“A LITTLE BIT CRAZY”Johnny Dawes l Peak District/England

Caroline Fink talked to 1980s climbing celebrity Johnny Dawes

about climbing on gritstone.

Johnny, as one of the best gritstone climbers of all time, you

know every inch of gritstone in England’s Peak District. Can

you tell us what makes the rock between Manchester and

Sheffield so special?

Well, you can’t really compare routes in the Peak with other crags.

Gritstone is much rougher, compacter and more rounded. This

makes the routes really tricky and very technical. Some of them are

difficult to protect, which makes them very dangerous. It also makes

them a little bit crazy.

You were the first to climb some of these “slightly crazy”

routes at the hardest grades in the 1980s. What does it take

to be successful on gritstone?

The way you use your sense of gravity is more important on gritstone

than on other rocks. You can’t simply ensure that you can do the

moves by being strong. The security comes from knowing what the

move really is, not from being strong enough to do the move really

easily. I also think that a dynamic style is very important for climbing

on gritstone. You get to holds which you can just about hang on to,

but where you can’t pull any harder on them to get the next position.

So sometimes, you’ve got to “unweight” the body to get some sort

of movement . . . one move is used to do the next one. So I think we

took dynoing a little bit further.

In descriptions of your climbing, it is often said that you in-

vented the “dyno”.

This is a bit of an exaggeration. But it is true that we really helped to

push the boundaries of dynamic climbing in the Peak District in the

1980s.

Dynos on unbolted rock, sometimes with only marginal pro-

tection. Weren’t you ever scared of taking a bad fall?

Fear . . . (pauses to consider) . . . it’s not like “fear!” and completely los-

ing it. It’s more the case that you are completely aware of the situa-

tion . . . you work out what to do and then you do it. This doesn’t make

you afraid, it makes you concentrate. You are forced to concentrate

on climbing your way out of trouble.

Even today, there are no bolts on gritstone anywhere in

the Peak District. Why is this? The rock itself is capable of

taking bolts.

That’s true. It would be perfectly possible to bolt gritstone routes.

But the rock doesn’t give you a bolt, so it should be left alone. Let’s

be honest here: if you climb from the bottom of a cliff to the top, then

this is “rock climbing”. If you put bolts in, then its “bolted rock climb-

ing”. Personally, I think that calling it “sport climbing” is just sexing

it up really. With the exception of the really dangerous routes, the ma-

jority of the easier routes on gritstone don’t need bolts. They have

wonderful cracks and holes and can be protected with friends, nuts

and hexs. This is the way they have always been climbed.

There is a longstanding tradition of climbing on gritstone.

Can you tell us a bit more about the history of the area?

Climbing first started here at the end of the 19th century. Things real-

ly kicked off after the Second World War. People still had old bits of

equipment left over, for example ropes, which they used to climb the

cliffs in the Peak District.

And this involved mainly working class men from Sheffield

and Manchester?

Yes, exactly. This was the exact opposite of most mountaineers at the

time, who were members of more elitist organisations, such as the

Alpine Club. The 1980s were a further important stage in the devel-

opment of the Peak District – it was a second heyday. My generation

basically climbed everything left that was considered “unclimbable”.

And you weren’t exactly members of the upper class either . . .

No, that’s true. We were students and workers. We didn’t have any

money. In actual fact, we should probably thank Margaret Thatcher

for her neo-liberal, free-market policies of the time. Thanks to her,

there were no jobs, which meant that we had more time to climb. It

was an amazing time for young climbers in the Peak District; it was a

really creative period that was full of energy.

What is there left to climb on gritstone today?

There’s really not much left. There is one old quarry with some pos-

sibilities. It has around twelve routes that have never been climbed.

They are all really desperate, even on top rope. But if there are

climbers out there who are good enough – then they’ll be more than

welcome here. The routes are just waiting to be climbed.

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