Featuring the usual suspects

Featuring the usual suspects

Into the dark.

BOXING DAY 1996


The first mistake we made was getting out of bed!

I’m not sure of the time now, and I’m sure on the day I thought it was really early but it was probably around 9am when I turned up at my brother’s house.

At the time I was 29, smoked too much, drank too much and being Christmas day the day before would have eaten too much. So consequently I felt like shit. But thinking back I always felt like shit in the mornings so I didn’t think much of it.

We travelled up to Wasdale head in my clapped out little mini. I’d just rebuilt it the winter before to go climbing in Wales that summer. An MG Metro engine had replaced the original which was great except the differential was designed for 13 inch wheels not the 10 inch ones I had on, so 0 to 50 was unbelievable but the top speed was a deafening bone shattering 65 mph down hill with the wind behind you. All the way to Wales from west Cumbria full to the brim with climbing gear, a frame tent, three peoples rucksacks, beer and my other (six foot) brother. On the old A6 because the M6 at 65mph in a mini is like Russian roulette.

As I was saying we travelled the ten miles to Wasdale head in my car. So at about 9.30 we set off from the car park, and as I also said before I always felt rough in the mornings but this morning was an exception, by the time we got to the top of Sty Head I was dying. (metaphorically) Our usual stop by the first aid box was well over due. Being inexperienced at winter climbing, my method was to take as much kit as possible, you know, spare rope, all my nuts, rocks (climbing gear), ice screws, big massive flask, loads of fags, etc, and a few spare jumpers, so for a day out my gear including my boots weighted about 56 pounds (25 kilos). It was normally a hard slog up Sty head. But that day my legs were like jelly.

The conditions were good even at 1500ft every thing was frozen solid. And with the wind chill I soon cooled down and got my breath back, the short walk from Sty head to sprinkling tarn was better we could see our target now Great End towering up on our right. From Sty head the shoulder of Great End starts at the same altitude but soon the two-part company. In the ¾ of a mile from Sty Head to sprinkling tarn the path climbs roughly 300 ft yet the shoulder of Great End up the band climbs 1000 ft to the summit. As you climb the path the great north-eastern face slowly reveals itself. This was our goal. Running straight through the face, cutting it right in half, is central gully. Not a hard climb for those die hard, sheer ice nutters. And at grade 2 not our hardest climb to date, but this is the longest climb on the face and so not to be taken lightly.

We set of diagonally from Sprinkling tarn up the 200 or so feet to the base of the face, this is where the going gets physically tough. Technically its just a snow slope, but being lazy and having a fuzzy brain from the night before we opted to do this approach with crampons and ice axes still firmly attached to our sacs. After what felt like hours (but was probably about 10 minutes) of slipping cursing and general ‘what am I doing here’ we reach a point some where to the right and above central gully. Why we didn’t make straight for the gully I don’t know, I think Dave was thinking of doing a different route. Anyway we sat down got the flasks out and started putting our gear on.
“I feel like shit Dave,” I said
“Whats up?” he asked
“To much bear yesterday I think” I moaned
“No sympathy then if it’s self induced” he mocked
I gave up struggling with my crampons, sat down and lit a fag up. After a couple of minutes I started feeling better, I pored out another cup of coffee and took a look at the view. We were at approximately 700 mtrs, 2 and a bit thousand feet right at the head of Borrowdale in the distance you can see Derwent water and Keswick beyond.
“I can see the pub from here” I said mimicking the Fosters advert
“Where?” Dave jested
“All right I can’t, infact I don’t ever want to see another pub ever again”
“Stop moaning” he said “its all your own fault anyway, come on get a move on!”
“O.K” I said finishing of my coffee and starting to wrestle with my crampons again.
“Which route shall we do then?” he asked.
“I thought we were doing central gully” I replied.
“Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“No, but I’ll give it a go” This was the standard answer.
“Lets go then” Dave urged.
“Hold on its all lumpy” I said punching my rucksack
Dave looked at me as if I was mad.
“My sacks all lumpy” I complained
He just burst out laughing and started to walk off.
Central Gully


