Page 17 - 2018 AMA Summer

pockets of slab which chose to stay-put, we reached the lower ridge and after a few technical sections hit our turn left, but the mess of glacial holes and overhangs changed our plan, so instead we turned right into the south valley before at last, night six since beginning to climb, we stopped on a flattening.
Day seven was a long arduous day following no path just a jumble of moraine and a river which after seven or eight hours popped us back into some form of reality near the village from which we started where the house Tashi, our Liaison Officer was staying.
At the moment, in my mind anyway, Britain is a land that appears to have forgotten how to care for people, especially people with little in their lives, and returning to the mountains with their honesty was cleansing. I’ve thought long about what it was that ignited this climbing passion within me. There was always some part of me that wanted to be a hero, inspiration for
the underdog, but there was also a part of my makeup that wanted to be absorbed into something bigger, something better, something to be proud of. But as that same flesh and bone becomes withered and brittle so does my mind and I’m not sure anymore, the world is changing, climbing is changing. A shift? I’m not
sure all of climbing is a collective in this day and age, it seems to be more each for their own and the louder an individual can shout, the more pictures a person can post, the better they are thought of. And loyalty, what of loyalty? But what do I know, because as I write my glasses are sitting firmly on-top of my head.
The LO, me, the head honcho from the village who’s house we stayed in, Paul and the Driver.
ARMY MOUNTAINEER / 17