The Blind Man of Hoy Page 8

  ‘Nick, sorry to ask but something’s wrong with the loop on my harness, I can’t seem to feed the rope through.’ I was loath to take the harness off having taken an age to sort out the leg-loops already. Nick began to fiddle with the nylon tie at my crotch.

  ‘The buckle’s bent. Have you taken a fall recently?’

  A bruise on my shin, the shape and colour of a Victoria plum, could bear testament to that. After Matthew had departed on holiday the previous week I had needed a climbing partner for my Thursday session and hooked up with a guy with macular degeneration who also climbs at Swiss. We enjoyed an hour of the blind leading the blind until, on an ambitious 6a, we had both failed to spot a very necessary hold and I had come crashing down after a dynamic leap.

  ‘That’s got it. Not surprised you couldn’t fix that. I found it tricky,’ Nick reassured.

  With Martin perched about ten metres above and Nick belaying, I psyched myself down for a slow, steady ascent. I always dislike the first couple of moves, the potential for falling and twisting an ankle or taking your face off on the rock feels greater when there is less distance for the rope to run out or stretch before you hit the ground. After a slightly scrambled start I soon struck a rhythm and within five minutes was staring at Martin’s boots. He gave a satisfied grunt and lowered me back down again.

  The next two routes steadily increased the grade, and my confidence. I was feeling comfortable on the rock. The south-facing crag was a natural suntrap and soon we had all shed our layers, enjoying the warmth and light that had been in hibernation since the previous October. London, its pollution and stress levels, seemed a thousand miles away and I was as genuinely happy as on any holiday since my honeymoon.

  We stopped for a bite to eat and I pulled out my homemade sandwiches, apple and a bonk bar. Martin looked approvingly at the first two items but refused a chunk of the energy booster.

  ‘Aye, I’ve tried those on Everest, or something like them. I’ll stick to my wife’s cake thank you.’

  Nick took a bit and pronounced it ‘Not as bad as some’ before polishing off his chocolate bar.

  After this I was given a lesson in Prusiking (an artificial climbing technique and alternative to Jumaring achieved by winding a nylon cord with a locking knot round the rope to form a looped slipknot that can be slid up the rope but tightens fast as soon as downward pressure is applied). Using this for my hand and its mechanical equivalent, a Ropeman with a sling, for my foot, I made sweaty panting progress up a route it had taken a fraction of the time to climb with my bare hands before lunch.

  ‘Looks like you’re getting the hang of it’ Martin called up. ‘That’s the method we’ll use if you get stuck on the overhang’.

  ‘Bugger that. It’ll have to be pretty hairy to force me into doing this again’ I shouted back. ‘Can I do some proper climbing now please?’

  The sun was blazing and we were joined by a couple of local regulars. Martin introduced me but said nothing about my sight until I was halfway up the next route, which turned out to be The Old Man of Moy, a vertical, narrow crack with a nasty bulge at the top. It took time, not helped by coming the wrong side of the penultimate quickdraw and having to unclip with my right hand back to front and my left slipping out of a two-finger pocket. I made it to the top and returned only a little shakily to the bottom.

  ‘Good lad,’ said Martin.

  ‘Aye, good effort. Good luck on Hoy, man. Wish I could be with you,’ said one of the locals.

  ‘Fancy trying something a bit more challenging?’

  I paused; in Martin’s lexicon I suspected ‘a bit more challenging’ lay with the superlatives. My arms were still pumped after my tussle with the quickdraw but I was climbing well and took his suggestion as a compliment.

  Moy Bueno turned out to be a pumpy slog of an F6b; steep (ie, leaning in towards me) from bottom to top. The holds, though by no means scarce, were awkward; small pinches and pockets that, because of the unrelenting steepness of the wall, I had to take rather than have time to seek alternatives. The crack, when I reached it, afforded some relief but was too narrow for a decent foot-jam and kept me moving up and hoping to find wider purchase. About six feet from the top I ran out of steam. The final bulge was pushing into my face, forcing me backwards and I could find no foothold to take me high enough to reach over it for holds that I suspected would be anything but jug-handles.

