The following chapter is excerpted from Eternal Alpinist by Mick Fowler. Published by Vertebrate Publishing. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
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From Chapter 9: Home-Grown Pleasures
By Mick Fowler
Back in the UK I couldn’t pretend that I was not disappointed. Our Chombu expeditions had been a complete failure. We had invested so much – mentally, physically and financially – and yet achieved absolutely nothing. Never before had I been on three mountaineering trips aiming for the same objective. Victor was now 72 and I was 66; knowing that we must have a limited number of expeditions like this left in us, we felt our obsession with Chombu had been unwise. Sikkim was wonderful, but it seemed the weather and climbing conditions – and maybe our luck – had been against us. Covid hadn’t helped, but never before had we had such a run of failure, and we didn’t like it. We felt we had let ourselves, and all those who had helped us, down. And for me personally I had it in my mind that I still somehow wanted to demonstrate to the medical team in Sheffield that they had done a good job and repaired me to the extent that I could climb technical multi-day routes in the Himalaya again.
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The crevassed plateau on the way to the face of Chombu. / Photo courtesy of Mick Fowler
In this rather disgruntled frame of mind, I decided that finding an achievable objective closer to home would help boost my morale. It may come as a surprise but there are still quite a few unclimbed summits in the UK, most of them coming in the form of sea stacks, which are often vertical all the way round and challenging to climb. One stack in particular, accessible in a day from my home, had been on my mind for some time – the Queen Rock at Flamborough Head on the Yorkshire Coast. I had climbed a couple of lines on the magnificent 130-metre Bempton Cliffs hereabouts and been aware of sea stacks at Flamborough since at least 1993. Thus far though, efforts to climb the biggest stack, Queen Rock, had been unsuccessful. A first visit in 2020 had resulted in a probable first ascent of a small but shapely stack at nearby Selwicks Bay but two return visits to attempt Queen Rock, a little to the north, had been defeated by weather and sea conditions.
Early photographs show that there used to be two sea stacks here – the King Rock and the Queen Rock – but the King succumbed to the ravages of nature and collapsed in a storm around fifty years ago leaving the Queen in splendid isolation. The stack stands in a bay surrounded by very loose vertical cliffs and the safest way to approach is by boat. The summit was long adorned by a car tyre with a gnome proudly sitting on top of it, but this apparent evidence of climbers was not what it seemed. Local stories have it that RAF Search and Rescue teams use the stack for accuracy training and may have left a memento of some kind on top. In fact, prior to the tyre and gnome, some reports suggest a toilet was once left up there. Whatever the exact history of the summit objects, it appeared that the stack was unclimbed by climbers and was clearly in need of attention.
Some years previously, a love of sea stack climbing had led me to jointly purchase a five-metre inflatable, which we christened Deflowerer, along with a 2.8-horsepower outboard engine. That boat gave me and my friends an enormous amount of pleasure ticking off unclimbed stacks around the coasts of the UK and Ireland. By 2022 the original Deflowerer and her successor had long since died and I was the proud owner of a bright red, rarely used, rigid-floored inflatable with a four-horsepower engine, christened Deflowerer III. It was this vessel we were relying on to get us from the launching point at North Landing along the half mile or so to the stack.
Our intrepid team of four comprised me, Himalayan partner Paul Ramsden, endurance runner and climber Chris Harle and talented young rock climber Graeme Hammond. The wind was from the west, but we were disappointed to see that the sea was nowhere near as calm as expected. If it had been our first visit, we might have gone exploring and postponed the climb for another day, but we had done with exploring on our two previous two visits. It is a five-hour round trip from Derbyshire, and we really felt we ought to give it a go.
Although it was a cold November day, North Landing was busy. It was some time since I had last used the boat and our lengthy faffing to put it together attracted unwelcome attention, which only got worse when we had great trouble starting the engine. Embarrassment levels rose as we endured a lengthy, aimless bob around the bay and I couldn’t help but think we were not looking very competent. At length though, without us doing anything different, the engine fired into life and an uneventful throb saw us leaving the bemused onlookers behind and heading along the coast towards the stack.
