by Clint Willis
Dougal didn’t know which way to go—but even as his fear arose in him the clouds parted long enough for the climbers to spot their gully. They descended 300 feet to the top of the gully and stopped; perhaps they could spend the night here. Dougal tried to hack out a platform for their tent, but once more the ice was too hard.
Don turned without speaking and walked across to the fixed rope. He set off into the gully and Dougal followed; soon they were piling into the tiny two-man tent at Camp Six. Chris and Ian had already moved in; they had expected Don and Dougal to establish Camp Seven and spend the night there. It was too late for anyone to go down to Camp Five—at any rate, Tom Frost and Mick Burke already occupied the only shelter there.
The four climbers at Camp Six settled in for the night. Chris had never spent a worse one in the mountains. The blowing snow made its way into everything, wetting the sleeping bags so that the climbers huddled in pools of snowmelt. Ian took the worst spot, in a corner. Dougal crouched nearest the entrance. He went outside once to clear snow from the tent so that the shelter wouldn’t collapse. The four men brewed tea; they listened to the wind and they talked.
Chris and Ian decided to abandon their own summit plans. They were very tired; more to the point, Don and Dougal needed their support: there was no one else to do the carry from Camp Five to Camp Six. They began their descent in the morning. Chris felt low and fearful. Ian was better. He was taking his first steps toward home; his real work on the mountain was done. He could begin to look forward to friends and to family and work. He knew that he would carry something away from the mountain—he wondered how he would make use of it.
DON AND DOUGAL stayed put at Camp Six. It was snowing too heavily to climb. They had enough food left for two days. They spent the morning clearing new snow from the tent, and trying to dry their clothes inside the shelter. They kept the stove burning and eventually slept.
The storm continued through the night and into the following day. They rested at camp for a second day, dealing with the accumulations of snow on the tent and dozing off from time to time. Mick and Tom came on the air during the evening radio call and promised to try to carry food up to Camp Six the next morning. Dougal during the night poked his head out of the tent and saw stars—the storm had passed.
He woke Don up early. They left camp at seven o’clock, and reached their high point before midday. They had planned to establish Camp Seven here—but it was early; there seemed no reason to stop, so they picked up the tent they had left here and kept going. They had come to a place where the top of the mountain existed; it was no longer a mere concept. It occurred to them that today they might reach the summit. They gazed up at an ice field that led to a narrow, snow-covered ridge. The ridge in turn led to an 800-foot face, mixed ground. It didn’t look like much, and after that—after that, there was nothing.
They considered for a moment. The weather was unsettled; gusts of wind whipped snow past them, and the sky held some clouds. They might have to bivouac on the ridge if the weather grew worse. They would have the tent—assuming they could manage to pitch it in the wind—but no stove or food or sleeping bags.
They climbed on. They reached the ridge and Dougal unpacked the tent and set it down in the snow. They continued up the ridge, feeling it under their feet, and set off up the final steep section, climbing without anchors. The terrain wasn’t easy; steep patches of ice and sketchy rock slabs. Dougal was surprised to find that he wasn’t suffering terribly from the altitude. He had a crampon that kept coming loose, and he made himself stop climbing and fixed it. He dug out the camera and shot some film of Don moving ahead of him toward the summit ridge; as the camera clicked and whirred, Dougal was aware of their spectacular position—the world, everything but this, gone.
Don continued to climb. The altitude was nothing to him. He climbed away from all that had blocked and stymied him—the pointless clutter of violence and difficulty and shame. He climbed toward snow and sky at 26,000 feet, drawn onward by the immense silent gravity of space. Dougal watched his solitary figure vanish into clouds of blowing snow and briefly reappear to disappear once more, this time on the final ridge.
Dougal followed. The climbing was still difficult. He scraped snow from wobbly rocks and moved deliberately; an ignorant observer might have suspected him of eyeing the ground for seashells or arrowheads. He was in no hurry. The climb was in his grasp, and he had only this time to enjoy the task itself, the unfinished work. He felt a familiar regret rise in him; he fended it off, exasperated. That passed and he came to the ridge and over it and was surprised by the calm; there was no wind on the north side of the peak.
