The Beckoning Silence

by Simpson, Joe

  I had immense respect for Tat’s ability as an ice climber. Indeed I deferred to him, happy to acknowledge his superior experience, although I would never admit this to him. I felt that I was more powerful and probably fitter than Tat but he had the cunning of vast experience and that was worth a great deal. We were climbing at the same standard and I was confident that I could accurately assess what we could and could not do. This now put me in an awkward position. I urgently wanted to tell him that he should back off, that the climb was in a very dangerous state, that it was too hard for him. But he was the leader. This was his pitch, his choice, and I would have to hope he would come to the same conclusion. I didn’t want to force the issue.

  Another part of me wanted to scream at him to stop. What is this crap? This isn’t just about losing face. This is a bad call he’s making and you care more about your precious ego than you do about your life. We’re friends, for God’s sake. This isn’t some hero trip. Tell him. He won’t hold it against you. I kept silent. I was unsure whether the suggestion might antagonise him into continuing; the last thing I wanted.

  ‘Can you get anything in?’ I suggested anxiously. Tat was now level with the roof. His left arm was stretched above it, gripping his hammer. I could see that the pick was gripping a few millimetres of filmy ice glued to the left wall. He craned his head to the right and tried to peer under the roof. He let his ice axe dangle from his wrist leash and unclipping a bunch of wires from his harness he tried to fiddle a small metal chock into a crack that he had spotted beneath the roof. The strain on his left arm was making him breathe hard. I stared fixedly at crampon points, trying to anticipate them shooting into space. I doubted his pick placement was doing anything other that keeping him balanced. It would not hold his weight if his feet sheared off. The wired chock jammed and Tat tugged down hard to seat it into the thin crack. On his second pull it flew out and the sudden jerk nearly toppled him from his perch. I swore and jerked my left arm out as if somehow I thought I might be able to catch him.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Tat gasped. ‘The crack’s shallow.’

  ‘Will it take a peg?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ Tat muttered and I heard a hint of irritation in his voice. I knew that he wanted to go for the corner and make the four or five moves needed to reach where the ice was thicker. One good axe placement in that thick ice would be enough for him to haul himself to safety. I knew what he was thinking but I thought it too risky. I watched as he turned to face the wall rising left of the corner. He flipped his axe shaft into his right hand and lodged the pick on a tiny rock edge on the wall. He hauled gently at first and tried weighting the tool. The pick shot off and Tat jerked backwards. I flinched.

  Anger began to flush away my fear. I wasn’t being given a choice. This is stupid. We could die on this. Just one slip and we’re gone.

  ‘Tat.’ He paid no attention. ‘Tat,’ I repeated sharply. ‘That’s it. I’m not giving you any more rope until you get a good piece in.’

  He said nothing but I could sense from his head movement that he didn’t like the ultimatum. He turned again to the roof and again attempted to place the wire. It ripped free when he jerked on it. As I watched him struggle to stay in balance a shower of ice crystals pattered onto his shoulder. I looked up to see the air above us filled with a fine rain of ice particles. I knew that it meant that the sun had reached the top of the climb and that there would now be a steady fall of this granular ice. It posed no threat but it meant that conditions would only get worse as the sun heated the already melting ice.

  ‘I can do it,’ Tat said. ‘It’s only two moves …’

  ‘The ice is terrible, Tat. It’s pouring with water for God’s sake!’ He glanced over his shoulder at me. ‘Fuck it,’ I snapped, angry now. ‘If you fall we’re dead. Simple as that.’

  ‘I won’t fall, kid.’

  ‘I don’t want to die.’

  ‘I won’t fall.’

  ‘Maybe … maybe not,’ I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not taking that risk. OK? I don’t want to do this. I don’t need this.’

  Tat turned and looked speculatively up the corner and I felt even angrier that he might still be risking my life. What can you do if he insists? I mean, you can’t pull him off. That would kill us. If he insists, then you’ll have to un-rope. Jesus! Tell him that.

  ‘Tat?’ I said quietly, hearing the fear in my voice.

