Summit Fever

by Andrew Greig

  Was he disappointed? Yes, but also in a way pleased and relieved to be done with it. They’d gone at it too fast and hard, hadn’t acclimatized properly, burned themselves out.

  It was good to have another Scot to talk with, someone who could share our warped Scottish humour of sarcasm and understatement. I was made even more nostalgic by waking to the sound of rain pattering on our tent next morning. I looked out and the air was thick and mild with drizzle. Lovely stuff. Bad news for Base Camp, though.

  Mustagh Tower from Camp 1 (photo M. Duff)

  Dawn at Base Camp (photo A. Greig)

  The Magic Bus (photo M. Duff)

  Mal Duff reading at Camp 1 (photo T. Brindle)

  Irrigation terraces, Indus valley (photo M. Duff)

  Crossing the Braldu, Mal and Kath (photo A. Greig)

  Jon prepared to avoid falling author (photo S. Allan)

  Sandy and Jon, Alpine Bin-men (photo A Greig)

  Camp 3 tent after storm (photo M. Duff)

  Tony at bivi tent, last morning (photo M. Duff)

  Going Home: Sandy, Andrew, Mal, Tony, Sandy (photo unknown)

  Mal on the summit (photo T. Brindle)

  That evening, the village elders sat outside, waiting to see if the moon would appear to signal the end of Ramadan. There was poor weather across Pakistan, but somewhere or other an official observer saw the moon, and the feast of Eid was declared across the country for the next day. Even Skardu accepted the official proclamation. But not Askole. In Askole, if they don’t see it, it doesn’t count.

  So the scrawny goats and chickens were unslaughtered, the sweet pastries remained unbaked, and the people of Askole went round looking hungry all the next day, anxiously watching the sky. The muezzin’s call to prayer that morning seemed more keening and sobbing than before. Shokat and Abdul, not being from Askole, gorged happily all day.

  There was an expectancy, a curious silence in the village. The rain stopped in the afternoon, the sky partially cleared.

  Dusk. The Askolites gathered outside their houses. The elders, Haji and the priest went to the raised patch of ground from which the moon had to be sighted. A hush settled over the village.

  Then the moon tore itself clear from cloud and briefly shone bright and clear over the whole valley. The muezzin’s triumphant call went on and on, was picked up and echoed by the entire village, like a pack of musical wolves. Haji came by and presented us with a basket of eggs and one of his rare smiles; I returned his Eid present with a tin of Parkinson’s Old-Fashioned Humbugs from my precious personal stash of goodies.

  Little work was done in Askole next day.

  But we still had planning and plotting to do. We got up early next morning and walked up to where the trail entered the outskirts of the village. We sat on a rock outcrop and scanned the barren waste for any sign of Mal and Tony, like beleaguered settlers waiting for the arrival of the US Cavalry. We waited three hours. They didn’t show.

  I went up to the spring above Askole in yet another attempt to rid myself of the fleas that were joyously celebrating Eid up and down my body. Perhaps because of the mild, drizzly weather I took a cassette of Scottish folk music with me. Perhaps that was a mistake.

  The first verse of the first song, Archie Fisher singing ‘The Grey Silkie’, made my heart suddenly turn over. A flood of memories washed over me. The song was sung in the ceilidh scene of ‘Local Hero’, one of its heart-stopping moments, a jumbled, mysterious, tragic lament. I terribly wanted to know my own culture again. What am I doing here in this alien land? My country is in that music, in turn stately, blithe, death-obsessed, bawdy, sentimental, grim, realistic, hopelessly romantic, inconsolable, sardonic. I know all those conflicting impulses, know them from inside.

  ‘We’re aa’ going East and West,

  We’re aften guy aglee …’

  Heart heavy, eyes prickling, singing over the Walkman the song I’d always wanted Dad to hear but never got round to playing him. Remembering singing in the early hours at the Clachaig, and that unknown climber’s lament for good company that hushed and touched us all. All the sweetness in us, and the loss, distilled in a particular voice at a particular time, opening our hearts – I bawled over the Walkman in the fields above Askole, tears running down my face till my heart was lightened.

