Before going to the South Face of Annapurna, I can remember being invited by a sports medicine research unit to submit my own group of climbers to the same series of tests for fitness as those which had recently been given to the England football team. I found an excuse for declining the invitation, knowing that we should almost certainly compare unfavourably and, if we failed to climb the South Face, could then be pilloried as unfit. As it happened Don Whillans, who had a substantial beer gut before the expedition, got himself fit during the climb and reached the top. Messner could have taken such a test with impunity and, I suspect, would have compared in lung capacity and fitness with any Olympic athlete. His pulse rate was down to forty-two beats per minute and he could gain a thousand metres of height on his training runs in under an hour. The Rupal Face was to prove a crucible in which to test his fitness and drive.
Herrligkoffer himself was an organiser rather than a climber and he led from Base Camp, a recipe for dissension on many of his expeditions. This time the dissension focused on Messner, who wanted to make a solo bid for the summit. The story around this is still clouded in confusion and ended in court actions.
Just three climbers were at the top camp; Reinhold Messner, his younger brother, Günther, and a German climber and film cameraman, Gerhard Baur. They had no radio, so the previous day on the radio at the camp below Messner had made an agreement with Herrligkoffer that if the weather report were good, the three at the top camp would fix ropes in place for a summit bid to be made by Felix Kuen, Peter Scholz, Günther and himself. But in view of the lateness of the season and the approaching monsoon, if the weather report were bad, Messner should make a fast solo bid for the summit. The signal was to be a rocket fired from Base Camp – a red one for a bad weather report and a blue one for good.
It was 26 June and that evening at Base Camp the weather forecast was good for the next few days. It should have been a blue rocket. This was to become the subject of a violent controversy, for a red rocket was fired. Apparently it had a blue marking on its cover and Herrligkoffer, assuming that all the remaining rockets were also red, did not attempt to fire any others for fear of confusing the issue still further.
To Messner it seemed quite clear. He could see the great cloudbank in the distance; the rocket signal indicated that it was rolling up towards Nanga Parbat, but his eyes and experience told him that he just had time to reach the summit and get back. It was a challenge that inevitably part of him welcomed, daunting, huge but something that he had confronted before, on the steep walls of the Alps. He set out at three in the morning, climbed swiftly and steadily upwards, into the Merkl Gully. After a mistake in route finding he was forced to drop back and take another line and then, just after dawn, he saw a dark shape coming up from below. It was Günther, who had been unable to resist the temptation to follow his brother and share in the summit. He had made extraordinary progress, catching Reinhold up in only four hours of climbing over a distance that was to take Kuen and Scholz a full ten the following day.
The two brothers climbed on together. It had been a bitterly cold night when they started, but now the enervating glare of the sun was their main problem. Making steady, continuous progress, they reached a shoulder on the ridge, and suddenly Reinhold realised that success was within their grasp. He could see across the Silver Saddle, the long weary way that Hermann Buhl had crossed on the 1953 first ascent. The summit pyramid was just a short way beyond; nothing could stop them. And then in the late afternoon they were at the top, relishing the momentary euphoria of slopes dropping away on every side, of endless peaks around them in the warm yellow light of the late afternoon sun, but then came the nagging awareness of their position. They had to find a way down.
On the way up fear becomes anaesthetised by the summit goal, the focal point of all one’s effort and desire, but once attained, reality floods back and for the Messners, the reality was daunting. They had no rope, no bivouac gear except a thin silver foil space blanket, no stove for melting snow and practically no food. Reinhold had been confident he could return by the way he had come, but Günther was an unforeseen circumstance. Younger, less experienced than his brother, he had stretched himself to his limit on the way up and knew with a horrible certainty that he could not climb back down those desperately steep walls of the Merkl Gully. The Diamir Face swept away to the west, lit by the setting sun, seemingly easy-angled, inviting, less daunting than the steepness of the wall from which they had only just escaped. But it was completely unknown ground. Kinshofer, Löw and Mannhardt’s route had been well to the right of the apparently easy summit slopes the brothers could see below them. But what of the route lower down? Messner had examined photographs and knew all too well how complex were the icefalls through which they would have to find their way. And so he compromised; there was only an hour or so before it was dark and a bivouac was inevitable. They could at least lose some height by climbing down to the col below the summit pyramid. From there it might still be possible to go down the Rupal Face and it was just feasible that someone might come to help them. It took them a long time to reach the col. Günther was desperately tired, slumping into the snow every few metres to get some rest.
