In Some Lost Place

by Sandy Allan

  The snow was unseasonably deep and we had to hack away at it to reach hard ground on which to pitch our tents. All of us set to work. The cook and his team put up a much bigger mess and cook tent and, with slushy snow from a nearby pool warming up in a big pan set over a roaring paraffin stove, we began to pay off the porters. They drank and had a snack before we shook hands and waved each other goodbye. By the close of the day most had gone, although Samandar kept a couple on the payroll to help run Base Camp and organise our stores. One of them would also act as a runner for us, coming up to camp regularly with a supply of fresh vegetables from Tarshing.

  As the sun set we were all still hard at work, trying to clear away snow and ice so as to have a base for our main mess tent. This would be our dining and living room during the day, somewhere to store equipment, eat our meals, hold meetings and rest. The snow was deep here and, with all the mule and porter traffic, had become quite consolidated. Yet by nightfall we had a large enough area cleared. We brought our barrels and climbing equipment inside and arranged it all around the walls, leaving a space in the middle for our collapsible tables and chairs. We also dug out our Honda generator and solar panel, which were connected to a car battery, so we could charge our electrical equipment. There was a vast array of battery chargers that turned into a bird’s nest of wires. Unhappily the generator proved unreliable. Every day one of us would tinker with it, cleaning spark plugs or fuel lines to get the thing to work for an hour or two.

  We then dug a latrine away from Base Camp over a small moraine ridge and pitched a small tent over the hole for privacy and shelter. With the communal area sorted, each of us put up his or her own personal tent. It was essential to have our own space, somewhere we could put out all our gear and begin to prepare for the climb. Finally we were finished and could eat.

  Base Camp was still rudimentary, but I knew that over the following days we would improve it, making it into a comfortable space where we could relax and recover. The simplicity of the mountains was seeping back into me. Norman Collie put it very well: ‘The sense of freedom, of perfect contentment with our present lot, blessed gift of the mountains to their true and faithful devotees, was beginning to steal over us. Languidly, we talked about the morrow, our only regret arising from our inability to catch a glimpse of that monarch of the mountains, Nanga Parbat and the ice-fringed precipices which overhang his southern face.’

  Sleep came easily that night.

  1. That expedition is recorded in Andrew Greig’s book Summit Fear (Canongate, 2005).[back]

  2. ‘Hefted’ sheep instinctively stick to their own local area and thus do not need fences.[back]

  – Chapter 4 –

  The Dividing Line

  Doug Scott had a lot of bad luck on the Mazeno Ridge. On his first attempt, during a hot dry summer in August 1992, rock fall badly injured his teammate Valeri Pershin while he was placing supplies at the Mazeno Gap. Pershin was swept eighty metres, leaving him badly cut and with several broken ribs. It says a lot about his Russian stoicism that he remained at Base Camp to recover, while Doug, Sergey Efimov and Ang Phurba Sherpa established a base camp below the Mazeno Pass at the western end of the ridge. Next day they climbed ice and snow to a subsidiary peak at 6,650 metres and then went over the first of the Mazeno Ridge’s summits – Point 6,880m – before camping on a saddle on its far side. Yet now the wind strengthened and Ang Phurba, complaining of injuries sustained on the dangerous Schell route, decided he could go no further.

  Doug returned in 1993 with a small team but was avalanched while acclimatising on a nearby mountain, badly damaging his ankle. He had to be carried out on the back of a horse and the expedition didn’t set foot on the Mazeno Ridge. Rick and I were part of Doug’s final attempt on the ridge in July 1995, along with the Polish genius Voytek Kurtyka and our Australian friend Andrew Lock. This time there was no thought of leaving supplies at the Mazeno Gap or acclimatising on other peaks. We would acclimatise on the ridge itself, making a couple of forays to dump loads at the start of the ridge. Unusually bad monsoon weather was predicted and we felt it best to get on with things.

