the shizzle > the blog pile
Black Hole Sun......
chris05:
Thanks for posting it. I wouldn't have guessed you were an engineer!
Found your writing compelling and emotive.
Chris
Will Hunt:
If it's helping then keep doing it. The perversity of finding a subject like this enjoyable to read is surely testament to your skill as a writer.
Oldmanmatt:
CairnGorm.....
I boulder, now. A little obsessively, perhaps.
It’s not as if bouldering is exactly safe (some of the worst injuries I’ve seen, in thirty odd years of climbing, have happened on boulders).
I’ve been climbing since I was eight years old. I don’t know why. If I did, maybe, I wouldn’t have to.
I climb.
It’s a sunny, January, afternoon. We’ve arrived early. The car park at CairnGorm is full, conditions are perfect (forecast for a dump overnight) and surely, surely, we can squeeze one in.....
We should have known better.....
“The Runnel (Grade 2)”, should be a doddle. We set off. Fast, young... stupid.
There’s another pair already on the route, about a pitch up (it seems there isn’t a single gulley free of Gore-Tex, right now). Mug of coffee from the flask, take our time gearing up. Let them get a pitch or two ahead....
We’re climbing; it’s easy going; just steep snow. The crux is on the last pitch, short, sweet. We alternate the lead and we’ll worry about who gets the crux later. Flip a coin.
“BELOW!”
I hunker into the scoop and put my head down. Ice comes clattering past; I wait a few seconds then emerge again. The weather is turning, the sky no longer blue but white, the light flat.
I’m on belay, Mike is leading, the pitch before the crux. I can’t see him and he hasn’t moved since the Ice came past. I shout but there’s no reply, no sound at all, the air is dead here in the gulley.
Then I get the signal, tugged through the rope, he’s on belay.
There’s something wrong, I have too much rope here, he can’t be at the belay point; but the tugs come again and I think I hear the call. I un-clip and he’s pulling through.
I climb.
Snow is kissing my cheeks, the world is white, the light is fading. I have to stop, frequently, to let the slack in the rope catch up with my progress. Something is wrong and this is a bad time for something to be wrong.
I climb.
He’s a mess.
The snow is red around him, his face a bloody, swollen, mass. One eye closed up, the other red, half closed, glassy.
The climber above had dislodged the ice, he’d shouted, he knew we were below. But in that instant, Mike had glanced up......
I can’t see the sides of the gully anymore, nothing but white.
“What are you going to do?” says the voice.
I don’t know. Below us lie many rope lengths of steep ground. Can I lower him? Can He make himself safe and then belay me, as I climb down? Again and again?
“What do you think?” asks the voice.
Can I leave him? Can I get down alone and call for help?
“You left them on the ice, remember. It’s what you do.” the voice sneers.
“Mike, Mike mate” I prod him and he looks up from his misery. “Can you belay? We can’t be far below the runnel and the top.”
He nods, the coin has landed, I lead.
I climb.
Within a few feet, Mike is lost in the soft white flurries. My breath thunders in the deepening gloom.
I climb.
My axe strikes the thin ice of the crux. It’s been heavy going, the rope sometimes too tight, sometimes too slack. The last deadman is a long way below. The ice is too thin to take a screw. There must be rock around me, somewhere to put some gear, but I can see nothing but white.
I climb.
The ice is thin, much thinner than I expected.
“You thought this would be easy” said the voice.
I climb.
The voice is talking again. I can’t understand it, it’s too surreal.
“Did you find my camera?”
Realisation. I look up and there’s a disembodied head smiling at me.
I cried.
There was abseiling, there was hauling.
There was stumbling through the dark, supporting Mike’s semi conscious form. The sharp beams of head torches cutting through the falling snow.
There were hospitals, hot coffee.
There was a warm bag on a youth hostel bunk.
But when I close my eyes.....
I climb.
butters:
Keep writing mate. Really enjoying it (though there is a tiny bit of me that wishes I could write that well) - it's very powerful, emotive stuff.
Best of luck with every thing.
shark:
--- Quote from: Oldmanmatt on May 16, 2011, 04:18:33 pm --- It will stay there, until the moderators get tired of it clogging up the bytes.
--- End quote ---
Not me :bow:
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