by Red Szell
‘Down a bit. There! That’s your handhold.’
‘That’s it!’
‘Yeah, just that sloping one there. When you’ve stood round and shimmied along the ledge it gets better.’
All the time I was teetering on the edge of balance with the disconcerting feeling that my feet were on molten wax that was oozing down the sides of the chimney. My heart thundered in my ears. Nick was filming, Keith was filming and I was in imminent danger of slithering off this dank wall, plunging down and swinging out to be left dangling in mid-air like a bedraggled spider.
‘Good, hang in there. So you can move out onto the left-hand wall in a minute.
Adrenalin pumped round my body. This was it! I had to go now. Kicking my foot deeper into the sandy wall behind me and ramming my fist deep into the crack above my head, I began to lever myself up and out. I flung out my left hand and groped for the greasy slope, willing my aching muscles to defy the pull of gravity for a few more seconds. My right foot started to slip; my heart was pounding.
‘Need a foothold for my left,’ I gasped.
‘Yeah, there isn’t any, unfortunately,’ Nick’s voice was infuriatingly calm.
With a heave I dragged myself round the corner and flagged my left leg as far out as I could to reach the ledge he’d mentioned.
‘Up, up for your foot, up, tiny bit, up an inch, left a bit, left two inches. No, the other way. Yes! Well done, Red. That’s brilliant, absolutely awesome!’
Breathing hard I hugged the rock and slowly, carefully brought my right foot out to join my left. I was lower down than yesterday with a lot of unrelentingly steep rock to cross till I reached the comfort of the bigger ledges – and I was knackered.
I forced my right arm up and deeper into the off-width crack, ignoring the tearing skin. With an almighty grunt I levered up again, smearing the sloper to reach a pinch with my left hand. Martin had the rope taut, pulling me away from the wall but I dared not call for slack, fearing any jolt would throw me off what little balance I had. I needed to get up, reach somewhere I could rest.
‘Handhold?’
‘Up and . . . you’re doing great, you’re doing great. Just take a deep breath.’ Nick read my discomfort and his soothing voice reminded me to take a break and stop fighting the rock.
‘Good. Hang in there, Red. Your left foot can go up and left. Downward. Yes! Nice one.’
With a better leg to stand on I tried to move up again only to find my right shoulder was jammed in the crack. I cursed and yanked it down and out, knowing as I did that it would throw me off balance. Only my fingers straining to hold the pinch stopped me from barn-dooming but once free I was able to throw my right arm high overhead to explore the crack.
‘Come on, just one nice little handhold,’ I implored, then ‘ah that’ll do as a handhold, finally!’ My hand wrapped around a flat, solid chockstone that didn’t feel like it was going anywhere and supported my whole weight as I pulled gratefully up.
It wasn’t a chockstone but the large wooden wedge driven in by Rusty Baillie on the first ascent in 1966 and used subsequently by both Chris Bonington and Al Alvarez to aid their climbs. With heritage like that I had no compunction about using it again and patted it gratefully before I matched foot to hand and pushed on.
I lay-backed the crack for a few moves till Nick called, ‘Go sideways instead of up,’ and I realised that I was heading up underneath the sequence of overhanging ledges. The wall to the left was even more featureless than I remembered and made no easier by the protection slung round my neck.
With each move I could feel my energy ebbing away. My climbing had no fluidity and I knew I was forcing my way up, but I was tired and had only The Haven 25 feet above in mind. I should have stopped and rested but I was genuinely afraid I might not be able to restart. Anyway, I didn’t feel in balance enough to be comfortable anywhere.
At last I drew level with Martin’s boots and with a final heave mantled onto the ledge. All the cams, slings and hexes snagged at once, checking my progress and leaving me prostrate at his feet. Swearing, I yanked them free and began to present them to him one-by-one. It was inelegant and hardly triumphant but I suppose it reflected the effort I’d put in.
