Summit Fever

by Andrew Greig

  They pushed on down, feeling the extra oxygen revive their minds and bodies. I hadn’t realized till Mal pointed it out what a precise technical business descending is, especially when you’re short on gear to abseil off. With each abseil, you’re forced to leave something behind – a nut, a couple of pitons, a friend, at the very least a sling and a karabiner. Which leaves you all the less to choose from on the next abseil placement. And if you run out of gear too soon, you’re in trouble.

  Knowing this would happen, Mal had memorized all the likely abseil points on their way up the summit ridge, and was now ticking them off one by one. They’d need this big nut for the crack on the next ab, so use the small one here … Got to keep at least three pegs back … We could use that old peg of Patey’s on the ab after that … Maybe even some of the old fixed line, it seemed strong enough in parts …

  A very mental business, a kind of climber’s Pelmanism or Kim’s Game. A feat of applied memory. I found later that Mal could visualize exactly every abseil point of the descent – and indeed all the important ones on every route he’d ever climbed. It reminded me again there is a lot more to mountaineering than courage and strength. To be good one needs tolerance, self-control, route-finding ability, understanding of weather and snow conditions, memory, meticulous attention to detail, absolute commitment set against the capacity to judge when one is stepping over the knife-edge ridge into unacceptable risk.

  On top of this, Himalayan climbing demands more sustained physical endurance than any other pursuit. Perhaps only single-handed long-distance sailing compares to it. A marathon runner gives it everything for a few hours. A pentathlon is held over a few days, but at the end of each day the athlete can bath, eat a normal meal, sleep normal hours and thus recharge. Above 20,000 feet one does not recharge, can eat little and usually sleep less, in conditions of great discomfort. And then the next day get up and do it all over again.

  It is this combination of absolute mental and physical demands that makes mountaineering the total experience. That makes it so addictive. That makes my bin-men friends so moving and impressive to me.

  Right now I just want to see them all back down here at Base, lounging among the flies and sunshine and green grass.

  Sandy: After a brew I led on up a steep couloir, finding it quite hard, almost Grade 4 Scottish. It was more bold than difficult, snow on rock slabs, not really secure placements just gravitation on poor rock. But came to the top of it anyoldhow and once close to the West Summit, belayed Jon. I took out my sunglasses. Later I realized Jon had his on but I hadn’t noticed at the time. He was there, sure, but just a person – I wished we could have communicated more …

  We moved on. I let up the side of the ridge and came to the bump of the west summit. We climbed up mixed rock, belayed one pitch, then another. It was a delight, a steepish rock wall then into a gully. Then we moved on together, ever closer to the summit.

  Mal: Camp 3 – a hovel transformed to a haven, even a heaven, in three days. Inside to brew, rest, even relax for half an hour. Then junk some spare food into a crevasse and then clip into the fixed line and set off down again.

  The slope was horrific, all anchors needing replaced, the odd rock whizzing down with a manic whine. I saw a large boulder plunging down towards Tony below. He heard my yell and started scampering off sideways. But the line was fixed and was about to pull him back like a bowstring. The rock shot past him, then the rope whipped him back across the line it had taken a second before. It looked really funny from above, like something in a cartoon – but probably not so amusing to the little fella!

  We continued on down as fast as possible, eyes and ears straining upwards all the time. Going-down syndrome, getting more edgy the nearer to home and safety.

  Back at Base Camp, the same routine as yesterday. Smoking, walking around restlessly. Irritable with flies and piles, waiting.

  Sandy: I led up taking my time and enjoying life in general. Once I thought I was on the last summit ridge I stopped and belayed to a block and took in the rope as Jon came up. I wanted to let him lead, just the one pitch to the top, but he was obviously not really in great form, he was happy but not enthusiastic. So he made a radio call to report our position. Andrew down there at Base Camp – with the flies, I thought, but also good food, omelettes and chapatis.

