: The Life of a Yorkshire Vet

by Norton, Julian

  Over the next few days we climbed some of the lower peaks around the Täsch valley near Zermatt. I found I could hold my own in terms of fitness and ability, although the climbs at this part of our trip were not too technically challenging. Our next mission was to tackle the notorious Matterhorn. This was more difficult than anything I had done before. We planned to tackle the hardest ridge – the southeastern one called the Furggengrat Ridge. This is regarded as harder than the north face of the mountain but a better option in summer, as the faces are usually only climbed in winter when the loose rock is attached firmly by ice. The rock on the Matterhorn is notoriously loose and dangerous and rock fall is the biggest danger to any climber attempting to scale its steep sides.

  I was anxious about this route, partly because I was the weakest climber and partly because we were climbing as a three. Steep routes are better climbed in pairs, while groups of three are better suited to less challenging climbs when climbers can ‘move together’. This involves being roped together and placing belays every so often. It is much quicker than climbing in a pair, where one person is always fastened, or belayed, to the rock.

  We approached the foot of the Matterhorn aiming to bivouac on the lower slopes of the Hörnli Ridge. It took all afternoon to climb to this spot and we reached a suitable place to stop by early evening. By this time the weather forecast had changed and it looked as if we only had one more day of clear weather ahead of us. We had a long discussion about what to do. To embark on the Furggengrat Ridge we would have to start very early, traverse under the eastern face of the mountain, then climb up the very hard ridge. With the weather forecast not stable, we had no flexibility in our plan. We had to be off the mountain by the end of the next day, otherwise we could be stranded if we encountered unforeseen problems. As we looked up at the enormous mountain, it seemed obvious that we should take our chance to climb it, and get off it as quickly as possible. And so we decided to make a quick ascent via the Hörnli Ridge instead. This was technically straightforward and well within our capabilities. We were already on the route and we knew we could climb it easily. The Matterhorn is 4,478 metres high, the sixth highest summit in the Alps, and we were already at about 3,000 metres, near to the Hörnli Hut. While the climbing was continuously steep, with the exception of the top section, we could move together for the vast majority of the route so this seemed the best option. We would be back in the pub before dark. I was secretly quite relieved, although I knew Dave and Tom regretted the missed opportunity to challenge themselves on the hardest route to the summit.

  We settled for another uncomfortable night, this time fastened by ropes to the steep rocky sides of the mountain so we didn’t roll off in our sleep. Not that there was much sleep, again. The morning sky was grey, rather than the usual alpine bright blue, but it was still and it wasn’t snowing. We stashed our sleeping bags and stove under a rock and set off, making quick and steady progress. Because it was cloudy, we only met one other pair of climbers on the whole route. On a sunny day, the route is packed with climbers, which can add another unnecessary risk, so in the absence of this, we felt happy with our decision.

  Three-quarters of the way up, we reached a small shed, perched precariously on the north-east ridge at a height of 4,000 metres, called the Solvay Hut. It was named after the Belgian chemist who invented the process for making ammonia, and was built in 1915 to provide shelter for climbers. It had sufficient space to house ten people, if they snuggled up together. It also housed a small radio-telephone in case of emergency. We stopped for a quick drink and rest, and to put on our crampons, before pressing on to the higher and steeper part of the ridge which was covered in ice and hard packed snow. There is a steep section above this area and the rest of the climbing was certainly the hardest part, with snow and ice on the route, but we could easily move together.

  Before we knew it, we were standing on the top of the mountain, the wind whistling around our ears and clouds below us. There is a large metal cross on top, as there is on many alpine summits, and we held onto this and whooped with joy. Occasional glimpses of Zermatt and the Hörnli Hut came into view as gaps appeared in the clouds. The summit was so exposed and the sides so steep, that the view was unlike any other I had seen from the top of a mountain. It was like standing at the top of a stepladder. We were never in the habit of lingering on the summit of mountains. Wonderful as these places are, I always felt happier when we reached the safety of lower slopes. We all knew that the most dangerous part of the climb was to come.

