Psychovertical Read online

  I was falling.

  It came so fast I had no time to be scared. One second I was stepping up on a copperhead, the next I was falling.

  I felt the next piece – a small birdbeak – rip out as easily as if it had simply been Blu-Tacked against the wall, and I carried on down for thirty feet, my fall slowing as a piece held and the rope stretched out. I stopped.

  Fuck!

  I hung in space, breathing hard, my heart thumping so loud it rattled in my ears. I was OK. A fixed peg – probably one left by Tomaz Humar in 1998 – had stopped me.

  I gripped the rope and looked up, feeling strangely proud to measure the distance of the fall now it had been taken. Then I felt angry with myself for having fallen in the first place. This time I’d been lucky and only gone thirty feet. Next time I might not stop.

  I clipped my jumars to the rope and headed back up until I reached the peg, clipped in and set about reclimbing the fifteen feet of crack, taping in the birdbeak I’d pulled out, and replacing the copperhead I’d ripped.

  Maybe it’s good to fall. Maybe it takes away some of the fear of falling.

  I climbed on. Suddenly, the heat of the day receded as the sun passed into black cloud which was scuttling without warning over the rim of El Cap, catching me out in just my T-shirt and shorts. It looked like a storm.

  Storms are rare on El Cap, but when they come they spell trouble. They have killed several climbers over the years and forced the rescue of many others. Often the victims are plucked off with moments to live, rain, ice and snow having sent them into hypothermic comas.

  I knew I was exposed. My storm gear – fleece and waterproofs – were back down at the belay in my haul bag. I had to move faster to finish the pitch, fix my ropes and abseil back down before the heavens opened.

  On most climbs you can tie your ropes off at any point to a collection of pieces of protection, but here I couldn’t trust anything. I was forced to carry on. Luckily I could see the belay only fifteen feet higher, the two bolts promising a quick turn around, allowing me to clip in my lead rope, and abseil down one of my two haul lines, which stretched back to the safety of the belay below.

  Just get to the belay, I told myself. Block out the storm. Concentrate only on the climbing.

  By the time I was below the bolts, the sky was almost as black as night. I could hear people shouting around the wall: teams that were still low enough to reach the ground were bailing back down their ropes; those too high were setting up their portaledges and attaching their rainflies, battening down the hatches for what looked as if it was going to be a major storm.

  The first hailstones hit me as I clipped into the bolts, pelting me, piling up on my shoulders, running down my back, hammering off my helmet. In seconds my body temperature began to drop. I made heavy, mannered movements, over-tensing my muscles to generate heat as I tried to set up the belay as quickly as possible. I couldn’t afford to waste one second, nor make one mistake. I felt the goosebumps rising all over my body as it tried to stave off the cold. I might as well be naked.

  I clipped in karabiners and attached my ropes, knowing that any mistake or miscalculation would be fatal. In less than a minute I had my lead line tied off, ready for me to climb back up the following day, and my red and yellow haul lines were fixed – my escape route back to the safety of my portaledge and storm gear. By the time I was attaching my abseil device to the yellow rope, my body was beginning to spasm with cold, my hand muscles becoming stiffer, fingers growing less responsive. I knew it wouldn’t be long until I lost all dexterity, and that would be it.

  I clipped the yellow rope into my abseil device, checked and rechecked in the blink of an eye, then unclipped from the belay and committed my life to the single strand of rope. I looked down at it disappearing below me into a galaxy of falling hail and swirling mist, the belay lost from sight.

  You’ll make it.

  I started down, slowly for the first metre, then with barely controlled speed, thinking I should have clipped into both haul lines, instead of the one, thus doubling my security.

  It’s too late. Go!

  The wall was overhanging, with the previous belay way over to my left, leaving me dangling out in space once I was level with it, forcing me to lock off my abseil device and begin pulling myself in with the rope. Each pull should have been bringing me nearer to my storm gear and safety. Yet each time I pulled, I simply pulled more and more rope out of its sack, forcing me frantically to gather in the seemingly endless rope. It was a comical scene, and the effort warmed me a little.

