Johnny Dawes

Johnny Dawes (born 9 May 1964) is a British rock climber. He is famous for his dynamic style and often very bold ascents. His influence on British climbing was at its peak in the mid to late-1980s.

Johnny Dawes

Biography

Among his contributions is the introduction of two new grades to the British grading system for rock climbing (E8 and E9), and several new routes that are today still well respected. In 1986 he introduced the grade E9 to the British grading system with a first ascent of the route "Indian Face".[1]

He is featured in the films Stone Monkey (1986), Best Forgotten Art (1994) and Hard Grit (1998). He published his autobiography Full of Myself in 2011.

Dawes has also claimed in several lectures that he has given that he is a descendant of the famous Medici family of Florence, Italy, through his mother's side of the family.

Other notable ascents
  • 1986 Gaia, Black Rocks E8 6c (first ascent)
  • 1986 End of the Affair, Curbar Edge E8 6c (first ascent)
  • 1986 The Quarryman, Twll Mawr E8 7a (first ascent)
  • Smoked Salmon, Bamford Edge E8 7b (first ascent)
  • Face Mecca, Clogwyn Du'r Arddu E9 6c (second ascent)
  • Angel's share, Black Rocks E8 7a (first ascent)
  • 1990 The Very Big & the Very Small 8b+/8c slab (first ascent)[2]

"Indian Face"

On his first ascent of the route "Indian Face" on the Welsh crag Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, he wrote:

I went for the crux, the motion startling me like a car unexpectedly in gear in a crowded parking lot. I swarm through the roundness of the bulge to a crank on a brittle spike for a cluster of three crystals on the right; each finger crucial and separate like the keys for a piano chord. I change feet three times to rest my lower legs, each time having to jump my foot out to put the other in. The finger-holds are too poor to hang on should the toes catch on each other. All those foot-changing mistakes on easy moves by runners come to mind. There is no resting. I must go and climb for the top. I swarm up towards the sunlight, gasping for air. A brittle hold stays under mistreatment and then I really blow it. Fearful of a smear on now-non-sticky boots I use an edge and move up, a fall fatal, but the automaton stabs back through, wobbling, but giving its all and I grasp a large sidepull and tube upward. The ropes dangle uselessly from my waist. Arthur Birtwhistle on Diagonal, I grasp incuts and the tight movement swerves to a glide as gravity swings skyward.

gollark: Because.
gollark: Your introduction would be easier to read if I didn't have to spend nonzero amounts of brain on error correction. In any case, you clearly don't have that much power if it's significant for you. It is also underspecified and somewhat incoherent, so fix that.
gollark: Surely your ultimate cosmic powers should at least extend to spelling power correctly. I mean, I can do that, and I'm not a god at least 83% of the time.
gollark: Greetings, "le bunker de corona" members. I am gollark, otherwise known as osmarks, a human. As someone who is totally a human, I exist, and do human things such as (not limited to): consuming food; consuming water; sleeping; not sleeping; sitting in chairs; motion; social interaction; thought.I enjoy things such as authorship of highly accursed code in a wide range of programming languages, computational gaming, reading scifi/fantasy, and sometimes (when I am not horribly distracted) reading about various maths topics.If you are reading this, it is already too late.Feel free to DM me iff Riemann hypothesis!I have harvested some insightful quotes:“You know what they say, speak softly but carry a tungsten slug accelerated to a measurable fraction of C.” “I mean, we could use it to destroy the Universe, but we'd have to add a lot of antimatter. Which pretty much goes for all other matter.”“The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."“The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.”“Eventually all the people who hate this kind of thing are going to be dead, and the ones who use it are going to be in control.” - a linguist“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.” “Ignorance of insecurity does not get you security.” “I don't always believe in things, but when I do, I believe in them alphabetically.” “If you're trying to stop me, I outnumber you 1 to 6.”
gollark: Does it? I thought you only needed to look after and before a bit up to a digit which would require carrying. Or something like that.

References
  1. Planet Mountain
  2. Climb and More
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