Summit 8000

by Andrew Lock

  I thought the porters were up to their usual tricks when I heard a rustle in the bushes behind the tent. Right, you bugger, I’ve got you! I thought. I sprinted through the scrub, ready to pounce on the thief, but as I emerged into a clearing I saw a zoe—a cross between a yak and a cow—chewing contentedly, the last few inches of my towel hanging from its mouth. I leapt forward and grabbed the remains and pulled for all I was worth, managing to retrieve about half a metre of saliva-soaked, chewed and stringy towel—my only victory in the mountains that year.

  *

  Frustrated by the failure to summit, I returned home. But far from being disenchanted with the mountains, by the time I stepped off the plane I was already planning a return to Pakistan in 1995. Having flown and driven past Nanga Parbat in the preceding two years, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It was an enormous black massif that commanded respect, and simultaneously struck both trepidation and excitement in me. And it had never been climbed by an Australian. All the previous 8000-metre peaks I’d been to had already seen Australians on their summits. I wanted to experience being the first. Joanne, however, had different ideas.

  We’d been married for three years by this stage and she was desperate to start a family. My continual absences had done nothing to strengthen the relationship; indeed, we were on pretty rocky ground by now. She wanted me to play my part as a husband and gave me an ultimatum: it was her or the mountains.

  I was torn. I cared for her greatly but I knew that if we had children, there would be no more mountaineering for me. It was too selfish a sport. I’d seen plenty of death up there and the odds were high that I would become a victim too. As a single man, and even as a married one, I could accept the risk, but I couldn’t be so irresponsible as a parent.

  The concept of no more mountaineering was abhorrent to me. In the long term, I still wanted to climb Everest but I was also coming to love high-altitude mountaineering purely for the sport. I’d never experienced such intense challenge and suffering, or such profound exhilaration. Rather than turn my back on it, I wanted more. It had become my life, more so than my marriage. I made my choice and we separated.

  *

  Newly single and raring for more adventure, I was pleased to be contacted by the English climber Victor Saunders, whom I’d met on K2 in 1993. Victor told me he was withdrawing from a predominately British expedition that was planning to attempt a new route on Nanga Parbat in the northern summer of 1995. The list of climbers who had signed on to the expedition read like a who’s who of the world’s top high-altitude mountaineers: Doug Scott, Voytek Kurtyka, Rick Allen and Sandy Allan.

  Scott was an Englishman who’d had an extraordinary career of first ascents and epic expeditions. He was probably best known for his first ascent of the south-west face of Everest in 1975—and for breaking both ankles on Baintha Brakk (commonly known as The Ogre) in Pakistan in 1977, after which he’d still managed to descend the mountain, then crawl for miles across the glacier to get back to base camp. Kurtyka was from Poland and was a pioneer of alpine-style climbing on the 8000ers. One of his best was an incredible ascent of the West Face of Gasherbrum 4 with the Austrian Robert Schauer. It is regarded as one of the ten most notable ascents of the twentieth century. Rick Allen and Sandy Allan, both from Scotland had climbed together over a number of years in the European Alps and the Himalaya, including an attempt on the north-east ridge of Everest in 1987, which at the time was unclimbed. Doug had also been in that team.

  Victor proposed to the team that I should take his place on the Nanga Parbat ascent, and they agreed. It was an incredible opportunity for me, and I leapt at the chance. I would be climbing with—and, more importantly, learning from—the best in the world.

  Nanga Parbat is the westernmost 8000-metre mountain in the Himalaya, and the only Himalayan 8000er in Pakistan. The other four—K2, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum 1 and Gasherbrum 2—lie in the Karakorum Range, about 100 kilometres further north. Unlike its 8000-metre neighbours, Nanga Parbat rises 8126 metres out of the landscape on its own, a solitary massif whose snow-fed streams irrigate the surrounding rural lands in an otherwise desolate region.

  The ninth-highest mountain on Earth, it received some of the earliest attention of any of the 8000ers. Englishman Albert Mummery made an attempt in 1895 but disappeared on the mountain with two Gurkha teammates. Thereafter, the peak became the subject of German focus, and catastrophic tragedy. In 1932 an attempt was aborted due to bad weather, while a 1934 expedition ended when sixteen of the team were trapped at 7500 metres by a blizzard. Eight of the party died in that maelstrom, and most of the survivors were severely frostbitten.

