Over the Hills and Far Away

by Rob Collister

  But if I was damp on the stance, I wasn’t going to become any drier by climbing. I was safely to one side of the spindrift cascades that were being flushed almost incessantly down the gully: Geoff was right under them, and every so often he would disappear completely. Then, the two ropes vanishing into mobile whiteness were the only assurance that I was not entirely alone. I was reminded of that wet day a fortnight previously, when we had walked as far as the CIC intending to do this climb, thought better of it, and done battle with a rainy Clachaig Gully instead. Not that I was watching closely, for chunks of ice, large and small, and some very large, were peeling off the rock above and all around, rattling like castanets on our helmets, and it was asking for trouble to look up. They weren’t as lethal as stones, but the whirring and whining and banging kept me in a state of expectant, hunched-up tension. But then, I was not climbing.

  When Geoff had traversed left across a steep wall and disappeared back right over a bulge, and it was my turn to climb, I discovered that I no longer had time to worry about the lumps of ice. When the big flows came, I could only take a deep breath, keep my head down and cling on for dear life; and when the deluge eased, the sleeves of my jacket would be filled with snow, because it doesn’t have storm-cuffs. I would look up quickly to spot the next few moves, only to find that snow had piled up behind my glasses and I was blind. I was shivering and uncoordinated, and my hands lacked strength to grip the hammers. No, there wasn’t time to worry about falling ice.

  I was still cold when I reached Geoff. It hadn’t seeped through to him yet, and as I wrung out the dripping Dachsteins, grumbling, he said with just a hint of malice, ‘This’ll warm you up.’ I glanced surreptitiously upwards, and caught a glimpse of an alarmingly vertical ice groove before the next torrent arrived. ‘We must be crazy,’ I remarked, and started climbing. Perhaps we were, perhaps we should have abseiled off. The climb was manifestly ‘out of condition’ and we hadn’t started it till 2.30 p.m. But it’s good to be crazy sometimes. When I lose the urge occasionally to flout the rules, to laugh in the face of the pundits, I shall know that mental middle age has set in and it is time to be measured for my coffin. Besides, now that I was leading, and all energy and attention were about to be absorbed to the exclusion of wet and cold and mere physical sensation, retreat was the last thing on my mind.

  Technically, the pitch was hard, but easier than it looked, because often it was possible to bridge and not many moves were properly out of balance. Just as well, since it was like climbing Mr Whippy ice cream. Only occasionally did the hammer picks bite in securely, and since I could have waited all day for the spindrift to stop, most of the time I had no idea where I was placing hands and feet. Once, the snow gave way beneath me, and, as the weight came on my arms, the hammer picks sliced out. Even as I registered that I was falling off, both feet relocked into a bridging position two feet lower down.

  Normally, I suppose, I would have been left quivering with fright. But the bombardment of ice and near-suffocation in rushing drift rendered thought impossible and I was quite unmoved. Geoff hadn’t noticed – only the blue top of his crash-hat was visible below – and I reflected that ‘what the eye don’t see the heart don’t grieve over’. Banging in an ice peg, more because it seemed the right thing to do than because I believed in it, I moved up again, and before long was ensconced in a little bay where I could rest and place a proper peg runner.

  Above was a steep chimney but it seemed straightforward by comparison, and a chimneying position, with immovable rock to brace my back against, felt deliciously safe. The notorious final pitch was rearing up ahead now, and hoping to belay on rock at the foot of it, I started up another, easier-angled chimney. Halfway up, however, the rope came tight and I had to search for a belay. On ice you either climb a steep pitch quickly or you fall off: it is the quest for protection that takes time. It took me longer to find a crack that would accept half an inch of inverted blade than to climb the pitch, and though voices stood no chance against the continual hurly-burly of the snow, I was conscious of misery down below. Finally I was tied on and, wedging myself into the chimney, yanked the rope for Geoff to come.

