Day 3: Written by Vivien Laverge

The mere thought of Day 3 was so hugely overwhelming that I could say that it really began as we arrived at Camp 2, Twins Cave, at 5.30pm at the end of day 2. Mountain no 2, the great Outer Horn had only been summated by one member of the team and the after the sense of elation, achievement and all round success of day one, day 2 had hit like a ton of great big rock, which it was. Our guide, who is satirically and affectionately known by now as “Jet Jungle” (although I err at times to refer to him as The Don Juan of Mountaineering) had informed us that we should expect the day three Mitre to be a more difficult climb than the already unachieved Outer Horn. As I trudged up Twins gulley to the neck which overlooked an un-lookable drop off, my nerves began to disintegrate, again. Over and over in my mind I tried to recall and recapture my sense of steely nerves that I had once possessed 7 years ago when I was at my climbing pinnacle. But reality kept prevailing. Then I had just gone through a cruel, acrimonious divorce. Now I was happily married again. Then, I had almost lost my boys to my ex-husband. Now I was the mother of those same 3 dashing boys and two new baby girls. Then I was as determined and hard as the rock I was climbing. Now I was as fragile and vulnerable as the daisies that grew precariously on the path which I trod. I had lost my nerve for adrenaline pumping adventure. I had lost my obsession with climbing in unclimbed places and forging unknown paths. I was very comfortable with the ‘known’. But the reality was that I was IN an adrenaline pumping high adventure place with 15kgs on my back and no piece of ground between day one and the day four where a helicopter could arrive to rescue me and whisk me off to the comfort of my life down below. Besides, I was with 4 other ladies that seemed to be getting on with what had to be got on with! AND I was the second youngest on the team. My weakness of mind was not an option.

As I came to a triumphant stop at the top of the gully neck I glanced up at the knife edge path that veered off to the cave on the right. The drop off on the left of the path was the one I didn’t want to look at. The porters came back down from the cave to relieve us of our 15kg backpacks so that we could, more comfortably and safely, negotiate the little path. I frantically searched the rock to my immediate right and decided that I would rather climb up to the cave over the large chunky rock and bypass the dreaded path altogether. Somehow the feel of rock under my fingers and the strength and safety I felt using all four limbs to propel me upward was more comforting than a shuffle along drop-off path. I reached the top path leading to the cave and joined up with the others. Their bravery still leaves me in awe – unless of course it’s really ’stupidery’ because they haven’t read as many ‘Death on the Mountain’ books as I’ve read. We arrived at the 30 metre long cave only to find that the 5 star sleeping spot on the right hand side, which was sheltered by a little make shift rock wall and adorned with a straw floor for Posturpedic comfort, had been duly bagged by none other than, Don Juan and his side-kick, Pedro. Our superwoman friend had unbeknowingly placed her sleeping gear there too, expecting the obvious 5 sleeper cave room to be reserved for the 5 women only. This was not to be. The other 4 girls were relegated to the opposite side of the cave where the floor was at a comfortable 2 star, 30 degree angle and in nostril-hair proximity to our 3 porters.

Before dinner was cooked, if it even was, for I don’t remember much about the food other than it was some ghastly vomit like concoction that cost more than a plate of assorted sashimi, we were called to a group discussion where the following was duly noted:

Only 4 climbers had summated Mountain no. 1 or M1. Only 1 climber had summated M2 and with day 3, M3 looming, it seemed that the rate of success was about to decrease even further. With all 5 ladies perched on various rocks and things in a contemplative circle, Captain Cock (Don Juan) read out the Mountain Club route guide for the Mitre. It commenced up a steep grassy gully which supposedly looked as if it went right up to the summit. The guide stated that it was imperative that the right gully be followed because the other gulley ‘didn’t go’, which in mountaineering terms means it reaches a point where you are faced with a paper smooth solid rock wall and would need to do a 360 about turn. At the top of the ‘right’ gully one would have to climb up through some chimney type rock formations until you reached a ‘knife edge’ with a HUGE drop off over the other side. (At this point in the round rock discussion I was about to ‘drop off’ a physiological load which the very words ‘drop off’ seemed to induce.) From the knife edge there was a steep rock scramble up to a grassy slope , it was strongly advised, one should traverse while being roped up as there was another ( f…ing) ‘drop- off’ to the left. A fairly do-able rock climb up a 20 m wall, a traverse around a grassy ledge and another short roped rock climb finally lead to the summit. That was the route guide to The Mitre or M3, the acronym we dramatically claimed to name our mountains, with the obvious K2 connotations! DJ (Don Juan) sidled over to me and sensuously grunted under his breath “Laverge, jew ken du dis. If jew dun da Bell den dis a piss of kek”. In reality, he said “Laverge, you can do this. If you’ve done the Bell then this is a piece of cake”. “Yes I’ve done the bloody Bell” I counter whispered, “but that was a long time ago” – another time, another place, another Laverge – or no, I was LAW then and certainly one unto myself. The three other ladies had already decided that this climb was certainly not for them. It was NOT as I had described in our itinerary, being self appointed Master of Itinerary, based on the information that I had received from the Port Captain, an ‘easy rock scramble’. The three girls had thus decided to attempt to climb Twins Peak, which loomed up above our namesake cave, when the Mitre team returned on day 3. An afternoon climb is always a little dodgy because that’s usually when the bad weather rolls in, however, the M3 Climb was given precedence as the first climb and the Twins Climb was relegated to the afternoon, NOT to the complete satisfaction of the Twins Team.

