A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

by Eric Newby

  * * *

  1. Couloir – gully.

  2. Geologically, I believe it consists of plutonic rocks; gneiss, hornblende, microschists.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Knock-out

  To make certain that there was no easy walk to the top used by elderly Nuristanis on Sunday afternoons, I set off the following morning to explore the valley towards its head, while Hugh with Abdul Ghiyas and Shir Muhammad, whom he had dragooned into this service, staggered off uphill towards the ibex ledge, each carrying appalling loads. As always Badar Khan contrived to remain in his passive role, looking after the horses which were all extremely frisky, possibly due to some aphrodisiac quality possessed by the root absinthium on which they continued to gorge themselves. He was also in charge of a sheep the three of them had bought as a syndicate (with our help) for 200 Afghanis from the cardinal in the aylaq who, in successfully demanding such an outrageous sum, showed a financial acumen that would not have disgraced a prince of the church.

  Higher up the valley, the meadow grew narrower as the rock closed in on it on either side and a thousand tiny streams purled down to the parent one. Finally the grass came to an end under some high cliffs at the foot of which a bunch of wild horses drummed up and down the slopes in a frenzy as I drew near them.

  From the top a waterfall roared down 200 feet in a deep gorge it had cut for itself, throwing off broken arches of rainbow as it plunged down, and finally crashing into a deep pool. The last leap where it bounced off a great black rock took it so far out from the cliff that it was possible to stand right underneath it, deafened by the noise, in cold shadow among frozen stalactites and stalagmites and look through the falling water that was like a window of molten glass shimmering and dissolving against the sunlight.

  Out in the sun among the rocks and in the water, there were flowers; in the water-meadows primulas; in the drier earth small flowers with gold petals and green buttons for centres; and in the crevices among the rocks pointed flowers with the furry texture of edelweiss and the shape of rabbits’ ears.

  At the head of the falls there was no more grass, only a little earth, still more primulas and a little lake full of clear water, a brilliant green, that fed the falls below. Beyond it to the right was Mir Samir, from here exactly resembling a crouching lion; its head the summit, a long plume of snow the mane. For the purpose of our climb this approach seemed useless, its sides were sheer, the ridges dividing the three small glaciers from one another steep and unwelcoming. Once again I had the delightful experience of being absolutely alone, but this time, on the eve of our attempt, its imminence gave the scene an air of unreality, like a stage set on which a piece is about to be enacted – as indeed it was. I only hoped it would be comedy.

  Back at our camping place there was no sign of Badar Khan; judging by the noise that was coming from the bothy he was inside. After eating a gorgeous mess of condensed milk, sugar and a little snow I had brought back from the foot of the waterfall, a mixture that would have made me vomit in more civilized circumstances, I set off for the ibex ledge with my own load.

  In two hours I reached the ledge; before leaving I had dressed my feet and I went up like a rocket. Hugh was waiting for me but there was no sign of Abdul Ghiyas and Shir Muhammad.

  ‘They must have passed you down in the black rock,’ he said. ‘It took us four hours to get here. Half-way up Abdul Ghiyas wanted to go back. I practically had to kick him up. I think he’s unnerved.’

  ‘I expect it was watching me falling about on the other glacier. He has my sympathy.’

  I asked about Shir Muhammad.

  ‘He was splendid. He just plodded on and on and didn’t say anything. When he got here, he dropped his load, growled goodbye and started off down. He was in a hurry because he’s got to cook the sheep for the Id-i-Qorban1 tonight.’

  ‘It’ll take him hours. We’d better start cooking something ourselves, otherwise it’ll be dark.’

  It was five o’clock; although the ledge on which we were now perched with all our gear was in deep shadow, directly overhead the sky was still a deep cobalt, while lower down to the east beyond the Chamar Valley and the ridge dividing us from Nuristan, it was a golden colour like honey.

  Soon the wind began coming from the north-west, bitterly cold, battering against the ridge above and streaming over it and down into our camp, extinguishing the stoves and sending us scuttling into our sleeping-bags, to continue cooking using our bodies as windbreaks.

