GROUND FALL ON-SIGHT

August 15^th, 2018

I started climbing when I arrived in England few years back and I had no idea back then what ‘Trad’ was, or that it even existed. After a short year indoors I was dragged outside and seconded my first ever trad climb, ‘Man Friday’ (VS,4c) at Corby’s. Later that evening I attempted to second ‘Sunshine Superman’ (HVS,5a) but couldn’t pass the crux, too tiring, too different; what a great game though.

DISCOVERING

My father, born in the French Pyrenees, was a mountaineer most of his teens, eventually giving it up after settling in Paris in his mid-20s. Although we've never shared climbing, he’s always told me stories of “mentors”, pitons, hammock bivvying mid-route, and friends taken by the mountains.

Trad climbing brought me a bit of this familiar mountain story smell and the feeling of seriousness. However, times have changed and with the easier access to climbing for everyone, the harder it is to find this “mentor figure”. I was lucky, thanks to the NMC, to find people who would take me on climbs and spare some time teaching me how to tie a clove hitch or how to set a nut; but soon enough I felt the urge to get on the sharp end.

Since gear has become more affordable, info and skills virtually limitless online and physical/technical fitness quickly achieved indoors, I believe people spend much less time seconding and building an overall experience. They start to lead very quickly, teaming up with similarly experienced partners, i.e. very fresh leaders. This can also be speeded up by the fact that training indoor coupled with a reasonable level of fitness makes you quickly find VS fairly easy to second. It is however not guaranteed to give access to anyone around leading more than HVS.

I believe one tends to alternate between a conservative and a riskier approach along the path of improvement until an equilibrium is found. This directly depends on level of experience and risk management.

DEVELOPMENT

Back to my own experience, I’d spent a year mainly seconding and getting some leads under my belt, mainly VSs, HSs on more impressive rocks and few HVSs. Those first leads were definitely completed with “beginner's luck” as some leads were rather sketchy. It took me more than a year to repeat some of those climbs! That was the “riskier approach”.

The realisation of how dangerous this can be has coincided with establishing a climbing partnership with someone without outdoor experience. This automatically propelled me “leader” with all the responsibilities this entails, without the possibility to share it. I entered the “conservative approach”.

I lost my naïvety, realising that this is at times a scary game, especially on Northumbrian sandstone.

Jugs became crimps as soon as the gear reached my knees and I couldn’t feel comfortable with less than half my foot on the hold. Routes were enjoyable but the whole climb would suddenly tense up when the holds got smaller or the gear sparser. The difficulty of the moves themselves weren’t an issue but rather a feeling of insecurity given by smaller and less positive holds.

I quickly reached the VS stage being mainly limited by my ability to be confident on gear as well as being swift in placing it. I've always thought that the only difference between VS and HVS was the lack of rests. Most VSs tend to have a tricky section between rests and breaks whereas HVSs are usually more sustained, forcing the leader to be quicker at placing gear as hanging around is not an option any more. However, I found that placing gear in comfortable position wasn’t an issue. I had to go on more sustained terrain to improve my gear placement, terrain that I would fear to tackle because of my lack of efficiency. Catch 22.

Towards the end of summer 2016, I decided it was time to push through HVS as I knew I had the capacity for it. On a nice day, we’d chosen Bowden Doors as our destination. Starting with the classic ‘The Scoop’ (VS,4c) as a warm-up, the first HVS to be tackled was ‘Long Crack’ (5a). This was a fair fight towards the top where some awkward bridging isrequired. My second declared it her worst climb to date!

My second chosen HVS was ‘First Leaning Groove’ (5a). The initial section, you establish yourself on top of the flake, a good nut set in the top of it. Some slots on the left crack don't feel like taking good gear; I placed a micro-cam (Wild Country Zero 5) which I didn't really rate but carried on. I got to the stage just below the horizontal crack where I hoped to put some decent gear in. The move felt committing, the holds quite small, and I faffed around for a while not sure what the best move to do was. I eventually pulled myself up, not committing to the break and halfway through the move tried reversing it looking for the smeary foot hold I had come from. I knew it a fraction of a second before it happened, the fall.

A black screen and a hard knock on the back of my head later, I was aware of lying on the floor, eyes still closed. A couple of nearby climbers rushed towards us and helped out. After a mental check, my whole body assessed, I gently recovered from my first on-sight ground fall.

