Frenchmans Cap 3: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

[Tim avoids the void, Frenchmans Cap] 

“Timing is everything.”

“Summit windows are small.”

“Short sentences sound hardcore.”

The truth about our Frenchmans Cap summit day is that we basically leave when we’re ready to – probably a bit later, in fact. And the truth about Tim and I is that our reputation has little to do with being hardcore, and lot to do with supreme PFA-ing*.

Three Victorian walkers who’ve shared the hut with us have left more than an hour before us. But their window is small; they plan to be back at Lake Vera Hut for the night. We’ll have another night at Tahune Hut, so our window could be re-opened the following day, if we really wanted it to.

It’s in this somewhat blasé mood that we check out the weather and gradually get our gear together. It’s cool and overcast, but the clouds that have hovered between our lake and the rock walls above seem to be lifting. There can be advantages in being slow coaches.

From Tahune it’s pretty much straight uphill towards North Col. 31 years ago we had come here from Lake Vera, rushed past Tahune and clambered directly up to the col. That track is now closed high up towards the col to allow the eroded gully to recover. Instead the track slices diagonally left, missing the col itself, before sidling further left across the steep walls for a few hundred metres.

[A panorama of the track from Tahune towards North Col] 

Just before it does a hairpin back in the direction we’ve come from, we meet the Victorian trio coming down. They’ve summited okay, but the clouds have only parted briefly for them.They’re still in high spirits though, and we promise we’ll send them some photos from the soon-to-be-clear summit. Everyone laughs in a “yeah, right” kind of way, and we go our separate ways.

Shortly afterwards Nick decides he might leave the hairy bits to us. As it’s got steeper he’s become more cautious and has begun to doubt his comfort on the really steep bits. He leaves us at the hairpin and heads down. Tim and I cinch our day packs tight and turn towards the top.

It’s not long before we reach parts that make Nick’s decision look wise. We come to a track junction with signs pointing straight ahead to the Irenabyss Track (via the col), and back behind us to Tahune. And the summit track? The sign just points up. Rather than walk, it seems we’ll need to climb or at least scramble straight up a steep quartzite wall. 

We switch to Russian accents. Part of our strategy for coping with difficulties is to use a variety of appallingly inept accents. Irish works well for comfortable strolling; uppercrust English seems good for gradual downhills; but there’s nothing like Russian for those steep uphill pinches. Ah the games we play, just to take our minds from the labours of hard walking!

Although there are several of them, the actual steep bits never last long. But with intermittent drizzle wetting the rocks, we take our time. Every now and then the clouds part a little; the sky brightens momentarily; and we wonder whether our window is coming. If timing is everything, dumb luck has a big say too.

[Tim negotiates a steep bit on Frenchmans Cap] 

After several “faux plateaux” – our term for false summits – the track turns a corner, the incline lessens, and a little white-brick-road meanders up to a remarkably broad and level summit. The memories from 31 years ago surge back as I see the summit cairn; the familiar blasted rocks; the swiftly shifting clouds; and the feeling of being high without actually seeing the evidence for it.

Yes, I’ve summited Frenchmans again, in the cloud again. Yet far from feeling it’s “strike two”, I actually feel quite euphoric. Tim does too. We settle down in the summit cairn-cum-shelter, grab a handful of scroggin and swig some water. And then? We sing of course: a rousing Russian rendition of the Carpenters’ “Top of the World”, which we video for posterity – and for our fellow PFA-er Jim, who took so long getting ready that he didn’t actually make this walk at all.

[Tim and I on top of the world, Frenchmans Cap] 

That formality over, we look up and suddenly realise that that the clouds have parted. We immediately revert to Irish, castigating ourselves for the “eejits” that we are for fiddling while the clouds lift. We rush over towards the edge of the summit to see what we can see. Huge cliffs drop 400m or more from here to the still unseen depths. But what can be seen – through gaps in the cloud – is the stately summit of Clytemnestra, and other peaks further off to the south-west.

The Romantic poets coined the word sublime for just this sort of view. It goes far beyond being merely pretty; it surpasses beauty even. For me it hovers somewhere between “beyond words” and “evoking deep feelings of simultaneous insignificance and significance”.

[A sublime moment: Clytemnestra from Frenchmans Cap] 

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* P.F.A. is an acronym for a slightly crude Aussie phrase that refers to dithering, delaying, or taking a long time to do anything. (P = P*ss; F = F*rt; A = Around.)

The Womble Cure

["The hills are alive" ... your blogger enjoying some New Zealand high places. Photo by TimO]

[Some lighthearted musings on music and walking, some of which has been posted here before]

Music goes with me wherever I walk. Sometimes that is literal, as when I walk to work attached to my iPod. But failing that it is in the form of what I call “head tunes”. These may be the musical equivalent of mad voices and of possible interest to a psychologist. And who hasn’t had one of those annoying tunes that follows them around unbidden and unwanted? The Germans have coined a very apt word for it: ohrwurm – literally “ear worm”.

Usually my head tunes are of the welcome variety: music that I’ve heard recently that somehow fits with what I’m doing and pops back into my head. It becomes a kind of soundtrack for my life. Just occasionally, usually while doing a hard walk, I will even make up tunes. I don’t set out to do this, but something about the ambulatory rhythm, and perhaps the pleasure/pain of what’s involved in walking, resolves itself into musical form.

There is however one extremely unwelcome form of ear worm. That's the tune that gets planted there by one of your companions. Here's an example I include in my (unfinished) walking book. To set the scene, it happens immediately after the sublime experience of reaching the summit of Tasmania's Federation Peak.

