Andy Turner has made the second ascent of The Hurting XI 11 on Coire an t-Sneachda in the Cairngorms. An E4 in the summer, the route was first climbed in winter by Dave MacLeod in 2005 and combines steep technical climbing with ground fall potential.
Andy climbed the route ground up and took one fall in the process of doing so. He describes this first attempt on his blog:
Standing at the bottom of the route knowing what lies ahead it’s hard to describe what's going through your head. As it turned out the bottom part of the route was perfect, giving nice neve and ice on all the sloping ledges which you needed for your axes. Fully aware of the consequences of a fall from any point in the first 30ft I managed to shuffle across the various small ledges making slow scary progress finally ending up on a comfortable ledge. This gives you time to take in your surroundings and contemplate your fate.
Above here is some wild bridging to finally give you some good gear. This was the point the wheels were quickly about to fall off. Looking ahead you can see what looks like a good ledge under the roof which makes a good target to aim for, unfortunately I was a bit to eager to get there and using a poor torque in a crack quickly found myself hanging on the end of the rope. Luckily I'd followed Tim Neill’s advice of falling off only when it's sensible!
To get the full story of what it eventually took to climb The Hurting and for photos visit Andy’s blog
