Kingdoms of Experience

by Andrew Greig

  My name is Malcolm … Roy … Duff … and I live …

  Rick I meet them at the foot of the 2nd Buttress. They have only made it halfway along to the Pinnacles. Tony is wasted and hands me the medallion for Joe Tasker and a poem to place higher up. Mal is even worse, in a really bad way, asks me if he is between camps 4 and 3…

  Jon Mal staggering with fatigue, like a spastic, arms and legs moving of their own free will. Two months is enough for my body and I’m off down as well. Had to lie down on the way back from the Raphu La. That’s enough for a while.

  Rick Jon has been sitting down for quite a while. When I reach the top of the Buttress I see him turn to descend. I shout down asking if he is going down. He nods. So I am on my own at the front again. Pick up O2 masks and food-bag and continue slowly to C4 …

  Allen arrives at Base. He seems to be lasting well despite doing a great deal of selfless load-carrying – but next time up he’ll be into the Pinnacles; like Rick he’s snatching a final rest before going up for the last time with whoever is fit to go. Sandy’s talking over waiting on here to team up with him.

  Allen is cautiously optimistic and makes a cheering counter to Andy and Urs’ view of things. ‘If the weather’s okay, we’ll get through the Pinnacles. Whether we make the top is another matter.’ I listen, wondering whose assessment will turn out to be accurate.

  Sandy and Allen are deep in earnest conversation. Liz sits at the cooking area waiting for another kettle to boil, her eyes distant.

  Bob is having a hard time making his carry to C3 into the teeth of what is developing into a blizzard. Nick has been going well enough, and is there to hand Bob a mug of soup on his arrival. Bob spills most of it, gulps down the rest and heads back down for C2, using a compass bearing to navigate through the whirl.

  Mal Tony went first on to the fixed ropes in an effort to establish footsteps because new snow had filled in all the tracks … I clipped on to the rope and stumbled and slid, triggering avalanches which thundered down the couloirs. I’m trying not to sag on to the ropes, just in case …

  Down to the bergschrund. Tied to Tony I’m staggering across the glacier resting endlessly …

  ABC late in the evening. Over a stone lighter, complete exhaustion. Alive.

  Mal had been descending at the very limits of his strength for some nine hours. Like Andy, the physical and mental effort required, hour after hour after hour, had stripped away flesh from the bone. He was finished, something still felt very wrong in his chest. That was the end of our second Pinnacle attempt: the first one hadn’t got beyond C4, and this one had pegged out before the foot of the 1st Pinnacle. Now for the first time Mal was beginning to seriously doubt if we’d get much further. Unless the weather changed, he was virtually sure we wouldn’t. And even if it did …

  The other climbers in the ABC Mess Tent that night echoed his mood. Tony said openly he’d had enough, so did Jon. Having recovered from his bronchitis, Chris looked awful but felt well; however, he kept his opinion to himself. In this group, Jon was the most vocal and influential personality. With Sandy feeling oddly out of things on this Expedition, and Mal being frequently withdrawn, it was often Jon who determined the mood of the Expedition, and so it was now. The only people who might have countered that near-resigned mood were either on the hill, like Rick, or at BC, like Sandy and Allen Fyffe.

  Somewhere during his harrowing descent and that evening in the Mess Tent, Mal moved from cautious but determined optimism to a sense that the game was up and we were fairly beaten. Yet as he lurched down the Ridge and met one climber after another – Rick, Jon, Nick, Bob – doggedly pushing on up in the teeth of the storm, he’d been deeply moved, almost to tears. He had a sense of all the efforts made over the last weeks, months really, to force ourselves on as far as this; and how we actually were a team though we’d scarcely realized it, all of us driven by the same idea, the same dream as we ebbed and flowed up and down the Ridge.

  ‘I suddenly seemed to see the whole thing quite differently, as if I was watching from high up, us all moving on the mountain. I realized that what we’re doing here is only partly physical.’

  Nick Felt in a good position, Rick on up at C4, me moving up tomorrow. Regretting the set-back of my shits but getting stronger and this time I feel Rick and I could do great things on the Pinnacles.

