The Blind Man of Hoy Page 5

  If Cole’s training programme had been my first test, then this training wall was the next. And yet I felt pretty confident. I was getting heartily sick of being told that my hand or foot was on the wrong colour hold – they all looked grey to me. On an indoor wall that nullifies the climbing grade of the problem. On an outdoor crag and this realistic copy every hold was grey. Just as there are no rules in a knife fight, no holds are barred on a rock face. Tucked away in the back of my mind I kept the reassuring knowledge, gleaned from Feeding The Rat, that Al Alvarez had only succeeded in exiting The Coffin by lassoing an old wooden wedge left behind after the first ascent.

  We met Andres at Uxbridge and caught the bus to the campus. He too was in high spirits and laden with gear, including ropes and at least three pairs of climbing shoes. Matthew’s rucksack too groaned weightily and I began to wonder what I’d forgotten to pack. I took firm hold of it and followed my two companions through a labyrinth of walkways that put me in mind of the set of A Clockwork Orange. We arrived at a modern sports hall that was bathed in that queasy half-light common to all high-roofed gymnasia on grey days. Looming from the shadows and occupying the entire far end wall, the 300-square-metre artificial rock-face looked as gloomy as the Roaches on a damp Derbyshire morning.

  Matthew and I took the obligatory rope safety test to a backbeat of enthusiastic netball practice being conducted on the other side of the partition that separated the wall from the main hall. We both passed technically but I was failed on administrative grounds. I might, in the future, use my competency certificate to book in with other companions and if I belayed them without a competent (sighted) person I risked causing an accident.

  Matthew began a patient, if testy, explanation of the number of hours and level to which we had climbed together, while I, incensed at the implicit assumption that my physical disability so impaired my mental capacity that I would seek to endanger the lives of my friends, did my best to keep my mouth shut.

  Eventually the clearly embarrassed and flustered instructor held his hands up in defence and said, ‘I really don’t know what to do here. I can see you know what you’re doing, so I can let you climb, as long as one of your two friends is with you at all times. And I suppose you can belay so long as you are accompanied on the ground by one of them.’

  ‘So you’re saying he can come in so long as we come with him?’ Matthew demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. We’re here; let’s climb!’

  Andres, who had been watching from the sidelines chorused, ‘Yeah dudes, let’s climb!’ Then asked quietly ‘What the fuck was all that about?’

  ‘Just the Health & Safety nanny state protecting the disabled from themselves,’ I muttered.

  We roped up with irritation and a profound sense of being scrutinised and prepared to tackle the first problem, a ten-metre vertical flake with a few horizontal edges and a handful of pockets, probably only a 4+.

  Andres had warned us of the dissimilarity between this and our usual indoor wall but Matthew, who was to go first, was uncharacteristically quiet for a full minute before he started to climb. And, though he’d been out on rock far more recently than me, he puffed and panted his way up.

  Rather than give his normal post-match appraisal after I’d belayed him back down (with Andres standing silently at my side) Matthew suggested, ‘I know, Andres, let’s see how Red does on this without you giving him any instructions.’

  It seemed sensible, though in the gloom I needed to be guided across the crash mat to the face of the wall. I gave it a good grope. Much of its surface had been worn smooth by successive generations of students but it still had some texture and the odd wickedly sharp protrusion as if chunks of flint had been cemented into it. The route I was to tackle however was predominantly concave holds that you had to jam your fingers into. Little stood proud of the wall; the opposite of Swiss.

  Feeling pumped-up before a climb inevitably leads you to get pumped during it – with the result that you climb like Rambo and knacker your arms. Maybe it was the debacle over the safety test, the fact I was keen to impress or possibly the double shot of coffee Matthew and I had enjoyed before setting out, but within two moves I’d yanked myself up on my, always weaker, right arm and twinged the pectoral muscle. Cursing silently in deference to the children in the hall I hauled my inelegant way to the top and was belayed down as a sweaty mess. It was going to be an educational day.

