by Andrew Greig
As we finally left the Mess Tent at 1.0 am into the pitch dark and light snow tickling our faces, Sandy said casually, ‘I’m glad now I came down.’
Sandy Really good jest which developed into an ACE time. Hits a fellow from ABC like a brick wall. Obviously a good place to recover. Tony Brindle cough, cough, cough, but everyone well mentally here. Too tired to write, my head active but not in control. Impressed by the people here, wish I was as confident and prudent about climbing Everest as A.G. is on guitar …
Tony A great evening’s entertainment – my mind has been in North Wales all day, and the music and song bring me back to this trip and stop the old homesick pangs …
The 1st of May was a perfect morning. Everest clear for the first time in ages, little wind. Smiles all round as we slowly filtered into the Mess Tent for breakfast. Perhaps this month would be better to us. Surely the settled pre-monsoon weather had arrived.
By noon it had clouded over again, and snow fell in a desultory manner. General disappointment. We put our thermal layers back on and returned to our sleeping bags or sat and shivered in the Mess. As always, speculation as to what was doing on the hill. In fact, nothing was doing on the hill, as Allen recovered from his diarrhoea, Bob and Nick lay in a dull torpor after their efforts of the day before, and Andy and Urs waited for optimum weather before making their next attempt on the 2nd Buttress.
An aspect Himalayan climbing shares with making a film: a lot of time spent hanging about in suspended animation. I wondered why people with such an appetite for hard technical climbing, for verticality, risk and action, should bother with Himalayan climbing. After all, there was little pure climbing to be done here, mostly endless hard graft with little adrenalin. In three months, the lead climbers would be lucky to each get a couple of days technical leading. As yet, only Andy Nisbet had actually taken out his second ice-axe, signalling hard climbing.
The lads understood my question. They’d had plenty of time to wonder about such things themselves. Rick said he’d always been drawn to mountains anyway, he loved them for themselves, not just for hard-won thrills. He’d moved naturally from winter climbing in Britain to the Alps, and finally to the Himalayas. ‘I like big hills,’ he said simply, ‘when I’m too old for hard climbing I’ll still go into the mountains.’
Jon and Sandy agreed, and freely admitted that one of the pluses of altitude climbing was the interesting parts of the world one went through – Peru, Nepal, Baltistan, and now Tibet.
‘It’s a holiday, a change,’ Jon said. ‘You can get bored with Scotland or the Alps.’ They all enjoyed the dossing life-style of a long expedition, its freedom from the stresses and distractions of life at home; they liked the new company and climbing partners, the companionship and sometimes close friendship. ‘Imagine having no telephone, no TV, no news and no transport for two months! And no money …’
‘And no beer, no London girls, no reggae concerts,’ Jon added wistfully.
Rick was fortunate in also greatly enjoying his job as an engineer with Texaco; if he could get away climbing at weekends and fit in one big trip a year, his life balanced out perfectly. For Sandy and Jon – and increasingly myself – it was harder; having no strong home ties, they came to feel at home only when climbing or on expeditions. ‘It’s the only time I feel real,’ Sandy confessed. ‘That’s not right, is it? …’ Regret and perplexity in his voice. He stared into his brew, scratched his head as if he could scratch away his thoughts like dandruff. ‘… But it’s Ace. Really!’
We are all here for the entirety of the experience. Personal summits, a day’s technical climbing, the chance of breaking new ground on the Pinnacles – these are the targets we have to aim at, but they are not what supports the arrow’s flight, the spaces in between do that.
The climbers see Himalayan mountaineering as a different kind of challenge, requiring different qualities from hard climbing in Britain or the Alps. It is challenge to which they are addicted. Thus the pull of the 8,000 metres mystique – an arbitrary height, yet there is the articulation of the challenge. As Jon pointed out, you don’t necessarily have to be much of a climber to go to 8,000 metres, but you do need uncommon endurance, persistence, judgement and nerve. And luck. It’s a test of character as much as of the body, mere physical fitness seems to have little to do with it.
8,000 metres, the foot of the 1st Pinnacle … ‘Not so much a test of courage as of stupidity!’ Jon laughed gleefully.
