Steve McClure's Beyond Limits....reviewed

Photo-V-Publishing

There was something about the cover shot and caption which suggested that, as climbing autobiographies go, this wasn’t going to be a Journey After Dawn or Native Stones. " The author, entirely focused and without a hint of fear climbing the Very Big and the Very Small ..etc’. Hmmm..Self aggrandisement, ironic self deprecation or simply the publishers hype slotted in for effect?  At least it sets the reader up for what lies within and that is, a climbing memoir from someone who is firmly rooted in that exclusive club of top end English rock technicians. Those who studied their craft at the feet of Fawcett and Livesey et al, before going on to outstrip them on English and Welsh rock.

Steve’s autobiography begins in the time honoured manner of many north country climbers. Not quite tramping on’t moors wi mother’s washing line and dragging Fred up a slimy green crack but a path nevertheless,well trodden by our friends in the North. He did have one big advantage however,over a lot of climbers who find they have a natural talent in the field. That is, of having outdoor loving, rock climbing parents which has to give you a head start.Typically, Steve progresses apace and his ambition and boldness sees him exploring further and further afield from his north Yorkshire base.

One anecdote which sticks out from these early years is when he climbs a hard route on Cloggy. Setting out late in the day, he and his partner finish in the dark. After taking an age to get down from the top of the cliff they fail to find their rucksacks and decide to walk to Llanberis in the pitch dark and back up to their camp at the Cromlech boulders, still wearing their rock boots and still racked up. Next morning they walk back to Cloggy still in tight rock boots as they had no spare footwear. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it! I’m surprised he didn’t end up permanently hobbled like one of those Chinese peasant women in Wild Swans!

Unsurprisingly for someone pushing his limits, Steve’s steep learning curve sees him take a big fall which left him unconscious in a churning  Irish Sea while climbing at Pembroke. The Welsh sea cliffs being the venue for another serious accident when Steve eggs on a punter friend to tackle a route beyond his capabilities with almost fatal consequences. Happily said friend survives and remains a friend of his to this day.

The reader will not be surprised given the books' fairly parochial emphasis, that no one gets benighted on an Alpine face in a storm or falls into a crevasse. Patagonian citadels remain unvanquished and the greater Ranges remain over the hills and far away. Apart from the occasional bus-man’s holiday to warmer  climes, the dank limestone walls of Yorkshire and the beetling cliffs of the Celtic fringes remain the main arenas of activity. In this regard, this can be seen as both the strength and weakness of Steve’s book. A strength in that  it allows the reader to really get a flavour of the physical and mental stresses and attributes required to push the limits on native rock. A weakness in that without being able-as Martin Boysen could do in his recent Vertebrate autobiography- range far and wide across world mountaineering and climbing in all its varied forms, Steve has to keep the focus tight and fixed.

In particular, concentrating a lot of the writing on the technical nuances of a hard route. Describing in the tiniest detail, the moves on routes like Hubble, Overshadow, Batman and Northern Lights. You have to say though, that unless you are one of those climbers who operates in that rarefied stratosphere or are a total anorak who has devoured every article ever written about these rare climbs, then detailing the technical minutiae is interesting for sure, but then I guess that for 99% of those reading the book, you could mash up these passages and no one would by any the wiser. But then again, many would say that if you have climbed some of the hardest routes in the world then you are entitled to describe those experiences in the finest detail.

 

An interesting philosophical aspect of Steve’s book for me is that is rekindled some musings I had after listening to a classic radio programme about rock climbing in the early 1990’s. Interesting in that it firmly placed modern climbers into two distinct camps. The Classicists and the Romantics or if you prefer, the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. In this regard Steve is very much a modern day Roundhead who appears to echo Ben Moon-or was it Jerry Moffat’s ?- statement that ‘I’m not climbing to be in nice places, I’m climbing for the moves man!’ In the same programme, Ed Drummond-no slouch he of course on the rock face but very much with the romantics- lamented modern climbers ‘juvenile pursuit of numbers’.

In this, Steve appears to recognise those sentiments when in the latter stages of the book he finds himself wondering out loud whether he is still enjoying climbing as he once did or had it become a rather mechanical process with the sole aim of ratcheting up the numbers to keep the sponsors happy.  In this regard though, Steve still dutifully sings the praises of Fat Face, Marmot , 5-10 and the other enterprises who have used him to promote their products. As a pro climber with a wife and kids to support these days however, needs must if you operate at the cutting edge. A climber of Steve's calibre has a limited time at the top. As Paul Simon says in Boy in a Bubble- ‘Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts’. Steve’s autobiography is written from the perspective of someone who has been ‘thrown up the pop charts’ but in 2015, is no longer the new kid on the block. 

