A short climbing story

Last year I attended a short writing online course at Mount Royal University, Calgary. The great thing about doing a writing course online is that you never meet your coursemates, so it's easy to post your stories without fear - it's effectively anonymous. The downside of the online format is that perhaps it doesn't pressure you to inject as much care into your writing as you would if you saw the readers every day in person. That's rather like this blog really! I'm going to pretend that I have an audience out there though, concealed behind their iPads and laptops. They just don't use the feedback button - unless it's to post spam...I get a few of "those" emails.

Here's one of the stories that I wrote on the course. The instructions were to write something that focused on interaction and dialogue between characters, in less than 500 words. I chose to write about climbing. Climbers don't talk a lot when they're on the cliff. They have to choose their words carefully to avoid miscommunication that could cause an accident. The story is a bit melodramatic, but I wanted to write something that the non-climbers on the course (i.e. everyone) would find interesting. Raving about threads and flakes, and extolling the virtue of the perfect hex placement probably wouldn't have cut it.

The photo accompanying the story is of a much younger me, leading Riders On the Storm in Pembroke, Wales. The sea was kicking up pretty hard that day, and made it one of the most memorable short routes I've done - or perhaps it's just this photo that keeps the memory alive, 20 years later.

Riders on the Storm, Pembroke, Wales

Ben

Susan steps smartly upwards into the sunlit safety of the stance. She clips a karabiner to a rusty pin, and yells: “BELAY OFF!” Her call is a bird that plunges at the booming sea, before swooping faintly beneath the jutting roofs to her partner’s perch. Unseen rope passes through protective palms, knots bend, and a life passes between hands, observed only by a hooded figure on the headland.

She exhales, relaxes, and pulls a sling from her neck. Safe again! Sweating. Shaken - but so alive!

“I’ve been looking for you”.

With a climber’s reflex she flinches forwards into the cliff, when another might have flipped into the space behind. Above her, Georgina’s curls whip darkly against the wind.

“Oh! Well shit. I’m glad I’d clipped; I nearly went the wrong way then. What’s up, George?” Air rises and falls around her like the waves below.

Georgina sends a shaded, insincere smile. “Just thought I’d check on you guys. How are you getting along with your new partner? ” She edges closer.

Susan shrugs. One hand feeds looping snakes of rope that flap and swing in space, until her partner’s lifeline tightens like a hawser. The ocean shakes the cliff; rainbows arc and fall like flying fish. She locks her belay device, relaxes. “Good, but he needs practice. I didn’t feel that safe leaving the last stance. Still, we made it OK. CLIMB ON!” Her shout tumbles end over end from sight; momentarily the rope comes alive and flows into her ready hands.

Across the gap, George slips into focus like a wary mongoose. “Oh. Sorry to hear.” Her eyes squint downwards into the seething maw; the endless, shifting ranks of whitecaps that besiege the wall. She looks back at Susan; staying silent until the sea’s roar subsides to permit her words passage. “So - was he any good?” She smiles again, falsely, steely; watching. The sky hangs still as stone beyond them.

Suddenly Susan is surrounded by screeching threats: the what-ifs, and she-knows surge from their stinking perches. Gravity pulls, and the wall lurches as if shaking her loose. Like a drunkard she grasps for steadiness. “You know?!”

George nods. “For a long time. You don’t have to say anything. It’ll be over soon. Poor Ben though. Really; it’s not him; it’s you.”

Her meaning is lost to the wind; too late, uncatchable. Susan’s mind scrabbles to fathom it even as she takes in slack rope and below her a figure emerges through the overhang, reaching high and swinging out above the seething sea. Understanding floods back suddenly. “Wait. George, no! You have it wrong. It’s not Ben.” George’s hand opens - in confusion, or bloody conviction? The jury of gulls explodes outwards as a ragged rock flies free to ricochet from the roof. Scarlet shards streak the wall, and a dead weight buckles Susan’s knees.

