This article is
Copyright. All rights reserved.
You are welcome to link to this
article, but
please
do NOT place
copies of it on other websites.
Introduction
On 21st April 1982 I had a most instructive experience on
Bidean nam Bian, the highest of the Glencoe mountains in the Scottish
Highlands.
This is a complex and awesome mountain with a brooding and
menacing atmosphere about it. It has a number of largely precipitous
and very craggy spurs and ridges, with subsidiary summits, between
which are steep, deep, craggy-sided valleys leading to upper corries
(hanging valleys). Novices are commonly warned that it is essential to
be very sure of your descent route if you are in the cloud on top,
because there are many apparent descent route gullies and tracks in
different directions off the high ridges which would lead you quickly
into serious trouble. I knew about this, having been on the mountain
the previous year in good visibility and seen for myself the abundance
of tracks starting down in the most hair-raising of places from the
high ridge tops and apparently just beckoning people to disaster.
The day in question had a fairly good weather prospect, though
with uncertainty as to whether the low cloud wreathing the mountain
tops would fully lift off or break up. I was still very much in the
process of gaining basic experience, having by this time had three
annual spring visits to the same area of the Highlands, and, as usual,
I was walking on my own.
Ascent and 'burning my boats'
On this particular day, for the first time I chose to ascend
the mountain via the Coire nan Lochan track between the ogre-like
precipitous spurs Gearr Aonach (on my left) and Aonach Dubh on my
right. Rather than just follow the track into the upper corrie, I
turned off to the right just past the imposing climbing pitches on the
flank of Aonach Dubh, following a brief easy steep scramble which led
me onto steep grassy ramps winding among the crags, to the top of
Aonach Dubh. I then followed the ridge round, bearing left along the
top of awesome organ-pipes-like cliffs onto the quite pointed summit of
Stob Coire nan Lochan. By this time I was in the cloud, and there was
patchy old, hard snow on the block scree.
I was now very mindful of the cautions regarding descent
routes, considering that I was in the cloud. At least I could descend
via the Coire nan Lochan track which I'd come partly up - except that I
then burnt my boats by continuing along the narrowing rocky ridge for
the main summit (see
photo below, which shows snowier conditions than on the day I'm talking
about). The ascent was extremely steep and very
narrow too, largely covered with hard and partly refrozen snow, and as
I ascended I felt very nervous on this slippery stuff with tremendous
drops both sides, and realized that not only would I be terrified to
try descending on that, but it simply didn't make good sense,
especially seeing that I didn't have crampons with me.
Descent options
So, where was I going to descend, then? I'd read that An
t-Sron, the western-most ridge, could be safely descended if one kept
well to the west of The Chasm, so I made my way along the summit ridge,
over Stob Coire nam Beith and then steeply down towards the An t-Sron
ridge, then passing along the top of the headwall of Coire nam Beith
(on my right), which was a forbidding whiteout although it also was
supposed to be a safe descent route, and then walking along to the end
of the An t-Sron ridge.
So, I pointed myself to what seemed well to my left (west) of
the top of The Chasm, and started descending, still in the cloud. The
ground was steep and loose with little bits of grass and mossy cushions
and became rapidly steeper and less consolidated, with lots of loose
gravelly stuff, as I descended with increasing gingerliness. I was
feeling weary by now and feeling more and more anxious. This wasn't my
idea of a safe descent route. Surely it must ease out in a moment into
the manageable scree slope which I'd been led to expect!
Then the mist in front of and below me darkened ominously, and
I suddenly realized that I was looking out of the base of the cloud,
the bottom and other side of the glen now faintly visible through the
swirling mist - and the slope below me steepened further into
precipitous crags!
Then Fear spoke
This is what Fear said to me. "Philip,
you've done it this time. You're on the verge of falling down that lot,
and you're whacked and it's too much now to go back up. Blow your
emergency whistle or cry out for help, which nobody will hear because
of the wind. Best to sit on one of the slight mounds and cry here till
you die. HELP!"
I don't mean I was 'hearing voices', but the above was the
content of the fear-driven thoughts which were wildly circulating in my
mind at that point.
Feeling desperate, I frantically scrabbled in an attempt go up
again - but bits and pieces just came away with my hands and feet, and
skittered and bounced their way down to those precipitous crags below
me, which I myself could so easily soon be bouncing over (HELP!)
- and with that attempt to reascend I'd actually descended
a trifle rather than ascended, and my legs felt like jelly and I was
shaking a little. HELP!
Could this just be a hideous dream? HELP!
