by Dan Simmons
First, says the Deacon, we have to learn about George Mallory—something that will show us something important about the challenge of climbing Everest that’s ahead of us—and for that we have to drive to Wales. (I know nothing about Wales except that I seem to remember that they use no vowels in their spellings there. Or was it all vowels? I’ll soon find out.)
We have a few weeks until the Deacon and I leave for Germany. He’s arranged a meeting with Bruno Sigl in Munich in November. In the meantime, the Deacon has reminded me that Jean-Claude lost not only all three of his older brothers in the Great War but also two uncles and a half dozen other close male relatives.
With that background, I find it surprising that Jean-Claude accepts German clients in his Chamonix Guide work and, the Deacon says, is as careful, protective, and polite to them as to any of his French, Italian, British, American, or other clients. But down deep, J.C. does, the Deacon says, deeply hate les boches.
But the Munich trip lies ahead in November.
“First,” says the Deacon after we’ve filled most of the backseat and all of the boot of a borrowed automobile with full rucksacks and climbing gear, including a lot of expensive new rope of the Deacon’s own design—the Deacon’s Miracle Rope, J.C. and I call it, since its blend of rope materials gives it a much greater tensile strength than the easily snapped climbing rope we are used to in the Alps—all of which I assume will go with us to Mount Everest, “we go to Pen-y-Pass.”
“Penny Pass?” I say, even though he hadn’t pronounced it that way. “That sounds like some place in a Tom Mix western.”
Rather than answering, the Deacon ignores me as he starts the engine and drives us out of town and west toward Wales.
It turns out that Pen-y-Pass is an area of tall crags and vertical rocky slabs in the region near Mount Snowdon in north Wales. We pass a hotel situated at the summit of the pass that—according to the Deacon—used to host many climbing parties in the early days of British rock climbing, many of them brought there by the preeminent rock climber of the time, Mallory’s older friend Geoffrey Winthrop Young, whom Mallory met way back in 1909.
I wouldn’t mind a big lunch and a pint at the hotel, but we keep driving. We’ve packed sandwiches and water in our rucksacks, but I secretly hoped for something better.
There have been plenty of climbable, fun-scrambling crags right along the dirt road we’ve been driving on for an hour now, but the Deacon keeps driving past them until, in an absurdly remote area, he finally parks the coupe and says, “Get your rucksacks and all that gear out of the boot, chaps. And tie it on well. It’s going to be a long hike in.” It is. More than two hours of covering rough country to get to his chosen crag. (I can’t remember now whether it was named Lliwedd or Llechog, but it is a big crag, at least 400 vertical feet to the summit, with a daunting overhang running the width of it about 50 feet below the summit.) All we’re given to understand is that the Deacon climbed here before the War with Mallory and his wife, Claude Elliott, David Pye, the better climber Harold Porter—who did a lot of first ascents and new routes on these crags in 1911—and the best climber of the time and perhaps Mallory’s closest climbing friend, Siegfried Herford.
Jean-Claude and I are ready to sit, study the face of the crag—which is daunting—and eat our pathetic lunches, but the Deacon insists we wait and walk just a while longer.
Surprisingly, he leads us around the massive crag to a backside where getting to the summit would be child’s play, just scrambling up tumbled boulders and easy ledges to the top. This is precisely what we do, which irritates me. I hate taking the easy way to a summit, even though that’s often the best way to do reconnaissance on a vertical rock face. Many great rock climbers do it, even rappelling down to check things out before starting their climb—although the Deacon tells us that after George Mallory did just that on this crag, after his rappelling recon, he let his climbing partner at the time, Harold Porter, take the lead.
The Deacon doesn’t allow us to eat even after we’ve hauled our loads to the top of the crag. The narrow summit, it turns out, is all but useless for climbing reconnaissance because of that view-obscuring overhang just 40 or 50 feet below the summit.
“Belay me,” says the Deacon and hands me one of the longer coils of rope we’ve dutifully hauled to the summit. It makes sense that I belay him—I’m by far the heaviest, tallest, and probably the strongest of the three of us, and there’s really nothing good to tie on to for a belay from up here—but it’s still irritating. It will waste energy I’ll need for any scrambling on the face of this crag that the Deacon might be planning for us.
