The Mountaineering Council of Scotland
Literary Competition 2006
by Joe Brown
The 2006 competition was judged by Ex-MCofS President, John Donohoe, Ex-MCofS Vice President and English Teacher, Ingrid Parker, Sport Development Officer Kevin Howett and Press and Journal columnist and keen hill walker Mike Lowson.
There was a good variation in the style and themes in this year's Prose entries and the judges were obviously drawn towards the same conclusion as to which entries merited special attention. Overall, eight submissions where received.
Sharing third place was 'The Taming of the Slate' by Alan Dawson and 'Time out' by John Biggar. Alan's piece cleverly applied the 'epic terminology' of mountaineering writing to a walk; whilst John's 'well constructed tale' highlights the stresses revealed when romantic and climbing relationships overlap.
In second place was ‘From Whence Doth Come Mine Aid...?’ by David McVey, a strong, contemporary piece that one judge felt showed 'great imagination and powerful structure.'
This year’s winner in the Prose category was 'Vivre La Difference' by Andy Cloquet. All judges applauded this witty, short yet compact piece that holds an unguessable twist in its tail.
There where a good number of entries in the Poetry section, although a number of those clearly had little to do with mountaineering and scored down accordingly. Susan Collin's entry, 'No Summit' captured perfectly the feelings of those all too familiar days when we find ourselves retreating from the mountains whilst J Purvis' 'No Risk' illustrates the loss we'd feel as mountaineers in a safety obsessed society taken to extremes. Mike Robinson's 'Why do I climb' expressed it's subject in a 'creative and thoughtful' way and came a close second to the eventual winner, 'The Arch' by Moira Baird, a multi-facetted piece that contains several messages.
1st place winner, Prose Section: Andy Cloquet
‘Vivre la difference!’
The name Khyber is unique in UK climbing. It now holds an unassailable position across both sexes in mountaineering’s Who’s Who.
You will remember Mark Khyber but do you know that the media-heroine Chrissy is also a Khyber? I certainly didn’t until very recently and it’s staggering to find that Chrissy, who is the most vocal in denying her celebrity status, is a climber of equal class to. Mark, of course, will always be remembered for his audacious solos of Greenland’s ‘Inuition’ & ‘Eskimobility’ and the yellow-streaked, politically touchy, ‘Lemon Curd’ in Northern Iraq. I doubt, though, you’ll know much about the real Chrissy other than the glib, fabricated dross repeatedly churned out by the glossy climbing comics.
When I watch Chrissy climb I can’t help myself seeing Mark’s style, grace and composure and maybe that’s why she rarely speaks about him: she wants us to see her for who she is: a daring, skillfull, competent world class climber. Take a brilliant Lucinda, dazzling Lucy, peerless Lynn, matchless Libby and an enduring Liv then scrunch them into the DNA melting pot of life with more than a dose of Mark and you’ll end up with Chrissy. Don’t try to make too many comparisons with Mark, though, as she’s far from his shadow.
She’s tall, leggy and brash; she’s sassy and self-opinionated but what’s most important, she climbs like Roadrunner on Speed. It’s as if she’s taken a combination of vitamins, Viagra and Vanceril in a solution of Adrenalin.
You can easily see Mark’s high cheek bones and his ever-present, face-splitting smile in Chrissy and she shares the same alluring brown eyes as Mark.
She has the same drive as Mark, edged with the finesse of femininity. Mind you, Chrissy wouldn’t have shown-off for the cameras like Mark! Oh, what a mess he made of himself, that day on the once hidden Palace Boulders in Edinburgh.
Having just been given the rocks and a surrounding acre of land by His Majesty, the custodians of the Caledonia Mountaineering Clubs Federation stood back to watch Mark dance over the boulders as the cameras devoured every nuance of his movement.
Mark’s only mistake was to attempt the unbouldered, horizontal roof that is finished by a rounded, leaning arete and suggest that a photographer position herself underneath for a more dramatic shot. It was some sight as Mark was stretchered off to casualty theatre with half a tripod still impaled in his upper thigh. Chrissy’s now claimed the line calling it Holyroof.
We never really saw Mark again. Apparently, he went on to some quasi-spiritual, life changing experience. Six years on we have Chrissy Khyber: not only taking his place but surpassing him in British and World climbing.
She boulders at V7 / F7a+ (Quartz Not - Glen Torridon & Gneiss Touch – Flowerdale Crags) with the typically tenacious, yet dexterous & familiar gritty Khyber power and she leads new routes at E5 ( Cwm On Gals – Yr Moel).
If that’s not enough, she can dry tool with surgical precision at VI; and that’s when she is meant to be resting. Whilst on her climbing marathons she smacks the balls of lesser men into oblivion; leaving those left in the group to collapse beside the nearest boulder. Who cares whether she just missed repeating Fawcett’s 100 Extremes in one day of daylight? Fawcett’s average was E2, Chrissy’s was E3 until rain stopped play on route 93: even Mark dipped out on route 92 when some weird hormonal pills started to get the better of his de-hydrating exertions.
