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A Fist Full of Steel

By Scott Muir

Commitment is such a powerful word in climbing. I’m sure you’ve experienced that feeling of “should I, shouldn’t I”. Uncertainty arises, moves become awkward, the stomach fills with fear and dread and the head, and well this is more of a world war than just a battle.

It’s at this point that backing down is always far too easy, grab the ‘draw’, make an excuse; this for most is probably the best policy anyway, as epics are born of such situations. Its confidence born of experience that makes you settled and certain at these times of stress, falling doesn’t even enter your head, in fact you didn’t even consider the last move, it just happened. And you even had time to think this is magic, what a place, what a life.

Yet sometimes you make a commitment that is so large, you’re not sure where to even start. You just seem to make that move above a dodgy runner, and commit, unsure exactly why you’ve just made a move impossible to reverse. It felt right and strangely at that moment still does, forging into hard unknown ground where reactions and decisions are super critical, you’re in control but the outcome is still uncertain, you feel confident but cautious and the moves just keep coming even with the odd shake and wobble, next thing you know, you see the thank god jug, the ‘Rock 10’ and an elation understood only by those who have ventured down similar paths.

And so this was my season. I had decided to commit, to go for it regardless of the uncertainty, to put my neck on the line for something I believed I was capable of achieving. If I could just make myself some luck and work like a mad man to be fitter and better than I’d ever been before then I knew I’d have a chance of success.

The notion had come after the vagaries of another Himalayan ‘death-outing’ and after another tiresome and frustrating Scottish Winter. I needed more than just Scottish Winter and dreams of Big Mountains. I hadn’t found my technical and physical boundaries yet, and although being passionate about my climbing in Scotland and the snow-clad greater ranges, I wasn’t going to experience this limit without dying in the process. Although undoubtedly, serious technical routes currently exist in Scotland, they pale in comparison to the technicalities and physical difficulty displayed by the cutting edge continental sport mixed routes. Only here would I find a winter playground in which to excel and learn, I knew some of them were still very serious propositions with pegs and dubious bolting in soft rock, but the images of Mauro ‘BuBu’ Bole in his film ‘Tool ‘em all’ and his ascent of Mission Impossible were gob smacking and the most inspirational climbing shots I’d ever seen.

We are all different and although it may not float your boat, Continental and American / Canadian sport mixed epitomised everything I had ever wanted in my winter climbing. The thought of burling wildly through massive roofs to hang wasted, miles off the ground on spectacular ephemeral ice stalactites that concluded these world test pieces seemed to me the epitome of ‘out there’ climbing. Massive roofs and overhangs that I would never manage without tools, maybe no one would, even with mutant finger strength. With razor sharp tools the tiniest holds can be utilised, sketchy sloping holds stuck with crazy body tension and funky twists of the body.

In 2003, success on 009 and Welcome to the Machine, both M9 Stevie Haston routes and the hardest of their type in the world at the time of their first ascent, had started my desire to explore further. For his time (and I never thought I’d say it) Haston was well ahead of the game. His vision was good and what he achieved has still not yet been fully respected. It is a shame he never returned to Scotland and transferred his skills. Undoubtedly given his strength and the difficulty of his world test pieces, he may have done very well and really set the pace for the ‘hardmen’ in Scotland to stand and stare at, rather than slag off an entire nation as he did. However this didn’t happen and his routes at the “Haston Cave” in Italy are now just a warm up for the main courses elsewhere like his own brilliant Empire, Gadd and Firth’s Musashi and BuBu’s Mission. These early steps by Stevie complemented what was being climbed back then by Jeff Lowe on the brilliant and still necky Octopussy at Vail in Colorado.

Relatively few Brits had ever ventured onto these routes and still haven’t. My repeats of them in 2003 were the first British after Stevie and even then over 5 years had elapsed since their first ascent! I wonder why? Feeble power and the intimidation factor ‘may’ be some reasons suggested by Stevie in the past, the great Scottish ability to demean any advances alien to staunch traditionalism and an inability to accept new styles and tactics may be others. I have mates that have gone to sport crags abroad and placed traditional gear beside the bolts, an admirable, yet incomprehensible, stubborn and uniquely Scottish action. What is going on here? Don’t go to sport venues! No wonder the continentals and American’s think we’re mental. However, maybe this is a more realistic, but slightly cynical, explanation of our way of thinking and why attention hasn’t been redirected towards sport mixed, but for me the mystery and unrepeated nature of these routes by Scots and dare I say Brits, was all the more attractive.

Repeating all the Worlds Hardest *Sport Mixed routes in a season was going to be a challenge in many ways, for one it was going to be expensive visiting many different countries, especially since sponsorship in terms of money from companies is almost non existent. I didn’t know exactly where the routes were, as guidebooks to some of the crags don’t exist. Info. was vague at best and even once I’d located the venues, I discovered that the routes themselves were on roofs so large (25m+) that to train specifically for them in Scotland was going to need some serious ingenuity. And so ‘Dry Tooling’ and Too Fast Too Furious was born, undoubtedly now one of the hardest tool’ed routes in the world. If you can climb the 40 metres and clip the 26 bolts at Birnam, you might just stand a chance of getting up M12. I spent 7 days on Musashi (M12) in Canada after spending a whole summer at Birnam and still failed in December within touch of the final ice.