  On 2 August we climbed back up to a pinnacle at 5,650 metres, where we’d cached some gear, and continued. Voytek mispronounced the word pinnacle as ‘pineapple’, and after that the pineapple became a landmark on the ridge. He and I were soloing out in front unroped; we seemed to be waiting ages for the others. Sheltering out of the wind, Voytek and I discussed this. I wasn’t happy we were losing so much time, but I was also aware that if anyone needed to take his time gaining altitude that it was me. Now in my late thirties, I knew very well I was slow to acclimatise. As it turned out, Doug was ill. We were all a bit shocked; Doug was always the superpower of our expeditions – our main man.

  We camped above the pineapple that night but had already decided to retreat in the morning as the weather was deteriorating. Back at Base Camp the bad weather continued and we spent some time hanging out. Rick, Doug and our Pakistani liaison officer Abdul Quadir took a walk up to the Mazeno Pass at 5,399 metres. The rest of us pottered about sorting out equipment, reading and lifting boulders as a keep-fit exercise. When Doug got back from the Mazeno Pass he told us he’d decided to leave the expedition. It was a great disappointment. We still weren’t sure what was wrong with him but thought he had heat stroke or was simply tired out from his usual frenetic schedule. Perhaps our bike ride hadn’t been such a good idea? Doug was soon in Islamabad, laid up in bed suffering from what turned out to severe gastroenteritis.

  I was really upset by Doug’s departure. It was a strange feeling; up to that point I hadn’t really been aware how much his companionship mattered to me. I was growing close to Voytek and we shared a similar, almost spiritual, discipline about climbing and living. Rick was an old friend and I got on well with Andrew. I tried to reason with myself, to figure out why I was not focused on the climb. I slept fitfully at Base Camp and all the time my thoughts were with Doug. The weather remained poor, and coming down from a foray on to the ridge I decided I should also retire from the climb and go home. I eventually caught up with Doug as we arrived at Rawalpindi airport to check in for our departure flights.

  Rick, Voytek and Andrew stayed to make further forays along the ridge to the ‘point of no return’. They told me that to climb down and along that convoluted part of the ridge was the moment you became totally committed to the climb and to reaching the Mazeno Gap. It meant stepping through a door that locked behind you. I began to wonder how you would manage to climb the Mazeno in a good style and get home safely. Turning the problem over in my mind, the ridge seemed incredibly dangerous. Voytek went back with Erhard Loretan in 1997 and I might have joined them if I hadn’t been going through a personal crisis that resulted ultimately in the end of my marriage. Bad weather meant they didn’t reach the previous high point.

  It seemed no coincidence to me that the two teams that had done best on the ridge – the Americans in 2004 and the Germans four years later – had set off along the ridge fit and acclimatised from other climbs. Even so, they hadn’t had the energy and resources to press on to the summit. They had both faced difficult descents, the Americans down the Schell and the Germans down the Diamir Face, following a dangerous route Messner had used when he soloed the mountain. Clearly the line between being prepared and being too tired and run down from altitude was a fine one.

  Still, the effort by Steve Swenson and Doug Chabot in particular had inspired me to commit to trying this route again. The ridge could be climbed. All I had to do was to come up with a plan to get some climbers along the ridge and still have the energy left to allow those who could to continue to the summit. At that stage I had little idea how I could do that when climbing in pure alpine style. I wasn’t interested in fixing a banister of fixed rope up the route. Rick and I had committed to trying again in 2010, but my chaotic finances got in the way. It was only with Cathy coming on board that we had the resources to try.<
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  Our ideas, endlessly discussed and finely drawn, like all plans of battle, didn’t survive for long in the face of the enemy. Thanks to the deep winter snow, our plan of starting on the Diamir Face had been abandoned. But we still needed to acclimatise. Time was tight, so we would simply have to get on with it as best we could. Rick and I knew this meant we would acclimatise on the initial ridge above Base Camp that led up to the Mazeno from the south; but it wasn’t something I wanted to do. Many high-altitude climbers wouldn’t think twice about it; they would follow other teams up the same mountain on a well-compacted trail and it wouldn’t even occur to them that there were any ethical considerations. I have to compromise when I’m working as a guide, but in my own climbing, I try to maintain a high sense of ethics; on all my private climbing expeditions I want to make our attempt as close to alpine style as is possible. This expedition to Nanga Parbat was no different in that respect. So we wondered how we could acclimatise without risking our pure definition of an alpine-style ascent.

