Quid Pro Quo Ch. 01

This is my first attempt at writing erotic fiction. Since I enjoy what I read on here so much, and I like telling stories, I thought I'd try to add something of my own. I'd have liked to have a female climber saving two guys, but I'm not at all confident I could write believably from a woman's perspective - I'm not sure I can write believably from mine :)

This is a long first chapter and there's no sex in it. The reason for this is the time it took to create a believable scenario for two girls to be in that situation. It's not that far-fetched. I've seen people walking up Ben Nevis in trainers as I've been walking down it in plastic boots and crampons, and though I've never had to help a walker in trouble, I've know people who have. It's a frequently underestimated hill.

Anyway. First attempt. Chapter two about three quarters done and there's shagging in that. Whether or not it makes up for wading through this is another thing, but I hope that someone likes it :)

"So you're a climber?" Said Nicola, leaning forward. "That sounds exciting; I'd love to be able to do that but I'm terrified of heights."

"Yeah, it's not for everyone." Dave replied. "It can get pretty scary, but half the fun is being scared and knowing you can deal with it."

Nicola looked at Dave across the table. his friend Mark was at the bar and she and her best friend Alison were in the early stages of getting to know them. The girls were in Fort William pretty much on a whim. A month previously, at work, Nic had said to her friend "Hey Ali - can you ski?" She couldn't, and during the course of the rest of the day, travel, accommodation and two days instruction with a skiing guide had been booked. Ali shook her head with a rueful grin. Life was rarely dull around her friend; Whatever it was that had prompted Nic's Grandfather to drop everything and emigrate to Australia after the war, rather than settle back into the comfortable life he'd left to go and fight, Nic had inherited and then some. Spending a year working their way around the UK had been Nic's idea too.

Mark returned from the bar and the four of them chatted away amiably for the next half hour or so. The girls were in town learning to ski, the boys were there on a climbing trip. As soon as conditions were right, they were going to do a big gully climb. Point five, or Zero maybe. They swapped tales of climbing on the gritstone outcrops in the Peak district with diving on the Great Barrier reef; Welsh mountains days with arid outback treks; Icy north faces with surfing trips to new South Wales. Eventually, the alcohol had its effect and the two girls excused themselves.

"Why do girls always go to the loos in pairs?" asked Mark, grinning.

"It's to talk about you behind your back." replied Alison cheekily.

The girls walked off giggling, and Mark turned to Dave and asked "How long have we been mountaineers exactly?"

Dave thought about this. "About ninety minutes. Ever since I stopped looking at Alison's arse and remembered that climbing came in fourth on the FHM poll of sexiest sports. Anyway - We are climbers. We own rockshoes don't we? I don't know about you, but mine are about ready for retirement."

"Oh yeah, and the upstairs room at Boulder UK, is exactly the same as Zero fucking gully. Where did you ever get that name from anyway?"

"From paying attention to what people are saying, even when they're not saying it to me. What do you want me to say to these two? - That we're a couple of plasterers from Bolton, pebble dashing your mother in law's extension?"

"It would have the advantage of being true - Less detail to invent, and far less to be tripped up on."

"True. And on the minus side, duller than dogshit, and unlikely to moisten the gussets of two hot Australian girls, who could have any guy in this room with no more effort than it takes to flutter an eyelash. In any case, where's the harm? We send them home with some happy memories of nights of passion with heroic mountaineers - Got to be better than a shag off a couple of builders yeah?"

"You missed your calling - you should have been in politics - Which isn't a compliment by the way." Said Mark with a wry grin.

In the Ladies room, the conversation went thus:

"So what do you think?" asked Nicola.

"Dave's a bit full of himself. He likes you though." Replied Alison. "Just as well really; since you seem to prefer him to Mark, who's more my type. Saves on a catfight I suppose." she added, with a smile.

"Which I would win round about now." Grinned Nic' "Shame that precludes getting to know him any better - for a day or two anyway. How about you?"

"I'm not going off with two guys I only just met, and I'm far too considerate to bring one of them back for you to get all frustrated listening to. She pouted theatrically. "looks like we're being good girls this evening."

