The Mountaineering Council of Scotland
Literary Competition 1997
by Kevin Howett
The number of entries was up on last year with seven prose and seven poetry submissions. Several of the poems in particular were good. The subjects for the prose ranged from - The Champion from Nick Bullivant (winner of past competitions), a ghost story based upon the meeting on the hill of a modern-day walker and a Highland Games competitor; to a humorous sketch about the relative merits of 'wellies' and 'brollies' when out on the hill from Pat Brown and several descriptive pieces about the ascents of various routes (Triple Buttress Without Stilettos by Kate Rennie; New Year on Ben Nevis by Roland Ashcroft; The Bramani Route on Punto Russica by Toby Johnson, and Columbine and Polymonium by Liz Bibby, a section of the John Muir Trail through the Sierra Nevada).
The Winner in this category was Ruaridh Pringle's moving description of how a young climber loses (and finds?) himself in a solo of a hard winter route - The Gully. Ruaridh receives £100. The runner-up was Liz Bibby who receives £50.
In the poetry section, the general standard was high. The winner was Ian McCabe of the Ochil's MC (who receives £50) Ian actually submitted four poems all of which held the judges interest. However, one in particular was felt to be head and shoulders above all the other entries. We hope that you enjoy it (below).
1st place winner, Poetry Section: Ian McCabe
An Teallach, Winter
Iced pinnacles glow red above
Dark Toll an Lochain's hearth,
The embers of the setting sun
Soon die to winter's dark.
On bellowing Corrag Bhuidhe
Spindrift sears above the gorge:
If crampons slip, then we are ash
In the cold heart of the Forge.
1st place winner, Prose Section: Ruaridh Pringle
The Gully
It was a test-piece. The most famous gully in the world, they said. It still had a reputation: nothing admittedly like it once had, when it had been spoken of in hushed whispers, but somehow, though the world had progressed around it, it had clung stubbornly to something which might be termed dignity; shielding itself from the denigration crampons had wrought on its siblings and their grades, to remain the epitome of the classic winter gully.
He had hired a car: a big one, more expensive than he could possibly afford, and had raced it through the plantations; up through glen after glen of bleak, snow-dappled moor, caring not very much if the next corner was just that little bit sharper or icier than he had bargained for. A curious sensation this. Anything was possible because there were no consequences. Life was exposed with breath-taking clarity as a narrow line, suspended, like the road’s painfully stark black and white ribbon, between dim and mysterious unknowns. Existence was now his clinical experiment, and he explored its boundaries with cold detachment.
The walk up from the golf-course had passed, somehow. He didn’t remember much of it. As his body carried on about its business he had been somewhere else, asking questions which so badly needed answers. There were none of course. The calmly reasoning part of himself he now found himself listening to most of the time as though it were another person told him this - and he desperately embraced the logic of it, but found it as cold and uncomforting as old bones. The fact that he knew it to be true; that there was nothing he could do about any of all this, and might as well just get on with things, made it all so much worse because, somehow, he couldn’t. He had shouted, again by way of a sort of experiment; he had screamed at the approaching, cloud-shrouded cliffs. He has said "you bitch !", but that didn’t help; so he screamed it instead; trying each action on like a coat for size. None of them fitted, so he left them behind with his forgotten footprints.
As he reaches the hut, the early cloud is beginning to disperse. A scrum of climbers are there, kitting up: tinkering and clanging, breathing big silvery plumes into the chill morning air and drinking steaming coffee from thermos flasks. One of their number sports a stars-and-stripes bandanna. He wildly brandishes paired Charlet Mosers, enthusing in surf-speak with a borders accent. "Just look at that nick. So good. Ice like toffee. The Zero and the big "O" yesterday. Totally mega". Beneath a battered orange Joe Brown helmet, his haggard one-man audience draws distractedly on a drooping roll-up and fingers threadbare tea-stained salopettes. He sees his opportunity and addresses the newcomer. "Grand morning. What are you going for".
He has a few minutes on this lot perhaps "Don’t know. Haven’t decided yet". He drifts away from the hut, leaving them all to think he is stealing a march on them. The evaporating mist reveals crimson buttresses far above against a china-blue sky. They look molten, like sculptures of lava. F... them. F... them all; these pointless rocks and mindless jerks who succour their little testosteronal fantasies on them; violating every rotting, ugly, frigid crevice for the sole purpose of reliving each sordid deed in some dingy pub, like the re-enactments of pitiful one-night stands.
