Country diary 1973: footholes in the snow disappear into swirling mists

24 December 1973: Creeping up the side of the mountain like a ladder, they were precise and just where I would have placed themTHE LAKE DISTRICT: The neatly kicked footholes in the snow crept up the steep side of Red Screes like a ladder until they disappeared into swirling mists. Somebody was ahead of me but I couldn't see or hear him - just the steepening snows rearing up into the greyness and the sound of the wind roaring round the corrie and bounding off the black cliffs. The footholes were precise and firm and just where I would have placed them so that it was a comfortable ladder except where black ice glazed the rocks. I could see where my unseen leader had taken his ice-axe off his rucksack and started to use it - at the foot of a steep little wall of snow just below the entrance to the corrie. From this point onwards there was a regular progression of holes pierced by the shaft and here and there, a scraped foothole.My original intention had been to cross the corrie and climb slant-wise up to the ridge but the other man had chosen the gully straight ahead so I followed his trail and soon emerged, in a buffeting gale and a flurry of new snow, on the crest. Visibility was less than five yards but there was no need for a compass bearing to find the summit for the toe-holes were now footprints and I could even estimate his size. A big man I thought, wearing newish boots, about size 10. Reaching the ice-plastered cairn a few moments later I found him, just ready to leave - yes big man, shrouded up to the eyes against the cold and wind, dimly seen in the white-out like a wraith. It was no place for conversation for the wind was deafening and the cold intense. "Bit rough" was my contribution, and his. "I'll be glad to be down" and we went our separate ways, disappearing immediately into the darkening greyness. Continue reading...