by Andrew Lock
The villagers told us that they’d communicated their issue to the government, who had sent a representative the previous day, but that they still didn’t have electricity. I guessed that there was a slight misunderstanding as to the time it takes to build a hydro plant, even a small one, but the villagers were adamant that they—and we—weren’t going anywhere until the power was switched on. Amazingly, given the would-be assassins he had to negotiate with, the government official returned after a couple more hours. Unfortunately, though, he didn’t have the magic switch, and the discussion soon became a shouting match. As if to prove their intent, the villagers started to let down the tyres of the waiting vehicles to further immobilise them.
Nobody carries a tyre pump in Pakistan and I could see us sitting there for days, with the lost time potentially costing us our summit chance. As the mob approached our bus to let down the tyres, I instructed our driver to offer them our car keys instead, as we’d have no way to reinflate the tyres once the blockade was lifted. The mob’s representative accepted the proposal, but I actually gave him an old padlock key, knowing that he wouldn’t recognise the difference. I felt no guilt whatsoever at exploiting his naivety, given that Rick and I had just invested about $20,000 in his country’s economy.
We sat around on the side of the road for several more hours. Some of the vehicles ahead of us had been there for a couple of days, and the government representative was clearly struggling to reach an agreement with the locals. Late in the afternoon, a military convoy arrived at the blockade from the other direction. They took no side in the argument but instructed the villagers to allow them to pass. This was our chance. As the locals rolled back some of the boulders, I grabbed our driver and we piled into our bus. As we still had the real car keys, we used the noise of the passing military convoy to disguise the sound of our vehicle’s engine starting.
At the moment the last military truck passed us, our driver slammed the bus into gear and we charged around the queue and towards the roadblock, while the villagers raced to roll their boulders back into position. They were too slow and we tore through the gap at the last moment, with villagers shouting and throwing rocks at us. We drove like crazy in case the threat of snipers was real, but no shots came. We were the only private vehicle to get through the blockade until it was finally opened some days later.
From Skardu we jeeped to the village of Askole, purchased the mandatory goat and started the 10-day trek to Base Camp, with thirty porters to carry our fuel, food and equipment. About three-quarters of the way there we suffered a porters’ strike. These were becoming increasingly frequent in the region. Despite the contracts they had signed, they demanded additional wages or they wouldn’t continue. It wasn’t because the loads were too heavy or the track was too difficult; they simply knew they had us over a barrel. These strikes can be quite tense. If we’d refused to pay, they could have done as they threatened, which was to abandon us and all our equipment on the Baltoro Glacier, leaving us without any means of getting to Base Camp. Or they could have stolen our equipment—there’d have been nothing we could have done about it.
Most expeditions just paid the ransom. But we were running a low-budget trip and simply didn’t have the money to pay the additional wages. I decided to play them at their own game and agreed to pay the additional money they demanded. We continued the trek, arriving at Base Camp three days later. When it came time to pay them, I counted out the wages for each porter according to their signed contracts. There were shouts and threats as they demanded to know why I hadn’t paid the additional money.
‘It’s simple,’ I replied. ‘You broke your contract and demanded extra money. I broke my contract to pay you that extra money. We are even.’
It was a risk, I knew, but I preferred to take it at Base Camp rather than halfway there. They had no tents or food, so they couldn’t stay at Base Camp longer than the hour it took them to drop off their loads and get paid. After a bit more shouting, they actually saw a bit of humour in having been outplayed. They accepted the contracted wage and departed.
It was 6 July when we reached Base Camp, and we were amazed to find another expedition already there. They were the Inurrategi brothers, Felix and Alberto, of Spain. These guys were hardcore and highly accomplished climbers. They had already been on the mountain for a couple of weeks and it was incredible that a route that had only had two or three previous attempts in history was suddenly hosting two expeditions in the same season.
Rick and I were pissed off that the Ministry of Tourism in Islamabad had not advised us about the other expedition and given us the chance to change our permit to a different route. The South Ridge was so steep and razor sharp that there would be few places to site our tents and sharing the ridge with another team would only exacerbate the problem. Worse, the Inurrategis were several weeks ahead of us and could potentially achieve the first ascent of the ridge before us, thus wasting our time and money and the extreme risk that the climb would involve. As it turned out, it didn’t matter because within a week of our arrival, while we were acclimatising on the lowest parts of the mountain, the route became ours alone when the Inurrategi brothers decided to abandon their attempt due to its length and difficulty.
At Base Camp we set up our meagre facilities. Our expedition was very, very lean. We had a cook, Sher Afzal, and the obligatory liaison officer (or LO), a Pakistani Army officer, Captain Shahid. While the heavily sponsored Inurrategi brothers had brought house-sized canvas tents for their base-camp kitchen, dining and sleeping tents, and at least a couple of cooks and all possible luxuries, our expedition kitchen was a low pile of rocks on the glacier with a tarpaulin stretched over the top. It was cold, dirty and uncomfortable. Sher Afzal and Captain Shahid must have felt really ripped off.
