Moving onto the headwall of Banana Wall XII,12 Photo: Calum Muskett

On Friday, Calum Muskett and myself made 2nd and 3rd ascents of Banana Wall XII,12 on Cairngorm. This route was put up by Greg Boswell and Masa Sakano in 2015. Greg had a few onsight attempts on the climb ending not that far into the difficulties. He returned and abseiled down the route, but because of its grossly overhanging nature, he didn’t gain much knowledge other than sight of enough cracks/features to commit to push on beyond the highpoint. Returning in 2015, he made a very impressive attempt, getting close to the belay but taking a large fall on the thin and delicate headwall. Even more impressively, he lowered back down and had another go on the same day, finishing the climb. Even with the gear in place from the previous attempt, that takes an immense amount of fitness and I always thought this was impressive. His efforts were nicely documented by Masa on his blog.

For several years I’ve been interested in taking a look at it, but I never actually made the decision to try it. Once, perhaps in 2016 or so, I did drive over with a friend to get on it, but the ski road was blocked with snow and we went for a cup of tea and drove home. After that, I became more interested in focusing on bouldering during the winters and only did a handful of winter routes per season. I have tried a few extremely hard new winter routes on Ben Nevis over the last few seasons, but all have been failures, albeit still good experiences. I have never posted any photos of them obviously. Maybe I’ll go back on at least two of them?

I would say there is a push-pull effect that drew me towards more bouldering and less frequent winter climbing. The main one is just that the difficulty of my boulder projects just keeps going up as I complete more of them. In the early 2000s, I could just about manage to go winter climbing every week and project Font 8A. When I got a bit stronger in 2016, I managed to raise this to maybe 8B. But at 8B+ or especially harder than that, I start to struggle. It’s okay if I just stick to an ‘off the couch’ grade of VIII or IX. But if trying harder winter routes than this, I find I start to turn more towards an endurance phenotype/burly mountain man and can’t also do the moves on 8B+/8C boulders. Possibly this is just an excuse and I do try to remain aware of that. But surely at some point there is a trade off and it does feel like I’m bumping into it. Ultimately, if forced to choose, I prefer bouldering. That’s the pull.

The push has a few components. One is that my ankles sometimes get quite sore on winter walk-ins, especially walking in crampons. I’m usually fine once actually climbing, it’s just the walks. To be fair though, I sometimes find myself carrying so many mats to boulders that this becomes almost as bad. Another aspect is just a tinge of sadness at the lack of snow these days with global warming. The thing that first sparked an attraction to winter mountains in Scotland was the sheer amount of snow. Vast piling quantities of it. The sad truth is, I have never seen as much snow as in that very first winter I became interested in mountains (1993/94). There have been a few winters that have still been very good, but most are a reminder than winters are warmer and leaner.

Another issue is that the Scottish winter discipline has an odd scene, in that the culture is a bit harsh at times. I think a few (certainly far from all) climbers worry that the elements that make it unique may become diluted. I have been reading articles suggesting that its ethics of climbing in wintry conditions and focusing on onsight climbing are under threat for about 30 years. If anything, I think it may have the opposite problem. It defends the ideals so hard, it is actually off putting, to me at least. There is always someone ready to tell you that your Scottish winter climbs ‘should be’ this or that. It should be a long route because short routes are too short, or should be icy because hooking is too dry, or should be done in one attempt because [reason needed]. You shouldn’t post your routes on social media because that doesn’t fit with the dark horse image, but you should post on social media so that everyone know the details of your ascents!

I think it’s totally fine for people to dictate what their climbing should be, but if that morphs into dictating what my climbing should be, I tend to just stop listening. For this reason, I’ve tended to pay less attention to Scottish winter climbing culture and a bit distracted from winter climbing itself. Instead, I’ve become more inspired by and connected to bouldering culture. Overall, I just found it more appealing to pull on grippy crimps in the cold months.

Then I got a text from Calum the other week, asking if I wanted to try Banana Wall.

I tried writing an explanation of the above, then deleted it and said ‘yes’.

A good as I am at lining up reasons not to try Banana Wall, it is still kind of hard wired that when a friend asks if you want to try a hard route, yes is usually the correct answer.

I did make a caveat in my message that I was not sure how I would fare with a sore ankle. That was my way of saying ‘I’ll belay you’, but this message was too subtle. Claire is constantly telling me this. When I arrived at the foot of Banana Wall with Calum, he suggested I tie into the lead ropes. Sadly, that is the other thing that is hard wired. If someone asks you to lead; lead.

