Hitting the Wall: Climbers making spectacular ascent out of lockdown
Two of Scotland’s top climbers scaled the heights after lockdown with one of the country’s most spectacular ascents.
The Wailing Wall IX 9 line in the north- west Highlands had only been climbed once when Guy Robertson, along with fellow climber Adam Russell, made the first repeat ( second climb) of the steep, severalhundredfeet wall on the mountain of An Teallach, 12 years later.
Robertson said: “Due to the pandemic, neither Adam nor I had climbed anything hard for two years previous, and so reaching straight for the top shelf on an unrepeated grade IX was inevitably a bit of an ask.
“The pandemic inevitably hit me and many climbers in Scotland hard. During lockdowns, you weren’t able to venture out of your council area, and none of us wanted to take on anything too strenuous in case we had an accident and ended up in hospital. Not that that happens often at all, but it is a risk. So there was essentially a two-year moratorium on climbing in Scotland, and now we’re all chomping at the bit to get back out and challenge ourselves again.”
Captured by extreme sports photographer Hamish Frost, the IX route (the hardest route level in Scotland) consists of a “frighteningly sheer, smooth and compact area of rock” with very little natural crags or ridges – something Robertson explains is extremely gruelling and difficult to climb.
“In layman’s terms, if you were to look up at a mountain, your eyes are often drawn to gullies, or ridges or bits of rock jutting out – which you might assume would be the harder parts to climb,” he said. “But, in actual fact, it’s the parts you don’t really notice – the smoother bits – that are hardest. And this is the line that the Wailing Wall follows. Fortunately for winter climbers, it’s not made of granite, but an exceptionally steep, compact and wonderfully filthy Torridonian Red (sandstone).
The route had been broken in December 2010 by the late climber, Martin Moran, from Wester Ross, the first person to conquer all of Scotland’s 277 Munros in a single winter journey and remembered as one of the UK’S most influential mountaineers. He was killed in an avalanche in the Himalayas in May 2019.
“Martin was a good friend of mine and out of all the places he had climbed in the world, he told me the Wailing Wall climb was one of the best and most difficult climbs he had ever done,” said Robertson, who lives in Aberdeen. “In his view, this cliff and route were amongst the very best on offer, so I just had to go and investigate.
“At grade IX, I knew from bitter experience this man didn’t hand out big numbers easily, and a route at such a high standard effectively finding the easiest way up a large area of cliff is a rare thing indeed.
“Although it has been over a decade since Martin first took the route, 12 years in winter climbing terms isn’t that long. You need to wait for conditions to be right, for example, and some years they might not be. But conditions were good for my ascent with Adam, and we invited Hamish Frost along to take some photos.”