The belay for the crux pitch was a hole about the size of a watermelon scooped out from the otherwise near featureless red-granite slabs of Spitzkoppe’s South West Wall, which rises for 400m above the arid plains and scrubland bushveld of West central Namibia. Bronwyn stood with her feet tucked into the little scoop while I hung next to her, 150m of dry air below me, and the smell of the desert rising up as the plains beneath us baked in the noon sun that had just broken over the peak and begun to warm the rock of the white streak pitch -- the 50 meters of steep and near-holdless slab I’d spend the morning trying to climb. It was maybe 7b+, basically at my limit--usually more than a morning’s work, and a morning was all I had.
Our bivvy bags, water, and supper were waiting at the top. I’d already climbed everything but the crux pitch on a 21 hour failed onsight attempt that saw Bron retching with exhaustion as we stumbled down through the bouldery descent; that left me with six finger tips blistered and sloughing dead skin, too sore and bloody to do simple tasks. After this,we’d been forced to retreat for some days of recovery away from the wall we’d been working on for weeks.
I looked up at the pitch above me: 50m of very thin holds, with one bad rest in the middle just before the crux. The crux itself: a series of about ten delicate, technical moves involving a very wide stem on terrible sloping ridges and some precise palming moves on equally bad slopers. I’d just spent four hours attempting it, on this the last day we had before having to catch our flights back to the UK. I had climbed past the crux sequence on two separate attempts that morning, only to fall twice, once because of pump and once because a hold had broken.
I looked down at my hands. The week of healing had been undone. Five of my fingers were taped up, with sweat-logged and mushy inside the tape, and sporting various blood blisters and flappers. They wouldn’t hold steady in front of my face. The sun grew more intense by the minute.
Heading up the second pitch.
Bron asked me if I wanted to try again. I said nothing. My face felt puffy and strange. There was a lump in my throat, and my head seemed to float a million miles away from my body. My hands throbbed dully, and I sat slumped in my harness, my legs crumpled against the rock.
Time passed in a silent daze, the shapes of words fluttering around my head. I wasn’t good enough to do it. The beta flitting through my mind. At that time, on that day, it was beyond me. We rapped down together and we drove to Windhoek the next day.
…
We looked up at the face 8 months later. It loomed over us, ominous and familiar.
We’d come back with a whole new set of tactics. The year before, our preparation had focussed almost exclusively on the bolting, development tactics, and logistics. I had almost taken the climbing for granted and had estimated most of the pitches to be at or below my onsight level. The note in our expedition schedule on send day said, “Have a grand day out!”
In short, we had underestimated the route.
This year was going to be different.
We would fix lines, and spend as much time as was necessary working the individual moves and pitches. We would take the time to thicken our skin and tone our feet and calves to get them used to the slab climbing. We would enlist the help and support of a bigger, stronger climbing team, particularly one Alex Pantelides, a good friend from the UK.
…
The route itself is 15-pitches long, and weaves a line up the face, linking together some of the last unclimbed cracks on the South West Wall, with difficult bolt-protected slab pitches. But the most difficult variable to overcome was the sun. It’s quite sustained, with cruxes in the low 7s and not much climbing below 6b. Not a lot of easy pitches, at least for us.
Because the wall faced West, the route was shaded until about noon. Once the sun hit the slabs and they started to warm up the climbing became extremely difficult. Not just because of the worsened friction, but because we were liable to get heat stroke climbing in sun that intense.
We settled into a steady rhythm. We would wake around dawn, jug up to our chosen pitches, and spend 3-4 hours projecting, before rappelling down the fixed lines around noon when the sun hit. We’d pass the afternoons in lazy indolence, reading, playing chess and poker, and planning the next day.
On the second day, we decided the 50m crux pitch should be broken up, and we put a belay in at what had been the rest point before the actual crux sequence. I sent the new crux pitch (the top half of the old one) on top rope that day at about 7a+. Things were looking good.
…
The next day, we’d planned to figure out the beta on the first pitch of the route, a nasty thin slab that had come in at 7a 10 years ago--before seasons of climbers had broken off what small holds there had been by aiding it on bathooks! It was gross! The year before, on my onsight attempt, I’d fallen on it repeatedly.
