Fairhead - September 2020

This was my second venture to Fairhead. We pitched up at Shaun's farm that bounds the crags. It's a basic setup, no more than an empty grassy field with a few cattle over a wall and a small toilet block (unfortunately still under construction when we visited), but the campsite comes with the bonus of being a short walk each morning to the crags.

The sun was noticeably less strong and days much shorter than it was in June on my last visit. We were now mid September and camping conditions were beginning to get damp underfoot. In the morning and evening, or when the sun wasn't shining, a thick layer of dew clung to the long grass. Wading around the campsite was constantly resulting in wet shoes and soaked trousers and inside the tent you could feel the dampness leeching into stored cloths and sleeping bags. In retrospect if I was going again and we had a group of 4 or more, I would certainly opt to rent a cottage in Ballycastle. Cost wise we were pretty much the same per head camping as we were in a cottage. The convenience of kitted out kitchen and comfort offered of not being inside a tent just makes getting on with climbing that much easier.

Face Value

One of the first routes of the trip, Face Value (E4 6a), is a route I'd missed in 2016. I'd seen a number of friends at the meet cruising up the middle of that wall. It was clearly a great line and I knew it would be high on the list for a return visit. It takes the fantastic central part on one of the most attractive walls on the crag. Pitch 1 doesn't have any particularly hard moves but keeps on coming and belays before a sizable roof section. It's around a 45 meter pitch and not to bad for the grade. Pitch 2 involves a few tricky moves through the roof but after that it's quite straight forward all the way to the top.

The Mask

Probably my highlight of the trip was climbing The Mask (E5 6a). This both mine and John's first attempt at an E5 onsight. The long endurance based style of climbing at Fairhead gave me a good deal of confidence that the routes here would have good options for pushing my grade a bit.

The Mask is 2 pitches of quite contrasting climbing. Pitch 1 is quite delicate with sections of bold climbing traversing out across a steep face to gain some cracks that lead to a ledge. John handled the delicate traverse rightwards well. Small spaced gear and a good micro cam gave him enough confidence to continue to a good rest. Pulling round the corner, a short and tricky wall brings you to a good ledge.

I set off on pitch 2 feeling nervous but excited. The first few moves off the belay are a slightly perplexing and committing sequence and bring you to a small exposed foot-ledge on the arete. From here you can look up the meat of the pitch, a wall with an obvious diagonal slanting crack. The climbing looked intimidating although was quite clearly going to be better protected than the previous pitch. I set off doing battle with the crack making slow but steady progress. Just as I was reaching the end of the difficulties I became immediately aware that I was losing control of the pump. I only had a few seconds to act. I lunged for what looked like a jug and right at that moment my foot slipped. Luckily my fingers managed to wrap the hold before I felt past it. It was indeed good, and from here it was more steady climbing, albeit with burst arms.

You won't be sort of 3 star routes at any grade at Fairhead. There must be at least 10 routes between VS and E7 at Fairhead that get 3 stars. Over the full week I don't think anyone did a route that was bad or underwhelming. Aside the the above routes, some other notable ones were Wall of Pray, Jolly Rodger, the routes around The Prow (great long single pitch that you can knock through in a day) and who could forget Salango (absolute sandbag!).

Don't cross the boulder field!

It doesn't need saying really, but we (ok, it was me really!) thought this might be a quick way of getting from one side of the crag to the other. Just don't... Don't cross that boulder field. We almost died about 3 times doing attempting this. We did finally make it, but it took us about an hour and a half to cover a distance that would take 10 minutes at the top of the crag. In that time we were almost swallowed up by giant vegetation covered crevasses, or crushed under tons of loose boulders. It's just not worth it! 😂