Rather an elder statesman in his mid forties. Steve’s generation placed between the 70’s and 80’s Godfather’s of Rock-Jockery and the current bright young things who grace the glossies are-or should we now say, were?- a supremely talented golden generation of rock athletes with Steve McClure very much at the heart of this select group. Beyond Limits is an honest and revealing work from the perspective of a supreme rock technician. It might be lacking in the romance and poetry which singles out the classic climbing book, but I’m sure even ‘Cavaliers’ will learn a great deal and find a lot to admire in Beyond Limits!

Krab-o-meter rating...

John Appleby:2015

Published and available direct from Vertebrate

 

String of Pearls

The sun cut through the mist and our senses were blunted by the technicolour glare. The plaques of granite became a gaudy mosaic across the face, and the String of Pearls acquired a lustre to match its name. To be frank, the Bosigran Girdle needs the magical touch of the sun, just as jewels need bright lights to sparkle. At risk of heresy it must be said that girdle traverses can be very boring indeed, and the middle sections of this one all but founder in the complex folds of granite. But not the start.

 At the right-hand end of the main cliff there juts a magnificent set-square of overhang, beneath which the early pitches nestle. Damp whiteness clamped the rock in cold monochrome as we swung on the Bow Wall. Some way across it the enfilading thrust of the sun flared on to the cliff. Our parting memories of Bow Wall were of granite as yellow as Catinaccio limestone, and of the 'Coalface’ slab of Suicide Wall glistening like newly spread tar.

And the rock was so hard. Three days on Bosigran had not lessened our wonder at its bruising density, as numbed Easter fingers, grown careless on more gentle,northern stones, came off the holds polished and raw. From a splendid pedestal stance in the middle of Suicide Wall, the great plates of granite pucker into a complex cluster of ribs and bays.

From this point the tempo changes completely, in a way that would have alarmed Glenn Miller, from one of whose titles Goodier and Deacon are reputed to have named the climb. Hitherto the scale and style of the surroundings have overwhelmed the deficiencies in detailed interest. Now, sustained only by what they can offer in climbing detail, the next four pitches are found wanting. Even the crux, a difficult and exasperating teeter across a very steep slab, is totally isolated in this confused and mediocre zone from those parts of the cliff which would give it real dignity.

It is in crossing Raven’s Wall, whose total height is only 120 ft that String of Pearls gets it together again. An overhanging fist of rock presses the route to within 40ft. Of the ground; encirclement of the knuckles provides a marvellous and disturbingly exposed 70ft. pitch. Tiny overlapping slabs lead to a steeply dropping hand traverse round the lowest forefinger of white granite; then the painful certainty of tired hands, thrusting deep into dirty cracks, brings this strenuous section to an end.

 As is so often the case,powerful rock architecture invests the lines that pass it with something of its majesty. The last pitch is delicate, unprotected and very lovely. For the first time the foreground is not the toy cove and picture-book island of Porthmoina, but the dramatic silhouette of the Seaward Cliff, creaming out of the Atlantic. The convex bulges glisten with a silvery, slickered sheen,roughened in striding sequence with a regularity unequalled by any human step-chopper.

The last pitch of Beaker Route completes the girdle, after 750ft. Of sustained, varied and often strenuous climbing. Regard the route as being like a rather dusty stretch of road, with the Bow and Raven Wall sections representing two automatic car-washers at either end, whose atmospheric drenchings erase enough of the journey’s grime to make String of Pearls fit for inclusion in this book.

Dave Cook

This article was intended for inclusion in ’Hard Rock’ but was omitted. Hence the reference to 'book' at the end. Like the essays in 'Hard Rock’ this piece highlights descriptive personal writing which seems so lacking in the magazines.

** After failing to make the cut for Hard Rock, Dave's article eventually appeared in Crags32. 

Letter to Jeanette

Coniston Fells: Original painting-Delmar Harmood-Banner 1938

Arthritis Cottage,

Ambleside,

Cumbria.

Dear Jeanette,

I am sorry...I apologise. I feel desolate. I did not mean to make you unhappy with what I said about your soloing Hopkinson’s Crack on Dow Crag. I never imagined you would flounce out of the climbing shop as you did, slamming the door and making us squirm with embarrassment. We Brits dislike scenes. I was clearly the culprit. “She didn’t like that,” said Julia,wrapping a pair of Huecos at the till. No, clearly you didn’t. Yet I had meant well.