  After the call Jon did not give any indication of wishing to lead, so I took the technical gear and led on up to the top – the summit. I placed my foot on a rock and on the snow and stood there on the summit of Mustagh, then sat down, legs on either side of the ridge, placed a friend in a crack and took in the rope. We felt good, well I felt great, not so much about the summit or even the place, just felt well. Looked out of my eyes and saw only clouds really, most of the mountains shrouded. Occasional windows gave us views of Base Camp, Gasherbrum etc., but no fantastical views. But they would have been materialistic views anyway. I am not here for that, for consumer durables. Be as well walking in the rain, I thought …

  And so at 9.30 a.m. our radio sprayed saliva-static at Base Camp and we heard a very cheerful Jon:

  ‘Well! We had a nice knife-edge finish to the route and are now sitting on the top. It’s really wicked here, and we’re really enjoying ourselves. To my left … (static) To my right …’ (More static – we could hear about as much as they could see.)

  A shower of congratulations across the airwaves. A clean sweep. All the lead climbers have made it. All they have to do now was get back down safely and we’ve a rare total success in the bag. Happy? We were radiant.

  Sandy came on, the same greeting as always, whether in South Queensferry, the North Sea or the Himalayas: ‘Hello there, youth, how’s it going? Over.’ He asks me how it’s going? How’s it going up there? ‘Really good, actually. Yeah, it’s really good. Quite happy …’

  So they sat up there cracking jokes and watching the clouds part to let them see into China. Sandy had a sudden picture of himself as a tiny blot, a fly on the summit of the Tower, and his Highland nature waited for a huge hand to come out of the sky to swat him off, booming, ‘Who the hell are you, Allan?’

  As they prepared for the first abseil he thought of his family and wondered ‘Is this what I get instead of a MA, BSc., Β Com., Vet. surgeon MRCVS? Do I care? Yes I do – but differently!’ He began the descent by slipping 20 feet when he thought Jon was holding him on the rope and it turned out he wasn’t. ‘Should I trust this youth from south of Hadrian’s Wall?’ he wondered, and began to concentrate again.

  So while a deeply fatigued and relieved Mal and Tony stumbled towards Camp 2, and Alex and I started working out how many porters we’d need for Gasherbrum 2, Jon and Sandy abseiled and downclimbed through the clouds towards Camp 4. And on the way down, as Sandy reported laconically a couple of hours later, Jon saved his life. Both of their lives.

  They’d come off one abseil and found a new peg banged into a crack. Obviously one of the first pair’s, it would save using one of their own. After a moment’s chat, Sandy abbed off:

  … the peg pulled out, I got a shock as I fell very fast before I stopped with an effective and impressive view down the southwest face under my dangling feet.

  ‘Hey Jon, do you have me or is it the peg?’

  ‘The peg’s come out – I’ve got you.’

  ‘Oh thanks very much’ as I reglued myself to the face and climbed back up. We replaced the offending peg and I thanked Jon for saving our lives. Teamwork at its best. Okay, in mountaineering one is always saving one’s mate and hence oneself, but I was glad he was on the ball when it really mattered. I owe him a pint of beer.

  In the early afternoon radio calls assured us both pairs were safely at the Camp 4 bivvy and Camp 2 respectively. Once again I found myself tired and restless, and it was with some pleasure and relief that I finally withdrew into the tent, into myself and music and my journals, at the end of the day.

  Automatic now to check the weather first thing: still holding. Misty on the summit ridge, but no sign
of heavy snow. There’d been some radio discussion the night before about how to clear our gear off the mountain; the nub of it was that if Alex and I didn’t go up to Camp 2 to bring some tentage, food and gas down, some would have to be abandoned at 1 and 2. Neither of us were keen on sticking our necks out. In Mal’s opinion the two summit pairs should take down what they could and leave it at that. People have been killed before now going back onto the hill to clear it; he saw no point in taking that chance for some £50 of gear.

  He probably regretted that decision as he and Tony tied on bits of tent and gear to their already bulging sacks and stumbled towards the White Tiger. They were full of down-going nervous tension, just wanting it safely done with. Ten days now on the hill was long enough. They came alongside the White Tiger to find it had pounced and obliterated our trail. Just another of those lucky things. They picked their way down the slope and carried on across some very shaky snow bridges in the general direction of Camp 1.

  Jon and Sandy passed by the old Patey-Brown Camp 4 site, wreathed in shifting mist, and left the mountain to a solitude interrupted only twice in eternity. Their passing was itself just a flicker, a puff of cloud.