We clambered into our sleeping bags pulling on beanies and extra pairs of socks as we went. Within minutes, the wind came up and blasted gusts of dust and mountain debris into the cave. We all went into foetal positions and hid our heads under our bags, only eyes and noses sticking out. Michelle gave a muffled holler “This wind is going to blow us right off the mountain”, to which Loraine replied “Well as long as it blows us back DOWN this bloody mountain”. We giggled nervously, hysterically, until tears streamed down our faces. Then Loraine called for prayers.

“Dear God. Thank you for keeping us safe. If you had wanted to kill us off then today was the day. But you didn’t so I know you love me. Please keep us safe tomorrow and help Vivien know what to do – to climb or not to climb. And please make sure the weather is good again. We can’t do this climb in the rain. And the wind will blow us off. So thank you again for keeping us safe. Thank you. Amen”.

I awoke at 4.30 am on day 3. Thoughts of M3 again consumed me. Belinda had said prior to my failed attempt of The Horn, “Pain is temporary but quitting lasts forever”. My mind kept saying “So does death”. I know this might sound dramatic but I lay there in the early hours of the morning staring up at the giant cathedral dome of rock above me and wondered if I’d be alive the same time the next morning. Maybe I just have a thing about death. Morbid and macabre thoughts often pull my mind and twist it into all sorts of death scenarios. But I really would not want to go there now that I had so much to live for and so much more that I wanted to do in my life. Death could wait. But deep inside I knew that I was going to do the climb. There was definitely something that compelled me forward. “Listen to your gut” my girlfriend would always say “It’s the only piece of advice I can give you”.

My gut said “yes” but my mind still questioned. Funny how it’s usually the other way around. We usually listen to reason, calculation, deliberation, mental contemplation, etc. but push that gut feeling away because we can’t quantify it. We can’t really put words in its place or give it a ‘reasonable’ explanation. It is just as it says it is, a feeling.

I turned over and fell asleep again, on my good ear. When I jolted awake, the Mitre team were already up, dressed and having breakfast. Without a second thought I shot out of my sleeping bag and raced through the next 15minutes to be ready for the 6.30 planned departure.

We set off for the Mitre at 6.40am and the other three girls wished me luck and sent angels along. Michelle’s angels are the best companions to have on any emotional journey. They really work. Was this an emotional journey? Maybe not. Maybe it was going to be so hugely physically demanding that there would be no space for emotion on the trip. Just good ole blood, sweat and aching muscles. Sometimes an exhausted body heals aching emotions.

There is no need to go into great detail of the climb. The route guide has done that. Needless to say, I was a little slower than the others but that was ok. It was good to be on my own. We conversed occasionally but mostly we just climbed. There was a narrow path with the obligatory drop off to the left, just for me, but I crossed it cautiously and kept my mind together. There was no other option. Don Juan offered to take my hand but I vehemently refused. I wasn’t going to attach my paw to anything that was even remotely movable. The grass tufts peeking out of the rock were definitely a safer bet. So I clutched onto the grass, which, many a seasoned Berg hiker will know, is more steadfast than the actual rock. The part where we had to climb up through vertical rock chimneys was where I felt most comfortable and secure. I could depend on my upper body strength and the agility in my legs. There were great big coffee mug hand holds and neat, firm places to comfortably place my big toes and shove my body upward.

I MUST look down. I need to know to what extent I must be fearful. I’d rather take the risk of looking, knowing that there is a slight possibility that the drop is only break-arm bad and my fear need not be all encompassing, leg wobbling, mind blowingly debilitating, rendering me so off balance that a the whiff of a butterfly wing would send me to my grizzly splattered death. So I look. More often than not, after I have looked, I watch out for butterflies.

