Northern Ireland Trip: Fairhead Meet

I don't remember when or how I first heard about Fairhead, as a british climber who'd not climbed in Northern Ireland I'd only stumbled upon the odd incredible looking picture and heard other friends talking about the cliffs in hushed voices: 

"It's the greatest crag you've never heard of" 

"It's a full 2 kilometres of hundred metre tall sea cliffs"

Solid information on the climbing was fairly hard to come by and as a result the cliff and its climbing took on legendary status in my head. Every little scrap I could find was used to piece together an Image in my head of what I'd discover, what I actually found met all of my expectations and so much more! 

Manhood shrinking 101, Myself abbing into the middle of Fairhead

The Fairhead Meet takes place at "the head" at the start of June to introduce people from all over the world to a big, daunting crag. The festival is a great opportunity to meet other members of the climbing tribe: I don't think I've ever seen quite so many climbers focused in one place (besides t'sneachda on a sunny winters day of course ;) ). There was a good smattering of big names a few of whom I met and chatted briefly to, which was a cool experience mainly because I realised that every one of them was "just" another climber like myself, just as stoked as myself, the only difference between us is they were pulling wee bit harder. Even besides the big names the "average joes" who'd come along to the meet were climbing astonishingly hard with E5's and E6's being done like they were going out of fashion.

Speaking of hard routes; meet organiser Paul Swail on the second belay of Faerie Stories (E6 6b)

The the main cliff itself is about 2 kilometres (girdle traverse anyone?) of unbroken perfect dolerite with routes ranging in length from about 40 metres to a wee bit over 100 metres. There's also a few other smaller outlying crags making the full length of Fairhead near enough 5 kilometres. The climbs themselves generally follow soaring crack and corner lines penetrating the blank walls. Protection is often on demand due to the nature of the lines, though the trade off for this is that they are often sustained or technically difficult to balance out their lack of danger for the grade. Jams are frequently required, and over the weekend I climbed cracks of all widths; fingers, hands, fists, offwidth, squeeze chimneys. Sometimes whole pitches were just jam after jam for a full 40 metres. The more "modern" i.e. flipping hard and bold climbs break out and away from the cracks and corners onto blank oceans of rock in between. 

Natural line interspersed with blank rock: Ben on Sandpiper (E2 5c)

The crag plummets down into a heavily vegetated and near impenetrable boulder field, though when we say boulder these are boulders in the order of the Douglas "Boulder" of Ben Nevis i.e. massive. Some of these bits of rock which are styled as boulders are the size of a small block of flats and have their own 40 metre climbs on them! This coupled with the militant vegetation made working your way around the base of the crag nigh impossible. So in order to reach the base of 95% of the climbing one had to abseil the full length of the cliff as near to your climb as possible. Though once again this is easier said than done. First you need a 100 metre abseil rope and second you need to be able to work out where on the entire 2 kilometre length of the cliff the climb you want to do actually is. Helpfully the climbing guidebook had recommended abseil blocks for certain areas of the cliff complete with pictures of said boulders, so after a bit of slithering around on your belly at the cliff edge with a healthy amount of umm-ing an ahh-ing you felt confident enough that you were in the right spot and headed off down your rope into the vegetation below.

One of the locals

The abseil is certainly an intimidating one, on the second day of climbing we abseiled into the middle of the cliff, requiring us to descend a full 90 or so metres to the bottom, the top section of our abseil formed a roof and so after having descended the first 5 metres I was swinging around in space, the only thing connecting me back to terra firma was the umbilical static rope. If your abilities are somewhat restricted, on certain parts of the cliff the abseil becomes a notch more committing as it's likely the only route in that area you are capable of is the one that you're attempting. So either you get to the top or you spend the next hour or so walking the most difficult few kilometres of your life.

On first acquaintance, quite unsurprisingly I found the head to be very intimidating. I might have done much longer routes, though never before had I done anything I done anything quite as continuously steep for as long as the climbs at fairhead. From the base I felt a lot of the climbs looked somewhat unlikely at the grade. For our first route of the trip and my first at fairhead we went for December (HVS 5a); a composition of two brilliant and contrasting pitches. The first, continuous sustained bridging up a positive corner out of a cave formed by a collapsed block and the second was pitch of awkward shuffling up wide cracks capped off by a physical move over a roof just before the top. The climb hadn't taken long, though I still hadn't quite found my mojo.

Pulling faces doesn't make it any easier Ben...

Our plan originally was to go and climb Toby Jug, though upon abseiling down we found this part of the crag to be particularly crowded and got snarled up in queues for routes waiting for slow climbers to crawl their way to the top of their routes. The particular party on Toby Jug took so long that we decided to sack the climb and instead went for Sandpiper (E2 5c) after some nice Germans (I think they were part of the DMM team) moved off the ground. What mojo I'd recovered from our smooth send of December had been neutralised by sitting for three hours at the cold base of the crag waiting for a climb, this resulted in me having a lot of difficulty with the first pitch of sandpiper. I wasn't climbing particularly well and I didn't have piles of confidence as I quested out on the crux of sandpiper. Gracefully the final pitch was a crazily fun, though perhaps not long enough off width crack. After a few arm bars, chicken wings and a lot of pig like snorts and grunts I was back in the sunshine atop Fairhead.

