ROCKIN’ AND ROLLIN’
TEAMING UP WITH MOUNTAIN MAN JOE FLANAGAN, ED THOM SETT HEADS TO THE LAKE DISTRICT TO EM BARK ON A LITERAL HARD ROCK ENDURO
It’s amazing the places you can get to with a mountain bike – and a climbing rope! Mountain (or should that be ‘mad’?) man Joe Flanagan gives our Ed a few scares on their very own ‘Hard Rock Enduro’
IT TAKES A FEW STRONG WORDS WITH MYSELF TO QUASH THE ANXIETY THAT'S RISING IN MY GUT
Hunkered down in the middle of a rising slab of rock, I dig my fingers as deeply as I can into the shallow crack, feeling around for grip and praying that the vicious wind whipping across me will abate soon. The bike that’s strapped to my back is acting like a kite and I’m worried that if I relax even for a second, a rogue gust will drag me clean off the face. Pushing my body in closer to the rock, it takes a few strong words with myself to quash the anxiety that’s rising in my gut. As a rock climber I know all too well that what situations like this call for – besides steely finger tendons and steadfast endurance, of course – is a cool head and a relaxed approach. “Fear won’t do you any good” is an old adage we love to throw around in the pub, but let me tell you, when you’re 30 metres off the deck and panic is on the verge of setting in, it’s much easier said than done, especially when you’re climbing with, to put it mildly, some rather unusual cargo.
Race to the bottom
This precarious predicament, teetering on my fingertips and with a dizzying drop between my legs, is largely of my own making. Being a lover of ascending steep walls as much as descending steep trails, I decided that an outing that combined the two would make for a pretty memorable experience. Instead of earning my turns in the Lakeland Fells with an arduous hike-a-bike to the top, I figured, why don’t we climb up? And by climb, I mean literally – with ropes and all the rest. That way we can tick off a classic route, reassemble our bikes on the summit and enjoy losing our hard-won elevation down some of the Lakes’ finest singletrack. What a bloody ace day out, I’m sure you’ll agree. But climbing of this sort requires a partner, someone to hold your ropes and keep you safe. The name that instantly springs to mind is Joe Flanagan. Picture a mountain goat with long, curly hair, a proper Northern accent and an insatiable appetite for bad jokes, and you’ve got a pretty good image of Joe. He and I haven’t really ridden together since back in the mid 2000s, when we both raced in the Scottish Downhill Series, but I’d seen snaps on social media of Joe scrambling up crags with his bike and I knew that, being both a keen rider and a proficient climber, he’d be up for it. What’s more, Joe is somewhat of an honorary Lakes local, with a knowledge of rock faces and gnarly descents that’s hard to match. His map reading might be somewhat haphazard, but his assurance that he (usually) ends up where he means to be is good enough for me.
Arriving at the base of our chosen route, having sweated our way up hundreds of metres through steep gullies and shifting scree fields, it’d be fair to say that conditions are sub-optimal. Our line – a direct route up the Oxford and Cambridge Buttress on Grey Crag – was chosen for its majestic position looking down over Buttermere, but the impressive jutting angle means it’s exposed to the full force of any weather sweeping over the hills. As we set about packing our bikes down for climbing – taking wheels off and binding everything tightly around our packs with spare inner tubes – I can already feel the wind buffeting me. I can tell Joe senses it too, but neither of us says anything. I don’t think quitting is a word in either of our vocabularies, and besides, the thought of admitting defeat and slithering all the way back down those lethal scree slopes, with the 20kg-apiece loads we’ve just hauled up, is less appealing than going up. All that remains is to uncoil the rope, tie in and set forth.
Ascension day
To non-climbers, the many styles of climbing, and the rules associated with each, can be a little confusing, to say the least. In the UK, and particularly in treasured national places such as the Lakes, there’s a strict ethic
of what’s called traditional, or ‘trad’, climbing. This means that damaging the rock by drilling in bolts for protection is very much not OK (you’ll be lynched) and instead climbers have to rely on placing their own temporary protection. This comes in the form of nuts (metal wedges that jam into hollows or fissures) and cams (spring-loaded camming devices that are retracted, placed into a crack and open back out). Belayed from below, the lead climber ascends, placing gear and clipping the rope through it as they go until they’ve climbed one pitch – usually a rope-length section between two ledges. They then make themselves safe and bring up their second, who ‘cleans’ (removes) the gear as they come up. That process gets repeated until either the summit is reached or both climbers are so broken, worn out or terrified that they have to bid a hasty retreat and abseil off. Because our route is split into two separate pitches, Joe and I agree that we’ll take turns on the lead. He’s just successfully climbed pitch one and now, having started from the mid-height ledge, I’m questing off up the slab above.