  ‘We shouldn’t be using words like “success” or “failure”,’ Sandy asserts at the Base Camp. ‘What is success anyway – getting to the top, everybody getting on well, or nobody getting killed?’

  ‘There’s only winners and losers in this game,’ Allen interjects with his own brand of realism. ‘You get to the top or you don’t.’

  ‘Oh balls, Allen!’

  Fyffey grins, but does not concede the point.

  Alone at Camp 4, waiting for his old climbing partner, Nick, to join him the next day, Rick methodically reviewed the options as he saw them.

  Rick Thoughts of evening 19th May on the climbing of this mountain. It is beginning to look like I am one of the few team members who can hack 8,000 metres at the moment. Original plan is out the window, we will never get O2 through the Pinnacles. Much depends on how strong Nicko is and whether in Andy and Urs we have a real summit pair. Only a Pete-and-Joe-type push without O2 and with all the commitment that entails will succeed now. Without the Pinnacles fixed it is even worse. Will broach the prospect with Nicko but he will see it too clearly. A bad turn in the weather during such an attempt and you are as good as dead.

  Assuming all the time that we could go back all the way without O2 – unlikely. Some helpful factors – rope may be found in good condition. We could always bale out down the North Ridge, but an accident similar to Juan Jose’s is so easy when wasted on ground like that. We might be able to live for several days out of Pete and Joe’s sacks if we find them – macabre, but survival is about shelter, gas and food.

  Last resort is going it alone. Save that for a really last resort, even then I would have to have a companion through the Pinnacles – I don’t want to die that much.

  The gap between the outlook of those who were still feeling well on the hill or Base Camp and those who were knackered at ABC was rapidly widening.

  20th May Sandy woke at Base Camp with a severe pain in his right calf. When he dragged himself out of his sleeping bag, he found he could barely walk. What goes on here? He’d had slight twinges the day before, but this was different. He began rubbing liniment into his calf while he pondered the decision he had to make today. He’d had no word from Mal one way or another about the proposed extension, and Luo was insisting on knowing today, so as Deputy Leader it was up to Sandy.

  He decided to set back our exit day by a week. It would be absurd to miss a chance of climbing the mountain for the sake of a week. Perhaps we’d get good weather, perhaps not. Either way, nothing was lost by an extension.

  So Andy and Urs set off early for ABC with the news of his decision. Some time later, I followed them, then Liz, who expected to stay in the halfway tent.

  For me it was the first time I’d tried to go the ABC in a day. A long haul, not helped by the snow, which began falling steadily at noon and quickly covered the moraine. It didn’t look encouraging – black clouds over the North Col, and the snowflakes were big and moist, quite unlike the usual dry flurries. It was still curiously mild. Was this the monsoon then, come to ring down the white curtain on all our endeavours? I thought of Ecclesiastes. ‘The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong …’ as I pushed on through thickening snow, wondering what I’d find when I arrived at ABC.

  Rick Little sleep, shuffle about and set off late for 1st Pinnacle. Pass one O2 bottle, then another with gear and a bale of rope attached. Add bale to rucksack already containing tent, stove and pan, and continue to foot of Pinn 1. 8,000 metres at last.

  Find Bonington’s fixing rope tied off with two tents, two harnesses, a jumar, figure-of-8 and two ski-poles. Dump tent and rope and stove and start to follow the fixed r
ope for a short distance until it emerged on rocks, totally frayed. We’ll need to replace this … Took the ski-poles and descended. Nicko arrives pretty tired. Tomorrow: the Pinnacles.

  Though no one else knew it yet, we’d finally made contact with the Pinnacles. People were moving into position lower down the hill: Chris went to C2 in good time and joined Bob, who’d tried to carry to C3 but had run out of steam in thick snow and turned back; Nick made the long haul over the Buttresses and arrived at C4, pleased to have reached a new height for him. He felt well and was confident he could go over 8,000 metres on the Pinnacles the next day.

  At Base Camp Sandy looks moodily at the mountain obscured by clouds, Danny strums guitar and makes bread, while Kurt and Julie, recently returned from a few days’ jaunt across to the Lho La pass, where they could look down into the Western Cwm, cook tea. It is now snowing, and because of that and his pulled calf muscle, Sandy had decided to put off going up to ABC for another day. With an extra week, there is time to wait for the weather to improve. Allen washes his clothes and himself, keeping a low profile and resting before his last return to the hill.

