Читать книгу The Book of the Bivvy - Ronald Turnbull - Страница 9

Chapter 2 BIVVY HISTORY

Brian an augury hath tried

Of that dread kind which must not be

Unless in dire extremity,

The Taghairm called; by which, afar,

Our sires foresaw the events of war.

That bull was slain: his reeking hide

They stretched the cataract beside.

Crouch’d on a shelf beneath the brink,

Close where the thundering torrents sink,

Midst groan of rock, and roar of stream,

The wizard waits prophetic dream…

The period from 1900 to roughly 1969 was a dark age of outdoor technique.

When the Marathon was reintroduced as an Olympic sport a hundred years ago, it was considered unnecessary and unsporting to drink water along the way. As a result, Marathon runners tended to collapse and die at the 20th mile. Certainly, 26 miles and 300 yards were too far for all but the toughest and most athletic: too far for the entire female sex. Today, 30,000 people every year cover the distance, some of them only moderately fit, some of them dressed as chamber pots and crocodiles. And at every mile marker they pass a drinks station. But we can be sure that Pheidippides, who was the original Marathon runner, knew about the importance of water. So did the Aztec post-runners, who covered over a hundred miles a day up and down the Andes.

When the Dyhrenfurth expedition attempted Kanchenjunga in 1930, each expedition boot, once its massive crampon was strapped onto it, weighed in at 2.85kg/6lb (5.7kg/12lb the pair). Professor Dyhrenfurth seems to have considered this a good thing, as it strengthened character along with legs. And yet the Roman soldier, as he padded along the ridge of High Street, knew all about lightweight footwear. Legionaries wore hob-nailed leather sandals; auxiliaries preferred the lightweight boot called caligula. One report describes the caligula as very comfortable, and better than the modern military boot. The upper was cut from a single piece of leather, laced all the way up the front and sometimes left open at the toe and heel. The sole-pattern resembled that on a modern pair of trail shoes – designed to optimise the distribution of the walker’s weight. Today’s boot design may just about be catching up with the Romans. It would be interesting to run a comparative gear test against a pair of Brashers…

Back in the dark days of 1970 I headed up into Glen Affric for a week of Munro-bagging. On my back was the state-of-the-art rucksack: a dangling pear-shape of stout canvas. Any self-respecting Roman soldier would have flung that pack into the bog. It added 10lb to the effective weight. And that effective weight already included the tent of the time: 11lb of cotton, and hemp cordage, with wooden poles connected with ferrules of solid iron. The 33 pegs on their own weighed more than a tent of today.

And yet, 100 years earlier, imaginative Britons had been sleeping out under tents with a total weight, including poles and groundsheet, of nothing at all. In 1878, the writer Robert Louis Stevenson appears to have invented the bivvybag.

‘This child of my invention was nearly 6ft square (i.e. before sewing into a bag)… a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart cloth without and blue sheep’s fur within.

A tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike again; and even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready – you have only to get into it; it serves a double purpose – a bed by night, a portmanteau by day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every curious passer-by.’

So here is bivvy-literature’s first recorded night out in a bag. Like many after him, RLS leaves it rather late to select his bedroom…

‘The rain had stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, began to dry my coat and trousers. “Very well,” thought I, “water or no water, I must camp.”

The wind roared unwearyingly among the trees; I could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves churning through half a mile of forest; yet the scene of my encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered…

I tied Modestine [his donkey] more conveniently for herself, and broke up half the black bread for her supper, reserving the other half against the morning. Then I gathered what I should want within reach, took off my wet boots and gaiters, which I wrapped in my waterproof, arranged my knapsack for a pillow under the flap of my sleeping-bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, and buckled myself in like a bambino. I opened a tin of Bologna sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that was all I had to eat. All I had to wash down this revolting mixture was neat brandy: a revolting beverage in itself. But I was rare and hungry; ate well, and smoked one of the best cigarettes in my experience. Then I put a stone in my straw hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap over my neck and eyes, put the revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled well down among the sheepskins.

I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to which my mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, and they would no more come separate.

The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it sounded for minutes together with a steady even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon…

When I awoke for the third time, the world was flooded with a blue light, the mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modestine tied to a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of inimitable patience. I closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over the experience of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed me would not have been there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold in the opaque night; and I had felt no other inconvenience, except when my feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of Peyrat’s Pastors in the Desert among the mixed contents of my sleeping-bag; nay, more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with unusually lightsome and clear sensations.’

But even earlier, in 1858, the explorer Charles Packe was backpacking across the Pyrenean High-level Route, and sleeping out on the summits of Lakeland.

He spurned the mountain cabanes of the shepherds (a lodging which few Englishmen would prefer to the open air).

