Cold Wars

by Andy Kirkpatrick

  Tea-less, we went back to Ian’s room. While I kept an eye on Ewen to prevent him sinking into the mire, Ian tried to excavate a slide I needed for my column that month, Ian being my go-to man for images.

  ‘It should be in this pile,’ he said, sitting down and lifting a big stack of slide sheets onto his knee. Most conversations we had in the real world were undertaken through the lens of a sheet of slides.

  I knew Ian was off the following day with John Varco to the Indian Himalaya for an alpine-style attempt on a brilliant line up a mountain called Saf Minal. If they pulled it off it would be a world-class climb.

  ‘Is John ready for the off?’ I asked, and got a repeat of his ‘loveless’ look again.

  ‘Of course not, he’s juggling even more than me.’

  ‘What are your chances of getting up it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s two thousand metres high, loose, and capped by a big cliff of black shale. Oh, and the summit is just under seven thousand metres, so who knows?’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘How are your teeth?’ I asked.

  A few months before, Ian had been soloing at Burbage, a gritstone crag above Sheffield, the routes just high enough to hurt yourself but perfect for soloing, which he’d been doing, and had thus proved the former point. He’d been near the top of a climb when his hand slipped and off he’d come. Ian had hit the ground many times before, so was something of a pro when it came to falling well. He had the presence of mind, in the split second left to him, to try and land on a ledge halfway down. Unfortunately, his plan backfired, and the ledge merely flipped him over, sending him headfirst into the ground.

  Most people would have died, but not Ian, who had woken up, dazed, his face and jaw in agony, his arms cut and badly grazed by the rough gritstone. Most people who had not yet died would have lain there waiting for rescue. Ian, on the other hand, staggered to the car park and found someone to give him a lift home, which can’t have been easy, seeing as he was covered in blood.

  Getting home, his face now throbbing, Ian went to the bathroom to check if he still had a face, and saw he’d not come off too badly, and that only one tooth was missing from the jawbone in the middle of his mouth. It took him a moment to recall that people tend not to have a middle jawbone, and he realised his was broken. To fall head first off a climb, the ground littered with brain-splatting boulders, and walk away with only a broken jaw showed the angels were with him that day. But Ian’s angels had their work cut out.

  Ian opened his mouth and showed me his impressive dental work, most of it caused by a diet of Haribo and Coke rather than climbing.

  ‘Are you looking forward to it?’ I asked, wondering how long it would take to pack.

  ‘I can’t wait to get out of here,’ he said, turning away and looking at an email that had just beeped onto his computer, instantly distracted.

  I looked around the room and considered both of our lives, what we had and what we didn’t. Who would have missed him if he’d died that night? How long would he have stayed there till someone realised he was gone? Movie con artists always say that to avoid capture a good grifter must be able to drop everything and just walk out of their life at any moment. Maybe this was why Ian was so good at what he did. But what was the price?

  ‘Dad can we go?’ asked Ewen, untangling himself from a rope that looked like it had seen its best days.

  ‘Okay, we’ll be off and leave you to it,’ I said, standing up and lifting Ewen into my arms, distracting Ian again. ‘Sorry for disturbing you.’

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ he said and walked us to the door.

  ‘Don’t eat any yellow snow or die,’ I said, turning to see him standing in the door. Another email beeped in, and his head turned back towards his room, then back to me.

  ‘Are you up to anything?’ he said.

  Lifting Ewen back onto my shoulders, I said, ‘A bit of this and a bit of that… but mainly this,’ and bumped Ewen up and down until he laughed.

  We both laughed, probably both thankful for what we had and what we didn’t.

  It was time to go.

  ‘See you soon,’ I said, wondering if I would.

  ‘You too,’ said Ian, closing the door, leaving us to walk home, Ewen’s small hands twisting my ears.

  NINETEEN

  Magic

  January 2005

  For as long as I’d been climbing in the Alps I’d dreamt of spending a winter season in Chamonix, as so many of my friends had, to go and not come back, if only for a month or two. Being there for more than three weeks meant I could get fit on a hard route and carry that fitness over onto something harder still, instead of coming home. It was something I’d seen many good climbers do, stepping from one summit to another, never having to descend again to the real world.

  For most of us, doing a whole season remains just a dream, lived by those rich enough to take a few months off and rent a flat in the valley, or those poor enough not to care, sleeping on floors and eking out their savings, making ends meet with bar work or emptying bins.

  I’d always been envious of climbers who’d done the whole season. I’d turn up for a brew on my first day to get the beta on conditions at a flat where every inch of floor space was sub-let to other climbers to get the rent down. Their faces would be suntanned and wind-blasted, with panda eyes from goggles and glasses. They had the look of ski bums, weary from nonstop fun, but also as fit as butchers’ dogs.

  Often they arrived as climbers, with ambitions for long gnarly climbs, only to turn to the dark side, and start skiing. Before you knew it, skiing took over, and climbing ambitions shrank to day routes, which wouldn’t get in the way of fun on the slopes. Instead of tales of epic bivys on the Grandes Jorasses or mad soloing escapades, I’d hear stories of the ‘best powder ever’ or off-piste adventures, big drop-offs and runs through the trees.

