Murder of the impossible

If you are at a loose end after a day hillwalking or climbing in Snowdonia then why not pop into Plas y Brenin for an evening lecture? The staff give illustrated lectures every Monday, Tuesday and Saturday evenings at 8pm and these are free, open to the public (you don’t have to be on a course) and there is no need to book in advance. Just turn up, grab yourself a pint from the Snowdon bar and follow the horde into the lecture room next door.

We did just that and settled into our seats to listen to Neil Johnson recount the first successful, all British assent of Cerro Torre in Patagonia.

Walter Bonatti, the Italian born climber who set new standards in post-war Alpine climbing had declared Cerro Torre “impossible” and from the photos Neil displayed it was easy to see why.

However, in 1970, Bonatti’s countryman, Cesare Maestri climbed a route on the south-east side of the mountain, the "Compressor Route", so-called because he used a petrol-driven air compressor weighing 70kg (yes 70kg!) to power a drill and place 350 bolts up a blank section of rock – thereby murdering the impossible.

Neil kept us spell bound for an hour and a half with his tale of repeating the route in 2005 but I came away with three enduring memories of the lecture.

Firstly the simplicity of life on an expedition – long periods of boredom interspaced with short periods of pure terror. The normal day to day activities of life and decision making are stripped away and as Neil puts it you are left with:

“move your hands, move your feet,
move your hands, move your feet,
eat,
move your hands, move your feet,
move your hands, move your feet,
sleep”

Secondly, climbing ethics – Maestri bolted the climb and even left the compressor, now rusting, roped to the blank vertical face 35m below the summit. It is all too easy to sit in your armchair and criticise this approach but Neil describes the moment when he reaches it and, without hesitation, stands on it as a man made ledge – pure relief – “ethics are for the elite like Messner”

Finally, the horror as Neil dislodges a large chunk of ice from the compressor which falls onto two climbers below, knocking his boss unconscious and breaking the ribs of another.

A gripping, humorous and inspiring lecture.

You can read teammate, Steve Long’s account of the trip here

Tryfan Revisited

Following on from John Hee’s blog I can say that I came to the outdoors much later in life, in my mid thirties, as an escape for the pressures of work and quite literally to gain a different perspective on the world.

I have been hillwalking for about five years now discovering new ranges to enjoy but I am always drawn back to North Wales and Tryfan in particular.

Tryfan to me is a yardstick to measure my own personal development as a hillwalker. Like any UK hill the weather is transient and each encounter a new one but underlying this is the fixed and unchanging rock oblivious to my presence.

Why Tryfan in particular then? Perhaps because it was the first serious hill I ever climbed or perhaps because it beat me at my first attempt. Is it the ease of access from the road? Is it the fact that mountain boasts so many routes at various grades? Is it the history of the place – Bonnington’s first winter gully and the inauguration of the Brown / Whillans partnership to name but two?

The answer lies in all of these but in essence it is a mountain I will neither tire of nor master. There is a certain satisfaction in getting to know one mountain intimately as an antidote to peak bagging.

I have done the classic North ridge several times but like most people never by exactly the same line; the South ridge and routes on the East Face.

I’ve been on the hill in rain, hail, high wind, fog and perfect sunshine. I’ve done it at night – subversively walking down the A5 approach road under cover of darkness and half expecting the police to arrive at any moment and whisk me off “to the Psychiatric Centre for Regressive Tendencies” like Bradbury’s Pedestrian.

So what is left for me to do on this hill? Well there are plenty of new and harder grade 2 and 3 scramble routes to attempt on the East face and the West face is yet uncharted by me. For pure rock climbing, an activity I have yet to experience, there is the famous Milestone buttress and beyond.

I have yet to “gain the freedom of Tryfan” by leaping from Adam to Eve like the handful of mad people I have watched. I haven’t walked the entire Heather Terrace to the south summit and I look forward to Ali and I taking to the mountain in winter conditions.

So I will hopefully return again and again to seek purer lines, new routes or simply to enjoy it for what it is – a classic mountain that cares not one jot for my fleeting scrambles upon her flanks.