Falling Down - Trip report (Long)
Struan Gray
This has grown. It started as a simple description of an accident,
but I ended up justifying and describing much more than I intended when I
flippantly offered to tell the tale. This story is true. Hit 'n' now if
bulk offends.
__________________________________________________________
Falling Down
by Struan Gray
My request for net.beers provoked an overwhelming response. So, my
ego suitably inflated, I hereby puncture it in front of you all with a
graphic description of how not to climb Ben Nevis. Unfortunately, two of
the beers were watery 'murrican concoctions (you know who you are) and
the third was offered ex-works in New Zealand (beyond my swimming
ability), so an unsated author hereby offers the fizzy keg brew of his
tale, with the Reinheitsgebot version to follow only when physical liquid
is tendered.
We were climbing on the Ben at Easter sometime in the mid '80s. As
with all my trips to Scotland the weather was lousy for climbing, with
low cloud and intermittent drizzle and snowfall: nothing too violent but
not nice for tackling the bigger routes. It was now our second week and
so far all we'd done was messed about on various icefalls below the
Castle Buttress, picked our way up the side of a badly-formed Curtain,
and eaten too many Haggis Suppers at the Fort Ben Takeaway.
Nevis aficionados will appreciate the tedium of the trip when they
combine that last fact with the knowledge that we were camping near the
CIC hut - four hours walk from said Haggis Suppers. Our spirits
therefore rose mightily when the forecast improved, the cloud lifted, and
for the first time we were able to see the summit, 2000ft above our
tents. Hurriedly, we sorted gear and set off.
We wanted to climb Vanishing Gully, a short ice and snow route which
winds for three or four pitches up the side of the Tower Ridge. Our plan
was to then continue up the Ridge to the summit plateau before bumsliding
back down No. 4 Gully to the tents. Paul, my partner, did not have a lot
of ice experience but raw ability and memories of summer rock had helped
him to get confidence on the steep ice messings abouts of the bad-weather
days and he was well up to seconding the climb.
So it proved. There is a wonderful cave in the centre of all the
difficulties on this route where one can belay almost without anchors.
Inspired by the safety of the good belay and ample pro, I led and Paul
followed, both of us enjoying the mixture of problem solving and brute
force needed to climb the slightly brittle ice. After about two and a
half hours we reached the main ridge, some third of the way along its
length.
The weather was still fine, although the cloud had descended a
little, and we decided to press on up the ridge to the top. I'd never
done Tower Ridge and Paul was a Nevis novice so it seemed a great way of
ticking off a classic and finishing the day. Unfortunately, soon
afterwards we came across a rope of two acquaintances who were making
very heavy going of the route and who attached themselves to our rope
once I was safely out of earshot and the more malleable Paul left alone
at a belay with them.
Rick and Andy were up and coming stars of our University rock-jock
scene. Since they, unlike us, were there on an Official Club Meet they
got to stay in the Hut (Boo! Hiss! Sissies!) and we hadn't seen much of
them in the preceding days. Despite a vast experience of dangling off
single digits many ropelengths from the ground they were both completely
intimidated by the unstable footing provided by the snow-covered rock and
further unnerved by the total lack of finesse permitted by gloved and
mittened hands.
Thus they had pitched up the easy snow slope that divides the Douglas
Boulder from the start of Tower Ridge proper, they had then slowly worked
their way up the lower third of the ridge, and were now very reluctant to
lead the Small Tower - the first major steepening on the route. Instead
of abbing off and coming back another day they decided that the logical
thing to do was to allow me to lead the Tower and for them to follow with
the security of a top rope.
Once I realised what was happening some discussion ensued. Some
vigorous and pointed discussion ensued. However, bribed by the promise
of bacon sandwiches and a good Malt I reluctantly donned the teacher's
mortarboard.
The next few pitches were slow but fun: Rick and Andy may not have
been natural ice climbers but they were good company. However, as we
climbed the light was dimming noticeably and the wind, which had been
listless all day, started to quicken. Ahead of us lay the climb up the
Tower and then the wild and exposed crossing of Tower Gap, the
psychological crux of the climb even in good weather, which would be very
precarious to negotiate with novices in a crosswind. I decided that
enough was enough and we would bail out along the Eastern Traverse, a
sort of ramp which peels off leftwards from the main ridge, dividing
Tower Scoop buttress vertically from the main face, and eventually
petering out in the slope of the hanging corrie which separates Tower and
Observatory Ridges.