  ‘I’m coming down! I think I should save myself for tomorrow.’

  But there was no sense of defeat, just of a battle well-fought and to be continued.

  ‘You climbed well today’ said Martin, his unexcitable voice betraying a hint of surprised pleasure. ‘I think we could give Cioch Nose a try tomorrow, how would you feel about that?’

  I was elated, though fortunately too knackered to do more than grin and accept the invitation.

  12

  The Diff to End all Diffs

  ‘It’s a wonderful feeling to push even a tiny piece of the planet down beneath one’s feet.’

  – Adrian Burgess

  ‘You lucky sod!’ The text was from Paul, another dad from school and keen climber who knew Applecross well. It preceded the alarm I’d set by a good 20 minutes, but I’d been awake since dawn, too excited to go back to sleep.

  At seven pitches and 200 metres high the climb I was taking on today would be by far the longest I had ever attempted and, if I didn’t make a mess of it, should give me the green light for the Old Man of Hoy in June.

  My mobile trilled with another message, this time from Matthew wishing me a simple ‘Good luck.’

  After a comprehensive and filling breakfast (I never have problems clearing my plate and suspected I’d need every calorie on offer) I did my best to empty my bladder fully and waited for Martin who was punctual and accompanied by his son Alex.

  ‘The sirens going out to the wild-fires didn’t keep you awake then?’ Martin asked, after he’d enquired whether I’d had a good night’s sleep.

  ‘No, dead to the world’ I replied. Actually I’d fallen asleep listening to a Sherlock Holmes on my iPod but had wondered why the morning air had smelled so heavily of smoke.

  ‘The landowners start them to clear the scrub and then they get out of hand. It happens every year. Fortunately it shouldn’t affect us where we’re going today.’ He was positively chatty, more relaxed than the previous day.

  It was a beautiful, crisp morning. Smudges of smoke and cloud hung in an otherwise clear blue sky. I chatted with Alex as Martin navigated the twisting loch-side road and learned that he was in his early twenties and teaching at a school in Edinburgh. The previous year he’d been working at Gordonstoun with another outdoor sports and climbing instructor who had found out he had R.P.

  ‘Poor sod’ I said, ‘that’s his livelihood up the swanee. How did he take it?’

  ‘Hard at first I think, but he’s got a strong support network round him and he’s good friends with Andy Kirkpatrick and Karen Darke.’

  ‘Well they should keep him inspired,’ I said. ‘But tell him to get in touch if he ever wants a natter . . . or a moan.’

  The miles slipped by and the peaks grew taller and more snow-capped as conversation flowed easily between the three of us. As fellow locals and fellow climbers they knew Andy Fitzpatrick fairly well and we had all recently watched the episode of the BBC’s My Life in which his daughter had Jumared up El Capitan. Alex had also watched the episode in which my daughter, Laura, had talked about having prosopagnosia (face blindness).

  Some days everything seems to click together, so by the time we pulled into the car park I was feeling part of a team, relaxed and confident of a successful day’s climbing in perfect conditions; happy to listen and follow Martin and Alex’s lead.

  Which was just as well. The compacted snow covering the car park was like an ice-rink. My Timberland boots would have deposited me in the valley 700 feet below had I not again swapped them for Martin’s pair, and I came to thank his foresight all the more on the 45 deg
ree scramble down into the gully beyond.

  This was the part that I (and it turns out Martin) had been dreading. I find going down stairs difficult enough and regularly stumble when walking off kerbs. Even with the trekking pole Martin had advised me to bring, and a short rope attaching my harness to his, providing a modicum of added security, the going was gruelling.

  Maintaining your balance while crossing uneven ground requires sight. Without it you end up disoriented and relying on your arms as much as your legs. Going uphill isn’t so bad, but descent is perilous; if you stumble it’s headfirst down into the next obstacle, if you slip you fall backwards into the last one. I did most of it crablike, clambering down on my backside using my arms for support, grateful to Matthew for his ski-gloves as they, and not my hands, tore on the gorse and shattered rocks.