‘I’m knackered,’ I groaned. ‘Just stick me in a corner and tie me to a rock.’ But I wasn’t there long. Martin and Nick set up the abseil in record-quick time and I was soon pulling on my ‘gardening gloves’ and preparing for another rapid descent.
The wind was getting up and the sky out to sea looking ominously dark. As I pushed off the top of the overhang I swung or was blown off to the left. Knowing that was the right general direction and that I was unlikely to encounter any sharp obstacles I carried on paying out the rope and dreaming of the foaming pint I’d be enjoying in the not too distant future. A sharp cry from below yanked me from my reverie. ‘Go right! Go right! Rope!’
Instinctively I arrested my descent. My left leg had been hooked by something and I was tipping over to the right.
‘Rope, Red. Rope.’
I was astride the ragged traverse rope. Mindful of Al Alvarez’s experience I had, fortunately, made sure to tighten my harness before the abseil but it was a timely reminder that most climbing accidents occur on the way back from the summit when your mind has already gone to the pub.
Back at the cave Keith was ebullient. ‘That was brilliant, Red, really tense. It had me on edge and I knew you could do it.’
‘That’s a relief, coz I’m buggered if I’m doing it again.’
We were a far happier party for our return to Rackwick. The sun even made a brief appearance, much to the obvious delight of the corncrake.
Though the minibus was there, Matthew and Andres were not, so I had our room to myself. I took the opportunity to get all my gear out, bury my stinking kit deep in my rucksack and then repack everything else in anticipation of an early and hung-over start the next morning. Finding a chockstone still in my pocket I slipped it into the bag as a souvenir. On my way to the shower I gave Martin back the boots he’d lent me, before hogging the bathroom for half an hour and allowing the hot water to massage my aching body.
In the meantime Matthew and Andres had returned, keen for a swim in the sea. Feeling clean for the first time all day I declined the offer but said I’d walk down with them. They hadn’t made it to the off-licence so I gave Martin £40 and asked him to buy some beers and a bottle of whisky.
The others had, predictably, had a crap day. They had gone in search of and eventually located the area mentioned in the guidebook. Its warning about ‘loose, fridge-sized blocks’ had at least been accurate but to describe the overgrown and tumbledown cliff that they’d found as ‘climbable’ was apparently highly optimistic. They’d done a bit of bouldering and Matthew had explained the difference between goolies and gullies to Andres but otherwise they’d just mooched about. Their swim in the cold Atlantic was a high point!
With supper and beer on the table and Keith delighted with the day’s filming we could finally all unwind. Nick stuck the radio on and to a slew of hits from the past 30 years we tucked in and chilled out.
The show, Get It On, was asking listeners to text in requests for songs or artists with one-word names, saying why the song should be played and what they were up to while listening.
‘Come on Red, give it a go. I’ll text for you,’ Nick urged.
‘Okay. Erm. Oasis – Wonderwall. Enjoying an Orkney ale having just become the first blind man to climb the wonderwall that is the Old Man of Hoy.’
A few beers later and there was time on the show for one last song. And sure enough, with the congratulations of BBC Radio Scotland, I heard my news and it finally sank in.
21
Touchdown
‘I look at climbing not so much as standing on the top as seeing the other side. There are always other horizons in front of you, other horizons to go beyond and that’s what I like about climbing.’
– Chris Bonington
I was glad I
’d had the foresight to pack. We’d paid a visit to the Hoy Tavern, a Nissen hut affair, open two nights a week only and full of good beer and fine locals. Then had a dram or three of whisky at the hostel to ensure profound sleep. If I felt rough the following morning the weather looked even worse. There’d be no climbing today, so we headed for the ferry and home.
On the road Keith kept us going with tales from his time on Siula Grande filming Touching the Void with director Kevin Macdonald, including exactly how they created and caught the look of pure terror on actor Brendan Mackey‘s face in the scene where the rope is cut.
In Stromness he turned to me and said ‘You know I spent a lot of time with Erik Weihenmayer when we were filming Blindsight. That journey up Lhakpa Ri with those six blind teenagers taught all of us a lot about ourselves and others. It was the most emotional film I’ve ever worked on. You climb as well as he does.’
