Freedom: the beginnings of an epic plan

After these past few months of coursework, deadlines and exams, I am looking forward to some adventures in the mountains next month. Since I currently have no set plans for late June it seems logical to stay behind in Glencoe after Fell Club departs, and have some fun there.

Originally I thought I could do a 2-3 day bivvying trip around the valley, but I was left with two problems:

1. What to do with my climbing gear? I would have to leave it behind in my tent and pay for a pitch. Booo.
2. I would have to get a bus back from Glencoe to Glasgow in order to catch my train. Boring.

In order to solve these problems, an obvious solution presented itself: ask Fell to take my kit back with them to Norwich, and then walk to Glasgow myself.

A quick look at the map confirms that the shortest route by road is 86 miles. Away from the roads, the landscape is a virtual wilderness, interrupted by only the occasional track and isolated croft. There are also lots and lots of huge mountains, many over 3,000 feet, including several distinct mountain ranges. And I intend to stick to the high ground.

I have not managed to get all the OS maps I will need for this journey yet, but a rough estimate puts the total distance at over 100 miles and crossing maybe 15 Munros, including some right out in the wild where only Munro-baggers ever go. Such a journey would take several days and would require real commitment of a kind I have rarely experienced in the mountains before. I would be penetrating deep into regions more remote than I have ever visited ... and that includes our visit to the Alps.

Despite the obvious logistical challenges, the idea is inspiring in a way that only a bivvying trip can be. I am almost tempted to leave my watch behind to gain freedom from the tyranny of time. There is an attraction in descending to the valley after days in the mountains, not even knowing what day of the week it is.

Bivvying represents freedom, and the bivvying trips I have conducted in the past have been the most memorable I have ever spent in the mountains. The nights are either wondrous, comfortable experiences under a blaze of stars, or shivering misery as the rain pelts down on the thin layer of Goretex between you and the sky, slowly trickling through the entrance and saturating everything you own. The mornings are cold and the days are exceptionally long and arduous. Sometimes the food runs out and you know it's two days until the next farmhouse; who knows how far until the next shop.

But it is true freedom of a kind we rarely experience in our lives today where so much risk and uncertainty has been taken away from us. To put back some risk and uncertainty, to be free from the pressures of our lives and be entirely unfettered by any constraints save the ones imposed by nature, is I feel one of the most worthwhile things one can do in life.

This will take some planning, but I do not want to plan it too much. Far better to give myself a week and a few maps, and to find my own way to Glasgow.

At the moment it looks like I will be starting at Lagangarbh in Glencoe, climbing Buachaille Etive Mor, then some of the remote mountains of the Blackmount before crossing Ben Starav, the mountains around the Bridge of Orchy and Crianlarich, and finally finishing over the Ben Lomond range before dropping down to Glasgow and catching the bus through the suburbs to the train station. There are a few places where I can re-stock on food along the way.

Hey, it'll get me fit for the Alps! ;-)

Tree climbing at UEA - new hard route

After a session at the climbing wall this morning, I went to have another crack at the giant oak tree in the circus meadow. It's an inspiring tree that I've tried to climb twice before but failed. Every route to the stance at the top of the first pitch is more or less blank, and you really have to search for the holds! They are fragile, small, and usually sloping. Eventually I chose the least steep route, on the NW side, which is stretching the definition of a slab but is more in the character of a slab than a wall. The holdless bulge at mid-height was interesting. Downclimbing was very unnerving and I had to jump off from the stance 11ft up (ouch).

It's a good route though because a fall from the hardest section is completely non-serious, so the grade of 3,I+ I have given belies its difficulty. A pitch of that technicality (about English 4c) 40 feet up a tree would make the entire route Grade 4. I reckon the other side of the tree, which is significantly overhanging, can be climbed at 3,II+ but the handholds just aren't there.

Here is the entry for the route.

CIRCUS SLAB AND CONTINUATION** 30ft Grade 3,I+

First ascent: A.Roddie 9th of May 2008 (solo, dogged, third attempt)

A fine route, taking the easiest line to get up to the big saddle about 11ft up. Technical for the grade but relatively non-serious due to the difficulties being concentrated in the first pitch. Start on the NW side of the tree roughly facing the circus, and ascend the slab on delicate, small footholds. Handholds are poor and fragile. The slightly overhanging bulge at mid-height requires a dynamic move for shorter climbers. Once at the concrete-filled saddle at the top of the first pitch, continue left along the more easy-angled trunk on slightly better friction holds. Downclimbing requires care and it's best to jump off from the saddle, or abseil.

Alpine stuff

Only two and a half months before the big trip to the Alps, the highlight of the whole year!

The dates have now been set and the flights will be booked soon. We will leave on July the 16th, the day after graduation, and should arrive in Chamonix Mont-Blanc at some point that evening (or maybe early the next morning). The plan is to stay in Cham for a week, doing some acclimatisation in the Vallee Blanche, brushing up on crevasse rescue skills, and hopefully climbing Mont Blanc du Tacul and Mont Maudit if we are fit and the weather is good. A (tentative) bonus goal will be the Traverse of Mont Blanc, which involves a full crossing of the entire range.

