Sunday, February 27, 2005
In reverse order of events:
Act 01] The Locum
Act 02] Smoke & Strong Whisky
Act 03] 16ft of Sit Start
Act 01] The Locum
Act 02] Smoke & Strong Whisky
Act 03] 16ft of Sit Start
Smoke & Strong Whisky [Act 02]
It seems an inescapable tradition, that when meeting up for a bouldering session, each participant in the future days events must first off, drink as much Stella as is humanly possible & wash it down with at least a bathfull of whisky. This then, renders each athlete unconscious & open to attack by the beer monkey. A Beer Monkey is a mythical symian creature that ruffles your hair, shits in your mouth & steals your wallet, before waking you up to go climb on steep stuff. I was first in the door of The Isles bar that day, having cunningly promoted it as an ideal meeting place, closely followed by Pete Murray, bounding into the sleepy village bar like Tom Bombadil. There we sat, locked in human chatter in the window seat, pints cold & golden, blue curls of smoke dancing through rays of sunlight, slots of the abode of God & the angels warming the wooden floors. John was on the island somewhere.
He's just behind me, he stopped off somewhere on the way up to cuddle some boulders...
Ah I replied with a grin, not at all suprised at Petes information.
& then he was here, 20 minutes later.
With the imminently alive John Watson on board...& a flurry of all of us trying to buy the starting round over, the scene was set for the heroics of debuachery & climbing tales. The rest of that evening was lost to a haze of laughter, incessant blethering the clanking of pint glasses & excited tales of rocks out in the hills...By about 11pm, all of us could climb Font 8b wearing rollerskates, all of us were wealthier than eachother, Ben Moon was a pussy; we were the best looking climbers in the bar [if not the universe] & everyone fancied us - but none of us had the sense to stop, becuase nobody could see us. At this point we had each mastered the art of invisiblity & added it to our growing list of improbabilities. At this point nobody is talking absolute pish, nothing has been exaggerated & everyone is right, except the barman...who is very very wrong.
Oh the joys of morning...The return of reality is no easy thing to bare upon a mortal soul. My reality returned, not as you might think, with a dull, drawn out thud, but more like a noisy morning child bouncing enthusiastically on my bed & all over my overhang. I lurched out of the cloying anesthesic state with the grace of an amnesiac arthritic & staggered around the flat looking for others who would hold sympathetic court to the state of my whole being...One of the sleeping bags ruffled sluggishly into life & the head that belongs to Watson peered out..
I now truly embody most of the characteristics I despise in other people. I don't normally drink. I do in company that asks me to, out of a polite regard almost, but in lifes quiet path, it doesn't enter my mind. If you must do something, do it to fullness though. I have awoken to find I am transformed into nothing more than a stinking poor sociopath, & my self respect has plummeted to a new low. If this is called beauty sleep...it hasn't worked, on any of us. I shamble on past the living room as Pete attempts to stand-up for the first time since we were attacked by the gang of covert beer monkeys, only to be confronted by a mean looking half drunk, bottle of Bowmore single malt, still singing at the top of its lungs, fighting kitchen utensils & diligently guarding my route to the kettle. Dilemma...I poke at it gingerly - nothing happens. I encourage it to back away gently towards a deeper corner of the unit & half-heartedly attempt to visually diminish its presence with a Rice Crispies box & the giant unwashed Wok. With the kettle chattering away on its pedestal, when that first brew goes in & people are shifting around, it isn't long before the pace picks up, almost like a contagious bug, an indivduals enthusiasm for the morning & the prospect of clear cold sunny bouldering, leaks over to the man he brushes past...Last nights crimes are fading..We were set to go. Hats on & chirpy. [shakily set, but set to go nonetheless]
Timeless old, the Gesherbrum
Wasting a night to alcohol is one thing, wasting a clear winters day full of boulders, because of the previous nights drinking, is just shamefull. There's no way on earth we were going to do that. It's an almost unwritten rule in climbing. Nobody ever adds doubt to the purpose of the day, mystery into the physical acsent, or questions to the art of belay in such an ordinary life... nobody says 'I know!Let's go bouldering'..We just all know, we are each connected by the internal unseen silk thread that ties us through the heart of this art, each of us seperately & quietly preparing our own gear like Zen monks on their daily duties, mumbling words of no real audible value. The task has the same matter-of-fact-ness wether it's kicking the stove into action in a tent on the Gesherbrum glacier or collecting up your bouldering tack in your house. You zip up the tent, letting hoar frost skitter off its slopes & your ice axes clank like a dull Tibetan bell. You close the front door to the flat, turn the key till the lock clunks, & the boulder mat creaks onto your shoulders. Everything is one smiling old mind...that is how my profoundly limited perception acknowledges it. Then you chatter & laugh - on the way - fired up. Then you have right & passage towards purpose. Then, & only at that time, you're a lean mean fighting machine, or, at the very worst, you're a punter with an epiphany. Either is frightening to a bimbling towny. Niether will frighten the Gabbro...