Surely there must be some way out that didn't involve my death! I
wracked my brain and silently argued with myself, but couldn't find any
answer. HELP!
Yes, perhaps this was indeed time for me to sit down and cry till I
died - or maybe keep sounding the distress signal with my whistle till
I keel over with exhaustion and then roll and bounce my way down to my
end! HELP!
What about a little experiment instead...?
After a few minutes the rational aspect of my mind took over.
By 1982 I'd already gained much experience in managing my adverse
emotional feelings, and that experience came into play at that point.
What I did was NOT to try to deny the fear, but simply to use a little
trick to step round it. I thought to myself as follows:
"Okay, let's
assume for the sake of argument, then, that this is the end of me and
I'm going to die here. I'm a dead duck - fine. Quack, quack, qu-!
Therefore there is nothing further to worry about. So, therefore
whatever I do now isn't trying to achieve anything such as staying
alive, so again there's nothing to be anxious or concerned about.
"Now, just as
an experiment to do something with my time, let's
put one hand very SLOWLY and gently up here, ...and the other hand very
gently up there, ...and very gently bring my right foot up here ...and
my left foot, also very gently up here - not to try and achieve
anything of course - ever so SLOWLY - but just as an experiment to see
what happens if I keep putting one hand very gently up ...and then the
other ...and then one foot ...and then the other..."
And so on.
In actual fact, when I moved in that slow and gentle manner
virtually nothing broke away, so that each hold, however precarious,
took me upwards. It took me only some ten minutes, if that, to get back
up to the top of An t-Sron, having stepped right out of the
mind-crazing fear and anxiety. I also noticed how my moving gently like
that was no great effort, putting the lie to the notion that somehow a
superhuman effort would be required for me to reascend that little bit.
And now another little experiment...
However, I still had apparent cause for nervousness, for I
wasn't at all keen on trying another route down An t-Sron in the cloud,
and so now I was really committed to going down into Coire nam Beith,
which I knew was an alleged good descent route, but it was untested by
me, and was now presenting itself as a forbidding extremely steep
headwall of snow disappearing below into the cloud - a whiteout. This
was going to require a great act of trust, and great vigilance for
potential problems.
And, to make things more precarious and knuckle-biting, this
extremely steep snow turned out to be frozen and of course I wasn't
wearing crampons (sets of spikes attached to the underside of one's
boots). So, once again setting aside the anxious concerns about getting
somewhere or achieving something, or indeed staying alive, I sat down
against the slope with my heels and ice-axe handle dug in, then lowered
one foot, digging in my heel, then lowered the other foot, digging in
the heel, then pulled out the ice-axe handle and dug it in a bit lower,
and so I edged down like this over a few minutes, and then, as the snow
just that little bit lower down was softer I intuitively started
allowing myself to gently bottom-slide, with my heels digging in all
the time to keep the speed very modest and safe.
After perhaps two minutes of such sliding with growing
elation, I suddenly found myself striding, romping down the still steep
but now manageable slope of deep soft snow, below the cloud base and
with a clear and spectacular view down where I was going - and I was
crying and laughing out loud with relief and joie de vivre.
The rest of the descent was a great, breathtaking joy in awesome
surroundings, with crags and cliff buttresses towering imposingly above
me on three sides.
Without predators to flee, who needs fear?
Had I really been in tremendous danger? Well, yes and no. Are
you in danger when you're driving in a mass of traffic? Of course you
are, in that if you aren't exceedingly careful you will have an
accident, and, depending on the situation, it could easily kill you.
But the other side of the equation is your recognition of the hazards
and responding appropriately to keep yourself accident-free. My only
problem had simply been the intervention of anxiety and fear.
People often say you need fear to make you protect yourself
and keep safe. That is almost always rubbish with regard to humans,
although fear does serve that sort of purpose for animals in getting
them to flee from a predator. For a human, fear jams up the mind so
that you can't respond well to the uniqueness of a situation. Fear may
make you flee from a predator (how many of us face such an issue even
once in our whole lives?) but it actually obstructs you in
assessing hazards and managing a situation in a rational way. Without
fear you can be rational instead, and actually be better able to
recognise hazards and able to produce a uniquely appropriate response
to each situation.
Fear is also the antithesis of love, so when you are truly
without fear in a situation you are with love, because love is your
deepest nature, and it is fear which hides the love. Buried fear
(almost everyone is carrying at least some) tends to hide that love
even when you are not actually feeling fear. To clear yourself of all
fear therefore is a cool, joyful and loving thing to do. What better
and simpler way to do this than The
Work...?
2006 by Philip Goddard. All
rights reserved.