Cold Wars E-Book

Andy Kirkpatrick

• Herausgeber: Vertebrate Digital
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

I was aware that I was cold - beyond cold. I was a lump of meat left for too long in a freezer, a body trapped beneath the ice, sinking down into the dark. 'I was freezing to death.' In this brilliant sequel to his award-winning debut "Psychovertical", mountaineering stand-up Andy Kirkpatrick has achieved his life's ambition to become one of the world's leading climbers. Pushing himself to new extremes, he embarks on his toughest climbs yet - on big walls in the Alps and Patagonia - in the depths of winter. Kirkpatrick has more success, but the savagery and danger of these encounters comes at huge personal cost. Questioning his commitment to his chosen craft, Kirkpatrick is torn between family life and the dangerous path he has chosen. Written with his trademark wit and honesty, "Cold Wars" is a gripping account of modern adventure.

Leseprobe

Andy Kirkpatrick

Cold Wars

CLIMBING THE FINE LINE BETWEEN RISK AND REALITY

FOR ELLA & EWEN

It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart

You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn’t enough to change my heart

Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped

What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top

You’re on the bottom

BOB DYLAN, IDIOT WIND

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Acknowledgements

Preface

PROLOGUE Yosemite

ONE Dru

TWO Lafaille

THREE Black Dog

FOUR Fitz Roy

FIVE Mermoz

SIX Park

SEVEN Fear

EIGHT Xmas

NINE Troll

TEN Hard

ELEVEN Troll II

TWELVE Breathing

THIRTEEN Lesueur

FOURTEEN Sheep

FIFTEEN Diamond

SIXTEEN Post

SEVENTEEN Charlie

EIGHTEEN Grounded

NINETEEN Magic

Climbing 101

Glossary

Plates

Copyright

Acknowledgements

I owe a big debt of gratitude to many people in this book, both in the writing of it, and in the living of its stories. I have tried to be very honest in my views of people back then, much to my detriment I expect, and I hope friends like Kenton Cool, Ian Parnell, Leo Houlding and others forgive me for my flawed opinions and pig farmer psychology. They remain superstars and the best of their generation.

Most of the people described in this book are partners of the wall and partners of life, and I owe them all a debt for taking me along, especially Paul Ramsden, Nick Lewis and Robert Steiner.

Some people are left unnamed in the book when a story was too important to omit (I couldn’t bring myself to give you a new name), and some important stories and incidents have been left out. Some people don’t wish notoriety of any sort, while others are only mentioned when it’s unavoidable. This is the story of me, not them.

When writing this book I tried hard to make it an improvement over Psychovertical, not wanting it to be my ‘difficult’ second album. You need to write a book to know how it’s done. Thanks to Ed Douglas for doing the edit, no small task, no matter how many times it had been through the spell checker. Ed scares me a bit because he has a super-powered brain (he’d make a good Bond or Superman baddy) and knows stuff about grammar and stuff. I lived in fear of reading his comments on the chapters he sent back for more work.

A big thanks go to John Coefield and Jon Barton at Vertebrate for taking on such a project during hard times in the book world, and for being so patient (it was only a year late!), as well as their designer Nathan for indulging my meddling with the front cover (it is better without the squiggles).

Thanks to my friend and ex RE teacher Rob Sanders for reading through my chapters as I wrote them, as well as Tim Maud, Chris Hale and many others for feedback (sorry it made you cry in the Adidas cafeteria Tim).

Thanks go out to all those cafes I’ve frequented over the last year. I guess for every page in this book a cup of tea was drunk.

I’d also like to thank all the people and companies that supported me through the adventures in this book, including: First Ascent, Patagonia, Black Diamond, Petzl, La Sportiva, the British Mountaineering Council, the Mount Everest Foundation, Outside and Snow+Rock, as well as Geoff Birtles and Ian Smith at High Magazine (another pair of very patient men), and my old boss Dick Turnbull.

Thanks to my Dad for reading the draft of the book, a hard read I know, but I hope you see it as much as a love letter (in a man-love way) as an indictment (I dissect my past out of interest, not to find fault).

Thanks to my kids Ella and Ewen for putting up with a dad who calls himself a writer (honestly writing is work) and for being inappropriate at times (you’re not adopted). I hope when you grow up and read this book you won’t judge me too harshly – like most adults I had no plan, and so just made it up as I went along.

And lastly, although she is noticeable by her absence in this book, my thanks go to Mandy. This book was written for her (even though she’ll never read it, which is good, as she’d tell me it was sub sixth-form crap). I just wanted her to know it was never easy.

Preface

A few months ago I went to Switzerland for the launch of the German translation of my first book Psychovertical, a book that ends a few hours before this one begins. At the event, full of serious and academic types, an old white-haired Swiss lady came up to me and asked politely if I wasn’t a little young to be writing my autobiography. The question really threw me, especially considering that Psychovertical ends when I’m still only twenty nine, with nearly ten years of stories of trips and climbs left to tell. She was intimidating in a teacher sort of way, and I daren’t even tell her that it was only part one in a planned trilogy!

‘Oh I think when you read his book you will see Andy has many stories to tell,’ said Robert Steiner, the translator.

‘But you are so young,’ said the lady unconvinced. She looked as if she was in her late sixties and no doubt had many stories of her own to share.

‘It’s not an autobiography,’ I said, laughing off her question, while feeling a bit embarrassed at the very idea, having never thought of it as such. ‘It’s just a story about a climber,’ I said, trying to sound humble.

Still feeling a bit uneasy I was led into a huge hall filled with people, all waiting to hear me speak about my book. I’d been warned by Robert that they may give me a hard time, as Swiss-German people tend to view people like me – who seem not to hold their lives too dear – as a little crazy, and not in a good way.

I stood there on the stage, looking out at all these serious climbers, wondering what to say, how to explain myself, my book and my view on life.