  ‘OK, OK …’ He carefully made a move down, lowering himself gently from his left axe. I breathed a sigh of release as he edged towards me. Within a few minutes he was back at the stance beneath where I stood.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry Tat,’ I said.

  ‘I thought it would go.’

  ‘Yeah, and I thought we would go.’ I glanced at the wash of ice particles showering my arms. ‘It’s way too late for this route anyway. It’s too hot. The top gully line would be falling apart.’

  ‘Can we abseil off those pegs?’ Tat ignored my explanation. I could see that he was disappointed but I could also detect an underlying anger. I was surprised, even though I knew how competitive Tat could be as a climber. I looked at the pegs and bent my legs until most of my body weight came onto them. They flexed.

  ‘Pretty flaky,’ I said. ‘But if we move slowly and smoothly they might hold.’

  ‘Can you back them up?’

  ‘No.’ I looked directly at him. ‘And unless you want to stand there untied you’ll come with me if they pull out.’

  ‘Right,’ Tat glanced at the small edge of crusty ice that he was standing on. ‘Well, I don’t trust this stuff. Here,’ he passed me a karabiner on a sling, ‘clip me in.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said as I clipped the sling into the two knife-blade pegs, ‘I’ve never had an abseil fail yet.’ I grinned encouragingly at Tat who stared bleakly back at me.

  ‘I have,’ he said. ‘Twice.’

  We sorted the ropes out in silence, knotting them together after threading them through the loop of red tape, untying from our harnesses, checking which colour rope to pull down, double-checking the pitons. It was a routine we had gone through countless times. We were methodical, efficiently calm. I was nervous about the pitons but said nothing. We had climbed ourselves into this position, now we had to get out of it.

  ‘Pull on green,’ I said as I lowered myself slowly onto the abseil rope, keeping it locked off on my belay plate. I stared intently at the pitons as they flexed and then stilled. I exhaled slowly. Tat grinned at my expression.

  ‘OK, pull on green,’ Tat echoed. ‘Careful, kid,’ he added in a gentle voice and I looked at him anxiously.

  ‘You too,’ I said as I slid down past him, concentrating on releasing the ropes smoothly. No jerks, no sudden stops to stress the weak anchors. I watched as the distance to the ground gradually lessened. When I was 80 feet above the snow slopes at the foot of the rocks I began to relax. It was survivable. A few minutes later my feet touched down and I unclipped from the ropes. A short tug on the green rope proved that it would pull down smoothly.

  ‘OK,’ I yelled, and watched Tat reach out for the ropes and clip his belay plate in place. I hurriedly moved away from the base of the rocks, feeling guilty as if I were betraying Tat by getting out of the way of his fall line. He’d kill you from that height, I reminded myself.

  We trudged down the avalanche slopes, following our tracks to the road. As we packed the hardware, ropes and harnesses into the boot of the car and flung in our axes and crampons I was painfully aware of the silence between us.

  I had let Tat down. I had ruined the climb for him by insisting that we retreat. Now that we were safely on the ground I began to question my decision. Maybe those pegs were OK? I mean they held the abseil. No. They would never have held a fall. I glanced at Tat as he drove up towards the village of La Grave.

  ‘Do you think the pegs would have held a fall?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Tat said bluntly.

  Yet you were still prepared to carry on, to push it to the limit? I thought. Wh
y not me? The simple answer was because I was too scared. I didn’t have such blind faith in Tat’s ability.

  ‘I wouldn’t have fallen,’ Tat added, as if reading my thoughts. I said nothing.

  A game of chess and several large beers on the sunny terrace of a café relaxed us sufficiently to begin talking about what had happened. Tat still seemed strangely reluctant to admit that it had been such a perilous enterprise – so much so that I began to have my own doubts. I wondered whether the frightening ice conditions on the first pitch had so unnerved me that by the time I found myself hanging on the knife blades I was psychologically defeated. Ice climbing is very much a head game and there is a fine balance between confident boldness and being in a blue funk.

  Yet when I thought of my reasoning at the time it seemed irrefutable. I felt that I had made a sound mountaineering decision. I knew that one of the hardest things to learn is when to back off, when to retreat ready to fight another day. It was not a matter of injured pride, or cowardice.

