My “Epic” in Easy Gully
How I learned to love Pavey Ark
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OUTDOORSmagic members Alex Ford and Jeannie Conley found themselves on a full-on winter outing recently at Langdale, but lived to tell the tale. For Alex's version of events check here or see associated articles below.
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I wrote this as a catharsis. It’s dedicated to anyone who has ever ‘frozen’ or wants to understand a mate who has. The hardest part of the ascent technically was in the gully proper. For reasons unknown to me, my epic happened just afterwards.
 | | Bow Fell in the distance |
Easy Gully had been far from ‘easy’. The chock stone at the bottom had been a bit of a laugh to get over. The rest of the first two-thirds were tricky. What appeared to be snow were, in fact, deep troughs of hailstones that the wind had obligingly dumped to impede our progress. The ascent angle was steep enough to require us to make steps directly above our heads. The material was too friable to compound properly so our progress was slow. ‘Below!’ came a shout from Alex as a collection of loose brown-coloured material came whizzing towards me. Instinctively I ducked my head under a nearby overhang of rock. The clattering stopped and I continued up the gully. At one point I felt as if I was stuck and could not swing my leg up far enough to reach the next foothold but Bob descended a little and held on to my ice axe and helped me up. I felt reassured to have companions with me whom I could trust. At the large rocks near the top some men had hesitated near the large stones that in summer are merely a challenging scramble. One guy had a rope and one by one we were safely escorted through the ill-fitting slabs of the rock jigsaw. The angle seemed to ease off a bit after that and then almost levelled out. ‘Thank God’, I thought, ‘it’s over’.
At this point I saw through the poor visibility that there was more to come. There was no longer a gully, but a broader snow/hail covered path that rose off steeply to the left. I started to climb up again, but the white deposits here were more granular than in the gully. I was following Alex and Bob but the surface that they had kicked the steps into was breaking into millions of separate spheres that repelled each other like loose polystyrene packaging. Half-way up, the integrity of the surface seemed to vanish completely. If I tried to move I started to slip down a little. There was nothing for the axe to gain purchase on. Every time I removed one foot ready to try to kick I descended further. Sh*t. I had had enough of this already. The other group of guys had overtaken me to my left and I could neither see nor hear them. I felt utterly alone and unable to move.
I knew from past experience that if I did fall a long way that the fall itself would not seem real or frightening; at such times the normal rules of time and acceleration seem to disapply. When I have fallen a long way through empty air it felt like I was floating gently downwards, I could see what was around me and I observed the landscape as I passed it, almost as a passenger dispassionately views the endless countryside that he crosses in order to reach his far-off destination. The initial excruciating impact is thankfully wiped out from my memory bank: I can only ever once remember having bounced upon hitting the deck. This, however, would not be a clear drop from here, there would be no opportunity to fly angelically, it would be a slide, then a roll and then repetitive little impacts, bone-snapping moments as the mountain jettisoned me away – begone stranger, you are not welcome.
 | | Pike O Blisco after the epic |
I began to hyperventilate. The abnormal mixture of aerobic gases began to befuddle my thought processes and I felt that if I stayed where I was, relatively dry and warm, then I would be safe. At least I wasn’t falling any more. The fogginess in my mind reminded me of my training to be an advanced scuba diver. The instructor had taken us one hundred feet beneath the ocean and had given us a problem to solve using the decompression tables, the type of problem that after training was easy to do on the surface. I was having trouble sorting out the answer as a logical sequence of steps and pointed to a number on the tables, not totally convinced that it was the correct answer. This had been done to demonstrate to us the effects of nitrogen narcosis and how its effects can creep up on one unawares. I was feeling a similar befuddlement now. The over-richness of oxygen was starting to affect me adversely; my mind and my body were operating independently like an unwelcome meditative state. I was panting loudly and I felt out of control of myself.
‘Come on Jeannie!’ came down Bob’s voice from above me.
‘I can’t move’, I replied back ‘Every time I try to do anything I slip down further.’
‘We can’t stay here’ was the response, ‘It’s too dangerous’.
‘But I can’t move!’
‘You HAVE to keep going; I can’t see the others any more. You can’t stay here. COME ON!’
Visibility was still very poor and the visor of my hood, pulled tightly down to repel the sting of the spindrift obscured everything but the immediacy of the snow. Bob’s insistent voice, and the knowledge that he was quite close to me gave me the push I needed for one more attempt. The new step, though not firm, held. I restarted the ascent and slowly got to the top of the slope. Dear God, there was more. A broad, level swathe of pure white lay before me, enticing me to walk over and plunge in up to my knees. I was too tired and too emotional to fight it. I dropped onto my hands and knees and crawled over it in order to increase the surface area of my body. It worked. A short icy scramble loomed up, I started up the rocks; ‘Jeannie! You’re going the wrong way! Come over here!’ I couldn’t see Bob or Alex but I climbed in the direction of the voice and then I saw them, nestled in a little gully between some rocks.
 | | Jeannie, blurred by the wind but over the worst |
‘Come down here, it’s a bit more sheltered’, Alex’s familiar and very welcome voice called over to me. He was already sitting down and was getting some soup out of his sac. Suddenly everything seemed strangely normal again; almost homely. How many times have I sat on a summit like this and had the celebratory cup of coffee? I didn’t feel any joy this time. I knew now that all the fear was in my own head and that in some ways I had been the architect of my own misfortune. Yet the potential for disaster had been real. There was nothing else like that during the rest of the day. At no other time did I feel in danger the way I had in that gully. The experience had been sobering yet strangely bewitching.
© Jeannie Conley 2002.
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Discuss this story
Ben, check out Glenmore lodge courses. Went there in Feb, had a great time playing in the snow and 80mph winds. Venue is excellent, great food, quality instructors, good bar. Nuff said. Si
Posted: 05/03/2002 at 11:37
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