Given that there were just four of us, and that Sher Afzal could speak just a couple of words of English—which I admit was better than my Urdu—the four of us agreed that in order to avoid long nights with no conversation, we would take turns to tell a story—one person each night. Captain Shahid would translate for Afzal. The subject was entirely up to the storyteller. It was a great idea and we enjoyed many interesting nights, with insights into each other’s lives, books we’d read, hobbies, subjects studied at university and so on.
One night, Rick related the history of the Scottish royal family. This won’t take long, I thought. I couldn’t have been more wrong. He proceeded to recite every detail of every person even remotely connected with the Scottish throne for the last two thousand years, maybe longer—I think there were even some dinosaurs thrown in. Now, I’m of Scottish heritage, but after two hours the LO and I were praying for a merciful end that neither the gods nor Rick would bestow.
On the odd occasion when someone found it difficult to think of a story, or when Rick offered to tell us a few more obscure facts about the Scottish royals, I took great delight in raising the topic of religion. The LO was a devout Muslim and Rick a devout Christian, so this would always spark some lively debate between them. Luckily, they were both quite able to discuss their faiths without getting hot under the collar.
Like most liaison officers assigned to expeditions in the Baltoro region, ours was a Pakistani Army officer. Captain Shahid’s role was to ensure that we climbed the mountain and the route we’d been assigned, and that we didn’t photograph any military bases or bridges, given the proximity of the mountains to the Indian border and the ongoing Kashmir conflict. Most LOs were majors, but ours was a captain, and one day I asked him about his career and what he saw as his future.
He was quite candid, telling us that he didn’t see any promotions for himself in the near future, because he’d been in a bit of trouble recently. He’d been in charge of a platoon of soldiers in some part of Pakistan, where he’d been tasked to capture a local bandit. His orders were to capture the bandit alive, as the authorities wanted to interrogate him. As his platoon surrounded the bandit’s house, a shot was fired from within, hitting one of his men. Shahid was so
enraged that he ordered his platoon to fire on the house with all weapons. Needless to say, the bandit was not captured alive and our LO’s career prospects were curtailed, at least temporarily.
*
Rick and I decided that the best way to climb Broad Peak was alpine style. This meant climbing it in one push from Base Camp to the summit, carrying everything we’d need for all the camps, rather than the siege style of climbing up and down, establishing and stocking a series of permanent camps. The route was so steep and technical—and therefore slow—that it would take us too long to descend from any point, get a fresh load of equipment and food, and climb back to our previous high point. The only way to do it was in one long push, and so each morning, over a week or ten days, we’d pack up the tent and all our equipment and carry it up with us. The risk, however, was that if we needed to descend due to injury, altitude sickness or bad weather, we wouldn’t have fixed safety ropes in place to facilitate a quick escape. It is a more pure style of climbing but also a more dangerous one.
Climbing in this way requires you to be acclimatised before you start the ascent. To achieve that, we walked around to the easier West Face of the mountain, and over two days we climbed up to 7000 metres, where we slept a night before returning to base camp. With this done, we felt well enough acclimatised to attempt the unclimbed South Ridge.
Back at Base Camp, we rested for two days, using the time to prepare our loads for the assault. Going alpine style meant that we had to trim every luxury from our loads or they’d be too heavy. We had food and fuel for a week, tent, sleeping bags, climbing equipment, water bottles and all the little extras—it added up fast. Our packs weighed around 25 kilograms each. To save a few critical grams, I threw out my toothbrush and plastic pee bottle. Pee bottles are essential if you want to avoid struggling out of your sleeping bag into the freezing cold of night, particularly when the tent is perched on a tiny ledge over a huge abyss, with no room to stand outside. But saving weight was critical on this climb. I still wasn’t going to go out into the night, though, so if I needed to pee, I’d just have to use my cup.
While we were physically prepared, the climb presented us with a severe psychological challenge. We’d be climbing alone, on a very technical route, without communication with our Base Camp or anyone else. Any accident or prolonged storm would almost certainly be fatal. The only way to overcome our self-doubt and trepidation was to stay absolutely focused and committed to our goal. And, to get on with it.
We planned to start the climb on 21 July. After dinner the night before, I fiddled with the final adjustments to my load, and then completed an entry in my diary:
Have a small moosehead good-luck charm that Alex gave me at the airport. Mustn’t forget to take it … Just had dinner—everyone is a bit nervous, including Shahid (our LO). Have agreed to send an 8 p.m. torch signal of 3 flashes = ok; 10 flashes means coming down for some reason.
I finished the page with my last will and testament, and settled in for a few hours of sleep.
As if to test us, though, the weather the next morning steadily deteriorated. It was both a reprieve and a great frustration, as our nervousness only increased while we lay in our tents. We prepared for a start the following morning but were again stopped by rain and sleet. I was getting edgy, so I applied my nervous energy to construction, building a frame under the kitchen tarpaulin to prevent the rainwater from running inside.
On 23 July we awoke to patchy cloud. It appeared to be clearing and we could wait no longer. We called out to Sher Afzal to get the kitchen stove going, and he duly produced an inventive concoction of chocolate muesli. At least, I think that’s what it was. Shahid gave us a couple of little food bars for good luck, a genuine and heartfelt gesture that I greatly appreciated.
