Expedition to Tsaranoro Massif, Madagascar: Tipping Point

“Think it was pepper spray. It was dark, just walking back from the Tsara Be, head full of banging tunes and silver stars. This guy just came out of no-where. Dark, no light. Anne was worst hit – got it in her eyes and it stings like mad. The bloke just ran off. He took NOTHING!”

John Arran, in his heyday was one of the UK’s very best rock climbers. 1.72meters tall and weighing less than 65Kg, he has an incredible power-to-weight ratio. We are talking one-armers on pub beams! I found him Scary when annoyed, and I could feel that force and anger now. But both were sandwiched by a big WHY! He and his wife had just been mugged in Diego Suarez, Madagascar’s party capital, yet the attacker had not taken anything. Instead he had left them with a load of unanswered questions and a night of pain. Why?

 “Sheer Seven” was all about climbing the biggest hardest ice and rock-climbing walls on each of the seven continents. It was a project created by me and international Big Wall professional Mike Twid Turner. It was the end of the Nineties, a time when climbing was still about real adventure and fun rather than technical grades and athletic performance. Yes, we all trained, but mostly, even the best guys relied on a lot of textbook utilization training. In other words, we just climbed as a means of getting fit, so we could climb harder. Today it’s all about “Capacity Training” I.E. repetitive, controlled, progressive based on established well-understood principles of human performance. Bottom line – BORING, but effective! We were more interested in real adventure on some of the wildest, vertical terrain on the planet. The team came together slowly but surely. Email “feelers” were put out, alcohol-fuelled bar chats occurred at the annual mountain tribal gathering in Kendal, road-trip climbers vising the alps popped in to see me, and so it came to be.

First up was a talented local to my valley – Giles Cornah. In a nutshell Giles is a sort of creative quiet version of Popeye. Always on the go, always moving strongly. Very bouncy and always finishing each sentence with “yeah yeah yeah!” Definitely a supped-up Citroen 2 CV. A classy, cranky putt putt but with a Range Rover 4-wheel drive power house under the hood, just ready to spring into power – Yeah yeah yeah!

Giles will always be a climber. It’s hard-wired into an amazing physique. He started his alpine career at the tender age of 17 alone on a new route on a 6,000m face in the Pamir’s after his partner, a 35yr old Swedish climber named Ulf Corlesson, fell to his death. Giles was forced to endure a night standing vertically, balanced precariously on his front points – one-inch long metal fangs that protruded horizontally from his crampons – metal claws attached to your boots that grip on sheer ice and snow-covered rock. Ulf had fallen more than 1000m. that is a whole kilometre vertically, to the glacier below. The climbing ropes and all their bivouac survival kit were attached to Ulf when he fell. Most climbers would have just lost strength and fallen. Giles had no ropes and no means of securing himself safely to the steep 60-degree terrain.

Giles clung all night – descended mtn alone, the team had left without him, so he had to make his way back from deep in the Russian Caucasus Mtn range. This alone would have been a big epic just getting back home, but Giles’ main preoccupation was trying to keep the whole epic a secret from his mum, so she would not stop him from going on another exped! She found out of course well in advance, yet he said nothing when she picked him up from Manchester airport. And it was only once they had reached their Welsh home, and his mum asked “so what really happen” did he reveal the truth!

I was incredulous when he told me this story. It would have been at least -15C on that face and with windchill most probably below -20C.  Yet Giles seemed almost embarrassed. He is one of life’s quiet very talented all-rounders – a great pro chef, a windfarm propeller blade technician, and a skilled video cameraman and producer.

I had dinner with Giles recently and he told me about his latest documentary in the Middle East. He was one of the first non-Arab civilians to enter Mosul, in Northern Iraq, since it was liberated from the Taliban. He was shooting a documentary about IED’s (improvised explosive devices) hidden and diffused around the war-torn city. Giles recounted tale after horrendous tale of Taliban torture. They made their mark quickly by selecting groups of normal everyday people like kids, couples and ageing adults and killing them in front of hastily assembled crowds. The deaths were as barbaric as they were simple – some were taken to the top floors of buildings and just thrown out. Those who did not die first time, where taken upstairs and thrown again.

