Unlike some climbing bureaucrats he has always remained very much a climber, going on lightweight exploratory climbing trips each year with his wife and climbing partner, Julie-Ann Clyma. They had undertaken two expeditions in the Garhwal area, climbing the eastern summit of Nanda Devi in 1994 and the following year making an attempt on Trisuli West, as well as a couple of first ascents of peaks at the head of the West Bagini Glacier. A glimpse of the formidable North Face of Changabang was enough to determine them to attempt it. Getting permission and then weaving his way through the barriers built by Indian bureaucracy was a major challenge, but Roger Payne persevered and achieved what had seemed the impossible.
In contrast the approach to the mountain was easy – just two days from Delhi to the roadhead and an easy two-day walk up the Bagini Glacier to establish Base Camp at 4,000 metres. The face was still out of sight some eight kilometres away but it dominated the head of the glacier, a huge sweep of featureless granite to which clung improbable ice formations. A series of ice-filled gangways and grooves crept up the left-hand side of the wall, converging on an icefield about halfway up the face. From there just one line of weakness reached up towards the crest of the North-East Ridge of Changabang, the route by which we finished our climb in 1974.
Roger had invited two other climbers. Brendan Murphy, although short and wiry, made up for any lack of size with a quiet yet intense determination. He was a scientist who successfully managed to juggle climbing with an academic career. Andy Perkins was more ebullient and worked for Troll, manufacturers of climbing harnesses. Murphy and Perkins had made a very impressive attempt on a formidable unclimbed peak called Cerro Kishtwar (6,200 metres) in the Indian Himalaya, spending seventeen days on it using capsule tactics. The pair had climbed the steepest section but had run out of food, fuel and energy and were forced to retreat only 150 metres from the summit. Roger thought that a similar approach would be necessary on the North Face of Changabang, the two pairs taking turns with one out in front pushing out the route, while the other came up behind, ferrying all the gear.
They started with a couple of forays to acclimatise and get some good views of the face, reaching both the Bagini Col and the col immediately below the West Face of Changabang where Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker had had their camp. The route they chose followed a groove line leading to the right side of the conspicuous icefield. It took them three days of hard ice climbing with two uncomfortable sitting bivouacs to the side of the gully. Once the sun hit the face, snow and ice began melting and the base of the gully became a torrent, soaking the climbers. Their third bivouac was on the edge of the icefield but it took several hours of exhausting work to hack out two narrow ledges for their tents. At least now they could lie down.
They were all tired after three hard days’ climbing and two appalling bivouacs. As it that wasn’t enough, Andy Perkins went down that night with violent gastroenteritis, a nightmare halfway up a Himalayan face. They had already decided to take a rest the following day. They needed it and hoped that this would give Andy time to recover. But next day Andy was too weak to move and the weather had deteriorated, so they took another rest day.
They were running out of time and food, since they reckoned it was going to take at least three days to reach the crest of the ridge. Andy was still desperately weak, but very determined, so they decided to keep going. They now had to cross the steep icefield to the beginning of the line of weakness at the other side. Their capsule approach, in effect having a line of fixed rope, was now an encumbrance rather than a help. Traversing on fixed rope with heavy loads across ice is a slow exhausting business.
Roger took the lead, running out three pitches across the bottom of the icefield. Once they had removed the ropes behind them a retreat was going to be difficult since they would either have to traverse back the way they had come or launch themselves down unknown ground. In addition, the icefield was swept by spindrift avalanches whenever it snowed. Andy was getting progressively weaker and the weather was showing signs of breaking. They discussed what to do and there seemed no alternative but for all of them to retreat. That night they got back to the site of their camp at the start of the icefield. It snowed all night and was still snowing in the morning. They abseiled to safety in a torrent of spindrift avalanches. They had been defeated by Andy’s illness and the weather but even as they walked out of Base Camp Roger was already planning another attempt. The reputation of the face was becoming known and other talented climbers were looking at it hungrily.
