Psychovertical Read online

  ‘I think it’s good,’ said Mandy, and my heart leapt. ‘There are a few spelling mistakes, but I really liked it.’

  I gave it to Dick at work. ‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘much better than last time.’ His praise, although not glowing, was good enough.

  I passed it on, and tweaked it as each new reader found things they didn’t understand, or thought it too over the top. The story shrank to an easy-to-handle two thousand words: long enough to tell the story, short enough for people to complete it before they switched off. I deleted all the other versions from my computer, dozens of foldersful, the result of nearly two years’ work. Two years of work just for one short story about a climb! But what next?

  I thought about sending it to a UK climbing magazine, but part of me wanted better than that. I knew the best in the US was called Climbing, a publication that set the standard for climbing journalism, with articles written by the very top outdoor writers. It was a long shot I knew, and by sending them my story I was setting myself up for yet more rejection, but what if …? After scribbling work’s fax number on top with the words ‘Wondered if you like this piece I’ve written. Andy K’, I tapped Climbing’s number into the fax machine and pressed Send.

  One week later I cycled into work, by this time already convinced I should try another avenue, but as I walked into the office I saw a fax with my name on it sticking out of the machine. The Climbing logo was clearly visible.

  ‘Hi Andy, love your piece. Would like to publish it. A few spelling mistakes, but almost perfect, what’s your number? Michael Kennedy’

  It was the greatest news I’d ever had.

  We climbed as fast as we could, up grooves and along steep arêtes, the climbing hard enough to be fun, but easy enough not to be scary. I revelled in the height and position on the Spur, the knowledge that every move made put us closer to the top and success. I wanted this climb so much. I would be lying if I said I was completely enjoying myself, as the stress and tension of being there was intense, and I was in no doubt I was overreaching myself, but that was what made it so exciting. Here I was, on the Frendo Spur, and in winter, the only other mountains I’d climbed just those in my head. I began to realise that mountains are climbed just as much in the head as with the hands. We arrived below the crux.

  Promising not to be long, I set off up the pitch, a vertical wall. We didn’t know it, but we were off route, the pitch above us much harder than we knew, harder than we had ever climbed, a compact vertical wall that barred the way to the easy climbing above us.

  It started with difficult hooking with axe picks and crampon points, each move feeling irreversible, each move unprotected. I pushed on, Aaron belaying me from a huge sword-like flake that promised to spear me if I fell.

  Twenty feet above Aaron I mantled up onto a narrow ledge no wider than my boot. It crossed the wall, leading to a corner that looked like the way on. With no hand holds or protection I began shuffling my feet along, my crampons scratching as I went. It felt as if I was traversing along a thin balcony on the side of a sky scraper, a suicide jumper with second thoughts, a daredevil, a cat burglar. I was surprised at my boldness, but it seemed the only way. Each step felt more insecure than the one before, but each step put me closer to the corner where I would gain the security of the facing wall. There was no going back.

  The last few steps were hurried, I felt as though my rucksack was about to pull me off. My hand shot out to steady me against the other wall just before I fell. I stood there in balance and tried to calm down before looking for the next move, mindful of the time, hoping I could find some protection and climb the next section quickly, just several metres between me and easy ground above.

  Using a shoulder pressed into the opposite wall, I pulled back my mitt and looked at my watch. I had already been climbing for an hour.

  ‘Not long now, Aaron,’ I shouted down, trying to convince us both I was nearly there. Once this pitch was in the bag it would be plain sailing.

  The corner was full of snow, so I raked it clear with my axe, and found, with dismay, that instead of a narrow crack that would take some protection, there was only a wide four-inch crack. I had nothing that big.

  I looked back at the way I’d come and knew I couldn’t get back. I also knew that without any protection I could neither climb up, nor be lowered back down. I leaned into the corner and tried to think what to do. No ideas came. My biggest pieces of gear were only about two inches wide.

  I had a thought.