If that’s not enough, take my word for it. I met with her just after she’d returned from Beinn à Bhuridh where she had led the first free ascent of Papal Condoms; the undercut pinnacle that soars out to the right of Vatican City. We made the interview whilst linking the best Cairngorm crags in a two-day hike, climbing in Mescalitos and choosing nothing less than 4b on each of our 6 multi-pitch routes.
I’ve never experienced such intensity and drive from one individual, yet all the time I was with her, I couldn’t get Mark out of my head. Also, I knew that he was the one subject sure to evoke a mood swing of gargantuan proportions. So, in our Petzl illuminated cave (cheque in the post, please for blatant product placement!) under Carn nan coire Lurcher, just before dawn signalled my first lead of Day 2, I popped the question: “Where is Mark, Chrissy? He just vanished from the scene leaving an unmatchable legacy of beautiful routes and then you appeared; what’s happened to him?”
The ensuing tense silence was quietly broken by Chrissy as she slam-dunked British climbing history into meltdown. Turning round, she slowly peeled off her Patagucci rock pants and it was with a cold sweat of realisation congealing on my face that I was drawn to the violent scar on her thigh. How much more life changing could Mark’s absence have been?
(“Vivre la difference” from Boys Will Be Boys by The Hooters)
1st place winner, Poetry Section: Moira Baird
The Arch
Many years ago the good earth spawned a monumental rock by the shore. Day and night the tide moved and washed around it's base, one day bashing it, caressing it the next, pounding it another. Tiny fragments of rock crumbled exposing a weakness, a keyhole, through which a dot of light projected onto it's shadow.
The turquoise sea found the key to the lock and pushed and poked one drop, two drops, more drops rubbing and twisting its way through the rock, opening to the size of a door. The tides continued to push the door wider each day, returning particles to the earth with each swing. Sand scoured around the space, munching into the fragile rock.
And then the rock by the shore was no longer. It became an arch. A narrow mass hunched over the sea. Rough yet polished, the arch textured into a natural beauty.
Man came, in a fraction of time, to clamber over, seeking thrills. At first gentle, chalked hands grasped and fingered. Tight boots toed pencil lines and rock ripples.
Later metal claws were rammed into small cracks to be tugged, twisted and pulled. Wet ropes snagged the surface, whipped and lashed beneath the arch.
At its feet oil covered bags and plastic bottles hooked and strangled. Orange peel and condoms swilled the rising turquoise waters into a murky grey slime.
Man wanted more.
Metal bits shook and penetrated the ancient walls. Shiny metal chiselled, dull bolts hammered into the underbelly above the swirling rubbish.
And still the swelling tide hungrily took it's share.
The arch fought back, discarding dead flesh and throwing chunks at the men. The sea grew higher and the sun burned hotter.
And man never returned.
But the feast continued, the surf gnawed through the arch until it crumbled to it's knees, breaking its spine before returning to the settling sea.
2nd place winner, Prose Section: David McVey
‘From Whence Doth Come Mine Aid…?’
Mountains are my business.
Mountains: they point the way to the sky and loom protectively – some would say menacingly – over the homes of men and women. They never move, nor can they be moved. They are the embodiment of strength and security and permanence.
No number of humans can move a mountain, but they can exert their influence upon them, as they have influenced the whole of Creation. My job is, if you like, to monitor the situation. I move backwards and forwards through time, from mountain range to mountain range, observing mankind and its dealings with mountain landscapes. How familiar I am with loss and spoiling and cruelty.
You will most clearly understand me through hearing some of my experiences. I may as well begin with the occasion when I find myself, in human form, following a man-made ice cave with walls and ceiling polished with the passing of bodies and an uneven, dirty, slushy floor. At one point a large hole in the ice opens on to the world outside. A huddle of humans gathers there, in a haze of milky-white breath, wearing military uniforms puffed out by layers of warm clothing. They greet me in Italian and motion me to look out of the opening.
Even after an eternity of experience among the hills, this is a giddy prospect. Below us, a steep snow slope ends in broken chaos above a deep valley through which crashes a wild mountain river. Opposite, peaks of rock, ice and snow glow pink in early sunlight. A fresh day of pure light and space has recently been born among these hills. I look more closely at my immediate surroundings: on the slushy snow-sill of the opening sit some rifles.
One of the soldiers tells me, ‘The Austrians usually lob some shells over at this time of day.’
We stand for a while in the silence of the hills. Then there is a loud report, like a sharp clap of thunder, which echoes and reverberates round the valleys for several seconds. On a high peak to our left a flower of flame and smoke and melted snow blossoms. Then silence, briefly, returns.
A slow, sickening rumble, felt rather than heard, seems to issue from deep in the heart of the hills. We watch in mute, powerless horror as the entire slope where the shell had landed seems to shiver and then begin to slide and move. Thousands of tons of rock shear from the slope and tumble down, several hundred feet into the snow of a high col. Some of the lumps of rock break off and fall further, tracing lines in the steep snow and ice right down to the river.
The other men are stunned. ‘We had men on that col,’ says one. Of course, it is only natural for humans to be moved by the misfortunes of their own kind, but they are not my concern. I remain with my gaze fixed on the upper slopes of the mountain that the shell has disfigured. The source of the rockfall looks raw, sore, bare, a gaping wound that will never repair or heal.
