Who Am I Now?

A year ago seems further than I can imagine. So much has changed. Now I am in a new universe, new stars above, new tides pulling. I am adrift. I really am. bedrock, storms crashing upon. Water, relentless, finding every flaw and hidden secret. My wee island, my flying, my albatross turning into blinding sun. That I can turn and find a safe place to fall to, I cannot. Safe harbour, a flicker beyond my sight.

The person I have been

I have no idea

This boat sails far from any shore

I wish I could say I am climbing out

It would appear my journey goes elsewhere first.

But I travel still.

To the Eiger.

I will switch on forces.
Forget myself, fill myself with love, let steady force flow, give with my body, give with my heart.

Maybe believe in magic again.

Magic for me..

I know I deserve it...

Col

More great sponsors on board...

A huge thanks to our new supporters:

Please support us through Fundrazor:

Only 4 weeks to go... New sponsors on board...

Pulling gear together and final funding required as we count down to the last few weeks before we leave.

A huge thanks to our new supporters:

Please support us through Fundrazor:

Time of My Life... "What the ACTUAL fuck..."

A room with a view... A lot of memories

For me, the trip to Glen Coe with the team, held a lot of significance, facing some ghosts from the avalanche, just a private tear for my friend as I walked with John attached behind me up towards the water slab where my friend died under the snow all those years ago.

I thought I would feel really scared climbing up the route that I was avalanched over as it was a profound experience to be thrown down a mountain like that over such steep ground, lose a friend, live, then learn to live with it. But with the intense objective of having John by my side, moving as one, made the return to this magical place a positive experience.

Seeing Jay, Alex and Colin forming a cohesive working climbing team up there was just so fantastic and I knew then that Colin was the right choice to help me with this Eiger Paraclimb. His journey is as big as the others as he fights his way towards accepting that change has to be a part of his journey away from chronic depression towards allowing himself the gift of letting happiness have an unequal share of his everyday experiences and thinking. The Eiger is just metaphorical for the team. each member finding their own meaning from the journey.

 

For me, it's not about the project in Switzerland, it's about trusting in something that I don't need to prepare to lose before I have it. It seems I have forgotten how to be something to someone. Re-learning to build my life with a new belief in someone that just seems so right. "What the ACTUAL fuck..."

Colin short roping Jay, with Alex behind on Curved Ridge

John and I moved faster and with more confidence than we ever have. We are learning to trust each other more and more, understanding the rules of what we are doing are being written by us and not in some manual for us to refer to. It's just a very human experience sight guiding and moving together on an exposed route like Curved Ridge. It's bigger than you could ever imagine. Watching the faces of others as we climb past them or them us, is just amazing and feels like fucking poetry...

It seems I am having the time of my life again.

Mark.

Courage: John feeling for holds at 2000ft above sea level!

The whole team on the summit of Buachaillie Etive Mor, Glencoe

Jay having the time of his life in a mountain environment...

The River beside the Hut, below The Mountain...

Defiance

Shall I call this fire?

To try?

That

Inside burns fire?

But the things

Hurt

Pull me back

Pull me down

around corners unseen

If I thought of escape where to fly to...
Into the sky?
The scouring wind tearing clouds from mountains, taking dignity from flowers and trees.
Into the night?
Shadows gather in armies, pull my legs away, the fall bruising weary times.

If I was to stand and resist, fly my flag and cry out rage, but if asked 'what do you fight for?' Could I answer? know the fuel from where my defiance flows?

such a whisper though

silenced too often

Defiance; keeping going when even you stop believing, when there seems no point; that you know still there is a shred of you that never was defeated

And never will be

I will climb out

My footsteps are on the path to this. I hope from the Eiger I can see my way

I hope

I hope

I hope.



Colin.

Eiger Paraclimb 2015 Training Weekend - Curved Ridge, Glencoe, Scotland

Back to Black - The Jacksonville Hut

The Mountain, Glen Coe (Photo Dave Cuthbertson)

As we prepare for our 2nd training weekend, this time in my own Glen Coe in Scotland, things seem to be coming together with the others fitness and my own. Some new equipment sponsorship coming in to help our cause and it feels to me like the group is becoming more cohesive. The final 6 weeks before we leave has to be a period of full commitment to nothing but increasing aerobic mountain fitness and endurance that will make our eyes water!

Fracture Route on Rannoch Wall age 14

The training route, Curved Ridge is a magical place. A place where Colin and I used to go most weekends at age 14 and climb the surrounding rock walls until the light of the day warned us to leave enough time to get down the 1,500ft to the black hut  of The Creagh Dhu Mountaineering Club before dark.

The Jacksonville Hut in Glen Coe

The Creagh Dhu have kindly allowed us to use their fiercely coveted black hut at the bottom of our route. I am so chuffed at this, as it will add a lot more depth to this for Colin and I as we relish in how this Eiger Paraclimb has helped bring us both back to this place together years later with so many wild experience just outside our window: soloing on Rannoch Wall together, car crashes, avalanches, Shibboleth, a hundred sunsets over Rannoch Moor and much more...

So it's back to black...

Mark

Feral

Feral...

Read the last thing I wrote, thought it's all sounding a bit serious. A bit dark. A bit too concerned with the darkness that is part of my experience right now.

There is more

A lot more...

Went home feeling shattered, cycling home just was hard.

Food
bit of rest
but was restless

 Thought I must train now

so cycled more

 to a big slag heap a couple of miles from my hoose.

Started going up and down it. Maybe 150ft up. Steep and sinky.
Tiring.
Up and down, over and over.
Hard.

I lost myself in this. Cooled my face with puddle water as I pushed myself. Felt feral, wanted to be.

Wanted fire and darkness

to keep going into the night, wanted mud, muck and struggle.

Felt free'r than I have for a long time.