‘Hello,’ I said, Robert translating as I spoke. ‘My name is Andy Kirkpatrick. I am mentally ill.’

The stern serious audience broke into laughter. I was saved.

Psychovertical was a book about a man who is struggling: against the wall, against himself, but who wins through. The story a hundred thousand word answer to the question: ‘Why do you climb?’

Cold Wars asks a different question: ‘What is the price?’

PROLOGUE

Yosemite

June 2001

It had taken eleven days to reach the final pitch, the wall beneath my feet skyscraper high, every inch climbed by me alone. Every day had felt like it could be my last. Out of my depth but unable to back off, it had been just me against the wall – toe to toe. Now we were done, the summit a few metres away, just an overhanging roof for me to cross, an easy crack from which to dangle. The Reticent Wall, one of the world’s hardest climbs, the climb of my life. And it was almost over.

The thought stuck in my head. ‘The climb of my life.’

The wall had taken everything I had to give, and in doing so made me see everything I had to offer as a climber, as a human being. The wall became a mirror, and in it I saw my life in complete clarity. Up here, a low-achiever, a guy with no prospects, with a dead-end job and in a marriage that wasn’t working, could really be somebody. Up here you could transcend the life you had. Once I got down, the world would see me differently. Maybe even I would be convinced.

I moved out to the crack, feet swinging, the two weeks spent up here still no antidote to the dizzying exposure. For ten years I had been pushing so hard, climbing in the Alps, Patagonia, Norway and here in Yosemite, consumed by a burning drive that seemed at odds with my character. The truth was I felt I had nothing to lose in a game with the highest stakes.

Halfway across the roof I allowed myself to look down and feel the waves of fear. All my heroes, the gods of climbing, had finished their climbs out across this very same feature. And as the fear swept across me, again and again, I knew what it meant to be superhuman.

‘Hi. I’m down. I’m safe,’ I said, standing at a phone booth in Yosemite Lodge, my legs still wobbly after the long descent from the summit of El Capitan, my feet throbbing from eleven days stood in slings. It was late evening in the UK. I could hear Ella in the background singing, home from nursery. I imagined Mandy sat on the stairs where the phone lived. I could see her sat with her hand on her pregnant belly, our second child inside.

‘Did you do it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you feel better?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want to make a go of it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, trying not to cry.

It seemed I was brave enough to solo one of the hardest routes in the world, but was too scared to tell her no.

I sat in the Yosemite Lodge cafeteria, sunlight streaming through the windows, thick branches swaying in a slight breeze, their leaves brushing the glass. The big room was almost empty.

Dirty plates stood piled up beside me on the table from breakfast and lunch. I hadn’t moved from this spot all morning, happy to just sit there, reading my book, looking at the trees and other people as they came and went.

I had never felt so much peace within me.

This time yesterday I was on the crux of the Reticent Wall. I could so easily be a corpse now; being hauled up by the rescue team from the ledge I started from yesterday, smashed to bits, my story that of a climber who went crazy and tried to solo one of the most serious routes in the world, and how he came unstuck, overreaching, dying.

It was the only way such a story could be played out.

The route was beyond me.

But I didn’t die.

I did it.

The leaves brushed against the glass. People laughed around me. I thought about the falls.

I thought about how much I wanted to back off.

I thought about how close I was to the edge.

I thought about the fear.

I knew I was going to die.

I wanted to die.

I did it.

I did it. I did it.

‘It’s the Kirkpatrick,’ said a voice I recognized, and I turned to see Leo Houlding and Jason Pickles walking over to me. In their Hawaiian shirts, shorts and shades they looked like rock stars – which they are.

‘Where you been?’ asked Leo, one of Britain’s best young rock climbers. Skinny and good-looking, Leo spent a few months every year out in the Valley climbing. He was someone who only lived the dream.

‘Climbing,’ I said.

‘Well, I guessed that,’ said Leo, rolling his eyes, his manner always assured. It was something you could forgive him for, as he was justified in his self-confidence, his skills as a climber touched by magic.

‘Not much…’ I said, preparing to tell them.

Leo interrupted. ‘Well, me and Jason have just freed the West Face of Leaning Tower,’ he said, pulling a catwalk face, no sign of the usual British reticence, his words like a challenge.

‘I’ve just soloed the Reticent,’ I replied, deadpan.

‘Oh,’ said Jason, looking at Leo with a smirk.

Leo’s face was blank for a moment, as though awaiting confirmation it wasn’t a joke.

‘Well done that man,’ he said finally, shaking me by the hand, a smile on his face.

‘Good effort,’ said Jason, the tension suddenly gone.

‘Looks like you’ve lost lots of weight,’ said Leo, poking me in the tummy with a finger.

‘I’m the self of my former shadow,’ I said, stealing a line from the great Mo Anthoine.

‘Have you met Pep?’ asked Leo, pointing over at the Table of the Gods, where all the superstars sat. ‘You should talk to him. He did the Reticent with his girlfriend Silvia a while back.’

We walked over to a table I’d never dared approach before, everyone on it a face, the young superstars, tomorrow’s heroes, and the legends, all sat chatting and laughing, oozing cool. These people had been places – in body and mind – that few can imagine.

‘Everyone, this is Andy. He’s just soloed the Reticent,’ said Leo, his hand on my shoulder.

I felt embarrassed, knowing it would be impossible to excuse myself as they all turned to me, looking like Benny Hill.

‘Hardcore dude,’ said an old guy in sunglasses.

‘Way to go,’ echoed a younger guy wearing funny specs.

‘Well done, Andy,’ said a girl who looked about ten.

‘Oh it was nothing really. Even Leo could have done it,’ I said, sitting down at the top table for the first time.

‘Pep. Andy. Andy. Pep,’ said Leo, as I took my place next to a good-looking Spanish climber, a guy I knew a lot about already. Pep Masip was one of the stars of big-wall climbing.

‘Andy, I have read some of your writings, it is a pleasure to meet you,’ said Pep, shaking my hand. ‘How was it?’

