Summit Fever

by Andrew Greig

  On the evening of 20 November, Kathleen threw an I Ching hexagram.

  ‘This is uncanny. Want to see?’

  I looked at the reading:

  Hexagram 62. Hsiao Kuo: Preponderance of the small.

  Success. Perseverance furthers.

  Small things may be done; great things should not be done.

  It is not well to strive upward,

  it is well to remain below.

  My eye skipped on

  …. Thunder on the mountain. Thunder in the mountains

  sounds much nearer.

  I put down the book, thought about it. ‘Were you asking about yourself or me?’

  ‘Both of us.’

  ‘Doesn’t pull any punches, does it?’

  Silence from Kathleen. Then, quietly, ‘Please don’t go.’

  I visited a climbing acquaintance to sound out his opinion. My wellbeing and safety rested largely on Mal Duff’s judgement and abilities. I scarcely knew him as a person, and not at all as a climber. What was his reputation in the climbing world?

  ‘Mal Duff? Can’t say I know him that well. A lot of people would put a question mark beside his name, but I don’t know why. Envy, maybe – he’s one of the very few who almost make a living from climbing. There was some kind of financial screw- up … No one’s ever suggested he can’t climb.’

  I accepted a whisky and let him talk on. The climbing world appeared very intense, gossipy yet reticent, full of allegiances and rivalries. I was just beginning to learn to read the coded messages, and to try to sort out a sound assessment from bias.

  ‘He’s done a lot in Scotland in winter, some in the Alps. I think he was out on Nuptse twice, so he’s had some Himalayan experience. He’s possibly not as good as he thinks he is – but nor am I! I’ve heard of this other chap, Sandy Allan, but the rest of the Brit climbers mean nothing to me. The Mustagh Tower is a classic – did you know it was once called “the unclimbable mountain” and “the Himalayan Matterhorn”? – but it sounds a very odd expedition with these semi-climbers along. I’d be very surprised if anyone gets to the top.’

  I nodded, looked into the bottom of my glass. How much of what I was hearing was envy? How much was climbing bullshit and how much accurate assessment? We talked a while longer about Malcolm and the trip – in that warm, Edinburgh flat it all seemed extremely hypothetical – till I asked the obvious question: is it possible for someone with as yet no mountaineering experience at all to go to 21,000 feet on a Himalayan peak?

  ‘Yes, it’s possible. Whether it’s desirable …’ He laughed, seemed to find the whole project amusing. But then he’d found being shipwrecked off Patagonia amusing. He’d obviously lost a few brain cells along the way. ‘Yes, if you’re very fit, can take the altitude, have considerable determination and are lucky – ’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like me at all,’ I interrupted him.

  ‘– there’s no reason why not. It may blow your mind a bit, but you’ll be safer than you think. Mind you, the Himalayas make the Alps look like a kiddies’ playground – but you’ve never seen the Alps, have you? And of course,’ he continued, smiling, ‘if something doesn’t go according to plan – and that’s bound to happen – you could be in real trouble. You’ve maybe one chance in twenty of snuffing it.’

  We had another whisky and I looked over the photos on his wall. Douglas crawling beneath stomach-turning overhangs, Douglas on Patagonian mountains, Douglas and friends steering a 12-foot inflatable through a Greenland ice pack. A lump of quartz from a Patagonian first ascent. Mementoes of another world. Nice to have some souvenirs like that …

  It’s the little vanities that get us going.

  ‘The trip’s a freebie,’ Douglas said. ‘Take it.’

  After five days of indecision – or rather, of constantly changing decisions – I went home to Anstruther to talk it over with my parents. I wanted to hear their opinion; perhaps that would clarify my thoughts.

  So, should I go?

  Dad paused so long I thought he hadn’t heard me properly. A long, awkward silence, my mother at the other end of the table, waiting for his response. Then he said very slowly, ‘I’m too old to be asked a question like that.’ He looked at me, his eyes pale blue and slightly fogged over, set deep among the ridges, wrinkles, creases and weathering of eighty-four years. ‘You see,’ he said simply, ‘I can no longer see any appeal in experience for its own sake.’