Jeanette is, of course, no more your name than Arthritis Cottage is my address. But you know me - or should do by now. (When was it we last climbed together on Dow- 1953 ? I simply can’t take things seriously. But I feel serious enough to want to protect your identity as I try to make up for my calamitous mistake. In those days Dow Crag was a giant place. Still is: an eyrie of the mountain gods; its ramparts the kind that make the climber’s heart skip a beat when seen from deep in the valley near Torver, or high on the footpath from Coniston. The times our bunch from Ladnek had on Dow! Was there ever a dull moment? Unlike today where the po-faced reign.

So you see, Jeanette, my memories are fond ones, treasured from an age ago when everything was sunlight and laughter, when you were a leading light. You in your shorts and long brown legs, joyfully and outrageously- for that time - soloing Hopkinson’s Crack. When I introduced you to Julia thus, I was re-living my golden and most affectionate moments of climbing innocence.

Your angry rejoinder that “Tony may live in the past but I prefer to live in the present!”, not to mention your double-quick exit through the door - saddened me utterly. Everyone looked so accusingly at me. Perhaps Jeanette, for all your success as head one of the biggest British branches of an international organisation, you regret that you’re no longer climbing. Possibly it’s too painful to bring back those days when your hair was a cap of blondest curls and when the sun blazed like a blowtorch, heating the rock on which you smeared so daringly in your Woolworth’s rubbers. If that is the case, then is it any wonder my words struck such a painful chord?

Hopkinson’s Crack rockets into the air from the depths of the Amphitheatre – an unusual feature for Dow, where many routes climb exposed battlements, busy with climbers at weekends. How different is the setting for those solos of Hoppy’s you did! Grim, silent walls surround you on either side. Just to reach the foot of the crack seemed an expedition, about that time when Everest was climbed, as we cranked fearfully up into the Amphitheatre past the massive boulder jammed in Easter Gully; or instead descended into its bottomless pit from the steep end of Easy Terrace, tricounis  grating on wet rock.

The situation of Hopkinson’s Crack graded Hard Severe but verging on VS – is galactic. On the left is the mendacious pillar of Great Central Route, while on the right is Black Wall. How your heart must have raced when soloing: especially when you drew level with the small rock stance and the crux of Hopkinson’s loomed overhead. 

You were climbing a deep cleft until then, but at this point your world fell away. I seem to remember you climbed the right wall, heart stopping in its exposure. The alternative is to climb the crack, bridging occasionally, reaching and reaching again, up past the big hex that fits so snugly in the back, to where many (including me) make an inglorious landing on the Bandstand.

Climbing solo though, you bypassed this famous haven and continued straight on up the crack, the next pitch an arrow-straight skyshot offering bridging that is exquisite. Is it surprising, therefore, you might now regret no longer doing what you once did with such elan and such prowess?

In those days,Jeanette, routes like Eliminate A and Murray’s Direct were a world away. But possibly you went on to do both before you hung up your rubbers and wet day socks. I sincerely hope so, for they are also quite magical. I climbed them first in the 1960’s. But they are the kind of routes you would so enjoy: the best sort in the world. Eliminate A, to start with, pierces the front of the great buttress on the left, its bigness on a par with that of Notre Dame. A smooth wall is shaded by a slanting roof, continuing above like a great rock prow. That any VS can breach its front is unthinkable. Yet Eliminate A does just that, with four particularly memorable pitches. The first runs out 90 feet of rope above the depths of Great Gully, leering up at the intrepid leader engrossed in placing his gear; layaways and rockovers, the kind at which you used to excel, dear Jeanette, coming at you faster than you can stop them.

The shelf below the Rochers Perchers pitch arrives as a welcome refuge, but the take-off up the next mauvais pas comes as a shock; so overhung you stay dry in the rain, you are soon above a chuteful of thin air. Here is where Neil Allinson felt himself  slipping down the crag and realised the block he was pulling on ( one of the heavy Rochers Perchers themselves) was slowly sliding down towards him. Have you met Neil? He’s the coal miner who inadvertently pulled the Rochers Perches off; said it was like the pit roof coming down in Eldon Drift Colliery, Co. Durham.

The third of Eliminate A’s great pitches is the next one, slanting up leftwards beneath the great roof and using the edge of a crack as a handrail, made all the more enthralling for its lack of gear especially as you pull through and over onto the steep slab above - which is the fourth pitch of note. And what an immaculate pitch it is! A rising traverse on the very lip of the roof which has shadowed you for so long, with nothing but outer space below.

