The Scramble of Doom
If I had to choose one surviving piece of paper to represent that whole period of my life, it might be the Warwick Mountain Walking Club poster for the Week 6 Trip – Patterdale, Lake District.
At first glance, it is just another student club handout: a university logo at the top, a list of walks for Saturday and Sunday, stern practicalities about leaving the hostel at 9am, warnings about group size, and a standard British Mountaineering Council disclaimer reminding everyone that climbing, hill walking and mountaineering carry a risk of injury or death.
But halfway down the page, among the neatly described walks up Blencathra, Helvellyn and Fairfield, there is a route entry with my name on it.
Rich: Scramble of DEATH
The description is wonderfully absurd:
“Rich is mental and hardcore, so he’s going to do a mental hardcore scramble somewhere (probably at least grade 2). You must be an experienced scrambler and be a bit mental and hardcore.”
Under distance, ascent and seriousness, the summary is:
“No one knows, No one knows, Mental and hardcore.”
Then on the Sunday, with even greater economy, comes:
Scramble of DOOM. Rich again, enough said really.
It still makes me laugh.
But it also captures something real. By the time that poster was printed, I had become, in the eyes of the club, the person who could be trusted to take a group off somewhere steeper, more exposed and more adventurous than the standard hill day. The joke only worked because the role was already understood. Nobody needed to explain who Rich was or what kind of day “Rich’s walk” might involve. Apparently, it meant a small group, some uncertainty, a scramble of at least Grade 2, and a fair chance that you would come back wet, tired and pleased with yourself.
That poster belongs to the point at which a longer process had become visible. By then I wasn’t simply a participant. I had become one of the people helping to shape the sort of mountain days the club could offer.
Learning the mountains before leading them
The irony is that by the time Warwick students were being invited on the “Scramble of DEATH”, none of this felt especially new to me.
Long before I ever led a university group, I had already spent years in the mountains with my father. A number of the routes I later took Warwick groups onto were not fresh discoveries at all, but places I had first known much earlier. Tryfan’s North Ridge was one of them. Bryant’s Gully was another. In fact Bryant’s Gully had been part of my life long enough that on one earlier trip with my father we had even bivvied partway up the route.
That matters, because it changes how I think about those first university leads.
I was not beginning by taking groups onto completely unknown ground. I was starting, at least in part, with mountains I already knew in my bones: ridges whose character I understood, gullies whose cruxes I remembered, routes where I knew roughly how the ground would unfold above and below. In a very literal sense, some of the first routes I led for Warwick were mountains where I had once been the young person following somebody else.
That gave those early scrambling days a kind of continuity. What I had first received from my father — confidence on mountain ground, a feel for ridges and gullies, an instinct for how a route should “go” — was beginning, almost without ceremony, to pass onwards to other people.
Two Warwick clubs, and the one that fitted best
Part of the story lies in the difference between the two outdoor clubs in my Warwick life.
Warwick University Mountaineering Club was my climbing world. It revolved around Bear Rock, the excellent climbing wall on campus, and a relatively tight group of climbers who spent a lot of time together both on and off the wall. There were ad hoc weekend trips, climbing partnerships, pub nights, and plenty of days that revolved around routes, grades and getting out whenever the weather allowed — or even when it clearly didn’t.
The Hill and Mountain Walking Club, or perhaps by then increasingly the Mountain Walking Club, felt different. It was broader, more social and, in some ways, more mountain-focused. This was a club that could take several minibuses into Snowdonia or the Lake District, fill a youth hostel, and then send multiple groups off in different directions the next morning. Some members were experienced. Some were capable hillwalkers. Some simply wanted a cheap and cheerful weekend away from campus. But among them were also people who wanted something more adventurous: ridges, scrambles, exposed ground, bigger mountain days.
I think my first trip with them was probably in the summer of 1999, at the end of my second year, though memory is hazy that far back. What I do remember is the progression. I joined in, got to know people, saw the possibilities, and realised there was both appetite and capacity in the club for more formal scrambling days.
I was already well placed to provide that. By then I had completed Mountain Leader (Summer) training with Carlo Forte at Plas y Brenin in 1997. I had passed my Single Pitch Award assessment in May 1999. I was already leading Warwick Mountaineering Club trips, and I had the benefit of a decade or so of mountain experience behind me. On top of that, in late 1999, I passed the university’s minibus driver assessment — a qualification which sounds bureaucratic, but in practice made me unusually useful in student outdoor circles. Not many undergraduates were over twenty-one, and being one of the few people who could both drive a minibus and safely lead a difficult mountain group was a handy combination.