One of these was Mick Fowler, the most successful innovative mountaineer of the last twenty years. He has never climbed an 8,000-metre peak, unwilling to take the length of time off work, but most years he goes to the farther ranges of the earth to snatch steep and challenging climbs on peaks of around 6,000 to 7,000 metres. Mick was born and brought up in north-east London by his father George, who did a bit of climbing and was a keen hill walker, taking young Mick with him on his adventures in a three-wheeled Reliant Robin. Mick, like me, started his career on Kentish sandstone, was a natural climber and was attracted by tottering rock walls which others had ignored or been afraid to tackle. He quickly established a reputation for bold new routes, particularly on the sea cliffs of Devon and Cornwall. He also revelled in transporting ice climbing techniques to the crumbling chalk cliffs of the south-east coastline.
While many climbers of his ability found ways of making a living around their climbing he pursued a more conventional course, ending up as a tax inspector, ascending the upper reaches of the Inland Revenue, despite the lack of a university degree and taking every possible day’s leave, and a few extra, to go climbing. In the 1980s he was the driving force in a group of London climbers who took off most winter weekends for the tar north of Scotland. They drove through the Friday night, snatched an unclimbed ice line in the far north-west of Scotland from under the eyes of the local Scottish experts, and then drove back on the Sunday night to be at work in body, if not in mind, first thing on Monday morning.
A British apprenticeship was accompanied by hard climbs in the Alps and then further afield – Taulliraju South Pillar in Peru and the superb Golden Pillar of Spantik in Hunza Pakistan. Taking a different line from Brendan Murphy and Andy Perkins, he reached the top of Cerro Kishtwar with Stephen Sustad in 1993 and made an impressive ascent of the North-East Buttress of Taweche in 1995 – all first ascents – an extraordinarily high success rate. Marriage and fatherhood had not diminished his appetite for hard climbing.
He was already thinking of trying the North Face of Changabang during the first attempt – just in case they didn’t get tip-and had invited Steve Sustad to join him. Steve came from Seattle but had settled in Britain in the mid-1980s, making a living as a joiner and spending as much time as possible climbing. Easy to get on with, yet totally focused on his climbing, he had joined Doug Scott and the French climber Jean Afanassieff in an attempt to traverse Makalu, fifth highest mountain in the world, very nearly getting to the top before making a desperate retreat. He was making a solo attempt on the huge South Face of Aconcagua, when the snow hole in which he was sheltering was avalanched and swept away most of his gear, yet somehow he managed to make a hazardous descent. He was just hooked on climbing, but he had no desire to write or lecture about it. For him it was a very personal experience.
As well as these potential candidates Roger Payne had his original team to think about for his second attempt on the North Face. Andy Perkins, who was training to be a guide, felt he couldn’t get away, but Brendan Murphy was keen and had been talking to Andy Cave, another academic who had started his working life as a coal miner and was now completing his dissertation for a PhD on ‘The Linguistic Heritage of the Yorkshire Coal fields’. It became a team of six for their attempt in the early summer of 1997.
Mick Fowler was mildly bemused by the sheer efficiency of the organisation: ‘I had not been on a Payne-Clyma expedition before. Previous jaunts in the big mountains always had been on the basis of a sort of com
munal responsibility, vaguely steered by one person. Here, though, Roger and Julie-Ann were clearly in complete control. Prior to leaving for India, I had wondered about this. Roger and I met on the crag, only to discover that we hadn’t enough equipment to climb ... but now, organised computer lists of things to do in Delhi appeared with alarming efficiency in fact, in retrospect, things had been different from usual the moment we arrived at the airport. Instead of the chaos and confusion followed by the cheapest possible transport to Delhi, we were met by a luxury minibus complete with curtains, which whisked us away to comfortable pre-booked accommodation. A whole new experience for me.’
