Summit Fever

by Andrew Greig

  Finally Tony decided to go to Yosemite, to tackle some big wall climbing. He couldn’t get time off work. He made the choice we’d all made, and left his job. For this absolutely pointless activity. To be able to sit in a tent in the middle of nowhere, with his fate out there on the dark Tower.

  He was, of course, absolutely right.

  The full moon hung impaled on the tip of Lobsang Spire, the wind was cold and clean. You could, with some difficulty, have read a book by the starlight. We said our goodnights and went to bed. ‘I wouldn’t have missed this for anything,’ Kathleen murmured as we slid effortlessly down the slope into sleep.

  Woke up at 5.00 a.m. full of nerves and purpose. A big day for the bumblies. Kath and I loaded our sacks with gas and hill food. We were only taking it to the cave at the end of the Ibex Trail, but it was a start and new territory for us. Tony was white and sick, so he and Mal took the day off and we set off on our own.

  Climbing up the first section of the trail gave us a premonition of being ninety. We moved painfully slowly, gasping, unable to find the oxygen to move faster. Like the cigarettes, we combusted with difficulty. And 40 pounds on the back seemed to nail our boots to the ground. The trail itself made the heart beat faster, but I could view it more realistically now. Exposure apart, there were only a couple of genuinely delicate sections. Not speaking but glancing at each other now and again in silent empathy, we laboured on carefully.

  After forty minutes I glanced back down; Base Camp was a little ring of tiny tents. The morning was so still we could hear the goat making goatish sounds and see the flash of water Jhaved poured from jerry can to basin.

  We edged round the section I’d stopped at the day before – and the trail abruptly ran down onto a small boulder field above the glacier. On the left was an overhang with ski sticks, crampons, ropes and sacks clipped to an old piton. We unloaded our sacks and took some photos of ourselves trying to look indifferent yet heroic. The Tower looked much more fierce and abrupt from here, a monstrous pyramid slammed down across the head of the valley. I could see too what I took to be the Icefall, a jumbled, glittering slope half a mile or so up the glacier.

  We lingered as the day grew warmer. More and more sounds from the glacier, slithers and rattles and crackings and hollow thuds. At her high point Kath was feeling slightly dizzy and light-headed; my chest seemed to be full of glue but I felt surprisingly strong – the benefit of having come up this way a couple of days before.

  Kath took a last look. She wouldn’t come this way again. We set off down; this time the trail was almost enjoyable. It felt good to walk back into Base Camp, back to the flies and flowers, to duck past ‘Brew Me Crazy’ and get a mug from Jhaved, having done one’s bit for the day.

  Before lunch we saw two tiny figures high up on the cliff. Half an hour later we ambled up from the camp to meet Adrian and Mohammed. Pat on the back, handshakes, the reassurance of physical contact, happy birthday to a beaming Aido. They were regretful not to be able to manage a second carry to Camp 2, but relieved and thankful to be safe and done with it.

  They also reported that Jon and Sandy had fixed the first rope length up towards the Col. Mal whooped and punched his fist in the air. The door of the Tower was opening.

  Mohammed pulled off his boots and crampons, handed them and the helmet and axes to me with a tired smile, as if to say ‘It’s your turn now’. It was good to have my gear back. I remembered that what had really peeved Mal on arriving at Askole was not that the others had broken into his private stash of goodies but that they’d taken some of his climbing gear. Lay off my blue suede boots, matey.

  I turned the fanged crampons over in my hand and wondered what kind of world they would take me to.

  Meanwhile Jon and Sandy were suffering on the 1900-foot ice slope below the Col. They’d got away from Camp 2 early, tramped to the bergschrund and crossed it in that Rubicon moment that marks the beginning of the assault on the mountain proper. With 1200 feet of rope, snow stakes, ice screws, deadmen and pitons in their sacks, it was heavy going.

  Neither of them had actually fixed ropes before. In Alpine-stylee climbing, it simply wasn’t done. So they just used common sense. Jon led out the first 220-metre reel of bright blue polypropylene, securing it at intervals with ice screws and snow stakes. It was heavy work banging and screwing them in; beneath a thin surface of snow the ice was hard. Lots of little rocks frozen into the slope suggested a fusillade of stonefall in the heat of the day.

