The climb had been fun, the competition had added spice to what was a mediocre route, and we were back in Chamonix that evening. I felt dissatisfied, however, and wanted something bigger and more challenging. Above all, I wanted greater control of the initiative. There was little satisfaction in being on a new route if it was not your own concept and you were just following another pair up it. But that summer I was destined to be disappointed, partly because the weather remained unsettled, but mainly, I suspect, because I was not clear on what I wanted to achieve – either in climbing or in my own life. Tom and Joe were now due to go home, and so I teamed up with two Americans, Jim McCarthy and Dick Williams, in an attempt to make a new direct route up the North Wall of the Civetta, a 5,000-foot limestone wall in the Dolomites. Jim McCarthy had conceived the idea. He had just finished Law School in New York, and was the most outstanding climber on the East Coast of America. Strangely, our paths had already crossed back in 1958, on Jim’s first visit to the Alps, when we had met on the lower rocks of the East Face of the Grand Capucin. My companion, Ronnie Wathen, and I had completed the route, but unfortunately Jim had been forced to retreat after his partner had dropped their rucksack.
Jim had come over to Europe with a formidable array of the newly developed American hardware – the chrome molybdenum pitons that had enabled a small group of Californian climbers to conquer the huge granite walls of Yosemite. A few of them had already made their marks on Europe. In 1962, Royal Robbins and Garry Hemming had made a direct start to the West Face of the Dru, up a series of superb crack-lines in the lower part of that face, and the following year, Tom Frost, another Yosemite pioneer, had made the first ascent of the South Face of the Fou, with John Harlin, Hemming and a Scot, Stewart Fulton. Jim wanted to apply the same Yosemite style of climbing to the North Face of the Civetta. He was aware, however, that his team was on the weak side. He had climbed in Yosemite himself, but his companion, Dick Williams, had never been farther afield than the New Yorkers’ local crag, the Shawangunks. These are a 200-foot high line of outcrops in upstate New York – the American equivalent of a glorified Shepherd’s Crag, or Three Cliffs of Llanberis.
I met Jim one night in the Bar Nationale, and he immediately asked me to find another companion and join him. I had been making plans with Brian Robertson, a young Scots climber, full of big ambitions. He was a leading light in a group of Edinburgh climbers who called themselves the Squirrels, after a famous Italian climbing group called the Cortina Squirrels. Brian was rather like a squirrel, short, strongly built, with a squirrel-like persistence. He was a great enthusiast, becoming near-incoherent in his enthusiasm for whatever happened to be his latest project. He happily agreed to join us, and the next day we all piled into Jim’s newly purchased Volkswagen Varient, and were whisked over to the small town that nestles below the North Wall of the Civetta. McCarthy is a great fixer; he already had introductions to one of the senior guides and great pioneers in the area. We spent the night in his barn, and next day, thanks to his good office, had our mound of baggage, ironware and food whisked up to the hut on the little service telepherique, whilst we wandered up, unladen, through woods fragrant with flowers and the hot resin of pine trees. We stayed in a newly built hut, immediately opposite the face. The more I looked at the wall, the less happy I felt. The line that Jim had chosen was to the right of the Phillip Flamm route, straight up a huge, blank, overhanging wall of grey and yellow rock. There were cracks all right – indeed, the scale was so vast they were probably chimneys – but it all seemed awfully steep. I had not undertaken such a big artificial route before and felt unsure of my own ability and, never having climbed with Jim, felt little confidence in him either.
I insisted on doing a training climb first, and the next morning we all set out to complete the North Face of the Torre Val Grande, a classic route on the far left of the Walls of the Civetta. Brian and I quickly pulled away from the two Americans as we scrambled up the broken gully that led to the start of the real climbing. It was an enjoyable fun-climb, with a thrutchy roof overhang which we swung up in étriers, and then a few good pitches of free climbing. We got back to the hut that evening to find the rest of the team at a low ebb in morale. Dick had never climbed on the loose rock that guards the approaches to most Dolomite climbs. He was unaccustomed to fast soloing, and eventually they had turned back before even reaching the foot of the climb proper.
