Summit Fever

by Andrew Greig

  Then to the left of the disturbance, a tall figure arose directly out of the water to about waist height, something between a demon, a god and a man, with wild yellow hair streaming out from his head, and his eyes bored into mine in a crucial, demanding way. His power, and the power of the challenge he was offering me, hit me like a blow. If I could understand his message and generate in myself the right response, I would be able to face out the monster whose huge grey back was at that moment rising up into the sky. If not, I would die or go insane with terror. He was on my side, but his eyes were so demanding –

  – I woke with a jolt as if I’d stuck my fingers into a power socket. What the hell was that about? And why now, rather than before the climb? What is the monster that really does exist, and who is its stern counterpart?

  I tried to put it out of my mind and groped for the radio. Sandy came through to say they were setting off soon, and I arranged to meet them at the top of the Ibex Trail. In the Mess Tent Alex, who’d returned the night before, was struggling with the kerosene stove, in as much of a state as he’d been in the Icefall. Support climber, Base Camp manager, photographer, glacier lover, jester – he’d been trying to be too many things and was not doing too well at any of them. And his recurrent bug had struck again.

  I finally got a hot brew and sat staring into the steam, wondering what was going on with my mind, what monsters wallowed under the untroubled surface and what challenge I had yet to face. Why do we know so little? God, I’m starting to think like Sandy Allan.

  So I wandered up the Ibex Trail to meet Jon and Sandy. The purple flowers along the way were withering. Autumn and bad weather were just round the corner. Time for us to move on.

  Once again I had a long, nerve-racking wait. And once again, the faintest clunk and ring of axes, then the tiny figures stumbling over the glacier’s spine. My pulse hammered while I watched them carefully climb off the ice onto rock, good old solid, reliable rock. Actually it was completely rotten and broken up, but a great improvement on the glacier, which was at its sleaziest that morning.

  Sandy’s steady ‘Hello, how’s it going?’ as we shake hands, a grin of pure delight from Jon. Nearly home. I take some of their gear and mention that they seem much less wasted physically and mentally than Mal and Tony. Sandy mutters something about it being easier to follow in someone else’s footsteps, while Jon puts it down to their greater Alpine experience – ‘A piece of piss, really’ – and I realize it’s competitive time again.

  As he walked down the trail, eyes delighting in grass and flowers, Sandy wished Jon would leave him out of such conversations. Really, who gives a fuck, he thought. Mountaineering is personal, I don’t wish to expand my ego by it. Sure it’s nice to appeal to the world, for folks to read Andrew’s book and think, Well, these guys are okay – but to compete, don’t need that. Need my girlfriend, one or two good books and to remain friendly with Mal and Tony and Andrew and Jon, to be able to participate in other ploys and adventures with the lads. That to me is where life is at …

  And so we walked back to camp. All the handshakes, the smiles, the sense of pleasure and achievement finally allowed expression. A clean sweep, I thought as we sprawled on our packs. All four up, all four down. The kind of success that seemed unlikely when we set off, and a complete fantasy at times like our Skardu crisis. We’ve knocked it off.

  ‘Right,’ Sandy announced as he took a brew from Alex, let the bullshit commence.’

  13

  Coming Down

  We go our ways, the author discovers a new reticence, and Malcolm makes an outrageous offer

  1–17 August 1984

  The bullshit commenced. We had four perfect days with nowhere to go and nothing to do but clean ourselves up, eat, sleep and shoot the breeze. Long, leisurely conversations comparing incidents of the climb, discussing the next climb, Scotland, Irish politics, books, pubs, childhood, good times and bad times. The first evening we were all together was largely spent debating which mountain to go for next. Annapurna 3? Changabang? Amadablam? Six months ago this would have been largely pie in the sky for the lads; now with Mustagh under their belts it all seemed possible.

