July 23
A stormy night. Despite snow blocks all round the fly, everything at each end is buried under inches of spindrift and there is a continuous shower of hoar frost as the wind shakes the walls. Thank goodness for goretex bivi bags! At 5 a.m. a start is out of the question. At 8 a.m. there is a lull and a slight clearing so we brew up and get dressed, only for the weather to clamp down again. Moving along such a heavily corniced ridge in zero visibility is not an option, so we dig a snow cave to make ourselves more comfortable, at least, and move in. Brew up, sleep and play desert island discs. We cannot afford this lost day. Tomorrow will have to be exceptional in terms of both weather and effort ...
July 24
Weather still poor but some visibility. We set out with one light sack between us, conscious that this will be our only chance of reaching the summit. A trying day … Long traverses on steep slopes over huge drops down the north-west face, pockets of soft slab alternating with the usual bottomless melt-freeze crystals. Visibility comes and goes but we never see the summit. We give cornice edges a wide berth, or so we think, until on one flat section, a place where we would confidently have pitched a tent, a huge segment ten metres deep and fifty metres long suddenly breaks away. John has just taken over breaking trail and, relaxing after mental as well as physical strain, I am plodding along in his footsteps, brain in neutral, when it happens. The fracture line is between my feet, though John is on terra firma with the rope tight. I dangle for a moment from my ice axe, thrust instinctively into the snow; then, amazingly, a small section of the cornice which has failed to break off swings back like a rat-trap to imprison me from the waist down. It all happens too quickly to be frightening and, but for the pressure on my legs, it would be almost comic. I am carrying the shovel in the sack on my back so, while John anchors the rope downslope, I start digging. It takes ten minutes, with cautious help from John, to release myself.
The mountain seems to be telling us something, but we don’t want to give up yet and continue, albeit in chastened mood. However, after six hours climbing the weather is becoming steadily worse and we are still on the horizontal section of the ridge. We have a brief glimpse of yet more gigantic cornices ahead and know that beyond them there is still 600 metres vertical height, of unknown technical difficulty, to be gained. Suddenly it seems too far and too much. We have done our utmost but yesterday’s wasted day has stymied us. Reluctantly, but with a strong sense that we are not welcome on this mountain, we turn back.
July 25
Retreat in a storm – snow, wind and swirling spindrift, very cold, very Scottish, but no Red Bum to make for … With little food left and slab avalanche conditions developing, we cannot afford to sit it out. Dangerous and exhausting climbing along the ridge, clearing away the newly-formed slab before taking each sideways step, belaying all the way. Then down the spur, setting off a big slab near the top. Downclimb the first little ice-pitch where a sérac wall abuts the ridge crest, but sacrifice an ice-screw to abseil the start of the next one. Intrigued to find well-developed depth-hoar crystals at the bottom of the snowpack while excavating for a belay. Late in the day we reach the site of our first bivvy, the worst now behind us.
July 26
The mountain lets us off the hook! Good weather at last. No breakfast, but we find an easy alternative descent on the south side of the spur, then an improbable but straightforward route beside the glacier all the way down to a moraine shelf where we can brew up and dry out in sunshine. Easily down to the valley, revelling in warmth and familiar alpine flowers – purple and orange asters, yellow rock-rose and creamy rock-jasmine. On the lateral moraine of the valley glacier, to our astonishment, we stumble across a solitary cairn; no more than one stone on top of another, on a boulder, but an unmistakable sign that someone has been here before. Not really surprising, and in our situation it is poignant rather than disappointing, for we are still a very long way from Base Camp, let alone other people. Wearily – and hungrily – we plod back up to our food-dump.
July 27
Heavy snow all night but clears during the morning and we are away just after midday, feeling sluggish and lethargic. The glacier is scary, with crevasses masked by several inches of new snow. Carelessly, I drop a ski pole while probing and it disappears with a tinkling sound of breaking icicles. Slowly, we toil up steep, unstable scree which becomes slightly easier as the new snow deepens towards the top. We pitch the tent right on the crest of the sharp ridge dropping from Pik Moelwyn, at the foot of the big snow slope. Memorable views across to Kirov and the icy sérac-laden faces of peaks to the west, but not a place for sleepwalking!
