HIGH ON AN ESKDALE
CRAG
By Anthony Toole
I have my own theory as to why people take up rock-climbing, as
a sport. It has to do with chance, and being in a certain place at a certain critical
moment in time. Nothing more. The person concerned will climb what is often
little beyond a long and airy staircase, yet it is the freedom of this
airyness, the conquest of its fears, the thrill of stepping like a ballet
dancer in perfect muscular control over a void seen only by the eagles, that
later becomes a drug.
The climber, when the appeal
of the staircases palls, moves on to moderate, and difficult, severe, very
severe and finally extremely severe rock routes. And the withdrawal effects can
be just as painful as those of the mainliner.
Even when he has mastered
some of the hardest climbs in the country, the search for more thrills
continues. Up to a point, the climber’s success has depended only on his
ability, for he knows that the climb is possible; it has been done many times
before; its description and grade of difficulty are there for all to see, in
the guide book that anyone can buy.
So his search leads him to a
rock face on which the outcome is uncertain. It has never been climbed before.
Upper Eskdale, Cumbria 
On a dull, October day,
Brian and I uncoiled our ropes below an isolated crag in Upper Eskdale. We had
walked for two hours, laden beneath heavy rucksacks, to get here. The summit of
Scafell was about a mile farther, but held no attractions for us that day.
A hundred foot scramble, up
steep heather and broken rock, brought us to a ledge below a 250 ft corner. The
start of this corner was hard, but after several attempts, I moved into it, and
progressed more easily. After 30 feet, I was standing on a small ledge.
This was my ledge. My
discovery. No one, ever, had stood here before. Water trickled on to it from a
crack above, to feed moss that had grown here for countless centuries. A few
feet across the wall to my right hung a tuft of faded purple, relic of the ice
age - an alpine plant that had found lodgement there when conditions were
alpine, and had somehow survived. I hoped it would continue to survive the
depredations of me and my kind.
I called down to Brian that
I was ready to attempt the overhang that now blocked my way.
I moved up from the ledge,
fingertips clinging to a crack in the corner, toes on thumbnail flakes of rock
on either wall.
Higher and higher I climbed,
farther and farther out of balance as the lip of the overhang pressed onto my
chest.
The moments of suspense were
mine also, created by me, and sustained in their existence only by my will. Was
that a good handhold, five feet above me? No one could tell me. I had to
discover the answer for myself. The moves I made were irreversible. If a hold
were not there, I was in trouble. Yet it was for such sensations that I had
come here: the thrill, the breath-holding uncertainty, the feeling of life on a
knife-edge, when all considerations of the world are swept aside, and pure,
unalloyed freedom sweeps through the body. It is only by risking all that one
can gain all.
Higher I inched my way, a
silent prayer trying to fight its way through my gasps. My ledge was now far
below me. Too far. Above were only the limits of my body and mind, which I
found myself pushing, exultantly, farther than I had thought possible.
And for a moment, I knew
that there were no limits, but that was just as my hands clasped the huge flake
that ended all difficulties, and the moment quickly became a memory.
The rest of the climb was
pure pleasure, as we rose through the air, far above the valley floor, our
heads still fizzing from the
experiences we had had lower
down. An hour later, we stood again at the foot of the crag, and gazed proudly
at the climb we had created. We said nothing. We had no need to speak.
Mystics spend their lives
searching for themselves. Much of the anguish of the modem world, which leads
people to all manner of excess, has been attributed to the fact that
individuals do not know who they are. It has almost become a cliché.
Yet, for a brief fraction of
time, high on that crag, where no one had ever been before us, we had both
known exactly who we were.