Scottish Winter Climbing – a short story
I had the absolute pleasure to show Joey around Scotland the other week and take her on her first forays Winter Climbing. She took to it like a duck to water, at least she appeared to on the outside anyway! Here’s a short strory she wrote on one of the days experiences…
“The West Face” By Joey Jones.
Snow stings my eyes. I squint and bow my helmet against the needling spindrift, examine hands hidden within gloves as if they held respite, not rope. Snowdrifts build over the landscape of my legs. A movement – I pay out rope. Air thickens in quick bursts from my mouth, forming shivering speech bubbles and silent white exclamations. Another movement – more rope. My back is fusing with the sub-zero rock, resistant and relentless. Rope, belay device, carabiner, me. Belay, clove hitch, carabiner, me. A line of sense and safety inches away up the cliff. How long since I moved? I hear a call, disconcertingly close and low, disorientating echoes bouncing off the steep mountain walls. My numb, cumbersome fingers fumble with a frozen screwgate. No dice. A familiar exchange of words, repeated automatically, and I stand, stamp the cold from my toes, hear the clatter of metal on metal as ice falls from my axes.
First moves, then. I appraise the route with new enthusiasm at the prospect of movement. Axe into frozen moss – will that hold? Here – thick, black ice – a satisfying chock, a bulls-eye in a frozen, splintered dartboard. Now a narrow rock edge, solid and hooked. I pull and step and kick and pull. Flex fingers after every move to ward off the cold, but it’s not enough. Agony rips through my frozen fingertips, tearing my breath into ragged banners that flutter in the cold air. Hot aches. The pain is exquisite and extraordinary. I clean the first gear – don’t drop it. The fabric of my gloves freezes to the metal nut on contact, pulling and tearing. Summer sunshine floods my mind with the memory of licking too-cold ice-lollies as a child.
Pause. Breathe. Pools of light turn the far-distant snowy valley basin into a luminescent playground for ptarmigan and mountain hare. Above, inhospitably dense mist obscures the route, snowy boulders looming ominous and unending, a dubious purgatory. My fingers throb. The rope tugs impatiently on my harness. Move. It is late already. A long day. My mind returns to the route. The crux is steep. Not much for my feet. A small voice whispers that I’m out of my depth.
The rock catches my eye and I am distracted. Vivid lichens, green and orange and white, gaudy and gorgeous, adorn the steel grey boulder, forming an incongruous paisley, peculiar and unexpected. The snow is starkly white in contrast, a deep shaft where an ice axe was recently thrust glowing a delicate, luminous blue. I inhale the wild air, filling my lungs and my soul. The moment of doubt passes – I am reassured, grounded and filled with certainty. A sense of being fills me intensely. I survey the rock, explore with my axe, solving the problem. Just another puzzle. This mountain, its jutting towers of indifferent rock with their creeping cover of slick, ridged ice and deep blooms of pillowy snow; this is my adventure playground, an all-natural obstacle course. I lose sight of the world below, sinking cloud engulfing me, in a different place altogether. The daylight hours are nearly spent; have been well-spent. Thwack – pull. Kick, push down. I move up, loose strands of hair aged prematurely by silver icicles, soaked beneath with three different kinds of sweat. A small triumph, I feel it show in the corners of my eyes and mouth. Savour hot Ribena. A shared laugh. Brief respite. Start again.
Joey on Aonach Mor