July 28
Back up the snow slope, the ubiquitous crust bearing our weight for some of the time, at least, otherwise we might never have escaped the Terekty valley. Once in the bowl beneath Moelwyn, however, the snow is soft and deep and the heat enervating. After covering 300 yards in an hour we abandon the packs and put in a set of tracks up on to the ridge, unladen. That done, we pitch the inner tent and spend the afternoon brewing and sleeping. At 4 p.m. we pack up and climb easily on to the ridge in cooler conditions. Along the ridge, still in deep powder but feeling strong again now, invigorated by glorious evening sunlight and valedictory views of Kirov and the Terekty valley. Even the cornices, icicles dripping like fangs from their jaws, seem almost friendly now we are saying farewell. A bitter little wind substitutes freezing fingers for such sentiment as we don crampons and the rope to negotiate an ice step and some nasty-feeling slab at the top of the Kayindy slope. Down, labouring through a crust that is breakable but only just, into the reds and oranges of sunset. Finally camp as light fades at 9 p.m. and cook by torchlight.
July 29
Out of food now, but we quickly descend the side glacier on a crust that is breakable at first (oh no! not again!) but miraculously improves as we lose height. Coffee and biscuits in the sun at the kitbag of food where we said goodbye to our friends all that time ago, in another lifetime it seems. Then we add the contents of the cache to our rucksacks to bring them back to the regulation thirty kilos and head down the glacier.
For the first time in days I have time to reflect. Although we have not climbed Kirov, I feel utterly content. Our names will not go down in the record books but I shall remember these three weeks as one of the best of times with one of the best of companions. One of Tilman’s wise sayings springs to mind:
‘A man ought to rate his achievements only by the satisfaction they give him, for they will soon be outdone, outshone and speedily forgotten by everyone but himself.’
I rate our Tien Shan sojourn very highly indeed.
A circling helicopter is the first indication that civilization may be closer than expected. Soon afterwards we meet two British climbers, just arrived, and hear about the double tragedy on P 5445 in which first Mick Davie and then two Russian guides died in cornice accidents. Mindful of our own experience, I can only reflect that ‘There but for the Grace of God go I’.
Although no part of our plans, or desires, we find ourselves being flown out a few hours later, along with the two porters who had come to meet us and the Russian rescue team who have been on the mountain. The helicopter struggles to get off the ground, initially because the chocks have not been removed from the wheels, but mainly because it is overladen for that altitude (eighteen people on board, plus a great deal of equipment). I find it the most alarming moment of the trip when the pilot finally gains enough height to accelerate forward, skimming only inches from the ground for 200 metres.
It is a sombre ride in that roaring, vibrating machine. The Russians are subdued, eyes downcast. I have my feet on the bundles of rope and tarpaulin on the floor of the helicopter until John nudges me. Aghast, I realise that the bundles are actually the bodies of the two Russian guides. A hand is sticking out of one of them. It is a strange, sad end to our journey.
– Part 6 –
The Himalaya
– Chapter 18 –
CHITRAL 1969
‘Salaam Alaikum,’ I call.
‘Alaikumus Salam,’ replies a proud-looking horseman, courteously reining in. He is dressed in a blue shirt worn outside baggy white pantaloons and a white beret that can be rolled down over the ears in winter. His features could easily be European. Behind walks a servant carrying two polo sticks and a small bundle containing both their belongings. He is a well-to-do Chitrali, off to a polo match three days’ ride away. Polo is the national sport of Chitral; every village has its own carefully tended pitch and any Chitrali of substance will own a polo pony. The annual match between Chitral and Gilgit, held on the Shandhur Pass at 3,700 metres is the social event of the year for several thousand square miles of mountain country.
