My first lead proper, that is to say the one that made me feel justified in describing myself as 'a leader', was Inominate Crack on Great Gable.
It was a Sunday and our driver was Ian 'I was a motorcycle courier' Smith. He managed the bus as you might imagine, swaying in and out of the traffic; a rainstorm of gossip and opinion, his stops for breath were more sparingly tried than the brakes.
We flew into the car park. Cumbria was wet and we slid to a stop in the middle of an enormous puddle. As everyone leapt to shore Ian, a small, stocky plumber stomped round from the driver's door seemingly oblivious to water that was pouring into his boots.
He clapped his hands and looked at me, “They tell me you can climb.”
Flattered, I tried to convey capability hidden beneath bashfulness and humility. Ian bored and turned heel halfway through my pretence. He marched back through the lake and off up the path.
“Bring a rope,” he shouted, without looking.
I caught him up and he began to bombard me with everything he knew about the area. My short climbing apprenticeship had left me able to distinguish with a certain confidence between a buttress and a chimney but now Ian was baffling me with gables, gullies, tarns and scree. I hoped there wouldn't be a test at the end of the day.
Soon we were at the foot of a tall silvery wall with two jigging vertical cracks.
“That's Inominate Crack and that's Kern Knott's Crack,” Ian explained.
I nodded.
“Have you led VS before?” he asked.
“Yes,” I blurted foolishly.
“Right-o. Your lead,” Said Ian.
Though I wasn't lying, the VS I had led amounted to no more than a short easy route with one well protected move. I tried to explain this but my back-tracking fell on deaf ears. Ian had bored of me once more and was now rummaging in his bag. Standing with a grunt, he produced a full rack of gear like flowers from a magician's sleeve.
Quite scared now, I repeated my reservations, Ian patiently waiting until my bumbling and stammering had run dry. We stood looking at each other in silence.
Finally he asked, “Are you going to climb it or not?”
I swallowed down a “Yes sir,” and began to fumble the gear onto my harness.
I looked at him one last time, resolved to my fate but hoping his headmaster-like air would break into fatherly encouragement. “Look,” he explained with weary impatience, emphasising the verbs, “go slowly, put in loads of gear and try not to worry.”
I remember three things: the jams, loading the crack with gear and the cold. My hands were numb in minutes. Trembling all over I looked down but Ian was daydreaming off into the valley. I daren't go down now. In what seemed like an age, I got to the belay, exhausted, elated.
Later, after we'd dragged the bus out of the pond, Ian was slaloming us home and had once again assumed verbal control of the journey. Cramped into his rantings was a brief account of our day.
“So I looked at 'im,” he said, referring to me, “and I tells 'im, go on, climb it. And he did. No fuss, just did it.”
A couple of the more experienced climbers on the bus nodded approvingly. I've never been so proud.
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