The Beckoning Silence (2 page)

‘I’m not sure,’ I muttered to myself, then leaned out and shouted. ‘OK, Tat. Be careful. The ice is crap and the belay isn’t much better.’

‘What?’

Great. He can’t hear me
.

‘Climb!’ I yelled, trusting that Tat was too good a climber to fall off the pitch. When he reached the last ice screw and was in earshot I told him about the belay.

‘Is it in the right place?’ he asked.

‘Well, I think so, but having said that I was expecting bolts, so maybe not.’

‘Why didn’t you carry on?’ Tat asked. His tone was critical.

  ‘I was a long way above a bad runner, the ice was bad and I saw what I thought was the belay,’ I said, sharply angered that my efforts on the first pitch hadn’t been appreciated. I knew that to follow it with the security of a rope from above would have presented few problems to a climber of Tat’s skill but surely he must have noticed the poor ice and lack of protection?

‘I thought it was pretty hairy down there,’ I added, with a note of petulance in my voice. It had unnerved me and I felt embarrassed to have displayed such weakness. Tat remained unconvinced. ‘And I didn’t like the look of that,’ I added nodding at the vertical 20-foot rock corner draped on its left side with mushy, crumbling ice. In truth, I was scared. The pitch below had seemed insecure and although I had climbed it competently I had constantly been aware that it was much harder than it should have been. The conditions were deteriorating and the short corner looked horribly risky.

‘I don’t think this is in good nick,’ I said, as Tat climbed up to stand level with my feet.

‘No,’ Tat said as he examined the corner.

‘You’ll have to get a runner in before you try that,’ I cautioned. ‘Otherwise you will be falling directly onto the belay.’ I leaned to the side so Tat could see the knife blades.

‘Two pegs. What’s wrong with that?’

‘They’re tied off. I don’t even like putting my weight on them.’ I glanced at the drop to the foot of the climb. ‘They won’t hold a fall.’

Tat shrugged. He didn’t seem as concerned as I was.
Maybe I’m being a wimp? Perhaps it’s not so bad?
I reasoned to myself but the bluff didn’t work. I knew it was bad. I was climbing well, feeling strong, but doubts were crowding in on me.
Trust your judgement. It’s your life.

I passed a bandolier with ice screws down to Tat. He swung it around his neck and moved to the left, making a long stride out with his boot to get his crampons onto the ice. A large plate of ice cracked off and tumbled down and over the buttress. I watched it, mesmerised, as it wheeled out into the sucking, empty space beneath my feet.

I tensed and grabbed Tat’s shoulder to steady him. He tried the stride again and I watched intently as he made precise, soft placements with his axes, weighted them, and shifted to the left until he could stand directly over his left foot. He made a perfunctory examination of the ice then reached up with his axe. Clearly there was no chance of placing an ice screw.

I shifted uneasily. Tat was tall and probably weighed 175 pounds. There was no way I could hold him without putting heavy force on the belay.

‘Gear, Tat,’ I said tensely.

‘I’ll look under that roof,’ he said and nodded towards where a small overhang of rock jutted from the rock corner. ‘There may be a crack underneath it.’

He lifted himself smoothly up on his right axe and braced the front-points of his right boot against the back of the rock corner. There was a cracking sound and Tat dropped down as the ice disintegrated and his left foot detached again. I gasped with shock and instantly braced for the fall. He stopped moving and calmly replaced the boot slightly higher.

‘Jesus, Tat, get some gear in.’

He said nothing.

I felt sick with anxiety. Tat was absorbed in the technical difficulty of climbing while I could only watch and worry and try not to think about the pitons. Any fall would kill us. An edgy hysteria was beginning to flood through me.
This is bad. This is really bad.
Yet I did nothing. I stared, transfixed by Tat’s movements, scarcely daring to breathe, trying to will his axes and crampon points to hold firm.

After what seemed an age I found myself looking directly upwards at the red plastic soles of Tat’s Footfang crampons. If he fell he might hit me. The impact would knock me off my frail stance. If he slid past me he would fall 20 feet straight onto my harness and then the belay. It would rip out. The frozen turf would not take the strain and the moment it collapsed I would lunge down onto the tied-off knife blades. Then we would be airborne.

