Psychovertical Read online

  On the last evening, still hungry after a tiny portion of curry and rice, my diet dictated by my giro and the budget constraints of my daily allowance at the ‘Scoop and Weigh’, I lay and thought about my future, a span of time that seemed as black and empty as the night.

  Next day, I stood by the side of the road for what felt like hours until I got a lift to Bolton with a roofer, then to Leeds with a man who ran a mobile disco. After being picked up by the police for walking down the side of the motorway, and dropped at the services, I hitched a lift with a trucker bound for Hull docks, his cab the first really warm place I’d been for a long time.

  Hitching always came with risks, and I’d come across my fair share of scary characters on the road, but this trucker was one of the good ones. He was probably in his fifties, kind of unhealthy-looking in a truck-driver way, but stopping at a snack wagon he bought me a cup of tea and told me how, at nineteen, he’d hitched all the way from Scotland to South Africa. He told me tales of being stuck for days on African roads, where lions roamed in the bush, of gun barrels being jabbed into ribs, of sandstorms and sunsets, tsetse flies and bivies in Timbuktu. I listened to him, and envied his stories, the adventure, his guts to just do it.

  ‘Why did you come back?’ I asked.

  ‘It was the best thing I ever did, and I enjoyed every minute of it, but when I got to Cape Town all I could think about was going home.’

  ‘What did you do next?’ I was imagining further adventures.

  ‘I got married and started driving trucks.’

  I was dropped off near the docks and walked back towards the squat, popping in to a friend’s house to cadge a cup of tea on the way. The house was full of students, who always seemed to me to have a limitless amount of money back then, and who, it seemed, did no more work than Wayne or me. The settee was full of long-haired students smoking skinny rollies and watching Taxi Driver on a small black-and-white TV. Out of the kitchen came an attractive woman with crazy curls of red hair whom I’d never seen before.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, surprised at someone new coming in the door. ‘Would you like some food?’ She spooned out a big plate of veg and rice, the best meal I’d seen for a long time.

  I suppose I fell in love with her at that moment.

  Her name was Mandy. She was a student at the university, doing a French degree, and had come back to Hull from France where she’d been working in a school. I’d heard lots about her from other people, as she’d been a DJ at a popular nightclub before she went, and was one of the cooler of Hull’s many Indie kids.

  Trauma was in the air, and I soon found out why everyone was so glued to the TV. Mandy had just found out that her best friend’s boyfriend had been two-timing the friend while she was living in London. She’d just told her friend over the phone. Now she had to find said boyfriend and tell him she’d spilled the beans and get him to ring his now ex.

  ‘Who’s coming with me?’ said Mandy, addressing the room. All eyes were uncomfortably but firmly fixed on De Niro.

  No one said a word.

  ‘I’ll come,’ I said, in an unusual fit of gallantry.

  I think I felt obliged after my free meal, and also because I quite liked the idea of spending some time with her, and so we put on our coats and began walking the streets, looking for the boyfriend. Mandy was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. She seemed full of light and ideas. She lived in France, she wanted things. No, she expected things. She had the touch of possibility that was missing from most of the people I knew. She also had a sadness about her. Maybe she was just as lost as me.

  We tramped through the dark streets, knocking on doors where we thought we’d find the boyfriend, until we knew where he was.

  ‘Stay here, I’ll go and talk to him,’ I said, leaving her at the street corner – another uncharacteristic act of chivalry, as I’d rather have sat with the rest of them and watched Taxi Driver. But I hadn’t, and, in that moment, she fell in love with me.

  I knocked on the door.

  Later, I walked Mandy home and said goodnight, then went back to the squat, up the fire-escape, past the broken door, and into the scruffy kitchen, where a pan of chips bubbled on the stove. The living room was full of people smoking dope and talking about how we were all going to be drafted into the Gulf War. I doubted they’d make very good soldiers.