Huddled into a tiny rock niche on the col, wrapped in the space blanket, they shivered through the night, exposed to the icy wind blasting through the gap. In the chill dawn Reinhold scrambled over to the ridge of the col; he could see where they had left the Merkl Crack to reach the shoulder about a hundred metres below. There was no way they could climb down without a rope. If only someone would come up from below. He shouted for help, but his voice was snatched away by the wind. For two hours he called, to no avail. And then, far below, he saw two figures slowly working their way up towards them. A great wave of relief – they were saved.
The two figures were a hundred metres below when Reinhold recognised Felix Kuen and Peter Scholz. He shouted down to them and Felix looked up, but their words were torn away by the winds. Messner took it for granted that they would climb up the steep and broken rocks leading to the col but saw that Kuen had turned away and was following their track leading to the shoulder. He shouted that it was much quicker for them to climb up to the col, that all he and Günther needed was the use of the rope to get down to where Kuen was now climbing, that Kuen and Scholz could then go on to the summit. But Kuen did not appear to understand or hear properly, merely shouting, ‘Everything OK?’
Messner thought he was simply asking if they were all right, so said yes. After all, they only needed a rope. So he was stunned when Kuen turned away and continued up the shoulder. When Kuen looked back Messner pointed to the west, the Diamir side, to which he now seemed irrevocably committed. In Felix Kuen’s account, there is no mention of the wind or any difficulty in communication:
‘The Merkl Gully continued vertically above. We left the gully by the right and crossed towards the South Shoulder. The traverse led over a snow slope of about fifty degrees in easy terrain, where I was able to carry on a conversation with Reinhold Messner. He stood on the ridge where the top of the Merkl Crack met the South Shoulder, some seventy to a hundred metres distant. It was ten o’clock and he spoke of the possible routes to the summit, as well as the time they would require. Reinhold reported that he and his brother were on the summit at 17.00 hours the previous day and that they were now about to descend in a westerly direction [Diamir side!]. To my question whether everything was OK, he replied “yes”. A great weight lifted from my heart for I had feared he was calling for help. As yet I had no presentiment that the tragedy had already begun the day before when Günther had followed in the wake of his climbing brother. From that moment the two were without a rope, without bivouac sack, without sufficient survival equipment. Reinhold was prepared only for a solo climb with an NRC blanket and some food in his pocket. And now he charged me to tell the others he was going down the reverse side of the mountain and would soon be back at Base. I strongly advised him against this, whereupon he broke off with a “Cheerio” and d
isappeared over the ridge.’
The two versions have the bare skeleton in common but the interpretation of the detail is very different. It certainly seems unlikely that Reinhold Messner would have chosen to go down the Diamir Face, as Kuen implies. Although an extraordinarily bold and innovative climber, he has always displayed very sound judgement and practical common sense. Heading down an unknown face on the other side of the mountain, with no gear, food or support, accompanied by his exhausted brother, seems completely out of character.
He was in a desperate state, he stumbled and fell a few times, tearing his hand on his crampons, and eventually leant on his ice axe and cried. It was not until the exhausted Günther rallied his brother that Messner took charge of the situation.
Reinhold knew that Günther would never survive another night at this altitude and was not capable of climbing back up to join Kuen and Scholz. He was desperate to get down those easy-looking slopes on the western side and so, at about eleven o’clock in the morning, they set out down the sunlit snow of the Diamir Face.
Reinhold went first, trying to pick out the best route, never easy from above, for it is impossible to see the ice cliffs until you are right on top of them. And then the afternoon clouds crept up the slope, engulfed them in their tide, flattening out all perspective as they groped their way down. Suddenly the mist parted, revealing a dark hole plunging into the depths of the Diamir Valley far below. They came to a barrier of ice, steep, sheer, impossible. Skirting it, Reinhold found a chute of smooth, polished ice at an angle of around fifty degrees. It was just possible. Facing in, kicking in with the front points of their crampons, penetrating only a few millimetres, they teetered down the hard, smooth surface.
