Summit 8000

by Andrew Lock

  It took us another thirty minutes to reach the tents. We arrived about 9.30 p.m., seventeen and a half hours after setting out that morning. The storm had raged in our absence and left only carnage. One of the tents had been blown away and the remaining few were bent and broken in the wind. But, still, they seemed like paradise. I collapsed inside, covered in ice, my down suit and mittens full of snow. I was frozen solid, and was lucky to get back in one piece!

  My and João’s tent had been so buried by the snow that there was only room for one person inside, but I crammed in anyway. We were forced to sit back to back with our knees hunched up, our heads slapped constantly by the whipping tent walls. We couldn’t light the stove to melt snow, which was particularly terrible for me, because I’d drunk almost nothing since midnight the night before. But just being out of the storm and knowing that I’d somehow survived was absolute heaven.

  When finally I could speak, I thanked João for shining his headlamp for us, as it had saved us. He didn’t know what I was talking about, and told me that he’d simply gone out of the tent to try to shovel away some of the snow. Our lives had been saved by pure luck! We’d been in the right spot and looking in the right direction at precisely the right time to see his headlamp flash. Was it luck, or were we given a helping hand? I can’t say, but I know what I’d like to think. Either way, we’d lived through a brutal event and survived by the skin of our teeth. And we’d achieved the summit of the world’s third-highest mountain, in a storm and without oxygen. It was a big day out.

  By morning the storm had eased. We emerged from our shattered tents like the shell-shocked victims of war. I had never been so physically wrecked. Nor had the others and our faces showed it. We spent the day in a near stupor, packing whatever we could recover and then descending painfully to base camp, which we reached at dusk. We were alive.

  It’s difficult to describe the physical impact of an epic like this. Rather than the gradual wearing down of the body’s reserves that occurs on a long overland or polar trek, to which the body has some time to adjust, high altitude ravages the body so savagely that it is common to lose kilograms of weight in just a few days. You put yourself through extreme cold, starvation, dehydration and lack of oxygen, not to mention endless hours of maximum effort, with your heart racing continuously. All this nonstop for days. The body has no time to adjust, so it strips itself. The line between life and death in those circumstances is as fine as silk.

  I have no doubt that our survival that night was largely a result of our years of experience, which gave us the mental strength to cope with the extreme challenges. We took our chances to succeed, and fought to survive. But still we were lucky. Ironically, so great was my mental exhaustion that when I retrieved my thermos from Camp 1 on the way down to base camp, I didn’t notice it was full. Although dying of thirst, I carried a litre of water back to Base Camp!

  For the next couple of days we rested at Base Camp, happy to lie for hours in our sleeping bags and enjoy endless hot drinks. Ralph, Gerlinde and Hirotaka had plans to climb another mountain, though, and needed to travel there quickly, before the season ended and the monsoon arrived. None of us was keen to make the long and tiring trek back out to civilisation, so we contracted a large Russian-built Mi-17 helicopter to pick up us and all our equipment from a point one day’s walk below Base Camp—the same place from which Tose had been evacuated nearly two months earlier. We flew parallel to major Himalaya mountains for nearly a hundred kilometres, passing peak after peak, including several 8000ers—Kanchenjunga, Makalu, Lhotse and Everest. We were transfixed by the incredible vista. The callous savagery we’d encountered just days before had transformed into serene splendour, those majestic giants now slumbering peacefully in the sun. That vision alone was worth every hardship.

  The chopper dropped Ralf, Gerlinde and Hiro at Lhotse’s Base Camp, and then took Veikka and me to Kathmandu. Ultimately, the others were unsuccessful on Lhotse due to their exhaustion, which was hardly a surprise. In Kathmandu I barely had the energy to catch up with friends and enjoy a celebratory beer.

  I experienced on that expedition something I haven’t felt with such intensity on any other trip. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I had a heightened sense of the mountain spirit, a oneness with nature, a deeper understanding of my ‘self’ and my inner voice. I came away a far richer person for the experience, and whenever I reflect on it, I feel a more powerful sense of spirituality and inner calmness. I wonder also if that solo cross-country skiing trip all those years earlier, back in the mid 1980s, during which I’d virtually sensed my way through an eight-day blizzard, had been an introduction to this amplified, subconscious perception of the environment around me.