  I arrive to find ABC sagging forlornly under steadily falling snow. The atmosphere is strikingly different from that of Base Camp. Jon, Tony, Mal, and now Andy and Urs, each enforcing the others’ mood as the hours go by, all inevitably influencing Mal’s perspective. At Base the others felt me to be pessimistic because I gave some credence to Urs’ and Andy’s view that we might be approaching the end; up here I am clearly far too optimistic in anticipating further progress. Such optimism is ‘Base Camp bullshit’, the prerogative of those who haven’t yet been wasted on the hill and are currently enjoying BC life, out of touch with the reality of things up here.

  But what about Rick and Nick, the lads currently highest on the hill? On their 6.0 pm radio call they sound very positive. Rick has already been to the foot of the 1st Pinnacle, found sections of fixed rope, and left gear there. He and Nick have discussed their options and decided to stick to the plan of fixing as much as possible of the 1st Pinnacle without oxygen. As far as they are concerned, the game is by no means over. Chris is certain he can carry to C4 in support. Is that high-altitude perspective not realistic? They are after all on the spot.

  No one had any real answer to that, preferring to lambast the Base Camp dreamers. ‘The idea of staying on received a thumb-down here,’ Jon asserts to general agreement. They believe that the monsoon is beginning – what else can this sudden mildness and heavy snow mean? Lightning began to flicker behind Everest. I look round the tired faces; they seem not so much defeatist as resigned.

  ‘I doubt if you can go more than twice to 8,000 metres on this route – and we need much more than that,’ Mal says carefully. ‘It’s up to personal ambition from here on.’ The others nod; they are more than tired – they want to be finished with the hill. ‘Still,’ he continues, ‘though I think the game is lost, we’ll play it out to the end – that’s the tradition, isn’t it?’

  Tony As I write this at midnight there is a mass of snow outside the tent. Andy and Urs arrived with talk of extending our exit by a further week – but to what point? Very few (like none) of the people coming down from C4 can see any chance in the prevailing weather – we must be realistic at this point rather than crossing the line – this is not pessimism speaking – purely practical observation and knowing one’s limits. No one here is capable of the Pinnacles (beyond the 1st) in the current heavy snow. Let’s go home!

  What is really going on? Are we on the verge of breaking through third time lucky on to the Pinnacles, or have we come to the end of the line, brought to a standstill by the soft but remorseless buffer of snow? Caught between the two worlds of BC and ABC, I don’t know what to believe. So I go late at night over to Mal’s tent to talk with him.

  Three candles light and warm the orange tent as we pass the water bottle back and forwards and exchange cigarettes and points of view. Snow builds up then slides down the sides of the tent. Mal huddles in his sleeping bag, not ill but very far from well; I squat on a Karrimat as we talk. There is a sense of lull, like that of a pendulum at the top of its arc. All of our movement and striving has brought us to this quiet conversation in a warm tent in a world of falling snow. He asks after Liz, concerned for her at the halfway tent and hoping she’ll turn round and go back tomorrow if the snow keeps up. He enquires how Sandy and Allen were when I left Base. Well, I say, still keen to go on. He considers that, nods.

  ‘Maybe I’ve been up here too long. I’m knackered now, and maybe that’s affecting the way I see the trip – I am aware of that possibility … But I don’t think so …’

  He glances at me with that casual I’m-going-to-lob-a-grenade-your-way look that I’ve seen twice before – when he asked me if I wanted to come on the Mustagh Tower trip, and again at Mrs Davies’s in Rawalpindi when he first dreamed up this expedition:

  ‘I was thinking we could come back here this autumn.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Well, I don’t like leaving something undone, but I don’t think we’re going to make it this time. Whoever comes here next has got a hell of an advantage – there’s fixed ropes everywhere they’re needed all the way to the Pinnacles, three snow caves stocked with food, gas, stoves, and the bloody oxygen that broke us getting it up there in the first place. And they’ll gain by everything we’ve learned. I want the next people here to be us.’