When we finally got to the top of the chimney climb and onto the knife edge, which was essentially a great big boulder lodged in between the pinnacles of two sheer rock faces, Don Juan gave two instructions: “Don’t move around too much – there’s fresh air below us” and “Don’t look down”. I froze. I tried to remember the feather game we used to play at boarding school. The one where you told yourself you were as light as a feather and then four other girls used only one finger each to lift you off the ground. It was really nice, however, of Sir G to mention the not looking down bit knowing my penchant for the sport. Pedro roped up and took the lead, climbing first over a tricky little boulder and then, after glancing back down to his left said that he felt the compulsion to rather climb up to the right. SG instructed him to follow the route up left – that ‘right’ was actually a more strenuous climb. I commented that I was quite happy to attack the more strenuous climb if it didn’t have the high exposure which the left and easier route offered. He ignored me. I think by now he thought that I was rather tedious. I decided to keep my fear to myself and never again to verbalise it. The perpetual Pedro was up at the top, had made a stance and yelled for Belinda to climb on. As she started climbing Sir G asked her to turn around for a photo. As she turned and glanced down I saw a visible tremor throughout her strong, lean, sinewy body and she turned to me, “Viv, whatever you do, just don’t look down – you can’t see the bottom”. She said she’d take a photo of ‘down’ so that I could look later, in the comfort of my lounge, at the extent to which I should have been fearful. When Belinda had reached the stance, she untied, found a safe place to sit and I got the dreaded yelled instruction “Climb on”.

I didn’t look down. I just took a deep breath, looked straight up and climbed on. There was something empowering about being able to shut out the vast drop of nothingness that was below me and being able to transfer that fear into something that merely compelled me onward. I completely ignored the exposure to my left, climbed left and reached the safety of the stance. From that moment on, my sense of elation was tangible. The worst was over, or so I thought, and I was all but on the summit of the mighty Mitre. NB. Hardened mountaineers should not read this and jeer. No, I was not about to summit the Matterhorn but, within the context of my own circumstances and personal abilities, it quite well could have been. When, the previous day, DJ had suggested I was being a ‘baby’ when I accepted his assistance in carrying my 15kg backpack across a section of path that no longer existed; where we had to traverse across rock face with a 40m drop below; I invited him to come and participate in Lorraine’s weekly dance class. A climber trying to dance the samba with very little practice and experience is as much a ‘baby’ as the dancer trying to traverse a piece of vertical rock with 15kg pulling her backward. So, let us all have the utmost respect for the ‘baby’ in all of us!

With DJ up!, we waded through a band of waist deep Drakensberg shrub and came to the foot of another section of vertical rock. SG lead, B followed, I scooted up behind and Ped took up the rear. 30m of solid and dependable rock with the obligatory tuft of grass here and there, with the comfort of a rope above and waist deep shrub below, is any novice adventurer’s dream; adventure and adrenaline wrapped in cotton wool! As I topped out SG shouted for me to pose for a photo. He said “Laverge, straighten your helmet”. I duly did and made sure I was comfortably positioned on a nice little foothold where my head was just visible over the top. Behind me the panoramic Drakensberg dropped away to the blurred valleys below. The photo is quite impressive.

A final small rock band of boulders stitched together lead us gloriously to the summit. We followed the existing pecking order with me coming up 3^rd. Pedro took a little longer to get up as he stopped and gathered up the gear and then the rope. From way down below in the gully to the left of Twins Cave the other three girls saw three figures on the top of the Mitre. “Aaaah” they all echoed, “Viv didn’t make it”. When I caught sight of them I waved my arms up and down like one of those aeroplane parking chaps but only with fast-forward, quick motion turned on. They casually and unenthusiastically waved back. Then, suddenly, as Ped came up and joined us on the summit, they started displaying overwhelmingly huge amounts of visual exuberance and Lorraine gave her famous wolf whistle. They had obviously thought that I was the last one up and given me the cheers, encouragement and congratulations solely reserved for the last fat lady coming in from the race.

Down was reflective process. A feeling of ‘So what was the big deal – it’s done and dusted’. Though we still had the abseil down and when we arrived at the edge of the sloped bush section, DJ started looking for a steadfast enough rock to accommodate the belay point. He started kicking and pushing at a one metre sized boulder which seemed to budge ever so slightly with the force. Not good. I had somehow expected to find two securely fastened bolts in the rock with 5mm inch thick chains attached. “It seems like no-one’s been up here since I was last here 12 years ago” DJ snorted. Drizzle started mingling with our sweat and the black clouds started rolling in. It suddenly became a ‘big deal’ again. Pedro found a boulder that seemed not to budge and quickly flung the rope around it, offering to abseil down first to test it. Well, it sounded very brave and gallant to me, the only problem being that I weighed in at least 3kg heavier than anyone else. Ped backed cautiously over the edge keeping a steely eye on the boulder until his eye disappeared over the edge. I watched the rope as it tensioned, slacked a little and then tensioned again. I watched the boulder as it sat in the drizzle amidst a bush of wild heather looking like a solemn bull frog. Toad of Toad Hall, I thought, with memories of that wonderful childhood story. What I wouldn’t give to be 8 again, lying in bed snuggled up underneath my fresh sheets and blankets (duvets were things from Austria and Switzerland) listening to my mother read about all the marvellous characters of the Toad Hall district. By this stage my hair was wet against my face and the thick cloud below was creeping up the valley fast. “You better be ready to get going, I don’t like this”. “Well, I don’t either” I thought back to the voice on my left. I leapt up, placed a dripping wet kiss on the cold Toad of Mitre Mountain and allowed SG to prepare me for my ab (sounds like some macabre intestinal operation). “Don’t make any jerky movements but don’t go too slowly. Just keep moving”. I glanced at him, smiled sweetly and replied in my head “Jerky movements are your domain, chief”. With the rope wet I found it very difficult not to make any jerky movements. The rope didn’t slide easily through the belay device and when I abseiled over the edge of a 3 m overhang my body bounced like a baby in the middle of the great big nothingness. It seemed to take forever, first coming down onto one ledge and then taking a few steps across to continue the abseil over the next ledge. I heard Belinda’s comforting voice below and those well used words, “Well done Viv, you’re nearly there”. “Well done to you too” I sprouted back, “You ARE there”.

