Fantasia

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Originally uploaded by SteveMLT

A sunny day at last! Pete Johnson and I followed up a tip-off that Gogarth was dry and headed over to my favourite crag: the Red Walls. This sandstone bastion has a notorious reputation as an "acquired taste" but once it gets under your skin (and in your hair!) there's no finer place for a day's adventure. To our surprise the crag was quite busy, though as usual we knew most of the others already. We started off with the ultra-classic Fantasia, and then got a bit lost on Redshift and decided to escape up a neighbouring, obvious line up a continuous corner. I got it into my head that this was a notorious corner line named Khmer Rouge, so spent the entire journey expecting hard moves to appear. It was pretty sustained but never too hard, so back at the car we hit on the bright idea of looking at the guidebook (we had both climbed Redshift before and each assumed the other remembered where it went!) Turns out it was the correct line after all, though actually the guidebook description could be improved. I've sent some suggestions to Groundup, who are publishing the next edition of the Gogarth South Stack guidebook

Don't bother rushing over again just yet though: 24 hours later the rains returned.

A week later we abseiled back down the line to check our hypothesis (correct), and climbed out via a route that I climbed with Chris Parkin in 1988 on the first ascent. Since then the piton that protected the strenuous crux has rusted away, but the climbing follows cracks and is well protected anyway. Named Dangerous Liason, it is technically harder but better protected than most of the other routes on the wall.


Steve leading Dangerous Liason, Red Wall, Gogarth