by Sandy Allan
The problem was that rocks and cornices enclosed our small site, blocking the satellite phone signal. The following day was predicted to be when the storm hit, but now we couldn’t check. Looking at the cloud formations around us, the message was clear: the winds were going to strengthen. At least our camping spot was flat and protected. We battened down the hatches and prepared to wait, but with no idea for how long. A day? A week? And all the time we would be eating up our store of food.
The following day was windy enough, but it wasn’t the wildness I expected. Still, it would have been nasty going, so I was glad of the chance to recuperate. We had lots of gas. But we had been on the ridge for five days now, and we were still only halfway to the Mazeno Gap with the hardest climbing yet to come.
– Chapter 5 –
Mind the Gap
The following day was much less windy but the snow was still deep. We climbed on over sections of rock and snow, one peak followed by another, and then another. The exposure was immense but I loved being there. It was a traverse in the heavens, our world dropping steeply away on either side and then spreading out to views of distant peaks beyond. The ridge wound sinuously like a serpent’s coils, decorated with steeply curved cornices poised like frozen waves. Time was stretching out in either direction too. There seemed to be nothing before or after this ridge.
Now we came to a steep gap – our point of no return. We deliberated what to do. It was straightforward enough to cut some of the thin cord and pass it around some rocks and tie a loop. We threaded the abseil rope through this anchor and joined it to one of the fifty-metre climbing ropes before tossing them down into the void. Then I clipped in and slid down the rope. I felt as though I was walking in space, my heavy rucksack tipping me backwards, leaving me feeling cumbersome and disoriented.
Rangdu and I were first down. We climbed across to a snow bank and easier ground, where we fixed the other end of the rope. One by one, the others followed, their crampons scratching and sparking on the rock, before scrambling across to where we waited so they could detach themselves from the rope. The wind howled and stung our faces as we waited patiently for everyone to regroup. Then, as the others climbed onwards, I pulled the climbing rope and left the abseil rope behind.
It was a slender thread of safety. I knew full well that if something went wrong in the next few days we might be forced to come back this way and climb up this blank rock wall. It would be a dreadful predicament if one of us was injured midway between here and the Mazeno Gap and we had to decide which way to go to get back to safety. Retracing our steps would not be easy, but the alternative of pushing on might be impossible. The thought of retreat was unnerving; we would be in a desperate state to make that choice. But there were only three options: press on to the Mazeno Gap, go back the way we’d come or sit on the ridge and freeze to death. Were we now in a place of no return? Had we, with that abseil, totally committed ourselves to getting to the Mazeno Gap? I thought of the climbers who had been here before us, so strong and fast. ‘Ooh la la,’ I thought to myself, ‘what am I leading us into?’ I looked ahead and saw the others tramping along the ridge in front of me, pushing on, dancing along a pathway in the sky which at any moment might become a mantrap. At least right now all was going well. That’s as much as any of us can hope for.
The next bivvy was fine but I found myself growing fractious with my tent-mate. It was a silly, tiny thing. At night as we finished melting snow and arranged our equipment before going to sleep, Cathy would take her rucksack and place it over the stove and pots in the doorway of our bivvy tent. This scuppered my system for waking up in the morning and reaching easily for the stove. One of us had to move her rucksack out of the way first, and this brought a cascade of hoar frost down on to our sleeping bags, where it thawed, making them damp.
It also meant whoever lit the stove had to get half out of their sleeping bag. Normally I could do this lying down, so I could remain in a doze, slowly waking up while the water took its time to boil. Why couldn’t she use her rucksack as a pillow like the rest of us? I realise sitting here at my desk in the comfort of my warm home how pathetic this sounds. Such frustrations are part of life at high altitude and I tried not to say anything about it. But it drove me nuts at the time. I wonder what I was doing that did the same to her.