  We reached the foot of the climb with my body and confidence intact. A walk-in that takes most climbers an hour had taken us 90 minutes; exactly as Martin had predicted. Our speed had picked up after about 20 minutes when Alex had started knocking on the top of the large boulders with the end of his trekking pole to warn me of their position. It was genius, utterly unbidden by me and highly effective as it told me height and position in one as well as giving me a sense of size by dint of the tone the strike made.

  As I pulled on my climbing shoes I was delighted to hear Martin say, ‘Okay Alex, I’ll lead the first couple of pitches. You and Red seem to be communicating well, you can come up with him.’

  As this was a circular climb ending up back in the car park we were carrying all our gear in rucksacks, an encumbrance I was unused to climbing with. The first pitch starts with an off-width crack sandwiched between two walls and I pfaffed about for a good few minutes trying to get comfortable for the four feet of laybacking it required to get past.

  ‘First move nerves, always happens,’ I muttered apologetically to Alex, who had said nothing but now pointed out a knobbly foothold just where I needed one.

  ‘Note to self,’ I thought, ‘remember to ask for help.’

  After that the route seemed to take me in hand and lead me up itself. With Alex a few feet behind occasionally directing me to a better foot placement or keeping me on course with a ‘trend left,’ I squeezed over the bulges, managed to avoid cracking my head on the low roof and rounded the fine corner to join Martin on the ledge he was belaying from.

  Alex joined us and gave me a refresher course on ropeman-ship while Martin led the next pitch. Ten minutes later I felt three tugs on the rope and the distant ‘climb!’ and I was off again, wriggling round the corner at the end of the ledge that led to a 20 metre tall slab that I romped up.

  Martin’s belay stance was on a wide grassy ledge. He directed me to a boulder and I began flaking the rope for him.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes!’ I puffed. ‘Great rock, it’s like climbing buttresses on a church.’

  ‘It’s Torridonian sandstone; about 800 million years old and predating any fossil life’ he informed me with enthusiasm, and I recalled reading that he had studied geography at university.

  By now Alex had joined us and I began paying the rope out as Martin set off again traversing right on little more than a wrinkle in the rock.

  ‘That’s where you could feel a bit exposed if you looked down,’ Alex said mischievously.

  ‘Just as well I can’t see then isn’t it’ I grinned. ‘Don’t get scared when I’m gone now.’

  It was my turn soon enough. Wind gusted round my feet challenging them not to test the 200-foot drop, but the ledge above my head afforded a degree of security for my hands and I was soon heading upwards across a series of ledges that caused no real challenges except for aggravating my bruised shin.

  ‘Head further left, towards the bottom of the chimney’ Alex shouted from below. ‘Yes, follow the rope. Don’t worry about that cam. I’ll take it out.’

  He was panting and I realised I was quite far ahead. In the minibus he’d told me this was his first climb in six months after dislocating his shoulder and buggering his rotator cuff. But he seemed to be moving okay and I was feeling very secure on the wall. I looked up to the left and picked out the contrast between the dark scar of a chimney that seemed to rise to the heavens and the lighter rock around it. I climbed to its base, found a comfortable place to bridge and waited for him.

  ‘You know it’s hard to keep up with you at times. You wouldn’t know you’re blind to see you climbing.’

  ‘Ah, well it’s a terrific route. So many cracks and flakes to choose from. And having you close by to direct my feet makes life a lot easier. My climbing instructor back in London is always on at me to climb with my feet not my arms but then he’s always saying ‘not that one, the one next to it and higher’. There’s none of that out here. You can even haul yourself up on a bit of friendly heather if you can’t find a handhold. It’s great!’

  I started up the chimney – the kind of climbing I love, wriggling right inside, bridging across and levering myself up on jug-handle holds, letting my back take the weight from my arms my helmet scraping and bumping along the uneven wall behind me. It went up a long way but deposited me a bit like an elevator on the next ledge, beside Martin.

  ‘Brilliant pitch!’ I enthused, clipping into the anchor.

  ‘Aye, you did well, good climbing. We’re making good time too.’