  I went to my room and, pulling back the curtain, dropped my rucksack on the floor. The space seemed darker and more depressing than usual, and I could see the poverty of my surroundings. But then I thought about my trip and the wall with pallets stacked against it, about bush shelters, ditches, and all the other places I’d slept. I didn’t live here. This place wasn’t me. I knew I wouldn’t be here for long.

  I pulled out my sleeping bag and threw it on the mattress. The foot of the bag was still frozen, ice coating the cardboard-stiff cotton, but I climbed in and pulled the blankets over it, knowing my body heat would dry it out by morning.

  I thought about Mandy, and wondered if I’d see her again before she went back to France.

  I just lay there and listened to the wind flapping the tape on the window, and once more imagined I was somewhere else. Only this time I wasn’t alone.

  Max load

  Pitch 2 New Dawn

  I PUSHED THE last of my gear into my biggest haul bag and, pulling the lid shut, clipped the bag to the haul line. Two ropes hung down from the belay forty metres above my head, a green climbing rope and a yellow haul rope, clipped to two bolts at the top of the pitch I’d climbed the previous day.

  It’s been a long time since you’ve done this.

  The first pitch yesterday had been slow, as I worked out how to climb again, but today, hauling these bags up, was where the work would really begin. It seemed almost comical to be feeling so rusty, ropes and hardware awkward and alien, when about to commit to the hardest route of my life. I was aware it would be so easy to make a fatal mistake.

  Just take your time.

  There were so many things I could do wrong.

  Just think everything through.

  There is no room for error when soloing a big wall.

  You’ve done it before.

  I’d only done it once.

  Soloing a big wall requires a complex system of self-belaying, abseiling and hauling, and for years I tried to learn how it was done, spending many days in Derbyshire quarries in the rain perfecting the technique. These days had probably been my most dangerous as I blindly tried out different ways of protecting myself without a partner, several times coming close to hitting the deck.

  The first lead had been in the slate quarries of Llanberis in North Wales, a thin crack tucked in the back wall of a disused pit. I’d climbed it in the dark after work, and had been so scared of making a mistake I’d climbed about ten feet up before remembering I’d forgotten to clip into the rope; I’d left it neatly stacked on the ground below me.

  The next solo had been El Cap by one of its hard routes.

  Yes and you did it.

  Only just!

  I would climb a pitch, paying my own rope out rather than a partner doing it for me, make a belay, then abseil down the second rope I was carrying, my haul line, back to the previous belay. Once there I would attach my bags on the haul line, and return up my lead rope, taking out the gear I’d placed, then haul the bag up after me.

  On reaching the belay again, all the protection would be racked ready for the next pitch, and both the haul and lead line restacked, ready for the next pitch, in rope bags designed to stop them snagging as they fed out.

  This system is both slow and labour-intensive, with a 1,000-metre route requiring 3,000 metres of movement (twice up the rope, and once down the haul line). It is a well-established and safe technique, but in climbing there is perhaps no bigger test of skill. With no partner to fall back on, or to swap leads, there is also no bigger reward than standing on top of a mighty wall knowing every inch has been climbed alone. There is also no greater weight than to look up at t
he wall from below, wondering if you have it in you to succeed.

  This was what I wanted. I wanted it all. All the good. All the bad. To say it was all mine.

  What will it prove?

  I slipped off my shoes leaving them sitting neatly next to the large flake at the bottom of the route, and put on my rock boots.

  One more night on the ground, and then you’ll be on the wall for good. No more coming down.

  Using the rope fixed from the previous day, I climbed back up using my jumars – metal clamps that only move up a rope, locking down on it once they are weighted – sliding up the one attached to my harness first, then the one attached to a foot loop next, moving each in turn, slowly progressing up the rope. Climbing rope is dynamic, designed to stretch and reduce the impact force on both your body and the protection, meaning it bounces as you climb it. When you climb one you’re mindful of all the people who have died because a rope had been sawn through by the bouncing motion over sharp edges, and no matter how careful you are, your mind will flip into paranoia mode.

