UKC Essay Competition, in association with Berghaus

Here the honourable mentions from our essay competition - articles that we liked, but which didn't get enough votes collectively to win a prize. Commiserations, people, but be confident that we like your stuff - enough to publish it right here. They are:

• Paul Marshall: Mother Said There'd Be Days Like These
  Tiptoeing up a Devon slab when you should be elsewhere
• Ian Wilson: The Unrepeatable
  Well, you try doing a V6 mantleshelf in the wet
• Nick Eaton: The Pause
  Another slab, but this time in Scotland
• Paul Johnson: Distant Dream
  A route you probably know, and the impressions it leaves

That's it! Our congratulations once again to the prizewinners and our thanks to everyone who entered.

by Paul Marshall

"I shouldn't be here." This wasn't my rack, these weren't my ropes and the shoes weren't mine either.

"I should be meeting a girl in Barnstaple."

I'd kissed her once, I knew I was falling for her but my old mate Jason had persuaded me to do one more route for old times' sake. So there I was, on a beautiful afternoon, at the base of Dartmoor's best slab route - Docker's Dilemma on Vixen Tor E5 6a.

"It's a route worth standing someone up for." Said Jason. Maybe, but I still shouldn't have been there - I hadn't pulled on rock shoes more than a dozen times in eighteen months.

Like all Dartmoor routes, it packs a lot into its short 110 feet. You get an easy start, the crux "Braille Covered Wall," boldish climbing between rounded breaks and then a bold, steepening 6a finish on feldspar crystals. I felt apprehensive.

"I heard of a guy who came off the braille wall. His belayer ran for it and he only got scratched up" said Jason. With encouragement like that I'd wear a helmet, but Jason didn't own one.

The easy wall was really easy. Big cams went in the break below the Braille Wall. Here you get all the time you like to work out where to go next. It seemed fairly obvious.

"Do you want beta?" Jason called.

"If I'm going to get dumped for this route, I'm at least doing it on sight."

Fifteen minutes later I was getting shaky. The "big holds above on the left," turned out only to be big from below. I needed to get back on route, but my unfit and frightened legs threatened to shake me off. I just managed to reverse couple of moves. It had to be up now.

"Thank God that's not as hard as it looked." Relieved, I sunk good wires in the break. I have heard some say the next wall is hard and bold but for me it flowed sweetly. You can get some cams too. Soon I was at the final wide break. A hunt about finds good gear here, but the hard moves are still a long way above. My main concern was that the crystals, to which you trust your self, look like one day they may come off. That day, however, they were sound.

Jason couldn't follow. He had bad tendons, so he scrambled to join me on top, where we basked in sunshine, companionship and the achievement. Next we had a problem. For a hard climber, Jason owned very little gear. There was nothing left for a belay. Eventually, Jason put his feet in potholes in the rounded granite, while I abseiled, from his waist.

Back on the ground, looking up, Jason asked: "A route worth getting dumped for?"

"Maybe, but when you are having as good a day as I am, you don't get dumped." Just to be safe though, I called her before the sun set.

by Ian Wilson

The most annoying thing about this three (or four) move V6 wonder is that it looks dead easy. A simple mantle, you look in the guidebook and think "Yeah, right!", but several square yards of skin later you start thinking that appearances may be deceptive.

It had been raining all day and all night. Any hope of ticking off a climb anywhere near hard was fast sliding away. The rain had admittedly stopped but it was still soggy underfoot and the boulders had plenty of water sitting on them, I mopped the top of my chosen implement of torture and headed off in search of some V2s.

An hour or so later having warmed up on some easier (but slimy) problems we returned to the main target. Putting the mat down (more to cover the pool of muddy water than protect a fall) I rested my palm on the problem's bulging prow: it was freezing from the recently past night air and had almost dried in the sun and wind.

I grabbed the bulge, the left heel hook went over, pulling twisting, pushing, I could feel it going, I rolled up onto the greasy slope, the weight just coming over onto the top &the balance came over my arm suddenly, then just as suddenly &thud! There's no way I'll be able to say I flashed this one. I sat down, a little sore but encouraged, that was the furthest I had been. I took a break and some vital flapjack and stepped up again. I held on and swung up again, this time as I twisted it was as if I was glued to the limestone, wriggling upwards and fighting until this bizarre sensation took over, it was like I was rolling up hill. The balance rocked over. My palm down hand seemed to perform a 360-degree twist from the wrist all by itself, I breathed out and looked around (just to check I wasn't going to be catapulted back to earth again!) I was there, phew! I wouldn't have the energy or the time to try and repeat this one.

by Nick Eaton

Morning glory blue glows from sky and loch with cawking calls to greet a drowsy dozer and Dave, "so you are awake then". "Yeah". Up the hill the slabs roll down, a stack of grey shields streaked with darker bands, held up by who knows what force.