Coming from Keith this was high praise indeed. He produced one final rabbit from the hat on the ferry back to Scrabster while he was copying his photos of Andres, Matthew and me climbing to Matthew’s laptop as a gift to the three of us. A couple, impressed by his stunning pictures of The Old Man of Hoy, asked whether they could buy one and have him email it to them. Keith told them about my ascent and asked them to leave a donation on my JustGiving page instead. They did, exceedingly generously.
Near John o’Groats we watched a stream of cyclists getting flayed by the rain as they set off for Land’s End. ‘The things people do for charity,’ I mused.
Inverness was dripping when Martin dropped us in front of the same guesthouse I’d stayed at back in April. We shook hands and he presented me with the boots I’d been using as a memento of our adventure.
‘I’ll use them to get to the Old Man of Stoer with you next year,’ I said, thanking him for everything.
He, Nick and Keith all had homes to go to. Matthew, Andres and I had 16 hours before our flight and a Saturday night on the town to kick the arse out of.
There was plenty to keep me busy back in London, starting with an interview for BBC Radio Scotland first thing on Monday morning. As soon as I put the phone down to them it was off to Broadcasting House to deliver my audio-diary to a very relieved Lee Kumutat, in time for her to edit and include it, hot off the press, in Tuesday evening’s programme.
The BMC, UK Climbing, Grough, The Ham & High and Scotland Outdoors magazine had all requested written accounts of the climb and I spent the next fortnight happily retelling the story. The Ham & High article was picked up by ITN and for the first time in my life I found myself entering a TV studio.
I was appearing on London Tonight, as the feature after the main story about cuts to NHS services at The Whittington Hospital. Local MP Emily Thornberry was there to speak about that and we chatted while we waited to be called through, which helped take my mind off the task ahead. Like me she had gone to school in Guildford and like Nick had stayed in one of those bothies on Hoy. I assured her that I found the idea of appearing on live TV far more nerve-racking than climbing the Old Man, and once she’d completed her interview she came to find me and wish me luck.
Soon after I was fitted with a mike, led through to the studio, introduced to Lucrezia Millarini, then the countdown began and Lucrezia introduced me:
‘One of the toughest challenges for any serious climber, contender for the title of Britain’s toughest summit, it’s a stack in the Orkney islands called the Old Man of Hoy and it’s just under 450 feet high. The first successful climb took three days and didn’t happen until 1966, 13 years after the conquest of Everest. As I said a challenge for any serious climber, which is why my next guest took it on. Red Szell from Hampstead was determined to conquer the Old Man of Hoy and he didn’t let the fact that he’s blind get in the way.’
Pia’s film of me began to play and I barely had time to feel incredibly flattered by the build-up I’d just received before I was answering questions about how difficult the ascent had been, how and where I’d trained, what level of vision I was down to and how I’d come to lose it. Five minutes flew by and while I wouldn’t say I ever felt truly relaxed I found I was really enjoying myself.
‘So you’ve achieved this now, what’s next for you?’ Lucrezia continued in her easy-going, encouraging style.
I’ll carry on climbing. I quite fancy having a bash at the Old Man of Stoer, which is another sea stack but involves swimming out to it. Maybe next year.’
‘Goodness me. Okay, well, when you do please come back and talk to us and tell us about that.’
And it was all over. Lucrezia was shaking my hand again and saying, ‘I mean it, do come back and well done.’
I was whisked away past David Suchet and Mary Nightingale, thanked for coming in and placed in a cab home, where Megan and Laura had been watching my performance.
They and the flurry of emails and texts I received were in agreement; I had come across well, hadn’t appeared to take myself too seriously and hadn’t let my nervousness show. Of course I only had their word for it and had to wait for the repeat at 10.30 pm after the national news.
Kate and I sat side by side on the sofa, through the Whittington story, our anticipation growing. The moment came and – the story had changed. A resident of Preston Road had discovered a pony grazing in his back garden. It was a cute little horse and a great story and as Kate said, far more suitable for the dead donkey slot.
