Dry-Tooling - What's it all About?By Scott Muir The article below was published in issue 20 of The Scottish Mountaineer, and has proved to be extremely controversial. It was an amazing scene, an awakening. Everyone left Glasgow Climbing Centre after the Dry Tooling Competition in March, buzzing. Armed with new horizons about what was possible with tools and hyper to end Scottish winter on a high note. Never before in any aspect of climbing or competitions have I seen such a buzz (possibly Red Bull - the sponsors - induced?) not only from the participants but also from a large crowd that couldn't quite believe their eyes. Dynamic, burly moves, wild falls and unpredictable blow offs were the order of the day. It was a brave step for some teams, not quite knowing what to expect, but with open minds they adapted quickly and learned loads.
One full day spent indoors on a Dry Tool wall can mean that folk new to winter climbing can easily second grade IV,6 by the end of a week. What it doesn't mean is that these people can lead this grade immediately or get too, and off, a chosen route because they still have hill and mountaineering experience to gain (placing gear, judgement, hill, snow and ice conditions etc) but it does mean that they bypass a lot of time spent thrashing and are able to use tools properly and in the right places. Over the last year or so, Dry Tooling as interpreted in this country has been associated with the damage of established rock climbs and out of condition winter routes. The controversial use of axes and crampons on established rock climbs on low-level crags, if nothing else, has shown that there must be a demand to train with tools at times outside (and inside!) the conventional winter period. It has gone on for years and has been castigated in Scottish Mountaineer and other outdoor magazines. But the new sport of 'Dry Tooling' being developed across the world and now gaining rapidly in popularity in this country has been wrongly associated with this controversy. In reality, Dry Tooling is well removed from the damage of established routes. Climbing as a whole is becoming a very diverse and at times a very specialised sport and Dry Tooling is a rising sport in its own right, both inside and outside. Venues are being developed where technical tools can be used throughout the year on technically difficult and physically challenging routes. And indoor venues for training are part of this development just as most folk go to the indoor wall during the winter for the following summer, so winter climbers are now able to climb all summer for the following winter. Venues like the 'School yard' in Edinburgh are appearing quickly and are totally dedicated to dry tooling. Tiso's shop in Glasgow has a real ice indoor wall and in December there will also be the new 'Ice Factor' climbing centre at Kinlochleven. Glasgow Climbing Centre, are also now developing a new Dry Tool area.
In today's, modern continental mixed world, the search for technical and physical difficulty has meant that routes have travelled down the same road as bolted sport climbing. The routes now don't necessarily follow the obvious features as they once did, as the obvious features often provide the easiest climbing (relatively speaking). So modern activists have purposely looked for blank and sickly steep rock. Modern mixed routes abroad now involve so many desperate moves on rock in a row that the ice is now a formality, a rest even, whether its ice 7 to the top or not. Therefore the challenge is in the rock, not the ice. In Rjukan Norway, projects in winter are appearing that are exactly that - pure rock. Dry Tooling is not traditional Scottish winter climbing, it is a totally separate discipline. For a start, you can Dry Tool all year round. Dry Tooling uses specifically designed axes, boots and screw-on crampons developed for the competition scene (some not even readily available in this country yet). Unlike Scottish winter however, dry tooling is safe (relatively speaking) as the routes are mostly bolted and require little of the mountaineering skills requisite in traditional winter. In essence Dry Tooling is the same as summer sport climbing, allowing climbers to challenge their abilities technically and physically on demanding ground that would otherwise be too serious to place protection on. Hard Dry Tool redpointing has all the aspects of its sport rock-climbing equivalent, containing all the mental pitfalls of failing time and again and of powerful positive thinking and visualising. There are very few rules in Dry Tooling outside sport climbing ethics. There are no ethical questions over conditions or time of year, you either get up it or you don't. Importantly though modern Dry Tooler's have no aspirations to damage established rock climbs past, present and future and should not be associated with folk that do so. It is totally unacceptable to damage established summer rock climbs. There are plenty of ideal venues for training for winter outside in abandoned quarries or on rock that will never make good rock climbs and in these recognised places Dry Tooling routes could be established.
YOUR COMMENTSMike Dunn writes: Garry Wardrope counters: Daniel J Clarke writes: mountain guide, Sandy Allan writes: It's fantastic that the MC of S have taken this initiative while we see our UK wide body (BMC) wallowing in its own financial despair and mire of political correctness. YOU and the MCofS should be congratulated for supporting this development, bringing it to people's attention and proposing a code of practice.
