by Sandy Allan
In Some Lost Place
In Some Lost Place
The first ascent of Nanga Parbat’s Mazeno Ridge
Sandy Allan
www.v-publishing.co.uk
To Hannah, Janis and Cara.
Thanks girls!
– Contents –
Prologue
Part 1 – The Magic Bus
Chapter 1 – Team Spirit
Chapter 2 – Mentors
Chapter 3 – The Road to Nanga Parbat
Part 2 – Mazeno
Chapter 4 – The Dividing Line
Chapter 5 – Mind the Gap
Chapter 6 – Splitting Up
Chapter 7 – Pushing On
Part 3 – The Summit
Chapter 8 – In Some Lost Place
Chapter 9 – The Edge of Extinction
Chapter 10 – Descent
Chapter 11 – Return
Acknowledgements
Photographs
– Prologue –
The howling wind tore into me, pressing my down clothing against my body and driving spindrift into my face, spindrift that stung like needles any skin I’d left exposed. The beam from my head torch punctured the black night, a bright arc in the freezing temperatures. Snatched, foreshortened views through my goggles revealed the vast Rupal Face below me, the longest vertical drop in the world. I was just a dot, alongside five more dots, traversing above a menacing void.
I kicked my crampon front points into the ice as precisely as I could, and balanced delicately on rock ledges. I jammed my mittened hands into snow-encrusted cracks in the rock, or twisted the pick of my ice axe into thinner cracks, torquing the shaft to give me some purchase, or else hooked the pick over a ledge, metal scraping against rock, a noise full of our determination.
Despite the high altitude and hostile winds we were moving efficiently, with the steady progress of a single-minded team. We had left our bivvy tents at one o’clock in the morning and now daylight was starting to break behind the silhouetted mountain horizon. At this moment we reached the first pronounced bump on our way to Nanga Parbat’s summit.
Around us, the high summits lit up with the sun’s first rays. Above, the rugged profile of an outrageously steep and drawn-out ridge came into view. There was nothing tedious or straightforward here, just continuous technical climbing at extreme high altitude broken up by two steep walls with terraces and ramps of easier angled snow. The towering summit dominated our ambitions, holding a mastery over us, testing our confidence, threatening our hopes. We still had so far to go.
Two of our group, Cathy O’Dowd and Lhakpa Nuru Sherpa, now turned back, a little demoralised, admitting exhaustion and acknowledging defeat. They showed adispassionate resolution in announcing their decision, a resolution that impressed me, and I wished them well as they began making their way back to camp. I watched them briefly as they headed down and saw at a glance how far we’d come together.
In front of Cathy and Nuru, as they descended, was the apparently endless objective we were attempting – the Mazeno Ridge. It seemed to reach out forever, on and on over a series of eight separate summits, each over 7,000 metres high, stretched out over ten kilometres. It is the longest Himalayan ridge at this altitude yet climbed. Together, the six of us had spent nine days patiently working our way along it, sitting out bad weather, fighting through deep snow and eventually reaching a notch in the ridge below the final climb to the summit – the Mazeno Gap. That meant an average of barely a kilometre a day. For the final, exhausting climb to the top, we faced another three kilometres and 1,300 metres of ascent.
The four of us who remained continued upwards; two separate teams of two with the will to push on and complete this majestic unclimbed ridge in the sky. I was tied in with my old climbing partner Rick Allen. We’d shared plenty of adventures in the past, had even climbed Nanga Parbat together once before and had two lifetimes of experience behind us. What were we doing here, middle-aged men deep into our fifties, faces turned against the inhospitable weather, pushing our bodies to the limit when most of our contemporaries were happily retired?
Our Sherpa friends Zarok and Rangdu took a parallel line up the awkward mixed ground of rock and snow and then we moved in semi-organised unison up a steep and loose rock wall, endeavouring to avoid the occasional loose stones which fell like shrapnel. Dislodged stones crashed into the wall and ricocheted off on new trajectories, whistling through the air as they plummeted. We continued towards the Merkl Notch and another rock wall which led towards the south summit.