Between taking the decision and getting everybody together at the
base of the Great Tower the weather worsened dramatically. Suddenly what
had seemed like a simple shepherding operation had turned into a serious
self rescue attempt. Although we did not know it we were entering one of
the worst storms to hit the Highlands since records began. We later
found out that the wind gauge in Fort William (2000ft below us at sea
level) had touched 150 mph and averaged 110 mph during the time that we
were extracting ourselves. There was great concern in the national press
because a party of twenty or so was lost on the Cairngorm plateau for two
days afterwards (subsequently they were found to have spent the time
singing songs and eating Kendal Mint Cake in a snow hole). Nobody
forecast this storm more than a few hours before it hit us, and needless
to say (and quite rightly), none of the rescue organisations were going
anywhere while it lasted.
It is still hard for even me to appreciate how fast that storm blew
up. I had led to the base of the Great Tower in mild winds and
relatively clear skies. I had placed a secure and spectacular belay at
the start of the traverse and enjoyed the good views of the surrounding
cliffs as I brought Andy up the pitch. By the time the other two had
joined us forty minutes or so later the wind was literally screaming
across the exposed belay site, driving eye-stinging snow before it and
grabbing handfuls of our ropes and clothing with worryingly strong and
persistent tugs.
I explained to everybody that we were going to abandon the climb and
started out across the slabby ramps of the traverse. In summer this is a
delightful, almost hands-free section of the climb which wends its way
round the steepest part of the Tower before heading up to the crest of
the Ridge again. Even in winter, when care has to be taken not to
collapse the supporting snow and the summer rock steps are often slippery
and verglassed, the traverse is a lot of fun. Now it was pain
personified.
My feet often disappeared completely from view as a continuous
hissing carpet of spindrift swept off the top of the Tower and onto, over
and into me. My headtorch was encrusted with snow in seconds and
excavating protection placements was a labour of Sisyphus: the cracks
filling up as fast as they were dug out. Routefinding was limited to
trying to guess which hold in my four feet circle of visibility to use
next. The only thing in my favour was that I was traversing off the
leeward side of the ridge, and the wind was much less strong than it had
been on the crest.
After 50 metres of half-blind crablike wallowings I ran out of rope
and excavated a belay of sorts at the head of a large detached flake.
One by one the others joined me, climbing like automata and, most
worryingly, simply doing what I told them and no more when it came to
rearranging the ropes. Paul was a little more attentive than the other
two, and I made him belay me as I took off again on the next pitch,
insisting that he should come across last and check the other two for
errors before letting them climb.
The second pitch brought me off the technical climbing and onto
easier 40-50° snow slopes. Glad to be rid of the scrape of crampon on
rock I set up a secure four-Friend belay in a conveniently split boulder
and collected my charges. This belay would have made a good place to
sit out the storm. The slopes below us looked avalanche prone, and had
Rick and Andy been carrying bivvi gear I would have stopped the show
there and then. Of course they weren't, and Paul and I were not carrying
enough to clothe them as well as ourselves, so if we were to avoid
watching our companions slowly freeze to death we would have to continue
the descent.
I made everyone put on all the extra clothing they had with them and
fed them with lukewarm tea, chunks of Lindt and big dollops of insincere
cheeriness. I explained that we were off the main ridge and had but a
simple descending traverse above the Tower Scoop buttress to negotiate
before we could turn downhill and descend a wide gully to the flatter
part of the corrie. The others had to take this on trust since nothing
could be seen outside a circle of a few yards radius. The only problems
were the weather, which would make movement and communication very
difficult, and the danger of an avalanche or cornice collapse.
I decided to try and hop from buttress to buttress across the
traverse, and to try to find rock belays to secure our progress. We had
three ropes for four people so I simply tied a rope between each of us,
making the worlds longest glacier travel setup. Then I was off,
postholing diagonally down the snow slope towards where I thought the
next buttress was. Of course, I ran out of rope long before reaching
rock and so Paul started following me, trailing the next rope as we had
agreed. When that rope ran out I placed our deadman and belayed Paul to
join me while Andy followed him, backup belayed on the third rope by
Rick.
