Summit Fever

by Andrew Greig

  Kathleen and I had decided to do some walking most days. It kept us fit, helped acclimatization – and got us out of the camp site, which became at times claustrophobic. We were on reasonable terms with Burt and Donna – that is to say, Burt told us endlessly about how he’d assembled our American gear, their battery of drugs, their first trip to Nepal, their second trip to Nepal, their time in Peru, on Mount McKinley, in the Alps. We didn’t have to ask for advice, it was showered upon us.

  In that time, he never once asked anything about us, what we did, liked, thought, felt, family, anything.

  We studiously avoided politics. We got on, though we had nothing in common but our predicament.

  We are running into a new crisis: shortage of food and fuel. We had weeks of food in the Expedition boxes, but Burt didn’t want to start on them, nor spend the remaining Expedition money that he had on buying food in Askole. Still ill and overweight, he didn’t have much interest in food. Fit and underweight, I did. We were running low on kerosene, didn’t want to buy more firewood. So we took out one of the Expedition Gaz stoves and tried to assemble it. Burt and I wrestled with it, and I ended up getting liquid gas over the back of my knuckles, which burned the skin and killed it off. Only later did it strike me as odd that the veteran of expeditions to Nepal, Peru, McKinley etc. did not know how to assemble a standard camping gas stove.

  As Burt sounded off about the iniquities of the fiend Duff, I managed to extract from him the figures for the Expedition’s assets, the costs of porterage, of Mohammed, of camp sites, jeeps, further provisions. I wanted to be able to do my own calculations, and work out our options myself.

  ‘I’ve done the honourable thing once – I’m not going to do it a second time,’ Burt asserted. I knew very well what that meant. If anyone, or anyone’s gear, was going to be left behind, it wasn’t going to be he or his. I was equally determined it wasn’t going to be me. I wanted to get on the hill; I owed Rocky a book, and I couldn’t write it in Askole.

  So I just nodded uncommittally. ‘The first thing I do when that fucker Duff arrives,’ he went on, ‘is get the money from him. Then we decide what to do with it.’

  I determined on one thing: Kath and I had to get to Malcolm first. From the earliest possible day of his arrival, we’d have to be in position to intercept him before Burt.

  But till then we were free to explore. One day we set off early in the direction the others had gone, followed the trail on till we could see the dark snout of the rock-strewn glacier in the distance. It felt wonderful to be out on our own, with no packs, no LO, no guide. Even more exhilarating was seeing a great wall of pinnacles and towers open out ahead. I thought I recognized Cathedral Spire, the Trango Tower and Mount Paiju. I’d seen the photos often enough, yet was somehow astonished to see they really existed. I had to get up there, at any cost.

  Another day we went back to the hot springs. I’d picked up a flea that seemed determined to play join-the-dots across my body, so I spent a considerable time submerged in the hot sulphurated water to drown it. I washed all my clothes, changed sleeping bags – to no effect. That flea, along with its friends and relatives who’d come along for the ride, plagued me for the rest of our time in Askole.

  Burt and Donna came later to the hot springs; that day Burt got heatstroke again, and spent the next three days moaning and shitting. After that, he and Donna attempted no more exercise. They read, sat in their tent, played cards with Shokat, and went up to the spring every second day. They visited nobody and saw nothing.

  Their choice. But Mal had stressed the beneficial effect of spending time above the altitude you slept at. We might as well be as completely acclimatized as possible by the time he and Tony arrived. So we went on a long scramble up the hill behind Askole, gained 1500 feet, felt breathless and distinctly light-headed, hung about, then came down again.

  We certainly slept better for it. No laboured breathing, no headache, no sleeping pills.

  Lilligo, 27 June

  A nice camp site, but very prone to stone fall which is not quite so great I suppose … Porters moving slowly, some of them have blisters … The glacier is not too difficult, the path is hard to trace here and there, but much better than I was led to believe previously.

  The ‘Team’ are all in good spirits, getting on well together in fact and are looking forward to seeing Mustagh tomorrow if the clouds rise.

  My heel is mending slowly, it’s sore, but Aido gives it a lot of attention. We all wonder how you folks are getting along down there, and hope that you are perhaps a little bit happier now.

