Summit 8000

by Andrew Lock

  The French experience on Annapurna was just the first of many epic expeditions. Among them was the 1970 British expedition, which made the first ascent of Annapurna’s brutally steep and avalanche-prone South Face. Its members included three greats of Himalayan climbing—Don Whillans, Dougal Haston and leader Chris Bonington. Their teammate, Ian Clough, was killed by a falling serac during the descent. In 1978 an American all-women’s expedition, led by Arlene Blum and supported by a strong Sherpa team, attempted to place both the first Americans and the first women on Annapurna’s summit. It was successful, but two died during the climb. The list of similar tragedies on Annapurna is long. By the time I turned my attention to it, there’d been approximately sixty deaths for just 120 successful ascents. Among the casualties was my old climbing friend Anatoli Bukreev, leaving me as the last surviving summiteer of our K2 expedition.

  I was intimidated by Annapurna. How could I not be? But I knew that if I wanted to climb all the 8000ers, I had to climb Annapurna. I would just have to accept a much higher level of risk. In April 2005 I bit the bullet and decided to take my chances. I felt that by then I’d accumulated enough skills and experience to have the best prospect of success and, more importantly, survival. Also, I didn’t want to leave it until last, as some climbers did, because I could see that putting myself in that position might bring on summit fever, a desperation to keep going for the summit, no matter what the risk, in order to complete the project. Annapurna demanded the very highest level of risk management. Summit fever would be a virtual death sentence on this mountain.

  I knew that Ed Viesturs, the United States’ most prolific 8000-metre climber, was heading there, so I asked if I could join his permit. He agreed but was heading first to Cho Oyu to acclimatise. I didn’t have the time or the money for Cho Oyu as well as Annapurna, so Ed put me in touch with two American friends, Charley Mace and Brendan Cusick, who were also keen to climb Annapurna. They’d both climbed in the Himalaya previously, so we agreed to form our own expedition.

  In Kathmandu I caught up with my friends Ben and Shaunna, who, together with the communications guru from our Discovery expedition, Mike Swarbrick, were back in Nepal to finish off Everest after their unsuccessful summit push the year before. They’d actually been back on the mountain for a couple of weeks before I met them, but Ben’s knee had shattered in an accident in the Khumbu Icefall and he’d been evacuated. He was heading home with Mike, while Shaunna planned to return to Everest the next day to complete her climb. It was great to catch up with them again, and together we consumed more than a few liquid painkillers—for Ben’s sake, of course.

  Charley, Brendan and I trekked into Annapura base camp along one of the best routes in Nepal. We first flew to the tourist town of Pokhara, beside the picturesque Phewa Lake, whose still waters provide glorious mirror images of the mighty Annapurna mountain range to the north. Then we took a small plane to the mountain airstrip of Jomsom, out of which I’d flown after the epic Dhaulagiri post-expedition trek. This is one of the most spectacular flights in the Himalaya. It cuts its way up the Kali Gandaki valley between the Annapurna Himal and Dhaulagiri, the deepest gorge in the world. I craned my neck in a hopeless attempt to look up to the tops of the monstrously high, sheer mountain walls on either side of our flight path. One of those walls was our destination, Annapurna 1.

  Most trekkers who visit Annapurna walk to the Base Camp on its south side, which is a beautiful but relatively benign trek. We would be climbing from the north side, however, and so we followed a route that very few visitors to Nepal have travelled. And with good reason. Almost immediately we encountered a problem. A police checkpoint identified that several of our porters’ names had been misspelt on our trekking permit. No amount of pleading convinced them to let the porters through, despite the fact that our expedition effectively came to a halt right there. We were left with ten porters for twenty-three loads. Some hurried repacking allowed us to prioritise the loads we needed immediately and those that could be carried in later during the expedition.

