A COMFORTING THOUGHT


      Skye again. Glen Brittle Youth Hostel. I had befriended two youngsters who had never climbed on the island before and I volunteered to be their guide from a safe position at the bottom end of the rope from where I could shout instructions like "left hand down a bit". We reached the last pitch of Cioch Direct. This is a good climb, not hard by modern standards, but quite hard enough for me, and one which is made special by the sheerness of the five-hundred foot drop at the climber's heels.
      Because the stance was cramped and the rope in a tangle, the leader said to me - "Why don't you just lead through." And before I could think of an excuse he had dropped a large collection of jingling slings, nuts, "friends" etc over my head. So I did as asked. With extreme care, and with many running belays, I came to the final few feet - an awkward triangular ledge which resisted my first attempts to raise myself on to it. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by terror.
      Hard hat. PAs on my feet. Two ropes. Stitched to the rock by three jammed nuts and slings. What was I afraid of? It came to me in waves of appalling memory. As a seventeen year old I had been in precisely the same position. But on that (previous) occasion I had nothing, no helmet, no slings, no protection. Only a hundred and twenty feet of nylon line (not much thicker than string) dangling from my waist. And a pair of clinker nailed boots which jangled merrily when shaken. The panic I felt was caused by the release, some thirty years later, of terror stored up at that earlier time but suppressed by the flush of youthful adrenalin. The padlock of my mind had rusted with age and the panic box had burst open.
      So REMEMBER THIS: We were all young once and when we were young we were very very stupid. Remember this too. Inside every young person there is an older and much wiser person whimpering with fear and pleading to be allowed out.