He stared down and across into a world until now hidden. Snow slopes disappeared in cloud, a sea of it a thousand feet below—everything a dove gray, like staring from the bottom of a winterbound lake in, say, Scotland.
The two men barely spoke; they had their oxygen masks on and words were no comfort to them, were obvious lies in this context. Don had already set to work building an anchor for the first rappel. He was at once relieved and angry at the fact that it was done, that there was nothing left to climb. But here he corrected himself: the actual summit was hard to identify on the ridge and the climbers could see a point that looked perhaps 30 feet higher than the ground they occupied. Don finished with his anchor and crossed the snow to the high point. Dougal filmed him, and then followed. They stood together for a moment upon the summit, confused, without ceremony to orient them, and then walked back across to Don’s rappel anchor.
They rappelled 150 feet of steep ground, and then disengaged from the rappel rope to pick their way through rock-strewn snow. This was a dangerous time and each climber moved with great care. Their backs were to the summit now and they kept their eyes down, on their feet. The wind died as they reached the fixed ropes and their hearts began to lift under the weight of their confusion. Don felt tired for the first time.
They reached Camp Six in time for the evening radio call. Don handed the set to Dougal. Chris, snowbound down at Camp Four, wanted to know if they’d managed to leave the tent that morning despite the storm.
Aye, Dougal told him. We’ve just climbed Annapurna.
MICK’S VOICE BROKE in amid the relief and happy chatter from the various camps, where the climbers hunched over their radios. He and Tom were at Camp Five. They wanted to move up to Camp Six for their summit attempt. Chris agreed, but his concern over the first summit team’s prospects had given way to concern—an almost childish anxiety—for the safety of the expedition members. The weather remained unsettled, and the strength had gone out of the team. There was little chance of mounting a serious rescue attempt if something went wrong high on the face. Chris had what he wanted most—the expedition had climbed the route—and now he saw the appalling risks in a new light. There was nothing left to achieve worth even the chance of casualties. He slept poorly that night, and woke resolved to order everyone off the face.
He made his announcement during the morning radio call. Tom Frost came on the air to talk him out of it, and Chris recognized that he couldn’t force anyone to abandon the route. He agreed that Tom and Mick would go for the summit while the rest of the team began to evacuate the mountain.
Chris immediately regretted his decision. The face seemed to grow more threatening by the hour. The impending monsoon warmed the ice walls and towers that threatened many sections of the route. The mountain heaved invisibly, as if brewing some violence. Chris left Camp Four with Ian Clough and Dave Lambert and the three men descended amid the falling snow: it was monsoon snow, heavy and wet. They stopped at Camp Three. Mike Thompson was there. Don and Dougal arrived a few hours later; there were subdued congratulations. The climbers all felt the peak’s menace, as if they had provoked some huge enemy and now found themselves in retreat. There was an element of horror in their growing sense that the mountain was not dead, not mindless or even fully asleep. They felt little pride in their shared achievement; instead they succumbed to an inchoate sham
e, which carried with it a choking fear. Don in particular was afraid and he urged Chris to get everyone off the mountain.
Dougal and Don departed and moved quickly down the route. The BBC crew ventured out onto the glacier to greet and film them. Chris and the others remained at Camp Three to wait for the second summit team.
Mick and Tom meanwhile made their way up to Camp Six. They climbed into the beginnings of a new storm. Tom was moving well, but Mick had gone slowly all day. Tom cooked that evening. The climbers slept for a few hours and woke soon after midnight to brew drinks and make ready to climb. Their preparations took three hours. It was still very cold when they left the tent.
Mick’s feet quickly turned numb. He was very worried about his toes—if nothing else, losing them would interrupt his budding career as a cameraman. He turned back, leaving Tom to try to finish the route alone.
The American climbed on into the storm. It grew colder and the wind rose again. He took four hours to reach the top of the gully—one of the spots where Don and Dougal had tried and failed to dig a platform for a seventh camp. The summit had seemed close to those two then; Tom thought it looked pretty far away.