A few minutes later, we tried to recall the event, what had happened during the fall and what led to it. It turned out the micro-cam partially held the fall but popped when I swung out. The nut below at the flake then caught me. I spun in the air, hitting my belayer on the way and landed on my back on the rope stretch, hitting my head, the only conscious feeling I had. Glad I wore my helmet.

What led to the ground fall was a succession of mistakes, caused by inexperience. The first mistake was to save gear for the following section. On the left crack I thought I could fit a large cam but worried I might need it for the top break. I went for the micro cam on a slot slightly above instead. The second mistake was combined with the third; I decided to continue knowing that the gear was poor and would likely not hold a fall. With poor gear I neither retreated nor committed, I pulled myself to the break and stopped halfway. The final mistake was to freak out when I decided to reverse the move, scratching my feet desperately looking for the smear. Independently, I don’t think any of these mistakes would have led to the ground fall, but combined it did.

Although physically unscathed by the ground fall, both my partner and I were fairly shaken by the event. A weekend in Pembroke a few days later didn’t help our confidence! It was time to reflect on what happened and use the experience for improvement.

Shaftoe bouldering (Photo: Craig Harrison)

Build-up

Following the summer, climbing days getting less often, it was a good time to review the year and how to engage the next step.

We've got some good bouldering in Northumberland and this is often viewed as a great way to train for and enhance trad. I never shared that idea as my limitation when climbing on gear had never been a technical one. As such, bouldering didn't really helped but sport climbing did. A short month after the fall, we spent a couple of days down in Yorkshire clipping bolts and it felt great. The feeling of being on the sharp end is there, the feeling of falling as well but the fear and the potential outcome of trad climbing reduced. It’s great to build confidence on the lead, above the gear and especially on smaller holds. It teaches you that footholds don't need to be ledge-like to be secure and that small handholds are fine too. It also allows you to cast a new eye on grades. A 6a sport climb is likely to be within my warm-up climbs. However E1, technically akin to a 6a sport, holds much more weight and tends to be my "pushing the grade" climb on a good day. Merging the two styles allows to improve difficulty on lead and put trad grades in perspective.

Feeling confident on rock is one thing. However this relies on "confidence", a very volatile feeling. I’ve heard a lot of “I feel confident at the moment”, “I climb well”, “I feel good with my gear placement”, “I feel strong”, “I’m in a good cycle” and so on. All of those statements reward good climbing performances and achievements. The common point though is that they rely on “the moment”, the confidence. Once that moment is gone, so are the upper grades. Injury, bad weather, bad fall, winter season and we’re back to Stage 1, a couple of grades lower. The harder grades feeling intimidating again, with the need to "warm up" for several months to get back to last year's high point.

I've tried to put the emphases on protection, the gear and rope system. Building confidence into the climber is essential, as discussed above, but confidence in the system is perhaps more essential when climbing on gear as this is more reliable. No more tired/injured/hungover/too much beach time, pick your excuse. After two full trad seasons, I fell at only one occasion, trying the second pitch of ‘Coldstream Corner’ (HVS,5a) at Kyloe. I had a solid hex slotted in the crack on the first steep part before the final groove. I didn’t have any doubts on this placement and after having tried and fallen off the moves 6 or 7 times, I couldn't pull myself any more, too tired. At that point in time, I had trust in the system and so was happy to push forward.

Post ground-fall I went back to the basics on gear placements. The internet is a great source of knowledge and lots of good tips and advice can be found. Within lots of reads, I found one of Kirkpatrick’s blog posts amongst the most useful. The basic principle is what I'd called an "instant assessment": select gear, place it, test it, assess it and forget about it. More of a sport climbing approach where the bolt is not suddenly a source of doubt once above it. It is assessed when clipped, rusty or not, and then forgotten (the fall may not be though!).

The next step covers what I had identified directly as one of my mistakes, namely don't go further unless the gear is assessed as 'good'. Give yourself a margin of error if only a poor placement is found, and allow few more moves to find the next good placement. If failure to do so, there are two outcomes, retreat or commit. If you commit, you effectively become the protection. Recently I read Steve McClure's book Beyond Limits. He follows a similar system with more of a "continuous assessment" approach of gear placements. He rates the gear placement between 1 and 5 − 1 being psychological gear and 5 bolt-like. If it's a 5, there is no rational reason to not fully commit. If it's a 3, he might consider where his previous protection is and what rating it has before continuing. A bad ledge below a good piece may also drop the rating from 5 to 4 or 3. And so on.