We talked about the route for a while, which pitches were the hardest, which were the most beautiful, where we thought the crux was.

‘What have you got planned for this trip?’ I asked, excited to hear what this hero was up to.

‘I wanted to solo Native Son, but I changed my mind,’ he replied, Native Son being a hard climb, but not as hard as the Reticent.

‘Why did you come down?’ I asked, thinking there must be some good reason.

‘I changed my mind.’

‘Changed your mind?’

‘I’m just tired.’

Leo asked Pep about Amin Brakk, his last climb. The wall was in Pakistan and he’d climbed it with his girlfriend Silvia Vidal, one the best big-wall climbers around, and Miguel Puigdomenech, who had also been on Reticent with them. They had to share a portaledge. Halfway up the wall, Silvia and Pep had split up.

‘Blimey!’ said Leo, both of us trying to imagine how you could do that, and carry on.

‘We had a lot on our minds, so it was not so hard,’ he replied.

They had run out of food, underestimating the length of the wall, and climbed on starvation rations, their bodies consuming themselves until they reached the top, the descent taking a further two days. The route had taken thirty-four days to climb.

‘It was not good,’ said Pep, ‘to take so much from your body. I have not been the same since.’

‘Tell me, Andy, are you married?’ asked Pep, changing the subject.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have children?’

‘Yes, I’ve got a daughter who’s three, and another kid on the way,’ I said.

‘Is it hard to do such things as this when you have a wife and kids?’ he asked.

‘It’s hard on Mandy, my wife. She always thinks I’m going to die.’

‘She sounds like a clever woman, your wife,’ said Pep with a smile. ‘How many times did you nearly die on the Reticent?’

‘Only once,’ I said, thinking back to my hundred and fifty foot fall on the second hardest pitch, a fall that should have been terminal. ‘Maybe twice,’ I added, remembering the storm, when I almost froze to death. ‘A couple of times,’ I said, as more near misses came back to me.

Pep raised his eyebrows. He had a decade on me. He knew the score.

‘It’s not dying that is the problem,’ he said. ‘Climbing is like a lover, and your wife knows this. Whenever you are together, no matter how much you love your family, your thoughts are only of your lover, of climbing.’

The deer sprinted out of the woods. Spooked. Into the road. Impossible to miss. Car doing fifty. Mandy beside me, her bump showing. Ella in the back, asleep in the car seat.

I knew I would hit it – saw its giant eyes. It knew it too. We were both heading for disaster on the road to Scarborough.

Everything, as it always does, slowed down. No time for fear, no time to freeze. Foot off the accelerator, going for the brake, knowing it was too late, the bones in my foot still bruised from the wall, hands tightening on the wheel, strong from hauling, knowing that I had to hold our course, not lose it on the busy road, trucks and cars speeding towards us on the other side.

We were going to hit the deer.

We met. A blow. Deceleration. It was like pushing against a soft wall, like wet clay, the deer bending around the bonnet, a bag of meat and bone, the glass breaking, our bodies shooting forward and then the seatbelts snapping us back.

Mandy had screamed as my foot hit the brake – too late. The deer unwrapped itself from the bonnet in slow motion, spinning off, legs liquid, into the oncoming traffic, missing the cars and stopping on the edge of the road.

I held on.

The car slowed.

I held on. In control.

Pulling in, onto the grass verge, the cars behind slowed as drivers turned to see the deer.

We’d stopped.

‘Are you okay, Mandy?’ I said, looking at her, her pregnant belly proud of the seatbelt.

‘Oh God I can’t believe what’s just happened,’ she said, panicked.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked again.

‘Yes… yes, I’m okay.’

I turned around to check Ella. She was still asleep.

‘Stay in the car,’ I said, and got out, the traffic now at a standstill, other people getting out, everyone walking over to the deer. I joined them, saw it lying in the dirt, tongue stuck out, its chest rising and falling. I waited for its last breath. Dying. Dead.

Walking back to the car I checked the damage. The front was bent, the lights on one side smashed. I opened up the bonnet and checked the engine, pulling out bits of bodywork that were getting in the way. It looked fine.

Getting back in, I asked Mandy again, ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ I put my hand on her bump.

‘Yes. Are you?’ she replied.

‘I’m fine.’

I started the engine. It sounded all right. The traffic had begun moving again, a green Land Rover pulling in to where the deer lay, a man in wellies jumping out.

I pulled back out into the traffic, and drove on towards Scarborough. Mandy burst into tears.

‘I can’t believe how calm you are,’ she said, sobbing. ‘You’re so calm.’

A few days ago I’d been on the crux of the Reticent Wall.

‘What’s going on dad?’ said Ella, waking up.

I turned up for work on the Monday morning, and stood behind the counter selling boots, telling the story of my holiday to as many people who would listen. My feet were still sore from the wall, my hands still swollen and scabby. I yearned to be back there, away from mundane things. I had been transformed into something magnificent. Now I was normal again.

‘What you been up to, youth?’ asked a customer I’d known for a long time, once a hard man of the Himalaya, but now just coasting to a standstill. When I first met him he’d just returned from climbing Everest. I was nineteen. He was the first person I’d ever met who’d climbed it, and I shook his hand as though he were an astronaut. His handshake was steel, his body hard, and he had a wicked grin on his face. Back then.

Now his handshake was soft – like his body. His hair, once military smart, was unkempt, his clothes crumpled and baggy. There were stains on his shirt – dribbles of baby food. He was a mess. A shadow. Now I was the strong one. I told him about the Reticent and felt I was sticking a knife in him.

‘I’m thinking of trying Latok with a couple of mates,’ he told me. Latok being one of the world’s plum hard summits, a route the very best had been trying to climb for decades.

I scanned his bloated face, his belly obvious even beneath the baggy shirt he wore to obscure it, presumably from himself as much as others. His kids were at school, but you could still feel the weight of them on him. He was deluding himself. He was over the hill at thirty-five. His feet wouldn’t leave the ground again.

