Wild Mate!

 

I don’t really do “Awesome. I certainly don’t do wicked, lets-av-it, crush-it-mate or mad-for-it…”

 

But getting to know Tim Emmett over the last few weeks and after climbing my first proper route with him, Cascade de la Lyre two days ago in the Cirque du Fer Cheval, I can’t help but laugh as I’ve discovered all of the above can be used in one sentence.

 

“Awesome mate, Wicked mate, come on mate we’re going to destroy it mate, but mate… mate… lets have it… bring it on… Mate, crush it…”

 

Over the last few weeks the winter has blossomed, nearly as much as my understanding and use of modern young person vocabulary.

 

But mate…

 

Mont Saxonnex keeps giving… Bracey, Emmett and I went in one day and crushed it!

 

Well to be honest, Tim crushed it while Bracey and I gave it a little squeeze.

 

Tim Crushing it at Mont Saxonnex.

 

Point Lachenal high on the Valley Blanche in bute weather mate led to a great adventure with Bairdy. We add it up a brilliant chimney in two pitches that was awesome. We crossed a route called Hit Machine to climb two more killer pitches until hitting the rib above the face and climbing together for another 120 metres to reach the summit crest. The sun was setting and the red hues painted the mountains before we add it large down the VB in the dark… Awesome mate.

The line isn’t in any guide, so I was thinking of whoring myself and screaming of new routes and big numbers to whomever would report my wild unsubstantiated claims, then I remembered I hadn't’t put stickers on my new climbing helmet so it was hardly worth the bother… (Note: place loads of stickers on helmet before going to climb again so as not to waste the time and effort.)

 

Bairdy on pitch 3 of something.

 

Hit Mont Saxonnex hard with the Brodie five days ago… Brodie is a totally righteous dude…

 

We sent a new 100-metre line of mixed and ice that that really rocked. With every swing of my axe I thought about the headlines and the media exposure…

 

Wild mate… bring-it-on…

 

Even Brodie, who really hasn't’t embraced the way of the twenty first century climber… (He hasn't’t even got a blog. Get with it mate!), was buzzing. I climbed the first pitch which was sick, about WI 5. Wish it had been more difficult, as lets face it, everyone climbs 5, but with the right camera angle it could be made to look really hard and funky, (NOTE: send Jonathon Griffiths an E mail to get some re-enactment shots). Brodie, climbing the last pitch, an ice pillar into a horror groove that utilises a tree for a, thank God hold, pulled out the lead of winter. The crux, above the tree move, goes at a grade of T 9 (Using the alpine sliding twig scale)… A crimp from a twig while expecting it to snap gave just enough height to reach a clump of frozen turf above an overhang. The tree behind is totally out of bounds and if you bridge from it you haven’t done the route as it was intended so take at least two grades off… The route which we haven’t named yet goes at WI5 M6. 100-metres.                

 

Brodie eventually getting with it ringing up the climbing sites to report the new route.

 

The conclusion to this little smattering of routes was going in to the Cirque du Fer a Cheval near Sixth with THE EMMETT! That boy is off the Scale for righteousness I’ll tell ya. A 2-hour skin and thrash led us to the base of Cascade de la Lyre VI WI 7 550 metres. I hadn't’t really looked at the guide description or taken in what it was all about, it was just another icefall in a wicked location. (NOTE: Make sure to have all info on the climb before hand, especially if it is a climb to improve status, shout about, blog about, film, and make a news item on the Internet climbing sites.)

 

The Emmett about to kill it!

 

We pitched the initial pillar then moved together for 300-metres until beneath the final three pitches. It was at this point the partly formed ice of Lyre direct and Les Cenobites Tranquilles to the left started to carve and crash down the bottom of our route… Phew mate I’ll tell ya, scary! But we were up for it and really psyched and took on the last three pitches avving it large. Mate, total journey. THE EMMETT climbed the middle pitch at its steepest so we could get some good footage and look like wads, and I took us to the top in the gloom. Topping out at 5pm the wind whipped which was good as I’m sure THE EMMETT would have pulled his wing suit out and jumped…

 

Whooo whooo hooo mate... Wild!

 

Fortunately the ice avalanches pounding down the route stopped long enough to allow us to get down and after a two and a half hour skin out we reached the car at 11pm. (NOTE: Climb quicker so I can update my blog immediately from my phone and ring around everyone to let them know we have sent really hard, or get Alastair Lee along to film it.)

 

Not so whooo whooo hooo, more fu***ng watch me and stop telling me to crush it!

 

Just read the Guidebook description of the first ascent of La Lyre. Thierry Renault, Wilfried Colonna and Denis Condevaux climbed it for the first time in 1992 with one bivvy. “A legendary icefall and a formative experience.” Nuff said…

 

I have added some pics in the photo section… Enjoy mate.

    

No Saxonnex please we’re British.

In association with DMM, Mammut and Vasque.

 

I knew after my Nepal fiasco I wanted to climb… I needed to climb, but driving to the Alps on Sunday the 7^th all the reports were of snow… and lots of it. I felt weak and unfit and a virus clung to me with a passion as strong as Jeremy Clarkson has for the combustion engine.

 

What to do? Go skiing then. Hmm… The Toula in Italy, 1000-metres of deep powder, altitude, attitude and the psyche of the team – Cool, Helliker, Emmet, Griffiths, Baird et al was too much, and after 4-hours sleep I crumpled much to the surprise and enjoyment of the team…

 

Times like these call for radical decisions, so the next day Kenton and I walked into Mont Saxonnex crag, the scene on my new route last year with Neil Brodie and checked the conditions, then we shopped for food and snow tyres, a paraffin heater for Kenton’s house that has no central heating, (for crying out loud, this is the Alps and its winter!) and, then did that weird thing called rest.

 

Wednesday 10^th Dec. Kenton and I walked into Mont Saxonnex and after a false start on what we knew was a new ice line, (it was pouring water, very fragile looking and steep, (my God was it steep) – and it was my first route of winter, Kenton’s first route of winter, (and he was rapidly going down with the lurg) and finally in the long list of excuses this was my first route since realising I’m not bionic) so we opted for the less insane line which is called Douche Écossaise. This goes at M5, though it felt quite spicy at that especially so teetering above two tied off stubby screws. On the second pitch I opted for a thin chandeliered wall which after 40-metres found me gasping and grasping with arms burning and bursting. Finishing off the route with a funky free standing pillar finished us both, but left me thinking I was on the up. Kenton melted on the way out, but did retain a sly grin of satisfaction.

 

 

Thursday the 11^th saw Brodie and me climbing Nuit Blanche, steep and unrelenting, it felt very much more sustained than last year and led me to think I’m definitely not bionic.

 

Saturday had me regretting a weights session on Friday as I hung from one arm clattering and destroying bubbled chandeliers and feeling pumped. Water gushed and sprayed me as it caught on the breeze caused by snow flumping off the branches of the pine trees. Brodie stood belaying at the base of the ice line Kenton and I had failed to climb on Wednesday. The line was the fully frozen version of two dry tool climbs called M6 Sunar and L’axe du male. What a difference, I now had the restored confidence and mileage of the two previous routes. Large soggy lumps ripped and my feet tore and water pummelled into my arms and legs, I looked down to see Brodie having a conversation on his mobile and immediately my new found bravado went the way of the chunks of pillar, until I reminded myself he was a modern multi tasking Mountain Guide so it should be ok if I fell?

 

 

The pillar grew more chandeliered and steep. I kicked my outside foot in an attempt to bridge between the pillar and the rock to stop the barn door effect of my body but the boot smashed and tore and wafted into space repeatedly. My body fought to control the swing until at last a straight arm and a full body stretch hooked solid ice before the final overhanging pulls to the ledge.

 

Brodie pulled on to the thin left hand pillar of the second pitch. Pine trees covered in snow glowed in the weak afternoon sun and continued their shedding of winter weight. The Mont Saxonnex church bell struck midday, the chimes echoing up from the valley and penetrating the swirling cloud. Silhouetted, Brodie crashed and swung onto the front of the pillar tensing and testing his body until disappearing into a cave beneath the final 20-metres of madness, which led him, and ultimately me, to the success we craved.

 

Reaching the base of the new ice variation which we decided to call, Who needs sex, we get hotaches, WI6 100m, Brodie suggested another climb to the right, which, seriously overhanging in parts, culminated in a mind blowing icicle. Namasté Ole M7 and WI6 was certainly the piece de resistance and all I needed to convince me my winter was back on track.

Loads of shots of Mont Saxonnex in the pics section.

 

All information on Mont Saxonnex is found in the guide Cascades de Glace du Mont Blanc au Léman Tome 1, published in 2007 and compiled by Batoux and Seifert.

Motivations and the 2008 BMC International Meet.

Below is a piece of writing I gave to UKC for an editorial. I am glad to say it caused quite a stir...nice. To quote a friend, "you're writing is like Marmite, love it or hate it, it always gets an opinion."...The worst thing would have been to have had no response.

 

I have also added a few pics from the recent International Meet where i had the privilege of climbing all week with Nicolas Favresse. I thought it quite fitting to put the Motivations essay and the International Meet pics on the blog together.

 

Climbing with possibly one of the worlds most talented, unassuming climbers really puts everything into context. Here is a guy who pulls down so hard he could have the climbing world at his feet, he could bragg, boast and look down at nearly everyone...But he doesn't. He climbs because he loves to climb...   

 

MOTIVATIONS?

 

Experiences, adventure, passion and love are important, a sense of belonging is important. Climbing to the general population is not important.

 

We as climbers swim in bags carried from the fair, on occasion ego’s push against the plastic.

 

I consider my climbing as personal and at the top of my ability, certainly not cutting edge but in the past, on occasion, my upward motion had me thinking I was better than others. I am glad to say, with age and understanding these feelings have relented. Unfortunately, some of the ‘top-climbers’ in Britain do not appear to be like this, image to them is important for whatever reason, but image is nothing. The act of climbing should be individual expression, forget about impressing others.

 

Life is a journey and climbing should be an adventure and enlightenment at whatever level, we should support each other. Climbers performing at the cutting edge should be climbing first for the adventure and love of the activity and secondly to inspire and encourage. Forget the profile, the sponsorship deal and the ego.