Reinhold felt the presence of a third person with uncanny clarity, just outside his field of vision, keeping pace with him as he carefully kicked downwards. They climbed on into the dark. A few rocks appeared. They were now on the Mummery Rib. They stopped at last around midnight. Exhausted, chilled, desperately thirsty, for they had had nothing to drink for two days, they crouched on a tiny ledge.
They set out before dawn, by the light of the moon. It was ghostly, mysterious with the thin gleam of the snow and the opaque black of the shadows lit by the occasional spark of crampons striking rock. Forcing themselves through the last levels of their exhaustion, they finally realised in the dawn that they had reached the glacier at the bottom of the Diamir Face. They had come through the worst; exhausted as they were, still far from safety, they knew the momentary elation of what they had achieved – of having made the first traverse of Nanga Parbat, the first ascent of the Rupal Face, the first direct descent of the Diamir Face – and of being alive.
In a dream, they wandered on down the glacier. Reinhold out in front picking out the route, Günther coming on behind. The glacier was bare of snow, the crevasses exposed, no longer a threat, and then as the sun rose little rivulets of water began to trickle on every side. Reinhold lay down, drank and drank, then sat basking in the sun as he waited for his brother. He heard voices, saw a horse silhouetted against the sky, cattle grazing, people leaning against a wall. He focused his eyes and the horse turned into a crevasse, the cattle into great blocks of snow, the people into stones.
But there was no sign of Günther. He waited for another hour – still no sign. Increasingly worried, he forced his body back up the glacier, retracing his route, forgetting his exhaustion as he made his frantic search. There were no footprints, for it had been frozen hard as they walked down, but there was the great piled debris of an ice avalanche that had swept down only a short time after he had last seen his brother. Slowly, the realisation sank in that Günther had almost certainly been caught by it and was somewhere underneath thousands of tons of ice. Unable to accept it fully, he continued searching throughout the day, shouting himself hoarse. He slept out on the glacier, searched the next day as well, and only towards evening at last began to admit what had happened. In a daze, almost unconscious, he staggered down the glacier to its end, to spend his fourth night in the open without food or shelter.
The following morning was cold, clear, still and silent, the Diamir Face inscrutably in shadow, the teeth of the Mazeno Ridge just catching the rays of the early morning sun. It was as if there were no one left alive in the entire world. Messner shouted his brother’s name yet again into the silence. There was not even an echo. He left his gaiters on top of a rock in case a helicopter was sent in to search for him, and started down the long, empty valley. His progress was desperately slow. Accompanied by spectres, he staggered from boulder to boulder, spending three more nights in the open before stumbling upon the high grazing camp of local villagers. He was emaciated, burnt by the sun, with torn, frostbitten feet.
For Messner it had been an armageddon that I suspect very few people would have survived, let alone have gone on from to even greater challenges. There were not only his injuries – the amputation of one big toe and the loss of parts of all the others except the two little ones, but also the emotional wounds. As if that were not enough, a series of lawsuits were brought by Herrligkoffer against Messner for breach of contract and libel. Messner described the impact of his experience in his book, The Big Walls: ‘The Nanga Parbat Odyssey has given me the strength to face any future hazards squarely and accept or reject them, and every single hazardous enterprise I now undertake – whether it is successful or no – is an invisible ingredient of my life, of my fate.’
In every way, 1970 was a year of crisis for Messner. He was befriended by Baron von Kienlin, a wealthy German aristocrat who had played a minor role on the Rupal Face expedition and had taken Messner’s side in the protracted legal wrangling which followed. He also invited the climber to convalesce at his castle in Württemberg. It was during this period that Messner and von Kienlin’s beautiful young wife, Uschi, fell in love. Uschi left her husband and three children to be with Messner. They were married in 1971 and together returned to the Diamir Valley to search for the body of Günther. They did not succeed.