"Don't be sad Ali puss," said Nicola, using her father's pet name for her. "There's always tomorrow, or the next day at a pinch. Besides, I have a cunning plan. We can't stay in Fort William and not climb Ben Nevis, and now we have two hunky mountain guides to keep us safe, and we'll be so *very* grateful once we get down..."

And that, pretty much, is how Nic and Ali got on the hill. They returned to the boys and artfully dragooned them into escorting them to the summit the following day. At the end of the evening the girls made their goodbyes and arranged the rendezvous for the morning's outing. The girls walked back to their rooms giggling and comparing scenarios for their imminent ravishment. As the boys made their way home there was a certain tension between them:

"What the Fuck have you got us into now Dave?"

"A walk up a hill followed by some hot, four way sex - Of course, if you like, you can stay behind, in which case it'll be three way sex."

"We haven't got the gear to climb a mountain. Even I know about ice axes, crampons - who knows what else? Can you even read a map? because I know I can't."

"Mother - How did you get here? - and what did you do with Mark?" Grinned Dave. "Don't worry about it. There used to be an observatory on the summit, and there's a pony track that runs all the way up to it. We won't need a map, and if it gets too icy, then we can turn back. It snows in Bolton too you know and I don't see anyone wearing crampons to the pub. - You worry too much."

"I have to. I do it for both of us. Sometimes I wonder why you're even alive."

Around about the time Nicola and Alison were making the boys' acquaintance, I was luxuriating in my first flat steps since setting off from the visitor centre an hour and a half previously. The pony track is a boring slog, but compared to the approach from the west via the distillery and the access road from the Alcan plant, it has one huge advantage. It isn't boggy, and even though my pack was unencumbered by rope and chocks and all the other paraphernalia of the climber, I was carrying my home and five days food to make up for it; And since the reason I was climbing alone was that my arthritic hip made it impossible for me to keep up with a fit partner, it wasn't the most pleasant stroll I'd ever taken on the flanks of my beloved Ben; But I was there, and that's all that mattered.

I picked a spot for my tent at the far end of the halfway lochan, popped some preemptive painkillers and set up camp. Even though I was on my own, I'd chosen to bring my big tent. I had no idea what the weather might do, and I wanted its huge porch space, just in case I had to cook in a gale, and also because it's nice to have a space to get out of wet gear, that's separate from the sleeping compartment but still out of the wind. If this trip went as planned I'd be here for a few days and I could live with an extra kilo on my back for the comfort.

Pitching a tent in snow isn't as bad as you might think. Those mesh laundry bags you use to wash your socks in make pretty good snow anchors, you just fill them with snow and bury them, after threading them with a cord loop to clip your tent to. Once my tent was pitched I threw my sleeping bag and mats into the dry compartment, my rucksack into the porch and crawled in. Working quickly I unrolled my sleeping mats, stretching out on the foam mat and undoing the valve on the thermarest allowing it to self-inflate. Next I dragged my sleeping bag out of its stuff sac, laid it out and quickly stripped off my clothes. Ten seconds later I was inside my bag, on my foam mat, unpacking my stove and pans from my rucksack. Two and a half minutes later I was listening to my favourite sound in the world. The roaring of a petrol stove turning ice water into hot tea.

Cooking on snow can be tricky, and for those of you who are wondering how a pan full of water on a hot stove, will stay still on a floor composed only of snow, there are a couple of ways to manage this - one way is to rest the stove on a shovel, but since mine's made of plastic, I use an eight by ten inch piece of 1/2" plywood. More weight to carry, but it does the job. To a hardcore alpinist every unneccesary gram is a mortal sin, but I learned my mountaincraft in the army, where they try to hang as much gear off you as possible, so I probably pack more gear than I should, but my experience is that any idiot can endure discomfort, and in the hills a little luxury goes a long way.

The following morning I woke and luxuriated in the knowledge that for once I had time to spare. I'd decided to do Ledge route, an easy, but exposed grade II, that experienced climbers often used as a descent route. Walking it to it was unlikely to take me more than an hour and a half, and I doubted that the route itself would require more than three. If I got to the base of the route by noon, I should still be able to finish in daylight, although I'd be descending in the dark. Maybe I should have been more motivated, after all I'd had enough unpleasant surprises on this hill not to take it for granted, but I was warm and prone and that's a hard obstacle to overcome when everything you know is saying "easy day ahead." In the end it was a full bladder that got me moving.

