I’d had crippling indigestion on Pennyghent and Ingleborough too to be honest. I don’t know what they put in those things but it’s not natural – try eating one and then jogging round the park and see what happens. Take a few litres of water with you though. I knew that whatever the climbing was like the weekend was going to be worth it just to inflict one of these things on Mark.
Our first trip out. 15th September 2002. Malc, Ben and I drove out to Gargrave and met Mark and continued up to Langdale (Cumbria). We arrived at the Old Dungeon Ghyll just before the light started to fade. Coincidentally we met two of my friends (Ro and Gareth) who live in Kendal who had been out climbing for the first time in a few years. While Ro and Gareth own a house in Kendal they rent it out most of the year and live in temporary structures (Yurts, roundhouse's) in woods around Kendal. Malc and Ben had met them a couple of months earlier as we'd spent my 30th birthday at their straw bale roundhouse so we decided that getting up to Angle Tarn (where we'd decided to camp for the night) could wait and we should have a drink.
Just as the light was beginning to fade we finished our pints, put our on our rucsacks and headed up the path to angle tarn. It is about a 5km walk with 500m of climbing up to the tarn. As the hill got steeper Ben and Malc, who weren't carrying the ropes or leading gear, disappeared into the low cloud and darkness. By the time Mark and I got to angle tarn Malc and Ben had completely disappeared. We weren't worried about missing ben as we had a couple of two way radio's with us, ben had one and I had the other. Ben found Malc eventually and we managed to find a small flattish spot to camp.
I didn’t really know Malc very well at this stage, he doesn’t say much and I tend to say quite a lot so he probably knew me better than I knew him. What I did know about him was that despite being 12 years older than me and a heavy smoker, and me being the fittest I’d ever been in my life, he was capable of outstripping me up steep hills without appearing to try very hard.. This provided some fun and games at quite an early stage in the expedition when he vanished into the night at 1500 feet. Andy and Mark meanwhile were several hundred feet lower claiming to have more than their fair share of the gear. More than their share of and chips and cigarettes if you ask me. We found Malcolm eventually and put up our tents.
Next morning we all started off with an all day breakfast in a tin each. We'd had one of these when Ben, Malc and I did the Yorkshire three peaks a couple of months before and decided that is was our duty to introduce Mark to them. Everything tastes of beans except the two mushrooms per tin. Then it all sits at the bottom of your stomach all day, slowly dehydrating you from the inside out.
We spent half the morning looking for the climb. Malcolm vanished into the mist several hundred feet above us. Eventually we found them both and did the climb. I can’t remember much about it really – it was just a nice day out, except I felt a bit ill and couldn’t fit enough water inside me. I led a pitch at one point, after Mark had reminded me of some basic rope work, which I was pretty pleased about. On the way down we decided we should do it again and jokingly named ourselves the ‘big easy mountain routes club’.
