Steve Taylor climbing Too Driven (HS 4b). Photo: Ben Stokes
So, reaching that first pocket, jam the left heel into the break, and feel around for the best bit of the next hold: Unhelpful at best. This time I make a tactical change from the previous attempt. Instead of leaving my feet in the break and performing the dreaded 'Flying-Carpet'* move, I commit to going footless until I can place a foot in the first pocket. With the poor hold in the right, I lock-off with the left, slap the right hand out to the next, hopefully, better hold. Dangling in a crucifix, lurch the left hand out to undercut the poor hold. A desperate lunge gains a good pocket at last and I can lever my feet back into the roof. A precarious ‘Egyptian’ allows the rope to be clipped, and I am back at the high point of my last attempt. Breathing hard, a positive approach in the shape of three brisk slaps gains the sanctuary of the lip. Unfortunately many of the routes here hold a ‘sting-in-the-tail’, in the shape of a tricky transition onto vertical ground. ‘Mirrorball’ is no different, with small crimpy holds and gut churning rock-over when you least need it! Stretching my foot onto a distant smear on the edge of the roof I semi-mantel the small edges until a welcome flat hold comes into view at eye-level. Releasing one of the crimps I begin to arch backwards into space until I latch the flat hold, and at last I can clip the belay with heart-pounding hammering thumps in my ear.
Ben Stokes and Joff Cook(enjoying ?) the 'Shining Path', F7a+
But the Amphitheatre roofs are no longer the sole-reserve of the sport climber. In a reversal of the normal patterns of new route development, the easier slabs and cracks between the desperate roofs have only just begun to be investigated, with the result that in recent months the remaining gaps have been steadily plugged.
If asked to describe the style of climbing on the Purbeck coast, the words ‘steep’ and ‘strenuous’ come to mind, so it seems a little perverse to find that a route with delicate and slabby climbing should be found at a crag named after its eponymous roofs, but there it is: ‘Mojo-Pin’, a 50 ft slab that runs the full height of the cliff from sea-washed ledge to clean cut finish.
*The ‘Flying-Carpet’ (an Amphitheatre Roofs Specialty): this manoeuvre is undertaken when your hands make their way across the roof in a desperate quest for positive holds, at a pace faster than the feet. Inevitably, a moment of crisis occurs, and you are forced to perform a heinous feet-first swing towards the sea. The strong will be able to re-establish contact between feet and rock, the weak will be jettisoned in a horizontal position to face the ignominy of a lower back to the belay! (It has been observed that a loud shout at the moment of maximum rotation increases the chances of successfully completing this technique!)
