Summit Fever

by Andrew Greig

  Eventually we were lumbering along in something of a daze, Alex cursing outwardly and me cursing inwardly. All we wanted was to be back at Camp 1, and everything seemed to be conspiring to prevent us. I followed him across the umpteenth snow bridge, stepping carefully in his footprints – and it gave way.

  It was all very clear. My right foot broke through, then my left. I started going down into this slot, as if being lowered vertically into my grave. I looked up and forward towards Alex. He’d stopped, half turned round, and with the swiftest and most graceful movement whipped our rope towards and round him. I was jerked out of the crevasse like a trout pulled out of water. One moment I was chest-deep, going down, the next I was kneeling on the far side, rubbing my knee where my axe had banged it.

  I looked up at Alex standing 30 feet away. He’d been very quick. ‘Thanks, Alex.’

  ‘Aw, meester, it ees nothing,’ in his Mexican whine. ‘Eet is all right …’

  The pain in my knee made me feel sick. I got cautiously to my feet. I could still walk. I looked back at the crevasse. It went down a couple of hundred feet, then it was too dark to see further. Well, that was lucky. Good value to fall in a crevasse and get out. Good for the book.

  We set off again, slightly loopy with fatigue. I’d felt no fear, not even adrenalin. Too tired for that. Too much in the present to dwell on it, just one of those things …

  Sometimes it gets so hard to care … Hard to care enough to keep banging that boot every second step instead of every fourth. Hard to care enough to follow this crevasse to a safer crossing. Hard to care enough to concentrate on feet, on rope, on the person ahead, on this tottering shit you’re passing through. We’ve gone through all the Kendal Mint cake now; we’ve even stopped stopping. We stumble on in our own dazed worlds, a world of pinpricks, of light and voices in the head, curses and anxiety, memories. I feel full of holes like a Swiss cheese, riddled as the times. Long periods of blankness, on automatic, then suddenly returning to myself and wishing I hadn’t.

  We’re wildly off course now, in an area where a gentle incline will suddenly end in an 8o-foot overhung drop, where a contour leaves us standing on a leaf of ice in the middle of a huge slot. We’re so far down into this wild patch that we can’t see where Camp 1 is – or back to Camp 2. It’s an ice maze that keeps shunting us further and further in the wrong direction, where every apparent shortcut is blocked, where all the time we’re getting into more and more trouble and the sun gets higher and our energy gets lower.

  ‘Look, Alex, this is fucking ridiculous!’ I eventually explode.

  ‘Any better suggestions?’ he snaps back.

  ‘Yes. We’ve got to get across to the left.’

  He looks at me, then nods. We set off on my line which seems promising until we abruptly find ourselves on the peak of an ice tower that falls sheer on three sides. We retreat with difficulty and care. Alex pointedly says nothing.

  We go back to his original line. It peters out in a torment of ravines, overhangs and ridges. It’s like being a microbe walking over the face of W.H. Auden. We look at each other – and exchange sheepish grins.

  No blame.

  We backtrack and try again. I just want this to be done with. This is absurd – we’re probably only half a mile from Camp 1, but we just can’t close on it. Obstacle after obstacle seems thrown deliberately between us and it.

  There’s no option but to keep on trying. This day has gone on for years. And suddenly, quite clearly, Kathleen is speaking to me. I’d forgotten about her. ‘Don’t let go, Andy,’ she says, ‘I want to see you again!’ ‘Yes, Kathleen,’ I mutter as she bullies, cajoles and nags me. ‘Look, I’m concentrating. Look, I’m being careful.’ ‘Don’t gibber,’ she replies, ‘watch your feet.’

  I can see her distinctly in the upper right corner of my mind. She is sitting looking out the window of a train. Rain streaks and wobbles across the glass. It is somewhere in England. She is wearing a blue hat and her French raincoat. She is thinking to me, telling me I must concentrate, I must care, that – she confesses with a wry smile – she wants to see me again.

  ‘You will, you will,’ I assure her. I make every step, every exhausted move for her, to her as in a dance one moves to one’s partner.

  The map of Auden’s mug suddenly smooths out. We have come to a deep blue glacier pool, the colour of her eyes. All we have to do is a front-point traverse round the rim of it and the way ahead seems clear. Our Camp 1 tent is perched on the moraine a quarter of a mile on.

