The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society (29 page)

Deep into the festivity I crept outside to take a leak,
shutting
the door carefully behind me. The sound of conviviality vanished as I stepped towards the trees, my feet squeaking and crunching on the frozen snow. The night was clear and moonless and the pines stood motionless beneath the frozen burden of snow. Returning to the hut, I noticed a figure standing in the clearing between the wood and the hut. It was Rafa, a student of astrophysics, and he was looking at the stars, which, it has to be said, were quite dazzling. I’m used to seeing some pretty bright stars at El Valero, where there is very little light pollution to obscure their shine, but these had a clarity all their own; they seemed to pierce the sky and hurtle towards you in the most vertiginous manner. ‘Do you know your way about the heavens, Cristóbal?’ Rafa asked. It seemed a surprisingly intimate question.

‘Well, I know the Plough… and the Pole Star… and the one that looks like a squared-off question mark,’ I said hesitantly.

‘That would be Orion’s belt.’

‘And isn’t that one Sirius?’

‘Actually no, that’s a satellite. See, it’s moving just discernibly. You need to go just a bit further on for Sirius,’ and Rafa helpfully manoeuvred my arm. ‘Interesting, isn’t it,’ he continued, ‘that the ancients could see pictures abstracted in these constellations? It’s an ability we seem to have lost.’

It was indeed interesting but it was also ten below zero, with the beginning of a nasty wind whipping towards us, so I cut short the conjectures and returned to the warmth of the hut. The party ebbed and flowed for another couple of hours until there was nothing left to drink and the fire died down and the cold started to bite and we disposed ourselves around the hut in a grunting heap of sleeping bags, ski-boots and woolly hats.

It’s hell getting out of a sleeping bag on an icy morning in an unheated hut, and I couldn’t help wondering why people ever come up as high as this. As I stepped outside into the blinding whiteness, I could see all the way down to where I lived. It looked warm down there, where there were oranges and lemons and even a banana tree. Here were only pines and snow and a couple of half-frozen choughs
coughing
in the woods.

We made some hot drinks somehow, and then set out. In a long line we slid up through the pinewoods and out onto the bare slopes above the tree line. Gerardo, silver-haired and with an impressive beer gut, led the way, grinding relentlessly up the hill. He was, bar Paco and I, the oldest member of the expedition, the rest of the party being in their late twenties, yet he was by a long head the fittest man there, and he showed no mercy. Up we slogged, and up and up with no suggestion of a halt.

As the bulk of the party hung limp, their muscles
screaming
, mouths open, gasping great lungfuls of icy air, Gerardo ground on effortlessly upwards – slip, slither, pole… The man was inhuman. Flesh and blood could not keep up this
pace. Some of the party wept, some begged, a couple simply stopped and stayed behind. But Gerardo powered on up towards the peak.

His reason for this unsympathetic attitude, avowedly, is not to humiliate or physically wreck his followers, but to challenge them, to knock them into shape and to get them up with a minimum of fuss to where they can start skiing, or ice-climbing or whatever. If you dropped back you had to catch up, and if you were lucky enough to catch up at one of the very few rest stops, then as soon as you crawled in, panting and on your last legs, the front group, who had already rested for two minutes and were now impatient to be on their way, would move off.

This torment went on all morning, with Gerardo
climbing
relentlessly away at the front; those in the middle head down, doggedly following him; and several knots of
disconsolates
grumbling and puffing at the back. It was bright from the snow in spite of the greyness of the day, and bitter cold, though the heat we generated with the effort of climbing forced us to remove our outer clothes. ‘Maybe we should stop and eat our sandwiches here,’ someone suggested.

‘No,’ said Gerardo. ‘Better to push on to the top; then we can eat our lunch looking over the other side.’ We were high up now; we could see the valleys and chains of mountains below us swathed in cloud, but it was still an hour’s steep slog to get to the top. The awesome Gerardo turned and headed in a series of steep zigzags up towards the peak.

When we finally reached the Pico de los Machos I felt too ill from the exertion – and perhaps the altitude of some 3,005 metres – even to think about eating. It was also too cold to hang about much, so we poked our heads up over
the peak into the vicious wind to take a look at the lesser peaks and swirling cloudscape below, and then, clamping our heels into the skiing position, we turned to the descent. That was the moment when I realised my foolishness. I hadn’t skied on slopes like this for perhaps twenty-five years, and I hadn’t exactly been an ace back then. I found myself looking down a vast, broken plain of snow, steeply inclined. It seemed to go on down for ever until the slope itself was lost to view in a boiling sea of cloud impossibly far below. Now, I’m not a nervous person at all, but my legs and knees, which were already quivering from the muscular exertion of the climb, began at that point to quake, literally, with fear. Nearly everybody had already set off, and were little more than dots far below by the time I had steeled my courage sufficiently to launch myself down the slope.

I reckoned no harm could come to me if I just kept it slow, but within seconds I was rocketing down at
breakneck
speed. The slope was ice with the odd rock sticking through, and here and there swirls of fine powdery snow. I couldn’t get a grip on that ice. By turning uphill I managed to stop. I panted and looked in terror at the awful expanse of slope that still remained. A hundred metres below I saw Paco, who looked to be in a similar predicament. I stumped inexpertly round and slithered off fast on the other tack. I slowed and, almost losing my balance, managed another turn. Then I hit hard ice. My lower ski slipped away, I leaned over, flailing my arms, and fell with a heavy crump onto the hard-packed snow. Aah, bliss. I was unharmed and could sit and rest here for a minute, take respite from that awful downhill rush.