Felt lucky to have this quiet private place to work hard on hill fitness, happy knowing it is there and that much can be gained upon this slope.

It is reminiscent of the way we created our climbing training places when we were wee. Odd local walls and cliffs where we took many not inconsiderable risks, pushed our boundaries and worked hard, building strength into fingers and our hearts. Mark had his in Blantyre, I had mine in Old Kilpatrick.

feral energy

From our beginnings

I'm trying to set it free

a part of me I almost forgot I have

it's coming back

It feels angry

Determined

Hard

I feel it...

Colin.

I see light, because life gets dark...

There is the strangest thing going on, this climbing out thing, stirring deep waters, feeling the tug of forces both familiar and new, wrapping like fog around me, like forgotten melodies overheard from another room, distorted by time but known, as old worn gloves know the shape of you.

I know my story is small; every charity or marathon runner having their own journey, their own battle. Indeed everyone does in their own way, in work, and in the wider enterprise of living.

This challenge feels big though, you see it's about following hope and allowing hope; actually believing something can be done.

a twist that I hadn't thought about is that to embrace hope, to push myself is forcing me to confront issues that hurt; an existential weave that cuts deeply, wraps up the deepest parts of me. Seeing light shows how dark things have been, that in these shadows lay monsters. It is hard to see the way you killed off hope as an act of self protection, but also why that protection was needed; that there was nothing else available.

I sought solace within this dichotomy

' a normal response to abnormal experience or abnormal response to normal experience'

Who knows?

It wasn't good or healthy or happy

And now the Eiger cuts through all of this - the training challenging my ability to cope. Tired all the time from two jobs and cycling miles most days, got to step it up too. Be tireder, not think, convince myself that pain is progress and shut down my heart - bleeding for a million reasons.

You see a thing happens, I call it the 'crush'. My mood just crashes through the floor, like feeling sick suddenly. It crushes energy, hope, meaning and esteem.

I feel utterly worthless and it happens all the time, unseen and hidden. I tell no one. I pick myself up and keep going; the everyday acts of living becoming victories, as all you want to do is lie down and vanish.

To then put yourself forward for new and bigger challenges is hard because this still happens and it is so so hard. It is so lonely.

It is here I remind myself of a former me that soloed ice so comfortably, had moments of grace on rock from time to time. Try to fight against forces that were insidious and took more of me than I ever realised; killing off hoping and dreaming

 The beast was stronger than I realised

It makes hope hurt. Makes the light of hope hurt you. Means that the idea of love and care scares you - for fear it will be false or you will lose it. So you forget love, or try to, because it hurts too much.

But

In safety there is no hope or hoping is there?

But I must hope, otherwise there is no life, just existence, just shadows in the cave...

So

I'm pushing.

Getting up after the crush.

Wiping away hidden tears, if they come

Trying to live.

Trying not to be blinded by the light.

I'm getting stronger...

I'm getting fitter...

I am hoping for more than this one summit and allowing the light of hope in. It's hard though, because it hurts, in cascades of feeling that drench sadness upon me, fatigue making me even more vulnerable.

But a strange wee force has started to chime within and I am listening - maybe I am worth something...

It's a truth that you try to ignore - how deeply worthless you can feel

This climb, this idea is all about pushing boundaries. Mark, my greatest friend, knows about all of this; Our, sometimes wine fuelled, conversations being a rare place where honesty can be...he knows all this dark stuff. The fact that he asked me is everything; maybe remembering or seeing me with better clarity than I see myself.

So I have been pushing myself and I feel exhausted. I will keep pushing, inside it I feel a hope I don't want to let go of; I know the taste of empty...

Colin.

When I see you...

It's been a long time since I stood below the Eiger and had it take my breath away, as it does. But when I see it, 'am gonna love it all over the place'!

My training is going well, better than expected in terms of building up one/two day mountain fitness, but still a long way to go to the level I would like to be at before we leave in July. It's not long now really, just 9 weeks or so.

The Eiger Paraclimb 2015, has, for me, been about a few different things: regaining my well being through training in the mountains, administrating the back end of the project to maximize our message, trying to facilitate the others preparedness for the climb, John, Alex and my good and loyal friend Colin Gourlay, but also about learning about my own life again and how risk taking is a necessary part of who I am.

It's easy to take risks when your on your own, big risks. And that is maybe why I was so comfortable solo climbing in the past. But taking managed risks with others feels so much more profound to me and a lot more challenging (as I experienced on Tryfan in North Wales, UK). Being 100% relied upon by a person who is blind in a mountain environment was simply, terrifying.

The people of Climb Out UK

But John and I talked over together why I felt like this and the importance of taking a risk for others and I began to understand, that it is not his blindness or my capacity to climb and successfully sight guide us both up a mountain, but more the reality of what will happen should it not go to plan on the Eiger.

John and I are just attached and move together as one climber, where I help him and he helps me stay sane (or insane!) under the stress of our objective. But there is no ducking the pressure I feel now and will feel as we begin our slow climb up that big gorgeous mountain The Eiger, attached to a guy who borrows my eyes through my voice and arm movements as we climb. John is one of the toughest people I have encountered in my tough life and our banter is brutal in our training days together as we joke our way up each step, slowly, carefully but with a determination way beyond some peoples imagination.

We agreed, that although this is very much John and Al's choice as independent climbers, that I will likely be publicly crucified should things go wrong up there.  The irony is that the more I promote our project, the more I increase my personal exposure to the risk of failure (or worse) but that is a risk I need to take for this to happen and I am and I will.

Thanks to the The Climbing Academy and their customers who have now donated over £1,000 we are now getting ever closer to our important goal of sharing a climbing experience that I hope will show the world a true meaning of diversity, humanity and strength... You gotta love it!

Mark