On you climb, up and up past the steepest rock, with holds and runners always coming. There’s a further pitch above, but it’s difficult to trace. The crack of Aréte, Chimney and Crack is a popular finish however.And then Murray’s Direct, the third of this trio of three-star routes. Then, when we used to stash our Bergen sacks under the cave on the scree, bouldering on the nail-worn slab immediately behind (4b today), I never dreamed that one day I, too would climb the inexorably smooth slab of Tiger Traverse - let alone the imperial line above: a magnificent corner hooded by overhangs and the essence of perpendicularity. Yet that is Murray’s Direct.

The Tiger Traverse slab is so tilted, the climber feels about to be tipped off onto the horrific landing below, gnarly jagged rocks and all. But wait. Today’s gear saves the day. Wires and Friends fit into a horizontal break immediately above the step up from a pointed flake, the next moves up and away also being protected by a further placement before the padding starts. Then happy holds are here again.

Tiger Traverse over, the open-book corner above is positively inviting. There  are beautiful holds for bridging; everything is so steep. But this is only the link pitch. The crux is still above, the corner itself deepening and  cowled with overhangs. Glance down between your legs as you bridge out above the tiny stance and it’s spit-straight to the screes. Then the immediate climbing has all your attention. Is it a layback, or a jamming crack, or will you bridge it as well? So near the belay, yet so wonderfully poised in such an outlandish position, it has seen the drying of the saliva glands inside many a leader’s mouth - that sure symptom of apprehension. No spitting now: at least not until relief once more flows through the body as you bridge and bridge again to reach better holds and begin to feel you are winning.

Shielded from the sun after mid-day but bathed in it before, Murray’s Direct is a well-protected line, complementing superbly both Eliminate A and, dear Jeanette, that climb I always associate with you, Hopkinson’s Crack. Whether you ever return to the rock or not (and surely it’s never too late, looking as fit as you do)  I can only wish you the very best. And hope you will now realise that whenever I might have so innocently gone on about  Hopkinson’s in the past, I saw it as a landmark to cherish rather than the reverse. A beacon in the light as the years roll by. We all need them. 

Take care then, Jeanette. Fight gravity  in all its insidious forms. There are so many straight faces around today, not to mention individuals with independent “miens”. Wherever did light-heartedness go?

All love and best wishes,

Yours affectionately,

Antonio (and his ice cream kart).

Antonio Frascarti:First published in Climber April 1992 

Ken Wilson....The man who gave us Mountain

I first met Ken Wilson at the foot of Pontesbury Needle, at the very spot to which Drummond, like Icarus, fell. It seemed somehow prophetic. After ticking the crag, we adjourned to the pub for a few beers. Subsequently we argued vehemently for nearly three hours in an empty car park while a silvery moon threw eerie shadows across Nesscliffe. Ironically we were on the same side.

Mention the W word in climbing circles and it's likely you'll invite a peevish response, typically from those who have never even met him. He's a maniac, he's a fundamentalist, he's an iconoclast, he's visceral.  Well indeed he is all of these and more... so much more.

At heart I suspect Ken is a figure of the 1960s, that vast, sprawling decade which indiscriminately spewed out so much good and bad that history couldn't help but be changed irrevocably. Certainly he emerged from that time, this architecture student turned photographer of crags and climbers, this courtier to those who once were young kings.

In the first age where the medium could be the message, Wilson, with a single Promethean bound, transformed Mountain Craft into Mountain. It no longer mattered whether you lived in Southport or Seattle. With Mountain, you were plugged into a global network spanning continents and eras, outcrops, big walls and great ranges. If there had been a mission statement for Mountain, surely it would have read, 'mountains and men who matter'. Unashamed elitism from a didactic autocrat?

Well unsnap the ring binders and consider those first 60 or so issues from over 40 years ago and what do you find?  Classic, after classic, after classic. The great routes, the great personalities, the great debates. As Flaubert noted aptly, 'You don't make art through good intentions.' Good intentions, yes... but there must also be iron in the soul. And Wilson fashioned Mountain from a motherlode.

However much Mountain changed our lives, for Wilson it could never have been enough. I suspect that for Wilson there will never be enough, the next horizon remorselessly spurs him onward, he is perennially taunted by great ranges which he may never reach. The Black Cliff, which he co-authored with Jack Soper and Pete Crew, hinted at what was to come. Looking back, it seems remarkable that a whole book could have unashamedly been devoted to a single crag, Clogwyn Du’r Arddu, of significant interest only to climbers, and been prominently displayed in city centre bookshops. With Wilson's inspirational photographic sequence of Drummond running it out on Great Wall, modernism in climbing image triumphantly emerged from the swirling mists of the myth-enshrouded past.

