Cold Wars

by Andy Kirkpatrick

  ‘No one actually uses those things to sleep on,’ I said. ‘They’re just there to help sell a rucksack to unsuspecting punters.’

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ he said, as he lay down and pulled the sheet-like bag over himself, manoeuvering his body so his arse and shoulders rested on the small pad of foam.

  I’d brought along a red Gore-tex portaledge flysheet to use on the route as a tent, which could be hung above us to keep off the spindrift. I pulled this out and flung it over us for some extra protection, more for his benefit than mine.

  Then we lay there in silence, waiting for sleep, feeling the cold nibbling our noses, aware of the Dru staring down at us. I knew he was in for a bad night, but he wasn’t me, so I didn’t really care. But I did wonder if this was why he’d bivied so little.

  The night was calm but cold, and he soon began shifting around, seeking some warmth, a fruitless task made even more torturous when you know there is someone beside you who’s cosy and warm.

  By three in the morning I could hear and feel him shivering beside me, rubbing himself to keep warm, in obvious bivy hell. If we’d been friends longer we’d have spooned together for warmth, but being Scottish I guessed he’d have preferred death.

  All I knew was there was no way we’d be climbing tomorrow. Instead of feeling frustration, all I felt was a sense of reprieve, that familiar paradox, doing anything to climb, only to find any excuse not to.

  We woke at five and began to pack, with no tea or breakfast, silently accepting the way things were, that we were going down. Somehow he fitted all the food back in and snapped the lid of his rucksack shut, forcing a large triangle of dense cake in on top, then shouldered it. Then he began not to walk back down our tracks, but up, continuing our trail to the Dru as a purple dawn began to build.

  I stood and watched him, amazed at his toughness, realising the climb was on, at least for another day. I followed, happy for him to keep on chugging.

  ‘I think this is the wrong way,’ he shouted, axe scratching at the blankness blocking his way up the first pitches on the North Face, a steep gully capped by overlapping slabs with the appearance of an upside down staircase.

  ‘No, that’s the way,’ I shouted up, ‘I’ve done it before. It shouldn’t be too hard.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said, looking down at me as if to check it wasn’t a wind-up.

  ‘Honestly,’ I said, holding his ropes, wondering why he couldn’t do it as he turned and half heartedly gave it another go, convinced already that it was beyond him.

  The minutes ticked by without any progress, until feeling impatient I shouted for him to come down, so I could give it a go.

  Swapping rope ends I climbed up grumpily, and without too much stress, jammed my axe into a crack, twisted it, and pulled over a small roof onto a slab, climbing up to easier ground and a solid belay.

  ‘The rope’s fixed. Jug up,’ I said coldly.

  Crouched there waiting as he started up the rope, the big rucksack pulling at his shoulders, I began second-guessing what we were doing. I thought about his sleeping bag, his skinny mat, that if he had trouble on the first easy pitch, how would he fare on the hard climbing to come? My initial acceptance of retreat had passed, and now I’d sunk my teeth in, I was in no mood to let go.

  I began making some calculations.

  We had very few choices. Either we could push on up the Guides’ Route and see what happened, switch to the moderate classic North Face route, or try the legendary and mysterious Lesueur route, a climb with only a handful of ascents. If he was struggling on the first pitch then the Guides’ Route was out of the question, since I needed an equal partner to even consider it. The route was beyond me on my own.

  The North Face was a rock route, and the easiest route on the face, and thus unappealing. I wanted to struggle on something really hard.

  All that was left was the Lesueur, a spiral stair of vertical corners that worked its way across the North Face until it intersected with the Dru Couloir close to the summit. It would be hard, something attested to by the few people who’d climbed it. The route was also notorious for its lack of bivy spots, something worth considering with such short days.

  ‘I’m thinking maybe we should switch to the Lesueur,’ I said as he jugged up, the rucksack on his back looking painfully burdensome.

  ‘Okay’ he said, his positive expression hiding any embarrassment at not climbing the pitch.

