The Blind Man of Hoy

by Red Szell

  I checked both ropes I was now tied into for a third and final time, took a deep breath of mind-clearing sea air and banished all these thoughts. The red cliffs fringed with sparkling white surf and clear blue sky, the life teeming above and below me and the ancient rock I rested on, all gave me a sense of something infinitely greater than a few personal concerns. I was here solely and simply to enjoy climbing this glorious chunk of sandstone and the best way to do that was one move at a time.

  ‘On belay!’

  ‘Take!’

  Martin pulled through the two lines till first pink, then green were taut.

  ‘That’s me on pink! That’s me on green!’ I shouted.

  ‘Climb!’

  ‘Climbing!’ I replied and, turning my back to the promontory, felt for the ledge below with my feet. I edged down into a high-sided gully that led me towards the corner between the south and east faces. It was steep and uneven. Nick was close on my heels.

  ‘So you’re now on a little pedestal, it’s quite a large pedestal. You can move rightwards on it. Shuffle rightwards but not forwards. That’s it.’

  ‘Okay, is this where there’s a gap?’

  ‘Then there’s a gap, yeah.’

  ‘This is where if I could see and looked down, I’d see . . .’

  Nick chuckled nervously, ‘You wouldn’t want to.’

  I transferred my right hand to the left, inside, wall and found a jagged flake of rock, about the size of a tea-tray for support as I inched my right foot forward. It found the edge.

  ‘You need to step round the corner and find the ledge on the other wall’ Nick said.

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Two, two-and-a-half feet.’

  ‘And 150 feet straight down,’ I thought grimly. The Atlantic was churning all too audibly between my feet as I toed the edge of the pedestal.

  I tested the flake, it felt solid enough and anyway it was the only decent hold in reach. Edging my hands as far round as I dared, I hung off it and stepped my right foot into the unknown. An inch or two lower than I’d hoped it found a ledge that felt about half an inch wide and was slippery with loose sand but gave enough purchase for me to stretch out my right hand and locate a side pull. I matched feet and was round.

  I remembered from Feeding the Rat that Al Alvarez had found another narrow ledge at scalp level for his hands and brought my left arm above me in search of it. It too was as dusty as the top of an old picture frame but allowed me to find my balance and catch my breath.

  ‘Well done Red.’ Nick had popped his head round the corner. ‘If you step down an inch or so, you’ll find a wider ledge to stand on. It might be more comfortable.’

  It was, till it ran out after about 18 inches, leaving me stretched like a starfish on the traverse. If I slipped now, even double roped as I was, I’d swing a good 20 feet across the face of the rock and into one of its solid buttresses.

  ‘The handhold you’ve got for your right is the only decent hold there. You need somehow to match both hands on it, match feet too, then step across to the right where you’ll find a side-pull at fingertip length. It’s a bit of a faith move but there’s a ledge for your right foot.’

  I followed instructions. The ledge sloped down to the right and I had to rock over onto that leg to stretch far enough for my fingers to locate the side-pull. All the time my left hand was clamped round a hold about the size and texture of half an avocado. Fortunately it was dry and having been used by five pairs of hands in the last 24 hours, clean of debris. The side-pull was much better and I drew myself gratefully across on it to come to rest at a corner underneath the first chimney.

  A cheer arose from the promontory and I could hear Nick’s grin as he patted me on the back and said, ‘Awesome, that’s one of the hardest bits.’

  We must have descended a good 20 feet from our belay ledge, which always feels somewhat counter-intuitive when you’re climbing, so I was happy to be going vertical again, even if the rock was steep and overhanging. Now however I found just how annoying it was to have a Go-Pro fixed to my helmet. That it added a bit of weight and heft had been a little off-putting at first but as I headed upwards I discovered the real trouble of having something the size of a satnav rising proud of the smooth lines of my safety hat.

  ‘Fucking Go-Pro!’ I muttered as it caught on yet another piece of overhanging rock and jerked my head back. ‘I hope it’s well insured.’

  ‘You’re certainly testing it to its limit,’ Nick agreed.

