CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A LESSON IN HEALING
FROM ANDY PARKIN

Creag Meagaidh, March 1996.

“OK, so this is called a brake plate. You put the rope in like this and clip it through there. If I fall, which is highly unlikely, you pull this hand back and the friction will stop the rope running through. Just give me loads of slack, so as you don’t accidentally pull me off.”

Without another word I traversed off rightwards around a sharp arête and back into the gully. A full pitch of dripping ice lay above me. Grade V said the guidebook – no problem, I can climb fives in any condition. I was feeling particularly confident today, nothing could stop me. The first seventy feet was off vertical, pretty easy. It had a few patches of cruddy, slushy ice but I could soon scrape past them to the other patches of chewy thawing ice. I tunnelled behind a gigantic icicle for a rest and screwed a screw in. I couldn’t see my partners. They were out of sight and I, as I later realised, was out of my mind.

I swung out onto the front face of the icicle and into the vertical. Ten feet of bomber Scottish ice and I got another screw which went in a little too easily and wobbled when I tugged on it. Oh well, I was feeling good. Great, in fact. I’d just carry on and see what came. I moved up into eggshell ice. My boots kicked straight through into the soft wet snow behind and my axes pulled out the odd time. I was used to dealing with this patchy sort of stuff and I could see a better looking area higher up. Limb by limb I crawled up the thin shell, keeping my chest right against the surface so as not to put too much weight on my arms. I was a long way out now … Whoosh. My body shudders and my heart starts to pound. The vibration makes my footholds collapse a tiny bit and I realise that it would be possible to come unstuck on this stuff. “I hate jet planes” I shout into the ice and briefly consider what I will write in my letter of complaint to the RAF. Dear Whoever: One of your pilots almost killed me on Creag Meagaidh yesterday blah blah.

Come on, get on with the climb. Each move now seems more insecure than the last. The eggshell is getting thinner and at one point I smash through and dig as far back as I can but find no purchase. The gaping hole I’ve made in front of me now makes it extra difficult to get higher but I manage, using a mixture of fear and bad style. Now I’m committed – I can’t climb back down that slop. With my ice screw seventy feet below, it would be way too risky a manoeuvre. I stop being scared and start to feel a bit like a cardboard cut-out. There’s a bulge above me with a reasonable looking patch of ice above it. I’ll aim for that. I edge left with my tools right in front of my face, standing on the tip of a thin crust. I go up into the bulge. At a reach, I slam my left axe into the good looking ice and to my detached disappointment it shatters like a breaking mirror. I sigh and can already feel the bad luck descending upon me. I stay motionless, calmly having a schizophrenic debate in my head. One of me wants just to go for it, just start fighting. It’s worked before, it could work now.

“No, stay still and wait for Nick to get around the top and drop a rope.”

“That would take ages. Longer than this brittle shell will last.”

“Reverse?”

“Is that possible?”

“Well, each move down is a move nearer to the screw and it looks even worse above.”

“OK, down it is.”

“This is a mistake,” I say out loud.

I take out my right boot and go to kick it in lower down. As I swing my foot back my left foothole breaks and my body slumps down. I brace myself on my axes … But they start to rip. They slow down for less than a moment and I kick in my foot … Then they go. The ice falls away from my face and I throw my axes at it in one last attempt to retain contact. I knew it was futile. I remember beginning to scream, very loudly. Deeply at first, then getting higher in pitch. A mass of white flashes past my eyes, no slow motion here. I don’t touch anything as I rocket past my companions on the belay. I hit the end of my fall fully conscious and spring back up the gully on the stretchy 8.5. The wobbly ice screw has held.

“Are you all right?” Nick shouts from above.

After some time wheezing in a winded state, I look up and see a blurred Nick. I clutch at my, judging by the symptoms, broken body. “Why do I never learn?” was all I could say.

Moving through your small house I have to mind not to knock your belongings over. But you don’t really care if they break. You didn’t pay for them – you made nearly all of these things. You haven’t said it to me but I think you have a clear idea of just how ephemeral all of this is. Like your stained glass mountains or the leaping salmon or, above the sink, Cerro Torre painted with a wall roller, the wire sculptures and the photo of the Peigne and Pelerins to help you recall your most frightened moments. Walking through into the front room my way is barred by haunted faces, crushed together, staring out at me from a large blue canvas. Kenya? India? Nepal? Where isn’t so important. I can feel the heat and the clamour. It has similar aspects to the canvas you made in Hampi:

We dragged ourselves out of our mosquito nets extra early this morning in a futile attempt to beat the trickling humidity to the boulders. The rocks sat like giant potatoes on a broad smooth dome. They were already shimmering. We began to move excitedly, stiff from the long train journey which had brought us here from the cold granite of the Gangotri. There Andy had climbed Shivling with Sean Smith, while I had sat in camp with a knackered arm. In contrast, this rock felt to the fingers like the crust of a hot loaf fresh from the oven. We suffocated and traversed as local men made their morning ablutions nearby.