  That they should sit and talk like this demonstrated to me not only their continued appetite for climbing, but that through all the inevitable tensions they still valued and respected each other as part of a team. It was simply assumed they’d all go on climbing together. After three months in each other’s company, this seemed unusual and remarkable, a real success in itself. It was probably that cohesion and cooperation in the midst of competition which had finally yielded the Mustagh Tower – and a sense of achievement which was only now beginning to sink in and glow, like the embrocation I rubbed on my knee every night in preparation for the walk-out.

  Only Tony fretted at our inactivity. ‘I’ll go mad if we spend another day here without climbing anything.’ His face was burned out, but not his hunger. He lacked the others’ talent for happily lying in a sleeping bag for days. Jon and Sandy were winding up for Gash 2, while Mal kept his thoughts to himself. On the third evening he came to my tent, ostensibly to ask for a roll-up but really to discuss arrangements for our walk-out. He said he felt physically recovered but the motivation, that hidden and mysterious source of power, had burned itself out. That night he announced to the others he wasn’t going on and explained why. They were taken aback and disappointed; for a while they tried to change his mind, then accepted it. ‘I’m sorry you’re not coming, youth,’ Sandy said, ‘but I understand why you’re not.’ ‘Yes,’ Jon cut in, ‘he’s a raving woofter!’ but his laugh was more sympathetic than usual.

  Tony congratulated himself on his powers of recovery, as the innocent lad was prone to do. ‘I’m like a battery – small and rechargeable.’ ‘And ninety per cent lead,’ Sandy added. Pause. ‘That’s not a pun’, but it was a beauty and five minutes later we were still laughing and spluttering.

  The days remained astonishingly blue and the nights a pale explosion of moon and stars. Now we’d soon be leaving I saw again how wildly beautiful the world was up here. I sat for hours gazing across the valley at Masherbrum, letting it imprint itself in me. I had no expectations of coming this way again.

  We all had our plans and futures mapped out for when we went our separate ways. Myself back to writing this book, cleaning up a book-length narrative poem, doing writing workshops in schools. Mal had to find some casual work to start recovering the money gone on the trip, then the winter guiding season in Glencoe, then a guiding trip to Kenya. The LO dreamed of rejoining his unit, of clean linen and hot showers. Sandy would go back to the oil rigs, Tony would go rock climbing until his college term started. Jon would work in a climbing shop in London. Alex planned to stay on in Baltistan, working with Mohammed towards becoming an accredited guide.

  We’d meet again, but probably not all together like this. Though my thoughts now were all of going home, I felt, as we all did, sad at the prospect of parting.

  Sandy: … And from Base Camp to the stream there is a path now, worn by our expedition’s feet, and the grass is yellow in the centre of the path. There are flowers, blues, greys and yellows ever changing, and big boulders with chips knocked out as they fell from the cliff that holds the Ibex Trail. I thought of the last few days, how good they were, then of the future and the jest on Gash 2. That ought to be good value, but who can tell as yet?

  On the afternoon of the fifth day, Jon shouted, ‘A sail! A sail!’ and we saw a procession of porters straggling across the Baltoro in our direction. Jhaved had made good time. He’d brought our porters and, most important of all, he brought K2 cigarettes and mail. A note from Kath to say she was having a great time walking out with Aido and Mohammed and that she wasn’t worrying because she for some reason felt certain we were going to make it. A letter of Anstruther minutiae from my mum, and a long funny letter from a friend in the insanity factory of New York City.

  We were jerked out of clouds of smoke and letters to confront another last-
minute crisis: we had four more loads than porters. Reluctantly we pulled together, went through all the Gash 2 loads and rationalized them, i.e. gave half of them to the porters, stashed one load of kerosene, and spread the remaining weight hoping the porters would accept it.

  It was the goat’s last night on this astonishing earth. We’d all become attached to it and none of us wanted it killed. But it was the LO’s goat and he wanted a farewell feast, so Jhaved led it away and came back with a bloody knife. The Balti method of cooking goat is to fry it for some ten minutes, and because it’s a lean mountain beast, it is quite inedible. It could be they cook it that way so we can’t eat the little bit we’re given, then they take the rest away and do it properly.