 

Logo splattered, sterile and posed pictures in magazines are becoming frequent. They offend me and I find myself questioning motivation. Should it matter? To me, actually, it does. Beautiful set-up poses are glamorising and belittling an activity I hold higher than most other things.

 

The Internet is an amazing source of information, but I have started to wonder what is motivating what… Blog to inspire or climb to blog? 

 

If you are up there climbing with the best, appearing in the magazines, climbing new routes and climbs at the top of the grade, be honest with your-self when you submit the report. That really hard practised climb you beat into submission… Yes, a fine physical achievement but did you persevere for adventure or upward motion of another type?  

 

Am I just envious?

 

Maybe a twinge, because I know if the climbs on the blogs, in the mags and on the Internet are climbed for the sheer joy of being out there, climbers pushing themselves to the limit, climbers finding liberation from the sane-sterility while bordering on the insane and screaming fuck-off to a cotton-wool society…Then envious definitely of the emotions, the experience.

 

Scottish winter climbing is adventure, but for how long? Top-roping and pre-inspection is now acceptable when limits are pushed, but will it lead to people using the same tactics on climbs of a lower grade and why shouldn’t they? Winter climbing in Britain should be hard, cold and uncomfortable…shafts of light cutting through clouds, shimmering lochs in the distance from a summit…an unforgettable experience. Winter climbing in Britain should be the domain of people who understand, not people who see a glamorous article and then dabble. Elitist…possibly, but we will read less about rescues and accidents when you go out expecting a fight. Climbing always has been, and in my opinion, should always remain a diverse activity for the minority.

 

‘British climbers will fall behind in standards if we don’t have the really hard technical bolted climbs of abroad or we only on-sight’…Who cares?

 

We all climb for different reasons but I feel its time to take stock and slow down, let’s celebrate inspirational and remarkable at whatever standard and reduce the glamorising. Everest is lost, we should cut it loose so it can float away on its ship of media madness and let us cling to what we have left before it’s too late.

 

Alpinism is the dirty relative of Scottish winter climbing, there are not so many nice shots here and Super-Alpinism is disgustingly messy. No nice set-up-images to be had…hardly worth doing? To be involved with Super-Alpinisim the climber has to be prepared to get weak, throw up a little, fight red-tape, bribe officials, spend months away from the gym and be out of contact…Relationships at home fall apart, you’re bank account haemorrhage's and it takes months to regain the grade you climbed a year before. But succeed or fail, you will have gained more, you will have Yak bells ringing as the loaded beasts trot along the dusty track. You will have the early morning wood smoke hazing the view to the churning river in the valley below. You will have a memory and experience that will last for life.

 

                  

   

 

           

After some reports on the internet this winter i felt the need to vent...

 

Colours.

 

‘If you look at something long enough it looses all meaning.’ (Andy Warhol)

 

'I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.’ (Andy Warhol)

 

We live in a modern society where time is valuable and information is demanded. Through the medium of the Web the scope is there to make a living and live-out our dreams, to enhance our business-our profile…the product, but at what price? Do we all crave our fifteen minutes? The internet has made information for the climber immediate but we are loosing.

 

News reports on the web are written by whom? An experienced, intelligent climber who wants to share, who has nothing to gain, or is it someone with a business to enhance and a reputation to increase? Who is it sat behind a keyboard tapping out pros worthy of a tabloid newspaper and judging others amongst the by-lines? News is news. Sensational journalism by an unqualified person, misinformed and biased, is not news, its hype. Who is it, brave and anonymous venting fury on the forum without time for contemplation? Who is it telling me the conditions for a climb are good-bad-wrong-right, out-of-condition, or too difficult? Climbing is about freedom of choice and adventure. Climbing is individual expression. Let me decide for myself and the next time you do something that doesn’t fit into my arrogant and opinionated ideals, I’ll promise not post from behind a pseudonym.     

 

Follow the crowds… No thanks.

 

New climbs are now reported before the team is off the hill. What point does this serve? A time of reflection often placates the feeling of euphoria that has us thinking we have just climbed the best and the hardest. Reflection gives a more balanced appraisal. Time allows facts to be confirmed.

 

Let’s cut the crap, egos abound, (Including my own). A report written and posted by someone else doesn’t make you innocent, ‘I was just out there doing it for myself.’ Be honest, the report was still posted, and you gave the information knowing it would be. If you really don’t want it reporting, say so.   

 

Alpine routes are special and should be worked for…Climbing through the night, the cold stings, doubt is with you. Muscle fibres ache, but thick and fluid ice flows over the rock easing the fatigue. Crossing from dark to light, the red shimmer, spreading like a bloodshot, breaks the horizon. Jagged crests, silhouetted, their outlines sharp. And with every swing of the axe you’re heartbeat increases. When personal experience and judgement lead you to success, not the track beaten by a million others following the internet report, the taste is the sweetest. The thirst for information is robbing us of the adventure. Consumer climbing is reconstituted offal wrapped in a thin skin of pig intestine and served to the unimaginative.

 

I live for climbing… the experience, the memories, and the people, but I have drunk from the poisoned chalice. Writing comes second to adventure, but as a writer, I have played the game and raised my profile. I want my words to be read. The poison burns, but I can live secure in the knowledge that my motives are honest. Let’s pull the curtain to the side and confess. I have given up a great deal to climb. I live a life with risk and an uncertain future, but I have that most valuable commodity…time. It’s a style of life that most are unable or too afraid to embrace. But now I have the time, it is reported that my achievements are less worthy than someone who only climbs on the weekend? Are the climbs more difficult, more committing and more overhanging on a Saturday and Sunday? I receive free equipment, does this mean my ascents are flawed. Do I climb to pacify the companies who give me equipment; do I risk my life for a free coat, a carabiner and a pair of shoes?

 

Get real…

 

Why Colours?

 

I’ll tell you why.

 

Pastel is for all of the ‘climbers’ that have to have up-to-the-minute reports before being brave. Grey is the climbing experience you will receive for you’re certain ascent. Green is the colour running through the centre of those that want, but are not willing. Brown is the faeces on the forums. Blue is the cold I feel for the lack of substance. Yellow is for the anonymous. Red is rage and black is what I see when I close my eyes.              

 

 

 

   

AndyKirkpatrick asked me to write something for a feature in Climb Magazine called ‘KitList’. I find writing to order and writing to a set formula near impossible. Below was my attempt to write about gear. It was never published! The full essay about climbing ME, an E6 on Yellow Wall at Gogarth will be published in the book. 

 

Slings, wires and red wine.

 

 

Adventure starved… We craved adventure. Hunched conspiratorially over the old oak table, Tim Neil and I studied the Gogarth Guidebook. Slurping more red wine, Tim, a.k.a, The Big Guy and I decided ME on Yellow Wall at Gogarth would give us the outing we required. Adventure detox over, a binge was heading our way.

 

            “Let’s open another bottle!”

 

            ‘A barbaric top pitch.’

 

Arms kicked into shape by bolt clipping at Ceùse do not help while thrashing and clinging to clay. Sweating-swearing-shaking-quaking, slipping…slipping… Hanging from a flat hold with an open-hand, sand-ball bearings grease my palm.

 

“Got-to-get-some-gear”, got-to-get-some-gear”.

 

Fiddle a nut into an exfoliating crack, heel-hook crumbling grey fins. The voice in my head between the pounding brought on by dehydration screams,

 

“IDIOT, STOP DRINKING RED WINE.”

           

The best, and worse placement had been the one last night, the twist of the sharp shiny point entering the cork. Solid and firm, squeaking with each turn, I was strong then, even stronger as the cork popped and the thick-red alexia of courage was gulped. I wish I had that strength now. My body was rebelling, filled with dark de-oxygenated Cabernet Sauvignon sweat pumped from pores. Gorged on lactic acid my forearms were two useless baguettes hard and crusty that had been left-out overnight.  

 

Aiming for two rusty pegs that had survived from the first ascent, the Big Guy shouts,

 

            “Lasso the peg with a sling”.

 

Easier said than done while hanging from slimy clay holds.

 

Slap. The sling missed. Slap, it missed again. Pumped, gasping-grasping…slap, missed. Look down. The ropes arc into space uninterrupted. The Big Guy hangs from 5 equalised pieces of gear. His face looks up at me full of concern and below, the chaotic Irish Channel pounds into the zawn.  

 

“Factor two, factor two”…

 

‘A factor-two fall is the most dangerous and the most force a climber can place on the belay. Always place a piece of gear immediately when leaving a stance’.

 

Yeh, ok, perfect world scenario, how many authors of, this is how to do climbing, had climbed E6 on Yellow Wall? Not all climbing in the real world is found in the index of a manual. Slap…

 

Thoughts race, voices shout instructions.

 

            “Make the move, do it, do it now, make the move and clip the pegs”.

 

Releasing the heel-hook, a leg wafts into space, shoulders tense, a toe is smeared to a dirty edge.

 

            “Pull and go-pull and throw-pull and go….

 

Don’t trust the pegs, sea cliff pegs are like sirens, they call and draw you on and lead you too a salty grave.

 

In amongst the purple Chianti haze, I spot a thin crack in hard rock. Replacing the heel-hook I grab the small wires from my harness and without hesitation bite the green wire. A sickly-battery-taste makes me gag. Green equals number two. Green equals life, green gives encouragement and energy to continue. Anodised wires were just a selling gimmick I thought on first seeing them. Yes, colourful and shiny, sexy looking and light, but it was just a gimmick wasn’t it? In a flash the green number two slots perfectly, an extender is attached and finally the rope is clipped.

 

            “Go…go now.”   

 

Screaming, I dyno for what I hope is a jug a body length away, but it is another sloping hold. Eyeing the flaking pegs close enough that I can smell their ravaged state, but unable to do anything apart from hang, I attempt to calm myself…and fail. Swinging legs flounder. A toe-hook is all I can find. Ripping a thin spectra sling from around my neck I wrap it around the head of the nearest peg wishing I had read the article on how to tie one handed clove hitches. These thin slings are a revelation both in the mountains and on rock climbs. Very narrow, but very strong, they squeeze through the smallest of thread placements and drape around tiny spikes and nubbins. Also, like now, if I could tie a clove hitch, they are brilliant for tying off pegs so the force comes on the peg where it enters the rock. A granny knot will have to do.

