A Climb Through History
The North West Gnarl Test
Oliver Metherell takes on Millennium, Foinaven’s Best route
Photos by Oliver Metherell & Richard Biggar
I have no more connection to the North West of Scotland than the road outside my house, yet I’m continually drawn to it. I’m always missing it. I know that to talk lovingly of climbing in the North West has a spongy sentimentality, but climbing up there has a sense of adventure, a feeling of the unknown that other climbing areas in Britain have lost. Everything that you achieve in this area of Scotland is done the hard way.
We have a problem. A Big problem. How is it that my car keys are locked in the car, without me being inside? It is already 9am and we should have left for the cliff at 8.30am. Rich pulls on the door with his steely fingers and I slot flat stones into the crack he’s made. The minutes rush by, and so do the midges, munching on our sweating flesh as we work the wire into the lock. "C’mon, C’mon!" Eventually we are rewarded with a satisfying ‘click’.
The walk in is gruelling. Imagine hiking up Ben Nevis with a hangover – and then some. Banzai midges attack with kamikaze hatred, brittle heather snaps at your legs, and cold bogs slobber hungrily up to your waist. I’m attempting to capture some of this horror on film, when I drop my fastest 50mm lens into a slimy pool. Damn! Finally we make it to the base of the cliff. Manfully I resist embracing Rich.
The base of the cliff is where the buck stops. It’s a big cliff, over 300m high and guarded by a series of fearsome overhangs. From here it looks unclimbable; it’s hard to believe that the route exists up there. Yet in the guidebook ‘Millennium’ is touted as one of the loadstone’s of Foinaven; a four star E2 up one of the remotest cliffs in the UK. It was climbed by Paul Nunn and friends in 1982.
I glance around the grass where we have readied our gear for the ascent. The two ropes are neatly flaked out on the ground with the top ends pointing out from the cliff so I can tie into them swiftly. The gear is racked on the harness and bandolier and it clinks softly as I move. Everything is positioned in its usual place. If things get spicy up there I can find the correct piece in an instant.
It’s always the same, after all this time, after so many climbs: The pin-prick of hair rising on the nape of the neck, the dry mouth, the feeling of lightness that goes up from the soles of your feet, the slowing and deepening of breathing. I move my hand up to the first hold and begin the long journey up the cliff.
The rock moves past my face. We are following a left-slanting crack. The ropes stretch down towards Rich in the direction of 7 O’clock, as the line fires up and right. No belay here at the top of the pitch, despite what it says in the guide. There is no chalk, no gear-worn holds, no fixed protection, no sign that you are on-route or that anyone has passed this way. I am dreading the next lead: how do you lead 5b on loose rock?
"Don’t stand on that block" Rich screams. "It’s going to annihilate me!" "Which block?" I reply. "The one you are standing on with your left foot". I’m 29 now; will I live to see 30? With the way things are going I don’t know… I move my foot and place some gear. The last two pitches are where the climbing gets hard. Especially now that the crux pitch has shed holds. Our ‘alpine’ approach to ethics turns into full-bore aid climbing, with a Scottish flavour – the feature we’re climbing seeps with a green primordial slime.
The blue sky pales. The loch below fades to black. The gloopy crack fires leftwards with a ramp below it and an overhang above. Rich has not moved for a while and there are three pitches left to climb. "I’m not making much progress here" he says "why don’t you give it a try?" I look at my watch: forty minutes of daylight left.
I feel my gorge rise as the head torch gets snapped onto the helmet. The rock is glassy; all the holds seem to slope the wrong way. Rich grunts as I place my feet on his shoulders and try to force the route upwards. "Slack on green Rich!" I say, hating the testiness that infected my tone. "There doesn’t seem to be much gear up here", I feel the clutch on my control slipping. I come back to the belay. It looks easier to the left – even though it’s wet. Stay cool, breath deep, focus and relax. Read the sequence and don’t make any sudden movements.
For one sublime moment it all comes together and we’re off; whooping out on the traverse rightwards, on a flying ramp about a thousand miles off the ground. Good holds as the ramp thins above the void. Now you’re pinched up; hand close to feet on the narrow ramp, nothing but acres of air below your feet and your white-faced climbing partner looking up. The overhang caps the ramp here. You must climb it to be free of this dark and dangerous place.
The last placement feels miles away below. Sketchy-looking white holds slope down from above … Are they solid? Will they hold? And then you crank up. Up and away; free from the dark, brooding overhang, onto the pale slab with the darkness flooding down into the valley and the light fading from the sky. We move swiftly and confidently over the slab, head torches glowing bright in the night.
We walked back over the miles of heather, having tamed our first big route in the North West, and feeling quite chuffed with ourselves. Millennium was ours and boy did it feel good.
Climb Through History
© MCofS
Route: Millennium, Dionard Buttress 1, Foinaven
Grade: E2
First Ascent: A Livesy, P Nun 1982
Millennium Climbers: Oliver Metherell & Richard Biggar