Climbers

James McHaffie:

Probably the most impressive soloist to have partook of the activity in Britain is someone few people will know of. He used to do laps on Void (E4), onsight soloed Great Arete (a mountain crag E5 in the Carneddau) as well as many other much easier soloes, like Positron (E5). He was...the great Doug Shaw, or Doug the Thug to people who knew him. I laboured for him for a while and he is a top guy. What he did back then was comparable to what Peter Croft did in Yosemite, if I had to choose between going up Astroman (E5) or Great Arete without a rope Astroman would win.

The achievements of these trad climbers often isn’t recognised like that of the well known sport climbers like Ben Moon who has been shown to be ahead of his time in terms of physical climbing ability. The likes of Pete Croft, Dougie Hall and Doug Shaw could easily have done more ‘terrifying’ things if they used tactics employed nowadays. For instance, if Doug had been arsed to dick about on a rope on Strawberries (E7) for an hour I’m confident he could have soloed it if he wished, as Croft could solo big E6/7s if he’d rehearsed them more, who knows he probably did.

References

[1] https://www.jamesmchaffie.com/caffs-blog/previous/3

References

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/earl-wiggins-36198.html

References

[1] Interview with John Meek (2002) https://archive.org/details/SirEdmundHillaryJohnMeekInterview