  All this made me grumpy. One of the biggest factors in the slow demise of British alpinism has been the metamorphosis of climbers who could hardly ski, into skiers who climbed. Part of the reason for that was the number of climbers who’d become alpine guides, a qualification that required a high level of skiing proficiency, turning them, body-snatcher style, into skiers.

  But there was still something fabulous about turning your back on normal life and going to live in such a place for the whole winter.

  Now it was my turn.

  All summer the Alps had been my focus. The promise of winter helped me ignore the fact I wasn’t climbing and was instead living a normal – for me – nine-to-five existence. I pushed that queasy feeling of time slipping by to the back of my mind, telling myself that come winter I would pack up my stuff and finally get to grips with climbing. On Charlie and the Chocolate Factory what kept me going was the thought of using the money I’d earned to spend six weeks in the Alps.

  Throughout the summer I made plans, found a tiny flat just outside the Chamonix valley that was cheap, and sorted out climbing partners. Six weeks was too long to be away from the family, so Mandy and the kids planned to come out for half the time. It seemed the perfect plan – but, as usual, reality got in the way.

  Mandy decided she wanted to move house, thinking ours too small. She complained it didn’t have a garden, which didn’t bother me, as in my experience gardens were just overgrown jungles for those people like us without the time or money to tend them. Having grown up in a block of flats, whose balconies grew only lichen and mould, I didn’t see the point of a garden anyway.

  Mandy was on a mission though, and so I went along, not bothered either way when I discovered moving day was in the middle of my trip to the Alps.

  It wasn’t far to go, just two hundred yards down the road, but I knew I should be there. I was too selfishly attached to my dream, and left it to Mandy’s friends to help Mandy move.

  My selfishness didn’t register, so complete was my focus on what I wanted. Sometimes it’s shaming to understand the reality of letting nothing stand in your way. I packed the car
with everything I could possibly need for routes on north faces and big walls, kissed the family goodbye and set off for the ferry and the long drive out to the Alps. I reached France that evening and drove through the night, the temperature falling as I drove up into the mountains at dawn.

  I knew that really I was running away from my family, going to my other life. I often thought about this, about just running. When people told stories of dads going out to the shop for a packet of biscuits and not coming back, I totally understood it. The idea of disappearing on a mountain sounded a little nobler, but there was very little between the two.

  Driving into the Chamonix valley in my own car felt special, as if finally I was planning on staying for a while, bringing a big chunk of one world to another, my stuff, my car, my family; as if the barrier between the two worlds was finally breaking down. Looking through its grubby windows at the Dru and the Aiguilles, snow trails blowing from the sunlit summit of Mont Blanc, I could see that high pressure was coming.

  This was going to be amazing.

  I found my flat in the tiny village of Servoz and settled in, sorting out my gear on the porch in warm sunshine. Paul Ramsden was flying out in a week’s time, and before he arrived I planned to solo the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses, and so spent the afternoon packing my kit, my head full of excited thoughts, choosing the gear, spraying my cams with lube so they wouldn’t stick in the cold.

  I went into town and photocopied a topo, bought my hill food and told the rescue team where I’d be if I didn’t return, feeling the confidence rushing through me as I walked through the streets of Chamonix, knowing that nothing could stop me.

  A week later I’d done nothing but lie in bed.

  A virus had been touring the valley all winter, and as soon as I arrived it found me, starting on my throat, then spreading through my body, knocking me sideways and dashing my plans.

  I lay in my bedroom for a few days, curtains drawn, feeling sorry for myself and only managing to make it to the living room with a supreme effort. I sat there watching French television, looking longingly at my gear packed and ready to go in the corner.

  My one consolation was I had time, lots of time, and that I would soon get better.

  Then it started to snow – and snow.

  And snow.

  Four days went by and I pulled myself together and went for a walk up a trail through the woods, wading up to my knees, feeling weak. I prayed that by the time Paul arrived I’d be fit and the weather would have improved.

  Snow covered everything. I thought about being up on the Grandes Jorasses now. I’d probably be near the top if I’d managed to set off. I’d expected a storm might come, but just thought I’d deal with it if it did, not wanting to be put off. I’d been in plenty of storms. They always rage hardest in the mind.

  A wind blew through the treetops, showering me with snowflakes, big white patches on my red jacket.

  I imagined being up there now, high on the Walker, feeling this wind cut through me, the snow shifting and sliding under my feet.

  There was nowhere to bivy up there.

  The wind blew stronger and the trees creaked, large clumps of snow dropping to the ground.

  I wished the kids were here.

  I met Paul at Geneva airport, pleased to see his familiar hangdog expression after a week in solitary confinement. We seemed to have so many failures under our belts I hoped this time we’d have a bit of luck.

  Driving to Servoz, Paul admitted to feeling fat and unfit, with too much work taking its toll. Having taken up Pilates, his back was feeling better, apart from the odd twinge. Pilates seemed a bit New Age for Paul. I told him I was also under the weather, but should be fit to climb tomorrow.

  ‘We’ve got to climb something this time, no matter what,’ said Paul.

  ‘No matter what,’ I replied.

