by Sandy Allan
The abseil rope I expected to carry to our 1995 point of no return. We would fix it and leave it hanging there in case we had to reverse the ridge in the face of bad weather or injury. Climbing a vertical wall like that in a state of exhaustion and perhaps with broken limbs would be too much. We were constantly aware that once committed to the ridge, we were only leaving it at one of its two ends. There was no other escape. I felt a little fearful, packing our stuff away, but I appreciated that feeling; it engenders respect, and that is healthy. The fear was manageable; if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been there.
Our sacks felt heavy – too heavy for climbing. Cathy’s sack looked a bit less bulky, but I knew it was just as heavy as mine. As our communications expert she carried the satellite phone and a small, handheld computer with spare batteries. She would use these to send text messages and occasional photos to Twitter and Facebook. She was also in charge of collecting our all-important weather forecasts, something we could never have dreamed of in the mid 1990s.
Our twenty-five kilograms of food should last about eight days but, if we rationed it, we could probably spin that out to ten. I don’t like chemical foods like gels and protein bars; I’d rather have something more organic. I find porridge, oatcakes, digestive biscuits and peanut butter, with the occasional tin of tuna or some other fish, will keep me going for long periods. I like the taste and texture as I eat them, and appetite is often a problem at altitude. Rick, on the other hand, seems to like gels, and many nutritionists will disagree with me. Astronauts seem to use these kinds of foods for long periods without any ill effects, but I find them excessively sweet, and find sucking gel out of foil wrappers revolting at sea level, let alone at 7,000 metres. My body does just fine eking out my frugal rations without resorting to squeezing disgustingly sweet refined sugars into my mouth. Gels also leave me thirsty and more often than not I puke them up anyway. They might be fine for a day or two but trying to survive on energy foods for eight to ten days would be difficult for me. I am sure my intestines would pack up.
We divided ourselves into three teams of two, with a climbing rope per team. Cathy climbed with Rangdu, and Nuru teamed up with Zarok while Rick and I roped together. Although we divided in this way, the plan was to stay close together and work for each other. I thought about the ridge ahead and all those summits over 7,000 metres. I thought about Doug Chabot and Steve Swenson. How hard was the climbing really? I told myself to stay cool and relax, to control my emotions and enjoy each minute as it slipped past. Those minutes would become hours soon enough, the hours would turn to days and each freezing night would give way to another new morning. I told myself to enjoy them and live for the moment.
And so we began this impeccable ridge.
Nuru was in front at first, breaking trail slightly downhill from our camp. I looked behind us and saw that only our footsteps remained. Then we traversed a steep wall of snow that turned out to be soft and Nuru’s legs sank in deep. Following in his tracks, we did the same. It was hard work for everyone, and above us the slope continued to rise. We hardly stopped at all, keeping a steady pace – guide’s pace we call it – slow but steady wins the race. It’s a pace I can keep all day and all night if necessary. I thought about my days as a teenager, the Scottish school holidays coming to an end, and the Glorious Twelfth of August in the Highlands. Grouse beating gave me the chance to earn some extra pocket money.
Walking the hills of the Haughs of Cromdale, Dorback and the Kinveachy, a line of school kids and impoverished students waved white cotton flags secured to branches pruned from saplings, scaring – or more officially ‘driving’ – grouse so they would fly over foreigners’ guns and be shot. Black Labradors, springer spaniels and Irish red setters would collect the shot birds, which were of more value to the shooters than us country peasants. My twin brother and I could gallop over the hills at an impressive rate and a friendly old gamekeeper called Charlie Oswald used to shout at us: ‘Boys, if you run in the morning you’ll be exhausted by night!’ The last drive would come and as we made our way back to the vehicles that used to take us home, we would run by old Charlie the gamekeeper, laughing and shouting as we passed him: ‘That’s right Charlie, if you run in the morning … ’
Now I was here, pacing myself on this huge climb, thinking ahead and plotting campsites with some shelter from the wind, flattish areas where we could avoid too much digging and pitch our bivvy tents with minimal effort. We needed to rest properly and conserve our energy for the next day, and the one after that, and after that … Our initial acclimatisation plan might not have survived, but this one was working well. We came to a good spot at 6,800 metres, a whaleback sort of ridge in a small col.
