Trad climbs

Grade 22, bold. 1 bolt.

A route with a troubled start to life. There was an oak tree at the bottom of the route, and after the first ascent it was found the tree had been chopped. Assuming it was first ascentionist John Redhead who had done the deed Martin Boysen wrote to Crags magazine:

Dear Mr. Blockhead, I congratulate you on 'creating' the variation start to Desecration Crack - a fine little route which I did with John Yates lost year... It was a splendid tree and quite large to be growing in so inhospitable a place... Perhaps chain saws will soon be as small and convenient to carry as a large Friend. [1]

However it transpired that Redhead was innocent when the culprits came forward. Chris Shorter and Dave Nottidge wrote in to Mountain magazine:

We cut it down and, having done so, found we could not get up the climb. So we enlisted the services of John Redhead. When he saw what we had done he was genuinely shocked... John is an artist and a painter of natural life. His subsequent silence on the matter was purely to protect us... It was a foolish, thoughtless, and irresponsible action. [2]

The tree has subsequently regrown.

References

[1] Crags magazine, issue 26

[2] Mountain magazine, issue 78

[3] Ogwen And Carneddau (1993)

The left hand side of Curving Arete.

Climbed in the midst of the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001, in which most non-urban crags were banned and 6 million cows and sheep were slaughtered and incinerated.