But where and what is Chitral? A province on the northern border of Pakistan, separated from Russia only by the twenty-mile strip of Afghan territory known as the Wakhan Corridor, it is alien to the rest of Pakistan in both language and racial characteristics. Last August, Chitral was incorporated into Pakistan, ending 400 years of rule by an autocratic royal family. Prince Buhan-ud-din, one of the senior members of the family, entertained us to lunch and, over mutton pilau and home-made wine, aired his views on the need for enlightened despotism – with himself as despot. Access to Chitral is difficult: air flights are scheduled three times a week but cloud over the Lawowri Pass (3,000 metres) frequently prevents the aircraft from getting through. The alternative is to drive the 150 miles of rough road from Rawalpindi to Dir and there to hire a jeep. The seventy miles from Dir to Chitral took us ten and a half hours, much of the time in four-wheel drive. The pass is only open for three months of the year. Large streams flow over and along the road at random; in places it cuts straight through permanent snowfields. Once we had to wait while a rock fall was cleared away. Three-point turns are necessary on most of the hairpin bends and every time the driver changes gear his mate has to jump off to place a chock behind the wheels. Beyond Chitral town the road continues for twenty miles; thereafter the only mode of travel is on foot or horseback.
The Chitralis are open-handed, friendly and honest. Europeans still arouse curiosity though mountaineers and hippies are visiting the country in increasing numbers (hashish is both plentiful and legal): yet it is a polite curiosity, neither importuning not obsequious as so often in the East. All along our route we were offered platefuls of delicious apricots and cups of sweet milky tea (water and goats’ milk in equal quantities are heated up along with the tea-leaves and stewed for ten minutes. Flavoured by wood-smoke, the result is nothing like English tea, but still delicious and very nourishing. In remoter villages, sugar is unobtainable and instead the tea is stirred with a lump of rock salt). Apricots grow everywhere in the villages along with mulberries, grapes, walnuts and tiny crisp apples. The villages are little oases scattered along the valley-bottoms of steep, barren mountains and after a dusty walk under a scorching sun, they seem like paradise, with their fruit, shade, green grass and clear tinkling streams. It is hard to imagine that this idyll exists only for three months of the year and that for the rest, life is a harsh struggle against the cold. I suspect, however, that in mid-winter hashish and mulberry wine help to induce a state of near hibernation ...
I am writing this under a tree in the little village of Wasam, more than a hundred miles from Chitral up the main Yarkhun valley, while I wait for the other members of our grandly titled British Hindu Raj Expedition to arrive. A week ago, Dick Isherwood and I set out to reconnoitre a possible approach to our mountain, Thui II (6,524 metres), leaving Chris Wood and Colin Taylor, together with our pompous, overweight liaison officer Major Munawar Khan, to follow on with donkeys carrying our food and equipment. Four days ago Dick developed bad blisters on both feet and I was forced to go on alone. Reaching Wasam, I hired a local man to guide me to the Thui An, a pass of 4,500 metres from which our mountain is visible. He was a little fellow with a quizzical expression whose only concessions to the mountains were a blanket round the shoulders and goatskins on his feet. It was a long day, the last section over jumbled boulders, wading swift icy streams and up a dry-ice glacier. We reached the top as the sun was setting, watched by a solitary ibex with huge, swept-back horns. It was an exciting moment, for though the pass is used fairly frequently by the locals, it can have been crossed by few, if any, Europeans. Stretched before us was a panorama of magnificent mountains which had been mere names before, Thui II most prominent of all. We spent the night there, on a small island of shingle in the snow, huddled together for warmth in a large polythene bag. It was not comfortable and we had little to eat, but I was too exhilarated to care. Next day, we stopped at the first hut we came across to celebrate on boiled chicken garnished with sugar ...
The news I have for the others is not encouraging, however. From this side the mountain looks formidable; we will have to try the alternative approach from the north, but it seems that Thui II is going to be difficult from any direction.
* * * * *
Advanced Base is two small orange tents on a patch of snow among some boulders. The snow is melting rapidly and already the tents are isolated on foot-high pedestals. A matter of feet away is the Shetor Glacier, a chaotic jumble of ice twelve miles long and a mile wide, leading into the heart of the largely unexplored Hindu Raj mountains. The glacier has never been visited before. Every now and then, a poised block of ice collapses with a crash or a stone fall roars down the mountainside, leaving a plume of dust and ugly scars in the snow. One night we were wakened by a rasping crunch as a boulder weighing several tons slid from its perch on the glacier to within three feet of the tent. Mysterious creaks and groans sound from below us. It is not a peaceful camp.