‘Good luck with that,’ I said.

‘What about you?’ he asked.

‘Something dead hard,’ I replied.

‘I might give climbing up,’ I said to Mandy as we sat beside the river. Ella paddled in the water, the sun casting shadows around us.

‘That would be nice,’ she replied flatly. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I don’t think I can keep it up,’ I said.

‘Me neither.’

I stood in the living room with Ewen, my baby son, born only twelve hours before, in my arms. Mandy slept upstairs.

I stood there and watched planes smashing into buildings and becoming flames, on that perfect September day. First one tower fell, then the other, live, on television. It was the first day in years when I didn’t think once about climbing.

‘I think I’m off,’ I said to Dick, the best boss I’d ever had. My days of shop work were at an end. ‘I’m going to make a go of it as a full-time climbing dude.’

‘Can you afford to leave?’ he asked, obviously concerned, more as a friend than a boss.

‘With my talks, my magazine column and other stuff I can leave and just focus on climbing. Also, I think maybe I’m past my sell-by date working in a climbing shop,’ I said. I loved working in Outside, loved working for Dick Turnbull and being with all my mates, cycling out to the Peak District every day. I never once didn’t look forward to work. It was well paid, for a job in a shop, offered loads of holidays, paid and unpaid, and made my passion my job. Dick and his shop were cornerstones in the life I’d built for myself.

‘I love working here, but I know that I have to leave,’ I said.

‘Why?’ asked Dick.

‘For one, I hate it when people say: “Are you still here?” Also, I’m too comfortable. I could stay here forever. You don’t really get anywhere in life when you’re happy.’

‘It’s up to you,’ said Dick.

‘Oh, and I’ve also just been approached by Snow and Rock about being sponsored by them,’ I said, Snow and Rock being one of the bigger outdoor chains in Britain. ‘It would look a bit odd to be sponsored by one shop, while working in another.’

‘So this is your last day then?’ said Dick.

‘I guess so.’

As the music played, the coffin containing Mandy’s grandfather slipped away through the curtains. She sat beside me in the front pew. I was holding her hand. She was crying. We hadn’t held hands for a long time. These days it was one of Ella’s hands in mine, and the other in Mandy’s. It was Ella that joined us as a family.

We walked outside and stood amongst the graves as she tried to stop crying.

‘What were you thinking when you saw his coffin?’ she asked.

‘That maybe the next time I went to a funeral it would be mine.’

‘Me too.’

Dawn found us beneath Fallout Corner, a classic hard mixed route about three pitches long on a frosted-up crag in the Cairngorms. I was due to give a talk in Inverness that night to raise funds for the Torridon Mountain Rescue Team, and had asked Ian Parnell and my dad to come along.

I rarely saw my dad. My parents had split up when I was six, and I moved from Wales to Hull with my mum and brother and sister. My dad had his own life, and I suppose dads were different in the 1970s. Even so, he had left a huge hole that was never filled, only papered over. I never consciously hated him for it, and as I got older I began to understand better how a dad could not see his kids. I could see how a child can still love an absent parent; the love is deep within you. But now, with kids of my own, I found it harder to understand. Although, instead of pity for my younger self, I felt sorry for my father: it was Dad who really paid the price.

I pulled out my harness from my rucksack and noticed that it held the same pieces of gear, including a skyhook and several ‘birdbeaks,’ from the day I topped out on the Reticent Wall six months before.

Six months without any climbing at all.

‘How hard’s this route, young’un?’ asked Dad.

‘It’s a grade six I think.’

I set off up the first pitch, Ian taking pictures while Dad belayed, looking a little as if he hadn’t belayed anyone for a long time, standing in a mess of ropes in borrowed crampons.

‘Do you want me to stop while you sort that out?’ I called down to Dad, worried as I watched him pulling at a tangled puzzle of knots with no obvious sign he was actually belaying me.

‘Oh, it’s OK. Keep going, I’ll sort it,’ he said, head turned down in concentration.

I carried on, scraping and scratching above him, twisting the picks of my axes into cracks until they stuck, then pulling up and repeating, my calves feeling heavy and weak.

‘You do know I haven’t been winter climbing for ten years,’ he shouted up to me.

‘I feel the same,’ I shouted back.

On my travels I’d met a lot of people who had met my dad Pete while he’d been in the Royal Air Force, either when he was a physical training instructor, or later as one of the longest-serving team leaders in the RAF Mountain Rescue. Each told stories about a man who always made an impression, generally a good one, even if he came across as a bit mad. Most tales would start: ‘One day, me and your dad…’ and go on to describe some major epic. One bloke I met told me about paddling across the Irish Sea with Dad in a double kayak, and how my father had turned up in just his running gear – without waterproofs or drysuit – and worse still with nothing to eat.

‘I’ll just have some of yours,’ he’d said.

It also transpired, rather like with our climb in Scotland, that he hadn’t paddled a kayak for a decade. They made it, but had to crawl on their hands and knees from their kayaks to the ferry booking office to find out when the next boat back to Holyhead was.

It took me many years to put my finger on just what it was about my dad – and in turn me – that created so many stories of epics and near-death incidents. In the end, I put it down to blind optimism. That’s also why he was the perfect man to run a rescue team. He always believed victims could be saved.

Safe at the belay, Dad followed, climbing up below me, a grin of concentration across his face. To pull himself up, he hooked his axes into the gear, which, although not strictly ethical, was certainly effective. I thought it impressive that not having climbed for ten years, he was still happy to follow his son up a hard route. Dad had taught me to climb in the first place, leading me up the sweeping Idwal Slabs in Snowdonia. This was so long ago I couldn’t remember it clearly. It had been a long time since we’d climbed together.

I suddenly realised he was my oldest climbing partner.

‘That wasn’t too bad,’ he said, as I clipped him to the belay. The two of us looked up at the pitch above – a hanging slab, thin and scary-looking.

