Going...Going...
The
alarm rang as usual about seven and, as usual, was ignored. The
debris attendant on three climbers sprawled across the floor of
Blonde Nick’s caravan while the climbers lay on the bunks and
struggled silently with their dreams, their bladders and whatever
else came to hand. The van rocked now and then on its rusty springs
as gusts of wind blustered down Glen Nevis. During the next half hour
mummy like figures struggled half upright one by one and pressed
their noses to the cold and misty glass. One by one they lay back
down without a word and, as sleep crept back in, a first peculiar
ritual of the day seemed complete.
Outside
it was snowing.Not up and down snow, but side to side snow. Although
each climber was silent and appeared to be asleep, their thoughts
were already up and wandering dreamily around the hills outside. They
wandered slowly up to the highest gullies of the Ben,down
which spindrift poured, and over which cornices creaked.
Down
from the ridges and buttresses where a rope of three would shuffle
their feet on the ledges and freeze in the bitter wind.
Down
to the C.I.C, down the soggy path to the dam, down to the Golf Club,
and finally back to the sordid dripping interior of the Van. This was
the strenuous reasoning that lulled the climbers back to sleep, a
process often mistaken by the inexperienced eye for simple laziness.
An
hour later I woke to the sharp and painful knowledge that a second
ritual of the day must shortly be performed, or a sleeping bag
shortly be watered. I’d had a dream, I’d looked over the mountain
and seen Hendrix on stage in Coire Cas. I kicked Phil awake and
started to describe the scene. He rolled his head toward me and, with
the air of an old and tired confessor, asked: “What the fuck are
you on about now?”
But
he wasn’t the problem. I’d known him for years and we had
developed a range of understanding about life and, broadly speaking,
were in favour. Anyway, he’d been climbing all week, an achievement
almost unique in an inglorious decade of mountaineering and was
consequently knackered. The problem was Pete. He’d arrived last
night fresh and keen from a conference in Aberdeen about how to die
in the North Sea. It seems this is quite an easy thing to do and so,
naturally, Pete spent the evening briefing us against such a
possibility. Short of a partner and a doss, a few beers later he had
both, and we had the usual highly defined plan. Tomorrow we would
have a look at ‘something’ and it would be ‘short’. Now, even
though confronted by the white hostility of the day, he was up,
obviously driven by a stronger will, or weaker bladder than mine. He
made a brew and we sat the three of us with glazed eyes and hands
round steaming mugs, like refugees waiting for negotiations to begin.
It
was from such unpromising beginnings that the fragile possibilities
of the day grew slowly into an Icicle that flows from the undercut
base of Number Five gully on Aonach Dubh. A rare and elusive pitch
this one, creeping down slowly through the empty air on cold nights,
a tantalising possibility seldom strong enough to bear the schemes of
those who stood beneath it. But this was the year of the Icicle when
everyone’s local
crag became an icecrop, guide books were left where they fell, and
trails beaten to the most unlikely places.
So,
our Icicle had come of age…’ Thirty feet…no more…good
landing’ according to the authorative Englishman in the bar last
night. Weeks ago, in another bar in Keswick, Davie MacDonald had
wizened up his face and quoted us twice that height. But then who
would buy a second-hand icicle from a man who was playing pool with
one ball? Second hand because Cubby had climbed it but not before
showing in passing that the ground below was indeed good to land on.
So
that was it, just what we needed, short walk, one pitch climb and
‘…you
can always come down if you don’t like it…can’t you?’
A
few veils of snow drifted up and down the Coe and the Icicle was
revealed, now and then, as a very small icy incident on a very large
crag. A sabre-toothed gully with the empty mouth of the rock open and
dark behind. It seemed to shrink to our kind of size as we slunk up
the slope beneath, only to sprout up fast when we stood with our
necks bent back at the dripping bottom. A clear forty feet of it hung
completely free, it’s tip tickling the slope below, with a further
fifteen or twenty so feet of vertical clinging to the rock until it
eased back into the gully above.
It
was Pete’s pitch. He’d been here before and this time was psyched
up to push things to a conclusion. Phil and I slouched about smug in
the knowledge that today at least there would come no moment high and
lonely on the Ice with all the choices gone. From this comfortable
position we generously offered Pete our various assessments of the
problem.
He
racks up his gear in a suspiciously systematic way for someone who
claims this is his third Scottish ice route. Nobody’s fooled though
because
he’s swopped us a Devils Appendix for a Curtain and the Karakoram
for a Carnmore. Mysteriously events have now developed their own
momentum and the cold shower of meltwater in which we stand evokes no
more comment than Pete’s throwaway line about his jacket being not
much good below twenty thousand feet.