We stumble back to the campsite in heavy rain. Surrounded by mud, exhausted, windblown and wet to the skin, we should be miserable. We’re far from it, at least until Bill shares a worse-than-useless bit of news with us. He tells us he’s been accompanied all the way down by a tune that sprang into his head while we were on top. Unfortunately it’s the Carpenters’ song “Top of the World”. And not only does he share this with us, he actually sings a verse out loud.

"Something in the wind has learned my name

And it’s tellin’ me that things are not the same

In the leaves on the trees and the touch of the breeze

There’s a pleasin’ sense of happiness for me."

Inexplicably we find ourselves joining him for the chorus, Jim and I going so far as to hold an imaginary microphones up to our mouths.

"I’m on the top of the world lookin’ down on creation

And the only explanation I can find

Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around

Your love’s put me at the top of the world."

Our choral complicity implies for one brief moment that we think the song somewhat apt. But when Bill tries another verse we quickly come to our senses, and threaten to throw him over the nearest cliff if he dares to sing or mention the song again.

He pretends to be offended, but gives the game away by grinning cunningly. He knows that the damage is done, that we will each internally hum that infernal tune right through our (very wet) dinner preparations. He stays silent as we eat, but his look is that of a farmer who’s just finished sowing his crop as the rain begins.

Is there any hope when such a despicable thing has been done to you? Is there any hero who can slay that monstrous ear worm? One sovereign remedy I have read about and tried is the “Womble Cure”.

The theory is that if you have one of those diabolical tunes stuck in your head, you simply start singing the theme from the Wombles of Wimbledon. This may sound like a “hair-of-the-dog” kind of cure, but I think it is soundly based. Most of us, it seems, know the first verse of Mike Batt’s tune (Underground overground wombling free, the Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we …etc) and can fearlessly sing that much of it. But from there on we struggle: I’ve met very few who can proceed to the second verse.

And that, I believe, is the secret to the cure. Like walking into a mire, or driving a racing car into track-side gravel, your forward momentum is stopped. You simply cease singing, and the ear worm shrivels and dies.

The walking mates with whom I’ve shared this cure haven’t quite come to swear by it yet. Indeed there’s been a certain amount of graceless swearing AT me for it. But I think they will come around in the end.

Federation Peak - Part 13

[part 13 of a 15 part series decribing an ascent of Tasmania's Federation Peak]

13) Down But Not Out

Bechervaise Plateau, Thursday February 7th, 1991

We stumble back to the campsite in heavy rain. Surrounded by mud, exhausted, windblown and wet to the skin, we should be miserable. We’re far from it, at least until Bill shares a worse-than-useless bit of news with us. He tells us he’s been accompanied all the way down by a tune that sprang into his head while we were on top. Unfortunately it’s the Carpenters’ song “Top of the World”. And not only does he share this with us, he actually sings a verse out loud.

Something in the wind has learned my name
And it’s tellin’ me that things are not the same
In the leaves on the trees and the touch of the breeze
There’s a pleasin’ sense of happiness for me.

Inexplicably we find ourselves joining him for the chorus, Jim and I going so far as to hold imaginary microphones up to our mouths.

I’m on the top of the world lookin’ down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around
Your love’s put me at the top of the world.

Our choral complicity implies for one brief moment that we think the song somewhat apt. But when Bill tries another verse we quickly come to our senses, and threaten to throw him over the nearest cliff if he dares to sing or mention the song again. He pretends to be offended, but gives the game away by grinning cunningly. He knows that the damage is done, that we will each internally hum that infernal tune right through our (very wet) dinner preparations. He stays silent as we eat, but his look is that of a farmer who’s just finished sowing his crop as the rain begins.

We finish dinner hastily and choose to leave our pots and dishes outside in the rain. The only precaution we take against wind and wildlife is to weigh the plates down with rocks. With a bit of luck the possums and the rain might even wash up for us.

Safely inside the tent, wet gear removed and stowed, I lie back with a feeling of utter contentment. It can rain; it can pour; it can blow; it can roar! Nothing can take this away. I have been mortally afraid for most of the day, and more than edgy for the whole trip. And yet I have kept going, and have achieved all that I could possibly hope for out of this trip.

A fresh squall thwacks into the wall of the tent, rain batters the roof. I just shrug deeper into the sleeping bag and smile. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction that borders on joy. Certainly I have come through this trial by ordeal, but there’s more to it than that. For most of the last year I have struggled to believe that I could do even the most basic things implied in being a husband, father, home-owner, bread-winner, friend, worshipper, creative soul. Never a depressive character, I have nonetheless gone through some dark valleys. I had begun to believe that I was of use to no-one. Despite two degrees and a diploma, a wide-ranging CV , and a genuine desire to be useful to society via my work, I can’t even get an interview for a half-decent job.

There have been times when I’ve been ready to give up, to simply pull a metaphorical blanket over my head, and ignore the cajolers, encouragers and others who want to whip me into more acceptable shape. But now, after this, I feel ready for anything. If I have stared down my long-held fear of this mountain; if I have kept going when my apprehensions would’ve had me turn back; if I’ve kept faith with my walking mates through good and bad, then I’m ready to face afresh the challenges of earning a living.

I have never counted myself among any kind of elite in the physical sphere. I’m more of a trier; a persistent type; a sticker. These aren’t virtues that rate on any elite list I’ve ever seen. Yet out here and – I was starting to believe – back in the working world, the ability to keep going even in the face of difficulties must count for something. It might not move mountains, but it could get you to the top of them. Even to the top of Tasmania’s hardest mountain.

Just before drifting off to sleep I pray again. It’s a blanket prayer of thankfulness for survival certainly. But there’s a deeply personal note of gratefulness too; a fundamental recognition that even out here in the wilds I haven’t been beyond the care of the one who delights in making and maintaining this magnificent world. As I slip into slumber the wind and rain roar a loud amen that not even the Carpenters can drown out.