  Last night we spoke to a Pole who thought the route was a hard one. That worried me, but today I’m full of respect yet confident also. Jon feels the same.

  Sandy

  We’re sitting cross-legged on a blanket on the roof of Haji’s other house, the one in the village across the gorge from Askole. The morning is cool, damp and fragrant. We sit with the elders of the village, surrounded by curious children, and wait for the inevitable cup of tea. The fat, white clouds slowly rotate and snag on the upper ridges of the mountains, then break free and drift on. Must be bad weather further up the glacier; if the lads have reached Base Camp, it’s probably snowing.

  Still, who cares? It’s stunningly peaceful up here, looking back over towards Askole, smoking the first K2 of the day and listening idly to the elders’ chat. The only worry at the back of my mind was the prospect of having to cross that death-on-a-stick bridge again …

  Haji had come for us early that morning. Wrapped in a brown cloak, he looked part wandering monk and part wizard. The light flashed on his blue and silver haji ring.

  ‘Assalam ο aleikum,’ he greeted us.

  ‘Aleikum salam,’ we responded.

  ‘I over river going. You would wish to come?’

  We grabbed our water bottles, sun cream, shades and hats, and followed him on his slow, stately wander down through the fields. He explained that his second wife lived in the village across the river. The Koran allows for a man having more than one household, but insists he spend equal time at each of them. So every day Haji crosses the Braldu river, and back again …

  Pure Indiana Jones, that bridge. It sagged across the gorge, above the hurtling, spitting, glacier-grey river, some 300 feet across. It had a single rope for one’s feet, and a rope for one’s hands at shoulder height. It dropped steeply at our end, and rose steeply at the other. And on closer inspection it wasn’t made of rope at all, but of thousands of twigs and little branches woven and twisted together. It takes two months to make, and they make a new one every year. This one, trailing broken lines along its length, looked on its last legs.

  We’d picked up a group of Askolites by this time. We all sat down at the end of the bridge and contemplated it for a few minutes. I tried to breathe deeply and slow my heart rate. Maybe it was easier than it looked.

  Haji murmured a few words, and three locals started the crossing, by way of demonstration. They seemed to do it slowly and carefully, so I attended. The problem was that as one got further out on the bridge, it began to sway and twist. In addition, the two handrails tended to close up, and one was higher than the other, so one was in a seriously unstable situation with little lateral support, on the edge of being pushed over sideways into the river. And the river shouted, with all the relish of Jon Tinker, ‘You’re going to die.’

  So the locals had evolved a technique whereby they crossed in small groups. One would go ahead for 30 feet while the others tried to hold the rails apart. Then he would stop and, leaning back on one rail, push the other out with his foot while the rest picked their way towards him. This made my stomach turn just watching. In the middle, where the bridge was at its lowest, narrowest, and most wobbly, the front man took up his position and the others all came up to him, stepped awkwardly over his upraised leg, and continued on. That was the bit I fancied least. From then on the front man brought up the rear, holding the rails apart and having them held for him.

  Eve
ntually they were across. Our turn. Haji looked at us with a ghost of a smile. Damned if we’re going to be wobbly westerners. ‘Is no problem,’ he murmured, ‘but slowly, slowly.’ We got to our feet, a little pale, hearts thudding in our ears. I took a last drag, threw away the cigarette in a Humphrey Bogart stylee, and followed him onto the bridge.

  This is really horrible. And exciting. Nowadays Kath and I seem to enjoy testing ourselves. It’s the company we keep.