  While I endured most of that epic descent on my own, I had shared an incredible journey with the whole summit team. There were no false agendas and there was no self-aggrandising after the event. We were all humbled by it, and once again I felt charged by the camaraderie that was wrought through great adversity. A post-summit photo at base camp with Ralf, Gerlinde, Hirotaka and Veikka remains one of my favourites.

  Kanchenjunga was my eleventh 8000er. I knew that I’d pushed the limits of my physical endurance on this climb, and that I would probably have died had I not escaped the storm. Far from being scared off the mountains, though, I actually felt psychologically stronger and fully committed to continue my 8000er project. Indeed, I was on a high for months. While it took me a few weeks to regain my physical fitness, I’d never felt more capable of enduring what the mountains could throw at me. That is not to say that I’d become arrogant about the dangers or dismissive of the hardships, but I relished the challenges ahead and was anxious to face them. I was focused, motivated and confident.

  That was just as well, as I would soon need every scrap of that mental strength. It was time to return to Annapurna.

  Postscript

  Norbert Joos, the leader of the Norwegian team who’d summitted on the same day as us, and who’d generously offered to help me descend, suffered a stroke shortly after reaching Base Camp and had to be evacuated by rescue helicopter. Kanchenjunga was his thirteenth summit of the fourteen 8000-metre peaks. Everest was to be number fourteen and he’d deliberately left it until last. He survived the stroke but never climbed at high altitude again.

  In 2007 Hirotaka Takeuchi broke his back in an avalanche on Gasherbrum 2. He was evacuated and survived but spent years in recuperation. He returned to the high mountains in 2012 to complete his own quest to climb the fourteen 8000ers.

  12

  THE MOST DANGEROUS MOUNTAIN IN THE WORLD

  In order to climb properly on big peaks one must free oneself of fear. This means you must write yourself off before any big climb. You must say to yourself, ‘I may die here.’

  Doug Scott

  AFTER THE DISASTROUS attempt on Annapurna in 2005, I felt the safest way to ascend it would be to acclimatise on a different mountain, then climb Annapurna as rapidly as possible, thus limiting my exposure to its dangers. With this plan in mind, I arranged to join an international team on Annapurna for the pre-monsoon season of 2007. First, however, I would acclimatise on Shishapangma. Ideally, I would summit it too, making the season a double success if all went well. To fit in both expeditions, I needed to start climbing ahead of when most expeditions begin, so I would be in the Himalaya for almost three months. However, after returning home from Kanchenjunga in 2006, I’d taken a job with the Australian Public Service in Canberra. I had been honest at the interview about my climbing passion and the amount of time off I’d need for my expeditions. While they’d agreed at the time, I think my boss was a little taken back when, after just nine months’ employment, I asked for three months’ holiday! Thankfully, he agreed.

  I organised with a trekking agent in Kathmandu to provide me with transport to Shishapangma and base-camp support early in the season. Another climber, Neil Ward from Wales, was also on the permit. I hadn’t met him previously and had planned to climb by myself, but i
t would be good to have someone to talk to at base camp.

  For several years I’d been trekking in the Everest region of Nepal for a couple of weeks before each expedition to initiate my acclimatisation, and I did that again this time. I then travelled back to Kathmandu to commence the journey to Shishapangma, and arrived at Base Camp on 15 April. To keep in touch with home during the expedition, I’d equipped myself with a satellite-linked mini laptop so I could send and receive short emails, but the cold kept causing the device to fail. At one point, while connected to the internet, it crashed and the clock reverted to 2005. When I got it running again, I reset the date to 2007, only to find that, when I signed off, it had recorded two years’ worth of internet usage! At a dollar a minute for satellite access, that was rather pricey. I wondered if I’d have to live in hiding in Tibet for the rest of my life.

  Neil was a good bloke, but this was his first Himalayan expedition. We agreed to climb together, at least on the lower, crevasse-prone slopes, where it was wise to rope together for safety. Neil had hired a Sherpa, Dawa, to climb with him. Despite having a business card that proudly proclaimed him to be a mountain guide, he was completely inexperienced and it soon showed.