 

Slapping and fighting, control is long forgotten. Lumps of rock fly, sand pours. Clothes covered in clay flap and crack like a string of prayer flags. On-an-up-draught, large drops of rain whistle up the cliff, blasted from a turbulent white-capped Irish Channel. Dark thunder-clouds race across the sea. Then I’m falling…and falling. And as I fall a thought crosses my mind,

 

            “Isn’t drinking red wine supposed to be healthy?

 

Packing up.

 

The windows of my van run with rain. The image outside is blurred as if looking through melting glass. Heavy drops bounce from the steel exterior. Inside, the noise echoes and increases a thousand fold.

A clap of thunder and a flash of lightening give Boy Wonder and me a visual treat. The stuffed and festering interior of the van is lit for a second and then, in an instant, returned to gloom. A car passes, tyres swish cutting Pirelli furrows, the yellow-sodium glow of the headlights spotlight the bouncing rain from the hot tarmac.

 

Spain, land of promise, land of sun and hot rock, land of sizzling skin, San Miguel, browned-beach-beauties, armed robbers on the run and cheap red wine.

 

Boy Wonder and I had escaped from the end of a winter season in Chamonix. Driving for 9-hours we passed tollbooth after tollbooth handing over Euros neither of us could afford to hand over. We drove past the turning for the Ecrin, Briancon and Le Grave and ignored the road for Gap and its miles of sun-bleached limestone.

Driving through the centre of Grenoble, constant glances into wing-mirrors, outside, inside, behind, in-front, the French driving manual’s opening paragraph of anything goes…goes.

South, to the land of shorts and flip-flops, fish and chips, Costa del this and Costa del that. South, 9-hours without a break, the Citroen gasped with the increase in temperature, second only to the increase of our anticipation. We escaped the brown patches in the middle of white ski runs and the white patches in the middle of brown faces belonging to ski-bums. South, 24-hours of sun and warm rock, time to get strong, time to get thin…Time to get bored sat in the back of the van waiting for another rainy day to end.

 

I didn’t see this when I packed up. The picture I conjured in those dark days of imprisonment was one of freedom and sun, fresh pine trees, brown skin and long hair. I left my home of 15 years and allowed strangers to move in. I quit my job as a P.E. Instructor in the Prison Service, quit a pension-holiday-pay-sick-pay, security and routine. I didn’t imagine rain when I gave up £25000 per annum and regular training in a gym with Brittany, Kylie and Christine all strutting their stuff on MTV.

 

We drove the steep winding hill deep in the heart of the Spanish countryside. The olive groves dripped with the fresh rain. The terra-cotta-pan-tile roofs ran like rivers in spate, barrels beneath the gutters overflowing. The Citroen struggled, hairpin after hairpin, until finally the focal point of my Prison fantasy was reached, Siruana, land of golden rock.

 

I didn’t expect the rain. I didn’t imagine this when I gave up the regular pay-cheque of £2000 per month and the moods of the boss. I didn’t expect the rain as I walked the streets of Leicester being bumped and jostled while avoiding the dog shit and meeting another ex-convict who despised me.

 

I didn’t imagine the rain when giving up a wash and a shave each morning, a regular hair cut, deodorant and toothpaste, council tax-water rates-phone bills-blocked drains-T.V. License-hoovering-dusting-cleaning the car and fighting for MY car park spot.

 

I didn’t imagine the rain when I returned home at night from 13-hours of imprisonment, without sun or light, without wind or rain, but with anger and hostility, with tattoos-aggression-pain, aggression, aggravation, intimidation, aggression, aggression…aggression.

 

I didn’t imagine the rain as I battled the British motorways through jams and crashes, following caravans along the narrow twisty lanes and the Sunday drivers along the coast road into North Wales, only to arrive in bad weather and sit and wait and wait…and wait.

 

Boy Wonder and I sat in the van that first day and between the downpours we checked the crags. We called into the camp-site and drank Espresso. We bought a copy of the climbing guide and talked to fellow climbers, we found a place to park and call base, sorted food, kit and climbing gear. Read a little and dreamt a lot.

 

By dinner on our second day the rain stopped. The mist swirling from the deep ravines surrounding the plateau thinned revealing an ancient village perched on a precipice, steep orange and Tiger-striped rock-walls, free standing pillars and acres of spruce, pine, larch and shrub. The woods dried and in doing so the wild Rosemary and Thyme gave a heavenly scent. Small birds twittered and large birds soured.

 

Boy Wonder and I dodged puddles and climbed. Not well, but we climbed. Day three dawned clear and we climbed and explored the miles of open countryside. Day four dawned and we climbed in the sun, donned shorts and flip-flops. Day five and six dawned hot and clear and we climbed.

 

Day seven, hotter still, but thin skin, aching muscles and smelling arm-pits begged for a rest, so we moved the van to the side of a large blue lake and washed away the grime. We re-stocked on food and bread without the Friday night super market madness in Britain.

 

Returning to our spot beneath the old pine tree, we cooked a meal with fresh vegetables and added handfuls of herbs growing all around the van. We ate fresh olive oil bread and drank red wine. We walked to the campsite for an evening coffee and checked out the hand scribbled topo’s describing the newly developed crag where we had climbed.

Returning to the van we laughed and scoffed at the supposed grade of the climbs we had thought a lot more difficult, then retired, ready for a return to the fray in the morning. Only the clouds had now returned and in the distance the rumble of thunder and the flash of lightening was a cause for concern.

 

I didn’t imagine the rain, it did not enter into my dream, but sitting out the second day in a week maybe it’s not so bad after all.

 

An exert from the essay Footsteps, published in Climb Magazine as a part of an article named Winter Epics by Colin Wells.

 

The walls closed around, steep and suffocating. A large boulder loomed blocking the way. To the side, ice dribbled. Wedging into the tight constricted cave beneath the boulder, I gained a purchase on the right wall and heaved. Back and footing, bridging-pressing-straining, I made height until level with the top of the boulder. The Orion Face dropped away. Sickening. Heaving from a placement in the corner above the chock, scratching-gasping, I wedged myself into a tight dark corner and knew without a rope or harness there was only one direction.

I look above. A runnel of snow ends abruptly with an open-book corner, like a trickle of brook water in a drought, a slither of ice ran at the rear of the corner.  

Steps were visible leading to a spike beneath the corner. The sling draped around the spike had a new-shiny locking karabiner hanging from it. The steps had lured me into this blind cul-de-sac and the steps belonged to climbers who had sailed away on an abseil rope choosing an easier option.

 Two, three, four moves into the corner, I knew I was fully committed. Beneath my teetering and insecure position sculptured waves of ice ran to join the snow cone hundreds of feet below. I had made a mistake. Soloing if confident can be liberating, but without means for escape? I vowed that if I were to survive, a rope and a harness would always be packed in the future.

First published in Montagnes Magazine, France. 

Pleasure beyond the mind.

 

Piss flowed under the two-inch thick steel door. Groaning and puking emanated from behind. Other doors shook with the pounding. I crept along the landing, slow and careful, tottering, a drunk late at night. The whole building buckled like a flyover in an earthquake. I was the only member of staff on a wing of seventy inmates, I.R.A. P.L.O. Mafia, gangsters, drug barons, rapists, Hells Angels, full time criminals and evil bastards. Infamous Street-fighter and hard-man Charles Bronson, a.k.a. Metal Mickey, shouted and smashed his door with more force than the other inmates. New Years Eve had been and gone. All inmates were safely locked behind their doors for the night? Fuelled on hooch, class A’s and dope, celebrations had been feisty; the day shift scurried from behind the walls, relieved that another one was done, one nearer retirement. Celebrations with loved ones to look forward too and celebrations in the pub, where comfort came in the bottom of a glass. The night-shift took charge, and I was the night-shift on A Wing.

 

Stumbling on another ice covered boulder, forcing myself on, trepidation, excitement and fear reminded me of that New Year. The steel grey of the early morning, eerie light, and the solitude, were similar to the 40-watt illumination of the long-leg in a high security gaol. My imagination ran riot, the smell of sweat; shit, and wasted life filled my mind. Maybe witnessing the waste, the ruin and the pain was what fuelled my drive. Maybe fifteen years as a Physical Education Instructor in the prison Service had made me appreciate life and take what I can from the remains. Bracey was in front picking his way toward the latest challenge. Everest was behind, a massive dark bulk, intimidating like Charles Bronson, but with strings of fixed rope, vanity, litter and oxygen, the street fighting days of Everest had been tamed long ago.

 

Bracey kicked steps into the snow-cone leading to a chandelier of ice. Overhanging, stepped and steep, the ice was pressed between the rock, an eruption of icicles. I started on the climb, it felt like entering the large wooden double-doors of a prison for the first time, outcome uncertain, life on hold. Never quite knowing how things will turn out, that what I liked about my climbing. A sharp breeze threatened winter, stinging like a punch. Not a sound. No one else shared our permit, our mountain, our fixation.

 

Jon Bracey and I had landed in Lukla on the 6^th of October. Four days later we arrived at B.C. which was Gokyo Resort Lodge, situated at 4800m. Day five was spent stashing gear beneath the face and on day six we thought acclimatising to a height of 5500m would be advisable, so that’s what we did.

 

The following day, Friday the 13^th! Bracey and myself bivvied beneath the stunning gully leading directly to the unclimbed west summit of Phari Lapcha. A truly fantastic line, sporting water ice plastered to the back of a deep cleft promising similar climbing to the Super Couloir on the Mont Blanc de Tacul in France which led to an independent pointy summit. This was what we had travelled to Nepal for. This was what both Bracey and I were about. Twice I had attempted bigger, more technical lines that involved load carrying, camps, fixed rope and monotony, I hated that style of climbing. I prefer to climb something technically easier that can be attempted free, quick and in good style. The life I live and the miles I run on a daily basis suited this quick fix type of climb.    