Tents sprouted like mushrooms from the snow, with hardly a word. Speaking seemed unnecessary. Automatically, one team-member crawled inside each tent, three stoves ignited, almost in unison, and the first pans of snow were put on to melt. Hydration was everything. We fought thirst constantly as the thin dry air sucked the moisture out of our bodies.
The next day – 5 July – went well and we made good progress. We were now on the ridge proper, looking down on to the Diamir Glacier some two and a half kilometres below us. We could see groups of tents at the Diamir Base Camp. It encouraged us to think that other groups would be climbing on the Kinshofer route. If we came down that way, we might find some friendly faces to help us along. The altitude now was between 6,800 and 7,000 metres. It was colder than expected, but as long as I could keep moving I was warm enough in just my Power Stretch trousers, with a breathable top and my down jacket. The others preferred to wear their down clothing all the time.
Looking ahead, the length of the ridge seemed almost inconceivable. The Sherpas realised now that what I had told them was true, although they still thought we could knock it off in six days. We were enjoying the exposed ridge, but the snow was now deep and unconsolidated. It was exhausting work. We arrived at steeper ground, exposed and technical. Nuru was in front again and was forced out on to a very steep mixed wall of rock and snow. As he attempted to wade across past a steep rock gendarme, his footsteps in the unreliable snow gave way under him. He fell and accelerated down the slope. I shouted to Zarok to watch the rope but he was too close to Nuru and there was lots of slack between them. The rope continued to run out as Nuru fell and I wondered if Zarok would be catapulted out of his footsteps when it finally came tight.
Startled into action, Zarok got a grip of the rope and Nuru finally stopped. I looked at the line of his fall; it was clear of any rocks so it was unlikely that he would be badly injured. Unless there was some obstruction hidden below the surface of the snow, I thought he’d probably be fine. Even so, it would have been easy to catch a crampon point on a patch of ice and twist an ankle or knee. Half buried in snow, Nuru stood up, shook himself down and looked around. His movements seemed clumsy and slow. At first I thought he had hurt himself, but it soon became obvious that the weight of his rucksack and the soft unconsolidated snow were making things difficult for him. He was fine.
Zarok held the rope tight and Nuru tried to climb up, but it was hopeless in the deep snow. We moved towards him and eventually climbed down to help. Having regrouped, we looked around. We had been forced on to very steep and avalanche-prone ground and so traversed to a rock wall where I found a tiny loop of old accessory cord threaded into a crack. It was a sure sign that one of the other teams had come this way. I looked up; they had probably abseiled from the steeper gendarmes of the knife-edge ridge above and then had most likely continued abseiling from this thread into the couloir below.
My first thought was to do the same and abseil lower. After that we could move around the stubby rock spurs below. It looked straight-forward enough, but I could see that the area was filled with unconsolidated snow. So while it looked the easiest line, I decided to traverse and not risk it. Rangdu searched my eyes for direction and I gestured back towards the knife-edge ridge. Even though the climbing was
technical and exposed, sticking to the rock would minimise the avalanche risk, avoid height loss and keep us as close to the ridge as reasonably possible.
Progress was necessarily quite slow and as darkness came we realised we were not going to reach a comfortable bivouac site. I made the call to stop when we came to a small ledge with bivvy potential. By now it was almost dark; this was safest and best, I told myself. I knew a bad night out at this stage would really weaken us and I was incredibly concerned. I sensed this could be the unfortunate event that might really tire us out. From our earliest planning, this was always my main concern. If we became exhausted early on, how would we ever keep going just to reach the Mazeno Gap?
