A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush Read Online Free PDF Page A

start to climb and I go on until I reach a knob of rock on to which I can belay. I take a karabiner ’ (he produced one of the D-shaped steel rings with a spring-loaded clip) ‘and attach a sling to the loop of rope round my waist. Then all I have to do is to put the sling over the knob of rock, and pass the rope under one shoulder and over the other. If possible, you brace your feet against a solid block. Like that you can take the really big strain if the next man comes off.
    ‘When the second man reaches the leader, the leader unclips the karabiner with the sling on it, and the second man attaches it to his waist. He’s now belayed. The second man gives his own sling to the leader who goes on to the next pitch. Like this.’
    ‘What I don’t see,’ I whispered to Hugh, ‘is what happens if the leader falls on the first pitch. According to this he’s done for.’
    ‘The leader just mustn’t fall off.’
    ‘Remind me to let you be leader.’
    The Doctor now showed what I thought was a misplaced trust in us. He sent us to the top of a little cliff, not more than twenty feet high, with a battered-looking holly tree growing on it. ‘I want you to pretend that you’re the leader,’ he said to Hugh. ‘I want you to belay yourself with a sling and a karabiner to the holly tree. On the way up I am going to fall off backwards and I shan’t tell you when I’m going to do it. You’ve got to hold me.’ He began to climb.
    He reached the top and was just about to step over the edge when, without warning, he launched himself backwards into space. And then the promised miracle happened, for the rope was taut and Hugh was holding him, not by the belay but simply with the rope passed under one shoulder and over the other. There was no strain on the sling round Hugh’s waist at all, his body was likea spring. I was very impressed – for the first time I began to understand the trust that climbers must be able to have in one another.
    ‘Now it’s your turn,’ said the Doctor.
    It was like a memorable day in 1939 when I fell backwards off the fore upper topsail yard of a four-masted barque, only this time I expected Hugh to save me. And he did. Elated we practised this new game for some time until the Doctor looked at his watch. It was 11.30.
    ‘We’d better get on to the rock. We wouldn’t normally but there’s so little time and you seem to be catching on to the roping part. Let’s go. We’ll take the Ordinary Route. You may think it isn’t much but don’t go just bald-headed at it. I’m going to lead. It’s about two hundred feet altogether. We start in this chimney.’ He indicated an inadequate-looking cleft in the rock face.
    It seemed too small to contain a human being at all but the Doctor vanished into it easily enough. Like me, he was wearing nailed boots, not the new-fangled ones with rubber vibram soles. I could hear them screeching on the rock as he scrabbled for a foothold. There was a lot of grunting and groaning then he vanished from sight.
    Hugh went next. It was easier for him as he was very slim.
    Then it was my turn. Like a boa-constrictor swallowing a live chicken, I wriggled up it, with hideous wear and tear to my knees, until I emerged on a boulder slope.
    ‘Now we begin,’ said the Doctor.
    ‘What was that, if it wasn’t the beginning?’
    ‘The start. This is the beginning.’
    ‘How very confusing.’
    The worst part was what he called ‘Over the garden wall’, which entailed swinging round a projection, hanging over a void and then traversing along a ledge into a cave.
    ‘I wish he’d wear rubbers,’ I said to Hugh, as the Doctor vanished over the wall with a terrible screeching of tricounis. ‘It’s not the climbing I object to, it’s the noise.’
    There was still a twenty-foot chimney with a tree in it up which we fought our way and, at last, we lay on the top panting and admiring the view which was breathtaking. I was very impressed and proud. It wasn’t much but I