Cold Wars

by Andy Kirkpatrick

  00:31

  The fitter you are the harder you are to kill.

  00:30

  The fitter you are the harder you are to kill.

  00:29

  I don’t want to die of laziness. One day giving up would not be an option. Then it really would be a fight to the death.

  00:11

  00:10

  00:09

  I pull HARD. I pull HARD. I pull HARD.

  I close my eyes and prepare for the amazing release to come. To just stop. To let go.

  00:08

  00:07

  00:06

  I pull HARD. I PULL. PULL. I try to snap the chain. I know I’ve almost done. In three metres I can stop.

  00:03

  00:02

  00:01

  00:00

  ELEVEN

  Troll II

  May 2003

  ‘Where are you going?’ the old woman asked. She was the only other soul left on the platform when the train from Oslo pulled away. Her head was wrapped in a scarf and she walked stooped over her stick.

  ‘Åndalsnes,’ I said, pointing west beyond the plateau, towards the sea where I guessed the village lay.

  ‘Are you on holiday?’ she said, looking me up and down.

  ‘Sort of,’ I answered, trying to be polite. Her manner reminded me of Yoda from Star Wars. I imagined that at any moment she would poke me with a long bony finger.

  She mumbled something under her breath and I wondered if at her age – she did look very old – there was no time for anything but direct answers.

  ‘What is in that big bag of yours?’ she asked, pointing at the huge haul-bag beside me, a bag almost as big as she was, before stabbing it with her walking stick.

  The bag contained all the gear I’d taken with me when Paul and I abandoned the Troll Wall, equipment which I’d carried all the way home with Paul, and all the way back on the bus, plane and train, back to the Troll.

  ‘Climbing equipment,’ I answered. ‘I’m sort of a climber.’

  ‘Climbing? What do you go to climb?’ she asked, sounding intrigued rather than irritated now.

  ‘The Trollveggen – maybe,’ I said.

  She looked up and down the platform.

  ‘Alone?’ she said, her face turned up to mine, her bushy eyebrows raised.

  ‘Alone.’

  She pulled a sour face, and shook her head. ‘I am very, very old, but I know life is very, very short, and it is precious. Don’t waste yours on the Trollveggen.’ With that she walked slowly down to the other end of the lonely platform.

  And there we stood, waiting for the train.

  I didn’t need a warning, I knew this already, knew that in a lifetime betting against the odds, this was my most dangerous gamble yet.

  To say the Troll Wall had been on my mind was an understatement. Ever since leaving my gear on the wall, I had thought of nothing else. The image of the wall, black and looming out of the mist, had filled my mind. I would wake up at night and lie there imagining my ropes hanging down the rock, gently swaying in the dark, or perhaps frozen solid, or more probably cut to shreds by stone fall. The wall itself, already a dark and mysterious place, became darker still. My dreams were filled with trolls but I would never see them whole, just catch glimpses of them: oily fur, a fang dripping mossy slime, their breath, their smell.

  They had been petrified up there for millennia. They could play a long game.

  Waiting for me with the patience of stone.

  The thought of going back up there terrified me. First, I must trust those ropes, so long exposed to the elements, and then go it alone, up a new line on the most dangerous wall I knew. I searched for others to join me, a new partner, but no one was interested. The wall’s reputation preceding it, but then so did my own. People could see through me, could see my madness and wanted no part of it.

  It sounded like a one-way trip.

  Yet in the mornings, when I woke from another nightmare with the spring sun shining in, it didn’t seem so bad. A solo first ascent was not impossible, it was just yet to be done. Someone would have to do it.

  I could be the first.

  The wall wasn’t so loose or blank – or so deadly. No one had ever died on the Troll Wall.

  Again, I could be the first.

  Whatever I thought, there was no backing out. My gear was up there, worth several thousand pounds, and my flight was booked, the train times sorted. I would leave Britain and be on the wall next day. It would be painful but it would be quick. I reminded myself I had enough experience to pull it off, and climbing it would put my career back on track. That in itself was worth the risk.

  Once I was back on the wall, there would be no fear then.

  Fear was for real life.

  But then night would come again and I would lie there knowing – without doubt – that I was going to die.

  The train snaked down the valley towards Åndalsnes, and turning a corner the Troll Wall came into view, a black tombstone a mile high, darker and wetter with the melting of the winter snows. It seemed oppressive. I peered up through the window, the rest of the passengers unaware it was even there, scoping my line, seeing that snow still clung to many of the ledges, the thousand-foot approach slopes covered down to the trees.

  I slowly climbed back up the snow slope, the haul-bag digging into my shoulders, the snow deep and old and granular, like sand. Kicking steps, I’d stop for a rest, then kick a bit more, always listening for falling rock, the ground peppered with an acne of stone shards.

  At the initial slabs, the band of cliffs blocking access to the upper wall, which Paul had almost fallen down, ice was forming down one side. I pulled out the spare rope I’d brought in case my fixed ropes were damaged, uncoiled it, and tied one end to me and the other to the haul-bag propped in the snow.