Slowly, so slowly in the thinning air, it became obvious we would not have time to surmount this difficult obstacle and continue our climb up the snow couloirs beyond to reach the ninth-highest summit in the world. Growing despondent and exhausted, there was little option but to turn back. Now it was our turn to face defeat. We had almost touched 8,000 metres, but we were too late, too cold and too worn out to continue.
Standing motionless in our steps, our conversation was amicable, short and realistic; but at some level I felt a little sour – two of us so tempted to push on, two wishing to turn back. Knowing full well that by nightfall we would be exhausted and trapped above 8,000 metres without a stove, food or shelter if we continued, better sense and collective survival instincts prevailed. Zarok and Rangdu announced that they were done. They would go down and would not try again.
Rick and I kept our counsel. We had no ingenious plan. Although steadfast and keen to continue, we had no intention of being martyrs to this climb. As expedition leader, hearing what the two Sherpas said, I simply acknowledged it was probably best to head down, retreat as a unified team and wait to see what the future might bring. We turned around dejected but knowing we had tried. The retreat back to the bivvy site would not be straightforward.
To save time, I suggested a short cut, traversing an easy snow ramp to a small notch where a vague narrow ledge divided the rock wall we had climbed earlier. Below and above the ledge was a steep cliff. I led down, using my ice pick to hook ledges, my crampons stabbing placements on the snow-encrusted and brittle rock. The others tentatively followed, questioning the wisdom of my route, wondering if my chosen line would get easier or harder.
The ledge continued. On one small but awkward overhanging step, I placed my ice tool above me, torquing the pick and holding tight to the shaft. I lowered my body downwards, trying to place my clumsy high-altitude boot and front points on to a tiny protrusion of rock. From here I hoped to transfer my weight and step down on to a slightly wider ledge, but the torqued pick pulled out from the crack and down I fell, the ragged rock tearing my down trousers. A plume of the finest quality duck down filled the air and gasping with hypoxia I breathed it in, filling my throat with feathers.
Choking, I spat them from my already dehydrated mouth. My legs floundered against the rock as Rick held the rope tight to stop my fall. Regaining composure and breathing more regularly, I led on down the thirty-five-degree traverse, flicking the rope over small rock flakes. If I fell again there was a chance the rope would catch on the flakes, reduce the fall and stop me pulling my partner down the sheer cliff with me. The climbing felt intense and as I cleaned the soft snow off ledges, looking for cracks in which to place my ice axe pick, my tired body buckled with stress. We had now been climbing continuously for fourteen hours: this was our eleventh consecutive day, and ten of those days had been at around 7,000 metres.
Once off the tricky rock ledge, the snow ramp looked steep but straightforward. We carried on traversing for what felt like hours. Tying our ropes together, two abseils brought us through another band of rocks where an easy snow ramp seemed to lead eventual
ly to our bivvy. We stopped, kicked small ledges in the snow and rested, drinking the last water from our bottles. We were exhausted, completely done in, and I was not looking forward to breaking trail ahead. We shared the last of our packed food and partially relaxed.
We talked and joked with each other, and this gave us confidence as we decided to move on. Now it was Zarok’s turn in front and he set off almost casually. Stepping forwards in the deep snow I saw Zarok catch his crampon on his boot. He tripped and fell on to the steep snow slope. There was some loose rope lying on the snow between him and Rangdu and Zarok continued to fall, tobogganing down the slope with ever-increasing speed.
I saw Rangdu stamp his feet and thrust his ice axe into the snow, ready to brace the fall. Then the rope coils ran out and the cord between them pinged tight with Rangdu braced for the strain only to be snatched up and out, flying into space like a champagne cork popping from a bottle.
Rangdu shot off down the slope, overtaking Zarok, with both men sliding upside down and out of control. As they careered downwards, Zarok overtook Rangdu again, as if it were a race. Below them were the steep and violently contorted séracs and icefalls of the Diamir Face. Like torpedoes, both Sherpas followed a deadly trajectory to the rugged edge of the vast ice cliffs below. A few metres further and they would be launched into space and plummet towards the valley floor several thousand metres below. There would be no chance of survival. All Rick and I could do was watch in horror.
