he said, blading a hand in my direction for emphasis. ‘It’s steep and exposed and it looks horrible, but the rock’s solid. And it’s better than the alternatives.’ I saw the look on his face and I didn’t like it: a kind of bouncy-eyebrowed I’ve-got-a-story-you-don’t want-to-hear look. Mal probably had a lot of stories I didn’t want to hear – as well as a whole bunch he probably didn’t want to tell.
Loosely, mountain rescue teams are the emergency services for the British mountains – only they aren’t, certainly not in the conventional sense. Nobody gets paid; few teams are even funded beyond the odd bit of clothing or radio gear, and they scratch sustenance from donations and tax breaks to keep volunteers equipped and trained. Beyond a doubt they’re heroes – but the cost can be steep. A mountain fall is not a pleasant way to go; it’s violent, tearing, shocking. Those dispatched to accidents where they sometimes literally have to pick up the pieces often suffer lasting psychological trauma. Some volunteers harden to encountering death in the mountains. Many, somewhat understandably, can’t.
If the fact that our mountain rescue personnel are local volunteers like Mal rather than paid-up professionals who ride around in helicopters all day is a surprise to many, the idea that Britain’s mountains are dangerous enough to need rescue personnel at all might come as another. In terms of their physical attributes, our mountains are laughable in comparison with those found in many other mountainous countries in the world. We’ve no glaciers filled with bottomless crevasses; no oxygen-drained high-altitude death zones in which pulmonary or cerebral oedema can stealthily kill you; no bears or mountain lions to keep an ear awake for in a quiet mountainside camp. But what we do have are hundreds – thousands – of steep, storied and striking mountains, and a lot of people interested in climbing them for amusement or thrill. The urge to climb mountains has complex, but largely pointless, sources – and often the feeling of danger is cited as justification in itself. The swaggery adage of ‘feeling more alive the closer you are to death’ often crops up at this point. But sometimes, for reasons often beyond control, close gets too close.
Before you even insert humans into the equation, mountains are in any case pretty hairy places. Avalanches and rockfalls are difficult to predict, and impossible to control. Freak weather gets freakier and more frequent the higher you go, and even the most benign gland of a hill can rapidly turn malignant given inclement conditions. Pieces of mountains fall down from time to time. Temperatures fall by around 6°C per 1,000 metres, a phenomenon known as the lapse rate – which, on a British mountain in spring, can mean the difference between dewy grass at sea level and solid ice at the summit, with damaging consequences for the unprepared. Lightning can strike without warning and with impunity, sometimes out of a clear blue sky, and wind can blow you off an exposed mountaintop in an unexpected gust. In the UK alone, all of these account for victims in double digits each year.
Sometimes when it comes to death or injury the mountains are merely aggravating bystanders. Heart attacks, strokes and the occasional suicide (including some extraordinarily odd cases in the Highlands of Scotland*) aren’t at all uncommon.
But most accidents in the mountains occur as the result of the smallest human error. Misjudgement, poor timing, inadequate clothing, distraction, panic, inexperience, over-ambition, under-preparedness, over-reliance – then the most simple and common of all: a split second of physical failing. A slip in a dangerous place. A trip. A tired stumble. Even something as innocuous as a broken shoelace or a dropped compass can be the spark that ignites a crisis. Head for a dangerous mountain and you need your head screwed on – a second can be all it takes.
Between 2002 and 2011 mountain-rescue teams in England, Wales and Scotland responded to 11,558 incidents in the hills. Of these, 6,862 yielded injuries, of which 564 were fatalities – almost exactly 10 per cent. The pattern of these statistics is unnervingly consistent but makes perfect sense when you think about it. ‘Slip, trip or stumble’ is the number one rescue-triggering mishap, year on year. ‘Falls or tumbles’ come a close second, with ‘lost’ as the number three cause of reported distress in the mountains. What’s interesting about these otherwise unsurprising figures is the nature of the wounding activity when broken down by region. In terms of objective dangers, Scotland has by far the most severe ground and weather, but their hills feel comparatively fewer feet – and the ones they do tend to be more experienced. Thus, Scotland has a much lower overall rate of incident when total area and potential high places in which to come unstuck are taken into account.* The Lake District has by far the most incidents for hillwalking, largely injuries to the lower legs befitting an ugly slip or a fracturing step. But Snowdonia’s principal cause of damage is rock scrambling – almost to the point of exclusivity. If you’re going to fall off a ridge, chances are you’ll do it in Snowdonia. And with one or two exceptions, you’ll very likely do it on Crib Goch. Which is why I wanted to talk to Mal.
‘So,’ he said after a while. ‘What’s your plan?’
I explained that later tonight – preferably after a splendid and unhealthy pub meal – I intended to drive up to Pen-y-Pass, wander into a secluded valley beneath Crib Goch and wild camp for the night. Then, come the dawn, I’d hit the ridge. Mal pulled a face.
‘Bad idea?’
‘Have you seen the forecast?’
I confessed that I had, but only the general forecast. Everything had seemed so meteorologically settled I hadn’t gotten round to it yet.
‘Well, the proper* forecast shows a front arriving early tomorrow morning. Gales, rain … Can’t say I’d want to be up there.’
‘Oh.’ Balls. This I should have checked.
‘May I suggest a compromise?’ said Mal. ‘Do the first section – the, ah, exciting section – tonight. Then you can slip down into the little valley beneath the gap in the middle of the ridge, camp, relax – and do the rest in the morning. You’ve got the nasty bits over with whilst it’s dry, then.’
‘Nasty bits?’
He bobbed his eyebrows again. ‘Exciting bits.’
I looked at my watch. ‘It’s gone seven.’
‘Well then,’ Mal drained the rest of his drink, ‘best get your skates on.’
***
The fast road to Snowdon from Bethesda takes you first through the broad half-pipe of the Ogwen valley. Here, ancient mountains spill slate to the roadside, lining the grand valley like a colonnade of towering, crumbling gargoyles. You pass Tryfan, a freestanding 918-metre arrowhead crowned with two tiny pinnacles: Adam and Eve. It’s a popular picture on the postcard racks; positioned just far enough apart to allow an uncomfortably nervy leap from one to the other, performing this summiteer’s tradition is said to gain you the ‘freedom’ of the peak.
Then the road bends and you brush the village of Capel Curig, before entering quaggy open ground, scudding along the shore of Llynnau Mymbyr towards the dark mass of Snowdon. From here, the triangular sweep of Crib Goch guards its parent peak in a protective curl, like a drawn cloak. The building overgrown with vegetation that appears to the right is the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel, marking the corner turn into the Pass of Llanberis – the road that wiggles up to the foot of Snowdon like a dropped cable.
Crags tower either side as you ascend, including some of the most storied in Britain. Find similar outcrops in Spain or Switzerland and, chances are, they’re just crags – unremarkable, unexplored and unexploited. But in Britain, being the confined menagerie of interested parties and interesting
