called a “friend”. Not totally reliable, but very useful at times.’
We went through the belaying sequence on the floor of a quarry. I was cumbersome and ponderous as I stumbled along pretending there was a 1000-foot drop on my right, placing runners along the rock on my left. When I shouted ‘On belay!’ my voice sounded absurd and lacking in conviction, like the first time you try to hail a taxi or call ‘Waiter!’. Mal followed on round the corner, walking slowly, treating this charade with elaborate seriousness. He came to the first runner, removed the peg – then abruptly fell back. I instinctively pulled the rope back on the descendeur and he was held. He came on again, head down. When he arrived at my stance he looked up, shook his head. ‘Whew, that was a bit thin, youth!’ We laughed. It was a game. The whole activity is an absurd and sometimes delightful game.
He led through and we did a couple of pitches on genuine slopes. It’s clever and simple, this whole procedure, each climber alternately protecting the other. I was still getting tangled up and several times hit myself on the helmet with an ice axe, but it was beginning to feel more natural. Finding out what crampons can do, working out different moves, reading the slope ahead. The last pitch was a scramble; the snow deep and powdery, no purchase in it, then loose and shallow over rocks. Spindrift blowing up into my face, balaclava slipping over my eyes. The left axe pulled through and I was off balance, hacking away wildly for purchase, slipping … An internal voice spoke very clearly, ‘Slow down, look for it.’ I spotted frozen turf, the inclined pick went in and held. Lovely. Pull up, across, come out on the top and find Mal sitting patient and immobile as a Buddha, wrapped in a cloak of spindrift.
We finished up by building a snowhouse. It was more of a beehive than a classic igloo, but the shelter it provided was impressive. Absolutely silent and windless inside. ‘If those missing Army blokes have made one of these and stay in it, they’ll be all right for days.’
Back in the gloaming, in high spirits, for tea and the latest disaster stories. A few casualties, but no fatalities in Glencoe. In the evening I borrowed a guitar and sang a few songs I’d written years before to go with my Men on Ice. Mal was very taken with them, insisted I put them on tape, and spent much of the rest of our time in Glencoe wandering about with the earphones on, bawling out the lyrics. When he was over in the pub I wrote some new verses to Throw me down some more rope, and a middle section. Mal was amazed on his return. ‘How can you do that?’ ‘How can you solo Grade Five?’ I replied. It was good to be reminded there were things I could do competently.
‘We’ll try a harder route tomorrow,’ he said as I crawled into my bag. I lay thinking about that as he muttered over a new verse and the chorus, trying to memorize the words:
Halfway up ‘Whitesnake’ when the blizzard hits,
Can’t feel your nose or your toes, everything goes
And nothing grips (except you);
It’s a funny desire, wanting to get higher,
Sometimes you wish you’d stayed below,
Sometimes you know that it’s right,
Sometimes you know that it’s wrong,
And sometimes you just Don’t Know –
Throw me down some more rope (throw me down)
Throw me down some more rope (hey, youth!)
Throw me down some more rope ’cos I’m falling,
Yes I’m falling …
We set out in the half-light. No cloud, no wind, blue sky filtering through. The high ridges slowly become three-dimensional as we plod up the road in silence, our senses sharp and clear as the air. A flock of sheep freshly out of a snowdrift are encrusted with icicles; as they move, a delicate tinkling like wind chimes sounds across the valley. A buzzard circles into high sunlight, drifting on invisible currents. Three crows beside a frozen stream tear at a dead rabbit. Glencoe goes about its immemorial business.
It was a long day that, on the north face of Aonach Dubh, but only fragments of it remain lodged in the memory, like slivers of ice caught in a windsuit’s creases. I was too caught up with what was happening to record, too present to stand back, too scared to take photographs.
The first pitch up a narrowing snow-choked gully made the first day’s efforts seem child’s play. Relief and exhilaration on arriving at Mal’s stance, then half an hour clinging to a stunted rowan tree, fighting off paralysis and panic, hating it. Sitting still is the worst. Time to take in where you are, time to think, time to fear. I look down – too far, too steep, too empty. I glance up – too high, too steep, too endless. Contemplating going on this Expedition is absurd. My body hates this. Don’t look, don’t think. Keep the rope going. Where’s Mal got to? If you think this is bad, imagine the sense of exposure on Mustagh … Extraordinary clarity of lichen on this branch, the precise angle of this fork …
It’s a relief to be climbing again, traversing onto a buttress of steep rock, soft snow, patchy frozen turf. Gloves off, treating some of it as a rock climb, half-remembered techniques from childhood scrambling. Chunks of knuckle left on rocks, arms with all the resilience of blancmange. Concentrating hard, each movement dreamlike in its intensity. I call for tight rope and get it. Thanks, pal. Over a bulge, there he is …
Another anxious wait on belay, then another pitch. It’s beginning to feel more natural. I cease tying myself up in Gordian knots of slings, rope, krabs and ice axe lines. Even relax enough to snatch a photo as Mal works his way up an angled cleft above me. After two hours fear starts to lose its urgency, and though I know this pitch is tricky by my standards I push up through soft snow, cross onto rock, find some lovely frozen turf and almost shout with satisfaction as the picks thud home. Hold an elephant, that would. Now pull up … Something in this lark, after all.
Until you pause and catch a glimpse of below.
An hour and two pitches later we come out on top of the ridge. I’m shattered, puffing like an old espresso machine, arm muscles like wet newspaper from working above my head all the time. In addition to the long approach plod, then the physical effort of climbing, I’ve put out enough nervous energy to light up Glencoe village for a year. But the weather’s menacing and the light starting to go, so Mal hurries on and I plod after. We pause on the summit of Aonach Dubh – briefer than a kiss is this final pay-off, that’s the joke of it.
Mal points down No. 2 Gully. ‘Follow me as fast as you can – but concentrate.’ I sense a certain urgency in his voice, and follow him down in the half-light. It seems steep, but I haven’t the energy to care. Step, plunge, axe, step, plunge … It becomes endless, unreal, hypnotic. I begin to stumble, stuff snow in my mouth to stay awake. Somewhere along the line a crampon disappears. No time to look for it, carry on … I seem to have been doing this forever, stepping down through the gathering dark. In the distance Mal swings right and up onto a buttress. Eventually I join him. ‘Well done,’ he says briefly. Must have been harder than it looked. It’s getting very dim now. We start feeling our way down over rock, scree and snow towards the yellow lights in the valley.
Finally his urgency relaxes, the rest is straightforward. We sit for five minutes on Dinnertime Buttress, munching biscuits and looking over at the glimmering slopes across the glen. We say nothing, but it is many months