  Andres and Matthew said nothing, which was suspicious in itself, and we moved to the next problem; another ten-metre vertical, with a three-inch crack running down much of its face and a similar horizontal crack at about eight metres. There was a mix of incut and protruding holds, the latter small and widely spaced.

  This kind of vertical crack is known as an off-width, being too wide for effective hand or foot jamming, and best climbed by laybacking, ie, pulling back on the edge of the crack with both hands and using friction, or any tiny holds you can find, for your feet. This hand-over-hand technique is an art and hard on the arms at the best of times, the more so if they’re already pumped.

  Matthew and Andres made short work of it. Again I went at it like a bull, making it only to the horizontal crack before flogging myself for five more minutes in a frenzy of flailing and falling, known in climbing parlance as dogging.

  I was belayed down, gasping and dejected. This was exactly the kind of thing I would be encountering on the Old Man and it had beaten me.

  ‘You’re trying to do it all on your arms. It’s not going to work.’ Matthew’s blunt Yorkshire assessment was spot-on but sounded so like Geoff Boycott that it shot right up my nose and smarted.

  ‘Well, I can’t get comfortable on the bloody footholds to reach anything above,’ I shot back.

  ‘You need to caress the rock, like it is a woman,’ Andres chipped in, which seemed at the time to be the most useless piece of advice he’d ever given.

  ‘You’re grabbing anywhere for handholds. You need to keep your hands on the rock and feel around, like you’re feeling a woman all over; like this.’ I could only guess at the gyrations his palms were performing and puffed out my cheeks in mingled annoyance and amusement. Teenage tittering came from the netball game behind us.

  ‘Yeah, that’s all great but not if my feet aren’t a solid platform. There’s no good footholds.’ I knew I sounded like a petulant workman blaming the tools, but I was pissed off and feeling defensive.

  ‘Let’s give it a go blindfolded,’ Matthew suggested.

  It was a good idea, not least because it allowed me to cool off. By now my eyes had adjusted a little to the light and fortunately both he and Andres were wearing white T-shirts so I had a misty view of their backs moving slowly but inexorably up the dark grey wall in front of me as I paid out the top rope. It took each of them much longer than the first time and, though they both made it to the top, I comforted myself that they had had the advantage of that preview.

  Matthew, I noticed, moved deliberately, mostly using his legs to push him up. Andres, like me, used his upper body strength to force his way up but often had his body turned side-on into the wall to stop him barn-dooring (swinging around away from the rock on the arm and leg of one side when the other side loses contact).

  Matthew called a timeout and I discovered what was in his over-stuffed bag.

  ‘Eat this.’ He thrust a Twix into my hand. I made to protest; I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth and I was still trying to lose that extra half stone which wasn’t proving so easy with the re-introduction of alcohol to my diet.

  ‘Don’t argue. If you’re going to do this you’re going to have to learn to eat quick sugars. You don’t need to like them but you do need to keep your energy levels up.’ I stuffed it down, grateful for the instant, happy rush it gave me.

  That was the sweetener. ‘Right,’ he continued, as soon as my mouth was crammed ‘that wasn’t so easy. I had to make a lot more, smaller moves. You’re trying to go up too fast; it means you’re often movin
g two limbs at a time, that’s why you don’t feel in balance. You need to slow it down, one limb at a time; remember your three points of contact or you’ll wear your arms out and then you’ll never get up the Old Man.’

  We were sitting on the edge of the crash mat; the netballers had been replaced by the delicate thwock of badminton.

  ‘Yeah mate, you gotta think more about placing your feet. If you only rely on your arms you’re gonna keep on getting pumped and you’ll never get to the top.’ I scowled in a ‘pot kettle black’ way. ‘Hey mate, I use my feet too but if you want to build your arms like me you’ll need to build your stamina. Every day I do sets of seven pull-ups on the fingerboard, each for seven seconds up then seven seconds down.’

  I’d been trying. I was up to three reps of six every other day, holding for about two seconds. Unless I lost another stone and did nothing else but exercise that wasn’t going to happen. Matthew thrust some more Twix my way. I might be Andres’ height but I was far more Matthew’s light build. I wolfed down the chocolate; maybe I should aim to climb more like Matthew.

