Crocodiles, on the other hand, gave them some severe frights. We had been towed down the slower, more meandering section of the river by one of the big assault boats and, as a result, had hardly noticed the crocodiles. They, however, were paddling at about the same speed as a crocodile swims and, to a crocodile, a canoe must closely resemble a very large fish. They had heard tales of crocodiles biting canoes in half and, sitting in a fragile, fibreglass shell, you don’t feel like taking any chances when a fifteen-foot crocodile conies cruising through the water to take a look at you.
Dave Burkinshaw was some 300 feet in front of the others when he noticed the distinctive V-wave coming up fast behind him. He put on speed, hoping that he could out-paddle it, having heard that crocodiles lack stamina. After about 300 feet he was beginning to tire and he glanced round to see that the crocodile seemed to be gaining on him. By this time he was naturally very, very frightened. He turned for the bank and paddled flat out for it. He was, of course, fastened into the canoe by his spray cover and, to make himself even more secure, he had doubled up with a second one. This meant it was always quite a struggle to free himself from the canoe, but now – with the strength of desperation – he succeeded in tearing off the covers with one hand between racing strokes of the paddle, leaping out of the canoe in a single movement as it ran aground and in three bounds reached the foot of the thirteen-foot-high wall of the bank and climbed it.
The crocodile was more interested in the canoe and, as it drifted off, he followed it downstream. The others had seen Dave’s spring for the bank and followed as quickly as they could. Steve, who wore his pistol in a shoulder holster, was the only one with a gun readily available. With considerable courage, realising that he had to recover Dave’s canoe, he paddled right up to the crocodile and emptied the magazine of his revolver into it at point blank range. The crocodile sank from sight, so they could not be sure whether it had been killed or not.
From this point, every stretch of slack water had its resident crocodiles who came out to investigate the intruders. Jones and Hopkinson now kept their guns at the ready, but Burkinshaw was unarmed and had to content himself with a little pile of stones. They now kept close together, but had several more encounters and had used up most of their ammunition by the time they reached the Shafartak bridge.
They arrived there on 12 September, tired and very tense from twelve days of nerve-wracking canoeing, the threat of crocodiles and the danger of possible attack by local people. They had originally planned to go all the way to the Sudan, but now all of them, I suspect, were beginning to have second thoughts. They had to wait a day at the bridge, both for Glen Greer with the support Land Rover and also for a Reuter correspondent who had arranged to meet them there. It was a period of relaxation after tension; the bridge was somehow a natural bound to the venture and yet there was the pressure of their expressed intentions. Mike Jones, perhaps, felt obliged to urge them on, down past the bridge; after all, the expedition had been his concept. At first the other three were doubtful. Dave Burkinshaw had definitely had enough; Mick Hopkinson observed that they had very nearly run out of ammunition and that there would be even more crocodiles below the bridge than there had been above. It was not as if the river itself would provide a challenge – they knew they could manage the water. It was the threat of crocodiles and Shifta bandits and the fact that there was no road from the river once they had reached the border that deterred them now. They were not a closely knit team, had never been away on expeditions before and this, of course, was their first venture into really wild country. Steve Nash, after a night’s rest, came round to wanting to complete the journey, but by now Mike Jones had swung away from it, saying that there was no point in going on if they were not united. This, I suspect, was the crux of the problem and in the end they piled their canoes into the Land Rover and drove to Addis Ababa.
They may not have completed their objective, but they had descended more of the upper part of the Blue Nile than anyone else has succeeded doing to this day and, in so doing, had tackled some of the most dangerous white water that anyone has ever attempted.
Mike Jones went on to organise and lead an expedition which canoed down the Dudh Kosi, the glacier torrent that runs down from the Khumbu Glacier on Everest. Mick Hopkinson went with him. It was a slightly larger team than he had had on the Blue Nile and, although the waters in places were technically more difficult than those encountered on the Blue Nile, there were none of the extra risks of attacks by bandits or crocodiles. In addition, a bank support party was able to follow the river much of the way and Nepal today is becoming as much a holiday area as the European Alps. Nevertheless, this was a fine achievement which confirmed Mike Jones as the most outstanding white water expedition organiser in the world. In the course of the descent he saved the life of Mick Hopkinson, who had fallen out of his canoe, by towing him to the side through a serious of dangerous rapids.
