Going mountaineering by mistake or what type of fun even is this ????

Exiting number 5 gully, Ben Nevis

Being “left for dead” but not by Kevin

I booked a winter mountaineering course with Rise and Summit. It was in Scotland: Ben Nevis and Glencoe, a place that I had never been to, is very dark in the winter and has much bigger mountains than England and Wales.

I told my climbing friends and Rob and Brian decided to come too.

I was planning to get fit but instead I got Covid.

I thought I would be doing a bit of delicate technical ice climbing and making use of my pristine crampons and shiny super light ice axe

I’d only worn my crampons once before and I didn’t really think it through about how one gets to that little technical piece of ice. In my dreams it was a gentle frozen stream and I’m not sure how I got there. I think Kevin magically transported me there. Apparently there is a difference between ice climbing and mountaineering and I’d booked on mountaineering.

On the first day Kevin, our delightfully direct Dutch instructor, asked us what we wanted from the course and I said “an adventure”. There was plenty of time to talk because the snow was a long way up so there was lots of walking and talking en route. We had fun playing in the snow making bollards to belay off, cutting steps and trying out different ways of using our crampons and ice axes. It was dark as we walked out but we had head torches, it wasn’t too arduous and it had been a really good day.

On day two we met Kevin quite early and he used a special key to unlock a road up to the approach to Ben Nevis which saved us a bit of a walk. I was very excited to go and see Ben Nevis in winter and the aim was to see if we could “operate as an efficient single unit” when climbing so that we could have our own almost independent adventure the following day. That’s what I thought was going to happen. On the walk in I told Kevin that I have asthma and the lungs of a poorly seven year old or maybe an 80 year old. Maybe I was getting my excuses ready because I’d been very worried that I would hold everyone up on the course and that I was being overly ambitious.

After about two and a half hours of fairly consistent but not difficult walking we came to the CIC hut which lies at the base of the route that Kevin had picked out for us. We could see Tower Ridge, which is a route that I want to climb in summer conditions and some snowy gullies. We were to go and practise our skills in number 5 gully. Getting there was a slog over snow that had avalanched. It had been turned into big balls of ice that were hard to walk over.

Once in the gully we geared up and did some climbing where we set up belays using the rocks at the sides of the gully. Kevin belayed us over a nice little pitch where we had a taste of grade 2/3 moves which I enjoyed. Once we’d got over the technical difficulties there was some discussion about whether to continue up or to go down. It was already early afternoon by this time. The upshot of this was that we decided to carry on up to the top. Having never been there before I had absolutely no idea of what that meant.

By this time the terrain was straightforward (not technical) and we didn’t need a rope. We just started to work our way up with crampons and one axe, in my case the cheapest one that I could find in Decathlon. After a while I decided to use two axes as the slope was well frozen, reasonably steep and falling off it looked as though it would probably end badly.

Carrying a rucksack and kicking in crampons and jamming in ice axes over and over again was totally and utterly exhausting and it took a huge amount of concentration to keep going and to keep attached to that compacted snow rather than falling down the mountain. Rob and Brian went ahead and after a while I couldn’t see them anymore. If I tried to look too far ahead my helmet would hit my backpack and stop me from raising my head any further. Kevin stayed near me and provided a calm presence without being intrusive. It must have felt like keeping a snail company to a man so fit and at home in the mountains but he never showed a trace of impatience. I know that he was talking to me to encourage me and keep me going and that he didn’t allow me to stop but sometimes I was so focussed on keeping going that I couldn’t make sense of the words. The only bit I really remember was when he said that I’d lost my sense of humour, which made me laugh and that it was only another 300 metres, which I couldn’t visualise. I also remember that he offered me a rope, which I declined and then I spent a while wondering how bad it would have to get before he stopped letting me make my own decisions and tied me onto a rope and dragged me up the gully.

That afternoon in the gully went on and on, my calves hurt, I was too hot, I couldn’t get enough breath, I was flailing with the axes and crampons but somehow I kept going, partly because I realised that there was no other choice. Eventually we could see the top and Kevin said that I could “make hero moves over the cornice”. In reality I barely got either my axes or crampons in properly because I was so tired and as soon as I reached the horizontal I used my knees, crawled off and collapsed with relief.

I was absolutely pushed to my limit physically and in a sense mentally. Getting down was arduous in a different way but at least my lungs weren’t protesting and I knew that eventually I’d get there. That was after attempting to descend by digging in my ice axe and sliding which seemed like a good idea but felt way too fast and uncontrolled. There was a lot of dark walking over bogs and falling in a stream but by then I could talk to my friends to distract me and keep me happy.

A beautiful moment was when I switched on my head torch and the snow was sparkling in the light. And it meant I could see how deep the footprints that I was trying to follow were.

Afterwards my body felt wrecked but my mind was spinning with all kinds of thoughts about how this day had evolved and what it meant.

I had without doubt had an adventure and we had talked about the types of fun, mainly 1 and 2. Type 1 is fun, when it’s happening it feels enjoyable. The early part of the day and the more technical bits I found fun.