In 1972 Messner climbed Manaslu (8,156 metres), his second 8,000-metre peak, as a member of an Austrian expedition led by Wolfgang Nairz, but once again disaster struck his climbing companion. Franz Jäger, who was making the summit bid with Messner, turned back, while Messner pressed on to the top alone. On his way back down from the summit, Messner was caught in a violent snowstorm, and when he reached the top camp was appalled to learn Jäger had not arrived. Two other climbers at Camp 4 immediately set out in search of him and one of these, Andi Schlick, also lost his life. Inevitably there was some controversy, though there was no way Messner could have foreseen the events that followed his decision to go for the summit alone.
Around this time Messner began to dream of the possibility of climbing an 8,000-metre peak solo, and the Diamir Face seemed to act as a magnet. He returned in 1973 to make his first solo attempt, described in his book, Solo Nanga Parbat, camping below the rocky spur of the Mummery Rib, quite close to where he had bivouacked in despair after his brother’s death. But his heart was not in it. Before leaving his little Base Camp, he had confessed in his diary:
‘Long after midnight and I cannot sleep. The few mouthfuls of food I managed to force down last evening weigh heavily on my stomach. I think of Uschi and sob violently. This oppressive feeling that robs me of hunger and thirst won’t go away. It is not my Grand Plan that prevents me from eating and sleeping, it is this separation from my wife. I am not mentally ready to see such a big undertaking through to the end.’
Even so, he had set out and, that morning of 3 June, he packed his sack, put on his boots and started climbing the lower slopes of the Face in the ghostly light of the dawn. He did not take the decision to turn back consciously. He simply found himself heading back down the slope. The jump into the unknown was too big and, equally important perhaps, his own ties on the ground were too strong.
No sooner did he get back to Funes than he began to dream and plan for other climbs; it is a syndrome which I, an
d almost every other addicted climber, have been through, the longing to be home when on the mountain, and the restless plans within a few days of getting back.
In 1975 Messner went on two expeditions which provided extreme examples of two different climbing philosophies. In the spring he joined a siege-style Italian expedition to the huge South Face of Lhotse, one of the most complex and dangerous faces in the Himalaya. The party was led by Riccardo Cassin, one of the great climbers of the pre-war era. Messner liked and respected Cassin and, on the whole, got on well with his fellow team members. Though he had done much of the climbing out in front, he found this type of expedition uncongenial, commenting in his book, The Challenge:
‘On the one side it offers greater safety, backup, the possibility of substitution in case of illness, comradeship. On the other hand you must offset the restricted mobility, the long discussions and the team spirit, which under some circumstances can strangle all progress. With careful preparation and the necessary experience, a two-man expedition would not only be quicker and cheaper, but also safer. On any quite large mountain everyone must be self-reliant. It is much easier to find a single well-matched partner than ten or fifteen.’
Cassin’s team did not succeed and already Messner was planning a very different kind of expedition, a two-man attempt on Hidden Peak (Gasherbrum I, 8,068 metres) in the Karakoram. No mountain of over 8,000 metres had yielded either to a two-man expedition or, for that matter, to a purely alpine-style attempt. Hermann Buhl’s expedition to Broad Peak had been extremely compact and had not used high-altitude porters, but they had ferried loads up the mountain, establishing their camps in the traditional way.
The evolution of mountaineering is influenced strongly by a conflict between basic instincts. On the one hand there is the spirit of adventure, the desire to pitch skill and judgement against the unknown, with the spice of risk to sharpen the experience, but on the other hand is the instinct for survival and also a need to increase the chances of success. The siege approach gives a greater chance of success, with its big teams and lines of fixed ropes, and at the same time reduces the psychological commitment, though in some ways the risks are just as great, if in different guises. The climber on a siege-style expedition can become over-complacent, confident in his camps and ropes. But he is going back and forth over potentially dangerous ground many times, and is therefore increasing the chances of being caught by avalanche stone fall or hidden crevasses. A weaker climber can, perhaps, get higher on the mountain than he ever would have done had he started from the bottom without the fragile scaffolding of a siege-style expedition.
Quest for Adventure Page 26
