Phillips talks about Longhope Direct (E10 7a)

• Monday 6th June 2022

Robbie Phillips and Alex Moore recently made the third ascent of the Longhope Direct, the UK’s hardest multi-pitch trad route at E10 7a.

It’s the second year running that Robbie has been on Longhope Direct; one of the longest and hardest multi-pitch routes in the UK. His success on the Dave MacLeod test-piece route follows on from his multi-pitch success which Robbie had in the Alps a few years back but is in stark contrast to the single pitch outcrop desperate he did last year, What we do in the Shadows (E10 7a).

Remarkably, Robbie and Alex didn’t head home immediately they’d ticked their primary objective but stayed on for some more adventures. Firstly they climbed a new three-pitch E8 on Mucklehouse Wall and then finished their trip with ‘in-a-day’ ascents of the Orkney sea stacks of The Old Man of Hoy, Am Buchaille and Old Man of Stoerr.

Climber has been in touch with Robbie and he talks about his latest success with Alex in an extended Q&A below…

Let’s start with the how and what and then we’ll get into the detail; so how did you first get interested in Longhope Direct and what were you looking for?

Films are great for inspiring people to climb things, and the Hot Aches film of Dave Macleod freeing Longhope Direct did just that. Unfortunately at the time I wasn’t a trad climber and couldn’t really imagine climbing something like that. Fast forward 10 years and things have changed quite a bit from my early days as a sport climber. Really the Longhope Direct is the ultimate British big wall climb and having spent the last 7 years or so exploring big walls and multi-pitches around the world, it felt about time to give it a bash.

The location and weather for Longhope Direct are challenging for starters, added into the mix is that it’s notorious for birds, it has poor and vegetated rock in places, it’s massively exposed and the crux pitch is right at the top and involves trad-protected F8b climbing. Adventure-wise, it sounds on par with some of the Alpine big multi-pitch routes you were doing a few years back?

It's certainly on par with things like the Eiger routes, and I’d say a fair bit harder and more adventurous than things like the Alpine Trilogy or the El Capitan free routes I’ve done. It’s a hard one to get across to people that haven’t climbed on sea cliffs like these… in fact, I fell into the trap of just looking at the topo and thinking “400m up to E5, then a well-protected F8b crux, nae bother!” HAHA! How naive I was…

Firstly, it’s all trad. On harder climbs in the Alps and Yosemite, you almost always find bolts to protect the faces or at belays and knowing you’ve got bolts makes a huge difference. Also the limestone and granite I’ve climbed on is generally pretty good quality… saying that, you do get choss in the Dolomites and on the Eiger, but you’ve not seen choss until you’ve climbed on these sea cliffs. I’d happily have swapped any of the 400m of E3-E5 choss pitches on Longhope Direct for a well bolted F8b on good rock haha! I actually thought the lower weetabix-esque pitches of the Eiger were positively delightful by comparison to the lower sandcastle-esque pitches on Longhope… weetabix is still more secure than wet sand!!!

Lastly, the fulmars don’t make it easy! We came a month earlier this year to avoid their nesting season, but they were still there. As it got closer to their egg-laying season they became more aggressive, and spending the whole ascent dodging puke and occasionally getting hit, or having to crawl through it did not make it any easier.

All these things combined mean you find yourself in a constant state of anxiety that takes its toll throughout the day. By the time you reach the final crux pitch you’re mentally exhausted and the thought of climbing F8b trad seems too much – on El Cap, the Eiger, Dolomites or any of the hard routes in the Alps, I never felt as mentally drained as I did atop St John’s Head.

You first tried Longhope Direct last year with Emma Twyford but came up short. What were the principal take-home points you learned from that experience?

The main lesson learned from last year’s trip was that the crux is not the crux. After 2 days on the F8b pitch I was confident I could climb it - I’ll even say I thought it was guaranteed! But as I’ve said before, Longhope Direct is about the whole adventure from start to finish and when myself and Emma climbed it last year, we were shocked at how much the lower pitches took out of us. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done relatively few sea cliff climbs and nothing on par with the scale of St John's Head, so it was certainly a lesson in the challenges of sea cliff climbing.

