The Pursuit of Happiness

Ogmore is not a normal cliff. No splitter cracks or easy approaches here. The cliff features dozens of horizontal bands of limestone that lean out over the sea. Climbing here is like climbing on stacked pizza boxes. Sometime they visibly flex. Typically, each band is cantilevered beyond the one below, lending the cliff a bulbous, about-to-topple-over appearance. The lowest bands, scoured and cleansed daily by the waves, appear as black buttresses festooned with barnacles. Between these prows are recesses, sea caves, dark, resonant, with a distinct aroma mingling hints of brine, seaweed, rotting limestone, seashells, and slime. Dank seams exude greenish drops that dribble and drip into murky holes.

Higher bands of rock, better protected from the sea, are speckled with pretty yellow lichen. Grass tufts mark fracture lines—a warning not to pull too hard. Higher still, these tufts grow larger and the blocks rattlier. If you’ve made it this far, you next have to negotiate steep grass slopes (treacherous when wet, when a nut-pick might be helpful for kicking steps) with occasional sheep, to find one of a handful of iron stakes pounded, deadman-style, into the dirt.

Beyond lies a different world: suburban South Wales. In 1980 there was a nearby pub where old men supped pints of mild and played the same games, dominoes, bar skittles, darts, that their fathers did before them. The working-men’s culture, strongly tied to the local coal and iron industries, had not yet been ripped apart by Margaret Thatcher’s policies but was fraying: old certainties were being questioned, unemployment and crime were rising. I’d just graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in Geography only to find that there were no jobs. I signed on the “dole,” filled in applications for interviews, collected my dole money every two weeks, went climbing. I was not working class, I was at that age when suburban life may as well have been one of the circles of hell. Pitting my wits against whatever Ogmore could throw at me suited me just fine, I felt right at home.

And I’ve not yet mentioned the thing that makes Ogmore uniquely fearsome; monster tides. The cliff lies within an enclosed funnel-shaped estuary where the moon does the equivalent of sloshing water to and fro in a bathtub: Ogmore’s thirty- to forty-foot tidal range is second only to that found in the infamous Bay of Fundy. The sea roars in and pummels the cliffs then pulls far out again to reveal a limestone pavement littered with debris—dead seagulls, driftwood, used condoms, rounded lumps of what had once been red bricks and green bottles. This flotsam collects in hollow basins between a network of ridges and spikes, similar in appearance to snow penitentes. This low tide pavement provides access to the base, though not for long. Once you are there, the clock is ticking.

There was one big plus, one single, nice feature of Ogmore: in some sectors, there’s a proud central zone of gleaming white rock, solid, friendly, steep, the equal of limestone anywhere in the world.

On this particular day in 1980, Simon Kennedy and I were to do a new route. It would even go through some of that prime white limestone. It was to be my lead. I set off, pulling onto black limestone, feet crunching on barnacles and crisp edges. Above was that zone of pure white stone, reeling me in. At the transition to white, three small wires fell behind a dinner-plate size flake that rattled but, if I did not yank too hard, stayed in place. Next, perfect holds led up and left toward the sun and a small ledge. This was going to be fun! Except that the crucial final moves to the ledge were thin. And seeping.

I wiped the rock with a small towel, chalked heavily, commenced a tenuous barn-door lieback to a mantel move onto the ledge above. Except I could not quite get onto the ledge because there was a three-foot roof above and in my way. No worries, I thought to myself. There were cracks for placing gear. I began fiddling in wires. But the wires did not cooperate. Uh-oh. No gear. Just that perfect white stone with, hereabouts, flared, tight non-seams. I stretched to the overhang’s lip, locked off and peered beyond. What I saw was a landscape of horizontal bands with neither gear nor rest. Which was too bad because I was in sore need of both.

I slumped down, cowering back at my non-ledge. There was no way to take all my weight off my arms. I could throw a leg up onto the ledge or get an elbow or two onto it, but little more than that. Cycling between a variety of not-quite-rests, I was aware of a slow-building crisis in one or other set of muscles, regardless of any contortions.

“Watch me here!” I shouted.

Simon snorted, yelled, “Go for it! Get up there!”

But “getting up there” was not going to happen, not now. I was tiring.

I replied, “I'm going to try to climb back down…”

After a couple fumbling attempts it dawned on me that reversing that now-damp-again lieback was not going to happen, either.

I was close to fifty feet up. Midway between me and the limestone penitentes were those three wires behind the loose flake, but they were no good. Simon understood the predicament. I asked him to put my backpack on the spikes directly below. He was reluctant, not ready for me to give up, still encouraging me to climb higher.

“No, I think that's too far to the right; try the next one…yeah….”

He acquiesced, moved things around a bit. I clung on, alternating one arm, then the other.

As time went by, the consequences of the situation I’d willingly put myself into dawned on me: these might be my final minutes on earth. During those long minutes (forty or forty-five, I heard later), what thoughts went through my head?

I recall rationalizing that the best course of action was to remain as long as possible, so I could listen to the seagulls and the gentle murmurings of the approaching sea, appreciate the briny air, caress the textured rock, for as long as possible. This was preferable to being dead. Though as my arms weakened, the advantages of being fully aware of my impending fate became less obvious. My final calculation was that the slim odds of surviving might be better if I lowered my body then deliberately let go, rather than clinging until a more abrupt, unexpected end. Whimpering, eyes closed, I warned Simon, who took in all the slack he could, braced himself. My fingers released their grip….

A hysterical scream erupted, it was not clear from where. My body began to drop with a frightening and accelerating velocity. This felt less like falling, more as if the very air was moving out of my way and I was being catapulted into a terrible, black emptiness.

I expected to die. Instead I stopped a couple of feet above the spikes. That terrible screaming stopped, too. Two wires slid down the rope and hit my head. I was crying. Simon was laughing. At me and my undignified display? Or maybe out of relief? He did not say, I did not ask. We were not close, he and I. We climbed together out of expedience, not choice.

“Lower me!” I croaked.

He laughed some more—he seemed in no rush to do anything and this drove me nuts because I now had a desperate craving to be sat, safe and secure, on solid ground and for this ordeal to be over with—but eventually he set me down.

Next day we were back again. It was my lead, again, apparently. This time, before we scrambled to the base, I'd rappelled the route and hammered a couple pitons into horizontals just above my high point. When I climbed up to that same spot, that same ledge, I simply reached up and clipped in.

Freshly-placed piton or not, the fear from the day before revisited me, crippling my will to try hard and dashing any hope of freeing this crux. A couple aid moves got me past the steepest bit and on to easier ground. Later, we went to the pub, joined the locals and shared in their bar games, before retiring to our bivy in the local bus shelter. We had a lot to learn but we were happy to be alive and, back then, that was enough.

Note: our route, The Pursuit of Happiness, was freed in 1986 by Andy Sharp. Sometime later it fell down.