  In this hour before everything froze solid, the mountain began to disintegrate; dislodged by the wind, the rocks fell about us in earnest. Lying as close as possible to the face on a bed of shattered stones which had only recently fallen, waiting for my stove to deliver the goods, I could see five hundred feet above us a vast rock the size of an omnibus poised delicately on the spine of the east ridge.

  ‘This is a fatheaded place to choose for a camp,’ I said grumpily. ‘That thing’s bang overhead.’

  ‘It’s probably been there for centuries. Think of the grant you’re going to get from the Everest Foundation.’

  ‘I distinctly saw it move. If that thing comes down there won’t be anything left of us to give a grant to.’

  But our immediate preoccupation was with what was actually descending rather than with potential missiles. Fifty feet above our heads nature had provided a projection so that bigger boulders bouncing down the mountain hit it and leaped out beyond us into space and on to the glacier below. But, in spite of this shield, a continuous shower of stones fell about us the size of large hailstones but more lethal.

  Against them, in the fatuous hope of breaking the shock of impact and also to shut out the noise, we muffled our heads and ate our dinner, the replica of the previous night’s and our current favourite: pea soup, tinned apple pudding and strawberry jam.

  As it grew dark the wind fell slightly and, as the mountain froze, the awful bombardment ceased, except for an occasional fall of rock so heavy that freezing could not arrest it. Apart from an unidentifiable roaring, like the sound that comes from a seashell pressed against the ear, there was a great silence.

  But not for long. Soon something like a distant artillery bombardment began in the direction of Nuristan and distant peaks were illuminated by tremendous flashes.

  ‘North India,’ Hugh said, with the tremendous authority that I had learned to mistrust. ‘Pakistan. Electric storm, possibly monsoon. Must be a hundred miles away. Lucky; if it reached here we’d be in a nasty spot.’

  ‘This is a nasty spot.’

  ‘I read somewhere,’ said Hugh, ‘that an electric storm is only dangerous on a mountain when you can hear a noise like bees swarming. But I don’t think there’s anything for us to worry about. The monsoon doesn’t extend this far.’

  ‘Who said it was the monsoon?’

  Until midnight the lightning flashed, illuminating vast mushroom-shaped clouds.2 Neither of us slept well; it was difficult to breathe and our boots, which we were nursing in our sleeping-bags to keep them malleable for the early start, kept on riding up, so that at one moment I found myself with the toe-cap rammed into my Adam’s apple, sucking a leather bootlace like a long black strip of liquorice.

  At two I got up to light the stove. The storm had ceased: the mountain was very cold and dark and still. I was happy doing anything to bring to an end a night as awful as this one. It took three-quarters of an hour for the water to boil for tea and whilst I waited the morning star rose.

  We left at half past four, when it was just growing light. With us we took two ropes, some slings, karabiners, a hammer, an assortment of ironmongery, a thermos of iced coffee, some Italian nougat, the aneroid, and two cameras, one a miniature, the other a little box.

  This time we followed the edge of a precipice above the calgier and made for the foot of a deep gully filled with snow that led eventually by way of a T junction to the ridge at its highest visible point, where we could see a prominent peak the shape and size of a castle.

>   At first we made slow progress across a bowl of loose scree. From a distance it had seemed the size of a small back garden; in reality it was more like a forty-acre field. Once across it we reached the rock, Everything was still freezing hard and the air seemed to crackle as we breathed it.

  The rock face was covered all over with a thin glaze of ice. On its surface, our noses close to it as we felt our way slowly upwards, time ceased to have any meaning at all. Only the coming of the sun, at first warm, then hot on our backs and the swift melting of the ice so that suddenly we were like a pair of water beetles crawling up a steep weir, told us that it was ebbing fast.

  We came to the snow high up at the T junction we had planned to reach. Here, exposed every day to the full heat of the sun, it had melted and frozen so many times that it was more like ice.

  ‘What do you think we should do now?’