  I was a long time in that position, because Geoff knackered himself taking out the ice peg and had to be lowered down for a rest. It was sleeting wetly and there wasn’t much to look at in the confines of the chimney. In such a situation, between bouts of shivering, one cannot help but ponder. I thought back to that perfect weekend earlier in the winter, when there had been queues for all the famous gullies, and from high on Observatory Buttress I had counted sixteen climbers clustered on the Great Tower. It had been a marvellous weekend of firm snow and brilliant sunshine, yet anticlimax had hovered over it. The summit of the Ben had been as populous as the top of Matlock High Tor on a summer’s afternoon. Somehow, it just wasn’t winter climbing. This was less enjoyable; in fact, I can’t pretend that I enjoyed a single moment of the day, in the way that one consciously savours sunny stances and warm rock, or eating steak and chips. But so what? What mattered was that the door of the CIC was locked in silent condemnation and we had the mountain to ourselves. Despite clothes that clung as though I had fallen into a swimming pool, and teeth that chattered like a pneumatic drill, I was glad to be there. That sounds like bullshit, I know. I can only insist that it was true. Admittedly, morale reached an all-time low when, after an hour, Geoff was still on the stance below. I even went so far as to suggest an abseil, but a timely gust of wind blew the words to the oblivion they deserved, and almost immediately the rope started coming in again.

  Finally Geoff arrived, looking as uncomfortable as I felt, with pendulous drips on eyebrows and nose, but stoical as ever. His hands were still very cold, so I led on. The final pitch looked ferociously steep, and by the time I was forty feet from the stance and a nut runner had lifted out, confidence demanded a couple of ice screws. The top one popped out when I tested it, but there didn’t seem to be any firmer ice, so I pushed it back in and pretended not to notice. In fact, this pitch also proved bridgeable, and it was legs rather than arms that could do the work; otherwise, handholds might have been necessary, as the hammer picks just weren’t biting. Unexpectedly soon I reached the top, emerging to a blessed region where spindrift flowed past my feet instead of over my head. Above, the gully lay back at a comfortable angle for 200 feet or so, before the mist gobbled it up. I felt like yodelling, but my mouth was too dry, so I simply grinned to myself, and then at myself, and was happy.

  As usual, the belay was poor, but Geoff didn’t come on to the rope, and soon we were moving together up into the gathering gloom, wondering if we could be off the mountain before dark. We had forgotten the cornice. If we had been sensible Geoff would have buried his dead man just below it and I could have climbed it in relative safety. But we were both tired, and when I told him not to bother with a belay, he took me at my word and stayed where he was, 100 feet lower. The cornice wasn’t that big, but the snow was rotten, and twice I was left dangling from a horizontally embedded axe. The second time, my arms felt as though they couldn’t take much more. It was no time to worry about margins of safety. Burying one arm in the snow and holding my breath lest the footholds collapse again, I cautiously withdrew the axe and slashed at the lip until I could reach over and tap the axe vertically downwards. Seizing it in both hands, I threw one leg over the top and rolled sideways on to the plateau. We were up.

  However, the saga was by no means over. The Ben was wrapped in drizzling mist and night had fallen. It was a cautious, probing descent along the plateau rim to Number Four Gully. Moisture on my glasses reduced visibility to almost nil, and as I could see even less without them I gratefully abandoned responsibility to Geoff. Once, we thought we were going uphill and turned back, abortively. But in the end we found the marker post and Geoff went over the edge. ‘Blimey, it’s steep,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t worry’ I replied casually, ‘there’ll be plenty of holds.’ There was an almost inaudible swish, and Geoff had gone. Aghast, I
peered over in time to see a dark flailing object come to rest, an inanimate heap, 120 feet below. ‘Are you all right?’ I called inanely, conscious of it even at the time. No reply. Now what? My brain unwillingly began to consider possible courses of action. At that moment the heap stirred, stood up, began to brush itself. Relief almost instantaneously gave way to anxiety as I realised that now it was my turn to climb down. I examined the marker post, hoping for an abseil, but it was inclined and the rope would have slipped off. Reluctantly, I lowered myself into blackness and found what Geoff had found, that there were no ready-made holds in the vertical little head wall. Having kicked steps for my feet, and thrust in the axe as far as it would go, I was faced with the problem of the next out of balance move. Suddenly it was made for me. The footholds collapsed, the axe pulled out, and I was falling free. It was only for a few feet, but when I landed I toppled over backwards, and at once I was rolling and somersaulting out of control. I was never too worried, because the snow was deep and the angle of Number Four eases off quickly, but I was relieved nonetheless when I slowed to a halt just below Geoff.