The snow is steep, but casually kicked steps prove sufficient. He could fall here, he thinks, and maybe those boulders will take him apart. Finish the job already begun inside. He stoops before the first ice, unbuckling rusted weapons and studying their rounded points. He really should have sharpened them. He looks at the ice. He could imagine it was his face. Or hers for that matter. Bitch. Bitch!! He drives the first pick so fiercely that he can feel knuckles swell from the impact. The ice develops a crimson smear. As he pulls up, he does not realise it, but he relishes the pain.
Steep, this first bit. He had seen photo’s, but had not realised how elbows and knees would get in the way. So much harder than anything he has tried before, even with the umbilical safety of a roped partner. Plates of ice clatter and spin in crazy, unfamiliar trajectories towards the snow below. Hard work, this. Ice like glass: three strikes before each placement. Knuckles burn and throb, leaving a trail of red smudges.
The gully narrows: a dark tunnel; the future exactly. Maybe this is it, he hypothesises. Maybe, if he can hold on long enough, there will be sunlight at the end. Easier this bit, and so he cries, shaking on poorly driven axes. He’s with her now. They’re together, not very far away; he can feel it, like a hot iron in his chest. He can picture the two of them together; him holding her, kissing her. He screams something and then rushes headlong into the steepening; axes flailing, knuckles smashing, heedless of the damage. A placement fails and he screams her name, thinking he is falling, wanting to, but the other axe has held. He forces on upwards like a doomed train, gathering momentum from the unbearable feeling which he knows must burst through somehow, soon, or he will explode.
This is not the answer: he knows that now, and suddenly he is trapped. He wants to be far away from this wretched, vertical place. In trembling fear he teeters up the next near-vertical runnel. He calls her name once more, almost pleading; knowing everyone will hear, and scrabbles precariously higher.
The hard part is over now. He does not remember much of what has just transpired. He stands in a small foot-hole, swaying first one way, then the other. So easy to lean out just a little bit more. Just relax for a moment ..
The rest is snow. Far too much time to think. He feels cheated that the last part is like this. So easy to let go, like it was for her. Just drift, without effort into something else. Bitch. Much better to be asleep, or drunk. Or dead. He pulls over the cornice close to the summit shelter. It is still early and he is alone, thank God. A skin of high cloud has formed, reducing the sunlight to a watery iridescence. He sits with strange awkwardness in the snow, and watches the curve of a small snowdrift; entranced for a few minutes by the subtle texture of its ripples, the shape of its curving spine, and the dimness of its snow against the surrounding crust to which it tenuously clings. Then he catches himself and screws shut his eyes so tightly that he see stars.
This is not the answer. Maybe there really is no answer. Maybe this wretched, corrosive, destroying feeling is all there is. He does not know how long he sits there, but when he opens his eyes he is shivering.
He finds the top of a broad gully whose name he should know. Normally Grade II, it seems well banked out with firm powder, although he can’t see the bottom. He bumslides it anyway; hanging precariously to control an axe-shaft braced against the steep slope; legs flailing, wishing he had what it took just to let go. Bare hands leave red streaks as snow gives way unexpectedly to lethally hard neve. At the gully mouth he surveys mangled knuckles with passing interest, and begins the long walk back down.
The car is still there, the same as he left it. Nothing has changed. It was meant to mean something. There was something that he had so desperately wanted from it - a sign perhaps ?, but now he looks at his hands and sees they are empty. It was just a stunt. There is a bottle in the car. Perhaps he will drive to a lay-by somewhere quiet, next to the sea and throw stones at the sunset. Maybe, bottle empty, he will see the sunrise.
2nd place winner, Prose Section: Liz Bibby
Columbine and Polymonium
I groaned inwardly, not for the first time on this trip. But I gritted my teeth and stomped reluctantly upwards. You see, Scott is six foot two with legs to match, and I am five foot four with legs to match. Not a fair contest. This was the twelfth day of our walk along the John Muir Trail, southwards through the Sierra Nevada mountains of California - the "range of light". It finishes on Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower forty eight.
