23

Seconds Away

WHEN ROGER PEELED into the air and landed beside me with a thud, I should have realised we weren’t cut out to be rock jocks. It was our first attempt at rock climbing. If I’d believed in fate, I would have given up there and then.

Red Craig, Glen Clova. A training ground for Dundee climbers and an initiation rite for beginners. Experienced rock climber Alec showed us how to tie on to the rope and led us, one at a time, up ‘Twenty Minute Mod’. No rock climb is more calculated to infuse beginners with confidence. We were well aware that Moderate was the lowest grade in the climbing world’s hierarchy of difficulty, but the ease with which we romped up it had us salivating for more. Difficult, Very Difficult, Severe, Very Severe… surely they couldn’t be that much harder?

Alec’s second top rope disabused us of our naïvety. Hanging Chimney (Severe) was well named. In the struggle to heave myself up its tight confines against the pull of gravity, it was indeed possible just to hang there with one’s feet dangling over space. The outcome was seriously in doubt until a heart-bursting thrutch popped me out the top.

Alec next offered one of us the opportunity to lead the easier Larch Tree Wall (Very Difficult). Both Roger and I were keen and exchanged pleading looks. I let him have the honour. To this day, I wonder what would have happened had he deferred to me instead.

It began to drizzle. Roger climbed 30 or 40 feet. He reached the crux. The rope stopped paying out. He fell. If it hadn’t been for the sloping ground at the foot of the climb, which lessened the shock of the impact, there might have been a worse outcome for him than a broken wrist and a transient pallor.

Classic abseiling on the Cuillin Ridge ’60s-style (no harness, no abseil device)

Neither Roger nor I were destined to become great rock climbers but, unlike him, I persevered. I was determined that lack of technical ability would not curb my freedom of the hills.

Over the years, this has led me into a variety of scrapes, which I have so far survived, occasionally through skill or experience, more often through luck or cowardice. In The Joy of Hillwalking I describe how, on Buachaille Etive Mor in Glen Coe, my leader fell, the piton to which I was belayed came out and we both pendulumed across the exposed face of Rannoch Wall, swinging from a precarious running belay he’d had the foresight to place.

In the misleadingly named Little Gully in the Cuillin of Skye, my own painstakingly placed runner somehow managed to slip off a rock flake, and I found myself unprotected on a long run out as I backed nervously up through the roof window of the crux cave pitch. On Dairsie Crag in Fife, I abseiled down the rock face without problem. When Robin followed immediately afterwards, the belay gave way and he plunged 20 feet into a gorse bush. A bit of elbow bone disappeared inside his arm and the doctors were unable to find it. As on Larch Tree Wall, it could have been me.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t such incidents that began to erode my desire to rock climb. It was Richard. Richard was a fine rock climber but he couldn’t muster the patience for it. For him, it was a slow activity made even slower by gear management and brought to a halt by the need to stand around belaying. He wanted to move. While I’d spend the day hanging around on some rock face, he’d take an easier, perhaps even more interesting, way to the summit, stroll from top to top along some scenic ridge and return glowing. To my chagrin, I was envious. My route was a detail on the mountain. He ranged.

It made me reconsider why I climbed mountains, and I had to admit that tramping the tops held greater appeal than working my way up a rock face with a big drop beneath my feet. I wasn’t a thrill seeker. I wanted to get high.

Rock climbing for me has consequently rarely been an end in itself, more a means to an end. But I do understand the appeal. I have felt the exhilaration that comes from three-dimensional problem solving and gravity-defying movement on steep rock. Perhaps if I’d been a better rock climber, or a better thrill seeker, I would have pushed my limits further. But I am neither. If I ever get the chance to climb Everest, it will be by the easiest route, and I don’t mind if there are fixed ropes to help me past the tricky bits.

Or perhaps it all stems from Roger’s fall. Or Richard’s attitude. Roger and Richard. It’s their fault.