Jack Longland described the greatest rock face in Wales, Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, as "Colin’s Cliff". Kirkus' series of new routes on "Cloggy" was unparalleled until the emergence of Joe Brown, 20 years later.
Kirkus also climbed extensively in the Alps and made a pioneering Alpine-style ascent in the Himalaya in 1933. He was killed in the Second World War in 1942.
Kirkus left the world of mountaineering two tremendous legacies: firstly his pioneering climbs in Wales and elsewhere, and secondly one of the finest instruction books ever written "Let's Go Climbing!".
Wikipedia
Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, the Great Slab
It was 1930, and Colin Kirkus searched intently for any way to reach the huge slab high on the 500-foot battlement of Clogwyn Du'r Arddu. His first obstacle was an overhang -- a very big one, as he later noted in his memoir: it created a sort of covered corridor, with a roof that projected in places for 20 feet or more.
Dark and ancient, with soaring gray faces and aretes, Cloggy is high in the heart of Snowdonia, the mountain center of North Wales. North-facing, slow to dry, and home to historic runouts, it was at one point considered impossible to climb, and remains a treasury of hard, heady classics.
From the ground, Kirkus, the leading climber of his era, decided to break through the middle, where a pile of blocks created a weakness, and traverse leftwards along the edge. He hoped to gain a narrow slab that reared up to the skyline. Whatever lay after the slab, as he would write in Let's Go Climbing, was impossible to guess.
On the exposed traverse, Kirkus hit a foothold too slick for his rubbers, so he took them off and continued in his socks. The traverse is Very Severe (5.7 or 5.8).
He reached a tiny grass ledge, and looked up at the narrow, difficult, rotten face, wondering what was coming. A hundred feet above the base, with the overhang below him, he was absolutely committed. He started up.
A thin ribbon of grass ran all the way out on the right, looking like a long and ragged caterpillar. I thought that even this might be safer than the rock and plunged into it. ...
t began to peel off and slide down. I left this moving staircase very hurriedly, and took to the rocks again. I climbed on the extreme edge .... Below my left foot the rocks dropped, sheer and unclimbable, for 200 feet.
He ran out of his 120-foot line with no belay in sight, and his partner Graham MacPhee tied on another 100-foot rope.
Kirkus finally reached a thread belay: It was wonderful to think no one had ever been here before. It was still more interesting to wonder whether we should ever escape.
Alison Osius in Rock & Ice: http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/colin-kirkus-climbings-greatest-unknown
Colin Kirkus: “Isn’t it boring sleeping every night in a bed? Don’t you sometimes long for a change? Wouldn’t you like to lie and see the stars above you, or sleep like a polar bear in the snow? Possibly not – you think it sounds too cold. But it need not be; with correct equipment you can keep warm under the most severe conditions.
One winter’s night I cycled up to a climbers’ cottage in the Ogwen Valley. The place was empty and locked-up when I arrived. The key was at the farm; but it was after midnight and I did not want to waken them, so I decided to sleep out in the open. It was a cold night – cold enough to freeze the stream. I put on all my clothes and looked around for a suitable site. The only sheltered spot seemed to be the rubbish dump, which was enclosed on three sides. So I lay down amongst the tins. Luckily the smells also were frozen up.
The greatest discomfort was the large stone which I had for a pillow. Now and again, when I began to feel chilled, I would stroll about a little. I was never miserably cold, and managed to get quite a fair amount of sleep. I felt fresh enough in the morning. It was a lovely day and two of us spent the next night in sleeping bags on the top of Snowdon. We slept in the snow, in 12 degrees of frost, but our bags kept us as warm as toast.
Ian Robertson, BMC:
https://www.thebmc.co.uk/lets-go-climbing
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