  We negotiated the steep, icy, upper slopes, using the fixed ropes that had been left in place to make it safer and easier, and moved together with Dave going first. Generally, when moving downwards, the first person is the safest because there are two people on the rope behind to cover in case of a fall. Tom was at the back, because he was still fresh and was the strongest.

  Dave moved to the right of the main ridge to lower himself down a small gully off its shoulder. It was exactly the same way we had come up, so we knew it was the correct route. What happened next changed everything forever. Dave manoeuvred himself over a large rock and I was braced in a safe belay stance in case he slipped, with Tom as an extra anchor behind. However, it was the rock that slipped, not Dave, and it rolled downwards with Dave on its underside. It continued sliding and snapped the rope. The rock and Dave fell away, down the eastern face with a terrible thunderous banging as the rock bounced all the way to the bergschrund at the bottom of the face, 3,000 metres below. I pulled on the rope, where Dave should have been, but all that came up was its frayed and severed end. I called Tom. He hadn’t seen what had happened because he was just out of sight, over the shoulder of the ridge, but had quickly appeared when he heard the noise. We both shouted Dave’s name over and over again, but there was no response. I fired three red emergency flares into the sky and kept my final one for later. No response from anyone.

  We had to act quickly. We both knew it would be madness to try and climb down the east face to search for Dave – it was too steep and loose and we knew from the distance that the rock had travelled that he would be a long way down. Our only option was to get to the Solvay Hut as quickly and safely as we could and use the emergency radio-telephone. The hut was about 200 metres below us, directly on the ridge. We were very shaken by now, and we knew the rock was very loose. Our rope was also only about half its original length because it had been severed by the falling rock. We decided to abseil down the route from here. It would be safer but would take longer. With a short rope we estimated it would take eight abseils. After abseiling about three lengths of the rope, we went over an overhang on the ridge. Tom went first and found a safe place to rest and I followed. As I tried to pull the rope through, after getting to the bottom of the section, it got jammed on a piece of protruding rock. This was a disaster and exactly the worst thing that could happen when abseiling. I had to climb back up the rope, using special loops of rope called ‘prusik’ loops. It was painfully slow and dangerous, but there was no choice.

  Eventually, after what seemed like half a day, I managed to dislodge the rope and free it. I returned to the bottom and pulled the rope through. By this time dusk was beginning to set in, but we just managed to reach the hut before it got dark. I called the mountain rescue to let them know what had happened. Very soon afterwards a helicopter was heard flying around the base of the east face. We could just about make out its flashing lights, but we both wept when it flew away after only about ten minutes. We knew they had not found Dave and that they thought any further searching was futile. We sat on the little platform outside the hut, with our legs dangling into space, crying inconsolably. It was desperate. One false move and this had happened. It wasn’t even a mistake; we had done everything correctly. It was just horrendous bad luck that the particular rock had moved at the wrong moment. It could have been any one of us, all of us, or none of us.

  By now, we all should have been drunk in the bar in Zermatt, as we had planned. Instead, Tom and I spent
the next forty-eight hours in this little hut, on the side of the Matterhorn, caught in a blizzard. Life would never be the same again. We had time to think about it all while alone in the hut. In a strange way, it gave us time to come to terms with the accident and the awful loss we had suffered, without distraction or comment from the rest of the world. When I reflect back, while those two days stranded on the mountain were hell, at least we had time to ourselves to gather our thoughts. We felt so sorry for the family and other friends back at home who only heard the news out of the blue over the telephone. They had no time to rationalize what had just happened and mourning must have been much more difficult.

  Our attention eventually focused on our own predicament. We had no food or water, no stove to melt snow, no sleeping bags and we were at 4,000 metres in a blizzard with half a rope. Descending would be very dangerous in the soft snow that now lay everywhere. We radioed again, this time to ask to be rescued. Conditions were terrible and at the end of the second day they tried, unsuccessfully, to fly the helicopter to come and get us. It was clearly far too dangerous as visibility was so poor and it was very windy. It was, in reality, only a half-hearted attempt to rescue us but we were in no real danger so we resigned ourselves to a second cold night.