This boded ill for our plans on the New Direttissima on the Main Wall of the Civetta. Dick wasn’t keen to commit himself to such a major undertaking, and nor were we. That afternoon, however, we had passed the tent of another British climber, Denny Morehouse. I didn’t know him personally, but had heard a lot about him. He had spent a lot of time in the Dolomites, mainly climbing with continental climbers, and had an impressive array of hard routes to his credit.
Sitting in the mouth of his battered tent, he looked a bit like the mad professor in an early surrealist German film. He wore heavy horn-rimmed spectacles, one lens of which was starred, presumably from a falling stone; his gear was in tatters and he had been living for the previous fortnight on a diet of pasta and plain bread.
I suggested inviting Denny, and Jim agreed. We brought him up to the hut, gave him a good meal, and the next day planned to carry all the gear up the face to the start of the difficulties.
The moment we started working together, things went wrong. Big wall climbing demands a high level of teamwork, rope management and awareness of the job in hand. We didn’t have a clue. Jim understood the new American methods; was accustomed to the high level of discipline adopted on the walls of the Yosemite; we were blissfully unaware of these techniques. Soon the rope was tangled into an inextricable mess. Denny, out in front, dislodged a boulder the size of a table, and it narrowly missed Jim. I dropped a peg-hammer; a few stones whined down from above and we all retreated for the night to the hut, full of doubts about each other. We were going to set out for the face at three in the morning. I felt half-hearted as I organised my gear, snuggling into my sleeping bag as a haven of safety, dreading the moment of commitment when we set out for a climb that I don’t think any of us felt up to. I dropped off into an uneasy sleep, to be woken all too soon by the jangle of the alarm. No one moved – and then Jim jumped down from the bunk, looked out of the window and called: ‘The goddamned cloud has come in – you can hardly see the bottom of the face.’
I suspect we were all secretly relieved. I rolled over and immediately dropped into a deep sleep. By morning the cloud had begun to break up, and by midday it had turned into a good day, but the delay had done the trick. With hardly a word said, we abandoned the attempt. Jim and I climbed the Andrich Fae route, a classic free rock-climb to the left of our proposed line, and then we all set off for Chamonix, I anxious to get back to the main scene of action, to snatch at least one good new route before the end of the season.
But our return to Chamonix coincided with the arrival of bad weather. Our little group, that had never coalesced into a team, broke up. Jim and Dick went down to the Calanques, Brian went home, and I stuck it out in Chamonix, just hoping for one good route to make the summer seem worthwhile.
Three weeks went by; three weeks spent hanging around Chamonix, living in other people’s tents, listening to the sound of rain drumming on the roof and eking out my beer money in the Bar Nationale, until near the end of the season, I became involved in a BBC documentary on the North Wall of the Eiger. Amongst my plans for that summer had been an attempt on making a new Direct Route up the North Wall of the Eiger. This was the current last great problem of 1964, and already several leading Continental climbers had tried and failed on it. John Harlin, an American climber, was leading contender, and had already made a couple of attempts. My own plans were little more than pipe-dreams – I had neither sufficient equipment nor the right companions for such an undertaking.
I trekked over to Grindelwald to meet the BBC team at the start of September. I should have liked to have talked about my original asce
nt of the original route on the Eiger North Wall – a climb full of good and exciting memories. The producer wanted something that was more immediate in its appeal, and I allowed myself to be talked into showing all the gear I should have used on an attempt on the Eiger Direct, as if I were about to go on the route. Having abandoned all thoughts of attempting it that summer, I felt cheapened. It emphasised my own vulnerability and made me doubt my own integrity. At the end of the interviews I returned to Chamonix, washed out and depressed.