We set off towards the bottom of the gully me with my rucksack still only half on my back, trying to push the lumps into place with my spare arm contorted behind my back.
The gully started 50 feet or so below and 100 to the left of where we had stopped. By now I was feeling better and looking forward to the climb.
We scrambled into the base of the gully, got the ropes out and tied our selves on.
“Do you want to lead the first pitch?” asked Dave.
“No it’s OK I’ll let you do it” offering eagerly. I often wimp out of the first pitch of a climb, which is generally a big mistake as the first pitch is normally straight forward and I end up with the crux of the climb somewhere in the middle.
I slung the rope over my head so it was round my waist. And started to pay it out as David walked of.
“Climb when you’re ready!” I mocked
“To late I’m already climbing” he heckled back to me.
The gully starts fairly straight forwardly with what is basically a frozen stream flowing down rock steps. I was standing at the bottom of one of these steps so Dave soon climbed out of sight. For the next ten minutes all I could hear was the thud, thud off axes into ice and the occasional muffled curse. Then I heard a muffled shout of “safe” and the rope started to jerk upwards as it was pulled in, I paid it out until all the slack was taken up “that’s me” I shouted and started to climb. I had really cooled down in the ten minutes I’d been standing there so I didn’t want to wait for the shout to start climbing.
Where the snow and water have mixed together over time there ends up this sort of frozen porridge of snow ice and water ice which is really plasticy and great to climb.
So we made quick progress on this first section. The side of the gully does a really strange thing here the left flank is about a 70 degree slope but the right flank actually overhangs, the stream in the gully has found a flaw in the rock and so created this strangely angled section where you are actually climbing under bare rock.
I reached Dave at the end of the over hanging section at the foot of the first real step in the climb about a ten foot boulder wedged in the gully with hardly any ice on it and powder snow around both edges.
“Your lead” said Dave.
“Cheers” I gasped; the hangover had come back with avengance half way up the previous pitch.
I just plodded past Dave and started to climb. I wedged my axe in the gap between the boulder and the gully wall, pulling my self up I scrabbled about with my crampons until they caught on something. Repeating this move a couple of times I could see over the top of the boulder into the gully above. I swung my axe into the ice on the top of the boulder and it shattered with a clunk as the axe hit the rock underneath I tried again, clunk, the thin layer of ice shattered again and the axe hit the rock.
“Shit!” I exclaimed
“Whats wrong” Dave asked
“There’s bugger all up here to get my axe in” I complained
I tried again and again with the same result. My legs were starting to ache being on there. I tried one last time my axe caught on a lip in the rock, so with my heart in my mouth I went for it. Pushing with my legs and pulling with my one (dodgy) axe placement I scrambled up and over.
“You OK” Dave shouted up.
“Yeah no problem” I gasped with shaky legs.

