UKH

I have recently lead Pinnacle Face (VS 4c) maybe 46 years since I first did it while working at the old Once Brewed Youth Hostel. It seemed just as tricky as it did then though my gear is a lot better now. But my abiding memory of this great little climb is watching a climber with one arm do it all those years ago. I still don't know how he did it or who he was. It was a great effort. If anyone knows who it may have been I would love to know.

Mmm...is it recently led or recently lead? I am usually good at spelling. But have a mental block with this one.

Led

'Led' is the past tense of 'lead'? Lead is a metallic element and a thing to put your dog on. Isn't English great?

I was faffing around the Lancashire quarries 46 years ago just becoming aware that climbing was a thing with rules and history and books about to get out of the library. You'd have thought a one-armed climber would have been well known? Then again, Northumberland was like most climbing areas back in the day, almost a closed society, probably even more so. For all we know one-armed climbers could have been ten a penny up there?

My friend in Cornwall used to climb with "one-arm Roj" who had a nasty accident with a train or a motorbike one night after too much pop.

DC

He's the only one I ever saw and I'm from Northumberland. I was thinking he must have been well known too.

Maybe it was 'one-arm Roj' after all.

I will ask. I know he could lead HVS so long as it wasn't overhanging.

DC

When I began 'proper' caving in 1976 there was a guy called 'Chesters' on the caving scene who had one leg and also used to be a guide at Ingleborough Cave. Jim Eyre mentioned him in one of his very politically incorrect (today) books.

Which arm did he have? Dimly remembering Pinnacle Face it involved precariously reaching out with the right to find a crack? 

Don't tell us you know of two one-armed Northumbrian climbers from the early seventies with opposite arms missing?

It was a long time ago. But from memory he didn't pull out right onto the face. He just went straight up the crack from the Sentry Box. Can't remember which arm he had. It was impressive.

A Peter Cook and Dudley Moor sketch springs to mind!

Memory may be failing me here but I think there's a scene in one of Jim Eyre's books (Race Against Time?) where Chesters (the one-legged caver) and a one-eyed caver show up to rescue a victim who then thinks he's stuffed.