He was alone, without the comfort or incentive that a partner might provide. He imagined himself on the wall that led to the summit ridge, solitary and cold. He weighed the possibilities with an intensity that reflected the stakes. He might not live to see another sunrise if he pressed on—but if he continued to the summit and survived, every sunrise from this day forward would be different.
He conducted an experiment: he told himself that he would climb on—his mind gave the command—and then he waited for his body to decide the issue: to lurch forward or to turn back. He waited in the stillness. The empty, windblown plateau seemed a place of death. He waited for three hours, allowing his options to narrow as the morning passed and the temperature began to fall. He daydreamed and collected rock specimens and at last turned away from the summit and from his desire for it. He descended the fixed ropes in the gully and was back with Mick at Camp Six before noon.
Mick gave the others the news at the midday radio call. Chris now felt free to descend to Base Camp. He came upon the debris of an ice avalanche at the foot of a gully below Camp Three. The torrent of snow and ice had buried the tracks left by Don and Dougal during their descent to Base Camp the previous afternoon. Chris continued his own descent, and reached Base Camp before dark. He slept poorly that night and rose early to write an account of the expedition’s success—a rough draft for a press release. He broke off from his work every so often, stepping out into the sun to scan the face for signs of the others. The television crew set up their cameras for an interview and he was standing in the sun answering their questions when he heard a commotion—anxious, frightened voices—he couldn’t make out the words—only his own name.
IAN CLOUGH AND Mike Thompson and Dave Lambert had left Camp Three that morning. They were glad to be getting off the mountain and their relief allowed them to feel their sadness at this end to their adventure. They had decided not to wait on Tom and Mick. Those two sounded fine, and the urge to get down to Base Camp was very strong.
Ian and Mike reached Camp Two at 9:30. Dave was perhaps five minutes behind them. Ian wanted to stop to rest and eat something. Mike wanted to carry on down to Camp One—it was easy going, another half-hour. Ian shrugged and gave his assent, and they kept moving.
The worst of the ice towers that threatened this part of the glacier had toppled some weeks earlier. Still, the climbers moved as quickly as they could. Ian led the way, with Mike just behind. They were thirsty and tired and their feet hurt in their heavy boots and sweat-soaked socks but they were nearly done. There would be no more climbing here—only easy talk and packing and sorting out feelings. The lives they had left to visit this mountain awaited them in various stages of neglect and disarray. Ian was glad to be going back to his wife and child and his work at the climbing shop. His ordinary life with a bed and bodies to touch and ordinary smells seemed a vision—he saw with a charming clarity the shape and texture of his life.
He dug in himself for a sense of urgency that might help him to move quickly here. He didn’t find it; he was too warm, the day’s heat heavy upon him. The two men emerged from a corridor of ice—a cavern of light, carved and hollowed by the season’s gathering warmth—and into the open sky once more. The sunlight greeted them. Ian saw a party of Sherpas ascending the glacier for some purpose. The enormous bulk of the mountain lay behind the two descending climbers, like an ocean or a Continent at their backs.
The explosion amid the high silence made a sound like the ringing of some huge and ancient bell. The sky went dark amidst the sound of it. Mike leaped for a trough of snow that lay behind a wall of ice. A torrent of ice blocks swept over and past him, leaving him half-buried in debris.
Ian had begun to run at the sound. He moved heavily in the snow beset by the impending dark even as he felt a curious lightness. Reasons were lifted from him, replaced by awareness of an imperative that didn’t need to make sense in order to matter. He needed the sun; he sorted through memories—which single thing to take in a dream from a burning house. He came upon it as the mountain’s exhalation reached him; the force of this drove away thoughts and needs and something he hadn’t known was there; its departing amazed him.
The Sherpas coming up the glacier had fled downhill. They collected themselves as the light returned to the sky and their surroundings. They found Ian’s body almost at once.