Far below, four people were moving sluggishly. The 10 am start time had been put back to 11:30 as Nicola, Alison, Mark and Dave all prepared for the walk up the pony track. Still slightly hungover, unsure of what to take, the girls ended up putting their ski jackets, a flask of coffee and a sandwich each into Alison's gym bag. As it happened they were better prepared than the boys, who turned up in jeans and hooded sweatshirts.

"Looking very casual there boys." Teased Alison when they met at the visitor centre.

"It's just a walk up a big hill." returned Dave, a little defensively. "Sky's blue, forecast is good, it should take us about four hours. No need to dress for arctic conditions."

Dave's research, the night before, had been to ask a guy in the chip shop, who looked like an outdoor type, how long it would take to "do Ben Nevis" The guy had replied "About four hours, up the path." and that had been that. Dave assumed the time given was for the round trip, and the guy he'd asked, had assumed he wanted the time to the top. Most mountain emergencies start with tiny details like this one.

Two hours later they were at the halfway lochan. They were above the snowline now and the wind was colder. They stopped to drink from the flask. The girls shared a sandwich. Dave and Mark had brought four Snickers bars each. They didn't stop long because the wind, although not strong, was cold, and cut through the boys sweatshirts. It should be mentioned at this point that Nic at least was having second thoughts about the two boys they were with. They'd passed people on the way up. All of them were heading downwards and she'd noticed the looks that they were getting. The people they were passing carried backpacks, most of them had ice axes strapped to the backs of them - many of them were using walking poles, and all of them were dressed very differently to the foursome heading upwards. Everybody they passed had been going down, and the only people she'd seen moving upwards were high above them, having obviously started out much earlier. Nic wasn't a mountain girl, but she'd rolled her eyes at people heading out on outback trails badly equipped. She recognised the looks people were giving her now.

After an unforgiveably late start, I got moving. I'd left a note in my tent, outlining my route for the day, and my expected time of return. It wasn't going to help me much if I got into difficulties, but it would give the MRT an idea of where to look for my corpse if they hadn't already found it.

As I was refilling my bag of water ice for the evening's cooking, I checked the sky out of habit. It was blue and clear, apart from the slug trails left by passing aircraft. That's not always a bad sign, but it does suggest the air is saturated at altitude, which again suggests a warm front moving in. The last Met. report I'd seen had shown a depression just South of Greenland, but I was hoping the high pressure North of Scotland would deflect it. "Looks like we'll find out" I thought, with a mental shrug.

Anyway, I was moving by midday and at the base of the route by two. Fit people who know the ground will laugh at this, but I was climbing alone, because I'm neither fit nor mobile these days; but climbing is something I have to do - I'm no fun to be around if I haven't had my climbing fix, and I'd far rather die getting it, than stop getting it. As any addict knows: You do what you have to do...

Ledge route can be divided into three sections. There's a snow plod, via the eponymous ledge, to the ridge crest; Then there's a short, but exposed traverse, which includes a move known as the "Difficult step"; After that it's another snow plod up the ridge to the summit of Carn Dearg, a subsidiary peak of the Ben Nevis massif. I'd love to give you an account of a heroic struggle, but there wasn't one. The snow had consolidated well and my crampons bit into it and held firmly. There's always a certain tingling of the scrotum at the thought that a slip, for any reason, is highly likely to kill you, and it's not like I've never slipped, or tripped before, but one thing I've learned about falls, is that even when you're bouncing down a slope, breaking bones along the way, the fall doesn't hurt, and there's no fear. The pain only arrives after you stop moving, and if that happens then you're alive. Once you get a few hundred feet up, you really don't have much to be afraid of...

