Anna Fleming on the Experience of Rock Climbing

Transcript

Oliver Strimpel

This is Geology Bites with Oliver Strimpel. This episode is a bit of a departure from our normal objective geology approach in that we address the subjective nature of various rocks as experienced by a rock climber. A rock climber's very survival can depend on the properties of a rock encountered along a climbing route. This engenders a uniquely intense relationship between climber and rock. Anna Fleming is a rock climber who has written perceptively about this intense relationship gained from climbing in Britain and the Mediterranean. In a book entitled Time on Rock, she writes about her experiences climbing gritstone in England's Peak District, gabbro and granite on the Isle of Skye, sandstone on the northeast coast of Scotland, and limestone cliffs on the Greek island of Kalymnos. Anna Fleming welcome to Geology Bites.

Anna Fleming

Hi Oliver, thank you for having me on.

Oliver Strimpel

I'm not a rock climber, but I can imagine that the key property of a rock for climbers is its mechanical strength. Do you generally limit yourself to rocks that are mechanically sound.

Anna Fleming

It varies really from where you're climbing. Often, the more traffic you get on the route, the cleaner and the sounder it will be, so the new routes can often be quite loose and require a bit of gardening as they call it to tidy it up and remove some of the debris. Whereas better-trod routes tend to be more solid.

Oliver Strimpel

In addition to the physical integrity of the rock, you've also written about the surface texture. Is that also important?

Anna Fleming

Texture is arguably more important. Of course you don't want the rocks to fall down underneath you, but it's very rare that you would as a climber go somewhere where the rock is very loose. And so texture becomes everything. You're very intent on getting up these routes that can be quite small. As you're climbing, you come to know them in a lot of detail, and you're really trying to work your body with that rock. It might be minute little details that you're working with, like little crystals or tiny little finger holds that you're trying to clamp onto.

Oliver Strimpel

When you say texture, do you mean really fine grain, like whether the rock provides a lot of friction to your hands and feet, or whether it's smooth and glassy.

Anna Fleming

Yes, for example, gritstone is quite rough sandstone surface, so that's all about friction climbing, so it doesn't have a lot of holds. Those weathered features that will give you something to hold on to. So, instead, you're using that friction and using your body to create holes within the rock, which contrasts really sharply with slate, where there's very little friction. It's really smooth, can be quite glassy. There, you're working with all the little details, which might be a little mineral vein. If it's in the quarries, a drill line from the quarryman who bolted it. It's really interesting seeing how those histories of how the rock has been used can then shape your climbing experience. I really like going out on the sandstone on the Moray Firth, which is Permian Triassic sandstone, and that weathers beautifully, so it's got all kinds of little cups and rims and popped holes and shapes in it. So to me, it's really sculptural rock. And it looks a bit like animal prints. And those shapes just make for really beautiful movements where your body can move with those weathered features. But climbing in the quarries is a fascinating thing as well because you're climbing with this real depth of industrial history and industrial history meeting geological, deep-time Earth history, alongside your climbing moment.

Oliver Strimpel

I presume you just climb in disused quarries.

Anna Fleming

Yeah, they're inactive now. Dinorwic was one of the biggest slate quarries in the world, and it's absolutely monumental. As a really interesting and peculiar site, it's a quite haunting space, and all the slate that's everywhere loose on the ground underneath you creates a very particular soundscape where it's clattering under your feet. But then you're in these enormous amphitheaters, like bowls that have been blasted out by some of the Welshmen who live nearby.

Oliver Strimpel

Did you actually talk to the quarrymen or former quarrymen about their experience in the quarry?

Anna Fleming

I chatted to a friend of mine whose great grandfather was a quarryman, and she showed me some beautiful things that he had made. So as well as working in those quarries in incredibly hard conditions, you know, blasting out the mountain basically beneath his feet, he was really gifted with his hands. She said all the quarrymen were. And she showed me these beautiful little whistles that he'd made from slate.

Oliver Strimpel

Just to come back to the mechanical properties of the rock and the gritstone, do a lot of people climb gritstone just because it's the rock that happens to be around the corner, or would you seek it out even if you had, I don't know, pristine granite closer to hand?

Anna Fleming

I think gritstone is really popular because it's so local to a lot of people. You've got Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, all within close circle of it and it's one of the nearest crags even to London and Birmingham, so that population, I think really draws people there. And then, you know, the scale of opportunity that you can get there. Stanage Edge, which is quarter of an hour drive for a lot of people in Sheffield, has two miles of rock on it, so there are lots and lots of routes to chase out. If there was granite nearby, people would probably head to that as a preference, but I don't know. It's only a very acquired taste. Within the climbing community, you get this kind of cult status to some things. It's in the nature of our community, that storytelling, where we swap stories and create an entire mythology around rocks, and gritstone has its own very proper mythology, which would be very distinct to a granite mythology.