  Torrential rain dampened our spirits a little but not as much as the news that another expedition heading to our same Base Camp had helicoptered in, due to impassable snow on the approach. After spending a night in an impoverished village in the gorge between Dhaulagiri and Annapurna, we trekked across some sparse cornfields, then ascended a series of hills and ridges towards a high pass that was still well out of sight. We spent the entire day going uphill, gaining 1500 vertical metres’ altitude, and even then our campsite at 3750 metres wasn’t on the top. The only available water was a 1½-hour round trip away, so we had a dry dinner, moistened only by a puddle on the track that the local birds had used for their daily ablutions.

  The following day we finally reached the top of the pass. The earlier news that we’d be stopped by deep snow proved to be incorrect, and we crossed a meadow-like plateau before descending to the side of a fearfully steep gorge called the Hum Khola. There it did snow heavily, disguising the track and making every step a potentially fatal slip. Indeed, a number of porters and even climbers have been killed in this area since it was accessed by Herzog’s team in 1950. As if to prove the point, one of our porters suddenly back-flipped off the track and tumbled 10 metres towards the precipice before somehow coming to a stop.

  Herzog wasn’t the first to pioneer this route. As we edged our way around the cliffs, we came across a small cave with hand-painted figures on the wall. One of the porters told us that it had been painted a generation earlier, when a shepherd and his son had brought a few livestock this way in the hope of finding some pasture. They’d become trapped by the winter snows and, after eating their livestock, began to starve. Close to the end, the father told the son to kill and eat him, with which order the dutiful son complied. His fidelity to duty didn’t save him, though, and he too eventually perished, but not before documenting the events by way of the rock paintings. A sad story, but pretty good paintings.

  *

  After crossing several more gorges and taking numerous more falls, we descended into the Miristi Khola gorge, which would take us to Base Camp. I handed my ice axe to a porter who was struggling on the slippery track and kept my fingers crossed that it would survive longer than the axe I’d lent to our porter on Nanga Parbat, as I needed it for the climb ahead. The following day we arrived at Base Camp and paid our porters, rewarding them for their efforts with a fat tip. They were a tough bunch and deserved every rupee. In a perfect world they wouldn’t have had to labour in this way to earn their living, but it isn’t a perfect world and they needed the employment. The least we could do was pay them top dollar.

  Ed Viesturs was already at Base Camp, having arrived a couple of days earlier from Cho Oyu. Annapurna was the final peak in his own quest to climb all the 8000ers. To summit it, he had partnered with his long-time climbing buddy, Veikka Gustafsson of Finland. Climbing the big peaks is such a tense and dangerous game that few people wish to expose themselves to the risks year after year. Those who do frequently end up dead. Finding a like-minded climbing partner in this game is a rare gift, but Ed and Veikka had established just that rapport.

  Annapurna is a peak whose deadly reputation sees seasons come and go without a single expedition daring to test her temper, so it was unusual that we found a couple of Italian expeditions there as well. One included the two Italians with whom I’d climbed on the Gasherbrums in 1999, Abele Blanc and Christian Kuntner. The other comprised the outstanding mountaineer Silvio Mondinelli, probably the strongest mountaineer I’ve seen after Anatoli Bukreev. His teammates included Mario Merrelli, whom I’d met with Silvio on Kanchenjunga and Shishapangma in 2003.

  Silvio, the elite alpinist, was a picture of health, while Mario had a permanent cigarette hanging from his lips. He’d look me in the eye and, with a wry smile, mutter, ‘Oxygen, Andre’. Both were incredibly friendly, and I spent many a meal at their Base Camp tucking into their drums of cryovacked pork knuckles and other delicacies that, unlike their countryma
n Kuntner, they were more than happy to share. They were great people to spend time with.