‘Glad it’s my eldest leading though,’ he said, smiling.

Unlike me, my dad kept most of his stories to himself. I thought this was down to some kind of Yorkshire hard-man kind of thing, not being brash or showing off.

‘Actually, I just can’t remember anything,’ he admitted.

Yet every now and again, a little story would pop out, often to my amazement. One such tale emerged when I was telling him about a piece I’d read by a guy who’d survived the Fastnet race tragedy in 1979, when fifteen sailors died in a storm. It was the largest maritime rescue operation since the war.

‘Oh, I was caught up in that storm,’ said my dad, as though he was talking about a brief shower. ‘It was pretty bad. I was on a small sailing boat on a training trip from a joint services centre. We were in the same area and ran for safety to the Isle of Wight. But because so many others had done the same thing we ended up mooring beyond the harbour walls. During the night, the boat was moving up and down like crazy. Stupidly I went out to check an unusual noise on my own. It was pitch black and stuff was flying everywhere, and I ended up falling overboard. Worse thing was I fell between two boats, and I still have no idea how I didn’t get squashed. Somehow I managed to pull myself back on board.’

I could picture him perfectly, staggering back down into the cabin, his mates jeering at him. ‘Trust Kirkpatrick to fall in.’

It occurred to me on hearing the Fastnet story that my dad had not only taught me to climb. He also taught me how to have epics.

The pitch was delicate, moving up a steep wall, crampons balanced on horizontal breaks as I fiddled gear into cracks that were coated in a thin layer of ice. It was very slow going, as each two-second move would take ten minutes of thought, preparation and general fannying around.

‘Have you seen the time?’ Ian shouted from below, his tone indicating that he had, and that he suspected there wasn’t enough left to finish. We had to be in Inverness by seven. I had a talk to do.

‘No,’ I shouted back, wanting to add how it was hard to look at your watch when you were clinging to the rock for your life. ‘But I think we’ve got time,’ I added with typical Kirkpatrick optimism.

‘I don’t think you have,’ he shouted back, his tone now authoritative, even dictatorial, like a teacher explaining something to a misbehaving pupil: ‘It’ll take an hour to get down, and an hour to drive to Inverness and it’s nearly four now.’

‘Oh,’ I said, looking down at the two of them between my legs.

My dad just kept smiling.

We scurried back to the car having left our ropes tied to some nuts at the high point, the plan being we would come back tomorrow and finish it. Ian hurried along, axes dangling haphazardly from his rucksack, his trousers patched with tape, his National Health Service glasses askew. It was hard to believe he was one of Britain’s greatest living alpinists – or soon would be. Like me, he had some optimism engine that powered him on, only his ran much hotter than mine. From the first day I met him I thought: ‘You’ll not be alive long.’

Thankfully, he’s proved me wrong so far.

We’d only climbed together a few times, and to begin with I didn’t like him, as he seemed posh, or at least posher than me, as most people are. I only found out later that he’d had elocution lessons and this was the reason for his good diction. He’d also been a bell-ringer, which I found endearing and funny, often telling people, ‘Ian’s a bell-ringer,’ and pointing out this wasn’t a euphemism for something else. One thing we shared in common was having both been a bit arty. Ian actually was an artist, and had gone to art school. Then both of us had swapped that passion for the love of climbing, making me wonder if climbing wasn’t just another creative pursuit.

The first time we climbed together was in Yosemite in 1998. He was a few years older than me, so seemed like an old man, but he proved his metal when we climbed a route called Lost in America, on which, as was my usual want, I almost died, pulling off a large rock and pitching into the night.

Ian had held my fall.

What I saw in Ian was what I saw in me, a kind of uncompromising and scary drive. Only mine was compromised. I was a husband and father, and he was not. In many ways Ian was who I could be. He was the man who stayed behind when I had to go home. He had no limits or limitations. Unencumbered by the baggage of love and fear, Ian’s rise would be meteoric. As for Ian’s view of me, all I know is that he’d described me as the most ambitious climber he’d met.

After Yosemite I viewed Ian, along also with Jules Cartwright, one of Ian’s partners, as being one of the few people daft enough to climb with me, and we’d done a few trips to France ice climbing. Things came to a head when we tried something hard, the Maria Callas Memorial route on the North Face of Les Droites. It was winter, and the route awaited a second ascent. The Maria Callas was state of the art and I was hungry to try the hardest route I could. Most good climbers know their place, and would not dream of trying such a route. Not me. I was an upstart – and so was Ian. In a way we were both outsiders, neither having done a traditional apprenticeship, and that’s why we got on. When we climbed with proper climbers our ignorance shone through.

What compounded our choice of route that winter were the terrible conditions in the mountains, with tons of snow and high winds bringing a death a day. The low point for us was the death of Jamie Fisher, and the near death of Jamie Andrew, who would have both hands and feet amputated after surviving a week near the summit of Les Droites. It made no difference what had happened; it simply had no effect on me. I didn’t know Jamie, and neither did the mountain. I felt indifferent, as we walked all the way up from the valley, since the cable car was shut down, ignoring the risk, just fixated on the summit.

We started in the middle of the night but progress was poor up the bottom of the face. I thought Ian was climbing too slowly, coughing and wheezing as he went. He was too weak, and because of him I knew we were going to fail.

I hated him. I hated him for being posh. I hated him for having so much time, and how for him failure meant nothing. He had another month here in the Alps after I went home. For me, this was it. I hated him for being weak because I knew how weak I was, and hoped he could carry me up the face with him.

I caught him up as he stopped, and asked him blankly what the problem was.

‘I don’t feel well Andy,’ he said, coughing.

‘That’s fucking winter alpine climbing,’ I spat back, only to catch myself, realising where I was, and with whom: a dangerous face; a friend who expected nothing from me.