Danny sits sketching in the corner of the Mess Tent, once in a while shambling over to check on his latest batch of bread. Huge hands and feet, wearing most of his personal possessions round his neck – sunglasses, face-cream, cutlery, keys, Swiss Army knife, pens – he clanks around our camp like the ghost of Jacob Marley in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but grinning happily all day long. To be a 19-year-old rock climber about to go to Art College, and find yourself climbing on Everest getting lessons in high-altitude filming straight from Uncle Kurt – no surprise he’s pleased with life.
He lets me look through dozens of his sketches. Most of them are done very fast, notes rather than complete statements. A few are portraits, but the majority are near-abstracts as he struggles to formalize the mountains. ‘It’s the lines of force,’ he explains about one particularly obscure sheet of clashing charcoal. ‘I’m trying to get the way the slopes along the valley crash into the flat moraine, and the whole thing then funnels up to Everest, which smashes it all back again … It’s so violent, yet harmonized. Competing lines of force … It’s the scale I can’t get on one sheet of paper.’
Next morning Mal could wait no longer and decided to set off for ABC with Liz. They intended to stay overnight at the halfway tent and celebrate Mal’s 32nd birthday (Liz labouring up the moraine carrying wine, cake and presents in her sack), while Chris went straight to ABC. ‘Whispering Wattie’ still looked as bad as he sounded, yet always seemed to be able to press on.
‘A very dark horse’ Mal thought, watching Chris, who looked more than ever like a raddled Rolling Stone. ‘Much less obviously in a hurry than a Boy Racer, always affable and tolerant – prime Himalayan virtues – keeping his suffering and physical condition to himself. Precise, uncomplaining, level-headed – the ideal partner. How far will Wattie go? But then, how far will I go?’
Mal was revving that morning to be back on the hill. Because of timing, weather and his abscess he’d done little so far, making two carries to C1, and one to 7090. To make up for that, he’d resolved to stay at ABC till the Expedition was over one way or another. Liz was uneasy about that – the whole policy of returning regularly to BC was based on the realization that real recovery was impossible at ABC. Would he not just wear himself out? Could staying up for some three weeks affect his judgement as well as his health?
Mal was aware of these risks, but felt he had no alternative. The weather had set us back considerably, both in time and climbers‘ energy. ’But in theory we only need one week of good weather from the foot of the Pinnacles. What we have to do now is get ourselves and our loads there. Carrying loads over the Buttresses to nearly 8,000 metres … that’s when you can expect the wastage to get serious.’
So he set off with Liz around noon in ideal weather, his hopes, plans and worries as firmly strapped down as the bright green Karrimat on top of his sack. ‘I’m not coming down till we win or lose …’ I sat in silence with Sandy below Joe and Pete’s cairn, wondering.
Meanwhile purposeful moves were being made on the hill. Still hampered by unconsolidated snow, Bob and Allen moved up to C2 for the night, Urs and Andy to C2 in preparation for finally fixing the 2nd Buttress. Nick carried a load to C2 and went down. His performance seemed to be steadily improving. And Sarah, climbing for the first time at altitude, took a load to the top of the ice-bulge – a fine effort that gave her much personal satisfaction. Now she and Nick prepared to go down to the comparative paradise of BC.
Sarah The last day we were up here I actually managed to get to the fixed ropes. I go
t above the ice-bulge and owing to the lateness decided to descend. Weather not good, wasn’t really keen to go any higher.
I don’t really like the fixed line.
I have never been so tired in my life, going up the ropes took a lot of effort and deciding to go down really did me in – I didn’t trust the friction brake over the ice-bulge! It took half an hour to fix it up – the rope is so tight. If I’d had the confidence to run down I would probably have got on a lot better.
Back across the glacier was horrendous … felt almost dead at ABC. I don’t think there’s anything quite so demoralizing as fixed ropes to feel just how strong you aren’t!
Andy G. This is one of the most preposterous places I’ve ever written from: the halfway tent on the East Rongbuk glacier. It’s in a dip in the moraine ridge, near the base of the ice-towers. Everyone who’s stayed here spends some time nervously eyeing the distance between tent and tower. If one of these fangs fell straight out … A spectacular site, sheltered, five hours from the nearest human, and with an outlook on to the North-East Ridge.