But there came a time when I knew I had to bite the bullet. Off I went, and got in a couple of goodish turns, but
then, hitting a great sheet of ice, I hurtled down faster and faster until I was completely out of control. My eyes filled with tears of cold; the world raced past in a blurred vision of white… faster and faster until suddenly I was airborne, feet and skis somewhere up over my head. An almighty blow and I was half-buried in cold soft snow… Ah, the peace; ah, the softness… But something was wrong. I did what I could to pick myself up, and only half of me responded. My left side no longer worked; the arm didn’t react to the commands I was sending it. It hung limp and heavy at my side. I sat up and rocked to and fro in the snow, clutching my injured arm and groaning. Dislocated shoulder… that’s what it had to be.

What the hell was I to do now? There was pain, a huge aching pain, but it seemed lessened by the fear of the abnormal state of my body and concern about my situation. Further down the hill I saw Paco again. He too was sitting in the snow, clutching his upper body and rocking to and fro. Way down below I saw three figures detach themselves from the main group and move back up the hill towards us. Somehow I managed to haul myself to my feet. My skis had come off with the fall, and tucking them beneath my right arm, and with the right arm holding the left arm in place, I started trudging downhill. The jolt of each step was a shock of pain. I had the feeling that my arm was only held on by skin, and I was desperate to protect it so that it shouldn’t break that skin and fall off altogether. After a painfully long time I reached Paco. He was in a bad way, pale and drawn, groaning piteously. He couldn’t speak. I stood for a bit
looking
at him and wondering what to do.

Finally Gerardo arrived with Jesús and Fernando. They unclipped their skis and fussed around us. Jesús tried to
manipulate my arm back into its socket, but after I had yelled and cursed at him, and the arm showed no signs of going back in, he gave up. ‘I’m sure there’s supposed to be a way of straightening it out… bending it at a right-angle and popping it back into its socket,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t seem to work on you.’

Paco was in too much pain to put up with such horseplay. A decision was made to call a helicopter.

‘I don’t want a helicopter,’ I protested. ‘I can walk out on my own.’ I was worried that, having not taken out any insurance, it would tip us into serious debt.

‘No you can’t,’ they assured me. ‘With a thing like this, the sooner you get to hospital and get it back in, the better.’

So they rang the helicopter with a mobile phone, which, by some miracle, had coverage. They gave careful directions as to just where on the mountain we would be found, and we sat down to wait. Paco, pale and drawn with pain, was moaning all the while. His injury was much worse than mine; I could at least keep a sense of what was going on around me.

After twenty minutes or so we heard the sound of the helicopter. It drew closer, and then faded again and disappeared altogether. Jesús’s phone rang. He gave some more directions. The sound of the helicopter appeared again, increased a little, and then moved away. More instructions and yet more. Paco groaned loudly. I started to shiver. Suddenly we caught sight of the helicopter ferreting about among the ravines and valleys below us. Those of us with whole bodies leapt up and down and waved jackets. At last the machine veered and headed up towards us.

 It turned and hovered two metres above the ground, fifty metres away from us. Two big men in the uniform of the Guardia Civil Mountain Rescue Service jumped down, crouched and ran across the snow towards us. They assessed our wounds, telling us that the machine was unable to land on such a steep slope, so we’d have to get into it at the hover. The two Guardia helped poor Paco across and, with an unceremonious shove, heaved him into the back of the cockpit. It was then that I realised that they had sent us a four-man helicopter – with four men in it, for there were two pilots. How the hell were we all going to fit on board?

The bigger of the two Guardia grabbed the runner, heaved himself into the cockpit, and sat on top of Paco. I could hear the poor man’s shrieks above the sound of the roaring engine. I grasped the runner with my good arm and tried to pull myself into the cabin, but I hadn’t the strength. The other Guardia, meanwhile, got his shoulder under my butt and, with a great heave and grunt, boosted me over the rim of the cockpit door, where I tumbled helplessly into the cabin, landing with an agonising thump. I screamed at the impact… but found that my arm had suddenly, magically, re-attached itself to my shoulder. The pain had disappeared, too. I wiggled the arm this way and that. It was a little stiff, but it worked. The Guardia had, entirely by accident, relocated it.

I grinned like a lunatic as my rescuer squeezed in behind me. And then, with a lot of grunting and wriggling, so that everyone was sitting on at least one other person, we set off across the mountains towards Granada. I watched, euphoric at the sudden absence of pain, and thrilled as the snowy peaks slid beneath the machine and the world fell away in folds of blue to the gorges and valleys of the Sierra.
Poor Paco, squashed beneath the enormous policeman, was in too much agony to take in anything at all, but for me, well, these vistas and the miraculous release from pain seemed almost worth the trauma.

In a very short time we found ourselves in the hospital in Granada. The doctor took one look at Paco, grabbed his arm, twisted it and pushed. Paco’s eyes nearly burst from his face. ‘God, it’s gone! The pain’s gone!’ he cried.

They trussed us up like a pair of oven-ready chickens and told us to take it easy for a bit, which we felt inclined to do anyway. Then we signed a form and showed our Social Security cards. ‘How much are we going to owe for the helicopter?’ I asked a little nervously.

‘Nada,’
said the nurse. ‘It’s free. All mountain rescue is paid for by the Junta de Andalucía.’ I was deeply impressed.