  There were some nice mountains of around 6,000 metres relatively close to Base Camp that we could have climbed, but as soon as we arrived we saw they were carrying huge amounts of snow. The avalanche risk seemed high. I didn’t want to end our expedition while acclimatising, as Doug had in 1993. Neither Rick nor I had seen so much snow at Base Camp before, and it became obvious there was no real alternative to breaking trail on the climb up to the Mazeno.

  After a night at Base Camp, Cathy, Rick and I took a walk up a steep rocky peak just above Base Camp, from where we spied an interesting line up to a subsidiary ridge that led in turn to the Mazeno itself. This was to the left of the line Doug had shown us in 1995. His route took us to the same ridge, but, while it was safe, it followed a big semi-circular arc to get there. With more snow on the mountain, we decided to go for the steeper, more direct route. I had concerns about avalanches, but there was a rock rib going up the slope and I reckoned that this rib would give us adequate protection and keep us safe. On 17 June we all went on the mountain for the first time, pitching a store tent at the top of a col at 5,650 metres before descending to Base Camp to rest for the night.

  All this work was good for my acclimatisation, but the three Lhakpas were already perfectly happy in the thin air, having just come in from Nepal. They had recently been on the summits of either Everest or Kangchenjunga, and were moving much faster than us. I suggested they sort their gear and hang out – enjoy a few days off while Cathy, Rick and I made efforts to catch up with them. I warned them that once we had caught up with our own acclimatisation we would all be really busy. They should enjoy the rest because it wasn’t going to last.

  At first the Sherpas were happy to do nothing and it was interesting to see them bouldering two days later as we came down from our first night on the hill, at 5,650 metres. Normally on expeditions it’s the Western climbers who are bouldering and languishing around Base Camp while the Sherpas are hard at work on the mountain. Yet even with all their base-camp activities the Lhakpas soon became stir crazy. Rangdu said: ‘Hey, Mr Sandy, can we fix ropes up to the col as you guys are going up and down it all the time? We may as well do something!’

  I pondered his request. It really was a problem for me, as I’d had no intention of using fixed ropes at all, even though we’d brought some just in case, but it made sense. Each day the sun softened the snow and small slides of snow threatened the ridge as the day wore on. The three of us Western climbers needed to keep going up and down several more times to get our bodies used to the thin air and the risk we were taking seemed pointless. So after talking it through with Cathy and Rick, we agreed to let them fix. The Sherpas were delighted to have a role. No more sitting around Base Camp for them. Next day, the three Lhakpas fixed rope, while Cathy, Rick and I were able to go higher, knowing that the ropes were there behind us to speed our descent.

  Soon we had put up an old dome tent at 6,150 metres – Camp 1 – and were able to make forays higher up the mountain. Bad weather and regular snowfall meant the trail had to be broken again and again. Climbing above this camp, we were often fearful of avalanches, and at one point I went ahead suggesting the others spread further apart so we didn’t overload the slope. I had to call on all my years of avalanche training to judge the fine line between being cautious and pressing on. While the snow was deep, it held firm. I traversed out to an easier-angled but less direct route up the slope rather than taking the line of steps we had broken the day before, which was now almost obscured by fresh snow. We all knew we were pushing too hard. I dug a snow test pit to assess how well the different layers of snow were bonded together. The snow pack seemed to be averagely bonded, yet I still felt we were trading close to the edge. I knew I was being influenced by the urge to get high and acclimatised. We couldn’t afford the luxury of lying around at Base Camp letting the season drift away. Anyway, the Sherpas were pacing round Base Camp like racehorses waiting for the off, waiting for us to catch up. We climbed on.

