Fawcett Ron - Ron Fawcett - Rock Athlete: the Story of a Climbing Legend

Ron climbing Cave Route Right-hand (E6 6b) at Gordale Scar, UK (John Beatty)

Ron on Froggatt Edge above the River Derwent, Peak District, UK (John Beatty)

(John Coefield)

D OWN IN THE VALLEY , lights were coming on as dusk deepened into night. I reached into my chalk bag for the cigar Id stashed there before leaving the house, got it lit and lay back on the flat gritstone summit, exhaling. The smoke rose straight as a pencil into the air. There wasnt a breath of wind. My eyes closed and my tired muscles began to relax. Just across the dale was the little cottage where I lived. I could use a bath and needed a pint. The air was beginning to cool. But for now I was happy not moving for a few minutes and enjoying the warmth of the rock against my back. Finally, I was at peace.

It had been a long day. Id parked that morning under Froggatt Edge, the partly quarried gritstone crag that fringes Big Moor, overlooking Derbyshire to the west and with the city of Sheffield at its back. It was a clear, autumn day and the beaches and oaks below Froggatt were golden. In the sun the air was warming fast, it would be a hot one, but the crag faces west and so for the time being was still in the shade. There was nobody about. I put my hands on the rock and felt at once that the friction would still be good after a cold night.

I sat down and changed my shoes, lacing up my rock boots and trying not to think of what I was proposing to do. The scale of it was vast one hundred Extreme grade routes in a day. I hadnt made a list, and I hadnt thought too clearly about where to find the most routes for the least amount of effort. I really just wanted a reason, some kind of target, to keep me out all day, to test my body, to find out what I was capable of doing.

There was no ulterior motive. I wasnt there for sponsors. I didnt care whether what I was doing would be reported in climbing magazines. I just wanted to find that edge I felt Id lost. For almost twenty years Id spent every waking moment either climbing or thinking about it. My body was honed by a relentless training regime that I had started to resent: hundreds of press-ups each day and seemingly endless top-rope sessions where I would do laps on routes I had once found hard. Id given pretty much everything I had to the sport. What did I have left?

I started as I meant to go on, soloing up Downhill Racer, the flawed masterpiece of my old friend Pete Livesey, crimping on its chipped hold and then moving on, a gem of a route. I climbed down Long Johns Slab, the easier Extreme to its left. Two down, ninety-eight to go. Moving leftwards along the crag, I continued, climbing routes Id done so often that I knew each hold before I reached it. I could feel the momentum building and shut off my mind from everything but moving up rock.

Back at the slab, I collected my gear and moved right to the blanker, neighbouring slab where the routes were even more committing. Ive always been a bit of a thug, more comfortable on steeper routes where strength comes into play. But I would save myself a lot of energy for later in the day by climbing these slab routes, even if they were dangerous. I squeaked my boots, rubbing my palms across the soles to clean off any loose dirt and padded upwards, adding five to my tally. Further right the crag got steeper and I felt a small twinge of apprehension. The last time Id been here Id suffered a bad fall while soloing and broken my leg. Today there must be no mistakes.

So casually had I taken my plan, Id brought nothing to eat. Now I was hungry. I should have continued along the edge of the moor to Curbar Edge and another batch of routes to solo, but instead I dropped back down the hill to my car and raced down to Hathersage. I sat in a caf half-watching two pretty waitresses move among the tables. I wanted to stay and maybe start a conversation. How could a compulsion to climb push me around like this? And yet, there I was, back on the street, getting into the car and taking the road up to Stanage.

Id never enjoyed the texture of the rock at Stanage all that much. It didnt compare favourably with the gritstone Id grown up with in Yorkshire. I found it lichenous and insecure, and as a consequence I didnt know the routes I was planning to climb nearly so well. Starting at the right-hand end of the crag, I tried out an idea to speed my progress. Id brought my oldest pair of sticky rock boots, now stretched and consequently loose on my feet. I could walk comfortably in them between routes, and by wrapping carpet tape around the uppers, I hoped they would stay solidly in place for when I was climbing.

Starting around The Dangler, I moved left, cursing whichever guidebook writer had decided to describe the crag from left to right. Where was I? My boot idea wasnt working either and I soon changed into my regular pair, putting up with pinched feet to save time. I was fed up. An old boy in breeches and floppy big boots latched on to me as I moved along the crag, trying to engage me in conversation about the good old days, the time of Joe Brown and Don Whillans. I didnt want to be rude, but I was busy and getting frustrated. Things werent coming easily anymore.

I had the motivation to step up a gear when climbing the harder grades, but that left me vulnerable on under-graded routes where I thought I wouldnt need to struggle. On an innocuous-looking climb called Fern Groove I found my feet and fingers greasing off the holds, my eyes scanning the rock ahead, flummoxed at what to do next. It was only E1, the easiest grade that qualified as Extreme, but I found myself backing off it. I felt shaken. I was losing momentum.

A little further along, I came across two climbers I recognised, Johnny Dawes and Martin Veale, practising desperate unclimbed routes with the safety of a top-rope. Here was the next generation hard at play. I might have abandoned my plan right there, and joined them for the rest of the afternoon. It looked like fun. But I felt shy with them, and the burden of my target was settled on my shoulders. I pressed on. But the kind of Extremes I was searching for were now becoming thinner on the ground.

I soloed a slab called Wall End Slab Direct, and then the gorgeous, unprotected arte of Archangel, pushing to the back of my mind the thought that I might be in any kind of danger. Id more or less forgotten I wasnt roped. But I still felt under pressure. Ploughing through the waist-high bracken, turning bronze with the season, I began to fret about the time. Id probably get more routes done at another crag. The sections of cliff on Stanage were becoming more isolated and further apart. After soloing Counts Buttress, I decided to run back along the top of the crag and down to the car park, now half a mile back up the road. My tally was up to fifty-six.

Reaching the car, I slotted in a Lou Reed album and sped off up the hill, then down past Higgar Tor and around to the small car park below Burbage. The climbs here were shorter and the friction much more to my liking. The crag doesnt catch the sun until evening and so the rock was still cool. I moved up a gear climbing short but awkward problems several grades harder than Fern Groove, but I felt secure and strong, full of confidence again, the momentum back with me. There were lots of hard routes close together and I felt strangely inspired by the route names: Above and Beyond the Kinaesthetic Barrier, Pebble Mill.

It must have seemed crazy to those climbers I met that day. Jogging from one route to the next in some kind of frenzy. They werent to know that Id been doing things like this for most of my climbing life. When I was young, and often on my own, I taught myself to climb this way, soloing on the crags around my childhood home in Embsay, a small, tight-knit village outside Skipton. In those days, my appetite seemed insatiable. I would run back from school to go climbing. I felt most at ease moving on rock. It was where I was meant to be. Later on, I would stay at the crag to climb a bit more when everyone else had gone to the pub. I was utterly driven by my passion for climbing.