  Only concentration keeps fear at arm’s length, and this one demands total concentration. Each shuffling step, each movement of the hand along the ‘rail’. Resist the urge to hurry and get it over with. The bridge starts rhythmically swaying. The handrails close up, one above my right shoulder, the other below my left armpit. I feel I’m being toppled to the left. The rails are too thick to get a hand round, all I can do is try to clench a strand. Each strand is clear, red-brown twigs, I can see each broken end. Out in the middle the grey water hurtles hypnotically past my feet, completely disorientating me. But I can’t look away, because I have to place each foot across a few inches of rope. I feel suddenly as though the water is still and the bridge and I are whizzing sideways downstream. I shake my head, blink, but the movement beneath my feet still throws me. Take your time. Concentrate. This is fun. Oh yes? Here’s the middle, now I’ve to step over his leg. Alfie Noakes … That was hairy. How’s Kath doing? Working at it. Bugger, my hand’s bleeding. It gets better from now on, must do. But I’ve still to come back …

  Kath and I finally stepped off the far end, jittery with adrenalin, pleased with ourselves. It felt damn good to be standing on solid ground, breathing the shrub sweet air of Askole’s sister village.

  ‘If I lived here,’ I said to Haji, ‘I’d rather have one wife than have two and have to cross that every day.’ He laughed, put a hand gently on our backs and guided us onto the path up to the village.

  Where we’re now sitting taking our ease, on the rooftop of Haji’s second household. No rush, no hurry. The tea finally arrives. All my senses seem sharp today, the tea is wonderful, the air sweet, the trees and fields are shimmering bright.

  At length Kath and I set off up the hill for more acclimatization exercise. It’s slow, steep going. A thousand feet up and we’re definitely feeling the lack of air. We’re light-headed, a little weak, but not headachy. We drink several pints of water, trying to thin our blood which is thick with red blood corpuscles that are frantically multiplying in an effort to catch and hold what oxygen there is.

  An hour or two later we set off back down. We meet a group of villagers who escort us to where Haji is. They’re in no hurry, and eventually stop awhile by a clear stream. Two young men are sprawled on the bank, talking and giggling, another lies on his back, sucking a straw and looking up at the sky. The old man chews and spits a kind of green tobacco that they get high on – the Balti equivalent of chewing betel nuts. He looks like a grizzly old Fife trawler skipper. As we lie taking our ease, I have a sense of déjà vu. Sunlight, water, trees, the lazy Edenic innocence … Then I have it: ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’, except that Kathleen is fully dressed.

  Eden in Askole! I’d expected diarrhoea. Instead – Balti time, amnesiac mountain time, full of the present and of timelessness. Vast external spaciousness gradually mirrored inside.

  On the hill, washing socks by the spring, drinking tea with Haji – something is happening to us here. I can feel a shift inside me. I feel an emptying out as if years of inner clutter was dissolving into the thin, cool air.

  After reading Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, I was determined to keep all meditation, all philosophy and the Meaning of Life out of this book. Too much thinking, not enough climbing, was my reaction. But dammit, it’s happening. I came here to climb, to take a closer look at Death and Destruction, not to think. If you can’t think well in the valley, why expect to think well in the mountains?

  Yet something is happening, and we’re not even on the hill.

  We’ll move on, of course, being restless westerners. But something of this will remain with us.

  (As I type this from my journals, Askole will be under several feet of snow. They’ll be digging in for winter, half-hibernating, huddled for days on end in with the animals in their rock houses. They’ll be sleeping, feeding the animals, making hats, perhaps telling the children bits of the Kayser Saga, a folk epic about a humorous conqueror that exists in Balti, Afghani, Chinese and Tibetan. The rain spatters on my window. I wish I was there, as one aches to be with an absent lover, on a grey November afternoon.)

  We crossed the bridge safely. At the other side I casually asked Haji if anyone had ever fallen off. ‘Eight … perhaps ten … two memsahibs fell on the stones, they did not die.’ ‘Good value, eh?’ Kath murmurs, mimicking Sandy.

  We returned to the camp site mid-afternoon, straight back into stress again. Shokat was sulking that we’d gone off without informing him. He pointed out he could restrict us from moving outside the bounds of Askole at all, both for our own safety and because we might be photographing military installations, viz. the rope bridge.

  There was another note from Sandy, dated 30 June, to announce they’d all arrived safely at Base Camp. He’d cut his heel crossing a river and Aido and Alex were suffering a bit from altitude. The weather was poor, but they hoped to start recon-noitering the Tower – which they hadn’t as yet seen for cloud – in the next day or so. They thought about us, and hoped we’d be able to join them.