I had immense respect for Tat’s ability as an ice climber. Indeed I deferred to him, happy to acknowledge his superior experience, although I would never admit this to him. I felt that I was more powerful and probably fitter than Tat but he had the cunning of vast experience and that was worth a great deal. We were climbing at the same standard and I was confident that I could accurately assess what we could and could not do. This now put me in an awkward position. I urgently wanted to tell him that he should back off, that the climb was in a very dangerous state, that it was too hard for him. But he was the leader. This was his pitch, his choice, and I would have to hope he would come to the same conclusion. I didn’t want to force the issue.

Another part of me wanted to scream at him to stop.
What is this crap? This isn’t just about losing face. This is a bad call he’s making and you care more about your precious ego than you do about your life. We’re friends, for God’s sake. This isn’t some hero trip. Tell him. He won’t hold it against you.
I kept silent. I was unsure whether the suggestion might antagonise him into continuing; the last thing I wanted.

‘Can you get anything in?’ I suggested anxiously. Tat was now level with the roof. His left arm was stretched above it, gripping his hammer. I could see that the pick was gripping a few millimetres of filmy ice glued to the left wall. He craned his head to the right and tried to peer under the roof. He let his ice axe dangle from his wrist leash and unclipping a bunch of wires from his harness he tried to fiddle a small metal chock into a crack that he had spotted beneath the roof. The strain on his left arm was making him breathe hard. I stared fixedly at crampon points, trying to anticipate them shooting into space. I doubted his pick placement was doing anything other that keeping him balanced. It would not hold his weight if his feet sheared off. The wired chock jammed and Tat tugged down hard to seat it into the thin crack. On his second pull it flew out and the sudden jerk nearly toppled him from his perch. I swore and jerked my left arm out as if somehow I thought I might be able to catch him.

‘It’s no good,’ Tat gasped. ‘The crack’s shallow.’

‘Will it take a peg?’

‘Doubt it,’ Tat muttered and I heard a hint of irritation in his voice. I knew that he wanted to go for the corner and make the four or five moves needed to reach where the ice was thicker. One good axe placement in that thick ice would be enough for him to haul himself to safety. I knew what he was thinking but I thought it too risky. I watched as he turned to face the wall rising left of the corner. He flipped his axe shaft into his right hand and lodged the pick on a tiny rock edge on the wall. He hauled gently at first and tried weighting the tool. The pick shot off and Tat jerked backwards. I flinched.

Anger began to flush away my fear. I wasn’t being given a choice.
This is stupid. We could die on this. Just one slip and we’re gone.

‘Tat.’ He paid no attention. ‘Tat,’ I repeated sharply. ‘That’s it. I’m not giving you any more rope until you get a good piece in.’

He said nothing but I could sense from his head movement that he didn’t like the ultimatum. He turned again to the roof and again attempted to place the wire. It ripped free when he jerked on it. As I watched him struggle to stay in balance a shower of ice crystals pattered onto his shoulder. I looked up to see the air above us filled with a fine rain of ice particles. I knew that it meant that the sun had reached the top of the climb and that there would now be a steady fall of this granular ice. It posed no threat but it meant that conditions would only get worse as the sun heated the already melting ice.

‘I can do it,’ Tat said. ‘It’s only two moves …’

‘The ice is terrible, Tat. It’s pouring with water for God’s sake!’ He glanced over his shoulder at me. ‘Fuck it,’ I snapped, angry now. ‘If you fall we’re dead. Simple as that.’

‘I won’t fall, kid.’

‘I don’t want to die.’

‘I won’t fall.’

‘Maybe … maybe not,’ I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not taking that risk. OK? I don’t want to do this. I don’t need this.’

Tat turned and looked speculatively up the corner and I felt even angrier that he might still be risking my life.
What can you do if he insists? I mean, you can’t pull him off. That would kill us. If he insists, then you’ll have to un-rope. Jesus! Tell him that.

‘Tat?’ I said quietly, hearing the fear in my voice.

‘OK, OK …’ He carefully made a move down, lowering himself gently from his left axe. I breathed a sigh of release as he edged towards me. Within a few minutes he was back at the stance beneath where I stood.

‘Look, I’m sorry Tat,’ I said.

‘I thought it would go.’

‘Yeah, and I thought we would go.’ I glanced at the wash of ice particles showering my arms. ‘It’s way too late for this route anyway. It’s too hot. The top gully line would be falling apart.’