 

Crash, ice splintered. Brittle. I had boasted my rucksack was light as we started walking, but already it weighed heavy, like the memories. Lungs sucked wanting more. Crash, another placement, crash, I imagined my stave breaking bone. Crash, one hit is self defence, the second is assault. Stalking the landing that New Year I was convinced at any moment, a fifteen stone drugged psychopath would break through steel; I held my stave aloft ready to strike. Crash, kick-kick, nose, ice, shoulder, ice, skull, brittle, swing, show no fear, crash.

 

“Safe…”

 

Bracey joined me, collected gear and continued. A steep corner disguised as powder but with soft and malleable beneath, gave way to quick passage.

 

I took the lead, traversing beneath a massive roof, above the roof, a wall of loose, dangerous and smooth. Icicle draped black and orange surged, lost to the eye, the top of the wall plunged, like a knife into the massive blue sky. I revelled now I had escaped from the Prison Service, the space and light, freedom and fresh air. Imprisonment was a punishment I could not have handled. Some inmates were locked away in their twenties destined to die of old age having only spent an hour a day outside. Some didn’t see the sun at all. Inmates on rule 43, separated from the general population, sex offenders, had a walled courtyard that remained shaded and dark, their lives were neon and sterile, wax-white, translucent, deep sea creatures destined to dwell in the dark.

 

Moving together for a while, the suck-it-and-see pitch was rapidly approaching. We didn’t know if the route would go, as it had been impossible to see into the corner that Bracey was about to look around.

 

“It should go but it looks hard.” Bracey’s shout floated from his hidden position.

 

I followed with excitement and anticipation, was he joking, was it easy after all?  ‘It should go,’ was good, but I wondered what the Bracey version of hard would entail. Bracey and I had not been on a climb together since I broke my ankle, falling from Omega on the Petites Jorasses in the French Alps. That had been in 2003 and his skill had improved since then and honed him into one of the best. We shared a lengthy history brought together for the first time by our late, and close mutual friend Jules Cartwright. Bracey had grown-up, once the homeless climbing and skiing bum, he was settled now in Chamonix working as a mountain guide. I was a climbing hobo, homeless, poor, but rich with experience. I was sponsored by several companies but received a wage from none. Extra cash would be nice, but I felt more relaxed with this situation. I wondered about some climbs and the style used to climb them. Does the extra pressure of money lead to a certain style that will give a better chance of success on bigger hills, harder climbs?  

 

Britain had become the land of consumerism and arrogance. Wealth was the gateway to adventure and brought about an attitude of, ‘I have the money, so everything is possible’. It sickened me that behind our wild and exposed, lonely situation the biggest circus in the name of mountaineering was occurring. Greed and the western way demanded success, and if success did not happen, or something went wrong, the lawyers would be called. I despised the whole Everest scenario, I despised some lawyers. My faith in the system had dissolved long ago since being involved in several episodes inside prison. The worst travesty of justice I was involved with was an inmate spinning and smashing an officer’s cheek in front of me knocking him unconscious. The inmate had originally entered prison serving three and a half years. The time I had the misfortune to deal with him his sentence had increased to twenty-eight years from offences in prison.       

 

After paying a ludicrous amount of money, people were being dragged by guides onto a crowded summit because it’s another tick, one more thing to boast about at the dinner party. No-wonder the values of mountaineering are forgotten on Everest. What is the achievement in climbing a route that was climbed for the first time in 1953 and in better style?   

 

Stomping, panting, I peered up. Bracey stood, hidden, belayed in a cave beneath a flowing cascade of icicles. To the left a fluted, ice-mushroom-covered-conical lead to a steep, mixed corner, relieved I grabbed the gear.

 

“And now zee crux.”

 

I had wanted to shout that ever since watching the DVD of Sébastien Constant and Jérôme Mercader climbing Bonfire of the Vanities on the face to the left of our present position. Twisted ropes, feeling the altitude and ready to dump my rucksack, I felt nothing like a French hotshot.

 

“With rope-work like that you should be a guide.” Bracey yawped, laughing.

 

            “Fuck being a guide!”

 

Breathing deep, I forced myself on. Masochism is a trait all alpinists must have flowing through their bodies, that, and the scary consequences of living ‘normal’. Squeezing into the back of the corner-crack, utching higher, pressing, bridging. The corner was vertical, hard like the crux of the Charlet/Ghallini on the Pre de Bar in the Alps, but placements stuck like chewing gum to the sole of a shoe. The debilitating rucksack hung from an ice-screw at the beginning of the corner, and would be pulled as Bracey seconded. Telling myself I had to leave the rucksack because of the constriction, worked for a while until I thought of Scottish climbing, thrutch, grovel and grimace, and all with a rucksack. I always felt disgust at myself when compromise was made in whatever form. Aid was the most hated of compromises. Aid climbing on an Alpine style route really gave me a feeling of not being good enough.

 

Bracey disappeared traversing right and down-climbing over thin ice-covered slabs, cunning took the form of esoteric protection, a thread, a stubby screw and faith. At the foot of a vertical off-width, a hex was persuaded into the crack before venturing into the corner/off-width. Fortunately, good hooks, torques and technique helped with upward momentum.

 

At the top of the snow-field and about to enter the couloir we thought it prudent to consider options. Floundering and digging a bivvy in the dark, confined and covered with spindrift belching from above, did not appeal. A tactical talk took place. It was decided that an early finish was called for, even if a feeling of being useless and slacking ran through both our heads. A bucket seat was cut and the long night endured.

 

Starting at 6.30am, Bracey’s early morning wake up was a fantastic and sustained entry into the narrow confines of the couloir.

 

            “Ten metres left Jon.”

 

The rope moved up until there was no-more to give. Perturbed, a voice called,

 

            “Strip the belay and move up, I’m on some pretty steep ground.”

 

Moving together for ten metres enabled Bracey to find a belay, which in turn enabled me to discover the delights of WI 5 with a sack at 5700m.

 

The gully was magnificent, a meandering river, iron hard, rippled, vertical. The search for slightly more forgiving ice as calves and shoulders, fatigued with the constant bash and crash, balance and teeter, proved fruitless. Deep unconsolidated snow, loose blocks, crumbling rocks, all lead to the crest, running between Phari Lapcha main summit and the west summit. The views were spectacular and the belay non-existent.

 

At 12.38 pm both Bracey and I stand on the pointed, rocky summit trying hard not to overbalance and fall. I wave to the crowds of climbers on Everest jumaring ropes and as normal the feeling of anti-climax with the summit overwhelm. For me the journey is always better than arriving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

      

 

 

 

 

                  

Deliverance

 First Published in Alpinist and Summit.

 

From high above comes a deep throaty growl. Instantly, I know its source. I desperately look around for shelter; but the only option, a single rock immediately to my right, is too small. The ropes snake down the gully, useless. I drive both tools into wet, melting ice and cower. An animal trapped. The heavy concrete snow hits me square on. I’m plucked from the middle of the couloir and thrown down the face. I scream deep from the hollow of my guts. I know I am about to die …

Tumbling, hurtling, cartwheeling, smashing into rock upside-down, my body collapses, concertinaed. My knees smash into my face and chest, splitting soft skin and forcing the air from my lungs. My ribs, chest and back feel as though they are tearing apart. I black out for a second then regain consciousness, horrified to find I am still falling.

Let the next one end the pain, I plead. I’ve suffered enough now. Please.

            I hit deep, soft snow hard. I’m alive. The joy of surviving ... soon gives way to more panic as I begin to slide ... only to hurtle another two hundred feet down the ice-cone. Spinning, twisting, pushed on by hundreds of tons of heavy, wet snow. Surfacing, I gulp air pulling hard for the side of the avalanche. My legs are twisted into unnatural angles; joints are forced the wrong way. Still I fight, clawing, flailing. My resolve strengthens: I refuse to be taken under.

The snow slows. I claw and swim. As it starts to set, I pull hard to get high, pushing an arm into the air in the hope of leaving some part of me visible, something for Powell to dig out.

 

It never enters my head that he can be buried as well.

           

 

            I shake my head, attempting to clear out the memory of our doomed attempt on this mountain twelve months earlier. Any sane person would avoid repeating such an experience. So why am I now bivvied on the same rock-step, waiting to climb the same evil chimney with the same deadly face above? Powell, sitting at my side, looks reflective; his intense, dark eyes set deep in a gaunt face. Is he also questioning, wondering what has made us return to this face?    

Jirishanca is an icy, towering skyscraper in a remote corner of Peru’s Cordillera Huayhuash. Fringed, latticed icefalls, joined together by snowy ledges and steep compact rock cover the upper three-quarters of its concave southeast face. The pointed summit is protected by overhanging mushrooms and fluted honeycombs of snow. Access to the unclimbed central area is via a massive snow cone and a tight chimney. As the sun strikes the face in the early morning it becomes a living entity. Everything falling from above is funnelled down the face and flushed through this chimney - the place where I had nearly died the year before.

The southeast face has seen only one ascent - ­­­­ in 1973 by a Japanese team that seiged their route over forty-five days. Several teams are coming to try their luck on the face this year. AlPowell and I comprise the second team. The first, AlexFidi and JulianNeumayer, two young guides from Austria, didn’t make it beyond their warm-up climb. While attempting a new line on Jirishanca Chico, in preparation for the main event on Jirishanca, they were caught in an avalanche. Both were killed.

 

We start soloing at 1 a.m. We have two days food for the nine-hundred-meter line. My stomach is playing up, I feel terrible. As we approach the start of the chimney my breathing becomes laboured. Entering it, fighting the desire to run away, I begin the sprint, but on perfect névé. It is freezing-cold; a luxury not experienced the year before. The chimney’s dark confines constrict my swings and kicks. Lumps of snow whoosh past me, the odd rock whirrs by. I desperately want to escape.

A crashing rumble breaks the black silence. Driving both axes into the névé, I pull in tight and wait. And wait ...

... Nothing happens. I swear at myself for being so stupid: it is only a serac collapsing on Yerupaja Chico. My guts feel like rope creaking under load. I rush onwards until finally the rock surrounding me opens, leading out to a wide expanse of snow.