These public killings to create an environment of fear grew in ferocity and intensity. The Taliban got creative in their killing ways and sort other means. Giles heard stories about ovens and fridges brought out on the street and people being burnt or frozen to death. Giles had 5 Iraqi special forces soldiers as his personal body guard. These guys, as were many of the Taliban, were members of Saddam Hussein’s specially trained personal bodyguard.

Anne Arran is a lovely strawberry blonde. A little shy, and coy appearing unconfident at first. But make no mistake this lady can be at times strong, opinionated and even slightly scary. Like all good climbers she is intense. In car terms she is a living version of a Renault Clio turbo. Small, fast, very sporty but classic beauty, like her desire to wear bright floral skirts at Base Camps in dirty off-the-beaten-track places.

Like everyone on the trip she had a honed physique. A rock athlete, with enticing eyes mixed. For guys climbing in the 80’s and 90’s Anne was simply THE sexy rock chick. In her instructing days she knew what she wanted and got herself into situations you would not always wish for. But despite her shy appearance she had a rock-solid inner confidence that allowed her to put herself into potentially compromising positions and deal with it. Anne has done a huge amount for 21st century outdoor active women. She has organised female only expeds to Iran, done hard-core climbing expeds all around the World and I found her always fun, a little dry and always managed to maintain her femininity, despite often being in unfeminine nasty and dangerous mountain situations. For me she had pretty much the full package and represented the complete all-round mountain woman.  A climbing version of a Cirque du Soleil acrobat.

Her husband John completed this great duet. John sounds like daffy duck when he speaks, as he has a pronounced lisp. But this cartoonesque quality soon diminishes and the amusement halts when you try to follow his lead on his own territory; in the ‘80’s and 90’s this guy represented one of the very best of the best British onsite trad climbers. So, what does that mean. Onsight trad means you walk up to a blank rock wall that you have never seen or climbed on before, with no bolts or man-made traces at all. You then wend your way up looking for and placing every few meters little bits of metal that you slot into natural cracks and fissures in the rock. These pieces of “pro” (protection) will usually hold you if you happen to fall. But no piece of protection on a trad (traditional) rock climb is guaranteed. You might fall 10 meters onto one tiny “wire” no bigger than your thumbnail and survive. Or you might “lace” a pringles pitch with pro placements every metre and yet rip out every piece if you accidentally fall. “Pringles” because once you pop you can’t stop! The vehicle that best describes his character is a Golf GTI 4×4 – light fast and enduring.

John excels at this sort of climbing and his speed and efficiency on steep Madagascar granite was beautiful to watch. And that is the thing with climbers like John. When you first meet him you think nice guy, quiet, lots of teeth and a funny lateral sputter. But when you get to know him you start to experience his inner strength. I actually find it a little frightening. He appears friendly, but I always detect violence and anger within which thankfully he mostly directs towards the vertical environment he frequents. I definitely would want him on my side in a fight. He is not tall and beefy. Actually, the complete opposite. A typical SAS profile – relatively short, super sinewy and sculpted for extreme endurance. On the islands of Paradise in the Mozambique straits I saw John “dance” on mildly overhanging, sculpted rock, on sight, no rope, no protection whatsoever, for more than hour. John was working his way up this Dahlesque structure ballet-dancing on holds and edges less than 2 centimetres deep and became totally absorbed. It was +30C and my palms were sweating just watching him!

Gaz Parry is simply a muscle-bound tiger. Just like the tattoo across his shoulder. Best described by Lyn Hill, shop manager at the Cotswold Outdoor shop in Manchester, as “classically ripped with lots of ropey-things rippling under his skin!” At his first day at the gear shop Lyn gave him a size small staff t-shirt and took delight at watching the effectively naked, unknowing Gaz displaying his wares, before she and her team collapsed in laughter! The other big distinguishing feature is his dominant always-smiling face, full of teeth and strong, confident facial bones. For me the vehicle type to describe his character is a VW California campervan. It controls the open road because it is great on endurance, yet supremely comfortable and fun to drive.

Gaz’s first taste of climbing came at the age of 12. A day out at Lancashire’s Cadshaw Crags saw the debutante climbing with an old ship’s mooring rope made out of hemp, and a car seat belt as a harness! But even from a young age he knew this was what he wanted to do. Gaz has competed in and won numerous national and international climbing competitions throughout his life, and lives in various European destinations like all five of us on the trip. Other than climbing, he spends a lot of his time driving his girl-friend’s horse around in the search for “free to graze and gallop” locations. 