  But real and precious enough to them. They came to the abseil where Mal and Tony had lost half their rope, and picked it up on the way down. Which was just as well, because their rope in turn jammed and they lost more than half of it. So they tied the two bits together which allowed them to make restricted 40-foot abseils, just long enough to reach Mal and Tony’s abseil points – without which they didn’t have enough gear to get down. Again, good luck and good practice.

  All in all, their descent was, as Sandy described it, ‘rather intense’. The margin for error was small, the weather miserable, the belays seldom secure. On the way up, this is more acceptable, but on the way down one’s thinking is entirely defensive, there is nothing to hunger for but safety.

  In time they came to Camp 3, had a brew and mentally prepared themselves for the fixed-rope descent–to Sandy’s mind, considerably more dangerous than the Icefall.

  Sandy: I stopped and took some final photos of that high place. I felt fine but sad, goodbyes always being difficult, as a chough circled above, the wind whipped me, and the tent fly bellowed.

  I attached my descendeur to the fixed rope, very aware of all the safety steps to take and I took them all. The slope was desperate: the snow crystals were large and independent of each other like sugar; the ice screws fixing the rope had melted out and lay against the slope, useless to anybody. I had to replace them all, as boulders the size of washing machines tumbled by …

  The last couple of abs were in and through a death zone, projectiles flew and the snow-ice was soft and desperate. I slid on my knees trying to spread my weight and fell through the bergschrund, looked up just waiting for something to hit me between the eyes. But it didn’t, so I climbed out and thrashed down to the end of the rope, took a bum-slide, then walked on a little to be out of range – and then water touched the rim of my sunshades and I was aware that I was crying and I sat on a mound of ice and looked up at the Mustagh Tower, the boulders falling down the southwest face, Jon sliding down, Camp 2 in the distance, the thin line of the fixed rope. Relieved and so glad, smiling internally now. We’d cracked it.

  Alex, sick and restless, packed a small sack and set off up the Mustagh glacier again towards ‘China Mountain’ for a couple of days. When Mal radioed at 9.00 to say they’d safely made Camp 1, I set off up the Ibex Trail with an empty pack to meet them.

  How could this trail ever have bothered me? It seems months ago that I first groped my way up here. Now happiness, suspense and a certain sadness at our imminent departure shift around inside me as I sit waiting at the end of the trail in hot sunlight. The Tower looks as uncompromising as before; we climbed it but in no way conquered it. If we conquered anything it was ourselves, each in our own way.

  I watch and listen as the glacier below me falls apart – boulders abruptly dropping out of sight, stones rattling, a wall of ice collapses. I begin to get nervous for the lads. They’re late, this tale’s still unfinished …

  It’s the clinking first, clear across half a mile, the unmistakable sound of axes on rock and jingling racks. Then I see them, two little blobs linked together coming slowly, very slowly towards me across the glacier. My heart leaps up like a lover’s.

  I watch them approach. After ten days on the hill, they are scarcely recognizable. Huge packs, lumbering and stumbling along, encased in windsuits, heads totally obscured by helmets, beard, glacier goggles, scarves. Could be anything or anyone under that.

  I get slowly to my feet as they cover the last few yards. ‘Welcome back.’ ‘Good to see you, Andy.’ We only shake hands, but the air is resonant with emotion. Mal looks exhausted, and Tony’s face is peeling, scarred and swollen with water retention and sunburn – but grinning as always. They sling down their packs and slump. I give them humbugs, pass Mal a hoarded K2. He smiles, again the emotion is tangible, pure affection and relief.

  ‘Thanks, youth, haven’t had a fag for five days.’

  Then he digs into his sack. ‘Here, I’ve got something for you.’ He hands over a small chunk of summit rock. It’s on my desk in front of me as I type this. It’s just a rock of course, but it took some getting.

  We sat chatting at the Cave, leisurely now in the pure pleasure of being alive. Mal was still peeved at himself for tripping in the Icefall when a crampon hooked some gear hanging from his harness: an elementary error, the only false move he made on the mountain but still one too many. They exclaimed over the flowers and thin grass in the ledges behind us, and I briefly saw it through their eyes – liquid colour to parched senses, the glowing evidence of life.