Luckily there’s a ridge of rock along the summit line where I can wedge both feet solidly, adding some non-skid insurance to my one-man belay. I feel Jean-Claude behind me pick up the rope, although if both the Deacon and I get pulled off, the odds are almost zero that the smaller, lighter Jean-Claude could arrest our fall. He would simply join us in the 300-foot tumble.
The Deacon is nonchalantly smoking his pipe as he rappels backward and out of my sight over the edge of the summit. He rappels quickly, bouncing down eight and ten feet at a hop, and the load on the rope is significant. I brace myself in the classic belay pose, the rope over my shoulder as well, and am glad for the crack in the crag-wall summit in which I can dig my booted heels.
Still holding the moving end of the rope, Jean-Claude steps up to the edge of the drop, leans over, looks, and says, “He’s out of sight under the overhang now.”
Then, shockingly, the rope goes slack. He’s still moving—I have to feed some more rope out—but he’s moving horizontally, along some ledge, requiring no full belay. Then the rope stops moving and I hold my position and Jean-Claude leans further over the drop and says, “I can see smoke coming up over the overhang. The Deacon’s sitting on some damned ledge and smoking his pipe.”
“While I’m starving,” I say.
“I want the wine I brought,” says Jean-Claude. “This is no fun at all. What does any of this rock climbing have to do with our climbing Everest—no matter what Mallory and the Deacon may have achieved on these stupid rocks before the War? Mount Everest is not a rock-climbing challenge—it is snow and ice and glacier and crevasse and ice walls and high ridges and steep snowfields. This trip to Wales is a waste of our time.”
As if he’s heard us, there’s a warning tug on the rope, and then I’m on full belay again, leaning back to take the Deacon’s full weight—which is not great, thank heavens, since he has a Sherlock Holmesian thinnesss to him—as he climbs back up over the overhang and the 50 or so feet of rock, leaning back almost horizontally as he ascends.
Then he’s up over the summit ledge, standing with us, untying the knots of his belay rope, no longer puffing on that damned pipe, which must be in his shirt pocket now, and saying, “Let’s eat before we go back down to do what we came for.”
“I want the two of you to climb it,” says the Deacon as J.C. and I stare up at the forbidding face of the crag.
“To the summit?” asks Jean-Claude, looking down at the heap of ropes, carabiners, pitons, and other gear we’ve hauled in to this distant site. It will take pitons driven in—German style—for some sense of safety, stirrups, and some sort of suspended cord ladder to hang under that formidable overpass, then Prusik-climbing it loop by loop, and trying to find a handhold or place to spread-eagle yourself on the broad edge to climb over it.
The Deacon shakes his head. “Just to where I forgot my pipe,” he says and points to a grassy ledge about three-fourths of the way up the face, just under the overhang. “I want it back.”
As tempted as J.C. and I are to say “Then go get it yourself,” we both stay quiet. This has to have something to do with Mallory and our attempt on Everest.
“And no iron,” adds the Deacon. “Just the two of you, ropes, and your ice axes if you wish.”
Ice axes? Jean-Claude and I exchange worried glances again and look up at the slope.
The grassy ledge where t
he Deacon left his damned pipe is about 250 feet above us, sheltered nicely by the overhang but wide enough that one could dangle one’s legs, smoke a pipe, and stare out at the view from 25 stories high. Which is exactly what the Deacon had done.
It took him a couple of minutes to rappel down from the summit to that ledge, including the mildly tricky rappel move over and then under the overhang. But climbing it from here…???
The crag is the kind of just-beyond-the-possible challenge that causes even temperate climbers to use harsh descriptive language.
“I know,” says the Deacon as if reading our minds. “It’s a daunting bugger.”
Everything under the grassy ridge, for a width of 50 to 75 feet and more, is a huge, smooth, steep stone bulge—like the underbelly of some giant stone sow or an ex-prizefighter gone completely to seed. I’m good on rock—I started with countless rock climbs in Massachusetts and elsewhere and have taken those skills to rock-climbing challenges in Colorado and Alaska. I fancy that I can climb almost any climbable rock face.