I descended into type 2 (only fun in retrospect) somewhere in the gully and only the presence of Kevin and his knowledge and experience stopped it from going into type 3 (not fun ever, dangerous and scary etc) because I trusted him to know if I was over stretching myself and what to do if something went wrong.

Afterwards I felt amazed that I’d managed it at all and it’s made me consider trying things that I thought were physically beyond me like climbing some more mountains.

Thanks to Kevin for being a great teacher and companion and to Rob and Brian for their patience, friendship and photography.

A Bridge over Salty Water

First pitch of rainbow bridge copyright Tracey R

Looking back at the second pitch

Towards the end of the second pitch

When I traverse I sometimes sing a song to keep me brave and happy, it goes “we love traversing, traversing is fun” and must be sung until the end of the tricky bit. At the start of Rainbow bridge at Mount Sion East in Pembrokeshire I was so busy wondering whether I dared to start the route that I forgot to sing. With over 50 metres of traversing to do this route would need a few more verses. Plus I didn’t recognise it as normal traversing or climbing, it was more like a very exposed obstacle course. Or a bear hunt, going over it, under it, round it.

I didn’t choose this route because Range West wasn’t in my book so I didn’t know anything about it. Luckily my climbing partner Rob is a devotee of definitive guides and put it on his wish-list when it became apparent that the MOD would let us in to the area with a form and a promise that we’d watched a briefing about avoiding touching bits of bombs, bullets, shrapnel etc. Then we had to go and have our pictures taken at the military base (there were 2 tanks at the entrance) and get a pass for the day. Only 50 people are allowed in each day and it’s a big area so very quiet and the rock feels untouched. We had to climb over a gate to get in and I was excited to be surrounded by bits of army surplus but it wasn’t that noticeable. One of our climbing club friends seemed to know a lot about tanks and explained that these days the outer shells stay in the tank. The ancient shells can still blow you up so there were warnings from other climbers: “shell” which in my head was a seashell.

The definitive guide described this climb as “an outrageous expedition into E3 territory”. It was a compelling description, tempting, intriguing, a gauntlet. The approach was a little amble off the path (our friends carried on to climb sensible routes) and the weather was mild and the sea friendly. We geared up on a big ledge from which we couldn’t see the climb at all and consulted the guide. The climb was graded Severe 4a and involved 2 pitches. The second pitch mentioned stepping across a void or something terrifying. To decide who would climb which pitch we did rock, paper, scissors as it makes it nice and random if you are climbing a multi pitch route. I wrapped Rob’s stone in paper and won the first pitch. The big ledge leading to the climb lulled me into a false sense of security and it crossed my mind that I wouldn’t want it to be all walking along a ledge.

A peep round the corner killed my nascent complacency and made me wonder whether I could get around the first big obstacle, a block sticking out above an overhanging drop. The consequences of falling off anywhere on this traverse would be swinging into the air and having to prussik back up to the ledge. Weighing this up and arming myself with 2 prussiks had made me rather apprehensive. I scurried back around the corner for a rethink and to gather myself. My fear was added to by the fact that the belayer can’t see you at all while you’re on the pitch so once I’d gone round the corner I would be alone with the sea and the rock. Luckily we had taken walkie talkies which made me feel a lot better, though I’m sure if I’d fallen into space I would have screamed loudly enough to be heard all around Pembrokeshire. I described the daunting beginning to Rob and then resolved to give it a go and definitely not to fall off.

Back around the corner and I started to move. Sometimes over a block, sometimes around. The pitch wiggled in and out and presented plenty of challenges. I kept reminding myself to place gear for when Rob seconded the route because that was potentially going to be quite scary. The route curved in and I went high up to avoid a bold step out then back down and a crawl over a block and round a corner, the block was so deep that I couldn’t reach the back of it with my hands so belly flopped it whilst telling myself that I couldn’t possibly fall from that position even though my feet were waving in the air and my hands weren’t on positive holds.

After a while I could see the end of the pitch offering me hope of a reprieve and felt a little sense of relief which helped me to overcome another tricky step around an overhanging block. Setting up the belay was easy enough and the stance very exposed and dramatic with a great view out to sea and down into the waves. As I got there it started to rain, coming at me diagonally and soaking my back and legs as I looked back and radioed Rob to climb.

I got a good view of Rob negotiating the obstacles which was entertaining. He joined me quite quickly and then we had a breather while the rain stopped and we convinced ourselves that the rock was so positive that we could climb it wet. The sun and wind dried it really quickly and Rob set off. Soon I could barely see him which made it difficult to belay and he seemed to take a long time on one section. It was difficult to gauge the end of the climb because it didn’t seem as dramatic as the description so Rob took a stance in a convenient place after we reached the halfway mark on one of the ropes. He belayed me on pitch 2 and several times told me to take the gear out after the move but I found it difficult to shake the habit of taking the gear out as soon as I reached it which added to the excitement.

When I reached the point where Rob had stopped we both decided that we had used up all of our nervous energy for one day and that it must be the end of the climb. We had to climb up on ever decreasing rock and to slopey safety. I suspect this climb is like marmite, I loved it. It’s probably the least climbed route I’ve ever done and one of the most absorbing. It deserves its own playlist.

