Over the Hills and Far Away

by Rob Collister

  Before I could depart with the baggage, however, there was a formality to be observed. ‘Please check that everything is here,’ said the inspector. He had already done so himself, using the list attached to our statement, but now it had to be done again. I was rather embarrassed as two fascinated constables, like children with a Christmas stocking, drew forth ropes, ice axes, hammers, pitons, karabiners, crampons and high-altitude boots in quick succession. But the inspector seemed unperturbed. Despite our insistence that we only wanted to ‘visit the glaciers,’ he was no fool and must have known better. The important thing, as far as he was concerned, was that we were not an expedition. The ruling of the Pakistan government is that expeditions to climb mountains must apply to Islamabad for permission, whereupon (maybe a year later) they are charged a royalty of $1,000 US, given a liaison officer whom they must fully equip and, more often than not, informed that they may climb a totally different peak to the one requested. But, as the inspector knew from personal experience, expeditions have at least eight members and require hundreds of porters. As we patently were not an expedition, he could see no reason why we should not climb mountains if we wanted to, though why we should want to was beyond his comprehension.

  Dick had gone home without setting foot on a mountain. I was more fortunate, having plenty of time and having already arranged to meet two other friends, Rob Ferguson and Dave Wilkinson, to climb in the same area. There was hope yet. I returned to Gilgit where the locals were perplexed by the mixed messages given out by my appearance. I had hair recently cropped short in the bazaar but wore loose-fitting cotton clothes, local style, and was quite comfortable eating with my hand. ‘Are you tourist or are you hippie?’ asked one bureaucrat plaintively. I did not regard myself as either but I kept very quiet about my intentions for the next ten hot, sticky, interminable days.

  Within a week of Rob and Dave’s arrival we were in a position to climb something. It was not one of the Kukuay peaks but it was a mountain, and after the frustrations of the previous weeks, that was the main thing.

  The auguries had seemed auspicious when, only an hour after reaching the village of Naltar by jeep, we had hired three porters and were on our way. And they were not proved wrong. Two short days of walking through a landscape of waterfalls, pine trees and flower-filled meadows, very different from anything I had seen since the Ushu Gol in Swat, took us to a height of 3,800 metres. Beside the stony and chaotic Shani glacier, at the foot of grass slopes where delicious rhubarb grew in profusion and where, to our astonishment, not only goats and cattle but even some water-buffalo were grazing, we paid off the porters.

  Nearby, a convenient spur ran up through pastures and steep scree to the corniced crest of a ridge separating the Naltar from the Daintar valley. Despite the usual problems associated with unfitness and acclimatization – headaches, lassitude, loss of appetite – during the next four days we transferred ourselves and our belongings to the top of the ridge, traversed perhaps a mile along it, and continued over a small peak of 5,000 metres. This peak had been christened Snow Dome by an English party which attempted it in 1970 (they were thwarted by bad weather). The name seemed apt enough until we came to descend the Janus face of the mountain – 1,500 feet of black, evilly loose cliffs and scree that took far longer than the ascent.

  On the col beneath, however, was a campsite that could hardly have been bettered. The tent fitted neatly on to a strip of shale – so much warmer and more comfortable than snow for camping on – beside a tiny turquoise tarn of clear melt water, twenty metres across. Here we basked in the afternoon sun, lulled by the lapping of water, letting our eyes wander over the view. To the west it was obscured by an ice wall which served as a slight shield from the prevailing wind. But to the east one looked over green alps and wooded slopes to the brown, barren walls of the Hunza gorge and the magnificent peaks of the Western Karakoram, the massive cone of Rakaposhi dominating the whole scene in its proximity and symmetrical splendour. Above our heads was the mountain we hoped to climb, rising steeply in a series of snow slopes, arêtes and rock pinnacles to a tower which we knew to be only halfway up. From the top of Snow Dome we had had a better view of it. Only 5,700 metres high, it was a midget compared with the peaks of the Hindu Kush and Hindu Raj in the distant west or the giants of the Karakoram, stretching from Kampire Dior in the north-east right round to Nanga Parbat away in the south-east. But for sheer siren elegance it could compare with any of them. In the valley it had presented a rocky west face and a steep-sided north ridge of snow broken up by rock steps. But from Snow Dome it took on quite a different character. The east face was revealed as a mass of deeply-etched flutings and snow-smothered rock, while our ridge twisted and curled away in a set of bewitchingly malevolent cornices. It was a beautiful sight, and a little daunting, too.