After our time in Cham is up, we take the scenic train through the Alps to Zermatt, haven of mountaineering and home of the Matterhorn.

We will stay in Zermatt for three weeks. We do not have any fixed objectives, but mountains we are considering currently include the Rimpfischhorn (PD+), Dufourspitze (PD+, but the second highest mountain in the Alps), Zinalrothon (AD-), Obergabelhorn (AD but long and hard with it, so this is very tentative), and of course the Matterhorn itself, which goes at AD but includes 1,700m of climbing at Diff standard or harder.

At the moment the idea is to live as cheaply as possible. Luckily our expedition grant has reduced travelling costs to £125 each, and insurance is going to be cheaper this year. We will be walking everywhere instead of taking cablecars most of the time, to get the full 'Alpine experience'! That means most mountains will take two, three or four days to climb. We will also be bivvying instead of staying in huts most of the time, and probably living off oatmeal, pasta and sausage for the month.

It's going to be quite an adventure! Unfortunately we will be there in August, which is the busiest season, but it also gives us the highest chance of favourable conditions for the Matterhorn.

We got an expedition grant!

UEA has a Travels and Expeditions Committee which organises giving out small grants to students going on expeditions. Since I am totally skint, I applied for a grant a few months ago, giving them a rough outline of our planned trip to the Alps this year. The stated goals were the Matterhorn, Zinalrothorn, and Dufourspitze, with other secondary goals (the training peaks). I had to give a complete risk assessment including the probability of death by avalanche, crevasse, altitude sickness and so on.

Apparently the 'standard' grant amount is £50 but we have been awarded £150! That should pay for most of the travel expenses, which is fantastic. This will significantly cut back the cost of the trip overall and make it more affordable for us to stay for three or four weeks.

I've also finished one of my essays today (my paper on the role of standards in systems engineering, due in on Thursday), so I'm a happy chappy.

I hate the third year

I am currently spending as much time in the library than I am at home. My semi-permanent residence has become a little concrete box on the 2nd floor. I enter there at 8:30 in the morning and leave at 8:30 at night. Work is getting done, but there's a lot of it left to do and not much time left to do it in.

The thing I am most hating at the moment is Networks. Three times a day, without fail, I have to go to the labs to make measurements (this takes half an hour a pop). I could have written a program to do it but was too lazy, so now I am unable to get into a decent flow of work on my dissertation because I have to go and do Networks stuff every few hours. It's bloody annoying.

And now I have to contend with papers written in the most unintelligible technobabble the world has ever seen. I actually have to use a bloody dictionary to translate the thing. Whoever wrote it obviously thinks they've awfully clever in using words like 'deleterious', 'modosify', 'consonant' and 'subjuncticated'.

Maybe in a few weeks I will emerge from my hole, blinking in the sunlight, confused that the outside world has moved into summer while I've been sweating away in front of a computer screen for the past few months....

It's at times like this that GWY's poetry keeps me going!

And in my darkest hours of urban depression,
I sometimes take out my dog eared map
and perhaps a dried blade of grass will fall out,
And remind me that I was once a free man of the hills.

Some ponderings on climbing in general

It's been a while since I posted, which reflects the lack of attention I've been giving to my book, due to the amount of time I'm having to put into my course. I've hit a better balance now though, and have written a few scenes in the last few days. I was also asked to do a review on the new biography of John Wilson Robinson for UKClimbing.com, which I'm very pleased with--he was a key figure in the early development of rock climbing, and a character in my book.

Anyway climbing has been progressing well lately. Something's been puzzling me, though. Since coming back from the Ben a few weeks ago I have not trained, hardly been running at all, and have been concentrating on work. Virtually no exercise. Why, then, did I find myself climbing better and harder than ever before at my first visit back to the climbing wall?

Winter climbing is supposed to do wonders for your confidence, but destroy your rock climbing technique. I've found I have improved dramatically in both areas. I can now solo routes I would have wanted a top rope for before, and my arm strength has increased massively. I am also faster at figuring out moves (this has always been my biggest drawback).

While the new routes at the wall stumped me a bit, perhaps with slightly more "realistic" (read: harder!) grading, my visit today had me soloing up to 5a onsight and with ease. I'm really pleasantly surprised. The last route I did before going up to Scotland was a steep 6a with horrible little holds that I really struggled on. My finger strength has obviously suffered a little--I'm not as good with very small holds now--but I am so much better at powerful moves and excessively steep lines.

I can even try my hand at bouldering and not feel totally incompetent now! Did two problems today, both extremely steep and featuring a prominent overhanging roof at the top. I think experimenting with a different technique might have paid off. My arms are definitely stronger (I can now hang off the fingertips of one hand for several seconds), but I was able to go for the final hold due to high footholds and upper body tension. It felt surprisingly straightforward. The overhanging 5a slab on the other side of the Numbers felt very easy.