  Our last supper. It was a little poignant – certainly for the goat – but our minds were dominated respectively by Gash 2 and going home. For me the great adventure was nearly over, but I had no real regrets. Leave when the party’s at its best. We were happy, relaxed, completely successful; Gasherbrum 2 might well detract from that. I always felt they were unlikely to make it.

  I took a last look at our camp by night. It was cold and clear; the moon had set behind the Lobsang Spire and threw great shadow-mountains across the face of real mountains, confusing the eye, surreally clear cut and dramatic. In the same way I was already struggling to distinguish what had actually happened from the creations of memory and the vivid projections of the imagination. All I really know is the heightened clarity of moments like this – the chill wind, the mile-long shadows, the stars frozen in silent detonation, myself hunched entranced in a pile jacket above the glacier, smoking a last K2.

  4.15 in the morning, pitch dark. Jhaved has the stove going. Time to break camp and leave this place.

  We burn all our rubbish in a kerosene pyre, a miniature Lobsang Spire, an upward-leaping twisting tongue of flame. We stand round and watch it burn, in a hurry to get away yet reluctant to leave. The fire marks the end of our time on Mustagh. Once it is reduced to ash, we set off down the hill to the glacier and come to the parting of the ways. We joke in the pale early sunlight, wish each other well, shake hands, take one last look back at the Tower, and walk away.

  My walk-out with Mal was a vivid succession of blue, hot days, of leisurely conversations and hour-long silences as we turned over the events of the last three months and anticipated the future. Glare of the sun, ski pole rattling on rock, sweat tickling under the arms, wind in the ears: the trance of walking.

  Once on the Baltoro we began meeting people again, were slowly welcomed into the wider world. This time we were the hard-bitten ones on the way down. ‘Summit?’ we were asked over and over. It felt good to be able to say yes.

  Walking out is an extended decompression, an easing back into normal life. Part of the addiction of climbing is that it makes the ordinary world marvellous and desirable again. I associated everything I wanted now with items of furniture: bed, chair, table, settee. The casually intimate embrace of a familiar lover; the company of friends, shared food and drink, laughter and conversation, the cats sprawled out, books, the guitar … Back to the warm, human world – not for safety and shelter, not running away from something, but a return to the complex, human life that’s there.

  And yet part of me acknowledged that in another six months I’d probably be dissatisfied, wanting something more, something challenging. It’s the absurd pendulum of the heart, always restlessly swinging from one desire to another. Always wanting something else. Sitting above Askole I’d felt the urge towards Buddhism, the desire to gradually prise oneself away from desire, to cease to be ruled by wanting, to stop the pendulum. Yet even then – and now, with Askole in sight and my steps gladly accelerating and leaving Mal behind – I knew I wasn’t ready. I am still in love with desire and commitment. They yield us, if we’re lucky and work at it, a relationship that endures, a mountain climbed, a book written. I hurry into Askole.

  The trees are dense with ripe apricots. The fields are stacked with yellow wheat, erect as schoolmasters, rapping my knuckles as I wander through them towards the village square. ‘Remember me, boy,’ they seem to insist. I will, I will.

  It’s autumn in the mountain villages. The mills are working again. Hadji greets me with the quietest of smiles. We shake hands, he touches me lightly on the back, murmurs how happy he had been to hear of our success. Askole feels almost like home, I am full of joy to see houses, trees, livestock, the rhythm of a life that is not climbing. On the way up I had been entranced by the foreignness of the way of life there; now I loved it simply because it was life.

  We bought six fresh eggs and ate a miraculous omelette. Then one of our porters invited us to his house for omelette and chapatis. When we saw Hadji in his cool, dim parlour and he offered us more eggs, we were struggling to fulfil the duties of a guest. Both stomach and mind need time to adjust to the sudden richness of life in the valley.

  We continued on down, through the villages and air thick with oxygen. We found ourselves increasingly cautious the nearer to safety we became. The paths above the river and below the mud pinnacles were obstacles rather than challenges. With our porters lagging hours behind we frequently were unsure of the way, whether to take the ascending or descending path. There were sections we didn’t recognize at all though we must have walked up through them, others that had become telescoped or enlarged by memory. The whole trip must be like that, a reflection not so much of what actually happened as how we happened to feel at the time.

