WHAT'S IN A GRADE?
Cubby questions whether grades are set more due to personal experience than actual difficulty.
Over the winter, Ballachulish village has been plagued by a psycho crow. It starts at first light "caw, caw, caw", rocking it's body and lifting its head as it does so. The car park in front of our house seems to be its favourite venue, which displays an array of shiny new makes and models of cars, all neatly lined up next to each other. I can't work out whether or not the crow is seeking attention but every time it caws, it looks around to see if anyone is watching. It starts by hopping up onto the wing mirror of the first car (usually mine), pauses for a moment, looks around once more and then slowly drops its head until it can see its reflection in the mirror.
Instantly it goes into a frenzy, pecking the mirror with its beak and fluttering its wings. It caws another three times, ecstatic - and then hops up onto the roof. Any old car won't do for it has to be shiny, with a sunroof. Our neighbours pride and joy BMW seems to be a favourite. Once on the roof, it caws again before gradually dropping its head, until its own reflection comes into view again. Then the pecking begins, the wings flutter and it goes completely mad, pirouetting 360 degrees and slipping and sliding on the polished surface and cawing and pecking, before moving onto the next car. I thought of the song "You're so vain" by Carly Simon and a flash of deja vu came across me and for a moment I thought that an old climbing friend, known as The Brat, had been reincarnated!
It's the mid 80's, 5.30 in the morning and all I can hear is the pitter patter of feet on the small flat topped out house, we called the Sauvage Garage but really it was just a converted garage which I rented from Paul Moores in Tighphuirst. Peck, peck, caw, caw, peck, peck, it drove me nuts. The Brat, or "Creature" as I more commonly called him, would spring out of bed, cawing like a crow and pecking my head with his fingers with a caricature that was a spitting image of Mad magazine - not a pretty sight at 5.30 in the morning! He'd cram a tape into the recorder, usually Planet Claire by the B52's and played at max volume.
Then, standing in the middle of our little bed sit, with nothing on but a pair of Koflachs and my underpants from the dirty washing pile, wielding a Chacal in each hand, the Creature would perform a sort of ritual - thrusting and gyrating his pelvis and hips like a strange form of oriental martial art. It was made even more grotesque when he would dislocate his hips and shoulders, which was accompanied by a sickening thud, that formed a beat in time to the music. "She came from Planet Claire, where all the trees are dead and nobody has a head..." and the beat went on. The Creature would just laugh at himself in front of the mirror.
The Creature's dad was a dietician (and Dean of the faculty at Aberdeen University), which was unfortunate because he stressed the point that all your daily energy requirements could be found in a tin of baked beans. So off we would go to the Ben, with enough wind in our bodies to carry us half way round the world, belching and farting up the Allt a'Mhuillin.
In 1986, Ed Grindley's winter guide to Ben Nevis and Glencoe had just come out and full of very flattering new grades it was too. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for opening out the grading system but this was just a tad over the top. The whole topic of grading winter climbs has always been a contentious issue and climbers can be incredibly over sensitive on the subject. I remember being approached by Gordon Smith in the late 70's.
Gordon was a leading alpinist at that time and a major Scottish winter activist with first ascents such as Pointless and Route II Direct to his credit. When I made the first ascent of Elliots Downfall in the Coe, I gave it grade VI. "You know you're treading on thin ice Cubby". Well I replied, of the few grade V's that I've done, Orion Direct for example, Elliots is so much steeper and harder and therefore easier to fall from and although it is short by comparison to Orion, I thought it was potentially more serious and also prone to collapse.
Why are we so reluctant to open grades out? The reasons are perhaps more deep rooted than we think. When you revert back to Ian Clough's definition of winter grades, grade IV especially, "exacting climbs of sustained severity, or climbs of the highest standard which are too short, or lack the seriousness to merit grade V." Evidently length matters! It's not surprising that climbs have been bottlenecked over the years. Thanks to Clough's definition of grade IV, we have been left with a legacy of short technical desperates.