But the part of this accursed face under the grassy ridge just isn’t climbable. Not by 1924 standards, equipment, and ability. (Perhaps the Germans could do it with all their pig iron—carabiners, pitons, and the like, which we’ve hauled this long way in—but the Deacon has ruled out using such Teutonic hardware on this climb.) I see no ridges, no cracks, no fingerholds or creases in the rock where booted feet can find a hold, and the smooth sow’s belly curls far out and then back in toward the bottom where we stand. The only thing that will hold a climber onto a vertical rock face (above the underbelly curve) like that in the first place is speed and friction—sometimes spread-eagled friction with every part of your body, including your palms and cheek and torso, trying to force itself into the rock, to become part of the rock, so you don’t keep sliding 200 feet to your death. But this curled-in sow’s belly won’t allow a friction scramble on a third of its lower face—one would be hanging out almost horizontally without any holds, sans pitons. A fall would be inevitable. Even with pitons allowed, I see no cracks or crevasses or soft areas of the nasty, solid-faced granite where any could be driven in.
So good-bye to the direttissima route—direct to the grassy ledge where the Deacon’s pipe sits. That’s out.
Which leaves the crack that runs up the majority of the face about 50 feet to the right of the grassy ledge up there above 250 feet.
Jean-Claude and I move to the base and look up. We have to lean back to see how it runs all the way to an ever-narrowing mini-crack as it peters out not far beneath the great overhang.
The first 30 feet or so of this climb will be easy enough—erosion has exposed boulders and rubble and ridges for this first short section—but beyond that it’s all this narrow crack and prayers for finger- and footholds that we can’t see from here.
“I hate cunt-crack climbing,” Jean-Claude mutters.
I’m shocked. To date I haven’t heard either of my new climbing friends use real obscenity or such a vulgar comment as this. I put it down to Jean-Claude not fully understanding what an unacceptable word this is in English.
But I look up again and understand Jean-Claude’s intense dislike of such a climb. For more than 200 feet our ascent will depend upon jamming our wedged hands, raw forearms, bloodied fingers, and the tips of our boots or shoes into an ever-narrowing and zigzagging crack. I doubt if there will be half a dozen decent belay points anywhere up this miserable little crack—and I still can’t see any decent handholds or footholds on either side of the fissure.
“You will lead, Jake,” says Jean-Claude without making it a question. Superb on snow and ice, brilliant on high mountain ridges and faces, the gifted young mountain guide simply doesn’t enjoy this sort of rock climbing.
He says, “Shall we even bother roping up?”
I look again at the face and crack—the 50-foot separation from the grassy “pipe ledge” to the highest points we must traverse from the crack, if it’s even possible to do so—and ponder the question. In truth, we’d probably be safer—especially I would—if we each climbed solo. With so few belay points, there’s little to no chance that if one of us falls, the other can hold him.
But some chance is better than no chance.
“Yes,” I say. “Ten meters of rope between us should do it.”
Jean-Claude groans. Such a short tether slightly increases the chance of holding a fallen fellow climber—since if the lead climber, me, falls, it’ll be 60 feet of falling inertia that the man on belay (Jean-Claude) will have to hold against, as well as far less weight-energy against the lead climber (should I have a solid hold) if the second man, Jean-Claude, falls. But the short rope will mean a slow ascent, with many stops for each man going on belay for the other. A sloppy, slow, dangerous climb, the antithesis of quality speed work on rock.
“But we should haul up a hell of a lot of rope,” I add. “For the rappel down from the pipe ledge. I don’t want to down-climb the damned crack.”
Jean-Claude stares angrily at the almost invisible “pipe ledge” nearly 250 feet above us, glares at the Deacon, and says, “That’s a lot of rope for a full rappel.”
“We’ll do it in two stages, J.C.,” I say with far more enthusiasm and confidence than I feel. “There has to be at least one decent belay point in that crack about halfway down or more, and we’ll swing the lead man on rappel to it and he’ll set up the second rappel from there. Easy as pie.”