We opt for Kilta, the perfect morning starter, a fry-up of Sandstone & side-salad, in preperation for the main course of hard boiled Gabbro & chainsaws....more on Kilta later. I did say events in reverse order didn't I...
Once upon a time, when I lived a short while inland, I would lay in the field & imagine the winds in the tall trees, were the ghosts of ocean waves still spiriting on from their physical forms, left long ago, on the shorelines. Moments can pass through us like that, like spirits, almost any time, without warning, the ripples of passed events.
Petes expression is unexpected as he skips the deep burn drops down through the gap & contours the outlaying faces that lead to It's Over. Or at least my reaction to it is. I think Pete swore at first, then stood there staring at the complete problem in utter silence.I felt something oddly familiar course through my body. Doubt..doubt? Was he doubting the line was climbable? Or indeed, that it had been climbed? I since looked deeper into my reaction. Years of doubt seeping through on-line climbing forums, pages of mindless verbal coursing attacks drifting over the ethernet, personal pm attacks, utterly shameless in their construction, internet ID impersonations, mis-information, witlessly reversed contexts & malicious emails sent to important players within the world climbing community as an attempt to discredit every one of my climbs; does not have a positive effect on anyones confidence. I now know who was responsible for those emails & to you I would quote Napoleon: ' Never interrupt the enemy when he is busy making a mistake'. True to form I obeyed that wisdom & bided within the confines of time, reluctant to go in, oldskool like a door-kicker, but that's not to say, I havn't quietly rolled a flashbang, with a long-assed fuse under your chair. I'll be seeing you in a future day sonny.
Being accused of engineering photographs, engineering climbs, chipping holds, & any other crime in the wild mountains of home; does not have a positive effect on anyones confidence & is the utmost in idiotic derision. Packs of dribbling Hyenas lining up on old Lions are just an unfortunate itch alive under the skin of bouldering, although we prefer not to see it...& stand in the coires, or Karakorum, atop of a steep boulder in the shivering light, where reality burns glorious & fierce with clarity, far above the verbal pissings of climbers locked in supposed absent-minded scandal . The seed of all that assasination had unexpectedly swarmed all over my mind, standing there with Pete, cloying the moment of seeing this magnificently difficult problem once again. My reaction to his disbelief at the scale of the climbing involved, was to embark on 15 minutes of frantic blethering about insane holds, speedily executed movement, techniques, success rates, failure rates & tales of trying. With Pete still standing qiuetly staring,I felt deflated, implausable & childish. John had disappeared in search of other boulders & I turned quickly stuttering & explaining out the even more impluasable project link-up running directly from left to right through the crux of It's Over. Pete fingered a vague feature on the green project wall & explained that it had no holds.
That's just sick, sick climbing, A dinnea understand how it's possible..
