Youth

This is the second of four posts on Experience that I introduced in Crossing an Ocean.

We walked in after work on Friday, passing the turning into Coire Lagan, and following the line of the ridge above us. We went along the path with the packs on our backs. We didn’t carry much. A single nine millimeter rope, a few rocks on wire with quick draws, slings, half a dozen screw gates and two harnesses. We had food for 24 hours, a bivy bag each and the clothes we walked in. We also had five litres of water each.

Midsummer, the light fading slowly as we meandered up and down across the hillsides. For an hour and a half we went, counting off the peaks above us. At the final mountain, Gars Beinn, we stopped and hitched the packs up our backs. Is this the right one? We asked each other. Up we went. Straight up, steeply uphill, over heather, then on the screes scrambling up towards the ridge dipping in the fading light. Eight hundred and fifty meters ascent, a hundred meters every 8 mins. Youth..

We made the ridge just north of the peak. It was close to midnight, but coming up that high had bought us more light. Back down below we could see a handful of lights away there on Soay. Further out west across the water were the shadows of Rhum and turning north, the Uists. North again was the last of the light. Midnight. The other way was dark. Rob went on but I stayed and turned to look over the other side of the narrow ridge, deep down into the void. From there streamed strings of mist towards me, spinning up through the smashed columns of rock.

This is the first experience I want to describe: just a moment, standing at 850m, looking down into the void. I remember it now more vividly than the day that followed and all that happened in it. I remember the exhilaration I felt at being there and at what we were there to do. I remember that I wasn’t frightened and being surprised by this. It was a moment and I was fully in it and fully up to it.

Then stone fall rattled up from the cliffs below. The wind blew harder. I went up to the summit of Gars Bein and joined Rob. We looked around for somewhere out of the wind. There wasn’t much. I squeezed between two rocks just off the summit. Then I put on my jacket, hat and gloves, shoved my legs into the empty rucksac and pulled the waterproof bivvy bag over me. Zipped it up. I could hear Rob doing the same. The rain began and we sat and waited for dawn.