The route took us up a rising glacier, on which we placed Camp 1, then up a steep and exposed ice face. We soloed the first 250 metres of 60-degree ice before facing a bulge that steepened to the vertical. Rick went first and trailed a rope, but he climbed so quickly that I couldn’t catch it. I picked my way up very carefully, still solo and unroped. The face narrowed to a rock and ice gully, where the climbing was technical but fun, and we reached the ridge above at about 10 a.m.
We’d hoped to keep climbing another 500 metres higher, but it was too hot. We spent the remainder of the day resting and rehydrating and set out again at midnight, hoping for firmer snow conditions. The route led us over a jagged and exposed ridge before joining up with a long snow ramp, up which we took turns plugging steps for endless exhausting hours with our 25-kilogram rucksacks. We finally hit the South Ridge proper at 4 p.m., sixteen hours after setting out that morning. These mountains are so big that our two days of tough climbing had only brought us to the start of our intended route.
From our vantage point we could see major rock buttresses on the South Ridge, so we soloed below them, across a very steep and exposed face. The drop was a couple of thousand metres—not the place to slip. We traversed to where the rock blocked our way, and then climbed up to the massive buttress above us. With our limited equipment, continuing meant crossing the point of no return. We wouldn’t be able to down-climb back through that buttress if things went bad, but we’d known in advance that this would be the case. Our plan was to climb over the summit and then down the West Face, on which we’d previously acclimatised.
Normally, this was a risk we’d have accepted, but on this occasion we both felt apprehensive about the situation. It wasn’t that the rock buttress was impossible, although it was clearly highly committing; it was more a feeling of unease, almost dread. We decided to descend. It was a big decision to give up because it meant the end of our attempt on that route, but to me it felt like we were being given a second chance. My inner voice speaks loudly when I’m on a mountain, and I’m not inclined to ignore it.
Despite having started climbing at 7 a.m. that day, we descended well into the evening, not stopping until we reached a lower campsite at midnight. Such are the days on big hills. The descent was not without challenges. An avalanche had stretched a section of rope left by the Inurrategi brothers that we’d hoped to use, so that it was too tight to clip on to. We were forced to solo again, above the steepest sections. When we clipped to the rope a little lower, we saw that it was frayed and worn thin in places from abrasion against the rock. Thankfully, the darkness of night hid the abyss below us and we could turn our minds away from the danger.
Rick started to abseil. Suddenly the piton that anchored the rope to the cliff yanked out of the rock. With a startled yelp, he fell. He’s a goner, I immediately thought, and watched on, aghast but helpless. Incredibly, the rope snagged on a tiny knob of rock, just long enough for Rick to regain his purchase on the mountain. Our small team of two had almost become a smaller team of one.
The next day we continued our descent, however the heat of the preceding couple of days had caused considerable rockfall. The rope had been nicked in a dozen places, but, without a replacement, we were forced to rely on it. I gingerly rappelled down a steep gully, using the points of my crampons on every little edge to try to take some of the weight off the cord, but in the end I had to commit myself and swing out over a cliff.
I found myself hanging in free space, the seriously damaged rope stretched thin and taught as steel, its worn sheath rubbing vigorously on the sharp cliff edge above. Below me was a steep face that fell away for another 800 metres. My heart was pounding and, with my full body weight plus my 25-kilogram backpack pulling on that frayed thread, I fully expected it to break at any instant and send me tumbling down the face, bringing an untimely end to my high-altitude aspirations. I did everything I could not to bounce as I descended.
I thought momentarily about how I might stop my fall if the rope snapped, but in reality I knew I’d be killed within seconds. For reasons known only to the gods and that rope’s manufacturers, it didn’t break. When at last my feet touched the slope below me, even though it was still steep and exposed and I had to down-climb
very carefully, it felt as flat as a football field.
We reached Base Camp in the late afternoon and collapsed gratefully into our tents. Soon afterwards, a storm blew in, and it lasted for days. Had we continued climbing through that rock buttress up on the ridge, we’d have been caught by the storm at 8000 metres. That feeling of unease, our inner voices, had saved us.
*
Rick was out of time and decided to go home, which left me in a difficult position. I was still highly motivated to climb Broad Peak, but without Rick as my partner I would have to climb without a rope. That would mean greater risk, but my determination to succeed or take up another sport meant I had to take every possible opportunity to summit. I would have to climb a route that was less technical than the South Ridge, though, so I decided to wait out the storm and attempt a solo ascent of the West Face.
Ten days of snowfall meant a heightened avalanche risk, but a basic rule is to wait at least a day for avalanches to clear before setting foot on the slopes. I passed that day walking around the mountain to the Base Camp below the West Face. A more pressing issue was how best to attempt such a big mountain without a climbing partner to share the load of breaking trail and carrying equipment. I knew that lugging a heavy load in all that fresh snow would destroy me, so I decided that my only possible method of reaching the summit was to leave everything, including my tent, sleeping bag and mattress, behind. My only climbing equipment would be the crampons on my boots, an ice axe in my hand and a stove so I could melt snow to rehydrate. I figured that with the light load, and assuming I didn’t freeze, I might just make it.