  I thought back to climbing the Northeast spur of Les Droites with Rich Cross, my second alpine route. I recalled how I’d backed off a pitch early on the first day, unsure of myself, and how Rich had led it instead. I’d stood there and cursed myself for not being brave enough to just push on, to go for it like he had. I promised myself then I’d never fold again and take my share, whatever that share might bring.

  ‘It was harder than it looked down there,’ I lied. ‘Give me the rucksack and keep leading, you’re fitter than me, so I might as well let you use some energy up.’

  He led on up the gully, and onto the snow terrace that curved around to the North Face proper. I reckoned that being out in front would exorcise any negative thoughts he had, and avoid the dangerous flip into a mental position of weakness. And with him leading, I could be carried somewhat by his strength, as we moved up past the Guides’ Route, and on up to the Lesueur.

  At first sight the route looked forbidding: vertical corners and chimneys laced with ice, one leading up to another, moving out in steps across a vertical wall. Once we began there would be no easy way off, the route traversing across the face. I could also see no obvious places to sleep.

  As we stood looking up snow began to fall, light at first, then heavier, spindrift tumbling down in showers.

  ‘Being so steep we won’t have to worry about avalanches,’ I said, trying to sound positive, knowing that it was daft to carry on.

  But we did.

  As he moved up a red rescue helicopter appeared out of nowhere and hovered above us for a moment, the crew – pilot, co-pilot and winch man – clearly wondering what the hell we were doing out on such a day. Unsure what to do I held up a fist to signal ‘N’ for ‘No, we don’t need rescuing,’ instead of two arms raised above my head for ‘Y.’ Convinced we were okay, and not just lost, they swooped away, heading home for tea.

  ‘Not sure seeing a rescue helicopter so early on a route is a good or bad omen,’ I said as he punched his feet on up to the first icy grooves.

  ‘Maybe they were just checking out some future customers,’ he replied.

  ‘Eat some more donkey dick,’ I said, digging out a huge salami from the second rucksack and jabbing it at him. Snow pelted the flysheet covering us, as we sat side by side on a narrow cone of snow. ‘We’ve got to get the weight of this bloody pack down. It weighs an absolute ton,’ I said, raking around inside it, looking for the heaviest items for him to eat first.

  He sat in his sleeping bag beside me, the stove purring between us, hanging by a wire from the roof of the fly, as I went on with my lucky dip, unable to eat myself, feeling sick with the altitude.

  The bivy was uncomfortable, but better for the flysheet, as snow fell outside and poured down the walls above us. Its constant hiss and the roar of the stove made it hard to hear each other.

  The minor storm had blown in during the afternoon, often obliterating all sign of him as he front-pointed upwards, showing no sign of weakness even as the weather turned grim. This time it had been my turn to struggle, jumaring with the rucksack, its shoulder straps threatening to cut off the blood supply to my arms. I was glad I was jumaring and not climbing under such a weight.

  ‘Might be worth filling a water bottle with hot water and sticking it between your thighs,’ I said, imagining this would be our highpoint after a second night for him in his featherweight bag.

  He’d climbed so well, and reached this tiny perch just after dark, seemingly unfazed by the prospect of a night sitting on a ledge no bigger than a toilet seat, looking cheerful as we hacked aw
ay at the ice, only stopping to hide our faces in torrents of spindrift. For me the whole thing was a reminder of what I hated about alpine climbing, the romance and machismo of it long worn thin.

  ‘Okay, if you think it’ll help,’ he said, passing me his water bottle, his mouth full of stale croissant.

  I poured in the boiling water, knowing we could use it in the morning to make tea and breakfast.

  ‘Don’t confuse it with your piss bottle in the night,’ I said, passing it back, a strong plastic smell filling the tent as the bottle heated up. ‘Having to be rescued for a burnt todger would be very embarrassing.’

  Dinner over, we packed everything away, switched off our torches and sat slumped, listening to the hiss, urging ourselves to sleep.

  It was another very long night, and by three he was shaking beside me once more, obviously gripped by cold. There seemed nothing to say, phrases like ‘Are you cold?’ or ‘Did you sleep?’ as useless as his sleeping bag.