That morning – 9 July – started with the usual shower of hoar frost, lighting the stove and struggling into my clothes. It was already 7 a.m. – quite a lie-in. I seem to have amazing circulation and during the night get warmer and warmer, so that I actually have to take clothes off. First thing in the morning, when I start moving, I need to cover my skin quickly. We made drinks and some porridge and then exited the tent. By this stage of the climb, after a week on the ridge, the others simply assumed we would be the last to be ready and as usual we were.
This annoyed me slightly but I couldn’t put that down to Cathy’s rucksack routine. The truth is that I love hanging out in my sleeping bag first thing in the morning. Anyway, we were only a few minutes behind the others, and somebody had to be last. Everyone else was busy striking tents or having a pee and barely noticed that we were fractionally behind. It’s of no consequence, so why did I care? Why was I on edge? As we packed up, I sang – badly – a Chuck Berry song, School Day. Then I thought: ‘I must be hard to share a tent with really.’ The sacks were packed, and we were underway again. For a group of six we were actually very efficient.
That day we crossed Mazeno Peak, the highest of the 7,000-metre peaks. The maps told us the height was 7,120 metres, but our altimeters weren’t so generous, registering not much more than 7,000 metres. After a week’s climbing, none of us had much faith that the altimeters were working correctly, but then again, our weather forecast, arriving from a meteorologist in Andorra, had predicted stronger winds and snow for that day, so it was possible the pressure was dropping. That would affect the altimeters. With the prospect of bad weather and the knowledge that the pinnacles, the crux of the route, were now just ahead of us, we decided to stop early at 1 p.m. and get a good rest.
I had no desire to be out on the ridge in bad weather. Earlier, in similar conditions, I had felt a weird itching under my hat as I climbed along behind Rick and the Lhakpas. I scratched my head, thinking it was time to comb my hair to try and clean it a bit. And then it dawned on me that what I was feeling was static electricity crawling across my scalp. All of us felt it, but no-one mentioned it until we’d moved a few hundred metres further along the ridge. We had become inured to such things. We would accept our fate.
The next morning we found ourselves grinding slowly through the pinnacles. The rocks were covered in puffy, unconsolidated snow, making progress difficult. The Sherpas had assumed we would cruise through this section but, not for the first time, they had underestimated the twists and turns of this incredible and apparently never-ending ridge. They had thought we would be through to the Mazeno Gap in six days; we were now on day nine. I had found myself trying to dampen their optimism: ‘No guys, we are carrying tons of gear and the snow conditions are bad. We are here for the long haul – expect nothing and we may be pleased with progress. Live simply, take it one day at a time.’
I was becoming more Buddhist than the Sherpas themselves. During the initial phase of the expedition I had taken ages to acclimatise compared to Rick and Cathy, and felt I was often behind. I had really thought it would be impossible for me to keep up and that I would be unlikely to make it. So I cooled my ambition and resorted to a mantra – one step at a time and let’s just see what happens.
The climbing was getting harder and, while we were making progress, we were moving too slowly. At times we fixed our ropes in a kind of capsule style, with the last climber stripping the gear as he followed, just to keep us moving a bit faster. I knew that the Americans had been through here in about eleven hours and from the few photos they published with their report it seemed that they had more consolidated snow on their trav
erse than the froth we were obliged to wade through. As time passed I could see frustration building in the Sherpas; we would get glimpses towards the summit ridge of Nanga Parbat and could see that it still looked a long way off. The three Lhakpas and Cathy were becoming a little exasperated by it all.
We had to abseil down a tricky section and then traverse a very sharp ridge to some more abseils. At times it was around Scottish grade IV, but, with the complication of high altitude, grades seem meaningless. Searching for suitable anchor points was not always easy on rock that was quite broken, and while pulling the ropes afterwards they brought down a shower of loose stones. Happily, it was only the ones wearing helmets who got struck on the head. Sometimes the ropes stuck a little, and we’d panic, but they never jammed completely. On one 50-metre abseil we found a piece of tat, a small human reminder that someone had been this way before.