  How had I failed to see how old, how very, very tired he’d become in the last year? The hand that held the glass of wine had shrunk to skin and bone. He took a sip, grimaced. ‘I’ve even lost the taste for this. But in your position, at your age … Yes, you should go.’

  Then he began to pull out from the vast, shadowy storehouse of his memory bales of stories of scrambling in the Cairngorms as a medical student in the 1920s, seeing the colossal Grey Man of Ben MacDui, the early days of the Scottish Youth Hostel movement, escapades in Ardnamurchan, taking the first motorcar over the old drove road to Applecross, hurrying five miles across a snowbound moor in the dead of winter to deliver a baby in an Angus bothy …

  And vitality came back to him like a fitful companion as he talked, and I sensed it was all happening again for him, behind the eyes of this most unsentimental of men. It had been these tales, together with his recollections of dawns in Sumatra and hurricanes in the China Seas, that had first made me long for my own adventures, for those experiences of youth that nothing, not even extreme old age, can take away from you as long as you breathe.

  Listening to him confirmed in me what I’d always known. When it came down to it, I’d take the chance.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Kath?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pause. Me leaning on the door frame, her grinning on the settee.

  ‘We’re going then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And that was the decision made, in an instant, on an impulse. The impulse of life that says, ‘Why not?’

  Mal had just gone out the door, and taken most of my reservations with him. He’d filled us in on more details, and they were largely reassuring. He’d promised my Glencoe initiation would not be terminal. I was very aware that my life would depend largely on his priorities and his judgement; in the end, on his character. I’d been watching and listening to him closely. I’d liked him from the start for his great enthusiasm for life. He was interested in practically everything, not just climbing. Now I sensed behind the casualness considerable determination. Behind the romantic was a hard-nosed realist. Behind the restless energy that kept his fingers tap-tapping a cigarette and his right knee jumping as he sat, there was a sense of self-possession. These were not nervous mannerisms, but those of someone who revved his way through life. The sardonic grin, the offhand climber’s humour, the thoughtful frown into the mug of coffee – they all seemed in balance with each other.

  He struck me as the kind of person who might get you into scrapes but would probably get you out of them again. (And how prophetic that turned out to be!)

  I’d trust him.

  A deciding factor was Kathleen’s inclusion. She asked if she could come along with the trekking group who were to accompany us on the walk-in to Mustagh, and cover her costs through writing articles about her trip. Just flying a kite … Mal took it quite seriously and said he saw no reason why not, subject to Rocky’s agreement.

  We hadn’t actually said Yes to him but, grinning wildly at each other, we knew we’d decided.

  The world was transformed. Being alive felt dramatized and vivid, vibrant with challenge. We couldn’t sit still. Adrenalin propelled us outdoors into a mild November night. We walked fast and aimlessly past moonlit stubble fields, dark cottages, a hunched country church. An owl glided between us and the moon. An omen? The night felt huge and elating as we talked, half giggling, spilling out plans, images, anticipations and fears.

  It was like being a teenager again. The same pumped-up energy, the fancies and fantasies swirling through the
body, the sense of the world being wide open and there to be explored. The ordinary things around us seemed vivid and precious, shining as the map Kathleen drew with a finger dipped in beer on a polished table in the Hawes Inn that night. ‘Here is Pakistan,’ she said, ‘and here’s Islamabad where we fly to.’ She wetted her finger again and drew a squiggly line. ‘And here, I think, are the Karakoram.’

  We sat and stared at the table, silent for a minute as the crude map of our future shone then faded.

  2

  A Glencoe Massacre

  A novice is initiated

  20–26 January 1984

  As we head north on icy roads in mid-January, Mal enthuses about the conditions. A substantial fall of snow, a slight thaw, now freezing hard. ‘Glencoe will be crawling with climbers this weekend.’ I’m less enthusiastic; if anyone will be crawling this weekend, it’ll be me. The van heater is broken so I huddle deep in my split-new climbing gear, watching our headlights skew out across deepening snow. We don’t speak much, each absorbed in our own thoughts.