  But once again, when the alarm went off at five and I switched on my headtorch, his face appeared in its beam with a smile, the cold brushed off with a few shudders as the stove warmed our little red world once more.

  And so up we went, climbing, belaying, seconding with the god-awful pack, the day seeming to finish almost as soon as it had begun. Then would come the start of another awful sitting bivy.

  We chose to climb two pitches in succession and then swap, meaning the poor soul who’d jugged with the rucksack had a rest. At one point he almost folded again, beneath a nasty looking crack, the face dropping away far below us now, but this time I firmly pointed out it was his lead, not mine. This was nothing to do with me insisting we stick to our system, but because the pitch looked desperate, and I didn’t want to lead it.

  Unable to back out, he led the pitch perfectly and by the time he’d reached its end, he knew he’d never back off again.

  As we climbed I began to see that he was in fact the better man: stronger, faster and more positive, climbing with style and never complaining. His only shortcoming was that he didn’t know this yet. He soon would. With each pitch his confidence grew. He was eating the climb up, instead of being eaten.

  On the third night – another sitting affair – I complimented him on how well he was climbing.

  ‘It’s bloody amazing,’ he said. ‘It’s so hard and sustained. I’ve never climbed anything like this before.’

  ‘You must have done stuff like this when you were training to be a guide,’ I said, imagining that all guides, even fast ones like him who’d only bivied once, must have had to tackle their fair share of hard routes.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said, looking puzzled.

  ‘You know, you must have done some hard north faces?’ He looked blank. ‘I thought you had to do loads of grand courses to become a guide?’

  There was a pause. ‘I’m not a guide.’

  ‘But I was told…’

  ‘I’m not a climbing guide… I’m a walking guide,’ he said. ‘That’s why I moved to the Alps. I want to become a guide, to build up my experience, but I’ve never done anything like this. This is amazing.’

  The penny dropped. The sleeping bag, backing off hard pitches, the weight of food – this route was a quantum leap for him. He was a novice. On paper it was way out of his league. On paper he was going to die. In reality he had found his calling.

  We climbed on the following day, myself with a new found respect for him as the pitches got steeper and trickier, the ropes more threadbare with heavy jumaring, the second’s rucksack never getting any lighter.

  Late in the afternoon I’d climbed up a steep crack and reached the end of the rope in a near vertical gully, the night not far off, but with nowhere to stand, let alone sleep.

  ‘I hope you find somewhere to bivy at the top of your pitch,’ I shouted as he jumared up, the belay that held us both just a slung spike the size of a yoghurt pot. ‘If not, we’re screwed.’ I was glad it was his lead, and desperately hoped he’d find some glorious sanctuary just round the corner.

  He took the rack and we swapped rucksacks. Up he went, tapping and stabbing his way, resting his calves every couple of metres by stepping onto rock spikes that sprouted from the ice. As usual he was steady and methodical.

  Night fell and I hung there feeling a deeper and deeper sense of dread about what fate would bring. Standing all night would not only be hellish but also dangerous, and our only option lay above. I willed him on.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ he shouted. His voice seemed closer in the dark, the hiss of spindrift yet to start. ‘It’s too dark. I can’t see anywhere to bivy. It gets steeper above me.’

  ‘There must be something?’ I shouted.

  ‘It’s overhanging. We have to find something down there,’ he shouted back.

  ‘There’s nothing down here’ I replied in bullying desperation. ‘Keep going.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m coming down.’ This sounded final.

  ‘Don’t fucking come down here,’ I shouted back angrily, and then switched to a more desperate tone. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  …?

  ‘I’m coming back.’ His words were final this time.

  Down he slid until we both hung from the belay, the ropes fixed out of sight above, both of us now desperate to find comfort. ‘Maybe we can abseil down a bit and see if we can find something,’ I suggested, trying to peer into the black below, knowing the face dropped vertically for a thousand feet at the limit of our weakening headtorch beams.

  All I wanted was to stop – to just sit down and have a nice cup of tea. It didn’t seem too much to ask.

  I slid down the rope feeling I was on a fool’s errand, finding a just off vertical vein of snow wide enough for one and a half arses.

  It was all we had.