  It was a ridiculous question which we both asked simultaneously. The only possible answer was to go up, but the angle was more than seventy degrees – never had either of us seen anything so unpleasant.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the book.’

  In it there was a picture of someone cutting steps in an almost vertical ice face – much worse than the thing we were on. Encouraged by this I began to cut steps; there was nothing else to do. It was far harder work than I had imagined and the heat was terrific; almost at once my goggles steamed up, making it difficult to see anything. I pushed them up on my forehead and was blinded by the reflected light and flying chips of ice.

  After thirty feet I realized that I couldn’t go farther. I was not worried by the height; it was simply that the feeling of instability was getting me down, this was nothing like the rigging of a ship. It was imperative that I make a belay so that Hugh could come up but there seemed nothing to make fast to. Tentatively I tried what the pamphlet had called ‘an ice-axe belay on hard ice’ but this convinced me that it would be murder and suicide to try and hold anyone with such an inadequate anchor. From below Hugh was watching anxiously.

  ‘Put in an ice piton.’

  ‘You’ve got the hammer and the pitons are in my rucksack. I can’t get at them. I’m going to try and reach that rock.’

  Projecting from the ice about fifteen feet above me was a small rock. Unfortunately there was no way of telling whether it was part of the mountain or merely a large fragment embedded in the ice. I took a fearful risk, reached it and sat on it facing outwards, jamming my crampons into the ice. The rock held.

  ‘Come up.’

  With the insufficient belay Hugh came up and went straight on. It was no place to linger.

  Still higher the slope became steeper but it also became softer; finally, just below the ridge, it became real snow. At the ridge there was an unpleasant crested overhang but Hugh went up the side of it, while I waited nervously below in a similar position to that which he had occupied lower down on the ice, to see whether he would start an avalanche and annihilate me. At last he disappeared over the top and a few moments later I was on the ridge beside him, breathing like a landed fish. It was nine-thirty; we were just below the great castle; the top was still invisible and we had taken five hours to get there instead of two.

  ‘We’re late,’ Hugh said.

  ‘We’ll do it.’

  ‘Nougat or mint cake?’

  It was not a place for extended conversation.

  ‘Keep the nougat for the top.’

  ‘How high are we?’

  Hugh produced the aneroid. In its way it was as massive a testimonial to Victorian engineering as a cast-iron cistern.

  ‘I’d say 18,500,’ he said finally after he had hit it several times. ‘I hope for our sakes it’s right.’

  We crossed the ridge and once again the whole of the east and most of the west glacier was visible. And the top came into view with a long final ridge running to the foot of it.

  First we tackled the castle-like knob to our left, going up the north side. It had all the attributes of an exposed face, together with a truly awe-inspiring drop of three thousand feet to the east glacier, and it was bitterly cold; like everywhere else we had so far been on this aggravating mountain there were no good belays. Up to now in the most difficult circumstances we had managed a few grim little jokes, but now on the face of this abominable castle our capacity for humour finally deserted us.

  From the top of the castle there was the choice of the north side which was cold and grim or the south, a labyrinthine chaos of rock, fitted with clefts and chimneys too narrow to admit the human frame without pain. In one of these clefts that split a great boulder twenty feet long, we both became wedged and only extricated ourselves with difficulty. Sometimes exasperated with this lunatic place we would force a way over the ridge through the soft snow only to find ourselves, with no way of going on, forced to return by the way we had come.

  But as we advanced, the ridge became more and more narrow and eventually we emerged on to a perfect knife edge. Ahead, but separated from us by two formidable buttresses, was the summit, a simple cone of snow as high as Box Hill.

  We dug ourselves a hole in the snow and considered our position. The view was colossal. Below us on every side mountains surged away it seemed for ever; we looked down on glaciers and snow-covered peaks that perhaps no one has ever seen before, except from the air. To the west and north we could see the great axis of the Hindu Kush and its southward curve, from the Anjuman Pass around the northern marches of Nuristan. Away to the eastnorth-east was the great snow-covered mountain we had seen from the wall of the east glacier, Tirich Mir, the 25,000 foot giant on the Chitral border, and to the south-west the mountains that separated Nuristan from Paryshir.

