Rhapsody - I
After succeeding on Achemine and then free soloing a 5.13d sport route called Hurlyburly (Scotland; 2003), the Scottish hardman felt ready to tackle Requiem’s direct finish, a swath of blank rock rising to the very apex of the Dumbarton headwall. The climbing was technically and physically harder than any he’d done, bolted or otherwise, but he wasn’t too worried about the monster fall — MacLeod had yet even to do the moves on toprope. In 2004, he managed to do all but two moves of the extension. “Then, in February 2005, I did the moves and decided I was going to get serious and try it properly,” he says. The line that would become Rhapsody required a 14-move V11, on tiny crimps, atop a 5.13d. “It took a long time to be able to climb the moves when pumped,” MacLeod says.

A long time is an understatement. Dumbarton Rock was MacLeod’s “office” for 2005. In 2003, he had moved to a tiny flat in Dumbarton with his wife, Claire, and from its windows could see Rhapsody, a five-minute walk away. He would climb four days a week on the route, most of the time alone, self-belayed on a fixed line, as if he were still a teenager exploring the boulders beneath. Finally, in fall 2005, MacLeod linked the direct finish to Requiem on a toprope. “Now I’ve got to f—kin’ lead it,” he said, hanging at the anchors.

The last protection in the Requiem crack (a #3 Black Diamond Micro Stopper) goes in about 35 feet below the hold he would try to grab at the top. If he fell from this lunge, MacLeod would plunge at least 65 feet. He was not naïve about the danger. MacLeod once had fallen 30 feet to the ground off an English gritstone route, badly breaking his ankle after a pebble snapped; he spent three months on crutches and still finds it awkward to walk or run on certain surfaces.

The climber’s first couple of falls on Rhapsody weren’t too bad, but this was an illusion — “they got worse every time,” he says. As he plunged, the rock whizzing by, MacLeod concentrated on positioning his legs to absorb the shock; he held the rope in front of him to keep it from wrapping around his ankles. “Taking a 60-foot lob is not such a big deal; it’s the swing into the rock that’s the bad part,” he says. “I sprained my ankles, twisted my knee, and cut myself up, and that was if it all went well.”

If all didn’t go well, the rope could catch MacLeod’s foot or leg and flip him upside-down. In one such fall, the rope crushed his calf as it came tight, but the bigger fear was hitting the rock headfirst. Rhapsody started from a belay ledge about 50 feet off the ground, and usually MacLeod slammed to a halt a couple body lengths above it. But one time, his highest wire broke and dropped him another 15 feet; he glanced the ledge. Had the wire snapped an instant later, he might have died, a prospect that weighed heavily on his mind for later attempts.

Surprisingly, the danger didn’t weigh on Claire MacLeod as much as you’d think. Claire has held the ropes on some of her husband’s boldest ascents and filmed him soloing that 5.13d. When I asked her how she coped with the knowledge that some of her husband’s routes were potentially fatal, she said, “I find it hard to answer this question, which people ask a lot, as the answer is ‘I just do.’ He involves me in a lot of the decision-making, so that helps — to be part of the process.” Claire said her spouse’s keen sense of judgment and “how much effort he puts into every single thing he does in his climbing” allay most fears. “I guess you could say it’s because of his obsessiveness that I trust him so much,” she said.

A crew of Scottish filmmakers had been following MacLeod’s efforts on Rhapsody since spring 2005, and now they were in position for every lead attempt. The film, E11, captures MacLeod’s screams of agony and despair after each smashing fall. In all, he took the whipper nine times, four of them while slapping for the finishing hold. After some of these plunges, he could barely walk home. Says MacLeod, “It’s one thing to come home to your wife once or twice in your climbing career and say you’ve been badly hurt. But doing that every week? It had to end sometime.”

In fall 2005, he seemed to be getting close. Then, after a rainy spell, the Scotsman snapped off a key hold — an undercling block about the size of a billiard ball — just a couple of moves below the top. The route he had wired now required a desperate new crux sequence.

MacLeod was philosophical about the setback. In E11, he said, “Part of me thinks it’s nice to have it just that wee notch harder. Because in its original state — because I got so close — I knew I could do it. And that almost takes something away from it.”