  A 1937 attempt on the same route, via Rakhiot peak, when seven Germans and nine Sherpas were killed by an avalanche that swept over them at Camp 4, resulted in the single worst disaster on an 8000-metre mountain, until it was equalled on Everest in 2014. A 1939 attempt, which included Heinrich Harrer, who had famously led the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland, failed due to the outbreak of the Second World War. Harrer was interned in India by the British but escaped to Tibet, where he became a confidant to the Dalai Lama—his exploits are recorded in the Himalayan literary classic Seven Years in Tibet.

  Thirty-one people had died on Nanga Parbat before it finally succumbed to the Austrian Hermann Buhl in 1953, just weeks after the British claimed Mount Everest. The two ascents could not have been more different. Buhl had continued alone to the summit after his teammates had turned back, thus making both the first ascent of Nanga Parbat and the only solo first ascent of any 8000er. In an epic of endurance, he reached the summit at 7 p.m. Caught by darkness on a narrow ledge as he descended, he was forced into a standing bivouac for the night. He survived and returned to his high camp forty hours after setting out for the top.

  Nanga Parbat’s history also includes the infamous 1970 Austro–German expedition to the mountain’s Rupal Face, led by Dr Karl Herrligkoffer. The team members included the outstanding South Tyrol alpinist Reinhold Messner, who would go on to become the first in the world to climb all fourteen 8000ers, and his brother Gunther. After a protracted expedition marred by bad weather and very difficult climbing, Reinhold and his brother were positioned in the highest camp, ready to go for the top next day. It had been agreed that those at Base Camp would fire a green rocket that evening if the forecast was for good weather. A red rocket would indicate bad weather. Somehow, despite a good forecast, a red rocket was fired. Despite this, the Messner brothers struck out for the summit.

  What followed was a messy case of claim and counterclaim, allegation and counter-allegation. Only Reinhold descended alive. He said that he and Gunther had reached the summit together, but that Gunther was exhausted and showed signs of oedema. They thought it was therefore safer for them to descend on the other, less technical side of the mountain. In a three-day epic they descended the entire Diamir Face without equipment or food, and had almost reached safety when an avalanche swept over Gunther.

  Some claimed that Reinhold had abandoned Gunther on the way up to the summit in his quest for glory, and that if Gunther had really been sick, it would have been safer for them to descend on the known Rupal Face route, where there were fixed ropes in place and where they could get support from the other expedition members who were in nearby camps. Although Reinhold’s version is generally accepted these days, he didn’t get off lightly, losing six toes to frostbite, not to mention his brother. Whatever the facts, Reinhold would go on to establish outstanding alpine records for years to come, including the first ascent of Everest without oxygen and the first solo ascent of Everest. Without doubt, he is one of the greatest pioneers of high-altitude climbing.

  Twenty-five years after that deadly expedition, our team met up in Islamabad on 17 July and had the usual mandatory briefings from Pakistan’s Ministry of Tourism. We purchased food and kitchen equipment for our Base Camp, then travelled by road to Skardu—straight past the mountain we had come to climb. Our expedition had been sponsored b
y the Raleigh bicycle company, which had provided each of us with a brand new mountain bike so that we could cycle from Skardu across the world-renowned Deosai Plain back to Nanga Parbat.

  The Deosai Plain is a 3000-square-kilometre national park. It’s the second-highest plateau in the world, with an average elevation of over 4000 metres, and it was created to protect the indigenous Himalayan brown bear. While we didn’t see any bears during our three-day bike crossing of the plateau, we did discover what must be the world’s greatest concentration of mosquitoes. As we pulled up to camp each evening, the overwhelming hordes immediately drove us inside our tents, where, after killing the several thousand that had come inside with us, we’d lie awake as millions of the little beasts attempted to penetrate the tent walls.

