I noticed faces going red with anger.
‘Fundamentalism is an excuse used by leaders to ignore the real causes of terrorism.’
Faces were now really red.
I decided to switch track.
‘This Texan farmer goes to Israel and meets an Israeli farmer. He asks him how big his farm is, and the Israeli says: “A thousand hectares.” The Texan says: “Boy, on my farm you can drive all day to the north and never reach the end of my farm. You can drive all day to the south and not reach the edge of my farm.” You can drive all day east and west and not reach the edge of my farm. The Israeli farmer looks sad for the Texan and says: “I used to have a car like that.”’
Cheesy gags really pissed them off, so I left Ian to his writing and went for a walk through Buenos Aires. They were the same streets I’d seen twice before, the city very much like any other. The world was becoming homogenised. Last time I’d been here I’d hung around for a week, leaving the mountains early due to bad weather. I’d stayed with two friends, who had a flat in the centre of the city. They’d told my partner Rich Cross and me that they lived above a disco, which excited Rich as he was going through a party-animal phase. Only it turned out that Disco was a chain of supermarkets.
I sat in a cafe and had some lunch, which, this being Argentina, meant steak and chips, the only food I could order in Spanish, along with eggs, which I’d had for breakfast. Sat there eating, I thought about how unadventurous I was, coming back to Patagonia three times on the trot, walking the same streets, even sat in the same cafe having the same food. I had no interest in going to all the places people travelled from the other side of the world to visit, being just as happy to go to the cinema. All that concerned me was climbing, just getting to Patagonia and going climbing. Everything else was just stuff.
Another day, another flight, another hostel, only this one had no connections to tango. In deep winter the town of El Calafate was all but deserted of tourists. The gift shops were closed, their windows grubby with dust. The only places open were the supermarket and the odd cafe. It felt like the Wild West down here, stuck on the edge of the world, Patagonia the last stop before Antarctica – like Cleethorpes on a weekend in February. We did the usual ferrying of bags from the taxi into the room, finding out that the road was clear to El Chaltén, and that a minibus would pick us up at six the following morning.
‘That’s the hardest part over with,’ I said as we went back to our room to sort out all our equipment. We’d be setting off as soon as we got there, so everything had to be primed and packed, ready for action. Ten minutes later I realised all our plans had turned to dust.
‘Ian have you seen the red bag with all the karabiners and nuts in?’ I said, already knowing that it wasn’t there and that it must be lost, but praying Ian might stand up and find he’d been sitting on it or something.
‘Er, no,’ he said, looking around. ‘Have we lost it?’ he said, raising his eyebrows, already knowing the answer. The ‘have we’ sounded more like ‘have you’.
I stood in the middle of all our gear and mentally reconstructed what I’d done with it in the last few days: picking it up off the belt in Buenos Aires, hooking it on the trolley and then off the trolley into the back of the taxi and then… nothing. I’d left it in the taxi. It was gone, and without it so was our dream of Fitz Roy.
‘Um,’ said Ian, standing up and looking around the room, trying to remain positive. ‘Maybe we can borrow or buy some krabs?’
I knew it was hopeless. The only climbing shop was several thousand miles away in Buenos Aires. No one was going to sell or lend us their precious gear.
‘Yes, I have some equipment you can buy,’ said the young bearded man behind the hostel’s counter. ‘I’m a climber.’ Excited, we followed him into a back room where he started to search through some cardboard boxes, the room piled with junk left behind by a thousand absent-minded gap-year kids, until he opened one and announced: ‘Here it is.’ I prayed that out would come a big-wall rack of gear, expensive no doubt, but worth it if we were able to get our route done.
We held our breath.
Out came a single karabiner with two nuts attached, one the size of a large potato, the second no bigger than an ant’s backpack. The man grinned as if he’d answered all our prayers.
We bought it anyway.