  I woke to hear Burt instructing Abdul.

  ‘Me leader. No breakfast. Hot water only. No lunch. Understand? No chapatis, no lunch. Cook only when I say. Okay?’

  I lay there, heart pounding with anger. I wanted food, I needed food. Since when had Burt been elected leader? When I crawled out of the tent, he beckoned me over. We looked at each other.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes. I thought it was a bit autocratic.’

  ‘Well, I am the leader.’

  ‘Yeah – and the Lord High Executioner. Come off it, Burt.’

  Kathleen came over. She said she thought it was a bit much. Burt cut her off and reminded her that she was in effect a nonperson on this Expedition.

  ‘I’m the leader. I don’t mind being unpopular.’

  ‘Look. In the first place, you’re not the leader. You couldn’t lead a poodle down the street. And as a decision, it was autocratic, unnecessary, silly and selfish.’

  He launched into a tirade about the burdens of leadership, the amount of money he’d put into the trip, how Mal had screwed it up, how Kath and I were a drain on the Expedition’s resources. Finally he sneered, ‘You should thank me. Your four British friends wanted you two sent back. I said no.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ We glared at each other.

  That hurt. That cut to the quick of our uncertainty. Was it true? Surely they wouldn’t have said that. And yet …

  We walked away. Back in our tent, Kathleen burst into tears of anger and helplessness. It was the third time he’d brought her to tears. I couldn’t forgive him that.

  Breakfast – hot water and oatmeal – was a family sulk. No one spoke. We didn’t even look at each other. It was the bottom.

  Angry and sick at heart, we followed the path again up through the fields to the beginning of Askole, and waited at our look-out point. And finally, we saw two specks in the distance, coming fast our way.

  Not ours. Two Askole porters hurrying home. They had no news of two Brits coming up the valley. We sat a while longer, not wanting to go back to the camp. It was our eleventh day in Askole. Already I couldn’t separate one from another. They’d melted together like our paraffin-flavoured Milk Duds inside their packets. Such mood swings from Olympian calm to seething anger and back again. It must be connected to the altitude – and to the intensity generated inside an expedition.

  To calm down, we decided to walk on to the next village down the valley. There we met a porter we knew from the walk-in. He invited us to his house for chicken and chapati. Lunch! We cheered up.

  We sat on his roof, surrounded by ragged Dickensian children and would-be porters pressing their scrap-paper recommendations on us. We explained we had no money and weren’t going anywhere. ‘But when Leader come with rupees …’ The whole valley seemed to know our predicament. A porter came into the village and spoke with our host. He turned to us and said, ‘Leader coming – Mustagh Tower – rupees.’

  We looked at each other. When? Today. How long? Shrug. An hour, inshallah. Me good porter, very strong.

  I’ll believe it when I see it. Still, our pulse rates went shooting up.

  An hour later, climbing over the stile with ski poles and huge packs, came the long and the short of it: Malcolm and Tony. We waved from the roof. We could have hugged them. I think we did.

  But had they got the money?

  Mal shrugged, enjoying the moment. ‘Yes, but I had to go back to Scotland for it.’ What?! He’d flown back home, met an astonished Liz, sold and borrowed and overdrawn to raise 40,000 rupees, gone to the new Indiana Jones film, picked up a flabbergasted Tony at Heathrow, and revved up the valley.

  I had to break the bad
news to him. Burt and Sandy had miscalculated. We needed another 30,000 rupees to get everything to Base Camp. ‘I know,’ he said casually, ‘we met Sybil in Skardu.’ But did he manage to get it? ‘Yeah, no problem. But we’re fucked. Let’s get on to Askole. Oh, and I’ve some mail for you two.’

  Kath impulsively hugged him again. He did his best to look embarrassed. He’d played a blinder, and he knew it. I filled him in on the details of the costs ahead, and the situation back in Askole, and that the lads had made Base Camp. And whatever he did, not to hand the money over to Burt Greenspan.