Looking ahead was difficult – the view was obscured by steep rock and various small pinnacles, all shrouded with deep unconsolidated snow. We got some pegs into a crack and fixed a tensioned rope between them. Once we were all clipped in to that, it felt a bit safer. I started to hack at the rock ledge and some of the loose stuff came off. Rangdu, Cathy and I rolled a big boulder out of the way and made enough room to half-erect one of the bivvy tents. Rick was working away at the other end of the ledge in a letterbox-type feature. He managed to excavate a shelter from the snow and rock that was shaped like a coffin for two corpses.
Between these two platforms there was a flattish ledge and with further digging, like a dentist hacking at an old filling, we levered out some loose rotten rock and expanded the platform. It wasn’t quite wide enough to pitch a tent but was big enough for two people to bivvy side by side. I urged everyone – quite unnecessarily – to make themselves as comfortable as possible. All seemed happy with the places they had chosen; we all knew it was far from ideal but we would cope.
I gingerly climbed away from the safety line, filled a bag with snow and then moved into the precariously pitched bivvy tent. The drop below our campsite was very steep; anything falling would go straight down to the Diamir glacier thousands of metres below. Cathy was inside not feeling very well but she was positive and chatty. We were all a bit shaken having seen Nuru fall, and the tricky climbing afterwards with heavy rucksacks hadn’t helped.
The worry of finding a suitable space to spend the night had preyed on my mind. I was the leader and our plans seemed to be falling into disarray. I appreciated being inside the tent and out of the freezing temperatures; for the others, I knew, it would be a cold night. Inside the tent, Cathy and I would benefit a little from the heat of our very efficient stove. Most of the energy would go into the pan, but some would escape into our confined space. The other four would not have this luxury.
Through the tent flap I could see Rick and Rangdu’s feet wrapped in sleeping bags, and tent fabric sticking out of the bottom of their rock and snow shelter. Nuru and Zarok were inside their sleeping bags and inside their bivvy tent without the poles, using it as a big survival bag. Rangdu told Rick the next day that he had never had to cope with a forced bivvy in the high mountains before; he had worked on high-altitude commercial expeditions where camping was planned, with good tents pitched on carefully selected camping spots and with the best possible food and lots of cooking gas to melt snow and quench their high-altitude thirsts.
By now all of us had our stoves going and were melting water, so that was a positive. I closed the zip of the tent and snuggled into my sleeping bag. The stoves burned late into the night and then fell silent as we finally tried to sleep. Mountain Equipment had given us all sleeping bags with Gore-Tex outers, so that was a plus. They wouldn’t get damp, no matter where we slept. Equipment had changed since my first forays in the Alps: fabrics were lighter and more protective; insulation was lighter and warmer; stoves were much more efficient and yet they too were lighter. For years I’ve passed on design suggestions to Mountain Equipment, who have supported me with gear for much of my career. One of the reasons such huge undertakings in the Himalaya are now becoming possible is because of design expertise and rapid improvements in outdoor equipment materials and technologies. Climbing hard for ten days at extreme altitude in alpine-style was only conceivable because of such developments.
Cathy rustled beside me, jarring me awake a few times. At one point she vomited and I grew concerned for her; what if the melted snow was contaminated in some way?
Years ago Cathy and I had climbed Lhotse together. I had been curious enough to want to reach the summit of Lhotse West before going on to the main summit. I was soloing, although in reality climbing alone was more accurate. Nowadays in the Western Cwm you can’t really solo because there are literally hundreds of people trying to climb Mount Everest. I was the first to try Lhotse that season and once I left the main track it was much harder going, breaking trail by myself. I had tried to get high on Lhotse but the snow was so deep that I turned back a few hundred metres above the ‘Turtle’, an exposed rock that forms a small island in the surrounding snow.
I was quite disappointed by this failure and was feeling a bit dejected; I had been hanging about the Western Cwm for a while and felt I was getting nowhere. On the way down I met Cathy. While we had met before we had never climbed together. During this unexpected meeting high in the Western Cwm, I told her how disappointed I was, explaining that the snow was deep and there was no way I could break trail all by myself up the steep couloir to the summit. I told her I was thinking of abandoning my climb. She told me she was climbing with Pemba Tengin Sherpa and I could team up with them if I wished. I had met Pemba several times before, so I was delighted at Cathy’s suggestion.