A large overhanging buttress to the right promises a haven. In my mind’s eye I can see the picture of the face pinned above my desk in the Prison Gymnasium. I have stared longingly at it for two years. I can see the massive snow and ice gargoyles stuck to soaring towers directly above. Why had Powell talked about earthquakes the day before? Where is he, anyway? I turn to look below. Yes, there he is: I can see a pin-prick of light still in the confines. He is still in danger. Still plugging away. Still moving as quick as his body will allow.

A final sprint across the wide, right-leaning snow slope deposits me safely under the overhanging buttress. I gasp for breath whilst waiting for Powell to catch up.

“Jesus, what were we thinking last year? This place must have been loaded with fresh snow.” He mutters as much to himself as to me.

“It’ll be one of the best ice routes in the world if we do it.” I reply, trying to control the tremble in my voice while glancing above, to the left, to the right, below, behind. 

“That chimney went on forever. I thought you said you were nearly at the ramp last year?”

“Yes, well, I did have other things on my mind at the time.”

Powell now meticulously checks the pictures of the face he had blown up from slides taken last year. I wonder how he feels. What drives him? A partner at home cares for their new-born baby; how would that effect me? Thirty-seven years old and single - there are no distractions or complications to interfere with my climbing.  Does Powell find this as scary as I do?

Chalk and cheese, Powell and me. My aggressive, impatient character is tempered by his quiet, laid-back but solid approach. A partnership three years old and already gnarled and knotted like an old oak lintel.

 

Dawn highlights our spectacular setting. We cling to life in the middle of a great concave amphitheatre. Upside-down organ pipes hang all around us in this cold cathedral; some are as thick as tree trunks. The mountains behind wake for another day, lit with a deepening red glow as the sun lifts above the horizon.

Suddenly the sun’s warmth make its presence felt. A large serac breaks free from the wall above the chimney. It crashes scattering into a thousand pieces funnelled through the constriction below us. Minutes later a second one follows. We cower with every resounding crash, insects in the bottom of an egg-timer.

Powell cuts across right, aiming for a great swathe of sastrugi-rippled ice. I move toward him, crossing runnels furrowed by falling debris. We pitch the climbing now: the chance of something crashing from above and wiping us out is very real.

Setting the belay, two screws and two axes, I stand between vertical-ice above and below. Powell, obsessive about saving weight, has chosen to bring small fun-size chocolate bars for our food. But as I gaze up I realise that even that extra weight will slow us down on the desperate looking ground above. While Powell seconds the fifty-meter ice wall below, I now study the east face of SiulaGrande across the valley. It looks like hell. I imagine JoeSimpson and SimonYates down-climbing the ridge above it. I am amazed as I recall the epic of their struggle. My amazement turns into trepidation. If we are lucky enough to reach our summit, how will we get down?

A strained, serious face pops above the final bulge of the long pitch. Al has struggled with the sustained climbing, shouting repeatedly to be held. Maybe he has some  full-sized Mars Bars stashed in his pack?  “Shit, that is desperate,” he says through clenched teeth. “I’m really not fit for this sort of stuff.”

A winter of skiing in preparation for his guide’s test has seriously affected his climbing. But I’m not worried: with more gnarly first ascents around the world than anyone I know, I can’t think of a better person to be with on such a serious face as this. The Bullock/Powell partnership works because with every pitch I throw myself at, he will address the balance with quiet control on the next. However, I sense that the icicle fest above is about to be offered over.

 

The pitch looks innocuous enough except for the overhanging ice at the top of the gutter. However, I’m twenty meters out with only one screw between us. I really must learn to say no. It comes naturally enough back home at work in the prison gym - why not when climbing? Out of balance, I frantically scratch and scrape, looking for any placements. I clear powder from the rock – this gives me a precarious right pick placement on a rugosity. I gingerly weight my right monopoint on a sloping edge, and release my left foot from the good ice. I shout to Powell to watch me. I hold my breath ... as I match the left monopoint on the sloping edge. With both feet now in the middle of the gutter I can finally balance. I need to step up right, but there is only smooth rock and a thin blob of rotten ice. “Why do I always get into these positions?” I yell, shaking.

Looking down, I spy the screw ten meters below, and Powell another ten meters below that. Maths at school was my favourite class to miss, but the distance I can now fall comes to me in a flash: Twenty meters onto the screw, forty meters if it failed. I regret not missing more lessons.

Insecure, frantic-frenetic-footwork, fumbling and scratching. Eventually I find myself under a large cluster of icicles drooling from the exit. I place three screws into crud, one tied off, two wobbling. I now make another move up, and another. Feet kicking, lumps of crud fly, Powell dodges, I swear, an axe rips. I lurch then reverse. I try again, but fail. And then again. But again I can’t get it. “Any ideas?”

“Why don’t you aid it?”

“On what? everything is rotten.”

“Just slap a sling on your top screw to stand in, and aid it on your axes.”

The thought of aiding through rotten ice doesn’t appeal. “I don’t do aid.”

After an hour Powell realizes I’m not joking.  “I thought aiding is supposed to be less strenuous than proper climbing?” I yawp between gasps.

“It is if you know what you’re doing.’ Powell replies.

As I grovel up the unconsolidated snow at the top of the overhang I vow never to scoff at aid-climbers again.

Powell starts to climb, quickly realising that the sensible option is to jug one rope. I belay him on the other, while watching television-sized blocks of ice ring constantly down the steeple of rock on the other side of the overhang. Powell comes into view - he fixes me with a long hard stare. We are, after all in deepest darkest Peru. As he reaches the belay he whispers those immortal words: “You’re a fucking nutter.” This pleases me. Obviously, he also thinks it is difficult.

 

Two pitches of worrying, unprotected powder-bashing place us on a knife-edge arête beneath a great tilting serac fringed with a massive mouth of sharp, icy teeth. For the first time since daylight we can see down into the valley, the place we have spent so long waiting for this chance to climb. Our tent is a dot nestled among the capillary system of streams pouring from the tumbling glaciers that spew from Yerupaja Chico, Yerupaja and SiulaGrande. The dark rocky peaks of the Huayhuash extend beyond for miles.

For the last hour I have watched a storm track across the range. We go to work cutting a ledge from the snow. It won’t be long before the bad weather hits. An hour and a half of daylight remains.

 

The storm lashes the mountain and us with snow and hail. The wind gusts and the views disappear. Night arrives, and we are enshrouded in our vertical world. I squeeze alongside Powell, shoulder to shoulder inside his homemade bivvy bag. “I suppose we can sit it out for a day if this keeps up.” For once I don’t have to strain to hear his quietly-hissed reply:

“No need. We can climb through this.”

I think of the slopes above loaded with fresh snow, and how little it took to knock me off last year. I think of us being trapped, unable to reverse the chimney as avalanches thunder through it. “Aye, I suppose we can,” I reply, though with not quite as much determination. 

 

Through the night the clouds pass over, and much to my relief the sky clears. As we ease the stiffness from our aching limbs, the sun comes out and so the mountain begins its morning song.

We follow six pitches of weaving and grovelling. Climbing vertical unprotected mush eats into precious time, though our moving together for a while claws a little of it back.

Moving together is a part of mountaineering that doesn’t usually worry me. In fact, most of the time I prefer it: the ground is covered quickly, and there’s no messing with belays. This face is different. The uncertainty of the ground taxes the nerves. The chances of being hit by falling debris taxes the nerves. The weather and conditions taxes the nerves. All our hard earned climbing so unfairly taxed. The simplest formalities on this mountain are serious. I watch Powell kick a stance beneath another vertical, rotten wall of despair. I force myself to get on with it.

Tunnelling through a wafer-thin cornice I crawl onto the East Ridge (first climbed by Austrians Toni Egger and Siegfried Jungmair in 1957). A panoramic vista opens in front of me: new valleys, intense blue lakes, grass, new mountains. I feel alive and relieved that the dark and foreboding face has been left behind.

 

Dropping down from the overhanging cornice, I traverse to belay at the side of a large ice umbrella. The sight of Jirishanca Chico tempers my joy. A growing sense of guilt begins to threaten my contentment. The Peruvian police left the area yesterday - we heard their chopper blades thudding in the early morning, mingled with the sound of crashing ice. The bodies of the two Austrians have finally been found: from where I am I can see the holes in the snow where they had lain. Had they been pushing too hard in questionable conditions, trying to get acclimatized to beat Powell and myself onto this route? Is it worth it? Is any of this worth it?

We had helped in the search for the Austrians’ bodies, leading the police through the icefall on the first attempt. The policemen were a happy bunch, just doing a job. Pointing to the southeast face, we told them that we were going to try to climb Jirishanca. They looked at us as if we were aliens beamed down from The Planet Pointless.

“You should go to the beach and meet women,” one of them said.

After the last two days, I start to think that maybe he had been right. For the first time I have witnessed the pain of loss caused for those left behind. Am I selfish to pursue a life of satisfaction for myself? Perhaps. But an existence of work, warmth, comfort, and mundane regularity simply don’t give me enough reward.

How would people view my demise if it came now? “He lived life to the limit and died doing what he loved.” I hope that’s what they would say. A cliché, I know - but true. The reward from climbing will always be worth the risk for me.

 

Powell traverses across to join me, disturbing my thoughts. He continues to climb the slope until beneath the wildest umbrella of ice. He fixes a belay. “You’re going to love this!” he calls. As I climb up to meet him I just know that ‘loving it’, whatever ‘it’ is, is not what I’m going to be doing.

Belayed underneath the umbrella, formed by erupting ice at the rear of the cave, Powell sits like a fly in the jaws of a Venus flytrap. At his feet is a hole, giving a direct uninterrupted view down the face. I now begin to traverse a wall of thin, corniced snow that hangs over the hole.

“Careful!” Powell yells at me quite loudly. “You haven’t seen how far that overhangs.”

 

I haven’t, but as I mince around the hole, to join him, it suddenly becomes obvious. “Why is nothing on this mountain normal?” I whine. “Everything has to be bigger, steeper, scarier, more rotten.” Powell ignores my moaning and sets about digging a five-star bivvy ledge. Soon, we have a pulpit overlooking a fine congregation of mountains. The night draws in, and for the first time in three days the afternoon bubble-up hasn’t resulted in a storm. “The weather looks to be settling again - just in time for our summit bid, eh? Couple of hours, maybe?”

