bags and dropped 800 feet to warm up before breakfasting huddled under a wet stonewall.
Julian Miles calculated that he’d made about 8000 bivvybags over the years, not to mention the more expensive but perfectly serviceable products of his competitors and successors. Where are they all?
Is it just that the bivvy is so discreet that we don’t see it? A gentleman who didn’t give his name spent four months in his one, watching a farmhouse in Kent where some thieves were preparing to steal the great De Beers diamond from the Millennium Dome.
But are the other half-million or so bivvybags manufactured by Britain’s lively outdoor suppliers all simply sitting in attics and their nervous owners taking them out every six months or so and saying, do I quite dare? Or don’t I? Like English lasses on a Spanish beach wondering whether or not to go topless…
Head of Loch Nevis, below the long ridge of Sgurr na Ciche
Topless – topful – topping – over the top – there’s a pun here, struggling with its zips and trying to emerge into the open air. So far the bag has mostly been taken up by serious long-distance types, and of course the Special Forces. But even on a simple tropical beach sleep-out, it does make all the difference not to have the morning dew joining you in bed. Or take a bottle of whisky to the first flat place above the youth hostel and join Prince Charlie in the heather.
They are the best of nights: they are the worst of nights. The modern lightweight tent has opened up the wilderness – but for an increasing number of people, the lightweight tent is just a bit too civilised. Can you really experience nature’s rawness from inside a zipped-up storm-flap? For those who want to bring a bit of old-fashioned pain and suffering back into the outdoor experience, the bivvybag is the place to be.
In a tent you have to unbag, boot up, and crawl all over a sleeping companion to see what the stars are up to. In a bivvy, the stars are shining right down onto your nose. When the moonlight falls onto a sea of cloud, and the Isle of Skye floats across the sea like a silver dream, do you really want to be zipped up under a green dome asleep? And when the wind howls in the heather and the rain gradually trickles in, you don’t experience the full misery when you recline in waterproof tented splendour. If you like to travel a nice short distance with a comfortingly heavy pack, and to spend the sunset hours lying in a cramped green space rehydrating little packets over a cooker, then what you want is a tent. Or perhaps a youth hostel, or hotel. But if you want to walk right across the Lakes in a weekend, or right across Scotland in a week – if you prefer a small portable rucksack with no oppressive luxuries (like Karrimats, dry clothing, or cookers) to interfere between you and the mountain experience – then you want the little green bag.
Apart from anything else, a tent won’t ever fit onto that ledge of Sgurr na Ciche.
My thanks to various companions (Oliver, Colin, Virginia and Glyn) for confirming that it’s not just me, and that the bag really is for having fun in. Julian Miles carefully explained just why I’d got so wet in Belfast, and has given useful advice on various technical points. Don’t waste their efforts. Find a sunset summit somewhere and shake out that bag.
Chapter 1 BASIC BIVVY
PEIGNE AND SUFFERING
On the way up, we met two other British people coming down. ‘Benighted: abseiled off: you’ll see our rope hanging in the chimney.’
Silly Brits, don’t understand Alpine climbing, always get benighted. We’d pick up their rope as we passed it and bring it back to the campsite that evening. Or that late afternoon – the Aiguille de la Peigne is one of the smallest of the Chamonix Aiguilles, good rock and Grade III (British Diff) all the way.
The trouble with guidebooks is that they’re written by people who are very good at it. Our book was an English-language selection. The English-language selectors had omitted the Ordinary Route up the Peigne in favour of this terribly easy but rather nice rock route. But there are 600m/2000ft of that terribly easy rock. This is fine if you consider English Diff a scramble and climb it unroped. It’s not fine if you consider English Diff a climb.
As we went up we looked at our watches, looked at the rocks above, and got less and less British and more informally Alpine in our climbing. We reached the previous people’s jammed rope and removed it from the chimney. We got to the top of the climb and crossed onto the ordinary route. We abandoned all idea of the summit and set off down the ordinary route. It got darker.
The trouble with downhill rock climbing in the dark is that you can’t distinguish the worn footholds, the trampled ledges, the turned-over screes of the correct line. So on a suitable rocky ledge we decided to stop and get benighted.
All night long we heard the meltwater dripping, so the temperature can’t even have got down to freezing. And we were equipped. We’d read all about it in The White Spider, and we’d gone in to get some of this sophisticated survival equipment. ‘I would like,’ I told them at Tiso’s, ‘a bivouac sack.’
They looked puzzled, then laughed. ‘Ah – you mean a polybag!’ Surprisingly for such an advanced bit of kit, the cost was only five shillings.
The five-shillingsworth were bright orange and rather thick. I wriggled into a cosy hole below some boulders. The other people’s rope, coils opened out into a long figure-eight, made a bed that was almost comfortable. A barley-sugar sweet, placed in the downhill cheek, spread an illusory warmth – bad for the teeth but good for morale. I certainly slept for some of the time.
After we’d listened to about a hundred thousand drips, the dripping darkness gave way to a dripping grey half-light. When you know you’re about to leave the bag and be even colder it seems less uncomfortable. A good shiver warms you up and then you can doze a little. Until a strange whirr and sudden rattle from overhead…
We were directly underneath the Mont Blanc cablecar. Fifty yards away in the grey air, well-fed people were passing through the sky in a warm plastic box. Their windows were steamed up: with any luck they couldn’t see us.
We packed our bags and scurried down the mountain. In the meadows below, the first of the new day’s climbers were heading for the Peigne. A pair with the patched-breeches look of the British were heading off towards the bottom of the 600m/2000ft terribly easy rockclimb…
PROBLEMS OF THE POLYBAG
Today we’ve upgraded the name to ‘Survival Bag’ but the price is relatively unchanged at between £5 and Free With This Month’s Issue. And there’s no doubt that these things do aid survival. Dumfriesshire, for example, has two extra inhabitants because of them. An elderly neighbour suffered a mild heart attack in the Enterkin Pass and lay for five hours in a snowstorm. A much younger one fell while descending into Glen Shiel, broke both ankles and jawbone, and nobody knew where he was except a friend who’d just that day emigrated to New Zealand. He lay in his bag for four days.
No piece of equipment does better in terms of lives saved per pound sterling, with the possible exception of bootlaces and other short lengths of string. But the survival bag means what it says. You wake up miserable, but alive.
Much of that misery is down to dampness. A medium-sized human, in the course of a night, emits about a pint of water. This pint (or half-litre, for a slightly smaller person who thinks in metric) condenses on the inside of the plastic. From there it gets into your hair, your clothes, your sleeping bag if you’re lucky
