Dales Outdoor Clothing

Learning to Fly: Mountains & Illness

There is a scene in the film “Apocalypse Now” where Kilgore exclaims, “If I say this beach is safe to surf it’s safe to surf.” Well the question facing me was “Is this mountain safe to climb?” and I wasn’t thinking about the objective hazards of crevasse and avalanche. Camped beneath the towering mass of Marble Wall I reflected over the events of the previous months that had brought us to the Tien Shan. Jon was stood outside the tent warming up, bending and stretching. We were heading up a subsidiary peak above base camp before the first load carry to camp one the next day. A few weeks before we’d left I’d run up just about every peak in Langdale, a few weeks before that I’d been laid in a hospital bed barely able to sit up due to overwhelming nausea and dizziness partially paralysed down my right side. The run in Langdale had not gone well. I’d been admitted to hospital the next day with a reoccurrence of symptoms. The tests had nearly all proved negative and the doctor had told me it was all down to stress, maybe even some childhood trauma. My abnormal liver function would resolve in time. I couldn’t remember any childhood traumas and chilling out climbing at Shepherd’s Crag followed by plenty fell running and a trip to the Tien Shan seemed like a sure cure for stress. Besides if the body was in top shape with clear MRI scans then all that was needed was a driven mind. So it was victory cigars on the summit and though we wouldn’t exactly be surfing down our route up China pass, it posed few great technical difficulties.

Any sane person would say at this point that they had nagging doubts about the sanity of the enterprise. You don’t go from being in a hospital bed to climbing 6500m peaks in a few weeks. However despite the fact that symptoms tended to recur following exertion I was in no doubt that we would summit. We both trusted each other’s judgement, our experience in Scotland and the Alps and Jon’s own soloing Cuillin type ridges in the high Atlas of Morocco convinced me that we had made a good choice for our first major expedition. The route would be a blast.

Jon had come straight from Chamonix so was already well acclimatised. We therefore thought nothing of the fact that I was slower as we crossed the moraine and left our tent alone and vulnerable beneath the towering peaks. The immense face of marble wall, more impressive than anything in Yosemite rose up glinting in the cold sun. The wall was actually overhanging with an icefall cascading over the top before you could reach the comparative safety of the summit ridge. We had been told a Russian alpinist using a portaledge had soloed the route and subsequently been ousted from the Russian Alpine Club on grounds of insanity. Despite my admiration for those who drove the sport forward I thought for once they might well be right. We were heading up one of the many spurs that carved their way down from the summit, slogging our way across ice and meltwater, scrambling up great gouges in the tongue of the glacier then onto interminable scree that plummeted down from the ridge above. We made the ridge as the clouds began tumbling in from Khan Tengri and we stared across to an ocean of glaciers and uncharted peaks. The Tien Shan Range is relatively unexplored by westerners. Many of its peaks are unclimbed and it was that allure that had drawn us here rather than the usual Himalaya. My job as a schoolteacher meant trips were limited to August, the monsoon season for much of the Himalaya, and thus our choice of expedition had been limited also.

As we set out for the small subsidiary summit I did not feel good. I had struggled to keep up with Jon and the snow arête looked increasingly narrow for someone who had chosen to tackle the route with fell running shoes and ice axe. I thought of days in the Lakes stood on Bowfell in windshirt and trainers, axe looped between shoulder and pack watching the tourists struggle up in full winter kit. Thunder broke above us and lightning clapped down the valley forking its way across the mountains. This was going to be a big storm and no matter what our intentions it was perhaps not good to push too hard on our first day. There is a sublime skill you learn from spending time in the mountains. It has nothing to do with mastering difficult moves or pushing your grade. It has everything to do with self-reliance, trust in yourself and trust in your partner. So that you reach a point where even in the worst blizzard you have a kind of certainty that experience, taking your time and judgement, will see you through. It was at this point that I lost consciousness and collapsed.

When I came round Jon was stood over me looking visibly worried. We were alone in the Tien Shan and it was a long way down back to camp. From camp it was a long ride on horse back down the valley to the gold mine where our chain-smoking driver and “guide” had deposited us. From the mine it was a day’s trek to the government base camp where we’d spent our first night in the Tien Shan. It would be ok, just get to back to camp, rehydrate then first load carry in the morning. The problem was I could barely walk; I felt drunk and unsteady. The world had been reduced to one of those scenes out of Saving Private Ryan in which you can see nothing because of the camera shake. I tried to stand and somehow in the hail and the thunder with Jon’s assistance we set off down to camp. My right side felt weak and stiff.