“Hmm,” Powell whispers his reply, “still a long way to go, I reckon.”

Bastard! I thought. Why does he always have to spoil my illusions with the truth?

 

7 a.m. I tiptoe across the knife-edge ridge. Cross a thin bridge of icicles shining in the sun. Multi-coloured prisms of light dance as if through a stained-glass window. I am petrified. Staring at the bridge all night has freaked me out. It is so thin, and the whole face drops away so drastically beneath it. Finally on the other side of it, I whoop a yell of relief.

The climbing above continues in a vein similar to yesterday; never as hard as the first day, but sustained, uncertain and always serious. Slots are cut, crumbling rock crawled over and overhanging ice pulled through. Mid-morning finds me tackling a steep buttress head on. It isn’t until I’m in trouble that I realise that a snow slope to the right is running straight up the ridge. “There’s a fucking simple slope there!” I yell to Powell.

“Didn’t you think to check around the corner before sending me on this death pitch?”

I’m not really that angry - in the three years I have known him this is his first error of judgement. It is good to realize he is human after all. Still, throwing a little tantrum gives me a feeling of smug satisfaction.

 

A careful sideways shuffle to escape the buttress deposits me gratefully on the slope. Climbing it indeed proves to be easy, apart from the effort of pushing, kicking and swimming at nearly 6000-meters. There is no protection, but that is par for the course.

Powell swims to the base of a second rock buttress, to which I am now attached. The rock is a pile of crumbling corn flakes. Rusty pegs sprout from lumps of congealed mud, and rotting slings hang forlorn, blowing in the wind. The angle of the buttress looks amenable for the first few feet, but bulges higher up. I point to a line to my left. It looks more in keeping with everything we have already done, and will give us more new climbing. Powell sets off around the corner to check it out. “It looks like it’ll go,” he mumbles.

My old ears struggle. “Eh?”

“It looks OK as long as the ice isn’t rotten.”

“Oh, it’ll be desperate then.” I whisper.

The morning sun dazzles me as I belay at the base of the buttress. Around the corner Powell, squeezed into the dark confines of a typical Scottish gully, is in a different world. Chockstones, overhangs, thin rotten ice covering compact rock: it is the Ben’s Minus One Gully, only at 6000-meters. No queuing here, then.

A sustained fifty-five meters later Powell escapes the confines, pulls through an ice overhang and belays at the base of a great dollop of snow balanced on the crest of the ridge. I join him with new-found respect. It’s easy to forget the skill and determination that brings you and a close partner together in the first place.

Powell points me toward the third, vertical, unprotected death-fluting-excavation-pitch of the climb. I dig through it with surprising ease, emerging onto the steep summit ridge. With each kick in the rotten, sun-bleached snow I sing hallelujah, each step bringing us nearer to our goal.

I make a long traverse left, passing above Powell, who is hidden beneath the whipped-cream dollop twenty meters below. I now start to burrow through Simpsonesque flutings of despair. Halfway up a fluting I dig out some ice and belay. Above looks to be the final ridge leading to the summit, and below - the runnel drops dramatically for thousands of feet. I picture falling now, without a single piece of gear between us. We would hang in space over the headwall without a chance of pulling back onto the face. Powell won’t have a clue if that’s about to happen; he is tucked away out of sight and sound. I don’t fancy emulating Simpson’s Siula epic, even if it would make a good story.

Powell follows my weaving steps to join me at my confined spot. It is a tight fit hemmed by snow walls. Continuing directly up the runnel he chops through the top of the fluting and follows a steep icy slope. The afternoon bubble-up of cloud has started earlier than normal - it is now spitting with hail. Spindrift falls in great clouds, blowing across the hundreds of fringed icefalls hanging from the headwall to my left. Soon I am covered.  “Come on Al, it can’t be far now.”

I’m impatient; the weather has started to concern me. I just want to be up this thing, though the thought of now getting off scares me stupid. I picture all the white shit thundering down the chimney, and before I can stop it my head starts to list climbers I knew who have been killed by falling debris. Sod that: I have Powell to get me down safe. I know he won’t take any risks getting us off.

The summit is close. Taking the gear, I quickly scurry off before the clouds come in and block the view completely. The mist clears for a second: I can see a flat ridge and a tower less than a pitch away. It has to be the summit. But what I now see scares me. The ridge looks deadly. On the right a curling cornice overhangs the northwest face, and on the left a perfect avalanche slope waits to be set off.

I belay off my rucksack buried in snow. Powell grovels back from checking the tower. Leaning close and shouting in my ear he delivers the bad news. “It’ll go with a lot of digging. There’s no gear, and getting back will be interesting. Maybe we can get down the other side?”

I didn’t like the idea of blindly forcing on in the teeth of a storm. “How about digging a ledge to bivvy and waiting for the weather to pick up? At least we’ll be able to see what we’re getting into.”

            “No, we’re strung out now. And if this weather continues we could get stuck here.”

He is right. We have no food left and even less energy. Getting down is going to be exhausting enough as it is. The line has dictated we move light and fast. We have no fixed rope to slip back down in times of trouble. There is no de-stressing, relaxing and eating before our summit push. My mind flashes to the scene that would greet me on my return to work: The detox class would come into the prison gym fresh from the street, pale, rattling and drug-riddled. Taking one look at me, they would smile and wink recognizing a fellow sufferer. Little would they know the drug of my choice didn’t come wrapped in foil. If we bivvy up here now, I am going to make the worse crack addict look healthy.

All we want is to stand and rejoice on the tip of the summit, shake hands and celebrate. We have paid our taxes, but the weather is now robbing us. Battered by large snow flakes, hoping for a miracle, we stand there for half an hour. But our prayers are not answered. “We should start getting down - it’ll be better down climbing if it’s light,” announces a stoic Powell.

I don’t want to leave. Neither does he. We want the summit. It just doesn’t feel fair. Fair is for dreamers, though; fair isn’t real. Life isn’t fair. Kicking angrily, I turn, facing in toward the slope.

We begin the long scary way back down to normality, hoping we will be delivered alive.

 

 

 

Cravings

First Published in Alpinist Magazine. 

 

 

My van veers toward the centre of the coast road. I’m fighting gusts of wind. I’m desperate to finish this arduous journey, desperate to see friends and make last orders in the pub, desperate to nestle into the folds of my lover’s familiar-smooth-skin. Rain runs in rivulets across the windscreen. I look to the dark-sea. White-frothing waves whipped to a curling-cornice-frenzy.

Yes, I’m happy to be back in North Wales, I’m so happy to have escaped Chamonix.  Yesterday I sent a begging text message to my sister in England: ‘Please can you transfer £100 into my bank account, I don’t have money to get home.’ Thirty minutes later my out-of-credit phone beeped, the money had been deposited. And so the 800-mile drive began.  

 

Three months of child-like-inadequacy with the French language had taken a toll. A constant stream of sofa-surfers invading my personal space and eating my food had taken a toll. My bank account haemorrhaging had taken a toll.  A set of new ski-skins catching fire, flames lapping the ceiling and acrid smoke pouring from them, this had taken a toll (although the heat generated was welcomed in the cautiously-calculated, Scottish-controlled central-heating). The dog-turds spreading like vivid brown fungus, melting into the slushy cracks of  Cham’s cobbled streets had taken a toll.

A bitter-Baltic winter in the French Alps had worn me down. The mountains constantly whispered. As I walked the streets of Chamonix my gaze would turn to the cliffs above the town, my eyes hunting continuous-silver streaks.

The winter had given me several moments of success: Hugging McAleese on the summit crest of the Petites Jorasses with the first free ascent of Omega. Swinging from an overhanging crux, out there and on my own soloing Madness Tres Mince. And topping out in the alpen glow on the Charlet-Gallini, my climbing partner’s shining blue eyes rimmed with red, alive and bright.

The winter gave a few abortive attempts, a few close scrapes and lucky escapes. A cold night on The Droits sitting huddled on a ledge waiting for the dawn; worrying, between bouts of shivering, that when the sun finally came it would only light the way to my obituary. An easy route soloed on the Tacul that was anything but easy. Where the spindrift pounded heavier than thunder-storm-rain. And that ski down the Valley Blanche afterwards, through blinding snow and gloom, goggles frozen, and hidden slots lurking - that still quickens my pulse.

I craved escape. I craved shopping for food with labels I could understand. I craved money in my account to be able to buy a new mini-disk. I wanted my books and CDs close at hand. I craved radio in the morning with a stiff-upper-lip public-school-accent. And toast in front of a crackling open fire. I craved solid stone cottages sunk into green-rolling hills. Grazing sheep, and lambs bumping their mother’s underbelly. I craved dark streaks of wet on the cleaved-grey slate of a Llanberis stone-mine.  I craved regular money at the end of each month, with work and routine.

 

‘Hold it a minute - I crave work and routine?’ Indeed the winter had been long and hard … but not that hard. The wind buffets the car, pulls me out of my reverie. Rain runs in rivulets down the windscreen. Looks like I’m going to make last orders. Soon I will be in a warm Welsh pub with friends. But already I’m thinking:

‘I’ll book my flight for Alaska tomorrow.’

Echoes.

First Published in the Climbers Club Journal and on UK Climbing.com. 

 

The thin skin of the tent stretched and pressed into my face, a freezing-cold bump bulging like a pregnant woman’s stomach. Outside the snow continued to fall. Turning from the bump, I shuffle in search of a new position that will relieve the ache on the bulging walls of my bladder. My bladder had pushed with insistence for fifteen hours. The tent was dark damp and festering. Almonds of condensation stuck to the ceiling like frozen teardrops. TwidTurner and I had hardly moved for five days. I started to drift once again and hoped for dreams of warmth, fresh food and female companionship, but the cell-like deprivation took me once again to my past. Fifteen years of working in the Prison Service mingled with memories from early expeditions, the innocence and ignorance, fighting and tension, hatred and gut-twisting-terror.