  ‘I want to look at your shoes mate.’ Andres said, picking up my foot. He tutted. ‘These are too big. Your toes need to be bent down at the front so you can push into the small holds. What size feet do you have?’

  ‘8½’ I said glumly, wondering whether any aspect of my climbing was going to be right today.

  ‘And your shoes?’

  ‘I dunno, 8 I think.’

  ‘Christ. My feet are 9½ and I’m wearing 7½s, no wonder you can’t find any edges!’ Matthew chimed in. He may as well have said ‘Christ, I thought you knew what you were doing, am I trying to get a complete ignoramus up a mountain!’

  ‘Your feet are my size, so why don’t you try wearing these?’ Andres produced a pair of climbing slippers that would have been a snug fit on my twelve-year-old daughter and I forced my feet into them.

  ‘Comfortable?’

  I scowled at Andres. ‘As a Chinese princess.’ My middle toe on each foot was bent up into a V and all my toenails were being driven back into their cuticles; it was excruciating.

  ‘You’ll get used to it. Go and have another try at the crack,’ he urged.

  I hobbled to the rock face and began to climb.

  ‘Remember, stroke the surface like it’s a woman’s body.’ Andres encouraged from behind, provoking a snort from a young female instructor who had just arrived and come over to watch.

  Despite the discomfort my feet felt more at home on the wall. Crunched up my toes gave me more accurate downward pressure and an unbending platform to rest on and push off from. I found I could gain purchase on the thinnest of ledges and create pressure and friction far more easily than before.

  I’d stopped fighting the climb and begun to enjoy it, reaching the crux calmly and with some energy still in the tank. This was where I’d got stuck before and my instinct was to force it; to pull up on the horizontal crack then grope blindly above it for a ‘thank God’ hold to save me.

  My right arm, still aching and weak from its earlier abuse, twinged the moment I tried. I ground to a halt, muttering darkly.

  Matthew’s voice cut sharply across Andres who was urging me on. ‘I couldn’t do that on my arms so I jammed my leg into the vertical crack and pushed up against that.’

  ‘Ah, like bridging,’ I thought, ‘now that’s something I am good at.’ Ten seconds later I was sitting at the top, triumphantly gasping ‘Yes, yes, flipping yes!’ Beneath the applause from my two companions below I heard Andres confide ‘6a or maybe 6b, not easy’ and my frustration was instantly dispelled.

  I hesitate to say it was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes but thereafter I climbed with a new confidence born of insight. The pain in my arm was a constant reminder to think before relying on it and that of my strangling feet to use them to their full advantage. As the three of us conquered first a problem based round a thin meandering crack that demanded confident, precision footwork, then a steep bulging route that required a succession of rockovers and nimble foot-matches, I felt increasingly in balance, working from a more secure platform with time to explore my surroundings more calmly and methodically, so that I found holds I would otherwise have surely missed. From a dispiriting start it seemed to be turning into one of those days where everything clicks.

  After refuelling on Jaffa Cakes (again courtesy of Matthew who I duly appointed Hoy Expedition Quartermaster) we moved the rope along again and prepared to tackle the final section of wall, which lay in the darkest corner.

  ‘I have brought my head torch for you to try’ Andres announced as I was tying in.

  ‘It’s the newer version of the one you have.’ This was his polite way of saying that it was better quality than the one I’d borrowed from my ten-year old daughter.

  It was duly fixed to my helmet and I began to inch my way up a steep wall that held a very sparse population of holds, the majority of which were pinches and finger pockets. The torch, though bright, made little difference to what I could see. It reflected straight back off the polished surface below the crux, which required an evil fist-jam and smear up a featureless face and held me up for a couple of minutes. I returned to the mat panting but triumphant.

  ‘I’m loving the light’ called the female instructor who was still watching us and had clearly not clocked that I was blind.