  I took a hex 7 and Rock 10, my two largest nuts, and placed them side by side. As I’d hoped, together they spanned the crack. I placed one nut, then slid in the second and hammered it into place. Mechanically it looked as if it could work. Emotionally it didn’t. I gave it a small tug to convince myself, then clipped it into the rope. It was all there was, but it still wasn’t enough.

  I began making a check list of items that might fit: helmet, too big; pan, in Aaron’s rucksack; plastic boots, yes, but not really an option.

  I ran my fingers on my thin rack: nuts, a few cams, pegs. I pulled off a long thin angle peg and, instead of inserting the tip, turned it sideways and saw that it fitted from tip to eye instead. I hammered it into place and clipped it into the rope. It was far from text-book, but again it should work.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Aaron shouted up, his words slightly slurred with cold.

  ‘Nearly there,’ I shouted back, knowing I wasn’t.

  Another hour passed and I hadn’t moved from the spot.

  ‘Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on,’ I shouted. ‘Fucking DO SOMETHING!’

  The corner above was too wide to climb. The gear was too bad to lower off and find an alternative line. I’d climbed myself into a dead end. The word ‘dead’ seemed highly appropriate. The only option was to see what lay around the corner.

  I held onto the gear I’d placed, trying to put as little weight on it as possible, and peered round. I could see a steep wall, with what looked like a good crack running up it, leading to a ledge maybe only seven feet higher. The crack was too far away to reach with my hand to place some gear, but close enough to hook my pick into. I pulled up my axe and tried. The pick slid in. I pulled down on the shaft and it lodged tight, probably on a jammed pebble.

  I couldn’t imagine trusting it, so slipped it back out and returned to the corner. I knew it was the only option, but I was in no doubt that if I fell off I would rip this gear and fall onto the jagged rocks below. But I had to. I had no other choice.

  I leaned out and slipped in my pick again, then got cold feet and slipped it out once more, repeating this several times. I knew I was too weak for this, too timid, but I also knew that this was my only option. I was more afraid than I had ever been before. This was life and death. This wasn’t a game. This wasn’t climbing.

  Do it, said a voice in my head. It startled me. It was stronger than I was. Do it, it repeated. I felt panicked, the voice pushing me to the edge. Do it. The words were impossible to ignore. I leaned out and slipped the pick into the crack again, then to my horror and surprise felt my body follow it, swinging out onto the axe, everything I was or could be hanging from this blade of steel wedged on nothing more than a jammed pebble. I was doing it, but it wasn’t me, it was someone else. This was beyond anything I could do.

  I hung one-armed from my axe, crampons pedalling against the rock for purchase, the smell of granite and steel filling the air around me. Move, the voice shouted. I hooked my other axe over the pick of the first, pulled up and locked off. I tried to move it up and slot it higher up the crack. It slid out. I tried again, my bicep burning under the strain. It slid down the crack once more. ‘Climb back to the corner,’ I told myself, but I knew I couldn’t, I was committed. All I could do was give this 100 per cent. If you want to live, climb, shouted a voice. My arm screaming, my hand losing its grip, I slammed the pick in again. Sparks shot out as it wedged against something. I pulled down on it. It held. I pulled up on it and locked my arm on the tool, trying not
to dwell on what it was actually hooked on. I manipulated the axe out below it, then hunted for the next hook. I could see the ledge above, perhaps four moves away, but yet again I could not get my higher axe to stick. I screamed out as I tried and tried. There was nothing. My arm was unable to stay locked off with my shoulder beside my pick, and slowly began extending. Without the height I wouldn’t be able to find a good placement. I bit down on the wrist of my sleeve to help me retain my position. I could have been biting my hand off for as much as I cared as I almost threw the axe into the crack. The pick stuck with a twang.

  Without testing it, I pulled up, pushing a point of one crampon onto a crystal in the crack, desperate to take some weight off my arms. Find some gear, the voice shouted. No, keep going, contradicted another. If I had been stronger in body and soul I knew I’d have been able to make it, but I wasn’t. I had to find some gear. My whole body was shaking with the build-up of lactic acid as I grabbed a karabiner with some nuts racked on it, sized from small to large. Without the time or mental capacity to find the correct nut and place it, I stuffed the lot into the crack and fumbled the rope into the karabiner.