The MCofS provided me with a grant for this expedition-cum-trip, or as some suggested, ‘my holiday’. Well let me tell you, I’ve had grants over the years for Greater Range Expedition’s to Tibet, Nepal, India, Greenland etc, not all of which have been entirely successful, however not one of them even up to 7000m compares in effort to this season’s sustained four month trip round the world. Lets put it all into perspective, for a start it’s more expensive taking ‘Superfast’ to Zeebrugge and driving to the Alps now, than it is to fly to India. Expeditions are short lived, with only a few weeks of real climbing time after walk-ins and extreme faffing and even then the exposure to extreme difficulty and danger is subject to a few days.

I applaud the MCofS for moving with the times and recognising that an expedition to repeat hard continental projects of world significance can be just as committing and sometimes more so than any expedition to the Himalaya. If it now means that the younger generation can cut there teeth with grant assistance and repeat the worlds hardest sport routes, climb the hardest sport mixed, the hardest trad route – then I believe it is of as much Scottish significance as trudging up another big mountain objective. The training, commitment and sustained effort required on these types of routes is often far greater than climbing up Scottish Grade 5 in India. There is room for everyone and their dreams in this game, and if it brings even a hint of success to a nation of self-proclaimed failures, then that’s fantastic.

In the end I had the best winter season of my life. I was in Canada twice, Switzerland, Italy and the USA seeking out the classics that have to be experienced to appreciate all that has gone before and put into perspective the present and the future. On-sighting routes like the awesome Octopussy (M8), flashing Reptile (M10), and having an epic final day battle with The Game (M13) the world’s hardest mixed route.

To fall upside down time and time again, to somersault, to get spat off routes filled with terror, to strip the sheath off ropes, to puncture legs with heel spurs, to tear hands with slipping picks, to smash yourself in the face with popping tools; constant hot aches in hands, and tingles from your feet strangled above your head in insanely tight boots when everything pops except one spur, suspended like a bat and leaving your extending hamstring screaming, as you either face a head first fall or you curl your ripping abdominals and get re-established on route.

Now, Mission Impossible is no longer that haunting ring tone on my phone, my screen saver on my laptop is now my next project and I can smile at the poster of Mauro ‘BuBu’ Bole on Mission Impossible every time I pass it. Fantastic!

I unfortunately only returned once to Scotland, guiding clients on two Northern Corrie VI, 7’s in a day and the following day guiding a repeat of Winter Edgewood (VII,7) all leashless, for George MacEwan’s excellent Performance Seminar at Glenmore. It was great to remind myself of where I had started my climbing and where Scotland might play a role once more in cutting edge mixed routes.

The trip was made possible by the generous support of the MCofS and my other sponsors Red Bull, Mountain Equipment, Grivel, Scarpa and Edelrid. Without their support, projects like this just would not be viable given the total lack of investment by our own countries sport agency, who still don’t recognise non-competitive sports and fail to give essential financial support to some of the countries most successful athletes like Malcolm Smith, proffering football and other ball sports. I wonder which sport does actually provide the country with the highest level of income through tourism; we all know the answer to that!

Look out for the DVD ‘A Fist Full of Steel’ going on sale and covering all the routes from this past season. Check out http://www.extremedv.net/ for clips.

Routes Completed:

Musashi M12 Canada

Too Fast Too Furious D12 Scotland

Mission Impossible M11 Italy

Empire Strikes Back M11 Italy

A Fist Full of Steel M11 Colorado

Tomahawk M10+/M11 Switz

White Out M10+ Switz

Tool Time M10+ Switz

Reptile M10 Colorado

Goldline M10 Colorado

Captain Hook M10 Italy

Power Limit M10 Switz

Orgasmo M10 Canada

Power Bat M10- Switz

Slice of Scheiss M10- Switz

Twin Towers M10 Switz

Pink Panther M9+ Switz

Misery M9 Colorado

Fatman and Robin M9 Colorado

Quazy Moto M8+ Colorado

Mojo M8+ Canada

Octopussy M8 Colorado

Dizzy with the Vision M8 Colorado

Amphibian M8 Colorado

Samurai M8 FA Switz

Shagadelic M7+ Canada

Seventh Tenticle M7 Colorado

Frigid Inseminator M6+ Colorado

And many more below M6+

*Sport Mixed – Routes with pre placed gear of a variety of types (bolts, pegs, threads, nuts etc) in a wide variety of states from bombproof to seriously untrustworthy. ‘Sport Climbing’ in an adventurous sense rather than the safe summer sport climbing sense, e.g. Robert Jaspers Lucky Lisa M8 in Rjukan, Norway = 1 good bolt, 1 tied off bolt stud, some pre placed trad gear and a screw.