  Did you do up all the karabiners?

  Yes.

  What if someone’s been up in the night and messed with it?

  Not going to happen.

  I thought about the time I practised jumaring up a rope in a quarry near Sheffield, how one minute I was fifty feet up, and the next I was shooting down. The rope had been running over an edge, and the sheath of the rope, the nylon mantle that protects the core strands of the rope, snapped. Down I slid until, with incredible luck, the sheath bunched up below me and stopped me hitting the ground.

  Just trust the rope. Go slow. It’s all you can do.

  The worst story I’d heard about a rope being damaged involved a solo climber on the Shield, jumaring back up his lead line in a storm, close to the top of the wall. With nearly a kilometre of air below his feet, the sharp burr on a peg rubbed on the rope, cutting the sheath little by little each time he moved his body up. Suddenly the sheath snapped, and he fell several metres, until, like me, the sheath bunched up. Unlike me, however, he was hanging in a storm with no chance of rescue. All he could do was gather up the multiple strands of the core of his rope and jumar up on them, the burr of the peg continuing to saw through them as he went.

  Think about something else.

  I arrived at the belay and clipped in, making myself comfortable and ready to haul my bags up. I passed the haul line through my wall hauler, a pulley with a toothed cam built in which allows the rope to be hauled one way and then locks down after each pull. I’d used this pulley on all the routes I’d climbed on El Cap, and I doubted there was any other device that had been the focus of so much expended energy, lifting hundreds of haul bags over tens of kilometres in its life.

  Clipping a jumar from my harness to the haul line I began to do squats, using my body weight to draw the rope through until the rope was tight between the pulley and the haul bags. I pulled harder as the rope took the weight. The rope grew thinner under the strain, but the bags stayed on the ledge. I pulled harder. The rope grew thinner. I pulled harder, using both hands now, the strain on me, the rope, and the pulley increasing with each stroke.

  I looked down and wondered if the bags were caught on something, or if I’d left them clipped to the belay, but I knew the real reason was they were simply too heavy. I lay back so that my legs were braced against the wall, my head pointing down, and heaved with my arms, the muscles in my thighs bulging as I pressed them out. The rope moved an inch and I collapsed under the strain.

  This is fucking impossible.

  I pulled again, my kneecaps feeling as if they might pop off as I pressed my legs out and drew another inch of rope through the pulley.

  You’ll never get them up.

  An hour later the haul bags were halfway up the pitch. I was exhausted and despairing. It was pointless, but I was stubborn. I wouldn’t give in – even if it took me all day and this was as high as I got, I would have this victory. I inverted again and pulled hard with every sinew. I marvelled at the amount of force the rope, pulley and belay could take. The only thing I doubted was me.

  You’re going to break something!

  Two hours had passed and the bags were almost up, but now I listened to my pulley groaning under the strain. The words ‘Max load: 50 kg’ stamped on the side caused me concern. My sixty litres of water weighed more than that.

  Just get it up quick.

  The closer I got the bag, the more the pulley creaked and clicked, as if to demonstrate how overloaded it was. It was an alarming sound. If it broke, the bag would fall straight onto my harness, probably breaking my hips and asphyxiating me in a few minutes. I watched in horror as the cam that held the rope in check also began to deform the alloy plate it pushed against, the weight on the rope far beyond its intended load. There was no way to get the load off the pulley, apart from cutting the rope with my knife, so all I could do was pull and hope it wouldn’t break.

  Finally after two and a half hours, I had the bags up and lashed to the belay. I looked at the two bolt hangers that held me and the bags, two twisted pieces of steel threaded through the bolts, no thicker or longer than my little finger. What was their breaking strain?

  It seemed I was already close to reaching mine and I was only a rope away from the ground. I slumped onto the belay, utterly exhausted and fed up. What was I doing? This was insane. I’d wasted most of the day just hauling my bag up one pitch. How on earth would I ever make it to the top?