And so it went on. Roger steered them adroitly through bureaucratic pitfalls, ensured that their porters were adequately equipped and guided his flock to Base Camp with the minimum of fuss or inconvenience. They had already agreed that they would operate as three independent self-contained pairs. The problem, however, was that although there was a choice of routes to the icefield where they had turned back the previous year, beyond it there seemed only one reasonable line. In addition, the face had a very different look. In 1996 there was plenty of snow ice, easily identified by its creamy white colour, but this year the icefields were a dirty grey-green, signs that the climbing was going to be very much harder.
First they had to acclimatise. They set out to establish an Advance Base and make a recce over the Bagini Pass, intending to leave a dump of food on the Rhamani Glacier which they could pick up on their return if they made their descent down the other side of the mountain. But it was not to be; the snow was soft and deep, it was ferociously hot on the glacier and they camped well short of the Bagini Pass. For someone who has specialised in cramming Himalayan climbs into limited leave periods, Mick has the disadvantage of being slow to acclimatise. Feeling nauseous and lethargic, he and Steve Sustad took it very gently, spending a couple of nights on the glacier, before making a half-hearted attempt on Dunagiri Parbat, having two more nights at around 5,500 metres. They then decided they had had enough of acclimatisation and hoped that by returning to Base Camp, they would be at the head of the queue and get on to Changabang first. They had been beaten to it, however, by Brendan Murphy and Andy Cave, who had also been on Dunagiri Parbat, had acclimatised faster and were bent on being out in front on the main objective. They had both selected the same line. Mick wryly commented, ‘I made a mental note to think about ensuring that I am surrounded by slow and unhealthy companions in the future.’ Roger and Julie-Ann were still acclimatising and had chosen a line to the left of the one selected by the others.
Andy and Brendan were ready to set out next morning. Quite apart from the satisfaction of route finding, there is a practical advantage in being first – there is nobody above you to dislodge rocks or lumps of ice. Because of this hazard, Mick and Steve opted to delay their departure for two days. Andy and Brendan set out for the foot of the climb at two in the morning on 21 May, each weighed down by twenty kilograms of climbing hardware, bivouac equipment and food and fuel for about eight days. They had two 60-metre ropes and a lightweight tent which they hoped to pitch on ledges hacked out of the snow arêtes they could see clinging to the face. They had chosen a route well to the left of the one used the previous year to take them, by a series of ice-filled grooves, to the left-hand end of the icefield. This would cut out the awkward traverse, giving them a much more direct line. They had reckoned it would take three hours to the foot of the real climbing. As so often happens they had underestimated the difficulties. It took them thirteen hours to reach what they had thought was the start. What had looked like an easy plod turned out to be soft snow lying on very hard ice. By the time they reached the start of the ‘real’ climbing they had broken two of their six ice screws, were tired from humping heavy loads and it had started to snow.
Brendan set off up an ill-defined, ice-smeared shield of rock, trying to avoid two cataracts of spindrift thundering down chutes on either side. Progress was now even slower and more precarious. By the time he reached the top of the pitch it was nearly dark but there was no sign of a bivouac ledge. Andy had to lead through the left-hand chute exposed to the full torrent of spindrift which penetrated his clothing, filled his gloves and got behind his goggles, nearly blinding him. The ice was steep and it was difficult to place any protection with their dwindling stock of ice screws. Axe and crampon placements were tenuous and he was encumbered by the weight and bulk of his sack. The climb had barely begun and they were already pushed to the limit.
He reached easier ground, searched around in the twilight, fingers numb with cold, to find a narrow ledge for a bivouac. It was dark by the time Brendan reached him and they had to go through the laborious process of clearing the ledge, unpacking sacks and preparing for the night. There was no room to erect the tent, so they just got into their sleeping bags, tied into their anchor point in case they fell out of bed. Shivering and parched with thirst, they were longing for a warm drink. Their stove was a Heath Robinson affair. Andy had been unable to find his usual Markill Stormy hanging bivouac stove before leaving England, so they had made one with bits of wire that they could suspend from a loop in the top of the tent. They called it Metal Mickey and it worked amazingly well – better than the production model which tends to starve the burner flame of the meagre amounts of oxygen present in the confines of a tent sealed from spindrift and the elements.
