Psychovertical Read online

  On my days off I began going to a local quarry, trying out different techniques, learning how to safeguard myself as I progressed, learning by thinking, doing and then re-evaluating. I didn’t have the time or money to do some easy big walls, so I had to learn all I could now.

  My first real solo had been that summer, taking place in the dark in the old slate mines above Llanberis in North Wales. It was scary, being alone in the dark, only the hum of the power-station buried deep in the heart of the mountain for company. But I knew that the most important technique I could learn, above that of knots and karabiners and pulleys, was the ability to control my fear. Fear kills all great ideas.

  It had taken an age to sort out my belay and stack my ropes that night, and longer still to get my rack in order. Worried that I might leave a vital piece of gear on the ground, I cast the beam of my headtorch around to check for anything crucial. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be on my own for days, perhaps weeks, and wondered if I could be focused enough for that long, if my clumsiness wouldn’t finally be the death of me. Eventually I was ready, and began climbing, still running through all the little details I had to get right: placing good gear, the correct sequence of moving up my aiders, making sure my haul line was running correctly. I was about fifteen feet off the ground when I realized a major error in my system: I’d forgotten to clip into the rope, which sat piled neatly on the ground.

  Kicking myself, I carefully descended and started again, only this time with the rope. Twenty feet higher I looked up and everything went dark. The battery for my headtorch had fallen off the back of my helmet. Down I went again.

  Later that night, walking away from the quarry after having completed the route, I tried to focus on what had gone right, and how to eliminate what had gone wrong. It was clear there was much to learn, and many unexpected problems that would have to be overcome in order to succeed. But I wasn’t naive. I knew it would be hard. I wanted it to be hard.

  I giggled again, knowing that it could be done.

  I told no one of my plan.

  As usual I began to focus on a do-able wall, the Verdon Gorge in France, but then moved on swiftly to harder walls, the Dru, the Grand Capucin. Finally I set my sights on the fearsome Troll Wall in Norway, the highest – and most dangerous – wall in Europe. I knew Mandy would be terrified if she knew what I was planning, and so made up an imaginary climbing partner called ‘Matt’ whom I was meeting out there.

  A month later I stood in the rain below the most scary and intimidating piece of rock I had ever seen, black, looming like a bad dream out of the clouds. I knew I wasn’t ready, but knew no one ever would be for such a challenge, and so I began anyway, ferrying my gear up to the base of the wall.

  Whereas El Cap is silent and majestic, the Troll Wall is always moving, rocks tumbling down, crashing and booming, sparks leaping in the dark. It was a wall straight out of a horror film. The wicked witch’s castle, the gateway to Mordor, the entrance to hell. I hid beneath my haul bag, sweaty and wet, and knew it was beyond me.

  I hadn’t imagined how lonely soloing could be.

  Unable to commit to the wall until better weather appeared I rang Mandy to put her mind at ease, her voice making me regret my decision to come. ‘How’s Matt finding it?’ she asked. ‘Fine,’ I said, wishing I had the strength of my imaginary partner as I stood by myself next to some remote phone box.

  The climb proved to be equally illusory. It rained for ten days solid, and each time I ferried my gear up to the base of the wall, my fear grew. The more the rain hammered on my tent, the more my resolve to climb the wall crumbled, the realisation I just couldn’t do it.

  I lay in my tent and listened to ‘The River’ by Bruce Springsteen.

  Eventually the other climbers who had hung around to climb the wall drifted away to drier climates, leaving me and one other, a Finn who had also come to solo the wall.

  I didn’t even know his name, but we teamed up and tried to climb it together, perhaps believing our pooled resolve might be enough. But at the first belay, as I watched him smoke a cigarette, fingers shaking, trying to shield it from the mist, psyching himself up, I wondered if he was as out of his depth as I was. Then, ready, he took the stub and pushed it into a crack. In that moment I knew I didn’t want to climb with him.

  You just don’t fuck about with mountains like that. They don’t like it, a fact proved an hour later when he fell off the first pitch, ripped out all his gear and landed in a heap at my feet. He was shaken but OK, but our climb was over.

