by Clint Willis
He found his footing on the rock slab and reached back for the axe and tugged at it. The axe came back to him as if it were part of his body, as if it shared his intentions. It felt odd to have the crampons off. He made a few moves on rock and then came to more ice and drove his pick into the ice with real force. It held his weight while he stooped awkwardly to strap the crampons back onto his boots. He climbed to a cluster of boulders and at last made another anchor.
It would be dark in a half-hour. Joe had led his two pitches. He was climbing well, though. Peter felt clumsy and timid following him. He let Joe lead another 70 feet to the top of the ice; then the climbers descended to spend another night at their new camp.
They woke fearful and tense the next morning. There was little talk between them now. They knew from photographs that they must get off the North Face and back onto their West Face, where a ramp of snow seemed to lead to the summit. Joe went down to fetch some rope they’d left just below their high camp. Peter went up the fixed ropes alone; he meant to rearrange them to eliminate a couple of awkward traverses. He took out a piton and leaned sideways and was suddenly swinging toward a corner; he picked up speed and twisted to get his legs up. He was traveling so fast now that the impact might break a bone—utter disaster—but before he could make his turn he finished his 40-foot pendulum, his body punching sideways into rock.
The impact hammered the breath from him. He hung on the rope until he could breathe. Then he gathered his wits and conducted a sort of drunken inspection. Nothing broken. He looked down to where Joe had dwindled to a speck of black. There wasn’t much they could do for each other. The thought somehow restored him. Peter set out again, sorting out the fixed ropes as he climbed. He stopped from time to time and looked around at what there was to see. It amazed him; the view seemed a chain of evidence that nothing was as it seemed. Any concerns he carried in one place were meaningless in another—certainly in this world with its vast mind, a mind that seemed manifest in rock that poked through snow and ice like bone though flesh. The glacier at this distance receded from the sky as space recedes from planets through layers so weightless and thick that traveling through them would be like moving through time; time would become mere geography or the other way around. Peter felt like a speck on the eye of some mind that at most times ignored him but might at any moment turn its awareness to him. His fall thrilled him in retrospect. He wanted to do it again—the fall had brushed by his defenses so quickly that he had for a moment felt his connection to all of this mystery.
He reached the top of the ropes late in the morning. Joe came up behind him. It was Peter’s turn to lead, to find a way back across to the West Face. Joe put him on belay. Peter stepped onto a huge hollow-sounding flake. He all but tiptoed on the front-points of his crampons finding tiny lips in the rock until he found a spot for a piton in a crack above the block. He stood in good footholds and the sound of his hammering was like the tolling of church bells; it summoned believers to remember, to come.
He rested. Music—chanting—ran through his mind. It grew and filled his ears and skull, his mouth—he was amazed. He noticed his shadow; the sun had moved. He looked down at Joe, who hung in slings at the anchor, and past down the face to the Bagnini Glacier, from this height a swirling abstraction. Changabang’s West Face—parts of it—had come back into view as he crossed the fringes of the North Face toward the ridgeline that separated the two great walls. Peter imagined himself the sun, rising and flooding nooks of the world with his awareness; whatever he failed to look upon remained in shadow. He leaned across and found a hand jam and muscled his way up to an ice slope. He buried his axe pick and teetered higher on his crampons. The wall veered above him, offering a single thin crack for an anchor. He hammered in three knifeblade pitons and fixed the rope for Joe to follow.
Peter set off to lead another pitch. He came to more steep rock and worked his way up cracks, dangling awkwardly to hammer in pitons and stand in slings; reaching down to retrieve the pegs at his feet so that he could use them again higher up. There were no holds on this vertical ground; there were only these thin cracks for gear so that there was nothing to do but build this ladder of slings. The climbers were running short of pitons—Joe retrieved them on each pitch, but they had used many to anchor the fixed ropes, and had dropped a few. Peter made another anchor and rappelled to Joe; it was growing late and they retreated to the tent.
