Kingdoms of Experience

by Andrew Greig

  Andy Nisbet looking like a Muppet with his wild red hair, very pale. Perhaps it’s not just the suncream. Bob exasperated with the Chinese stoves, tongue between teeth in concentration. Allen peeling potatoes, ‘I think I’ll go off and do something really useful now, like look at my tent ceiling.’ Kurt comes across as an irascible old bull; partly because he is, partly because his brain works faster than his (excellent) command of English. Muttering to himself, peering over his grandad glasses, looking like an East European bishop in his woolly hat. Andy Greig humming ‘She’s got perfect skin’ as he types. Rick doing a seminar on radios – heavy Motorolas again. Chris looking not too good at the moment – lucky he’s a professional dark horse. … Everyone’s face beginning to show the strain of altitude – psyches recede as people realize the pressure.

  The Basque lads came up for a brew and stayed for supper. One, Juan-Jo, seemed ill, his first time in the Himalayas. Antxon was cool – he’s got a good British sense of humour. Juan, the young lad, switched on, did Jannu by the French route. Mari, the leader, wizened, 40, climbed on K2 with Roger Baxter Jones; like an army NCO, puffing on cigs, slight twitch in the left cheek. Good men and true.

  A secret. In the Himalaya, people who have some spirit left over for their mates are the most valued companions of all. …

  Bob My thoughts go even more than usual to Anna and Alex and little Eliane, and I look at their photos often. This is the first big trip I’ve had since we’ve had children and I do feel different – I don’t think I’m more held back from risky situations, because I never was a necky climber, but I feel like I’ve got a more stable core, a reference point, and that my feet will stay on the ground even if, God willing, my head is in the clouds. …

  The first Yak Run has been scheduled for the 28th and the team has been divided or has divided itself as follows:

  OLD FARTS BOY RACERS

  Me, Allen, Mal, Andy N., Jon, Sandy, Rick, Tony

  Andy G., Chris Watts. Brindle, Nick.

  Dave Bricknell appears to be hyper-fit as does Urs, and so they are allowed to feature as Boy Racers despite the constraints of age.

  The Old Farts have a leaning towards hypochondria (Andy N. got sunburnt in Lhasa and ever since has been walking around with his face inches deep in cream). We prefer leisurely acclimatization, and we think the route is going to be pretty hard.

  By contrast, the archetypal Boy Racer won’t admit to fatigue or headaches, can’t cope with all this hanging about, and reckons that Bonington’s team would probably have done better if they hadn’t been O. Fs!

  Tony A rest day for everyone. I spent most of the day in the tent ’cos it was very cold today – writing letters and thinking of home and Kathy. Can’t wait for the 8th when Terry is expected with the jeep and surely some mail. By then I will have been away a whole month without a word from Kathy – seems so long. Liz has been nice, knowing my plans more than the others do and very understanding.

  This is a whole new ball-game for me, thinking about the future rather than just the next month or so … amazing how much strength one can draw from such a close relationship. …

  I am beginning to retreat a little again into my shell – have been aware of this on other trips, but am finding it hard on this one to do otherwise. I don’t like to make relationships too quickly with people I know so little about and understand even less.

  Afternoon in the Mess Tent. Kurt and Julie film Mal and Dave discussing the route from Base to Advance Base (pre-war Camp 3). On their fourth take and getting more and more stilted. ‘Silence with the Mars Bar!’ Kurt commands. Off-camera, Jon mimes a silent Fuck Off.

  Liz and Sarah make up sachets for hill-packs. Jon and Tony peel apples, Rick fiddles with the petrol stove. Chris and Nicko are poring over the photos in Bonington’s book. Urs sorts out his drugs into a Base and an Advance Base barrel. Yesterday we all got our handouts of aspirin, sleepers, pain-killers, suncreams and salves, tubes of vitamins. ‘Typical Himalayan wimps, we are,’ Mal commented. ‘Have you seen the avocado hand-cream anywhere?’

  The Basques drop in on their way down from ABC. They look tired; Juan-Jo, the least experienced, is absolutely done in and the others have to carry his rucksack. ‘The pressure of a small expedition,’ Jon remarks. Their presence makes the Boy Racers more restless, eager to get to the hill.