What happens next you will find puzzling, but it is important in showing you what my existence – my job – is like. The freezing trench, the hills, the rocks, the snow and the icy river all fade and vanish like a dream as you wake. And as I wake, I find that I am standing on another hillside, gentler, windblown, black with winter heather. I am one of a small group of men wearing rough tweeds or plaids, watching a herd of newly-released sheep plodding doubtfully across the slope.
‘His Lordship had them taken by ship to Inverness last week,’ says one of the men, ‘Hardy beasts. All weather is the same to them, and they will eat anything.’
‘I have heard it said that they poison the land,’ says another man. ‘Some of the glens that introduced them years ago are just one plaid of grass without heather or trees or flowers.’
‘Och, havers,’ says the first, ‘Poison the land? No – they make it pay.’
In the middle distance is a huddle of rough cottages. Their hearths must be cold because no smoke rises through the heather thatch. The second man points to them and asks, ‘Do the people still live there?’
‘No,’ replies the first, ‘All gone with the rest of the people. The sheep only need a few shepherds and labourers and those we have brought in from the Borders. Reliable men, not afraid of hard work. These cottages,’ he waves a hand vaguely at the small settlement, ‘we will pull down. The stone can be re-used for fanks and dykes.’
The other man seems to think about these words, what they mean, what they conceal, then replies, ‘These rooftrees have sheltered many a generation. Now they’ll just rot or be thrown on the fire.’
‘Oh, do not waste your pity on these people. They will have to learn to make themselves useful in the towns or in Glasgow – or in the colonies.’
I do not speak but it seems, in any case, that I am not expected to say anything. I just stare at the abandoned hovels and try to look beyond them. The life of the native people must have been miserable enough, but at least it had certainty, familiarity, continuity. But now the chain is broken.
It is not the people who chiefly concern me, however. It may sound harsh, but they are not my responsibility. Instead, I study the hills: I picture their fecund summer greenness and plenty and variety. With the all-devouring flocks of sheep the result will be an empty, stifled uniformity. A sadness seems to enclose the hills and I feel powerless and weak and despairing. My feelings rise up, overwhelm me and I no longer attend to my surroundings. When I concentrate again, when I look, smell, taste, hear, all has changed once more.
I am scarcely able to move. I am now wearing several layers of thick, constricting clothing with a kind of thick nylon boiler suit on top. Goggles protect my eyes and a thick balaclava covers the rest of my head. The straps of a large rucksack tug at my shoulders and suggest a burden of unimaginable weight. I am fighting my way up a steep ice slope, clutching a sliding device attached to a fixed rope, scrabbling my cramponed boots on a worn, much trod-upon surface.
I am just one of a line of similarly-burdened figures. Ice crystals, lumps of snow and Sherpa expletives sweep down on me from the figure ahead of me. After an hour of effort and sweat and pain, the gradient eases and we plod up a gently-angled slope of deep, soft snow which leads to a broad, bouldery col. Our destination comes into sight – a small area of dome-shaped tents and piles of equipment on a flat, stony, wind-scoured part of the col.
We flop to the ground, drop our burdens and seem to float a foot above the ground. For a while, everyone just lies where they land, but gradually they rise and begin to busy themselves. I go over to a stand on a little rocky eminence.
This could only be the Himalaya. This high col soars above dizzying drops on two sides to distant valleys where glaciers meet and collide and form crazy patterns of shifting ice. On the two remaining sides, jagged teeth of rock and ice rise steeply and are lost in wind-torn cloud. I spend my being among the mountains and often see them at their finest, yet the sheer drama of this place prompts me to worship something, someone.
And then I look more closely. Down in the floor of the valley from which my party has come there are little scatterings of things that don’t belong among the dazzling whiteness of snow and ice: more groups of tents, like coloured fly-droppings, and lines of tiny figures, parties ascending and descending the valley. I turn and see more figures incrementally creeping their way up the steep slopes above the col.
The col itself proves not to be the wild world of frozen rock and snow that it had seemed. Many relics of previous expeditions lie scattered around, trapped in the ice’s grip; empty cans, plastic bags, food containers, tent poles, shreds of canvas and discarded oxygen cylinders. And I notice that I am standing among some hard-frozen human faeces.
A voice sounds close by – addressing itself to me, it seems. I turn and see a climber looking at me. His face is mostly obscured by goggles and a cagoule hood, but I can see that he is not happy.
‘Get back here and unload your equipment,’ he barks in English, pointing to the rucksack I have abandoned, ‘Sherpa no work, Sherpa no get paid. Get it, sonny?’
I follow the man back to the scene of slow, methodical, oxygen-starved activity.
Often I am aware of my powerlessness, my onlooker status. It seems as if I am, after all, not here to observe and monitor what man has done to the hills, but, rather, to weep for it.
I am soon gone from the Himalaya. I find myself back in Scotland, on a high plateau among lowland hills. It is a bright, spring morning, hymned by skylarks and curlews and pipits. Above me, eerie and menacing, sweep the blades of gigantic wind turbines.