| The following is an acount by Vince Anderson of his experience "ice" climbing the White Cliffs of Dover, England in the fall of 2003.
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“I think you should climb fast,” said my partner Yan as the incoming tidewater was now splashing up on to our small belay ledge. We had spent more time than anticipated rapping in to the start of the route and for me, tides are something I have never had to deal with before. The fact that the rodk was now getting wet did not bother me, though. I knew it would help my tools stick into it better. Now, looking down at the rising, black, frothy water added a sense of urgency to the climb that I had not accounted for. The biting honesty of the sea made itself ever more evident by the sting of the salt on my chapped, raw hands. The punishment of the last several days of swinging tools with bare hands into the dry, often brittle rock was taking its toll.
We came here to climb on the famous White Cliffs of Dover. We came here to go ice climbing, if you could call it that. The cliffs are made of a high density chalk and rise abrubtly out of the sea. The bleach white color and sheer vertical relief beautifully contrast the cold black waters of the English channel above which they are perched. The peacefullness of the open sky and soft, grassy fields above further contradict the austerity of the of the cliffs and water below. The composition of the scenery leads to a sense of wondering, fearfullness and sedation all in one. Ice climbing is not the first thing I was thinking of after my first gaze upon the landscape here. I think taking a nap was, but maybe that was just from the jet lag.
These cliffs have captivated the curiousity of onlookers for many centuries and they are still a very popular site seeing destination today. Climbers had looked upon the cliffs for quite sometime before ever making any serious attempts to scale them. Early attempts at rock climbing here were more or less fruitless due to the smooth, featureless faces and soft, crumbly rock . But eventually British alpinist Mick Fowler and his buddies had the bright idea to try and climb it with ice climbing equipment. Their efforts in the 1980’s produced a few routes that gained some limited notoriety mostly due the novelty of it all. With rumors of difficult or poor protection and route names like “The Great White Fright,” the popularity remained limited.
I had just spent the summer guiding in France. A few of my friends there would say “Have you not climbed in Dover?” Of course I had not, but the way they asked it seemed as if I should. “Well” they would reply “then you must go and climb with us there.” I was thinking maybe Boux or Ceuse or something like that for the fall, but no, my french ice climbing feinds told me otherwise. I saw a few photos and the white rock did have a slight resemblance to ice. Maybe it would be good. Jack Tackle related to me a two stories about his first introduction with “dry-tooling.” One involved something he did on dates back in high school, The other was about getting stuck in some motel in Cook City Montana (for reasons that I am still unsure of) and climbing the sheetrock walls with his tools and crampons (maybe it was a lean ice year). He had reckonned (incorrectly, as I was to later bear witness to) that climbing in Dover would be much like the latter memorable and cherrished expeirience of his youth. Well, I reckoned if it proved to be like eithe one, it sounded like fun to me, so I decided to give it a try.
Low and behold, here I was. Definitely, not like sheet rock. It did, however, have some vague resemblance of an experience I may have had on one of my early dates: something about the fear of the wrath promised by her father if I did not get her home by nine. The first few moves off of the belay were the steepest. The action of the sea over the years had undercut the bottom of the cliffs so that it was overhanging for the first 10-15 meters. Still, this was the best chalk to be found on the cliff. The wetting affect of the waves and the moist sea breeze had made this stuff a bit more soft and sticky. It was easy to get sticks here. My grandma could climb ice (rock?) like this. It was not to last for long, however.
While rapping in, I had not been so sure how good the protection would be. I had heard the stories of tying off partially driven warthogs for belays. I did not even own any warthogs and I was not excited about tying anythig off for the belays or for protection. After some testing, we decided that V-threads were the best thing going in this stuff. My partner and I debated whether to use the French ethics (Yan was from France) of English ethics here. Using the English ethic would mean a degrading dog-a-thon of fifi hooking into the tools in order to place protection. Since we were here to climb the steep stuff and there was no way to put in pro from a stance, I agreed, French ethic it is.
