by Sandy Allan
Still, the body has to be kept in shape, and that doesn’t get any easier. For training, I cycled on my simple Dawes hybrid, squeezing in a session early in the morning or late evening around my local circuit, leaving my house in Newtonmore, below the crags of Creag Dhubh, passing by Balgowan and riding through to Laggan, past my friends the MacDonalds at Drumgask Farm and up the hill to Catlodge, alternating the route sometimes by going by the Slimons’ farm at Breakachy, or taking the longer hill towards Dalwhinnie and back along the old A9 to my home. The wind and rain were, more often than not, relentless. But I loved the hills of home slipping by and watching the wildlife – mountain hares, red deer and the occasional fox, with buzzards hanging overhead. Wild flowers changed with the season, and I once saw baby stoats playing among them on the verge. My most favourite of all was the evening call of the curlew, bubbling up from the darkening moors. It kept me company.
Fitness has never been much of a problem for me, whereas altitude can be. I take ages to acclimatise, absolutely ages. Even in the Alps I usually have to go high for a few days before guiding clients, playing Scrabble with the guardien at the 3,600-metre Cosmiques hut to kill time and adapt. That had been my plan before leaving for Pakistan but events had conspired against me. It didn’t worry me too much. I may take a while, but once I am acclimatised, I am among the strongest people I know. I feel at home, comfortable in my own body above 7,000 metres. Being able to move efficiently in such a hypoxic and extreme environment is a blessing because I simply love being up there. I am also blessed with good circulation, but when I get tired I seem to feel the cold acutely, even in the Alps and Scotland. Sleep is vital to my wellbeing. Oh, I thought to myself, lying awake in Chilas, how I love to sleep.
After Muztagh Tower, I’d gone to Everest again with Mal Duff, to attempt its north-east ridge, the unclimbed ridge where in 1982 British climbers Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker lost their lives as they tried to traverse the pinnacles. Rick and I tried that ridge twice, in 1984 and 1987. On the second attempt we asked Doug to be leader, knowing that he’d be able to bring in the necessary support. I remember leading with Rick in thigh-deep snow and Doug commenting that he thought we were incredibly strong to do what we were doing, breaking trail at such high altitude. I felt a little bit of pride at that, Doug having climbed the south-west face ten years before.
Doug is a special man, with special abilities, and he passed on so much knowledge to me, perhaps unwittingly. I remember being with him high in the Karakoram, all of us freezing and complaining about the cold except for Doug. He was complaining he had a wrinkle in his sock that was bothering him, so he took off his boot while we stood there in the snow, freezing cold, shivering and urging him to hurry up. His feet were so hot we could see steam rising up out of his boot. I laughed so much that day, but I couldn’t get over how Doug kept himself so warm.
Trying that ridge on Everest in the mid 1980s had been an incredible long shot and the same was true with the Mazeno. I knew how long it would take and that reaching the summit was incredibly unlikely. I knew the American climbers who first traversed it to the Mazeno Gap were incredibly strong and no less experienced than we. Technically there was nothing that would stop me from climbing it. It was the high altitude and the freezing cold that scared me. I lay in my warm bed in the Shangrila, imagining the frost forming on my skin and hair, the freezing spindrift being driven by the wind through the zips of my clothing, insinuating itself like an unwelcome squatter against the back of my neck. The thought of having to bivvy high on the mountain in such unbearable cold had me drawing the blanket up to my chin. Surviving where life should not exist and climbing through such hostile places is truly rewarding, but deserves the utmost respect.
That’s why when Ewen Todd and other possible partners called to say they wouldn’t be coming, I felt paradoxically reassured. It helped me realise that Rick and I really were the best team for the job. All our previous attempts on impossible-looking objectives on 8,000-metre peaks pointed in that direction. Rick was breathing quietly, asleep in the next bed. There is someone, I reflected, who fights until the very end. He will try and try at the same problem, anticipating that it will give way eventually. That’s who he is, I thought, but it’s not who I am. We had spent years arguing about this route. There was no way I was going to try on the off chance that this time it might work out. We had to be able to reach the end of the ridge and still have something left.