  We sit down and drink the last of our Gatorade. We share our last Granola bar. We get up and carefully execute our last traverse. We arrive.

  We’re lying in our bags as the light fades and the last brew comes to the boil. We’ve eaten and drunk and largely recovered. We’ve spoken with the lads to confirm our safe arrival. Mal sounded almost envious when I told him about my slot-fall. ‘Usually you’ve to climb for years to have one of them.’ They’re all set to move up to Camp 3 tomorrow for the final assault. We sign off with mutual good wishes for tomorrow.

  I sit at the entrance of the tent, looking down the glacier towards Lobsang. I’m very tired, but somehow feel very steady. It wasn’t that bad, was it? No altitude sickness, no headache. Right knee’s painful and stiff, but I’ll take painkillers if necessary tomorrow.

  Tomorrow … Can’t relax yet. Still the Icefall between us and Base. Let’s hope we make a better job of it this time. Don’t want to fall at the last hurdle.

  ‘Hey, gringo! You wanta thees brew?’

  I crawl in and take the mug. Alex’s emaciated eagle face in the candlelight. It’s hard not to appreciate someone who saves your skin, even if he then endangers it again. We gave it maximum pastry today, even if we got a bit flaky at times. Good value that.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘’Night.’

  Asleep in seconds.

  For the last time pull on the Koflach boots, zip up the Yeti gaiters. Harness, tie on. Prussik loops. Axe. As we prepare to set off, Alex tells me about his dream last night where he went up to the Col to fetch down Jon and Sandy’s tent and when he got there they insisted he burn it. He did, and they stood back and watched it blaze, a beacon on the Chinese border …

  We’re at once flat and nervy, being so nearly finished but not quite. I mentally gather myself. ‘Let’s get it done with.’

  A cold morning, the glacier dormant and no snow balling under our cramps. With light packs, we move fast, automatically, over crevasses and bridges, skirting pools and boulder pedestals. The ice is hard and the snow crisp; the most dodgy bridges hold as we hotfoot it over them. We come to the Bungalow Rock; it’s still perched at the top of the chute, but only just. We face into the slope for two front-point descents. This is so much easier now. It’s just climbing. Knee’s painful from yesterday and have to go cautiously with it.

  Brew Tent. We don’t stop for one, just pick up a few things and set off again. We don’t say anything, but we know we’re home and dry. I almost feel regret as we make the awkward scramble off the glacier for the last time.

  At the Cave in silence I slowly take off my helmet, crampons, harness, strap my axes to the sack. Slowly stripping away my climbing identity to emerge again as a regular citizen. Feel light, almost floating without it.

  I walk down the Ibex Trail, savouring every step, noticing the flowers, the miracle of grass and dust and ibex droppings. I hear our goat baa, see the familiar circle of tents. Onto level ground. I wait for Alex and drink in the pure sweetness of being alive. Together we walk to the Mess Tent, drop our packs and walk in.

  ‘Mr Andy! Alex!’ A great beam from Jhaved, we hug each other, then shake hands with Shokat. I’m grinning like a simpleton. I feel very simple. Cleaned out. Released.

  Jhaved hands us a brew each. ‘Camp 1?’ ‘Camp 2.’ ‘Good climbers, very good!’ He fumbles in his jacket, produces and lights his last K2 cigarette. He looks at me, his eyes dancing – then passes it over. I accept it reverently. These are as rar
e as snow leopards now, haven’t seen one for a week.

  So Alex and I slump across the tent from each other, wasted and joyful, grinning like imbeciles in the mountain villages as we answer Shokat’s questions. I want this feeling to linger in me for ever. Jhaved hands us cheese omelettes. I unlace my boots and pull them off. I slowly take off my shades.

  11

  Summit Fever

  We put it to the touch

  26–29 July 1984

  Mal watched Andrew and Alex set off down the hill away from Camp 2. He noted with approval how Andrew immediately began knocking off the soft snow balling under his crampons. He’d mentioned that to him once, when they sat halfway up Dinnertime Buttress in Glencoe … A brief memory flash of the Clachaig, of Liz frying sausages, of laughter and warmth … If Andy keeps thinking and concentrating like that, he’ll be all right. Really, the youth did OK. And they brought up the loads that make our summit bid possible. And Adrian and Mohammed’s work … Up to us to finish it off now. I think we can do it.

  Mal, Tony, Sandy and Jon spent the afternoon of 26 July at Camp 2 establishing the second tent, sorting out gear, trying to calculate exactly how much food and clothing, rope and ironmongery they’d need. With every pound having the effect of ten at this altitude, it was important to get it just right. Carrying too much or too little would equally endanger the chances of success and of getting off the mountain safely. So how many pitons, how many friends? How much rope; stakes or deadmen? Pile jacket only or down jacket as well? Who carries the radio? Retorts?

  They’d agreed the next day would be a rest day and they’d start the summit push together the day after. But somehow over brew and Jon’s mum’s precious fruitcake, they found themselves beginning to talk as if they were to go for it tomorrow. By the time they’d finished the cake, it was agreed. They were too revved up to wait any longer and, anyway, the weather must surely break soon. The new game plan was for a 2.00 a.m. start, to do the fixed ropes up to the Col while the ice-slope bowling alley was still asleep, then push up to Camp 3 before the heat of the day.

  So they brewed and ate a retort each, and took a 6.00 p.m. call from Andrew and Alex who sounded tired but high to be back at Camp 1 after some adventures. Then they turned in, each to gather himself in his own world of calculation, ambition and apprehension.

  Mal: Thought a great deal about home in that twilight zone between sleep and awareness. Semi-lucid plans for the future, all of course involving complicated ways of releasing Liz from work while allowing us both to earn a gainful income from some source or other. I need to see and be with her so badly sometimes. Each day on the hill I suppose is one day closer to getting home. Funny, this Himalayan stuff is so awful that the true wonder and fun and enjoyment only comes in retrospect. Trouble is, I suspect it’s also a bit addictive …

  Sandy woke up at 2.00 a. m., took his Bic lighter into his sleeping bag and gave it five minutes to heat up, then lit the stove. Jon woke up with his normal hill vocabulary. He said he hadn’t slept much. Sandy poked his head out of the tent and grunted at the weather. Not too impressed. It was snowing some, light wind, very heavy clouds thickened the darkness over the Cathedral Spires.

  Jon was still tired and showed no sign of stirring. Sandy talked with him and eventually they settled on staying put at Camp 2 that day. Jon put his head back down to sleep but Sandy suggested that as they were all a team it might be a good idea to communicate their decision to Mal and Tony.

  ‘Hey, Mal, we’re sleeping.’

  ‘What d’you mean you’re sleeping?’

  Sandy told him they weren’t going to go. He heard the zipper close on the other tent, and Mal and Tony conferring. Not long after, ‘I think we’ll go on up, and if the weather gets bad we can come down from Camp 3.’

  Sandy asked Jon to communicate some, as really he’d played a major part in their not moving. Jon called out, ‘I didn’t sleep, so we’re going to stay.’

  ‘Yeah, no problem. We’ll give it a go.’

  A lot of subtle dynamics were going on at this point, only hinted at in their diaries. It meant that Mal and Tony, who had arrived at Base Camp two weeks after the others had done the groundwork, were going to get first crack at the summit. Well … okay.

  Sandy bid them adieu, pulled off his Thinsulate clothes and went back to sleep, disappointed but philosophically accepting the situation. No point getting fussed about it.

  So Mal and Tony set off into the dark on their summit push. Pools of light bobbing from their headtorches picked up swirling snowflakes. They felt isolated and lonely, dreamlike, their world shrunk to a few feet. They were each carrying some 40 pounds – five days’ food, stove and gas, bivvy tent, shovel, rope. They crossed the bergshrund crevasse – that marked the beginning of the final struggle and plodded upwards to the fixed ropes on the ice slope. In the half-light they could see that the stakes and ice screws had melted out from the day before, then refrozen overnight, half out and at drunken angles. But they held and the stonefall was minimal at this hour, so they clipped in their jumars and doggedly plugged on up. Nothing challenging or interesting about this, just brutally hard work. Jug, step, jug, step, for three hours on the fixed line. An endless mindless plod. Then into the chimney at the top that Sandy had fixed. The line here had a nasty habit of dislodging loose blocks as one pulled or moved on it. Finally they were on the ridge, took a breather in the morning sunlight. The snow had stopped. If the weather held, their decision to set off alone would be justified. And even if they had to turn back, the trail they’d broken would give the second pair that much more of a chance.

  And so it was all the way on Mustagh, the fruitful combination of competition and cooperation urging them on up the mountain.

  Thus Mal and Tony plodded on to Camp 3. The tent looked awful, covered in blizzard snow, half collapsed and totally inhospitable. They dropped their packs and slowly set about putting it right, packing rocks and snow under the downhill side then stringing safety line round it, very aware of the surrounding cornices and those inexplicable holes in the snow.

  That done, they melted water for a brew and chatted. Good to be done for the day. They studied the ridge above them. ‘Hard,’ Sandy had said, ‘but nothing like as hard as Nuptse.’ He and Mal had been rather over-ambitious on Nuptse West Ridge but the experience had been invaluable. It put the ridge above them into perspective and allowed them to look at it in an analytical, objective way.

  Down below, Sandy pottered about to keep his red corpuscle-thick blood circulating, and read William Golding’s Free Fall. ‘This man knows what it’s about,’ he thought. Jon slept and kept the reggae dubs crackling out of the tiny speakers hanging from the ridge of the tent. Just dossing about, waiting, in an Alpine stylee …

  Mal: 6.00 p.m. What Tony and I felt was a really emotional radio call to the others. Them wishing us all the best from Base Camp, including Jhaved and Shokat, almost brought tears to my eyes. Just hope we can make the push from here okay. If we grind to a halt, the second lot should have a reasonable chance. Inshallah. This one for Rocky, for Liz.

  By 7.30 that night the lights were all out in Base Camp where Andrew lay smiling to himself in the dark at the sheer pleasure of being alive, at Camp 2 where Jon and Sandy were sleeping, and at Camp 3 where Tony revolved all the possibilities of tomorrow while Mal turned over, thinking of home as sleep drifted over him like the light snow on the outside of their tent.

  Round 5.00 a.m., Tony and Mal were ready to leave Camp 3 for the final push upwards. In the half-light they could see the weather was not bad, though worse than for several days. Drifting cloud, light snow, ominous across the Baltoro. If it holds two more days …

  The last brew, pack away stove, mugs, billycan, sleeping bag and Karrimat. Gear up, tie in on the rope that will link their fortunes all day. Both feeling tired but plenty left in reserve, no headaches or other altitude problems. Helmet, gloves, goggles, sling on the pack – about 35 pounds today. Ready. They looked at each other. ‘Okay, yo
uth?’ ‘Fine, Dad.’ ‘Let’s go, then.’

  It was good to be breaking new ground again. As he led the first few pitches, Mal’s mood was one of suppressed excitement, total concentration and commitment. The ridge was initially steep but ill-defined and frequently obscured by cloud, so he found they tended to drift about on the southwest side in gullies and rock ribs. Don’t want to take a false line this early in the game, must conserve energy.

  He was aware of a slight apprehension as he kicked through surface snow into ice and began front-pointing up. Patey and Brown had taken three days to climb to their Camp 4, so it must be demanding. Probably not technically desperate – about Scottish Grade 2 or 3 at the moment – but this cruddy ice under cruddy snow made for slow, cautious going. The rock ribs were awkward and rotten, and protection was generally poor.

  What this needs, he thought, is three days total concentration. Not one mistake, however minor. A slip or a small snow slide could take us over the south face with very little time to correct or brake. Looks like we’re going to be mostly on the face or a few feet above it. Really relying on each other on this one …

  Three weeks together on the hill had given Mal and Tony confidence in each other’s abilities. Just as important, they’d quickly come to work together with the minimum of friction. Sandy and Jon’s partnership was that of a long-married, constantly bickering couple; Mal and Tony’s had taken the form of father and son, old head and youthful enthusiasm. It suited them to make a joke of it. Adopting and accepting these roles underlined their mutual reliance on each other; they were a pair, not two competing individuals who happened to be tethered to the same rope.

  After five pitches Tony came up to Mal’s stance, grinned through his sunburn. ‘Great, isn’t it?’ Without any need for discussion, he led through onto the next pitch.