With only four weeks of vacation and finals a month later, there was clearly no possibility whatsoever of a lengthy climbing trip this Easter for Erskine and Phillips. They therefore decided to go to the Hoggar Mountains in the middle of the Sahara. In view of the critical length of time available, they also decided to go overland. Preparations were extensive and thorough; Erskine bought himself a pair of shades and Phillips purchased an umbrella of the black variety. Appointments were made with the stunningly attractive nurse at No. 3 for the notorious hepatitis jab, an injection of uncommon savagery delivered to the buttock. Phillips had no trouble relaxing on the couch while the nurse gently smoothed his buttock, but Erskine had to be told three times and still treasures the plaster on his rump.
On the last day of full term the team assembled. Phillips was late, buying a dress. Erskine was later, explaining to his Director of Studies that of course he was taking all his files with him to the Sahara Desert and would without doubt be putting in several hours hard labour each day. Having assembled, Erskine set off for the bus station. Phillips, who had just set off for the railway station, followed reluctantly. The expedition finally rolled up to the bus station just in time to miss its bus.
Upon arriving in London, a frank exchange of views took place as to how they were in fact going to get to the Sahara. Erskine was dispatched to scour those fine establishments, the travel bureaux of Earls Court, for a cheap air ticket to Algeria. He teturned some hours later empty-handed and frozen, having met a snow shower without his brolly. T-shirts are very comfortable wear in the Sahara, but against the rigours of London’s bleak climate they ace a trifle ineffectual. The pair trudged off to the railway station.
Many chilling hours later, Erskine and Phillips finally set foot on the Dark Continent at Tangiers in Morocco. They were welcomed from the boat by the Moroccan Minister of Tourism in person, a swarthy character sporting a fez and drooping moustache. He assigned them to a dedicated but greasy assistant called Abdul who did his utmost to prevent them from entering the waiting train and instead accompany him to his uncle’s luxurious but inexpensive hotel, only 5 miles or a short taxi tide away. They were unimpressed. Abdul stomped off to his master in disgust. Erskine and Phillips boarded the train by a door held open by two elderly gentlemen who then demanded a Dirham each for their labours. Erskine’s strict Scottish morals paid great dividends, but nothing else.
It is in Fez that the traveller first encounters the Moroccan medina with all its glorious colours and smells. The medina is the oldest and most central part of the town, consisting of a maze of tiny, dirty passageways often roofed over so that little light filters through. On either side are clustered hundreds of tiny stalls open to the street where the merchants sell their wares. Each shop sells a different commodity; fruit, vegetables, meat, leather, metalwork, carpets, cloths or spices.
Erskine and Phillips were guided by a small Arab with only one good leg and a breakdancing hat. They followed him through miles of tenuous passageways breathing in the gaudy colours, noises and smells of the living city. They were shown ancient mosques and stinking tanneries, fountains and squares... but mostly they were dragged round shops. It was in a leather shop that the fact emerged that Phi1lips was in need of a hat.
"A hat? Of course we have hats upstairs!" The shop owner then stepped to the door of his single-storey emporium and despatched a street urchin down the street Some minutes later the urchin arrived out of breath with a couple of the variety worn by Indiana Jones and the Freak Brothers. One of them apparently had a bullet-hole and Phillips, his street credibility firmly in mind, could not resist buying it.
The expedition continued by train as far as Oujda near the Algerian border, pausing only for a game of soccer with a talented team of street urchins. Erskine clinched the hard fought match, nodding the bladder past the Moroccan goalkeeper an urchin about three feet tall. In Oujda the financial necessity of smuggling cash across the border became clear and 100 pounds worth of Algerdabs (Dinars) were purchased at about a quarter of the official rates. The border at Beni Ounif took an entire day to cross – they were searched to the grundies three times but the loot, stashed in location X, remained undiscovered. The customs officers took the sensible precaution of consuming a Mars Bar and some chewing gum to check that they were really what they purported to be. They also wanted to check out the expedition’s whisky supply hut a Scot is not easily parted from his drink.
From the border Erskine and Phillips hitched a lift across the desert to Bechar. This took them through the middle of a dust storm which had the appearance of mist until the cloud was entered and red dust started settling everywhere. From Bechar a couple of buses took the pair to In Salah. This involved driving across the southern corner of the Grand Erg Occidental (one of the largest areas of sand in the Sahara).
In Salah is on the main North-South trade route across the Sahara and from here they just had to catch .html bus for the last 600 km south. The time of departure of this bus was shrouded in doubt; 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 2 o’clock were times given by various sources. It left at 9 (obv.). They were in fact very lucky to catch this bus and only did so by a combination of blatant but uncompromising queue-jumping and bribery, both supplied by Phillips. He didn’t actually know about the bribe until some time later when he counted his change. Phillips followed the usual practice of the Briton abroad in matters of communication – shouting very loudly until understood. In extreme cases he would, however, try the foreign lingo and bawl some appalling French with a broad Lancastrian accent. It worked more often than not.
The bus took off with a wrench of gears in a cloud of dust and they soon found themselves off the tarmac. For 27 hours they suffered bone-shattering jolting – a lot of it without seats – as the road slowly unravelled from a shimmering horizon. The stops were few but quite relaxed; they twice indulged in platefuls of cous-cous, the staple diet (indeed the only diet) of the area – a substance resembling coarse sand in appearance, but tasting of greasy rice. On arriving in Tamanrasset, Phillips announced that he was ill.