  I tried to explain this to Tat but he dismissed me with a smile.

  ‘I know all that,’ he said. ‘I was just disappointed … oh, and Check Mate!’

  He happily knocked my King over with the base of his Queen. ‘Three – one in the La Grave Open,’ he added with a triumphantly raised forefinger.

  ‘Bugger,’ I muttered disconsolately.

  ‘And by the way, I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Oh?’ I replied, apprehensive of whatever climbing adventure he was about to suggest. I knew our failure on the climb that morning would only have spurred him on to try better things. Tat couldn’t be put off that easily. ‘Let me guess.’ I said. ‘The Valley of the Devils?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Tat looked genuinely surprised. ‘I was thinking about this morning, about Alea Jacta Est.’

  ‘Really?’ I said warily.

  ‘Well, you were right about the conditions. We started too late and it was obviously deteriorating. Once the sun hit the top we were in trouble. Now if we get up really early, say five o’clock … five-thirty …’

  ‘Five-thirty?’ I was aghast. ‘This is a holiday, Tat …’

  ‘Well, OK, six then. We’ll grab a quick coffee for breakfast and we should be on the first pitch by seven …’

  ‘You want to try it again?’ I asked, taken aback.

  ‘It’ll be freezing hard at that time.’

  ‘That’s as may be but the ice conditions on the first pitch won’t change. It will still be cruddy sugar ice and the screws will be non-existent.’

  ‘One,’ Tat said. ‘You had one on the first pitch.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have held a falling fruit fly and you damn well know it.’

  He grinned and nodded agreement. ‘Well, yes, that’s true, but you could lead that pitch again. You climbed it well, I thought. A bit slow, mind …’

  ‘A bit slow?’ I protested. ‘Of course I was bloody slow. It was falling apart.’

  ‘Yeah, but you never looked like falling did you? You were solid.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ I conceded, flattered by his praise.

  ‘You could do it again, no problem.’

  ‘But it’s a virtual solo without those screws,’ I complained. ‘And there’s no way it’s grade V. We’ve done stacks of climbs that hard, even harder, and that thing today was desperate. Grade VI more like and bloody serious, crap gear, crap ice …’

  ‘Yeah, but what a line,’ Tat enthused and pointed at the open guide-book. ‘Look at that couloir cutting through the top rock wall. It looks brilliant, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, it does actually,’ I agreed. ‘Rather like a Scottish line, isn’t it? And I’ll bet we can get good protection in those rock walls.’

  ‘Exactly, so it’s only that short bit that’s stopping us. We can do it.’ His enthusiasm was infectious and I could feel myself becoming intrigued and excited. Tat was an excellent persuader and he was right. It had been a disappointment to have retreated. We had a score to settle.

  ‘You’ve been on it now,’ Tat continued, sensing that I was weakening. ‘You know the score. You’ll be ready for it.’

  ‘Yeah, and I’ve been on those bloody tied-off knife blades.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking about,’ Tat leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘You see, I was above the roof and trying to put gear in underneath it. I was off balance and I couldn’t really see what I was doing. Tomorrow I’ll put the gear in before I commit myself to the corner, then it’s just a few moves and we’ll be up.’

  ‘Or off,’ I murmured. ‘I’m not sure, Tat. I really didn’t like it today.’

  ‘At seven o’clock it will be freezing hard. Totally different ball game. Come on, what do you think?’

  ‘OK, but on one condition,’ I said reluctantly. ‘If you can’t get good protection, and I mean good fall-proof gear, then we back off. No questions asked?’

  ‘All right, if you insist.’

  I smiled and nodded assent.

  Tat looked delighted and leaned over to give me one of his trademark hugs. He stood up looking excited and energised. There was no trace of the depressed, silent figure which had trudged gloomily down to the car. ‘Six o’clock start, then?’ he asked, just to check I wasn’t going to back out.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said glumly.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up.’

  ‘I thought you might.’