  There was no more drama after that. Only the long plod down Coire na Ciste, falling through the snow uncaring into meltpools and hidden streams. The CIC had become a seductive dream of warmth and brews, but the reality was still darkly barred. Squelching downwards by the light of a single head torch, we met a few weekend hopefuls near the dam and complacently filled them with gloom. Midnight. At the old railway line a rising moon brushed aside the clouds to escort us on our way and the sickly aroma of whisky wafted us the last few yards through the distillery. At the car, the bliss of dry clothes – and the rude shock of a syphoned petrol tank. Finally, the long, long crawl round the loch to the Coe, Geoff waking periodically with a jerk of wheel, worried lest he break his car yet again.

  Rain was still pattering on the bothy roof. Geoff was snoring gently. I snuggled deeper into the warmth of my pit.

  – Chapter 8 –

  SCORPION (1983)

  A fading February day, gloomy greyness merging imperceptibly into night. A lonely building overlooking a bleak, windswept moorland; at its back, snow wraiths disappearing up a dark heather hillside into cloud. A dim light glows from the only window. Inside, the candle gutters in a draught. Pine logs blaze and spit in the open hearth, throwing dancing shadows on the wall but adding little warmth to the bare room. On a bench before the fire, two figures sit, the chill at their backs recalling the merits of old, high-backed settles ...

  Down in Glenmore, we had stepped off the bus the day before to find no room in the inn. Shouldering our skis, we had plodded two miles up the little valley through open stands of Scots pine, surprising a group of stags on the strath near the green lochan. Picking up some dead branches we had continued to the bothy, relieved to find it empty. Now, after a day on the congested, icy runnel that was passing for a piste on Cairngorm, we had had enough of skiing and were planning a climb. Netti had used axe and crampons in the Alps but had never climbed in Scotland. The obvious place to introduce her to the esoteric pleasures of Scottish ice was a short, accessible climb in one of the northern corries, but from what we had seen in the Cairngorm car park these corries would be only marginally less crowded than the ski slopes. As I enjoy the company of other climbers in the pub but not on the hill, I decided that Carn Etchachan would be a more suitable venue for her initiation. Overlooking Loch Avon, Carn Etchachan is a big crag, a long way from anywhere. Because of its remoteness, at that time (1974) the route I had in mind had had few ascents since it was first climbed by Tom Patey and Richard Brooke in 1954. Moreover, it was a grade IV, which some would regard as too hard for a first climb. But the name, Route Major, and its associations with the Brenva face on Mont Blanc, seemed to imply that its grade was derived from length rather than difficulty. And to cope with the long approach, we agreed to make an expedition of it.

  We left the bothy next morning with bivvy gear and two nights’ food. There was a bitter wind blowing down Strath Nethy as we toiled up deep drifted snow, tracked only by hare and ptarmigan and a solitary purposeful fox. The view from the Saddle was not inspiring. The cloud base was more than halfway down the crag and there were flurries of snow on the wind. We hurried down to the edge of the frozen loch but thought better of walking across it. Ahead was a jumble of huge boulders fallen from the crags above, among them the famous Shelter Stone, reputed to have accommodation for twelve. We reached it, tired and none too early, only to find it choked with snow. Some energetic digging made it habitable, if not exactly comfortable, for two.

  The following morning the wind was stronger, eddying spitefully among the boulders, picking up loose snow and throwing it in our faces as we emerged from the shelter. The cloud was even lower, hovering just above the rock known as The Sentinel at the foot of Castle Gates Gully, which is the dividing line between Carn Etchachan and the even more imposing Shelter Stone Crag. Of our route, there was no sign. At the bottom of the gully we opened the guidebook, failed to make anything of the description, and put it away for the duration. Adopting the old-fashioned expedient of following the line of least resistance, we started climbing. On firm snow, with occasional bulges of ice, we worked up and left along a system of ramps, then back right beneath steep rock and up a shallow chimney. Three rope lengths brought us to a major fault running up the crag.