  I screamed again, hoping some primal rage would get me up the last couple of moves. Hand shaking, I pulled out the axe from below and reached back to smash it into the crack once more.

  BANG.

  The axe I’d been hanging on sheared out of the crack and smashed me in the face.

  Unconscious I fell.

  I came round with a start, finding to my disbelief that I was hanging from the rope, not crumpled on the ledge below. I was alive. I looked up and saw that a single nut had held me. The rest had ripped out and were dangling uselessly from the crack. I noticed I couldn’t see properly out of one eye, and that my face stung. Lifting my fingers to my face, I could feel a hole in my cheek, and that one lens of my glasses was missing. It had deflected a blow that would otherwise have blinded me. I felt a power race through me, adrenaline mixed with fear. I was alive.

  The magazine came in the post a few months later, printed after a few weeks of editing, which introduced me to the luxury of someone being paid to make me look as if I knew what I was doing. Feeling like Charlie Bucket looking for his golden ticket to the chocolate factory I opened the thick airmail envelope and slid out the magazine. I flicked open the glossy pages, and found it: my story, my name, my words. ‘Broken Promises’ by Andy Kirkpatrick. I wondered what I was more proud of, that climb or this story, the climber or the writer. I thought about all the hard work and doubt that it had taken for both, and it had been worth it! I had believed I could climb that route, and I had believed I could learn to write, and tell my story. I had learnt that belief was in me, and now I would find it harder to doubt myself again.

  I arrived at the ledge and collapsed, utterly exhausted. I saw a black bird close by, and wondered if it was real. Surely birds wouldn’t be able to survive up here?

  Aaron jumared the pitch, swearing at the stupidity of mixed climbing, until he saw the stacked gear and then the blood. He was silent after that. Pulling onto the belay, he looked tired, cold and as strung out as I was. He knew this was beyond us – but so was the ground. We had to push on. I realised that this route was changing us both. After every pitch I felt stronger and more confident in myself, confounding what I thought was possible, feeling more and more in my element, whereas Aaron seemed less sure. I knew after each pitch he became more and more convinced that this wasn’t for him. It suddenly struck me that this was going to be the last route we’d do together.

  An hour later, I mantled onto the summit of the last tower. The oppressive blackness and complexity of the lower rock spur finally gave way to the simple white landscape of the upper ice field. The relief at arriving at the ice arête was indescribable. We stood together, and for the first time in three days, relaxed a little. I smiled, not because I knew we’d make it, but just because I was happy. I wondered for a moment whether I’d shake Aaron’s hand or hug him when we reached the Midi, imagining this would make everything all right. All the pushing, anxiety and resentment of being dragged onto such a route would have been worth it, wouldn’t it? Anyway it hadn’t been all that bad.

  ‘Your lead, Aaron, a nice bit of ice to see us home.’

  ‘Maybe this isn’t such a bad route after all,’ he said, giving a laboured smile. He looked out of place here. I wondered if I did too.

  Letting down our guard, thinking it was almost over, Aaron led off up the ice arête as the first flecks of snow fell and a major storm blew in from the east, warm Mediterranean winds clashing with Arctic cold.

  With the last of our energy, we bashed against the ice-coated door, the entrance to the high mountain téléphérique station. The north face we had climbed dropped away behind us into the darkness and the storm. Snow spun around us, caught in the eddy where the door appeared out of the mountainside. We smashed into it again, knowing we wouldn’t survive unless we got inside quickly.

  It remained solidly closed.

  I dropped to my knees and tried to prise it open with my ice axe, its pick already bent and blunt after the kilometre of hard climbing it had taken to get here. I twisted it hard into the metal reinforcing on the door, but it snapped and I fell back defeated. After all we’d gone through, we were going to die because of a fucking locked door.

  Frustrated and too frozen to care, Aaron flung himself at the door and disappeared inside with a bang. I crawled in after him.

