Summit Fever

by Andrew Greig

  I regained the grass, heaving, nearly sick with the sudden exertion. I’d been out of my depth, got into a bad situation, got out of it. All good training.

  I carried on parallel to the Mustagh glacier, on the boulder fields and scrubby pasture below the cliffs on my right. A couple of hours later, I came to a sudden plateau. It was roughly the size and shape of a football field that had been crumpled slightly by a giant hand. The polo field.

  Mohammed had talked about it. ‘Up there,’ he’d said, waving to the west, ‘Afghan and Balti play polo with horses. Long time ago, big field.’ And here it was. I wandered about its undulations, trying to picture the crowd that once jostled here, the fierce, boney faces, vivid scarves, the reek of horse sweat, the shouting and jeers … They still play Balti polo in Chitral and Gilgit, in a roughhouse stylee, and claim the game originated among the mountain people here. Lost in a dream, I passed ruins of rock houses, a rickle of stones that must once have been summer shielings or staging posts on the long trek between China and India. I’d seen those deserted, haunting mounds of stone before, in the ruined crofts dotted over the Highlands.

  I sat back against an old hearth and dreamed in the sunlight while the wind crept over stone and grass. Up here in the mountains, human life and human time are so evidently of little account. We’re a passing flicker across the land. This feels just right. I’m glad we don’t stain it with our desires, our fear, greed, delusions of importance, money, arrogance, cruelty, hopes … All this must surely have passed through here for hundreds of years, and now there’s only an unlikely polo field and some heaps of stone. So be it. That’s what’s so uplifting about these mountains – they’re one of the very few parts of the world we haven’t affected or fucked up. They’re too big for us. And the few who come here come not to master but to be mastered, not to squeeze but to be squeezed …

  It feels as if I’ve finally dumped a rucksack I’ve been carrying round for years. I feel light, innocent, uplifted. I’ve dropped the burden of my wasted, suffering, self-important race with its tragedies, hypocrisies and its near-mad leaders who will in all likelihood destroy much of this planet in the next thirty years. I’ve dropped the burden of myself.

  For really we don’t matter much, and this is a relief. My life is not important, my worries, hopes, losses, triumphs, are of little account. In the eternal, ever-shifting mountains, under the sky and wind, we flicker by like shadows.

  For me now, there is the cool wind, the sun on my face, the warm rock at my back. I am alone on ‘the roof of the world’. My happiness has a quality I can never describe.

  We woke on the 19th to rain drumming on our tents and heavy cloud steaming up the Baltoro. Mustagh was completely blanked out. Jon radioed to say they were staying put at Camp 1.

  So today was a festerday. We sat festering in the Mess Tent, talking fitfully. There comes a time when there seems little left to say. If this was the beginning of the monsoon bad weather we had been expecting, we could be here for a long time. Time hung heavy for all of us, but Tony seemed the most restless. He hated sitting about and fretted for activity. The rest of us were capable of retreating into books and solitude, but he always had to be doing.

  Eventually we decided to make something, anything. At random I suggested a game of darts. An hour’s ingenuity produced a missile constructed from an umbrella spoke, bolts, tent repair kit, candle wax and flights made from a John Players packet. On the lid of a cardboard box we drew in Mustagh, and situated little triangular tents at the appropriate places up it. You had to spear one tent before you could proceed up to the next one.

  We were enjoying ourselves, like children on a rainy day, and competed seriously. After a couple of hours Tony and I had reached Camp 3, while Mal was still stranded at Base. Meanwhile Alex had given up in disgust and gone off to get stoned in his tent.

  It didn’t look likely that we’d ever make the tiny Camp 4 bivvy.

  We sac around after lunch while Tony made a ball. He knotted climbing rope, melted the ends in, then wound yards of tape over the whole. He threw it over to me; I caught it. It was very hard and heavy, not enough bounce for football. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘anyone for cricket?’

  Two porter staves bound together made a bat, an empty jerry can was the wicket, cardboard boxes were strategically placed fielders. It had stopped raining now, and Alex lay propped against a boulder, stoned and speechless, as we proceeded to play cricket for over two hours at 14,500 feet.

