Heidbanger - Scotland 2025

 

Heidbanger

Starting up the second pitch

Climbing stories are rubbish when they're rambling descriptions of each move and sequence. Unfortunately that’s more or less what this is. Sorry!

The second pitch of Heidbanger is my first IX pitch lead, and the experience in poor conditions, covered in verglas and pummelled by spindrift felt pretty special to me. I write this as though Callum and I finished the route- which we didn’t.  I don’t care too much for the third pitch.

The second pitch lead felt like a new level of trad mixed climbing for me, and by writing this hopefully it’ll serve as a good memory in the future. 

Write up contains a lot of beta, you've been warned.

I had walked up to the CIC the previous night feeling rather keen for a big day out. The young alpinist group and Tom as well as a handful of other non YAGs were staying in the hut. I had agreed to climb with Will (Rupp), however his exploits on Sioux Wall had left him rather shattered and I could understand why his enthusiasm for a big day out the next day had been drained. However Callum Johnson (ex YAG) was keen on Heidbanger, and so the next morning the two of us left the CIC making tracks in the snow for all the YAG members who seemingly enjoyed their lie in (very tactical!). That was until (inevitably) Rob Giddy overtook us

After another 30 minutes spent wading we made it to the base of the climb. With almost no wind and clear skies, the weather couldn’t have been much better. 

Prepared for rock paper scissors, I asked Callum whether he minded which pitch he led. He was keen for the first offwidth pitch, which worked well for me as I wasn’t!

Callum took a while to fiddle in gear, bridging and squashing his way up some tenuous and then thrutchy climbing. He looked really solid despite the obvious difficulty. I thought I’d likely make a clown of myself falling off on second. Thankfully with the safety of a toprope I got up! Impressive lead! Almost as soon as I had finished seconding the wind direction switched and the weather worsened. Spindrift started flying down the face we were on and the winds started buffeting, the experience now felt very Scottish indeed!

Sheltered away in a little cave it was hard to tell what awaited me. The next short section looked amenable enough, but it was beginning to dawn on me that the remainder would likely be non trivial. With a bit of thrutching up a chimney I found myself bridged awkwardly in another little cave. After several more minutes looking for improving gear or hooks I cautiously began teetering my way up the thin arête to my left. Once I found them , the hooks were all ok, but none were so sinker that I could easily stop to dig for gear.

  

Instead I’d climb up, scratch around for 10 minutes: reverse, rest, repeat. After what seemed like an eternity, I found a placement for a low down hex that had been buried in the snow and ice. It inspired confidence, so I climbed two moves past my highpoint on flat edges. There still didn’t seem to be any gear going up!

I looked around and scratched some more before getting spat in the face by a gust of spindrift. There was verglas both in the vertical cracks and on every horizontal ledge! This was problematic since almost all the hooks were flat ledges, and all the cracks I scraped away at showed no signs of swallowing gear or ice axes!

Leaving the belay

My stomach growled. I even got cold, stood on the same tiny footholds searching for kit. Just something would have been nice, I didn’t care what! The wall ahead looked steep, hard and sustained. I didn’t mind any of those if I had gear I could trust. I was not keen on flying off a flat icy ledge and hurdling into the cave below.

Tired, shivering and hungry I down climbed to the belay. I hadn’t been nervous winter climbing in a while, but the prospect of commiting to a thin, blind and verglas covered face above with mediocre gear was worrying me a little. I told Callum I’d have one more look and if I didn’t fancy it he’d be welcome to try. He didn't seem overjoyed at the prospect. I ate some food. After 5 minutes stood at the belay I felt more relaxed, ready to go again.

Climbing back up to my high point didn’t take long as I’d maybe covered 6 metres in over an hour. Here I found a mediocre terrier in line with the mediocre sling I’d popped over a spike. All the gear wasn’t exactly good but it inspired me to climb up some more moves on flat iced edges. Some of the reaches were full lock offs with little other than credit card sized holds for feet! 