Its barely possible...I think if the sidepull disappeared..it would be impossible...for maself at least aye...
I let my statement hang there, in the cold shadowed air.
I moved the subject to knifing along Thunderhead & then back-peddling, tried to explain that the green project wall did have holds, when viewed from the climbers perpspective & not that of the observers, dutifully placing myself in the -ss- position of the green project wall & trying to show him a nipple of a hold was now possible 3 ft above. Minimalistic futuristic holds admittedly, but any feature on a blank face is a possibilty or a wild thrust at hope, for someone exhibiting a suitable amount of clinical insanity & strength on the day of the full ascent. I felt upset, hurt, a stuttering over excited moron, a shoddy actor in an old 1940s movie, fragmented & overzealous in his panic of trying to explain his innocence to the cops. Then I realized that it had stemmed, not from Petes doubt of the climbing involved, but becuase I had come into the Coire subconsciously armed to defend myself against the self-doubt that the so called forum truth seekers had planted within me. The irony is, in their [supposed] search for truth, they missed the goal-mouth completely & resorted to outright lies. And thats all it did, damage everyone, instead of bringing to bouldering, as it is for me & should be about for you, peaceful isolation or grouping of dedicated people. These attacks ultimately cost me my relationship with Hannah, not as indirectly as you might think, when she had to deal with a drunk, incommunicado climber sleeping at a computor desk, in doubt of his own integral honesty, a forum page whirring on the back screen of 4am. This is totally unacceptable & disgraceful behaviour from supposed grown adults, too eat away at another human being with complete disregard for the effects their actions may have. The collosal fuckwits even managed to sound magnanimous as they did it...What I find incredibly angering is, not one of these people ever quietly emailed me to ask a poignant question, genuinely in search of truth, through all those days, to which they would have recieved a truthfull answer. It makes you wonder aye, just what their motivation for public posting was, when it was clear I was not going to be drawn into a squabbling messy fight...I would ask, that they focus less on cruelty & more on compassion. Of cruelty & opaque cleverness in the world, there is enough. Take yourselves into the upper reaches of the Qomolangma, learn the petroglyphs & inscriptions of the soul, then ask yourelves about focus & truth of focus. Come & climb with me when you have grown & I will repeat every problem in the Coire of your own choosing, in front of your own eyes, each after each if need be, until my hands bleed.
Thus I'll never enter into the illusionary Scene fully, through my own choice, lest I would be guilty of being involved in tarring with the same brush of insensitve destruction, some other persons quiet climbing life. The passed through years have given me more reason to avoid the Scene than become part of it's decadant sneering proccesses, & remain, preferring as many do, to boulder & climb with those who prefer honesty, ordinariness & unfetteredness. Thanks must go to my assailants though, for they have shown the world, their own true colours, their own reactionary talents. The task is finished, the future expanse of active climbing however, is just begun & ventures warmly forward, with or without your benign whining approval. The legend made, the legend destroyed...either way it helped. Take your side, everything is healed. This is the result. My resolve to climb even harder than before has stiffened more than your Johnsons ever will. Onsight that...
