Tight Corners

Forty years ago, we had a day out on the Snowdon Horseshoe, along with the usual (fewer than is common now) hordes of weekend walkers out from the cities. We did the thing in the reverse direction to usual for no particular reason, but as always the challenge from whichever direction, for the casual walker as opposed to climber, is the ridge known as Crib Goch. Admittedly, it can be intimidating to the less experienced, and in Winter is a serious proposition deserving of great respect and not a little mountaineering skill. However, on a fine Summer's day it is an exhilarating scramble in a fantastic spot.

Unfortunately for some, that experience can be overwhelming to the point of immobility - in climbing parlance: 'getting totally gripped'. We came upon some poor bloke who was completely gripped, right in the middle of the narrowest section; unwilling to advance or retreat, despite the entreaties of his companions on either side of the section. Figuring he had enough support and the weather being more than fair, we all climbed around him and carried on to the summit, to be met by hundreds of train-bound tourists from the town of Llanberis below. A couple of beers in the summit bar, the ravens wheeling around the cairn viewed, we continued and descended to the finish.

I've experienced getting stuck on climbs twice in my life. The first 'stuckage' was on the Milestone Buttress of Tryfan, when my twelve-year-old self wandered off-route and ended up in a blank corner considerably taller than I was, with vertical sides and no appreciable holds. My uncle Godfrey had led the pitch and was within shouting distance at the stance. Explaining my problem, he gave me a tight rope and told me to push off from the right hand wall of the corner and swing out beyond the left, which I duly did, launching out into the void above the 150 or so feet of space beneath, beyond the arête and onto the slab I should have been on at the start - this on an old-style waist-length and bowline rather than a modern harness.

The second time this kind of thing happened, it was an almost identical situation, albeit on a harder climb on slate and nearly twenty years later. Bryan and I were climbing in the Vivian Quarry, Llanberis, on the Dervish slab late in the afternoon. We followed a vague line, starting with Last Tango in Paris and finishing up Wendy Doll - both unremarkable E1 5b's, although to fair, the slab and the quarry have an amazing atmosphere and in certain conditions are quite intimidating.

I have to clarify the situation by adding the rider that a few days before I had an accident at work and suffered a deep gash to the palm of my right hand that needed five stitches, so by the time we were on the route I was effectively one-handed. This was fine for the slab itself - shallow scoops and a thin crackline being the only holds for the first section meant that it was mostly balance-y, requiring little grip from the fingers. However - as on that first Welsh rock outing, I managed to wander off-route into guess what? A sodding blind corner where a humungous block had parted company with the arête sometime previously.

This time at least, the back of the corner had a 1/2 inch finger crack that ordinarily would have afforded me a simple layback up the corner to hoist myself over the arête and back to where I [again] should have been. But being one-handed with no strength in my right, it was a call for help to Bryan, belayed some thirty or so feet above me. The scenario was an almost exact mirror of the one on Tryfan in the mid-sixties - tight rope, kick off and pendulum around the arête and onto the face, just below the famous overlap of the slab.

With the late start, and the added faff of my random wanderings/injury issues, we finished the route in darkness, without torches. The only safe way off was to abseil down the centre of the slab to the scree below and onto the walk-off - itself a bit hairy in the dark. We fetched up at The Padarn Lake Hotel for beers afterwards, myself at least thinking it might have been a bit daft to go cragging one-handed and I imagine Bryan thinking a more able second would have been a better idea. There you go.