Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
William Blake

I would add: & souls are bent into the shape they should be, quiet & burning.

An Cuilithionn is steeped in traces of my dna. I'm fair knackered, cold, damp, sore & yet again, the proud owner of some truly remarkable abrasions. Add that a few days with farty Finn on the bivvi is enough for most mortals. He kicks like a sheep in his sleep as well.
I have dried blood in my snot, gabbro dust in my socks & the shapes of Am Bhasteir & the Coruisk rocks are stamped into my back, like a secret treasure map. I have performed open surgery on the dog, with an implement blunt as a spoon, & from our carrion perch, watched those fearful ghosts of gortex, stumble noisily, nervously through silent fog shrouded massifs, clattering through scree, onto the black ridges unaware of their watchers. I could smell soap coming off them from a distance like you can with over perfumed old women in screw on hats. The dog took to growling in his sleep. Life in the stormfields & shadowlands aye - the fight in the Pagan place.

Gonna hide under some warm water for a while & re-generate. I'll be along shortly, after a hot date with that slapper they call Rubha Hunish. Need to swing by Sron Ulladale with MacGill-McFarter on the way up as well. The effervescent lop-sided grin meister also reckons that being half a lung lighter these days, gives me an unfair crux advantage! Did the bolts from Noodle Spokes for the other island cave arrive there yet matey? Has Alec John turned up yet? Maybe he's re-inventing the warrior on Sulasgeir, biting wings off guga, spitting them into the sea.
That Niseach is one of the rare few who know, the only 'view' worth having in this game is the one of the coire streaking out below, as you burn your fingertips into that deep flying arete. Swim free of the hivemind, cut away from the rags of history, & avoid drowning. Sometimes when I burn away the layers of scene, I wonder who is driving...who is so sneaky & arrogant to colaborate & accord history unto their own coteries & motivations. But history is often tailored to suit a plan, & rarely unbias...As it has proven to itself in the unravelling of time, it often allows itself to be written by those who would hang heroes & innocents without great forethought. Thus, extradition is never a punishment when you understand that really, it frees you of unwanted confines. On the subject of fact avoidance & the skillful art of selective memory, we also talked about these online climbing forums briefly, as we trundled out of the Cuillin. 'The internet equivalent of being able to piss in someones pint while they're out of the room', was about the scariest we could come up with to be honest. Well, one day they may learn, that stamping in a puddle does not effect the ocean.
Didn't they teach you that old son? Do you no longer question the acid, the test-gold?
Save Climbing - Keep a Waddy in the cave. Whatever...It's time to ready for killing another rope at the Mangurstadh project & lay down some v-numbers on the huge untouched boulders in the bay...

'Come into my parlour - sail in at my shore,
Drink my soul dry - there is always more,
There is always more after that.
Fly on my carpet - look into my face,
See the heart of man - in a Pagan place'
≈The Waterboys≈


An Cuili†hionn - another superb church, not made with hands aye...

Theres people who Piss in pints and theres people who drink.

Some climb, some talk, who is winning? who is happiest? who is? and who isnt?

Ali Hargreaves used to be the first one out of the tent in the mountains. She would pick her way down to the freezing lochan at dawn & dip her head in, & brush her teeth in the ice water. Some peoples rituals far below the wind whispered trails of snow dusted summits, involve lighting fags & going for morning pints to talk about such silences in great noisy detail.
Those who climb, regularily read from their own book of ghosts, with sobriety & clarity. They understand the ebb & flow, the consise distinction between the often torrid & harsh reality of doing & the imagined visualization of dreaming of doing, They understand that talking about climbing after the event is nothing more than a wheelchair for the brain. As I do.

The internet would tell you I am liar, I am charlatan, alcoholic bar dweller, delusionary smoker, manic-depressed psychotic, schizophreniod loon & heathen, amongst many other things. Heathen I am, maybe, but the rest is simply poor architecture that collapses under, even half-hearted scrutiny - such is its foundation. I am none of those things, but the reactionary child who screams at being put to bed early says otherwise, so I allow it the notion - even humour it on occasion - since there is more living afoot than the whimsical rhetoric of wierdos to contend with. The internet will tell you, given half a chance, of a myriad of fantastic wonderments no mortal could hope to aspire to in a single life, but these amateurs of social Coup d’État, dart all to quickly into shadow when it's time to respect a positivity. I no longer read them. Maybe they are in the bars, & gathered at shady tables of witless scheming, dreaming up deformities & faults in doing's celebration...As I said earlier, stamping in a puddle does not effect the ocean.

I am only aware of these things becuase, on occasion, I come down out of the wild sierras to find a wheelchair for my brain & some soft shoes for the fireside; my mouth fidgeting at the thought of being able to expel some information after days of silence. I'm not an ignorant person, but neither am I a stupid tree hugger. I simply have nothing to say to a lot people, becuase for the most part, I find them abhorrant idoitics. They stumble clumsily & stutter all to often over the easiest of tasks & it agitates my thresholds of patience. But aye, the greatest writers of climbing, never truly find their way out of the mountains J. Others write as if they hold cosmetics in their hands, trying to conceal what they consider to be warts on the face of climbing, & albiet misguided but well intentioned, set about to enhance the best facets, ignoring the grotesque or bungled or genius or non-conformist, for safety's sake...You kill what you fear, & you fear what you don't understand I guess...Somewhere in amongst all that, I also get hurt, more than I outwardly admit.
Often great, or mediocre climbers for that matter, have no interest in writing, competition or fame, prefering to live as some samurai do, focused only on the solitary perfect execution of their art; rather than the proximitous waging of war. What is bouldering to climbing...or a grade to the mountain. Why draw such distinctions & boundaries between the colours, with such unabated fury, when we are simply marking our achievments like a thousand Hansel & Gretels. Lest we become lost in the woods & lose a sense of self-meaning or permanence... For some of us, it's all we truly have left, all that is precious or sacred within an awakening world. How could they possibly film that...or come close to doing it any justice.

Most of all...I understand Ali's preparation, the way she lived - that path. I understand that when I wash the blood from my hands in that mountain loch, I am giving back a part of something I have borrowed, that the numbers we drape over summit after summit are simply washed away in the capricious force majeure that is time, pressure & erosion...& that the traces of those paths & people become lost, overgrown, unattended gardens, unless somebody is meticulous & warm in their care & preservation of each dissolving cataclysm. K2, E7, HVS or a tiny font 4 learning to walk.
I understand also, that preferring to drink the cold snow-melt water affords me the further luxury of pissing in a high loch, whos waters will eventually filter down into the mains supply of my far away adversaries. I am simply my own worst protagonist. A principal villian in the play, for saying no, upwind of those who don't expect such replies.

Who is winning, isn't the right question. Who has got the quietest smile, is a better one.




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I'm leaving for Mangurstadh, Na Hearadh now & I hope I don't die on my trad project...In all likelyhood, the hub-coterie will be hoping I do.

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A quiet smile, my life is lived in me, not in the minds of others

Enjoy the trad