Oliver Strimpel

Does that mythology revolve around the properties of the rock? The fact that the rock is friable, I suppose, and heavily eroded?

Anna Fleming

The mythology erodes around how hard it is . Like gritstone is basically bloody hard work to climb on. You have to develop a really particular set of skills, so it's amazing training for going off elsewhere, whereas other rocks like rhyolite or limestone, you can get on easier stuff that doesn't require as much technique, straight away.

Oliver Strimpel

Just to be clear, why exactly is gritstone so difficult?

Anna Fleming

Because it haven't got any holes, so you have to make it all up with your body. You have to trust friction. Yeah, a lot of climbers learn a lot on that rock and that adds so much to the culture. I was quite amused a few years ago, Alex Honnold, this American superstar of rock climbing, who you may know from the film Free Solo, where he climbed El Capitan without any ropes.

Oliver Strimpel

Absolutely.

Anna Fleming

He came over to the UK, and they were taking him on a tour of the best of the UK climbing. So we went to the slate quarries in North Wales, and he was really intrigued by slate because he hadn't climbed on any of that before. And then went to the gritstone, and was completely underwhelmed. He couldn't understand why British climbers made such a big deal out of these routes that were just 8 or 10 metres high. It was baffling to him. Yeah, I don't know that the culture translates across the pond.

Oliver Strimpel

Well, not everyone has climbed El Capitan solo, so that's a pretty high bar there. You said a moment ago that gritstone might be a good training ground, and then you could perhaps be well equipped to tackle rhyolite and limestone. Why is that? What's easier about rhyolite and limestone?

Anna Fleming

They have holes so they weather in a way that gives you much more to climb with. The chapter I write about where I leave the UK and go over to the Mediterranean Kalymnos, that's the limestone island, and that's just beautiful climbing in terms of the features that you get in the rock. You can climb right across from very easy routes to really challenging ones. It's a lot of tufa formation there that you're climbing on, which, it's just a joy to get your hands on as a climber. It's so tactile and lovely to handle. And then rhyolite, I climb mostly in the Lake District, a little bit in North Wales. And that was when I just got onto it, and it just immediately felt right. I immediately knew exactly what to do on it. My body could move on it fine. And I think this is something in the quality of that rock, possibly the crystalline nature of it, because it's igneous? Means that it's got a better friction quality to it, or a different friction quality that works really nicely with your body and the sorts of weathering formations you get on it are just really pleasant to climb.

Oliver Strimpel

So, texture that results perhaps from the crystal matrix.

Anna Fleming

Yeah, and you get incredible variety in it, which I assume is from when it was formed, and that makes me very curious. You know there are patches where it's quite orange. Other places where it's got a more purple or greenie quality to it. Some places where it's really speckled and holey. Other places where there's more crystal. It's just fascinating to come across those details as you're climbing and as you build up that vocabulary across the entire Lake District and start to see those differences across the different crags and pieces of rock. That brought in my geological curiosity of, how did this come to be? Why are they so different across the lakes, and then that was leading me to try and picture very different landscapes of when those rocks might have formed and what led to them to have such variety.

Oliver Strimpel

You said in your book that each rock speaks its own language. What do you mean by that?

Anna Fleming

To me, rocks are a bit like people. And as you get to know them, you form a relationship with them and you come to understand their personality and their culture and where they're coming from. And to speak to them, you know there's a way of relating, and adapting your own language to speak with them. Which as a climber, you're doing with your physical body, but also with your mind, and how your mind is interacting with that rock. And the journey for me was to really delve into those different languages of the rocks and try and pull out the fundamental nature or personality or characteristics of those rocks to really understand how they worked and how to speak to them.

Oliver Strimpel

Can you give us an example perhaps?

Anna Fleming

Thinking a little bit about gabbro and how gabbro sits up on the Cuillin Ridge and what a particular rock that is in terms of how it shapes your experience. The tactile sensation of holding it and how sharp it is and how your fingers come away completely shredded by it at the end. Because it's so sharp. But that also makes for really good friction, so you can stick hands and feet on it with absolute confidence that they'll hold. But then the rock is also really loose, so you have to be very careful where you're stepping and what you're pulling on, because it might come out. And then there's also the magnetite within the rock, which sends your compasses arwy, and route-finding up there is really difficult. So, gabbro is fascinating for having quite a trickster quality to it where it's conjuring up this entire landscape on the Cuillin Ridge. That's utterly different from anywhere else in the UK.

Oliver Strimpel

So you said it tears up your fingers. Now, presumably that's because you've got large angular crystals.

Anna Fleming

Yeah, it's very coarse grained, and there's also some peridotites there, which I love. That's even sharper, but then they're shaped in such funny, sharp, jagged sculptural forms that remind me a bit of coral reef formations.

Oliver Strimpel

And magnetite, so you actually have enough magnetite in some of these rocks to really throw off your compass.