  I knew that all the rope would have to be pulled out of the sack before it would come tight to the belay, the other end being clipped in with a karabiner. On I pulled, metre after metre, my body temperature now dropping fast. The rope came tight, allowing me to get some traction and pull myself closer.

  The closer I got, the harder I had to pull, but then, with only a few metres left until I was safe, the rope snagged and ripped out of the bag, sending me swinging back into the storm.

  To my horror I saw the end of the rope whip from the bag as I swung out.

  I had forgotten to clip the haul line into the belay.

  I had no fear, just the knowledge that all I could do was jumar all the way back up, and abseil back down on the second haul line.

  Did you leave your jumars at the belay?

  Did you leave the other rope untied?

  One fuck-up and I was dead.

  My hand shot to the back of my harness and with relief felt the shape of my two Petzl jumars. Removing them, my hands already beginning to cramp and lose control, my body shaking with the onset of hypothermia, I clipped them in and set off back up the rope, just as the first bolt of lightning shook the wall.

  The last time

  Chamonix, France. February 1997

  THREE SIMPLE WORDS slipped out of my dream into the darkness of the room, three simple words that stained the night: ‘Please don’t go.’ They hung in the cold air, a plea, an ultimatum, until by opening my eyes I scrubbed them out, until there was only the hum of the wind on the cracked window beside my bunk, and Rich’s fitful breathing beside me. I moved my eyes like a blind man, unable to see anything except the receding images of my dream.

  I moved my hands under the pile of blankets, each one thick like an army greatcoat, unwashed perhaps for a decade or two. They reminded me of my grandmother and her house with its tiny bedrooms and the thick heavy layers of crushing blanket – more like being buried than being put to bed. I thought about her thick hands. Her stubbornness, how she told us we all had our own lives to live. She had died ten years ago, and I tried to remember her as she was the last time I’d seen her, sitting in a hospital bed, her IV incorrectly set, fluid filling and bloating her skinny arm. It’s a shame we have to die with so much indignity.

  The dream and those three words came back to me in the dark, insinuating themselves like a ghost through a wall.

  I ran my hands down over my body, unzipping my fleece so I could touch my skin, now warm. My body felt different. It had changed so quickly – out of sight, buried beneath thick winter layers for the past five days – that it didn’t feel part of me. I hadn’t had time to acclimatise myself to myself. I felt my collarbone, my ribs, moved my hands down to my flat rumbling belly, to my pubic bone, down to my cycling thighs. It was erotic, like feeling the body of a stranger. Comforting.

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember what had created this change, filling my mind with memories, to push away those three words.

  I stood in the doorway, swaying with a fatigue so deep and overwhelming that only good manners kept me from falling flat on my face.

  My partner Rich sat slumped down at the end of the table, smiling with relief, four concerned French skiers seated around him. He looked like a picture of Jesus, unshaven, the skiers his companions at our first supper for days. We both looked tattered, torn and emaciated, as if we’d climbed up from hell, while they looked well fed, healthy and surprised at us
stumbling into this mountain hut late one winter’s night. I steadied myself against the wall and breathed in the warmth of the room. Its walls were illuminated by messy candles, and a pan of water boiled on a coal stove in the corner.

  Cheese, bread, sausage, everything we’d dreamt of for the previous five days, lay spread across the table. The rich, vital smell of coal, wood and food mixed with the hot moist air and made my head spin. There are no smells out on the mountains in winter.

  A tall, smiling skier stood up and walked over to me, helped me with my rucksack, sat me down, and passed us both some cold water. We looked into our cups, neither daring to drink or to believe. The skier sat back down and they all looked at us, at our faces raw and gaunt, at our ragged frost-nipped hands which were visibly shaking, and waited for us to tell them about our climb.