As we waited at the bottom for our brave and impetuous Don Juan de Montanya, marble sized hale started lashing the mountainside and I wondered how in God’s name we were going to get back down the steep gully on an ice slope. I missed Lorraine’s prayers. Thoughts of the little knife edge ledge reared into my head and I immediately started devising alternate routes back down. If we just went straight down the gully and didn’t have to traverse across to the other gully over the thin little ledge then all would be well with Laverge. My three climbing compatriots laughed condescendingly when I made the suggestion. “The bottom of this gully is steep with huge rocks, loose boulders and no shrubs and grass to hold on to” someone said. “That’s ok” I retorted matter-of- factly back, “The other gully needs to be arrived at over a thin, slippery, knife edge, death trap, excuse for a foot-path”. They answered in frustrated union “But the path is only 3 metres long!!”. Oh fuck off, I wanted to say, Just fuck right off your own bloody way and I’ll go my way and see you back at the cave sometime tonight – and you might as well have the kettle on when I arrive – if that’s not too much to ask. But I bit my tongue and followed them across the path and over into the ‘nicer’ gulley. In all honesty, when we got there I was glad that we’d come that way. But that’s always the case isn’t it? We try to skirt around our fears, make excuses and justifications for not tackling them head on and then when we’re suddenly forced to deal with them, deal with them we do, and then – we’re glad we did – simple, isn’t it? Only retrospectively though.

We zig zagged our way down the nice gulley, onto the Bell/Twins contour path and eventually I arrived alone at the base of the gulley going up toward the cave. The other two were almost at the top and DJ had gone somewhere below to offload his wares. But I was faced with that gully again. I stared up at her for a very long while and wondered what I could do differently that I hadn’t done before, to get my achy breaky body up her gruelling track. The feather thought didn’t work. I felt like a ton of lard or rather, lead. So I took painful step number one and started to count. On step number 598, 40 minutes later, I had arrived at the Nek and, completely ignoring the famous drop off, edged my way up drop-off path toward the cave.

The girls had been languishing around in the cave for most of the day with some epic tales of their own to tell. Invasions by hostile Sotho men, injuries to eyes from wind injected dirt specs and games of 30 seconds around rock table. All ladies had thankfully been able to ablute and douche sufficiently enough and privately enough to feel more human. Although, if the truth be told, Michelle never let go a thing the whole 5 days! And I don’t know where it all went. It possibly burnt up inside and the smoke coming out of her ears at the constant and unbelievable liberties taken by our own Don Juan of the Mountains, was the visible result. Anyhow, the girls were now eager for the challenge of Twins Peak. I flopped down onto my sleeping bag where I had left it that morning and enjoyed all the words of congratulations from the girls. I also enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate made for me with motherly love by our darling Lorraine. “So are you joining us to climb Twins” the bubbly Lee blurted. My gut feeling said ‘no’ but this was a different kind of gut feeling. I, unlike the rest, had not yet abluted that day and the discomfort looked like a 3 month pregnant mound. My muscles ached and I desperately wanted to lull off into a well deserved pre dinner nap, safe and snug in my sleeping bag as the wind started howling again. My head, however, was fast and busy calculating and quantifying the personal benefits of getting up and doing Twins Peak. I had not done Outer Horn for the sake of my emotional seizure 100m below the last rock band. If I did Twins then I would still have at least achieved 5 peaks, although not the planned 5. There was, of course, also the pull of ‘doing it cause it was right there’ and at this stage I felt that it was highly unlikely that I would ever return to this neck of the woods again.

So with Belinda neatly tucked into her sleeping bag, the four of us set off to climb Twins Peak. It was approximately 3pm in the afternoon and the lashing wind had set in.