I was lying at the foot of a steep wide snow slope. About 40 feet above me the gully split, to the right was a 20 foot high ice flow, to the left what looked like a steep rocky bank and even further to the left an even bigger ice flow. I instantly put all thoughts of what was yet to come aside and concentrated on the job at hand. I needed to make myself safe! The gully wall to the left was vertical and looked good to put a ‘rock’ in. I stood up and moved over to the left, straight up to my knees in snow. Every time I moved forward there was a mini avalanche. I eased my self over to the rock face and unclipped my rack from my harness. Nothing would fit, what little cracks where in the rock were full of ice, the rocks just slipped out. I looked over to the other side of the gully, it looked great, big lumps of rock sticking out just waiting for something to get wedged between them!
I set of almost forgetting about the unstable snow. Every step was not only hard work but scary as the whole slope felt as if it was just about to slide of the edge “you don’t get avalanches on Great End, at least not very often” I told myself. (Infact you do, quite often, two years later six people where caught in one in the very same spot and in 2009 I was involved in one of the scariest moments of my life just ½ mile from here, see ‘not a good day to die’).
I started moving up the slope as well as to the left, trying to put so distance between the drop and me. Suddenly I was stopped in mid step. The rope around my waist had become tight!
“Slack!!” I shouted to Dave. All I could hear was a muffled reply. I shouted a string of obscenities and pulled the rope. I realised straight away what had happened, the rope was getting caught in the gap between the gully wall and the boulder
“Shit!!” I shouted at the snow
“Shit shit shit!” This was not good.
Pulling the rope I gave it a flick at the same time, about two-foot of rope came free and then it jammed again. I set of moving again. All I could do was move a little way then try and pull a little slack in then move another couple of feet. Every time I pulled on the rope the snow beneath my feet would start sliding.
The gully at this point is no more than 20 feet wide, but it took me a good few minuets to get to the other side. At first I couldn’t find anything to put any protection in, looking over to the other side of the gully their seemed endless places for gear! Then about three feet away was a pinnacle of rock. Cursing my self for being so blind I pulled my self over, took a sling from around my neck, hung it over the rock and clipped myself to it. I sat down, my legs were like jelly again, but god was I glad to be attached to something solid. I got my breath back pulled my self together and shouted down to Dave
“Safe”
I was knackered. Pulling at the rope, I managed to get enough to start belaying with. The next problem was how to get it around my waist. I had a loop but every time I threw it over my head it just caught on my rucksack. So with a great deal of effort, lifting one leg up at a time I managed to work the rope up around my waist from the bottom.
“Climb when you’re ready” I shouted then started pulling the rope in, sliding it around my waist an arms length at a time. Suddenly the rope became slack Dave must have managed to free it, so I started pulling it in as fast as I could. After a few moves the tiredness came flooding back into my arms. What had taken me 20 minuets to climb was infact about 10 metres in vertical height, the rope was 50 metres long so I had to pull in 40 metres of rope in arms lengths around my waist until I pulled it tight to Dave. It was endless, pull a bit in, lock it with the other arm, hand down the rope, pull another bit in, etc etc.
After an eternity the rope became tight. I heard another muffled shout and the rope became slack in jerks as David started climbing. After about two minuets Davis head appeared over the end of the slope.
“What took you?” he asked. The answer he got is unrepeatable!
Dave carried straight on up the slope seemingly undeterred by the unstable snow.
“I’ll go up to the junction and we’ll decide which way from up there” he shouted from half way up the slope.
By the time I reached him I just wanted to get out of the gully. After the decidedly unsafe snow slope I wanted something solid to climb so the rocky bank to the centre left seamed the best route up infact it didn’t look that hard at all. Wanting to get this climb over with and because it didn’t look that bad I set of up this mixed ground. The first few moves were fairly simple. Hooking my axes behind rocks or even using big hand holds, but then my energy started to sap again and my nerve started to go. There was no where I could find to put protection in. I would waste minuets trying to find somewhere, then move up a few feet, then waste more time with no success. Trying to get a good foothold was just as bad, the crampons slipping all over the place on the bare rock. I wanted to take them off. But having no protection in I just didn’t feel safe enough to.
I was about half way up this section, after spending ages looking for a placement for my gear, I finally gave up. I had had enough. I was tired, hungry and shitting myself. That was it, I was going home! Taking my outer mitts off I let them and my axes hang around my wrists. I put the thin woollen glove onto the rock. It stuck! The moisture in the wool frozen on contact with the freezing rock and the glove stuck! This was great, what were before incredibly slippery rocks now had infinite grip.
I hauled myself up to the top of the bank, still feeling very venerable with no protection between Dave and me. I was parallel to and about ten feet above another snow slope that started from the top of the right hand ice flow. Looking up I could see blue skies, the slope carried on as far as I could see, opening out to reveal blue skies. Could this be the top?
Turning around I started to climb down to the snow slope. This ended up as a sliding scramble as I lost grip with my feet and then hands. I landed in the snow in a quivering heap. The snow was as soft here as it had been further down but not quite as steep. So my fall was nicely broken. I stood up and hitched the rope up around my waist. As I was ten foot below the highest part of that section there didn’t seem much point in putting some gear in now. David would have to pull me up ten feet first if he fell. Not much chance of that if I kept the rope tight. He soon appeared above me, then scrambled down into the gully beside me.

“That bit was crap wasn’t it?” he said

“Crap! Crap!” I exclaimed, “it was F&%7ing Crap! And left it at that
Dave set of up the slope, as soon as the rope was tight I started up behind him. The blue sky had a grey tinge to it and it seemed darker in the gully. The final slope is about 250 feet long and after a long climb is hard work. After this climb it was endless and exhausting. I was gasping a lung full of air, foot in foot in, axe in axe in, another lung full, foot in foot in, etc. every time I looked up it the top was no nearer just a little darker.
Finally with what felt like the last energy left in my body we reached the top. I wasn’t happy, I was completely wasted and collapsed in a heap.