So there was no formal moment when someone announced that I had become a scramble leader. It happened organically. I took part first. Then, as people got to know me, and as I got to know the club and its members, I started taking people up the kind of routes I wanted to do myself.
Bryant’s Gully and the beginning of leading
The first entry in my leadership records that really marks that transition comes in February 2000:
Bryant’s Gully. Six adults. Rope out for difficult section on the back wall of the Trap.
Again, it looks terse when written down, but the shorthand conceals a great deal. Six people had to get to the route. Six people had to move well enough through mountain terrain for the day to remain enjoyable rather than stressful. Six people had to make the transition from straightforward walking into scrambling. Then, at the critical point, I had to judge what kind of intervention was appropriate.
That was usually how I led scrambles then, and to be honest it is not so different from how I would still approach them now. I generally carried 25 to 30 metres of 9mm rope, perhaps a sling and a karabiner or two, along with the sort of things experience teaches you to have in reserve: spare gloves, first aid kit, bothy bag, odds and ends that might become unexpectedly important when someone else has forgotten theirs. The rope was not there because I intended to pitch every scramble like a rock climb. Most of the route would be done moving together, with people scrambling as it made sense to do so. If someone needed a little support, they might just need reassurance, a spot, or a hand from the right place. Only occasionally did the terrain or the consequences justify getting the rope out for a short direct belay.
Bryant’s Gully was one of the first times in my Warwick records where that approach shows up explicitly. It was a mountain route I already knew, which made it a natural place to begin leading others.
That spring consolidated the pattern. On 13 May 2000, I led five mixed-ability adults over Tryfan’s North Ridge and Bristly Ridge, summiting Tryfan and Glyder Fach. The note says simply:
High pressure and dry rock.
About as good as it gets.
The next day, 14 May, I led seven adults on Crib Lem towards Carnedd Dafydd, again in high pressure and on dry rock.
These were not just random route choices. They show the shape of what I was trying to do with the club: not merely take people for a walk, but to offer days that sat in the satisfying middle ground between hillwalking and climbing. Scrambling was ideal for that. It turned a line on a map into a journey with character. The mountain stopped being something you simply ascended and descended and became something you moved through.
The progression of the routes
Those earlier routes — Bryant’s Gully and Tryfan North Ridge in particular — belonged partly to an older inheritance from my father. But not all the later ones did. Some of the routes I led with Warwick reflected a genuine progression, both in my own abilities and in the wider abilities of the groups around me.
That progression is there in the log.
There was Snowdon Horseshoe in October 2000: a classic exposed mountain day and, in club terms, probably a natural step up in seriousness. A month later came Gillercombe Buttress above Honister, which I recorded as a Grade 3 scramble, on a day of damp rock and clag/cloud on top. By then the challenge was no longer simply the technicality of one move. Weather, visibility and judgement were becoming equally important parts of the day.
Then there was Pinnacle Ridge on St Sunday Crag in January 2002: four adults, a Grade 3 scramble, and another note that says a lot in a few words:
Rope out on difficult step.
Or Cneifion Arête in February 2002, where I led eight adults on a route involving the Idwal descent, Cneifion Arête, Senior’s Ridge and Glyder Fawr, with the note:
Set up rope on difficult first section of Cneifion Arête.
That entry in particular says something about how far the whole thing had developed. Eight people is no longer just a couple of mates out on a scramble. It requires proper group management: getting them there, getting them onto the route, dealing with the technical section efficiently, and then carrying on into the mountains without everything grinding to a halt.
This was where my climbing background became especially useful. I had spent the years before this learning trad climbing, mountain routes and rope systems, and all of that fed directly into scrambling leadership. Carlo Forte had warned me during Mountain Leader training not to get too distracted by climbing. In the end, of course, I did get rather distracted by climbing. But he may also have been right in another sense: what climbing ultimately gave me was not a desire to spend my life chasing ever harder rock grades, but a broader toolbox for moving through the mountains. Ropework, anchors, judgement on exposed ground, confidence in steep terrain — these made me more capable on the ridges and scrambles I most loved.
“Rich is mental and hardcore”
Which brings us back to the Patterdale poster.
What makes it such a wonderful document is that it captures both the culture of the club and my place within it. It is funny, affectionate and slightly ridiculous, but it also reflects a real trust.
The club was essentially saying: there will be a harder scrambling option this weekend; Rich will sort it out.