  ‘Yeah, well I don’t reckon anyone will be in any doubt that I can’t see if they use any of the footage from it. Assuming it survives.’

  But the chimney itself was a delight. Dirty, a little damp and slippery in places but with deep cracks for fingers and toes and wide enough to bridge comfortably.

  Near the top Nick asked whether he could pass me so as to help guide me out onto the arête. In doing so he managed to step on my helmet. ‘Fucking Go-Pro!’ we said in unison bursting into a fit of the giggles.

  I found a gorgeous niche hold for my right hand and a little plinth to push up on underfoot and pulled smoothly out round the jutting corner of the overhang and onto the right-hand arête. It was bristling with holds and within a few relatively straightforward moves I’d achieved my reward and was bridging the base of The Coffin.

  The natural line to follow as you climb this bottomless chimney draws you deeper and deeper into it as the cracks converge at the back of the flue. I knew I needed to head out before I hit the roof at the top; I’d watched Bonington make that mistake and read of Alvarez’s struggle to exit; but like them I was reluctant to leave the safety of good holds for the seemingly featureless walls on either side of me; besides there was the most enormous hex to remove from a fist-wide crack above me yet.

  All climbers operate on a ‘you lose it you replace it’ basis and it becomes ingrained – partly out of habit, partly out of pride – that as a second you do your damnedest to remove all protection put up by the lead climber; especially the really expensive pieces.

  Nick was now on Jumars so he could film me on the Handycam. He read my thoughts and insisted, ‘I’ll get that. You concentrate on getting yourself out.’

  I’d already gone too high and was tucked up under the roof with my head on one side. The effing Go-Pro kept bumping the rock above me and in my best public school accent I reprised Chris Bonington ‘my wretched crash hat is too big’. I should have moved down a few inches but my right hand was in a good ledge and my left had hold of a flake like a scallop shell that would be equally good for my right when it came to it. My feet were the problem. The right was wedged into a horizontal crack and taking most of my weight but try as I might I could find nothing for my left which was jammed against the wall behind me and kept sliding down the sandy surface. I moved my free hand down and hurriedly brushed the sole of my shoe clean, but to little avail.

  ‘You need to come out of the back and swing round onto the left hand wall in a minute.’

  Nick was right and the sooner the better. I was getting tired and thoughts of the drop beneath had begun to flit across my mind. Matching hands I hung most of my weight from the scallop-shell hold, braced my leg against the wall behind me and wiggled my foot across it in search of the first reasonable bump it could find. There was nothing. With infinite care and my heart in my mouth I edged back and swapped feet so I could try my right foot instead.

  ‘Down an inch!’ Nick sounded tense too as my shoe scraped blindly across the wall behind. ‘A little to the right.’ My toes bumped over a wrinkle, reversed over it and found the merest edge to hang on. ‘Got it!’

  Time was of the essence now. Telltale quivers ran through my legs; I had under a minute till I’d have to retreat and rest, or more likely peel off the wall and have to do the overhang on Jumars.

  Using ten valuable seconds to get my breathing under control I inched my left hand out and groped round the edge of the overhang for a hold. All I found was blank wall. I tried to get my head o
ut from under The Old Man’s belly but the camera wedged, pushing me down: ‘Fucking Go-Pro’ I howled.

  ‘Out further, an inch maybe. Up a little. That’s it!’ Nick urged.

  My fingers closed on an impossibly smooth nubbin of rock. ‘This one?! You’ve got to be kidding Nick!’ I protested.

  ‘No. That’s the only one. Palm off it then you’ve got a crack above right for your other hand.’

  My right foot had begun to slip. I pulled back in, hung with aching arms off the scallop, then re-placed it and stretched out for the nubbin again. ‘Shit or bust’ I muttered and rose into a wobbly Egyptian. On tiptoes now I jammed my right fist into the crack above. Both feet swung free for a sickening moment before my right landed exactly where my left had been while the left slid down the outside wall to an ‘oh thank god’ ledge.

  I shuffled along an inch and brought my right foot round to join its fellow. Heart thumping I caught my breath. I was out! Hopefully the worst was over.