  I dug out his stub with my fingers and went home.

  A few months later I hung in my portaledge below El Cap and thought about the Troll Wall, and about going home without that climb, about the crushing disappointment. For a while I was broken-hearted, my dream dashed, glad I hadn’t told anyone. But slowly I began to rebuild my plan. I would go and solo El Cap instead, where the weather wouldn’t play a part. I had no time for doing an easy route, and so chose to try my hardest route so far, Aurora, that terrifying climb I’d heard Adam Wainwright talk about a few years before at the Troll training weekend.

  I felt that familiar giggle rising inside me, the excitement that I would begin tomorrow, jumar up the ropes that stretched up for five pitches, fixed high on the route. Could I do it? A haul bag crashed down from the top of Zodiac, the route a hundred metres to my right, cast off by climbers wanting an easy descent. It made a horrible ripping sound, ending in a large echoing thump. It sounded like a body hitting the ground.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  I tried not to think about why I was there. I tried my well tested technique of imagining myself soloing on Stanage, the long gritstone escarpment that hemmed in the west edge of Sheffield’s moors. I could smell the heather, feel the brush of the ferns on my legs, the cotton of my laces, squeaking as I pulled my climbing boots tight. I began climbing my usual routes, alone, just me and the crag, a bluebird sky save for the smoke from the cement works. I rebuilt the holds within my thoughts, each one as memorable to me as a lover’s body. I could feel my hands cupping rounded edges, or carefully placed and locked in, my shoulders tensing, elbows down, pulling, pushing, stepping, but never too hard. The best climbs are seduced. I could feel myself high above the ground, only my body to save me, from the earth and from my thought. I marvel at the freedom of the soloist, to move without fear, to be free from the thing that pulls like gravity: doubt.

  The following morning I started climbing.

  Aurora was everything I had hoped and feared it would be. It demanded more than I could give, but somehow what was missing was found. It was almost impossible, only the tiniest chink of possibility for me to find my way, and so day after day I got higher and higher.

  As usual my main problems came from the small details, not the large.

  Committed to the route I found to my horror that all the belay hangers were missing, which required me to fit my own on the stubs that projected an inch from the wall at the end of every pitch; three steel fingers signalling an end to the trauma and fear of hooks and copperheads. The problem was, although I had brought hangers and nuts, my nuts were metric and the stubs were imperial. Nothing fitted. Hanging there on pitch six, knowing I had somehow to haul my bags up on these studs, I felt the blood drain out of me. Without the ability to retreat all I could do was place the hangers on, then wrap gaffer tape around the studs and hope the weight of my bags would hold them in place.

  As I climbed I learned the art of big-wall soloing, and wondered why school wasn’t more like this, and how great it would be to have a Master’s in big walling.

  On the fifth night I sat on my ledge and cut the gloves from my infected and bloated fingers, a reminder that next time I should take more care of them and bring a first aid kit. Over on the Dawn Wall I watched as Leo Houlding had a party up on Lay Lady Ledge. A fellow Brit, but younger and good looking, Leo was the star of UK climbing, bringing a rock-and-roll edge to a pretty conservative sport. For him life always looked
so effortless, one long party of fun and climbing. He was one of the few climbers I knew who was fully sponsored, and so could do what he wanted. I wondered why my life wasn’t like that, what I could achieve if I wasn’t forced to climb in fits and starts. Then I looked at myself, sat there on my own with sausage fingers, eating cold beans, while he drank Tequila with climbing babes across the wall. Deep down I knew the reason was that he was single, with no house, or job, or any ties. This was his life. This was my holiday. I lay in my bed and wondered that if I felt normal here, if things made sense, then why should I go home?

  Then I remembered once making a commitment to Mandy, that if she gave me her heart, I wouldn’t break it.