  It was desperate and very serious and very funny. We believe it is a record for high altitude cricket, and can recommend it to any expedition as an ideal form of acclimatization training. With one batsman, one bowler and a wicketkeeper, there was no rest at all. We were all gasping for air, doubled up with laughter and exertion. I was heavily bruised by Duff’s bodyline bowling, he put his knee out, and Tony pulled his forearm muscle. Eventually we hadn’t the strength to bowl or hit another ball, and limped into the Mess Tent for a brew.

  ‘English very strange,’ Jhaved said, shaking his head.

  ‘Too right, youth – but the Scots are worse.’

  We were shattered, but we’d needed it. Now the clouds and barometer were rising, and Jon and Sandy radioed to say they’d be moving up to Camp 2 tomorrow. Over our evening dal and retorts we discussed the best game plan for Alex and me. Mal and Tony in particular disliked the Icefall. It was a concentration of what they called objective danger, that is, risk they could do little about. Stonefall, collapsing snow bridges, towers that suddenly crumble. There was an area near the top of it they described as walking over the dome of St Paul’s, where they could actually feel the ringing hollowness beneath their feet. There was no way round it. It would have to fall in some time.

  Listening to their stories, I agreed I should go there as little as possible, but the distinction between objective danger and normal being-in-control climbing didn’t really exist for me. All my danger felt subjective, and I didn’t expect to feel in control when climbing. What I’d seen of the Icefall so far was wild enough, quite disturbing; I could see it was dangerous but I didn’t feel it. I’d been more gripped safely clipped to an exposed belay in Glencoe, which felt dangerous though it wasn’t.

  The upshot of our discussion was this: Alex and I should go only once through the Icefall. Once we’d gone through to Camp 1, instead of coming back to Base, we’d head on up to 2 the next day. Which of course could well create acclimatization problems: we’d be sleeping at Camp 1 without having previously been up there, then going further up to 2 and possibly trying to do the same there. That was a bit of a risk, but on the whole we preferred it to going up and down through the Icefall several times.

  It was our sideshow. Obviously the lads, shorn of support climbers, had no time or energy to assist us. We must carry our own tentage, gas and food and bags. As long as we didn’t impinge on the summit attempt, we could do what we wanted. At the same time, we wouldn’t be able to help much in that attempt.

  It was a delicate situation, and I was relieved to have our plan and position clearly stated and accepted. As usual, I was apprehensive and excited. The Col was my summit, trained and planned for and contemplated ever since Mal first walked into my kitchen in what now seemed another world, a world before climbing … We’d go for it when the weather coincided with a natural break in the other lads’ activities.

  I fitted heel bars to my crampons so they wouldn’t come adrift again, looked through all my gear and packed everything I’d need in my sack. Now we’d just wait for that opening, and go for it.

  This is what I came for.

  I stood outside my tent that night, looking at the moon shadow of Lobsang cast across the glacier like a stupendous spike on a sundial. I waited in the cool wind till excitement subsided and peace came. But my last sensation as I crawled into my bag was that of the sharp pang earlier in the day when I’d found Kathleen’s nail clippers in the flattened grass where our tent had been. I’d put her out of my mind for the last few days.
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br />   It’s the little things that get under your guard.

  Jon and Sandy woke at 3.30 to the whisper of snow on their tent. They looked outside. Maybe one-and-a-half inches of fresh snow. Which could create avalanche conditions further up the mountain, particularly on the White Tiger slope below Camp 2. At 6.00 they decided to set off in any case and see how it looked.

  Sandy plodded ahead, remembering how when the weather was bad in Chamonix he could nip down to the Bar National for a beer, or drive through the tunnel and head for the Dolomites or the windsurfing and sun-soaked beaches of the Calanques, with Dominique, or shoot the breeze with the goatherds and wine, pumpkin and apple growers in the Loire valley … He thought of his brother fishing for marlin off Bermuda, must be good jest, that …

  Jon trudged behind, keeping an eye on the weather and the build-up of snow. It was their third time up to Camp 2, so they were reasonably acclimatized and moving well. Just the same, he did rather resent the weight of his pack, stuffed with food, gear and gas cylinders. If only Adrian and Mohammed had made one more carry to 2 … But they hadn’t and that was that. It’s hard work doing all your own support, too hard maybe. Who’s going to burn out first – Mal and Tony, or us two?