This year… I fell on it again! I looked into my heart, and thought… f**k this, I’m tired of climbing nasty slab. I looked around. About 50 meters to our left was the first pitch of another route, INXS. From the top of that, leading back to about halfway up the second pitch of our route, was an arching undercling traverse crack. Would that go?
Alex arrived the next day, and the plan was to see whether the new pitch went. Bron jugged up and set up a top rope while Alex and I climbed the first pitch of INXS. I set out across our new pitch first. It’s always strange climbing something that no one has ever climbed before. It takes doing so for me to realize how much I had usually relied on the guide to set my own expectations of difficulty, and it’s hard not to be a bit nervous climbing into the unknown.
The pitch went, and the climbing was fun! Burly and pumpy, but delicate at the same time, and with a nasty crux where the crack thinned towards the end. Alex and I lapped it a couple of times on TR, and then I put in the belay bolts and the necessary protection bolts where the cracks were two thin for any gear. We had an option.
…
On hearing that I’d sent the crux pitch on top rope, Alex thought we’d fire the whole thing within a couple of days, and we spent the next few days managing his expectations downwards. He might have been right, but to be honest, but I was legitimately scared of repeating the previous year’s mistakes. I was committed to a slow and steady approach.
On the next day, I sent the crux on lead and Alex on TR. And Alex sent what had been the lower half of the crux, which he would lead on send-day, so things were coming together.
...
The sun would dictate our logistics and tactics. We wanted to fire the crux pitch, six pitches up, before the sun hit the wall, so we planned a ‘half send burn’. We would get up early and climb the route to the crux, getting used to trad climbing (we’d neither of us had much trad practice over the cold and rainy spring), and time ourselves so that we’d know when we would actually have to leave to beat the sun on send-day.
We fired the first pitch no problem, but I fell a few times trying to lead the traverse we’d put in. It was hard! Maybe E2/3, and my trad head game was off. I even ripped some gear out on a fall. After I fell a last time on the last move to gain the belay, we decided to carry on. I’d almost climbed the pitch, and we had time to come back and session it again before send-day. I grovelled my way up an awful chimney pitch, and we traded leads until the crux, which we arrived at just as the sun crested the peak.
We were physically smashed, depleted, and my calves ached. My trad leads had been terrible, just fearful, shaky, and scared. But you’ve got to get the bad leads out sometime, right? Pain is just weakness leaving the body, right? It was all part of the process. We had two to three days more of projecting left: one to two working a couple of hard bits near the top, and another day for the new low traverse, and then we figured we’d be ready to send.
…
Alex high on the slabs
There was an enormous crevice at the top of the 11th pitch, formed between the face and a huge flake rising four meters above a small, flat strip of sand, just shoulder width at its widest, and about 2.5 people long.
On send day, we would bivvy in it.
The plan was to rise at 4am, climb past the crux while we still had shade, and then climb the easier middle pitches in the early afternoon. We would then crawl into our tiny bivvy and pass the afternoon and night sleeping, eating, drinking, and reading. The next morning we’d have another 6 hours of shade to climb the remaining four pitches. Easy!
Alex and I would climb and Bron would film us when she could, but also play an invaluable supportive role, carrying water and food so that we could climb without the weight and irritation of a backpack. The fact is, that this route was difficult enough, and long enough, that we needed that support. I’m sure there are stronger climbers than us who wouldn’t have, but for us, Bron would be an essential part of the send team.
We spent two days hiking bivvy gear and water up to the crevice, as well as projecting the upper pitches. On our first attempt the year before, we’d got to the upper pitches in the dark. I was very tired and Bron was nearly spent. I’d resorted to pulling and standing on bolts just to get off the face. As a result, I didn’t really know how hard it was up there, and I was nervous some of the thin parts wouldn’t go free.
It turned out to be not too bad. On day one up there we both sent pitch 12, and on day two I figured out the crux beta for pitch 13, which was maybe a few moves of 7a-ish slab. Pitch 14 was easy, but the last pitch would be difficult. A boulder problem really, it involved pulling around a bulge rising from the bench.
