Music lessons

Pitch 9 Reticent Wall

MY KARABINER CLOSED around the belay bolts at the top of pitch nine. There was none of the usual euphoria. I was just glad the pitch was over. Another pitch closer to this being finished. I was feeling glum.

The belay was special. It featured a tiny sentry-box-type ledge set into the wall, onto which I shuffled my bum and sat on my throne. It was only just big enough for my hips, but I sat there resting my head on my knees, looking down the wall. I’d never felt so drained. I had nothing left to give.

The last two days had been intense. Yet again I doubted I had it in me to carry on.

You’re just tired.

I had no idea how I was going to find the energy to abseil down and begin cleaning and hauling the pitch.

You will.

The pitch, like all the rest, had stretched on and on, culminating in a wide crack full of batshit and the bones of small animals. The dust had covered me and choked me until I had reached this tiny perch.

My eyes felt heavy; I just wanted to sleep.

I sat there a long time, my head and arms resting on my knees, and I felt my whole being fall apart. There didn’t seem to be one bit of me that wasn’t throbbing, bleeding, bruised or close to breaking. I was done in, and just couldn’t imagine how I would have the energy to complete the five pitches to come.

You still have the crux to climb, but at this speed you could be there in two or three days. You’re faster than Humar.

I don’t care.

I hugged my legs and wanted them to hug me back. I felt destitute and alone.

What did you think it would be like? Fun?

I wished I had a phone so I could ring home and tell Mandy how much I was suffering, but I knew she was unimpressible. Climbing was a disease. Climbing was a curse. Climbing was making both our lives hell.

It’s not about your climbing.

I thought about talking to Ella, imagined her voice, what she would say.

She would ask when I was coming home.

I often wondered about writing her a letter, to tell her who I was, why I climbed, and why I left her, even though she was the greatest gift I had ever been given. But every time I started, my words sounded like the excuses they were. The only thing I had to give were the photos I had taken of her, boxes full. Through them you could see my love for her. And her love for me.

One day, I would write a book and hope she would then understand that fathers are only children too.

You need to abseil down. It’ll soon be dark.

I looked over the wall. To my left I could see a climber leading, heading up to the twenty-fifth belay on the Pacific Ocean Wall, shouting to his partner that he was almost there.

I wished I had a partner to shout to, to clean the pitch, and help me haul the bags.

I looked around, and tried to tell myself how lucky I was, – more people have sat on the summit of Everest than have sat here. I didn’t care.

Then I saw something close by, the edge of a piece of card sticking out of a thin crack just above my head. Teasing it out with my fingers I found it was a tatty old business card advertising the services of a ‘Lance Millo Eagle – Rock and roll, blues and jazz for all occasions. Banjo and guitar lessons given’. I looked at it and blinked. Inside my head a pilot light came on, and my brain turned over and restarted as it took in how surreal it was to find such a thing here.

Had it been blown up here from the valley, or perhaps it had been left behind by Lance himself, moonlighting as a big-wall climber, maybe the world’s greatest banjo-playing big-wall climber? It didn’t matter, the card had pulled me back from my self-indulgent funk. The pity party was over and the laughter inside my head reminded me that I was still here.

You’re the luckiest man alive.

I stood up on my stiff legs and rigged up to abseil back down to the start, remembering what the taxi driver had said about hard work killing horses.

Give yourself a little slack.

When you’re soloing, it’s important not to imagine yourself as cold and hard like the stone you climb. You must find some softness within, and see it not as weakness but as compassion and support. You must learn to think about yourself as you would about a friend, a lover, a mother, a daughter. In all the anxiety and fear, you have to make time to love yourself. If you are alone, there are no kind words save your own. This was a lesson I had forgotten. I sat awhile, just admired the view and took a moment to understand what I’d already achieved on this climb.

I clipped in my belay device and double-checked it. Then I slipped once more back down my haul lines. The top now seemed so near.