Biting off more than I could chew

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  The picture in this case does not tell the story, we need a thousand words

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  How did I get here?*

How did I manage to position myself at the top of the most photogenic pitch in the peak district and how did I get down again? With a little bit of help from my friends that’s how. And a little bit of over confidence from me maybe.

Saturday was a beautiful day at Bamford Edge and there was a lovely group of us there, I was climbing with Bruna and we were enjoying the company of our comrades Liam, James, Rich and Alan. There were plenty of friendly climbers to chat to and one of them I had noticed swinging one handed from the top of gargoyle flake as his friends took pictures. I wanted to look at the climb and when I went to see it he was at the bottom so I asked him what he thought, he said that the hardest part was at the start. I liked the look of it so I decided there was no harm in giving it a go, if it wasn’t for me I would realise soon enough. Bruna was planning my strategy by suggesting that I could “abort” if necessary. I realised later that she was comparing it to an astronaut’s mission.

Liam, a super duper new addition to our club, was at the base and he and Bruna were very encouraging and patient as I kept attempting to get off the ground and trying different angles, I managed to get onto the arete and make some progress by pushing up on a tenuously placed left foot which felt quite scary but I persevered, moved to the left and managed somehow to get onto the massive ledge in the picture. I was lying flat on my front when I landed and happy to be there but not able to stand up as there was a big overhang in the way. I pushed myself along and eventually stood up but felt very out of balance and unsure of how to get myself onto the huge flake that came next.

Much faffing with gear ensued but eventually I came up with a strategy and started to lay back the flake, this was a very satisfying part of the climb but then I decided to stop at the top of the flake and place gear which was tricky and got my leg shaking while I was hanging about there. Wires were getting stuck on carabiners, I had a mouth full of quickdraws and I dropped an offset near the very lovely belaying Bruna. Still I carried on and ended up at the last section of the climb, this was the bit that I had underestimated.

The climber who had caught my eye had made this bit look easy but we differed in some fundamental ways: he was younger, stronger, leaner, fitter and a much much better climber than me. Unfortunately I didn’t tell him during our chat or remember till I got to the top that the only climb that I’d ever led at this grade I’d fallen off the top of.

I tried to put in some gear to protect me from a possible fall but I wasn’t especially convinced by my own best efforts. I experimented with some upward movements and then couldn’t quite reach the next big holds that I needed (he was taller too and I see from the picture that I should have straightened my legs more 😦 ). Plus there is a big bit of overhanging slightly slopey rock before the famous gargoyles. At this point memories of falling off Cosmic Crack came to mind, my unconvincing placements were worrying me and I couldn’t move up or down. I saw my friends James and Rich and shouted for help and they came over. James is very tall and had some lockdown weight as ballast and he lay down and gave me a helping hand and a lot of reassuring presence, Rich was ready to hold onto James, not sure if he did.

Seconds later I was at the top of the climb and very relieved, bleeding and bruised. By the time Bruna arrived she was emotionally drained by my shenanigans and we decided to go to the pub. What a great team effort and many thanks to Liam for taking the photos and gently suggesting (afterwards) that if overhangs are involved then dropping a grade in my ambitions would be a good idea, which was pretty much the opposite of what I did!

*the soundtrack to this adventure is Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”

Fear, grief and winter wanderings

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Autumn and winter were all about keeping going despite the lock down, trying to be tough and outdoorsy and climb with cold hands and all the time trying to cope with the illness and loss of my dear friend Anne. I never really went anywhere with Anne outside of Manchester. We both went off and had our adventures, she loved holidays in the Canaries, Portugal, trips home to Dublin, she’d lived abroad for years, spoke lots of languages. She loved to walk everywhere but the furthest we went together was Marbury in Cheshire and even then we got lost because she kept pressing the wrong buttons on my phone and messing up the Satnav. Our friendship was all about the city : cinema, theatre, going for lunch or coffee and chatting endlessly. Cosy and funny and a wonderful person to come back to after an adventure.

Grief is not a good climbing partner for me it turns out. I couldn’t climb well when I was sad because the fear and distress of losing my friend and watching her suffer kept hitting me at unexpected moments and making me doubt the world, myself and what on earth I was doing. Not a helpful feeling halfway up a route. Everything felt risky and uncertain which took the joy out of seeking more risks through climbing. Being out and about in the hills felt comforting but pushing myself to climb harder didn’t at all, it felt crazy and scary. The fact that I’d fallen off Cosmic Crack at Stanage at the end of the summer probably didn’t help much either. I felt OK at the time and happy that my gear had held in my first big trad fall but later I wondered if I was getting the balance right or taking too many risks at a time when my mind didn’t feel quite right.

