Green Shorts and the ascent up Cuilcagh

Cavanman's Diary

It was the morning of the sixth day. We were standing at the foot of the mountain, looking up, ready to sweat out the festive excesses.

It was one of those mornings, to quote Shane MacGowan, where the cold wind comes and finds you. I hummed the song. “This could be, our final dance.” It seemed fitting.

“Have you no full-length socks?” the kindly man in the carpark enquired of one of my female companions, whose ankles were already at risk of frostbite.

“Jesus, put them on you. It’s not giving it to get any better,” he under-stated.

It was December 30 and, in the distance, Cuilcagh’s snow-covered peaks were visible on the skyline. The rain drifted down in sheets and the gale howled. Bitter, bitter.

We watched it battering the windscreen for a few minutes when we parked up (it cost €6 for that particular privilege). It wouldn’t have taken much to turn the car for home but, as self-appointed leader of the expedition, I felt it my duty to cajole the others into leaving base camp.

“Come on,” I encouraged my fellow Sherpas. “You’ll be glad when you have it over you.”

In hindsight, that wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement – it was the sort of statement that could equally apply to, say, a tooth extraction – but it seemed to do the trick. So, off we set at 10:37am.

At first, there was a novelty factor to this thing they call “exercise” – but enthusiasm was waning by the minute. The over-indulgences of the previous week or so – work parties, Irish coffees, Cadbury’s Roses for breakfast, headaches and heartburn – were taking their toll.

Maybe 15 minutes in, we met the first flood. I considered tying my €20 hiking boots around my neck and wading through it, like a pioneer from the old west. I decided to plough on – and my first step saw me drenched to the ankles. Lovely.

It was then, feet saturated and freezing, I realised why my crappy Regatta shoes had been only €20. No matter. Like Gatsby, we beat on, boats against the current, fumbling ceaselessly with numbed fingers for those last few Rennies.

We passed by some bemused sheep, their heavy wool sodden, and I could have sworn they were laughing at us. But upwards we went, like three Tom Creans, had that mad Kerry publican prepared on a diet of items he served behind his bar – peanuts and Silvermints and stout and such things.

“It’ll be easier when we get to the boardwalk,” I lied, as I squelched on.

Eventually, we reached it, but most of it was under a treacherous covering of snow, which meant we had to pick our steps.

The sage attendant down at ground level had been right; the weather was getting worse. Three-quarters of the way up, we still couldn’t clearly make out the top of the mountain. Reeling from the effort, I unwrapped the second of the chocolate chip cookies for sustenance (the first departed this world around Belturbet); to my disgust, I found that my water bottle had opened in my bag, drowning everything therein. I wolfed the soggy cookie anyway.

The last section, the stairway, was torturous – it put me in mind of the Khumbu, which is a famously dangerous icefall on Everest and also sounds like an equally-perilous takeaway dish I vaguely remembered ordering on one of those lost recent festive evenings.

One of my fellow climbers, whom I had cheerily convinced to come, was finding things particularly difficult; whether it was because of the altitude, the cold or the wet feet, I couldn’t be certain, but I noticed she had stopped replying to me. Luckily, this was not the first time this year that this had happened so I knew not to panic – panic being the enemy of the extreme adventurer.

At long suffering last, at 12:15pm, we made it (or ‘summited’, as we say in the mountaineering game). Wary of the threat of avalanches, I resisted the urge to yell in triumph, instead celebrating with a drenched banana.

We hung around and took some photos from the little wooden gantry up there for a few minutes but visibility was awful. We may as well have been standing in front of a white wall. And, in truth, having read Into Thin Air about a disaster in the Himalayas and watched some Netflix documentaries, I was wary of spending too long in what they call ‘the death zone’ anyway.

I rallied the troops and we began our descent. My own spirits were fairly high considering all I had bravely been through in the previous 90 minutes but temperatures continued to plummet.

And it was then that we saw him. In the distance, at first, and then growing closer until, God almighty, there he stood, in front of me, ruddy of cheek, sauntering along with his girlfriend.

The wind hacked my eyes; the colours bled into one but I strained to make out the key particulars: green O’Neill’s shorts, pink legs, gingery hair minus any form of cap, a pair of white runners tinged with grey from the slush underfoot.

In his hand, a can of Coors Light (fitting, actually, if you’ve ever seen those). I looked at him in astonishment but couldn’t find the words.

“Nice morning for a walk, hi!” he announced, skipping by me on the stairs.

The rest of the descent was spent in a daze. Was that fella really going up there in shorts on today of all days? Had the combination of endless hours of mince pies and cheap red wine led to a sort of delirium now that I had pushed my body to the limit? As in, had I really seen this geezer at all?

We made it to the car and thawed out. I then reluctantly set my modesty aside for the greater good (it’s important to record these feats for posterity) and posted some photos on social media. Then, with an explorer’s zeal, I took to WhatsApp and sent them to approximately two dozen contacts, most of whom I knew for a fact to be hungover.

Afterwards, to Ballyconnell, where I picked up three pairs of socks for a tenner in the Trading Post and the hot soup in the Angler’s Rest never tasted so good.

With full use of my digits thankfully restored and a toasted sandwich eliminated, I began to Google other great feats of climbing, in the Alps and other such locations of note. It was then I discovered the sad and slightly morbid story of Green Boots.

On Everest, for 20-odd years before the body was moved, expeditions on the north side of the mountain passed the remains of an unfortunate unidentified climber known only as Green Boots, so called because of his distinctive footwear. He had passed away on a descent and lay where he fell.

Immediately, my thoughts returned to the man with the can. Is Green Shorts still up there? How many tins of Coors did he have? How in the name of God did he get back down in a pair of skinny-looking runners?

I polished the last of the chips and, feet now dry, we headed for home, the heater on max and the biggest mountain in Cavan (TM) conquered just in time for new year.