by Andrew Lock
Christine and I found an expedition that was already going to the mountain, comprising Italians Silvio Mondinelli, Mario Merelli and Christian Kuntner, and Spaniard Carlos Pauner. I’d climbed on the Gasherbrum mountains in 1999 with Kuntner—he of the chocolate-bar-on-the-summit incident. My trekking agent managed to get our names onto their permit for our share of the cost, which meant we didn’t have to buy a whole permit—costing US$10,000—for just the two of us. Christine and I would share the base-camp kitchen and dining tent with the international team, but we would climb separately.
Christian was even less friendly on this trip than he had been in 1999. His group had brought in some additional sponsored rations of pork and pasta, and various condiments to spice up their meals. We didn’t expect to share any of that with them, but Christian made sure by regularly giving the cook strict instructions not to give any of his group’s special food to Christine or me. Our cook was a great guy and felt embarrassed by this. He tried his best to imitate for us what he was cooking for the others, so we experienced such culinary delights as Nepali tinned spam with Nepali spaghetti in tomato sauce. Disgusting, but we ate it with appreciative noises anyway so Christian would think we were eating his stuff. Every time he saw us eating what looked like his food, he ran off to his supply tent to check the packets of pasta and meat.
I had two other sources of entertainment on this expedition. Since 1998 I’d been studying a degree in disaster management. It was a distance-education course so that, rather than attending university regularly, I could study and send in my assignments from wherever I happened to be. By this time, I’d submitted them from Antarctica, Pakistan and Nepal, among many other far-flung places. I’d also achieved quite a reputation for unique excuses for late assignments. On this expedition, I was trying to complete an assignment in social research—probably the least interesting of all the subjects on the course. My rest days at Base Camp were spent labouring over my textbooks and writing a draft assignment by hand.
My other distraction was a small radio that I took on all expeditions to try to catch up on news and events via the BBC. I suspect Christine might have been in the employ of my university lecturers, because one day she asked if she could borrow it. Within an hour she returned it, the aerial snapped. There was nothing left for me to do but go back to the books.
Christine couldn’t really find her pace on this expedition, and after a couple of weeks she gave up and went home. I’d come to the mountain to climb with someone I respected and liked, hoping that we’d have fun. In her absence, I once again found myself essentially alone in pursuit of an 8000-metre summit. It wasn’t my choice, but I was far from being depressed about it. I was even excited and it led me to do some soul-searching, a rare thing:
Why do I climb these things? Why am I here? I’m sharing a base camp with a bunch of climbers whose leader lives in constant fear that I might eat his food. The mountain is high and dangerous. Summit day will involve a lot of steep rock climbing, which worries me more than anything else. Going up is okay but descending will be very tough. The idea scares me seriously. The summit is the third-highest and looks to be my toughest one yet. I get butterflies when I look at it.
Yet here I am. Why? I could be at home, working a good job, working on my house, pursuing a nice relationship. Base camp has people but I am lonely and virtually alone against this mountain. What inner force drives me to it? I haven’t finished this one; indeed, I am apprehensive about it, yet already I am thinking of the next one and the one after that. The summit is a relief, at best, no major high. An inner euphoria to be celebrated, in my case alone, if, and only if, I succeed. And yet I feel a nervous excitement, an inner tension at the thought of pushing through the barriers of fear. The pain and exhaustion I am prepared for. It is the fear that has to be overcome, and perhaps with that, the greatest sense of achievement.
Yet at the same time I long for the fear to be gone, to be over and finished with. I feel that I must finish the fourteen to vanquish the fear and earn the peace. I long for simplicity on the one hand, yet adventure on the other. The two do not go hand in hand. Is there a middle ground or am I destined to jump from one to the other in the search for myself? I want this summit, and then I want good friends and family, social contact, warmth, simplicity. The mountains are simple but they do not bring simplicity.