  Our own immediate situation was no less impressive. A stone dropped from one hand would have landed on one of the upper glaciers of the Chamar Valley, while from the other it would have landed on the east glacier. Hugh, having determined the altitude to be 19,100 feet, now gave a practical demonstration of this by dropping the aneroid, which fell with only one bounce into the Chamar Valley.

  ‘Bloody thing,’ said Hugh gloomily. ‘I don’t think it was much use anyway.’ Above us choughs circled uttering melancholy croaking noises. ‘We’ve got to make a decision about going on,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got to be absolutely certain it’s the right one, because our lives are going to depend on it.’

  Anywhere else such a remark would have sounded overdramatic. Here it seemed no more than an accurate statement of fact.

  ‘How long do you think it will take to get to the top?’

  ‘All of four hours and then only if we don’t go any slower.’

  It was now one-thirty; we had been climbing for nine hours.

  ‘That means four-thirty at the summit. Going down, four hours at least to the Castle, and then twenty minutes to the col on the ridge. It’ll be nine o’clock. Then there’s the ice slope. Do you think we can manage the col to the camp in the dark?’

  ‘The only alternative is to sleep on the ridge. We haven’t got any sleeping-bags. I’m afraid we wouldn’t last out. We can try if you like.’

  For a moment we were dotty enough to consider going on. It was a terrific temptation: we were only 700 feet below the summit. Then we decided to give up. Both of us were nearly in tears. Sadly we ate our nougat and drank our cold coffee.

  The descent was terrible. With the stimulus of the summit gone, we suddenly realized how tired we were. But, although our strength and morale were ebbing, we both agreed to take every possible precaution. There was no mountain rescue service on this mountain. If anything happened to one of us, a bad sprain would be enough, it would be the end for both. As we went down I found myself mumbling to myself again and again, ‘One man’s death diminishes mee, one man’s death diminishes mee.’

  Yet, though we were exhausted, we felt an immense sense of companionship. At this difficult moment the sense of dependence on one another, engendered perhaps by the fact that we were roped together and had one another’s lives in our han
ds, produced in me a feeling of great affection for Hugh, this tiresome character who had led me to such a spot.

  At six we were at the col below the Castle, exactly as he had prophesied. The conditions were very bad. All the way down from the Castle a tremendous wind had been blowing and the mountain-side was flooded in a ghastly yellow light as the sun went down. As the clouds came up the wind became a blizzard, a howling gale with hail and snow battering us. We had come down from the Castle without crampons. Now to cross the head of the col in this wind on the frozen snow, we had to put them on again. Still wearing them, we lowered ourselves one by one over the overhanging crest into a gully on the south face.

  The south face was a grey desolation and the gully was the wrong one. It was too wide for an easy descent and was smooth ice the whole way for two hundred feet.

  Twice we had to take off and put on our crampons, almost blubbering with fatigue and vexation, as the straps were frozen and adjusting them seemed to take an eternity. Worst of all the wind on the ridge was blowing snow into the gully, half-blinding us and sending down big chunks of rock. One of these hit Hugh on the shoulder, hurting him badly, and I thought he was going to faint. The gully was succeeded by a minute chimney full of ice, down which I glissaded on my behind for twenty feet until Hugh pulled me up. Very stupidly I was wearing my crampons attached to a sling round my middle and I sat on them for the full distance, so that they went in to the full length of the spikes, scarring me for life in a most interesting manner.

  By now it was quite dark. We had an hour on the rocks, now covered with a fresh sheet of ice, that I shall remember for the rest of my life. Then we were home. ‘Home’ was just the ledge with the two sleeping-bags, some food and the stoves, but we had thought of nothing else for hours.

  As we stumbled on to it, a great dark shape rose up and struck a match, illuminating an ugly, well-known face with a wart on its forehead. It was Shir Muhammad, most feckless and brutal of drivers, come up to find us.