  That night I woke up several times, scared out of my wits, panic gripping my brain, grabbing for something to hold me on to the world. Then I’d remember I was safe, and lie back down and listen to the sound of the wind, Rich’s fitful breathing, the blood pumping through my head, telling myself everything was OK, we’d made it. Each time, I’d close my eyes again and think about getting back to Chamonix, back to Sheffield, back home, lying next to Mandy, feeling companionship and warmth with someone who wanted me to be there forever.

  In my dream we’re in our bedroom while the sun casts its light through yellow curtains onto sea-blue walls. My arms are round her, and her curly red hair is in my face. She hugs me tight, as if she thinks she can hold on to me forever. I hug her back and whisper a promise into her ear, a promise that will unwind her arms. ‘This will be the last time, Mandy, the last time.’

  Then my dream changes as I open my eyes and find myself back on that face, pressed tight to Rich’s frozen corpse with the wind howling and the black clouds boiling up to engulf me and set me like stone upon the mountain …

  Panicked, I woke again and listened to the wind outside. I knew she’d be worried, we were a few days overdue – but everything would be fine once we got down.

  It always was.

  Mandy’s mother died when she was six, but her father and family had kept her apart from her mother for a long time before her death, hoping this would make her loss less devastating and traumatic. She told me she couldn’t remember her mother at all; all she remembered was the loss. She told me once that she couldn’t lose someone that close again.

  We had lain in bed together, the last time before I left for the Alps. She had asked me what I was planning, asked me why I had to go. She worries about me. She hates it. If I loved her I wouldn’t put her through this. I know the pain it causes, but I have to go. Without this I have nothing. She had made me promise not to take any risks, and I had agreed. Both of us knew it was a lie.

  I lay in the hut with Rich and thought about her, pleased to be alive, but knowing she was alone at home fearing I was dead. I thought back to all the other times. After I’d come back from the Frendo the year before, she would find me asleep, cradling the alarm clock as if I was trying to tie myself into the electric lead, dreaming I was back sleeping on the spur. She’d wrestle the clock from me, only to find me safely re-belayed into the electricity system by morning.

  ‘You’re losing it, Andy. What happens to you up there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Later, she had sat next to the bath as I told her about the climb and watched my frost-nipped fingers shedding dead skin. Forgetting myself, I gave her the hardcore version of what had happened: near-death and near-disaster. Instead of gasping and looking impressed, she’d had tears in her eyes.

  Now, at home, she gave in and located the number of my friend’s house in Chamonix.

  ‘Is Andy there?’

  ‘Hello, Andy’s not back yet,’ the voice said, unaware of who or why anyone was asking.

  ‘It’s Mandy, Andy’s wife.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the voice said, telling her that the weather was good, and that there had been no rescues, that the route was really long and hard, but safe. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow, I promise,’ he reassured her.

  Things hadn’t gone to plan from the start.

  I had been all set for the North Face of the Eiger, hoping to try a winter ascent, a ridiculous objective considering my single alpine climb. However, the months that had followed that climb had allowed me to digest the Frendo experience. The failures, successes and mistakes were mulled over and lessons learnt, until I believed I could make that giant leap from novice to Eiger warrior. The Frendo had been simply a stepping stone. For a year I trained: biking, walking, running and climbing, testing out gear and visualising myself on the White Spider, the Hinterstoisser Traverse, moving across the Traverse of the Gods.

  Aaron no longer climbed, but that summer I met Paul Tattersall who, although almost ten years older than me, shared the same rabid obsession with climbing. He had begun working in the shop part-time, raising funds for an expedition to Greenland, big-wall climbing. He was the archetypal free spirit, with no fixed address, only a collection of climbing gear. He travelled around, climbing with his German girlfriend Angela; he’d met her while living in a cave in Spain. On rock he was world class, soloing up and down routes I couldn’t even top-rope, sometimes in mismatched boots, very often with holes in. To me he was a god, fit, strong, and able. We climbed together a few times, generally with me struggling to lead on my routes, then struggling again to second on his. Paul was hoping to become a guide, but wanted more alpine experience, so we decided we’d go out to the Alps that winter. The Eiger was chosen because I knew Paul had the ability, and I had the ambition.