They climbed the fixed ropes again the next morning. Peter arrived at the start of the last rope and thought of that last anchor he’d placed—he hadn’t much liked it. He weighted the rope and struggled up in a swirl of fright; it held him and Joe followed and set off to lead more thin cracks then an arête. Pete watched him wrestle his way across and up on holds too small for the toes of his boots.
Joe placed a piton and clipped a sling to it. He ran his trailing rope through the carabiner and moved cautiously up and sideways on more thin holds. He took tension from the rope that ran down to Peter and worked his way into a groove that offered some security. He rested there and then climbed to a huge boulder. He rested again. He could see a corner that led to the start of the ramp they hoped would take them to the summit. He moved to the base of the corner and built another hanging belay beneath some overhangs and brought up Peter.
Joe took an hour to find a way past the overhangs, and then made his way back onto the crest of a ridge. The ramp was perhaps a rope’s length further. Peter followed, stopping once to take pictures. Joe told him to hurry.
They descended to their high camp in the growing murk. Joe went first. Peter was feeling the altitude without knowing it and he lost himself in games, in the twisted logic of dreams. He named the various knots cows and thought of the pitons as Americans. He gave a girl’s name to each of the carabiners that dangled from his waist.
The tent surprised him. Joe was there; he looked frightened. He had somehow unclipped from both of the fixed ropes while shifting from one to another. He’d had one hand on a jumar; otherwise he’d be gone now. Peter regarded Joe’s stricken face and could find nothing to say.
They were beginning to believe that the route’s major difficulties were behind them. One more hard pitch would bring them to the ramp. They packed food for two days. They intended to set off in the morning but they slept late and decided to rest a day.
They had been on the mountain for five weeks but it seemed much longer—months. Peter left the tent in the afternoon and looked around at the mountains that sprawled in every direction, endless, most of them anonymous. He wondered which was Kailas: center of the universe and throne to Shiva, creator and destroyer of all things. He returned to the tent; when he stooped to crawl into the entrance he saw blood in the snow—Joe must have coughed it up—but neither climber mentioned it. Joe described the way the tent fabric brushed his face as he lay in his sleeping bag. He said he loved how that felt. Peter realized that they weren’t afraid anymore.
THEY ROSE EARLY—three o’clock—on October 14. The wind had risen in the night. They set out with bivouac sacks, sleeping bags, stove and pan, food and rope. Joe went first. Peter followed. He regarded the fixed ropes with dread. The wind gusted and his hands grew numb as he fumbled with his jumars.
Peter caught Joe at the top of the ropes and stopped to warm his hands. He climbed past Joe onto new ground. He climbed in shadow and he again lost feeling in his fingers—this meant stopping to hang in slings and shove his hands into his oversuit to restore circulation. He bridged up a chimney, his legs spanning the gap in the rock as he climbed 20 feet on vertical and then overhanging ground. He wedged a nut into a crack and hung from it, the route spinning and falling away beneath his body. The ridge he climbed divided the world into shadow and light, but the distinction meant nothing to him. He looked up and judged from the quality of the light overhead that weather was coming; he briefly wondered when it would reach them. There was a huge block at the top of the groove. He placed another nut and moved higher to squirm under the block and onto snow.
He was on the ramp, at last out of the shadow of the West Face.
Joe followed him up and into the sunlight. There remained only 1,000 feet to the summit. The climbers dropped their axes and most of their gear, keeping two ropes and a few slings and pitons and carabiners. Peter started up another pitch on powder snow. Joe followed, making his own way up the snow; it was not steep enough here to require fixed rope. Joe led a difficult pitch up the lower part of a buttress. Peter led through on mixed ground; it was more difficult than he had expected. He was enjoying the climbing and he volunteered to lead the next pitch as well. Joe was tired enough to let him.
Peter continued up the buttress. A shadow climbed the rock below him as the sun sank in the sky. His arms and his body grew light as he moved higher. He felt this as a kindness, and felt himself released even from the obligation to be grateful. Joe began moving before Peter finished the pitch and as Joe climbed darkness arrived as if beckoned.
