Rhapsody-II
Soon after MacLeod broke the key hold on Rhapsody, the Scottish winter arrived. The determined Scot decided to spend the winter of 2005-06 training, postponing any attempt to lead the route for the next six-odd months.

One might think you’d train endlessly in a climbing gym — away from the elements — for such a route, but MacLeod doesn’t like the gym. Mostly, he trained on the boulders at Dumbarton, working projects, running laps on circuits. On “rest days,” he’d do an hour of pull-ups and lockoffs on the simplest of wooden fingerboards, a single strip about a foot wide and half an inch thick, mounted above a doorjamb, or he’d trek into the mountains for some winter action.

As spring approached, MacLeod, fit as ever, had devoted more than 70 days to Rhapsody and was getting close. He’d learned a new sequence on the crux in November and linked the full line again on toprope in March. But the route was getting inside his head; he’d become lost in a world of his own creation. In the E11 film, Claire says of this period, “You can tell [Dave’s] not really talking to you. He’s going through moves in his head, and he’s just kind of glazing over. Every waking moment, almost every sleeping moment. ... It takes over my life, as well as his.”

Claire and Dave MacLeod first met when they went to see the same band in high school; he was 16, and she was 15. By early 2006, they had been together for a dozen years, married for five, but they had never faced a challenge like Rhapsody. Their tiny flat, says Claire, filled with “unbearable tension.” She was the breadwinner, commuting into Glasgow to a job she didn’t much like. And though Dumbarton wasn’t a slum, it wasn’t pretty — more Trainspotting than Highlander. (Claire had to choke down a laugh when the visiting Canadian Sonnie Trotter described it as “charming.”) She had deferred creature comforts and the prospect of having children for her husband’s climbing — all for this little slice of Dumbarton Rock.

MacLeod put on a helmet when he went back to lead Rhapsody that spring. In October, the rope had wrapped around his leg during a bad fall, and he’d barely managed to jerk his head away from the rock. What if the Micro Stopper broke again and dropped him onto the belay ledge? He was gambling: sooner or later, he figured, he’d hit that ledge, maybe headfirst. Winning meant doing the route before that happened. Each attempt was like torture, but not trying was even worse. Ultimately, “Climbing the route became the easier option,” he says.

April 9, 2006, hardly seemed auspicious. A snowstorm blew through in the middle of the day, soaking the crag. But by late afternoon, the sun was out and MacLeod scrambled to the summit to check out the line. He and a friend carefully toweled and brushed the final hold — the flat jug that MacLeod had already failed to hold four times. A big puddle filled the next grip. Despite the dampness, MacLeod felt ready, and so he called Claire to come belay. It was the first time she’d ever held the rope on a Rhapsody attempt. By 6:50 p.m., it was all over. MacLeod latched the final hold as the sun set, carefully swung onto the top of Dumbarton Rock, and screamed “Yes!” with relief and joy.

“You know that feeling you get when you’ve been trying something for a really long time and you finally do it?” he asks. “It was like that, only a mile stronger.”