While waiting at the deadman I caught a couple of glimpses of the
next buttress through the murk and so when Paul arrived was able to swap
rope ends and send him off in the right direction to prospect for a
proper belay. We eventually ended up strung across the slope in a giant
knight's move, each a ropelength apart. Paul was excavating an anchor at
the next buttress, I was freezing my nuts off at a deadman belay in the
middle of nowhere, Andy, at the same height as Paul and I, was waiting
patiently in a hole in the snow, and Rick was still attached to the four
friends belay directly above Andy. That's when the avalanche hit Paul.
The first I knew was that the rope to Paul started to swing downhill.
Because of the curve of the snow bowl the line first went slack and then
suddenly tightened. I was pulled forwards with a jerk and was some way
down the slope before I realised that the popping sound had been the
deadman pulling out. I accelerated, falling headfirst and face
downwards, my mouth and eyes filling with snow. I turned round and sat
up, trying to slow the slide and reaching for my tumbling axes at the
ends of their tethers. It was hopeless: I couldn't get a grip on the
axes and my pathetic attempts to slow myself with my hands and feet just
threw up a spray of surface snow. Sitting up and fully conscious of my
situation I raced down the slope in a bizarre and terrifyingly fast
bumslide, certain that I was about to fall down Tower Scoop and die. The
only thing going through my very clear and lucid mind was a tremendous
feeling of regret that no one would understand in the slightest why I had
died.
It seems strange now, but I had completely forgotten the main belay.
I was so used to thinking in terms of climbing as a pair that it was only
after the sudden breath-robbing stop and a few seconds of dangling on a
very tight rope that I remembered Andy, Rick and the four Friends.
Groggily I assessed my situation. Nothing seemed broken, nothing hurt
too badly, my rucksack was on my back and both my axes (and the deadman)
were clanking beneath my ankles. I was alive and, incredibly, ready to
climb.
Somewhere above me Andy was shouting. All he knew was that he'd been
rudely pulled from his snowpit and was now trapped at the junction of two
very tight ropes. Rick had felt the rope tightening and had used the
last fifteen feet to provide a dynamic belay before being held by the
array of Friends. Both of them, understandably, were somewhat concerned
to be holding a very strong downpull on what was supposed to be a
traverse.
I answered the shouts and told them to shut up while I found out what
had happened to Paul. If I had fallen one ropelength he had fallen two,
and although we had technically pendulumed rather than fallen, the shape
of the corrie meant that we had in fact had plenty of time to fall down
the slope picking up speed before being pulled across by the belay rope.
I could see that I was hanging a few feet from the top of the Scoop
Buttress, which meant that Paul would have fallen down the buttress
itself. At the time I had no idea how high the Scoop was, and so did not
know if Paul would have hit the bottom or be dangling in the void. I
shouted, terrified that we would have to rig a pulley to lift Paul's
unconscious body up the cliff.
Paul's voice answered me out of the gloom. He was badly shaken, but
unhurt, and had all his gear with him. Better yet he could see the broad
snow slopes of the bottom of the buttress and there was easy climbing to
get down to it. After a shouted game of Chinese whispers up and down the
ropes we agreed that he would untie, downclimb to the base of the
buttress and wait for us in the lee of the ridge where there was little
chance of further avalanche.
It was strange to feel the rope go slack and to haul in the end where
Paul had been, but I was so relieved that everyone was alive, conscious
and able to climb that I just coiled the rope, stuffed it in my sack and
concentrated on the 300ft thigh-numbing slog back up the snow slope to
Rick without dwelling on what might have been.
We were now in exactly the situation as before, except that I had one
less second to worry about and we knew rather than merely suspected that
the slopes we had to cross were avalanche-prone. We had no choice but to
try the traverse again, and rather than expose several climbers
simultaneously to the avalanche risk I made the crossing to the next
buttress in one long, lonely push, using our three ropes tied together
end to end.