All of a sudden, almost as violently as it started, the wind dies off and the whistling gullies fall eerily silent. Tentatively I uncurl my fingers, dip them into my chalk bag and reach up. Feeling the coarse texture of the rock through my boots, I test the friction of the rubber and push down, shuffling up and left towards a line of weakness above. Still tense, anticipating a gust to blow in at any second, I arrive at the base of the crack, reach down to my harness, grab a piece of gear, stuff it in, clip the rope and relax. I’m looking at the prospect of tumbling back down several metres to where Joe’s perched on his ledge, the hunk of awkwardly-shaped metal on my back making the chances of a graceful fall highly unlikely. Above me I can see what I hope is a line of good holds leading to the next ledge. Moving more confidently now, I pull up easily into the crack, slotting in two more bits of protection as I go, and then head for the ridge that leads to the top, scrambling back to where a large fridge-sized boulder can act as my anchor. “Safe, Joe!” I shout down, tying myself around this, before pulling up the rope and
EITHER THE SUMMIT IS REACHED OR THE CLIMBERS ARE SO WORN OUT THAT THEY HAVE TO ABSEIL OFF
threading it through the belay device. A few minutes later the top of his bike emerges over the edge, followed by his head. “Bloody superb!” he exclaims in a mock-RP accent, putting on a show that emulates a Victorian mountaineer, before dumping his pack with a grin. I think we’re both secretly glad to be back on terra firma. I’m relieved that my bike has survived the climb too and is still securely strapped to my back. That would’ve been a tricky one to explain away at the end of the year – why my long-termer was returned as a mangled pile of scrap.
Scree fallin’
With wheels back on, knee pads pulled up and rope stashed away, now begins leg two of our adventure. Joe sets off first on his Santa Cruz Hightower, with me in hot pursuit on my Transition Patrol. Our focus is snapped instantly out of the slow, calculated climber’s mindset and thrust headlong into the fast-paced world of pedal-catching rocks and split-second line choices. Lakeland riding is renowned for its unforgiving nature and today it’s made especially tough by the gale-force crosswind. Attempting to carve smooth arcs through the jumbled scree is twice as hard when your balance is being constantly thrown off. I marvel as Joe slings himself into it with full commitment, sliding back-end-out into a turn and then quickly righting himself before letting loose again to slash in the other direction. Behind him I’m just starting to find my flow when there’s a loud hiss and the air in my rear tyre evacuates all at once. It’s an unceremonious reminder of what’ll happen if your line choice isn’t quite up to scratch, with those damned square-edged hits taking no prisoners.
Dropping altitude fast, the scree fields soon give way to grass and the rocks pack in together to form a steeplypaved zigzagging ribbon punctuated by 180-degree turns. The trick here is to set up wide and flick the back wheel around, hopping the awkward water bar that intersects each corner. Further heightening the challenge is that you have to do all of this while simultaneously reining in a bike intent on running away with you down the steep slope. Joe, it turns out, is a master at this kind of thing. After several minutes of semi-controlled skittering and a stream of expletives (mainly on my part), the slope eases up a bit and we blast out onto faster singletrack. The smoother surface and wider-spaced rock sections mean we’re free to play around, gapping off natural kickers and sliding into bankings.
Rounding the corner of the fell, I see the smooth, still water of Buttermere ahead and know we’ve nearly made it. The fast-moving clouds are casting dramatic shadows across the hillside and it’s hard not to feel the presence of the place accompanying the rush of elation for the day we’ve just had. Granted, these weren’t the emotions forefront in my mind while balanced halfway up that rock, but intense climbing experiences, just like the intense mountain biking that followed, have a habit of shifting and changing in your mind. It doesn’t take much for “what the hell am I doing here?” to change into “that was the best thing ever!” shortly after you’re done.
As I relish the final stretch of descent down to the car, I remember a quote from the famous Yosemite climber Jim Bridwell: “There’s a fine line between boldness and stupidity.” Admittedly this does come from someone who used to take LSD midway up thousandmetre wall ascents, so perhaps he isn’t the best person to muse on less-than-smart thinking, but there is an element of truth in it too. If you find the line that’s right for you and stay just on the healthy side of it, you’re bound to have some wild adventures. As I catch up with Joe at the bottom, the first thing on our minds is: “So, what route are we doing next time? I reckon we could try something a bit harder, you know!”
DROPPING ALTITUDE FAST, THE SCREE GIVES WAY TO GRASS AND THE ROCKS FORM A ZIGZAGGING RIBBON