My relationship with everyone except Christian was actually pretty good, and they invited me to join them on their summit attempt. We climbed to Camp 3, which we placed at about 7500 metres. I proposed that we put in a Camp 4 the following day at 7800 metres to give us a reasonable climb on the summit day; however, the others wanted to make the summit push the next morning, making a massive day of it by climbing directly from Camp 3 to the top at 8600 metres. I thought this was a mistake and that we’d be exposing ourselves to too many risks, but the others were adamant. I agreed to join them but only for as long as it felt right.
We got away at 2.30 a.m. Although the weather forecast had been good, the thin line of cloud on the horizon was ominous. Within a couple of hours it was upon us and the weather was deteriorating significantly. I also found that I was suffering some warning signs of altitude sickness—double vision, nausea and headaches—a sure sign that I wasn’t sufficiently acclimatised. Going higher would only worsen the symptoms.
Since 1997 I’d been climbing with a firm commitment to continue, unless the risks became absolutely too great. I had succeeded on every expedition since then. However, I had no intention of climbing into a blizzard at such extreme altitude, particularly as I was becoming ill. The risk on this occasion was too great. It was unacceptable to me, so I turned around and descended. The others kept on for the top.
The storm completely hid the mountain, and the other climbers soon became lost. They kept going for the top over unknown ground. With great determination, they reached the summit, probably achieving a new route along the way. When they started to descend they were soon separated, and it became every man for himself. All of them fell at different times, and all suffered frostbite. Eventually, the three Italians made it back down to base camp. Carlos Pauner, however, had disappeared.
The weather didn’t improve and the season was drawing to an end. Without the prospect of another summit attempt, I trekked out. The Italians rested for a while after their climb, but as they were packing up Base Camp and preparing to leave, they saw a faint light at Camp 1. Climbing up quickly, they found Pauner, barely alive. He was exhausted and badly frostbitten but had somehow crawled down the mountain on his own, an amazing story of survival.
I was happy for the guys who had summitted but was absolutely content in my decision not to have continued with them. They were lucky to have survived, and the frostbite they’d incurred during the storm was a terribly high price to have paid. It would impact on their lives forever, and would henceforth impede their ability to tolerate cold. My goal was to climb all the 8000ers, not just this one. Injuring myself in a way that would affect my main aim was unacceptable.
In Kathmandu I found that the city was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest. Hundreds of Everest summiteers were in town, and for three days we were treated to banquets and parades, and I had an opportunity to catch up with old friends as well as meet some famous Everest celebrities. I was invited to the final function, which showcased this royalty, including Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb Everest; Junko Tabei, the first woman to climb Everest; and Reinhold Messner, the first, with Austrian Peter Habeler, to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen, and the first to climb Everest solo without oxygen. The function concluded with a medal ceremony.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand presented the Nepal Mount Everest medal to a number of climbers. I wasn’t really paying attention and was caught very much by surprise when mine was the first name read out. I wasn’t first for any special reason but simply because Australia and Andrew both started with the first letter of the alphabet, which d
ictated the order of presentations. I was honoured to receive the award, but as I stood on the stage with the prime minister while the media’s cameras clicked madly, I rather wished I’d read the invitation a little more closely. It had requested that attendees wear either a suit or their national dress. I guess that in some parts of Australia my grubby shorts and T-shirt probably did meet that criteria.
*
Kanchenjunga in 2003 was my first unsuccessful expedition since 1996, so I was keen to get another summit under my belt. I’d been putting off going to two particular mountains, Cho Oyu and Shishapangma, because I’d read that they were the easiest 8000ers. I was planning to knock them off at the end. But big hills like these are quite adept at putting you in your place, and I was about to be put in mine. A friend was running a commercial group to Shishapangma, so I joined his team for base-camp services. Once on the mountain, I would climb on my own.