After two months of attempts to string more than one move together on my boulder project, I had absolutely zero chance of improving my onsight winter grade by three grades in a single jump. But I could at least go up a bit and begin a ground up ascent. I went up, went the wrong way, got pumped and hung around until it was time to down climb. Often on the harder mixed climbs a deciding factor is protection. If cam placements are needed, it’s important the cracks are not coated in verglas. This isn’t such a big deal with wires which you can tap in to seat them even in icy cracks. A few years ago I did the IX two metres right of Banana Wall ‘Bavarinthia’. The whole time I was looking across at Banana Wall and remembered seeing breaks under the overlaps and thinking ‘that’s going to need dry cracks’. They were coated in verglas and so without gear I was happy to fall onto, I climbed down. Calum didn’t go any higher.

I knew that all I would need to do would be to go on Banana Wall once and I’d get the bug for it. When I got home I looked up the picture of Greg on the FA and realised I’d gone slightly off route at my highpoint, missing an important wire placement. I also decided that it was kind of inevitable I’d try it again, so might as well forget my boulder project for a week or three and do some work on my tools. So I started with daily rounds of 3x20 minute circuits on the tools for a week. Of course this is not enough to actually get fit. But the curve of improvement from zero endurance is not linear, so a week of steady work certainly does get you a few rungs up the fitness ladder.

Helen joined me for another day on Banana Wall. Conditions were a lot worse. I had a double rack of cams on my harness which again were completely useless. The route was really far too plastered for a serious try. I did get much further though. With all the cam slots useless, basically all the gear I was getting was peckers in blind seams. After grinding to a halt, I rested on peckers and went a few more moves, finding an in-situ nut, presumably left from Greg’s ascent. It was very well jammed and I wondered if this may have held his fall. In grim weather and with still unfit arms, I lowered from this, leaving behind a few peckers to back it up.

The next week I came back with Calum, yet again finding totally verglassed cracks. With peckers in place and the nut to aim for, I climbed past my previous highpoint but again found the icy cracks made it feel too dangerous (for me at least) to justify running it out while pumped. The cam placements before the two crux sections would be totally reliable runners and without them ended up resting on my ice tool and wondering what to do. Beyond the in-situ nut, the headwall above was vertical but looked thin. I got back on and gingerly climbed to the belay, again only finding a couple of pecker/terrier runners where in better conditions there would be decent cams. Calum also went up the pitch on my gear with some rests.

The next morning we were back and finally had a break from stormy weather. We had left our gear in from the previous day since it didn’t make much sense to hammer the peckers out and then back in again the next morning. This time Calum lead first. He was saying he felt he had a very low chance of success but nonetheless climbed with conviction, as he tends to do very well. Calum has always been excellent at just battling his was up pitches without hesitation. He appears to accept that a hard route is not going to give in with a tentative or conservative approach. The higher he got, the more pumped he looked but also the more committed to going all the way. He moved out of sight for some time on the headwall and there was mumbling. Shortly afterwards the tell tale sign of falling rime (being cleared off the belay ledge) told me he’d made it.

He quickly lowered down so that I could also try to lead it before we tackled the easier, but still important second pitch. I was also unsure I could do it. The main difficulty of Banana Wall I would say is that several of the hooks are very thin to the point they may rip with the slightest movement of a tool. You can certainly make your own luck by being careful and ‘tight’ with your movement, but this is easier said than done when sketching about above aid climbing protection I’d really rather not fall onto. After watching Calum’s fine effort, there was no way I was going to do hesitate and miss my opportunity to finish the route, so just focused on neither rushing it nor hanging around longer than needed. I’d had 8 days in a row of board circuits, followed by two days rest and finally could feel I was just maintaining a steady pump that wasn’t any worse after I got through the hardest moves. For a brief moment on the headwall, on the one hook I’d actually call decent, I briefly enjoyed being there at the time. Normally enjoyment tends to be retrospective on such routes.

Suspended enjoyment soon returned when teetering onward towards a fluffy clump of turf on the skyline above, tempting you on for an even bigger whipper onto that pecker below. It was really too late to care and so I went all in by taking top handle on a thin hook and stretching straight for the turf. Thunk! It was really good turf. Calum followed and then led the top pitch quickly while I marvelled at the total lack of wind that seems to perpetually rasp Coire an Lochain.

Overall I’m pleased that I decided to finally bite the bullet and get on this route, even if was really Calum’s bullet! Protecting it was a little worrying at times and I’d recommend trying to catch it with verglas free cracks which will make a difference for protection. It was hard work trying to place peckers and terriers on lead on steep terrain and would be rather cleaner to use cams since you can just take them out and place them again easily if you end up falling off the onsight attempt. It was an excellent effort from Greg on the first ascent and his ascent inspired me, despite my draw towards bouldering in recent winters.

The question is, boulder project or something else on the tools next. I’ll need to think about that.

Fighting the Push-Pull on Banana Wall