  I’m keyed up, anxious yet oddly elated. To shut out the cold I mentally run through everything Mal had shown me about the basic mechanics of snow and ice climbing, in the warmth of his flat a day before. It had been quite bewildering – the knots, the principles of belaying, the extraordinary array of ironmongery, the pegs, pins, channels, screws, plates, nuts, crabs, slings … An evocative litany but especially confusing when everything seemed to have several alternative names. This was starting truly from scratch.

  I try to review it all logically. First, the harness. I smile to myself in the dark. With our harnesses belted on and the full armoury of the modern climber dangling from them, we’d looked like a cross between gladiators and bondage freaks. Then the rope; I tried to picture again the basic figure-of-eight knot used for securing the rope through the harness loops.

  Then the basic sequence of events for climbing. The leader climbs up, more or less protected by his second, who’s on a hopefully secure stance at the other end of the rope. When the leader reaches a secure position somewhere near the rope’s full extent, he in turn protects the second who climbs up after him. Simple and reasonably safe. At least, I hoped so.

  We’d rehearsed it on the passage stairs. We stood roped together at the bottom of the stairs. Mal tied a ‘sling’ – a loop of incredibly strong tape – through the bannister and clipped it to my harness with an oval metal snaplink, the karabiner or ‘krab’. This secured my belay stance. Then he took the rope near where it came from his harness, threaded it through a friction device, a descendeur, and clipped that to my harness. Then with a ‘see you at the top, youth’ he solemnly walked up the stairs while I paid out the rope through the descendeur. About 20 feet up he stopped and pointed out that if he fell now, he’d fall 40 feet in total before the line between us came tight. ‘So I put in a “runner”.’ He looped another sling round a bannister rail, then clipped a krab to it, with the rope running freely through the krab. If he fell now, he’d only go down twice the distance he was above the runner till he was brought up short by the tight rope between us being looped through the karabiner.

  I thought about it a couple of times till the logic of it sank in. Yes, it made sense. The runner was there to limit the extent of the leader’s fall.

  It was at this point a woman came bustling up the stairs and gave us a very strange look.

  With the merest blush, Mal continued on up, putting in a couple more runners till he got to the top. There he tied himself securely to the rail. ‘On belay!’ The cry floated down the spiral staircase. I unclipped the descendeur, tried to remember the appropriate call. ‘Take in slack!’ I shouted. He took in the rope till it came tight between us. I waited as he put his descendeur onto the rope. ‘Climb when you’re ready!’ With some difficulty I unclipped myself from my belay stance, shouted ‘Climbing!’ and set off up after him.

  Some 20 feet up I was going great guns, then was suddenly brought up short with a jerk. I couldn’t go any further. ‘Try taking out my runner,’ Mal called down. Of course, the first runner was preventing me from continuing above it. I unclipped the krab, untied the sling and continued.

  At the top, we shook hands most movingly.

  And that seemed to be the basic principle and practice of belay climbing. I hoped I’d remembered the calls correctly. I mumbled them over a few times in the freezing van. The rest of the gear – the pitons in various shapes and guises, the screws and nuts – were for use when there was nothing convenient to loop a sling over to set up a belay stance or a runner. We’d gone around wedging them into cracks in Mal’s fireplace. It had all been wonderfully ludicrous, but next time it’ll be for real. How did I get into this?

