Welcome to Malhamba - Into the unknown.

The Crack House

by Ged Desforges

Cruising down Highway 365, riding in the big Buick, John Denver or some crap from Dave’s collection playing on the stereo, we were the boys!!

The hard classics at Tuolumne had fallen thick and fast. Maybe these cracks aren’t too bad after all. Maybe we’re just flippin’ good! Off to the Needles, home of the best cracks (and climbing) in the world to tick the place, then to the Valley. Stopping in little John Wayne towns called things like “Fort Independence”, we sat in diners eating huge burgers and taking the piss out of fat Americans. As dark fell we turned back into the mountains. Dave gunned the car over high passes, while I sat back sipping beer and looking at the book to see which routes we’d dispatch tomorrow. We were the boys!!

Less than 24 hours later, for the first time in a long time, I was in tears. I think. The whole hour it took to move up those 10 metres of offwidth is quite blurry in my memory, but I definitely remember reconsidering my religious beliefs (or lack of; that was proof enough for me that there is no God!) and all the naughty things I had done leading up to that point in my life, and wandering if this was some kind of reconciliation. The first few pitches had been immaculate. The most perfect granite finger and hand cracks you can imagine. Steep, physical climbing up soaring, perfect cracks. But now things were no longer fun. After being spat out the bottom of the slot and tumbling down to land on Dave’s head about five times, I got established in it. By getting established, I mean that every available bit of body was pressed against some rock, and I didn’t seem to be moving downwards. “Come on Buddy, use those shoulders, send it man!!” came the helpful words of some dude nearby. In return he got a lesson in swearing and grunting. An hour later I emerged bleeding really badly, feeling like I’d just been in a bar brawl with some big, big men. Gone were the days of cruising up 5.11 finger cracks. I’d just had to give it everything and more on a 5.8! We were no longer the boys. Bugger.

Two weeks later I woke to that awful sound; my alarm clock. I was still always slightly surprised to have not been mauled by a bear in my sleep, but now just confused. This isn’t the Alps, we don’t have to get up early do we? Ah shit, The Nose. I’m not that fussed really, lets leave it and just go cragging. Perhaps I’ll just close my eyes for a second…”Spear Hard, get the kettle on. You’ll need the warm up, you’re leading off”. Rubbish.

Slightly humbler, but even more psyched after a few days at the Needles, we couldn’t wait to get stuck into Yosemite. We had a cunning plan. I’d get good at free climbing cracks, and Dave would get good at aiding, then we couldn’t fail on the Nose. We spent day after day finding as many steep cracks of all shapes and sizes to tussle with, invariably with Dave offering helpful encouragement from below along the lines of “Allez you bloody sport climber, thought you were supposed to be strong? Get a move on, just pull!”. Then we’d find some aid practice for Dave, while I offered equally encouraging words along the lines of “Bloody Alpinist? Thought you lot were supposed to be fast!”. Needless to say we both took a lot of pretty big wippers in the process, but after a quick practice at big walling on Washington Column, we reckoned we’d mastered this big walling game. What could possibly go wrong?

Finally it was happening. The first pitch went by pretty quickly, but the whole thing was just so daunting. Looking up, there’s just too much rock to even comprehend. It’ll take us weeks! I set up the belay, and get ready to haul, just like we’d practiced lots of times.
“OK Dave, I’m hauling. Is it stuck on something?”
“No”.
“It must be, I cant budge it”
“Pull harder”.

A team of Irish lads had fixed ropes up to the sickle ledges (about 5 pitches up) and were busy jumaring up when we proved our beginner skills. I’d led a big diagonal pitch, and what better way to get the haul bags underneath me than by Dave by just letting them go and watch them ping across the wall.

“right Ged I’m letting them go”.

“er, hang on a sec…”

“wank!”

“WANKERS”

“SORRY MATE! Quick Dave, lets leg it”

“where to”

“dunno, up? That fella looks pissed, and he’s big, and you’ve just swung 40 kg of bags into his head”

“ok leg it”

Leg it we did. Fortunately they thought better of climbing under us, and went home.

Anyway, the rest of the story is essentially boring. We climbed a LOT of pitches of immaculate, steep cracks. Sometimes scary. There’s only so many cams you can carry, so when you have a 60 metre stretcher with 3 cams its better not to fall off. But you get used to it, until you suddenly find yourself throwing the aiding textbook away, putting a cam on each aider, and legging it. I was sick once after a particularly burly pitch where I would have loved to stick and cam in and rest, but I’d used them all about 15 metres lower. Dave took a couple of pretty huge falls whilst trying to aid the great roof quickly before it went dark. He did, just. Then it went dark, and we learned how to climb cracks in the dark.

Then we learned about bivi’s on really crap ledges with no food, and waking up hanging off the edge of it in your harness, watching clouds roll in and be convinced a killer storm is on its way, and wishing you’d listened to Craig and gone bouldering. Then we learned how low your standards slip after 3 days on a wall when you find yourself squatting side by side on a 2 foot ledge taking a crap into a bag, without really thinking anything seems odd. Finally we learned just how possessed you can get when you know you’re near the top, and you’re stuck into the best climbing you’ve ever come across, 3000 ft up, completely out of food but not hungry, feeling like you’ve never done anything else. Not even thinking about the consequences of falling. You just leg it, screaming your head off, and nobody can hear you except Dave, and he’s screaming his head off too. You don’t notice when you try stuffing a cam in, it doesn’t fit, and you just lob it over your shoulder and crack on (actually Dave noticed that cos it was his cam). You don’t notice that your hands are shredded to bits, your clothes are in tatters, sweat stinging your eyes, every muscle burning. You just plough up through the most ridiculous terrain you’ve ever seen, swinging around in space, wandering if you’d bounce before you hit the ground, never wanting it to end…