The answer came in scrambling, you can keep moving, keep warmish and have lots of fun without getting terrified. Small problems appear but they are isolated and often comical. It doesn’t matter if you use your knees and finding holds in streams and encountering snow, water and ice was really fun. I have pristine crampons which I’ve never used but have optimistically taken out for a ride in my backpack. Even if there hasn’t been ice that is climbable there have been lots of beautiful icicles to admire and frozen rocks to slide over. I’ve learnt to trust the soles on my boots and find out just what they can grip (most things but not a road completely covered in ice). Scrambles that I’ve done so far are Wilderness gully near Dovestones, Nether Red Brook and Crowden Clough on Kinder. Nether Red Brook has a fun exit at the top that can be squeezed through in an old fashioned style, Wilderness gully included a crawl under the rocks and then a back and foot exit where my legs were only just long enough to enable my escape.

Another answer was top roping difficult but enjoyable routes while the crag was quiet, one of my favourites was Three Pebble Slab at Froggatt. I loved working out how to climb it without having to fear for my life at the same time. I did try to learn to love seconding too, that’s a work in progress but there were times when it was quite fun, especially when there were no cracks involved like Green Streak at Stanage.

There has been great joy in escaping the city and the house and seeing friends and meeting other climbers out and about, all complicated by the pandemic but maybe that makes me appreciate it all the more when I do go out. Thanks to my friends and climbing companions and to Rob for the top two photos. The last word goes to the wonderful Anne. When I asked her if she wanted me to go round and help one Sunday she texted back: “it’s a beautiful day, get yourself up a mountain”.

The joy of crack gloves and summer dabblings

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At last a summer came where I didn’t break any bones, I had people to climb with and I felt a lot more like a person who knew what she was doing on the rocks. After my trad falling course I acquired some crack climbing gloves and they have made it so much easier for me to attempt jamming when jamming needs to be done. I don’t care if people think it’s cheating, old timers in hob nailed boots probably think you’re cheating, I love my gloves and I’m wearing them all the time. A fellow climber commented : “You’re not in Yosemite” but I can dream. I can hang off the delicate backs of my increasingly thin skinned old lady hands and feel no pain.

Not long ago I read an article in a climbing magazine by an man in his 50’s who was winding down his climbing and being realistic about climbing as an older person. As a late comer to climbing that’s not really an option for me, I don’t want to get worse at this I want to get better. So contrary to received pandemic wisdom I’ve been climbing a tiny bit harder, sometimes.

This grade pushing has been such a mixed bag, the climbs are so varied that it’s hard to know what you will find difficult or scary until the difficult move or scary moment arrives. In one afternoon at Froggatt I had to be rescued from the top of a Severe climb, Tinsel’s Tangle, after deciding that I really couldn’t and shouldn’t make the last move but then I did my second Hard Severe, Sunset Crack, without too much drama. Now that I feel more confident that my gear placements are generally good I find it much easier to focus on the climbing. I managed to do my first Very Severe route, apple arete at Gardoms, there was a part where I looked up, saw a lot of blank rock and couldn’t see what to do next, it felt intimidating but there is a great sense of joy to be had in overcoming the problems and working out how to progress on a new route. This route sounds very pretty and it was, no big muscles required, lots of tip-toey balancy stuff and a beautiful fluted hold right at the top. I was helped by the calm silence (mostly) of my climbing partner Rob who was very patient and didn’t even gasp when my foot slipped alarmingly mid move. Worrying about the nerves of your belayer can be very distracting.

I’ve also felt more able to go to a new place without my expert friends and to sort myself out which is a big step forward. I accidentally booked a holiday in the birthplace of Scottish sport climbing (Angus) with my mainly non climbing family. My youngest child, Cai, is luckily blessed with a good head for heights and enjoyed climbing a tiny sandstone sea cliff at Arbroath with me. It was very exciting as the tide was rising and the sea was rough. It took a while to work out how to get to this sector “popular with children and beginners” as it involved stepping around a corner on a ledge above a huge drop with no handholds. It took me a while to believe that it was wise to step around this exposed corner. The thought of small children skipping around it was terrifying. The rest of our family couldn’t watch and ran away at this point. Once on the route I tested Cai’s belaying skills and nerves by climbing terribly and falling off a few times and agreed with the guidebook that this place was “not for fragile egos”. He of course skipped up the route easily after being refreshed by a wave.

It’s been fun to go to some new places : Laddow, Dovestones Tor, Gimmer, Pule Hill, Goldsborough Carr, Arbroath, and a geological trifle that turned out to be far from delicious. I’m getting a sense of the kind of adventures that I want and am capable of with my rubbish lungs. I’ve decided that I’m a big fan of a crazy long walk in with a huge backpack followed by a bit of climbing, some eating, chatting, looking at the view, a big long walk back followed by the pub.

It’s surprising that there are no pictures here of the gloves, I feel as though I’ve had them forever, I wish that I had. Next time you will see the gloves in all their rubbery glory.

The Rise and Fall of the Accidental Comrades

This is a story about me going on a climbing course. I’ve been climbing enthusiastically for quite a few years now but I’ve never had one drop of paid for tuition so when a course on falling on trad popped up somewhere on social media I decided to give it a whirl. It looked suitable for me because I’d realised that I wasn’t able to push myself on trad at all because I was too scared of falling off and the fear was largely due to my lack of confidence in my gear placing. At times it almost felt as though I might be placing gear mainly to convince myself and other people that I was attempting to be safe but in my heart I didn’t trust it. The only times I was completely convinced was if I placed a thread (a sling around a rock for my non climbing friends) or a hex that felt utterly secure.