  Groping blindly for a better left-handhold met with no success, so I rose up on tiptoes; bad move! My left leg began to jiggle up and down like a sewing machine.

  ‘Handhold, Nick?’

  ‘Up and, er, left. Well . . .’

  I couldn’t hang around any longer so stood on the nubbin to gain height. It pushed me out left, away from the crack but I’d found a small ledge for my fingers that was enough for both hands. Legs trembling, partly from effort, partly from relief but in the main because my balance was off and my position precarious, I rested for a few uneasy seconds during which I had time to question my sanity.

  ‘That’ll work. Awesome. Well done.’

  ‘Straight up or head right?’ I demanded.

  ‘Straight up and head to the left a bit.’

  The wall above felt blank, and steep. Out at ten o’clock there was a small ledge and I rocked over towards it. From then on it was a bit like progressing up Andres’s Rockover Route, just hairier and with less margin for error.

  ‘You’re doing it yourself, you don’t really need me.’ But Nick kept me trending left and with a hand-width crack developing in front of me and a series of jutting ledges to my right it became obvious why. Using both I began to build a rhythm and could finally breathe easy again.

  ‘You’re over the crux, well done.’ The voice from above made me jump. Martin’s face peered down at me. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Bloody marvellous thanks, Martin’ I gasped, dragging myself up past his boots and across the rope. ‘Now I see why they call it The Coffin – it’s bloody difficult to climb out of.’

  I’d done it! Jubilant cheering erupted from the promontory but I was so exhausted I couldn’t even make out the red mass of the cliffs. I unzipped my pocket and pulled out a squashed and warm bonk drink sachet. It tasted revolting but was like mainlining caffeine. Within a minute I was beaming. Within two I was recording my elation in my audio-diary. Within three Martin was off up the next pitch.

  Nick was full of praise: ‘You did that really nicely. Well done, Red. I should have some great footage on the Handycam.’

  I’d made it to The Haven! Tucked into the niche of what is surely one of Nature’s most perfect belay stances I was buzzing as I tried to take in the beautiful panorama spread out ahead of me, the feat I had just achieved on the rock-face below and all the while fighting the urge to laugh for the pure joy of being alive and climbing.

  In comparison to what had gone before, the next 80 feet was easy. I needed little guidance from Nick as I tacked first right, then left, to follow the crack-line up the east face. The regular ledges provided secure footholds and only the occasional fulmar – all of whom must have vented their bile on Martin because they left me alone.

  Half a dozen moves in, I remembered what Andres had said the night before: – ‘I felt in too much of a hurry; I forgot to enjoy the climbing.’ I’d done the hard part, I could afford to slow down a little and live the dream.

  I am surprised that Channel 4 has not yet featured extreme pissing as reality TV – there’s probably a website dedicated to it somewhere though. As far as ‘atmospheric and extreme’ goes, taking a leak while facing out towards The Long Hope route on St John’s Head was pretty spectacular. As Nick and I attempted to direct our streams over the fulmars swooping beneath I remarked: ‘You know I’d love to go back and have another go at The Coffin. I reckon my exit looked pretty ragged. I bet I could do it more stylishly next time.’

  Nick laughed. ‘Let’s get you to the top first. But we can always come back next year if you want.’

  The fourth pitch was another ‘glorious Diff’ and a 120-foot geology lesson rolled into one. My fingers were spoilt for choice amongst the textures and features of the beautifully stratified wall, including arcs of rock-iron that feel as though someone had buried sections of iron drainpipe in the sandstone, and which provide the best side-pulls known to mankind.

  The wind had got up and moaned deeply around the corner of the fourth belay ledge. Martin took the Handycam from Nick to film some footage of me topping out.

  ‘You just open it up like this and it starts filming,’ Nick demonstrated.

  ‘And that’s all I need to do?’

  ‘That’s it. Easy.’

  The guys on the promontory were waving to us and shouting again, but it was snatched away by the wind so we just waved back.

  After Martin had gone Nick and I shared the ledge with a little puffin that landed on the next ledge down with its fish dinner just as I was tucking into my own snack. Nick directed my gaze and after a couple of minutes hard staring I finally made out its sleek black shape perched just a few feet from me.