– Chapter 1 –
Team Spirit
Nanga Parbat stands alone. It might be physically close to the great mountains of the Karakoram like K2 and Broad Peak, off to the north-east, but it is in reality the western wall of the Himalaya, the last flourish of a range that extends east in a narrow arc some 2,500 kilometres long to the fringes of China. Nanga Parbat translates from Urdu as ‘naked mountain’, a name that captures the idea of a peak that rises from the plains in full view. It is the ninth-highest peak in the world, one of the fourteen 8,000-metre peaks and the most westerly. Although the Karakoram peaks are close, its nearest 8,000-metre neighbour in the Himalaya is Dhaulagiri, some 1,400 kilometres further east.
This sense of grand isolation is deepened by Nanga Parbat’s incredible topography. The mighty Indus flows round its northern and western flanks at little more than a thousand metres in altitude, carving a deep gorge around the mountain some 7,000 metres below the summit of the peak. Nanga Parbat’s Rupal Face is around 4,500 metres high, the highest mountain wall in the world. It’s no coincidence that, at the time of writing, only two peaks over 8,000 metres remain to be climbed in winter: K2 and Nanga Parbat. And while K2 lies hidden up the Baltoro Glacier, many days’ walk away, it takes just a few hours from the road to reach Nanga Parbat’s base camps. Its sheer size and exposure to bad weather has stopped all comers.
So perhaps it’s all the more amazing that Nanga Parbat was the first 8,000-metre peak to be attempted – and back in the nineteenth century too. This amazing step into the unknown was taken by Albert Frederick Mummery, one of the leading alpinists of his day and a visionary when it came to both what was possible in the mountains and how his ambitions should be realised, by what Mummery called ‘fair means’.
He was born in Kent and as a sickly child might have seemed an unlikely contender to be the first man to climb an eight-thousander, but with his small team of just two others – J. Norman Collie and Geoffrey Hastings – that’s precisely what he set out to do in 1895, and in an amazing lightweight style too. Sadly, he perished in the attempt, along with two Gurkha soldiers acting as porters, most probably in an avalanche. There had only been a handful of Himalayan climbing expeditions at this point, and if Mummery was naive and overenthusiastic, his instinct for ‘fair means’ in the Himalaya has inspired subsequent generations, including Reinhold Messner, the first man to climb all fourteen 8,000-metre peaks.
Those who know the story of Nanga Parbat often describe it as a German mountain, in the sense that it was German climbers who tried again and again to make the first ascent in the 1930s, but unsuccessfully and with a grim loss of life. Great climbers like Willy Merkl and Willo Welzenbach met their ends in a sequence of terrible disasters. In just two expeditions, in 1934 and 1937, twenty-four climbers and Sherpas lost their lives. Altogether, thirty-one men died before Nanga Parbat was finally climbed in 1953 by Hermann Buhl. Seventeen of those men were Sherpas. This sequence of dreadful accidents earned Nanga Parbat the sobering nickname ‘killer mountain’.
Even after Hermann Buhl became the first man to reach the top, climbing in a super-lightweight dash that Mummery might have admired, many of the significant new routes done on the peak were German. This was partly because of the obsession of one man – Karl Herrligkoffer. He was the half-brother of Willy Merkl, who led attempts on Nanga Parbat in 1932 and 1934 and perished in a terrible storm that took the lives of three climbers and six Sherpas. Nanga Parbat was consequently Herrligkoffer’s obsession. He led eight expeditions there in all, including the 1953 climb when Buhl reached the summit, much against Herrligkoffer’s orders. Two more hugely important climbs were made by teams under Herrligkoffer’s command: a route up the Diamir Face in 1962 now known as the Kinshofer and the normal line of ascent, and the first ascent of the Rupal Face in 1970, when Reinhold Messner reached the summit with his brother Günther, who died as they descended the Diamir side of the mountain.