  Sandy led out the second reel. Suddenly it was hot, with the sun reflecting back up from the snow they felt caught in the focus of a giant magnifying glass. The heat, the altitude and the heavy sacks drained away their resources at a frightening rate. They monitored their bodies and decided enough was enough; much more of this and they’d seriously deplete the reserves of energy mentally set aside for completing the mountain. That ability to assess realistically just how much go one has, and to know when to push on through suffering and when to call a halt, struck me as one of the most intriguing and essential Himalayan qualities. And like many Himalayan qualities, it transcends the physical.

  So they secured the remaining rope and climbing gear to three snow stakes and rappelled down from their high point, and an hour or so later they plodded exhausted back to the tent. The heat was intense all afternoon, and due to it and the altitude of Camp 2 around 18,000 feet – they felt they were resting but not recovering. It was their fifth day of continual climbing and load-carrying. A certain degree of embuggerage was setting in.

  And besides, they were beginning to smell.

  We had a special meal – double retorts, rice and dal, and pink custard – for Aido’s birthday. I gave him a can of peaches from my rapidly dwindling stash, and the advice to open it in the solitude of his tent – which, being at heart a canny Scot, he did. He was happy and relaxed now his time on the hill was over. It was hard for him to leave not knowing if we were going to make it or not, but his thoughts were turning now to getting back to Sue and starting his job. As always, those who were staying on part envied and part pitied him. He conscientiously went through our medicine chest with me. It contained an extraordinary variety of drugs and salves and potions, everything from pile cream to morphine and some wicked-looking tubes for carrying out a tracheotomy. We decided to pass on open-heart surgery.

  As I’d got to know him more, I realized that for all his doctor’s seriousness, he too found normal life lacking. He didn’t like risk, yet he went parachuting, climbing and drove a Porsche very fast. He was an ideal climbing doc. We were all going to miss him.

  With the possible exception of Jhaved. When Aido saw Tony’s condition, still very pale and sick, and the state of Mess Tent hygiene, he expressed his opinion focibly. To mollify him, Jhaved made us pancakes. They tasted strongly of paraffin. ‘This simply won’t do, old boy.’ They went to our goat.

  While Jhaved sulked, Alex cleaned out the pan, rinsed it, and made a fresh pancake mix and presented them to the gourmets. We tasted them critically. Paraffin flavoured pancakes again. Adrian stormed, Alex was defensive, the goat got fat. When the same routine happened the next night, Jon occupied himself with a felt-tip pen and the lid of a cardboard box and twenty minutes later produced a memorable addition to our Mess Tent graffiti (I should add Alex’s middle name was Brittingehame, and the paraffin miraculously speeded up bowel movements):

  BRITTINGEHAME ALPINE SERVICES

  The 5 Star Caterers

  PUT A TIGER IN YOUR BELLY

  STEP HIGH WITH ALEX!!

  I did a lot of moonlighting that night. The paraffin runs. Squatting half-asleep looking over at the moon above Masherbrum, the sky holding light as if it was particles in suspension. It was peaceful and beautiful, but I would have preferred a good night’s sleep.

  I woke late to hear Tony and Mal saying their goodbyes to Mohammed, Adrian and Kath. As always, there was no knowing if or when they’d meet again, and as always it was very casual. ‘Mind how you go, youth.’ ‘See y
ou in Scottie.’

  I finally got up, tired and weak. That day seemed full of goodbyes. Adrian and Kathleen packed up their gear and took their last walkabouts. I began sorting out my sack for tomorrow’s glacier introduction with Alex. Jon radioed to say he and Sandy were coming down for a couple of days recuperation at Base. They passed Mal and Tony below Camp 1, compared news, then romped happily down the Ibex Trail into the green world of our Base Camp.

  I want to quote Sandy’s diary at some length because it gives some insight into his world, and also, I think, into how one is opened up inside after returning from five hard days on a Himalayan peak.