  Descending from the plateau with the few precious drops of blood we had managed to keep to ourselves, we completed the trip when we reached the picturesque village of Tarashing, close to Nanga Parbat. We planned to attempt the Mazeno Ridge, a route known as one of the great unconquered challenges of 8000-metre climbing. Most of its 10-kilometre length is above 7000 metres in altitude, and as narrow as a knife’s edge.

  After hiring porters, we enjoyed a very pleasant three-day trek across the alpine meadows below the Mazeno Ridge. At Base Camp our porters left us to fend for ourselves, with only a liaison officer and a cook for company, since we were on the far side of the mountain, away from the more popular Diamir Face. I appreciated the relative solitude because I could take in the spectacular landscape, undisturbed. Nanga Parbat absolutely dominated the flat terrain that lay all around it.

  Some shepherds were grazing their sheep and goats near our Base Camp. It wasn’t long before we reached an arrangement with them to bring us some fresh goat’s cheese every few days. It was lumpy and runny, a bit like fresh ricotta. Since it wasn’t pasteurised, we fried it up to kill the bugs and then ate it for brekkie. Absolutely delicious, although probably not Heart Foundation approved.

  The first challenge of the climb was actually to get up onto the Mazeno Ridge, which sat about 3 vertical kilometres above us. We’d only brought a small amount of rope to fix to the mountain, which obliged us to solo most of the climb, unroped. This was totally new climbing to me. We had to be bold and commit ourselves to each movement fully, because there was nothing to save us if we fell.

  It was absolutely exhilarating. I would look between my feet and see Base Camp thousands of metres below me, and I’d know that only the tenuous hold of the points of my ice picks and crampons lay between me and a rapid descent back there. Needless to say, it motivated me to focus. But the high I felt was like a drug. This was the unadulterated pleasure of pure climbing. I alone had absolute responsibility for my survival.

  Early in the expedition, Doug became quite sick and left for home, followed soon after by Sandy. Although Voytek, Rick and I were disappointed to see them go, we chose to continue the climb. After establishing a depot of food and equipment at the start of the Mazeno Ridge, we descended to Base Camp to rejuvenate, await a spell of good weather and plan our summit attack. The ridge was so long, we decided we wouldn’t be able to reach it and return the same way, so we’d have to traverse the mountain and find our way down the other side, very much in the way that Reinhold Messner had done with his brother Gunther many years earlier. This was a real risk, but it was the only feasible option if we were serious about reaching the summit.

  Unfortunately, on our subsequent summit push, our climbing along the ridge was slower than we had anticipated. After climbing for several days we realised that we still had the most technical parts of the ascent ahead of us, and we felt that we didn’t have the necessary food to complete the route to the summit, let alone down the other side. Discretion is the better part of valour, so we backtracked to Base Camp, our expedition over.

  After a few days of rest, Rick and I decided to circumnavigate the mountain on foot, to explore the sides of the mountain that rarely see foreigners. We were still pretty exhausted from the climb, so we hired a local porter to help carry our camping equipment. At one point, as we crossed a narrow glacier, we had to descend a small block of ice. Our porter had no climbing equipment, so I lent him my ice axe for safety. Immediately, he began hacking at the ice to cut out some steps, but he only succeeded in breaking my axe—the one I’d taken to K2’s summit! At the bottom of the ice cliff he gave it back to me and wandered off, not the slightest bit aware of why I might be upset. Possessions are a first-world problem.

  The rest of the walk was incredibly beautiful, isolated and wild. And very hot. At one point, we walked for hours in baking temperatures without water, hoping at every bend to find even a puddle from which we could moisten our lips. Desperately thirsty, we finally came across a desolate village, comprising a few mud and stick houses in squalid condition. When we asked for water they produced a goatskin bag with fermented milk in it. Not only was it unpasteurised, it was full of dirt, goat’s hair and goodness knows what else. It was lumpy, fizzy and rank, but we gulped it down like it was the freshest alpine stream.

  While we hadn’t summitted the mountain, the expedition had influenced me hugely. I had climbed with the best, I’d been pushed way beyond my comfort zone, and I’d learned much about risk and commitment. It was a positive step on my way to the top of Mount Everest.