  The door blew shut as we rolled onto our backs, sealing out the storm and putting a loud full stop to the strain of the last three days. Both of us lay there for a long time, staring at the icy ceiling, neither of us wanting to speak and spoil the overwhelming return of peace and safety.

  My hands were frozen and dried blood covered my face. The rope lay at our feet; new a week ago, it was now a frozen torn mess, its core strands bursting out like loose intestines. Most of our climbing hardware was gone, left strung along the final section of the 1,200-metre face, left without a second thought as we battled to reach the top through the violent storm. If we had reached the last pitch an hour later we wouldn’t have made it.

  Slowly we began to move, knowing we had to find something to eat, something to drink, and we had to tell people we were still alive.

  Standing carefully, creaking like old men, we looked down at the knot that joined us and began to untie ourselves, our fingertips starting to throb as they warmed. The rope, our rope, the one we had climbed on all these years, which had kept us alive, kept us together, at first simply as partners, and then as friends, was now only fit for a washing line.

  I haven’t seen Aaron for many years. He works in IT and has a nice house, a wife and children near Bradford. I know he doesn’t climb any more because I’ve still got his gear.

  After our climb his girlfriend told me he’d realised that alpine climbing wasn’t for him. On the Frendo he’d realised it just wasn’t worth it. He’d grown up, she said. And me?

  Sitting on some god-awful ledge, hungry, cold and nervous of what is to come, I often think about Aaron and our ascent of the Frendo in winter, my first climb. I think about him spending his holidays on beaches, in forests, having fun – happy, healthy, relaxing in the sun and sleeping with the woman he loves, while I cuddle up to some rock.

  I wonder what life would be like for me now, if, below the Frendo, I’d failed to find my boot and just walked away from it all.

  It’s all easy until you fall

  Pitch 2 Reticent Wall

  I WOKE AND for a moment couldn’t place myself. It was dark. A small triangle of stars hung above me. I sat up and, removing my arms from my sleeping bag, felt around. I touched something rusty and metallic. A barbecue. I settled back down. I was on Lay Lady Ledge, sleeping on the flattest spot, tucked in right at the back, the rest of the night apart from the triangle of stars obscured by the soaring walls on both sides. Somewhere close, my ropes hung, arching up out of sight, up to the next belay. The first pitch of the Reticent Wa
ll was in the bag.

  The sky began to grow pale. Dawn was on its way.

  I closed my eyes, rested my head on my fleece jacket, and felt almost satisfied. I had climbed the first pitch. I had overcome my fears and doubt.

  The sky began to turn from black to dark blue, the sun edging up slowly somewhere beyond the Sierras. I could make out my ropes gently swinging, drifting in the early morning breeze.

  For the first time in a long while I felt calm, the voice in my head silenced by my action.

  Although itself out of sight, the sun touched the wall.

  The idea of carrying on, actually attempting to climb the Reticent, made me giggle inside. It was crazy. Impossible. Maybe I could do it. I felt buoyed by my little taste of success, even if the pitch had been graded as relatively easy.

  It had felt pretty damned hard.

  Lying in my sleeping bag, I thought back to all the mornings I had lain like this on other routes and felt uncertain about what to do, what the future would hold. There was always the knowledge it would be better to fail without doubt, than to fail because of doubt, that to turn around because of what I imagined, not what I knew, would leave me regretting my own weakness far more than my folly.

  Yet the overriding draw was the thought of actually climbing the route. Just imagine it, me climbing the Reticent Wall. It would be unbelievable.

  Yet what if I couldn’t? What did that actually mean? There was no way of retreating once I committed to the next pitch. There would be no way down, the only escape option was to climb the route to the top. What about rescue? On such a steep and vast wall a rescue would be a huge undertaking that would take days. Don’t think about it.

  The sun began to creep into view, moving light down the walls on either side of me.

  What to do? Go up or down? Do I carry on or call it quits?

  All my doubts returned as new.

  I had maybe ten minutes until the sun reached me. I snuggled down and put off the potentially life-changing decision until then.