There wasn’t enough snow to dig a snow hole. They scratched out a platform and crawled into their bivouac sacks. They lay still. They were 6,700 meters above the sea in this impossible place. They dozed and woke to fidget in the dark. The wind rose in the night. Peter slept again but after midnight woke to spend two hours rubbing his numb feet. The climbers packed when the sun appeared. They left camp under a thin scum of high cloud. They climbed more rock and then they were back on snow; it was easy climbing, not terribly steep. Joe led it. He was very close to exhaustion but his weariness didn’t surprise or worry him now.
The day seemed to Peter unreal. There was no warmth and no color to it. He wanted to see Nanda Devi from the summit—there had been nothing but clouds at the top of Everest. Joe shouted down and told him not to worry; Nanda Devi was there, through the gray—also the vast territory that lay at its feet and at their own.
Joe waited and they walked another 30 feet on nearly flat ground to the summit. Their relief clashed with their dread of the task still ahead. They could find little to say to each other. The climbers ate chocolate and took pictures. They rested for a half-hour. Nanda Devi disappeared in cloud. Flakes of new snow drifted in silence past the two men’s faces and came to rest on the mountain.
Joe roused himself to suggest that they unrope to descend to the first rappel. That way one of them could fall without pulling the other off the mountain. Peter didn’t like the idea, but he was glad that Joe was sufficiently focused on the work at hand to be ruthless. They set off. They felt the storm rise at their backs. Peter allowed himself occasional glances toward the Rhamani Glacier far below. It would lead them home if they could manage to reach it.
The storm grew worse. The climbers became shapes in the snow. Speed alone could protect them. They reached the top of the first rappel and carried on down, building anchors and setting up more rappels; they had left no fixed ropes on these highest sections of the route. They were almost out of pitons now. Joe frightened Peter by building an anchor that featured a single peg, driven perhaps an inch into a crack.
The piton held them. They reached the line of fixed ropes. Joe descended more quickly than Peter and found their camp on the ledge—Camp Two—long after dark and crawled into the tent to melt snow. He had time to imagine the worst before he heard Peter’s approach. Joe at the sound felt his bones grow light again. They had climbed the mountain.
They talked about it. There was this relief, and something else—they groped for it for a time, and at last grew calm enough to sleep. They woke to sun and an unfamiliar absence of urgency. They were sorry to leave this place but also eager to escape it. Joe again fixed a single-piton anchor for a rappel. He set off down. The piton flexed and Peter unclipped from it so that if the anchor failed it wouldn’t take them both. Joe looked up and saw what Peter had done and made a joke; it was all right between them.
They had made a late start. They moved slowly, fumbling with the ropes. They were still 500 feet above Camp One on the ridge when night fell. It began to snow heavily. Pete had better night vision. Joe asked him to go ahead. They were tired and cold but they would rest soon, and meanwhile they enjoyed aspects of this; they flirted with a sense of not wanting it to end. They reached the tent after three hours of moving in darkness.
They descended the rest of the ridge in the morning, coming at last to the creaking ice slope that led to the glacier. Joe climbed down quickly. Peter followed more slowly. It was bliss to come off the ropes and stand on level ground. Everything was absolutely clear—the snow seemed painted on the ground—but there were no words to explain.
THEY HAD EARNED their happiness. They wanted to be among people. They spent the night at Advance Base Camp. They descended to Base Camp the next day—October 18—and found another expedition camped near their tent. The new arrivals were Italians who had come up this valley by mistake hoping to reach Kalanka; they were on the wrong side of Shipton Col.
A middle-aged American woman was with them. She introduced herself as Ruth; she had been with the Dunagiri expedition. Joe and Peter spoke to her and learned that four of the Dunagiri climbers had been killed in a fall; one of the dead had been her husband. The bodies were still lying in the snow where their fall had taken them.
Joe and Peter volunteered to attend to the corpses. They recruited two porters to help. The party set out before light the next day. The porters soon fell behind. Peter and Joe reached the bodies together. The dead climbers were still roped in teams of two. The climber tied to Ruth’s husband had been nineteen years old. They found a journal in the boy’s pack and kept it for his family. Joe took one rope; Peter took the other. They dragged the corpses down the hill toward a crevasse where they meant to deposit them, away from the birds.