‘It’s still impossible,’ I told myself, lying there in the dark, and yet somewhere in my brain was this unquenchable spark of belief, a kind of trust in the future. I knew inside me that we had the skills and the belief; Rick and I could do it. I just had to come up with a plan. And so I lay there, dreaming of the ridge, thinking of the audacity of what we were proposing, until sleep finally took me.
We rose late next morning – 11 June – and by the time we made it downstairs the Sherpas were smiling and happy, having ploughed their way through a huge breakfast. There was no rush. We took photos of Chilas and then climbed aboard the bus for the next leg of the journey. After twenty-five miles driving east, we turned south off the Karakoram Highway into the Astore valley and after a few hours reached the capital of Astore District, a town called Eidgah. We were now on the east side of Nanga Parbat. Here we switched to jeeps for the last bumpy stretch to the roadhead at the lovely village of Tarshing, where we pulled up at the Nanga Parbat Hotel. This was less a hotel and more a simple lodge, but with a large lawn in front where you could sit in the evening and take in the fabulous panorama of snow-capped mountains.
We were here much earlier than I’d planned. Our original idea was to go first to the Diamir, or north-western, side of Nanga Parbat to acclimatise. I thought we could climb a way up the Kinshofer route, perhaps to Camp 2 at around 6,500 metres. I’ve learned over the years that this is about the optimum height to get one’s body properly acclimatised before going up to try an eight-thousander. Wasting energy going higher seems pointless to me; in my earlier climbing days we sometimes took the time to climb much higher but then became tired and exhausted before the main attempt. But even before we arrived in Pakistan, our agent Ali warned us that the mountains were still buried in feet of snow after an unusually harsh winter. The summer thaw hadn’t yet cleared the way on the Diamir side, so in the interests of saving time, energy and the logistical complexity of having camps first on the Diamir side of Nanga Parbat and then moving everything to the Rupal side, we decided to focus our attention exclusively on our route up to the Mazeno.
The last time I’d been to Tarshing was with Doug, Rick, Andrew Lock and Voytek Kurtyka in 1995, arriving on a new-fangled contraption called a mountain bike. Doug had managed to secure sponsorship from the bicycle manufacturer Raleigh, which is based in his home town of Nottingham. Part of the deal required us to cycle their new mountain bikes across the Deosai plains that lie between Astore and Skardu, now a national park. This high summer pasture, according to one anthropologist, was the location for Herodotus’ gold-digging ants – and that’s what we were, singing if not for our suppers then for the expedition’s coffers. Raleigh sent along cycling journalist Steve Thomas, who unfortunately got the runs, but did what he could and maintained our bikes for us. It took three days to cross the Deosai. The first night we camped above the beautiful Satpara Lake at 3,800 metres. The following day we reached the high plateau, often having to push our bikes along the stony, twisting track, wading rivers and crossing rickety bridges. The plain is high and remote, offering good grazing to flocks of sheep and goats. Local herders, as hefted[2] as their animals, seemed to merge into the landscape. I recall the whistle of marmots and huge drifts of wild flowers.
Crossing a high pass, our camping place that night was just beyond the Kalapani river, sixty-eight kilometres from Skardu. It was hard going for those of us new to off-road cycling and it rained hard next day as we crossed the Chakor Pass and then made the scary descent into the Astore valley. We reached T
arshing late that evening, splattered in mud and wet through, the bikes on the back of jeeps for the last bit along the road. Steve was to leave us next day but the torrential rain had washed away bridges and he remained trapped for a while. It was all great fun, but it left us depleted and full of colds and illness.
Like us, Mummery, Collie and Hastings arrived to discover bridges washed away, but from the south, not the north. Arriving at the village of Chorit, they found themselves unable to cross to the north bank of the Astore. No matter. There was soon a crowd of men on either side more than happy to help build a new one, as Collie described: ‘The bridge-building began; tons of stones and brushwood were built out into the raging glacier torrent; next pine trunks were neatly fixed on the cantilever system in these piers on both sides, and when the two edifices jutted far enough out into the stream, several thick pine trunks, about fifty feet long, were toppled across, and prevented from being washed down the stream by our Alpine ropes, which were tied to their smaller ends … after three hours’ hard work the bridge was finished.’
