It was a long day that, on the north face of Aonach Dubh, but only fragments of it remain lodged in the memory, like slivers of ice caught in a windsuit’s creases. I was too caught up with what was happening to record, too present to stand back, too scared to take photographs.
The first pitch up a narrowing snow-choked gully made the first day’s efforts seem child’s play. Relief and exhilaration on arriving at Mal’s stance, then half an hour clinging to a stunted rowan tree, fighting off paralysis and panic, hating it. Sitting still is the worst. Time to take in where you are, time to think, time to fear. I look down – too far, too steep, too empty. I glance up – too high, too steep, too endless. Contemplating going on this Expedition is absurd. My body hates this. Don’t look, don’t think. Keep the rope going. Where’s Mal got to? If you think this is bad, imagine the sense of exposure on Mustagh … Extraordinary clarity of lichen on this branch, the precise angle of this fork …
It’s a relief to be climbing again, traversing onto a buttress of steep rock, soft snow, patchy frozen turf. Gloves off, treating some of it as a rock climb, half-remembered techniques from childhood scrambling. Chunks of knuckle left on rocks, arms with all the resilience of blancmange. Concentrating hard, each movement dreamlike in its intensity. I call for tight rope and get it. Thanks, pal. Over a bulge, there he is …
Another anxious wait on belay, then another pitch. It’s beginning to feel more natural. I cease tying myself up in Gordian knots of slings, rope, krabs and ice axe lines. Even relax enough to snatch a photo as Mal works his way up an angled cleft above me. After two hours fear starts to lose its urgency, and though I know this pitch is tricky by my standards I push up through soft snow, cross onto rock, find some lovely frozen turf and almost shout with satisfaction as the picks thud home. Hold an elephant, that would. Now pull up … Something in this lark, after all.
Until you pause and catch a glimpse of below.
An hour and two pitches later we come out on top of the ridge. I’m shattered, puffing like an old espresso machine, arm muscles like wet newspaper from working above my head all the time. In addition to the long approach plod, then the physical effort of climbing, I’ve put out enough nervous energy to light up Glencoe village for a year. But the weather’s menacing and the light starting to go, so Mal hurries on and I plod after. We pause on the summit of Aonach Dubh – briefer than a kiss is this final pay-off, that’s the joke of it.
Mal points down No. 2 Gully. ‘Follow me as fast as you can – but concentrate.’ I sense a certain urgency in his voice, and follow him down in the half-light. It seems steep, but I haven’t the energy to care. Step, plunge, axe, step, plunge … It becomes endless, unreal, hypnotic. I begin to stumble, stuff snow in my mouth to stay awake. Somewhere along the line a crampon disappears. No time to look for it, carry on … I seem to have been doing this forever, stepping down through the gathering dark. In the distance Mal swings right and up onto a buttress. Eventually I join him. ‘Well done,’ he says briefly. Must have been harder than it looked. It’s getting very dim now. We start feeling our way down over rock, scree and snow towards the yellow lights in the valley.
Finally his urgency relaxes, the rest is straightforward. We sit for five minutes on Dinnertime Buttress, munching biscuits and looking over at the glimmering slopes across the glen. We say nothing, but it is many months since I felt so at peace. ‘What was that route called?’ ‘We can decide that in the pub,’ he replies casually. Understanding comes slowly. ‘You mean you … we …?’ I splutter. He nods. ‘I’d been saving that one up for a while.’
A new route for my first route. I’m outraged, flabbergasted, and not a little chuffed. Of course it wasn’t hard – Grade 2 or 3 he reckons – and all I did was follow on, but the sense of delight and absurdity sustain me on the rest of the trudge back. ‘Two Shakes’ I say finally. ‘Why?’ ‘Well, there was two tree belays on it, there’s two parts to it – the gully and the buttress – and I’m lying about the amount of shaking I did!’
Finally, we push through the door of the Clachaig into a gust of warmth and light and laughter. Then the simple wonder of sitting down. We’ve been on the go for eleven hours. I slump back against the wall, totally blank.
‘Tired, youth?’ Mal asks.
I search for the right epithet.
‘Massacred,’ I say briefly, and with some effort raise the first pint of the night to my lips.
We left Glencoe two days later. I was relieved yet oddly regretful as the old blue van struggled out of the valley. Five days in this place had been a month of normal time. Grinding and slipping past abandoned cars, cottages up to their eyelids in snow, a snowblower moving across the wilderness of Rannoch Moor, followed by a tiny man in yellow oilskins …
We were silent as we worked our way south toward civilization and its dubious benefits. What had happened to me here, what had I learned? The extent of my fear, for one thing. It hadn’t miraculously evaporated over the intervening years, like teenage acne. I felt weakened by that fear, yet strengthened for having coped with it. Perhaps one can never overcome fear completely – after all, it is often a sane and appropriate response-what counts is that it doesn’t overcome you.
Being a novice climber is like having a weak head for alcohol: people may laugh at you, but you get high more easily. It didn’t take much to get my heart thumping, whereas Mal has to push it a long way to get his kicks. Both novice and expert have the same experience, despite the huge gulf in their capabilities. Both know fear, exhilaration, satisfaction, relief. Both have to persist through discomfort and utter fatigue. Both have to recognize their limits, then push a little further. And both experience the great simplification of one’s life that is the reward of all risk activities …
But I was thinking most of all about the two Army lads who were found dead today in the Cairngorms, and of the half-buried monument to the Massacre of Glencoe. Our ‘massacre’ by the elements is a self-imposed one, a piece of personal theatre. When it is over, all but a few get to their feet again and feel themselves, behind their fatigue, somehow stronger and more alive than before.
For those who do not rise again, there remains the unyielding pillar of stone, the inscription obliterated by drifting snow.
We prepare to bottle up and go November 1983–May 1984
I trained for our Expedition from late November till our departure in early June. I had not trained for anything in fifteen years. It was hard work. Sit-ups, pull-ups, press-ups, toe-ups, Bullworker, stiff hill walking with a weighted backpack. And, above all, running. Between three and eight miles, five days a week.
Picture one of those montage sequences used in films to indicate continued effort through time. At first we see an unfit, ungainly figure running through falling leaves, the last rags of autumn quivering in the trees. He emerges, panting and staggering, onto an open beach. Then the trees are bare, the light low and brief; it’s a world drained of colour and sound; no birds sing, but the runner now seems to be moving more firmly and rejoices in the frozen sand as he turns for home in the half-light of 3.30. Then clots of snowdrops appear on the forest floor, then crocuses, birdsong, movements in the undergrowth. The runner has removed his gloves, then his sweater. He is moving faster and lighter than before, more upright. And suddenly the light is fresh and green, it is May, and as he turns for home at 8.00 on a sunlit evening – wearing only shorts and running shoes – he is running not towards his home and a cool shower but towards a tower of snow and