He next went off to the Orinoco in South America and then, in 1978, with the bulk of the Dudh Kosi team, on the Braldu river running down from the Baltoro Glacier in Pakistan. Here he was drowned – once again going to the help of a member of his team who had fallen out of his canoe in a practice session. It was typical of Mike Jones that he did not think of his own safety in going to someone else’s assistance. He was still only twenty-six. His immense enthusiasm and drive, combined with his boldness and physical strength, would have taken him through many more adventures had Fate spared him.
Of the 1968 expedition, John Blashford-Snell went on to organise a series of even more ambitious projects, manhandling Range Rovers across the Darien Gap, the pathless jungle swamp that divides North America from the southern continent; descending the Zaire river with another large waterborne expedition of scientists and soldiers. He has also organised Operation Drake and Operation Raleigh, global projects to give youngsters a taste of field scientific work and adventure. In doing this he has given a large number of people a great deal of enjoyment and excitement and has made possible some useful scientific work.
There is a vast difference between the approach Mike Jones adopted and that of John Blashford-Snell on the Blue Nile. In climbing terms, it is the difference between the massive, carefully organised siege attempt on a mountain and a small party making an alpine-style ascent. It was ironic that the big, carefully organised party had a fatal casualty and, because of the very size and so somewhat ponderous descent down river, attracted two full-scale bandit attacks, while the comparatively unorganised, lightweight dash by canoeists who really understood white water, and were using suitable boats for the upper reaches of the river, got away unscathed. It is possible that audacity has a momentum that sometimes carries its own protection.
– Chapter 7 –
Annapurna, the First 8,000
Maurice Herzog’s French expedition to the north face in 1950
One’s first visit to the Himalaya is always immensely exciting. There is the anticipation of the climbing on mountains higher than one has ever been to before, the anxiety of how one will adapt to altitude or, on larger expeditions, whether one will be a member of one of the teams to reach the top. But beyond that is the fascination of the country itself, not just the mighty snow peaks that can be glimpsed, often half hidden, elusive and mysterious through the haze from the ever-ascending crests of the foothills, but of a new and different people; the women in their long cotton skirts, heavy earrings and gold stud in one nostril, often beautiful in a subtle, gentle way, the men, lightly built, lean from hard work, but laughing and friendly. Every inch of fertile ground is intensely farmed in terraces carved from the steep hillside, the houses, with mud walls, often with elaborately carved window frames and either thatched or slated roofs, nestle into the country with the same feeling of belonging that I’ve seen in English Lakeland farmhouses or the old Swiss mountain chalets.
But for Maurice Herzog and his team of eight the excitement was especially intense. It was 1950. Only one of them had ever been to the Himalaya before
. Nobody had ever climbed a peak of over what has become the magic height of 8,000 metres; and only one solitary mountaineering expedition had ever been into Nepal (to Kangchenjunga back in 1930), for that mountain kingdom which straddles the spine of the Himalaya for about 650 kilometres and which contains eight of the fourteen highest peaks of the world had kept its borders closed to almost all foreigners until 1949. The pre-war British expeditions to Everest had all made their approach through Tibet. Now, in the post-war period, the position was reversed. With the Chinese taking over in Tibet, that country was closed to outsiders, while Nepal was beginning to open up.
The French had played a minor part in the expeditions that had attempted the highest peaks of the world before the Second World War. But the 1950 Annapurna expedition was to be the first of a series organised centrally by the French Alpine Club which were to have a remarkably high level of success. A committee nominated both the leader and all the members of the team. Their selection was the more difficult because so few French climbers had been to the Himalaya and of course, with the gap of the war, the few that had were probably over their prime. The younger French climbers had, however, been undergoing a renaissance of hard Alpine climbing. Before the war, pioneering the steep and difficult face routes of the Alps had been a preserve of the Germans, Austrians and Italians, who had claimed the north faces of the Eiger, Grandes Jorasses, Matterhorn and Badile. The French approach, like the British, had been rather conservative, rejecting the techniques needed to scale the steepest walls of ice, techniques that had been developed on the sheer limestone walls of the Dolomites and Austrian Alps.