Next morning we boarded the minibus in the dark, our rucksacks thrown on the roof and tied down. Each one was full of state-of-the-art gear, designed for the hardest climb of our lives, but missing the glue that held a climb together – nuts and karabiners. Winston Churchill once said: ‘When you’re in hell, keep going.’ It seemed the best plan of action.
Having climbed in over our sleeping fellow passengers, the bus set off on the road out of town and into the blackness beyond. Ian stuffed in his earphones and pulled his hat over his eyes, as familiar with such journeys as a man going to work on the tube. He’d spent a good deal of the last few years travelling to and from mountains, his luggage stowed on every form of transport from aircraft to mules. To him the thrill had long since gone, the journey something to endure.
In many ways, climbing far from home only brought the stupidity of such travel even more into focus. I could climb on the gritstone crags half an hour from my house, crags I loved like friends, every hold familiar from countless visits. Instead I spent a good percentage of my yearly wage travelling halfway around the world to a place where summits reached were the exception, and where the cold meant climbing wrapped in thick layers. All that just to step up onto the top of a lump of stone that no one knew or cared about, apart from me. Maybe the pointlessness of it all was what made it addictive, like building a train set in your loft, or collecting Dr Who memorabilia; the luxury of squandering time on nothing but a whim.
The ride was long and bumpy, the dawn, being so far south, arriving slowly through the misted windows. I watched the country slip by in the half-light, trying to shake my gear anxiety, to be happy that we’d made it this far, that just being here was enough. Yet it seemed so unfair to put in all this effort and to come unstuck due to the loss of one small bag. The devil is always in the detail.
A dark mood took hold, my thoughts as desolate as the landscape beyond the cracked windows, the scrublands of the pampas grey under an overcast sky. Then there was a murmur, a ripple of talk inside the bus, people standing up, or crossing the aisle, as on the horizon Fitz Roy appeared, the head and shoulders of a giant peeping over the horizon. My climber’s heart began to race.
We roared into El Chaltén, even more frozen and empty than El Calafate, and got a bed in a friend’s hostel, the only guests. In summer El Chaltén was a fleshpot, with big coaches coming in and out everyday, people from all over the world travelling in the hope of seeing the huge bulk of Fitz Roy and the needle spires of the Torres. Now there was only us and the cafes, restaurants and gift shops were closed and boarded up against the weather, a bitter wind blowing through the empty streets. Ruban, the owner of the hostel, shook his head on seeing me back again.
‘When will you learn?’ he said.
‘I do not know if I want to sell my equipment,’ the man said. Dressed like a labourer in his thick winter overalls, he stood at the table, his gear spread across it: six quickdraws and six nuts. ‘It is all I have.’
Ruban explained to him how far we’d come, that we couldn’t climb unless we used his gear, even though his rack was skeletal compared to the one we’d lost. He nodded the nod of a climber who knew how it would feel to lose their rack in such a place.
‘Okay, you can take my equipment for free, but please, you must pay me for any loss.’
We packed that night, sorting out gear for our base camp in the valley, gear for our higher snow hole camp, and gear for the wall. Even with our baggage allowance shenanigans, we still only had a small amount of gear, so packing was quick. Glancing at our pathetic rack, I joked that at least it wouldn’t slow us down.
With the devaluation in the exchange rate w
e found we had a surplus of cash and decided to save our legs by hiring a gaucho to carry our gear to base camp on horseback. In the past this had been too expensive, meaning a long fifteen-kilometre carry. This way we could wander in like tourists, taking pictures and enjoying the scenery.
The gaucho came round after we’d packed, to collect our stuff. He was a solid looking chap, with a moustache, dressed half like a cowboy, half like a pirate, with a coloured scarf wrapped around his waist from which poked a dagger. He smelt of damp horse and his hand, when I shook it, was thick and rough. He spoke no English but a price was agreed, Ruban helping to translate. Fifty dollars, which at twenty-five each was well worth it.