  When I chatted with Andrew I wondered why he was surprised when I said I always keep a diary. Does he think because I don’t talk too much that I’m as thick as two short planks? Like, I cannot spell, I speak porter-talk, but who in the world does not when one has spent two years with a no English speaking Yugoslav crew on an oil rig, and living with a French girl? Well, how can the man comprehend – he probably does. And such irrelevant but important thoughts pass through my head as I speak to him and Jon. One look into Jhaved’s eyes and he knows what I want. One straight hit with my axe and I find a good ice placement. C’est la vie, Dominique would say. Don’t worry, Sandy, she’d say. They’ll never know you or what you’ve done.

  … I fade away to wash by the stream. It’s good to wash the sweat of the hill away, and I watch the dirty soapy water. What right have I to pollute the water here? But it soon turns clear. What right have we to hold opinions? Every right, I say to myself, and then I say if we have the right to opinions do we have a right to put them to other people to try and change their views? Do we have a right to build a small dam in the stream to make a convenient washing place, it’s OK for us but by what RIGHT?

  And Jon says, every right. He’s an opinion holder, tells everybody his and puts them down boldly as he talks. I always think why does he, why should we? I wonder if he ever thinks this way.

  Kath worries Andrew will not be OK on the glacier. I reassure her he’ll be OK. Well all be OK. I hope she finds that OK and reasonable …

  … So, candle flutters in my tent. Slight wind tonight, nice alpenglow on Masherbrum. That’s another point: why do we all compare things? Why are we all so narrow?

  I thought like this a long time now, why does it start to fill my head and the pages of this book? And climbing is not so important to me, it’s more the way I feel, the way I react, the language I speak and the words I scribe, the mess that I leave behind, the way that I eat my food … These suit my feelings.

  Sign off now. Letters to write. Folks go tomorrow, the end of the Expedition for them. The climbing has just begun on the Col.

  For Kath and me it was our last night together. We lay in our separate sleeping bags holding hands. There was little left to say. My head was full of tomorrow on the glacier, and her heart was full of leaving.

  9

  A Walk on the Wild Side

  The author romps on the sleazy end of the glacier, the Four Aces push open the door, and we play high-altitude cricket

  16–22 July 1984

  Adrian, Mohammed and Kathleen left in the morning – along with Shokat, who was going back to Urdukas for some kind of LOs’ convention. He’d seemed rather miserable, restless and homesick the previous days. Here he had no duties, nothing to do, no servants to wait on him, no army buddies to talk to. How unselfsufficient army life makes people! You needed inner resources to live here, and he didn’t have them.

  It was an intense parting for Kath and me, at once too drawn out and too quick. We were all standing about in front of the Mess Tent at 6.00 in the morning, our sacks packed for the hill, theirs for the walk-out. My arm round her waist imprinted itself with the memory of her delicacy and her strength. ‘Look after yourself,’ she said. Her eyes held the sudden intensity of naked feeling, as if a blue lid had lifted revealing a deeper, bluer eye within. I nodded, wanting the moment to last for ever, wanting to be away.

  A brief farewell hug, for we were diffident about making a fuss in front of the others. Adrian: ‘Would you two like ten minutes alone in my tent?’ Laughter, handshakes with the others, the usual promises and assurances – see you in Anstruther, meet you on the Baltoro, when you get home I’ll cook you steak and onions and we’ll drink red wine and then … It all seemed very iffy, but we have to say these things.

  They turned and walked away. At the crest of the slope down to the glacier Kath paused and looked back at the camp, at the mountain, at us. Unusual for her. (‘Well, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.’) Then she disappeared down the hill. Her slight figure carried much of myself away with her.

  *

  I put Kath out of my mind. Big day today, onto the mountain at last. I checked my gear: harness, helmet, axes, down jacket, rope for prussik loops, a jumar clamp, gloves, camera, sun stick, goggles. Then a load of hill-food bags and gas cylinders to carry to the Brew Tent. How the weight adds up! Okay, youth, let’s have a look at this glacier …

  A clear, needle-bright morning as Alex and I pick our way slowly, gasping already, up the Ibex Trail. It feels like early days in Glencoe – keyed up, concentrating hard on detail, everything vivid and dreamlike, adrenalin buzzing. Pink flowers nestling under a ledge, caw of a raven, ski pole scraping on rock, watch this loose gravel, Base Camp tiny already, can see Sandy airing his sleeping bag, wish I was down there, no I don’t …

  We rope up at the Cave, tying our fates together for the day. A gesture of trust and solidarity, marriage by a 40-foot length of polypropylene. Mustagh is gleaming and severe and magnificently indifferent to our pranks. A little further and we sit down to strap on crampons and helmet, then gingerly climb up onto the glacier at last.

