I remember climbing the talcum-powder slab without any meaningful protection, focusing on a bloated spider seemingly at home on this vast wall. And there was a gull mimicking the sound of a jet plane, I recall.
Eventually, I arrived at the peg and clipped it with a screamer - a loosely stitched-together quickdraw designed to rip under load, thereby lessening the shock to the system. I equalised it with an RP3 and hung on it.
When I brought Mike up, he was less than happy to see the belay I had created.
The guidebook described it as "a contender for the worst belay on Gogarth."
It really felt like a big deal at the time - and we lived to share more climbs together.
I call it extreme humouring: what Mike did that day, risking his life to indulge a mate's dangerous fantasy. [2]