My fear was not of falling itself, I’m pretty happy falling off sport routes, top ropes and seconding trad but absolutely not when leading unless I’m still very close to the ground. It wasn’t an illogical fear, it was more of a sensible fear that I could do something about.

I booked this course with Rise and Summit not knowing what to expect but trusting that they would know how to help. The course information said that I should be able to second up to VS (very severe) and I could on a good day, depending on the route, if the wind was behind me and all. I thought that by the date of the course I’d have done loads of climbing and be super fit and confident. Then came the lockdown and I did precisely nothing to help maintain any kind of upper body strength other than kneading lots of dough.

The night before the big day I was worrying about being completely unable to climb, looking ridiculous in front of other people. I worried about that considerably more than the falling itself. I didn’t worry about the falling because I reasoned that the teacher would very much want us to survive the course. I decided that if the other participants were totally super duper they wouldn’t have signed up and that if it was too terrible I could just apologise for my poor climbing and go home. I’d helpfully emailed Kevin the teacher to offer my excuses which made me feel better and he reassured me that it would be fine and then told me that we would be going to Millstone. This was great because I’m scared of Millstone and this course is about being less scared, yippee.

We met at 9am on a pretty grim Friday, the eve of my 54th birthday (I was also worried about being old and a woman, only in relation to this course mind you, I’m happy with it in off the crag life). The first great thing was that the car park machine was broken, the second that I found Kevin easily and he was friendly and kind, the third that there was another woman on the course.

Our short walk in gave us time to chat and get to know each other a bit. We were a little group of four including Kevin and it was a nice little approach through puddles. We went to the far end of the quarry and Kevin asked us to place some gear at the bottom so that we could talk about it when he got back from rigging up ropes. We had to look at each others gear placement and rate it which was great except that I immediately convinced myself that the other two didn’t need the course half as much as I did. They seemed pretty good already. There was also some chat about fingerboards and pull up bars ( I kept quiet about my dough kneading and how good it is for the forearms) and Blanca, the other woman on the course, told me that she did body building and weight lifting and could lift twice her own body weight. Blanca was very petite and not the stereotypical weightlifter so I was seriously impressed by this. I think that I could lift another adult person or a few babies but not two of me, definitely not.

Once we’d looked at different placements it was time to try and climb. Kevin chose a climb that was “perfect for today” meaning I think that falling off it would be relatively painless. Climbing it though was another matter. Paul went up while Blanca belayed the lead rope and I belayed him on a top rope. He did some good moves and fell on the gear he placed by the devious method of me having to slacken off the top rope so that it was just there as back up.

Second up was Blanca and she was a lot more vocal than Paul, which was entertaining. She hesitated to let go at first but she did eventually and her giggles and whoops showed that she was enjoying herself in that slightly masochistic way that most sport seems to involve.

By the time it was my go the weather was pretty grim, raining and then a blast of hail as I got onto the rock. The good thing was that the pressure to climb the route and get to the top was completely absent so we could really focus on placing the gear and trusting it to hold us. If we struggled to make upward progress then the top rope could be tightened dramatically to help. I placed quite a few pieces of gear and definitely fell on my cam few times which was magically reassuring, a revelation that it would actually hold me when I fell. Kevin made sure that I’d had the chance to fall on different pieces of gear and that I felt happy to stop before lowering me to the ground. When I asked him to look at my placement he would always ask me what I thought of it first which was great, I need to be able to assess the safety myself and decide whether or not to trust it.

We had a shivery wet attempt at lunch while Kevin rigged up a second route. I was dreaming of log fires and hot chocolate and Blanca’s lips looked blue. Paul was being stoic but looked frozen. He and Kevin had both expressed joy in suffering earlier so I assumed he was having a good time.

We went to look at the second route, it was everything that I hate in climbing, just one big crack up the face of the rock. Kevin told us that it was dry inside the crack, the face of the rock was streaming with water. The crack looked like a good place for pixies to shelter. I went first this time to get it over with which was a bad idea as it was so wet. Then again I wouldn’t have been able to climb it dry either. Bobbling around near this crack and trying to jam my cold soggy hands inside it was a great opportunity for me to remember why I avoid such climbs. But the challenge is to do the thing you hate isn’t it? I read this climbing book once: 9 of 10 climbers make the same mistakes by Dave MacLoed, he told me to practise the things that I tend to avoid. Well that’s exactly what this was. The good news was that I got to place some big cams in that crack and was delighted to fall off it. Falling off meant less pain than jamming my appendages into it.

Thankfully neither of the other two made this look easy either which made me feel so much better about my feeble rope dangling.

Once we were back on the horizontal the sun briefly tempted us to think of leading another route, this would have been the normal end to the day but the rain and hail came back to send us home again.

In the car park Kevin gave us all individual feedback, straightforward and not technical in my case which was definitely what I needed and more or less what I knew myself. Then we all drove off in our socially distanced little boxes hopefully feeling happier and eager to put what we’d learnt into practice soon.