After a couple of minutes I started to recover and the world around me became clear again. The wind was picking up. I heard voices. Looking over I saw Dave talking to some one. I pulled myself to my feet, picked my axes up and walked over.
I’m not sure now where the person had come from and very soon he disappeared.
‘whats happening’ I asked
‘Its going to get dark soon, I think we should head down the easy way rather than climb down Custs Gully’ He replied.
Custs Gully is a grade 1 gully at the north end of Great End. The easy way David was referring to was to walk south down to Esk Hause, then round to the left heading north back down to Sprinkling Tarn.
We took our gear off and coiled up the rope, then set of walking. In the short time we had been on the summit plateau the clouds had come down, visibility was about 100 meters and there was a greyness that was disconcerting.
The summit plateau of Great End has a diameter of about 300 meters with small out crops of rock in various places, none of which lend them selves to be the summit any more than another in bad visibility. Since this day I’ve been known to spend 10 minutes or more wandering around trying to find the ‘summit’ cairn. Either cliffs or steep ground surrounds this plateau for its entire circumference all except a small corridor leading to the col between Great end and Ill crag.

We headed left, at 90 degrees to Central Gully, heading (we thought) for Esk Hause.
After a short time we were confronted by outcrops that fell away looking quite ominous in the worsening light, we moved towards the easier ground to the right and carried on descending. After the day I had just had I was glad to just stumble along the easiest way possible. With unannounced knee deep snow drifts ready to get you with one step and unseen boulders lurking just below the surface with the next, I was having a hard time focusing on the way ahead.  The steepening ground and outcrops kept us from heading to the left, the way I felt that we should be going.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ I asked David in between one of my stumbles
‘Just following my nose’ he replied. I left it at that.
Very soon (far to soon infact) we reached flatter ground, what we thought was Esk Hause. We then headed of again at 90 degrees, to the left.
We started down a small cove; the ground was easier now the snow being older and more compact. Loosing height we still seemed to be heading too much to the right but the ground just kept leading us down we’ll see sprinkling tarn soon I thought to myself. But we kept going to the right!

I’m not sure who raised the question first but very soon we realised something wasn’t quite right
‘We must be heading into the top of Borrowdale’ I said ‘if we head up over here (pointing to the high ground to our left) we’ll be able to see Sprinkling tarn’
We started climbing back up. The fatigue that had briefly subsided returned with a vengeance, every step back up the slope was an effort. We had to climb back up about 50 meters in height before we could again start descending into the next valley. But still no sign of Sprinkling tarn! Even so we carried on descending hoping it was around the next corner. Again we soon realised that something was wrong.
David finally decided to get his compass out.
‘I think we’re heading south!’ he said
I’m sure I swore! No, infact I know I swore. This was the final straw. I had no energy left for climbing back up all I wanted to do was get of this bloody mountain.
‘So where the f%$k are we’ I asked.
‘I think we’re heading down into the top of Eskdale’ he replied
‘Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks’ I exclaimed. ‘I can’t go back up I’m totally knackered’
‘Well if this is the top of Eskdale then at least if we head down we’ll know where we are.’
So we set of again, the sky was now really getting dark, the clouds were heavy and snow began to fall. I was happier that I was heading down but not looking forward to to long walk infront of us. Tripping over another hidden boulder I wondered how the hell we had ended up heading the totally the wrong way!
Upper Eskdale from Esk Hause

 Central Gully doesn’t actually cut through the face of Great End at 90 degrees; the face looks to the Northeast but Central Gully runs more to the East. So when we emerged from the slog of the final snow slope and turned left we weren’t heading for Esk Hause as we thought but more to the right.  We were then pushed even more to the right by the cliffs we encountered, if we had moved to the steeper ground to the left we would have ended up right on course. So the easier ground to the right led us not to Esk Hause but to the col between Ill Crag and Great End. When we turned left here we were then heading for Esk Hause not sprinkling tarn as we thought. The ground falls away from Calf Cove oh so easily as we found out and before we new it we were heading the wrong way.