With the major faces of Nanga Parbat climbed, there was just one major feature left to climb, one so vast it barely merited consideration. But that’s what each new generation of climbers does – considers the impossible, and how it might be achieved. Nanga Parbat’s west ridge is more commonly known as the Mazeno. It takes its name from the saddle at its western end – the Mazeno Pass. Most likely, it’s derived from the local Shina word majeno, meaning the middle, or between two places, which the pass most definitely is for people living in Astore and Bunar. For centuries immemorial it’s been a handy route for bandits sneaking over from Chilas. The ridge itself is vast, around ten kilometres long, a dragon’s back with eight separate summits to cross before you arrive at a col known as the Mazeno Gap, just below the final summit pyramid. The highest of those intermediate summits is Mazeno Peak, at 7,120 metres, and just before the Mazeno Gap is a series of awkward, technical pinnacles – a real sting in the tail.
For those who know the Isle of Skye, it’s slightly shorter than the Cuillin Ridge, except that most of the Mazeno is at around 7,000 metres and not 3,000 feet. It might be possible to run along the Cuillin, but no one is running anywhere at this altitude yet. The Mazeno is also flanked on either side by huge drops – a real tightrope in the sky – and the only way to escape it is at either end: the Mazeno Pass to the west or the Mazeno Gap to the east, in the lee of the summit. Once you’re on it, you either have to retrace your steps or press on. There is no down. The Mazeno is no place to get caught in a storm.
These complications leave climbers in a classic dilemma. On such a long and complex objective you have to choose between carrying enough supplies to keep you going, and not making your rucksack so heavy that you end up moving slowly. This will cost you more time and mean, consequently, that you need more supplies, which in turn makes your rucksack heavier. Snow conditions are also critical. What might be a straightforward slope one day could take four times as long if it’s covered with unconsolidated snow. And when you have an objective as big as the Mazeno, all these problems are exponentially bigger.
It’s hardly surprising that over the years the Mazeno became one of the great unclimbed challenges for the world’s high-altitude climbers. It looked so vast and tempting, but how would they succeed?
First to try was a huge French team of climbers who fixed a lot of rope but only reached a small peak at the start of the ridge. I had no interest in a big, fixed-rope expedition. The real challenge of the Mazeno was to climb it as light as possible. Doug Scott led three expeditions in the 1990s, and on the f
irst of these made some good progress. His team had initially climbed up to the end of the ridge near the Mazeno Gap via the Schell route to leave a stash of gear they could use coming along the ridge. But the climbers were strafed by rockfall and the Russian Valeri Pershin suffered bad injuries. When Doug did get on to the Mazeno Ridge, with Sergey Efimov and Ang Phurba, they made good progress until Ang Phurba called a halt in windy conditions. He too had been injured in the earlier accident and couldn’t go on.
Rick Allen and I joined Doug in 1995 for his third try. It was then that the Mazeno first got under my skin. In the early stages of that expedition I climbed with Voytek Kurtyka, the legendary Polish alpinist. When Doug left the expedition, suffering from a severe stomach illness, I felt strangely out of sorts, and eventually left to catch Doug up as I missed him so much. The remaining climbers stuck at it until they reached a spot on the ridge we’d dubbed ‘the point of no return’ – the spot where it would be easier just to keep going to the Mazeno Gap and descend, if necessary, from there, than it would be to turn back.
Voytek had another go in 1997, but didn’t get any further than he had before. The real breakthrough came seven years later when two strong Americans, Steve Swenson and Doug Chabot, raced along the ridge which was in excellent condition, to reach the Mazeno Gap in just four days. When they arrived that summer in the village below the Rupal Face, the locals asked them: ‘You trying Doug Scott route? Not possible. Schell route much better.’ Steve and Doug had proved them wrong. Yet when they got to the Mazeno Gap, Doug was sick and the weather was deteriorating. They opted to descend the Schell route rather than climb up another 1,200 metres to the summit. Four years later, two experienced German climbers, Luis Stitzinger and Josef Lunger, did pretty much the same thing, taking slightly longer and consequently running out of food and gas at the Mazeno Gap. Twice now, strong, well-acclimatised teams of two had managed to climb the ridge but had not been in good enough shape to carry on to the summit.