Several tenuous moves later I was committed to the headwall. Downclimbing would’ve been too awkward. My axe was on a small blind edge but thankfully my feet were on halfways ok footholds. I needed to find gear or good hooks. I lifted my hood to have a look around and was again splashed in the face by shitty spindrift, before getting blown around. I nervously watched my axe wobble side to side on the tenuous placement- there wasn’t a lot I could do when my whole body got hit by the force of the wind!

Fuck. The more I looked for gear the more frustrated I became that I couldn’t find any. Eventually I smacked in a black offset in the only possible place. Despite the full force of my axe hitting it, the nut was sat awkwardly, perched as though fully prepared to wobble out. I think it was good enough to weight but I didn’t fancy falling onto it.

Another 30 minutes of scratching around for gear passed. Everytime I’d take my hood off to look up higher spindrift would engulf me and freeze my face. I forced a terrible bulldog in below the nut. I wouldn’t have hung my jacket off it.

I had one moment where I wasn’t entirely focused on the climbing. Yet again I was hit in the face by spindrift and thought to myself given the awful weather, shouting TAAAAKE would be a rather reasonable thing to do. Then I remembered something Dave Mac had mentioned in his book. He’d been petrified on a route in winter but suddenly realised he wanted to be there, he didn’t want to be back in Glasgow in normal life. Obviously my circumstance is different, my "normal life" is quite comfortable, but I felt I had spent so many hours training and dreaming of moments like these, I should continue climbing.

I looked at the black offset and made a choice to trust it. I climbed two moves up on thin hooks and could no longer retreat to the safety of my gear.  Again I optimistically hung around hoping for gear. When I realised there wasn’t any I launched up few more moves on more flat edges to an obvious niche, and with considerable relief, here I smashed in a hex I could trust.

On the only sinker hook in the middle of the headwall

The last 5 metres of the wall looked rather blank. There were shallow cracks trending up and right but these looked too thin to be of use, besides at the lip of the crag I could see a large blob of turf that looked inviting. The wall getting there seemed featureless, and a little further left where previous ascents had had useable ice, the wall was covered in verglas and what looked to be useless ice. Just above the niche I found the only sinker hook of the headwall. I placed another totem and it became clear to me that from here I’d need to run it out to the top of the pitch. My forearms were cramping up in dramatic fashion, and while the wall wasn’t steep enough for me to feel completely pumped, my arms and back were tired from pulling big moves between small edges...not to mention by this point I must’ve been on the sharp end for over 3 hours.

I made a few moves between rather tiny edges, until I was stuck on a flattie, maybe 2 cm in width, with useless ice and sloped compact rock all around. This layer of crud mixed with verglas was frustrating, I couldn’t even smear my feet on the features without breaking through the ice and them sliding off. The blob of turf seemed closer now, but still so far away. SMACK my axe hit through the ice below it and slipped clean out. FUCK. I hit it again, even harder, angry that it wouldn’t stick. I was out of options, I’d need to place my foot on a gently angled flat hold at my waist and lunge for the turf. The move seemed outrageous, almost comp style. I didn’t have a lot to lose, if I missed the turf or didn’t commit entirely I’d be flying into space soon enough anyway. I pulled with what little I had left in the tank, and time slowed. I had to almost release my axe to let it fly into place.

Thunk.

It had stuck! Without thinking twice I smacked the other axe into the turf as hard as I could!

At the belay I was in total disbelief that I hadn’t fallen off. The conditions were really poor, the climbing (for me) felt really hard and runout- I let out a squeal of joy.

The weather was already bad. Spindrift had been pummelling down the face for the entirety of my lead, but it started to get absurd. MWIS had been right to warn of ferocious gusts setting in at dusk. At times I almost lost balance at the belay. We couldn’t see the top of the pitch, and with Callum nearly climbing out of sight I didn’t think it was  a good idea to continue. If Callum got blown off some of the next featureless slabs it had the potential to be quite bad. In better conditions these slabs can form an ice pitch (as they did for Pete and Tom) or they’d be equally easy to climb with neve on. We abseiled and walked back to the hut in whiteout wading through very deep snow.

A brilliant day out!

 

Other comments:

All photos of climb by Callum Johnson

Link to Greg repeating Heidbanger on the international meet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crCW5jzJjSA

(I wish we’d had those conditions!)