Alex had been wadding it up at the Rainbow Rocket climbing gym in Cambridge so I let him have the first lead of it. It took a few tries, but he pulled the bulge at maybe a move of 7a+. I followed.
All that remained was to spend a morning having a second go at the low traverse, take a rest day, and we would be ready to send.
…
When we got down, Bron was grey in pallor, sweating, unconscious, stricken with stomach cramps, unwell. Alex looked at her and lost his colour in about five minutes. I lasted through the night, but when I woke, I could barely make it to the outhouse and back I was so shaky and weak. We were all of us in no state to climb.
Bron was our bellwether. She’d been stricken first, so we watched her to auger our own fate. We pumped her for the obscene details of her bowel movements and the schedule of her vomiting. We did nothing for three days.
As we finally started to recover, it began, unthinkably, to rain.
There are places in Namibia where it gets less than 1mm of rain per year. We’d sacrificed the clean glacial granite of Yosemite, Squamish, or the Alps for Spitzkoppe’s friable kitty litter, we’d given up the gentle northern summer for Namibia’s sun-blasted velt, we’d eschewed the Rocky Mountains’ sustaining alpine brooks for lugging bags of water up South West Wall’s parched fastness… all so we wouldn’t have to deal with rain!
But it was raining. As we were later to find out on our send day, our bivvy spot acted like a funnel for the many, many slabs above. This meant all the food and gear we had stashed would have been literally flushed out of the bivvy, had it not been for a blessed fig tree blocking the exit. We named it river bivvy.
Between the desert rains and the sickness, we snuck in a project day on the low traverse, which didn’t suffer too badly from seepage, but we wouldn’t be able to attempt the upper pitches, which did, until they were dry.
We passed more days watching the low clouds scud past the face--a rare sight--and drove to a nearby seaside town where we played at being tourists for an afternoon.
…
The next day we woke in the darkness before dawn. We drove to where we could get a sliver of data, and checked the weather. It still said rain but we looked around, and it seemed that the grumbling low-pressure system that had hung over us for days had broken. The strange southern stars hung overhead. All our bivvy gear and water was stashed and ready, our bags were packed. We decided to go for it.
...
Following the beam of my headlamp, we hiked up to the first pitch. We racked up in silent apprehension for the adventure to come. Alex sent the first pitch clean, climbing steadily and well. I seconded up behind him. One down, 14 to go. The next pitch was the hard traverse, and I climbed it well. Keeping my head together through the thinning crux near the end.
Alex slipped on his second right before the chains, but shook his head when I asked him if he wanted another go. He had decided that getting his leads clean would be his goal for the day.
Alex only discovered the concept of “freeing” a route after the trip, from reading Tommy Caldwell’s “The Push”. Since returning, he has apparently been practising the dark arts of nighttime toproping, and wants to go back to free the whole thing for himself, though I’m keener on enlisting his help with another line next to ours…
We climbed the third pitch well, and the fourth pitch was one of the gems of the route. It starts up a beautiful layback crack, before climbing directly sideways along a burley undercling for about four meters. Then you have to completely switch gears and make your way up another 20m of delicate bolt-protected slabs. I’d climbed it probably five or six times before, but this time my nerves got to me and I fell on the last move. I stayed calm, lowered and fired it second try. Alex came up smooth and steady behind me.
He was now to climb the hardest of his leads, the lower half of the old crux pitch, which would be followed by my lead of the new crux (the upper half).
He set off, and I was about 90% certain he was going to fall on almost every move. He was nervy, shaking, not climbing as well as I know he can. But he’s gritty. Somehow, he crimped hard enough to stay on even as his feet crunched and scrabelled on the friable slab and Spitzkoppe’s kitty litter bits rained down on me. I seconded up behind him without incident.
It was my turn to lead the crux, and also apparently to forget everything I knew about how to climb. The rain had washed my chalk off, and I’d been relying on it more than I knew. The holds felt terrible in my stress-sweaty palms and I completely forgot where to go. The memory of repeatedly failing the year before welled up in me. I froze up and fell.
