Book chapter
Mountaineering personality and risk
Mountaineering tourism, pp.224-242
Routledge, 1st edition
2015
Metrics
67 Record Views
Abstract
The granite friction on the sloping belly of the Paron Towers was good, deceptively good. With my brother Grigota, we were climbing 2,000 m above the serpentine road that wound its way into the Paron Valley of the Cordillera Blanca,
in Peru. With a dominant ‘El Niño’ weather pattern it had been a difficult climbing season; it was hot and humid with mosquitoes buzzing above 5,000 m, and
heavy rainstorms by mid-afternoon. Grigota belayed from a scoop on the
enormous slab face. Over the years constant rain had polished the granite wall
featureless. The only protection we could find, in a shallow crack by the belay
station was useless, but the climbing was straightforward. Grigota kept paying
the rope out . . . and the friction holding me to the wall was good . . . so I kept
moving. As I climbed there were no cracks or fissures on the rock, so no protection, but the friction was, oh . . . so good. With feet spaced well apart, maximizing the contact of the rubber soles with the granite wall and flat hands pushing
up the slope, I kept moving. Twenty metres out of the belay station, there was
still no protection. The gentle angle had become deceptively steep. ‘Any pro,
bro?’ Hmm, nothing, so I stopped moving to have a good look around. When I
stopped, the balance no longer felt so good.
Above me I spotted a thin hairline crack, a subtle wrinkle on the youthful
rock. To reach that crack I would have to step high and rock over a mantle. I
hesitated for a moment; this was an irreversible move. The simplicity of stepping
over something that cannot be reversed embodies the spirit of adventure and
exploration. By making that single move we would cross a threshold where
success on the pitch was measured against certain death. The finer the balance
between difficulty and ability, the better the adventure and the sweeter the taste
of the summit. I took the step and crossed the threshold where great adventure
and tragedy lies in wait! I reached up to the crack; it was the thinnest of lines and
choked up with dirt, but there was nothing else. With hands and feet spread apart
and pushing into the wall, the balance was still OK. But I needed to free my
hands to clean the crack. I pushed down hard on to the balls of my feet, rested
my elbows on the rock and with one free hand started cleaning the crack – it
wasn’t much of a crack. From my harness I unclipped a piton and scraped away,
revealing a margin so thin it was almost useless. The tension through my flexed
ankles caused increasing calf strain. I leaned into the slab and shifted the weight
on to my elbows. I shook each foot, one at a time, trying to ease the strain, but
the pain increased. I cleaned some more. I repeated the motion through my feet,
but each time the recovery was less effective. Despite the urgent cleaning it
looked like the crack would be too thin to take the piton. I looked down past my
brother, past the 100 m of climbing we had just completed, and straight down the
600 m ravine we had climbed the day before. The Paron River water foamed into
a cavalcade of white caps, I was stuck and this was serious!
The aching and cramping in my legs disproportionally intensified with the
realization of the situation. Trying to steady myself I again leaned on to the rock,
rested my left elbow and with my left hand held the thin piton to the crack. I
hammered gently and the piton danced refusing to bite. Mosquitoes swarmed my
arms and face. The sweat of fear and exhaustion burned my eyes and dripped
steadily on to the rock. I persevered with gentle hammer blows until finally the
piton held. With each blow it crept in deeper. Then in desperation I gave a solid
blow. The piton jumped out of the crack, bounced and disappeared down the
precipice.
The fear of falling intensified with waves of calf cramp and panic. The belay
had no chance of holding a fall and so I yelled to Grigota to take himself off the
rope. He could still down climb to safety. Shaking his head he emphatically
refused. I insisted, but he would have none of it – ‘work it out, I am with you
bro . . .’ My legs shook uncontrollably. I was fighting for both our lives. I
unclipped the last (knife-blade) piton from my harness, placed it in the crack and
again gingerly hammered. It held. The thin blade slid in a couple of centimetres.
As it crept in some more the hammering sounds became reassuringly duller. The
pain through my legs was excruciating. I hit harder and then again the piton
jumped out, somersaulting and bouncing, heading straight for Grigota. As the
piton bounced away the passage of time froze – we were doomed! The only
piton that had a chance of biting into the crack was falling away. Everything
stopped, the image in my mind frozen in a still-life frame. It was trance-like. The
spell was finally broken when Grigota reached out and caught the flying piton!
‘This time, use a sling and secure the piton to the rope, bro.’ The third attempt
succeeded and the piton slid far enough into the crack to clip the rope and rest.
As I hung the pent-up pressure just drained away allowing me to recover. I
could then climb on and eventually reach a safe balcony of rock. Not realizing
that behind us a thick chariot of clouds was moving up the valley we committed
further up the face, swapping leads. Undeterred Grigota ran out the next pitch
over poorly protected ground. Absorbed, we just kept moving, driven for the
summit. Then in an instant the valley fell asleep, the mosquitoes disappeared and
the sky blackened. The flaming filaments of lightning heralded the first roar of
thunder. There were no abseil points or escape routes, and so as the first drops of
rain built to streams of water we began down-climbing. When there are no
choices, decisions are quite simple – we descended. The tropical rain didn’t
dampen the feverish pitch. The water gushed down and we pushed hard into the
rock. The friction was gone and blindly we groped. The water seemed possessed,
committed to washing us away. It ran up my arms, into my face, punched my
chest and bounced off my shoes. I remembered what a Spanish philosopher once
said summarizing the human condition, ‘The best a man can do is hope’, and
against all odds that is all we did – hoped. And that was enough to keep us
moving. Lower down Grigota managed to secure himself sufficiently to protect
me over the difficult, final descent to the balcony. Then in a surreal display of
controlled desperation, he free-climbed to my side. We fixed the rope and
retreated back to high camp.
Details
- Title
- Mountaineering personality and risk
- Creators
- Eric Brymer (Author)Erik Monasterio (Author)
- Contributors
- Ghazali Musa (Editor of compilation) - University of MalayaJames Higham (Editor of compilation)Anna Thompson-Carr (Editor of compilation)
- Publication Details
- Mountaineering tourism, pp.224-242
- Publisher
- Routledge; London
- Edition
- 1st edition
- Identifiers
- 991012965998702368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Health; Human Sciences
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Book chapter