But the weather was, at last, looking up, as all too often it does in early September –there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the Chamonix Aiguilles were clear of snow. At last, here was the chance to recoup a wasted Alpine season – one great, exacting route and I could go home happy, my confidence restored. And yet, perhaps, in those weeks of waiting and worry, I had lost sight of the very reasons why we should climb – had lost the sheer spontaneous joy that climbing should entail.
I met up with Mick Burke in the campsite. He, also, was without a companion and we agreed to tackle the South Face of the Fou, a route that still awaited a second ascent, and had the reputation of being exceedingly difficult. I had a few American pegs, sold to me by Jim McCarthy; there weren’t nearly enough, and I suspect we could have got ourselves into a precarious situation if we had ever launched ourselves on the climb. Anyway, Mick and I went into Chamonix to get some bivouac food before setting off for the hut that evening.
It was in the supermarket, between the dried-soup shelves and the refrigerated cabinet holding dairy foods, that I suddenly realised that I had drained myself of all my drive and ebullience – I felt an irresistible longing for home, to hold Wendy close to me, to see and play with Conrad. I had already half-filled a basket with bivouac food; I stood there in an agony of indecision, and then just dumped the basket on the ground and walked out of the shop. I found Mick at the campsite, packing his rucksack.
‘Y’re ready then?’ he said. ‘There’s only ten minutes before the last train to Montenvers, you know.’
‘I’m sorry, Mick, I’m not going. I think I’ve been out here too long. I feel bloody stale, and wouldn’t be any use on the climb anyway.’
Mick took it wonderfully stoically, without any recriminations. Having made up my mind, I had the homing instinct of a carrier pigeon. I caught a train for Paris that evening, spent most of the night pacing up and down in the corridor, in a fever to get home; reaching Paris, I was so impatient that I got a taxi to the airport terminal and took the next available plane to London. I phoned Wendy and caught a train that took me as far as Preston. Wendy drove down in the middle of the night, with Conrad asleep in the back of the van, to pick me up.
That return to the Lakes was a return to reality, to the joy of our life together, to a newly found satisfaction in getting down to the book, which at last seemed to flow with some prospect of, one day, being finished – even to a renewed and fresh enjoyment of climbing, unsullied by worries of maintaining a reputation, or building a career round the mountains.
– CHAPTER SIX –
HOME GROUND
A Lakeland autumn: the hill opposite turning a rich golden brown, leaves falling in the little artificial lake at the bottom of the drive, and rock warm to the touch under an autumnal sun. I had three weeks before my lecture season started – three weeks to skirmish with my book, lie in the sun and climb when the will took me, or friends arrived to drag me – all too willing – away from work. Two of our most regular visitors were Mike Thompson and Martin Boysen. Mike was one of my oldest friends. We had first met at Sandhurst, back in 1956, when he joined my company. He was already a climber, having been born and brought up in Cumberland. He went to St Bees, a school more renowned for prowess at rugby than academic learning, and had wandered the hills in his spare time, either with or without permission.
He also had gone into the Royal Armoured Corps – into the cavalry – spending three years in Malaya and then returning to this country to complete a university course at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham. Mike was getting tired of army life at the same period that I was becoming discontented. His problem, however, was that having started the science course, the army insisted on getting their money’s worth from him and therefore insisted that he complete at least another five years after finishing at Shrivenham. At this stage, Mike was determined to escape, wanting to get a place at university to study anthropology. He struck on an ingenious solution to his problem by standing for Parliament, since no member of the armed forces can become involved in politics, and yet it is anyone’s constitutional right to stand for Parliament if they so desire. In 1962 he stood as Independent candidate for Middlesbrough West. Much to his surprise, he got around fifty votes, but lost his deposit. This freed him from the army.
In the autumn of 1964 he was just starting his final year at University College, London. Besides his interest in anthropology he had a flair for property – many of our Lakeland climbing trips had been spent exploring ruined barns as possible conversions. He had spent a couple of summers converting one such ruin above the Duddon Valley, and, in London, had secured the lease of an unfurnished flat high above Dean Street, living in it for three years nearly rent free, by sub-letting rooms to friends. In Mike’s make-up there is a property tycoon and an anthropologist sometimes working hand in hand – at other times in conflict. He is one of those people who never seem in a hurry, never seem to do very much, yet quietly and effectively succeed in carving out a life of their own choosing.
