Interesting times

Monday 8 March 8:00am
The overnight train from Scotland to London - somewhere near Milton
Keynes

I've got a blister on the big toe of my right foot, my ankles still
feel sore, my legs ache, I have a headache, a parched throat and a
large bruise on my right elbow that I have been hitting on the side of
the sleeper berth every time I turn over during the night. There is a
nasty blood stain on my trousers. I feel - fantastic.

Sunday 7 March 7:00pm
The Lounge Bar of the Spean Bridge Hotel

I know that it is a feeble way to assuage my guilt about what we
allowed to happen, but I have been trying to buy Barry a beer.
Unfortunately, I am too slow and he is walking from the bar with
another round of drinks. I will have to try again when we get onto the
train, but I am not usually a heavy drinker so I may regret this in the
morning.

Saturday 6 March 9:50pm
The MacAulish Hotel, Laggan

Andy is describing Barry to the policeman. "He is short, five foot four
perhaps, with a shock of grey hair. He is about fifty."
"I think he's fifty five," says Steve.
"What was he wearing?"
"A blue waterproof, a grey-blue rucksack."
"A red woolly hat," I suggest.
"Was he wearing that hat?"
"He was wearing it yesterday."
"I thought I saw him with it today, but I'm not sure."
None of us are sure.

The policeman has a standard list of questions. What equipment was he
carrying? How much experience does he have of the mountains? It is easy
for us to say that he is very experienced, sensible and well equipped.
I makes us feel a little better and a little less stupid to have lost
him in the first place.

He must be running out of questions by the time he asks us what colour
Barry's bivvy bag is. Andy says he thinks it must be orange, but it
sounds to me like he is guessing. I am imagining a mountain rescue
helicopter team spying a figure huddled up in the snow below them. The
co-pilot is saying, "No, that can't be the one, his bag is the wrong
colour. We'll have to keep looking."

The policeman's mate comes back into the hotel bar.
"I have found a stray," he says.
Behind him is Barry. A little wet, tired and with his hair rather more
unkempt even than usual, but unmistakably Barry. The policeman looks at
Barry, looks at his notes, then looks back at Barry.
"Well, for a start you missed out his glasses."

9:15pm
Steve is on the phone to mountain rescue.

"We went up the mountain with four in our party and we came back with
only three." How else do you say it? We're stupid. We fucked up. We
don't know what we're doing. There are quite a few rules to follow when
you are in the mountains, but not leaving one of your party behind is
one of the most important.

8:30pm
Tramping down a mountain valley

It has been getting progressively darker for quite a while and now, if
I switch my torch off I can see the outline of the forest on the right
and nothing much else, save a few stars above the tree tops in the one
part of the sky that isn't covered with cloud. I need to switch my
torch back on to make sure my footing is secure. The snow we are
walking through now is soft, and with each step forward I have to lift
my foot out of the deep hole it has created and then put it back down
into another. It is hard work, but not as draining mentally as the
Russian Roulette snow we were walking in for much of the day.

To keep our spirits up the three of us have been discussing football,
politics, the likelihood of getting back to the hotel in time to get
some dinner. We have been discussing pretty much anything except
Barry.

We arrive at the gate that heralds the end of the footpath and I am
elated. We could ring the hotel from the village of Laggan and I am
sure that they will keep dinner on for us. We round the corner to where
the car is parked, and Barry isn't there. The longer our walk had
seemed, the more I was convinced that he would be waiting there. But he
isn't. He isn't far away, but he is on his own, in the cold, a long way
from home.

I've got the makings of a blister forming on the big toe of my right
foot, my ankles are rather sore, my feet are wet, I am desperately
tired and a large bruise is forming on my right elbow. There is still
quite a lot of blood on my trousers. I feel awful.

4:30pm
On an ice face

As we get nearer to the top, the gully is getting steeper. They say
that when you feel as though the surface you are climbing is vertical,
it is really an angle of about 45 degrees. It still feels bloody steep
to me.

Above me, Steve is just hauling himself onto the ridge. As he does so,
a mini-avalanche of snowballs comes racing down towards me. Foolishly,
I reach out for another handhold and lose my balance. My behaviour is
pretty much instinctive as I use my ice axe to steady my fall and bring
myself to a not too-inelegant stop. My right elbow bashed a few rocks
on the way down, but otherwise I seem to be fine. Looking down, I
notice that Barry is standing up right at the bottom of the ice face. I
am not sure how he got back down there.