We went down but something was broken. I’d had high ambitions for our partnership, but after that it was dead, for the short term at least. Instead I just watched – green with envy – as he went on to put up the kinds of routes I coveted, in Alaska, Greenland and the Himalaya. It was what I deserved.

Rushing down from Fallout Corner, we made it back to the car as it grew dark and since we barely had time to make the gig, we just piled in and drove off without changing from our climbing gear. Then I realised I’d neglected to ask exactly where the talk was being held, only that it was somewhere in Inverness. We made it to the talk, and only half an hour late, and I did the first part dressed in all my climbing gear, changing into my jeans in the toilet for the second half. I think some people thought my costume was part of the show, and seeing as all the proceeds went to the mountain rescue team, no one was too unhappy.

That night we drove back towards the Cairngorms, eating fish and chips as I drove, my dad in the front, Ian in the back listening on his iPod to what sounded like someone doing DIY, his music tastes always eclectic.

‘Do you think it went well tonight?’ Dad asked.

‘Yes, I thought it was okay. Did you?’ I suddenly wondered if my performance had been below par.

‘I always think it’s good. You’re my son,’ he replied, an uncomfortable silence building until I laughed his affection off.

‘What is the most you would like to make from doing talks,’ he asked, knowing that I already charged around three hundred quid.

‘A thousand pounds?’ I replied. ‘Yes, a grand, that would be great, although I’d probably be happy to talk for free. Getting paid is just a bonus.’

‘Well, if you’re ever going to get that much money, then you have to make sure you’re worth a thousand pounds.’

I guessed it was his way of telling me to pull my finger out, dress properly – not in climbing gear – and find out where the venue was. It was a suggestion I wouldn’t forget. You can seem shambolic and crap, and it’s funny, but if you can’t change, or at least conceal it, then no one would ever take you seriously. Being taken seriously was what I wanted more than anything. I knew he was right, but I felt a little defensive, thinking that he was just as much of a fuck-up as me.

Someone my dad worked with once told me a story about his team getting called out for a crashed jet. Its fuselage lay intact in a field and the team set up a cordon so no one could approach the wreckage until crash investigators could be flown up there. It was a big deal. The investigators had a huge responsibility to check for anything that might explain why the aircraft had come down. When they turned up, my dad, as team leader, escorted them to the site and then moved aside to let them begin their investigation. After a while there seemed to be a bit of a commotion. Dad was called over, the experts standing and rubbing their chins while perusing a metal cylinder about four inches high and three inches wide, balanced on top of a piece of the fuselage. They were clueless as to what it was, and wondering if it had any bearing on the crash.

‘Do you know what this is flight sergeant?’ they asked my dad.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s the lid off my flask.’

That night, not wanting to sleep in the drizzle in a car park, we dossed with a friend of Dad’s from his RAF days, a guy called Tom Jones, who although not being the Tom Jones, was just about as loud and full of life – and Welsh. We sat in his kitchen drinking tea and talking, more stories coming out about my dad, including him getting hit on the head by a rock in the Dolomites, and how, on seeing the state of him, with blood pouring from the wound, his partner had fainted on the belay, and my dad had to look after him instead.

Tom’s son had been in a bad car crash and suffered a brain injury, leaving him partly paralysed down one side of his body. As a former physical training instructor like my dad, Tom had decided he had to keep his son active, and so bought a tandem. He fixed his son’s paralysed foot to the pedal, and the pair went off on epic bike journeys. ‘The one thing you have to do, when you stop, is put your foot down on the right side, otherwise he’ll just face plant,’ said Tom, laughing.

Sitting there in Tom’s warm kitchen, listening to the stories, I felt like my father’s son, especially as most of their tales turned on how my dad would make some fuck-up, then save the day by his willingness to not accept the fact that he was screwed. Next morning we headed back up to Fallout Corner but a warm front had passed through during the night, and our climb had defrosted, the ropes hanging lank and damp. The only thing to do was climb up them, get the gear, and abseil off. We drove south that night – the chances for winter climbing being zero – dropping Dad off in the Lakes, where he worked.

The roads were quiet as we continued on to Sheffield, and we talked nonstop, more to stay awake than for conversation.

‘What you got planned next year?’ I asked Ian, although not wanting to suffer the envy of knowing.

‘I’m off to Alaska with Kenton Cool in the spring, and the Himalaya in the autumn. What about you?’

‘I’ve started to think about going to Chamonix and trying to solo the Lafaille route on the Dru,’ I said sheepishly, ready to rein back on my boast with a dismissive remark.

Ian nodded his head as if to prove he understood the gravity of what I had planned, while pulling the type of face that signified I had an evens chance of dying in the undertaking – to attempt a second ascent solo of the hardest wall in Europe. But I knew I had climbed harder routes in Yosemite, and that technically I could match Lafaille, the best all-round climber in the world, on that route at least. What I didn’t know was if I had the balls to hang out on a frozen face for a week or two.

‘I’m not sure about soloing though, it’s just an idea,’ I added. ‘It would be much better to do it as a pair.’

‘I’d be up for it,’ said Ian.

And that was it.

ONE

Dru

February 2002

‘Deux… tickets… to… la… summit. Un way,’ Ian said slowly to the woman behind the thick glass. She looked confused. ‘Un way,’ he repeated, pointing up with his forefinger, towards some imagined summit in the sky. ‘One… way… We go to climb the Dru.’

The woman sighed at his poor grasp of French and shook her head slowly, as only a French ticket woman who has spent a lifetime listening to her language being abused can. She waited for him to have another go, but thankfully he said no more. They both looked at each other. Ian pointed up again, which was really of no help, as most people at the bottom of a cable car in a ski resort want to go up not down.

Losing patience, as the queue built up behind him, she gave an unhappy slow shake of her head, pressed some unseen button, and two small tickets appeared. Ian grabbed them: ‘Mercy!’

‘That’s the hardest part over with,’ I said as he walked back, tickets in hand, and we hoisted our huge haul-bags onto our backs, each weighing almost as much as we did, making us stand out among the bustle of early morning skiers.