Martin Boysen had slotted into a more conventional mould. He was one of the most brilliant rock-climbers that this country, or to be more accurate, Germany, had produced since the war. Born in 1941, at Aachen, of a German father and an English mother, he spent a terrifying infancy, of which he could have barely been aware, with his mother under constant surveillance by the Gestapo, and constant threat of arrest. After the war they came back to England, and Martin was brought up in Tonbridge, near Harrison’s Rocks. He started going to the rocks when he was fourteen and it was here that I first met him, a shy, gangling boy who drifted up the most difficult problems with an easy grace, showing no visible effort. He went to Manchester University in 1961 to study biology, met Maggy in his first term, took her climbing and they have been together ever since. Maggy, slim, vital, dynamic, compensates for Martin’s easy indolence. We spent many delightful weekends with him when they visited us at Woodland. They both had a deep abiding love for the hills which went further than just a passion for rock-climbing. Martin had an extensive knowledge and interest in the fauna and flora of the mountains – and this was how one of the best routes I helped to put up in the Lake District came to be called the Medlar – named after a rare tree, reputed to be found only in Southern England, but growing at the foot of our climb.
Martin and Mags arrived one weekend shortly after I had got back from the Alps. Mike was over in the Duddon Valley, working on his cottage at Bigert Mire. The weather was perfect and Martin knew of the ideal new route for us to try.
‘I had a go at it a couple of weeks ago,’ he admitted, ‘but I wasn’t climbing well, and turned back.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Wait and see – we’ll have to make sure it’s fine tomorrow.’
Such is the secrecy that surrounds any possible new line – there are so few left in the Lakes.
The morning was fine and Martin revealed that our planned ascent was on Raven Crag of Thirlmere. From the road it is lost in the conifer woods that cling to the slopes of Thirlmere – the crag is a good 600 feet up the hillside, steep and slender, with jutting, angular overhangs. A light green lichen clings to the rock, making patterns similar to amoeba or bacteria seen through a microscope. The crag was discovered, in 1952, by Harold Drasdo and Pete Greenwood. Its very character, yielding bold lines on very steep rock, attracted some of the outstanding post-war climbers to its flanks. Pete Greenwood was a leading light of the Wall End Barn mob, a group of climbers who temporarily opted out of
the rat race, long before beatniks or hippies had been thought of; they raced round the Lakes on high-powered motor-bikes, and went in for prodigious drinking sessions. As with many of the hard climbing groups, their members later settled down to successful careers in a number of widely differing fields. Pete Greenwood, finally deciding that he had had enough of bumming around, worked his guts out as a labourer on the Spade Adam project, saved enough money to buy a plot of land, built a house, borrowed more money, and is now a property tycoon in Cumberland. Jack Bradley, who made the first ascent of Necropolis, an attempt to tackle the huge cave that is carved out of the centre of the crag, seemed to be one of the wildest members of the Wall End mob. He became a successful financier in Leeds, floating companies with the same sang froid that you or I would display buying a few premium bonds.
Communist Covert, a fine line that works through the big overhangs of the cave, and airily across the upper part of the buttress, fell to Arthur Dolphin, a climber whose brilliant career was cut short in 1954. He was Lakeland’s leading rock-climber, making the same impact in the Lakes that Joe Brown and Don Whillans were making in Wales. Even today, some of his routes rank as the finest and most difficult in the area.
The final stamp of recognition for the crag came in 1956, when Don Whillans forced the overhangs of the cave with his route, Delphinus. It was a typical Whillans route, a direct onslaught at the most obvious, and certainly the most formidable, challenge of the cliff.
And now, on a fine September’s day, Martin Boysen, Mike and I were picking our way through the sweet-smelling woods towards the foot of the crag.
The Next Horizon Page 10