That was the team, so what about the terrain? Madagascar is poor and is called the land of the red earth. Basically, because it is! It has been largely deforested and when we took our bus down the back bone of the country all you would see for miles were red hills. I was struck but the overwhelming poverty. Every kilometre along a road that took 8 hours to drive we would see small family units. By the road side, lone dwellings in the desert heat and dust. Normally a mother and father and an assortment of half clothed children. They were all actively involved, to some degree, in the daily process of grinding rock blocks into much smaller gravel fragments. The family would grind away breaking stone and the results would be scooped up at the end of the week. The reward – one US $. And that would feed them until the truck arrived 7 days later. If they did not grind they did not eat. All along the Antanariva Highway.

I thought about the rock dust in their eyes. The fact that they had no safety goggles, gloves or gear of any kind except the odd battered rock hammer or chisel. No local ambulance, hospital, doctor or nurse. If you fell sick you waited for a passing vehicle. Health and safety in Europe are based on the assumption that all things are dangerous until made safe. These children’s lives were certainly dangerous from cradle to grave. Madagascar is a former French colony and although the Malagasy language is generally spoken throughout the island, the other official language of Madagascar is French. And French is spoken a lot but generally among the more educated Malagasy. I was desperate to communicate to these impoverished gravel merchants and I was also nosey. Where do these people sleep? I went up to the man in the family unit and motioned to the plastic shelter at the end of a line of assorted rock, larger slabs and small piles of gravel. He walked with me, pulling back a sheet of dirty plastic to reveal his home. It was stark, dusty, emptiness. It reminded me of the simple animal shelters in the high alpine pastures above my village in France. There was just a simple table constructed of bamboo struts with wood planking making up the surface. The bed spaces comprised of cloth mats overlying a plastic sheet base. The man looked at me and then my collection of cameras and communication devices. I felt immediate guilt and reacted badly. I hurriedly dipped my hand into a pocket of Malagasy bank notes and gave him a fistful of grubby cash, probably no more than the equivalent of 2 American dollars. He muttered under his breath what I thought was something equivalent to “J’ai assez”. “I have enough”. Bollocks! I blew it again! This man was clearly proud and what I should have done is remarked on how nice his home was. But my inadequate western training had not prepared me for the shock of how these people lived. I found the whole 5-minute experience so humbling, encased in the road-side heat and dust of this hill top desert. All I had with me was an iPhone, a video camera, a small tripod, my passport, a few credit cards and probably around $50 in cash. Yet the joint sum would equal more than the whole family could earn in a year. And my reaction, as we so often do in the West, was to try and buy a way out of my self-imposed guilt. Luckily Gaz was close and sensed my predicament. “Give him some gaffer tape”. That’ll fix it” he joked. Heavy duty duct tape, or Harry black maskers as we used to call it in the Marines, pretty much kept the UK’s Armed forces together whatever the crisis. It was the perfect gift and the man thanked me. The whole family waved us goodbye as they disappeared into the dust. It was a moment that started a succession of questions that resulted in my own tipping point by the end of our time in this land of beaches and biodiversity, huge varieties of endemic wildlife and miles of dense rain forests. You can drink fine “grey” wines, feast on foie gras finer than in France and if you are so inclined enjoy a sex trade stranger than fiction. Madagascar is renowned for its ubiquitous lemurs, abundant Baobabs and shrivelled vanilla pods. But I was beginning to realise this huge island had another whole dimension and that was its endemic people and their daily struggle for survival.