  We left the tent at three in the morning, hoping to be high on the mountain before the sun should soften the snow. There was a waning sliver of a moon, not bright enough to dim the stars but enough to cast my shadow on the snow. Ahead, the other two were using torches, the circles of light probing leftwards for the cornice. A breeze sent particles of snow rustling across the slope and set the laces of Rob’s gaiters tap-tapping against his leg, like halyards on a mast. Occasionally there was a grunt as someone broke through the crust deep into sugary powder beneath. Zigzagging up snow slopes that steepened and eased and steepened again, faithfully following the sinuations of the ridge, we gained height steadily. With the first outcrops of broken rock the climbing became more varied. One moment we were scrambling up and down along the crest of the ridge, the next dropping below it to avoid difficulties, traversing on snow or ice whichever side was easier.

  The terrain was serious – the rock loose, the snow unstable, the drops on either side, though we could not see them in the dark, huge. Yet, as with many a ridge in the Alps, to have climbed it in pitches, belaying with the rope, would have taken days. One alternative was to move together with the rope on. On a sharply defined ridge, if one man slips his companion can then save him by throwing himself down the opposite side. But the drawback to moving together on a corniced ridge is that you have to run uphill before you can throw yourself over. If this is accomplished you are liable to find yourself dangling in mid-air. If it is not accomplished, moving together is quite likely to prove a way of dying together. Indeed, many lives have been lost through an over-reliance on the magical properties of a rope. For the time being we preferred to climb unroped.

  The sky began to lighten, Rakaposhi took on a hazy, purplish hue, and as we abseiled down some overhanging rock the sun’s rays spread fan-like from behind distant peaks. Briefly, we were engulfed in a flood of gold. Then we were continuing up shaded snow slopes towards the halfway tower, the ridge crest to our left glittering in the sunlight.

  The tower was by-passed on mixed rock and ice, steep enough to make us use the rope. After one pitch we moved together, keeping the rope on, for here we could protect ourselves with running belays on rock, The slope was becoming even steeper, however, and a compact rock buttress, the first of the real difficulties, lay just ahead. Hammering a piton into a crack, we belayed and began to move one at a time.

  The next 200 metres were the crux of the climb. Dave, who had been discovering that load carrying is not his forte, came into his own here and did a magnificent job. He coped with dangerously loose, wet snow with a speed and surety Rob and I would have been hard put to match; climbed equally loose rock with the same confidence; and handled with ease a long ice pitch which would not have been out of place in one of the harder gullies on Ben Nevis. The key pitch I, for one, would not have cared to lead. The difficulty here was caused by a deep gash, four metres wide, that cut right through the mountain. It was spanned by a snow-bridge so tenuously attached at the far end that one could look through it. From this bridge it was necessary to step on to an all but vertical wall of snow overlooking the gully, roofed by icicles and, a few feet below, completely undercut. The wall had to be traversed fo
r three metres until a latticework of unsupported ice served as a bridge for the last few moves on to solid rock. How the whole thing held I do not know. Even following was an unnerving experience. If any of that fragile structure had given way, having first hit the gully wall with considerable force, one would have been left hanging with little or no chance of climbing out. Dave, however, simply took it in his stride in a remarkable display of sang-froid.

  Above, the difficulties eased and we could move together again, but the climb was far from over. Time had been passing all too rapidly. Although huge cumulo-nimbus clouds had obscured Rakaposhi and the other big peaks from time to time, and the occasional outrider had drifted in our direction, the sun had been beating down most of the day. Breeches had long been saturated by soggy snow and dripping icicles, and mittens had needed wringing out periodically. Now the sun was sinking. Rob was muttering about bivouac sites, but Dave and I preferred not to hear. Over two rock bumps, then an unwelcome drop and a steep climb out of the gap. More ridge, more bumps, and glimpses, looking back, of enormous cornices. At last, nothing but 100 metres of open snow slope, with some crevasses to side step. Dave was tired, not surprisingly, and Rob was feeling the altitude. Glad to contribute after following in Dave’s footsteps for so long, I went in front and trampled a trail through deep snow to the top.