  Which was fine, but like his other notes this one was addressed only to Burt and Donna. To my highly tuned paranoia, this was upsetting and alarming. Had we simply been cut out of the Expedition? What agreement had Sandy and Burt made between them when the others left? Were we to be left behind if Mal came with insufficient money?

  Kath was upset too. She loved Askole, but was determined to get to Base Camp. Anyway, it wasn’t up to Burt who went on, it was up to Mal. Which made it all the more important we get to him first.

  That afternoon, on the other side of the world, Tony Brindle was applying himself to the last question of his exam paper. “Outline the main principles of the Treaty of Rome”. He looked at the clock. An hour to go.

  It is hard to concentrate on the Treaty of Rome when you’re about to rush off to the Himalayas. His bicycle was outside. In an hour’s time he would jump onto it, hurry back to his digs, pick up a haul sack and rucksack bulging with clothes and climbing gear, rush with them to the station, catch the train to London, get out to Heathrow and board the PIA flight to Islamabad. And then, finally, the mountain …

  It was a tight schedule. He sat in his chair, revving like a little sports car waiting for the lights to change. And then there was that mysterious phone call he’d had the night before, telling him to look out for a friend at the PIA desk at Heathrow …

  Fifty-five minutes to go. He sighed and wrenched his mind back to the Treaty of Rome.

  On the same afternoon, while Tony tried not to think of mountains and Kath and I worried and plotted, Jon and Sandy strolled down into Mustagh Base Camp with shit-eating grins all over their faces.

  ‘What’s up then, anyway?’ Adrian asked, still nursing his sore head.

  ‘We’ve been scampering about and found this amazing ibex trail that cuts out the whole of the lower icefall.’

  They went into the Mess Tent to explain and have a well-earned brew.

  Jon (1 July): Woke up feeling as good as after a route. Aido like death all day. Me and Sandy went for a look at the hill. First sight of Mustagh – big, black, beastly. Sobering.

  The joy of making things – slings etc., all part of the tactile turning-into the work ahead.

  Sandy with the iron close to his surface.

  Jon (2 July) Work today. Me, Sandy, Mohammed and Alex up the Ibex Trail to the glacier. Me and Sandy don crampons. The route becomes more tottering … incipient headaches … still problems with crevasses. We set up the Camp 1 tent on a moraine bank far too far left. Some bickering, but all at a
civilized level. Looks like we’ll need another camp before the ice slope to the Col.

  We go back down the right bank of the glacier, trying to find a better way. Gradually becomes even worse than on the way up. Both of us relieved to get out …

  A brutal, typically thuggish Himalayan day. Cool down at Base with Alex’s pancakes and reggae music.

  Jon (4 July): A festerday today. Cancelled due to rain.

  Scene in the Mess Tent: Sandy’s gasping laughter, his whole face wrinkling up. Alex’s off-the-wall Americanisms. Western music from the Walkman speakers, the purr of the paraffin stove. Jhaved crouched by it, watching the cabaret. Adrian delighting in puncturing his own seriousness with a schoolboy joke. Mohammed quietly watching and curling his moustaches.

  I appreciate the feelings the city suppresses – the easy friendship, the tolerance, the quick forgiveness. When Mohammed said there were a lot of people praying for us – Skardu porters – I was moved entirely uncynically.

  Wishing everyone else was here.

  After a week, it felt as if we’d been in Askole for a year. Various expeditions passed through on their way up or down. I’d never expected the Baltoro to be so busy. At this point we’d met ten expeditions, only one of which – the Swiss on Nanga Parbat – had been successful. That seems to be the average Himalayan success rate, and it gave me a far more realistic notion of our likelihood of success on Mustagh. The commonest causes of failure were bad weather, loss of strength or resolution, and death or injury to members of the party.

  A Scottish lad from the Brit Trango Tower team turned up. He looked very thin, very tanned; the backs of his hands were cut all over from hand-jamming. What was most striking was how they hadn’t healed at all – the body’s capacity for self-healing breaks down at altitude. The peak had been practically all rock climbing, despite its being over 20,000 feet. They’d gone at it for a week on the face, done thirty-odd rope lengths, then been driven back just two pitches from the final snow field up to the top.