  ‘I think it’s some of the nicest rock I’ve climbed. Not too abrasive, big responsive holds wherever you need one and a grassy ledge in the sun to relax on at the end of the pitch. I love it!’

  ‘When Tom Patey and Chris Bonington made their first ascent, Patey rolled himself a cigarette here, they all smoked back then, thinking the next pitch looked so tricky Bonington would be ages on it. He’d just lit up when Bonington shouted down telling him to ‘Come on up. It’s a glorious Diff!’’

  ‘I won’t get too comfy then,’ I promised.

  True to form I was soon inching round the end of the ledge and straight into a layback, on my weaker side which was a bit hairy, before pushing out right onto steeper rock that seemed to want to push me further away with every tentative step across its face.

  Alex hadn’t made a mess of the layback and was right at my heels. ‘You’re coming to the nasty bulge I told you about. You need to traverse right, step round it then follow the crack up to the next ledge.’

  I peered across the traverse and saw the protruding rock outlined against the blue sky, appearing to mark the end of the Earth. It was the same angle as the picture of the solo climber I’d seen on my computer a week before. The small wave of third party vertigo I experienced was the same too.

  Alex must have read my discomfort and added encouragingly, ‘Nearly there.’

  I edged slowly right, swapped feet, felt a thin ledge with my right big toe and worked along it to see whether it widened. It didn’t. I got some purchase and went to move my left again. The fingers of my right hand were wedged into a thin crack running at shoulder level, my left gripping a thin flake for dear life. I inched my left foot slowly round in a widening spiral but found nothing.

  ‘Down, left, ten centimetres out, nearly.’ I began to wobble, my right toes peeling away. A hand grasped my left, bent the toes gently downward and they met good, firm rock beneath.

  ‘Thanks!’ I gasped transferring my weight and shaking life back into first one hand then the other. I found a better foothold for my right and matching hands and feet recommenced the traverse.

  Just as I reached the flank of the bulge a cry rang out overhead.

  ‘BELOW!’

  Instinctively I pulled myself into the wall, pressing my face against the cold rock, every fibre alert and pumping out the message – ‘Don’t look up!’

  A sharp, grating ‘Thunk’ rang out ten feet above and to the left, closer to Alex than me. But impact can send rocks any which way but up and I braced myself as it shrilled towards us.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  At times like these you
think only of yourself. ‘Yes,’ I bellowed, to the exclusion of all others.

  ‘Alex?’ It was the only occasion I heard anything approaching fear in Martin’s voice.

  ‘Smash!’ The rock exploded into smithereens 300-feet below.

  ‘Fine Dad! That was a big one,’ Alex called up.

  ‘As big as a heavy book. I didn’t realise it was there and must have knocked it over when I took a step back. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Look Martin, if you don’t want to take me up The Old Man of Hoy you’ve only to say!’ I shouted, a late surge of relief hitting me. I’d behaved properly. Twenty-five years after seeing a schoolmate get a face full of pebbles at Harrison’s for being too inquisitive, I’d done the right thing instinctively. This was still my element and I was back in it.

  The bulge provided no further problems and neither did the vertical crack beyond. I mantled up onto a grassy, boulder-strewn ledge, groped my way past Martin to the anchor sling, clipped in, then let him guide me to a pedestal.

  ‘That lent a frisson of excitement to a Diff,’ I smiled.

  ‘I’m just glad you’re both okay.’ He patted Alex on the shoulder as he passed to the sling then said, ‘Right, let’s have a break for lunch.’

  The packed lunch from the B&B was as good and filling as the breakfast but I made short work of it so stuffed down the majority of a truly minging energy bar that, recalling Matthew’s slang term, tasted like soiled sheets and made me gag.

  After just half an hour we were on the move again, Alex leading off, giving Martin a chance to watch me over the next couple of pitches. After a bit of a scramble over ledges and boulders we came to a wickedly fun and feature-full crack up the side of a very steep ridge. Martin climbed ahead of me, preferring to give me directions looking down from above. This led of course to confusion between his left and mine. My frustration was compounded by him being a steady, methodical climber, leaving me snapping at his heels and having to rest in places I would not otherwise have chosen.