I concentrate on retracing the staircase of holes I kicked into the
snow above me and taking the last few steps to the top. When I manage
to stand up, Steve is shouting instructions back down to Barry.
"Head back down to the col and we will meet you there."

Steve is pointing across to the saddle point from where we can find a
route back down the mountainside, and gesturing with his arm the arc
around which the rest of us will walk to meet him. It is not at all
clear whether Barry can hear him, so he tries again and Barry appears
to gesture back.

A hundred yards away is the mountain's summit, so we walk over to it.
Andy points out a mountain hare across the exposed plateau. Its white
fur is nearly invisible against the ice and I see nothing, until we
move a little closer and it is sparked into action, lolloping unevenly
but with its hind legs generating astonishing speed.

When we arrive at the col Barry is not there, but we spy a figure
marching energetically down into the valley on the wrong side of the
forest. It looks too tall and too energetic to be Barry, but we haven't
seen another human being all day, so we conclude that it cannot be
anyone else.
1:00pm
Geal Charn means White Mountain and it is certainly an apt name today.
When the sun catches the summit it glistens invitingly back to me.
Behind me, the valley is starting to look distant and the views beyond
it are improving all the time. The higher we climb, the more rows of
mountains are visible, each one of them snow capped and shining, each
one of them unique in shape or character, yet somehow each one of them
unmistakably part of the West Highlands.

It occurs to me that if, apocryphally, Eskimos have thirty seven
different words for snow, then I should co-opt some of them to describe
the different experiences of walking through it. There is the
physically demanding soft stuff in amongst the heather and grass on the
valley floor. There is the crisper, sharper snow that can be carefully
compacted to make perfect snowballs. A little harder, icier, it makes
for better tobogganing down hills (or in absence of a toboggan your bum
makes an excellent substitute). Where we are walking now, I call it
Russian Roulette snow: mostly firm and crisp but every sixth step you
tread through an imperfection and find yourself with one leg anywhere
from a foot to a metre lower than the other.

At the stream we crossed earlier, a single red deer is drinking.
Finishing, it skips through the water and underneath a gap in the
ineffectual fence. It is hard to imagine anywhere that I would rather
be.

12:15pm
Crossing a mountain stream

Andy is telling me how to cross the water.
"Put your foot on that large grey stone just below the surface. It's
perfectly stable."
"I will hold you to that," I tell him, making a move for it.
He is right. The stone stays perfectly still as my foot slithers along
it and into the water. The sensation of water filling my boot is
surprisingly pleasant, for the moment at least.

Across the stream, Andy is trying to climb a fence. With his right foot
on the lower wire he loops his left up and around to get onto the other
side. His size fourteen walking boots were never designed for deft
manoeuvres, however, and he catches his foot on the top wire of the
fence. Lurching forward, he lands head first in the snow on the frozen
ground.
"Lucky I didn't hit anything important," he says.

Friday 5 March 6:00pm
London

I have been wearing my new boots all day to try to break them in. I am
slightly concerned that my feet will suffer after a first weekend of
walking in these boots. Otherwise, I am looking forward to the
trip.

I love the conspicuousness of carrying climbing equipment on the Tube.
It is worth the effort of struggling with bags through the rush hour
traffic. If I swing my ice axe and crampons over my shoulder, narrowly
avoiding the suit behind me, truly I can say to myself: "I am not a
commuter, I am not a commuter, I am a free spirit."

On my way to the station, two men are arguing.
Man one: "You owe me five and half thousand pounds."
Man two: "No, you talk to my wife. You contracted to..."
"I will get my money," says the aggressor moving smartly forward.

The aggressee steps sideways and tries to hide behind me and my
luggage. I am ignored, while the aggressor gets hold of his prey by the
lapels of his coat and shakes him. Pushing forward, falling backwards;
man two slumps against a wall while man one drives away cursing.

I tend to the man on the ground, holding his head where he landed on
the wall. Various people pass by, deciding it is not their problem.
Later, when the Police have been and gone and the man has been helped
onto an ambulance, I realise that I have blood all over my
trousers.