Phillips makes first ascent of Valinor (E9 7a)
- Wednesday 17th May 2023
Robbie Phillips has made the first ascent of Valinor (E9 7a) on Ben Loyal.
The north coast of Scotland is pretty special; remote and desolate but there isn’t a deal between Cape Wrath in the west and Caithness in the east. Now, however, there is an amazing new E9 to go at thanks to the efforts of Robbie.
Reporting his ascent on Instagram Robbie first described Ben Loyal, ‘Across from the Kyle of Tongue lies Ben Loyal, a lonesome mountain entangled by threads of granite and crowned by wisps of cloud and mist across its summit. This landscape reminds me of Valinor, the kingdom of the elves, the Kyle being the Grey Havens from which the boat would leave Middle Earth taking the elves on their final journey home.’
Writing specifically about the route itself Robbie added, ‘I’ve spent quite a bit of time on Ben Loyal recently in search of new routes, Valinor being the first to be climbed. It’s about as varied as it gets, with a nice easy crack to start with leading into hollow flakes, then a bouldery sequence (crux) through crimps and a flared crack. Even once you’ve done this, there’s still an easier, albeit technical fridge hugging sequence to breakthrough into the final offwidth.’
As often the case with first ascents, Robbie isn’t sure about the grade of his route. Inevitably, he compares it to other routes he’s climbed including Le Voyage (E10 7a) at Annot which he climbed recently. ‘I’ve never been so confused about a trad grade in my life… I wrestled with whether to give E8 or E9. It’s harder than any E8 I’ve done, but as it’s safe, it doesn’t feel hard enough to be E9. But then the gear that protects the crux would be tricky to place onsight and there’s a risk that the hollow flake could mean the gear fails, making it a more serious route than I gave it credit for. The French grade is hard F8a+ but certainly not F8b… The crux is harder than Le Voyage (E10) but has an easier start… and it took more goes to do than Achemine E9, but I still think Achemine is harder?!’
Ultimately of course, the views of repeat ascensionists will help settle the grade as Robbie says, ‘I think repetitions are the only way to decide ultimately, so I’ll leave it at Soft E9 for now and see what folk say 😅 it may just not suit me, or it might confusedly be one of those “in-the-middle” sort of climbs.’
Summing up his route Robbie was clear however about the quality saying, ‘Regardless of the grade, it’s one of my proudest First Ascents 😌 Now to get stuck into the really hard projects…’
Given the “off-the-beaten-track” location of the route, together with Robbie’s write-up, Climber couldn’t resist getting in touch with Robbie to get some more details from him about the route and where it sits in the rapidly growing pantheon of hard Scottish mountain trad routes. Robbie has been ‘camping’ up at Ben Loyal but has just sent his thoughts back and Climber is very pleased to share them with you…
What got you interested in that neck of the woods? Did you get a tip-off or did you act on gut instinct?
It was complete gut instinct. I was driving over the Kyle of Tongue on the way to Am Buachille for our Three Stacks in 24hrs challenge last year and saw Ben Loyal… it was beautiful and I’d never seen a mountain like it! I had this feeling that something really special was up there. As soon as I got home I looked Ben Loyal up on Google and saw pictures of granite boulders and tors that walkers had taken. Then I had a look on UKC and saw that Simon Nadin had done a couple of lines, so I reached out. He was really happy I’d got in touch and sent me some pics which confirmed my suspicions - there was an incredible granite wall with some real potential for hard rock climbs!
So what were your first thoughts when you saw the wall for the first time?
I went up with my girlfriend about 3-4 weeks later and walked up to the cliff Simon had mentioned “Sgor a’ Bhatain”. It was so much better than the pics, southwest facing and stunning granite with a combination of cracks and pocketed face climbing. I abbed two lines on the face which proved to be very hard and very bold!
How long has it taken you to clean, work and send the route?
My plans for this year were always to come back and spend a chunk of time up there. I told a few strong climber friends about it in the hope they’d join me and share in the experience - Franco Cookson was the most intrigued and joined me straight away. After chats we’d had previously that he suspected everything really good had already been discovered and well documented, I was eager to prove him wrong! He admits now that he was wrong.
Alongside Simon Nadin, we got to work. I decided to put work into an “easier” line on the left initially, which became Valinor. I had one or two days cleaning and working it, then a few days scoping out other lines then came back and lead Valinor. I don’t think “Valinor” is like anything else I’ve climbed in Scotland… it’s really safe and pretty obvious gear, however, there is a bit of loose rock at the start of the crux and the big flake cams came straight out when I prised the flake back (haha). Also, the two small cams that I fell onto are good, but you need to place them quite accurately so as to not touch the hollow shield right beside it. For this reason, I was really concerned about the grade as for me I’ve always graded for an onsight experience. If there was no question about the gear, I’d have given it E8, but as it was a mountain environment with a bit of fear around the rock quality, I put my ego aside and gave it E9.
Where do you think Valinor ‘sits’ in the scheme of Scottish Mountain routes?
I think Valinor is just another brilliant addition to the numerous fantastic single-pitch mountain routes in Scotland. You get the entire experience of walking up a big hill, having an epic searching for the crag, being awestruck when you find it, and then probably having an absolute mare abseiling/cleaning it, hence why it will probably get very few repeats, but it’s totally worth it :)
Robbie's ascent was filmed for the forthcoming @britrockfilms so watch this space, as they say...