Malagasy road surfacing is done cheaply with poor materials and many of the roads are subjected to severe weather conditions during the rainy season resulting in large potholes that make UK roads pre-Brexit look pristine! Our transport across the spine of this vast land, was a taxi-brousse, the ubiquitous form of public transport resembling a sort of battered Paris2Dakar minibus. From the capital Antananarivo, this decrepit charabanc rumbled its way south, mile after rutted mile. This was now a ravaged landscape of red bare earth, stripped naked of its once voluminous and verdant apparel. The analogy with the physical act of rape started to surge through me. Mother nature had been abused systematically, again and again, by desperate men taking what they could from her innocent and delicate soils. She had found no means of defending herself against the relentless attacks. Axe and saw, spade and shovel, the metal teeth of mankind knawing at her unprotected skin, taking what they thought was theirs without asking, without knowing and without caring about the effect of their actions. Over and over again until there was nothing left, the claw marks burnt deep into her skin, and left to suffer silently and slowly. This was a plundered land that had been shown no mercy, a lost case, trialled by an uncaring jury of wind, rain and heat. As we rolled across these ravaged lands, as empty and ruined as a woman taken against her will, nature’s silent cries for mercy seemed to scream out at me through the noise and pollution of the jolted journey.

Our Base camp was as luxurious as you can get. Big tents, elevated savannah views, a beautiful multi-coloured tablecloth and our very own pet Chameleon. I had arrived in Heaven! I had always wanted a pet chameleon and had put it on my Father Christmas list every year until aged 12! But I never got one. My other “must have” dream present was a Raleigh Chopper, with its central gear shift and high backed “chopper style” seat. Never got that either! My father confused Raleigh Chopper with Raleigh “shopper”. So, Christmas Day that year ended in tears as I puffed and panted trying to keep up with the local kids and manoeuvre a woman’s heavy town bike complete with wicker basket and tiny shiny bell!

Many days went spent climbing on the huge granite rocks that surrounded our beautiful Base, and tower above the tiny village of Andonaka, a simple, tiny settlement in the wild heart of Madagascar.

The climbs were vast and plentiful. Our first, a 580m. climb called “Out of Africa” put up by Big Wall legend Michel Piola, literally got better and better the further we climbed up it. Perfect high-friction granite allowing you to stand erect with no handholds on an almost vertical wall! This was like playing football on the turf at Wembley! But on my rest days I took the opportunity to visit Andonaka and explore the small communities that surrounded our lofty camp. I witnessed children and adults frantically pounding rice husks for their evening meal. I met and engaged with mothers and their children as they worked their way through their daily chores of chicken feeding, picking maize and tending to the ubiquitous Zebu cows. Rice and Zebu pretty much sums up the food and lifestyle of these shy hard-working people. And everything you touched was mixed with a healthy dose of dried dirt.

When travelling in the third world, as a Type 1 Diabetic, I always try and keep my fingers clean, in the event that I have to do a finger prick blood sugar test (up to six a day). Here in the Tsaranoro Massif, in the wild heart of Madagascar, I needed wet wipes sadly. A fact I was not proud of, but it was so easy to get infected. All five climbers took turns lying in the base camp tents, watching the rest of the team progress on the vertical landscape. Just as one belly cleared up, another would open up and the inevitable gurgling would commence. This would always pose a direct threat to our supplies of freshly cleaned underwear, lovingly scrubbed and hung out to dry on the local cacti by our Malagasy staff.

My sojourns around Andonaka made me think that life was tough and rough enough, but my visit to the local Saturday market revealed what rough really means on this red island. Sex in Madagascar is prolific and plain weird. The rough jeep-track ride to this popular bazaar took us through the occasional village comprised solely of empty rectangular red brick buildings. We were told that villagers slept side by side around the inside walls of these structures. When they wanted to have sex, they would simply turn over to their right or left and GFI! A sort of group version of Tinder I guess! Then there were the combs! Wandering around the market I began to notice girls often wearing one or a whole series of combs in their hair. I asked a local village elder and he said the reason dates back to ancient songs in Hainteny. This ancient Malagasy term translates as “knowledge of words” and is the traditional form of Malagasy oral literature and poetry. It involves the heavy use of metaphors.  In Hainteny, a comb represented a man, and more specifically a penis. From these distant origins, the comb is now used to symbolize a desire for intercourse. Sex hungry suitors seek the combs, select their partners and then go together to get a key from the very large lady who runs the market’s soft drinks store. I nicknamed her Ursula after the monstrous sea witch/sorceress in the “The Little Mermaid” cartoon. In keeping with the activity, she was promoting, Ursula was usually to be found recumbent on the store’s counter, her voluminous body acting as a formidable barrier to the sweet drinks that lay enticingly behind.   35 cents bought you a coke and err…..a..….. well a key to a shed door. She told us some of her “clients” would purchase up to 6 times in a day! I peered inside one such cabin and found nothing more than a bare earth floor and a nasty lingering odour. Not even a pair of knee pads – so unromantic!