After the war, however, a new breed of French climbers had emerged, keen to catch up with modern Alpine trends. Lionel Terray and Louis Lachenal had made the second ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger. French climbers were repeating the hardest routes put up before the war and were beginning to pioneer technically hard rock routes in the Mont Blanc region. Terray and Lachenal must have been obvious choices for the team. They were very much the modern post-war climber; both had been keen and talented amateur climbers and had then decided to base their lives around climbing, becoming Chamonix guides, no easy feat for men not born in the Chamonix valley. Gaston Rébuffat came from a similar background, though born and brought up in Marseilles. He had learnt his climbing on the sun-blazed rocks of the Calanques sea cliffs, but had gone on to do many of the most difficult climbs in the Alps. Jean Couzy and Marcel Schatz, on the other hand, were talented young amateurs. Both came from the traditional middle-class backgrounds which were the hall marks of the pre-war and immediate post-war mountaineers, certainly the ones who were invited on Himalayan expeditions in both France and England at this time.
The leader, Maurice Herzog, was also an amateur climber. His appointment caused a good deal of argument, his critics pointing out that Herzog was not at the forefront of hard climbing in the Alps. He had, on the other hand, got a broad Alpine background, was secretary of the elite Groupe de Haute Montagne, was a good organiser and committee man and acceptable to the French climbing establishment. He had climbed with all the members of the team and had the necessary force of personality, combined with tact and sympathy, to co-ordinate the efforts of a group of individualists.
The team was made up by three climbers who had more of a support role: Jacques Oudot, the doctor, Marcel Ichac as climbing camera man, and Francis de Noyelle, a young French diplomat who came along as liaison officer and in effect was their Base Camp manager. Herzog got his first glimpse of the great peaks of the Himalaya on 10 April, from the brow of a hill above the small town of Tansing. He wrote:
‘The sight which awaited us at the top of the hill far exceeded anything we had imagined. At the first glance we could see nothing but filmy mist; but looking more closely we could make out, far away in the distance, a terrific wall of ice rising above the mist to an unbelievable height, and blocking the horizon to the north for hundreds and hundreds of miles. This shining wall looked colossal, without fault or defect.’
This was Dhaulagiri. They had permission for both Dhaulagiri, 8,167 metres and Annapurna, 8,091 metres, but first they had to find the way to the foot of their mountains. The maps of the Nepal Himalaya were particularly inaccurate, for the Survey of India had not been allowed into Nepal and consequently most of the mapping had been done from a distance. They reached the village of Tukucha on 22 April and immediately split up into reconnaissance parties to determine which mountain to attempt and the route that would give the greatest chance of success.
Initially they were attracted to Dhaulagiri. Higher of the two and by far the most obvious, it rises in a huge isolated hump above the Kali Gandaki, steep on every side. They made three reconnaissances but were discouraged by what they found. They had judged the appearance of the difficulties by their own Alpine standards, but once they attempted the long steep ridges they quickly discovered how much greater was the scale of everything, combined with the insidious effects of the greater altitude. They then turned to Annapurna, whose upper slopes they could see were less steep, but first they had to find a way to the foot of the mountain. The map was particularly misleading, putting both the Tilicho Pass and the range of mountain peaks that sweep to the north of Annapurna in the wrong place. As a result it took two further exploratory trips to find a way to its base.
Time was now slipping past all too quickly. In a spring or pre-monsoon attempt the time available for climbing in Nepal is bounded by the end of winter, the thawing of winter snows towards the end of March and the arrival of the monsoon towards the end of May or early June, and it was now 14 May. They had spent very nearly a month on reconnaissances.