Ben extracting himself from the top pitch of Sandpiper

The camera wasn't actually out of focus, Ben was just shaking a lot; he doesn't like off-widths

After all of the queues, much time had passed and it was 5 o'clock and we hadn't eaten since breakfast. After some refuelling we went to go and find some confidence in the evening light of the prow. Often in these sorts of situations I find the best tonic is to force yourself to keep on climbing and sooner or later you'll feel confident again. We spent the rest of the evening at the prow, where I climbed Midnight Cruiser, a route similar in style to that of Grey Panther on Kilt Rock, Skye though nowhere near as good. 

For myself the best routes of our trip were two relatively esoteric climbs: Drag Race Queen and An Goban Saor, which is without a doubt in the top 10 of climbs I've ever done. Both made for fantastic adventures away from the honeypots of the ends of the crag. Both also only get one star, though to me these climbs prove just how subjective the star rating of a climb really is. We climbed An Goban Saor as the first route of our second day at the head. The route is on the tallest section of the cliff and as a result is one of the longest. The climb snakes up the conspicuous corner to the left of An Bealach Runda (one of the most popular climbs on the crag) in three pitches, though we strung the first two together as it made more sense than to split the climb as the guide says. Ben took the lead on the first two pitches, which followed an impeccable hand jamming crack for 50 or so metres to a large comfy ledge half way up the cliff. There wasn't really a crux on this pitch, just a solid 50 metres of 5a/b moves.

elbow deep in An Goban Saor

Amazing Columns

The upper pitch of the climb was an incredibly involving lead, almost every single move from about 10 metres above the ledge up was definite 5b, pulling on awkward sidepulls and crimpers up a clean corner with on demand protection. I found myself frequently jammming my feet in the crack feet meaning my toes went numb after about 15 minutes. The crux of the pitch and indeed the whole route were the last couple of moves. The guidebook describes an inhospitable niche a few metres from the top from where some awkward and very physical moves diagonally up and right are made to a good foot ledge after which the climb is in the bag. My beta for the moves (probably not the best, but I felt like Sharma so who cares!) involved getting my right foot up in a heel hook on the foot ledge at about chest/shoulder height and then yarding on a small but positive crimper with my right hand to rock over onto my right foot to gain the foot ledge. Upon pulling over the top, the release of the pressures of trying my best to stay pasted to the rock allowed me to be filled with a sense of great joy. I flopped onto my back and a grin creeped across my face. My mojo was back! (Groovy baby).

Still so much climbing to go! Myself on An Goban Saor, my favourite climb of the Fairhead meet.

The other quality climb of the trip as mentioned before was Drag Race Queen, an E1 5b in the blockbuster area climbed in two incredibly disparate pitches. The first was led by Ben and featured a similar style of climbing to the second pitch of An Goban Saor. This section lead up to another cracking ledge underneath the ominous looking final pitch. 

The second pitch wasn't that long by Fairhead standards only about 20 metres and all of the difficult climbing was in the first 10, but boy did it pack a punch. Above gaped a wide and overhanging corner crack. After having geared up to go for the lead I did a fair amount climbing up and then back down to test the holds and place gear before I psyched myself up enough to blast up and over the wide overhanging crack. Before I set off I had my two largest cams at different heights in the crack with one in reserve to place higher up. I viciously jammed my way over the bulge using my fists whilst my feet were placed delicately on small edges bridging the corner. As I climbed I shuffled the white cam higher and higher up the crack so as to save the energy of placing another piece of gear, annoyingly the piece overcammed and I had to sit on a higher piece of gear to wriggle it back out to safety. I quickly lowered back down to the belay so I could try the pitch by fair means and soon I was over the bulge hugging the jugs above! 

At the top we chatted to Calvin Torrans (The first ascentionist of the first route at Fairhead, Earnsheugh's Chimney for those interested, and a bit of a local legend who still climbs E4 in his 70's) who was surprised that we'd decided to climb such a left field choice of climb, admittedly it was a bit dirty and my eyes were still red from all of the lichen I'd unwittingly brushed into my eyes, but it was a fantastic climb all the same. Later that night we bumped into him again and he'd gone and done it on our recommendation and found it to be much harder than the guidebook suggested grade of E1 5b. Though it wasn't intended as praise I was pretty proud that I'd got up a climb that such a strong climber had found tricky.

These weren't the only climbs we did on the trip, we managed to complete Girona, Taoiseach, and Run Fast Run Free, which was our final climb of the trip before heading home and a really positive note to end on as in terms of grades it's the hardest thing I've ever climbed without falling and so provided a good injection of positivity at the close of the holiday.

Myself leading the first pitch of Taoiseach.

Other highlights included Alex Honnolds evening talk in a farm shed on Sean's farm which turned out to be quite the one off as he changed his usual cookie cutter presentation about how he ended up doing what he does to one all about his experiences and climbing ethics. later in the weekend I got to chat to Honnold himself as he asked to look at Ben's guidebook so that he could work out the line of Styx before he onisghted it. Once we topped out on our respective routes we also stopped to chat to Alex's climbing partner for a good 45 minutes about climbing and just general life a climbing writer from the west coast of America called Chris and a really great guy. It's such a cool experience to just meet strangers and immediately be able to hit it off with them, it's one of my favourite things about the global rock climbing community.

But with that my trip drew to a close, and what a trip it was! Ireland is one of the most incredible trip destinations I've ever been to if not the best (in contention with Lewis) it's definitely the place I want to go back to and climb most! Hopefully It won't be too long.

Just missed the sunset; beautiful regardless.

Typical Fairhead Climbing.