The worst part of the traverse was waiting in the middle of the slope
while Rick changed the belay past the knots joining the ropes. This
seemed to take an age, and I had plenty of time to reflect on the fact
that if another avalanche hit not only would I repeat Paul's slide, but
would then have to climb back up *again* to rescue these two dorks I was
lumbered with. By the time I was excavating a belay at the end of my
450ft leash I was actually envying Paul, safe at the bottom of the cliff.
Worse, he had all the lead gear, and I had to use bad pro instead of
good because the relevant piece was dangling from his harness instead of
mine.
The traverse round the Scoop buttress and down the gully took three
nerve-wracking hours. The wind now was wailing like a banshee through
the pillars above us, and although we were out of its full force and it
had stopped snowing, great eddies and spindrift-laden gusts worried us
from all sides. The noise was tremendous; a mixture of roars,
high-pitched flutters and sudden, terrifying crashes. Acutely aware that
the gully side of the corrie was better known for its avalanches than the
slopes we had already been unceremoniously tumbled off, I treated Andy
and Rick as mobile sacks of coal, sending them scooting downwards from
the last belay under the walls of Observatory Buttress and, like a
flustered mother hen, following after them as soon as the triple rope
went tight.
As soon as we had collected at the base of Tower Scoop we started
shouting and blowing our whistles to attract Paul's attention. My
spirits sank when the answering call came not from some cosy howff under
the main ridge, but from halfway up the Scoop buttress. This was turning
into Deliverance on Ice. Paul had been wrong in thinking he could see
the bottom of the route: he had in fact untied and downclimbed to the
first belay ledge. Realising his mistake, he had attached himself
securely to the rock, climbed into his bivvi sack and waited for us to
arrive and rescue him.
I was beat. I was exhausted and scared. I had no ice gear with
which to lead the pitch. I had no reliable second. I suggested that
Paul should downclimb. The route is an easy grade III ice scramble and
should have been well within Paul's ability. When he fell I felt sick,
far far worse than I had done when facing my own death. Cold, stiff and
shaken by the first fall, Paul downclimbed twenty feet or so before a
crampon skittered off the hard ice and he fell down the rest of the
route, landing in spinning disarray in a large snow bank at its base.
Incredibly he kept coming, and the three of us actually caught him,
stopping his tumbling fall by forming a human wall for him to pile into.
Things were so bad that none of us stopped to express surprise that
he should have survived a second serious fall without injury. One
crampon had come loose and he was, unsurprisingly, a little
disorientated; other than that he was untouched. Back in mother hen mode
I shut my imagination off and chivvied everyone into coiling two of the
ropes and rigging the third as if for glacier travel.
I was still worried about avalanche, since we would be descending a
large bowl-like corrie which could easily slip itself, even if the slopes
above held. I gave the other three precise directions as to the route
back to the hut, tied them close together at the front end of the rope
and installed myself as a sort of sea anchor at the back. I watched them
disappear into the darkness and, for the umpteenth time that night was
left alone with a tugging rope. After a few hundred yards of stumbling
about it became obvious that this method was not going to work. The
three in front kept heading off in the wrong direction and it was
impossible for me to keep the tension in the rope even, because it was
blown back and forth by the wind.
I reeled in the others and tied myself into the rope close enough to
see their headtorches. Sod the avalanches, I wanted to get out of there.
Close enough to shout above the wind, I could direct their stumblings in
the right direction and we made faster progress down and off the slope.
We had one last ordeal to face. As we came out from behind the ridge
the full force of the wind hit us. It was immense. We could hear the
gusts coming up the valley, and had warning enough to lie full length on
the ground, both axes buried up to their heads, and still the wind would
lift and tumble us across the slabby snow. I've always attributed a
haughty indifference to mountains and their weather, but this was
personal; that wind was trying to kill us where the mountain had failed.
It took us four miserable hours to scrabble, stumble and crawl the last
mile to the hut.
Paul and I slept on the floor of the hut in our bivvi gear. The wind
blew all the next day, and we salvaged some food from our buried campsite
before scurrying back to the hut to take up places vacated by Official
Meeters. Only on the next day did we fully excavate our shattered tents
and that afternoon I wandered back up our trail to look at our ascent
route in daylight. The entire valley was filled with avalanche detritus.
All the cornices round the head of the corrie had collapsed and several
major slab avalanches had detached and slid down the slopes we had
descended. There was no sign that we had ever been there.