  Soloing is all about self-confidence, and right then I had zero. I imagined the Russians looking down at me, and thinking what a bullshitter I was, how I couldn’t even haul my bags properly.

  Why do you always care what other people think?

  I put the thought of having to haul the bag again to the back of my mind and began sorting gear for the next pitch, hoping the climbing would make me feel better.

  Aid climbing is an odd way of scaling rock, and is designed to make it possible to climb what is impossible to climb with fingers and toes alone. All the hardest walls on El Cap involve primarily the aid-climbing technique. This involves placing a piece of protection – a peg, a nut, a skyhook – then clipping a set of aiders to it, attached to you via a sling called a daisy chain. These aiders are long nylon ladders with steps sewn in, which allow you to climb up and then place the next piece. The physical skill involved, apart from hauling, jumaring, etc., is finding and placing the best protection possible. The harder the route, the less reliable and more hard-won the place for the protection pieces becomes. But what makes aid climbing so addictive is the mental focus required. Very few sports involve the breaking of so many mental barriers.

  I started up the next pitch, but my lack of fitness and organisation only seemed to make things worse. The ropes, aiders and gear became a tangled mess.

  You fucking fat useless knacker.

  The ‘easy climbing’ also proved harder and more scary than I’d expected, with several pieces of protection ripping out as I moved up on them.

  These first six pitches had been climbed since a year after I was born, something I tried to remind myself as I shook my rope clear of rusty pegs and corroded copper heads. I just wanted to get up the pitch so I could abseil off, go to bed, and put the day behind me.

  The sun beat down, and a cloud of doubt built with each placement I crept up onto. Even pieces that I knew were good felt more like time-bombs. I was rattled, the reality of the route disintegrating any high ideas I had about my climbing prowess.

  And you thought you could climb the Reticent. You can’t even climb this piss-easy route.

  My hands were too soft and unready for a wall, and the fold of fat that overlapped my harness made me feel far from athletic. I had never felt as foolish and out of my depth. I was a dreamer, a fantasist, a Walter Mitty, an overreacher.

  Another piece of protection popped and struck me in the forehead just below my helmet. I sank back in my harness and felt the bump, blood and sweat running into my eyes. />
  Fucking useless twatting fuck face!

  I looked down at the valley, the Merced River twisting below, moving slow and green, people sitting on blankets along its sandy banks. I thought about sitting on the beach at Scarborough making sandcastles.

  What are you doing?

  Every inch of me wanted to back off and call it a day. There was no way I could climb the Reticent. It would be suicide. I had felt like this so many times – out of my depth, blindingly aware of overreaching myself yet again – but this was the worst ever.

  You haven’t climbed a wall for a year. You’re too fat. You’re too weak. You’re too scared.

  I pushed on.

  I arrived at the second set of bolts, about seventy metres up the wall, and, clipping onto them with relief, quickly set up my belay, attaching my ropes to it. I was still very close to the ground. I could still abseil down and escape from the route, and these terrible feelings, for a little while longer. It was too late to haul the bags up this pitch and I didn’t have the energy, so instead I set about getting ready to leave. I couldn’t wait to get back on the ground.

  I concentrated, trying not to be distracted by thoughts of being elsewhere, and transferred from the belay to the haul line so I could abseil back down to my bags. A mistake now would be fatal, just as it would a thousand metres higher, only here I’d have less time to wonder what I had done wrong.

  I checked and rechecked that I was attached properly, that the rope fed correctly through my abseil device, that jumars were attached to my harness so I could re-ascend the rope in the morning – countless little things I needed to remember. It had been a long time since I’d done this, and it would be so easy to make a simple mistake.

  I unclipped from the belay ready to abseil, all my weight on the one rope, locked in place only by my hand.

  I thought how my life depended on that one hand, that if I lost grip I’d slide down the rope out of control and hit the ground. The rope felt hot and stiff in my fingers, my palm was slightly sweaty, my hand gripping imperceptibly harder to compensate. If I let go now I would fall.