So far, I knew everyone well, but my choice of an eighth climber was influenced by commercial considerations. Our expedition agent, George Greenfield, with whom I had just started to work, suggested that perhaps we could have an American climber in the team. It would be such a help in selling American book rights. Today I don’t think I would agree to let such a consideration affect team selection, but back in 1970 none of us was particularly well known, and fundraising was a very much more serious problem. I did not know any American climbers personally, but both Don Whillans and Dougal Haston knew several. Finally, we settled on Tom Frost, a brilliant rock climber who had taken a leading part in the opening up of the great rock walls of Yosemite and who also had some Himalayan experience. It was only at a later date that I discovered he was a practising Mormon, a very strict religion that forbids drinking, smoking and swearing – vices pursued to a greater or lesser degree by almost everyone else in the team. In the event he proved to be very tolerant and, though he did not succeed in converting any of us, we co-existed happily.
I now had eight outstanding climbers in the team and it seemed essential to have someone whose sole function was to look after Base Camp and ensure that the right supplies started their passage up the mountain. In military parlance I wanted a combination of chief of staff and quartermaster general, who would look after headquarters, leaving me tree to get up into the front line to get the feel of the action. Who better for this role than a military man? I made enquiries through the Gurkhas, because it would obviously be a tremendous advantage to have a Nepali-speaker. As a result, Kelvin Kent, a captain in the Gurkha Signals, became our Base Camp manager. A dynamic hard worker, he took on all the organisational work in Nepal and was to fill a vital role on the expedition.
The final two members of our team were Dave Lambert, our doctor, and Mike Thompson, another ex-military man and one of my closest and oldest friends. A good steady performer, he was invited along as the other support climber, someone who would be happy to help in the vital chore of humping loads between intermediate camps without expecting to go out in front to make the route or have a chance of a summit bid.
We had our share of crises in putting together the expedition. Through inexperience, I had failed to delegate nearly enough, but my worst mistake was to send out all the expedition gear by sea to Bombay with an uncomfortably tight margin for error in a boat that broke down in Cape Town. Fortunately for us, a British Army expedition was attempting the North Face of Annapurna at the same time that we were trying the South. Generously, they agreed to loan us some of their rations and fly out enough gear for us to get started on the South Face while we waited for our own supplies to catch up with us.
We reached Base Camp on 27 March. The route to the South Face of Annapurna is guarded by outlying peaks; the beautiful Machapuchare, or ‘fish’s tail’, Hiunchuli and Modi Peak. At first glance they seem to form a continuous wall, but the Modi Khola, a deep and narrow gorge, winds sinuously between Hiunchuli and Machapuchare to reach the Annapurna Sanctuary, a great glacier basin at the head of which towers the South Face of Annapurna. Don Whillans, having gone ahead to make a reconnaissance, met us in the gorge of the Modi Khola.
‘Did you see the face?’ I asked.
‘Aye.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Steep. But after I’d been looking at it for a few hours, it seemed to lie back a bit. It’s going to be hard, but I think it’ll go all right.’
The following day we emerged from the confines of the gorge and were able to see the South Face for ourselves. It was certainly steep and difficult, but it did look climbable.
For the next two months we were to be involved in the complex, at times repetitive manoeuvres of a siege-style climb. For me, the juggling of logistics – devising a plan and then trying to make it work – was as fascinating as the climb itself, but for most of the team the exciting role was to be out in front, actually selecting, then climbing the route up the next few feet of snow, ice or rock. The very steepness and difficulty of the face made this all the more satisfying; but only one person of the team of eleven could be out in front at any one time. The rest were either humping loads up the fixed ropes or resting at Base Camp. We had six high-altitude porters with us – a very small number by standard custom, but I had felt that the Sherpas were unlikely to be able to cope with such steep ground. As there had not been any climbing expeditions in Nepal since 1965 they would be out of practice, and it was also most unlikely that they had ever been asked to use fixed ropes on anything as steep as the South Face of Annapurna.
Most of the inevitable tensions of a siege-style expedition are caused by the frustration of spending so much time in a support role, and in worrying about one’s prospects of personally getting to the top of the chosen peak. Back in England I had hoped to get over this by alternating the lead climbers so that everyone had a fair turn, but now reality was forcing me to adopt pragmatic courses, to abandon the notions of equality. The problem is that people’s talents are not the same, yet each person involved sees his abilities in a different perspective. Already, I felt that the two strongest climbers in their different ways were Don Whillans and Dougal Haston, even though Don, at the start of the expedition, was anything but fit. Don’s canniness and Dougal’s fitness, drive and climbing ability made a powerful combination but also created an imbalance, for the other pairings just did not have the same drive or experience – at any rate in my eyes. I was never quite as confident when one of the other pairs was out in front.