He
climbs up and down the first dubious ten feet or so to satisfy
himself that the ice is ok and, since it seems to be, he ties on the
ropes and makes a start. The first few fragile moments pass to the
sound of tinkling ice and withheld breaths, until Pete develops a
rhythm, switches off the relevant part of his brain and clunks slowly
up into the sky. The placements are good once the surface crud is
cleared away and at about thirty feet he takes a rest, arms dangling,
hanging from his hooked in Terrors and apologises for the delay.
I
begin to realise that he won’t be climbing down now and fumble
superstitiously in my sac for a helmet as odd lumps of ice begin to
sneakily appear at speed from high up the gully. Phil scurries about
from side to side, framing it, composing it, wide angling and zooming
it, calling for smiles and bows. Pete, with some feeling back in his
arms, sets off again, almost out of my sight now, round bulges of
dripping ice. He’s completed the detached section of the Icicle and
moves left to a small grotto in search of some protection more solid
than the screws that slid too easily into the ice below. After much
mumbling and hammering he gives up the search and moves back onto the
ice leaving behind a tied off peg, unconsoled by our encouraging
shouts of ‘Only fifteen feet to go!’
I
realise now that soon I’ll be hanging up there and so begin to
scheme the easiest way from A to B. I’ll find all his placements
and just hook up it, no scrabbling about with manky ice for me. I’ll
leave all the screws for Phil to struggle with by persuading him
he’ll need them for rests being so knackered from his big week.
I’ll just scamper up with the minimum of brain damage and then I’ll
be able to say how easy…BANG!’…..Shit!’ … I dive into the
cave …briefly glimpse a pillar of ice in the sky settling for a
moment on its fang into the slope like a factory chimney might just
before it tilts out and thunders down. Three successive violent blows
to my helmeted head follow as the screws attached to lumps of ice
rattle down the ropes amid a dense cloud of ice dust.
All
you have to do is close your eyes and then when you open them again
its gone. Two ropes hanging and spinning round a roof of ice and rock
fifty feet up and fifteen feet out. Pete clings to his Terrors
just
above the dotted line. Phil gazes through his lens at the pitch
now
noisily receding down the hill. A few feet to my left there is a
crater about four feet deep littered with ice blocks as if a mortar
bomb had landed. ‘Incoming or outgoing?’ I wonder, before
deciding it must have been a bit of both.
The
fracture had sprung from the tip of Pete’s right axe, run down
beside him, curved under his feet and then broke away. Although he’d
felt the screws pull he seemed to have some trouble believing that
the whole pitch was gone. When he got his mind round this he also
realised that going on was definitely too freaky as we could now see
all too clearly how much water was draining behind the ice. Pete
crept back to his peg slotting the Terrors tenderly into the
placements he’d made so confidently a few minutes before. Phil and
I felt helpless and silently began to heave the biggest blocks of ice
from the landing strip.
Three
boys from Devon piled around the corner to help dig our bodies out
having heard the Bang and seen the bad news churning down the slopes.
Upstairs Pete slowly made his calculations and rigged two ice screws
to back up the tied off peg then gently, very gently, floated down
through the air to the snow below. We swopped amazements, reliefs and
useless wisdoms as passers by did double takes and stopped on the
path below.
We
slowly packed our sacs with much looking and wondering and shaking of
heads. The weight of it…the mechanics…’If I’d ever for a
moment, even a moment, thought there was the remotest possibility’….
We
could now see exactly how the whole tonnage of the thing was hung
from a sheet of ice eight inches thick and eight feet across.
So,
treat it gently if you should ever, because there’s a trigger
there, a lever, a hidden spring. We came back down as the sun came
out and clambered over the blue ice blocks beneath a rainbow.Ducks
on the loch stuck their bums into the air and we sat by the river and
laughed.
Up
there something was missing.Tomorrow was All Fools’ day.
Gone!
Footnote
from Phil Swainson.
The
“three boys from Devon” who piled around the corner to dig out
our bodies were not. They were three Scottish guys, two of whom,
John Mackenzie and Duncan Macallum became friends, and sometime
climbing partners. Shortly after this wee epic, I left Newcastle to
live in Sheffield, where our new pal Pete Thexton became a firm
friend. His skill, tenacity and formidable motivation secured him a
place on a winter attempt on Everest, and other trips. He died too
young in 1983 on the descent from the summit plateau of Broad Peak.
And now, forty years on, John Given and I are still hauling our beer
bellies up steep(ish) rock, provided there are enough bolts. The
combined age of the this pair is 141.
First
published in Mountain 71, this attempt at the second ascent of
Eliot’s Downfall took place 40 years ago. We walked away without a
scratch. Article by John Given, pictures Phil Swainson.