Next up was the actual market stalls. You could find all the usual stuff here – bicycle pedals, bed linen and local produce. One lady’s stall caught my eye. On a piece of cloth, no more than a metre square she had placed literally just this – a pile of five small tomatoes, eight small bananas and two cloves of garlic. She would sell this lot for maybe a couple of dollars and so would be able to feed her children until the following Saturday. We found out that she had been kicked out of her home by her partner on the false pretext of adultery. She probably had some form of osteoarthritis as she limped badly, and her husband clearly thought that she did not pull her weight. Her house had been burnt down which basically mean the thatched roof, as the bricks were pretty much fire proof. She had been left with nothing. In our terms no savings plan, and no insurance of any kind. Nothing, except these few veggies and whatever hope her battered mind could conceive.  She had three young boys and as I watched them whirling around barefoot, it suddenly hit me.  What would it be like for a young child with Type 1 Diabetes here in the arid savannahs of remote Madagascar? In the UK most T1D’s have access to full medication, insulin pens or, depending on the severity an insulin pump, specialist nurses and doctors, off-line support groups, online forums, specialist websites, camps for those with Diabetes whatever type and for all ages, specialist magazines, ezines, a huge variety of free online videos, community events, shows and festivals, and charity challenges. In Madagascar in 2006 …….err…..maybe the opportunity for a visit to a faraway clinic or hospital where they might be able to diagnose the condition. But more likely they would be totally incapable of offering free insulin necessary to ensure survival. Specialist healthcare support and diabetic education would also be highly unlikely.

In July 2012 IRIN, a front-line news agency reporting on international emergencies, said that “an estimated one million people in Madagascar were diabetic, but only about half of them knew it. Finding the other half presents a major challenge for this large, island nation in which 80 percent of the population live in rural areas where few people have ever heard of this chronic and potentially deadly disease.” All this, of course, was news to me back in 2006, but one thing was sure. The appalling lack of medical facilities meant that if a child contracted this chronic condition he or she would not survive, unless they had rich parents and/or lived in close proximity to one of the island’s few major hospitals.

Juvenile-onset Type 1 Diabetes typically occurs in children between the ages of five to fifteen. Once they contract this auto-immune condition, unless they are given insulin they will simply wither away agonisingly slowly over a six to eight-month period. At the end an untreated child looks like they had been living in a Nazi Concentration camp. The level of pain and suffering during this gradual descent into death would have been equally similar. Or worse! This realisation was literally a life-changer for me, just as my own diagnosis had been. How many can you have in just one life time? On the 13Km rattle back to Base that evening, a million thoughts surged through my battered mind. It was time for a cold beer. It had been one hell of a day!

The main aim of our MAD 06 adventure was to reopen the largest, most technical rock wall on the African continent – Gondwanaland (7c, 7a obl., Botte-Cola-Egger-Gargitter- Obojes-Obrist-Thaler Trenkwalder-Zanesco, 1996), on the 800-meter East Face of Tsaranoro Be. Located in the Tsaranoro Massif in the Andringitra National Park of southern Madagascar, this huge kilometre high wall of blank granite offers delicate climbing on insecure slabs with dangerous fall potential protected by hand-drilled six-millimetre steel bolts many of which had broken, and the route had been closed to climbers. Even Rock-God Leo Holding had backed off the climb.

The distance between these decrepit steel fixtures was often as much as 10 metres apart. Forget the broken bones, if you fell before clipping one of these protection bolts the 20 metres ride down the flowing carpet of sandpaper would have reduced you to a bleeding red peeled grapefruit. Imagine climbing onto the window ledge of your eight-story office and climbing up the tiny 2-centimetre-deep brick edges. As you feel the gravity suck you down and the strength slowly seep from your sunburnt arms, you quickly realised the only thing keeping you alive was your mind. You focus, you shake out, the world is a whirlpool sucking at your heels and your feet are on fire crammed into boots two sizes too small. You smear on blank, high friction sand, and move jerkily to the next good “hand hold” in this vertical desert. The hold is no more than a thumbnail quartz crystal but your hand envelopes it like a limpet on a metal hull. The sweat stings your eyes, as you yell “Hey watch me on this”!  “Watch me, okay, just watch me”. All the time knowing tta if you peel now your partner, metres below you, will be powerless to do anything except hold the rope and await the forceful drag of a thin 9.5mm cord with a 70Kg jangling corpse on the end of it.