‘I hope not,’ said Ian.

The Lafaille route was perhaps the biggest available objective in Europe at the time, said to be the hardest big route on its hardest big wall – the Petit Dru’s West Face. There were plenty of other hard climbs around, to repeat or put up, but the great thing about the Lafaille for us was none could be done so relatively cheaply, with Chamonix being only a day’s drive from home an important consideration.

Jean-Christophe Lafaille, France’s premier mountaineer, had finished the route the previous winter, pieced together both with partners and alone up the blankest section of the wall, a grey skyscraper towering over the Chamonix valley. He started off on the bottom section climbing with others, before continuing solo as the project dragged on, finally completing it over nine days. The final push had been made under the gaze of the media, with helicopters flying overhead. Lafaille was a poster-boy for French alpinism, a mystical figure – a survivor – and the French press followed his career closely. The route ended with a dash to the summit as a storm closed in, an added urgency being the fact his wife was expecting a baby. Once down he declared his new creation to be perhaps the hardest big-wall route in Europe, daft really, seeing as he hadn’t done all the others. But since this was Lafaille speaking, most people took his words to mean that even if it weren’t the hardest, it would be very hard indeed.

Most hard routes in the Alps wait many years, sometimes decades for a second ascent, the mystique of the hard men, or man, who climbed them too much for most to overcome. Most climbers view those at the forefront of alpinism as being superhuman, and it takes a long time to build up the group confidence necessary to attempt to follow in their footsteps. It’s often young tigers, looking to build a reputation, that repeat the biggest climbs, rather than established heroes, who fear failure on their rivals’ routes more than death itself.

Yet once a climb is repeated, there is invariably a rush to make further ascents. The mystique is gone. Overnight, a climb can go from something that is only whispered about, a project that everyone imagines doing sometime, to being a trade route, guided, soloed and diminished in the minds of all, with that god of a climber suffering the same fate.

We too were young tigers of a sort, eager to make a mark, and overcoming such a route was more than just an act of climbing. Like most such efforts it was a statement. Chamonix contained the highest proportion of top alpinists on the planet and for me and Ian – two nobodies – to get the second ascent would be quite something.

Shuffling through the echoing concrete corridor in a long queue of skiers towards the cable car, my shoulders ached under the huge load of gear. My haul-bag was bigger than a dustbin. I made a mental checklist of everything we needed to climb tomorrow: bivouac kit, climbing gear, ten days’ food, fuel and portaledge. The one thing we didn’t have was a first-aid kit. Such things always seemed a little defeatist.

I knew getting to the bottom of the face would be a nightmare with this kind of load; a real exercise in toil, made worse by the fact this was our second trip up, and we knew just what we were in for. Nevertheless the weight on my back felt great. It meant I was doing something positive towards something amazing.

A few days before, we’d taken the same route with equally heavy loads: up the cable car to the top of the Grands Montets, a peak that stands beside the Dru down which people ski to the valley. From there it was a short traverse to a band of cliffs, which we descended to the Nant Blanc Glacier. Crossing that put us at the bottom of the Dru. Only in the Alps could you walk downhill to your mountaineering objective.

On that first trip it hadn’t seemed quite as easy as it sounds. We found ourselves trawling through deep snow and around big crevasses before we could dump our loads in a rock cave close to the bottom of the face. Each step was made worse from knowing we’d have to make it again in a few days’ time. It had been dark and growing cold as we stashed our gear, and I’d been glad not to be setting off just yet. Going down for a few more days would help top up my psyche for the toughest challenge of my life. In winter, everything takes twice as long and requires ten times more energy, and so, on that first trip, it had been two in the morning by the time we made it back to Chamonix. Just getting our gear to the foot of the mountain had felt like a route. It was clear why it had taken Lafaille so long to complete his climb.

The cable car door slid open and people began to file in, the guard giving us puzzled looks, having seen us heading up with the same sized load only two days before. I assumed such people were used to seeing climbers doing the oddest things in the Alps, a playground for the unhinged.

The door shut and we began to ascend, the tiny cabin filled with excited voices, everyone looking forward to the coming day’s skiing, the quality of the powder, which lines were ‘in’, who was doing what. Ian and I kept quiet, staring out of the scratched plastic window and bracing ourselves for the hard work to come.

For some reason I had no sense of fear about the climb, which was unusual. I felt instead a calm confidence that I had the skills, the gear, and the partner to do it. Like climbing El Capitan this route would be brought down by a thousand little cuts, not a single blow. Some would have said the route was out of our league. If you wrote up a list of heavy hitters who should have been trying to make this second ascent – professional climbers and guides living in the mountain’s shadow – we’d be several hundred entries down. Yet here we were.

Success sometimes comes down to just giving things a try.

I thought back to Ian’s assertion that I was the most ambitious climber he’d met, and that he must have been right, and that maybe instead of feeling embarrassed about it, I should embrace it and accept it was true.

The cable car reached the halfway station and we piled out, half the skiers shuffling out to the slopes, the other half queuing again to go up to the top, where only the best skiers dared to venture. A gentle wind permeated the building as we took our place within a maze of steel barriers, like cattle in a slaughterhouse, waiting for our turn to go. It was nothing more than a breeze, yet it cut into us, everyone zipping up their jackets and pulling down their hats. I wondered how much colder it would be ‘up there,’ how this would seem tropical on the wall.

Ian took shots with his heavy Nikon, looking like someone’s dad with his glasses falling down his nose, not your typical super-alpinist, except maybe a British one. I doubt there had ever been a less cool climbing team. Neither of us looked ripped or skinny. We’re both short-sighted and everything we wore, no matter how expensive, became lumpy and dishevelled. Ian looked like a tramp. I looked like a garbage man.