 

I discovered climbing at the age of 27 while training to be a Physical Education Instructor in 1992. I discovered aggression and violence, loathing, lying and prejudice several years before. At the age of twenty-one the doors opened to a world that society would rather forget. The shadows clinging to the dark beneath the walls of the Prison Service entombed and changed me, the sick minds rearranged my mind. Fifteen years later fortune shone, the doors opened and I was released to begin a life of adventure-excitement-travel and people. Fear and terror were still with me, but there was no risk of a red-hot pan of cooking oil mixed with sugar being thrown into my face anymore.

 

The punishment block of Gartree maximum-security prison is dark. The corridor runs in the shape of an L. Painted pipes run around the low ceiling uncovered like an engine room of a ship. Footsteps echo. The sick-sweet-smell of sweat, shit, and fear cling to clothing and soak into the pores. Twelve steel doors face into the gloom locking the hatred behind. Strip lights provide the only light, an artificial sulphurous glow. There are no windows to look into this microcosm of misery that is enclosed inside a microcosm of misery. Rules of life do not exist here just rules of survival. Separated and secluded, everyday values are not to be entertained, everyday values are a sign of weakness, and weakness is something to be exploited. As a prison officer waiting to be accepted onto P.E. Officer training, this was my life. Deemed to be fit and healthy and less prone for a heart attack, this was the usual position for those waiting to begin the twelve months training. I worked for 18-months in the Block and at the time I never guessed it would stand me in good stead for time on rock and in the mountains. 

 

Waking after only two hours of sleep, worry and stress made the night an intimate companion. I would drag myself from bed in the morning and dress, blue trousers, a white shirt and tie, whistle-stave and key-chain. I knew I would be dressing again as soon as I arrived and entered the gloomy medieval environment of the block.  A flame-retardant boiler suit and plastic shin guards, thick leather gloves-steel toecap boots and a helmet were my suit of armour and the shield I hid behind was made of Perspex. There was no way to avoid the oncoming fight. I drove the ten miles to work with the radio playing music I didn’t hear. I nearly crashed into the rear of the car in front most mornings. Concern coursed through my veins, twisted guts bubbled and tension gnawed. Arriving at the prison car park I hoped there would be no space so I could turn around and drive home. On entering the prison fear and bitterness was simmering beneath the surface. I would joke with other Prison Officers, false laughter, bullshit and bravado. The maggot in the intestines squirmed. Before opening the four-inch-thick wooden door of the block I would breathe deep and savour the time before aggression.  

 

The time arrives when psychological turns to physical. Stressing before opening the door on hatred and aggression, before being smashed into brick and slammed to the floor is good mental and physical conditioning for the hardships of the mountains. 

 

Huddled all night wrapped in a Gore-tex bivvy bag at 5500-metres on a crest of snow, the wind buffets while the void drops sickeningly on each side. The fabric pushes into my face, damp, humid and claustrophobic. The rime-encrusted wall above wares me down, it whispers to me through the night daring me into the unknown. My character will not be able to back down from the challenge. No escape, no way around the on coming confrontation. The wall is like a murderer holding out his meal tray waiting for more food at the serving hatch. Wooden fingers attempt to tie the laces of frozen boots, slow ungainly movement, delaying tactics. Confrontation is unavoidable. The ice-coated metal work is packed and the ropes, frozen solid, uncoiled.

 

JamieFisher, JulesCartwright, OwainJones and I attempted the Sharks Fin on Meru Central in the Gangotry region of India in 1997. This was my first expedition, my first time in Asia. The mental and physical training of life in the Block were a good grounding. We struggled every afternoon with the heavy snowfall, the altitude, exposure and inexperience. The rack was too big and our objective difficult, six thousand five hundred metres of unclimbed, uncompromising mountain. An avalanche prone slope at the base led to a mixed ridge of hewn-granite-blocks teetering on a knife edge topped by the monolithic 400-metre high fin of smooth overhanging rock. The snow plastered the rough granite like the shit smeared to the walls of a cell and smeared into the ears-eyes-hair and body of an inmate on dirty protest.

      

The mental strength needed to face another day of savagery on a winter climb in the French Alps or the Himalayas, or force myself on when every inch of my mind screams to stop-turn around-run away-re-warm and recover, is never as hard as what it was like to open a cell door knowing aggression and hatred, pain and brutality, a certainty.

 

Fisher, Cartwright and I reached a high-point 400-metres beneath the summit of the Sharks-Fin. It does not sound far; it might have been in outer space. The final 400-metres of the route were the awesome fin of overhanging granite that no one to date has climbed. Our naivety didn’t allow us to look from the valley and run away, we were proud and pushy. Like dishing out the chips from the prison hot plate, I couldn’t live with myself if I bowed to intimidation. A queue of murderers-terrorists-rapists-hells angels-drug-dealers kidnappers and thieves watched with microscopic interest looking for a way in, an easy touch who would fold with intimidation. A smack in the mouth was better than the self-loathing knowing I was a coward and opening myself for more of the same.

 

I jumared ropes for the first and only time on the Sharks Fin. We had fixed our four climbing ropes on the first attempt and ran away when the regular afternoon snow had started to fall in the morning. The two 10mm ropes and the two 8mm ropes had been fixed and left in place for a return match. All four ropes were stretchy climbing ropes. For a week between the first abortive attempt and the second attempt the ropes had swung in the wind chafing like a scab on a kneecap. Jumaring with a 25kg sack adding to my 70kg bodyweight, while watching 8mm of nylon repeatedly saw across a sharp edge above terrified me. Inexperience didn’t entertain the thought of fixing the ropes tight or duct taping the ropes where they ran over edges. Thoughts of JohnHarlin on the Eiger ran through my head constantly. Thoughts of chafing sheaths-white mantels and death were with me every time I pulled on the rope. I do not believe in God, but as wide-scared-eyes, hypnotic, turned red-raw with intensity, I prayed.

   

Cartwright broke one crampon on the first day and continued. A second crampon braking slowed him more, but still we continued as a team of three, Jones had opted to remain in the valley. Cartwright’s drive refused to allow him to accept the obvious and our faith in Cartwright refused to allow him to leave. A testing traverse on ice at 6100-metres on day four was the deciding factor. Cartwright was Jumaring sideways with no crampons on vertical ice when an anchor pulled. Fighting, fighting… just for a second, but then he was gone. Fixed to the rope by his two jumar clamps and nothing else, he swung like the pendulum of an old clock gathering speed by the second. Smashing into rock 30 metres below, we heard the sickening crunch of forgiving flesh. We turned and ran at this point, Cartwright’s leg was bleeding and badly injured. Fisher’s and my head were battered and mentally exhausted. Reaching the base of the climb two days later the gasp of relief poured from us in nervous laughter, the same as after a battle in a cell with the inmate safely trussed into a body-belt, face down and naked. The grappling and grasping, smashing into walls and sliding in shit were over and the spit and snot successfully dodged. The nervous laughter would begin and the day could start.

 

*

Expect the unexpected.

 

Like fire-fighters in the station on a slow Sunday afternoon, four of us would doze in the office of the Block-feet up and prone, relaxed on the surface, but guts twisted and messed up. It would only take the sound of an alarm bell to break the monotony. In the Block any bad shit happening would be flushed our way. We were the u-bend between the pan and the sewer of the prison population. Gartree prison is for the worst offenders in society, a category A prison. The key had been thrown away for most and because of this there was little to loose. Sitting dozing, waiting and wondering before jumping into action when an alarm bell rang was great preparation for the mountains.

 

PaulSchwitzer and I were on the second day of climbing a mountain called SavoiaKangri in Pakistan. SavoiaKangri stands next to K2, it is 7263-metres high and unclimbed. The first attempt stopped abruptly when JamieFisher climbing as a pair with JulesCartwright was hit by a rock that rattled from high until glancing off Fisher’s Bicep.  

 

On the second attempt Schwitzer and I, climbing through the night, pulled from the gully onto a large rolling cornice of snow that had formed at the top of a ridge. The cornice overhung so far a semi-detached house could stand beneath it. A cliff of black-blocks jutted from a frozen pebble dashed wall of rotten-snow until reaching the Savoia glacier a thousand feet below. Arriving late in the afternoon we hurried to cut a level platform from the snow on top of the cornice. In the fading light of the early evening we moved around with a long lead of rope attached to rock anchors fifty feet away and we tried not to think of the gaping void beneath the floor of snow.

 

Gasherbrum IV, BroadPeak and K2 stood towering above our viewing platform. EricEscoffier and his client were missing on BroadPeak presumed dead. I stared intently on the West Face of K2, a plume of snow streaked from the summit, I tried to imagine the avalanche that had swept Nick Estcourt to his death and the deaths in 86 of 13 climbers including Julie Tullis and Alan Rouse. We anchored the tent to the same rock as we had attached ourselves too fifty feet away. There was nothing else. The ropes ran in a curving arc and grew heavy as ice gripped the colourful sheath. To pin the tent to the top of the cornice we drove the shafts of axes into the snow at each corner.

         

We brewed and survived. Life above 6000 metres is not easy. Noodles and soup boiling in a hanging stove spilt and soaked into down reducing the warming properties of the feather insulation. The litre pan full to the brim with gruel swung and rattled, it reminded me of an incense burner in a Greek sermon. The slop slithered down the outside of the pan baking to a dry crust. The wind tore across the cornice battering the little tent and the snow fell in large flakes threatening to burry us. Settling down for the night, fully zipped-arms strapped along my side, unable to move, but warm, I thought of the inmates I had fought and held face down, hand pushing into hair, warm skin pushed into the cold concrete floor of the strong-box so hard that the blood left their cheek and the crazed etching of the concrete was copied on soft skin. The special cell was like a padded cell, but not as comfortable. The inmates wrists were locked into handcuffs that were fastened to a 6-inch wide leather belt around their waist. Trussed, arms straight and by their hips they would be left to contemplate the error of their way. More than once, even after being trussed the inmate would attack us as we entered into the cell.  A team of three, in arrowhead formation behind a shield, spitting-head-butting-kicking and charging were all in the rules of engagement and used against us regularly. There wasn’t an inch to spare in the tiny single skin tent, this was our cell, a cell of deprivation, I wondered what crime I had committed to put myself through this torture?

