an interesting obsession, for the first couple of hours at least.
And so that first night at the Clachaig rolls on. Red faces, swollen knuckles, diminishing pints, growing excitement and anticipation as hopes and plans build for tomorrow. At least they don’t train on orange juice and early nights. Their regime seems to be one of alcohol, nicotine, late nights and systematic abuse, both verbal and bodily. Suits me.
I stand outside our chalet door for a few minutes before going to bed. The air is clear and cold, smelling unmistakably of snow. Clouds move across a three-quarter moon and sweep enormous shadows over the glimmering slopes across the glen. Passing voices ring hard in the frost. Orion is rising, the wind whispers over the snow, distant echoing water. I feel uplifted and self-forgetting before the irresistible forces of moon, shadow, mountains, snow. This alone was worth coming here for. I shake my head and go inside. See what tomorrow brings. Hope I’m up to it. I’ve been training two months for this.
The wind’s gusting spindrift into our faces, but my new gear keeps me surprisingly warm as we plod up through soft, deep snow into Lost Valley. We go over ice-axe braking and the placing of ‘deadmen’, which are in effect snow anchors. Then the fun’s over. Time to do some climbing.
My heart thuds wildly as we gear up, I have to force myself to breathe slowly and deep. Concentrate. I buckle on the harness, tie in the rope, get the knot right on the second attempt. Then strap the crampons onto my cumbersome rigid-soled double boots. The cramps are like heavy-duty running spikes, with two additional fangs projecting out in front. Then I sort out my two ice axes. Both have sharply inclined picks with teeth notched towards the tip; the head of one ends with a hammer for knocking in and removing pitons, while the head of the other ends in an adze for cutting steps. Apparently this is largely redundant, as the combination of front-pointed crampons and inclined picks make step-cutting unnecessary in most situations.
I feel absurd and overburdened, like a deep-sea diver in a paddling pool, as I follow Mal up the steepening slope. It’s not steep enough – he says – to merit belaying. I keep my gaze determinedly at my feet. Slip, flurry, recover. Continue. Untangle these stupid axes. Stop tripping over the crampons. Up and across, don’t like traverses, getting pretty high now. Don’t look, watch your feet, time for doing, not thinking. How clear the sounds are: scrape of crampons on rock, scrunch of boots in snow, jingling harness, echoing wind, a faint mewing cry …
We look up and spot a figure waving awkwardly further up John Gray’s Buttress. ‘Looks like he’s got gripped,’ says Mal. ‘Kick yourself a ledge and wait here.’ I feel a moment’s pleasant superiority over the incompetent up ahead, then a surge of fellow feeling. Mal tries to persuade him to climb down, but the shake of the head is vehement even from here. I look down. Safe enough really, but just the same … Mal climbs further up, secures a belay. In crabbed, awkward movements the man picks his way down. When he finally passes me, he’s white-faced and embarrassed. ‘Snow’s tricky in patches,’ he mutters apologetically. I agree politely.
A shout from Mal. He’s waving me up towards a ledge on the left beside a steep drop into a narrow gully, then adds something I can’t catch. By the time I reach the ledge, he’s disappeared. The rope runs over the edge into the gully, then drops out of sight. I wait. And wait. And wait.
Thirty minutes later there’s still no sign of him and the view downhill is beginning to impinge on me, nagging like a toothache. I shout tentatively, feeling foolish. No answer. Adrenalin wears off and muscles stiffen. Now what? Don’t think. Wait. Odd feeling alone up here …
He finally appears below me, plodding up the hill looking puffed and not very pleased. ‘Dropped my glove belaying that wazzock, it slid right to the bottom of the gully.’ I ask what had happened to the man he’d rescued. ‘Gripped,’ he says shortly and indicates our next line. A traverse right across a distinctly steep snow slope. He sets off. Looks like I’m not going to be belayed. I’ve had a lot of time to get nervous and don’t like the look of it, but follow on gingerly, thinking about avalanche, about falling …
I reach his stance, a narrow ledge beside a boulder, panting hard. Nerves, mostly. ‘Right, better clip in now, Andy.’
I put him on belay through the descendeur as we rehearsed on his stairway a lifetime ago. He checks my gear, goes over the call sequence and disappears round the corner. One day all of this will seem normal. I peer round to see where he’s making for and find myself looking down the throat of an apparently sheer snow chute. I look away, feeling ill. How did we get so high? This fear is like seasickness, invading mind and body. Hands tighten, stomach lurches, legs feel weak, stare fixedly in front … ‘Gripped’ is the right word for it. One grips and is gripped by an enormous fist of fear. I can’t do this. I’ll have to cry off the Expedition. What a farce. Then angry at myself, at this instinctive fear and revulsion. A clinking sound drifts faintly back. He must be putting in a runner. Good man. Put in a dozen. Stare at the weave in my gloves, the powder snow caught in the cuff of the windsuit. All sharp and vivid, too clear. ‘I’ll put you in controlled freak-out situations,’ Mal had said. ‘You freak out and I’ll control them.’ He knows what he’s doing. You trust him, don’t you? Yes. So nothing to worry about, just don’t make an ass of yourself …
The rope stops paying out. I start untangling myself, take off the descendeur and clip it to my harness. The slack’s taken in, then tugs come down the line. If only we had to face just one moment of truth, not many. Here goes …
‘Good enough, youth.’
I arrive at Mal’s stance and subside, jittering with adrenalin. I’ve just learned that waiting is worst; climbing itself is too novel, too demanding and intense to leave much room for anxiety. Or for memory. Already the last twenty minutes are reduced to a floundering through whiteness, stinging knuckles caught between axe shaft and rock, a flurried impromptu tango when my crampons interlocked, a hurried pull-up, the surge of satisfaction when the pick thuds into frozen turf. All so clumsy and unfamiliar, but something in this lark, perfectly safe really …
Then I look down and that anxiety that is like drowning rushes up to my throat. We’re poised out on the edge of space. Horrible. Unnatural. I shrink back into the slope. Mal points out matter-of-factly that the crampons can’t grip properly this way. Clinging to the slope actually increases the likelihood of falling. I point out this may well be true and would make a sound Buddhist parable, but every instinct in my body shouts at me not to stand upright.
By now the weather’s deteriorating fast; a greenish-grey sky and each gust fiercer than the last. And the pitch above us isn’t filled in with snow and ice – Mal points it out, I shudder and try to sound regretful when he decides we’ve done enough for today. And oddly enough, I suddenly am. He belays my descent along a ridge and down the sheerest slope yet. Perhaps because down is the right direction, I enjoy it and even find the blinding spindrift exhilarating. Then turn outwards and step-plunge down, feeling positively elated. Great to be in the hills, feeling oneself so physically immediate, so simple … And there’s something pleasing in the essence of winter climbing; a rope, axes, crampons, things to wedge in cracks, and with these one can go almost anywhere, in reasonable safety. Pointless maybe, but satisfying. And I like the way in which, quite unlike rock climbing, routes appear and disappear, may only exist for a few days every other year, are never the same twice.
In the valley we find an ice slab and mess around on that, reluctant to pack in for the day. Vertical and all of 12 feet high. My first fall of the day leaves me dangling helplessly from one axe wrist-loop, unable to go up or down, feet six inches off the ground, cursing a Duff helpless with laughter.
As we plod back, the wind redoubles. The combination of spindrift and fresh snow forms drifts in minutes. A couple of gusts simply knock us over. It’s exhilarating. We do not know this is the beginning of