  He looked tired and a bit grim. He’d been rushing around like a blue-arsed fly, then shot up the valley with Tony. He’d left Liz and himself some £4000 poorer. The reaction was beginning to set in. We finished eating and set off for Askole, followed by half a dozen porters we’d promised to take on. Mal trudged along thoughtfully, while Tony prattled away with his customary energy and enthusiasm. It was his first time in the Third World. He loved it. His eyes were lit with excitement as he asked about the trek ahead, and tried to glean every scrap of news about the lads at Base Camp. He was panting to get on the hill. He never learns it’s uncool to display such enthusiasm. He was just what we needed, a new input of energy.

  And so we led Mal and Tony into Askole. The despair of the morning seemed weeks ago. No doubt we did look smug. Burt scowled as the four of us walked into camp, and I laughed out loud, remembering the I Ching hexagram Mal had thrown before leaving:

  DELIVERANCE.

  We spent the rest of the day making up porter loads, calculating costs, buying further provisions. We had enough money to take everything we needed up to Base. Burt and I went to Haji’s and bargained, pulling together at last. Haji asked me to write him a reference; this was absurd, he had more dignity and stature than I ever would. We shook hands, looked forward to seeing him on the way back.

  ‘Mustagh summit, inshallah.’

  ‘Inshallah, Haji.’

  When darkness fell, we had our twenty-nine loads and twenty-nine porters. Askole was packed that night with no less than seven expeditions, four of them heading up with us the next day. We decided to get to Jolla Bridge – which we’d been told was a bottleneck – before the others, so set our alarms for 3.15. We had a big meal, ate some personal goodies, pored over letters from home.

  Our last night in Askole. Moon bright over the valley, the clouds like milk on a drunk man’s floor. It was hard to sleep for excitement, and Mal’s worrying, racking cough.

  7

  The End of the Beginning

  The Brits pull a fast one, the weak fall by the way, and the Bin-Men make heavy pastry

  6–11 July 1984

  The race for Jolla Bridge starts at 3.15 a.m. Angora blackness as we silently take down our tents. The only hint of dawn is in the wind. The seven of us slip away from Askole, following our porters into the half-light.

  Forward going, leaving more and more behind, walking at last into the savage arena. The frustrations and reversals of the past two weeks made it all the sweeter. We passed the turn in the trail where we parted with the lads twelve days before. This time we went on.

  Midmorning we hit the glacier for the first time. It was nothing like I’d expected. I was looking for gleaming blue and white; the reality was the biggest quarryload of rubble in the world that entirely smothered the ice beneath. We picked our way up and down and round endless shifting heaps of boulders, rocks, stones, pebbles, grit – the chaotic smithereens of the world’s greatest mountains. The rock under my feet could have been the summit of one of those peaks I watched through the mist up the valley. So walk with some care and respect.

  The glacier moraine was hard going. Very demanding on knees and ankles, it took total concentration, perpetually stepping from one rock to another, most of them sharp edge up, many of them insecurely stuck to the ice beneath. There was no time to look up or around; a twisted ankle could happen in a second and spell the end of the adventure. ‘Switch to endurance,’ Tony said stoically, as he bobbed along under his huge pack.

  We met the British Trango Towers team on their way down. We exchanged cigarettes and news. They seemed pleased to be on their way back, philosophical about their bad luck with the weather. A down-going party always slightly patronizes the one on the way up; they’ve been there, they’re veterans.

  We reluctantly parted from them and plugged on, thankful for the grey skies. A man wearing a green hat with a light pack and two ski sticks passed us, heading down. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Hello,’ I replied. We kept on walking. ‘That was Rheinhold Messner,’ Mal said casually.

  So one of the gods had just passed by. He looked an ordinary sort of bloke. Except this ordinary bloke had just come from adding another extraordinary success to his curriculum vitae – a traverse of Gasherbrums 1 and 2, solo of course. I looked back thoughtfully as the green hat bobbed into the distance.