But I knew that might happen. We still had an hour and a half of shade. I’d climbed it before. I yoyoed up and down the bolts remembering the beta and then came down and climbed it clean on my next try. Alex fell at the beginning a couple of times, but then seconded up clean behind me.
…
We settled into climbing through the easier middle pitches. Having passed the crux, we both relaxed and started climbing better. With Bron filming and swinging over to give us a cliff bar or a sip of water from her camel pack, we were climbing in the lap of luxury!
We made it to our bivvy in the crack by about 2:30, lowered in, took our harnesses off, and set up our sleeping pads. We ate and drank, happy to be out of the sun. Eventually, we all dozed off watching the afternoon clouds scroll past our thin strip of sky.
…
We woke at about 5:30pm feeling good, and decided to try to climb the last four pitches that evening. With a couple hours of sun left, we would be able to climb the bulk of the route while it was still light.
Alex fired the first one, climbing steady and strong, but I fell on my lead of the next one, coming off at the crux. I’m not proud of it, but I had one of those hissy fits climbers throw sometimes. I started yelling, even at Bron for having a fixed line in the way of the crux, which wasn’t fair as I’d told her it was OK to film from where she was.
Something about being up there as night was falling brought back how terrible it had been on those pitches the year before. To have Bron basically in my care, belaying me for hours as I lead pitch after pitch. By those top pitches I’d been so tired of the insecurity of slab climbing that I was terrified and climbed awfully.
I’d fallen over and over again, slamming Bron up into the rock below me. It was all I could do to haul bolts out of there, and we’d been so tired hiking down that what would usually have taken 40 minutes had taken us four hours.
It all came welling back and I lost myself a little, but Alex talked me down as he lowered me for a second attempt. And I have to thank Bron for being so forgiving and supportive in the face of my immaturity.
…
I sent it clean the second go and Alex came up quickly behind me. The next pitch was easy and was dispatched shortly. All that remained was the boulder problem of the last bulge pitch. It was maybe V4, but we were tired, and our skin was bad. I had a blood blister on one finger, and I wasn’t sure I could climb it.
Alex tried it a few times, but with no success. He’d basically checked out after his last lead, and was waiting for me to lead it. “Alright”, he sighed as he lowered to the belay, “get us of this hill.”
I couldn’t do it. I almost did it a couple of times. But I was too tired. I think inside I’d given up and even suggested we go back and sleep in the bivvy and do it in the morning. I think that watching this, Alex realized that one of us would have to step up. He got back on the sharp end and sent it first try, and I sent it on my first try on second. Alex had freed all his leads and I had freed the whole route, either on lead or second.
I raced Bron to the top, and we celebrated with one warm beer, which she had heroically carried since our start, 17 hours previously.
We rapped down to the bivvy and jugged up our camp gear. After some freeze dried sustenance, we found a sheltered sandy hollow and slept under the moon to the sound of the cicadas and the Namibian barking geckos.
…
Postscript: The Name
The Slap Chip is a Southern African “delicacy” of dubious origins. Available in most gas stations, it takes the British penchant for undercooking french fries to hitherto only speculated at heights. Served in greasy paper and doused with vinegar to the point of limp sogginess, the only crunch the Slap Chip possesses is the latent crispness of still-raw potatoes.
Sitting under the face, a fair portion of each afternoon tended to be spent coming up with possible route names, but eventually we settled on... The Slab Chip Experience. Slab puns notwithstanding, this seemed appropriate, due to the fact that, as one is apt to feel upon receiving one’s portion of Slap Chips, were were often, through the development and projecting of the route, left thinking to ourselves thoughts such as, “Why did we order this?”, “Who thought this was a good idea?”, and, “This can’t be good for our health…”
Nonetheless, there’s another unclimbed line next to ours. It cuts directly up the white streak of our crux pitch. Nothing but slab for 15 pitches, and from the far distant perspective of England’s green and pleasant summer, I can’t help but hear the siren song of a second portion calling me back…
The development and climbing of the route was supported by the Irvine Fund, John Wilkinson, and by DMM Climbing.