Surfacing...

Lundun, innit. People, lots and lots of people. People compressed into so small a space that they pop out of their cars and walk. En masse. But alone in their little bubbles. Squeezed into tube trains like rats. Everything turned inwards.

It's good to go back. Reminds me of why I left in the first place. The feeling if being entombed in concrete. Layers of suburb between me and hills. Remembering the train slicing through them like a drill escaping from a stack of Russian dolls.

Mine were actually bought in Russia. Thanks dad, sometimes having a Russian banker for a father was useful.

So, after a day of strategy meetings, coffee meetings, getting to know you meetings, I was tired of meetings and people. So instead of getting the tube, I walked. From the office in Islington to my mate's place in Finchley.

There's something really basic and grounding about walking through the concentric layers of city. The weird once broken regeneration of King's Cross. The tawdry plastic trendiness of Camden Town. Affluent beneath a still dirty crust Kentish Town and Tufnell Park. And then the long, long climb into the niceness of Highgate.

Before the empty moat of Hampstead Lane. People don't walk here any more. They drive or maybe run. And right into the Garden Suburb.

Where I stand gawping and open mouthed at the sheer affluence. Streets of ridiculously big, ridiculously clean and ridiculously expensive mansions. Big cars. Big trees. But not hedges or walls, I think, because the Garden Suburb won't allow them. The rich stripped bare.

And I find myself wondering what they people who live there are like. What they've done to have that much money. What their lives are like. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a small voice is asking whether in a different world, I could have sold my soul to the city. Or advertising. Or... erm, anyway.

Idle thoughts. And on across the suburb, familiar running roads. With no runners. Just big, expensive cars rushing home in a bubble of shiny luxury to slam the big, wooden double doors on the world.

Funny things legs. Much under-rated. They can take you to the top of Everest or just stand in for a tube train. Bikes are faster. But legs are somehow more grounded.

Food. Chat. Drive. Fog. Crawl. Home. Hills.

The Things You Find...

At the top of Chunal no less. I have no idea why anyone would decide that the junction of the Monks Road and Chunal would be an appropriate place to site an advert for a Barbie pink, Playboy Hummer, but there it was - with a rainbow behind it no less. So if you need transport to the works Christmas do, here's the answer...

Meanwhile, in a slightly different, parallel universe, had a spectacular perfect arctic day on Kinder with my mate Dave and Zak, the crazed springer spaniel. Just lovely, bring back the snow, please.

 

 

The Great Smell Of Mountaineer.

Wrote this for wurk, but I like it enough to stick it on here as well:

I guess it had to happen eventually, the other day the postie rocked up with a box-full of outdoors-friendly male grooming products called, wait for it, Rockface! I added the exclamation mark by the way, it just felt right. Grrrr... Ruffty tuffty crag-friendly gels, scrubs, balms, shower gels, moisturisers and the rest.

The fantasy...

It smells like, er,  'top notes of green apple, bergamot, mandarin and coriander, middle notes of jasmine, cedar leaf and muguet and a base of precious woods, musk and amber'. So sort of fresh and well, like cosmeticy moisturising, after-shavey sort of things.


But here's the rub – and I don't mean a gently exfoliating scrub containing micro particles for deep cleansing, removing impurities and conditioning the skin – the whole point of being outdoors is not having to wash or worry about how bad you smell.
The great smell of mountaineer features top notes of semi-digested dehydrated food and unburned petrol or paraffin, middle notes of glacier cream and lip balm and a base note of powerful rancid perspiration leavened with fresher sweat, DEET and mouldering baselayer. 


But what makes it special is the unspoken pact that no-one in the group should wash until you're off the hill. Miraculously, stick to this long-established protocol and eau de grimpeur remains completely undetectable – you can share a tiny cramped tent with your mate for, ooh, a week, without the faintest awareness of your mutually dubious aromatic condition – it's God's way of making mountaineering bearable.

The reality :-/

But where it all falls down is when someone breaks the faith, washes and anoints themselves with fresh-smelling unguents. Suddenly not only are your nostrils invaded by, yes, 'top notes of green apple, bergamot, mandarin and coriander, middle notes of jasmine, cedar leaf and muguet and a base of precious woods, musk and amber', but you become instantly and uncomfortably aware of your own personal stench.


The most graphic illustration of this on a big scale was arriving at Lukla en route to Everest Base Camp after starting from Jiri. The Jiri walk-in is a glorious week-long trek through lush cloud forest and up into the foothills and washing facilities are best described as 'basic'.


The result, by the time you reach Lukla, is a satisfying ripeness and only the vaguest memory of the smell of soap and anti-perspirant. Unfortunately arriving at Lukla is like taking part in an overblown chemistry experiment.

And one more gnarly action shot for aromatic luck.

Suddenly the streams of unwashed trekkers from Jiri are mixed in the vast test tube of Nepalese streets and Tea Houses with a torrent of trekkers fresh from Kathmandu and still subtly treated with cosmetics, toiletries and, er, grooming products. The funny thing is that in the petrol-fumed streets of Kathmandu, the smell is virtually undetectable, but transplant the wearer to Lukla and...


Let's just say that I could smell the new arrivals with their clean trekking pants, newly washed armpits and moisturised, exfoliated faces from at least 20 yards away. 


Of course the effect is temporary, two days down the trail and everyone is, once more, a mass of mutually undetectable reeking trekker, but the Lukla experiment tells you one thing – there is no room for male grooming products in the outdoors... 

Tightrope walking on dubious snow...

Ace day in the Lakes on Monday testing kit and clothing, or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. My mate Chris just bought a Mazda Bongo with camper van conversion, so we headed up on Sunday evening, parked up, pubbed up and went to sleep.

It'd be nice to say that we got up bright and early and embraced an alpine start so we could watch the sun rise as we reached the summit, but the truth is that we woke up quite late, pottered about gently with porridge and coffee, geared up in a desultory, random sort of way and finally set off up Helvellyn.

Snow conditions lower down were frankly crap. Wet, unconsolidated cack of variable depth, but things got better as we got higher and hit the start of Striding Edge proper. Weird conditions, soft and slidey except along a foot-wide trail of tramped-down, cramponed snow, mostly along the crest of the ridge. Mostly straightforward, but some interesting, floaty, high-wire walking with steep drops on both sides.

Crampons feeling quite alien after not having used them for over a year, so full-on relaxed concentration to avoid catching a point and going arse over tit into the abyss. At which point, according to Chris, Type One Fun, would have become Type Two and significantly less fun. Fortunately it all stayed as Type One despite the iffy snow.

Down the final scrambly down-climb - two moves, snow firm fortunately - then a scamper up and onto the plateau. Lunch at the summit shelter, banter shared with two men hiding under a blokka bag, then a gentle meander back down via Dollywagon Pike and a frozen Grizedale Tarn because I wanted to recce the bridleway.

Rrrright... It looks like a toboggan run, god only knows what's underneath... And just occasionally the clouds would lift to reveal seductive glimpses of tiger-bread mountain flanks, then just as suddenly, the curtains would be drawn across hiding it all again.

Back down in Patterdale and drowned by memories of the last time I was there. In the summer. When it was different.

Cracking day. And good company. I like mountains.

Lightpacking

Back from a lovely weekend lightpacking in the Lakes. Just a stunning Saturday, proper mind-blowingly beautiful views and all the better for being an autumnal special bonus limited edition. Just walking, talking and enjoying being in the hills. And that's it, apart from a couple of phone pics.