  The next day was better and eventually we got a message over the radio to say that rescue was on its way. We were given instructions to put on our harnesses, with screwgate karabiner attached, and to wear helmets and crampons. Our rucksacks should be on and securely fastened. The helicopter finally approached and a man on a winch landed on the little ledge outside our hut. It felt like our hut by now. He deposited a flask of hot orange squash and some ham sandwiches and then disappeared into the sky as the helicopter suddenly lurched upwards. He was only there for a few seconds. We were disappointed at first not to be rescued, and then delighted to have food and hot drink. As we tucked into our feast, the radio burst into life again, saying that they were coming round once more, to try and get us. I went first. The winchman unclipped himself and quickly fastened me onto the winch. The next thing I knew, I was flying around the Matterhorn’s north face, almost able to touch it. The winchman was left with Tom and once I was installed in the back seat of this mini helicopter, we returned to get Tom. I can’t remember whether we ever did go back to get the man on the end of the winch.

  Soon we were back in civilization, in Zermatt, and our predicament became dire again as we realized we had to contact people back home, and first Dave’s parents. It was the hardest phone call I have ever had to make.

  I haven’t climbed serious mountains since then. I have no real intentions of ever doing so again. Six years later I was sitting at Everest base camp with my trusty mountain bike. I was looking up at the highest mountain in the world with a plume of snow travelling horizontally from its top. Once, I would have had a burning urge to be at its summit, but now it looked a very dangerous place to be, and I had absolutely no desire to climb it. The event in 1993 marked a turning point in my life. Dave, one of my closest friends, with whom I had shared some wonderful times, was dead and life could no longer be the same. I was about to start my clinical studies at vet school, exactly half way through my university course. So, with memories of Dave constantly present, the focus of my life shifted away from the mountains, and towards veterinary medicine in earnest.

  11

  A Year in the Cotswolds

  My biking trip through the Himalayas was superb. I had worked very hard for those first three years in practice and, while I had loved it, I was very much in need of a break. A month amongst the biggest mountains on earth was the perfect antidote and I relished every moment. We covered up to 60 miles on our mountain bikes every day, climbing up and over passes of over 5,000 metres in altitude, in maybe the most awe-inspiring surroundings that the world has to offer. It was mind-expanding and energizing, and I was hungry for more veterinary work when I returned.

  Anne came to collect me from the airport. Soon, our conversation turned to what was next. I had three months before I was due to start work at Anne’s practice in the Cotswolds, so my plan was to find a locum job for the intervening period. Locum work is sometimes regarded as a ‘rite of passage’ for young vets and many would use it as an opportunity to travel to Australia or New Zealand. I had no desire to work so far afield – Anne and I had been apart for too long already.

  Anne had been in charge of contacting locum agencies on my behalf while I had been away. She had found a possible position with a vet called Nick, who ran a small practice in the Forest of Dean. He sounded very keen to meet me, so the very next day, I got back on my bike and cycled from Winchcombe to meet him at his practice. Since I was between jobs I had no car (my old red Metro had been put into retirement some years previously), so my trusty but rather dusty mountain bike was the only means of transport. It was a long way, but I was full of energy, having been at altitude for the last four weeks and used to cycling 60 miles a day over very rough terrain. I was very fit and my blood cells were boosted. However, I also had a terrible bowel infection, acquired while recovering from our epic bike ride, in Kathmandu. As a result, my ride to the Forest of Dean was punctuated by regular stops at any public conveniences I could find. Despite this rather unconventional approach to an interview, Nick offered me a temporary job to help with cover over the summer holidays.

  I didn’t know much about the Forest of Dean. It proved to be a lovely but rather peculiar place. Its idiosyncracies took me somewhat by surprise. The forest is situated on a small coal seam and is littered with small, disused coal mines dating back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Coming from a mining town in West Yorkshire, I thought I knew about coal mining, but what happened here was a world away from the large-scale operations on the huge coalfaces of south Wales and the north of England. Here, the rules were different, and individuals who qualified were granted leases to mine in certain areas, under a system called ‘free mining’. The enormous advances in technology that occurred during the industrial revolution seemed to have bypassed the forest, and in the mid-nineteenth century this small area alone had over three hundred small mines. Very few are still producing coal, but many disused mine shafts remain, dotted around the forest, each one recognizable by a small opening heading horizontally into the hillside. They look just like the ones that are full of ghosts in Scooby Doo.