On our first trip up, Ian had me model some clothes for a catalogue he was illustrating, trying to kill two birds with one stone. The problem was I was too fat, and nothing fitted, requiring him to find angles which hid zippers that couldn’t be shut and seams that were fit to burst. I was always envious of climbers who looked like climbers, who looked the part, irrespective of whether they could climb or not. I’d probably be just as happy looking like a good climber than actually being one. Maybe what I really wanted was a life that gave you that kind of body, a life of just climbing, to become a thoroughbred of rock and ice, rather than a donkey, useful enough, but stubborn and plodding.

The queue jostled forward and we entered the upper cable car. Inside it was quieter now, many of the skiers psyching themselves up for some hard runs, the odd one or two with axes strapped to their packs, heading down to the Argentière glacier to climb, to tick off a route that day and be back home for supper. There is nothing more satisfying than climbing a big route and reaching the pub that evening. Especially in winter when no one wants to spend the night out, because of the obvious misery, and the need to carry lots of extra kit. Seeing them standing there, comparing their tiny daypacks with our gigantic haul-bags, I thought about the reality of spending so long on a winter wall, hauling up everything we needed to survive, sleeping in our folding portaledge with nothing more substantial between us and the Arctic cold than a sheet of nylon.

Most climbs are completed at speed to avoid exposure to the elements, but on a big wall it generally comes down to grinding it out, literally inch by inch, one hard pitch potentially taking as long as a thousand metres on a mixed face. I’d never spent that long in such harsh conditions. How would I cope? Could my fingers survive climbing such a technical route in the cold? Would we be able to remain strong partners? All I knew was that if others had done so, then so could I.

The cable car lifted out of the mid station, out over the glistening pistes dotted with skiers, and up towards the summit of the Grands Montets, the top station looking like a Bond villain’s lair. I thought back to a story an engineer told us in the station one winter, about being trapped there for a week in a huge storm, and how the roof blew off. They hid deep inside the building’s bunker-like foundations, only daring to venture into the upper levels to piss out of the door. I guessed such storms were rare, but wondered how our tiny folding portaledge would cope, its narrow alloy tubing and nylon our only hiding place on the wall.

The Alps opened up before me as we rose. Watching familiar landmarks float by beneath, nose pressed against the plexiglass window, I thought about all those fruitless trips taken in this very same aluminium cabin, a space soaked in the ambition of so many, my own often ending in nothing more glorious than a slow stagger back down to the valley. But then there were times when my ambition had been realised. It seemed so long ago though – a lifetime. What was it that kept me coming back, and trying harder and harder climbs? Why not just come and enjoy it, climb those day routes, learn to ski and make climbing fun?

The cabin slid between the steel arms of the top station, the doors slid open for the last time, the passengers clattering out, their clunky ski boots dully bashing their way down more concrete corridors and out into the dazzling light. Standing on the viewing platform, they gasped as they took in the view, breathing air so cold it stung.

The Dru came into focus, a tower of rock, sharp and forbidding, its North Face almost black, the only detail picked out by a spider’s web of ice. The West Face lay on the other side, a grey canvas of walls and slabs, scarred by rock falls, many so big they created mini-earthquakes that made needles jitter on distant seismographs. When you told people you were going to climb the Dru they invariably asked if it was still standing.

The Dru had captivated me from the very start of my climbing career, and only a decade ago I’d stood on a frozen street in Chamonix, a proto-alpinist with zero experience, and gazed up at it, that grey tower block, in the cold light of dawn, wondering what it would take to climb such a thing in winter. Now I knew, having climbed it once before via the Dru Couloir. The route took two tough days, and the answer to my question was simple: it took everything. Imagining myself back then, standing in the street without a clue that one day I’d be back to try the Dru’s hardest route in winter, seemed outlandish. It had taken more than just a leap of faith, but a leap of reason too. I marvelled at what life could bring you. That alone seemed reason enough to try what seemed impossible. Climbing is not about winning, or reaching the summit. If it were, no one would climb. It’s about having the self-belief to try.

The skiers descended awkwardly down a flight of metal stairs and began clipping on skis for the descent, while we walked up to the high viewing platform to take a few last pictures, and put off the grim walk for a few more minutes. We only had to reach the bottom of the Dru that day. There was no rush.

Walking up the stairs I could feel my heart beating faster from the altitude, leaving me breathless at the top. The Argentière glacier spread out below us. I looked over at the North Face of Les Droites, tracing the kilometre-high face, which I’d soloed a few years before, and its twelve hundred metre Northeast Spur, my second winter alpine route. Each was like a test, the solo teaching me the value of self-belief – you won’t fall – the Spur illustrating the value of simply being stubborn and not giving in – you WILL make it – climbing the route over four days with a broken stove, and consequently almost no food or water. I imagined all the climbs that led up to this one, climbs in the Alps, Patagonia and Yosemite, each teaching me another lesson. The Lafaille felt like the final test, but experience showed it would slip in along with all the rest, just another step towards something I couldn’t see yet, just over the horizon.

‘Right. Let’s go,’ said Ian, and down he went, boots clanking on the metalwork, while I followed. We picked up our haul-bags and our old tracks leading to the Dru.

The route down involved dragging ourselves through deep powder to the edge of some high cliffs, then climbing and abseiling down these to a jumbled glacier. With a normal rucksack it would have been a simple walk, but with our monstrous bags the whole thing was an act of endurance, each little way-mark – the first abseil, reaching the glacier, the toe of the Nant Blanc Face – an objective in itself. The trip was too exhausting to comprehend as a whole, but each chunk put us closer to our goal.

Crevasses on the glacier dwarfed us as we took turns ploughing our route towards the Dru, following our old tracks mostly. Mindful of the extra weight in our haul-bags, we shuffled along unsure if we were on solid ground or some slender snow bridge. The bags, which we’d haul up behind us on the wall as our life-support system, were made from slick vinyl fabric, designed to slide up walls without catching. But if you fell on snow you’d take off like a rocket, strapped to your very own bobsled.