UP AND OVER THE HILL?

While the weather stays miserable Cubby takes the chance to meet and muse with old friends and is made to feel his age by the youngsters!

It's always back to the rain. I've never seen so much water in the west in early October. Mind you the last two weeks have been superb in the north west, our Indian summer I suppose - although I hear Aberdeen is still patiently waiting for theirs!

And before that I even saw the odd flutter of snow forecast. Now there's a good omen for the coming season, snow in mid September and with all that rain it's certainly got the makings of a good ice forming year.

Speaking of water, I was submerged, literally, in the Feshie the other day where I was helping to make an educational video for the Mountaineering Council of Scotland on river crossing - line astern and all that sort of stuff. One of the helpers, a young lad of 18 years, named Alex, turned out to be Bob Barton's son, the ex Glenmore Lodge senior instructor, guide and co-author of A Chance in a Million.

Bob assessed me on my winter guide's test. He had a reputation for being very hard on students and I was somewhat dismayed to discover that we would be together on my personal climbing day. Conditions on the Shelterstone had been excellent all week so I suggested that we should go there and do the Sticel Face but there was a coy silence. "Ah...well...Cubby...I don't know how to put this but my wife is about to have a baby and I would prefer to maintain radio contact!"

What could I say? We did Patey's Western Route instead and my estimation of the man went up leaps and bounds. In an attempt to assess my improvised rescue skills, Bob pretended to fall off the crux wall but I knew that he wasn't pretending! Anyway, after all these years, it was interesting to catch up with the young enthusiast who stopped me from venturing away from the Northern Corries as a newborn!

Still on the theme of being made to feel on the slightly older side of life, I recently had a week where I thought to myself, yip, I'm just about slipping into has-been status. Well actually "slipped" isn't quite the word I was looking for - more a case of having been dropped from a great height. My mind is still full of thoughts of unfinished climbing projects though and new routes that I would like to put up in interesting places.

However the final straw came the other day when I was taking pictures of Sadie Renwick, the young girl from Edinburgh who is doing rather well in the British junior competition scene. I didn't think for a minute that she would know of me in a contemporary climbing context - and I was right. But when her fellow British team mate, April Marr told me that I was not the grey, fat and overweight blob that she expected, I knew that it was time to hang up my ropes. Ah well, enough of my ageing dilemma, after all it comes to us all eventually.

With that first flutter of snow in mind, I went round to see my friend Hugh McNicholl at the Mountain Technology factory. It brought back a few memories of Deadmen whizzing across the factory floor, having been wrenched out of my hand by a powerful grinder. Most climbers in the Coe did a stint at Hughies, mainly riveting ice axes. So if you purchased a Mountain Technology axe pre mid eighties and it fell to bits, then that's probably why.

I've known Hughie since my early days when I worked as a ski mechanic for Nevisport in Glasgow. We knew him as the man who supplied Nevisport with Deadmen! He's a little greyer around the whiskers these days but a passion for mountain biking and running keeps him in good shape and he's still the same vigorous old Hughie. Characteristically, you would see him at trade shows, or in the Local demolishing a packet of crisps. His head cocked back slightly and with lifted brow, his eyes always appeared to be peering over the top of his spectacle rims. "Och aye...aye..." with that short cropped silver hair and beard, "Have you seen Moores recently?" (another Glencoe regular), another rummage in the crisp packet, another "och aye".

"Anyway, I want to show you something," said Hugh and he disappeared into another room and left me in what I suppose is a sort of assembly area, where rows of axe shafts, picks, adzes, spikes, leashes and bits of crampons filled duckets on the wall. Hugh returned caressing his latest feat of engineering art. "What do you think of this and I would prefer an honest opinion?" It's just what I have been wanting to see and I was really surprised that no one had done it before now. It looked fantastic and completely original.

I suppose it's a sort of hybrid that combines the flat bed concept of a conventional twelve-point crampon, a bit more like the discontinued Choiunard Rigid, yet designed with the option of fixing mono or dual points that can be off-set depending upon personal taste. Overall, the fit can be customised, which is great news for women and people with small feet. So we went outside and pottered around and made a few tweaks here and there but otherwise this was a finished masterpiece. The new crampon will be available for this coming winter so keep an eye out, it looks the business.

Talking about axes and crampons, I heard through the grapevine that somebody has scraped and scratched their way up the great Glen Nevis classic, Storm. I have no idea who the perpetrators are but I hope by now they have seen some sense and will not commit such a crime in the future. For those who don't know this part of the world, Storm is one of the best three-pitch, HVS, rock climbs in the area and I would confidently say that it is not a route that comes into regular condition.