I was out in front breaking trail at the top of the couloir, when I decided on a whim that I would traverse out to the right and check out the summit there rather than turn left to the top of Lhotse’s official main summit. The reason I suppose arose from a small article in a climbing magazine suggesting that Lhotse’s west summit was actually higher. Some accompanying photos taken from various angles showed that this might well be the case. So, I climbed up some steep loose rock, which was quite awkward, and looking back down I saw Cathy following me. I offered to throw down a rope. She tied on and continued up. Some of the sections were loose and awkward so I was pleased to be roped up.
Pemba decided not to bother and instead headed up to Lhotse’s main summit, which turned out to be a wise move. I continued up the rock and Cathy watched the ropes. Not long afterwards we came to a cairn with some very old prayer flags wrapped around it and I climbed on to the exposed ridge. Even as a climber, used to such places, I felt precariously balanced. Cathy just stood on the ridge, telling me that she was not moving from that lonely and unfriendly spot.
I asked Cathy to watch my ropes and, with lots of slack, scrambled and climbed along the crest and came back on to a pinnacle. We took some photos but it was misty and unpleasant. On the summit I lay on my tummy and looked over the south face of Lhotse and thought: ‘Holy hell, that’s wild and steep.’ I wondered if Tomo Česen really had climbed it or if the story of him making it all up was accurate. I thought: ‘If he really did this then he must have wings on his ankles.’ I thought also of Jerzy Kukuczka, the second man after Reinhold Messner to climb the fourteen 8,000-metre peaks. Jerzy was climbing a fixed rope just six-millimetres thick on this face at 8,200 metres, not far from where I was now, when it broke and he fell to his death. Kukuczka was one of my great heroes. Unlike Messner, he had come from a poor country and had to hustle his way to the big mountains, coming up with clever schemes to smuggle goods to pay for it all. There was no doubt in my mind that Jerzy Kukuczka was outstanding.
I climbed back to Cathy and put the rope around some sound rock so we could abseil back to easy ground. By now Pemba was back from the main summit. It hadn’t taken him long. The mist had closed in and the wind was howling. He and Cathy spoke while I coiled the rope and then Cathy shouted over the noise of the wind that they were going down. As the weather was deteriorating I thought I had better go down too. The main summit would have been cool and I was sure I’d be back. I wanted to spy out a
route to Lhotse Middle, another neighbouring summit that was said to be the highest unclimbed point in the world. Mal Duff and I had looked at it many years before, another obsession just like the Mazeno.
I have no explanation for why I am drawn to climb new things, except that it’s fun. Girlfriends and journalists who try to peer inside my empty head tell me it’s ego, or competition with other men. The boring truth is that I just like exploring. As a kid I was always rolling big stones over to find out what insects lay beneath. If my dad gave me his pen, within seconds I would have taken it apart to see how it worked, usually dropping vital parts on the floor. I’d usually end up with a smacked backside for my curiosity.
Cathy and I became good friends after Lhotse, and that’s why she was here now, vomiting and rustling in her sleep on a tiny ledge part way along the Mazeno Ridge. I knew that she was strong, even though she hadn’t expected to get all the way on the Mazeno. But this forced bivouac was a serious setback and I hoped she’d get through it.
In the morning we were alive and still in reasonable shape. There were no frozen body parts and we all busily melted snow, but our situation was uncomfortable and we all wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. Once we traversed and climbed the rock walls ahead we were bound to find a better place to rest. We had a quick drink and something to eat and packed up.
The climbing turned out to be quite awkward, up steep rock walls with ledges covered in soft, light snow that complicated the climbing further. After several hours we came to a small but sheltered col where a cold wind was blowing mist across the mountain tops. We decided to put up the tents and get the stoves on to melt snow. It had been a short day but everyone was tired – we could have pushed on, but none of us knew what lay ahead or whether we’d find a better place to camp. The decision was an obvious one.