  We were cut off by a raging melt river an hour above Chaqpo. The hours passed, it grew dark and still our porters didn’t show. We had no food, no water, no tent, no sleeping bags. We did have cigarettes. Luckily the night was mild so we just took a sleeping pill each and lay out on our Karrimats. It felt curiously exposed, lying in the middle of nowhere with no shelter or cocoon about one.

  It didn’t bother me that much, just another of those hitches. As I lay waiting for sleep to hit me, I tried to remember what I was like before all this started. Do I feel different? Have I changed? There did seem a new inner confidence, or at least a resilience. I felt more self-possessed, more patient, less anxious, more fatalistic. I didn’t know what was coming up next but I knew I’d deal with it because I had to. That was a difference.

  I can’t quell legendary monsters with a glare, but I don’t panic either. That felt good to know, even as the rain started falling and we had to look around for a ledge to lie under. The morning would come, the porters would show up, we’d get home sooner or later.

  ‘Sure climbing a mountain is a challenge,’ Sandy had remarked, ‘but the biggest challenge is leading a normal life, eh?’ In a curious way the past nine months had been the most simple and unstressful of my life. All the problems were immediate and had immediate solutions. All you had to do was get up early in the morning and keep going safely till the end of the day. Everything else, the past and the future, was lost in amnesia.

  And crouching under this ledge, shivering slightly and extremely thirsty, was a minor nuisance that would pass. Beside me Mal hunched and lit another cigarette; in the flare of the match I saw his face was stoic and untroubled as we waited for dawn.

  It came. It always does. We crossed the river, found our porters and set off on the last leg, to Dassu.

  Two miles short of Dassu, we were overtaken by one of the Norwegian team that we’d met at Jolla Bridge on their way to climb Trango Peak. He was limping with tendonitis and seemed agitated. We soon found out why.

  They’d had a rough trip. One climber had to be helicoptered out with oedema, and the wife of one of the other climbers fell in the river and was injured while accompanying him to the chopper. They flew out together. The remaining four climbers got high on the peak, then ran low on supplies. Two of them abbed off to leave enough for the other two. The other two were finally spotted on the summit. At that point one of the first pair set off home with the good news while the other, Dag, who was now hurrying along with us, went off to film for a day. When he
returned there was no sign of the summit pair. The descent route was visible, but there was no one on it.

  He waited another day. When there was still no sign of them, Dag left their LO at Base Camp and set off for Skardu and an army helicopter.

  There was nothing very adequate we could say. As we hurried on to Dassu I was reminded how fortunate we’d been. Sandy’s escape when Jon held him over the southwest face, the rock thundering past Tony, my crevasse, a dozen other occasions when we’d got off without even noticing it … There had been three other deaths on the Baltoro range that we’d heard of already. I fervently hoped the lads were going to be all right on Gash 2.

  Dag shared our jeep on the grinding, sliding, bone-shaking ride towards Skardu. We were quiet and thoughtful, Mal and I just beginning to relax in the knowledge it was all over, beginning to feel the fatigue and the pleasure of achievement. Only four out of forty-odd expeditions had been successful in the Karakoram this season, and we were one of them. We did all right. I did all right. Didn’t make the Col, but I got far enough to make Adrian raise an eyebrow, and I had carried a crucial load. In my sack now were three volumes of journals plus three of the lads’ diaries: the makings of Rocky’s book.

  It seemed a lifetime ago, that innocent, joyous, uplifted day of our jeep ride out from Skardu to Dassu, Mohammed’s hat raised against the sky. Now we were weathered and worn, skinny but resilient, all our movements economic and controlled. We were tired but not weary, for who could feel weary with a Himalayan summit behind him? I felt older now, more centred and self-possessed, curiously at peace with myself and the world around me. It wouldn’t necessarily last, but it felt good now, and that was enough.