Walking in next day, the snow not too deep, Fitz Roy remained hidden behind the cloud. This wasn’t ideal for Ian, who hoped to take some pictures to sell once we were home. Ian made most of his money through photography, and even though he cut his gear to the bone to be lightweight, this was generally negated by the huge amount of camera equipment he carried, including several different cameras, partly because he was a pro, and pros always had more than one camera, but also because he was accident prone. For this trip he’d brought a very expensive Nikon SLR, a Voigtländer rangefinder camera, as posh as a Leica, and a pricey Contax compact. The best thing about having a climbing partner who carries so many cameras is you always end up with some great pictures.
We reached the little shack that would serve as our base, essentially just a roof on legs, where we found the gaucho waiting. His two horses stood patiently in the snow, our bags beside them. We greeted each other and Ian gave him fifty dollars, but instead of doffing his stylish cowboy hat and riding off into the sunset as cowboys are supposed to do, he just looked at the money and shook his head.
‘No,’ he said.
He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. We looked at each other.
‘I think he wants more money,’ I said,
‘Well he’s not having anymore, we agreed on fifty dollars,’ said Ian, a man with more experience of being ripped off by the hired help. ‘WE ARE NOT PAYING MORE,’ said Ian loudly, shaking his head.
The gaucho looked at us, then he beckoned with his finger as he crouched down, both of us following his lead.
He took out his dagger, a mean looking blade, and with it wrote in the snow ‘$150’.
‘I think we should pay,’ I said, never being one for confrontation, especially with foreigners dressed like pirate cowboys and waving knives.
‘This is bloody murder,’ said Ian, pulling a face as he trudged up behind me, up the trench I’d slowly excavated with my feet as I kept doggedly pushing my way up the glacier. The plan was to get to our advanced base camp and dig a snow hole that day. I’d told Ian the approach to the Col of Patience would be easy and once we’d dug our cave we could wait comfortably for good weather, but things weren’t turning out as I’d advertised. The snow was deep and soft, and even with snowshoes we sank down under the weight of a fortnight’s food on our backs. To make matters worse it was snowing lightly and a mist cloaked the wide snowfield we were edging up. With no map, I was trying to work from memory.
‘We’ll be up there drinking tea before you know it,’ I said, recalling it had only taken a day the last two times. My thighs kept pumping upwards, and I was glad of all my training. Ian started shouting behind me, and I turned to see him cursing at his rucksack, which he’d taken off.
‘What’s the matter?’ I shouted back.
‘It’s my Nikon. I stuck it in the lid of my sack with my water bottle, but the lid must have had ice in it and didn’t tighten. All the water’s come out and gone in my camera.’
‘At least you’ve got two spares,’ I commiserated, trying to be positive about an error that would cost a thousand pounds to rectify.
Ian let out a frustrated scream, and then we moved on. We were only halfway when the sky started to grow dark, the days, like all winter days, unhelpfully short. Luckily for us I fell in a crevasse and found it would make a good home for the night, one wall rising over us like a breaking wave and offering protection. So we pitched our tiny red bivy tent at the bottom and settled in.
Inside, sheathed in our sleeping bags, we brewed up and talked about how tough a day it had been, wondering what all this would mean for our climb, whether there might be big car-sized snow blobs hanging above us waiting to fall, or if the route would be in condition.
Personally, I enjoyed the struggle. I liked that feeling of a little victory in every step, every metre of ground a battle won. I’d had a few months of being sat at home dreaming about nothing else but this climb, and nothing was going to stop me getting to it.
‘I think it’s buggered,’ said Ian, opening and closing the back of his camera.
‘I hope we’re not pitched on a snow bridge,’ I said, hoping the thought that at any second we might plummet down into the depths of the glacier neatly wrapped in the tent might take his mind off his loss.
‘Didn’t you check when you got here?’ said Ian, my diversionary tactics working.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Did you?’