Andy set off to climb to the top of the first Hampi boulder. He had a different climbing style to the rest of us. His right arm and leg would always move first and then pull his thin ripped torso up a stop to allow his left limbs to locate the nearest edge or pocket. It seemed to me the movement of a very graceful crab. At the last move of the problem, as he hauled on a jug with his right arm, the rock broke and Andy fell to the ground. He was only a few feet up and for most of us a short ground fall would be no big deal, but for Andy with his fused hip the feline landings of a carefree youth are a hazy memory. He hit the bare rock with pencil straight legs and cracked his heels.

He didn’t try to hide the agony as we carried him to a nearby café (many hardy mountain types would be ashamed to show such a weakness to pain). He began to retch as we fed him sweet tea and in the heat we all felt some of his delirium. A pair of white eyes moved in the darkness at the back of the room and, as they neared, a bald Tamil materialised. His skin was incredibly black. The man squatted at Andy’s feet and, after much gesticulating, took the left foot in his hand and began his examination. We made room and watched. He squeezed and explored the heel and, feeling the pieces of loose bone floating, looked up at Andy, whose knuckles were now turning white in acknowledgement. Our man then moved over Andy’s body, squeezing and manipulating every joint. Occasionally he would gasp in surprise and then assume a worried look when he fingered a bolt or plate under the skin. Slowly he broke into a proud smile. He had found an excellent subject with which to work. Then he tried to force the frozen elbow to straighten out and met with fierce opposition from a squirming Parkin. There, dazed and naive in all the heat and excitement, it is so easy to be sucked in by the many experienced con merchants but in the Swiss hospital Andy had felt the hands of the world’s finest physiotherapists and quickly recognised that our friend, the temple masseur, had a gift.

Over the coming weeks our Tamil friend was to be Andy’s constant companion, packing his feet in mud and administering herbal relaxants. During one particularly heavy bout of massage he pulled and twisted Andy’s foot to extreme angles; “Stop, please, stop!” No effect. In a reflex response to the torment he kicked the man around the head and he fell backwards across the room. But he wasn’t too put out – it was just the effect he was looking for. Andy was philosophical. He had spent so much of his life injured that he had a well rehearsed mental system for coping with such mishaps. He threw himself into his painting, as he had done before. The result, amongst lots of studies and portraits, was a huge bazaar scene on canvas. The many faces, like the faces in all Andy’s crowds, look as if they know something. Something that not all are aware of – of course this is to my untrained and romantic eye.

Early in his career and on the Sheffield scene Andy had been a superb free climber. In ’82 he went on a road trip to the States with Thierry Renault and made first on-sight ascents of many of the hardest routes of the day, including Leavitt’s Hot Flyer in Boulder Canyon.

“All these blokes were saying ‘Why don’t we try this?’ but that wasn’t the way I thought. I said ‘Why don’t we do this?’.”

In ’83, after Lobsang and Broad Peak, he almost succeeded on a new route on K2 with Doug Scott. Then, in Cham, he made the first true winter solo of the Walker Spur on the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses. The Japanese alpinist Hasagowa had soloed the route in the late ’70s but had resorted to siege tactics and fixed rope. Andy’s one and a half day solo was made in a purist style.

“I wanted to honour Cassin and invoke some of the sense of discovery that he might have felt, walking over from Italy to make the first ascent. I climbed mostly free solo and without a route description. It was using this style that got me lost whilst soloing the Shroud.”

The following season, whilst guiding on the Riffelhorn in Zermat, a belay failed when the rock gave way and Andy fell ninety feet onto a flat slab. The list of injuries was terrific, the most serious being a ruptured pericardium. I do not, and neither would Andy, wish to dwell on these injuries. It is better to dwell on the future than the past. This also goes for each and every route. Once a route is behind you (and especially with a poor memory) the experience may never have existed. The joy of climbing comes from the participation. Andy knows this and I reckon he won’t be hanging up his boots, sitting by the fire and getting lost in reminiscence too early.

After the best part of a year in a Swiss hospital he was utterly broken. He assumed he would never climb again, and climbing was his life. He had hardly thought about anything else for years. This is the part of the story I needed to listen to. Then he began to paint. Mountains and people. The years passed and his body recovered. His choice of sites from which to paint became more adventurous as he moved further away from home and memory to find a suitable view. And, after time amongst the mountains, a desire to climb was instilled once again.

“A few years later I woke up and knew I was better. First I was a climber, then I was a painter and now I need both.”

Now his painting and his climbing evolve side by side. Sculptures made from rubbish found on the glaciers form a significant part of his recent work.

“We found this airplane wreck on the Boissons and turned it into a huge elephant. An endangered species from human detritus.”

In Patagonia Andy would spend days building cairns in the mountains or mobiles in the forest. He wouldn’t take any photos and after a while the wind would take them back into the earth. Again the joy coming from the participation, and the mind looking to the next creation. That is not to say that Andy finds recounting past experiences disagreeable. It is the sheer size of these experiences, rather than his yarn-spinning abilities, that leaves me riveted. I was aghast when in his Chamonix house, he matter of factly told me of his three days alone, bivouacked at 8300 metres on Everest without oxygen or, more recently, when he modestly described his climb of Pelerinage on the Peigne with Christophe Beaudoin:

On the tenth pitch after lots of difficult mixed climbing Christophe took a belay and Andy led through on one-centimetre water ice.