  The summit was a snow ridge, slightly corniced. We chopped it down and sat on the crest in a row. I do not think any of us felt particularly excited – just tired, and suddenly aware that both night and a storm were creeping up menacingly. The thunder clouds had become a uniform grey pall which had spread over us, obscuring the sun. As we watched, the pall began to drop and close in, obliterating peaks as it came. Alarmed, we descended rapidly, pursued by rumblings of thunder. For a few brief moments the sun reappeared, gilding the snow in eerie contrast to the darkness of the sky. Then it disappeared for good and the greyness was all about us.

  There was a hold-up in the descent. At the back, I could not see what was causing it. Standing on the crest of the ridge, holding coils of rope, I waited impatiently. A few beads of hail fell and the surface of the snow seemed to be spluttering. My hair felt strange. Putting up a hand I found it was rising of its own accord. The air was alive with static electricity. When my axe began to hum as well, I dived for the nearest boulder – partly to avoid being the most prominent object on the ridge but chiefly, I must confess, to be out of sight of whoever sits ‘up there’ throwing thunderbolts.

  However, we were lucky. By the time we had dug out a bivouac platform and settled into our sleeping bags, the hail had stopped and a few stars were visible. There were one or two showers in the night, but by morning the weather was as good as ever, the big peaks having borne the brunt of the storm.

  Four long abseils took us down the main difficulties, next day. By climbing straight down steep ice on to a hanging glacier, we were able to skirt much of the ridge, regaining it just before the initial snow slopes. From this point we looked down on to the brilliant splash of blue on the col and the welcoming yellow speck of the tent beside it. At the sight, the elation which had been so conspicuously absent on the summit, welled up within me. Mingling with pleasure in the beauty of our surroundings and delight at the isolation of our position, it became a conscious, exuberant happiness as I hurried on down. Being conscious, it was accompanied by gratitude – to Rob and Dave, to the weather, not least to the mountain itself. Dismissing grammatical objections, we called it Mehrbani (pronounced ‘Merra-bani’) which, besides being suitably euphonious, in Urdu means ‘Thank you’.

  Having climbed Mehrbani, the prospect of clambering back up the disintegrating cliffs and mobile screes of Snow Dome was as unwelcome as their descent had been unpleasant. Instead, we dropped down a small glacier and contoured long across the hillside, passing beneath a cliff where a welcome spring of fresh water spouted forth as if the rock had been struck by Moses, crossing nullahs and projecting ridges, streams and snow patches, and finally scree-running a stone-chute of a gully to reach the high pastures. Cattle tracks led comfortably round to the spur we had originally followed, a mass of gentians, forget-me-not and cranesbill making me feel that, truly, ‘our days were a joy and our path through flowers ’. We camped back on the crest of the ridge, where we had left a cache of food.

  Next day we found an uncorniced section of ridge and, after lowering the rucksacks the first few metres, quickly descended 1,200 metres of snow, scree and scrub willow to the Daintar valley, slowed only at the bottom by two tiers of continuous cliffs. There we indulged in a rest day, a luxury we could ill afford with so little time at our disposal, and we were to regret it later. It was not even particularly restful, for we were plagued by flies during the day and by inquisitive cattle, attracted by the campfire, at night. With relief, we broke camp and set off to climb the peak of 5,961 metres which dominates the head of the valley.

  A harmless little glacier led to a col of 4,900 metres where we were able to level out a platform for the tent among some rocks, To our amazement, even here there was a trickle of melt water draining downwards. It was another perfect campsite, with a superb view down the valley to Rakaposhi and our own peak, Mehrbani. Later, we discovered that this col had been crossed by Younghusband, on his way to Ishkoman, in the eighteen nineties, but it does not seem to have been visited since.