  I began climbing up with my axes, the exposure below me instantaneous, knowing that, without a belay, if I fell I would slide a thousand feet down to the river. But the ground was only steep for less than a rope length, with little bulges of soft wet ice, and soon I was pulling up the bag, sticking it on my back and climbing up the slope again, eager to see round the corner and discover if my fixed ropes were still there.

  In those final few minutes, as I neared the edge of the buttress that hid our line – my line now – I was unsure what I wanted to find, the ropes intact and ready to be climbed, and the route continued, or the ropes gone, just unreachable strands swaying above, the route and all my gear swallowed up by the trolls. If that was the case at least I had come this far, and not bottled it at home. I’d made the effort, but would be safe. In stealing my gear the trolls would have saved me.

  Perhaps I could come back next winter with a new partner, freed from my obsession for the summer, and then continue. Perhaps I could live a very long life and stand at train stations with my stick and tell youths not to squander their greatest gift.

  Having the roped dashed by stones would be a blessing.

  The ropes were still there, trailing down and secured at the bottom with the single cam I’d left behind. I clipped into the cam but added a nut as a backup, aware of the drop below. Then I took off the haul-bag and clipped it in.

  The rope looked okay from here. I could see the next thirty metres and the anchor I’d placed on the way down, the rope re-belayed under a roof, before it continued over it unseen.

  I tried to envisage where I’d placed the extra anchors, each of them put there in the hope of avoiding abrasion by the wind, allowing me to climb back up them safely, spotting any damage before I was committed. When climbing a rope with jumars, your life really does hang from a thread.

  I attached my jumars, the blue one above the yellow as usual, and took in the stretch in the rope, looking up as I did so, knowing if it did break I’d be backed up by the cam and the nut. The rope seemed fine, solid between me and the first anchor.

  This was it.

  I took out the two pieces of gear at the bottom and tied the haul-bag to the
end of the rope, thus allowing me to pull it up once I reached the first belay. Then I let the rope take my weight for a second, stepping back a little so that gravity could take hold of me.

  Now it was just me and the rope.

  I took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, telling myself that the rope was fine and that I’d done this hundreds of times before as I pushed the blue jumar up, rested on it, moved the yellow one attached to my foot with a sling, stepped up in it, and pushed the blue one a foot higher, making each action as smooth as possible.

  Twang.

  Falling.

  Suddenly weightless.

  I hit the snow and tumbled backwards, my hands still holding the jumars attached to the slack rope, sliding towards the cliff band.

  ‘No!’ I screamed, knowing it would be impossible to stop with the heavy haul-bag tied to me.

  I was going the whole way.

  TWANGGGG!!

  The rope snapped tight, stopping me dead on the slope twenty feet from where I’d first fallen.

  Looking up, I saw the first anchor had ripped out and that I’d fallen onto the next one higher on the wall, somewhere over the roof and out of sight. The fall was caused by the slack between them.

  My mind raced ahead. What if the next one rips out? What if the rope’s broken above? I crouched on the slope and stared for a long time at the point where the rope disappeared over the roof. Below it was a knot with a nut dangling from it –the blown anchor.

  Staring but seeing nothing.

  I seemed to be temporally blinded, distracted by the vivid images playing in my head, my body spinning down the slope below me, cart-wheeling over and over, bones smashing, tendons ripped apart, an empty suit of a man.

  How far would I go before I blacked out?

  The wet snow began to soak into my trousers, but I just couldn’t move.

  I was stunned.

  This was what I was scared about. The trolls were playing with me, testing me, drawing me in and then pushing me away.

  I wanted to go back down.

  I wanted to go home.

  How could I find the strength to climb the rope? I’d now have to do a free hanging jumar over the drop with no idea what it was attached to.

  I could die doing this. And if I don’t then it could be the next thing, or the next, or the one after that.

  Water was trickling into my boot.

  A rock crashed down the wall opposite the face, echoing back and forth until it ploughed into the snow slope with a dull thud.

  If I went down now I’d never be free of the Troll’s spell.

  I’d leave more than just my gear on this wall.

  I must not be weak.

  I pushed the blue jumar up, then the yellow, walking up the slope until the rope hung plumb from the overhang, and I could leave the ground.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  The jumars slid slow and steady.

  The rope stretched, my weight drawing down the slack until, like a balloon dropping its ballast, my feet left the ground.

  I was away.

  Committed.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  Tied to the wall, and the wall to me. Neither could escape the other. I’d show it. Whatever happened it would be worth it to be free.

  Up the rope I went, concentrating only on the action of jumaring, the sound, the rhythm, blanking out the drop, or the lurch that would come if the next anchor ripped – or the rope snapped.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  I looked up and measured my progress by the distance to the knot of the failed anchor, growing closer and closer, as the drop below me opened up.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  I reached it and just hung for a while and tried to relax. I told myself: ‘Either the rope will snap or it won’t and going fast will make no difference.’

  I absorbed my position, alone on the Troll.

  Hardcore.

  ‘Isn’t this the climber you’ve always wanted to be?’

  I looked down at the river flowing far below, a red tractor moving down in a farm below the wall, the dots of tourists walking near the viewing platform beside the road.

