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Neil Gresham has just sent through a route report on what could be Britains Hardest Deep Water Solo to date.....
 On 14th August 2011, I climbed a new DWS called Hydrotherapy, 8a+ / S2 in the Hollow Caves Bay area of Pembroke. The route is located in a huge cave, just to the right of Ben Bransby’s unrepeated trad E7 Underworld. I discovered the line last year whilst climbing a new 7b+ called Submariner (which was filmed by Alastair Lee for his Movie, Psyched II).
Hydrotherapy required more effort and determination than any other DWS that I have climbed before. It took me four trips from London in order to get all the necessary variables to balance. The cave dries out in the last three hours of daylight, (providing there’s evening sun) and this needs to correlate with high tide, calm seas and the Range not being closed for firing practice! Frustratingly, I found myself without a climbing partner on two days that would have been ideal for an attempt.
The route is tricky to access, and I solved this by rigging a tryrolean traverse from the Western flank into the back of the cave. From here an easy traverse leads into the line, which is continuously overhanging at an angle of about fifty degrees. The style of climbing is power-endurance with two definite cruxes, the first is about V7 (a drop-knee allows you to connect a tiny left hand crimp to a sloping right hand side-pull) and the second maybe V6 (matching a high under-cut). There’s also a bit of a ‘last move’ to gain the finishing jugs which lead into the final chimney of Underworld.
I would love to have tried the route ground-up but for me it was out of the question. It took me ages to work out the sequence on an abseil rope, and the conditions window is so narrow that I reckon I would still be falling off the first, relatively easy section in about five years time if I’d tried it from the ground! In addition, the cave has a big and serious feel to it. The logistics are different to venues like Lulworth or Connor Cove, which have more of a sport-vibe. It would be amazing if it was repeated ground-up and I reckon Steve Mac would crush it!
Regarding the grade, I’ve noticed a tendency for trad routes and DWS’s to be given over-inflated French grades, so I thought I’d attempt to reign things in a bit. My Devon route Cutlass felt hard at the time, because I climbed it ground-up, but it’s probably a soft 8a+. However I’m pretty sure that Hydrotherapy represents the top of the grade. It’s certainly the hardest DWS I’ve ever done, as a combination of physical difficulty, logistics and position.
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