Jean-Claude only grunts.
I turn to the Deacon and find that my voice is as angry in tone as was J.C.’s gaze at our “leader.” I say, “I presume that you’re going to explain to us why this miserable and dangerous save-the-pipe climb has something to do with Mallory or our attempt on Everest.”
“I shall explain after you deliver my pipe to me, old man,” says the Deacon in that smug British tone that makes Americans want to punch Brits.
Jean-Claude and I sit down, our backs against the crag, and start coiling the extra rope—we’re going to have to carry a lot of it looped over our backs and bellies—and emptying out our rucksacks to carry even more rope. I’m using the rucksack mostly as a way to hold my ice axe, which I can imagine a use for even though Jean-Claude thinks I’m crazy to haul it up this iceless, snowless mass of rock.
And he stares in shock—now truly convinced of my insanity—as I take off my mountain boots and put on an old pair of sneakers that I’d hauled in with me in my rucksack, holes worn in them from my years of tennis at prep school and college and on summer clay courts. I understand my French friend’s incredulity. Crack climbing demands the heaviest and most rigid climbing boots you can find; wedge a toe of that mountain boot in on the slightest spur or foothold, and the stiff sole of the boot gives you a stable platform on which to stand as you go for your next hold. My tennis shoes all but guarantee that my feet are going to be as bruised and bloody as my bare hands after this climb.
But all I can think about is that 50-foot traverse to the pipe ledge across that smooth and seemingly hold-free sow’s-belly curve of rock 250 feet up. On that sort of rock, I’ve always used the softest shoes I can find—my American equivalent to the grippy-soled soft shoes that the new generation of German rock climbers call Kletterschuhe. So today it’s my old tennis shoes with the holes in them.
Jean-Claude and I rope up and begin the climb. We’re soon using the crack, and it’s even nastier than I’d thought. My hands—already toughened and well calloused for such rock work—are bleeding profusely before the end of the first pitch. My tennis shoes soon have more holes in them, and I feel as if my bruised and torn feet do as well.
But we’ve found our rhythm, and very soon we’re climbing as quickly as the frequent stops for belays in the crack allow. Jean-Claude watches for the improbable places where I jam my hands or set my toes for a hold, follows my lead well, and our climbing soon flows smoothly upward. Only our occasional curses—in American English and more expressive French—echo down to where the Deacon lounges against a tree,
only occasionally watching us.
When we’re three pitches and about 100 feet up the crag, something that had been in the back of my mind comes to the forefront of my thoughts: most rock climbers prefer crags and rock challenges close to a road. Falls from vertical rock faces can be terrible for the victim, and if the man survives the fall but is immobilized with broken bones and an injured back, it’s important to get him to medical help quickly—if he can be moved at all—or to get medical help to him quickly if he can’t be moved without killing him or snapping his back or neck. The two-hour rough hike in to this crag, no way to get a car or even a horse-drawn buckboard in here across the boulders, showed me that Mallory, the Deacon, Harold Porter, Siegfried Herford, and the others had been displaying impressive confidence and courage climbing here before the War. Or perhaps a certain arrogant stupidity.
I should talk about other people’s arrogant stupidity, I think as I clench my aching and bloody left hand, turn it into a wedge blade again, and jam it into the crack as far as I can reach above my head. Then, feet secure on nothing, I begin pulling myself up yet again.
When I find spurs in the crack where I can get at least one of my torn tennis shoes set, and find a real hold for at least one hand, something better than a mere friction wedge, I call “On belay!” and wait while Jean-Claude closes the ten meters or so until his head is just below my free, dangling sneaker.
At about 200 feet up the crag, we pause to catch our breath—hanging too long in such temporary holds will just tire us out more, but we have to stop for a few seconds—and Jean-Claude says, “Mon ami, this climb is merde.”
“Oui,” I say, using up half of my collection of conversational French. It’s possible that the little finger on my left hand is now broken—it feels broken—and this does not bode well for a Mount Everest attempt, even though such an attempt would have to be at least eight months away.