Not long after we had started down into Eskdale the fatigue I had been feeling all day really started to take its toll.
‘I think I’m going to have to stop for a bit ‘I complained to Dave. ’I need some food
‘O.K.’ he replied
So we found a comfortable looking patch of snow, Un-shouldering my rucksack I swung it round to my front and sat down. I hadn’t realised until now just how hungry I was; I took my flask out and opened my sandwich box. With the effort of the walk up and the gross hangover I had eaten half a sandwich all day. The next five minutes were a blur of stuffing sandwiches chocolate and coffee into my mouth as rapidly as possible.
‘We had better let Pauline know where we are before we drop to far and can’t get a signal’ I mumbled in between mouthfuls of Mars bar flavoured peanut butter sandwiches. I bought a mobile phone just for this purpose the summer before.
Pauline was Dave’s wife who wasn’t expecting us before it was dark, we had often walked down in the last throws of light not to get home a good hour after it was dark.
I got my phone out, luckily I had a signal. I dialled and it rang.
‘Hello’ a faint voice answered.
‘Hi its Paul’ I started trying my hardest to sound happy and unconcerned, but hurriedly gave my information as the line sounded really bad. ‘We’re fine but we’ve ended up coming down into the top of Eskdale, it’ll take us a couple of hours to get down but we’ll phone you from the pub when we get there.’
‘Are you all right?’ came the question.
‘Yes, we’ve just ended up in the wrong valley, perfectly fine’ I tried to convince myself.
‘O.K. bye’
‘See you soon’. I finished with relief
I put the phone away, packed up my now nearly empty sandwich box and flask and put my rucksack back on.
‘well hear goes nothing lets get of this mountain’.

We set of, I felt a lot better as we picked our way down through the rocks. Heading down the clouds seemed to clear slightly, but the night was closing in and a chill was gripping the air. The next twenty minutes were a blur of  slips and stumbles but we were loosing height and despite the darkness things weren’t looking as bad.
‘I’ll have to get my torch out soon’ David said after tripping over another small rock.
‘Pass mine out then will you it’s in the top pocket of my rucksack’ I asked.
Dave rummaged around for a couple of seconds.
‘There’s nothing in the pocket and its still open!’ he exclaimed.
‘You’re joking’
‘No, it’s empty’ he assured me.
I took my sac of anyway, but sure enough there was nothing inside. I checked my pockets, I found the phone, I had put the phone in my jacket and not closed the zip on top of the rucksack.
‘Shit!’ I moaned ‘I’ve got no friging torch.
‘I’ve still got mine’ Dave had found his torch still intact.
‘Well I’ll just have to follow you then’.
We set of again, Dave in front, me following in the ever moving torch light. Every time Dave came across an obstacle he would shine the torch on that and my feet would be left in darkness. I would stumble over the smallest boulder or slide on an unseen slab of icy rock. When we got to a really tricky section I would complain and Dave would turn around, temporarily blind me and then shine the torch at the particular offending rock step or small gully. We carried on like this for a while until I had had enough of either being blinded or falling over.
‘Let my go first and you shine the torch at my feet’ I suggested.
This was a little better, for most of the time I could make out the way ahead. Every now and then Dave would concentrate on an obstacle and my view would again turn black, but at least now I could stop when I couldn’t see and not get left behind.

The slope shallowed out into a frozen swamp! This was Great Moss a great big bog right at the top of upper Eskdale luckily it was, for the main part, frozen. We arrived at the bottom of the slope. Large pools of water were linked with small streams some not quite frozen. In what was now a pitch black night the horizon was none existent.
      
‘Which way?’ we both thought and asked.
‘We need to find the river that leads down the valley to the bottom of Hardknott’ one of us said.

The upper river Esk is a good 30 feet wide when it leaves Great Moss, however at the start its just puddles and bogs and little streams and Great Moss is nearly ½ mile wide. Eventually we found what looked like a stream with a purpose and followed it, it grew bigger and bigger and turned into the river.

I can’t remember quite when Dave’s light started to fail but I do remember by the time we found the exit to great moss we were following a dim yellow glow.
‘Time to put the spare batteries in Dave’ I said
I’m not sure if he knew what he would find but he at least made the effort of looking for the spares, of course there wasn’t any!!!
That was it, cold, hungry with no light in the pitch black and knowing it was about 4 miles to the nearest road we set off.

It’s surprising that when you have a light you need it but when you don’t your eyes adjust enough to see things you didn’t before. We slipped and fell and staggered and fell again but the further we got the more used to the lack of vision we got. I know we were walking along the side of a steep slope as we could hear the river on our right below us but all I could see was a faint outline of rocks and tufts of grass in front of me and to the right was just blackness. The ground started to flatten out then all of a sudden I banged my shin, I’d walked into a wall, it was the side of Lingcove bridge. We had made it down the worst bit and were now on a track, we knew this track, it headed straight for Brotherilkeld and the road.

An hour later I remember sitting on the rock next to the phone box at the bottom of Hardknott smoking a fag, we’d phoned Dave’s wife and our brother was on his way. As we sat there the snow stared to fall, the end to the perfect epic!