################
Postscript.
Looking back at that night I do not think I would do anything
different were it all to happen again. The others agree. For a long
while I felt guilty about making imperfect decisions that put others in
danger, particularly telling Paul to downclimb the Scoop. Now I feel the
only 'better' decision would have been to abseil off as soon as Paul and
I found the other pair. At the time that would have seemed unnecessarily
cautious. Without the other two, Paul and I would have finished Tower
Ridge and had a night to remember in our tents. Without us, the other
two would probably have died. Knowing that, I'm sure I would let then
join our rope again.
There are a lot of 'I's in this story. At the time the thing I most
resented was that all the responsibility ended up on my shoulders; the
others just stopped thinking and expected me to provide answers. I had
alpine experience and had lived through some brutal weather ski-touring
in a Norwegian February, but it was only my third ice climbing trip and I
was learning just as much as they were. I had never climbed Tower Ridge
before, and was guessing about our escape route, based on sketchy
information in the guidebook and a memory of the pictures in 'Cold
Climbs'. I still hate ice-climbing with people I cannot trust to look
after themselves. I value those I can.
Lessons learnt? First that there is not enough time during a fall to
do anything other than realise that you are falling. Such moments are
shown in films as languid slow-motion shots, where the hero has time to
think, react and watch his life flash before him. It ain't so. Several
times since I have caught myself thinking 'Well if anything happens I'll
be able to...' and have rearranged things so that the only thing I have
to do is hold on tight.
Second, all those things I had lugged around and never used, I used.
Spare clothing, food and drink all made a small but vital difference; in
Paul's case the bivvi gear too. When people laugh at me for always
carrying a bivvi bag in winter, no matter how trivial the route, I remind
myself of my reasons and shrug it off. I'm just grateful the first aid
kit was superfluous.
Had we died we would have been an unremarkable accident, caused by
remarkable weather. It happened and we survived. It affects the way I
stack and calculate the odds, but it hasn't stopped me climbing. The
hardest thing is giving someone who loves you a true description and then
trying to explain why you are going to do it all over again.
Struan
Dave Smith
<strua...@sljus.lu.se> wrote:
>
> This has grown. It started as a simple description of an accident,
> but I ended up justifying and describing much more than I intended when I
> flippantly offered to tell the tale. This story is true. Hit 'n' now if
> bulk offends.
You are a good story teller. I liked it. Thanks.
> We were climbing on the Ben at Easter sometime in the mid '80s. As
> with all my trips to Scotland the weather was lousy for climbing, with
> low cloud and intermittent drizzle and snowfall: nothing too violent but
> not nice for tackling the bigger routes.
Same for me. I've spent the last 7 New Years and a couple of Easters in a
20 mile radius of Fort William and not been able to climb too much. Got to
wander around the hills in some seriously abysmal weather though....
It was now our second week and
> so far all we'd done was messed about on various icefalls below the
> Castle Buttress, picked our way up the side of a badly-formed Curtain,
> and eaten too many Haggis Suppers at the Fort Ben Takeaway.
>
> Nevis aficionados will appreciate the tedium of the trip when they
> combine that last fact with the knowledge that we were camping near the
> CIC hut - four hours walk from said Haggis Suppers.
Urgh....
Dave
Hal Lillywhite
> My request for net.beers provoked an overwhelming response. So, my
>ego suitably inflated, I hereby puncture it in front of you all with a
>graphic description of how not to climb Ben Nevis...
[Description deleted of how Struan helped a couple of less
experienced climbers, likely saving their lives.]
Well, Struan, I don't know how your part in this incident would be
ego deflating. It appears to me that you did a very good job in a
situation not of your making. You were faced with several decisions
which could have reasonably gone either way. Whatever would have
happened had you decided otherwise, 4 people lived through a nasty
situation and for that you are to be congradulated.
I suppose the ego deflation could be in understanding just how
helpless we can be in the face of nature's power. You got a lesson
in how helpless we can be in spite of all our nice equipment and
training.