Of course there are parts of the article that give me some concern, Bolting being one, Scott only publishing photos of himself and no mention of team work, comradeship and the importance of a good belayer. Mentions of Red Bull at the turn of every page also turn my stomach…but what the hell, Scott has done well to get a commercial sponsor and I truly hope that who ever is behind Red Bull receives some value for their sponsorship….and while I am semi critical of Red Bull I have to admit on long drives back from climbing in Spain or Chamonix I have used their product and it certainly worked for me! Perhaps a bit like training in a gym which is alien to many climbers, now and again its good fun and even beneficial, but the body may suffer if one does it to often! More importantly … I think one should be asking: why do good climbers such as Scott have to sell themselves to a commercial company for funding anyway?
It seems to me that as our government and Sport Scotland are so remote from the wishes of Scottish Mountaineers that we see the likes of Plas Y Brenin and the MTT becoming the recognised experts in Scottish Winter Mountaineering instruction, when in “the good old days” our very own (and we all felt it was our very own) Glenmore Lodge stood head and shoulders above any other provider and held great international respect and did Scottish Mountaineering the word of good. Please do not get me wrong, I do not intend to be a critic of Glenmore Lodge or PlasY Brenin or their enthusiastic and hard working staff for this turn of events but the fact that we are letting the expertise drift from home to Wales rather than here around the Cairngorms and Glenmore is something that desperately needs addressing. Paying lip service to Scottish Mountaineering issues, as a front line sport seems rather dim. Products such as Andrew Irvine supporting Mallory on Mount Everest, Dougal Haston and so many others is testimony enough to that! The good work of many Principals at Glenmore Lodge over many years all slipping down the drain is simply not acceptable. I do know that a great deal of the financial support does come from the Scottish Sport Council , but surely they can see its not just money that Scottish Mountaineering needs, but true belief from the uppermost corridors of power that Mountaineering is a core activity and is something worth supporting.
There are many of us who think that Scottish Winter Climbing has not really moved forward since the late 80's, it appears to have plateaued out and this openness by Scott and his friends is very positive and much needed. Not only as a recreational activity in its own right (Really, I hope that this is not the principal aim) but also to give climbers the skills required for pushing harder and more technical climbs in Scottish winter and on the international scene. We need locations where we can “safely” push our skills. A grade eight Scottish climbs is not the place to practice the skills, the opportunity to find one in good condition is very rare, so how can we push the grades higher and make the risks acceptable? Sure some will argue ( partly quite rightly in my opinion but its only half the argument!) that we have Dumbarton Rock and other amazing bouldering areas, where we can hone many of the skills, like, positive attitude, clear and calm thinking when under duress, goal setting and specialist skills, and there is no doubt that several leading climbers have developed their skills in such an environment, Climbing walls help a bit, but not as much as being outside away from the “safe” indoor protective environment. So why not have a few areas set aside for developing these skills with ice axes and crampons? Personally I have never been such a climber to visit and train around a pile of boulders or feel at home in a disused quarry (Some readers may disagree as Everest base camp could be regarded as such a place!), however many of us Scots have always felt much more at home even at the bottom of the steepest rock walls, dressed with crampons and ice axes rather than rubber soled rock boots and a chalk bag. Many of us have private areas where we have developed our skills, for me it was the distilling glens of Scotland, disused chimney stacks and, partly demolished whisky warehouses, eroded gravel embankments by the banks of a turbulent mountain stream and disused railway bridges, “dry tooling” away in a secret society, but how else were to do winter ascents of routes such as Grey Slab (Corrie Sputan Derag), Grumbling Grooves ( Corie an Lochan) Haripin Loop ( Carn Etchican) Black Mamba and the Rat Trap (Creag an Dubh Loch). Even these climb, back in the early eighties, some still unrepeated, at grades of VIII.8 .
At that stage we were scratching away at something very new and exciting. There were others, Rab Anderson, Mal Duff, Dave Cuthbertson and many others... But enough: Allen Fyffe, Hamish McInnis, Cunningham, Marshal were doing amazing things, even Chris Bonington along with Tom Patey much earlier than us, but the reader should note that the Tough Brown traverse was climbed in 1895 and Black Spout in 1893 and Collie was scratching around in the Coe in 1894 which hopefully illustrates that there really is nothing new under the sun, and no modern climber even with a Red Bull sticker on ones hat can claim to be first!
As I was developing my dry tooling (mixed climbing skills) at the same period but quite unknown to me, Mick Fowler and Victor Saunders and other London based climbers were scratching away too, on the White Cliffs of Dover, trying to find something exciting and safe to do, as it was a reasonable alternative to pushing limits on the remote Highland buttresses. Also of course, it was good fun! I suppose its reasonable to say that all the above mentioned characters and many others who I have not mentioned have developed into being reasonable enough climbers for the time. However the great game has a long way to go yet, there are overhangs and crack lines all over Scotland crying out with the challenge to climb them and hopefully then the skills will be transferred to the International scene .There are plenty such challenges around the world for the innovative but it does need some help and to have a few specified areas to practice and develop the activity seems a reasonable enough idea to me.
