Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Above- Hendo on his new addiction at the Forked Lightning Boulder- a perfect mantel on sharp gabbro into a do or die highball scoop; & below - getting to grips with the Howling Gael. Craig has finally come face to face with the infamous gabbro. The Coire is a destroyer of hands by day & a haunter of dreams by night. It was a great flying visit by the fella involving a gallon of whisky, fingertape & blood loss. The result was three new lines in the Coire & two projects, one of which he was very close to nailing, before a razor edge finger flake shattered under the strain. It will still go. I can't help thinking my constant enthusiastic babbling about this boulder & that boulder fried his brain a little. Anyway, the blood all over the project crimps is a sign that it's a line in the making. Craig also joins the gallery of perplexed expressions after attempting the classic Snake Attack. John is no longer alone...he looked equally shocked at the Eat Yerself Whole roof - thrown into the speed tour for free. I waffled about trying to link into it direct from the Street Fighting Years sitter - a slim possibility, with a move harder than that of any project I have on the boil in this arena. We strolled back down through the weave of Coire paths & bog in a fading winter light - time a distant concept, Canna, a floating black hat on the ocean. Moonset. Deer eyeing us with caution below the snowline, dogs on their scent & trail - me still blethering like a madman...The winter days never last long enough up here - A thousand unclimbed stones all vying for attention.
This was Craigs first time on Skye - bouldering under the shadow of the earth itself in an ampitheatre of raging black clawed peaks. He's a good fella. In the few hours of winter light we had, of a brief winter day, my hangover clinging to me like a shore crab; I chose Sron naCiche, home to monsters living beside docile vertical outings & slabs; [Had we travelled up into the higher reaches of the Clach Ceann-Feadhna we'd have had 50 minutes of good light]. My primary concern was the importance of being a good host & tour guide, to give him the best time I could by showing the fella every unclimbed line at his level...Some slightly beyond. To relay insider knowledge. I love it within the equality of climbing itself - the gesticulative narrative of expression that goes with your home territory & gesticulative narrative of expression that the rock dictates to moving over its rough skin. Here, the aim was to have him taste the gabbro directly for himself & gain a certain fulfillment. It gives you, in some ways, more pleasure to spend time coaxing an up & coming into a reachy sequence, trying to install confidence - bypassing the day being about your own stuff, your own needs. I'm never selfish like that - making some fella spot me on a few desperate moves he can't relate to, in the cold for a few hours under a gnarly dark stone, after driving across the country. Some trip that would be aye...It's not about proving yourself at every spare moment, or massaging your ego. Craig isn't a mindless doubter out to seek proof anyway...He doesn't ask me once to repeat any line for his own peace of mind, & equally, he doesn't seek guidance on a new highball he's attempting, everything has it's own flow - just as it should. He timidly fingered a hold on Eat Yerself Whole. He saw the wear in all the other hardest of lines...the evidence of worked abrasion - black stealth marks in roofs that have no earthly business being there, patios for feet, levered edges, chalk still embedded into holds after months of storms... & all inbetween me hurrying him & mats over to virgin boulders I knew he could send....He'll be back I'm certain, I hope inspired by the lines he saw & pulled on. One sunny day in spring, maybe he'll be a face in a band of boulderers witnessing the subterreanean beast below the Clach Ceann-Feadhna fall, or the bolted arete. I hope so. For me the Coire is always there, for brief visitors, it's a place they dream, back in the cities. I wish he'd have stayed longer than a day, narrowed into a corridor of light...darting back to Edinburgh so fast that same evening. We'd have swapped spotting duties & set to work on a few new project desperations I have in sight, but, there is always time & nothing is that panicked - for me at least. It's a frustration I'm used to...Johno will turn up soon & filming work will commence in the cold snap for A SIMPLE STONE. My hands will bleed with fury again as deadpoint contacts echo between stones & scree. But this lightning flash moment for Craig in the Coire?...What of it?
I hope it stays with him like a fever...
A Howling Baw-Heid groping a Howling Gael - kinky aye...
∈ - ∋
posted by ※Sgian Dubh ※ at 1:31 PM | 
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