  For the climb we started early again, and after threading a hesitant way through some crevasses by torchlight, gained height quickly on the broad snowfields that comprise the south ridge of the mountain. Only near the top did the ridge narrow and become corniced, forcing us to traverse steeply in a way which brought back memories of the Lyskamm above Zermatt. The summit was a small tower of rock and snow, which gave a flourish to the end of the climb, but nowhere did we need the rope.

  It was not the climbing that was memorable but the surroundings. The whole of the Hindu Raj on the one hand, and the Western Karakoram on the other, unfolded about us, acquiring first shape, and then depth, and finally colour as the day dawned and we rose higher. We sat on top for a long time, content just to gaze, and muse on what we saw. For once there were no worries about time, weather or the difficulties of the descent. Nothing mattered, except that we were alone with the rising sun in a high and beautiful place.

  When we did descend, we moved rapidly and were back at the tent by ten. Continuing down the glacier, we picked up the food we had hidden among some boulders and pressed on, following well-worn goat tracks through birch groves and across moraines. On the outskirts of the village of Taling we stopped for the night, having descended nearly 3,000 metres.

  When Rob and Dave first arrived in Gilgit I had persuaded them that, while the 6,800 metre peaks at the head of the Kukuay glacier were still worthwhile objectives, it would be more interesting to approach them from the Naltar valley. On the map the logic of this is not obvious, as they are separated by three large, and little known glacier systems, and two high ridges, only one of which had been crossed before. With little more than three weeks available to us, such a route could not but reduce our chances of climbing the Kukuay peaks; indeed, we might never reach them. But, during the long days of waiting in Gilgit, my dislike of Bar and its inhabitants had grown almost paranoic. Moreover, for many of us who climb mountains, the urge is irresistible not just to stand upon summits, but to peer round the next ridge, to cross the next col, to ‘travel always a little further’. The journey, I argued, would be a mountaineering challenge in its own right probably as great as the ascent of any single peak could be – providing, at the same time, opportunities to climb smaller peaks on the way. Rob and Dave, weary from a fortnight of futile commuting to and from Rawalpindi airport and anxious only to escape into the mountains as quickly as possible, had agreed willingly enough to the change of plan. Now, having made two good climbs and reduced the amount of food to be carried on our backs, it was time to be moving if we were to have a chance of attempting one or other of the Kukuay peaks.

  Taling lies at the jun
ction of the north and south branches of the Daintar valley. Having just descended the south branch, we now followed goat tracks up the north to the Kerengi glacier, hoping to find a way across the watershed to the Sat Marao glacier, which merges with the lower Kukuay.

  The Kerengi glacier bore little relation to any of the maps in our possession. Instead of a vague pear-shape we found three major branches, one swinging round to the west, the other two to the east. Formidable icefalls guarded the way up all of them, stretching in an unbroken barrier right across the valley. This was a surprise, for neither the Cambridge expedition of 1954, warming up for Rakaposhi, nor Trevor Braham in 1970, had experienced any great difficulty on their brief forays up the glacier. Acting on what we had seen from Snow Dome and Mehrbani, we front-pointed a way through at the joint of the western and central arms. There we left the glacier and toiled up 300 metres of old moraine to a small hanging glacier. At the head of a gentle snowfield lay the lowest point of the watershed ridge.

  Reaching a col is always exciting – suddenly, a new world lies revealed. But it becomes doubly so when it has not been visited before. There is always a chance that the far side will prove impossible, and that, tail between legs, one will have to retrace one’s footsteps. That we knew to have been the experience of Tilman at the head of the Kukuay glacier in 1947. And our first glance over this col was not reassuring. The far side was a rock wall, steep and loose, 250 metres high; the glacier below was no more welcoming, riven and fractured even before it dived away out of sight in a tangle of broken ice, littered with blocks fallen from above, and fed on either side by innumerable icefalls, all highly active. We were so disturbed by the sight that we camped early that day, on the col, in order to recce the way down. In the event, the route we took was not particularly difficult, and only the last hundred feet required an abseil. Moreover, being on the crest of a slight spur it was protected from the stone fall of which there was ample evidence. Nevertheless, I doubt if it will ever achieve great popularity as a pass. Like Whymper’s Col Dolent or Mummery’s Col du Lyon it is more likely to remain simply a col which has been crossed.