There seemed no important difference between the living and the dead. The difference was like the difference between an acquaintance and a stranger—a matter of circumstance. The two climbers were careful as they approached the dark slot in the snow. Peter felt a child’s distress at the notion of being entombed with these newly dead.
Joe slid two of the bodies into the crevasse. Peter hung back, watching; he felt ill. Joe took Peter’s rope from him, pulled the remaining bodies, stiff and distorted, through the snow until he could push them in after the others. Peter suggested a prayer. Joe agreed to stand in silence for a time.
The two climbers descended Base Camp. They reached it in darkness. The porters were singing around a fire. They stopped singing when the two British climbers arrived. Ruth had been crying. She apologized; she said it was the singing.
16
CHRIS BONINGTON SPENT 1976 consolidating his status as the leading British mountaineer of his generation. He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) on New Year’s Day in recognition of the Everest triumph. He toured the country lecturing to sold-out crowds eager to hear his version of events on the Southwest Face. He was made a vice-president of the British Mountaineering Council. He lent his name to charities. He made appearances at business conferences to supplement his income from lectures and books.
He was no longer a poverty-stricken climber—but he was still a climber. Doug Scott called that summer. He wanted Chris to join an expedition to the Karakoram the following year. Pakistan had reopened the range to exploration in 1975, giving climbers renewed access to some of the world’s most beautiful and challenging peaks: the likes of K2 and the spectacular Trango Tower and the brutish-looking Ogre.
Doug had picked the Ogre (7,285 meters; 23,901 feet), the tallest mountain in the Biafo Glacier region. The mountain remained unclimbed after six attempts. It presented a squat-looking mass of rock and ice, with an elaborate assortment of towers, buttresses, walls and gullies. Chris, studying photographs, saw the complex as a monster with three heads.
Doug had become a big-wall enthusiast; he had his eye on a line that went straight up a seemingly featureless spire to snow that wrapped like a bandage around the peak’s upper reaches. Chris thought Doug’s chosen route looked appallingly difficult, but he saw the potential for an easier wa
y up the peak. And he liked the idea that someone else would be running the expedition; for once, Chris could leave the fund-raising and the organizational chores to other climbers.
The Ogre wasn’t the type of mountain to make his reputation with the public, but Everest had done that—and anyway, that wasn’t the point, whatever others might wish to believe. He was touched that Doug had invited him—and the Ogre was an enticing destination, a spectacular mountain. That said, it was also true that the Ogre might help rehabilitate his reputation among the young climbers who saw the Southwest Face expedition as a throwback to a bygone era—a time when sheer organizational ability mattered as much as climbing skill or boldness. Bonington’s expedition to Changabang in 1974 had been a step in the right direction, but young Joe Tasker and Dick Renshaw had increased the ante the following year with their spectacular two-man ascent of Dunagiri. The success of Tasker and Peter Boardman on Changabang’s West Face in the fall of 1976 would soon provide further evidence that a new generation of British mountaineers had arrived—a generation at least as creative and determined as Chris Bonington and his circle.
Bonington’s triumphs on Annapurna and Everest had in fact put a cap on the era of big expeditions. They had done this largely by proving that climbers could scale virtually any mountain feature given sufficient resources and organization. The possibility of failure receded, and with it much of the reason for mounting large expeditions in the first place. Meanwhile, corporate sponsors had lost interest in funding such trips. The biggest sponsors generally required a hugely visible target like Everest—and the feeling for the moment was that Everest had been done.
Even Doug Scott had his doubts about the Everest trip that had made him a celebrity. Doug had always been a proponent of lightweight, alpine-style mountaineering. He disapproved of formal hierarchies—partly on principle; also because (as Chris and others liked to point out) the strength of his personality allowed him to dominate more informal proceedings. He had rankled at Bonington’s authority on both Everest trips and on Changabang in 1974. The Ogre would be different; this was to be Doug’s expedition. There would be no army of porters, no central command and no master plan. Climbers would do as they pleased.
