In Favour of Ticklists

There was soon a list of mountains. I was told I had to ‘do’ Crib Goch, that I really needed to ‘do’ Tryfan.

How absurd that felt at the time, this concept of consuming a mountain, and moving it from your in-tray to your done pile; it felt so disposable. I suppose it’s a notion more aligned with today’s modern attention spans, but I didn’t want to ‘do’, or even have ‘done’ Crib Goch. I wanted to experience it, not for a tick, but for the views, the thrill of the position, and hopefully as part of a lush afternoon around the horseshoe, maybe creating some memories with a dear friend. 

But equally, I also knew as an enthusiastic newcomer, that there were just so many hills I really wanted to climb ASAFP. Certainly the concept that there were just so many exciting mountains out there, from that perspective I could at least in part understand why you might have ‘done’ any given hill, and moved on to focus your energies on other objectives. I certainly did feel like I needed to go to Skye (rather for instance, than go to Snowdonia yet again). And Torridon, Mont Blanc, and many, many others. So picking a good day, and a good route up, came to mean really savouring a mountain before turning attention elsewhere. 

The more I read, the longer the list grew. The outdoors, it seemed, was absolutely awash with lists. Welsh 3000ers, Seven Summits, National Trails, County Tops, Dodds and Corbetts, Munros and Marilyns. Reader-voted top 100s and top 50s broken down into specific geographical regions. There was a lot to digest.

Back in those early B.C. years (before climbing), I allowed myself to go off on tangents, trying out the different mountaineering genres for size. Winter mountaineering, fell running, bouldering, trad climbing, ice climbing, these disciplines all had their own must dos, whether it be a question of aesthetics, challenge or even notoriety. So the lists grew longer, and more varied. 

As the passion settled though and I became more familiar with my own personal tastes and techniques in the mountains, certain lists came to the fore, while others were marginalised. Once I’d found out what it was, I knew I wasn’t a Munro Bagger – that I thought I would save for when my body had had enough of climbing (yes, that’s right, organising one’s mountaineering career around lists). But I could be a Hard Rock ticker, that sounded sexy and seductive and I pored over the pages of Ken Wilson’s famous climbing tomes. Equally, I would like, while the flame burned brightly, to ‘do’ some of the very classical or iconic adventures before I hung up my mountaineering boots: I’d like to scale the Matterhorn, traverse the Black Cuillin Ridge, perhaps climb Half Dome.

The more I read, the longer the list grew. The outdoors it seemed, was absolutely awash with lists

A year later with a less contentious friend, I was walking a circuit of Wainwrights near Blencathra. It was a very dreich day, spent entirely in the clag from Sharp Edge until we descended via Doddick fell. It wasn’t raining but the air was just wet. Like walking through skimmed milk. Bannerdale Crags was a very nondescript summit. We ate a sandwich and then, hastened by the chill, set off for Bowscale Fell. When we got there, my less contentious friend did still, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, query the slight absurdity of our afternoon.

‘So let me get this straight: We’ve just walked from one point to another, with no noticeable change to the view, or terrain underfoot, purely to satisfy your desire to have climbed both hills. An out-and-back walk that was completely unremarkable – not that you weren’t lovely company the entire way – but that served no obvious purpose aside from you being stood on one grid reference, and then, on another, with all the varied views of the inside of a ping-pong ball. And now, mission accomplished, we can go down? It’s… well it’s a little odd. Isn’t it?’ I had to concede, she had a point. The lack of view certainly added to the hollow sensation of merely being in a slightly different place on the map.  

As I write, I’ve done 189/214 Wainwrights, 41/282 Munros, 10/61 Hard Rock routes (from Ken Wilson’s 1974 book Hard Rock), 45/83 Classic Rock routes (from the 1978 book Classic Rock from the same author), 29/50 routes from the West Country Rockfax Top 50, 15/82 Alpine 4000m Peaks and still have all six of Starlight and Storm (the great north faces of the Alps) to do. I know all this because [cringe] I have an app which I use to record and track my progress. I’m subscribed to 7 ticklists on my UKC Logbook, including the esoteric Parois de Legend (120 of the nicest multi-pitch climbs in the world) – which is certainly not getting completed any time soon.