Also, conditions play a huge part in climbing near your max and we had so many things against us… bad choice of timing (nesting birds), poor prep on lower pitches, and ultimately the sun was killer for me - I can’t climb in the sun and it was a really hot day!

Returning this year then, how did your 2022 plan differ?

I was determined to not let the mistakes of last year hold us back again, so thanks to the advice of a friend (Benjy) who used to work for RSPB and did his uni thesis on fulmars (very handy!), we came a month earlier to avoid the nesting fulmars. This definitely worked, but towards the push I noticed the numbers of birds and their aggression towards us increase. Now there will be eggs everywhere, so we basically did it just in time!

Secondly, I actually worked/cleaned some of the lower pitches prior to the push. This was a great decision because pitches like the Vile Crack were particularly bad for green slime, and we also had a more tailored rack for each pitch which meant we could be lighter and move faster.

Let’s talk about how you worked the route; did you start by working the hard pitch first? On a top-rope/shunt? Pretty airy starting right at the top but good to get the crucial hard pitch worked early on?

The day we arrived we set up a fixed static rope, re-belaying three times on the 65m pitch so me and Alex could work different sections at the same time. We probably had 3 days shunting the top pitch before we abseiled to lower pitches to check them out.

It is nice to get the top pitch dialled early on, but similarly to last year, it came together quickly. I saw the same thoughts cross Alex’s mind as I had had… “I can do this. It’s not too bad…” but I knew this wasn’t important, the real challenge would be from the ground. So we spent some time working down the wall working 2-3 pitches a day until we were at the base. Then we had one more day on the crux to remind us what to do before the push.

How did you ‘prep’ the lower so-called easier pitches? Ground-up? Did you fix rope on the route to enable you to work it? Did you ab-in every day for example?

I brought a few hundred metres of static so we could get to the bottom, but we worked the individual pitches mainly by leading, or top roping them. You can’t work the lower pitches easily on a static because of the winding nature of the pitches, so it’s easier to just climb them.

Trad climbing is often type-2 fun but you’ve said that there are some type-3 pitches on Longhope Direct. Can you describe them and how you approached them?

There is some terrible rock on St John’s Head leading up to the crux, of which the worst is in the lower half and again from just after midway to the crux. The Vile Crack despite being green and slimey is actually brilliant quality and one of the finest pitches of sandstone I’ve done anywhere (when it’s clean!).

There are three pitches that I really never want to do again, and that is pitches 1, 6 and 7. Pitch 1 is the softest sandstone I’ve ever climbed and everything you grab feels like it’s only a matter of time before it disappears in a puff of sandy smoke. The crux involves getting a loose flake and yarding of it to reach a more solid sloper, a real heart in mouth moment.

Pitch 6 comes just after the Vile Crack – it’s not hard, but it’s a horrible band of rock. Alex led this pitch and on the push almost had a terrible accident when the ledge he was mantling collapsed! Incredibly he managed to stay on whilst blocks the size of his head crumbled apart from the ledge, bouncing of his legs and falling into the abyss.

Finally, pitch 7 (after the big ledge) is the easiest climbing on the whole wall, but it’s hard to avoid the fulmars and there’s one section where you have to do a balancy runout traverse through fulmar territory to get to the belay. I really hated this pitch because it felt slow and precarious despite being easy climbing.

When you set off from the ground you need to make the decision then that you are committed to trusting the rock – if you don’t, you’ll climb too slow to get to the top in time. Of course you don’t climb like it’s bomber El Cap granite, more like a crab scuttling around distributing weight across all four points as evenly as possible, but you can’t allow yourself to be weighed down by fear. I knew from last year how tiring the day would be mentally so I tried my best to keep stress levels low and climb with confidence.

Let’s talk about how the send day went next. You didn’t get off to a good start when the abb ropes got tangled up?