Having said that, I wasn't ready to kiss this life goodbye - Not in that place. Just before the traverse and the difficult step, there's a small snowfield, where I hacked out a bucket seat, put on my down Parka and sat down to stare at the mountain that enfolded me. The word Awesome, has become somewhat undervalued lately, but sitting there and looking across the corrie to Tower ridge and the Northeast buttress, I was filled with a joy that words - my words anyway, can't capture. Alcohol is a pretty bad idea whilst climbing, but I was carrying my hip flask anyway, and I raised it eastwards, took a swallow and remembered faces I'd never see again.

On the other side of the hill, the wind had picked up and the boys were suffering. The temperature had dropped with the altitude gain, and their hooded tops weren't windproof. As they continued upwards, a party of climbers heading downwards, passed them on the path. One of them, an older man, in his fifties or sixties, with snow white hair, stopped to speak to them. He was a guide, who'd just taken the other two, a honeymooning couple, up a climb on the far side of the mountain. He was also a member of the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team, and so whereas everyone else who'd passed them had said nothing, he pointed out to them that they were completely inadequately dressed and equipped for Ben Nevis in winter and suggested they turn around immediately.

"You've never done this before have you?" Said Nicola, sharply, when the other party were out of earshot. "Jesus. I bet I've been up more mountains than you have! What the fuck are you playing at, bringing us up here?" Dave started to reply, but Mark cut him off:

"We wanted to impress you - It wasn't my idea but I played along - It was just pub talk, but then it kind of snowballed.... Sorry."

He looked down at the ground between them. "Anyway, the old guy's right. we should knock this on the head."

"You go down." said Alison sharply. "I want to carry on a bit longer." She added. "We can talk about this in the pub later." [with no intention of doing so].

And so the boys turned around and followed the three climbers down. As the girls continued up the path, Nicola asked Alison, why she'd wanted to continue, when going down was obviously the wise choice.

"Well our jackets are warmer than theirs, I mean I'm not cold, and we're nearly at the end of this bit - it looks like it levels off a bit further up. You never know, we might get to the top - but mostly it's because I don't want to walk back down with those two." replied Alison, with a grimace. And that was how the girls ended up alone on the hill.

Because they were walking up on the south side, they couldn't see the cloud rolling in from the North. The day was still bright, and the sky above them was still fairly clear, although it was filling steadily with high altitude clouds - not thick enough to block the sun, but a harbinger of a change in the weather, for the worse. To them it must have looked like a pretty good day. The sun was bright, the air was clear and the view, spectacular. Twenty minutes later, they were in sight of the end of the zigzags and the summit plateau. Twenty minutes after that, they were at the first of the line of cairns that lead up to the summit shelter. These things are big, and there's one every hundred feet, and the reason for that is that the summit plateau of Ben Nevis, is nowhere to be blundering around in poor visibility. There are cliffs to the North, and to the South, and when the clag comes in, it's very easy to lose yourself. The only real landmarks are the summit cairn and shelter, and the line of cairns leading off the plateau. Can you see where this is going?

I was just setting off on the traverse to the Difficult step when the clag rolled in. Tendrils of mist drifted past, and I looked up to see the Northwest Buttress and Tower ridge fading from view. In less than a minute, visibility was down to twenty metres. In two minutes it was less than ten, and I estimated maybe 45 minutes of daylight left. No biggie. The traverse went easily enough, but my traitorous joints were complaining as I carried on up the ridge, stopping briefly to attach my headtorch just before the light faded. Being in the mist at night can be disorienting. Every direction looks the same in the bubble of light that you inhabit. Still, the only way I had to go was uphill. Once I ran out of upwards, then it was time to navigate. I carried on walking.

On the summit plateau, Nic and Ali were finally able to look to the North, and they didn't miss the approaching cloud. The wind was stronger here, with nothing to divert it, and they had to raise their voices to be heard. They couldn't see anyone else. Everyone they'd met in the last four hours had been heading down. Now they were on their own.

The significance of the approaching cloud wasn't lost on either of the girls. They'd been counting on a clear night and the moon to get them back down the pony track, so they turned around and followed the line of cairns, and kept following it as the visibility dropped to the point that the cairns were only visible when you were practically on top of them. The wind had been picking up, and on the plateau, with nothing to hinder its progress, it was making its presence felt. There were footprints in the snow, which helped, but both girls were suppressing a feeling of worry. All they had to do was find the path.......