  It was cold and the route was silent. There was no meltwater running under the ice. Tat had been right about the first pitch and although I climbed cautiously I dispatched the rope length in about half the time. I quickly climbed over the snow-ice sections, not wanting to waste time looking for protection. I began to feel confident that maybe Tat’s plan for an early start was all that we had needed to succeed.

  As I neared the belay on the two knife-blade pitons, however, my new-found enthusiasm waned. I clipped into the pitons, arranged my feet on the cramped, frozen turf and stared gloomily at the corner. It looked desperate. Even in the freezing conditions the shattered sections of thin water ice looked fragile. I glanced at the pitons again, hoping they might not look as bad as they had the day before. If anything, they were worse.

  As I took in the ropes and Tat climbed rapidly towards me I tried to work out how on earth I had managed to convince myself that this would be any different from the day before, less than fifteen hours earlier. I had walked away from the climb glad to be alive and now I was back here in exactly the same position. You must be bloody mad! Nothing has changed. You’re belayed to the same two wobbly pitons again, the ice is still crap, and now Tat is working himself into a veritable lather of excitement. What on earth were you thinking?

  ‘Not bad, is it?’ Tat said cheerfully as he reached the belay. ‘Told you it would be right.’ I gaped at him in amazement. ‘Right, let’s get on while it’s still cold,’ he added quickly.

  ‘Listen, Tat.’ I was going to tell him that I wanted to go down.

  ‘Here, hand me those screws.’

  I passed the bandolier to him. ‘I was thinking …’

  ‘Have you got the pegs?’

  I searched on my harness, unclipped the pegs and passed them to him.

  ‘This belay still won’t hold anything,’ I said. ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll get something in, don’t worry.’

  ‘I am bloody worried!’

  ‘Right, watch me, kid,’ Tat said and he bridged across the corner before I could protest further. My heart sank. My stomach felt empty and ached. That’s because it is bloody empty. We didn’t have any breakfast because this idiot wants to kill us again, I thought as I watched Tat fiddling with wires and pitons under the roof. Don’t let him move if he can’t find good gear, not an inch.

  It took forty-five long minutes of experimentation before Tat managed to lodge a tiny wired metal wedge, little more than a match-head thick, into the crack below the roof.

  ‘OK, watch me.’

  ‘Is that any good?’ I aske
d, hurriedly.

  ‘Sort of,’ Tat said, as he carefully placed his left axe pick against a tiny edge of rock. There was a slick patina of ice shining on the surface of the smooth compact limestone.

  ‘Will it hold?’ I said anxiously, as he lifted himself up level with the roof.

  ‘Maybe,’ he grunted, and that was it. I could do nothing. It was clear that he was committed to the corner. His crampons scratched against the rock as he sought to place them on tiny irregularities. His right arm reached up high and he tapped the axe gently against the ice. I heard the distinct sound of metal on stone. He tried again, swinging blind.

  ‘Further right,’ I said. ‘There’s a weep of thicker ice a foot to the right.’ He grunted acknowledgement and swung again. The pick held. His right crampons clawed up the corner seeking purchase. One front-point lodged in a nick cutting into the rock. He weighted the point and I stared at it intently, willing it to hold.

  There was a clicking metallic sound and I watched in frozen dread as the tiny wired metal wedge detached from the crack and slid down the rope on its karabiner to fetch up against my hand. Horrified, I stared at it and then at Tat spread-eagled across the corner. I knew he couldn’t reverse the moves and I knew he didn’t know that his only piece of protection had just fallen out. I kept silent and braced myself nervously against the pressure of the ropes holding me to the insecure grip of two tied-off knife blades.

  Tat raised himself with steady care until both his arms were locked at the elbows, hands gripping the axe handles as they pressed against his chest. I watched as he bridged his left boot out to the side, searching for thicker ice. He kicked gently and the points bit into half an inch of brittle water ice glued to the wall. For a long contemplative moment he hung there, sensing his points of contact, trying to assess whether they would hold and then he un-weighted the left axe from its tenuous purchase with the rocky edge. I held my breath as he slowly raised the axe to his full arm length. I could see that it was almost in reach of a smear of thicker, stronger-looking water ice. Come on, Tat, get it, get it, I urged, as he strained to reach a little higher.