  Charley, Brendan and I were the last team to arrive at the mountain, but the hard pass-crossing trek had aided our acclimatisation and we were able to start climbing after a couple of days’ rest and preparation. The route up to Camp 1 followed an easy grassy trail from Base Camp before dropping over a 40-metre wall of lateral moraine that had been exposed by the slowly advancing glacier below. After crossing that same glacier, we picked our way up a headwall of ice and rock. This brought us to a steep and crumbling rock ridge interspersed with loose scree slopes and snow patches, the top of which led out to a broad glacier, surrounded on all sides by threatening, avalanche-prone mountain faces. Our first attempt up the ridge was thwarted by ice seracs, which collapsed around and in front of us, so close as to cover us in ice dust, followed by constant rockfall on the ridge. We returned to Base Camp, determined to make an earlier start on our next attempt. This proved more successful and we reached Camp 1 after a solid push of five and a half hours’ constant climbing.

  To reach Camp 2, we crossed the glacier roped together for safety against hidden crevasses, then slogged our way up easy but deep snow slopes for several hours. We placed our tent underneath some ice cliffs that we hoped would protect us from miscreant avalanches above. Although we’d already had to overcome rockfall, crevasses, avalanche danger and altitude, the hazards to this point had been no greater than those on most other high mountains. Above Camp 2, however, the game changed considerably.

  To assist with our acclimatisation and to get a better look at the route, we climbed up from Camp 2, crossed the plateau above the tent site and approached the bottom of the north face. Just to access the face we had to cross terrain that was threatened by some of the biggest seracs I’d ever seen, which clearly avalanched every day. I wrote at the time:

  This part of the route is absolutely deadly. There are huge seracs that overhang the plateau on the left as you head up, not to mention the sickle serac above. Our track crossed some avalanche debris but it is quite clear that any big serac avalanche would sweep the entire plateau clean. There would be no hope.

  We climbed a ramp of snow and ice that was hundreds of metres wide, hundreds more long and whose depth could only be imagined. The ramp was completely out of place until we realised that it had been formed by the debris of the continual avalanches that crashed down from the hundreds of seracs on the face above, which itself was crowned by an astonishingly enormous ice cliff known as The Sickle. The Sickle’s exposed bluff was easily a hundred metres of sheer, crumbling ice. It curved right across the top of the face in the manner of its namesake for more than a kilometre. Just standing on the debris below the face was enough to make my palms clammy. The route we planned to take to Camp 3 climbed over that avalanche debris, up through the entire serac-filled north face, and through that deadly ice cliff at the top. Gulp!

  Having intimidated ourselves sufficiently, we retreated to Base Camp to fortify our courage with a few nights’ sleep and proper food. In the interim, Ed and Veikka launched their summit bid, as did the Italian team with Silvio and Mario. They were all a couple of weeks ahead of us on the mountain. They climbed through the dangers to Camp 3, their highest camp, but were caught there for three nights in strong wind. Silvio descended to Base Camp, having suffered very cold feet and not wanting to incur more frostbite on top of his Kanchenjunga injury. The others made a desperate lunge for the top in a lull in the conditions.

  That break in the weather was short-lived, though, and the ascent became a battle against strong winds and deep snow. While they successfully summitted, they were separated on descent. Two of the Italians spent the night after the summit sheltering in a crevasse, unable to find their way back to the tents. Thankfully, they all survived, and a couple of days later we greeted them back at Base Camp. With that ascent, Ed had completed his project to climb all the 8000ers, becoming the first American to do so. After a grand party, he was helicoptered out to great acclaim back in the United States.

  A week later it was our turn. For the first time, I’d taken a satellite phone to Base Camp, which had allowed me to ring Julie every few days. It was great having contact with her, particularly given that I was climbing with people I didn’t know well. Julie was also able to give me regular weather information, and told me that a good spell was forecast. My team and the second Italian team, which included Blanc and Kuntner, were joined by Silvio Mondinelli, whose feet were feeling better and who’d stayed on at Base Camp to try again. We agreed to climb as a single group and share the work of breaking trail in fresh snow. We would also provide each other with support on this most dangerous of mountains.