‘It’s not far now,’ I shouted down against the roar of the wind and snow blasting against us as we swam up near vertical powder. I’d been saying this for two days now, flicking on my headtorch and looking upwards, looking for the end, another night coming on with us still not at the snow hole. It was almost dark and I knew we still had a way to go to the col, our trench stretching all the way up from the valley, like some bitterly won advance on the Somme.
‘This is fucking ridiculous,’ shouted Ian below me, the slope steepening towards a rock step, the last obstacle before the col.
It was, but we were also almost there.
Then the avalanche hit us.
‘There’s been an avalanche!’ Ian shouted, helpfully informative as ever.
‘I know,’ I said, which I did, being the one in front, but glad that, as Ian now told me, ‘It was only a small one.’ We’d been held in place and not swept away thanks to the weight of our packs.
Digging ourselves out, we reached the band of cliffs that blocked our way to the col, our last hurdle.
‘There should be a rope hanging down it!’ I shouted, the storm turning up a notch. ‘There is usually a rope,’ I continued, foraging around in the deep snow but failing to find it.
‘I can’t see one,’ Ian said through gritted teeth, looking left and right, and helping me dig. ‘I’ll just climb up’.
What followed was textbook Parnell, climbing with a giant rucksack on, in the teeth of a storm, with total confidence that he could do it, that he wouldn’t fall.
And of course he didn’t.
We staggered up to our longed-for oasis, finding the col at last. It was a desperate spot, just a snow scoop between two ridges, which in the storm was like the inside of a vacuum cleaner sucking up hailstones.
Blasted on all sides we crawled to an overhang of snow, where we guessed it would be deepest, and began digging the hole we’d be calling home for the next few weeks.
‘I’ll go first, you make sure the rucksacks don’t blow away!’ shouted Ian into my ear, as we knelt side by side. Ian then untied our one shovel from his rucksack.
Usually the one doing the digging has the hard job, but with only one shovel the one left to make sure the rucksacks didn’t blow away had the short straw, quickly becoming cold with nothing to do. We took turns, digging away frantically for ten minutes while the one outside kept an eye on the time. The temptation was to stay inside the slowly expanding cave, where it was warm and quiet, shouting ‘Just a minute’ to hang on for a few more moments, while the one outside jostled forward for his shift.
Eventually the size seemed habitable enough for both of us to lie down head to toe. We dragged our gear in and closed the door with our rucksacks.
There was silence at last, just the hum of the storm outside the thick walls of our new home. Both of us brushed ourselves down, relieved to have made it to safety. The snow hole w
as too small, something we realised as soon as we’d relaxed a little, a common mistake when digging under duress. Now we were in it we could see that we should have spent a little longer enlarging it. It was sharing a single bed, only big enough as long as you didn’t want to sit up, or move, a good place to stow a couple of coffins, but not two living climbers. Nevertheless neither of us wanted to go out while the other did some home improvements, so we just made do, sorting out our supplies, stowing food, gas and books around the damp walls to keep our sleeping bags off them.
We lit a candle, and this, combined with our body heat, brought the temperature nearer to something civilized. It was a great feeling to have made it to the base of the mountains. Fitz Roy was now only half an hour away across the glacier. We were safe and fully prepared for action.
For the next few days we stayed hunkered down, the storm raging outside as we made tiny home improvements: a shelf cut from the snow here, a piss hole there, making our snow cave a bit more homely. Not that I pissed in a hole at home.
Ian had brought along Heavier Than Heaven, the biography of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, who shot himself in 1994. It was not the most cheery book for an expedition.
‘Does it have a happy ending?’ I asked. Ian’s eyes appeared over the top for a second before returning to the text.
I read White Jazz by James Elroy, my favorite writer, a man who rations his words like an alpine climber. I wondered if someday I might write a book, scale up the short stories I’d become used to writing to fifty times their size. If I did, I knew I’d have to write like Elroy, a man of few words that were emptied of verbose description, which has as little place in the mountains as in a noir L.A.
Cold Wars Page 9