Having not really climbed much chalk, I figured that it would probably need about the same amount of pro as any other ice climb. That sounds great when you are rapping in and trying to hurry up so that you can get climbing. It is a different story altogether when you are desperately beating at the rock with your ice tools and kicking and clawing with your feet to get some purchase. All the while, you are looking at decking in the drink below. Unlike with the water soloing that has become fashionable in England these days, you can be sure that in this case, with loads of metal attached to yourself, you would not float back up to the top after you hit the water. I told myself, “at least I am tied to a rope”. A small consolation as I know they could toe my ass back in if they had to. The climbing proved to be far more tedious and difficult than I had immagined. It was very slow upward progess and I began getting a fierce pump in my arms and, especially, my calves. What I was thinking about now was that we should have put in more V-threads.
We had spent the previous day doing some bouldering along the beach when the tide went out. In contrast to the climb we now found ourselves on, the bouldering was safe, fun, and excellent chalk quality. The sea soaked boulders and overhanging walls along the beach offered perhaps the best rock to climb on. When the chalk is wet, it is much easier to get a stick in and you can climb up amazingly steep stuff. Swing a tool, THUNK. Kick in your feet, THUNK, THUNK. Move up again. This was the true “Hero Ice” of chalk climbing. Some of the rocks were covered with a strange green slime that seemed to make it even better for sticks, though it was really smelly if you got any on you. We had great fun creating problems with reverse stein pulls, long reaches and dynos over roofs. It was sunny and the water polished stones on the beach made for a soft landing.
There were even some caves that were blasted into the rock by one of the various wars fought around here. Here we found some really gymnastic climbing up through multiple roofs. We made a short, sport route out of one of them. Leaving behind our new style bolt on crampons with heel spurs in favor of more traditional crampons we climbed in the (relatively) old school style of doing multiple figure fours to clear the roofs. Good fun and a great pump.
Back on the big route,Yan started to get impatient at the belay. The water was starting to lap up at his feet. As I made my way around the overhang, I got onto a wakk of beautiful, smooth, white chalk that was slightly more than vertical. This nicer looking stuff is much drier, being farther from the sea, and, consequently, harder. I don’t think that the word bulletproof would necessarily apply in this case, but it certainly did cross my mind. I was thinking how similar it would be to swing the tools into the red Wingate of Indian Creek. I can’t believe that people actually get into this stuff. I can’t believe I was talked into doing this. This is desperate! I can’t quite compare it to any ice that I have climbed before. Even real brittle ice will break and eventually yield to a well placed tool. The chalk, on the other hand, would just start to dent. After a what seemed like an eternity of relentlessly beating my tools into the rock, I would have a small dimple that I tool could hook in. The placements were always wobbly and removal was never a problem. Occasionally you could find a crack. Here was salvation.
The feet were even worse. After frantic, toe numbing barrage of kicking I could get my point (mono’s were worth their weight in gold here) in a small, insecure dimple. With only a few millimeters worth of the mono making purchase in the rock, there was very little support for the calves. This was pure, unadulterated, calf burning hell. The kind you used to get front pointing up endless 50º alpine ice climbs when you started climbing. The kind that made you think that maybe climbing in ski boots would be a good idea. Only this was 90º and your feet would come skating out of the small dimples with the slightest movement of the feet. My heart began to flutter severl times as I lost my footing. There was a lot of silica rocks imbedded into the chalk in various layers. These withstood erosion much more than the chalk and would offer protrusions to stand on in places. As we quickly learned, they are not all that trust worthy. More than once did we get to a restful stance on a silica rock only to have it break out from underneath, sending us falling onto an outstretched arm gripping tightly to our leashless ice tools.
Yes, we climbed leashless. And yes, we got pumped. Pumped stupid. Leashless tools rock for mixed climbing in the modern paradigm. I even prefer them for most ice routes back home in Colorado. I was not so sure about them here in Dover. I guess you could call what we were doing dry tooling, but we were really climbing the stuff more like ice. I kept thinking how nice it would be to have some super heavy, old school tools--something that could really penetrate with some hefty mass in the head. These puny, light weight leashless tools required a lot of work to get purchase and a good grip to hold onto them for the long bouts of time consuming climbing needed to cover short amounts of ground. What a drag it would be to drop one and watch it fall into the sea.