Pete later explained, speeding down the Slig road between the mountains, Lamb beating out it's melodies on the cd player, that; it wasn't the powerfully technical line of It's Over that was the problem or my ascent. But the fact is, he is regularly bewildered by some lines & now It's Over is added to his list, It's Over V14, Venom Jag V12, the Dumbarton roof project V13?Smokescreen V12, Devastation Generation, our first F8c & various other feats of yogi levitation that seemingly steal time from gravity. He just laughs or stares quietly at the lines, & those subtle emotions in short, are the mechanics of how he deals with such improbable looking blanknesses & voids, in his own, individual way. I learned too trust a bit more that day. Pete got totally Tango'ed in the chops by the enormity of the project I will take on this year, & by the impossible looking face of It's Over , but then, it is arguably the 4th hardest boulder problem ever climbed in the Hebrides. Did he expect a ladder of thrutching jugs to take you silent into the sky from a dark pit?...non technical moves, grace & danger laughing idly on a sunlit banking? less steepness?....V14 afterall, is exactly what it says on the tin - V14. It isn't V14 for the effect of V14, it's what I would term real V14, if grades are logarithmic in their scale. There is to much grade-creep. In effect, a mindcrushing crux of F9a+ if it was hoisted skyward & added midway, to a steep clip-up. John still hadn't re-appeared from slinking off round the cornered deep arete of Morning Wings. What's that man up to...I had tried to verbally coerce him into having a fight with the knife edge sloper lip of Thunderhead, but his hands arn't Gabbro trained yet, his hands still do dishes, as the Coire boys would say; & even for those who have titanium tips from years fighting these stones, the Gabbro will find a way through & spike your brain & jump up & down on your knuckles. John declined for that reason only, to save skin. We'd stupidly forgotten the finger tape, a cardinal sin when facing the Coire. Maybe he's digging up new stuff out of sight? Stealing away boulders in carrier bags, hiding secluded favourites under piles of heather. Maybe looking for One we Made Earlier...
Recently on a night over at Uig, Harris, with James, he had remarked that he'd been up in Coire Lagan once & taken the track up to the Duck Boulder for a wee climb. Someone had chalked, in big letters under the V3 Right Arete, the words ' TOOO HARD!' The Coire grades are no sandbags but they are no soft touch.
'It was probably the English aye James...'
'Yeah that fits...'
'It was probably the English aye James...'
'Yeah that fits...'
All is good in the world again, I am amongst friends, & have merely momentarily forgotten it as the wild insecurity drifted by like the moon affecting the tides. Not friends that would lie for me if they saw me fall off It's Over, friends that would enjoy the honesty of seeing me crumple into an exploding chalk cloud on failure, which in reality, we all do from time to time, whatever our fighting grade. They would announce it to the world like it is, success or failure...that I trust. These are fellow hoodlums that would taunt me openly in the bar about peeling off a crux, until I got humpty about it, & then wash it all away with laughter. Dave MacLeod rates in this close group as well as James, ordinary sparkly people at their heart, talented boulderers in their outer limits. These people do not push & shove for answers like herded cattle, but, unbendingly follow as I do, each rumour of hand touching rock, wherever that rock or hand may be. There are many more who have not yet, arrived fully into the new church, of what hardcore bouldering means, into the new way of thinking. Many up & coming who will outclimb everything we shuddered on. That's the education, giving them an honest foundation, one of caring. Change the world, the perceptions of climbers?..Educate the youngsters with sound ethics, a peacfull stillness, with an empowered intellect & plenty of Brassica Oleracea [brocoli], light the touch-fuse, point them towards the high coires & stand well back.
Everything is good in the world again, except for my now very painful back, victim to stomping the torn & smashed Coire paths. I refrain as much as I can from moaning about this, I am the proud tour guide, reinstated with furver & enthusiasm, but I must attempt to climb something soon, more as a personal test to my vertigo, or is that vertebrae. It's frustrating to be in the Coire injured, when I normally come here to fight the good fight & wander back down twi-lit, totally depleted, totally together. The wind picks up, barging through our enclosure of boulders, bright sunlight streams through snow filled clouds & blizzards dust the towering dark precipitous shards that make up the Cullin ridge. From our stance a few 100ft above sea level, in the long mountain rye grass, 30 toes wet in the bog, the higher storms are a living oil painting, viewed in warm sunlight with safety & with awe as a backdrop to the proceedings. John is about to pick a fight with the Venom Boulder, more accurately, with Snake Attack [V5].....I'd better go & back him up, throw out the other boulder mat on the floor crux spike.....This will be an epic.