  Kurt trains an enormous lens on Everest and we all have a long look. The spindrift is like the sky bleeding milk. Sandy glances through the lens. ‘Well, that’s it,’ he says cheerfully, and sets off towards his tent, ‘I’m going back to Lhasa!’ We are thoughtful and impressed. There are not really three Pinnacles at all, more like five. And a hell of a way from there to the summit, the jet-stream into your face all the way.

  Sandy Oh, magnificent to be here! Everest looks huge. We’ve got our work cut out but mean to go easy over the next few days to keep it all in perspective, to become acclimatized, to feel and be one with the environment here, with the team, with life. I think for me that feeling of peace with the surroundings is the most important point in Himalayan climbing. Then one can begin to feel confident and then move up on the hill and feel at home there, as though approaching the house of a friend rather than heading for an interview or interrogation. …

  … Yes, keen. Realize the route is quite desperate and way beyond our previous experience – well, the 8,000 metres part of it, but still think that if we all work together, don’t get panic-stricken and take things cool, we stand an OK chance. The wind is what frightens me. Really frightens me.

  We’re lucky people! We’ve got a licence to go crazy on the Ν. Ε. Ridge of Everest. … Are we fit to be here or are we counterfeit? Joe and Pete. … Who the fuck do we think we are? So keen, so keen. … Pity we couldn’t have got a 8,000 metres peak in after Mustagh Tower. We’re not quite ready. I see that as we sit around the Mess. We’re close. … We’ll need luck. … We’re almost there. We’re sort of vulnerable – but it’s not unconquerable. …

  Feel so distant from the lads, bit of a drag, don’t mean to – but man! Like 40,000 miles away. God only knows what the reason for this is, can’t seem to slip into conversation, probably something to do with … Yeah I used to love her, but it’s all over now … Joe and Pete. Passed by their memorial again tonight. Strange, trying to prepare myself for meeting their bodies. Not a nice thought. Christ, really I’m not looking forward to that. …

  We need some JOLLIFICATION. No bull-shit, just real regular JOLLIFICATION.

  Nick … The Basques seem to be moving really fast. I felt I’d rather be with them today, going lightweight, fast and mushy, instead of snail-like, hampered by the media bullshit. …

  Had a bit of a go at Kurt – he was being really stupid and awkward. Folks were generally sorting things out in the Mess Tent – he then decides his film barrels and other gear have to take up about half the Mess Tent space, despite the fact he has an empty Vango near. I suggest this. ‘Oh no,’ says Kurt, ‘maybe somebody steal things from it – nobody sleep there.’

  I just couldn’t keep a straight face. The guy must take us for a bunch of idiots. To have the audacity to think that the film gear is more important than any other thing, e.g. medical and for that matter climbing gear. After all, we’re here to climb a mountain. I think some people seem to forget that.

  Andy G. You wouldn’t expect on a big expedition to have so much time on one’s own, something like 16 hours a day in the privacy of our tents, alone with our cassettes, books, letters and diaries. Alone with our thoughts of home and the past, our hopes and fears about the future. It’s quite unlike the intense companionship of a small expedition. We’re finding this hard to adjust to. Only Allen has experience of a big expedition, on the South-West face of E. with Bonington’s crew ten years back, and he said today that they’d had a long walk-in to become close. Implying, quite rightly, that we’re not. Still, early days, and in truth we do get on remarkably well.

  One’s tent can be a sanctuary or a prison, depending on mood.
Tonight it’s freezing and wild outside, the tent rocks and is battered like a small boat. Some evenings I crawl in here and dislike the thought of the many solitary hours of broken sleep ahead. As Dave remarked today, what one misses most, even more than bacon or beer or sex or a shower, are the few people one is used to sharing one’s life with. Intimacy is what we miss.

  There can be value, not deprivation, in this solitude. Climbing may be an escape of sorts, but not from oneself. Whether face-to-face with one’s own fear halfway up a route, or in these weeks and months away from everything familiar, mountaineering is one long adventure or ordeal in self-knowledge. And self-possession, the quality these lads have so strongly, tends to make them hard to know. They often scarcely know each other outside of climbing.

  Tonight, wearing all my daytime gear and only just warm enough in this bag, with munchies, water-bottle, old man Fyffe’s Taj Mahal tape (we’ve similar Old Fart musical tastes), tonight I like this tent. I’m physically, mentally and emotionally comfortable. But we need action and movement soon to pull us together. The first hints of boredom, irritation, broodiness. Like our tents, each a certain distance apart. Each contained in our own orange glow, and the freezing dark between us. We’re separate kingdoms in a temporary alliance.