  The following day I woke up to find a surprise, a three-person speed team climbing up below me. They had started the night before, and had climbed through the dark. They were still many pitches below, so I climbed a pitch and waited for them, shouting down that they had to be careful as my belay was primarily constructed with gaffer tape. I guess they thought it was a joke.

  Their imminent arrival created a dilemma as I’d been dying for a piss all day, but didn’t think it was fair to go. After all, pissing on someone on a big wall is bad form, especially if they then catch you up. I ended up holding it in all day until tea time. I had a tin of cold stew to take my mind off it, the team only a pitch below me by now, but this only compounded my urgency, the stew putting further pressure on my poor bladder. I was desperate, and so decided I would have to go in the empty stew tin, quickly filling the tin to the brim, lumps of fat and potato floating on the top.

  Now I had the dilemma of what to do with the tin. I wasn’t keen on the lead climber reaching me and asking why I was holding a tin of piss, so I hit on the plan of pouring it out one drop at a time, hoping it would dissipate before it hit the leader or anyone else below. I lay on my belly, peering over the edge of the ledge, and began pouring. The plan was working, but was far too slow. There was no response from below and my confidence got the better of me, so I poured faster. Suddenly there was a commotion, and the leader began screaming at me to stop pissing on his head. Now I was in big trouble, because when he reached my portaledge he would realise that not only had I pissed on him, but had been pouring it out of a tin can!

  For the second time on the route I reached for the gaffer tape, and wrapped the can in tape before hiding it in my haul bag lid.

  Eric, Andrew and some guy who’d never climbed a wall before reached me by sundown. Strangely, I found myself washing my face and hands in order to look presentable, feeling a bit like a castaway, cutting off his beard and long hair when he sees the approach of his rescuers. They all looked totally fucked, having been awake for two days already.

  No one mentioned the piss incident.

  They’d forgotten to bring any belay seats, wooden planks that took the strain off your harness leg loops, and so they shared my portaledge as Andrew geared up for the crux expanding flake directly above the belay. We were all pretty nervous, as this ‘Gong flake’ pitch was notorious, a grand piano that hung above the belay. If it ripped we’d all be scraped off the wall. We all watched him in the dark, as he carefully taped his way up to the flake, listening to the hollow sound, like a cracked bell, as he used all his skill to place pegs that would hold his weight, but not force the flake off the wall.

  BUM BUM – BUM BUM – BUM BUM – BUM BUM.

  All of a sudden a loud pulsating beat filled the air all around us. We all looked at each other baffled at the sound until Eric said ‘Shit man, you must be scared up there, we can hear your heart beating.’

  Then we realised the sound was coming from Leo Houlding’s supercharged stereo banging out some Euro Techno. He was having another party on Lay Lady Ledge.

  Andrew continued.

  A scream ripped through the air, followed by a jangling rattle of gear as Andrew plummeted down, plucking out all his gear as he went. The sound was horrible and for a second we all shrank, expecting the flake to come scraping down the wall with him.

  All I could think about was the tin of piss in my haul bag.

  Andrew groaned, and we looked up, all still alive. He started up again.

  The night drew on, the climbers beginning to hallucinate with lack of sleep. Andrew fell once more, this time when a bat had pushed his cam out of the crack.

  It was way past midnight by the time they left, slowly jumaring up, shouting ‘Thanks for your hospitality’ as they went.

  I tried to get back to sleep, only to be woken again when I heard a scream from above. I opened my eyes just in time to see a light fly past my ledge; spiralling down until it disappeared into the rocks at the base of the wall. I felt sick, knowing one of the climbers must have fallen to his death. I had never seen anyone die before.

  Then I heard laughter from above, and cursing. It had been nothing more than a dropped helmet with the headtorch attached.

  I was glad to be alone again.

  Three days later Aurora linked up with the last four pitches of the route Tangerine Trip, and I climbed up to the summit.

  You would imagine that the greatest moments of your life would end with a little fanfare. But this one ended with a simple ‘Thank fuck that’s over’ as I dragged my almost empty haul bag to the top.