At times this lack of confidence was barely justified. Martin Boysen and Nick Estcourt forced the steepest and most difficult section of the ice ridge that guarded the middle part of the face. It was an incredible cock’s-comb of ice, to which clung great cornices of crumbling, aerated snow. Martin burrowed his way through a narrow tunnel which went right through the ridge and then climbed a stretch of vertical ice leading up into another cornice of soft snow. It was probably the most demanding lead of the entire climb.
Ian Clough and I took over from them. Perhaps through over-confidence in myself, a desire to be where the most vital part of the action was, I stayed out in front for what was probably much too long. The snow arête which linked the lower part of the face with its upper reaches proved to be a critical barrier. It just never seemed to end – fragile ice, little rock steps, endless traverses on insubstantial snow. I spent a week at Camp 4, the only place where the ridge relented into a small half-moon of angled snow. It would have been no good for an ordinary tent, but Don had designed a special box tent, based on our experience in Patagonia in 1963 where we had found that no normal tent would stand up to the savage winds. The Whillans Box, a framework of alloy tubing with a covering of proofed nylon, had the advantage of being a rigid structure that could be fitted into a slot cut into a snow slope and, unlike a conventional ridge tent, would not collapse under the weight of snow. Camp 4 was a spectacular but uncomfortable eyrie and the climbing each day was both exacting and wearing. Somehow we had to make a route up which we could ferry loads. This meant finding suitable anchor points for the fixed rope and, because our line traversed along the side of the ridge, these anchors had to be every metre or so. The weather did not help. It was bitterly cold and windy, with the cloud rolling in from below and engulfing us before mid-morning; with the cloud came snow and more wind.
In many ways I was in the wrong place, for out in the lead your entire concentration is taken up with the snow and ice in front of your nose. It was difficult to take a long-term view of the climb, to keep track of the flow of supplies and people up the mountain behind us. I had become obsessed with reaching the end of the arête. My partner, Ian Clough, who had stayed behind at Bombay to escort all our late-arriving baggage across India by truck, was barely acclimatised. He was forced to go down and Don, who was now running the lower part of the mountain, sent up Dougal Haston instead of Mick Burke or Tom Frost, whose turn it was to go out in front. Don felt that neither of them was going s
trongly enough.
Dougal certainly brought a fresh drive to our daily struggle, though we were still making little more than thirty metres or so progress each day. But at last, on 3 May, Dougal Haston and I reached the top of the ice ridge. Back in England we had allowed a mere three days for climbing it; after all, it was only forty-five and a bit metres of vertical height and had looked in the photograph like a fragile but elegant flying buttress between the lower and upper parts of the face. It had taken us three weeks. By now I had been out in front for just over a week. It doesn’t sound much, but I was desperately tired, as much, I suspect, a nervous tiredness from worrying about the climb as a whole, as the actual fatigue of the climbing. I had not yet learned how to pace myself while running an expedition.
When Dougal and I had arrived back at Camp 4, Don Whillans, with Mick Burke and Tom Frost were already there. They had dug out another notch for a box tent and were cosily installed. I dropped back down the ropes to Camp 3, hoping to stay there for a few days’ rest rather than go all the way back to Base Camp. This had been Whillans’ idea. Harder, more ruthless than I, he was worried by the amount of time being wasted by climbers moving up and down between camps to rest at Base Camp, and had decreed that none of the climbers should go below Camp 2. It had sounded a good idea at the time, and I was to be the first guinea pig. I spent two days lolling in my sleeping bag, and then set off for Camp 4, got about halfway up but felt the strength ooze out of me. I decided to go down, turned round and slid a few metres down the rope but the thought revolted me. How could I expect others to grind their guts out if I wasn’t prepared to do it myself! A spasm of coughing hit me, and I hung on the rope, amidst tears and coughs, trying to bolster my resolve.
I turned back up the rope and made a few steps. It had taken a matter of seconds to drop back nine metres on the rope. It took me a quarter of an hour to regain those few metres. The contrast was too much. My body was screaming to go down, my logic told me that I could do no good by going up, yet a sense of duty, mixed with pride, was trying to force me on. I felt torn apart by two conflicting impulses, weakened and degraded by my own indecision. There seemed no point in stopping at Camp 3. I felt I had learnt the hard way that if you get over-fatigued, rest at 6,000 metres does very little to help you recover. I therefore dropped all the way down to Base Camp.
It is interesting that on Everest in 1972 and 1975, I never went back below our Advanced Base, once it had been established. This meant staying there for periods of as much as six weeks, at a height of 6,615 metres, without any ill effects. On Annapurna South Face we undoubtedly pushed ourselves much harder than we ever did on the Everest, expeditions. Wracked by serious coughing, I spent very nearly a week at Base Camp, watching through binoculars the drama that was being enacted on the great wall opposite.