‘Can we abseil off those pegs?’ Tat ignored my explanation. I could see that he was disappointed but I could also detect an underlying anger. I was surprised, even though I knew how competitive Tat could be as a climber. I looked at the pegs and bent my legs until most of my body weight came onto them. They flexed.

‘Pretty flaky,’ I said. ‘But if we move slowly and smoothly they might hold.’

‘Can you back them up?’

‘No.’ I looked directly at him. ‘And unless you want to stand there untied you’ll come with me if they pull out.’

‘Right,’ Tat glanced at the small edge of crusty ice that he was standing on. ‘Well, I don’t trust this stuff. Here,’ he passed me a karabiner on a sling, ‘clip me in.’

‘Anyway,’ I said as I clipped the sling into the two knife-blade pegs, ‘I’ve never had an abseil fail yet.’ I grinned encouragingly at Tat who stared bleakly back at me.

‘I have,’ he said. ‘Twice.’

We sorted the ropes out in silence, knotting them together after threading them through the loop of red tape, untying from our harnesses, checking which colour rope to pull down, double-checking the pitons. It was a routine we had gone through countless times. We were methodical, efficiently calm. I was nervous about the pitons but said nothing. We had climbed ourselves into this position, now we had to get out of it.

‘Pull on green,’ I said as I lowered myself slowly onto the abseil rope, keeping it locked off on my belay plate. I stared intently at the pitons as they flexed and then stilled. I exhaled slowly. Tat grinned at my expression.

‘OK, pull on green,’ Tat echoed. ‘Careful, kid,’ he added in a gentle voice and I looked at him anxiously.

‘You too,’ I said as I slid down past him, concentrating on releasing the ropes smoothly. No jerks, no sudden stops to stress the weak anchors. I watched as the distance to the ground gradually lessened. When I was 80 feet above the snow slopes at the foot of the rocks I began to relax. It was survivable. A few minutes later my feet touched down and I unclipped from the ropes. A short tug on the green rope proved that it would pull down smoothly.

‘OK,’ I yelled, and watched Tat reach out for the ropes and clip his belay plate in place. I hurriedly moved away from the base of the rocks, feeling guilty as if I were betraying Tat by getting out of the way of his fall line.
He’d kill you from that height,
I reminded myself.

We trudged down the avalanche slopes, following our tracks to the road. As we packed the hardware, ropes and harnesses into the boot of the car and flung in our axes and crampons I was painfully aware of the silence between us.

I had let Tat down. I had ruined the climb for him by insisting that we retreat. Now that we were safely on the ground I began to question my decision.
Maybe those pegs were OK? I mean they held the abseil. No. They would never have held a fall.
I glanced at Tat as he drove up towards the village of La Grave.

‘Do you think the pegs would have held a fall?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Tat said bluntly.

Yet you were still prepared to carry on, to push it to the limit?
I thought.
Why not me?
 The simple answer was because I was too scared. I didn’t have such blind faith in Tat’s ability.

‘I wouldn’t have fallen,’ Tat added, as if reading my thoughts. I said nothing.

A game of chess and several large beers on the sunny terrace of a café relaxed us sufficiently to begin talking about what had happened. Tat still seemed strangely reluctant to admit that it had been such a perilous enterprise – so much so that I began to have my own doubts. I wondered whether the frightening ice conditions on the first pitch had so unnerved me that by the time I found myself hanging on the knife blades I was psychologically defeated. Ice climbing is very much a head game and there is a fine balance between confident boldness and being in a blue funk.

Yet when I thought of my reasoning at the time it seemed irrefutable. I felt that I had made a sound mountaineering decision. I knew that one of the hardest things to learn is when to back off, when to retreat ready to fight another day. It was not a matter of injured pride, or cowardice.

I tried to explain this to Tat but he dismissed me with a smile.

‘I know all that,’ he said. ‘I was just disappointed … oh, and Check Mate!’

He happily knocked my King over with the base of his Queen. ‘Three – one in the La Grave Open,’ he added with a triumphantly raised forefinger.

‘Bugger,’ I muttered disconsolately.

‘And by the way, I’ve been thinking.’

‘Oh?’ I replied, apprehensive of whatever climbing adventure he was about to suggest. I knew our failure on the climb that morning would only have spurred him on to try better things. Tat couldn’t be put off that easily. ‘Let me guess.’ I said. ‘The Valley of the Devils?’