Don’t ever do this

This is a cautionary tale. That I am still alive to tell the tale is down to good luck, nothing more.
When I was in the armed forces at RAF Shawbury, near Shrewsbury, two friends and I decided to travel across to Snowdonia on the weekend to do a spot of rock climbing. None of us was what you would call an experienced rock climber but we borrowed the necessary equipment from friends and, full of confidence, set off. Our journey to Snowdonia was uneventful – in those days the roads were relatively free of traffic – and we arrived at our intended camp site before dark.
The next morning, after breakfast we set off to find our first challenge of the day. Snowdonia has been the preferred choice for mountaineers, rock climbers and scramblers for many years and, at the time of our adventure, many books had already been written about the many rock climbing routes that could be tried, together with the degree of difficulty of the climb. Unfortunately, being such innocents, we had consulted no such books prior to our climbing outing so we arrived at the faces not knowing what to expect. In fact, we were somewhat overwhelmed by the choices before us but eventually we settled on our first climb. It seemed to have many jug-handle holds and appeared quite easy. Nevertheless, no one was keen to be the first to attempt it but as I was the youngest and the one with least imagination, I volunteered. I should have been warned by the first six feet of the climb because what, from below appeared to be beautiful jug handles were, in fact, nasty downward sloping bits of rock that were quite unusable as hand or foot holds. I should have retreated or jumped off straight away but I was still a teenager and lacked imagination for what could go wrong so I continued up carrying the rope that would help those following and than someone was paying out from the bottom. The rope was actually supposed to be my safety backup. By belaying into crevices and attaching the rope to the belay, if I fell I would only fall twice the distance between the belays. Unfortunately, and unknown to me, none of my belays were holding. It might have been the way my friend at the bottom was holding the rope that encouraged the belays to pull out or it might have been because I had not made them secure enough. Either way, but unknown to me, I was now climbing free.
If anything, the climb was getting harder the higher up I went and on many occasions my toe holds were so precarious the nerves in my toes and lower legs were literally threatening to throw me off the face. By this time I was over sixty feet high and was beginning to get concerned that there would be insufficient rope to allow my companions to make the attempt. I also knew I had to keep going to the very top because retreating would now be impossible. After climbing about 90 vertical feet I eventually reached safety. Needless to say, even though they would have had the protection of the rope, neither of my two companions dared to attempt the climb.
When we returned to our RAF base, we consulted the catalogue of climbs and discovered that the one I had done was rated extremely severe. There are harder levels but extremely severe is still a very highly rated climb.
Without, doubt, I was extremely fortunate to have survived that climb. I was stupid even to have attempted it which I put down to the over-confidence and innocence of being a teenager. Every day on YouTube and You’ve been Framed we see teenagers doing ridiculously stupid and dangerous things. We see them come croppers but we never see the full aftermath. Be warned, the human body is a very fragile structure, especially when falling through almost 100 feet onto solid rock.

Bernard Gallivan August 2019