  I loaded my sack with their gear and we set off down. Tony was soon way ahead, and I realized Mal was moving desperately slowly, with the exaggerated care of a drunk trying to walk in a straight line. As if reading my thoughts, he quietly admitted to being shattered, not so much physically – he can recover from that in a few days – as mentally and emotionally burned out. He didn’t think he’d go on to Gasherbrum 2, it was too serious a peak to start with anything less than total enthusiasm and commitment. He hadn’t told any of the others yet, but was pretty sure in himself it was more than the last few days’ exhaustion. All the rushing to and fro, having to go back to Britain and come out again, had taken its toll. He’d done the main thing he came for, any more would be out of a sense of duty rather than desire.

  He was silent then as we plodded on. I could understand his feelings – the same inner knowledge had grown on me somewhere on that endless haul to Camp 2, a knowledge that this was enough, that one’s appetite for achievement and pain was sated.

  I suddenly realized I wanted to go home too. Up till now I’d assumed I’d go on to Gash 2 with the others and sit around Base Camp there while they went for it if weather permitted. But I wasn’t really that keen. The mountain itself was out of my league to tackle Alpine style, it didn’t sound spectacular, and Mustagh had always been the core of the trip for the book and myself. The only reason for going there would be to see K2, and Mustagh from its ‘unclimbable’ side.

  My time here, I reflected, is physically and emotionally used up. I’ve had the experience I came for – any more would be because I feel I should rather than genuine desire. Yes, I’d like to see K2 and be around while the lads go for Gash 2, but there’s things I’d like even more: to be with Kath again, friends, Scotland, to pick up my life again.

  Imperceptibly, as we picked our way down towards the oasis of Base Camp, we found ourselves talking about Queensferry, about the Edinburgh Festival and Liz and Kath. That world which for a long time seemed faint and insignificant compared to the Tower became more real and present in our minds, a new gravitational pull that asserted itself even as we stepped down onto the grass of Base. As Jhaved emotionally hugged Mal and Shokat congratulated them, and Mal and Tony finally shook hands amid much emotion on the verge of tearful
for us all – even at that sweetest moment I knew I was ready to leave.

  Jon and Sandy radioed to say they were at Camp 2 and to discuss porter loads and extra provisions for Gasherbrum 2. When it was clear that no one down here was going back up to clear the mountain, Jon was peevish at the thought of the load he’d have to carry, while Sandy was upset at the thought of the mess we were leaving on the hill: each in character.

  Jhaved set off mid-afternoon for Askole with a list of provisions and the number of porters required, letters, telegrams and a press release. The news of our success would spread down the valley and out to the ‘First World’. Not that it was important, but it would bring relief and delight to people that mattered to us: Liz, Kath, Aido and Rocky.

  It felt like the end of term at Base, our minds were full of departure. In the evening we found ourselves in the yellow pool of the paraffin lamp, talking about what we missed most. It was not, as before, things like food and beer. What we yearned for now was human values and human contact. Tony missed his family and friends, for Mal it was Liz and home. And I suddenly felt how intense and narrow life up here had been, as narrow and all-enveloping as the sleeping bag I slid into every night. So much missing – all the gentler emotions, all the warmer colours for the heart and the eye. Here it was only black and white and blue, and our lives had been monkish in their single-minded harsh simplicity. It had brought extraordinary elevation of thought and feeling, but at the cost of leaving behind the fertile valleys of the world, and all the life that flourishes there.

  Time to go home, Andrew. Soon as the lads are off the hill.

  I was with Mal in deepest South America, looking for a legendary sea monster in an inland sea. We were guided there by a crazed old man who looked like an ancient version of the film director Werner Herzog on a particularly manic day, a raving scarecrow who insisted over and over that the monster existed. There was an unearthly silence in the air, the lake lay deep and green and motionless. Then the surface began to wallow, great waves boiled up from beneath. It was clear the beast was about to appear and it was going to be gigantic. The ancient lunatic capered and gibbered on the shore. We were about to see something completely outside our comprehension, beyond the very bounds of possibility.