Tarshing was still a simple place, although not as simple as it had been in Mummery’s day. He had taken twenty-seven days to reach the village from Britain; we had taken three. Within minutes of our arrival the area around our parked jeeps had drawn a horde of porters – like bees to a new hive. They crowded round the jeeps, smiling and looking expectantly for our sirdar. It felt great to be among this crowd of mountain men. I drew the fresh mountain air into my lungs and rested my eyes on the verdant green of the irrigated fields. Then Samandar Khan stepped forward from the crowd and shook my hand, and then hugged me in a warm embrace. It was ace to see him again and a relief too to find that Samandar would be our local fixer. I had gotten to know Samandar when we were climbing the Kinshofer route from the Diamir side. At that time Samandar was acting liaison officer for a Korean expedition led by the country’s star climber Go Mi-Sun, who fell to her death after summitting Nanga Parbat, her eleventh eight-thousander. On rest days between acclimatisation forays I spent lot of my time shooting the breeze with Samandar as we sat in boulders around Base Camp. He lives in Bunar village, Chilas, and is married with five children. A thoughtful and kind man, he would share tales of his experiences of working with climbing expeditions in Pakistan. I made a mental note to thank Muhammad Ali for hiring Samandar.
We had met Ali in 2009 almost by chance. Rick and I, still dreaming of the Mazeno, had decided to climb Nanga Parbat’s regular route on the Diamir Face. The plan was to climb as high as we could and at the same time get an impression of the ridge over a long period of time as well as experience of a possible descent route. While organising the expedition from my home in Newtonmore’s old converted police station, I got an email from an Austrian guide called Gerfried Göschl who suggested I consider joining his much larger expedition. Gerfried had a lot of experience on 8,000-metre peaks, and had climbed Everest without supplementary oxygen in 2005. He also led expeditions for the Austrian Alpine Club.
We talked it over on the phone and it became obvious that with economies of scale we could travel and climb the mountain much more cheaply and with less organisational input from me by joining his large expedition. A tremendous additional bonus was that we got to know Gerfried’s agent, Muhammad Ali of Adventure Pakistan. Ali had started his company in 2009, having worked previously for the Pakistan Foreign Office. As we camped and climbed with Gerfried we got to know and like him and many of his climbing companions. I found him to be a very kind and friendly individual, an exceedingly good climber and expedition planner – a chess player in negotiations. His father Rainer had also been a successful climber, part of Hans Schell’s team in 1976 that made an important first ascent on Nanga Parbat’s Rupal side.
Like many younger climbers, Gerfried was always taking photographs of himself, eager to please his sponsors. For someone of my generation, it’s all rather terrifying, but a necessary part of the game. Himalayan climbing is expensive and for a guide like me – or Gerfried – the loss of earnings while on expedition can cost us dearly. True, we’re away on ‘holiday’ having a fantastic time, but commitments back home carry on regardless. We still have to pay the mortgage and get the boiler serviced. Trying to anticipate what could go wrong is part of the preparation for an expedition so that there’s the minimum hassle for the loved ones we leave behind.
Over the years Rick and I have needed to manage our time carefully and one great advantage of Nanga Parbat was its short approach. Rick’s employers usually understand, but there’s a limit. Despite the pressures, we both have the ability to suss out the really important issues and let the rest go. I liken it to birds migrating on their vast journeys across continents and oceans. Even though they fly for days at a time, they have techniques that allow them to coast along not really using up much energy at all, even though it seems they flap their wings like crazy to maintain momentum.
It’s more difficult to explain to family that you love them and yet want to go away for several weeks to climb a beautiful but, as they see it, potentially dangerous mountain. As a climber I never think I’m not going to come home again; I’m confident the risk of an accident will be minimised and all will be fine. For family members back home, waving goodbye at the airport, there’s the unarticulated thought: ‘I wonder if I will see him again?’ And while I feel confident of coming home, the truth is that there are risks. It’s emotionally tough. In 2012 Gerfried himself disappeared attempting the Karakoram giant Gasherbrum I in winter, just three years after we climbed together on Nanga Parbat, when he added a new variant to the Kinshofer route.