  That summer and autumn I thought of little else.

  As the trip drew closer, I became more and more nervous, imagining the Face, thinking of everything that could go wrong, always falling back on the knowledge that if Paul was there everything would be OK. The idea of climbing the route, of coming back with it in the bag, was dizzying.

  Then, with a week to go, I got a call from Angela telling me Paul had contracted some kind of heart virus, and that he’d been told not to do anything. I made the right noises and I was sorry for him, but all I could think about, as she explained how serious his condition was, was who could replace him at such short notice. Before she’d had time to put her phone back on the receiver, I’d started to dial for a new partner.

  I’d met Rich Cross only once before, when I had gone out after work a few weeks previously to do some winter climbing on Kinder Scout, the highest mountain in Derbyshire – well, the highest hill. That night Rich, myself and Jon my lodger had squeezed into his car and driven up snowy roads for an all-night climb, getting back from the hill just in time for work the following morning.

  Rich was the same age as me, but exuded a quiet physical confidence. He was tall and built like a brick. He had been pushing his climbing grades through three years at Leeds University, both in Scotland and the Alps, and had returned the previous summer from a bold expedition to the Ogre in Pakistan. His experience was far beyond mine, but we had got on well that night, sharing dark belays and tramping through the snow. So I dialled Rich’s number first.

  He was also the only person I knew who could leave at a few days’ notice.

  * * *

  We drove over in a van lent by my friend Pete the Grocer, the back full of climbers and skiers rather than bananas and oranges.

  The Eiger had been put on hold, so we were bound for Chamonix, and needed a new objective. I thumbed through the guide, panicking that I had had no time to climb any potential route in my mind beforehand.

  ‘Why don’t we try the North East Spur of Les Droites,’ suggested Rich, his raised eyebrows and wide eyes showing that even he thought this would be a bold leap in both our grades. I scanned my memory banks for data on the route, thinking of that 1,200-metre face on the back of the guidebook, the awesome spur running up its left-hand edge, steep and hard, a big tick in summer for any alpinist, a very rare tick in winter. I remembered an image from one o
f Doug Scott’s books of Aid Burgess tiptoeing out on a big ice field on the Spur. The picture had stuck in my mind at the time as particularly vertigo-inducing. I had tried to imagine how it would be possible to go on day after day for such a long and sustained climb, a route as hard as the Eiger North Face, a route that made the Frendo look like a bike path. My brain whirled at the possibility. I imagined that with Rich as a partner we could do it, not knowing that Rich was under the self-same misguided belief in me.

  ‘The stove’s fucking fucked,’ said Rich, twisting the tiny control knob. The flame, no bigger than a dying match, remained unchanged and certainly unable to melt any snow. We sat in our thick sleeping bags, one day up the climb, and looked at each other.

  We’d started on the route hoping to storm up it in two days, but the climbing had proved much harder than expected. On one lead I’d backed off, finding it too scary, the hardest climbing I’d done. I left it for Rich to complete. A pitch higher I’d found myself on the same type of terrain, only this time I had pushed on, not wanting to seem weak in front of such a strong partner.

  Reaching the snowy notch in the spur, a third of the way up my hardest climb, had been immensely satisfying. A good weather forecast, and feeling strong, had given me the confidence that I could do it. But now, with a broken stove, that dream was over. The only thing to do was retreat and hope we could get another weather window long enough to return.

  ‘Fucker, fucker, fucker,’ said Rich, as he continued to fiddle and shake the stove.

  ‘If we climbed fast enough, we could do the rest in a day, and get down to the hut on the other side,’ I said, and both of us craned our necks up at the colossal black mass of the spur above.

  The North East Spur is famous for getting harder and harder as the climber progresses, with the crux situated near the very top. Today had been one of my hardest days’ climbing ever, but tomorrow would inevitably trump that. To carry on, with no ability to melt snow for drinking or cooking our dehydrated noodles, would be madness. Yet it was easy to convince ourselves that we could. Blind youthful confidence, if nothing else, was on our side. So we continued.