Okay, from an argumentative point of view, how can you differentiate between Storm and a route on, say Ben Nevis or Glencoe? Well that's a good point and all the more reason why routes should be climbed in proper winter condition. But this was climbed, from what I can gather, during the summer months. To be honest summer or winter, it doesn't really matter, this is a clean, quality piece of rock and climbing Storm (a route situated almost at sea level) for whatever reasons, with axe and crampons has to be unacceptable - God forbid it is repeated.

On a more refreshing note, Dumbarton Rock has yet again added a stepping stone to further the development of Scottish rock climbing, or rather Dave MacLeod has with his latest offering. Unnamed as yet, this is a direct finish to Chemin de Fer and weighs in at a hefty E9, the first route in Scotland to be given this grade. Look out for a special report on this website soon.

I was actually on my way to Stoer to work for Mick Tighe on a mountain rescue drama/soap series for TV, so I had to leave wishing Hughie good luck and left him to make the necessary tweaks to his new crampon.

I once vowed I'd never work for Mick Tighe again. It's not that I dislike the man or anything like that, quite the opposite in fact. It's just that some people operate differently from others. But here I was staying in the Stoer lighthouse with Mick and feeling slightly worse for wear after a few drinks. Mick must be in his 50s at least and still running around like a spring chicken, with that cherub'like face of his.

"The only difference between you and me," he kept repeating, "is that you operate at a higher standard than I do". I couldn't bear the thought of agreeing with him but in some respects he was right. I always prided myself in the way I do things in climbing. The thought processes, the planning and the preparation. Like myself, Mick is a Mountain Guide and I first worked with him in the early/mid eighties, running a rock climbing course on the sea cliffs of western Lewis.

After a couple of days of bad weather, I'd wake up in the morning to the sound of Mick rummaging around the extension to our Vango Force 10, MK5, always in that chirpy, quickly spoken manner. "Cubby, the weather's bad, morale's low, we need to get the troops in order." "Yeah, yeah," I would say and lean back in my bed. "You know Cubby," said in a tone that you would expect from a regimental Sergeant Major, "a good Marine is a clean Marine and a clean Marine is always fifteen minutes early".

That was my cue to do the dishes and have a word with the troops. Once a marine, always a marine, I suppose. There was a big military manoeuvre in operation on the island and Mick just couldn't keep his nose out of it. We drove through an old gate, Mick at the wheel, me in the front seat and about eight "troops" in the back of the Nevis Guides van. Mick pulled up and jumped out to ask the two soldiers a question, about the weather or something. In the next instant he turned on the two soldiers and pretended to apprehend them, "I could've had you there," he said, laughing to himself. "Had you worried there boys, eh?" laughing again.

Completely taken aback, the two soldiers just didn't know what to think. Anyway, the weather improved so we abseiled into a little geo that we called Basset's Bay - named after Mick's secret stash of Liquorice Allsorts that I kept pinching from his tent. There was one student in particular who Mick couldn't handle and he asked if I could make any headway with him.

Tom was fine, a doctor from Kirkcaldy. "What is it with Mick?" Tom would ask, "he's completely obsessed with anything military". Tom had a gentle, slow, unhurried manner that I liked but it completely clashed with Mick's military temperament. Having done a couple of first ascents with Tom, I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting at the top of Mick's next adventure, ready with a rope. "Cubby - can you throw me a rope mate. The old rock is not so good down here and the tide is coming in."

It was more of an order than a request but predictable at least. You couldn't deny Mick's enthusiasm and sense of adventure and the "troops" loved every minute of it. He had that twinkle in the eye that so often got him out of trouble, where others quite simply wouldn't get away with it.

I had very little to do on the recent job, such is the nature of the film industry but Mick's guilt got the better of him and he didn't like the idea of us sitting around doing nothing while getting paid for it. So he suggested that I take the catering staff out to do some climbing. Thinking it looked most unprofessional in front of the film crew, I wasn't happy at this request.

As it was, I was eating vast amounts of food from the catering wagon. In the end I reluctantly took the family climbing and of course they loved it. From then on though, if I came anywhere remotely near the catering wagon, a huge plate of food would be forced upon me.

In some respects it was good to see that Mick hadn't changed after all these years and I hope to be working with him again in the future. We have our differences but then it takes all sorts - does it not?

Cubby
11/10/2001