  Wanting something challenging, but not too extreme for unfit men with jobs and children, we chose the Messner route on the Northeast Face of Les Droites, a mixed line that was rarely climbed in winter, but would allow us the luxury of going slowly and doing what we did best: Scottish mixed climbing, suffering and camping.

  I’d climbed the North Face twice before, and had made a couple of attempts that came to nothing, so knew the way down, often reason enough to try a new way up.

  The face was broad, split into two angled faces by the Northeast Spur, twelve hundred metres long, the faces on either side a kilometre high and angled at sixty degrees with the odd steeper section.

  We packed in the morning, erring on the side of caution by taking food for four days and a small bivy tent. The Messner was mainly a rock buttress, meaning we could get on the route and climb it to the top no matter how slow we were.

  The familiar walk down from the Grands Montets lift went swiftly on solid snow, the new stuff blown away in the previous few days. But instead of crossing the glacier to the Argentière hut, with its dank winter quarters, we opted to bivy in our tent at the base of the face, putting the route on our doorstep. Walking up the easy-angled lower slopes to a flat spot a hundred metres from the bergschrund, my legs seemed leaden. I was still weak, not quite over the virus.

  Chopping out a platform for the tent with our axes, we paused to rest and scope out the route in front of us. It began with some moderate ice that led to a big snowfield, before rearing up a granite pillar.

  ‘It looks like a meaty route,’ said Paul, looking up as he fitted the tent poles together.

  ‘Weather looks set as well,’ I replied, the evening sky empty of clouds.

  ‘Maybe this time we’ll be lucky,’ Paul said, as he slid the poles inside the little yellow tent. We crawled inside as night came on and curled up in our thick sleeping bags.

  ‘How did your virus start?’ Paul asked after a while.

  ‘I had a sore throat and a temperature,’ I replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘Either this sleeping bag is warmer than I thought or I’m coming down with what you had,’ he said.

  I lay there in the dark, still not recovered myself, knowing that in the morning we’d be going down.

  We woke before the alarm to the clink-clink of climbers passing by, shouts in French echoing from the face as they negotiated the bergschrund and began to climb. I guessed they were heading for the parallel Koenig-Suhubiette route, and felt guilty and lazy for having a lie-in when others were up and climbing. I guessed it was probably still only three o’clock. They must be expecting to climb the route in a single day.

  Lying in my warm sleeping bag, in my tent, it felt good to be going slowly, lying in the river, waiting for the flood, unsure if the drought would continue.

  ‘Are you awake Paul?’ I whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered back, as if we didn’t want the French to know we were there.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not bad,’ he said, by which, being a Yorkshireman, he meant terrible.

  The alarm went off at five and I lay there for a moment waiting for Paul to cancel our plans, something not too hard to swallow at that time of the morning. Instead he unzipped himself and leaning on his elbow, lit the stove.

  ‘How you feeling?’ I asked, still laid on my back.

  ‘I’ve got a headache. Feel a bit crap,’ he said, not sounding too good either.

  ‘Are you okay to climb?’ I asked, concerned he might kill himself on my behalf.

  ‘I’ll give it a go.’

  With so many disappointments over the last few years I guessed he wasn’t going to let anything stand in his way.

  By the time we’d packed up the tent and closed the gap on the face it was dawn. The first few pitches were steep but not too steep, the going slow, with plenty of stops along the way. As the sun lit up the glacier we could look across to the French team, as they made equally slow progress a few hundred metres to our right, their shouts echoing back and forward, removing all sense of isolation from the face.

  The only memorable pitch was a steep ribbon of snow and ice l
eading up a blank granite slab, one of those pitches where there is no gear, but the ice feels secure. It was an exercise in mind control where fear was the only enemy.

  As I led, I tried to work out the last time I’d led an ice pitch, thinking it must have been the Lesueur a year ago. I felt intimated by the pitch, the weight of my pack, the sensation my crampons might slice through the snow at any moment and leave me hanging by my tools.

  I forced the feeling back, telling myself that I led harder pitches when I knew nothing, and I could lead this now, with many tens of thousands of metres between that novice and me. It was like riding a bike, only downhill and fast along a potholed road. All I had to do was concentrate on positive action, not negative emotion.

  The ice got thinner, probably three inches thick, thick enough for ice, but thin for snow-ice, which had the resistance of over-frozen ice cream.

  I kicked my feet hard, wanting the most metal and boot possible in the ice, feeling all my weight bearing down, each step a little act of faith.

  My pick struck the rock and bounced off and instantly I felt as if I was only balanced on my feet.

  My sack felt heavy, pulling me backwards.

  My attention was suddenly down at my feet, feeling them about to rip out.

  ‘Bit thin this bit, Paul. Watch me.’

  I breathed in and out, and focused on that.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  I tried higher with my pick, the only chance I had to make progress.

  It bounced off again.

  I reset it beside the other tool, my arms now getting tired and my calves sore.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  I chopped the ice away in front of my face to create a little shelf, the rock beneath blank, then rotated my axe by ninety degrees so the whole length of the pick hooked against it.

  Then I kicked hard, first left then right, and stepped up, pulling down on the shelf I’d cut.