It sure didn’t! It was supposed to be good weather, but the connies were miserable and we were both soaking wet before we even started abseiling down the wall. Then the ropes got stuck below on a rock and I had to descend 30m passed the next abseil point to unstick them, but got spewed on by loads of fulmars in the process and had a struggle ascending back up the grassy ledges afterwards. By the time we got to the base of the climb it was 10am, a full 2 hours later than I had planned. Soaking wet and covered in sick I said to Alex “Sometimes the best days start of totally rubbish…” – spoken like a true Scottish climber!

Did you and Alex do any simul-climbing on the lower pitches to save time or did you do block leads or just alternate leads?

We had originally planned to do some simul-climbing, but I opted against it in the end. Alex hadn’t done any before, and I was concerned that with the poor weather and added complexities it might not speed us up by much. But it didn’t matter anyway, me and Alex moved well as a team swinging leads and we were quite quick moving through the lower pitches.

Originally there were 20+ pitches but Dave MacLeod’s route topo split the route into just nine by combining them. What did you do?

We did something similar to Dave, however, we split one of Dave’s pitches (his pitch 8) into two pitches. I don’t know how Dave did this exactly (I need to remember to ask him), but I suspect he didn’t place much gear in the first 30-40m leading to the final stretch to the guillotine, which would have made it pretty sketchy for both the lead and the second. I think the way we did it was safer, probably not that much slower, and for that reason I think better.

How did the lower pitches go and what time was it when you arrived at the top crux pitch? How confident did you feel at that stage?

The lower pitches all went quite smoothly until a ledge Alex was mantling on Pitch 7 crumbled to pieces! With one very poor small blue cam between him and the belay, it was a nerve-wracking moment for both of us… but he managed to stay on, and finish the pitch. It’s never a good moment when a factor 2 fall becomes a likely reality – the rock was so poor there I really wouldn’t have been happy to test that. When we arrived at the crux it was about 7ish and I was pretty tired; I really didn’t think I had much left to give and the idea of climbing F8b trad seemed pretty insane.

The crucial final pitch is 65m of climbing up to F8b. How did it go?

The final pitch is split into 6 distinct sections. Part 1 is a relatively easy section of F7a climbing, but pretty bold with a long runout to reach the big hole where Mildred (the fulmar) lives. You can chill on a big flat jug and have a chat to Mildred before starting the first crux, a steep bulge leading into a finger crack. This first crux was always the easiest for me and never felt hard, but at that moment it felt tough which wasn’t a great sign of things to come. I didn’t fall however, and found myself at the next rest eyeing up the second crux that Alex had taken a 30m fall from during a pre-redpoint lead session. The fall was floating through my mind, but luckily we’d found some new gear so I was feeling a bit more confident about that. Once again it felt a bit goey, but 30seconds later found myself at the rest before crux four!

Now things were about to get interesting as crux 4 is the hardest climbing – I’ve done this in isolation, but never tried it in a full link. I rested for ages and talked to myself a while, slowly building confidence to commit everything to the next 5m as there would be no room for mistake or hesitation. I had opted out of placing any gear in the big crack as I didn’t want to stop and allow hesitation or negative thoughts to creep in, I just wanted to focus on the climbing! The next 20-30 seconds went like a blur and I don’t really remember much, just the moment I grabbed the final jug and screamed “Fuck” really loudly! It wasn’t over yet though, there was still the final crux that is shared with the E7 pitch of John Arran and Dave Turnbull’s original free variation – although it wasn’t that hard, there was a couple of committing moves on small feet and slopey handholds which could easily have spat me off if I hesitated, luckily it didn’t though and I romped up the final F7b roof which felt like the ultimate exposed victory lap to the summit!

In true team spirit, you abbed back in having led the top pitch so that Alex could lead it too. These hard multi-pitch routes necessitate a strong teamwork approach it seems?

Absolutely. Alex and I were a great match despite never having climbed together before. We got along really well, climb to a similar level although have our own strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly I found we had each other’s backs.