  We finally crossed the glacier and stopped for a brew. Mal had withdrawn into himself, was quiet and looked distinctly grey. He lit a cigarette and frowned at the ground. ‘Actually, I’ve been feeling bloody depressed today.’

  The sky cleared and the temperature soared while we spent what felt like hours plodding through soft sand by an old river bed. With the sun hammering down from above, and bouncing back up from below, energy drained away down the plughole. I’d felt that a ski pole was sissy and unnecessary, but at times it seemed to be the one thing pushing me forward. Up ahead I saw Tony’s figure shimmering through the heat wave. Kath was going well, sometimes in front of me, sometimes behind. I plugged on, suffering, annoyed at myself.

  Early afternoon we reached Jolla Bridge – a grand name for a single cable strung across the bucking Braldu. We were practically the first there. Tony babbled away about how wonderful it was to be here, wonderful to be climbing soon etc etc, then added, ‘But that was hard going through that sand, I thought it would never end.’ That was reassuring. You tend to forget that when you’re really feeling it, the odds are the others do too. The difference between climbers and trekkers is not that the former are so fit and strong that they don’t feel fatigue and altitude and pain. They do. The difference is climbers’ capacity to endure, to accept and keep going without complaint.

  After the Askole rope bridge, Jolla Bridge was a pushover. You sat in an orange box hanging from a pulley on the metal cable and were pulled across by a cord attached to the pulley. It was fun, but slow and cumbersome. We’d got there before the other expeditions, but our porters hadn’t. We found the camp site half a mile beyond Jolla Bridge, unrolled our Karrimats, propped up our brollies and settled down to read.

  Some three hours later I emerged from the mellow world of Blandings Castle to notice that practically none of our loads had arrived. Most important, there was no food and no tentage. The schoolmaster, who was acting as sirdar and so giving the Askole kids a week’s holiday, showed up very agitated, explaining that the bridge was broken and we had to do something or other. Mal and Tony were shagged out and pretended to be deaf. Kath had had to double back for an extra couple of miles to look for a ring that had slid off her finger, and she’d had enough for the day. Burt was groaning quietly and fingering his knee. Oh well …

  A huge queue of porters and loads had built up at the far side of the bridge. The rope for pulling the box across had broken. After a long delay someone had somehow connected up a much thinner cord, so now only half-loads were coming across and very slowly at that. On our side of the river were most of the climbers from four expeditions, plus a dozen of our porters with nothing to port – their loads were on the far side. I could see our blue barrels and make out some of our boxes, scattered all the way down what I estimated to be a five-hour queue.

  But we had an edge. Captain Shokat was in charge at the far side. I dropped a note for him in the empty box going back: PRIORITY BLUE BARRELS. BOXES 17, 22.

  The Captain played a blinder. I could see him waving his stick, threatening and cajoling and organizing porters an
d loads, waving his arms, striding up and down in his best white pajama suit. This was an army-style operation; he was loving it.

  On our bank, each nationality was behaving wonderfully true to character. The Italians were waving their arms and fighting with each other; the French elaborated bizarrely logical and totally unworkable schemes for speeding up the bridge; the Scandinavians slumped and looked at the ground and contemplated suicide; the Pakistanis all spoke at the same time, making quite sensible suggestions that no one listened to. Meanwhile perfidious Albion was watching the Brit barrels and boxes unobtrusively leapfrog up towards the head of the traffic jam on the far side.

  An hour later I’d secured all our essential loads, rounded up the necessary porters and walked back to camp. I was feeling weak and drawn and slightly dizzy, but it had been great fun. It was good to make a contribution.

  I got Abdul going on the evening meal. The camp site gradually filled up. Naturally we’d taken the best places. Two hours later Captain Shokat appeared through the gathering dusk, pale and hoarse. We gave him a round of applause. Here’s your food, here’s your brew, have a cigarette, you did great. Like most LOs, when it really mattered he was right behind us.