  We were delayed at Camp 2 for a day due to high winds, but the next morning we faced our fears and set off for the shooting gallery that was the climb up to Camp 3. Kuntner and his team were a little slow off the mark, but Brendan, Charley, Silvio and I crossed the plateau and ascended the field of avalanche ‘runout’ at the base of the face. Above us was a gully that clearly channelled much of the avalanche debris that came down the face. It was only a 50-metre climb until it fanned out above and we could move to the side out of the firing line, but for those 50 metres our hearts were in our mouths. We knew with absolute certainty that an avalanche at that moment would be fed straight on top of us, and we’d have little hope of survival. I climbed rather quickly.

  As I went, I scanned continuously for a safe place to hide should an avalanche fall. Sure enough, as I emerged from the couloir about 7.25 a.m. there was a massive roar from above and the ground beneath my feet shook. A serac had collapsed somewhere on the face above and was sweeping down towards us. Simultaneously, we all yelled, ‘Avalanche!’ and sprang for cover.

  I’d spotted some large seracs about 20 metres away that would provide excellent shelter, but I hadn’t time to reach them. The only possible protection at that moment was a small serac of ice about 1.5 metres high and 2 metres long. I dived onto the slope below it. I could hear the avalanche thundering down the face, and wondered whether my backpack might be sticking out above the top of the block. If so, it would be hit by the avalanche and I would be dragged off the mountain. I considered ripping it off, but that would mean rolling away from the block for a few seconds, exposing myself even further. I decided not to risk it but forced myself as flat as possible into the snow.

  Time passes rather slowly in this situation, perhaps because your every sense is heightened with the expectation of instant oblivion. There was time to ponder my fate. It seemed likely that I was about to die, and for a brief second my stomach tightened. But it felt hypocritical to panic about dying, given that I’d known and rather carelessly accepted that risk on all these mountains over so many years. I put my head down and accepted my fate, whatever it was going to be, writing later:

  It’s an eerie feeling lying helplessly, waiting for such a powerful natural force to run its course. If my serac didn’t offer enough protection, or if the debris or wind blast caught me, I’d be pulled in an instant from my hiding place and literally thrown down the mountain, with about 1000 tonnes of ice and snow following.

  If that happened, I would probably only have a few seconds of terror and would then be killed. How to describe the expectation of death within a few seconds, but not knowing for sure? A feeling of dread, an acceptance that this was always possible; not so much regret, but certainly a question: ‘Is this how it all ends?’

  As I lay there, I couldn’t tell if it was going over me or not, but the sound was deafening and the ground shook. It seemed to last a long while—my guess would be around twenty seconds—before it passed.

  Gradually, the deluge lessened and the noise faded. I raised my head. The gods had been kind and I had survived. My teammates above me were also okay. But Kuntner and three of his team—Stephan, Marco and Abele Blanc—had been below me, right in the neck of the couloir, when the ice hit. The four of them had been swept back down the couloir and about 300
metres out onto the football field of debris.

  We raced back down the slope, our hearts full of dread at what we’d find. Overall, the injuries were surprisingly light. Stephan had a broken arm, cuts and bruises, while Marco, battered and bloody, had a face wound that was open to the bone. Blanc was in total shock and not aware of his surroundings, but physically he was relatively unharmed. Kuntner, however, was badly injured. He had a massive wound to his head and a dislocated shoulder. Most troubling of all, though, was that he preferred to lie on his injured shoulder rather than on his other side, which he clutched constantly, moaning, ‘Malo, malo.’ He had obviously sustained a significant internal injury.

  After some emergency first aid, the walking wounded descended to Camp 2. We bandaged Christian’s gaping head wound and gave him a shot of dexamethasone for his concussion, but we then had to consider our next move. He’d been lucid when we first reached him but had deteriorated quickly. Now he was writhing on the snow, unable to walk. He needed urgent hospitalisation.

  Ideally we’d have stabilised him and organised a Nepali helicopter to evacuate him, but we were at too high an altitude for one to land. In any case, we couldn’t stay in that location because it was beneath another massive ice serac, nearly a thousand metres above us, that avalanched daily. We were standing right on its debris. We used our sleeping pads and a sleeping bag to make a sledge, into which we zipped Christian. Silvio, Brendan and I then dragged him down the mountain.