Reader Adventure: “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail”
Climb, Hike, News — By Outdoor Adventure Guide on April 17, 2014 at 3:17 amWe teamed up with Ellis Brigham to offer our readers the chance to become published adventure writers. We were inundated with entries, and picking the winner was far harder than we imagined. After much debate, we whittled the list down to six entries, with the overall winner being published in our May issue, and the five runners-up being published online.
The second of our runners-up is Alex Hebbes, with a tale of his first climbing experience.
When I was younger I remember being told that: ‘Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.’
Over the years I have heard a number of variations on this theme but all carry the same broad message. The necessity of preparation in many instances is not a matter of life or death, however once we step outside the bounds of the relative safety of everyday life the consequences of our actions can have a very real impact on ourselves and those around us. Now, before you get excited about this being a true survival epic I would like to manage your expectations, a tale of fierce derring-do this is not.
The day started at 6a.m. Outside it was dark and cold as is often the case in Wales in mid-November. I had a strong urge to grab an extra five minutes in bed which was reinforced by the hangover from the night before. I was staying with Ed, a university mate in his student flat just outside Aberystwyth . Ed and I were going to be climbing a route on Cadair Idris along with our friend TB.
Cadair Idris is a mountain in the Snowdonia National Park and although not as famous as Snowdonia’s eponymous hero it is still an imposing and beautiful mountain. The name of the mountain means, in Welsh, ‘The Chair of Idris’, Idris being a mythical giant warrior poet. The summit of the mountain is quite accessible with a few hours hiking, however we were planning to take more of a vertical approach to the mountain.
Ed and TB had more experience than me in rock climbing with almost all of my experience coming from a few months bouldering indoors at the Mile End climbing wall in London. I didn’t want to hold up the guys on the mountain but knew that I should be able to hold my own as I had been told that the climb was relatively straight forward.
We were driving the hour or so from Aberystwyth to Cadair Idris and we set out just as the sun was breaking the skyline. The drive was uneventful and we arrived in Dolgellau, a market town in the shadow of Cadair Idris. We drove through the tight streets of the town to find our way to the other side, back into the countryside leading up to the base of the mountain.
After parking up the car we began the walk into the climb. The gaps in my fitness became evident relatively early. I was struggling as the guys strode out ahead of me. After I saw them stop and wait for the second time I thought of mountaineer Joe Simpson’s comments on the issues that can arise from a disparity of fitness within a team on the mountain. Simpson aired these thoughts in his book ‘Touching the Void’ about his near death experience on Siula Grande in Peru. Although Cadair Idris is very far from Siula Grande in almost every sense and we were far from mountaineers, Simpson’s thoughts still rang true in my head and I didn’t want to hold the guys back. Although we had planned this trip at quite short notice I still felt annoyed that I hadn’t maintained my fitness and knew that I could have been better prepared for this.
It was shortly after one of these stops when I was lagging behind and stumbled over something. When I looked down to see what it was I had tripped on I saw a huge pile of dung. I had an idea on the origins of this monstrous movement and called the guys back to see whether they also saw this as proof that ‘Idris’ had been in the area dropping more than just poetic lyrics. It was then that Ed pointed out some cows up ahead of us as the likely culprits, although still not entirely convinced I allowed the matter to rest there.
After some time we crested a ridge and found ourselves on the shore of the mountain lake Llyn Cau which we knew was very close to the start point of our climb. Although close we couldn’t make out where exactly to go as fog had come in at just above the level of the lake obscuring the features of the mountain. At this point a map and compass would have been very useful, however we had struggled to get a map at short notice. We had not been overly concerned as we had the climbing guidebook with an illustration of the area we were looking for. We had not counted on the fog obscuring our view and therefore rendering the guidebook useless.
After a while walking around the lake the fog lifted enough for us to see that where we had first stood looking at the guidebook trying to pick out clouded features was in fact the base of the scree slope that led to the start of our climbing route. Once we started on the route we climbed it almost without incident, there was one rock fall which saw me and TB hugging each other, and the mountain, trying to avoid a huge tumbling piece of potential pain. Although when we have relayed the story since we have tended to omit our true reactions to the situation and highlighted our bravery in staring down the danger.
Down off the mountain we stopped for a beer in Dolgellau. Once we had parked up both Ed and I noticed how we had neglected to bring our wallets so our being unprepared meant that this round was going to be on TB.
The day had been great fun and we felt like we had cracked it, however being more prepared would have made it even better. I could have been fitter and more able to enjoy the day. If we had a map we would have found the climb earlier and maybe could have taken a bit more time to enjoy the climb itself rather than rushing to beat night fall. And finally, if Ed and I had brought our wallet we would have been able to buy our own beers. Actually, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be a bit unprepared … cheers TB.
Why we liked it: It’s informative and thoughtful, and we liked the way Alex wove the theme of “failing to prepare” throughout the story.
Think you could do better? Entries are now open for our second issue’s reader adventure story. More information here.
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I really enjoyed reading this. I thought it was very well written with a good level of humour as well.