Thanks very much to Kevin Roet for the pictures above and for a great course and thanks to Blanca and Paul for being kind and fun comrades for the day.

Love to Manchester Eye Hospital

The other day I read that a famous surgeon has asked some famous writers to tell their stories of the NHS. He didn’t ask me so I thought I’d put my eye surgery story here instead. I love being able to see as well as I do and I feel very lucky to live near such a great hospital. Here it is, don’t read it if you have retinal detachment! 

I have been waiting all morning on the ward at the eye hospital. I am wearing a gown over my normal clothes and I have a big arrow drawn on my forehead pointing down to my right eye. I don’t think I need this as I’m going to be awake during the operation. None of the other patients has been drawn on.

A doctor summons me to a side room and tells me that they will probably be ready for me by 2.30. She explains what they are going to do: drain my eyeball, repair my retina with a laser and then fill my eye with gas to hold the retina in place while my eye recovers. She says that it won’t be the most pleasant experience that I’ve ever had but that it probably won’t be the worst either. I’m not really reassured by this (how does she know what I’ve experienced?) but I know that it has to be done so I go back to my chair and wait. I try not to think about the impending operation.

An extremely old woman is in the chair next to me. She’s very thin and fragile looking. She’s wearing a beautiful 1950’s floral skirt and a mustard cable knit cardigan. She looks very stylish. Her daughter, a middle aged woman who is not nearly as well dressed as her mother, is with her. They barely speak. I sense that they are both so nervous that they have been rendered dumb. The old lady is removed by the nurse and walks back about half an hour later looking absolutely fine. I assume she’s had a cataract removed.

Eventually they call me and take me into the theatre. I look at all the big machines and they show me a table that has a hollow at one end for me to put my head in and tell me to lie down there. Under the machine. I get very scared and start crying, I had assumed that they would sedate me but apparently not. The nurse says that I seem worried, obviously I’m worried, I’m about to have my eye cut open.

I feel better for admitting that I’m nervous so I lie on the table and the doctor starts to explain the procedure to me. They cover me completely with a blue cloth with a gap for my right eye and tell me not to move. A nurse is going to hold my hand for the duration of the operation and I can squeeze her hand if I need to. This hand holding turns out to be absolutely fantastic and makes everything bearable.

The doctor clamps my eyelids open somehow, this hurts quite a bit and reminds me of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, I try not to think about that and the doctor comes right up to me holding a syringe and says: “Don’t worry it’s not a needle, just a hollow cannula” I still have no idea why being stabbed in the eye with a needle might be worse than with a hollow cannula. She applies a lot of pressure to my eye which is suddenly released in quite a gross way. I can’t see anything at all now which is actually a blessing. Now the machines start to talk, they mainly say numbers with decimal points but rather more terrifyingly “cutter on, cutter off”. I would advise whoever programmes that machine to make it say something a little more tactful.

The next part is where they make three incisions in my eyeball and I feel the fluid running down my cheek and neck. I try to put my mind elsewhere, there’s a radio playing music and I focus on that and imagine a warm beach, a cliche I know but it’s the only coping strategy I can think of right now. I have no idea how long this is going to take or how much time has passed so far. I lie completely still and tell myself to be calm.

Eventually my eye is lasered and stitched, it amazes me that the doctor can stitch an eyeball, and it’s time to fill it with gas. The gas machine has a voice that tells us the pressure and it seems to take an eternity to fill my eyeball up. I refuse to think about how my collapsed eye must look. Then I’m all cleaned and patched and wheeled back to the ward. I have to keep my eyes parallel to the floor to give the retina the best chance of staying in place. I will have to do this for 50 minutes out of every hour for the next 72 hours.

The hospital gives me a strange green doughnut to clamp to the table and put my head in. This doughnut proved to be a hard and uncomfortable thing and became the focus of all I hated about “posturing” (medical term for keeping your head in one position, even at night 😦 ). You can see the doughnut monster in the after picture (to the left of the before picture!) at the top of this page.

Just in case you accidentally read this with retinal detachment something I learnt that I wish I’d known before the operation is that you can’t see through the gas bubble in your eye. So when I took the bandage off the next day and couldn’t see a thing I thought the operation had failed. It was OK, the gas gradually gets replaced by eyeball fluid and you walk around with your own personal spirit level in your eye while that’s happening. I could see it sloshing around and gradually filling up as the weeks went by, I recovered my sight from top to bottom.

Pandabbydosy

What a beautiful start to the outdoor climbing season I thought, amazing weather, a bit chilly, wear a jumper. A pandemic, we can just stay 2 metres apart. It’ll be fine.

I planned to go to the Lake District, Wales, Lundy, Croatia. To go outdoors twice a week, to do a day course on gear placement, to climb better than last year. That wasn’t super ambitious as last year my climbing was on hold for a while when I broke my foot falling off my bike on a German cobble at 3 in the morning.

So I started with a tiny trip to Windgather rocks because that’s how I like to start a new climbing season, it’s familiar, little and cosy. All was well and I managed to lead a severe called Mississippi crack quite nicely which seemed like a good sign.