  After Callander the glimmering countryside grows wilder and more desolate. Long slopes suddenly swoop upwards, the snow deepens as we skirt the wilderness of Rannoch Moor and wind down towards Glencoe. As we near the infamous Clachaig Inn I think back on the last time I was here, sixteen years ago. High on adrenalin, youth and Pale Ale at 2s. 3d. a pint, I’d stood in a corner in full hippie regalia – the gold cloak, quilted tea cosy for a hat, peacock feathers, the strawberry tunic, oh my God – and thrashed out Incredible String Band songs into a small bar dense with steam, smoke and climbers so large and hairy it was hard to tell where beards ended and sweaters began. Climbers must be exceptionally tolerant, and such was the confidence of youth and the mood of the times that I got off with it, even had a few drinks bought me. Then at closing time walked out with a nurse from Glasgow into the black night to try yet again to lose my virginity, mind intoxicated with Pale Ale, adventure and the great sensed bulk of the mountains …

  Now I can’t even recognize the interior. The clientele are much the same, only now they look younger and smaller. A motley crew: straggly hair, gaiters, training shoes, bare feet, old jeans, blue fibre-pile salopettes, bright red Gore-Tex jackets, moving from table to table talking gossip or snow conditions, arm wrestling, playing pool. A number of girls too, some looking decorative and bored, others decidedly capable.

  Mal’s clearly well known and respected here. A constant stream of people come up to our table. Climbers’ talk. ‘Tower Ridge … still seconding all the time … solid for its grade … knew he was going to lob, so … Whitesnake … the crux after the chockstone … wiped out in Peru …’ It’s all new to me, exotic and bewildering, but I sense some interesting interactions behind these casual exchanges. Allegiances and rivalries, the seeking and withholding of information, put-downs and half-acknowledged challenges. How much a casual remark such as ‘I thought it a soft touch at Grade 5’ can imply! It suggests that for the speaker the climb was easy, that he is familiar with real Grade 5s, it inquires after the listener’s capability and casts aspersions on his friend who first climbed and rated the route. Just how good are you, anyway? ‘I found it hard enough last time,’ Mal might reply mildly. This counterstroke makes it clear that he has climbed it, and more than once, that he doesn’t need to pretend a hard climb was easy to bolster his reputation …

  In fact, it’s just like the literary world. Competition and cooperation; jostling over places in an invisible league table; ideological, personal and geographical divisions. The Aberdeen crowd here to show the others what real climbing is, the hard men up from the North of England to make their point, the Central Scotland boys protecting their patch … Yes, very familiar.

  ‘Who are you?’ one youth asks me, uneasy he can’t place Mal’s new partner. ‘I’m a guitar player.’ Pause. ‘What are you doing up here, then?’ ‘Learning a few new chords.’ He looks baffled, scowls and retreats. Mal grins and agrees that though climbing itself may be a pure activity, there’s nothing pure and disinterested about the social side of it. Everyone seems extraordinarily vague about what they’re going for tomorrow.

  Tony Brindle and his climbing partner Terry Dailey walk in the door. Tony’s one of the lead climbers for Mustagh, the only one I’ve met other than Malcolm. Handshakes all round,
it’s good to see a familiar face. I’d seen him last at Mal and Liz’s wedding, carried off to do a Dashing White Sergeant by two tall girls and grinning wildly. Even sober as now, he’s still bouncy and hyper-enthusiastic. As he chatters away about past and future routes it suddenly strikes me who he reminds me of: Davy Jones of the Monkees. Small, looks as if butter wouldn’t melt, innocent brown eyes, hair in a neat fringe, something about Tony makes one want to pat him on the head. He’s twenty-three and looks about fifteen. I think he both resents and plays up to it. It’s hard to imagine that he’s recognized by his peers as having quite exceptional stamina and self-reliance. There must be steel somewhere behind that baby face. Who or what put it there?

  ‘So where are you taking Mal tomorrow?’ he asks me, for the benefit of Mal who’s locked in conversation about this season’s big challenges on ‘the Ben’, i.e. Ben Nevis.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, we’ll just poke around,’ I reply in the prescribed vague manner. ‘Maybe warm up with Smith’s Gully and see what he’s up to. Then we’ll take a look at something more serious.’ Now we have a few attentive ears at the next table. Mal twitches slightly but can’t get out of his conversation.

  Tony grins, replies in his Lancashire accent, ‘Yeah, he’s a bit lazy is Duff. The old fella’s buggered. Still, he’ll second anything you lead.’

  ‘Thought I’d maybe give him a couple of leads if he’s shaping up …’