At 15,000 feet we are half way up the glacier. From a Base Camp in the valley 5,000 feet below, it has taken twelve days of reconnaissance and load-carrying to establish ourselves here. Colin and I have climbed a peak of about 5,300 metres immediately behind the camp. The route looked deceptively short from below and we were slowed down more than we had expected by altitude, so that our ‘day off’ took us eleven hours, up one AD ridge of slabby granite blocks and down another. It got dark on the way down. Colin is very short-sighted and unfortunately on this occasion he had only his dark glasses … We are dangerously late in the season. We have been warned that after 15 August the weather is likely to be unsettled and the winter snows could set in any day. It is now 10 August. On top of a nine-day walk-in, we have been delayed over two weeks by the machinations of Major Munawar Khan who spends much of his time composing telegrams to the government begging that we be prevented from climbing. Liaison Officers have to be fully equipped for altitudes up to at least 8,000 metres. Sadly, Major Munawar prefers to lie on a charpoy while his batman brings him cups of tea and cuts his toenails. Batman even follows him into the bushes every morning, carrying the bog-roll. We are not friends.
Nevertheless, surrounded by such superb mountains, morale cannot be anything but high. Crawling through the sleeve-entrance of our tents in the morning, we look straight across the Yarkhun valley to the mountains of the Afghan Hindu Kush, twenty miles away. Turning to look up the glacier, Thui II stands out immediately. Dr Gerald Gruber saw the mountain from the valley floor two years ago. In an article in the Alpine Journal he wrote, ‘In my opinion it is the most beautiful and isolated summit in the Hindu Kush or Hindu Raj’. Now, only a mile from the foot of its East Ridge, we can thoroughly endorse his words; the mountain is magnificent. And difficult, too. Dr Gruber in his article went on to say: ‘The ascent of Thui II will require a strong team and a massive outlay of equipment.’ We hope we are a strong team but we have chosen to ignore the latter part of this warning. We prefer to attempt the mountain alpine-style, a small mobile party travelling self-contained and as far as possible doing away with permanent camps. Unfortunately, both the ridges visible to us are extremely long and bristling with difficulties. Either would mean so many nights on the mountain that bivouacking is out of the question, which is presumably what Dr Gruber meant. Yet we
simply do not have the fixed-rope and other gear to embark on siege tactics. However, we are putting our faith in the old mountaineering adage, ‘There’s always an easy way round the back’. While Colin and I attempt a smaller peak nearby, Dick and Chris are going to the far end of the glacier to find it.
Colin and I climbed our mountain. It was about 6,000 metres and gave us a long day’s climbing from a light camp at 5,100 metres. We called it Pachan Zom, the Hidden Mountain, since it is not shown on the map and, except from one point on the glacier, it is completely concealed by intervening peaks and spurs. The closer look it gave us at Thui’s north-east ridge merely confirmed the impression that it was definitely not an alpine route.
Dick and Chris had better news. Bivouacking twice at the head of the glacier, they climbed a straightforward snow-peak of 5,600 metres on their first day and from there could see that the mountain’s south ridge was far more feasible than the other two. Of prime importance, it was much shorter – could we but place a camp on the obvious col at 5,800 metres. The problem was to reach the col. The only route to it was up a slope dissected by enormous bergschrunds and apparently threatened by séracs. On their second day, however, Dick and Chris found a way through that was quite safe, if spectacular, the key being an exciting traverse along the lower lip of a bergschrund.
Forthwith, all four of us set off up the glacier carrying tents, climbing, gear and food for six days. It was 17 August. We spent the night at 5,200 metres and the following day picked our way through the bergschrunds to a sheltered bowl just beneath the col where we set up a camp. We were all set to climb the mountain.
Over the Hills and Far Away Page 11