  I resisted the temptation to give a sarcastic answer along the lines of ‘I’m checking for cracks in your wall’ and heard her colleague (the one who had performed my safety test) bring her up to speed. A ripple of incredulity ran through the group of kids she was supervising.

  While Andres roped up for an attempt on the chimney, I retrieved my water bottle and white stick and tapped my way from one side of the sports hall to the other. When I got back to where Matthew was belaying he asked me whether everything was okay.

  ‘Yeah, fine thanks. Really good.’

  He was puzzled. ‘Why’d you wander off then?’

  ‘Oh, just giving a practical demonstration for the sceptical’ I said, wafting the stick. ‘After all, seeing is believing. Now they’ve seen I’m really blind and that it doesn’t stop me climbing, one or two of that lot may go away and think about it and who knows next time they see someone with a white stick they might not be so quick to jump to conclusions.’

  A couple of minutes later the instructor who’d done my safety test came over to talk.

  ‘Nice system you’ve got going there’ he said. ‘Great communication. When you first came in I really didn’t know what to expect . . .’ He trailed off, awkwardly.

  ‘Thanks,’ I smiled. ‘Well I don’t guess it’s an everyday occurrence.’ I explained how we’d got together at Swiss and had a plan ‘to climb something quite challenging,’ all the time listening with some consternation to the grunts and groans coming from the chimney.

  The instructor quizzed me about how much outdoor climbing we, and I guess I in particular, had done, throwing in technical terms that were meant to gauge my level of competence. By now Andres had squeezed his shoulders through the bottleneck top of the chimney and was flat on his back on the crash mat recovering from his exertions.

  Matthew sidled off to chat to the female instructor, who likewise seemed finished for the day. I winced when I heard him mention the Old Man by name, and listened for the peal of incredulous laughter. Instead the instructor I’d been talking to whistled then blurted: ‘Look I’m sorry again about earlier. I’m bound by the rules you know. One insurance company refused to pay out for an accident at a wall in Reading recently because the climber hadn’t filled in the date on the form. There’s no question about your climbing, if it was up to me you could do all your training here.’

  I assured him there were no hard feelings and he shook my hand and wished me good luck.

  Matthew was tying in for his attempt now and I moved over to watch beside a sweaty and aching Andres. The female instructor, clearly still a bit embarrassed, hovered in the background fini
shing off paperwork. A bevy of teenagers had arrived for archery practice – a couple, according to Matthew sporting Anthrax T-shirts and wielding crossbows. I was glad to discover that they were aiming away from us, after four hours climbing my back hurt enough already.

  This noisy, hormone-pumping crowd was, however, silenced by Matthew’s expression of frustration and woe as he peeled away from the wall. Having warned me to keep the fruitier end of my vocabulary locked away in the presence of children, his expletive-laden howl echoed percussively around the building.

  ‘Not easy’ was his breathless précis on completing the route. ‘Here, have some of this, you’ll need it’ and he thrust another stick of Twix at me.

  By now I was expecting failure before I’d cleared my own height. The chimney was a vital aspect of the Old Man; the second pitch is dominated by two of the buggers.

  The one in front of me at Brunel was tall and narrow, approached from the left by a short traverse that led into a tight upward-angled crack before rising vertically in a metre-wide flue with occasional jagged protrusions and culminating in a rounded bulge for the climber to squeeze past at the neck, before he can flop onto the ledge at the summit.

  No matter how well a climb is outlined to you, it will never describe your own experience of it. Each of us has our own bugbears and specialities.

  I began to inch across the narrow ledge towards the dingy mouth of the chimney, glad that the rubber edge of my borrowed shoes was not as worn as the artificial rock face. Wriggling up the tight crack to the base of the vertical, which was slick with use and the sweat of my two companions’ laboured efforts, I relaxed. This, I remembered, was what I loved about climbing at Harrison’s Rocks when I was a teenager; squeezing along dark, mucky crevices: thrutching up chimneys on chicken-wing arms, knee jams and leg bars; inelegant but perfect for a person of my build; something I could do better than the taller, less-compact Matthew and the chunkier, less flexible Andres.