UKH

Hi everyone, posting this to encourage other people to have a go at Wonderland (E1 5c) when we’re allowed to travel/climb again and hopefully provide some information.

At some point last year when this sort of thing was allowed a friend and I had a go at Wonderland. Neither of us had climbed in the Ruckle before and we couldn't get down for any recce days beforehand due to not having the time off work. Anyway we both thought it would be more of an adventure if we just set off at one end without extensive research. We had the idea that we might be able to do it in a day, but that we were probably being over optimistic.

We didn’t get much sleep the night before and were a bit late to the top of the crag, but that was quite helpful for actually finding the start of the route. It was basically apparent from the first pitch or two that we weren't going to move very quickly! After 3/4 hours or so we decided that we would more or less stop trying to move particularly quickly as there was no way we'd finish the route in a day and to be honest it felt kind of dangerous (based on our personal judgement of risk, I'm sure others would think differently) to try and move quickly. I'd already broken a foothold off and been left dangling from one arm earlier in the day and my partner broke a reasonable number of handholds off as well, we just didn't feel like it was particularly conducive to moving fast in a safe manner. We found the route finding difficult in terms of moving quickly, not particularly difficult in general, just we had to stop a lot and consider 'do I need to change level here', so altogether that added up to quite a lot of time. I was not very slick on the belays either which didn’t help... Anyway, we got approx 20-22 guidebook pitches along in about 10-11 hours before deciding that we would start losing light before we got to the end of the next section and as we weren't going to come anywhere close to finishing in 24h we decided to not carry on into the night and bailed. 

We definitely didn't do as well/get as far as we could have if we’d continued into the night/changed tactics a bit/had more sleep, but even with the knowledge we have now I don't think we'd be able to do a sub 24h 'ascent' on a subsequent attempt by changing tactics or being more familiar with the crag. I think that'll have to wait for someone who's simply better than we are.

There were some enjoyable pitches along the way, one very memorable one traversing the lip of a roof low above the sea. There were also a few pitches which were pretty horrible.

We simul climbed some sections and pitched others. We found communication pretty tricky, there’s a lot of corners and aretes which your partner disappears around. Rope drag was quite annoying too for the same reason. We used a 40m single rope and a pretty large rack, including some large hexes and cams which were quite useful, but didn’t take enough doubles of small gear.

I think the grading is towards the stiff end, but fair. I’m very bad at grading though.

It was a fun day out despite our abject failure to get anywhere near finishing the route.

If anyone wants some more detailed information feel free to message me.

Well done for getting on it guys!

Who's next?

Excellent, from the log books entries it looks like it took David and Tim 17 months to complete it, so a sub 24hr will be a phenomenal achievement!   

How long did it take you, David? Did you manage it continuously, or did you climb out and then ab back in to continue?

Great to see people srill doing this sort of thing. Nice one.

Having done the first chunk (and I’m aware the rock improves later on), I’d say to go sub 24hr you’d need to take some pretty hefty alpine style risk.

I would agree with that. And although this means many (most) people are unlikely to do sub 24h, I kind of thought the difficulty of doing so might have attracted more hard girls and boys to have a go. To have such an alpine challenge 2 hours from London I thought might have been more attractive.

The mini guide splits the route into easy to navigate and complete sections, so the route is open to most experienced climbers, allowing it to be completed as a project over a year or more

I climbed somewhere between a third and a half of the easier Boulder Ruckle Traverse (the route which follows the obvious horizontal break) in a day with Steve Parr in summer 1977. I can't imagine how anyone not soloing could climb either of the traverses in under 24 hours without moving together alpine style for a significant portion of the route. At least on the easier traverse the route finding is easy.

It was completed kind of as a community / collective project by climbers in the Exeter area over two winters. In total I had 12 seconds ranging from 12 years old to 70. Some had never been on a sea cliff, others only on much easier routes. Pete C did more than most in part as others ran away. He says he learnt a lot. 

Our rules included:

1. winter only. In part this was because Swanage has the best winter weather in the UK. In summer one can go elsewhere.  But also because the idea of the traverse was in part to give Swanage a climb that could be done in most winter seas.

2. only sat or sun with nice weather

3. A modest grade. So we could do it and many others too.

4. On-sight. No walking the base. This meant we often led ourselves into hard climbing or rubble had to throw away the last few weekends work and try another semi random line. I cheated at one point and swam a section (in February, naked, photos exist).

5. We simply rapped back in where we left off. The mini guide presents this idea as the way most climbers might do the route. And recommends where to exit - basically the 3 star popular "safe" exits. Doing 10 pitches in a day is still an big thing for many people.

thanks for the account. Sounds fantastic! A brilliant, exploratory project. I'm way up in the NW, but if I ever get down that far into the deep south, it'll be high up on my mental ticklist - at least, a day or two of it!