Simon Yearsley starting up the second pitch of Beggars Belief (VII,7) on Ben Nevis during the first ascent. The crux wall is visible diagonally above his right shoulder. (Photo Helen Rennard)
Simon Yearsley and Helen Rennard added a testing new route to the left of Vanishing Gully on Ben Nevis on Wednesday (January 16). Simon decribes their ascent:
“Helen and I were out yesterday looking at the Secondary Tower Ridge area on Ben Nevis. I’d often thought of this as an interesting place to visit, as there do seem to be some gaps, and there’s an awful lot of rock! In this area there’s a good combination of mixed routes (Fat Boy Slim), the classic gullies (Vanishing) and some mixed climbs which rely on good plated ice (Running Hot).
I was intrigued as to why the summer VDiff line of Beggar’s Groove hadn’t been done in winter. Neither of us had climbed in this area before, so we weren’t too sure what the characteristics of the rock would be like (often a critical factor with mixed routes on the Ben), but I did remember Iain Small’s quote when he and Simon Richardson had climbed the nearby Rogue’s Rib back in March 2011 ‘The cracks are good and it’s turfy’, and ‘It’s slabby without much gear’. Two intriguing quotes… the only way to find out what Beggar’s Groove was like was to give it a try!
Helen led the first pitch, the obvious chimney mid way between 1934 Route and Vanishing Gully which proved fun, and belayed below a steeper area. From here we took a long time trying to figure out where the Beggar’s Groove went, but simply couldn’t follow the summer description. So we headed up the natural winter line – a nice open groove, a short traverse left and then a steep wall. This gave the first crux of the route, with hard but good climbing… and no, the cracks weren’t great and what turf there was, was very pebbly and very thin indeed! It was very time-consuming to lead the pitch, as route finding wasn’t straightforward, the placements difficult to unearth, and the spaced protection not easy to find. The light was fading as we tackled another couple of (still interesting) pitches, and then headed into steeper ground above as the night closed in.
By now we were down to one decent headtorch and one pretty dim headtorch, and Helen’s lead of the final pitch was a superb piece of climbing. This was the second crux and gave 50m of absorbing technical climbing including a steep technical crack, and a very precarious mantelshelf onto a turf blob which had her only protection for 8m embedded in it – a bulldog which of course came out a wee bit too easily. The pitch finished with a superb diagonal rightwards traverse across steep slabs with just enough dabs of thin turf to climb, but certainly not to protect easily. What was it that Iain had said? Oh yes – ‘…slabby without much gear’. His description was spot on. I definitely thought it was an excellent pitch to second!
Overall grade of VII,7 is probably about right, but it’s definitely high in the grade, with a pretty serious feel to the two crux pitches. Worth at least one star.
The route finished on Tower Ridge, which we descended, wondering to ourselves what folk in the valley would be thinking as they saw lights descending Tower Ridge late at night… ‘There goes another party over-extended on Tower Ridge and bailing’. Over-extended… nearly. Bailing, definitely not. We called the route, ‘Beggars Belief’, partly because it was close to Beggar’s Groove, and partly because it did beggar belief as to how long it can take to climb new mixed line on Ben Nevis!”