The belay was a short respite from the gripping climbing. The views across the English Channel were marvelous. It was clear and we could even see the French coast some twenty miles away. Yan made his way up to my belay in good time and wasted no time in getting after the next pitch which followed a slightly overhanging crack system. Now the pace slowed considerably. As I was about to find out, it was much easier (maybe ten times over) to follow a pitch then to lead one. For one thing, you were not on lead and that alone settled the nerves enough to allow you to climb more relaxed. Also, the leader was the one pounding away for each meager placement. The second could just draft in their holes. Much easier, especially with a tight rope from above. As other parties repeat this climb, it will obviously be significantly easier with each subsequent ascent.
There was a huge chimney cut into the cliff during one of the wars to aid hauling equipment up from the beach. It somewhat resembled a couloir and has now become a classic route called “The Tube”. It has been climbed so much that the numerous holes made from tool and crampon placements were clearly visible from a distance. It is now like the one of the routes in the Schoolroom area of the Ouray Ice Park in the late season with more resemblance to a peg board at a high school gym than to an ice route.
The comfort of the belay was short lasted, however. A hanging belay on ice is bad enough. You can usually hack out a small foot ledge to get some sort of stance. Not on the chalk. It is literally a “hanging” belay with no place to stand on your feet. I tried for a while to hang while flat footing against the rock. My ankles got sore after a while of this and then I tried to hang while in the front point position. You can imagine how long this lasted. Eventually I surrendered to just hanging and letting the feet just dangle. This was about as comfortable as rappelling in a dulfersitz and my legs started to go numb. I have not had many occasions where the belay was more uncomfortable than the climbing. I honestly started thinking that leading this stuff might be better than suffering through a hanging belay on it.
The rock here was even harder than below and Yan had equipped much of this pitch with bolts. He thought they seemed “OK.” I would have preferred the V-threads, but it was his pitch to lead so who was I to care? There was one section where it overhung at about 95º for about 5 meters. This was the business. He cautiously took his time here trying to get good sticks. There was a bit of a crack running up this section which really helped out. Still, you could tell that he was getting a pump. He continuously alternated grips, trying to shake out the the lactic acid bath that was surely wallowing in his forearms. After having some difficulty getting a placement, he down climbed a little to shake out again. Now he was really shaking out. Was he going to whip? I started to wonder how strong the bolts were that he put in. I had noticed on the way down that if you put your tool behind the hanger you could pry them out very easily. I tried to assure myself that they should be perfectly adequate for just a downward pull.
Yan is strong and I had confidence in the young, French alpinist. He competed on the 2003 Ice Climbing World Cup and can do multiple one arms. He has also done his fair share of high, scary alpine routes so he knows that there are consequences to falling. We would now fall here. He pulled through the crux and arrived at much nicer belay ledge. He brought me on up to the relatively comfy stance. A final, easier pitch traversed left around total choss to gain the rim. The initial traverse was a little unnerving as the rock was still very hard, though on a slab. We had run it out pretty good with the pro here because we figured it would be easy being a slab and all. This was the sort of pitch where both ends of the rope were the sharp end. At the end of the traverse, we ascended a dirty, loose corner. The rock near the top is much more rotten as it starts to become more like soil and less like rock. It had a small bulge of dead plants and dried roots at the top that was tricky to surmmount. The rock was quite soft here and very easy to get a stick. It was like snow and sort of reminded me of tunneling through a cornice. And like snow, the tools tended to shear through it. After much excavating and a few mouthfulls of chalky dirt, we pulled up onto the flat, grassy rim above the sea.
We had pounded in a one meter long steel stake into the soft earth for an anchor up here. The serenity of the gentle, grassy top was in stark contrast to the anxiety ridden climbing found below on the cliffs. The long blades of grass would yield to the sea breeze ast it swept acoss the field while the gulls litled and stalled above. The sun set just as we topped out and cast an amber glow on the ivory chalk cliffs. It was kind of strange not seeing anyone else out here climbing but very satisfying. With raw hands, stiff calves, and pumped forearms we headed back for a few pints of beer and some time for reflection.
We called our route Carte Blanche.
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