         

Schwitzer began to snore, he always snored and it really pissed me off. I lay there in the dark with my sleeping bag tight around my face listening to the wind and the snow and the snoring. I must have dozed off but suddenly woke with a jolt. Paul stopped snoring-I lay frozen to the spot.

         

          “Did you feel that?” Paul whispered in his Californian-pot-smoking-hippy-drawl.

 

          “Of course I felt it, you know what’s happening don’t you?” 

 

The cornice had loaded with fresh snow and the extra weight had caused it to crack and settle. It was two in the morning-we frantically pulled frozen boots on without tying the laces. The inside of the tent was as cold as a freezer but we had to get out. I could imagine the cornice breaking off and the tent with us wrapped inside like a chicken in cellophane, hanging, suspended on a thread, unable to escape before the tent ripped apart spawning the contents from the fabric-bowels into dark void thousands of feet below.

 

The snow blew into the tent as soon as it was unzipped. Heavy flakes slapped into my face. I crawled from the entrance, floundering on all fours into the blizzard, through deep snow lapping cold against my chest and thighs. I edged from the overhanging section of the cornice and balanced on the crest of the ridge. I was unclipped, but the only anchor was the one the tent was fastened and I wasn’t keen to clip that.

 

Schwitzer joined me, a snow-covered apparition crawling from the dark. Whiskers of his goatee mingled with the ice encrust to his face, round John Lennon glasses streaked, steamy and lopsided, hiding his eyes, eyes that were wide and wired-like a crack addict, like my own. We crouched scared a gust of wind would blow us from the edge and wondered what to do. The cornice had dropped a foot. A crack had opened running its length. The wind cut through my body and soon we both were shivering. It was obvious we couldn’t stay out in the open. Clipping to the rope we cautiously stepped onto the cornice expecting it to collapse. It appeared to be solid, so without using our imagination we began to clear the new snow from the cornice to lighten the load. An hour later we crawled back into the tent to start the long wait and several more snow clearing sessions each hour. Schwitzer didn’t snore again that evening.

 

Escaping from the deadly cornice camp the following day we met Fisher and Cartwright retreating from the summit ridge. They had been battered by the storm all night but had found a good bivvy site and had left a stash of food and gas. All four of us retreated to return several days later and reach 7000-metres. We existed for four days being battered once again by high winds, snow and Baltic-bone numbing-temperatures. We stretched two days food into six, but our chance to sprint the final 263-metres to the summit didn’t come. On the evening of day eight since beginning the third attempt we made it safely back to advance base and the following day Schwitzer led Cartwright, Fisher and myself down to base camp suffering with snow blindness.           

                

Brutality is something I equate to the mountains, but the mountains are not brutal. People are brutal. Death and injury, disfigurement and distress occur in the mountains but the mountain has no soul. Occasionally being in the wrong place at the wrong time or sheer bad luck takes a toll. Sometimes a mistake or a bad decision or when ego and ambition get in the way accidents happen.

 

I witnessed brutality first hand inside a prison. For fifteen-years slashing-stabbings-beatings and bludgeoning were common in my life. I watched an inmate spin and break the cheek of a colleague as we escorted the inmate into the strongbox. My colleague was 6ft 5” and built like a brick-shithouse. He fell to the floor unconscious in a bloody-pulp with the single punch. Another Prison Officer and I fought for twenty minutes, rolling, twisting, writhing… separated from the rest of the prison, no-one knew until another Prison Officer happened on us and rang the alarm bell.

 

On another occasion I held the head of an inmate, pushing a gym vest into the hole in his scull where he had been hit twice over the back of the head with an iron weight-training bar. A contract had been taken out on the inmate as it had been discovered he was a paedophile. The price I found out later was a £20 crack deal.  The second swing from the iron bar puncturing the inmate’s skull saving his life by reducing the pressure that had built from the first blow. I wallowed in tangled-twisted-sticky strings of clear cerebral fluid that hung from his ears. The grey matter running freely from ears and nose mixed with vivid bright red blood. I lay slithering and slipping while attempting to save the life of the inmate who writhed in agony. Thirty inmates in the gym stood and watched, none helped.

 

A clot dried on the gymnasium floor, large and jagged, like the outline of Australia, dark and crispy. The police arrived immediately and began an inquiry. Two days later they decided I was innocent of taking a bribe to look the other way. The prison governors had been warned that that this inmate was at risk, but they had ignored the warnings and attempted to place the blame on me. Luckily the original paperwork that had disappeared had been copied and the internal blame shifting inquiry collapsed. My evenings were spent on my own for a while after this episode and my clothes were thrown away. 

 

Red-hot-oil-filled chip pans with sugar added, making the oil stick on contact with skin, were a favourite for the delivery of maximum pain and permanent scarring. PP9 batteries in socks made superb implements to cave in skulls with one quick swing. A table leg wheeled like a baseball bat, Bic-razor blades melted into the head of a tooth brush and tubes of steel, machined in the engineering shop by I.R.A. terrorists, made to fire a single round, were all a part of my life in the late 80s. The learning curve was steep on the way to prejudice-paranoia, bitterness and loneliness. Luckily I found the gym, which led to the mountains and finally my escape.

 

Witnessing so much injury and having to deal with savagery on a daily basis probably helped me with some of the incidents I have seen occur while mountaineering or rock climbing.

 

*

 

          “WATCH ME MICHAEL, IGNORE WHATS GOING ON…OK?”

 

I remember calling to my climbing partner vividly, his eyes were as big as an owl’s as the blood pumped hitting the grey rock all around him. I had only just recovered from breaking my kneecap after falling from a climb on the Rainbow Slab. On that occasion Michael had been sitting too far from the bottom of the slab half asleep when I fell from the crux moves of Cystitis by Proxy. The one good piece of protection on the climb was a bolt. The bolt was just below me as I fell and I remember thinking at the time why am I still falling? I hit the ripple of the rainbow 30-feet below the bolt after surfing the slab and watching Michael being pulled across the ground like he was water skiing. My knee took the full impact smashing into a lump of slate standing proud from the smooth-sheen of the black-velvet. I finished the climb and walked back to the car knowing that something was wrong. A week later I had reduced the swelling and was climbing ok, but I had booked an appointment for an X-ray just in case. Seven weeks later, fresh from a full leg plaster, the knee cap that had been split in two had knitted and I was with Michael again on an even more serious climb called Tess of the Durbivilles.

 

Tess is a scary E6 high on Left Wall of Dynas Cromlech in the LlanberisPass, it has limited protection and only the best at placing devious bits of gear could make the climb justifiable.  Unfortunately, I do not fit into this category. I was on-sighting the climb and as normal I took the approach of why bother wasting time and energy fiddling bits of brass into marginal placements when forging on makes more sense. This approach is all well and good until outside forces intervene or my arms get tired.

 

Several rock-over moves forcing my still not fully functional knee into positions it didn’t like, caused it to ache like a bastard. My eyes attempted to focus on the sharp crozzled rock inches from my face but failed, the combination of sweat and tears brought on by pain and effort stung and blurred. I was still on the sick from work and I was facing a ground fall from 70-feet. Forearms burnt with the effort of crimping edges no thicker than tiles around the sink of a washbasin. I attempted to work out the moves that led to the comfort of the first piece of gear since starting on this madness. Time stood still. Nothing else mattered apart from moving right 10-feet.

 

The climber tackling Cenotaph Corner to my right was a blur, an insect buzzing on the periphery. There, but only in the grey mist of my sub-conscious. I lock off. The muscles in my shoulder tense, shake out-chalk up, study-plan-breathe-deep with control. Prepare. Once committed to the sequence of moves I would be continuing in one of two directions, reverse was not an option. The insect moved to my right. A move he will not forget for the rest of his life. A move I will not forget for the rest of my life. He pulled on the pudding stone, a house-brick lump of rock wedged for years into the crack of Cenotaph Corner. The Pudding stone ripped from the corner as easy as a vegetable-knife is pushed into a Prison Officers neck on a quiet evening in Gartree Prison.

 

The clarity coursing through my veins, heightening my senses made me watch with deadly fascination. End over end, the block spun, plummeting. The insect stopped buzzing and screamed. His belayer took no notice. I watched with deadly fascination, still unable to pull my eyes away from the 5kg lump spinning its way to misery. The insect screamed again. The block twisted and turned closing in on its target only several feet above the skull it was about to smash into a grey-splintered mess. The belayer looked up and jerked his head back. The pudding stone missed his brow by an inch ripping into his bare arm. Blood shot high into the air covering rock. The belayer collapsed, the insect whimpered no longer on belay. Mayhem ruled. Blood spurted.  

 

          “WATCH ME MICHAEL, IGNORE WHATS GOING ON… OK?”

 

I made the moves. A rock over-a match-a foot swop, flagging, gently easing body weight controlling the barn door my body wanted to emulate and finally into Left Wall and protection.

 

Hanging from big holds with the gear placed, I looked into the owl-sized eyes of Michael. Not once had he taken his eyes from me. Blood covered the rock around him. The unconscious body of the belayer had been lifted over him and still he had faithfully watched me ignoring the body passing beneath our ropes. The insect had been lowered from Cenotaph Corner as his motivation to continue with the climb had waned leaving me to finish Tess half an hour later very relieved.

 

*

 

As the rain hammers against the window of YnesEttws, the climbers Club hut that is nestled into a grassy-damp fold deep in the heart of the LlanberisPass and what is now my unofficial home. The big open fire warms me. The wind rattles the door and the memories rattle my mind, no longer a Home Office cheque at the end of each month, no longer T.V or the comfort of a pension and regularity.

 

The rain soaks the hillside and the streams pour in white-gushing torrents. The leaves on the trees open with new vivid-green fresh and innocent leafy-life. Grey rock drips with the deluge and sheep shuffle beneath boulders. No longer hate and misery. No-longer bigotry, violence, aggression and mutilation, or a life tracked until retirement, the right to vote or possessions. No-longer wealth, but now I have more riches imaginable.