Psychovertical. Andy Kirkpatrick

most prestigious universities in the country, and, more importantly, in a city I knew had good climbs close by. I was going to fulfil my promise to return.

      A few weeks after the interview, I got a letter from Sheffield University. I felt that I was on a roll. I was amazing. I was talented. Then I ripped open the envelope and saw they didn’t want me. In that moment my world came crashing down. I was worthless again.

      ‘You’ll just have to get a job,’ said my mum, ‘or sign on the dole.’

      I felt sick.

      Within a few weeks I did sign on, and then I moved out to live in a squat with a friend, unable to live at home any more, feeling distant, alienated. My stupid dreams of going to art college had been dashed. My only skill had come to nothing.

      I threw away my paints and pencils, and my paper and sketch books, and from that moment, for years and years, I didn’t draw another thing.

      FIVE

      A very brave man

       Pitch 1 New Dawn

      I carried my first load up to the base of the wall in the cool of pre-dawn. The approach was short, a few hundred metres of track leading through forest to the base of El Cap, then up some zigzagging paths to the bottom of the Dawn Wall.

      I walked slowly, picking out the track with my headtorch which cast scary shadows from the bushes and trees as I twisted the beam around, looking for black bears.

      One of the most amazing things about El Cap is the way it simply shoots out of the ground without any warning, like Jack’s beanstalk, rocketing out of the earth and up into the clouds. In the dark you simply bump into it, its grey granite base looking just like a skyscraper of rock, smoother and more perfect than any concrete. Walking along its base, crushed under the weight of a haul bag, hand brushing the rock both to aid balance and because doing so proved it was real, it was only when you spotted an iron deposit or band of black diorite that you would guess this was a natural feature.

      I don’t believe in God, and intelligent design is only for those who know nothing about either, but when I stand beneath El Cap I always have second thoughts. How could nature be so brash and showy? And if there is a God, he must be American, or the road wouldn’t be so close to this glorious wall.

      My thighs bulged and strained under the load, the weight causing me to move in a slow painful lurch, using the odd rock or tree stump to help me rest and catch my breath, bag balanced. The weight of what I had brought from England had doubled with a twenty-day supply of water—thirty-two litres in plastic lemonade bottles—plus my food, comprising tins of stew, bagels, cheese, cans of Coke and tortillas. Strangely, although I had plenty of water, I probably only had ten days’ food, even though I knew Thomas Humar, one of the best climbers in the world, had taken fourteen days to solo the route in 1998. Maybe subconsciously I knew that being thin would be an asset on such a route, where an extra gram of fat could mean the difference between life and death.

      El Cap is one of the biggest ticks for climbers. There were always half a dozen on the wall, and already I could see the odd headtorch springing to life, as climbers woke on portaledges and began preparing to climb as soon as the sun appeared; those at the top were keener to get going than those lower down who still had days to go.

      Here and there the base of the wall smelt of toilets, the sign that a ‘shit bag’ lay nearby, tossed by a team in the last week or so and still not collected or desiccated by the sun. In the past, climbers would collect paper grocery bags from the valley store, crap in them and throw them off the wall. The idea was that, once down, the team would return to collect their shit bags, but many were less than diligent. In order to stop this, it was now the law that climbers must bag up their crap and carry it up and then down the wall, generally in a home-made plastic ‘shit-tube’ constructed from a drain pipe. Unfortunately, many climbers found this too grim a job, and so still preferred to toss their bags. However, most felt guilty enough to come back and pick them up. I often wondered if the rangers could dust for prints in order to discover who didn’t.

      There had also been a fad a few years ago to set fire to one’s shit bag, creating a ‘flaming shit ball’ and adding a pyrotechnic edge to the throwing experience.

      Of course, the downside of neatly packed excreta was being struck by them while climbing or lying in your sleeping bag. Dawn and dusk were always times to keep your eye out for falling feces. Luckily I’d only had one close call, when a bag had struck my belay and covered my radio in shit. Fortunately, I had a roll of gaffer tape, which I used to cover the offending areas.

      My feet stabbed into the talus as I grew close to the start of the Reticent, sweat already running down my face and back, the burden made worse because I knew I had two more loads to carry up before I would have all my gear in place. I seemed to have spent a great deal of my time carrying haul bags up and down this path, and I passed a few minutes trying to work out just how many that had been, and a rough estimate of the total weight. I wondered if carrying Ella on my shoulders was good training, and tried to imagine the straps that dug into my shoulders were her bouncing legs.

       Can you remember being on your dad’s shoulders?

      I also kept an eye on the ground for wall booty, gear dropped by climbers above. I once met a climber who braved the rain of shit bags by living at the base of the wall, claiming that everything a man could ever want fell there: food, climbing gear, water, even the odd wallet, sleeping bag and fully packed haul bag. He said all you needed was to pray for it, and the next day it would appear. This high-risk but lonely life seemed to work for him, and he lived there for years, until a female base jumper smashed into the ground from half a mile up after her parachute failed to open. After that he moved on. I suppose you have to be careful what you wish for.

      I smeared up the final slab to the base of the wall just as the first rays of the sun struck the summit overhangs three thousand feet above me, giving this area of El Cap its name: the Dawn Wall. It would soon be roasting down here, but I rested my bag on an old dead tree and marvelled as the wall lit up.

      You’ll be up there soon enough.

      All big routes are primarily about logistics, carrying heavy gear around, and waiting; but soon all that would be over and the climb would begin. The beauty for me of big-wall climbing is that the moment you step from the ground, your life is suspended—in every sense of the word—with days or weeks of honest hard work, the bizarre joy of struggle, the escapism. Up high, there would be no bills to pay, no emotional demands, no distractions, only climbing, dawn till dusk, and the reward of seeing the sun set at the end of the day.

      This was why I was there. I needed to escape from normality. To leave the din of my life, leave my thoughts and troubles behind. The only thing that always seemed to be simple was this piece of rock.

      You know you can’t escape.

      You have to come back down sometime.

      Unless . . .

      I looked up again. The sun had moved down the wall a few more metres, making slow progress, each minute illuminating more and more of the route, the fearsome and feared Reticent Wall.

      The Reticent was climbed in 1995 by Americans Steve Gerberding, Lori Reddel and Scott Stowe, and was immediately hailed as the hardest big wall in the world: fourteen of the most dangerous and difficult pitches possible, climbed from a feature called Lay Lady Ledge six pitches up the wall. This title of super-route came primarily from the fact that Gerberding proclaimed it his hardest route, something people took notice of, given his 100 ascents of El Cap, including almost all its hardest routes, in addition to big walls that stretched from Patagonia to the Himalayas. Gerberding was the strong silent type; he had no need to impress. So when he said it was hard we believed him.

      The route began with six easy existing pitches, put