That was the day after I finally got told to work from home because of my “underlying health condition”. Finally told by managers who don’t spend their time visiting lots of community venues where all kinds of coughing and spluttering and bobbing back and forth to Northern Italy was happening.

The following day everyone who could work from home was sent home, which meant I’d been told I could work from home an entire day before my colleagues, my day off. There are many reasons why I like my job: seeing colleagues, helping learners and volunteers, meeting members of the community, cycling, the fact that every day is different. The bit I don’t particularly like is when I have to sit in front of a computer and do admin. That’s the bit that I can do from home 😭

On Saturday it looked like climbing near to home, being extra careful (we’re pretty super cautious on a normal day) would be responsible and fun so we went to Castle Naze. There were three people in our group and we only saw two other climbers there all day. It was warm, not too windy, the view was fantastic. It was almost spookily quiet.

I was the last to arrive, Rob and Paddy were on a route called the Niche. Chosen by Rob because it has “good steep climbing on solid jams” I decided to try and do it without jamming which Paddy said would make it harder but at least I got to keep the skin on my soft winter hands.

I got to choose the next one so I chose easy and nice, Zig a Zag a (if you wanna be my lover…) I would like to be able to lead its neighbour Zigzag Crack by the end of the year.

Our new young recruit Paddy is a super duper boulderer and a really good climber but fairly new to leading trad. Rob tricked him into a route that in his definitive guide was an HVD (Hard Very Difficult for my non climbing friends) but in my book it’s a severe 4b, I think it was called No name and I struggled with the first section. I think my book is right. And it has better pictures.

I managed to lead a severe 4a – Combs climb with the power of my blue inhaler which you can see in the picture. I did faff about leaving the ground but then I quite often do. The ground has this really strong pull doesn’t it?

As it was so quiet we put a top rope on Scoop face which Paddy did delicately and with panache, Rob did very competently and I fell off about 6 times. On about the seventh time though I did it quite well. Thanks to Rob and Paddy for their patience and good advice. I had to put all my weight on my right foot, stick my elbow out as far as I could and rock over to grab a tiny chalky hold. I really like the rest of that climb, I just can’t get to it very easily.

The last climb involved Rob disappearing into the rock and swearing while me and Paddy looked on in amusement. Footstool left it was called if you want to avoid indignity.

As we drove off in our separate socially distanced cars and I lost sight of my friends I felt really sad. It’s probably going to be at least 12 weeks until I get back on the rock, last night we were told to stay at home and I realise that my chances with the virus aren’t great so I need to be wise. Thanks Paddy and Rob for a fun and memorable  day and to Rob for the pictures.

 

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Sea Tube Shenanigans

I saw a picture in the guidebook to climbing in Pembrokeshire of a woman looking slightly stressed and surrounded by rock and thought : “there’s no way I’m doing that, it looks more like caving and I’m scared of enclosed spaces”. Over the next couple of days I kept being drawn back to that page and the diagram of the route going in and out of the rock and I wanted to see what it looked like in real life. And I wanted to do something a bit different and exciting. Howard, one of our fellow climbers, asssured me that it was “more like tunnelling than caving” which for some reason made me feel more enthusiastic about doing it. I have since realised that Howard’s soothing tones and deadpan understatement are not to be trusted.

Finding ourselves very near this route one day me and Rob decided to give it a go. We offered our friend Henry the chance to join us and he said that he was “not terribly keen” so we left the rest of the club members and set off to find the Sea tube. The problem was that it’s by its very nature hidden inside the rock so a lot of wandering about the cliff top ensued. This culminated in my standing on a headland and gesturing to Rob “left a bit, right a bit..” until he was above it. Like a rocky episode of Golden Shot for you 70’s kids.

We then (mainly Rob) set up an abseil which took ages as some of the rocks were rather loose and unconvincing. Eventually Rob abseiled down and stood on the beach. He was doing a lot of arm flapping at this point and I could tell that he wasn’t sure about something but I didn’t know what. He then indicated that I should follow and I went down past the entrance to the sea tube and down to the beach. The issue was that it wasn’t much of a beach by then, more of a shallow sea with waves washing right up to the cliff. We’d intended to climb at low tide but with all the faffing the tide had now turned and it comes in super fast as we’d seen in the previous few days. There had been talk of it having the second highest tidal coefficient in the world.

We considered our options, going back up the ab rope was one, but that seemed like hard work. And would have been very disappointing and probably quite slow. So we decided to climb it. There was a slab from the beach up to the mouth of the tube that had been washed very smooth by the sea and was beautiful. We ran through the water and got up that and set up  a belay at the bottom of the tube. The view over to the rocks looking out to the left of this stance was amazing, all bits of rock and sky and sea making spectacular shapes jumbled together.

The entrance to the tube was intimidatingly narrow and steep and smooth. I decided that I didn’t want to lead it with the time pressure but neither did I want to belay just above an incoming tide for  too long. I was feeling a bit sick at the thought of being inside the tube with the sea coming up into it. I started planning my escape from the belay if the tide came up to where I was and settled on swimming out. We decided to do it in two pitches as there was a good stance at the end of the first tube.