Gondwanaland involves 21 pitches or rope lengths all within the French Seventh grade. This is pro-level-only rock with a killer mid-section comprising eight continuous pitches of Fr. 7a/7b climbing on expanding flakes and numerous “grapefruit potential” runouts between bolts. Each rope length demanded total commitment. It was literally dare or die, to the extent that often I was physically sick before embarking on the day’s “work”. Each pitch was a proper journey and comprised a lifetime of emotions. Bubbling fear in the pit of your stomach, simple joy at clipping a protection point, big grins at the jet pilot views, Attenborough-like interest at a rock cactus stuck in air, waves of Cool as you make insane gymnastic moves deep in space, and orgasmic euphoria when you finally hit the belay anchor. You had made it. You had lived to ascend another day. We became rock warriors in a remote and elevated wilderness of heat and hurt – the passion fizzing in our bulging acid-soaked forearms as we abseiled down from that day’s high point.

After seven days of combined effort and a dodgy “bivouac” on a grass-covered ledge at two-thirds height, complete with a giant cockroach and the fear of the whole rock ledge erupting in fire, Gaz, Giles and I topped out just before sunset. It was simply amazing. We were spent, emotionally empty and physically exhausted. But I would not had traded it even for a winning lottery ticket. To be part of such a strong fun professional team was the best feeling ever, and as I spurted my insulin into the darkening sky to prepare an injection, I felt that deep fulfilment – yessss! Diabetes is NOT an excuse after all!

John and Anne Arran came through the next day sharing leads and climbing every pitch either onsite or redpoint. Base Camp by now was shared with a superb mixed team comprising both Poles and French. We had a riotous goodbye party which French climbers Denis Roy and Pierre Muller attended. Roy and Muller eventually got to sleep around 1 a.m., then got up at 3 a.m. to start for Gondwanaland. With extensive beta from us Brits (and a well-chalked route showing all the hand holds!)  Denis on sighted the entire route in less than eight hours. There are many legends and stories throughout climbing’s rich history. Denis Roy was simply one of those legends!

It was all looking good for a final dramatic conclusion to what had been, so far, a really epic adventure. The team moved north to Diego Suarez, the red island’s party-capital. This place is all about fiestas, dancing, amazing sea food and well….. amazing women! The sex-trade in this part of the world is like none-other that I have ever witnessed. Not I say witnessed, not experienced! Gaz and I would go out for a beer. Our “girl-friends” would come out of no-where and we would just enjoy a fun night with these girls as if they were our real girl-friends. We would shoot pool, sing some karaoke, and then have a delicious supper of freshly caught speared fish or lobster or whatever was “on” at Ki-Koo’s our favourite restaurant.  And then dance away the night. Happy days. But only an amusing hors d’oeuvre as it turned out to the main event – The Islands of Paradise. Located in an aquatic maritime national park these tiny islands are located in the Mozambique channel. You take an old steamy wooden hull 4 hours out to sea. And land on a deserted perfect sand beach. Think “Love Island” but without the bravado or the brylcream. You live under thatched open-wall bothys and enjoy acres of bolted limestone until your fingers and throat scream “rest and beer” not always in that order. Served up with freshly caught fish by your spear-fisherman staff, quaffing ice-cold beer you watched the bow-head whales breach the skyline of a dying sun. It really is paradise. Honestly! And we were the only ones on the island – it is reserved exclusively for the clients of a Paris-based company called NewSea Roc, by royal decree – literally!

Us voracious climbers knew that our tiny tiny island of Nosy Andatsara had one last gem to yield and this was the first redpoint ascent of “Nosey B“. At Grade Fr. 8b, it was Madagascar’s most technical climb. But there was a catch. It was horrific! A horizontal fault line ran straight out to sea with the underslung hero having to hang horizontally from this monster’s underbelly. Then you release your legs swinging from the flat to the vertical, do two or three one arm pull-ups to gain access to the sheer wall above, and dyno (read jump) for a bomber jug (read small hand hold) to finish.