CHRIS SAW THEM from a distance as he walked up from Base Camp. They were dragging the corpse—wrapped in a tarp and then strapped to a ladder—across the bleak glacier. The image seemed a manifestation of the corruption implicit in change, implicit in spring as much as in any other season. His eyes rose to the ice cliffs that still stood above the glacier. The mountain had no sympathy for men’s tasks or ceremonies. It made no decisions; it was mindless.
He walked on. He passed Mick Burke and Dave Lambert on their way down and kept walking; he was looking for Tom Frost and a young trekker—one of the honorary Sherpas who had wandered into Base Camp one day and stayed to help. Tom and the trekker were the last men down the mountain. Chris almost passed them in the mist, but hearing their voices and the rattle of stones dislodged by their boots he turned from his path and they rose in his sight—ghostly black forms; he dreaded speaking to them. The three men descended together in near-silence.
10
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE had followed newspaper and television reports of the Annapurna climb. The BBC reports and the film that followed the expedition featured dramatic interviews with the plainspoken climbers just down from the face. These exuberant, easygoing young men offered the public a refreshing contrast to the stuffy restraint of the old breed. The climbers were still brave and hardy, but they dressed and talked like pop stars—they seemed to be having a good time.
Chris had agreed to write a book about the expedition. He had spent hours in his tent at Base Camp recording events and impressions; he also had access to the other climbers’ journals, which he drew upon to flesh out the controversies and undercurrents of feeling that had informed the expedition. The resulting book, Annapurna South Face, was another departure; it portrayed the climbers as authentic characters with human strengths and weaknesses. Chris and Don and Dougal and the rest emerged as personalities; they seemed nothing like the earnest automatons that had populated most previous expedition accounts.
The media coverage and the book’s success made Chris a household name in Great Britain for the first time. Don and Dougal, the men who had reached the summit, were nearly as famous. The rest of the Annapurna climbers also were known to a wider world now. They were part of the circle—they were Bonington’s Boys. The climbers’ respective positions within the group defined their individual prospects and shaped their ambitions. They were no longer anonymous and powerless vagabonds, no longer mere climbing bums. They were the emerging climbing establishment.
Th
is new role took them by surprise. Their response to it was informed by undertones of grief for Ian Clough and for another friend. They had arrived home from Annapurna to the news that Tom Patey—the Scottish climber who had recruited Chris to climb the Old Man of Hoy—had been killed in a rappelling accident, roping down from another of his beloved sea stacks. He’d died on May 25, 1970, four days before Ian Clough’s death halfway around the world. Tom had been good for Chris. He had been inclined to mock Bonington’s hopes and pretensions—had written a satirical song about them—but he was a friend. And the Scotsman’s death would be felt in other, unacknowledged ways. Patey had stood opposed to big expeditions, with their growing tendency to commercialize climbing. His death was the death of a dissident; it made a gap that gave passage to tendencies he’d resisted not only by his words but also by his mode of life.
Fame meanwhile offered Chris new ways to marry commerce and climbing. He had accumulated considerable credibility in the wider world, and with that credibility came the power to mount even larger expeditions to big mountains. Chris saw the risk that such expeditions would revert to the old and outmoded system of overpowering a mountain, but he set aside such concerns for the moment. The deaths of Ian Clough and Tom Patey propelled him along the path that unfolded before him; whatever guilt or grief these losses provoked might be swallowed by some astonishing endeavor.
THE PATH NOW led to Everest and that mountain’s huge and unclimbed Southwest Face. John Harlin had talked of mounting an expedition there. He’d told Dougal of his hopes when they were stormbound in their snow cave on the Eiger. Dougal and Chris had talked about the face after John’s death, when the two of them were together in the hospital for treatment of their frostbite.
That was more than four years ago. The Southwest Face of Everest had since emerged as mountaineering’s Next Great Problem. The face presented huge logistical challenges. A successful expedition would need to ferry tons of supplies up steep ground to the base of a steep rock section. This was the Rock Band, at 8,300 meters—already higher than all but four of the world’s summits. The team would then have to lay siege to 1,000 feet of hard mixed climbing to escape the face; after that, there was more climbing to the summit.