Given my progress this year, I'm really keen to do some more trad climbing in the mountains and find out where my limits are. I know I can climb VDiff with big boots, so Severe won't be a problem. I'm actually fairly confident I could at least second HS and VS with a little practice too.

All this will improve things immensely when we go to the Alps. James and I are looking at a number of routes at AD, including classic such as the Zinalrothorn and Matterhorn-Hornligrat. I'm also considering meeting up with some other people I know and trying something a little harder, once I've done a few more routes. If I can climb HS or VS, there's no reason why I shouldn't be okay on a D-graded Alpine route with a more experienced partner.

Going off on a tangent

I'm spending a lot of time working (or, more often, trying to work!) on my dissertation, so am not left with a great deal of time to write. I never seem to have a day, or half-day, in which I can immerse myself back into the story and make solid progress. However, I am progressing well with general research, and I'm finding The Confessions of Aleister Crowley very useful. It's a rather stodgy tome that wanders all over the place, but it is fascinating and it's giving me deeper insights into Edward's character.

It's becoming increasingly clear that Edward Crowley is the strongest character in the book. Due to his oddities and fascinating contradictions, he is a marvellous character to write, with his mood swings and dare-devil attitude. Geoffrey Young is taking more work because I know less about him. His books are helping, but the overriding impression is that he has nowhere near the force of character that Edward has. Edward is powerful, passionate, mysterious, and a near-genius; Geoffrey is rather quiet, given to introspection and solitude, still settling into Cambridge life, and is a novice mountaineer. Nevertheless, I'm currently working on scenes that develop Geoffrey's character so hopefully this poor balance will settle down.

A problem I've recently become aware of is that George Trevelyan and Thomas Holdstock, both peripheral characters, are not very different either from each other or from Geoffrey. The main issue here is that everyone is being eclipsed by Edward. I'm going to have to apply serious work to this. In fact I suspect it may mean replacing Thomas Holdstock altogether, and merging him with Felix Levi. Thomas is the only fictional character in the book and I'm finding him increasingly superfluous.

I think it's a shame that Edward won't feature in the second two volumes, because he really is amazing! However, I am consoled that I will have George Mallory instead, and I can't wait to write about him. If anything, George has an even more potent and vivid character than Edward.

However, I don't want to waste Edward Crowley, which is why I'm giving serious thought to a spin-off novel.

After Edward's accident in 1896 (no spoilers yet!) he underwent a transformation. He looked increasingly inwards, renaming himself Aleister because he thought it was a name destined for infamy, and applied his considerable energies to black magic and the occult. However, he antagonised the magical establishment of the day, and by 1898 he was a marked man. Several attempts were made on his life. He fled England, met up with his friend Oscar Eckenstein (also a friend of Young's) and went travelling in Mexico and America for some years.

In 1902, Eckestein led an expedition to the Himalaya, with the objective of climbing Chogo Ri, the mountain simply marked as "K2" on the British survey map of the Karakoram of Pakistan. K2 is the second highest mountain in the world and still regarded as the most deadly. In 1902, it was only the second 8,000m+ peak to be attempted after Nanga Parbat, the killer mountain that had claimed the life of Alfred Mummery and his companion in 1895.

Eckestein and Crowley were a firm climbing partnership and they ran the expedition jointly. However, Crowley's increasing split from reality resulted in stormy arguments, mistakes, and disasters, ultimately causing the deaths of many sherpas. Crowley's temper was notorious and on several occasions he threatened fellow climbers with a revolver if he didn't get his way.

The expedition was ultimately a failure, but Crowley did redeem himself somewhat when he was the only expedition member to recognise a case of pulmonary oedema and insisted that the group descend, thus saving the climber's life.

if I do write "The K2 Book" it will be quite an adventure! The challenge will be to accurately portray Crowley, not as the monster he appears at first in this period, but as a complex character tormented by internal demons and the beginnings of his addiction to Heroin. In 1902 he was not a bad man, certainly not yet "The Wickedest Man in the World", but his habits were difficult to understand and his love of magic and enigmatic rituals frightened many.

In any case this is a project for the future. The Everest Trilogy will occupy my efforts for a long time, probably years. It's inspiring that there is so much to write about, and the great story of the renaissance of British mountaineering from 1895 until 1924 is an enormous tapestry of adventure, exploration, romance, and an increasingly tragic thread as more and more of the pioneers die in the war or on the mountains they love.

I think I have finally found the one story that I can spend years writing and never tire of. And the beauty of it is that there isn't any end: even once I have exhausted the possibilities of Geoffrey Young's circle, I can go forward in time to the "Silver Age" of mountaineering, or back in time to the Golden Age of the 1850s and 1860s.

All I need is time to work on it!