“I was balancing on little ledges I was manufacturing with my ice pick to balance my front points on.”

The angle was 80 degrees, unprotected and very delicate.

“At thirty metres I found a Friend on two cams and the climbing continued to be the hardest ice I’ve ever done. At sixty metres I still hadn’t got another piece in and I was tip-toeing on verglas. There was no belay in sight, so I just kept going.”

Out of rope, Christophe began climbing also. After a further fifteen metres Andy was on or off and Christophe was fighting desperately to stay on the face, now with even less ice after Andy had scratched up it.

“There was a spike above me which I couldn’t quite reach, so I lunged for it. If I’d missed, the two of us would have gone. I just caught it. I couldn’t believe the release of stress. I’ve never done anything like that – well perhaps on the Mermoz.”

Patagonia has become a strong source of inspiration for him. For his painting and for his climbing. The depth and space of the sky and landscape are a challenge to paint and the frontierland atmosphere, the stories of Saint-Exupéry and the early explorers, have captured his imagination.

Andy’s first ascent solo of Vol de Nuit on the East Face of the Mermoz caused quite a stir amongst the teams of international climbers camped at Rio Blanco. The weather had been dreadful and everyone was waiting for FitzRoy. Then one day, one of those kind of OK days that everyone knew would bag out before tomorrow, a lone climber was spotted through the binoculars picking his way up near vertical-looking mixed ground. Thin 90-degree ice and irreversible moves were again the hallmark of the climb and also a difficult aid section. As the young Argentinian hot-shots looked on, they commented with obvious respect, “Andy es locisimo.”

“That climb was near the limit for me. One of those rare times when you experience that inner flight.”

These recent climbs herald the beginning of a new era in Andy’s life.

“I don’t like to talk about that accident but these modern hard things I have done feel like part of a healing process to me.”

These routes convey a level of self-trust and coolness of head that can only be achieved by someone utterly in touch with their body. And after being forced to listen to his body for so long this could definitely be said to be the case for Andy.

He settled his tumbler of wine on the table top.

“You’ll get better, kiddo. That time I lost everything. I lost my girlfriend, she looked after me for ages but I got so down, so distant, that she finally gave up. I lost my mind, for a while.”

I nodded, trying to relate all this to my own sorrowful state. “But if I can’t climb what can I do?” I had a lump in my throat. I needed his help.

“As you get older you’ll realise that climbing isn’t everything. Other opportunities will present themselves to you and to grow you have to explore them.

“The next season I was in the Bridwell camp waiting for Cerro Torre.”

When the weather window came he and his mate François began a new route on the South Face of “the hardest mountain in the world”. The line they had chosen was a steep and technical ice gully and much of the climbing was on rotten crud. They moved swiftly to lessen the risk of being taken out by the band of séracs above. After a thousand metres they at last arrived at the Col of Hope, in plummeting air pressure. They made it to the Helmet ice formation when the storm hit. After bivouacking, they began their descent and decided, upon reaching the Col of Hope, that it would be asking too much of fate to chance rappeling down the séracs. There was no choice. They rappeled the Ferrari route onto the Hielo Continental, the Patagonian icecap. They had no food left and no map of the icecap. After jettisoning most of their hardware, days of walking ensued. They stumbled off the snout of the Tunnel Glacier and onto the Pampa in a hallucinatory state and kept going by eating dandelions.

I know it was all a mistake, but that’s the kind of experience I have always looked for. Andy remembers seeing horses prancing around him, mocking him, and this experience provided the mental material for his recent horse sculptures made from wire or cut from sheet metal with a blow torch. After another day on the featureless expanse of the Pampa they met gauchos who gave them cooked beef.

“That made me sick. After nine days out I think I had done my internal organs some damage.”

Andy showed me his paintings of the Torre. Before his climb the mountain had rounded edges and a classic mountain look with light coloured, almost warm, granite. And after, it looks brooding and Gothic. Higher, darker and sharper. That exercise showed him that the act of climbing a mountain can change one’s perception of that mountain for ever.

The French chose to give Andy and François the Piolet d‘Or award for the ‘adventurous spirit’ of their climb, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. He had hidden the tacky trophy out of sight, but he did admit that the prize money would be useful for the forthcoming Alaska trip. Don’t ask me how old he is. Really he is ageless. For him there is no time to lose but that is not to say that he rushes and loses sight of the reasons for doing what he does. Amidst the exhibitions and commissions, the sculpting of human waste, the climbing and skiing and the planning of imminent trips to K2 and Patagonia, and what inspires me most, this man still finds time to revel into the night.

Summer ’96

I’ve just finished my morning stretches, they take about an hour, and I move on to my mail. It’s a little package from – Andy! A book on homeopathy. And a card: