by Andrew Greig
We chat on, enjoying the contact and hoping Mal will come in. He doesn’t. I arrange to switch on every half hour from now on, then sign off.
He either fears his fate too much
or his deserts are small,
that dares not put it to the touch
to win or lose it all.
One of Mal’s favourite quotations, from the Duke of Montrose. It expresses the attitude of those who are prepared to take a calculated gamble with their lives to achieve their goals. Then again, Montrose did in the end lose it all. When he was led down the High Street in Edinburgh to the place of execution, did he still think it had been worth it?
Very probably. It sounds as if he had a climber’s mentality. That’s why death isn’t tragic for those who decide that, win or lose, life merits the gamble. It’s excess of the life urge that brings us here, not a lack of it.
I watch the goat cropping the sparse grass at the end of its tether. The faintest breeze stirs the flowers nearest me. Something hovers on the brink of declaring itself.
2.30. Switch on. Wait. Flick away the flies. Suddenly Mal comes through and announces: ‘We’re on top of the west summit now and heading toward the main one.’ Our exhilaration bubbles up in smiles all round, Jhaved bouncing up and down on his heels like a hairy leprechaun. The west summit! Surely they’re going to make it now. Just a few hundred yards, a couple of rock steps, and a knife-edge finish. But Mal sounds quite wasted, and we can feel the effort he’s making to breathe, speak and think coherently as he continues. ‘Still a bit of a way to go and we’re really tired and it’s getting late … But I think we’ll make it. We’re leaving our rucksacks here in a small snow basin and going for it. We’re just zooming off now.’ He laughs. ‘Zoom’ is scarcely the word for it. They seem to have been moving in slow motion, like divers in lead boots about to tackle an octopus in an old B-movie. ‘Get back to you soon.’
Radio silence, the distant swish of static.
We look at each other. Leaving their sacks is very committing. If for any reason they don’t find them again – like if this threatened storm finally breaks – they’ve had it.
I get up and walk around camp to kick off adrenalin. All the empty tents waiting for their occupants’ return. Scattered cassettes, letters from home, a book left open … I’m beginning to worry about their descent. They’ve been going over nine hours and have still to make the top, turn around and set off back to their bivvy on what sounds like a very accident-prone ridge, probably finishing in the dark.
Only Patey and Hartog made the east summit, after all. The other two had to turn back because it was too late in the day. Even at that, they were forced into emergency bivvies, and Hartog got frostbite. But there’s no way these lads are going to turn back now. I hope they can still make the right mountaineering decisions while in the full grip of summit fever.
Down here we’re fidgety and raised as expectant fathers, pacing up and down, totally involved and totally helpless to influence the outcome.
3.00 Jon. ‘Well, the first brew’s just coming to the boil …’ He laughs, sounds very relaxed. But he too is concerned about the time, and can see Mal and Tony being forced to dig in overnight. And he’s also worried that deteriorating weather might blow his and Sandy’s chances for tomorrow. With the other lads’ tracks to follow, there’s little else could stop them other than avalanche or a collapsing serac.
‘By way of further incentive, Jon, if you make it and get back to Scotland, you’re promised from Kathleen as big a hug as is possible for a small girl to give. And as for Sandy, I’ll buy him breakfast in the North British Hotel any time he wants!’
Laughter across the miles.
‘Well, she’s certainly one of my favourite ladies. A big grin’s just appeared all over Sandy’s face … Ah, he says he wants Kath sent up here right away!’
We sign off after some more or less witty repartee. The radio is on all the time now, but no one comes in. Where’s Mal got to? They’ve got to be near it now.
I pick a yellow flower and slowly shred it between my fingers. Waiting …
3.30 A burst of static on the radio. Then the familiar Duff tones, struggling for breath between words. ‘Looks … about fifty feet from the top … Keep monitoring … Doesn’t look far now – maybe fifteen to twenty minutes … Later …’
Christ, he sounds tired.
The LO keeps nervously smoothing back his hair with the palm of his hand. Jhaved squats, bobbing beside me, muttering under his breath. We feel we’re pushing them every step.
I cut up the last of Dominique’s letter. My hands are not entirely steady. Well, Mr Covington … What it must be like up there, all the slopes finally falling away …
4.00 ‘Just done a fairly stiff rock pitch … Wait till I untangle the rope … Okay … I think this is the summit ridge … I fucking well hope so.’ Long pause, we bend our heads even closer to the radio. ‘The west summit wasn’t in actual fact … We’ve been over another one since then …’ He’s gasping for breath now, the voice hoarse. ‘… Very threatening clouds and an even more threatening time … Don’t see us getting down tonight, bit of an epic, I imagine, later on … We brought up the stove and forgot to bring any matches or lighter – that’s not brilliant, youth, now is it?’
I shake my head in silent laughter and affection. Pure Malcolm, that is. We’ll remind him of that one for years.
‘… Rope’s just running out to Tony now, so I’ll have to get moving …’
Surely they’ve cracked it. But like Scottish revellers waiting for New Year to strike, we daren’t celebrate yet. I look around the camp. No wind, no sound; the two ravens are still perched on the boulder 30 yards away, heads cocked, expectant.
4.10 p.m. An explosion of static. My pulse leaps to 120. I pick up the radio. Malcolm comes through. He barely succeeds in sounding casual.
‘At the moment we’re sitting on the top of Mustagh.’
12
Thunder in the Mountains
Mal and Tony bale out and Sandy hangs ten
29 July–1 August 1984
Mal: Thank god we got here, I thought that ridge would never end. Pleasure; not intense, too much still to do to feel any bubbling joy. Just very happy at having reached our goal. Slumped astride the ridge, one leg in China, one in Pakistan – Tony a few feet away in his blue windsuit, K2 massive in the distance. A lot of peaks smaller than us. All around blue, grey-black thunder clouds twisting and churning. Shafts of light spilled through or under them, illuminating high hanging glaciers away out over China, mirror-silver bright. And odd twisting snow particles glinted in the air, caught like dust in sunlight …
At Base Camp, our wild and joyous cheer, the release of two days’ tension and adrenalin, startled the goat from its grazing. It looked at us with puzzled, reproachful eyes as we babbled our congratulations. I sensed it was uncool, poor Himalayan stylee, to congratulate them at this point, but that was how we felt.
Jon cut into our euphoria to show how it was done:
‘Hello, Mal. Jon here.’
‘Hello, youth, how are you?’
‘Oh, we’re thriving. What we want to know at the moment is something rather practical …’ And he went on with climbing business: what gear would they need, what was the route like, any problems? No congratulations, no well-wishing. Mal replied in the same vein, then Jon cut out of the conversation, leaving Jhaved and Shokat to express their happiness.
Mal: Radio a nice obligation, but as they dragged on, a rising sense of indignation – don’t they realize that every second passing is critical to us? ‘Okay Shokat, thanks, yes I’ll tell Mr Tony as well, yes thanks okay, see you in a couple of days …’ A raised eyebrow from the youth as he shuffles towards me, I move slightly to allow him to fix the rope for the first abseil, down a different face of the summit to a snow trough. Then I handed him the radio and took some photos …
So Tony came on the radio, his Lancashire accent bubbling from the crumbling knife-edge sum
mit ridge of Mustagh to the parched green security of our camp. ‘… Extremely happy, Andy, extremely tired. It’s an awful lot longer than I thought. The last 200 feet is à cheval, one leg over either side of the ridge. It’s amazing! I can honestly say I’m well and truly knackered. I think we want to get down – there’s not much daylight left, and an awful long way to go.’
Mal: Eventually Over, Out. A big grin from Tony as if to say great, well done, but the work starts now. Any fool can trog upwards but it takes craft and cunning to descend quickly and safely in these conditions. I view him critically – will he keep his concentration? I’m much more experienced at operating efficiently when fucked than he is – I’m fucked more often! So just a bit reserved. He knows my views on summit congratulations anyway, so we act as if we’re only halfway on this mountain. Which we exactly are. I’m secretly glowing inside but suppress this to avoid alarming Tony. Urgency is the overriding theme, so we take a last look and turn our backs on this jewel …
They’d had some twenty minutes on the summit. Tony abseiled off a block, fixed the next placement. Mal whizzed down after him and pulled the abseil rope down as Tony fed the slack through the next abseil point. Everything on fast automatic now, precise, no need to speak. They soon regained their rucksacks and abseiled into the soft-snow gully which had nearly broken them on the way up. Two more pitches of swift downclimbing took them to the rock barrier. Suddenly thunder started to roll out over China, distant but not distant enough.
They faced a choice in the twilight – abseil down the rock, five pitches with the possibility of the rope jamming so they couldn’t retrieve it, or follow the gully diagonally under the seracs on the avalanche-prone slope of the morning. To Mal, this was one of the most important mountaineering decisions of the trip. Down the rock led into unknown territory: a jammed rope or lack of belay placements could leave them desperately benighted. On the other hand, if it worked, they’d cut out an hour or more from the time it would take to traverse down under those menacing seracs. The pros and cons were perceived and weighed up wordlessly in the few seconds they stood still above the rock barrier while the thunder rumbled. ‘Straight down, Dad?’ ‘Reckon so, son.’
They went for it, made it, and carried on down towards the haven of the Camp 4 bivvy in the gathering dark. Mal smiled, remembering the I Ching Kathleen had thrown before leaving South Queensferry: Thunder in the mountains sounds much nearer. Too right, youth …
I switched off the radio and recorder and was suddenly exhausted. Post-summital langour. Shokat tuned into the test match from England and Jhaved started making tea. We were the only people in the world who knew the Mustagh Tower had been climbed for the first time in twenty-eight years. It was already a fact, but no one else knew it yet. And it changed nothing at all, except us.
Elation glowed in me like whisky, but I was sobered by the knowledge that we couldn’t relax and celebrate yet. I’d picked up enough between the lines to realize that Mal and Tony’s descent would be the most hazardous phase of the climb. The majority of mountain accidents happen while descending. People are exhausted, their concentration slips, it’s much harder to see what you’re doing when downclimbing. Then Jon and Sandy still had to go for it tomorrow. A clean sweep … Only when all four had made the top and were finally reunited back down here could we finally call the Expedition a success.
Nothing I could do about it now. Might as well attend to these piles. I picked up water bottles and washing things and padded off towards the stream.
Alex was there when I returned. He seemed oddly tense and dissatisfied despite the lads’ triumph and having had a good day communing with the glacier. He was still wondering if he could have gone higher on the Tower, and still unable to rid himself entirely of summit fantasies. He’d been sick on and off for two weeks now, and had become so beaky and scrawny he looked like an anorexic pterodactyl.
Jon radioed in at 6.00. No word from Mal and Tony. The air at Base was deathly still, the sky hazed and yellow, redolent with thunder. Jon asked us to start calculating how many porter loads we had for Gasherbrum 2, so we could send Jhaved off to Askole for porters in the next couple of days and minimize sitting-about time. Alex shook his head in mock astonishment and rolled his eyes. They haven’t even got up this mountain, let alone down, and they’re planning getting to the next one.
‘Hey, amigo, these gringos they ees crazee.’
They intended to start shortly after midnight for the summit and follow Mal and Tony’s tracks by head torch. Jon’s cockney drawl was compressed with excitement; he knew that if the weather held, they had every chance of making it. It would take sleeping pills to let them rest tonight.
I lay in my tent. It was fully dark now. Ever optimistic, I’d drafted a telegram for Kath and Liz, and a press release. Now I was too restless to read, and too raised to sleep. All I could think of was Mal and Tony abseiling down through the dark. Had they taken head torches? Had they been forced into an emergency bivvy somewhere above Camp 4?
I grimaced, rolled a last foul French-letter cigarette and looked at the ceiling. I wanted my friends safely down. I wanted Kath and Adrian here to share in our success. I was singing inside, yet apprehensive. Three more days before we could truly relax and celebrate.
8.00 p.m. I speculatively switched on the radio, though I’d made no arrangement with either pair for a call. Dead time, it’s called, when there’s no transmission, only the endless swish of electromagnetic surf.
‘Camp 4 here, anyone out there?’
I fumbled, astonished, for the ‘Send’ switch. ‘This is a pleasant surprise, Mal.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s remarkable how the prospect of being caught in an electrical storm on a Himalayan peak gets you moving. We got here five minutes ago. Tony’s got the stove on and we’ll have a brew if we can stay awake long enough.’
He sounded very relieved, and very tired. His voice dragged but was still ironic, still in control. We made arrangements for tomorrow’s calls, and signed off. For tonight at least, they were safe. I could sleep now.
*
Mal switched off the radio, looked at Tony slumped over the stove. The last few hours had been a flickering movie on a tired old projector. He felt tired, more tired than ever before. Pleasure was there, somewhere in the background. A fifteen-year-old dream, two years’ planning, all that slog and running around, the money …
It was certainly rather nice to get it done.
Jon had the stove humming as Sandy extracted his head from his sleeping bag. Five past midnight. The bivvy tent had proved desperate, hoarfrost everywhere that fell off the inside in plates causing damp patches and eventually total wetness. It was a bit depressing and miserable; the night outside was not much better, flurries of snow caught in his head-torch beam.
His mind was quite blank as they put down a couple of brews and dragged on their gear, nursing their fingers back to life. They geared up, selected a rack of pitons, nuts, friends, karabiners and slings, a figure-of-eight for abseiling, then roped together and set off into the dark.
Sandy: Jon led the first few pitches, my head nowhere special, a lot of concentration to crampon points and ice-axe placements and putting one foot in front of another. I followed the delicate beam of my faltering head torch, watched Jon and the complicated slopes he led upon.
He belayed so I climbed up to him, finding that initial part of the climb semi-hard in the early morning cold and darkness. He was tired, me too. We moved together most of the time as the light slowly crept in. We began sinking to our knees in soft powder snow, and Jon kept sitting down, quite exhausted. As is the mode of teamwork and friendship, I took up the lead …
I woke up late, round 6.30, went out to check the weather. Hazy, mixed cloud, very still. Our luck is holding, I thought. Just give us two more days.
At 7.00, Jon radioed in, sounding determined and businesslike. They were well up the mountain, not too far below the west summit by the look of things through drifting cloud and snow. ‘
A couple of hours, I should think.’ And signed off.
Mal came on the air. They’d slept in after yesterday’s efforts and were just having their first brew. He asked immediately after Jon and Sandy. ‘That’s fantastic.’ Best wishes. Over, out.
When Tony and Mal finally got moving, their descent was a long history of dragging weariness and automatic action. They abseiled a lot, but downclimbed together at times for speed’s sake. Finally Tony’s concentration faltered; he slipped on snow-covered ice and only stopped himself from shooting over the southwest face by grabbing a rock on the way past. Mal was unamused; if Tony had gone over, so would he.
It happens again and again in climbing. It makes one at once trusting and extremely critical of the least error or piece of carelessness in one’s partner. Climbing partnerships are often marriages of convenience, all too frequently followed by a quick divorce on return home, but at the time their intensity is total.
Well, we got off with it that time, Mal reflected, controlling his anger. Let’s hope Tony learns from it. You must go on a mountain with an absolute determination not to make a single mistake.
Still, they moved quickly and well until, having abseiled down a 100-foot rock wall, the abseil rope jammed and they couldn’t pull it back down. Mal borrowed Tony’s knife, climbed back up as far as possible, asked Tony to pull on the rope to stretch it, then cut it through. They now had less than half of their original rope length. Their longest abseils could be only 35–40 feet. No need for words; they both knew this would add to the time, energy and the likelihood of accidents on the descent to Camp 3, and that there was nothing to be done about it.
