Bright Air - Barry Maitland [82]
‘What’s wrong?’ I turned to look and saw a piece of webbing in her hand. She tugged it clear of the stones and I saw that it was the strap of a climbing harness, and with it came a cluster of climbing aids—wedges and snaplink carabiners. Anna handed them to me, and I held the webbing up to the light. It was a faded red, just like Luce’s. Anna had crawled deeper into the recess, and now she pulled out a coil of nylon rope and a helmet. We stared at each other.
‘Well,’ Anna said slowly, ‘she didn’t jump or get pushed, or she’d still have been wearing this stuff.’
I nodded. Even when sleeping she’d have kept the harness on to attach herself to an anchor. ‘She must have gone on free solo,’ I said.
There are various styles of rock climbing. The one that I was most familiar with is what is called aid climbing, in which you use bolts already in the rock or the gear you carry to support you and help you climb. An alternative is free climbing, in which climbers use only their bodies to progress up the rock, but still carry ropes and passive protection to save them if they fall. But there is another style, called free soloing, in which they go up without any hardware at all. It is the purest form of climbing, and some would say the most sublime. It is certainly the most dangerous, for if the climber slips there is nothing to save them. I watched Luce free soloing once, my body rigid with anxiety the whole time, expecting her to drop at any moment. Afterwards she spoke of a sense of liberation, and of confronting her destiny. I thought it was utter madness.
The thing about free solo climbing is that it’s so dangerous it should only be done on routes the climber knows and that are well within their capabilities. This place was completely alien territory. Luce couldn’t have had any idea what lay ahead. Without back-up or equipment, she could have found herself trapped in impossible situations, forced into hair-raising manoeuvres without any form of support. I felt my skin crawl, imagining it.
‘Why would she do such a crazy thing?’ For both of us, drained and almost defeated by the effort of getting this far, it seemed incomprehensible. Unable to come to terms with it, we turned away and busied ourselves with our meagre supplies.
We had what passed for a meal with barely a mouthful of water. We were on the east side of the ridge, watching the long evening shadow of the Pyramid stretch out across the green water three hundred metres below us. There was a nor’-easterly breeze that was becoming fresher by the minute, and we had no blanket or sleeping bags.
‘It’s going to be cold,’ I said and we squeezed closer together. ‘They’ll come looking for us in the morning.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, nodding her head firmly, but we both knew that wasn’t likely. The Kelsos would probably assume we just wanted a bit of privacy, and with Carmel away her boat might not be missed for weeks.
The shadow spread out across the ocean and finally faded into a darkening void. In the gloaming we tried to make our little cave more comfortable, sweeping debris aside, and in the process disturbed some brown centipedes that scuttled away into the far recesses. I knew that every living thing on Balls Pyramid, as on Lord Howe, had arrived either by floating through the air or on the sea, and I wondered how these little creatures had found their way to such a remote corner and how they survived. Now fate had placed them and us on the same small ledge of rock. Later, in the dark, as Anna and I clung together against the cold, we discovered they had distinct ideas about sharing their patch with us, as they attacked us with vicious bites. Soon we were scratching miserably at painful swellings on our wrists and ankles. Despite my exhaustion, it was a long time before I drifted off into a fitful