  Early in the expedition, the three of us climbed to Camp 1 and stayed the night there, with the intention of climbing to Camp 2 the next day. Just beyond Camp 1 there were several very large crevasses. As we prepared to leave, we roped up, with Neil and I tying into opposite ends of the rope and Dawa in the middle. Dawa took a bunch of coils of loose rope in his hands. When I told him that he should drop the loops and keep the rope tight between him and Neil, he laughed and said that he could hold anyone’s fall, because he was a Sherpa. I pushed the point but he refused to drop the loops, and Neil said not to worry. I did worry, though, so I put myself at the back end of the rope, with Neil at the front.

  We started walking and had gone no more than 25 metres when Neil broke through the surface and plunged into a crevasse. Immediately, the 10 metres of loosely coiled rope was ripped from Dawa’s hand, adding a major distance to Neil’s fall as he plummeted downwards. Expecting exactly this scenario, I had backed up so that the rope between Dawa and me was very tight. As soon as Neil broke through the crevasse, I threw myself down, buried my ice axe to the hilt in the snow, and then hung on for all I was worth.

  When Neil hit the end of the rope, the full force of his fall came against Dawa, who was ripped off his feet and jerked towards the crevasse. Immediately, however, the rope between him and me snapped taut, and he was slammed down into the snow, the rope stretched tight in both directions. My anchor held and I quickly placed two snow stakes as backup. Dawa was white as a ghost, so I told him to anchor his ice axe and stay where he was, while I crawled forward to the edge of the crevasse.

  I yelled down to Neil. He was okay, but his foot was caught in the rope and he was hanging upside down and couldn’t climb back up the rope. One of the benefits of tying correctly into your climbing rope is that you have about 10 metres of spare rope at each end to set up a pulley system, so you can get someone out of a crevasse if they are injured or incapacitated, as Neil was. This was one of the lessons I’d learned all those years ago on my technical mountaineering course in New Zealand, and I’d used it a number of times since then.

  I set up a three-to-one ‘Z pulley’, and Dawa and I tried to pull Neil up. Even with the two of us hauling, the rope didn’t budge. I re-rigged the system to give us a six-to-one mechanical advantage and, straining ourselves to the maximum, we managed to pull in the rope about an inch. The friction was incredible. There was nothing for it but to bust our guts and heave.

  Slowly, inch-by-inch, we pulled. It took us a good hour but, finally, we saw a foot, then a leg and soon he was out. Dawa and I collapsed onto the snow, exhausted. Neil wasn’t in any better state, having been hanging upside down for an hour in a bottomless, frozen abyss, his very survival dependent on our ability to get him out. I asked if he was okay and if I could get him something, to which he replied, ‘Gosh, I could really do with a cup of tea.’ That was it—no ‘Thank god!’ or ‘I thought I was going to die!’ or anything dramatic. He just wanted a cup of tea. Our thermos was full, so his wish was easily catered for.

  Neil was happy to continue climbing straight afterward, so we pushed on up the mountain. Dawa chose to keep the rope tight between him and Neil thereafter and we agreed to keep climbing as a team of three. I enjoyed the company and it was a good opportunity for Neil to pick up some pointers on climbing the 8000ers, as he was keen to take on other big ones. And it was safer for all of us.

  As we’d started the expedition so early in the season, we didn’t see anyone else on the climb. What a joy to have a great Himalayan peak to ourselves. The downside, of course, was that we had no one to share the work of breaking trail in the deep snow. On our push for the summit a couple of weeks later, the snow above Camp 2 was particularly deep, so the going was exhausting and very slow. In the end, we didn’t get to where we’d hoped to place Camp 3, on a ridge at 7400 metres, so we set up a Camp 2.5 on the glacier at 7050 metres, some 350 metres below the ridge.