Queen Rock lies in a shallow bay and is not completely surrounded by water when the tide is out. We arrived at mid-tide, with the tide coming in, which was good from the point of view of not grounding but, because of waves breaking round the stack, bad for easy disembarking. Feeling protective of my lovely boat I stayed on board with Graeme while Paul led what was obviously a challenging loose pitch to the summit. Chris followed, Paul abseiled off, Chris brought up Graeme, Graeme brought up me and it was time to see about leaving. While all this was happening, the tyre was replaced with a proper climbers’ cairn. There was no sign of the elusive gnome.
By now the tide was well in, the sea had become increasingly rough, breakers were rolling round the stack and, as last man on the stack, waves were reaching up to my crotch. All was going well until an unfortunately large wave pushed the boat back on the painter and it bounced back into the stack. Previous experiences have shown me that inflatable boats are incredibly strong, but the chalk at Flamborough weathers into very sharp edges and I watched in horror as contact was made and the front compartment sliced wide open.
The others didn’t notice to begin with but by the time I had jumped in and got the engine running it was clear that we had a slight technical problem. A few walkers on the cliff edge had gathered and were showing interest.
As we floated back from the stack a quick decision was required. Either we retreated to the beach at the back of the bay where we would be trapped by ‘unclimbable’ cliffs or we committed to the return journey. At a crucial moment there was a lull in the breakers.
‘Okay – let’s go!’
The Deflowerer 3 in action. / Photo: Chris Harle
I’m not sure the others had even noticed my slight hesitation. Paul, at the front, lifted the now flaccid front compartment by pulling hard on the painter and I steered for the safest looking line with all four horsepowers throbbing to the max.
More by good luck than judgement, we made it to open water without being swamped by a breaker. But our problems were far from over. The boat had three inflatable compartments, and I had always assumed that a puncture in one of them wouldn’t be too serious because the others would ensure that there would be no chance of the boat sinking. Soon though this theory was being sorely tested.
Part of the problem was that it was the front compartment that had gone down. Much as Paul was doing a sterling job holding the front up, it simply wasn’t enough to stop water flowing into the boat as a result of the forward movement. Chris baled furiously but there was no way he could keep up with the inflow of water. Gradually it became clear that we were sinking further and further into the water. Items lying around in the boat started to float away. First, it was buoyant objects such as a half- full can of petrol and one of the oars, but soon less buoyant items such as our remaining petrol and a big watertight bag containing all our climbing kit were in danger of being lost.
Another serious problem was that the air intake of the engine was getting dangerously close to the water level. If the engine died there was no way that we would be able to row the waterlogged boat back to North Landing with our one remaining oar. This raised a question over what course we should take. Staying close to the cliffs meant that we were closer to dry land should we end up swimming, but the waves were breaking there and the chances of the engine and boat being swamped were higher than if we kept out to sea.
We decided on the keep-out-to-sea option but that certainly did not guarantee success. The swell was quite big and coming from the side, so every time we rose up a wave the waterlogged boat tilted, water poured to the downside, the air intake was in danger of sucking in water and a capsize felt a real possibility. Paul admitted later that he was keeping an eye out for safe looking spots to swim to while I had decided that, if it came to it, staying with the boat was the best option. I don’t know what Chris and Graeme were thinking.
Another concern I had was the petrol. One can had already been swept away. In the chaos of floating debris, I couldn’t see how much fuel we had left. The little four-horsepower engine was working hard, sucking up lots of fuel to push the waterlogged craft along incredibly slowly.
As all this was happening, I was very aware of a number of people marvelling at proceedings from the clifftop. The distance was such that we couldn’t be sure that they could see our predicament and as they waved to us I wasn’t sure whether we should somehow acknowledge our possible difficulty or just ignore them. We settled for a gentle return wave and carried on.
It was not the most relaxing of return journeys, but we finally rounded a headland towards North Landing, the sea calmed down and we approached the few people left on the beach trying to project an aura of normality as if a fully deflated front compartment was quite acceptable and not a cause for concern.
It had been a pretty rubbish climb but a very memorable day. And when all is done it is the memories that are important.
Michael Fowler is a British rock climber, ice climber, mountaineer and climbing author. He is internationally noted for his alpine climbing and was awarded the Piolet d'Or three times. Mick has written three books on his life as a climber, winning several literary awards.
If you enjoyed this excerpt, you can buy Mick's book at Vertebrate Publishing.
Feature Image: Mick Fowler on Devil’s Castle at Ballybunion. Fowler and Chris Harle made the First Ascent of this sea stack in County Kerry off the west coast of Ireland. / Photo: Jonathan Edwards