The sea falls silent; a faint cry carries from the headland. Wide eyes stare at the shocked onlooker, then two voices share his name.

Low-Grade Banff Classics: Gooseberry and Rundlehorn

Gooseberry and Rundlehorn

I'm on a slow mission to tick the low-grade classics of the Bow Valley and Kananaskis. To save myself the effort of reading through the many guidebooks to the area and trying to define a list, I'm relying mainly on the web to identify the climbs; the easiest way to do this is to look at the routes used by the local guides. My thinking is that the routes up which they tow their paying clients are likely to be reasonably clear of loose rock, and offer decent belays.

Last week I did two of these climbs: Gooseberry (5.8) on Tunnel Mountain and Rundlehorn (5.5) on WEOR. The two climbs face each other across the embarrassment of an exclusive golf course (well, to be fair, it's fully inclusive if you have a thousand dollars to drop on a four-person game of motorized tiddlywinks) built within a National Park, and both are affected by the noise from the tannoy used to remind people that they are late for their tee-off. I can't think of anywhere else in the National Park where this would be allowed, but for some reason (hint: money) the Park makes an exception for golfers. I wonder for how long a climber might use a tannoy to make their belay calls before getting a ticket.

Oh well, the route's called Rundlehorn, not Grumblehorn, so I'll get on with a brief account of the climbing...

Rundlehorn (as seen from Gooseberry) climbs the narrow bedding plane slab that begins as a sparsely treed gully where Mt. Rundle intersects Tunnel Mtn on the photo above. Where the slab pinches out, it hops up a short wall to gain more easily-angled ground above.

Lou's first long-ish route of the year was to her liking; here she is leading off up the narrow Rundlehorn slab, on the fourth pitch.

Looking down the slab.

Tunnel Mountain crags in the background, above the river.

Lou leading one of the two best pitches of the climb, after the short wall that takes you off the slab.

Lou with Cascade Mountain.

The upper pitches are quite photogenic.

After climbing, we had a quick paddle up the creek from near the "Banff Canoe Club" concession to Vermillion Lakes, but the water was really shallow and it was windy, which made for tough going in our solo boats. If your idea of wildlife is drunk teenagers doing dumb things in boats, then this area is a haven for spotting many varieties of that species!

Looking down Gooseberry, about four pitches up. There are perhaps three cruxes on this climb, all around 5.8. I got the loose-looking flake on Pitch 2/3, which turned out to be alright. We broke the second pitch into two because of potential for rope drag around the entry to the flake/groove system.

Selfie while waiting for the call to climb, around pitch six or seven. The trees are starting to look small, which is a good reminder that despite being on Tunnel Mtn, and considered to be valley cragging, this is a decently long climb.

Lindsay seconding one of the 5.7 or 5.8 pitches near the top of Gooseberry. I found these pitches difficult, but the others though my lead was tough - I think I approach leading with a different state of mind to that I have when seconding, where I often struggle to engage fully with problem-solving.

2009: A sparse rock year!

Well, it's December and I have just managed to get in my second day of proper rock climbing of the year - in England. Hopefully I'll get more done next year. Here's a picture of us out in the snow at Froggatt Edge.

Climbing in the South Ghost River Valley

The Ghost River Valley is about 90 minutes from Calgary, accessed via a gravel road and then a section of road that requires a 4 x 4. Despite being close to Calgary and Cochrane, it's a remote place to climb and help is a long way away if you get in trouble. There are many kilometres of cliff here, and probably untold unclimbed lines - but the rock is steep and often loose, so the sitaution is unlikely to change.



Here are some pictures from a rock climbing trip into the Ghost that I made with Grant, local access worker and Ghost afficionado. I found the climbing tough - I'm still not used to the YDS grading, but it seems to me that if the rock is loose and the protection dubious, then the tech grade within the overall grade calculation should slide....this doesn't happen here though. Until I get my head around this one, I'm not leading much trad rock here!