If you’re an American who pays attention to what goes on in climbing, you may have heard of a guy named James McHaffie—especially as he is now in the news for having sent every route in Ken Wilson’s classic guidebook Extreme Rock. You may know something about how James McHaffie, or “Caff,” is a badass trad climber from Wales. If you’re Very Online, it’s possible you’ve come across some of his trip reports and musings on his blog, on which some of his surlier rants have appeared. Those articles, along with his general in-person demeanor, which can be that of a foul-mouthed Hamlet, have affectionately earned him the nickname Dark Lord among his U.K. compatriots.

If you’ve gotten that far in your comprehension of Caff, you probably won’t get much further as you will quickly enter the morass of unpronounceable Welsh route names and crags that comprise much of his ticklist. These confusing words, pointlessly laden with consonants (or seemingly so), have the effect of rendering Caff’s curriculum vitae largely inscrutable to the average American climber.

Beyond the unreadable words, there’s also the fact that pictures of these places often don’t do the climbing justice. Slate slabs, jumbled sea cliffs, and squat blocks of Grit don’t electrify the imagination in the same way as, say, El Capitan. Wait, why do you need two ropes just to climb 35 feet of rock? Clogwyn Durr Whaaa? It’s all just confusing to us, We the People of United States, who are as fiercely proud and as savagely dumb as we like, fuck you very much.

Another reason you may be only dimly aware of Caff and his status as one of the best trad climbers in the world is that he doesn’t play the usual pro-climber games. He doesn’t go to the Place Where All the Pros Go, to tick that One Route that all the other pros do—whatever route that happens to be that year. Even within the U.K.’s own climbing pecking order, Caff has demonstrated a preference for logging mileage over the big headline-grabbing ascents. He’s onsighted over 100 E7s, which is more onsights of this grade than all the other top U.K. climbers have amassed together.

His social media “presence” sucks, objectively so. The metrics aren’t even there to justify a chalk bag sponsorship. You’re more likely to find him on the lash in some dingy pub than on a Instagram hashtag.

James McHaffie works. He comes from a humble background. He doesn’t have loads of money or tons of time. He’s a core dirtbag. His climbing, therefore, is necessarily local—a process of scraping together the odd weekend trips when the weather’s decent and he isn’t working as a climbing instructor / guide, or executing his duties for the BMC as their Youth and Equity Officer, which means his job is finding ways to give kids in urban areas more climbing and outdoor opportunities.

For all his dark glowering, he’s also a guy who always removes his sunglasses when speaking to you. He’s polite in that way. He wants to look you on the eye and make that connection. That’s why the people in his life, his friends, the people ruthlessly taking the piss at Caff’s expense, seem to actually love the guy. “He’s a bit of a cunt,” Ben Bransby said. Nothing but respect.

So now that you know who James McHaffie is, let’s discuss what he just did.

In the 1980s, Ken Wilson put out a trilogy of books listing famous routes around the United Kingdom. The books are organized into an elitist hierarchy, divided up by grade and titled Classic Rock, Hard Rock, and Extreme Rock. The latter book really is the one to get, only now you can’t as it’s out of print and anyone who has one would never consider parting with it. It’s that treasured. Only 4,000 copies were printed, and a warehouse fire destroyed the next print run. It’s a cherished heirloom, passed down through generations of climbing groms to fill their hearts with fear and reverence for those climbers who came before them and perhaps inspire them to test themselves against such fearsome routes as Indian Face.

Though Extreme Rock contains 180 routes, spanning the range of E grades (E for Extreme, in the U.K.’s quirky rating system), it isn’t a guidebook, per se. The 50 Classic Climbs of North America by Steve Roper is perhaps our closest equivalent—a list of climbs but more so a historical document. Extreme Rock such a prized tome is that it is filled with the stories of climbing legends and the absurd death-defying games they’ve played in the name of relying on minimal gear and maximal courage while pushing the limits on the U.K.’s scrappy outcrops.

This week, James McHaffie sent Jerry Moffatt’s desperate sport route Revelations (8b) at Raven’s Tor, which marked the last of the 180 routes on the list. Though this route was one of the hardest in terms of technical difficulty, it was actually the Master’s Wall at Clogwyn Du’r Arddu (Cloggy) that represented the real breakthrough in Caff’s quest to complete Extreme Rock.

Master’s Wall is adjacent to Indian Face, and is historically considered to be the easier and safer of the two veritable death climbs. As a 19-year-old, Caff nearly died on this route. He reached a place where he was stuck—either unwilling or unable to climb any further into the teeth of horrifying run-out, and also unable to down climb from his position. His belayer, Adam Wilde, unclipped from his device and ran around to the top of the cliff to drop down a rope to save Caff from a deadly fall.

As Adam scurried up the mountain, Caff became increasingly exhausted. He was hanging by his fingers and perched on a precarious high step. He untied from his ropes and dropped all his gear to save weight. Now he was just free soloing.

It felt as if he was there for ages. In fact, he was probably there for two hours. The mental torture of this evil position defies imagination. Caff was beginning to resign himself to what was about to come next. He’d just fall and get it all over with. And just when he could tolerate this miserable existence no more, a rope came lashing down the wall. Adam had, at long last, come to the rescue.

Only the rope was just out of reach. Caff stretched his arm. His fingers ached to grab hold. He just couldn’t quite reach it. Please, please, please …

The rope flicked close enough for Caff to grab it, and latch onto it he did. Now he was sliding down the rope, burning his hands to bits. He hit the ground and crumpled into a pile at the base of the wall. Now he found himself sobbing uncontrollably, whether out of pain or the relief of being alive, who could say?

He recovered ultimately. Although he lost all of his fingernails and toenails from those two hours spent death-gripping the rock. Years later, he returned and ticked the more infamous Indian Face without nearly as much drama. But the Master’s Wall was being a real fucking bitch. He tried it again, and again experienced a harrowing escape from a hook. This route is trying to kill me, Caff thought. Again he summoned the courage to face it, and finally sent it in 2018, 18 years after his initial epic. At this point, he knew he’d gotten through the gauntlet, and the path to ticking Ken Wilson’s book was firmly within sight.

With his ascent of Revelations this past week, Caff has achieved a goal with major significance and meaning to many climbers across the U.K. It would be a shame if we climbers around the world, even us ignoramuses in America, didn’t also understand the incredible effort this required and appreciate the death-defying journey this feat took.

Congrats, Caff. I’ll be downing a pint of bitter in your honor.