"A last look at the line
and a strange impulse took a hold of me. I went for it. At 70ft I woke up. Ghastly!
The aggression was dissipated and fear gripped me. I had climbed with virtually
no protection and was now eyeballing a tiny shallow crack. I remembered it from
the abseil and it looked pathetic. It was real now... The mental preparation
was becoming harder and harder. The so-called psyching-up, a pain beyond reason.
Out of the acquaintance grew more and more fear. Gone was the initial naivety
which had sparked off this terrifying enterprise. I knew the score and I was
unnerved by it".
I
started climbing when I was in my mid twenties, quite late really considering
most climbers start in their teens. I've never been particularly good but I've
enjoyed it tremendously and it has taught me an awful lot about myself. It's
a seemingly irrational and fearsome sport but in a lot of ways it has direct
analogy to many of lifes circumstances.
An overall view can be taken by relating
it to lifes journey, upwards is the logical way to go. The beginning is full
of heroism and bravado, but as we progress we become more aware of the reality
of the situation and sometimes it's frightening as John Redhead found out. Sometimes
it's easy, sometimes it's hard, and we never know what's coming next. If we're
smart we learn and become wiser with each step, but if we're foolish and don't
learn from what went before then we can get terribly hurt. Then at the end,
if it's been successful, we can look around at the view from our lofty perch
and look back with a deep sense of satisfaction, but if the situation got on
top of us then we can so easily miss the wonderful view, all we can see is the
fear and the terror that the situation brought and feel glad to be out of it.
Fear is a great motivator, it can
be beautiful, it can make us reach inside and find strength that we never knew
existed in anyone, let alone oneself. It can make us capable of superhuman effort,
or it can destroy us. It's a choice we make as to whether we give in to it or
overcome it. The interesting thing about fear during a climb is that the climber
often analyses it in a cold and calculating way which allows the irrational
nature of fear to be overcome. Then a conscious decision can be made to make
a move which all ones natural sense of self preservation is screaming at us
to back away from.
The most common remark people make
to me when they discover that I climb is, "I couldn't do that, I'm terrified
of heights", and I guess it's a reasonable assumption that because someone is
prepared to put themselves in a vertical situation then they have little or
no fear of heights. I would venture to suggest that climbers have just as much
and sometimes even more fear of heights as anyone else. What makes the difference
is that a climber can rationalise that fear and see beyond it to a greater glory
that manifests itself only to the climber.
Self-searching...
Climbing is also a brilliant therapy, everything is so clear, choices are black
or white, either you make it or you don't, you climb or you fall. Having everything
around you structured in that way seems to help gain a perspective on other areas
of life, it becomes possible to relate any problems to the climbing and often
enables clear decisions to be made.
Not that you think about such things
when actually climbing and I think that this is the reason why thinking is so
clear during the climb. Everything is removed from your mind except the immediate
physical problems of how to make that next move, all the clutter is gone and
if you can overcome the fear element at that time then thinking assumes a clarity
rarely experienced in everyday life. Spend a whole day in this frame of mind
and it will carry over into other areas of your life for the next few days at
least.
The Old Man of Hoy stands on the
West coast of Hoy, Orkneys second largest island. It stands at 150m and is the
highest sea stack in the UK. For someone living in the south of England the
journey up through Scotland removes any feeling of comfort and security that
the rural ambience of the south engenders. It passes through some of the worlds
most beautiful scenery and seems to carry you back in time as it becomes wilder
with every mile travelled.
As the journey progresses the sense
of loneliness and vulnerability increases until finally you find yourself in
a remote fishing village on the north coast of Scotland. From Scrabster you
take the ferry to Stromness, this is when you really start to feel alone, so
many miles travelled now, seas have been crossed and there's no turning back.
From Stromness you must take another ferry across to Hoy, sunken wrecks of German
warships scuttled after their capture in WW2 appear above the waves to increase
the sense of destiny as you become silent and introspective.
Then finally you land at a little
jetty on Hoy and strangely enough, as if life is giving you a perverted last
look at civilisation before you move on to the unknown, there's a taxi available
to take you to the other side of the island and one of the most remote camping
sites in the whole of the British Isles.
From here there is no more civilisation,
a 3 mile walk across a lonely moor brings you within sight of this majestic
monolith. The landscape gently rises as you approach the edge of the cliff,
allowing the climber to see the top 100 feet or so of the Old Man until suddenly,
you're at the edge of the cliff and stand, awe struck at the sight of this giant
structure patiently sculpted by nature over thousands of years. Sea birds wheeling
and calling to each other and the waves crashing against the rocks below only
serve to increase your feelings of loneliness and vulnerability.
The climb itself isn't particularly
difficult although the second pitch is enough to give anyone some food for thought.
It's spectacular though, and it's the culmination of events that make the whole
journey into one big adventure that is the satisfying part. After the climb,
sitting on top taking stock of the journey produces a sense of being "out there",
the long road journey to the top of the world, getting close to the Arctic Circle,
further again to a set of remote islands, then another sea crossing to this
lonely little outpost and finally the walk across the moor followed by the ascent
up to what must be the UKs most remote platform. All this produces a feeling
of truly being at the top of the world. After climbing this magnificent edifice
I was happy, I was content, and more to the point, I was so acutely aware of
the glory and the beauty of this glorious world that we live in. This is what
climbing has given me.
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