  Tony was revving in frustration at Base Camp. Another day’s rain, probably snow further up, little chance of progress. Over breakfast he confessed he’d been awake half the night thinking about the summit ridge, envisaging all the possibilities and problems. Not through fear, but pure mouthwatering anticipation and desire. The Tower was a beautiful mountain, daunting, pure somehow, a worthy challenge. He was restless, distracted, his imagination working overtime, his eyes distant.

  The youth had summit fever.

  ‘When I first got here, I was happy just to do some climbing. But now it’s definitely on, I want more than that. I don’t care if I’m first or fourth on the summit, but I definitely want it.’ He looked up from his brew, flushed at the thought. Typical of Tony, I thought as I smiled at his enthusiasm, always more ingenuous than the others. They’re always very dismissive about their summit ambitions. ‘I just like climbing’ is the standard line – true, but a load of baloney as well.

  Summit: at last the word had been said. From now on it hovered, unspoken, at the back of every conversation. They all seemed to have suddenly realized that if Jon and Sandy fixed up to the Col, the way would be open to the top. So whoever arrived at Camp 3 at the right time … Hmm …

  I could sense their minds turning over the permutations, and hear it in Jon’s voice over the radio. If he and Sandy had to come down after fixing the Col, then Mal and Tony would take a tent up and establish Camp 3. And then … Would they go on, could they continue with two weeks less acclimatization than Sandy and Jon? And would that be fair, after the extra work the others had put in? Did it matter?

  Competition and cooperation. It was interesting to see these two highly developed impulses struggling inside each of them. We’d got to the stage now when carrying a load for someone else – food and gas, for instance – diminished one’s chances of first crack at the summit. And with this deteriorating weather, there might well only be one shot at the top …

  Mal hunches over his cocoa, distant and uncommunicative as Tony babbles on. He lights another cigarette. His eyes are directed at the dirt floor, but his thoughts are clearly not. He frowns, seems about to speak, doesn’t.

  I think this was the background to the tensions created by the midday radio call from the lads. They’d made Camp 2, where it was now snowing steadily. They were faced with the prospect of having to sit it out for a few days. They were getting very tired of trying to eat freeze-dried food and would like more and better munchies.

  That is, will someone bring some up?

  A notable lack of enthusiasm at our end as everyone calculates. Mal and Tony are already nursing summit hopes for the next time they go up; taking food for the others plus their tent for Camp 3 would probably rule that out. It would mean coming back down to 1, perhaps even Base Camp, before setting off again. Not a very exciting prospect. Alex is suffering from his recurrent bug and doesn’t feel like going anywhere. I realize that if he and I go, to have any chance at the Col, we’d have to return to Base Camp for more provisions for ourselves, which would mean repeating the Icefall.

  ‘Let them eat freeze-dried,’ someone mutters. ‘If they wanted more retorts and munchies, they should have carried them up themselves.’

  That’s how it looked from Base Camp. Mal and Tony had done all their own support, plus carried up more rope. They still had to take their own climbing gear up, and food for their summit bid, and the Camp 3 tent. So why should Sandy and Jon have any more support?

  From Camp 2, it looked quite different. They’d been here two weeks longer, had put in more hard work, trailblazing and load-carrying. They were still the cutting edge of the Expedition. They should be able to call on support to maximize their chances. Sandy noted in his diary: ‘I sincerely hope that the lads at Base Camp have not decided to forget about teamwork and just to get their own deal out of this Mustagh trip. It would be disenchanting if this were the case …’

  Such conflicting viewpoints are inevitable on a trip like this. Each is quite reasonable and legitimate to whoever holds it. The quality of an expedition turns on how such situations are handled.

  In this case, the situation is handled by not forcing it to a conclusion. ‘We’ll think about it,’ we say. ‘Please do,’ they say, and sign off.