Finally, as the sun was setting and we climbed in the pink evening light, we came to a point that we knew was very close to the Mazeno Gap. After eleven hours on the go we had done it. We cleared an obvious site to camp knowing that we were just a few hundred metres of easy ground short of our first big goal. That evening we felt relieved and delighted – we were finally there. All the team were still together and Cathy had become the first woman to traverse the ridge. Ten people in total had now reached this point, six of them on our expedition. We felt elated; an important milestone had been reached and as we drank and ate inside our tents we all felt very pleased with ourselves.
The next morning, 11 July, we woke late after the trials of the previous day – at 8 a.m. The reality of our situation now became clearer. It was our tenth day on the route. In planning the climb, I’d thought that the Mazeno Gap would be a smart place to rest up for a day. The altitude is around 6,940 metres and, I imagined, we would have been on the hill for six to eight days by this stage. Our tired bodies would be glad of a rest day and the spare time would allow us to melt snow and get properly hydrated. Now that we were actually there our food supply was getting sparse; none of us had enjoyed a proper meal since leaving Base Camp. Thanks to the altitude and the strain of climbing, we were probably burning something like five to six thousand calories a day. We had already had a rest day, forced on us by the forecast of bad weather. The truth was that we didn’t have enough supplies, apart from gas canisters, or the physical reserves to hang around. On top of that, the weather was perfect.
Without much conviction, I mentioned the idea of resting up for a day anyway. It occurred to me that one of the team might have been looking forward to stopping for a bit and hanging out in this wonderful place. All three Lhakpas, Rick and Cathy made it perfectly clear that they were keener to push on; we couldn’t let this good weather slip through our fingers. Without further discussion we struck the tents and packed up; we were on our way again at 10.30 a.m., climbing down to the Mazeno Gap proper before starting the climb back uphill, turning some pinnacles on the Rupal side of the face, to our right-hand side as we faced the summit.
It was much harder going steeply uphill and I did wonder if, in our enthusiasm and excitement at having achieved so much, we had given adequate consideration to the state of our bodies. Perhaps we should have taken a rest day? As we climbed we talked a little and decided we could always take a rest at the next bivvy site if we felt we really needed it, although the lack of supplies made that unlikely. We all seemed to be feeling positive in our three teams of two. The weather was sunny and the climbing absorbing, with some tricky traverses and a steep gully of soft unconsolidated snow that felt difficult at that altitude.
Finally, we came to a scree slope that curved upwards into a small flat plateau at about 7,160 metres. There was now a slight breeze and, since the spot looked so accommodating, we decided to camp at around 2.30 p.m. We took our time moving some boulders and lumps of rock to get level platforms – hard and mundane work at high altitude – and then secured the tents with stones. We fully expected the winds to strengthen sooner rather than later.
Having camped on rock, we were able to sit in the afternoon sunshine on boulders outside the tents, chatting together as a group rather than being isolated in our pairs. The stoves purred away, melting snow to water, as we wrapped ourselves in down jackets and drank tea. Once more, I suggested it would be cool just to stop and have a day off, but my idea got short shrift from the others so I let it go. And when we got out the food supplies to have a proper look we realised that there was very
little left indeed. That night we took only half a meal each. Cathy and I shared our first and only freeze-dried meal of the trip and drank more tea.
The team was divided over tactics. Zarok, Rangdu, Nuru and Cathy, as well as Rick, were all pushing to go for the summit next day, while I was still thinking we should rest up, perhaps move our camp higher so as to cut a few hundred metres from our summit day. We still had almost a thousand metres of ascent to go. The others were adamant. Given the lack of food, the Sherpas said that in their opinion we had to go for the summit tomorrow or we would starve. Rick was pushing a bit too, and given that I didn’t mind that much, the decision was made. I knew better than to waste energy by trying to convince them otherwise.
As the day wore on the wind got up; the weather forecast had predicted winds of thirty miles-per-hour and that concerned me. Even at 4,000 metres that would be close to borderline for a summit attempt. At 8,000 metres it felt to me completely unrealistic. I expected the others to review the plan, but they had their minds set and that was that. I felt detached, as though I was observing us all from another perspective – outside myself looking down.