There was one really key moment I remember before leading the crux; Alex said he wasn’t that psyched to do it all again and suddenly I felt the pressure of having to send right there and then… I remember saying: (Robbie) “Yeah… we don’t have to come back man if you’re not keen?” as I didn’t want to force him back up there if he wasn’t keen, but then he rebuked (Alex) “Oh no man, I didn’t mean it like that… I’ll come back and do it again if we don’t get it.”

Suddenly I realised that Alex was in this to the end and was putting me first because he knew how much I wanted it. Also, despite all the hard times, we were both having a lot of fun! Suddenly I wasn’t nervous anymore, and I was ready to fight to get to the top!

Just like Longhope Direct is not just about the crux pitch, an ascent of this is nothing without a good partner. All the ascents have been from solid teams:

Ed Drummond + Oliver Hill (FA)

John Arran + Dave Turnbull (FFA Variation)

Dave Macleod + Andy Turner (FA Longhope Direct)

James McHaffie + Ben Bransby (2^nd ascent Longhope Direct)

When I topped out I had 10seconds of celebrating before I was zipping back down the rope to belay Alex. He was frozen solid from belaying me and was not feeling great, so I gave him a quick pep talk and he perked up a lot before totally smashing the pitch clean!

After his first ascent Dave MacLeod broke Longhope Direct down as follows: Pitch 1 55m E5 5c, Pitch 2 45m E6 6a, Pitch 3 70m HVS 5a, Pitch 4 55m E2 5b, Pitch 5 40m E5 6a, 4 Pitch 6 40m E4 5c, Pitch 7 E1 5a, Pitch 8 60m E5 6a and Pitch 9 65m E10/11 7a. For the benefit of anyone else planning a visit, is that how you found it?

I’d agree with most of that as to go ground up they would all feel full value for the grade and the situation you are in is really serious, rescue would be outrageously difficult and a long time coming and this all has to be taken into consideration. The final pitch I felt was more akin to E9 6c in its own right – a safe F8b trad pitch that would get that grade if it was at a single pitch crag. The full climb from bottom to top however is deserving of the E10 grade because of everything that you have to deal with along the way. The top pitch is amazing in its own right, but I could never be happy with just abseiling in and ticking that – it’s just not what doing the Longhope Direct is all about for me.

Is that it for the Orkneys and multi-pitch routes for the year for you?

Well after we did Longhope Direct, we added a new 3 pitch E8 to the Mucklehouse wall area with an E7, E8 and E4 pitch (in order) – it’s certainly the best climbing I’ve done on Orkney yet! We also finished off by doing the Old Man of Hoy, Am Buchaille and Old Man of Stoerr in a 23-hour push as a bit of a fun challenge on the way home. That’s probably it for Orkney this year, but I’ll be back for sure! As for multi’s, I have a trip to St Kilda booked for September and if we get the weather I’d be keen to try and do a line up Conachair.

Arguably, your big lead last year was What we do in the Shadows (E10 7a) at Loch Duntelchaig - essentially an outcrop E10. Which in retrospect was the more challenging and which was the most rewarding looking back?

Both were rewarding in different ways… What we do in the Shadows was much harder technically, but didn’t have the objective hazards of St John’s Head – it was great to see how hard I could pull on small holds above gear and it helped me through an extremely challenging time in my personal life whilst I was dealing with the loss of my Dad! Longhope Direct was a huge adventure with some technical challenge… I’d probably say WWDITS took more focus from me over a longer period, but the requirements were more basic. At the end of the day anyone can train, get strong, pull hard and probably get to the top of a hard piece of rock by the road, but to pull it all together on an adventurous big wall like St John’s takes more mentally, and for me it was very satisfying to know that I could pull it all together up there.

Any idea what your next project will be yet?

I think I’d like to take the summer to do more first ascents around Scotland, maybe repeat some harder lines that I’m inspired by, and use the time to find some future trad projects – I already have a few ideas of places to look...