Arrived here late afternoon, five and a half hours from BC. I opened up the tent, found matches and a new gas cylinder, filled the billy from a melt-stream and got the brew on. No hurry, gradually adjusting to the silence and solitude, broken only by gunshot cracks from the ice-fins and a drifting chough. Unroll the bag and Karrimat, set out my toys – notebook, writing paper, Walkman, book, munchies. Now, four brews and a cigarette later (must be acclimatizing, I really enjoyed it), I’m sitting on the convenient sloping rock near the tent, looking at Everest in the last low yellow sun.
You come round the corner on the moraine, and it’s a shock every time: the entire North-East Ridge, seven miles away, towering over Changtse. It’s like seeing a lover again, feeling the excitement, belief and commitment rising in oneself again after the long and doubt-filled inertia of Base. Snow clouds play ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ as my eyes run up and down the Ridge, gauging, estimating, almost feeling this route with my eyes, remembering the flow of it.
It mounts in developing surges or movements, music transposed into stone and ice. The initial pyramid is a decisive opening statement of intent. The steepness of the ridge between 7090 and the Buttresses is a surprise, much more of an incline than I’d remembered. The lads refer to it as a walk, but I can see now just how hard-going it must be, into the jet stream above 7,000 metres. The 2nd Movement, the irregular swells of the Buttresses, also looks much bigger and longer and steeper than I’d remembered. Mixed ground this, a lot of rock showing again as the wind strips the snow away. Can see from here the thin white finger of the gully where Andy Nisbet fixed up the 1st Buttress. He and Urs should be somewhere above that today, trying to fix the route and finally decide on a C3 site. The cloud clears and in a showman’s flourish reveals, way above and beyond the Buttresses, the jagged staccato Pinnacles. Mist clings to them, they remind me of the Cuillin ridge, just as black and sinister. The 800-foot build-up of Pinn 1, then the utter mystery of the ground beyond the Pinn 2 – where do you go, what’s it like, what took Joe and Pete 14 hours to get to the Col below Pinn 2, what goes on there? Wattie’s now dreamed three times of approaching and tackling Pinn 2, and Sandy’s thoughts are often there. Then an unresolved number of Pinnacles clustered close together, ending in the abrupt vertical bastion of Pinn 3. We know it must be turned on this side, but how we don’t know. Nobody alive has been near enough. Joe and Pete may be there somewhere – a thought all the lads push to the back of their minds. After this crescendo, there’s almost another mountain altogether, rising steadily from 8,300 metres, to the summit, two-thirds of a mile – but at that height it might as well be 20 to 30 miles. I’m looking at all the near-mythical features of that summit ridge, imprinted on the mind by countless pre-war photos. Spot the point just above the Pinnacles where the North Ridge joins ours, the limestone Yellow Band (hard to imagine that being laid down on the sea-bed), the 1st Rock Step, the 2nd Rock Step ‘jutting like the prow of a battle ship’, the couloir Colonel Norton reached … Is that Japanese ladder still in place on the 2nd Step? ‘It would be a bit inconvenient to get up there and find it had gone,’ Andy Nisbet observed drily last time I saw him. Beyond that, the final steepening, God that must hit you hard, the final kick in the teeth, and the wind … Then the slope relents, the last 100 or so feet and there you are on the highest and final note, transfixed in the sky, and the spindrift banner streaming miles back from your feet …
God it’s so BIG and we’re only one-third of the way up it.
Sitting here in the late, almost mellow, afternoon sunshine, a rare hour of feeling at ease and fully awake. My inner camera has already clicked and this hour will always stay with me. The showdown is approaching. On the hill fate is being worked at.
That day brought fresh snow, and high winds that on the Ridge blew plates of snow-crust high into the air. But by now the lads were adjusting to working on the hill in wild weather. The two Glenmore Cowboys did an invaluable day of shuttling loads between Camps 1 and 2, each going up and down twice. By that evening most of the C1 loads had been shifted up to C2. The time had definitely come for pushing the route out.