The lack of food was driving the others on but I wasn’t too worried; supplies were low, but we were getting on okay. I had known we would have very few supplies left by this stage and so felt mentally prepared for the situation. It didn’t seem that important in the grand scheme of things. I was slightly concerned that we had run out of quick soups and powder drinks and sugar to add to water; at altitude they are a great way of getting energy. But as long as I knew we had some gas cartridges to melt snow I was happy enough. And if we had the luxury of something to add flavour to the meltwater, even an old teabag, then so much the better. Hydration was the main issue. We had enough body fat and muscle to burn for a day or two. When I got home the weight loss would benefit my rock climbing. But no water? That was a crisis.
I felt a bit outnumbered. The Sherpas were concerned and I understood their point of view. I could see they were tired. Cathy was too. Rick and I had done this sort of stuff before, although not for quite so long, and we knew that at this altitude one could hardly digest food anyway. But given that the team were so keen to keep moving, it would have been a brave leader to talk them out of their attempt. I worried about the wind; I wondered, given how tired the Lhakpas were, that they wouldn’t want to try for the summit if it blew hard. I thought it would be the Sherpas who would be the stronger members of our team at this point. I fully expected us Westerners to be wasted by this stage.
All things considered, I decided it was best just to go with the flow and accept the democratic view. We discussed a plan and agreed to go to bed as soon as possible, wake at 11 p.m. and try to set off around midnight. We didn’t really discuss the descent. That would be for the following day. It was generally assumed that if we did summit then the obvious descent would be by the Schell route, as we were camped right on it. With some good luck it would take about two days to descend back to the isolated herder village of Latabo. We finished our drinks and settled down for the night, having made sure our equipment was ready for the off in the wee small hours.
I dozed intermittently, but at 11 p.m. the tent fabric was flapping like crazy in the strong winds so we delayed things a bit, hoping the wind would ease. By 1 a.m. we were all ready. I was happy to give it a go but not wildly convinced we could get far in such strong winds; if one of the others had given me an indication of support for my wish to stay put I would have
readily called a halt. I felt like crap, and the thought of a first ascent was way down my list of motivational incentives. The wind was too strong and I knew it. I struggled to walk and adjust my head torch, goggles and various hoods all at the same time.
At first I was right at the back as the others climbed off into the night. I was roped to Rick, who was at least semi-patient. He knows that under stress I can vomit most of my breakfast and then feel fine and start functioning as well as anyone. He slowed the pace slightly for me and we managed to keep up with the others. The route we were taking was steep as we tried to follow the natural line along the main crest of the ridge. Rock features curved steeply upward, dividing the Rupal and Diamir faces. The climbing was superb, quite hard at times but never too technical. There were a few occasions when we had to stop and climb one at a time, but in general we all moved together, making good progress.
The wind-chill persuaded us to keep moving; we needed the heat of exercise in the black night. As light slowly crept in from the east, the view around us deepened and took shape. I became aware of the huge exposure below me and to the right where the Rupal Face plunged into the shadows. At around 6 a.m., after climbing for five hours, we came to a little summit from where I expected the ridge to continue in a relatively straightforward line to the Merkl Notch at around 7,900 metres. It was here that Reinhold Messner and his brother Günther had endured the bitter cold of their bivouac after reaching the summit in 1970.
Now we discovered that the terrain was more complicated, exposed and technical than any of us had expected. Seeing the terrain ahead of us, with the summit so far away, Nuru and Cathy became totally despondent. Perhaps they thought the summit we were on would have been much closer to the true summit; as it turned out there were other similar intermediate summits to overcome before we got to the top. They both seemed physically tired and emotionally worn out. Cathy told us she wanted to turn back. Since Nuru had agreed to team up with Cathy if she opted to descend, he untied from Zarok and swapped ropes with Rangdu, who had been climbing with Cathy.