A few years later, The Black Cliff's celebratory promise of word and image was fully realised when Hard Rock, the volume most likely to be found on any climber's bookshelf, appeared. At once a hymn to the visual, the visceral and the cerebral, it's 57 essays about major British routes gave us unforgettable images. Perrin's dalliance with Right Unconquerable was a paean of sensual pleasure, whereas Drummond's haunting refrain for Great Wall and its lonely progenitor rings forever in our ears. 'Lovely boy, Crew, arrow climber. Wall without end.'

Games Climbers Play, the classic anthology of mountain literature, came next. So many outstanding writers were represented that to single out any of them seems invidious. But again Perrin featured strongly and again Drummond's sporadic genius soared. Mirror Mirror, the great wall which so nearly proved his nemesis, is one of the most profound studies of  obsession ever written. It touched the essential sickness which inhabits many climbers' souls. And it depicted climbing as a fire which can purify, a rite of passage by which we may possibly be redeemed.

While Mirrors in The Cliffs, Classic Rock and Extreme Rock consolidated Games and Hard Rock, Wilson was already racing ahead with Diadem, his own publishing house. Again the mission statement might have read, 'mountains and men who matter'. Bonington, Boardman, Messner, Roskelley, Saunders, Scott, Shipton, Venables and many, many more formed a distinctive roll call of the illustrious.

Yet as essentially a one-man business, no matter how successful, Diadem was always vulnerable. Its assimilation into Hodder & Stoughton gave Wilson considerably enhanced publishing clout. Hodder Headline's subsequent rejection of mountaineering literature as a significant concern was the stuff of 1990s publishing drama. Within four days of his corporate chains snapping, Wilson had another publishing house, Bâton Wicks, up and running. His declared aim was, 'to publish the best in mountaineering literature'. Same message, different format. Again there were to be the great names, the great ranges, the great deeds. And again there were innovative writers such as Paul Pritchard and Dermot Somers. Whatever you may feel about Wilson, be in no doubt – he takes publishing risks. And we benefit.

But what are we to feel about Wilson?  Confusingly perhaps, there are so many Wilsons. There was Wilson the courtier of yore, who became Wilson the king-maker. There was Wilson the photographer, whose compositions of crags such as Cloggy and Gogarth reveal an architectural simplicity of line which has probably never been bettered. There was Wilson whose Mountain helped shape our perceptions of all mountains. There was Wilson who demonstrated the potentially infinite variety of Games Climbers Play. There was Wilson of Hard Rock, Wilson of Diadem and now of  Bâton Wicks.

There is Wilson the ceaseless archivist of climbing history. There is Wilson the polemicist, unsparing and unyielding as he grapples with the great debates. There is Wilson the climber, a soldier of the middle grades. There is Wilson the mountaineering politician, merciless in his pursuit of what seems the greater good. There is Wilson the businessman, who takes considerable risks with climbing writing, is canny with money yet meticulously pays his bills. There is Wilson the friend, unexpectedly considerate in one who possesses not a jot of sentimentality. There is Wilson the dutiful family man. There is Wilson the iconoclast, his iconoclasm consistently invalidating establishment status. There is Wilson, not an original thinker (Mountain, Hard Rock and Games Climbers Play all had their less-heralded precursors) but a consummate shaper of ideas. Above all, there is Wilson the man who delivers. That motherlode of iron runs deep and far and wide.

God knows, mountaineering has thrown up more than its fair share of quirks, maniacs and oddballs. But what in heaven's name have we done to deserve Wilson? Bolts at Harpur Hill, trees in Cheedale, guidebooks in Pembroke, lower-offs in Lancashire quarries, ethics at indoor climbing walls, something else, something else, something else...  Will Ken ever shut up?

No he won't. And nor should he. Because Ken, however much he may rant, is truly the Jonathan Swift of our time. That such an extraordinary creature should have emerged from the climbing world should be cause for celebration, not confusion.

When Ken sights along the line of truth, he has 20:20 vision. It's less easy for the rest of us, who tend to be misty-eyed with misgivings and, when we eventually manage to focus, often don't like what we see. Ken's devotion to the truth is unswerving.

When you stand back and try to add it all up, you find that Ken has given so much to mountaineering that it's well-nigh incalculable. Why does he do it?  Who knows? It's his belly and it's his rat. But for as long as we are content to live with the convenient popular caricature, we are blinding ourselves to a visionary in our midst.

Photo: Ian Smith

© Mick Ward, 1997.  First published in Climber, September 1997.