That lack of specificity was not only student chaos, though there was probably some of that too. It also reflected how I actually operated. I did not always want to commit myself to an exact route too far in advance. There were practical reasons for that. The right scramble depended on who signed up, how many people there were, how experienced they were, what the weather was doing, whether the rock was wet, and what seemed sensible on the day. In modern language we would call it dynamic risk assessment. The Warwick poster translated it more memorably as:
SCRAMBLE OF DEATH.
The contemporary log strongly suggests that the Saturday “Scramble of DEATH” was the trip recorded as:
9 November 2002 – Patterdale – Greenhow End, The Dark Slabs – Grade 2 or 3 – 6 adults
and that the Sunday “Scramble of DOOM” was:
10 November 2002 – Patterdale – Eagle Crag, Grisedale – Grade 2 – 7 adults
I love the contrast between the two records. The poster makes it sound like some wild, undefined expedition into the Lakeland crags. The leadership log reduces it to a few dry facts. Between the two lies the truth: we probably had a very good mountain weekend, on exactly the sort of terrain I most enjoyed, with the route choice made according to the people and the conditions.
That, really, was the role.
Returning after graduation
By November 2002, I was no longer even a Warwick student. I had graduated in 2001 and started work at IBM Hursley, near Winchester. But I was still coming back on club trips.
Partly that was because the Hill and Mountain Walking Club had become a real community in my life, full of people who would remain friends for years afterwards. Partly it was because I met my future wife on one of the club’s winter trips, shortly after leaving university, and she still had time left at Warwick. So there were many Fridays when I would leave work around lunchtime, head from Hampshire to Leamington, collect her, and then continue on to North Wales or the Lakes to join the weekend’s adventures.
I sometimes did the Hursley-to-Leamington leg by motorbike, partly to avoid the traffic around the A34/M4 junction before it was improved. However I travelled, the pattern was the same: office to motorway, motorway to university friends, university friends to hostel, hostel to mountain.
Looking back, I was probably a bit of a hanger-on.
Hopefully a useful one.
I could drive. I could lead. I knew the people. And most importantly, I still wanted to be there.
The later culmination
The last really striking Warwick scrambling entry in the sequence comes in February 2003.
On the 15th, I was back on familiar ground again:
Bryant’s Gully – six adults – cold day with limited visibility.
The route had accompanied different versions of me by then: younger son following his father, university student leading six adults, and now graduate returning to take a club group up the same mountain in wintry conditions.
The next day was arguably an even bigger statement of where this period had reached:
South Gully scramble on Tryfan, grade 2/3, Bristly Ridge, over the Glyders, down Y Gribin – four novice adults – rock slightly slippy in places.
That is a substantial mountain day by any standard, especially for a group described as novice. I no longer remember exactly who those four were or precisely what “novice” meant in the language of that record. Almost certainly they were not complete beginners to the hills. But it does suggest confidence — in myself, in the group, and in the sort of days the club was now capable of offering.
That is perhaps the clearest example of what had changed over those few years. The routes had become more ambitious not only because I had grown as a mountaineer, but because the people around me had too. The Warwick club had enough appetite, enough trust and enough ability to make these days possible.
What it meant
It would be easy to describe this period simply as a list of routes led:
Bryant’s Gully.
Tryfan North Ridge.
Crib Lem.
Snowdon Horseshoe.
Gillercombe Buttress.
Pinnacle Ridge.
Cneifion Arête.
Dark Slabs.
Eagle Crag.
South Gully and Bristly Ridge.
Those are the facts. But they are not really the meaning.
What mattered more was the transition they represent.
By this stage of my life I had accumulated a fair amount of mountain experience from other people — from my father, from instructors, from climbing partners, from clubs, from years of simply getting out and learning. The Warwick Mountain Walking Club gave me a way to turn that accumulation into something useful. I could drive the minibus. I could take the group that wanted the harder day. I could carry the short rope, judge when to use it, teach a little, guide a little, and quietly manage the sort of mountain day that would have meant a lot to me when I was younger.
And in return I got a great deal.
I got the mountains I wanted to be in. I got routes that mattered to me, some because they belonged to my past and some because they represented what I was growing into. I got friendships that have lasted decades. I got the sense of being useful inside a community that itself gave me somewhere to belong.
That may be why the Patterdale poster feels so evocative now. It is silly and jokey and very of its time, but it also preserves a truth.
At some point, without fanfare, I had become the person whose contribution was understood well enough that a whole mountain day could be advertised simply as:
Rich: Scramble of DEATH.
And somehow, that was enough.