Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

Still holding the moving end of the rope, Jean-Claude steps up to the edge of the drop, leans over, looks, and says, “He’s out of sight under the overhang now.”

Then, shockingly, the rope goes slack. He’s still moving—I have to feed some more rope out—but he’s moving horizontally, along some ledge, requiring no full belay. Then the rope stops moving and I hold my position and Jean-Claude leans further over the drop and says, “I can see smoke coming up over the overhang. The Deacon’s sitting on some damned ledge and smoking his pipe.”

“While I’m starving,” I say.

“I want the wine I brought,” says Jean-Claude. “This is no fun at all. What does any of this rock climbing have to do with our climbing Everest—no matter what Mallory and the Deacon may have achieved on these stupid rocks before the War? Mount Everest is not a rock-climbing challenge—it is snow and ice and glacier and crevasse and ice walls and high ridges and steep snowfields. This trip to Wales is a waste of our time.”

As if he’s heard us, there’s a warning tug on the rope, and then I’m on full belay again, leaning back to take the Deacon’s full weight—which is not great, thank heavens, since he has a Sherlock Holmesian thinnesss to him—as he climbs back up over the overhang and the 50 or so feet of rock, leaning back almost horizontally as he ascends.

Then he’s up over the summit ledge, standing with us, untying the knots of his belay rope, no longer puffing on that damned pipe, which must be in his shirt pocket now, and saying, “Let’s eat before we go back down to do what we came for.”

“I want the two of you to climb it,” says the Deacon as J.C. and I stare up at the forbidding face of the crag.

“To the summit?” asks Jean-Claude, looking down at the heap of ropes, carabiners, pitons, and other gear we’ve hauled in to this distant site. It will take pitons driven in—German style—for some sense of safety, stirrups, and some sort of suspended cord ladder to hang under that formidable overpass, then Prusik-climbing it loop by loop, and trying to find a handhold or place to spread-eagle yourself on the broad edge to climb over it.

The Deacon shakes his head. “Just to where I forgot my pipe,” he says and points to a grassy ledge about three-fourths of the way up the face, just under the overhang. “I want it back.”

As tempted as J.C. and I are to say “Then go get it yourself,” we both stay quiet. This has to have something to do with Mallory and our attempt on Everest.

“And no iron,” adds the Deacon. “Just the two of you, ropes, and your ice axes if you wish.”

Ice axes? Jean-Claude and I exchange worried glances again and look up at the slope.

The grassy ledge where the Deacon left his damned pipe is about 250 feet above us, sheltered nicely by the overhang but wide enough that one could dangle one’s legs, smoke a pipe, and stare out at the view from 25 stories high. Which is exactly what the Deacon had done.

It took him a couple of minutes to rappel down from the summit to that ledge, including the mildly tricky rappel move over and then under the overhang. But climbing it from here…???

The crag is the kind of just-beyond-the-possible challenge that causes even temperate climbers to use harsh descriptive language.

“I know,” says the Deacon as if reading our minds. “It’s a daunting bugger.”

Everything under the grassy ridge, for a width of 50 to 75 feet and more, is a huge, smooth, steep stone bulge—like the underbelly of some giant stone sow or an ex-prizefighter gone completely to seed. I’m good on rock—I started with countless rock climbs in Massachusetts and elsewhere and have taken those skills to rock-climbing challenges in Colorado and Alaska. I fancy that I can climb almost any climbable rock face.

But the part of this accursed face under the grassy ridge just isn’t climbable. Not by 1924 standards, equipment, and ability. (Perhaps the Germans could do it with all their pig iron—carabiners, pitons, and the like, which we’ve hauled this long way in—but the Deacon has ruled out using such Teutonic hardware on this climb.) I see no ridges, no cracks, no fingerholds or creases in the rock where booted feet can find a hold, and the smooth sow’s belly curls far out and then back in toward the bottom where we stand. The only thing that will hold a climber onto a vertical rock face (above the underbelly curve) like that in the first place is speed and friction—sometimes spread-eagled friction with every part of your body, including your palms and cheek and torso, trying to force itself into the rock, to become part of the rock, so you don’t keep sliding 200 feet to your death. But this curled-in sow’s belly won’t allow a friction scramble on a third of its lower face—one would be hanging out almost horizontally without any holds, sans pitons. A fall would be inevitable. Even with pitons allowed, I see no cracks or crevasses or soft areas of the nasty, solid-faced granite where any could be driven in.

So good-bye to the direttissima route—direct to the grassy ledge where the Deacon’s pipe sits. That’s out.

Which leaves the crack that runs up the majority of the face about 50 feet to the right of the grassy ledge up there above 250 feet.

Jean-Claude and I move to the base and look up. We have to lean back to see how it runs all the way to an ever-narrowing mini-crack as it peters out not far beneath the great overhang.

The first 30 feet or so of this climb will be easy enough—erosion has exposed boulders and rubble and ridges for this first short section—but beyond that it’s all this narrow crack and prayers for finger- and footholds that we can’t see from here.

“I hate cunt-crack climbing,” Jean-Claude mutters.

I’m shocked. To date I haven’t heard either of my new climbing friends use real obscenity or such a vulgar comment as this. I put it down to Jean-Claude not fully understanding what an unacceptable word this is in English.

But I look up again and understand Jean-Claude’s intense dislike of such a climb. For more than 200 feet our ascent will depend upon jamming our wedged hands, raw forearms, bloodied fingers, and the tips of our boots or shoes into an ever-narrowing and zigzagging crack. I doubt if there will be half a dozen decent belay points anywhere up this miserable little crack—and I still can’t see any decent handholds or footholds on either side of the fissure.

“You will lead, Jake,” says Jean-Claude without making it a question. Superb on snow and ice, brilliant on high mountain ridges and faces, the gifted young mountain guide simply doesn’t enjoy this sort of rock climbing.

He says, “Shall we even bother roping up?”

I look again at the face and crack—the 50-foot separation from the grassy “pipe ledge” to the highest points we must traverse from the crack, if it’s even possible to do so—and ponder the question. In truth, we’d probably be safer—especially I would—if we each climbed solo. With so few belay points, there’s little to no chance that if one of us falls, the other can hold him.

But some chance is better than no chance.

“Yes,” I say. “Ten meters of rope between us should do it.”

Jean-Claude groans. Such a short tether slightly increases the chance of holding a fallen fellow climber—since if the lead climber, me, falls, it’ll be 60 feet of falling inertia that the man on belay (Jean-Claude) will have to hold against, as well as far less weight-energy against the lead climber (should I have a solid hold) if the second man, Jean-Claude, falls. But the short rope will mean a slow ascent, with many stops for each man going on belay for the other. A sloppy, slow, dangerous climb, the antithesis of quality speed work on rock.