It happened on rock as well, in Borrowdale for example nothing was graded above HVS, probably because of the climb's ease of access and crag ambience. Northumberland was tarred with the same brush too. No doubt the theory being that the chances of surviving a ground fall from 40 feet was far greater than from 300 feet! I think Ed Grindley was on the right track by introducing grade VI back in 1986. However, I do feel that some climbs are simply more serious than others but does this necessarily deserve an increase in grade? On rock it is relatively straightforward to classify a climb but in winter conditions vary enormously and it takes time for a consensus to evolve.
On the other hand, guidebook writers have an uncanny knack of taking the law into their own hands and personalise grades from their own experiences, often to the embarrassment of the first ascentionist. Some good examples can be found on the Ben. Con Higgins, a climber at the forefront of Scottish ice climbing in the 70's, gave Albatross grade IV, which no doubt falls into the "too short to warrant grade V" syndrome. In good conditions, how much harder is Albatross, than say, Point V. Harder, certainly but by how much? It now gets a massive grade VII,6, as does Stormy Petrel, Pointless and Journey Into Space. Is the grade a reflection of popular opinion, or could it be that guidebook writers (and climbers in general) are attempting these routes in adverse conditions, or is it a reflection that they themselves were given a run for their money. With an increasing number of winter activists on the scene, I am confident a general consensus should be possible.
Anyway, being in the CIC hut recently, left me wallowing in nostalgia. Fuelled by a glass or two of the old amber nectar, the topic of conversation inevitably swung round to grades and conditions. The expression "legendary" was very much in vogue but as one of the more seasoned climbers amongst the group, my thoughts drifted back to the 70's and 80's. The thaw freeze cycle required to build copious amounts of ice and neve usually takes place in March and early April. My first experience of "legendary" Nevis ice was in April 1976, when I did Orion Direct, a phenomenon that I was fortunate to experience so early on in my climbing career.
Back to Grindley's grade VI's in 1986. As an Aberdonian, Creature was weaned on Cairngorm granite and as a consequence, he was a very capable mixed climber. On ice he was a complete spaz! It took us longer to do Point Five than it would do had I been guiding a student. The winter of '86 was magnificent with somewhere in the region of six weeks of blue skies and perfect snow. Over the winter, the Creature honed his ice technique.
On my occasional day off from guiding, we climbed some classics together, such as Gemini on the Ben and moved together on 50% of The Fly Direct. He soloed the second ascent of Rainmaker in Glencoe, originally given grade V but now promoted to grade VI in Grindley's guide. I soloed Smith's Gully on Meagaidh in under 15 minutes and Psychedelic Wall. So an idea had been planted in our minds to solo all the routes that we thought didn't warrant grade VI on the Ben and these would have to be climbs that we hadn't done before. I immediately thought back to the Easter of '76 and I suggested that we should wait until early April and see what happens. If the season ended abruptly then nothing would be lost. True to form, conditions were magnificent.
Fuelled by another tin of beans, we warmed up on Vanishing, reversed Tower Ridge and over to the Orion Face where we did Slav, down Tower Gully and up Rubicon Wall. After a day of bad weather, we warmed up on Sickle, then climbed Astral Highway and Galactic Hitchhiker. Conditions were generally outstanding, though Astral Highway was cruddy on the crux and the initial slab of Galactic, very hollow. Another bad day of weather followed. Creature was getting bored so I did Left Edge Route Direct and then backed off part way up the crux corner of Pointless due to a lack of ice and nerve!
We were both getting bored. We could have done a lot more, perhaps we should have done some new routes but I think within ourselves, we had made a point. Our achievements appeared to be largely ignored and in the next addition of the guide, the grades went up even more. Still, we had a lot of fun but don't underestimate the quality of legendary ice, for these are the conditions that the majority of Nevis first ascents have been made under.
Cubby
1/5/2001