Shishapangma is the only 8000er that sits entirely within the so-called Autonomous Region of Tibet—better known these days as China. It’s an unusual mountain. At 8027 metres, it stands alone on the Tibetan plateau, a beautiful white monolith presiding over the plains below. The origin of its name is the subject of several theories. Some believe it means ‘Crest above the Grassy Plains’, which sounds about right to me, but I prefer the more interesting interpretation from its literal meaning in the Tibetan language. In Tibetan, shisha means ‘meat of an animal that died of natural causes’, and sbangma ‘malt dregs left over from brewing beer’. Legend has it that, years ago, a blizzard killed all the livestock in the fields below Shishapangma, leaving as the villagers’ only food the dead animals and some malt dregs left over from making beer. Who can pass by that interpretation?
I was planning a quick expedition. What I didn’t know at this time was that the true summit of Shishapangma is very rarely climbed. Most expeditions climb to a point on the north ridge where it turns towards the summit. They refer to this as the Central Summit, but in fact it isn’t a summit at all. It has been assigned various heights over the years—many records indicate that the height of the central summit is about 8012 metres, while the real summit is 8027 metres; others say that the Central Summit is less than 8000 metres and the true summit is 8013 metres. Either way, Shishapangma is still the lowest 8000er, so it’s ironic that it was the last 8000er to be climbed. The Chinese achieved that glory with a risky climb across the avalanche-prone North Face in May of 1964.
For some reason, the Chinese Mountaineering Association provides summit certificates to people who’ve only been to the Central Summit. Thus, the mountain is attractive to commercial expeditions and less-experienced climbers, who can then claim an 8000-metre summit without actually getting there. While the real summit is only about 15 metres higher than the false summit, it is a much more difficult place to reach. The original ascent route up the mountain by the Chinese has been repeated several times, but the significant avalanche danger on the traverse across the North Face above Camp 3 to the top puts a lot of climbers off. A number of other ascents have been achieved via the steep and technical South Face, first climbed by a British expedition led by Doug Scott, with whom I climbed on the Mazeno Ridge of Nanga Parbat in 1995.
Somewhat lazily, I had done no research whatsoever into Shishapangma before heading there. I’d heard that it was an easy climb, and therefore I assumed it wouldn’t pose too much trouble. I didn’t realise that most climbers’ claims to have summitted the mountain were actually falsely based on having reached the Central Summit. Perhaps my years of successes also caused me to be a little blasé about the challenge.
From Kathmandu we bounced and jostled our way by road in a dilapidated Indian-built Tata bus to the border town of Khodari, stopping on numerous occasions at checkpoints en route. The Nepali Army and police force gave us the once-over each time, satisfying themselves that we weren’t Maoist desperados intent on overthrowing the government, posing as western climbers—or, given the direction we were travelling, returning home from having done so. We were duly ushered through.
Khodari is a squalid township of rickety timber and brick shacks. It’s etched into the side of a gorge, alongside a raging torrent that descends from the Tibetan plateau. Water runs everywhere from the cloud-enshrouded hills above, and there’s a constant stream of people ferrying loads of goods along the muddy road that leads to the bridge that is the border crossing. This bridge and others on the Nepali road that leads from Kathmandu up to the border were apparently built courtesy of the largesse of the Chinese government, so I’m sure there couldn’t be any truth to cynics’ claims that they were built strongly enough to support Chinese tanks, particularly since the main bridge is called the Friendship Bridge, while the road that runs all the way from the bridge to Lhasa, the capital of the Autonomous Region of Tibet, is the Friendship Highway.
Once across that bridge, and before reaching the customs post, I was obliged to stop at a little booth. An official pointed a small, black, gun-shaped object at my forehead, and for a brief moment I thought that my irreverence was not appreciated. The gun was in fact a thermometer, and my forehead’s temperature was apparently able to indicate whether or not I was a carrier of the latest mutation of a nasty influenza virus. I wondered whether it wouldn’t have been more appropriate to do that test on my way back, and I wasn’t overly surprised when given the all clear. Once through the bureaucracy, we piled into a minivan for a zigzagging ride up the steep Chinese—sorry, Autonomous Region of Tibet—side of the gorge, to the first town, known as Zhangmu, a concrete version of Khodari.