  It’s an easy trap to fall into, experienced climbers pushing on and on, closing their minds to the obvious signs below their feet. But the line I took finally got us off the slope, which eased back and led us, after several hundred metres, to a whaleback false summit being blasted by strong winds. In its lee we decided to pitch one of our little bivvy tents – Camp 2. The altitude was 6,400 metres. In a stroke of good luck, the snow now stopped falling, the view cleared and, while a cold wind was still blowing the snow around, we felt happy and quite proud to be that high. It had been only eight days since we arrived at Base Camp, and here we were, already at 6,400 metres, feeling weak but otherwise fine.

  We descended to Base Camp to rest for a couple of days and then the three of us went back up, pitched another of the bivvy tents and spent a night at Camp 2. The next day, 27 June, we descended once more to Base Camp, dismantling the storage tent we’d put up at 5,650 metres on the way. In the meantime, the three Lhakpas carried supplies up to our high point of 6,400 metres. Our night in the bivvy tents had left all of us feeling tired and as we descended we agreed that ideally we would rest, come up and spend another night at that altitude and then go down to Base Camp again. Then we would rest some more and only then start our attempt on the ridge. Now that the vast scale of the challenge was firmly in front of us, it seemed incredibly imposing. We felt weeks away from our attempt.

  When we got back to the tents, the weather forecast made us think again. While researching the expedition, Rick had been in touch with the Met Office in Bracknell and told the forecasters we were looking for a week of good weather on Nanga Parbat. They got back to him after a week and told him their records suggested that this never happened. Now we had a forecast that looked too good to miss. We were promised five days of good weather followed by a storm. We knew full well we were bound to get a storm at some point. The ridge was so long there was no way we could avoid one. It was also likely that when it happened we would be caught somewhere that was incredibly exposed. That was just the reality of committing to such an extended adventure.

  The promise of five days of good weather on Nanga Parbat, the killer mountain, seemed too good to waste on further acclimatisation. We discussed the pros and cons of getting back on the mountain immediately so as to take advantage of it. I feared the prospect of being stuck in a tent at 7,000 metres on a knife-edge ridge, but if we were realistic about climbing this route we had to accept the risk. We had known all along that in all likelihood we would have to face that situation. So we made the decision that after two or three nights’ rest we would all head back up, spend a night at Camp 1, climb back up to the bivvy tents at 6,400 metres and, the following morning, go for it as a team of six for a full-hearted attempt on the Mazeno Ridge.

  And so, on the morning of 4 July, I woke at 6,400 metres on the third day of our climb. I could tell the sun wasn’t shining, and it was still bitterly cold. Hoar frost coated the inside of the single-skinned bivouac tent. I turned the stove on to star
t melting snow for drinks and porridge. Next to me in the tent was Cathy. Rangdu and Rick shared another, while Zarok and Nuru were together in the third tent. Moving carefully to stop the frost from sprinkling over our sleeping bags and gear, we finished our porridge and biscuits and started packing. Finally we stuffed our feet back into our boots and left our warm cocoon, reversing out of the tent’s narrow door to greet the day.

  I took in a lungful of cold pure air and looked around. The sky was turning blue and I could see for miles, the mountains towering around our perch at 6,400 metres. This was the springboard for our great adventure. As the sun broke the horizon and lit up the tent’s orange fabric, we dismantled the poles and packed them away. I stared in a kind of numb horror at the amount of equipment we needed to carry. There seemed to be tons of it. We had all our personal clothing for the whole climb, then a shell and down insulation. Some of us were already in down suits. We had a few pairs of spare socks, vital for staving off frostbite. There were cameras, head torches, spare batteries, thirty-two gas cylinders, three stoves with pots and pans, drinking bowls and basic cutlery. We had around twenty-five kilograms of food between the six of us. There were the three 50-metre dynamic climbing ropes, a spare abseil rope we could abandon as needed and a small rack of ice screws, pitons and wired nuts, along with a few quickdraws and some tape slings with karabiners. We also had a fifty-metre length of thinner line to cut up into lengths for abseil anchors and secure our tents if necessary. If there was any left, it would be useful as a lightweight climbing rope on the summit push.