We arrived in camp to be met by a German party who had trekked over one of the high 5000m passes. They had had a tough time, the Kazakh porters even worse. One German woman had been bleeding from her ears. The snow had been deep and the German expedition’s belief that table, chairs, toilet tent, clothes line, poles for clothes line, mess tent, and individual tents were all essential for an expedition had done nothing to increase their speed. The Kazakh lads with their 40-50 kilo loads had sunk waist deep in snow yet trudged on for hour after hour. They had fitness and a hardiness unlike most westerners and their gear of rip off adidas and patch after patch on jackets and rucsacs looked at odds with the Germans brand new clothing. We learned that one of the lads held the record for crossing the pass from the Inylchek Glacier, a couple of hours. He spent the time in between playing porter summiting the peaks around Khan Tengri base camp like I spent my weekends running up hills in the Lakes. They were in a different league. The Germans in the deep snow had taken fourteen hours and were totally exhausted. Our lightweight two-man expedition looked very different to theirs as they stretched out on chairs and brewed up in the comfort of the mess tent. I collapsed into our own tent. It would be okay in the morning; I just needed to rest.

The morning came with the wap wap of helicopter blades. The Germans were leaving. I sat up in the tent but the dizziness and sickness were overwhelming. I glanced out to see a neatly constructed wall of rucsacs scattered like chaff as the big Russian helicopter landed. They swiftly began loading and I wondered if maybe we should have been more upfront with them about my difficulties, my previous illness and what had happened the previous day. Jon had set off on the first load carry; we’d come to the conclusion that I just needed to acclimatise. But when Jon returned in the evening I had deteriorated considerably. He was worried. We spent the evening watching the TV as the Kazakh’s called it. We had two channels, the weather moving in over Marble Wall and the clouds sliding up the valley from below. In bad weather the Russian helicopter pilots hugged the ground and followed the contours up the valley and the glaciers. There had been a lot of accidents. “I think we need to get out of here,” I said to Jon “I’m worried, this seems like all my neuro symptoms are coming back.” Jon was despondent. I knew however that I was very ill. I could not sit up without severe dizziness and nausea, I had increasing muscle stiffness in my right side and I was aware I was slowly relapsing to how I’d been a few months previously following my viral infection, virtually paralysed and unable to care for myself. But that had been “all in the mind” to sum up the words of one neurologist. My condition had been classed as a hysterical reaction to a virus. In our current circumstances surely sense would kick in and we could simply walk out. But I couldn’t walk out, I was going nowhere.

In the morning Jon set off down the valley for horses. I lay in the tent feeling worried and alone. Pk. Kazakhstan stood next to Marble Wall, a nightmare of seracs like the nightmare that seemed to be unfolding for us. I’d messed up badly, both for Jon and myself. “It’s not rocket science,” Jon had said “To figure out that if you’ve had a neurological illness then going to altitude is not the best place to be.” But I’d been told I’d be fine. The neurologist Dr. Phil Nichols had merrily discharged me with no cautions over what I should or should not do. After being laid flat for his final examination I’d stood up and collapsed as he’d turned his back on me and walked back to his desk, but hey that was part of a recovery, you had to expect a few setbacks. Jon arriving in basecamp on horses with a local Kazakh was like some surreal scene from a Hollywood movie. Jon was a skilled rider and our gear was rapidly loaded onto the horses as the Kazakh herdsman helped load me onto the horse. The saddle looked ancient and his traditional dress made me feel like we had been transplanted into another era, one of Genghis Khan and raids on silk-road merchants.

The next few days were a blur of time spent in the big climbing camp serving the area, of being stretchered from ambulance to tent, from tent to helicopter, from helicopter farcically stretchered almost vertically in a lift to a hotel room. The British ambassador had been drunk and advised us to sign anything to get out of the country. I’d spent too much time in hospital to sign myself up for further hospital admission so the neurologist came to see me in my hotel rather than hospital bed.

“You have a problem with the blood supply to your brain!” he declared. “This is why you have all this collapsing and why you are getting all this spasticity err muscle stiffness. You have no control of your bladder either yes? We see a lot of this and have tablets to treat it.”

Back in the UK the neurologist was less than convinced. “Witchdoctor!” he exclaimed “I know a doctor who is skilled in these problems, this is an emotional disturbance, probably caused by something that happened to you when you were a little boy.” And with those words the mountains loomed up again in my mind. To look well to each step as Whymper put it, to follow the same resolute desire to climb. Of course the emotional disturbance and childhood trauma bit was absurd but there was no physical reason why I shouldn’t be able to get well once more and climb again.

