By:
Chimera
My friends and I decided that spring was the time to head out to Gogarth and bag a climb I’ve wanted to do since coming to England: ‘A Dream of White Horses’, a sea-cliff multipitch that wanders left above booming waves.
The weather was with us, so shortly after noon I made the abseil down the sea-cliff with my friends Caleb and Wayne – Caleb and I alt-leading the climb and Wayne along for the ride. Caleb was laden with the lion’s share of the trad rack as the first pitch was to be his, I had a paltry few pieces, and Wayne was grappling with newly patched together shoes. Not ideal for Wayne.
You see the shoes he was wearing had become wet on a previous climb and so to rectify the problem he had shoved them in the drying room. This dried the shoes but delaminated the rubber so that the soles were hanging off. The climbing rubber was literally hanging on by the heels, it was the only place where it was still attached. And we didn’t discover this until right before we were abseiling in. So it was a case of “too late! We’re going for it, sucker!” but we taped the soles tight to his shoes as best we could. This was to set the tone for Wayne’s climbing for the rest of the day.
After I made it down the abseil, I was charged with setting the first anchor. There have been a few times when I was less than happy with my anchor, and this was one of them, so I kept myself on abseil in addition to having a direct line to my anchor. Wayne came over, and being thoroughly out of his element, eyed my anchor (and my unwillingness to commit to it) with scepticism. However, Caleb, our lead, moved swiftly past with a bravado-laden “it’s fine”. After making his first anchor at the top of the pitch, I settled into my anchor, only to have one of my pieces ping out from the rock. After re-seating the piece and reassuring Wayne that we were fine and not to worry, I took the time to look at what lay below. Booming waves, frothy blue water, and a number of seals frolicking immediately beneath me, while the waves themselves crashed with enough energy to hit my nethers with spray. “Yeah, the anchor is fine...” I readjusted onto my abseil line just to be sure.
The first traverse pitch was mine, and passed smoothly. For the third section Caleb once again took the lead, moving up and left, finishing with a downward climb to the anchor. The day was getting on, and Wayne was getting deep into his head, swearing he was done. By this time all the tape was gone from his shoes, it just fell off, and the soles were flapping in the wind. This may have been mean of us, but you have to get experience somewhere!
I noted that Caleb had climbed higher than how I read the route, and was placing gear less densely than I would like, so I called out to remind him to protect me on the down-climb (a section he described as ‘sketchy’. Oh joy). After he hollered back a choice phrase, he then proclaimed that I better not fall, and placed nothing further until he made an anchor. I guess things are about to get rowdy. After Wayne made his way through the pitch, I followed. Right as I suspected, Caleb went off route, and now I had 2 pieces to collect from sketchy terrain – but we had bigger problems; Wayne was thoroughly sketched, the light was fading, and the final (crux) pitch of “A Dream of White Horses” was drenched! The 2 days of dry weather was not enough to dry it out from the recent British winter. Our only option was to make our way up the headwall above us, past an overhang, and hope for gear placements.
Caleb, a strong comp climber, grinned at me, saying “off you go!” – the schadenfreude is strong with this one. Off I went into unknown territory. I cruised through some HVS terrain, placing 2 or 3 pieces, but mostly enjoying the feeling of climbing. As I reached the roof, I saw a line to the right that looked promising. I followed. It led me over the first roof to the base of another, so rather than bull my way through, I went around to the left. It was here my luck ran dry. I spied a jug 3 feet below and to the left, but otherwise nothing. Seeing no other alternative, I begrudgingly accepted that the route demanded a dyno from me. With a breath, I leapt down and to the left. Success! As I prepared to move up the jug-lined crack above and left, I felt a tug; my rope had gotten caught in a small, lateral crack in the rock! After a minute of futile tugging, it was apparent that I was not going up until I fixed the problem. With what was surely the most invective-laden cry that the seals below ever heard, I let loose and flew from the rock, hurdling down. After a catch, I looked up, and the cursed rope had come free. “Figures”, I thought to myself. I resumed my climb, topped out, and hauled my 2 partners over the edge.
After we all swapped stories of the last pitch, we headed back to the car, and hence to a pub.
After some quick research, we discovered this upper pitch was unclimbed, not part of any other climb, and so the naming rights fell to us. Considering how many dreams were crushed by the day’s events, it seemed only fitting that such a violent end be shared in the title; hence our “Dream of Crushed Horses”.
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