Tomorrow, we were to rendezvous with Phil, our "link man" to pick up a further ten days supply of food, but for now, a final push up the two and a half thousand feet into Dusy basin, a hanging valley high above the John Muir trail. A virtually treeless plateau of rock and scrub - no fire to cook on tonight. Most nights we had the pleasures of camp fire cooking, much quicker than a petrol stove, though I guess my pans will never recover from the thick layer of soot and tar they got coated with! That wonderful smell still lingers....
We pitched the Saunders on a flat gravely area - camping on the grass is not allowed. I struggled to light the temperamental stove, cursing the lack of wood. Eventually, our customary pasta and lentil stew was ready and quickly dispatched. Both of us were inwardly drooling at the thought of some fresh food the next night. ( We were both to lose a lot of weight this trip!) A quick wash to remove the dust from our brown legs (not much cellulite on these thighs, I thought, pure muscle....) before squeezing into the Dalomite and instantly falling asleep. No coyotes or bears tonight - back at Thousand Islands Lake, we had heard the eerie howling of a pack of coyote only a short way from our camp as we lay on the still-warm rocks and gazed at the bright stars. Above the treeline, bears were rarely a problem, but most nights we hung our food high on a branch using a counterbalance system - I’d practised the technique back in Fife, much to the amusement of my neighbours, who watched my antics as I tried to throw a weighted line over a branch on the horse chestnut.
A cold overcast morning, we had our thermals on as we headed down Bishop Pass to South Lake under the chaotic mass of Mount Aggassiz. The Sierras are full of the names of famous scientists - Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, Huxley, Goddard. In the distance, we spied a genuine cowboy. He was leading a pack-horse laden with food for the organised camp we had passed yesterday. Soon we caught up with some venerable members of the Sierra Club, including a lady of seventy in long flowing skirt and floppy hat. They had gladly shared with us their wide knowledge of the Sierran flora as we had walked down together from Muir Pass, two days earlier.
"How’s it going?" greeted Phil in his inimitable Irish drawl. Beers were gratefully downed as he told us of the bear attack on the car. The paintwork was deeply scored with claw marks and the back door had been partly bent out of its frame. A hungry bear will do anything to get at a Vesta Beef Curry! Steak, tatties, tomatoes, mushrooms and two litres of red wine later, we sat round the fire and swapped tales. Phil had been doing his own thing since leaving us at Thousand Islands Lake a week before. The three of us were going to spend the next few days in the Palisades, climbing peaks in this treeless wilderness of clean granite.
Restocked with our last ten days supply of food, we staggered to the upper reaches of Dusy basin to camp. It was a wildlife haven, not much visited. A long-eared mule deer picked its way delicately and unafraid past our camp, and below, amongst the shattered boulders, we watched as a coyote caught a ground squirrel and dragged it into its den. Trout abounded in the streams and rivers. A long haul over boulders and scrub to Knapsack Pass, where we met a couple with three and a half boots between them- the rough granite had taken its toll ! The shapely cone in front of us was Columbine, only a thousand feet above the pass. We dumped our sacks and feeling positively weightless, we drifted up the slabs and blocks to the airy summit, a prow of slender granite with only room for two.
Suddenly I felt shivery and lethargic. I struggled to keep up with Phil and Scott as we headed over the trackless chaos and down the steep granite slabs, overbalancing with the weight of our packs. I collapsed into my sleeping bag, too shattered and cold to do much until I had eaten. Phil and Scott foraged far and wide to find enough scrub to light a fire. At eleven and a half thousand feet, this was our highest camp. One ancient tree we stumbled across was no more than two feet high, growing contorted in a fold of rock. Its thick trunk betrayed its true age. No fire fodder this.
Teetering delicately over a huge boulderfield of mammoth blocks, we gingerly navigated onto the moraine beneath Mount Sill. It looked intimidating to shorty-legs here, but the temptation of friction-full granite overcame my qualms. We clambered on and up to the summit ridge, feeling distinctly underdressed in shorts and T-shirts when we came across a fully-clad Alpine party, complete with axes and crampons. They had come from the North, over the Palisade glacier. The views down into the Owens Valley were hazy, but to the south we glimpsed our first view of Mount Whitney!
Our names were duly written in the summit book, photos were taken, lunch was eaten and a lazy hour’s sunbathing had before the descent along a blocky ridge. Scott couldn’t resist shooting up the next peak along. It’s called Polymonium. Named after another beautiful flower typical of the Sierras, its English name is Sky Pilot. With legs like his, perhaps Scott should also be renamed....?