  I have a photograph taken at this point, underexposed despite a slow shutter speed and maximum aperture, of a dark figure, blurred by spindrift, emerging from the gloom behind. The fault, or gully, above was hidden in cloud but facing us was a rock wall which guarded entry to it. At first glance this looked impassable. The only line to look remotely feasible was a wide chimney on the right-hand side, but there was an ominous overhang at its top and I approached it without much hope. To my surprise, I found I could bridge the chimney. A pick placed blindly over the top, a mighty pull which was translated by a convulsive heave and flailing legs into a mantelshelf, and I was over the obstacle, panting. Netti followed with a speed which I found at once disconcerting and reassuring. That, as she confessed later, she was motivated solely by a desire to be off the mountain as fast as possible, is beside the point. Nevertheless, I could sympathise. The wind was gusting by turns up and down the gully so there was no escaping the stinging facefuls of drift. Stances were a solitary communion with the cold. The fact that we had by now no idea where we were on the crag added all the tension and uncertainty of a first ascent to the climb. But the way above still looked possible, for the next few feet at least, so I pressed on into the mist.

  I found myself being forced leftwards across a wall of perfect névé, at an unusually steep angle for snow, the heavy rucksack seeking always to pull me out of balance. We began to sense that the top of the crag was not far away. But now we had also reached the end of the gully. We were in a small bay completely enclosed by steep rock. The only conceivable exit was to the left but even that looked hopeless. The rock was thinly coated with hoar frost and apparently quite without holds. My heart sank. We had long since guessed that we were not on Route Major. Only much later, re-reading the guide, did the significance of this sting in the tail dawn on me; although to be honest, I am still not sure what we were really on. At the time, a retreat down the length of the crag, on a single rope, looked a distinct possibility. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, however, so I balanced precariously up, crampon points on small incuts, till I could go no further. Only six feet above and to my left was a snow slope. So near and yet so far. In that six feet there was nothing, save a vertical crack choked with ice. Legs beginning to shake, I cut out the ice from the crack hoping to find a peg placement. It was blind. In desperation, I hammered an ice peg into the one surviving lump of ice stuck in the crack. It hit rock after two inches and I tied it off. I glanced down at Netti, belayed to her axe thirty feet below. She was hidden inside her hood, paying out the rope mechanically, her mind, no doubt, far away. I moved up using the peg as a handhold, feet scratching, then catching
, on something unseen. Still I could not reach across to the snow. Suddenly I was mantelshelfing on that absurd peg, standing on it, wildly thrusting my axe into the snow only to find it soft, useless. Frantically, I packed the snow into the semblance of a handhold and launched myself sideways on to it. It held; and seconds later I was on firm snow at an easy angle. Trembling, I had to rest on my axe for a minute or two before bringing Netti up. Once again, she followed more easily than I expected and a few minutes later we were on the summit.

  There was nothing to see and in the tearing wind damp breeches and mittens froze hard as boards. The rope was a wire, to be folded not coiled. A hasty compass bearing took us off the top and down into Coire Etchachan and, as the wild day drew to a stormy close, crampons still on our feet, we stamped thankfully into the Hutchinson Memorial Hut. A candle was lit, the primus purred obediently. Sitting in the dry heather that covered the floor, I pulled clots of ice, one by one, from my beard. For some reason I did not have a helmet and had been wearing an ear band rather than a balaclava. The penalty was a mass of frozen curls which melted now and dripped down the back of my neck. As we sipped, gratefully, the first brew, we were both silent. I did not ask what Netti was thinking, I could guess. It had been a long, hard day, not at all what she had been led to expect. Remorse tempered my elation at completing a route which had taxed me as much as I care to be taxed; but the damage had been done and, even now, she quizzes me suspiciously about my intentions whenever we climb together.