For the next two days Phillips remained horizontal, usually moaning. His only excursions were short and frequent – exactly how short some of these excursions were was revealed to him when he recovered and rolled over. Erskine, however, was not ill, possibly because of years of training on porridge. He instead spent his time pouring water down the top end of Phillips’ sleeping bag and watching with interest as it come out of the other end, consistency unchanged.
The climbing in the Hoggar is mainly situated in two areas, the first being immediately NE of Tamanrasset, the second some 50 miles in the same direction at Assekrem, around the Hermitage of Pere de Foucald. This retiring gentleman built his house on top of a 9,000 foot mountain 50 miles away from any other building. Nowadays there is a road up and a sort of hotel at the hermitage called the Refuge Assekrem. Enormous numbers of Land-Rovers, full of tourists, come up every day to admire the view. It is near here that Mount Tahat is situated: at almost 10,000 feet, the highest mountain in the Western Sahara.
During two weeks in the Hoggar, Erskine and Phillips met only one other group of climbers – four Germans with a 1965 guidebook in Italian that none of them could understand. They were climbing at a similar standard to the Cambridge pair until, on their second route, the latter suffered a slight setback. Phillips was leading the second pitch of an imposing line on the west face of Adriane. He clipped into the higher of two pegs, then moved up and right towards a constriction that looked feasible but strenuous. Phillips leaned across onto the holds…
"Aaargh!"
A block, "about the size of a torso" according to Erskine, asserted its independence from the mountain. For twenty feet however, Phillips and the boulder plummeted together until the ropes caught our luckless lad. The block meanwhile continued downwards and shattered about five feet above Erskine, showering him with fragments (save for his helmet which was not hit). He was not well. Erskine’s first coherent reply was "I think we’re talking going down".
The left hand had little skin on the back and was badly cut in the fleshy part of the thumb. The right hand was not bleeding but hurt and was unusable. Phillips surveyed the wreckage of the hands and the blood now carpeting the belay ledge.
"Still, ne’er mind eh?" Erskine moaned with feeling.
After this, Erskine did most of his climbing with his elbows, his hands wrapped in handkerchiefs and stinking of TCP. Luckily this did not affect his climbing standard. For a week they climbed various phalli around Tamanrasset, until .html setback assaulted the team. Arriving back from the crag one day they found that most of Phillips’ belongings had been stolen. Erskine, having retrieved his carefully hidden valuables, relished his cheerful comment;
"Still, ne’er mind eh?" Phillips threw a rock at him.
The report of the theft obtained after a torturous day’s negotiation with the police ends:
"(stolen) un marteau deux parapluies Le 1. Avril 1985"
The next day saw the duo heading for Assekrem in the north. The 55 mile trip was accomplished easily with a six mile walk and two lifts. They were in the area for four days during which time the major achievement was their ascent of Mt Tahat about 10 miles away from the Refuge. They arrived at the summit in time for a quite amazing sunset. Pinnacles and escarpments thrust up from an ocean of gravel, straining to catch the last rays of the dying sun. Feeling rather small, the lads curled up in their sleeping-bags for the only genuinely cold night of the holiday.
They ran out of food after four days, and with all the drinking chocolate powder eaten on the last day, had to head for home. It looked like being a long plod to Tamanrasset, when a small car screeched to a halt. Erskine proceeded with negotiations;
"Avez-vous des places a Tam, Jim?"
"Un seul, monsieur."
"One place, youth. Still, ne’er mind eh?"
Before Phillips could reply, Erskine was ensconced in the car with his rucsac. It was only as the car vanished in a cloud of dust that Phillips realised that his companion had only left him with one tube of mustard and about a pint of water.
Phillips did not get a lift for some nine hours, after marching 25 miles across the desert through the midday sun without a hat. Whether this has had any permanent effect is hard to say because he was pretty deranged before, but he spent the next three days washing himself over and over again. He also confessed to Erskine, in strictest confidence, that he was really a woman trapped inside a man’s body.
On arrival in Algers courtesy of an Algerian Boeing 727, they discovered that the last ship for two days was leaving in one hour. They decided to take it. The only drawback was that our lads had 250 Algerdabs (50 pounds at official rates) to get rid of before boarding.
"Dates?" said Erskine, but a calculation revealed a figure of 30 kilos – a little excessive even for Erskine’s extravagent tastes. However he was despatched anyway with instructions to get rid of the cash. About 20 minutes later he returned with a broad smile and a paper bag.
"What did you get?"
From the bag Erskine unveiled the prize – one of those peculiar leather objects that decorate Edwardian drawing rooms but seem to have no sensible use at all; a pouffe. This one was particularly large.
"Wot the ’ell’s that?"
"Shut up, I got it cheap!"
"You can keep it, lad"
The boat was successfully boarded and they steamed slowly across the Mediterranean. Not slowly enough for Phillips, who redecorated a small section of the deck in technicolour.
France was traversed at some velocity and it was only a day later that they were queueing up for breakfast on the Calais- Dover ferry. Phillips came hack, his tray groaning, unable to conceal his unabounded joy at the sight of a British cooked breakfast.
"Steady," he said, "Reet steady."