‘Throughout the chain, and especially on the Spanish side, there is a great deficiency of hotel accommodation on the mountains, so that a sleeping bag is almost an indispensable part of his kit to anyone who would see and thoroughly enjoy the grander parts of the Pyrenees… More may be seen in the mountains in four or five days’ camping out than in three weeks of hotel life with an occasional excursion. Besides the bag, a tin saucepan with a lid, a frying pan and a few spoons ought to be taken.’

According to Packe’s obituary, there was hardly a mountain top of eminence in Britain on which he had not passed the night, often with no shelter but a blanket or a cloak. His companion Count Henry Russell-Killough used the mountain itself as his bivvybag. After digging several caves into the side of 3298m/10,824ft Vignemale, he had himself buried overnight at the summit. His head alone stuck out into the clouds, and frost formed in his beard.

But whatever we think of the rival claims of Packe and Stevenson, it’s clear that the mystic exploitation of the bivvybag goes back much further than either of them. The quotation at the head of this chapter is from the 4th canto of The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott. This 70-page poem has 30 pages of notes to it. Helpfully, Sir Walter explains:

‘The Highlanders, like all rude people, had various superstitious modes of inquiring into futurity… A person was wrapped up in the skin of a newly-slain bullock, and deposited beside a waterfall, or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange, wild, and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horror.’

Informal bedroom of the fifth century: St Ninian’s Cave at Whithorn

Although Scott doesn’t say so, it seems clear that the subject should lie naked within the warm and bloody hide, with only his head showing. Leather is moderately breathable – that’s one reason why it’s good for making boots with. However, it probably is not as good as Gore-tex or Milair, if we judge from the contemporary records.

‘One John Erach of the Isle of Lewis was a night within the hide; during which time he felt and heard such terrible things, that he could not express them; the impression that it made on him was such as could never go off, and he said, for a thousand worlds he would never again be concerned in the like performance.’

Much has been written about the North Face of the Eiger (in German, Eigerwand) – in the 1930s the most dangerous and difficult face in the Alps. In the first four years of attempts none succeeded, and of the ten who set foot on the face, all but two lost their lives. (For comparison, of every 30 people who climb higher than Everest Base Camp, four reach the summit and one dies on the mountain.)

What is less frequently realised is that the eventual conquest of this face was down to advances in bivvy technique.

The early attempts fell into a pattern that soon became familiar to the watchers at the telescopes of the Grindelwald hotels. Fit and vigorous, the climbers would make excellent progress on day one, crossing the first icefield and even the second before being pinned down by the afternoon stonefall. They would then bivouac. After the bivouac they would continue much more slowly, hesitating at every difficulty. They would make less than half the height gain of the previous day and be forced to a second bivouac. On the third day they would vanish behind the clouds of an Eigerwand blizzard, and some time later their bodies would be found in the avalanche cone at the foot of the face.

Most famous of the Eiger overnight spots was at the top corner of the Flatiron buttress, between the Second and Third Icefields. This small stance under an overhang, sheltered from stonefall, became known as the Death Bivouac. The first seven to sleep here either died of exposure and exhaustion or were caught soon afterwards by storm or stonefall; the eighth, the Italian Corti, only got away by being winched off the Traverse of the Gods by a climber who descended 1,000 feet from the summit on a wire cable. The bivouac was again used on 28th August 1961 by Adi (Adolf) Mayr, attempting the first solo ascent. He climbed very strongly to reach the Flatiron early on his first afternoon, but was brought to a stop there by stonefall. The next morning he was seen to climb with unaccountable hesitancy and slowness, and fell to his death from the Ramp.

The discovery that was the key to the face was not the famous Hinterstoisser Traverse but rather the bivouac site immediately above: the Swallow’s Nest. Here it is described by Heinrich Harrer (all quotations are from his book The White Spider, translated by Hugh Merrick).

‘We reached our rock knob and were able to fix two belaying-pitons; then we spent hours in digging a small seat out of the ice below it. We tied ourselves and our belongings to the pitons for security’s sake, furnished our seat with coils of rope, and started to cook our meal. The knob of rock afforded us complete protection from stones; the view from our perch was magnificent. All the conditions for a happy bivouac were present…’

At this bivvy, in 1962, Chris Bonington used as a bivvybag the plastic cover of Hamish MacInnes’s motorbike. Coming across another climber who needed rescuing they abandoned their attempt without much regret – a bike cover isn’t an adequate bivvybag at 2500m (8200ft).

It was an Austrian climber called Ludwig Vörg who discovered this Swallow’s Nest, level with the bottom corner of the First Icefield and protected by an overhang. Its comforts allowed the climbers to start the second day refreshed, and to cross all three of the icefields before stonefall.

Not for nothing was Vörg the ‘Bivouac King’ (Bivakkonig). He equipped the Swallow’s Nest with fleece-lined sleeping bags and airbeds, and built it a low wall of stones. And as the ascent unfolded, his bivouac technique was crucial. The four climbers spent their second night on the Ramp, below the Waterfall Chimney (the ‘usual bivouac place, a good bivouac’).