Anna Fleming

Yeah, if you put a compass down on the Cuillin, it will just spin. It doesn't settle, which the poet in me loved, as this notion, that here was an entire ridge of rocks that was creating its own magnetic field that then pulls in all of these climbers. You know they're drawn to this rock because it's so sticky and adhesive, and it's a beautiful shape of mountain in terms of the weathering of it and the sharpness of it. And then it has its magnetic field that draws us in.

Oliver Strimpel

And like traps in the unwary climber, we could never get out.

Anna Fleming

Yeah, I mean there there's also that. So I was talking about the mythology of different rocks and places, and the Cuillin really has a very strong mythology within the climbing fraternity. A number of climbers can to give you a very entertaining anecdote of their first misadventures on the Cuillin.

Oliver Strimpel

Well, you had a couple yourself.

Anna Fleming

I did have a couple myself, yeah...

Oliver Strimpel

In your book, that certainly comes across as some of the most grueling experiences you write about.

Anna Fleming

Yeah, it's always raining and windy and they do get snow and ice up there in the winter as well. It's loose, it's sharp. Route-finding is really difficult and it is a really grueling traverse to go from one end to the other, which there's not really anything comparable within the UK.

Oliver Strimpel

What's your favorite rock to climb?

Anna Fleming

Lewisian gneiss. I love climbing on that. It looks gorgeous. It's black and it's brown and it's pink and it's got crystals. And sometimes you come across it and there's a huge cross marked in it, and I find that fascinating looking at those crumples and those features in it and thinking about how that formed so many billion years ago and then the amount of Earth history and process of formation and reshaping that that rock has been through to come out looking so beautiful. And it handles really well, is the other reason why I like it. So it's got a lot of friction, like gritstone, so it's really grippy. You put your feet on and they stick. But then it also has a lot of features. You've got cracks and holds. Features do weather into it that resemble holds, so there's a lot to work with. And then the situation of where you go to climb on it is also always quite special. So, I've mostly climbed on it on Lewis, where you will walk out to what feels like the end of the world. You walk out across the bog and the grass and the greenery, and there's never a soul around because it's Lewis, and then you get to the end of the world where the greenery ends and it just plummets. And then your task is to somehow identify the top of the route that you are looking to climb from. How it looks at the top, and then you will rig an abseil so, often, throw some rope around a boulder and build an anchor around a boulder, and then drop that down, and then you drop down the line a bit like a spider lowering down in, to then climb back up and out. So, it's a bit like climbing in reverse where you're going down first and then climbing back up and out, which makes it committing, and really wildly elemental, as you've got the sea crashing around you.

Oliver Strimpel

And those cliffs were formed by the sea, so that has the full force of the westerlies across the Atlantic.

Anna Fleming

Yeah, so it's not a great place to climb in a westerly. In fact, it's awful in a westerly. Yeah, you have to then be quite discerning and try and hunt out the aspects of cliff that are facing away from all that swell that can get. So much wave crashing against the cliff and then these foam will fly up a bit like a snow globe. You'll just get all these globules of foam flying up through the geos.

Oliver Strimpel

When you're climbing, do you have the mental bandwidth to examine the rock for what it contains? As opposed to its ability to afford your route to the top?

Anna Fleming

Climbing, it's often seen as quite a high adrenaline activity, and the focus can be all on the performance element, but climbing really slows time down. It slows movement down, and while you're climbing, you're moving very, very slowly, and then you'll spend a large amount of time also just sitting. When you're sat on a belay, you're paying the rope. To keep your partner safe while they climb their section. There’s nothing else you can do but sit and hold the rope and pay it out, and that's a very meditative state to be in, and you can take in a lot. And those are the times when I do really study the rocks around me to see what they contain. And my curiosity starts to bounce into these cracks and look at the features around me and the colors and the textures of the rock and how it's weathered, close at hand.

Oliver Strimpel

Do you sometimes think about the formation of the rock?

Anna Fleming

Yeah, I get really curious about that, actually. Where did these rocks come from and what past landscapes are they showing to us? So that led me to see how on the gritstone you're climbing on a rock that formed in a delta, so you're climbing, plunging your hands into ancient riverbed material. Or up in Moray, the sedimentary rocks there, which are these beautiful colors of yellow and gold and pink. They're so stunning, they used to clad quite high-status buildings, so if you go to Edinburgh, the National Museum, the new extension at the end is all clad in those desert rock. So climbing there, I'm aware that I'm climbing with this desert history of when Scotland was right down near the equator, and there was also a really curious feature there, which I would always go and check in with in the roof of one of the caves there. There's a section where I could pop my hand in the ceiling of the roof in these little indents that were there, perfectly fitted the palm of my hand, and they were footprints from a reptile that had crawled over that rock, when it was a desert, however many million years ago.

Oliver Strimpel

Anna Fleming, thank you very much.

Anna Fleming

Thanks for having me.

Oliver Strimpel

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