I still get people coming up to me and say that the scratches I left on Black Mamba are still there, and it is something I feel guilty about and in fact now I stay away from trying to climb establish summer classics. However that being said, who can say which climbs are OK to do in winter and which are not? I do feel that Mountaineers own ethics will develop a system for that. Criticism and controversy is nothing new, Maestri and Egger was climbing in Patagonia in the early fifties and have been underestimated ever since, and other have still not managed to climb to their amazing grade! There are many other climbers who have encountered some back lash from the establishment when new climbs are done.
Dry tooling is an important development and has an international following, although many of us prefer to call it mixed climbing.
Congratulation on an inspiring article and magazine, I have no idea how you plan to police the activity, but I feel confident that the partakers of the sport are well aware of the environmental concerns and problems, via continued good education and clear guidelines which you are trying to produce and good open communication, it will develop just fine, with out the need for any policemen at all. Erik Brunskill of Glasgow writes: I have my own views on Dry Tooling, but the main concern amongst a number of climbers is the long-term impact of Dry Tooling on Scottish winter climbing. This impact may involve the erosion of the strong traditional Scottish winter ethic; justly famous worldwide. For an organisation representing Scottish mountaineers, which places a high onus on resisting commercial development of our mountain areas, I feel the MCofS is guilty of hypocrisy by allowing blatant commercial publicity for this development.
An article debating the issue would have been far more beneficial. As a side note, I trust Red Bull and Grivel gave a healthy donation towards MCofS funds for the quality advertising? From Alastair Robertson: Steve Wright agrees: but Ian Appleton differs: Kev Shattock writes: The sport of dry tooling in my opinion is one of the most exciting, thrilling, physically and mentally demanding of the climbing sphere. We NEED to encourage this sport responsibly. It has a right to be practised and discussed openly from everyone involved. Embrace the future. Darko Spirovski writes: Oliver Francks writes: I find the smashing up of every small ice fall to form, by aspirant "ice climbers", distasteful enough but I am comforted to think that a thaw and refreeze will erase their traces; the iron mongery is for use on snow and ice where it will leave no permanent scars.
Just because people buy axes and crampons like the latest toy and have to go out and show them off whether the conditions permit or not, doesn't mean we have to welcome their behaviour or their sponsors and we certainly don't have to promote either.
John Macavoy writes: I also agree that this is a legitimate sport and I am sure that most climbers will keep off established climbing grounds. That said there will always be uproar and upset every time someone new to the sports takes their axes to the wrong places. So this argument will never end.
However we should remember that ALL climbing damages the rock; from polishing to gear pulling or piton bashing... not to mention bolts.
Rhys Dobbs writes:
Dylan Jones:
James "lapsed passport" Bussey writes: |
It has been evident to me for years now whilst guiding in Scotland and running sessions at the Winter Climbing Performance Seminars at Glenmore Lodge, that quality time spent using axes in a controlled environment rather than in hundred mile an hour winds and driving spindrift on the hill, is massively beneficial to people experimenting with what is possible with axes - how hard you can pull on small hooks or baggy torques.
So, 'What is Dry Tooling?' and 'Where has it come from?' Despite what it sounds like, it does not require lubrication, although it can be painful! Dry Tooling or Mixed 'M' grade climbing has been developed by Continental, Canadian and US ice climbers searching for new ice routes as the obvious lines ran out. The remaining lines headed for the funkiest, most outrageous hanging stalactites around. Initially the pioneers gained these stalactites of ice using Aid (pulling and resting on gear). On reaching the ice, they then free climbed using the ice techniques of the time to gain the top. As a new and stronger generation appeared, they in turn sought to remove the points of aid. Dry Tooling was simply the term used to describe the climbing of the rock sections using axes and crampons to free them. It is the climbing of rock that is very steep or overhanging, would be almost impossible to climb purely by hand, and that is often either loose or dirty, to reach free hanging stalactites of ice. Hands are sometimes used for a move or two on the rock and sometimes on the ice before switching back to tools, making routes truly mixed.
Fast and Furious is the first route of its type in the UK (besides the chalk routes of Suffolk which have recently fallen down) and the completion of Too Fast - Too Furious, which is the extension of this route has established one of the largest roof climbs in the country, being at an angle of 60 degrees or more over its entire 40 metre length. It is in Newtyle Quarry near Dunkeld. Speculatively, it has been given a grade of 'D12', placing it physically and technically alongside Mushashi, Vertical Limits and Batman - the hardest routes in this genre in the world. Loads of scope remains for more routes of a more reasonable grade and some are currently being developed. The use of a 'D' in the grade indicates that the route can be climbed at anytime of year regardless of conditions. The number stays the same as in the technical number attached to 'M' Mixed graded continental routes.
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