  So many stars at night, it’s hard to pick out the constellations. Hanging back on the rope over the shit-pit, looking at Everest in the silent moonlight, I’ve a brief, farcical vision of myself as a charioteer riding this earth as it thunders through the void.

  The days passed. We finished all our Advance Base preparations and waited for the yaks to turn up. Word came they’d be two days late. A small delay, but added to our earlier ones it could be significant. ‘Where’s the sense of urgency?’ Rick asked himself.

  Graffiti began to appear on the Mess Tent. By the entrance NO MORE HEROES ANY MORE and NOT A SECOND TIME. Above the kitchen area DON’T GIVE ME THAT GOLDEN STUFF and HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE MY CUSTARD? Near the ceiling WE SHALL STAMP TO THE TOP WITH THE WIND IN OUR TEETH – heroic stuff, unfortunately it comes from one of Mallory’s last letters home. Jon took a broad felt-tip pen and scribed THE AUSTRALIAN RULES OF WALKING:

  1 If you have all day to get from A to B, you take all bleeding day.

  2 Never, ever, break into a sweat.

  3 Never do anything twice.

  4 (Of course), there is no 4th rule.

  And after his first time up to ABC he came down and added a heartfelt:

  5 All moraine is terminal.

  We were beginning to occupy this space, to make it our own and express ourselves in it. Our expedition was acquiring its own mythology, history and language of private jokes. Now we were ready to begin exploring further, and at our own pace began taking acclimatization hikes. Bob and Allen packed their gear and went for two overnight bivvies in the hills above our valley – typical Glenmore cowboys, no fuss, very methodical. The Boy Racers went for a preliminary recce up the trail towards ABC. Chris Watts wandered off by himself. Mal stayed in his tent, reading and planning and sleeping, in a manner reminiscent of Achilles, another believer in static acclimatization. Liz, Danny and I made our own forays. Acclimatization is not like hard training at sealevel; pushing yourself tends to do more harm than good.

  * * *

  ‘You’ll never learn, mate,’ says Jon, shaking his head and handing me a brew. I take it, grey-faced and shivering, fighting nausea and a crunching headache. And I’d felt so good just hours earlier. …

  … Heavy-headed and slow as I am every morning here, I pull on salopettes, pile and down jacket and crawl out of my tent. A perfect morning, Everest flying its customary white flag. Sounds of zips, pissing, a clatter from the Mess Tent.

  It is Jon’s birthday, he shambles in late to affectionate abuse and applause. We gradually wake up, conversation begins to flow, sun hits the tent. ‘Let’s go climbing!’ from Sandy. ‘Oink, oink,’ Jon replies.

  I want to move today, so I find Andy Nisbet and persuade Dave he deserves a day away from Base now that everything’s under control here. We set off – water-bottle, camera, suncream, munchies, the routine is automatic now. We work our way up the initial slopes of scree, rock, loose blocks, gasping at first till we slow to a more sensible pace, perhaps 1 mph. It’s all the body can do; the problem is the mind’s frustration, its impatience to get somewhere. Remember the Australian rules. …

  It feels good now. Everything super-clear (is it the air, or light-headedness?) Happy being up here and pushing myself a little. I take my pace from Dave and Andy. An hour passes, two. We’re in no hurry. Moving up is an effort, then as soon as we stop we feel good again. Cho Oyu starts to appear, a sprawling beautiful-ugly massif. New angles on Everest. This is the business, clambering in the Himalayas’ thin air and hot sun. Dave and I exchange smiles of pleasure.

  We see a figure below working his way up towards us at an astonishing pace, at least twice ours. … Mr Rick Allen, Boy Racer incarnate, neat and trim. The gaunt, foxy face, his nose as sharp as a pen; the cockerel quiff of his short red hair; the precise economy of his words and movements – everything about him is honed to a cutting edge. ‘Thought I’d come out for a stroll,’ he says with just a hint of self-mockery, and leads off in front. Mal’s restless energy appears in his large gestures, enthusiasms and impulses; Rick confesses himself to be just as restless, but he channels it within an absolute discipline – physical, mental, moral and emotional. It will be interesting to see which of them goes further.