  Mal you never change.

  But there’s sense in what he’s saying. Whether it’s practicable or not remains to be seen. Count me in if you need me, it’s another good dream.

  ‘Anyway, if this is the monsoon the decision’s made for us. See what tomorrow brings.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mal.’

  ‘Night, youth.’

  I leave him puzzling over a last cigarette and slip and stumble over snow-covered moraine to my tent.

  Waking in the night, you put up a hand and feel the tent fabric bulging down under the weight of snow. Give it a push and hear a sshh … whoomph … as the snow slides down to the ground. A miniature avalanche. Then a thousand tiny wet kisses as fresh flakes whirl on to clean fabric.

  Snow settling a crown on your head when you go outside to pee.

  Snow, as though the unwritten contract we’d had with Everest was being quietly shredded into a million pieces.

  21st May. ‘We’re going home!’

  I look round the smiling faces in the ABC Mess Tent and see relief, as if a heavy burden had finally been shrugged off. Mal nods, ‘I told the lads in the 8.0 am radio call to come down and clear the hill. It doesn’t matter if we call this the monsoon or not – I only know you can’t climb Everest in it.’

  I’m scarcely surprised. There was something conclusive about last night’s snow, and it’s still coming down steadily outside. A white screen at the end of a film, the empty page.

  Rick and Nick start brewing at 7.20, and have unaccountable problems with the stove till they discover that powder snow has completely blocked the entrance to the snow cave, sealing off fresh oxygen. ‘No wonder we had a rough night!’ A snow cave is a little world of its own, and they are quite unaware of conditions outside. So Mal’s 8.0 call is a complete surprise, telling them to get off the hill while they still could, and bring everything possible with them. That means we are clearing the hill, that means the end.

  Rick When Mal called at 8.0 am and said he thought the monsoon had arrived, I had no knowledge of conditions outside the snow-hole, and both Bob at C2. and I postponed any decision. At 9.0 Bob announced that he and Chris would descend and, having considered Bob’s judgement, I was strongly influenced to do the same. I added the proviso that I would still consider going to the base of the 1st Pinnacle. When Nick and I finally emerged from the snowhole at nearly 10.0 into a blizzard, I abruptly decided to descend and Nick agreed.

  Rick goes back inside and radios ABC. ‘I think you have a point, Mal – we’re coming down.’

  ‘Good. Radio in every t
wo hours on the hour. We’ll come out and meet you at the bottom of the fixed ropes. And by the way, we’re thinking of coming back in autumn.’

  ‘Duff, you’re a bloody dreamer – but a good one!’

  He and Nick quickly collect their gear and set off down, triggering windslab avalanches every few yards.

  Tony descends the now treacherous moraine with a message for Sandy telling him the trip’s over and to cancel our extension if possible.

  ‘I don’t agree with failure … You keep coming back till you’ve done it,’ says Mal, hunched over his brew. He looks less happy than the others. He’s just made his only important leadership decision on the Expedition – to call it off. All the climbers at ABC accord with that decision, but what will the others say? And how will it look back home? What’s done is done; though he has doubts, it still feels right. He could give many reasons for calling it off – the probable monsoon, the hill now wildly dangerous, lack of time, lack of climbers still capable of going back on the hill – but essentially it’s an intuition, an intuitive recognition that the game is up. To ignore such intuitions in the mountains is to court disaster. No one’s died on one of his trips yet, and he intends to keep it that way.

  So we wait anxiously for the descending pairs to radio in every two hours, knowing that the snow slopes will be wildly out of condition. All that matters now is getting everyone back here safely, then we can have the post-mortems, then we can get excited about coming back in autumn.

  Bob Woke just in time for the radio call. To our surprise Mal announces very heavy snow – he suspects it to be the monsoon – and he wants us to evacuate the hill. This seems a bit premature, so we arrange a time to call back and I stagger outside to look at the conditions. There is a steady wind, quite heavy continuous snowfall, and the depth of snow has completely obscured any sign of the fixed ropes. It is also ominously warm so this is either the monsoon or the ‘little monsoon’ that comes some time before it.