  About 1 a.m. Neil and I set out for the top, Dawa electing to remain behind. When we were three-quarters of the way to the ridge above us, a storm unleashed itself. It was so brutal that we were blinded and frozen and could neither ascend nor descend. Without shelter, we hunkered down near some rocks for about an hour. The storm eased around dawn, by which time we were too frozen to continue, so we descended back to our tent, great icicles hanging from our faces.

  Still motivated, we tried again the next night, and this time we made it to the ridge at dawn, but Neil was too exhausted to continue so I had to proceed alone. I’d been planning to climb a new route across the bottom of the North Face, potentially avoiding the avalanche danger higher up, but I needed a climbing partner with whom to rope up because of the dangerous hidden crevasses. Without Neil, I was obliged to follow the normal route up the ridge towards the mythical Central Summit.

  I tested the snow and tried to traverse the upper North Face towards the real summit a number of times. Crack—like a lightening bolt, a jagged line zigzagged across the hard-packed snow. The surface had fractured and the whole slope threatened to avalanche. I froze.

  Careful, now, I thought to myself. I knew of too many climbers who’d been swept away by avalanches. My life depended on no sudden movement. Ever so lightly, I tiptoed—as much as one can in heavily insulated, knee-high mountain boots—back along my tracks. The same thing happened each time I tried to traverse. Eventually, I conceded that it was useless. I wouldn’t be getting to the summit via the North Face that season. It was my third unsuccessful attempt on the true summit of Shishapangma, and I was really disappointed, as I felt fit and strong. If I’d had a climbing partner to rope up to, I was confident that I’d have made the summit easily. But it wasn’t Neil’s fault; he was simply too exhausted to continue.

  I descended to find him waiting for me at the top of the face above our Camp 2.5, when he could have descended to comfort and safety. That sort of fortitude or mateship—staying at altitude even when exhausted, just so he could provide support for a teammate—was by 2007 a rare thing in the Himalaya, and I was touched. Neil is one of the good guys.

  We dropped down to the tent and packed it up. Once we reached Base Camp I departed quickly—I had an appointment with Annapurna.

  *

  I caught a lift in a jeep across the border into Nepal, then spent a night in Kathmandu before chartering a small helicopter to fly me directly to Annapurna’s Base Camp, avoiding the time-consuming, albeit spectacular, trek. As my helicopter came in to land, I saw that there were two base camps set up. I didn’t know which was mine, but as we touched down a man came running from one, a duffel bag across his shoulder. He sprinted for the chopper and, as I unloaded my own duffels, threw his bag across me and onto the backseat. He dived in after it, yelling out, ‘Annapurna crazy!’ He was buckling himself in even as the helicopter pul
led away. It wasn’t the most inspiring start to an expedition.

  The team I’d arranged to join was an international group and included some very strong climbers: the Russian Sergey Bogomolov and two of his friends—although, as it turned out, one had just departed in my helicopter!—the Spaniard Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, and his Romanian friend Horia Colibassanu. The Russians had trekked in while I was on Shishapangma and had been climbing on Annapurna for a couple of weeks. They’d already established Camp 2. Indeed, Sergey had captured some incredible video of an avalanche coming down the face above Camp 2, precisely where my 2005 expedition had been hit. Iñaki and Horia were still on their way to Annapurna, having also first gone to another mountain to acclimatise.

  After settling in, I learned that the other base camp belonged to a Spanish-speaking team led by the Basque climber Edurne Pasaban. She was on a mission to climb all fourteen 8000ers too, although she still had a few to go at that time. Her group included several climbers from Spain, as well as Fernando Gonzalez from Colombia and Ivan Vallejo from Ecuador, whom I’d met on Kanchenjunga the year before. He’d succeeded on Kanchenjunga after I’d left and, with thirteen 8000ers in the bag, he had just Annapurna to go. Like Christian Kuntner and Ed Viesturs in 2005, he’d left the most dangerous to last.

  Remembering the disaster on the French Route in 2005, both my team and the Spanish-speaking team decided to attempt an alternative route known as the German Rib. It followed the same line as the French Route as far as Camp 2 but then branched off up a different face, before making a long traverse above the dangerous North Face back towards the summit. While it was longer, this route avoided the main avalanche-prone area of the North Face, and we hoped it would be safer.