  We follow him on up for another 40 minutes of geriatric boulder-hopping, then Andy Nisbet announces this is far enough for him. Like Allen Fyffe, he’s very much preoccupied with his failure to acclimatize, and is determined to take things very methodically. I’m impressed at his self-control; it must be hard for a very pushy climber like Andy to let Rick and two bumblies go higher than him. I should have learned from that. …

  But I follow Rick and Dave on to the crest of the ridge as we work our way awkwardly up towards an ever retreating ‘summit’. Going very slowly now, monitoring an incipient headache like a huge thumb gently pressing my temples. Thoughts of home, of success on the hill, of getting to my personal summit, drift through my mind like the slow nebulous clouds above.

  Finally we stop, take photos, drink and chat. Around 5,770 metres, Rick says. I translate this into feet and realize it’s possibly a new height record for me – even more so for Dave, who’s never been over 4,000 feet before coming out here. He’s as ecstatic as I am. It feels wonderful to be alive, sitting on these warm blocks looking out over the deep blue and glittering white of the Everest range. This sense of elevation is more than physical.

  ‘Half a dozen of us could get to the top without oxygen,’ Rick asserts. I remind him of the track record for oxygen-less ascents of Everest. ‘Well, getting down again would be a different matter,’ he concedes, smiling as he stares hungrily over at our summit. If he wasn’t so absolutely sane, I’d say he was mad as a hatter.

  Our descent is exhausting – scree-running, awkward traverses, feeling suddenly sick and wobbly. Rick thoughtfully waits at intervals to guide Dave and me down. As we finally trudge across the flat moraine to Base Camp, the tents are bobbing in and out of focus. …

  ‘Yes,’ Jon concludes sadly, ‘you’ll never learn. There’s no point in trying to keep up with the appalling Rick Allen.’ The Boy Racer, looking very relaxed, looks up from his Les Trois Mousquetaires, grins. Tinker-stress bounces off his armour-plating. ‘You’ve got to find your own pace and don’t let anyone distract you from it,’ he observes quietly, and goes back to his book.

  I mumble something and drag my abused body off for a long night’s penitence in my tent. Violent shivering all the way from knees to throat, nausea, boom-boom headache. The worst is not being able to breathe regularly, as if breathing were now an effort of will. Whenever I start to doze off, I jerk awake gasping for air. A touch of claustrophobia. This time, surely, I’ve learned my lesson.

  Sarah Atmosphere is very good
at BC, people get on most of the time – only the odd niggle – nothing serious. A free day – I went down to the Rongbuk nunnery with Nick. It takes about an hour to get to – an hour and a half back up – however small the incline, it’s still up! Nick is a lot fitter than I am – but I’m not doing so badly. It was very pleasant just to sit in the sun, drink our water and eat a few munchies. Across the valley, a herd of sheep were being shepherded along, bells gently ringing.

  Julie must have spent a long time making beefburgers – probably the most memorable meal, special effort for Jon’s birthday. Beefburgers, chips, peas and tomato sauce, followed by sponge pudding and custard. …

  On 27th March the yaks and their herders or ‘yakkers’ finally slouched and tinkled their way up the valley. They’d come from the nearest villages, two or three days away. They pitched their basic tents, brewed up, and soon the air was full of the surprisingly fragrant smell of dried yak-dung fires. Lots of less fragrant fresh dung from the morosely grazing yaks. They were slow, shaggy, moody creatures who seemed entirely unenthusiastic at being in this godforsaken place. They probably had altitude headaches too. The gay ribbons pleated into their tails and manes by the yakkers must be an ironic joke. There is nothing festive about a yak at altitude.

  Their owners were ‘real heavy-duty ethnics’, as Sandy remarked. Clad in layers of sheepskin, turquoise stones in their ears, knives on their hips, long black plaited hair, they were as curious and inquisitive about us as we were about them. We kept all valuables out of temptation’s way, and nothing went missing.

  Except the yaks, which scattered overnight to the four winds. We woke to find a few on the slopes, the rest had disappeared in the direction of the Rongbuk nunnery. A yakkers’ ploy to gain a paid rest day, another day’s delay for us. Negotiating with them was difficult, because Jack spoke no Tibetan and they claimed not to know Chinese. This was compounded by the problems of democracy: each yakker had an equal say in the proceedings, even the little 12-year-old boy. This was impressive, but it made arriving at an agreement virtually impossible.