  *

  Keen to have another go at Nanga Parbat, I wrote to my trekking agent in Islamabad to ask if he had any expeditions going there in 1996. He had. It was a Polish team. Two foreign climbers had joined the group and they were happy to have another. Of course, joining such an expedition flew in the face of my decision several years earlier to only climb with people I knew. But the problem was that I couldn’t find people I knew, particularly in Australia, who wanted to climb the hard 8000ers, especially without oxygen and without Sherpa or high-altitude porter support. I rationalised my decision. If I wanted to climb high, sacrificing my ethics to do so was worth the added risk.

  On paper, the leader of this expedition was the highly accomplished Polish mountaineer Krzysztof Wielicki, but in fact he had organised to climb on another mountain before Nanga Parbat and so did not arrive while I was there. In his absence, he’d appointed Jacek Berbeka, the brother of another proficient Polish mountaineer, Maciej Berbeka, to run the expedition.

  Along with about six Polish climbers, there was the international contingent: João Garcia from Portugal, German climber Berndt Hackler and me. I think the Poles had sought a few western members to help finance their expedition, but while we shared tents and equipment on the mountain, we pretty quickly split into two teams, the Poles in one and we three in the second.

  The route that we chose to climb on Nanga Parbat was the same I’d intended to descend the previous year, had we summitted from the Mazeno Ridge: the Kinshofer Route on the Diamir (or western) Face. The trek to the Diamir side of the mountain is one of the shortest approach treks of any 8000-metre peak. From the village of Chilas on the Karakorum Highway, we walked through quite precipitous rocky gorges alongside thundering glacial torrents fed by Nanga Parbat’s slopes. The path gains nearly 3000 metres between the KKH and base camp, which sits at 4000 metres. Given that radical altitude gain, it would have been prudent to allow three days for the trek in, to allow our bodies to acclimatise. But Berbeka was in a rush and demanded that our porters carry their loads all that way in just two days.

  This was pushing the porters too hard, I knew, and it could well have detrimental effects on the rest of us, too. Sure enough, within a couple of days of our arrival at Base Camp, I suffered severe headaches and sleeplessness. While the others started climbing, I had to walk all the way out to the road head, then turn around and walk back in at a more appropriate pace, all of which took nearly a week. The better acclimatisation I gained, though, allowed me to catch up to the expedition—or at least with João and Berndt. By that time, the group had really split into two.

  It was clear from the outset that the Poles lacked experience, and befo
re long some of them went home. The work of opening the route, fixing ropes and carrying loads fell to our little group of three. That suited me fine. There is a particular thrill to be had when the path is unknown, and you must draw upon your skills and experience to determine the best line: Should we climb up this gully or that? Does the top of the ridge lead onto easier terrain or is it blocked by ice and rock cliffs? What dangers are there en route? Is there rock-fall or avalanche danger? This cliff appears to have a weakness that will allow us to overcome it; that one does not. All in all, I was happy to be out in the lead, making decisions about the route and safe sites for our camps.

  We had constant bad weather with lots of rain at Base Camp and heavy snow dumps on the mountain. On 30 July, João, Berndt and I opened the route to Camp 4, but as we sat in the tent that evening, preparing for an attempt on the summit the next day, we were hit by a massive snowstorm that dropped a metre of snow in an hour. It was an incredible deluge, and our tent was crushed by the weight of the snow.

  Desperate to save both it and ourselves, I went out into the storm and shovelled furiously, but I couldn’t compete with the volume of heavy, wet snow pouring down and retreated back inside. We couldn’t open the door due to the amount of snow blowing in, so we just lay there, the roof of the tent pressing down on our faces, wondering if we were being entombed or if we’d be swept away by an avalanche. We quickly ran out of fresh air and spent the rest of the night feeling really nauseated. By morning, the tent was a ruin. The storm continued, so we descended to Base Camp.

  While we rested, the Poles went up for their own summit attempt. Somehow they got lost and tried to climb the wrong face of the mountain, constantly calling us on the radio, saying the slope was impossible to climb and wanting to know where the fixed rope to the summit was. There was no fixed rope to the summit, of course, so we gave them the best directions we could, if only to stop them climbing to a useless death on the wrong side of the mountain.