  ‘Can you see me?’

  I looked at the nut hanging from the knot, and guessed it had been wobbled loose by the wind blowing the rope over the past few months, or by the cold. I took off the top jumar and reattached it past the knot, weighting the rope again. Now I was able to untie the knot, racking the nut on my harness.

  Shifting my legs I swung out a little, trying to look up at the rope, trying to see if it was still attached to the next belay, but saw instead that the rope was running over what looked like a hanging block on the slab above.

  I swung back in without another look.

  ‘Well, you’re committed now, son.’

  I hung there some more.

  It would be getting dark soon.

  Moving up to the lip of the roof, I was no longer hanging free, the rock once more to hand. I reached out and touched it.

  It felt cold and slimy, troll-like, but still nice after nothing but space, even comforting, me and it.

  I could now see the rope was hung up on a block the size of a small television set. If it came loose it could hit me or cut the rope.

  ‘It hasn’t so far.’

  I moved up, focusing not on the wall, but on a visit I made many years before to the factory in Switzerland where they made my ropes. I recalled trying to break a single hair’s breadth strand of nylon, and watching it spun with a hundred more to make a core strand, this strand spun again with several others before it was wrapped in a tough sheath. The process was inspiring. Infallible. The rope was indestructible.

  I pushed on and reached the block safely, carefully passing it, wanting to kick it free, but leaving it in case it hit my haul-bag below.

  ‘You’ll need to remember to kick this off if you retreat.’

  ‘I won’t be retreating.’

  Taking out my headtorch, I climbed on, taking the anchors out as I went. The darkness calmed my nerves a little since I could no longer see the ground below me, only the rope, the rock and the jumars in front of my face.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  Push. Push. Step up.

  I reached a steep slab and it felt good to have my toes on the rock, then moved up a final loose corner, part of my stashed haul-bag flashing into view, making the final few metres much easier on the nerves, as though it was waiting to greet me like an old friend, the bag the wall’s prisoner, me its rescuer.

  I pulled onto the ledge.

  I was there.

  I was back.

  I put my arms around the haul-bag and hugged it. It was still where I’d left it, which you’d expect, since there wasn’t much chance of petty thievery on the Troll Wall, just hanging from the anchor on a small sloping snowy ledge.

  Inside everything was intact but covered in a thin layer of ice. Water had found its way in. It was cold now, but I warmed up by hauling my rucksack and coiling the ropes as they came up, ready for tomorrow.

  With that sorted, I pulled out the portaledge and fly, set it up, crawled in and got a brew on.

  It had been a long day.

  I had not rested since leaving this ledge months before.

  In the food bag there was a big piece of Norwegian almond cake and I had a greedy chunk to celebrate the ropes not snapping.

  Lying there drinking my tea, I thought about the anchor pulling out, and why I’d carried on in the face of danger. It made no sense, but I felt glad of my past self’s fortitude to push things, and made a note that I mustn’t let that version of me down now I was up here, and how it would be a great story once I climbed the route.

  How I almost failed but pushed on regardless.

  That night I lay in my sleeping bag, nice and warm, comfortable in my double portaledge, and listened in the
darkness to the rocks falling. The winter snows were melting out, and as they did so down came a rain of rocks day and night. Most of the time the sounds would be small and distant, like the drip drip drip within a cave, but every quarter of an hour there would be a barrage of stones close by, their sparks lighting up the night and flashing across the fabric of the flysheet. It was a terrible sight, but one I made a point of watching. Afterwards, silence returned, before it was broken as the drip drip drip of the more distant stone fall resumed.

  I pulled out my mini-disk player and tried to block the sound with some music, which worked, leaving me with just the nagging doubt about how safe I was, laid here on my back, with only a thin layer of nylon to protect me.

  The morning was windy, with wisps of snow blowing round the ledge. I was faced with another rope-climbing exercise to reach Paul’s highpoint before pushing on. I ate some more cake and had a brew, then climbed out of bed and began sorting out all my gear, checking it had survived my absence okay. It felt good to clip on cams and nuts and hooks, and all the other gear I might need, making me feel ready to fight, rather than passively suffering the intimidation of the trolls. For the first time in ages I really felt excited about climbing this route. There was no longer the fear of doing, just the doing itself. I was fighting back, not cowering from the fear of being beaten.

  Climbing the rope wasn’t too bad, even though I had no idea what Paul had anchored it to, but I’d trusted him with my life before, and so trusted him again, finding a couple of small nuts equalized together. I clipped in and sorted myself out for soloing, stacking the rope in a bag, attaching the self-belay device that would hold me if I fell and tying the backup knot in case it didn’t.

  ‘This is it Andy, you made it all the way back.’

  I began.

  The rock was blank and compact, any cracks full of dirt and bits of grit and pebbles, but I made steady progress upwards. It felt great to be climbing, the process of doing the right thing in the correct order replacing darker thoughts and fears.

  I became absorbed in the next few feet of rock. The trolls lost their grip on me, and now could only watch as I ate away at their wall.