At Tukucha Herzog held a meeting. He asked everyone their opinion, let them all have their say, before summing up the consensus that Dhaulagiri was impossible, at any rate as far as they were concerned, but that Annapurna offered a chance of success. It was an agonising choice. Dhaulagiri was a magnificent challenge; they could at least see the way on to it, hard though it obviously was. They had still only had glimpses of the elusive Annapurna, by penetrating the precipitous Miristi Khola, which seemed to give the only feasible approach to the North Face, but they had only had a limited view of this and of the North-West Ridge, though these seemed less steep than those on Dhaulagiri. It was Herzog’s ultimate responsibility. In Terray’s words, ‘Maurice Herzog hesitated before the choice. Should he abandon a prize, however doubtful, in favour of a mystery so insubstantial? Could he expose men who had sworn to obey him to mortal danger?’ In some ways I envy the level of authority that Herzog had vested in him. On my own Annapurna South Face Expedition in 1970 the members of the team had signed an agreement which included a promise to obey their leader, but I always had a feeling that this was something that would be ignored in the stress of the moment if ever my own commands were far out of line with the consensus of the expedition. In fact the authority of a leader of an expedition does not depend on a scrap of paper, or even on a formal oath, but rather on the personality of the individual concerned. Climbers tend to be individualists, accustomed to taking their own decisions, and as a result they do not respond to authoritarian leadership. A group of two or four people climbing together in the Alps, or for that matter the Himalaya, does not need a formal leader, though interestingly enough someone nearly always emerges as a natural undeclared leader in any particular situation. With a larger group, however, particularly one where the members are scattered between different camps, some kind of positive co-ordination which is accepted by the other members of the party is necessary.
It is interesting to surmise how much stronger Herzog’s authority was in 1950 than that of the expedition leader of the eighties and nineties. The mood of the early fifties, even among mountaineers, was more amenable to the concept of authority than it is today. Even so, the morale of the team depended on very much the same ingredients as that of a modern expedition, and in this respect Herzog’s approach to leadership was similar to that of John Hunt on Everest in
1953 or my own today. He believed in keeping in close touch with the feelings of his team, took an active part in the climbing and yet, when it came to decision making, took them himself rather than put the question to the vote.
The first problem was to reach the base of Annapurna. On 15 May, Terray, Lachenal and Schatz, with three Sherpas, set out up the Miristi Khola. It is an incredible switchback along forest and scrub-covered terraces, around rocky bluffs, along a series of tenuously interconnecting ledges that weave their way between the dizzy snow-clad summits of the Nilgiri peaks and the dark gorge of the Miristi Khola, 1,500 metres below. They could barely hear the thunder of the torrent that hurtled down its bed, and then at last at the end of the switchback, a steep but easy couloir led down to the open sweep of the Annapurna Basin.
Annapurna was before them, but they still had to find a way up the mountain and the uncertainties weren’t over. By far the safest route seemed the North-West Ridge because of being free from avalanche danger, but it was long and gendarmed. Herzog once again wanted to recce every alternative, sending parties both to the ridge and the heavily glaciated North Face. The ridge proved to be more difficult than they had anticipated, while the face proved to be easy, though threatened by huge avalanches that came sweeping down it from a great sickle of ice cliffs above. So they accepted the dangers of the easier route. It was now 23 May; the monsoon would be upon them in another fortnight and most of the expedition baggage and part of the team were still scattered between Tukucha and their newly established Base below the mountain.
They wasted no time and started to push the route out in the manner that had already become customary on most Himalayan climbs. There are two ways of climbing a mountain: alpine style, where the climbers carry everything with them and make a single push towards the summit, bivouacking or camping as they go; or by siege tactics, where a series of camps are established up the mountain and all the gear needed to make a summit bid is slowly ferried upwards, the aim usually being to put two men into a top camp to make the summit bid. This pyramid approach was developed in the face of the great scale and altitude of the Himalaya, once climbers found that they were unable to carry everything they needed on their backs for a single push. The number of camps and the distance between them is determined by how far a man, usually a Sherpa, can ferry a load in a day. The Sherpas therefore filled a vital role in this siege approach to mountaineering. Ferrying loads is both exhausting and monotonous work; much pleasanter to pay someone else to do this, while the climbers concentrate on the exciting business of finding the route. On pre-war Everest expeditions the British climbers very rarely carried a load.
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