  Hacking at the ice, I reckoned we could cut out a slim step to sit on and so called him down to join me. We worked together, chopping at the ice with our axes, but to our dismay hit rock after only a few inches, our ledge no bigger than a folded newspaper.

  Trying not to panic, we made a go of it, using our rucksacks to fashion a makeshift extension to the ledge, pulling the trusty flysheet over us as the spindrift began to fall again.

  Inside it was a battle of slings and rucksacks and ropes, searching for a nugget of comfort, adjusting our daisy chains and knots, shifting our mats, the whole time scared that we might drop something vital. One second of inattention, and it would be gone for good. We couldn’t get into our sleeping bags until we’d cooked, so just had to live with the cold, half-standing, our crampons still on, but at least we could relax a little bit.

  ‘Erm. I need a crap,’ he said.

  ‘Now? Really?’

  The main problem with the prodigious amount of food he ate was the number of times he needed to have a crap: twice a day, every day. I had yet to go once, my food intake still minimal.

  ‘Can’t you wait till morning?’ I said, not wanting to upset our hard-won scrap of comfort.

  ‘No.’ With that he dug out the toilet roll, climbed out from under the fly and jumared down ten feet to the edge of the ice, the blackness below. He hung there, his pants down, and went.

  I took a photo to remind myself of this moment then ducked back inside.

  ‘Finished!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t think my digestive system is taking this well.’

  ‘I know. I can smell it from here,’ I replied, my head buried in the fly, not wanting to impinge on his privacy – beyond taking a photo – for either of our sakes.

  He jumared back up, and again we shuffled around trying to regain the hint of comfort we’d had earlier.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ I said, as a horrible stench filled the flysheet.

  ‘I’ve got an upset stomach,’ he repeated.

  ‘No… it’s in here with us,’ I said, trying to stay calm.

  ‘I don’t think it is,’ he replied, looking around.

  ‘Yes it is,’ I countered, the smell growing worse by t
he second. ‘Check your boots,’ I added, pointing at his feet, only to see, to my utter horror, that my arm was smeared in shit. ‘Oh my God!’ I shouted, wanting to get as far away as I could from my arm. He looked just as shocked as me, no doubt trying to find some way to explain that what we were seeing – and smelling – had nothing to do with him. ‘Fuck, fuck, FUCK!’ I shouted, totally at a loss what to do.

  Trying to find an explanation, he noticed that he’d somehow managed to crap on his boots and it was now smeared all over his crampons, and me.

  A few minutes earlier I’d have been hard pressed to imagine a more desperate situation, but now that had been trumped. A moment later it was trumped once more, when, thanks to all my squirming around in horror, my bum ledge gave up the ghost and collapsed, leaving me hanging in my harness, my feet scrabbling, desperate to hold on, while trying to avoid getting in an even worse mess.

  ‘I’m going,’ I said, rather illogically, as he tried to clear up the mess with a spare pair of gloves and a carrier bag.

  ‘I’m going,’ I repeated, flashing my torch into the night, spotting a spike of rock that looked like my only option.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m going,’ I said once more, and with that slid out from under the fly and jumared down, my sleeping bag clipped to me. I swung towards the spike, jammed myself onto it and wrapped the bag around my shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he called down in his sad voice, now muffled behind the flysheet. I sat feeling sorry for myself, rubbing my arm on the ice, spindrift pouring down in buckets, my arse soon feeling as if I was sleeping on top of a gnome.

  It’s fair to say this was the climb’s low point.

  The night stretched on, snow hissing down over me, around me, into me, the only other sound the soft rattle of fabric as he shivered above.

  I felt as if I’d been on this route a month.

  Sleep came and went unnoticed. When I was awake I dreamed of being asleep, and vice versa, that familiar bivy limbo. But my anger passed. I wanted to shout up, give a friendly sign, a few words that showed I was over it, even if it was still all over me: ‘It’s great here,’ or some other oblique English shorthand for sorry. I doubted I’d ever had such a strong partner, wondered if my anger was due more to my own inadequacy and frustration than anything else. Maybe it wasn’t that he was so good, but that I was so crap.