John had tried a number of times and had succeeded in traversing the roof but ran out of steam on the vertical section. Gaz had got the closest, but he knew it was really at his limit and we only had a day left before our journey back to the capital and home. It was tense and the four of us (Giles had abandoned us by now en route to Diego Suarez – Love and his girl-friend Anne had proved more compelling!) were all equally involved. Except it would be just Gaz who was going for Gold.

With the waves whipping up the spray, and the dying sun beginning its long descent, Gaz turned his back on the sea and stared at what was to be his last attempt. When the sun goes below the horizon in the tropics it goes dark instantly. No twilight. Just wind chill. He has less than 30 minutes to complete the 35-metre-long climb before blackout and fittingly the wind had risen to add another degree of excitement. I was the belayer, responsible for holding his rope, Anne was camerawoman, and John was I/C of Techniques and Beta giving advice and encouragement as Gaz ran the gauntlet of fear. As I looked out to sea a big wave splashed out of the overhanging rock platform, we were all standing on and soaked his chalk bag. Chalk, or magnesium is essential in order to dry a climber’s sweaty fingers and palms. An essential bit of kit especially on a world-class climb of this grade as the margins between success and failure run to just a few millimetres of laser precision. The holds are that small. Anyway, Gaz calmly released his chalk bag from around his ripped torso and with a “didn’t t want it anyway” calmly tossed the soaked sack into the churn. Commitment! I was impressed anyway!

To make progress on a horizontal roof the rock gymnast must twist both his feet and hands into the crack and “jam” them into position. It can be excruciatingly painful, but Gaz was a trained gritstone afficionado having been brought up on the fissures and fault lines of England’s Peak District.  He dug deep literally, plunging his hands and feet deep into the horizontal crack and moved crab-like across the roof. He had been hanging literally upside down for more than five minutes and I knew it was not going well. On previous occasions Gaz had raced across this strenuous section but now seemed to be stalling. The wind increased as did my heart beats and the sea spray was palpable now. Shit! I started to lose confidence. He can’t hang on any longer, how could he. The sun started its descent into the depths as I forced myself to maintain the PMA and think positive karma.

Suddenly he had swung out. His legs now dangling free in mid-air above a boiling storm of sea and spray. Was that it? Was he off? No, he’s got the hold, another one armer, then another, I could feel the force and the fast approaching fatigue. Gaz you have got to hang on. HANG ON GAZ! I yelled into my brain and clenched my fists. Do it Gaz, DO ITTTT!

Yessssssssssssssssss! Yahhhhooooo he yelled as he grabbed the belay anchor. He clipped home and in no time I was lowering him down from that merciless roof. The climb was conquered. Madagascar’s hardest ….in the bag. The sun dropped, the darkness enveloped, and the beer exploded. It was party time and the celebrations of one of the best rock trips ever had already begun!!

MAD 06 was a helluva holiday on so many levels, but the stand out for me has always been the recollections of a people and a lifestyle that continually help me make sense of my opulent life in Europe. We all have more than enough and our continual desire for more and more and our endless comparisons and inner jealousies are hard to contain. That is when I use my MAD recollections the most. My personal favourite that I regularly review to myself was the hour-long queue waiting to board our delayed flight back to the UK. During those brief 60 minutes of present I heard more winging and complaining from the frustrated and spoilt travellers around me than I did from the Malagasy people we encountered throughout the entire 5-week trip. These Austronesian peoples are kind, welcoming, and very hard-working. Their lives are physically and emotionally very hard, but we were rewarded wherever we travelled in this multi-faceted land with warm smiles and honest hearts. We’ll all with the exception of one night! We never did find out the motive behind the mugger who assaulted the Arrans in Diego Suarez. But John and Anne quickly put it behind them and have since gone to experience many more exciting and diverse adventures across the globe.

This multi-faceted expedition gave me many gifts to savour and retain. But for sure the greatest was a strong new passion, a new reason to get out of bed each morning. My mission to support disadvantaged young people with Type 1 Diabetes had just begun.