Nick Bullock on the First Ascent of the Mindless Finish
Get access to everything we publish when you sign up for Outside+.
Watch Nick Bullock during the first ascent of the Mindless Finish variation of Pic n’ Mix (Scottish IX, 9), Northern Corries, Scotland. In describing the ascent, Bullock wrote:
A few moves in and I had turned from the bumbly who couldn’t find the crag into Ueli Steck, well in my mind anyway. God I was good, it was easy. What was Tim [Emmett] thinking on the first ascent going around the corner and not finishing the job? He must have been having a bad day. A few more moves and the verglas increased, along with the wind, the hoar, and the steepness. It’s OK, I’m Ueli. A few more moves and still no gear. Perched high on the front face of the pinnacle the wind buffeted and wafted my body like a flag, I locked and fiddled with a nut, a cam, a bigger cam, a bigger nut, but eventually I dropped a hook into the hole made by my pick. And then I dropped another hook into another hole and continued up. Bayard a long way below was huddled in his jacket thinking this was normal. I flapped and swung and attempted to find a good torque, good feet, but in a few short meters my Ueli Steck bubble had burst, I felt more like Uma Thurman. The crack my left pick was in repeatedly pulled, feet sketched, I brushed big ears of hoar, I looked wistfully to a sloping ledge to my left. I had to move, but there was nothing for feet and it also meant leaving my one good hook and I didn’t want to leave it, it felt like home, a place I trusted. Bayard looked up, “Go on, send it Dude.” But the only thing I was going to send if I blew this was for a helicopter!