  Its noisy munching made the ledge, which was littered with the debris of previous climbs, less haunting. I had the impression I was high up the buttress of some long-abandoned gothic cathedral about to scuttle beneath the gargoyles and up onto the roof.

  Nick described the route ahead: ‘It’s a big corner, with a crack in the back of it. Do lots of bridging. There’s more ledges on the right-hand wall than on the left-hand wall. And at about halfway, so after about ten metres, there’s a bit of an overlap, a bulge you go over, but it’s pretty straightforward. At that point there’s then a crack in the left-hand wall. I’ll be behind you so I’ll be able to direct your feet but I won’t be able to see your hands.’

  ‘Okay.’ One last overhang between me and the summit; how appropriate it should end this way.

  He gave the dreaded Go-Pros a final once-over. The battery on his had died but mine was still running. I’d made my audio-diary entry while gazing for, and then at, the puffin, then left the recorder running to give a flavour of the climb itself.

  ‘That’s us!’

  ‘On belay’.

  ‘So basically it’s straight up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Climb!’

  ‘You go first. I’ll just dismantle this belay.’

  ‘Climbing!’

  ‘I’ll try and catch you up. The speed you go I’ll be lucky.’

  ‘Climbing!’

  The story of the fifth and final pitch is the one I shall take from my library to tell myself during winter nights of the soul when I am consumed by self-doubt or rancour. There were lots of handholds spread across the dihedral wall. I tend to talk to myself as I climb anyway so there was no difficulty thinking of things to say into the mike clipped to my collar:

  This is lovely, lovely rock. Big cracks and ledges to get your hands and feet jammed into. It beats the climbing wall any day and I sat within sniffing distance of a puffin. What a day!

  Nick was clinking along behind me, shouting the odd direction but in the main leaving me to it.

  I’m now leaning right out 450 feet above the Atlantic . . . er . . . searching for a handhold . . . arrgh . . . got it! All I can say is that if I didn’t have RP I would probably never have done this . . . so . . .

  There’s a couple of bits of gear above you . . .

  Scrape, crunch, he
avy breathing.

  The gear’s right in front of you now. About to hit your helmet.

  Clunk.

  Climb up the left hand side of it.

  Left? Okay. So come out of this corner a bit.

  Most of the holds are on the left hand wall.

  Is there anything for the left foot?

  No. Good right foot, nothing much for your left foot. Er, you’ve just taken your foot off the foothold. Right foot down. You can actually . . .

  Ah!! I’ve got a lovely foothold here.

  A bit of grunting and scraping, the sound of protection snagging me, then:

  Bastard!

  Behind your head and above your head; on the right-hand wall. Yeah, just there.

  You might have to come out of the corner a bit for it. Just move your hand around. That’s it. Well done! If you want to pass the gear to me.

  Krak . . . runch!

  Ah just taken the Go-Pro out. Excellent!

  I’m coming out over a bulge that bulges out about two feet. So my legs are about 2 feet in front of me underneath the bulge, my upper body is leaning out . . . Got hold of something with one hand and with the other. Ah, the end is nearly in sight. Well it would be if I could see it. Urgh, and over . . .

  Here my bold manoeuvre must have dislodged the microphone jack because the recording quality turns to mush. The bulbous section pushed me back and out over the sea, leaving me fist and knee-jamming the corner crack and flailing for both a hand and foothold on my left. Palming the wall I quickly found a jug to pull on, smeared with my shoe and mantled up over the top.

  A gust of wind buffeted my face and bright sunshine blinded me completely.

  For a moment I thought I must have hit the summit and called out to Martin. His reply came from a good ten feet above. Then it dawned on me – this was the cleft at the top of the Old Man; an eight inch wide split running 20 feet down, as if some giant had taken an axe to the sea stack and tried to split it in two. My eyes slowly adjusted to the glare. The contrast between light and shade; matt red and glittering blue; between shelter and exposure was so elemental and beautiful that I had to stop and catch my feelings.