Hard Grit

Happy Boxing Day! Since boxing’s about grit here’s some tip top gritstone action from England, featuring Neil Mawson’s infamous deck off of Meshuga in 2005. UK Climbing’s Jack Geldard caught up with Mawson to see how the fall has affected his life since. Click the excerpt to read the entire interview.

The next few years I did very little trad climbing, onsighting or headpointing, and concentrated on pushing my sport climbing level. I tried over those years between 2006 and 2010 to headpoint some trad routes but I found I could never commit to the lead even though I'd climbed them cleanly on top rope. I'm sure that my lack of confidence to get on lead was due to my fall off Meshuga. Before then I'd never had any problem committing to the lead after top roping the route clean, but then that changed and it was really frustrating.