The Chasm

As we turned right onto the road into Glen Etive I wondered which of the gullies in the side of Buachaille Etive Mor was the legendary "Chasm". Before too long I realised there could be no doubt as to which particular gash was our route. The whole side of the mountain seemed to collapse into a tear in the very fabric of reality. Quite ridiculously this massive deep chasm in the side of the mountain was where I was headed.

The reputation of the chasm is almost legendary. Known as the ultimate and longest adventure climb in the UK. The route gains 450 metres vertically over the loosest wet choss I have ever encountered. The climbing borders on the ridiculous at almost every point though this is most felt when reaching inside a waterfall to find more hand and foot holds. In total including the short scrambles between the pitches the route must be around a kilometre long. the chasm is given the very unassuming grade of VS, though talk to anyone in the know and they'll tell you it's not a VS it's a "Scottish" VS. 

I first heard about the route by surfing the UKC logbooks to find the longest climb in the UK I could, I stumbled on the chasm quite quickly and then preceded to read about peoples experiences of the route on the forums.

"A stonking gully route. More than 15 pitches and sparse gear (if any!) on most sections. Loose rock, slimy in places, adds to the experience as did navigating snow-bergs and the converging walls pitch (glad to be on second for that one!) Cauldron 4c pitch wet so took 4b route out but still a long chossy scramble to the summit ridge after that. Midgie hats essential once out. Walked down SE ridge scree and steep southern heather slope to make last food order at the Clachaig Inn!"

Snowbergs? In June? I had to find out for myself! I drafted the idea past the recently married Ben Gibson (congratz) and a mischievous smile crept across both our faces. We convinced ourselves it would be a good idea by saying things like "it'll be a laugh", "surely it's not that bad", "It's probably just hype". Unsurprisingly all of my assumptions about the route proved to be true, though sadly we didn't encounter any snowbergs.

The obvious rapture in reality known as the chasm

Despite their being no doubt which gully was the chasm, actually getting into it proved quite difficult. You want to get in high enough that you don't have to step over too many the bodies of slain of climbers at the bottom, but you don't want to start too high that you miss some good climbing. Even when you decide what point is a good one to enter, getting into the gully due to it's large steep walls is a challenge. Thankfully we found a less precarious section between rock walls to scramble down into the gully. Once in the chasm we approached our first obstacle, a 8 metre high waterfall blocked our path.

Our First obstacle

We solo'd up the wet rock just to the right of the falls. A definite sense of caution was needed, In the chasm one does not simply pull on a handhold. The hold must be tested repeated times by whacking it as hard as possible with your hand or foot to see if it can be trusted before it can be utilised to aid your progress. In ascending the first waterfall, I actually reached into the path of the water to find a hidden jug tucked underneath, the novelty of the situation began to sink in! You can't help but laugh.

Very tolkein-esque

From this point on, climbing through or right next to waterfalls on wet/loose rock became just another pitch on our adventure. After this nearly every single pitch was climbed roped up with (little) protection. I took the first leads and Ben took the next few after me and soon the pitches began to blur together though a few pitches we tackled definitely stood out.

The first memorable pitch was my lead, and looking at photo's of the pitch since having climbed it, it looks much tamer than it was.

It's much worse than it looks. Source: http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.html?id=147865

I wasn't entirely sure which line would be best to take and ended up following a line just to the left of the man in the picture, and then traversing up and right to escape. This pitch with out a doubt is the single most dangerous pitch of climbing I have ever done, definite type 2 fun. Every single hold and I mean every single hold was covered a film of vegetation and water. Then when you went to test a hold that looked good it would simply pull out in your hands. It was like climbing a soaking wet heavily vegetated stack of books, when each book is up to the size of a microwave. On the whole pitch there is not a single piece of meaningful gear, so despite being on lead the rope offers nothing except another obstacle to trip on. Thankfully to make up for this the climbing was very easy, but the ease of the climbing didn't make me any less nervous on lead. Suffice it to say I was very glad when my pitch was over. (though I will admit it was good fun)

Another memorable pitch for me was one where the path of the gully forks, mainly because I have some nice photos of it as It was one the the sections of the climb open enough for enough light to filter down into the gully below.

It almost looks pleasant?

The next memorable pitch was the famed "100 foot waterfall pitch" which was waaaaaaay longer than 100 feet. This pitch actually provided some pretty decent climbing. If you took the pitch out of context and gave it a good clean it would probably merit a fair few stars especially at the grade, which was probably about VDiff. Ben took the lead on this fantastic and surprisingly exposed pitch, The exposure at the grade has only been matched in my experience by that of Agags Groove.

It climbs really nicely, Honest!

100 feet of waterfall

I have a couple of regrets from the day one of which was skipping the famed "converging walls pitch". This was an unfortunate error that occured because we had completely lost count of what pitch we were on and weren't quite sure if the pitch we were stood under was or was not the converging walls. Between the two of us we had a bit of a debate, and looking at it from below we thought surely that's not possible? and went around to the left skipping out the famously terrifying moves which require you to bridge up the gap between the two walls of the gully and then when sufficient height and lack of gear is attained you transfer across to the wall on your right. 

The second regret of mine is that we didn't actually finish the route. The main reason for this was we simply started too late. Perhaps we over estimated our own capabilities? more likely we underestimated how huge an undertaking the route was, our original plan was to simul climb most of the pitches, which I wouldn't recommend and the flaws in this approach soon became apparent and we resorted to pitching almost all of the vertical sections, which significantly slowed us down. We reached about pitch 12 by the time the clouds started to come over and Ben made the wise call to get out of the chasm while we still could. We escaped via another gully which cut through the chasm, though descent from out high point on the route still took us several hours and the rain that quickly came in proved to us that bailing was certainly the right choice.

The bowels of the earth.

Despite the fact that through my blog post the route might come across quite badly I actually loved the climb. I think the whole point and joy of the route is that it's a total horror show (I don't even want to think about doing it in winter). From start to finish you really feel you've entered some weird pre-historic world, we joked about finding a colony of woolly mammoths residing on one of the flat sections between pitches and in all honesty I wouldn't be surprised if there was something unusual tucked away somewhere. I'm sure any decent botanist would have a field (pun intended) day on the route. 

I'll offer some advice for any would be climbers of the chasm. Take full on waterproof gear and a pair of approach shoes/boots as well as your climbing shoes. Be prepared to climb up to around HS/VS in your approach shoes as swapping your shoes around regularly wastes valuable time which the climb seems to eat more of than even climbers. I wouldn't recommend doing this route if you're only leading VS and nothing harder due to the hazards posed you need to be a strong, confident and experienced climber.

The chasm truly is "Mind-altering" unlike anything I've ever done before and probably unlike anything I'll do since. It definitely gets 4 stars for a reason, while the quality of the climbing and rock is often sub optimal the quality of adventure is greater than that of anything your ever likely to do, I certainly recommend!

Good thing we bailed!