The following morning dawned fine but bitterly cold. They brewed up, delayed getting out of warm sleeping bags as long as they could, and then faced the slow painful process of forcing on cold plastic boots, pushing sleeping bags rimed with frost into stuff sacks, all the time terrified of dropping something. It was well after dawn when they were ready to set out on the first pitch. The climbing remained steep and demanding. Progress was slow and once again it started snowing shortly after midday, so their line of ascent became a cataract of rushing spindrift. On the third day, after a testing start, the difficulty relented slightly and they made better headway, reaching the left-hand end of the first icefield. This was like ‘a giant skating rink, tilted at 55°, with an impenetrable skin of steel that shattered and splintered until the sun softened it up’.
They were now down to three working ice screws. The ice was so tough that even for belays they could only sink a screw about halfway in, tying it off with a length of tape close to the surface, and backing this up by tying into the ice tools, whose picks penetrated little more than a centimetre. They couldn’t afford a fall.
This day took them to the foot of the big icefield which Brendan and the others had reached the previous year. It was an important landmark. They made good progress up one side to its top where they had the choice of very steep ice on the right or mixed rock and ice to the left. They chose the former despite their shortage of ice screws. Brendan led the first pitch and then it was Andy’s turn. The afternoon storm had started and quickly rose to a more intense pitch than on either of the previous days. Spindrift was pouring down the face, streaming across and even upwards as it blasted around them. The rumble of thunder and crash of wind over the summit merged in a roar of sound.
Brendan was hanging from a tied-off ice screw, which left Andy with only two – one for a runner and one that he would have to keep for a belay. The snow pelted him with ever increasing force as he teetered up, crampon points and the picks of his ice tools barely penetrating the steely surface. Twenty metres above the belay he tried to place a screw. It is not easy on steep ground at the best of times, but with avalanches of snow pouring over him, the weight of his sack pulling him backwards and the blunted bent teeth of the screw failing to bite in the ice, it was desperate. He was tiring rapidly, clipped into one of his ice tools and hung on it so that he could use both hands. It held for a few seconds and then ripped out. He toppled backwards, his crampon points flicked out and he fell on to his remaining tool, which miraculously held. Panting with exhaustion and fear, blinded by clouds of snow blown upwards into his face, hampered by the weight of the sack, he managed
to kick in the front point of his crampons and stand up in balance once more. At last he managed to engage the teeth of the screw and keep turning until it was embedded halfway in. He tied in thankfully and brought Brendan up through the deluge of snow to join him. Brendan, usually the most stoic of climbers, was retching with the pain of frozen fingers and toes. The spindrift had penetrated everywhere, into gloves, down their necks, behind their goggles.
Brendan hardly paused at the stance, but just battled on up a brittle, ice-filled corner. At least movement created some warmth, but Andy, now belaying, was quickly frozen to the bone, shivering uncontrollably as he tried to keep himself warm by flapping his arms. Progress was desperately slow and it was getting dark. Andy climbed up to Brendan on a tight rope, screaming that he had to have something to eat. As he arrived, Brendan thrust him a food bar, which Andy bit into with the wrapper still on.
There was no sign of a bivvy ledge, so it was Andy’s turn to press on. The angle eased slightly and he was able to move faster, traversing to a snow arête which would at last provide a good bivvy site. He had already used all the functioning ice screws and spent twenty minutes pounding one of the broken ones into the ice, tied off on it and his ice tools and shouted down into the darkness for Brendan to come up, warning him, ‘The belays are shit.’
The rope pulled in all too slowly and jerkily, and then he felt a sudden violent heave. He was pulled straight off his stance. For an agonising moment he wondered whether the belays would hold. They did. He could just discern a blob of light through the driving snow and darkness as Brendan pendulumed twenty metres across the slope to a point where he was suspended directly below Andy’s belay. Fortunately he was able to climb straight up to rejoin his climbing partner. The only comment he made was, ‘That was lucky, I could have lost my torch’.
Quest for Adventure Page 31