In order to get a feel for this and not really wanting to take lead falls on purpose, I set up some practice falls on gear. The first destination was ‘Devil's Edge’ (HVS, 5a) at Kyloe. Perfect for a mid-height first runner, a shallow cam, with a clear landing. Boulder pad in place, I climbed up to the cam placement and placed the said cam. The crack is quite shallow and as such was rating the cam as not fully trustworthy. I would have easily seen it slip before it could bite the rock. I started testing it by resting on the gear. It held. I bounced on my harness. Still attached to the wall. Climbed at the cam's level and fell. It still hasn't moved. I climbed a bit higher than the gear and dropped again. Still solid. What I had assessed as poor gear proved to be good enough to catch a modest fall. That had the double effect to also bump up my confidence onto other cam placements that I would rate great or excellent! I planned on doing a similar test on a nut but I'd always had more confidence into nuts than cams anyway so didn't get to try that one out (voluntarily!).

After not too long, having climbed few HVSs, I decided to go for my first E1, ‘Whit's End Direct‘ (5b) at Gimmer Crag. To increase my feeling of safety, I placed gear pretty much two by two, double safe. On the first tricky slab sequence, I placed a size 3 or 4 nut, and swiftly added a cam above it. I climbed the thin sequence and near the big handhold, I got suddenly scared and started down-climbing. On such a slab that was a silly idea and I inevitably took a fall.

A decent length and a gentle catch later, I looked up and saw the cam peacefully holding me, the same I had tested in Kyloe.

Back on the wall, I passed the section with ease, finally topping out with sore feet. All 14 or so quickdraws and much of my rack placed, I had scaled my first E1, taken on the way my first real fall since ‘Coldstream Corner’. I felt ready for more!

Just before the fall on 'First leaning groove'

Pembroke climbing. Riders on the storm (HVS 5a).

Thoughts on trad

Most of us are familiar with the motto "you need to fall to improve" and yet it proves difficult to put it in practice."The leader never falls", the old-time mantra, still rings true for a lot of people. Although most of us would agree that this mantra belongs to the older days, it still remains fairly ingrained in lots of climbers’ head, especially those operating at mid-grades. I was recently discussing with a friend who took few falls trying an E2. As he discussed this with another climber, that person replied "at least you're honest about it" as if it was a thing to hide. Why does falling have to carry such shades of shame? As with most decisions in trad, falling should be part of the assessment. Coming off happily on a "no fall" zone being an obvious bad decision and ultimately a big mistake. Although counter-intuitively, routes also become safer the harder they get; walls are often steeper, less ledgy, allowing for clearer falls. This may not hold true on very hard and bold routes though!

The idea of on-sighting or not sending a route clean can also have a huge impact on our relationship and ultimately achieving our goals in climbing.

On-sighting has a high status and should be seen as a treat for the special climbs as opposed to being the norm. One might find too many worthwhile climbs to save for an on-sight, but how many others can someone realistically just try to climb? I’m in a different position to someone local to an area with no prospective of moving. Every time I go somewhere, I’ve got a thought in the back of my head that tells me “I might never come back here”. “Saving” for the future is therefore somewhat absent from my mind. But regardless, you might stop climbing, you might get injured and lose grades, you might even become way stronger than the climb, so the on-sight would not mean much anymore. So why wait? I’d rather remember of my years of climbing when I tried and fought this climb than remember how good it was to save it for the future (yet to come).

On top of Fool's Gold, Bus Stop Quarry (Photo: Megan Denman-Cleaver)

A season or so later

Since the ground fall, in June 2016, I have, by the end of the 2017 season managed to climb several E1s on sandstone, limestone sea cliffs, grit, and our local Whin Sill. Some were managed on-sight, some had seen previous top-rope tries, some starts were “bouldered”, some were with rests and others with falls, some were interrupted by the weather, some were 40+ m long, others as short as 15m, some hard and others soft. Every try made me more impatient to get onto the next one, bringing the grade down to my level.

After the winter season, in spring 2018, trad was back. I had a small feeling of doubt, would I be able to apply the principles worked on in the past season? It turned out yes. By the beginning of April, I had climbed a few E1s and managed my first E2, ‘Vector’, at Tremadog, followed by few more, and a whipper on ‘Daddy Cool’(E2 5c)!. I can't say that all fear or nervousness is gone, trad is a mind game after all! Mixing sport climbing has also really helped as after climbing on a thin 7a, most E2s will feel juggy!