Rob then set off and squirmed his way into the tube. The getting in was tricky but once in it was possible to brace body parts against the sides of the rock and feel fairly secure. He told me it was like crawling but the angle was fairly steep and never felt like a crawl to me. More of an undignified vertical grovel. The good thing was that we could see the end of it and it was fairly light inside so I didn’t get too terrified. I still laughed slightly hysterically once I’d got my body into the tube. Then I sang a bit to keep myself  happy. The surface at the bottom was smooth and rippled so I did imagine that I might be squeezing myself through a giant colon. I had thought of rebirth but constipation might be more apt. Before leaving that tube I vowed never to go caving, I think I’d go into full on panic underground in the dark.

Once we’d both escaped the first tube I led the second one which was a breeze, much wider. By the time I got out of it I was so relieved that I scrambled up the rest of the climb to the top without placing any more gear and was then far above the abseil point so I had another scramble back down and belayed Rob from there. Done and dusted, my strangest climb so far. It was exciting and a bit crazy and I’d love to try another one. Just not yet.

Climbing with Seddy

It’s two years today since my dear friend and erstwhile climbing partner Seddy buggered off, so time for some anniversary commemorative musings from me.

First I want to tell him about breaking my foot while riding a bike at 3 in the morning after a party because I know that he would have really taken the piss out of me. Once I complained after I’d dropped a bottle of gin on my foot and his response was: “pah, you have 9 other toes”

I still miss climbing and hanging out with him, it was such a good laugh. Funny how someone who was often very depressed could be so much fun to be with. Mind you there were many times when he couldn’t get out of bed at all so he’d come climbing in the times when he felt better.

As a climber Seddy always pushed himself and loved a challenge. He had a knack of making a route look difficult and watching him could be scary. I read the other day that many women climbers worried about their ability to catch men falling but I don’t need to worry as Seddy trained me to catch heavier people by falling off repeatedly.

He was quite concerned about style in climbing and would complain loudly if he saw me use my knee “Sam and Ewan use their knees which is also technically cheating and not very pleasing to the eye”. He was very appreciative of watching women climb though and would often put me off by making remarks about my bum while I was trying to concentrate. One time when he was watching our friend Sharon he turned round and asked me: “Why aren’t all women lesbians?”

We disagreed about where to climb, he loved quarries, I didn’t, but he was very persuasive so we went to quite a few quarries, some so obscure that I’ll never find them again. His favourite was called Wilton, three quarries near Bolton and very convenient because I could pick him up at the train station. They’re not pretty, there’s no view and if you go on the wrong day you risk being shot as some of them are used as a shooting range. Wilton 1 was/is particularly terrifying  – a stand alone wall of rock, I seconded Seddy and was horrified to discover that when I reached the top he expected me to walk along a very narrow ridge with sheer drops on either side. We’d climbed up the shorter side but when I looked over the top there was a huge drop on the other side which to me said certain death. My reluctance to walk off it unattached to a rope caused Seddy to call me “a big girl’s blouse who needs to man up and earn her right to drink beer in the pub”. It was a constant battle to stop him saying stuff like that, a battle that I would always lose. Our disagreement about the merits of Wilton led him to tell me “If I could I would marry them, all three of them. Even if it meant becoming a mormon”

Last time we went to Wilton Seddy had spent a few months in bed with anxiety and depression and was quite weak physically but he was determined to give it a go and warned me that he was about to fall off about 2 seconds before he did. Luckily his gear held and I caught him although I swung and slammed into the rock and we alarmed the other climbers who were there. I want to go back and scatter a bit of him at the top of one of those climbs.

Seddy taught me a lot about climbing and was amazingly patient as a teacher. He convinced me that I could climb all sorts of routes just by saying: “You can do this, this is well within your capabilities” and I believed him. He’d often realise when he followed me up that it wasn’t that easy at all. One of our fun end of the day at the climbing wall activities was to climb harder routes until we failed. That has helped me to push myself and not mind falling off. If I got scared he would just tell me it was my “monkey brain” talking, he’d read a book about that and often quoted it when my legs started to wobble.

For a person who struggled with life a lot Seddy was always full of advice for other people. We covered mental health, statins, diet, childrearing, driving, navigating, cycling, sex and relationships. He had a strong opinion on everything it seemed. And wasn’t afraid to tell me the gory detail about his own health, mental and physical.  Whatever he did he certainly wasn’t suffering in silence, we knew he was ill but he had a very long term and intractable illness that we (his many friends) couldn’t fix, neither could spells in psychiatric hospital so we just tried to be there with him to make it more bearable.

I think Seddy loved climbing for many reasons but one of them was the freedom from anxiety that it affords. You have no space in your head to worry about life when you’re clinging to a crag wondering what to do next. I found this quote for his funeral that summed this aspect of climbing up for me, it may seem a little melodramatic to be able to sense this on a VDiff in the Peak district but some of us have wild imaginations and senstive souls:

“They are fragile, transient times when the borders between living and dying seem to overlap, when the past and future cease to exist and you are free”

With lots and lots of love to you Seddy xxxxx