While we could probably quibble endlessly about various options
during this incident I think the major lesson has more to do with
attitudes than actual decisions. Studies of survivors in such
incidents show a wide disparity among people. Some can survive
incredible hardship while others fold up and die with relatively
little reason. The difference seems to be attitude. Assuming a bit
of knowledge (so you don't do something really stupid) the person
with the attitude of, "I will do what ever is required but I'm not
giving up" is likely to live. The person who passively waits for
the breaks won't live long. The person who thinks there is no hope
and gives up dies even sooner. I suspect that Struan is in the
first of these three groups and that is why he and his three
companions are alive today.
Nick Parker
>>..ego suitably inflated, I hereby puncture it in front of you all with a
>>graphic description of how not to climb Ben Nevis...
>ha...@macs.ico.tek.com (Hal Lillywhite) writes:
>..the person with the attitude of, "I will do what ever is required but
>I'm not giving up" is likely to live....I suspect...that is why
>he and his three companions are alive today.
Or could it be he knew that if he died he could no longer partake of
the fine ales from that part of the world! :-)
Seriously now....I think Struan should publish. He is an excellent
story teller, and his writing style is better than much of the
climbing literature out there. Based on what I've seen lately, I'd
certainly buy it!
--
Nick Parker - nspa...@ingr.com - Intergraph, Huntsville, AL
Statements/opinions are my own, not necessarily Intergraph's.
Bart van Deenen
writes:
>Seriously now....I think Struan should publish. He is an excellent
>story teller, and his writing style is better than much of the
>climbing literature out there. Based on what I've seen lately, I'd
>certainly buy it!
#####################################################################
# Bart van Deenen # #
# van der Waals Lab # * * Ad Astra #
# University of Amsterdam # * * #
# Micro-g dept. # * #
# vde...@phys.uva.nl # * #
# +31-20-5256395 # * #
# # #
#####################################################################
Struan Gray
>Well, Struan, I don't know how your part in this incident would be
>ego deflating.
It's a mixture of things. I've collected quite a crop of criticisms
when telling this story in the past so in a sense I was trying to preemt
the obvious ones. Climbers usually focus on the what-ifs, telling me how
we should 'obviously' have done things differently. Non-climbers confuse
minimising risk with eliminating it and say it simply shouldn't have
happened. Some have accused me of bragging.
The reactions of rec.climbers have been thoughtful and gratifying.
Not a jerking knee amongst you. Thanks.
>I suppose the ego deflation could be in understanding just how
>helpless we can be in the face of nature's power. You got a lesson
>in how helpless we can be in spite of all our nice equipment and
>training.
And that's how I now feel about the whole episode. A small risk is
still a risk and circumstances can conspire to put you in situations
you'd rather avoid.
One more lesson learnt: all those minor habits and safety checks
that novices find so irksome and pointless are there for a reason. A lot
of what we did that night we did by instinct and habit. Had we not all
built up safe rope and gear handling skills beforehand we could easily
have made fatal mistakes.
Struan
(Tom: if you're reading this I cannot reply to your email because your
disk quota is exceeded.)
Struan Gray
> Nick Parker writes:
>>Seriously now....I think Struan should publish.
Thanks to you both (Nick's post never made it here, but I assume this
is the important bit). I already have published: I posted to
rec.climbing. If someone wants to shower me with used fivers for the
privilege of putting my stories on paper I (probably) won't object, but
that's not why I wrote them.
Paper publishing, and particularly commercial paper publishing, is a
very different game from internet posting. I'm hopeless at writing to
deadlines (that faint rocking motion you feel is the synchronised nodding
agreement of my various co-authors), and I like to tailor what I write to
an intended audience rather than just anybody who buys the mag. Both of
these things make it hard for me to contemplate 'normal' publication.
I do reserve copyright, and have a bevvy of lawyer friends who would
love to be the ones to establish the relevant precedent were some editor
to grab a post and publish it, but essentially I write and post because I
feel like it. I have no desire to find myself having to write because
somebody else wants me to.
Struan
Struan Gray
> rec.climbing is now waiting for the next one.
Well I'm waiting for the Spods Illustrated Harness Issue myself.
> Should we set you a deadline ?
Is that a Knot?
Actually the muse has run off with her aerobics instructor, leaving
me to console myself with mountains of dill-cooked crayfish and the
Penguin Guide to Belorussian Folksongs. Expect a gloomy saga of hard
shells and dissonance in forest glades to follow real soon now.
Struan