As anyone who has climbed with me for long enough will know, I hate abseiling. Like many mountaineers, I can usually trust a rope and placements to arrest a lob. Sometimes I even think that a knackered partner could hold a fall whilst moving together on fifty degree ice. But a statically loaded rope on a bomber placement? No way. Remember the gibbering wreck trying to retrieve gear from Bond Street? Or getting to the bottom of Baggy? Or abseiling into Avernus?
Imagine this same climber on top of a pile of steep rock 500m high, in swirling cloud, faced with an abseil descent via an unknown, invisible ridge. Add to this the jumpiness of two lonely mountaineers who have just lobbed off into exposure three times worse than that of the Tower Gap, and now you can picture the situation in which I found myself last summer.
Mash and I had spent the previous day spying out the mountain's weaknesses; what looked like the easiest line of ascent was a diagonal chimney on the north east face. The route had everything: steepish snow at first, turning to ice, then a few mixed pitches, followed by 300m of mostly excellent granite.
Having put off the decision of which way to descend (first by pretending to enjoy the virgin summit despite not being able to see much more than 30m, and then by electing to wait till the weather cleared), it was getting late and we were growing colder, so we finally started abseiling eastwards on easy angled broken ground. The loose choss near the top of our ascent route, apart from resulting in a leader fall, was instrumental in our (what proved to be) questionable decision to descend the mountain on its east side.
Progress was quick and incident free for several rope lengths, using the rope almost as much for balance as for taking our weight. Later, we began to stumble more, as we had to rely on our head torches to see what we were standing on. After some time I was slumped at a belay contemplating my warm sleeping bag when Mash's voice drifted up to me - "Come and have a look what you think".
We had arrived at a steep face, unable to see the end of our ropes, or the bottom of the steep section. Mash suggested that I investigate. "Cheers mate!" It wasn't that bad, being unable to see what I was doing helped. Before I knew it, I had descended 15m, and my feet were barely touching the face. With an immense struggle I shone my head torch down the rock and, to my horror, glimpsed the knots in the end of the rope hanging free, a good 10m from the wall.
I tried to picture where we were on the mountain. My mind, although numbed from fourteen hours exertion, calculated that the line we had taken was not far enough east, and that we had subsequently ended up on the left of the NE face. Undeterred (well I was desperate), I figured that if I could find an anchor, it would be possible to make an abseil down to easier ground. I communicated these thoughts to a sceptical partner, and proceeded to search for a belay on the rock. Encouraged by a flake low down to the left, I slowly let rope through the figure-of-eight and, once level with the feature I initiated a pendulum making occasional contact with the rock. Soon I was spinning around, swinging wildly from side to side, sparks resulting from the totally uncontrolled contact of my crampons with the rock.
This diabolical display continued in vain for several minutes, till I slumped in my harness sobbing with frustration. At least nobody saw it, or if Mash did, he's been polite enough not to mention it. Once I regained control of myself, I became scared - the rope seemed very thin, and what if it had been hit by one of the falling rocks earlier on? Was the edge that I had abseiled over sharp? There was nothing for it, but retreat back up the mountain as quickly as possible. In those 25 meters of prusiking, I put up the worst performance (till last summer) of my climbing career. Things started badly when I put the prusik loop for my leg above the one for my harness, and the difficulty of getting frozen prusik loops to bite, ensured that I was left hanging for .html hour. In the end a combination of three loops some very dodgy (not to mention strenuous) clipping and unclipping got me back to a bemused climbing partner who was so cold that his teeth were chattering.
The inevitable discussion of whether to accept benightment ensued. Mash, being a hard Yorkshireman, was keen to stay put, but, having never had the pleasure of an enforced bivvy, I didn't relish trying my first at 5400 m! Besides, the poor visibility wasn't only because it was dark, it was also due to clouds and snow.
Mash, now fully in charge, set off on a leftwards traverse along a snowy ledge, leaving me to fight sleep at the belay. Despite tired limbs, and less than no enthusiasm, we traversed two full rope lengths through deep powder snow without loosing more than 10m. At last the clouds became more broken, and we saw the shadow of the ridge we had been aiming for. Unfortunately, however, our way further left was barred by a large rock step, and, reluctantly, Mash decided to 'have a look' over the wall towards to glacier.
I sat on a boulder, getting colder and closer to sleep for more than half an hour, dreaming of smoky pubs and beer. Sometimes I went to peer over the edge, but although I could see occasional flashes of light amongst the snowflakes, I had no way of communicating with the guy on the end of the rope. I could only sit and wait until the rope became slack, barely interested in what was happening lower down.
As it happened, we had an amazing turn of luck. Mash had set off, down an almost featureless vertical wall, with very little hope of finding a belay point. He saw one about 30m down, way over to his right. He managed to swing his way across to it, and stretching to his absolute limit he tried to tie off. At this point he slipped, inadvertently letting out some more rope, and was forced to continue down, passing no more belay possibilities. As he reached the knots in the end of the rope, he spotted a narrow ledge just close enough, with a flake at one end. When I followed down, Mash had already taken the knots out of the ropes, and as I eased my weight off the ropes, Mash had to hold onto an end so that the ropes didn't disappear out of our reach up the rock face - we only reached the ledge because of rope stretch!
As I went to tie onto the flake, the knot tying the two ropes together came down to us, but, a fraction of a second later, the ropes jammed. Two dehydrated minds couldn't figure out what had happened, but with plenty of abseiling still left in the mountain, Mash decided to prusik up the ropes to retrieve them! Luckily I was just awake enough to be alarmed, and Mash sheepishly saw sense before he got off the ground. We cut the rope, and three nerve wracking 25m abseils later we reached the bergschrund and stumbled down the glacier, completely unsure which direction it was best to take in order to avoid the larger crevasses. Eventually, some exhausting detours, and lots of trips and slips, brought us below cloud level, and within sight of the tent. Twenty one hours after setting off, we crawled into out sleeping bags with what were, undoubtedly, our best mountain memories.
Back in civilisation and the tedium of everyday life, I look back on that climb with clearer memories than any other. It seems strange that despite all our best efforts to avoid epics, when they actually happen they form the most treasured memories, and the ones we draw on for inspiration - everybody remembers the rock climb were their fingers were uncluring at the top with a 10m runout below, but few remember the climb that was made in good style without fuss. One day soon I will go back to enjoy the exposure, hardships and pure excitement of the unknown which accompany exploration in remote areas. Anyone want to join me?