"What d'ya think?" "Looks better already". "Weeps a lot". "If we don't do it now we never will". So up the slope we trudge to where the coffin stone lies buried in the ground above the treeline and below the treelicking slabs.

"I'll do the easy bits", I say, so Dave ropes up and sets off up the grey-pink granite in the requisite position, almost bent double like he's waiting for an almighty shag. Don't laugh because it'll be my turn soon, and once I do start the only thing on my mind is the first law of climbing; trust your feet. Over the first overlap I come upon Dave, so it's my turn to lead. Tiptoeing the lip of the overlap and feeling my way across a weep I pray that friction will keep me there; somehow it does. Next comes the crux pitch a traverse beneath the main overlap to the crevasse. Dave takes his time so I admire the view. What a day, azure above and below, air as still as a whisper, it's worth a scream except it might dislodge Dave.

A distant voice, Dave's, recalls me from my reverie and spurs me into action. Up easily at first then, awkwardly trying to undercling a weeping overlap, progress slows. Then comes the crux, it says 5b in the book but how can you rate moves where there are no holds nowhere, nothing but fearsome friction to hold you, I guess by a result. Delicately, oh so delicately, I crab sideways amazed that I am beating the odds until I can lunge for the primal security of the crevasse. My turn to lead again and like a joey I leave the crevasse and climb up except there is no fur to pull on, nothing to pull on. Kangaroos would soon die out faced with this.

Floundering in a sea of granite I see below trees like flecks of paint, a wash of etive blue, the buckles beyond, brilliant, better than bleach climbing sure gets you to those inaccessible places. That's what I like best, the physics, the psychology, the geography, the geology, not so much learning more the application. Well we have to apply ourselves some more to this with two more pitches gaining height steadily, steeper than one in one, till we come upon the final headwall. This is plumb vertical and is overcome by more normal climbing techniques, a layback and a grunt. And we're there in amongst the heather, coiling ropes, winding down. A daft way to get nowhere in particular, a hillside by a loch, but where else could you feel as elated. Go to it. The pause still waits.

What defines ones best route? Hardest, longest, most daring perhaps? Or, after 20 years of rope and rock, can it be other than the most enduring? A point in time so memorable that it acts as a benchmark, a snapshot in the memory that invades idle moments.

Yet it is more than a snapshot. More a storyboard of instances time-stamped and randomly interleaved. Behind the snapshots a soundtrack goes round and round. "Slip sliding away, slip sliding away...." The song was old then and older now but matched the moment. Sung as a mantra, denying the sea the strength to ooze 200ft up the white rock and suck me from my finger pockets.

Sung to lift the spirits of the tiny RP, in the tiny crack. Sung to make it forget it was embedded in that huge colour plate of a slab that embraces a dog-eared bookmark in Hard Rock.

Behind the silly song, more sounds. Long ropes dragging over rock, a faint hint of the sea and the eternal whisper of the wind. Never birds though, not a seagull to be heard. They should be there but they never are. Perhaps a childhood on the coast makes them too common to note. Strangely, I can still hear the Stony Middleton crows challenging my right to their sky when I choose. Even so, I never hear so much as herring gull gliding past Gogarth.

They were there though, in the evening sky.

Suddenly, the soundtrack changes to activity. I climb a rising traverse up a drooping gutter. I unclip an ancient MOAC, embedded like a strange fossil. I muse it must be nearly 20 years old, unaware I will one day wonder if it made 40. Perhaps one of my daughters will tell me how it fares in the future but I am the past now and unaware of them. Perhaps this is what makes the darkened, rotten overhangs beyond Darren appear sane. If I went back today, would my daughters allow me to abandon "just in case" jumars in favour of less clutter and hopefully, more speed? Would they let me set off so late on an autumn afternoon?

Then we hang in Concrete Chimney, from a barely remembered tangle of slings. My memory has one of the slings old and orange. The rock to the left looks dark and loose, the void below massive. Now, straight up might be the safer, sensible option with the light almost gone and only prussic loops to escape from one alternative future. Back then, left was why we were there, falling toward the sea barely considered.

Darkness and tension, then below me Wen Zawn. Out in the night, Darren. I shout across to him, the light of South Stack sweeps the cliff. The ropes relax and I take in quickly. Then it is dark again. We wait for the light, it won't be hurried and Darren's head-torch will be forever in his sack.