we …?’ I splutter. He nods. ‘I’d been saving that one up for a while.’
A new route for my first route. I’m outraged, flabbergasted, and not a little chuffed. Of course it wasn’t hard – Grade 2 or 3 he reckons – and all I did was follow on, but the sense of delight and absurdity sustain me on the rest of the trudge back. ‘Two Shakes’ I say finally. ‘Why?’ ‘Well, there was two tree belays on it, there’s two parts to it – the gully and the buttress – and I’m lying about the amount of shaking I did!’
Finally, we push through the door of the Clachaig into a gust of warmth and light and laughter. Then the simple wonder of sitting down. We’ve been on the go for eleven hours. I slump back against the wall, totally blank.
‘Tired, youth?’ Mal asks.
I search for the right epithet.
‘Massacred,’ I say briefly, and with some effort raise the first pint of the night to my lips.
We left Glencoe two days later. I was relieved yet oddly regretful as the old blue van struggled out of the valley. Five days in this place had been a month of normal time. Grinding and slipping past abandoned cars, cottages up to their eyelids in snow, a snowblower moving across the wilderness of Rannoch Moor, followed by a tiny man in yellow oilskins …
We were silent as we worked our way south toward civilization and its dubious benefits. What had happened to me here, what had I learned? The extent of my fear, for one thing. It hadn’t miraculously evaporated over the intervening years, like teenage acne. I felt weakened by that fear, yet strengthened for having coped with it. Perhaps one can never overcome fear completely – after all, it is often a sane and appropriate response-what counts is that it doesn’t overcome you.
Being a novice climber is like having a weak head for alcohol: people may laugh at you, but you get high more easily. It didn’t take much to get my heart thumping, whereas Mal has to push it a long way to get his kicks. Both novice and expert have the same experience, despite the huge gulf in their capabilities. Both know fear, exhilaration, satisfaction, relief. Both have to persist through discomfort and utter fatigue. Both have to recognize their limits, then push a little further. And both experience the great simplification of one’s life that is the reward of all risk activities …
But I was thinking most of all about the two Army lads who were found dead today in the Cairngorms, and of the half-buried monument to the Massacre of Glencoe. Our ‘massacre’ by the elements is a self-imposed one, a piece of personal theatre. When it is over, all but a few get to their feet again and feel themselves, behind their fatigue, somehow stronger and more alive than before.
For those who do not rise again, there remains the unyielding pillar of stone, the inscription obliterated by drifting snow.
We prepare to bottle up and go November 1983–May 1984
I trained for our Expedition from late November till our departure in early June. I had not trained for anything in fifteen years. It was hard work. Sit-ups, pull-ups, press-ups, toe-ups, Bullworker, stiff hill walking with a weighted backpack. And, above all, running. Between three and eight miles, five days a week.
Picture one of those montage sequences used in films to indicate continued effort through time. At first we see an unfit, ungainly figure running through falling leaves, the last rags of autumn quivering in the trees. He emerges, panting and staggering, onto an open beach. Then the trees are bare, the light low and brief; it’s a world drained of colour and sound; no birds sing, but the runner now seems to be moving more firmly and rejoices in the frozen sand as he turns for home in the half-light of 3.30. Then clots of snowdrops appear on the forest floor, then crocuses, birdsong, movements in the undergrowth. The runner has removed his gloves, then his sweater. He is moving faster and lighter than before, more upright. And suddenly the light is fresh and green, it is May, and as he turns for home at 8.00 on a sunlit evening – wearing only shorts and running shoes – he is running not towards his home and a cool shower but towards a tower of snow and rock some four and a half miles high, on the roof of the world.
I’d noticed the sudden proliferation of runners in the last few years. I could only shake my head and wonder at them. It all looked too mindless and too painful: an exercise in masochism. To my surprise it was not like that at all.
Not only did I stick to my schedule of running five days a week, but I found myself looking forward to it. After a couple of days off, I’d be edgy and irritable, obscurely dissatisfied. ‘For God’s sake, go for a run,’ Kathleen would say, and her diagnosis was correct.
It was often uncomfortable, often painful, particularly for the first month, but other days were pure joy, a revelling in the sensation of movement, of strength and wellbeing. My regular headaches stopped. For the first time ever, I got through winter without even a cold. I felt incredibly well, began to walk and hold myself differently. When friends asked ‘How are you?’, instead of the normal Scottish ‘Oh, not too bad,’ I’d find myself saying ‘Extremely well!’
How obnoxious.
On other days training was pure slog, the body protesting and the will feeble. The mind could see little point in getting up before breakfast to run on a cold, dark morning, and none at all in continuing when it began to hurt. Take a break, why not have a breather, why not turn for home now?
It is at times like that that the real work is done. It’s easy to keep going when you feel strong and good. Anyone can do that. But at altitude it is going to feel horrible most of the time – and that’s what you’re really training for. So keep on running, through the pain and the reluctance. Do you really expect to get through this Expedition – this relationship, this book, this life for that matter – without some of the old blood, sweat and tears? No chance. That’s part of the point of it all. So keep on running …
The real purpose of training is not so much hardening the body as toughening the will. Enthusiasm may get you started, bodily strength may keep you going for a long time, but only the will makes you persist when those have faded. And stubborn pride. Pride and the will, with its overtones of fascism and suppression, have long been suspect qualities – the latter so much so that I’d doubted its existence. But it does exist, I could feel it gathering and bunching inside me as the months passed. There were times when it alone got me up and running, or kept me from whinging and retreating off a Scottish route. The will is the secret motor that keeps driving when the heart and the mind have had enough.
Mal would call it commitment. He’d said there was no point in going to a mountain with a ‘let’s see how it looks’ attitude. One’s commitment and self-belief had to be absolute. And yet that had to be balanced by clear, objective assessment of one’s capacities and limitations. That balancing act is at the very heart of climbing. I noticed that most climbers didn’t value bravado and boldness unless it was tempered by good judgement. One of the lads at Mal’s wedding said, ‘The hardest and bravest and probably the best mountaineering decision you can make is to say No.’ I looked at Tony. The diminutive innocent nodded vigorously. ‘That’s right. Mountaineering isn’t about getting to the top – it’s about mountaineering.’
To call mountaineering a sport or a pastime is like calling monastic life a hobby. For those who become serious – though seldom solemn – about it, it is the core of