  More rain. It’s enforced idleness and boredom that lead to this endless speculation and these tensions. I feel suddenly fed up with the limitations and privations of life up here. I miss people to talk with about something other than climbing. I miss Kathleen and our easy intimacy. I miss writer friends, I miss wine and meals served on tables. Life here is so narrow and confined it’s like living in the most severe of monasteries. One experiences very intensely, but in a very narrow range. Everything is black and white and blue – I feel acutely the lack of the warm colours, the subtle colours, the sights and conversations and affections that round out our lives.

  Lying in this sleeping bag is a metaphor for life here: it’s narrow and confined and I long for the double bed and the woman I share it with.

  I spent the afternoon putting my tent in order. The Walkman, tapes, books and jotters laid out within reach of my sleeping bag. Candles, spare munchies, head torch, aspirin and sleeping pills all in their little pockets. Our tents are our kingdom, our refuge and our prison. They’re the only solitary place on an expedition, the privacy we respect and guard, escape from, return to at night. Their contents shore up our identity; our letters from home, our books and tapes, the personal talisman we each have (in my case, a smooth stone picked at random from a Canadian beach), remind us who we are. Which at times, at certain times on days and nights like this, is something we feel slipping away like an avalanche slope.

  Evening: Mozart on the headphones, rain on the tent. Together they empty the mind, displacing all else as I lie in the fading brown light. Till sleep comes I wander, an ironic, nostalgic ghost, through the streets and attics and bars and bedrooms, the fields and classrooms of my past.

  Saturday

  Sandy (21 July): 2.30 a.m., still snowing as I crawl in my sleeping bag to peer out the tent, also mist swirling and sneaking around. ‘Today’s off,’ I thought, with probably four or five inches of new snow, powder lying up to the Col on the old hard snow. Classic avalanche conditions. I wondered what Mal and Tony were planning, they’d still be asleep right now. 3.30. Alarm went again, looked out, still snowing. Jon and I after quite profound consideration decided to go back to sleep …

  That morning at Base Camp was all freshness after night rain. Wind, sunshine, blue sky and clouds – a world brand new and innocent. Jhaved and I sat looking across to Masherbrum while he talked about his village in the valley behind it, of clear streams, trees, apricots and girls. Like to go there sometime, it sounds like the Promised Land. Jhaved grins and nods. �
�Mr Andy stay long time.’ ‘I’d like to.’

  We sit in silence, full of a sense of spaciousness and ease. We’ve nothing to do and nowhere to go. Sitting with Haji Mahdi I always had the same feeling of peace, of the fullness of the moment.

  12.00. Jon on the radio. He reported there’s too much fresh snow up there to climb today, but they’re hoping to fix rope to the Col tomorrow, weather permitting. The prospect of some progress raises our spirits – at times it seems as if we’ll never move again. I remember the Spanish expedition we met on their way back from Gash 2 – out of twenty-five days there, they spent twenty confined to their tents. It could still happen to us. But this waiting too is part of Himalayan climbing.

  Jon and Sandy still requesting more retorts and munchies. They must have a possible summit bid on their minds. We say nothing very definite, but indicate a certain lack of keenness. Alex is seriously sick today and can scarcely walk, so that rules him and me out. We’ll see.

  High point of our day was custard, solid pink kids’ stuff. Biggest crisis: we’re coming to the end of our tobacco. We hadn’t expected to be smoking up here, so didn’t bring enough. Never again! These enforced shortages don’t break the habit, they merely confirm it. Yet I don’t really miss alcohol. Our fantasies now are all about food. A pint of MacEwan’s 80/-in the Athletic Arms, Edinburgh (the finest pint in Scotland and therefore in the world) seems as distant and unlikely as sex, which is another of life’s goodies we scarcely miss up here.

  Sandy: We read, listen to music, make brews. Jon breaks wind now and then, we chat occasionally. Then the sun shone through mist making a big yellow ring. Rock falling and powder snow avalanches. I pottered around awhile, inspecting some gear, checked out the bivvy tent, tried to get Jon to speak with a Black Isle accent. Spoke with the lads. Mal and Tony intend to come to Camp 1 tomorrow, but all plans tentative. When the mist cleared I could see traces of the rope we’d already fixed up towards the Col, and the red dot of lead rope at the end. Good to know it’s still there. Tomorrow, inshallah …