‘We arranged our bivouac about 8ft below that of Heckmair and Vörg. We managed to drive a single piton into a tiny crevice in the rock. It was a thin square-shafted piton. It held after only a centimetre, but it was just jammed.

Obviously, once we hung our whole weight on it, it would very likely work loose with the leverage. So we bent it downwards in a hoop, till the ring was touching the rock. In this way we did away with any question of leverage and knew we could rely on our little grey steely friend. First we hung all our belongings on it and, after that, ourselves…

We managed to manufacture a sort of seat with the aid of rope-slings, and hung out some more to prevent our legs dangling over the gulf. Next to me there was a tiny level spot, just big enough for our cooker, so we were able to brew tea, coffee and cocoa.

Heckmair and Vörg were no more comfortably lodged. The relaxed attitude of Vörg, the ‘Bivouac King’, was quite remarkable; even in a place like this he had no intention of doing without every possible comfort. He even put on his soft fleece-lined bivouac-slippers, and the expression on his face was that of a genuine connoisseur of such matters. It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that we all felt quite well and indeed comfortable… Our perch was about 4000 feet above the snowfields at the base of the precipice; if one of us fell off now, that was where he would certainly finish up. But who was thinking of falling off?

It was a good bivouac.’

On the third day the weather, as usual on the Eiger, got very bad. Their final bivvy was above the White Spider, in the Exit Cracks.

‘After we had climbed an ice-bulge, we came upon a rock-ledge protected by overhangs from falling stones and avalanches. When I say a ledge, I do not mean a smooth comfortable feature on which it is possible to sit; it was far too narrow and precipitous for that. Heckmair found a place where he could drive in a rock-piton firmly, and with great patience fixed enough hooks on which to hang all the stuff, as well as securing himself and Vörg. Fritz and I arranged our overnight abode about 10ft away. The ledge was scarcely as broad as a boot, and only just allowed us to stand erect, pressed close against the rock; but we contrived to knock in a piton to which we could tie ourselves. Even then we couldn’t sit, not even on the outer rim of the ledge.

However, we found a solution. We emptied our rucksacks and tried fastening them too to the piton, in such a way that we could put our feet in them and so find a hold. We were sure it would work all right, and so it did.

Between us and our friends we had fixed a traversing rope, along which a cookery-pot went shuttling back and forth. Vörg had taken on the important post of expedition cook… Fritz, being Viennese, is a coffee connoisseur, and praised Ludwig’s concoction…

It was now 11pm. Ludwig had given over cookery and “retired to rest”. Even here, on this tiny perch 12,300ft up, and 5000ft sheer above the nearest level, he hadn’t foregone the comfort of the bivouac-slippers. Andreas had to keep his crampons on, so as to get some kind of stance in the ice for him to maintain a hold; but his head rested on Vörg’s broad back… Fritz and I had pulled the Zdarsky-sack over us; our rucksack architecture served splendidly as support for our legs, and very soon I could hear the deep, regular breathing of my friend as he slept by my side. Through the little window in the tent sack I could see that there were no stars in the sky and the weather was still bad; it looked as if it were snowing. There was an occasional small snow-slide from above, but they only slid over the skin of the tent, with a gentle swishing sound, like a hand stroking it… I wasn’t worried about the weather. I was possessed by a great feeling of peace; we would reach the summit tomorrow. This sense of peace increased to a conscious glow of happiness. We humans often experience happiness without recognising it; but here, in that bivouac of ours, I was not only genuinely happy; I knew I was.

This, the third bivouac for Fritz and me on the North Face, was the smallest in terms of room; in spite of that it was the best. And if you ask me why, the reason was the rest, the peace, the joy, the great satisfaction we all four enjoyed there.’

Harrer’s book not only gives a detailed description of the route, but the all-important data on the various bivouac sites, from the Bivouac Cave, above the shattered pillar and below the Difficult Crack (narrow and wet; too low), to the ‘Comfortable Overnight Spot’ to left of the Ramp icefield – first used by Rébuffat and French members of the European ascent of 1952. Ludwig Vörg himself was killed fighting on the Russian front in 1941.

This Eiger expertise was slow to spread to the flatlands. Even in the comparative humpiness of the Scottish Highlands, the hard men were wrapping themselves in groundsheets, or constructing howffs out of heather and stones in the hollows below various dripping boulders. But all that was about to change.

In 1938, William L Gore discovered Teflon and started wondering what it was for. ‘Teflon’ (which is a registered trademark) is the lightweight name for polytetrafluorethylene. In the 1960s men started going to the moon. In the process they discovered that Teflon was useful for non-stick saucepans. In 1969 Bill Gore’s son Bob Gore was playing with a sheet of Teflon and discovered that if he stretched it suddenly in both directions, it grew billions and billions of tiny holes.

The Age of the Bivvybag was about to begin.