Samandar had made all the necessary arrangements for the approach to Base Camp beneath the Mazeno Ridge. He had brought along an excellent cook with two young assistants and hired some experienced porters to help with all our equipment and supplies. In this part of Pakistan most loads are carried on mules but we anticipated that once we were at higher altitudes we would run into deep snow and the mules would most probably not be able to plough through it. Mules are worth a lot of money and the risk of injury would persuade the mule-drivers to turn back. So to make sure our loads got to Base Camp, we would take a few hardy men along as well. They would carry little at the start, but would increase their loads once we reached the snowline.
As the porters loaded up their mules in the village, local children passed by on their way to school, girls and boys together in their best school clothes. This was one of those rare occasions when we saw females mingling with the village crowd, even though it was only the children. Their mothers were out of sight, presumably busy in their homes. It was a part of Pakistani culture that I found hard to understand. How could a culture place such restriction on women’s freedom of movement? It was all a bit strange really, to see so many people milling around and all of them men. What impact must this have on young men reaching maturity? I looked at the strong mountain porters setting out on the trail to Base Camp. Did they simply not trust their women? Or themselves? Or was it visitors like us they didn’t trust?
The approach walk was wonderful. We left the village on a well-maintained path, dodging mule droppings, stepping across irrigation channels and ducking under coppiced trees until we were free of the village. The day was pleasantly warm and we were happy to amble along taking in the views. The noise and dust of the Karakoram Highway felt far away and the hassles of day-to-day life fell away. Soon we would be able to focus on our climb.
The green terraces of crops and grass disappeared abruptly as irrigation ended, replaced with the wild and desolate terrain of a glaciated valley. The trail now wound its way through awkward moraine until eventually we came to a patch of more stable ground used for pasture where we could camp for the night. Its name was Latabo, a tiny hamlet at around 3,500 metres directly below the Rupal flank of Nanga Parbat. The place was rudimentary, just enough to support a few local people herding their sheep and goats. Here for the first time we saw women passing by and doing tasks amongs
t the animals. Not for the first time I reflected that life in the mountains is usually more egalitarian. Hardship makes it so.
I took the three Lhakpas and Cathy for a walk to show them the general direction of the Schell route. This we had earmarked as a possible descent route from the ridge, although to descend that way we would of course have to get all the way along to the Mazeno Gap first. Back at the planning stage Cathy kept highlighting that she really thought she would not get that far, and certainly not to the summit. However, I had a strong belief in her and felt she could, and would. I was pleased when she decided to accompany us for the walk. Unfortunately the summits were shrouded in mist so I could only point out the lower section of the climb, and from that distance there wasn’t that much to see anyway.
We only had a short distance to walk next day; without acclimatisation we could not really go much higher without risking altitude sickness. So after a few hours of walking along an impressive glacier junction we traversed up towards an interim campsite. After setting up the tents and drinking a cup of tea, Rick and I took a walk several hundred metres above camp, to a point where I felt my head pounding a little bit with altitude. That was enough. With my head still throbbing, I flinched a little when we got back to camp to see the mules fighting, their huge, yellow teeth biting at each other’s necks. I was sure one would get hurt and their loud braying pulsed through my head. I was glad when the porters and muleteers gathered them together and tethered the mules some distance from our tents.
We awoke to fresh snow on the ground and, as we gained height, the old snow pack became deeper, the mules sinking into the snow until only the longest-legged animals could continue. The rest of the mules had to be released from their loads, which were picked up by our porters. It was hard work freeing the mules in the deep snow, unstrapping the loads and rearranging them so a man could carry them. The daylight soon slipped away. Finally we got all our baggage moving again and at last came to the dry-stone-walled shelters used as base camps for previous attempts on the ridge, at an altitude of 4,900 metres. It was 14 June.