***

The arête from the Allalinhorn snaked down from the vertical rock wall below the summit. I’d been soloing four thousanders like they were going out of fashion. The plan was to meet up with other climbers from the alpine club and tackle some of the more heavily glaciated peaks. I was storming up mountains like those Kazakh lads in the Tien Shan. The last year had been spent in and out of hospital; time and again hard climbing and running had seen symptoms recur. Much of the year I’d been wheelchair bound and absent from work but six months absence on doctors orders had given me time to recover, to get fit and I was fit like never before. I stood on the summit and looked out across the alps. I could see the Matterhorn and the whole of Monte Rosa beckoned me towards another summit day. It was a small victory, a triumph against illness. Even the snow turning to slush couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm and delight as I walked and leapt down the slopes to the pisted glacier below. A few beers in Saas and then more routes the next day. But the next day wasn’t like the day before. I woke unable to sit up due to severe dizziness and exhaustion. I could barely stand due to severe muscle stiffness and any fine motor skills seemed to send my arms into spasm. It was the same the next day, and the day after that and the week after that, and the month after that and the year after that.

***

“It’s obvious this is a vascular problem,” said Dr. Byron Hyde leaning across the table “Only a complete fool would think that this was Conversion Disorder or some kind of emotional disturbance.” Dr. Byron Hyde was a specialist in post-viral illnesses, what the media so often label ME or “yuppie flu”. He looked at me seriously across the dining table. It was all we had managed after interminable battles with the NHS, a consultation with a maverick Canadian GP in a London restaurant. “I never find simply one pathology, you need more investigations.” Back in Cumbria the phone rang within 24hours, Byron had pulled strings via colleagues in Whitehall. More tests, more investigations. Prof. Julia Newton, Dr. Grainne Gorman, Dr. Yan Yiannakou. The initial viral infection it turned out, had damaged my autonomic nervous system, I had a type of dysautonomia. I had not collapsed climbing at altitude because of an emotional disturbance as the first neurologist had claimed, but because I was unable to regulate the metabolism of oxygen in my brain and muscles.

***

In my mind therefore I am running in the mountains, Great Gable passes beneath my feet and I run over Green Gable to the valley below, I head up over Honister and fells like alps arise and fall beneath my feet. I cling to the crags I leap up rocks like a gazelle. Marble Wall towers above me and I am running in my mind to its summit. My wheelchair is left behind me and I run every day. I do not grow weary and soar as though on Eagles Wings. But the summit is always ahead and the closer I am the further away it seems. The clouds move in and the thunder grumbles down the valley. There is lightning.

I am sat in the waiting room in the mitochondrial clinic. Dr. Grainne Gorman comes out of her office and calls me through, I rise to take those last few steps and my fall goes on down and down, past Tower Ridge, past point five gully. I have touched the sun and now I am falling past every climb I have ever triumphed over, the rope cut and unwinding before me. I am laid on the floor of the hospital as nurses busy themselves, patients glance up from magazines, porters hurry and the day goes on. Outside a plane passes overhead and the receptionist has too many files to see to. I smile at Grainne who calls for a wheelchair “I’m ok, don’t worry.” I say. And in my mind I am stood on a different king of summit, one of dejection yes, but one with dignity, resolution and ultimately hope. I think of the Tien Shan and Byron Hyde’s words run through my mind “I would have done exactly the same as you and also be gnashing my teeth for being such a fool and at the same time contemplating when I would next try something ridiculously wonderful.” Such is a life in the mountains.

Simon Overton Monday, 11 April 2011

The author remains a wheelchair user and with the help of flyability and Jocky Sanderson from Escape began paragliding last year. He teaches English and Classics at Thomas Whitham Sixth Form College in Lancashire and lives in the Yorkshire Dales. Due to the constraints of disability he is now working part time and developing a web based clothing business at www.dalesoutdoors.co.uk over time he hopes to grow the business to be a store that combines his abiding passion for the mountains with meeting the clothing needs of climbers, mountaineers and walkers. The aim is to produce a store offering a carefully selected range with products meeting the specific needs of various outdoor disciplines rather than pandering to fashion or the latest trends. He would welcome feedback along the lines of “The best piece of kit I have for cragging/mountaineering/trekking/fellwalking is…..because….” simonoverton@me.com

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