MOONDANCE

The problem abseiling down arêtes is that you tend to swing off the crest onto the faces on either side. To the left of ours was a 4000 foot expanse of granite, home to the Cassin Route and its ghosties. We’d gone right. Not that we were off route, we had just followed the abseil rope’s call a couple of times too often.

Concentration centred on a dim orange point in the shadows. Happiness in the land of granite is the next abseil sling. With sticht plate jammed hard against the rope’s knotted end I penduled across. The rough textured rock helped me, until at fullstretch of fingertip and smeared feet it could just be brushed. It fell, whirling until it bounced out into space. The ledge it left was bare and distinctly pitonless...

Hanging on the end of the rope I saw that the granite had changed from pale pink to grainy grey. In the dusk below me, way, way down, were the lights of Bondo...

Thinking over my store of climbing memories most of them seem to involve the combination of night-time and being in ’silly places’. Prim, ephemeral smugness over solving ’the move’ is just nothing to the eerie, enveloping stillness of falling dark.

Early lessons on night climbing were taken in the Lakes. Troutdale Pinnacle, Golden Slipper on Pavey, Eliminate A -the world’s best route if it weren’t for Dow’s arctic climate- and Overhanging Bastion were all finished in various shades of gloom. It’s probably a good job -hi-tech rubber sticks to anything when you can’t see it. The most important lesson was learnt on the descent paths; always, always send your mates out in front...

We then got a bit cocky and decided to go European -to the Calanques, in fact. Home of the most poorly-clad women and best beaches in southern France -bravely we did actually go climbing at least twice.

The first time we set off up this 700 foot V.Diff. with a full 10 minutes of daylight left. Half an hour later Ian managed his first one-finger pull-up and began to suspect I’d sent him up the wrong climb. "No problem youth," I said, "We’re using the Pete Livesey guidebook remember." (Pete Livesey Diff=large overhangs with one hold and that’s loose.)

We spent the night on a six-inch sloping ledge, hanging in the harnesses. I think we put in 39 belays, I might have lost count. There were no real problems, we were well equipped -swimming trunks and a T-shirt between two. We spent the night listening to the large rustly thing that seemed to be getting nearer.

I was bleary-eyed the next morning until I saw what we’d considered abseiling down. The ropes hung free in the middle of a 250 foot concave limestone wall. Can you prussik on the cord in swimming trunks? Surely the BMC should look into it. The descent was top end diff.

The following couple of years were fairly quiet. We grew older, wiser and bought headtorches. We specialised in trying to get benighted on small crags next to pubs, or at the same time as major mountain rescue practices in Llanberis. There was, however, one exception...

It all started with this really nice limestone roof. Keith and Mark tried to climb it whilst I did what I usually do on big roofs- "quick-take-the-photo-before-I-fall-off."

This had all taken time, six hours in fact, and all we did was make sure there wasn’t even the teeniest, weeniest little hold once you got round it. (i.e. Livesey Severe(mild).). So it was getting fairly dark. However this is quaint, pretty little Dovedale in Derbyshire and between us and Keith’s car was 10 minutes of National Trust pathway -the sort you take your granny along. The only problem was the Dove, -wet, riverlike and at least 20 feet across. Gripped, we fled up the undergrowth on our bank.

OK, so the bank did steepen and the trees did close in a bit but really don’t know how we managed to emerge out of Amazonian jungle, at midnight, onto a moonlit field miles from anything. One hour of weirdness later we were in sight of the ’Keithmobile’. The final indignity being wet feet crossing the sodding Dove.

"Home, Jeeves; Cambridge minus two hours." Silence. "Why doesn’t the car start?"

Other experiences followed. Topping out of the Verdon, (after climbing 500 consecutive scrubby little bushes), to find no path. Wandering around with your hands outstretched, trying not to add, "aaaaaaaa... aaa... aagh splat" -oh, I’ve just walked off the top of the biggest cliff in France. to the descent vocabulary.

Finding the sheep, goat, Edlinger track was a major fluke. Unfortunately we dogged it, tree-to-tree. suppose ethically we’d better go back for the redpoint.

…running across the slabs I could see hundreds of piton-shaped shadows, only the metal one eluded me. Finally there was a "clink"; "Kev., I’ve got one!"

Soon a murky shape appeared above me and we went through the circus of swapping the foothold. The prayer for unjamming of ropes was said after the first tug but a determined Lancastrian soon made it join us.

I touched the peg, checking it was no dream, and set off down. Below me the rope caught, as it had been doing far the last few hours. Angrily I flicked at it. This time it seemed well wedged so I swung across to it... The ledge was perhaps 30 feet by 10 feet wide but it was going to be home.

OK so there was no jacuzzi and I imagined the sun a hundred times before it arrived, but the memory will be mine when most others are gone. Stars so bright and the echoing words of a van Morrison song, half-heard months earlier…