In my last post I said that returning to the mountains was going to require a different kind of approach. Well I wasn't merely conjecturing.
At the end of June, I am going to take part in Back Up’s The Push.
Or at least, I'm going to try to.
The basic idea is that a team of friends are going to push me to the top of Snowdon,1 in a specially adapted chair that I have kindly been leant for the weekend. For me at least, that's going to be the easy part. I will just sit there and get pushed (and pray it doesn't rain).
Personally speaking, the logistics of just getting to North Wales, staying there for two nights, and getting around the various bits of it, are way more daunting than getting to the top of the mountain. There are plenty of ways this could go wrong2 - but I'm doing my best to plan ahead.
Psychologically, this is going to make the Lake District look like small beans. Prior to my accident, I spent more time climbing in North Wales than anywhere else. This was helped by the fact that the North London Mountaineering Club has a hut there, where I stayed countless times, plus the fact that probably the highest concentration of quality climbing in the UK is found in the region. I will be seeing some of my most beloved places - but only from the road. Also, about three weeks before my accident I not only went up Snowdon, but did the surrounding Snowdon Horseshoe scramble route, solo, in four and a half hours. Going back in a wheelchair will be…emotional.
I think this may be the last time I see the mountains. An important step in saying goodbye; in trying to move on.
Anyway, anybody who fancies supporting this slightly mad endeavour is welcome to contribute to my Back Up fundraising page. (Over the last two years a lot of people have pledged subscriptions to this Substack. I will never turn subscriptions on, because for me it is important that I'm not writing for money. But if you feel like “paying” me for what I do here, feel free to use the link.)
The Welsh nationalists want you to call it Yr Wyddfa, which ironically is an act of historical and cultural appropriation. Don't listen to them.
I will try not to shit myself in my friend’s car. But realistically it's not up to me.
In the final episode of The Wire, a bar-room wake is held for officer Jimmy McNulty. McNulty isn't dead, but his career in the Baltimore police force is irrevocably tarnished. McNulty the officer of the law is dead, and so he gets dressed up in a suit and he lies down on the table of an Irish bar, and his friends in the force fondly toast his memory. They give a rowdy send-off to a man who was very good at what he did, but who can never be a policeman again.
So too goes Paul, the climber, who has probably taken climbing as far as he can, but who still has friends who care enough to push him nine miles up the side of a mountain in Wales, to his own living wake, and to whatever comes after.
Grief comes at you from funny angles and in unexpected surges. You know that it's coming and that, when it comes, that you won't be able to do anything with it, other than bear it as best you can. It's out of sync with the world. When you expect to feel it, sometimes you feel nothing. When you are not expecting it, it can knock you off your feet, if you'll pardon the expression.
But you do have to go through it. You have to face it. Going to a high place with friends maybe sets the scene for it. Enjoy your two day excursion to Valhalla, Paul. I remain optimistic that there is a better future for you.
Good luck to you, Paul. You must be an amazing person to have such good friends. I hope all goes well and it give you whatever you want, or perhaps something else that you didn't know you needed. x