There was even better news towards the end of the week when Steve Bate reached the summit of El Capitan. He had had an epic; fate had seemed to conspire against him and Andy all the way, but he had not given in and, though at the limits of his endurance, had succeeded in becoming the first blind person to solo-climb Zodiac – one of El Cap’s toughest routes. He sounded exhausted but exhilarated as we exchanged congratulations over the phone. Between us we felt we’d stuck two fingers up at the limits RP, and Health & Safety, try to shackle us with.
As Piers Plowright had written on receiving the news from Hoy ‘a terrific achievement both for you and humanity.’
Cole, Dan and the other instructors gave Matthew and me quite a reception when we arrived at Swiss for our regular Thursday afternoon session. But Andres was determined that we should not rest on our laurels. Martin had let him lead the final pitch on the Old Man and then suggested on the way back to Inverness that my next step should be to get confident leading on easier routes.
Matthew took to it immediately, while I was more tentative. But for improving strength and technique, Martin’s advice was spot on. Also it gave me a new goal to focus on and a reason to keep up with the daily exercise routine.
Lead climbing was however only one of the new challenges that arose as a consequence of the Hoy adventure. Out of the blue I got a call from Jimena, a wonderful instructor at Swiss who had taught Megan and Laura to climb and been my regular teacher after Trevor and before Andres. She was now a manager at Ellis Brigham, the mountain sports emporium. How would I like to learn to ice climb on their in-store ice wall as their way of saying congratulations?
Kate teased me relentlessly. Had I not always said that winter climbing was just not for me? I hated snow and ice, pooh-poohed skiing. But with the sun baking the streets of London during one of the most glorious summers on record, I headed down to Covent Garden to give it a go.
The ice wall is an enormous, two-storey high, 12-foot-square freezer, covered floor to ceiling with thick, lava streams of ice. Dominating one wall and not for the faint of heart, is a jutting shelf overhang.
Jimena helped me into the thermal gear, ice boots and crampons, showed me how to kick my toes into the ice and wrist-flick the ice axes, ‘like throwing a dart at a board’. And then I was off.
It’s quite different to rock climbing; much less reliant on hand work and far more about forming a balanced apex on the legs with the ice axes overhead more as a brake than support. After months of being reminded to ‘use your legs not your arms’ I got the hang pretty quickly and found I could easily identify the dif
ference in sound the axes and crampons made when they had a good or bad bite in the ice. In short I loved it! With ten minutes of my hour to go and blood dripping from my top lip where a shard of ice had crept in under the visor, Jimena asked what I wanted to try for my final route.
‘I’ll probably come off, but can I have a go at the overhang,’ I asked.
I doubt Chris Bonington or Tom Patey would have given me many points for style but with my record on overhangs I wasn’t too keen on being slow and graceful. When I rang the bell at the top I knew I was hooked.
I had another chilly appointment to keep. Matthew had, after all, stripped to his Speedos and donned his East German Ladies Swimming Team cap when atop the Old Man and several members of the EGLST had promptly doubled their sponsorship money. In a moment of gushing gratitude I had promised to join them one Saturday morning for a dip in the cold waters of Highgate Men’s Bathing Pond.
‘Right. You will get seriously cold. So bring a thermos of tea, a woollen hat and Cole’s down jacket if you’ve still got it. Otherwise a warm fleece and layers to wear after you get out. Sometimes I’m still shivering half an hour afterwards.’
‘You’re really not selling this Matthew. I’m getting a bit worried about cardiac arrest.’
‘Brain freeze is more likely, but it’s been known.’
A group of a dozen men of varying shapes and sizes with matching white rubber caps emblazoned with the DDR flag and the slogan ‘Moob Rule Since 2011’ was gathered on the pontoon. The water temperature was, I was assured, a balmy 17 degrees C and the two lifeguards on duty looked in no hurry to come to my aid. I took the plunge.