The British Borneo Expedition 2000: Life on a ledge

Big Walls are vertical sheets of rock – 500 meters or more in height – and represent the extreme end of the mountaineering game. You live, eat and pooh in a vertical wilderness where sleep walking is strictly forbidden, and words like “exposure” take on a whole different meaning. Everything has to manhandled up a vertical to overhanging sheer wall of rock and ice. An ideal environment for those suffering from vertigo and obesity – NOT!

Big Walls are often climbed over many days using specially constructed tents called portaledges to sleep and live in. The following is a diary extract to help explain what living in such tents is like. I wrote it during an expedition to Borneo to make the first ascent of the huge wall that bordered the infamous Low’s Gully. This massive gash in the Earth’s crust is so big it has been noted by astronauts orbiting the planet! In March 1994, British Army Officers Lt. Col. Robert Neill and Major Ron Foster led a disastrous expedition to complete the first descent of this giant ravine. The expedition soon split, the strong managing to escape, leaving the officers and Hong Kong rookies, unable to continue or retreat and stranded deep within the gully complex. After two weeks and one of the largest international rescue operations ever mounted, the soldiers were found alive, just.

Mt Kinabalu – 3,000m. up on Low’s Gully Wall – hanging above a tropical rainforest!

It’s 5am in Borneo and I can’t sleep. I’m lying inside my 2-man portaledge,

a free-hanging tent just over a meter wide and less than 2 meters long. My

climbing partner Steve Long and I are hanging off a single 3cms long hand-drilled bolt, in

the middle of Low’s Gully Wall, a sheer rock face on Mt Kinabalu. We are

alone, a third of the way up a sheer 1,000-meter face that has never been

climbed, in an area that gets more rain than the Lake District.

Its day 4 on the wall, the humidity levels are in the 80s, and already I feel

knackered. Four 100 litre haul bags, each weighing more than 50Kg. hang underneath our ‘ledge, a constant reminder of the effort put in to reach this position. I am thankful that I am here at all. On 12th December 1999, less than 3 months before the start of this trip I broke my neck Sumo wrestling at a Christmas party. I was told Borneo was out of the question. I massaged oil of Comfrey (“Knitbone”) and drank comfrey tea daily and flew out from the UK on 3rd March 2000.

We lie head-to-toe inside synthetic sleeping bags inside Gore-Tex bivvy

bags. Big Wall climbs are usually multi-day affairs, this one will take 15

days, and a down bag would just suck up the dampness. We are wearing

climbing harnesses which link directly into our rock protection. Everything

is tied in, including us, right down to my faithful Big Wall spoon, and that’s the

way it stays until you top out. Inside the ledge hang stuff sacs full of

essentials like finger tape, a Leatherman, pee bottles, head torches and IPod. Yesterday’s socks lie on my chest so that I will have a dry pair to start the day.

The sheet of rock to which we cling is a vertical moving desert that creaks

and groans. It hangs over the gully bed below, a narrow slot only 20 metres

wide. The base is so deep-cut that it never actually sees the light of day,

and is inhabited by water snakes, scorpions and millipedes.

It’s time to start brewing. We need an early start if we are to make two new

pitches or rope lengths today. Aid climbing is mountaineering’s end-game – it’s pure

adrenaline but it’s not fast. A hard pitch up to 60 meters in length can take over 5 hours to climb and we’re on a very blank section of stone at the moment.

I stretch carefully, still stiff from days of sack hauling and nights of

cramped sleep, and start the process of getting out of the portaledge to

fire-up our hanging stove. I release one of the two slings that form my

lifeline, reach out and clip it into the safety rope we have rigged around

our hanging campsite. Then I release the other and move out into the

vertical, damp rock boots skittering on the narrow rock edge. I look

straight down 300 meters and shiver. It’s like being balanced on metal

railings. It’s +7C, coolish, but still I feel a damp sweat in my armpits and

across my palms.

Suddenly I hear a piecing crack. I look up instinctively only to be greeted with my worst Big Wall nightmare; a flake the size of a fridge door has broken loose from the headwall and the helicopter drone as it whirls through the air demands action. I scream at Steve to get out and throw myself into the wall, hoping to get out of the rock’s path. Mercifully in mid-air the flake crumbles into three separate pieces which harmlessly whiz past. I feel a massive down

draught, and the poles of the portaledge smack against the face. A whiff of

ozone, my racing heart, and silence again. Now for that brew……