  In the towns and villages of the forest, there was still the atmosphere of a pre-industrial era. I was once standing at the cash machine outside the bank, when three sheep walked up and stood behind me in the queue! It made Thurso look like a bustling metropolis, and Thirsk too.

  It was a great place to spend a summer and an insight into a different type of veterinary work. The practice solely dealt with small animals, and was very businesslike. I learnt a lot about how to run the financial side of a practice, since for much of the time I was in sole charge while the boss was on holiday. The best bit of the job, however, was that I had a full two-hour break at lunchtime. I was used to about twenty minutes for lunch on a good day back in Thirsk, so this was a real luxury. I usually took my bike and used the time to go mountain biking around the forest. I also only worked a four-day week, so I had plenty of time to explore this new part of the country.

  One day I was returning from my usual lunchtime circuit in the forest when I came across an injured cat by the side of the road. I had nothing other than a bike pump and a puncture repair kit with me, which I did not think would be very helpful to this poor cat. It was obviously in a very bad way. It had severe head injuries and bleeding, bulging eyes. The only thing I could do was to scoop it up and ride back to the practice as quickly as possible. It was about a ten-minute ride, mainly downhill, so I sped off as fast as I could. The cat didn’t like being held and despite its injuries made vigorous attempts to escape. It was also hard to hold a cat and ride fast downhill, so I stopped my bike and ‘scruffed’ the cat with one hand. This is a way of controlling a cat safely, by firmly grasping the fold of skin on th
e back of its neck. While it looks unkind, it is completely painless and is the way a mother cat holds onto her baby kittens. It also keeps a cat with flailing claws and teeth a safe distance away from the handler.

  As I whizzed downhill at high speed to get back to the oxygen machine, x-rays, intravenous fluids and other medication, I couldn’t help but notice the strange looks I was getting from the cars that were overtaking me. Some drivers were even gesticulating at me with their fists. I think they must have thought that I was taking my cat for some kind of weird cycling experience, completely against its will. Other drivers, however, appeared utterly oblivious to my cat-cycling antics. Like I said, the forest is a peculiar place. The cat made a good recovery, but had used up one of its nine lives.

  In the course of our veterinary lives, Anne and I had both been consulted on many occasions about dogs that chewed the house, puppies that wouldn’t house train or who destroyed shoes, clothes or furniture. On close questioning, it often emerged that these animals were left on their own for long periods of time. It was always surprising to us that some owners seemed to expect a five-month-old puppy to hang on all day without a wee, or were outraged when it sought some comfort from its absent owner’s lovely smelly footwear. Consequently, even though we both longed for a dog, we had decided this would be entirely inappropriate while we were still commuting between Thirsk and Winchcombe every weekend, and working long hours on duty. However, now that we were finally in one place, the time seemed, at last, to be right, and Paddy the border terrier came into our life. Anne went up to collect him from Ripon on her half day. He was a tiny, ten-week-old ball of fluff, just like a teddy bear. We introduced him to our little black cat, Billy, who promptly hit him on the nose with her paw. Our cottage was also tiny, with no place for either cat or dog to escape from one another, so they had to learn to get on. Paddy forgave the cat her initial punch on the nose and tried to make friends, but the cat never really returned the sentiment, although a tolerance of sorts eventually developed. In one early encounter, Paddy came rushing in and enthusiastically chased the cat upstairs. She made a beeline for the bathroom window and flung herself out. Clearly she was desperate to escape. We spent hours searching for her, convinced she must be mortally wounded, but she sauntered in at three in the morning as if nothing had happened. It took her a while to realize that, if she didn’t run, Paddy wouldn’t chase her. If she stood her ground, he just wagged his tail and eventually wandered off, slightly confused.