Regions of the Heart by David Rose

Author:David Rose
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405943895
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

In these moods of depressed reflection Alison often compared herself to other, apparently more fulfilled, female mountaineers. One of them was Catherine Destivelle, the Frenchwoman she had climbed with years earlier on the international meet in the Verdon gorge. Like Alison, Catherine had become inspired by bigger mountains. She also had a new partner and mentor, Alison’s old Himalayan comrade, Jeff Lowe. The pair had met at an international climbing competition in Utah in 1988, two years after the expedition to Kangtega. They had fallen in love, and under Lowe’s experienced tutelage, Destivelle had been learning new skills and techniques. Lowe lived with Destivelle at her home near Chamonix, and in the summer of 1990 she joined him on an expedition to climb the Nameless Tower, a huge granite needle in Pakistan, close to K2. David Breashears, a mountain film-maker, made a documentary about the climb. In the Alps Catherine used the skills she had acquired from Jeff Lowe to spend ten days making a new route on the west face of the Dru, an “artificial” or “aid” climb, where she made progress up an almost featureless granite wall by hammering scores of knife-blade pitons into almost invisible cracks. All the way up, she was followed by television cameramen in helicopters, and afterwards she was featured in a ten-page spread in Paris Match.

Alison found her apparently effortless progress difficult to bear. Catherine’s life seemed devoid of struggle; she had only to smile, so it seemed to Alison, and commercial sponsors came running. Yet it was Alison who had met Lowe first, she who had won his friendship and respect through her determination and ability. Now, she noted bitterly, he had turned up to speak with Destivelle at a mountaineering festival in Buxton, a few miles up the road from Alison’s home, where the couple were fêted by the specialist climbing press as stars. Alison’s friends noticed her feeling of rivalry, a resentment borne of her belief that Catherine was claiming a monopoly of recognition, some of which should rightfully be Alison’s. “You could sense it, this intense feeling of competitiveness she had with Destivelle,” Ian Brown says. “She tried to keep it hidden, but sometimes it would show.”

At the same time she began to consider whether there might be ways to emulate her rival’s success. Try as Jim might, she had little faith in his ability to rescue the business and their former way of life. She still longed for the freedom to climb. For the first time she began to consider whether pursuing her passion might reestablish her family’s security.

Meanwhile, just as after the birth of Tom, she returned to the rocks, seeking solace in short, intense bouts of solo climbing. Usually she would drop the children at her parents,” before setting off alone for one of the local crags. In one seven-day period in August, she climbed twenty-seven routes in this fashion at Burbage North, forty at Birchen Edge, seventeen at Stanage and twenty at Ramshaw Rocks. Slowly, the routes she was prepared to tackle in this fashion were getting more difficult.

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