Abseil Skills Session : 20th March 2022

[Paul Embley]

An enthusiastic group of 12 club members and a couple of spectators met at Lawrencefield yesterday for the abseiling session, The aim was to practice abseiling skills in a controlled situation which could then be transferred to situations encountered in the mountains or at sea cliffs. After an initial practice session using trees at the base of the quarry we then did lots of abseiling down Red Wall – which luckily proved unattractive to climbers wanting to do the excellent routes there.
We set up two ropes. Rope 1 was fairly steady whilst Rope 2, set up by Hugh, was a more adventurous affair. In fact it was the abseiling equivalent of “Oblivion” and made the other rope seem like the “Tea Cup Ride”! By the end of the day we were all abseiling like Clint Eastwood’s stunt double in Where Eagles Dare.
An enjoyable day which allowed less experienced members to learn about basic safe practice and veterans to experiment with different methods of backing up their abseils. Hopefully these skills sharing sessions will continue to be a part of club activity.

[John Barnard]

The Wikipedia article on “Where Eagles Dare” mentions a stunt double for Richard Burton, but not for Clint Eastwood, though it says that the actors privately dubbed the film “Where Doubles Dare”. Famously, in “The Eiger Sanction”, (which he also directed) Eastwood did all his own stunts, including the scene where he cuts his rope, to be held on another rope from the mid-station window on the Eiger railway (filmed in situ). In his Paul Nunn memorial lecture at Sheffield Hallam Univ some years ago, John Cleare, who was the mountain cinematographer on the film, described the incident, telling how there was more slack than intended in the system, and Eastwood fell further than planned. This was the days of Whillans harnesses, and Eastwood was heard to shout up, in a squeaky voice, “which side does Whillans dress?” I hope all partipants in yesterday’s meet have suffered no ill-effects (modern harnesses should ensure that!), and look forward to their future Hollywood appearances.

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