Be a light unto yourself, betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone but yourselves - Buddha
The Locum [Act 01]
The Locum looked at me over his reading goggles like a man about to tell me I had an incurable dose of Giraffe lurgy. I hate that look so I smiled at him to hide my feeling of impending doom. My mouth took me by suprise & spoke without permission.
'I don't really want an operation...'
Arse!, why did I say that? I realized that I still beleive that when you step through the doors of a hospital, lurking surgeons jump on you, scalpels at the ready..& dig yer body parts out for fun. You know the one, you go in for a nose operation & leave with no testicals.
He ignored my words & flicked through some more paperwork
....waiting for the diagnosis....
'Well Si O' young rock Jedi...', he breathed, tapping his notes into a neat square on the desk.
'The EMG, magnetic resonance imaging & computed tomography as well as my doctorly skills [he smiles] show you have a prolapsed musculoskeletal something-or-other & you need some rice'. At this point he grins broadly.
'I can cure it by eating rice?....' I ask even more confused than before. Im checking how quickly I can block him behind his desk & head for the door at this point.
'RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation'. he says spinning in his creaky wooden chair towards a closed cupboard.
'Oh...' I say, lining up my right foot on the blind side of his desk.
'I'm going to give you some of these, take 1 daily, & I'll book you into see Meridith who is good at crunching back vertibrae.' He says this as he swings back round with a wee book in his hand. I quickly realize this is hardly a weapon, jag device or doctorly implement of intrusion & remove my foot from it's ready position.
Meridith instantly frightens me but I accept the challenge somewhat foolishly to go 10 rounds with his own personal bare knuckle fighter, & the Locum slides a prescription across the desk, for what turns out to be big pink suppository sized pills & a card with dates to meet my executioner [Merideth] on.
'So it's physio & rest?' I inquire. [Just to make certain there's no surgery ploy about to be sprung.]
'Indeed it is young sir!' he exclaims as he springs to his feet. His brown pastie shoes remind me of when you purposfully put your wellies on the wrong way round as a kid. His beard has grown & to cheer myself up as I'm shown the door I fancy he could smuggle a moose over the border [Skye bridge] inside it.
'And no climbing! how many times do I have to say this, by rights you shouldn't have even been on the Coire path...you should take on like my wife for a while!'
'Eh..?'
'Stick to shopping'.
I take his meaning & reply.
'Hand over the VISA card then...'
We laugh & shake on our departure of paths... he isn't so bad.
I accept my verbal punishment with grace, thank him, & close the door behind me. As I'm leaving I glance back up the clinically squeeky corridor to hear him shouting 'Merediiiiiith...' & I scarper at quick walking speed towards the auto doors & freedom, [they can't get you in the sunlight] flaunting the seriousness of what I did to my back at Kilta 3/4 weeks ago. I bet she has a beard as well & a fuckin swastika on her arm...
I let my fart come free outside like a squeezed balloon neck & wander off, my mind for no logical reason, immediately returning to a visual recital of the moves on my F9a bolt project back on Lewis. I had basically compressed 3 vertibrea & nearly knocked one out of it's proper place. The wee bone mending bugs had cuased it all to fuse together & added big cerebal pressure on my spinal nerve, or something along those lines... I was better off not knowing this in some ways, with the Locum talking in millimetres being the difference between why I'm walking today & why I might not have been..The revelation was a sobering eye opener. Things are on the mend though & the rocks are not as safe as they like to think. I'll be chasing them sooner rather than later. I need a second opinion. Where is Dr.Patey when you need him...I now have a new lesson &; humility to learn, & one of considerable difficulty. The art of not climbing up steep precipitations. At least for a moment in time, I must enjoy watching repeats, new climbs, without being able to retort.
John 'the machine' Watson cranking out a new V3 at Kilta
© S K Y E B L O C
James Sutton about to shit himself on a new highball @ Europaidh
© S K Y E B L O C
This man speaks the truth... if you don't read him, you should go out and get soul lessons... one day the local council will run free courses...this stuff will be the guidebook...
Siddharta