  I took my clothes off and lay amongst all my scattered gear and thought about the climb. I no longer felt the giggles, only pride that this dream had been made real. There was also a slight sadness at its passing.

  I was happy. I had kept my faith. I had not given up. I wasn’t a failure. It would have been so easy not to have climbed this route. But so many times in the last few days and months and years I had found strength of body and spirit that I would have imagined to be utterly beyond me.

  I thought about the Frendo Spur, the Shield, soloing the Droites, and now this, and how each climb had changed me, made me who I am. But why had I wanted more so soon? Wasn’t it that I just wanted to recapture that feeling, the same feeling that I had experienced there on the summit of El Cap?

  These moments were hard fought and dangerous to find, and some would probably question my sanity, but making a dream reality would always be hard. But in that moment, on the summit, I would have paid any price to feel as I did. To feel proud of who I was. To have believed, and reached beyond my grasp yet still snatched that dream.

  I looked over at the Dawn Wall and thought about the Reticent.

  Fearometer

  Pitch 8 Reticent Wall

  I STOOD NAKED in a cold white room, a hospital maybe. The room was empty apart from a large black door. My stomach was in knots. I knew that something terrible was beyond it, but I was compelled to go through, even though every instinct I had told me to run away. But where to? There was only one door.

  I noticed glass littering the floor.

  I touched the door. It was rock hard, cold and stony. I pushed and it slowly swung open. There was only blackness. I was terrified of what I would find in the dark, but I walked on.

  I stood in a white room, identical to the last, empty save for another black door. I pushed it open and saw only darkness …

  I woke in the dark.

  Where am I?

  I sat up in my sleeping bag. The metal corners of the portaledge scraped on the wall, the sound bringing me back to the present. I was bursting for a piss.

  My muscles were sore, my tendons were stiff, as I stood naked like an old man and pissed off the edge, the heat of me falling for hundreds and hundreds of metres. I shivered, feeling the smooth granite under my feet, cold now after the warmth of yesterday had radiated away.

  I noticed I wasn’t attached to the rope any more. I wasn’t scared. I knew I wouldn’t fall.

  I lay back down and zipped up my sleeping bag. The dark outline of the rim of El Cap was becoming defined in the predawn. I thought about the dream.

  Too much cheese.

  I looked at the next corner. It didn’t look any easier. Although I was worried about the climbing above, I was al
so excited; the climbing below had given me confidence in my abilities. Just one placement at a time. I thought about Royal Robbins, and his solo ascent of El Cap. I had met him a few years before at a slideshow, an old man now, but still charismatic, the magic of El Cap still in his eyes. I wonder if, when you’re old, all those crazy things you did make more sense. Do the people who doubted your sanity, and questioned your reasons, now question themselves for not having done the same? I like to imagine being a very old man, and looking in my trophy cabinet of life, remembering all those climbs and adventures and thinking it had all been worth it. Probably the thing that bothered me most, especially the older I got, was not the fear of dying, but the fear of getting old and realising I’d let doubt and fear stop me from living the life I’d really wanted to live. And yet I knew that my dilemma lay in the fact that part of me wanted the normal life that Mandy wanted for me – being a normal husband and father. The problem was I was living two lives, in two completely separate worlds. I felt that I had to choose between them. I felt as if I was being pulled apart.

  You could die today and none of that would matter.

  I’ve made it this far.

  This is the hardest pitch you’ve ever climbed.

  I know I can do it.

  Even if you do, you still have the crux.

  I got up and stood with bare feet on the cold granite of Wino Ledge and began sorting out my rack for the next pitch, too anxious to wait for the sun. It was so quiet.

  What will it feel like if you fall, knowing in that instant that you could not stop?

  I thought about my responsibilities, to both Mandy and Ella and also to my mum and dad, brother and sister. So many lives could be changed, even ruined for this. For this. What was this? It wasn’t just a climb. I was fighting for my life day by day. There was no fun, only relief; no laughter, only sighs; no smiles, only grimaces. This was torture – mental and physical. I could take the pain in my body, but the agony of anxiety was almost too much to bear.