Mountaineering in Tibet is strictly controlled by the government through the Chinese Mountaineering Association and the ‘autonomous’ China Tibet Mountaineering Association. All transport, hotels, meals and expedition permits are organised by these associations, and one is essentially ushered to the mountain by vehicle—no wistful meanderings along alpine trails on these trips. After a night in Zhangmu, during which we were introduced to the mandatory meals of monosodium glutamate with a garnish of unidentified vegetables, and which would be repeated for lunch and dinner for the next six days, we drove up the Friendship Highway in chauffeured Land Cruisers to the Tibetan town of Nyalam.
The drive was quite incredible. Reminiscent of the infamous Bolivian Yungas road from La Paz to Coroico, known as the most dangerous road in the world, the Friendship Highway had been blasted from near-vertical cliffs. At times it tunnels right through them, and at others it snakes its way up the precipitous gorge to the plateau above. Landslips from above and from the road itself were common. Teams of workers constantly maintained it, repairing the damage caused by legions of trucks that carted goods between the two neighbours.
Nyalam is cold, windswept and barren, and its inhabitants are as tough as the packs of marauding dogs that patrol the streets looking for unsuspecting tourists. Part of the Tsang Province in the old Tibet, you can still see Tibetans wearing traditional garb, including densely woven woollen shoes, but these days it is the administrative capital of the local county in Shigatse Prefecture, with a strong Chinese presence to help guide its autonomy.
The attempted food poisoning continued in Nyalam’s dining room; however, due to Nyalam’s significant altitude (3750 metres), we were obliged to spend two nights there to acclimatise. When not seeking enlightenment through abstinence, I spent my time pushing my acclimatisation by climbing the nearby hills, which provided up to a thousand metres’ height gain for those with the energy.
After Nyalam and another couple of nights in the next town, we drove to the official Chinese base camp of Shishapangma, which, at an altitude of 5000 metres, is well and truly up on the Tibetan plateau. Using yaks to ferry our loads 20 kilometres across the plateau to Advance Base Camp, we strolled across gently undulating grassy hills populated by large flocks of Himalayan blue sheep, which look like goats. The lucky few caught a glimpse of a Himalayan snow leopard or a wild ass. Impossibly deep blue skies above distant shimmering lakes surrounded by white-capped H
imalayan peaks make this trek an absolute delight, albeit a cold and constantly windy one.
My plan was to commence climbing from Advance Base Camp on 20 September, a Saturday, but one of the Sherpas there told me that Saturday is an inauspicious day on which to begin. I’m not sure if my superstition has increased since surviving various accidents over the years or if I’ve really come to embrace the belief systems of the locals, but I saw no sense in challenging the gods. I could wait for one more day.
The route up the north ridge to Camp 3 is very easy, and I quickly reached this point. From there, I hoped to follow the original Chinese line, a rising traverse across the North Face for several hundred metres, which would bring me to a saddle on the summit ridge between the central and the true summit. The face was heavily loaded with snow, however, and I wasn’t prepared to risk setting off an avalanche, so I kept climbing up the ridge.
My repeated attempts to traverse across the face as I gained altitude were thwarted by the loose snow, so I continued upwards until I found myself at the Central Summit. There I looked out across a steeply sided, heavily corniced ridge. I could see why most expeditions stopped at this point. The mountain’s South Face dropped precipitously away to the right, and the precarious and top-heavy cornices that perched above the North Face were impassable. Frustratingly, I was halted just a couple of hundred metres horizontally and only about 20 metres below the real summit. I could see it clearly just beyond my reach, but I couldn’t get to it. There would be no summit of a mountain by me that year, and so I returned home.
The year 2003 was a disappointing one for me. For the first time since 1996 I’d failed to achieve my objective—and on not one but two expeditions. I hadn’t been too worried about not reaching the summit of Kanchenjunga earlier in the year, because that had been a sound risk-management decision, but I knew that my approach to Shishapangma had been far too lax. More than anything, it was a wasted opportunity. My goal to climb all the 8000ers was delayed, and I’d wasted a fair amount of money. Worse, I’d have to return to this mountain in another season, which might have been better used to climb a different mountain.