Which was what Andy and Urs were trying to do. They’d started brewing at 6.0 am, and set off at 8.0 into the teeth of the gale; feet, face and hands were soon numb. Urs in particular grew uneasy, staggering on along this sloping ridge-pole in the sky. When they finally reached the bottom of the 1st Buttress, the fixed rope was buried under two feet of snow. Each length had to be dug out with an axe, feet repeatedly giving way to leave them waist-deep in powder. Spindrift simultaneously poured down on them from above and came swirling up from below. ‘I found it exhilarating,’ Andy told us later, though he confessed it was also very tiring. ‘Urs thought the weather was awful. I thought it was a poor day.’ Poor day it must have been; just wading up the initial snowfield and into the gully took two hours.
Then Urs pulled on an old Bonington peg. It came away and he fell ten feet on to his back. That completed his demoralization. He decided to go down, leaving Andy to continue. This splitting of a partnership was dangerous; the North-East Ridge is not a sensible place to be alone on in bad weather. It also rendered the remaining climber ineffective, for there’s little one person can accomplish alone. It had happened already with Jon and Rick, and was to happen more frequently as extreme altitude drove its wedge between a pair, ruthlessly separating the weaker from the stronger.
Still, Andy accomplished all that was open to him. He went on to the 2nd Buttress. He looked for a suitable bank for a snow hole, but nothing obvious there. The wind had shaved the Ridge of excess snow, so he pushed on up the 2nd Buttress, finding most of the ground acceptable. He came across sections of the last expedition’s fixed rope, much of it still usable. He checked and replaced the anchor points, jumared up, made a traverse and forced himself up the final ramp. He sat there coiling rope and taking stock while snow and ice particles howled by him. About 7,600 metres, he guessed. He exulted in the knowledge that he was capable of going further. ‘Maybe I’ll go on to 7,850’ (the height of a proposed camp near the 1st Pinnacle) he thought, for the ground looked straightforward enough. He got up and went on 20 metres; suddenly feeling weary and acutely aware of his isolated position, he turned back. Then turned again to go up. ‘Maybe I’d better not,’ he finally decided. No useful purpose would be served by his going on. So instead he made some additions to Bonington’s fixed rope, checked the remainder and set off on the long solo stumble down the canted Ridge towards 7090 and ABC.
Allen met them at C2, and noted that Urs was ‘very tired and disheartened’, all his customary buoyant optimism knocked out of him, shocked by the ferocity of the wind and needling spindrift. Eventually Andy turned up. The pair of them set off down the fixed ropes to ABC. Bob and Allen descended to C1, while Kurt and Julie came up the fixed ropes for the first time and settled down in C2 for a couple of days’ filming from 7090.
Mal Strolled
into ABC – made a mistake with Bizet – back to the Thompson Twins for the long final section. The place was abandoned – everybody on the hill except Wattie hunched over a stove.
Andy, Urs and then Danny eventually arrived at 8.0 pm pretty done-in. Fixed 2nd Buttress – token progress, but at least re-established the route in very heavy snow conditions. Plan definite to establish a couple of our tents between Buttresses 1 and 2: I could hear Bob on the radio but not vice versa, they are going to try for a snowhole below Butt 1 – so am extremely frustrated.
That evening at ABC another setback developed. Andy Nisbet was becoming snow-blind. The day had been overcast and he had been quite unaware that he had taken off his goggles. Such is the vagueness induced by altitude that Urs hadn’t noticed either. And now he was suffering for it, waking up in the night blind and in great pain. ‘A beginner’s mistake,’ he cursed himself, and yet one made by the most hardened Himalayan veterans; both Messner and Kurt had gone through that agony.
Urs injected painkillers, bandaged one eye over and numbed the other one so that Andy could fractionally open it. Andy stood trembling with pain and eventually was moved to say, ‘Urs, that bandage is beginning to hurt.’ For him, this was a massive statement of distress. His voice quavered as he added, ‘Urs, it would really help if you loosened that bandage.’ And later, ‘Urs, I think I’m going to pass out.’
