BLACK
ROCKS
REJOICE
Words by Niall Grimes
I first saw, in the film Stone Monkey on Channel 4 in 1988,
Johnny Dawes, on a tight top rope, climbing a route called
Gaia, his own creation from some years earlier. Today, in the
YouTube era, it’ll be hard to get your head around how mind
warping it was to see this guy doing these climbs on the box.
This wasn’t Bonington flogging Bovril, this was the cutting,
poetic edge of our sport. It was the Hindenburg Explosion.
It was the Moon Landing. Any climber absorbed every scene
and every line and every route into their DNA. Black Rocks
entered our minds and I knew someday I would go there.
DESTINATION
Having overcome the ‘cack-handed jelly wrestle’ is one move crux Gus Hudgins finishes up the
upper groove of Lone Tree Groove (VS 5a) in the Birch Tree Wall area. Photo: David Simmonite30 MAY JUN 2020 http://www.climber.co.uk