Underland by Macfarlane Robert & Robert Macfarlane

Author:Macfarlane, Robert & Robert Macfarlane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

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Looking back afterwards, from the far side of the Wall – though there were other hazards there, and other wonders too – I recall the crossing chiefly as a white whirl, a dissonant combination of finely granulated decision-taking and chaotic blur.

I follow a dead-end road away from Roy’s house and out of Å, a little after dawn. The fresh snow squeaks under my boots. It has fallen softly through the night, settling to a six-inch layer. Sound is muffled. The village is asleep. Mine are the only tracks on the road.

The gully rises from the head of a long low-lying lake called Ågvatnet that runs westwards from Å, draining a horseshoe of peaks to its north, west and south. Movement along the lake shore is immediately difficult – rocks slippery underfoot, under snow. The water of the lake is frozen to steel in its main reaches, clear only at its out-take where the current keeps the water moving. A riprap of stranded Ice-plates has been piled on the bay shores by the recent winds. Roosting on the lee crag of a rock island in the lake’s centre is a colony of gulls. Their chatter and screams are comforting in that austere valley: the convivial sound of social life. Far ahead of me, black cloud hides the peaks almost to their bases. This worries me. It will be hard to locate the correct gully.

Slow going over snow-hiding boulders and slick rock. Trip, slip, fall, hard to get back up with the pack. Four times there are small crags to be scrambled, the hand-and footholds outwards-tilting and icy, requiring delicate, orderly movement.

Then the land eases, opening to a wide bowl of open ground at the lake’s head that rises gently for half a mile or so to the foot of abrupt cliffs. Scrub birch forest grows here; it is hard to force a way through. Bushwhack, posthole. Low wreaths of quick-moving white cloud conceal and disclose the terrain around. There is no sunlight. Just water-streaked rock, wind chill and the occasional rumble of small avalanches. I have a strong sense of the terrain’s disinterest, which I might at other times experience as exhilaration but here, now, can feel only as menace.

In the lee of a boulder just short of where the Wall rears up into cloud, I rest and take stock. Still no sight of the peaks themselves. Small spindrift cyclones roam the slopes. I can see the starts of three gullies ahead of me, leading up into the cloud. I know from a photograph I have been sent that only one is passable: the other two lead to sheer cliffs. Avalanche debris has gathered on the run-outs of all three gullies. I am reassured by its nature, though: it consists mostly of larger chunks of snow, rather than full avalanche fans.

How to choose in this poor visibility? Left, right or middle? The left-hand gully seems to veer too far to the west to be correct. The right-hand gully looks truest, but also appears to narrow abruptly as it enters the cloud-line.

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