  No gleaming blue and white here. ‘The sleazy end of the glacier,’ Alex drawls. It’s all dark corners, rubble, disintegrating alleys, broken walls. My first sizable crevasse, a dark slot that goes down further than I care to look. Alex instructs on jumping technique: pick your stance on the lip, spot your landing place on the other side, picture the jump, then do it. Make sure you keep going forward.

  I check it out, jump, clumsy with nerves and the weight of my sack and the unfamiliar crampons. Stumble on the far side, regain my balance. Alex relaxes and moves on. I feel like Lucky in Waiting for Godot, stumbling after an elongated Pozzo at the end of his rope. Moving together like this is new to me, all my Scottish routes had been done on belay. Rope’s a bloody nuisance, always threatening to entangle with my front points, catch round a rock, or pull tight. There are dozens of crevasses up here. Most of them we step over, a few we jump. It’s all happening too fast, too much to attend to. We come to a wide crevasse with a snow ledge in the middle. This one needs a combination jump – land on the ledge with one foot, tense and continue the jump to land on the other. Picture it. Feel it inside yourself. It’s not a heave, more like an ice dance, Alex says.

  He goes ahead, making it look easy, positively graceful. He digs in his cramps and waits, takes in the rope till it’s taut to me. Go for it …

  Scarcely balletic, but I got across. Another stumble on the far side, still tending to catch on these crampons. ‘Don’t land on the front of your feet – you’ll just trip over your points. Land on the heel, let your momentum carry you forward.’ I try it over the next few jumps, feels a lot better. Then a double jump, to one leaf of ice, to another, then across to the far side. Not so bad this, could get quite into it. Sure makes the heart beat faster …

  After twenty minutes of this, I begin to have time to look up from my feet. What we’re in now is a fantasy wonderland. We move past great boulders perched like glowering skulls on slender snow pedestals. Around us are leaning towers of ice, slabs of snow some 40 feet high that must carry a hundred tons, wild gulches, broken pinnacles, white canyons curved like throats, caves like open jaws. All threatening, all inhuman, dead and wildly beautiful.

  As the sun gets higher, the snow and ice surface is cut and scored b
y dozens of rivulets and streams. It’s like walking over the hide of an immense white animal. Every so often we feel a shudder, hear the slither or thud as the animal stirs and another overhang collapses, or boulder finally falls off its perch. Alex grins maniacally, leans over a crevasse and bellows down, ‘Wake up, Bertha!’ Then we come on the first of the glacier pools, a strange blue-green, still as a watchful eye. It’s a reverse of the natural order, seeing water on top of ice instead of the other way round. This whole place is a reversal, a negative of reality.

  It’s unreal, the product of a deranged imagination. It’s the set of a low-budget sci-fi movie, They Came from the Baltoro. It’s a blow-up of a world seen through a microscope – only there have I seen such chaos, breathtaking anarchy, a world in dissolution. It is so stunningly novel and bizarre and beautiful that I nearly walk straight into a crevasse for looking about me.

  Alex’s eyes are shining. This is his world up here. To the others it’s an unpleasant necessity they’d rather do without, to him it’s wondrous and inspiring. ‘Right, time to go to school,’ he says, and proceeds to give a crash course in glacier techniques.

  He explains the procedure if one of us falls in a crevasse: the other kicks in with crampons and axe and tries to hold him. If he succeeds, he quickly makes a secure belay – a sling round a spike, or put in an ice screw. Then, if necessary, he can get out of the rope system and help his partner. Who, if not injured and still conscious, should either climb out with axes or tie prussik knots to the rope he’s hanging from, clip them to his harness, and climb up the rope with their aid.