The Devils Face

Diafol yn Wynedw

– The Devils Face.

“I have to let go, I have to let go. I can’t go on; there’s nowhere to go.”

I could feel the panic rising in me. “Stay calm.” I took a deep breath. “There’s always a way out of these situations. Just think”.

I looked back and down to the climbers beneath me. “Too far to call out as the wind will just take my words away. And I need both hands to hold on.” Nodding my head to try and indicate I am going to let go. “Be ready!” I shouted, hoping they could read my lips.

“I don’t understand, this has been climbed before. Where the hell are the old anchor points?” I looked above frantically for any sign of them. “Maybe when I took the chimney, I should have gone past it? Not up it? But I can’t get back and this shitty rock is useless.”

Pulling on the ledge I could feel it give under the pressure. The face is either absolutely smooth and hard or just crumbling and falling away. I felt my fingers sticky and wet with mud.

I tried to ease back. There was nothing to climb back to. My foot felt the rock, toes feeling for a grip, a crevice but I felt nothing, just smooth rock.

“I have to let go!” I breathed heavily, preparing for the shock of the fall.

“Will the anchor hold?” I suddenly thought.

“O God!” I whispered and stepped into space.

He rested against the rockface and looked up to the lead climber. Something looked wrong. The lead climber, twenty feet above him, seemed to be stuck. He could see him looking around but not moving; he could see him testing the rock above him, pulling on the ledge and a trickle of loose stones fell past into open space. “We must be at an overhang, that’s why he’s stopped. Well, he can’t go up, not there. He’ll have to track right a bit. I‘m sure I can see an old anchor just past him.”

He looked back to the climbers below him, all looking up at him. “Hang on he’s stuck,” he called but he didn’t think they heard, what with the wind howling by. So, he gave the signal to wait with his hand. Then, looking up he caught a glimpse of the lead climber looking down and mouthing something but he didn’t catch it. All he saw was the lead climber feeling back with his foot, then lifting himself and launching into space!

“Jesus!” he cried. Grabbing the rock and flattening himself against the rockface, he shouted, “Brace! Brace!” As the lead climber hurtled past, he gripping the rock and tensing his muscles for he knew, at any moment, the ropes would yank at him taking the strain of the falling man. With a look of horror, he saw the anchor above him pull free of rock as he was ripped clean into space by the safety ropes that had now become the engines of the disaster.

There were six of them, strung out, each about twenty yards apart up the rockface. They had been moving steadily for about an hour when they came to a halt. The lead climber seemed frozen, spread eagled and vulnerable. He looked as if he was lost. He was looking about as if seeking something, straining to find the next set of handholds.

The climbers below all peered up, unable to see much as the number two climber was signalling for them to wait. When the lead climber, turning and shouting to the man below him, fell!

The number two climber yelled and flattened himself to the rockface. Some of the others did the same but some leaned out to look as the lead climber hurtled down, pulling in his arms and legs ready for the impact as the ropes swung him into the rockface. But it never came for with a crack like a rifle shot his safety anchor ripped out of the rockface and in an instant the number two climber was plucked into mid-air, tumbling backwards, arms flailing as the first climber swung into the mountain, bounced then hit the face again and tumbled.

As the two climbers fell, the third climber desperately crouched trying to hold his position but the impact of the falling climbers ripped the safety anchor above him from the cliff with a spray of loose rock and he jumped to control his fall rather than being pulled into space. But it was hopeless. With each falling body the impact on the anchors was more than the friable rock could take.

As the three climbers fell, the fourth climber unhooked himself from the team rope and ducked as the safety line ripped the anchor free, but the rope hooked on an outcrop and stopped the fall, swinging the three climbers hard into the rock.

The fall had stopped. The climbers hanging on the ropes hung motionless, the process of rescue began.

It was called Black Mountain, but the locals knew it as Diafol yn Wynedw, the ‘Devils Face’, for it killed those that climbed upon it.

Local climbers knew and would point out the boulder field that lay below it. This rockface was unstable, for it held a deadly secret. It had been conquered, it had been climbed, but it had killed the unwary, the unskilled, the English and for that it was known to the local-mountain rescue as ‘Caradocs dail’, ‘Caradocs revenge’.

The six climbers were not unskilled, for they climbed in the Peak District regularly, but they were new to it, and nobody warned them.

The first two hundred feet was easy going. A series of ridges drew them on and there was no need for safety anchors. At three hundred feet, they found their first old anchor, a sure sign it had been climbed before. The anchor was good so they used it and followed the route it inferred, climbing steadily as the wind picked up and a light rain came with it. At four hundred feet, they hit the chimney and the rock changed, harder, smoother, and they climbed the fifty feet to a horizontal ledge, leading them on and on, away from the way and towards the overhang. The unseen overhang that none should take. But the mountain led them to it.

The rock was like limestone in layers but also held slate and was heavily creviced. The safety anchors went in easily and it was then, with the team strung out over a hundred meters, Caradoc struck, revealing his secret.

The rock was as smooth as marble, and as impenetrable. The face leaned away to hide the route forward and the mountain had set up these English for the disaster it had in store for them, for they had climbed upon its face and now they must pay.

What do you do when you’re stuck? What do you do when the way ahead is gone and you can hear the wind laughing at you? When you cannot climb back and your fingers pull the rock away and touch the wet, soft mud-rock beneath and you realise you’re holding a veneer of stone, that has no strength. You must go back, but there is no back, only down.

The fall will not kill you. It’s the not falling, it’s the hitting the rockface, the tumbling and with each tumble, bones breaking, the body falling apart. The harness may crush you. The ropes hang you, but it is the mountain that kills you.

Two men died that day and one went home filled with the guilt at what he did. But he went home alive, telling himself he saved those behind him. He had to keep telling himself that.

Six men on the Devil’s Face on a Sunday afternoon.