Don and Dougal were able to make fast, spectacular progress up the long, comparatively straightforward snow slopes above the ridge. On 6 May they established a camp just below the sheer ice cliffs that formed the next barrier but, on the following morning, Dougal found a gangway that led – dizzily but surprisingly easily – through them. Tom Frost and Mick Burke, impatient to have their turn in front, now went up to the foot of the Rock Band. We had always thought that this feature would prove to be the crux of the entire climb, steep rock and ice at an altitude of around 7,000 metres.
Don and Dougal shot down the ropes for a rest, leaving Nick and Martin at Camp 4 with the unenviable task of supporting Tom and Mick. I was lying, frustrated, on the sun-warmed grass at Base Camp. I had tried to go back up but had only reached Camp 2 at 5,335 metres, where Dave Lambert, our doctor, was staying. I had a stabbing pain in my chest every time I coughed and he diagnosed pleurisy. Clutching a bottle of antibiotics, I returned disconsolately. There was no way that you could lead or even effectively co-ordinate an expedition from down at Base. You had no feel for what it was like high up on the rock and ice of the face, even though you had been there just a few days before. On an expedition of this kind, undoubtedly the best place for the leader is in the camp immediately behind the lead climbers. In this way he maintains a direct contact with the people out in front and, being at the penultimate point in the line of supply, can feel how effectively this is working.
The carry from Camp 4 up the Ice Ridge and then up the endless snow slopes to the foot of the Rock Band was particularly savage. The ropes were too steep and difficult for our Sherpas, and anyway we needed them for the carries between the lower camps. We were now so short of manpower that we were using local Gurkha porters, who had never been on a mountain before, for ferrying loads from Base Camp, across the glacier to our bottom camp. We even ensnared casual visitors with the promise of a good view from the lower part of the face as a reward for ferrying a load up to Camp 1, 2 or even 3. One party of trekkers, two men and a couple of girls whom we named the London Sherpas, stayed for several weeks and became honorary members of the expedition. But it was the climbers doing the carry from Camp 4 to 5 who were becoming exhausted and it was at Camp 4 that I should have been at this stage.
The Whillans Box at Camp 5 was tucked into the bergschrund itself. This gave some protection from the spindrift avalanches that came pouring down the slopes from above but as it also blocked out the rays of the early morning sun, the interior rapidly became an icy coffin. The ice on its walls never melted, the spindrift that had poured down each afternoon and night covered everything that had been left outside. And the climbing was hard, much harder than anything we had encountered so far.
And while those at Base Camp theorised and criticised, out there in front Mick Burke did some of the most difficult climbing that had ever been carried out at such an altitude. Icy runnels led on to steep rock. He had to take off his crampons, balancing on a tiny foothold some thirty metres above Tom Frost, as he struggled ungloved with frozen straps on the almost holdless rock.
But we were running out of time. It was now mid-May; the monsoon was close upon us and we were barely a quarter of the way up the Rock Band. I was impatient to push the route out, fully confident only of Don and Dougal as a lead climbing pair. Everyone else was beginning to tire, largely because they had all been exhausting themselves on the long carry from Camp 4 to 5. I decided to push Don and Dougal into the front as quickly as possible, even though this meant upsetting the rotation of lead pairs. I put the plan across on the radio. And then all hell broke loose. It’s never easy having an argument by radio – Nick, at Camp 4, very rationally pointed out the appalling bottleneck that we now had at the start of the long carry to Camp 5. Mick Burke, at Camp 5, urged the need for Don and Dougal to make a carry from 4 to 5: ‘The thing is, Chris, you don’t realise what it’s like up here. It’s much easier to lead than to carry loads.’
Then Don came on the air.
‘Dougal and I left that place Camp 5 a week ago. Camp 5 isn’t even consolidated and the progress of all towards Camp 6 is so poor that it’s had me and Dougal depressed all the way up the mountain. I don’t know what Mick thinks he’s playing at, but Camp 5 is short and we want to get the route pushed out and unless they get their fingers out, push it out and establish 6 or at least find a site, they should make way for someone else to try. He’s had a week and progress seems very poor.’
The reaction from the two higher camps to this remark was violent. It was just as well, perhaps, that the various contenders in the argument were separated by several thousand metres of space! In fact, both parties were partly right. Ferrying loads up behind the lead climbers was a desperate problem, but if we had slowed down in an effort to build up our supplies I suspect we would have come to a grinding halt.
The following day Mick, who always responded to a challenge, particularly one set by Don, was determined to prove that he could do as much as – if not more than – any other pair on the mountain. Mick and Tom ran out 240 metres of rope up some of the steepest and most difficult climbing we had yet encountered. It was certainly the best bit of climbing that had been done on the expeditio
n to date, but it was also their last fling, for they were now on their way back down to Base Camp for a rest. Martin Boysen helped Don and Dougal get established in Camp 6, halfway up the Rock Band, but he also was forced to retreat, exhausted by his long stint of carrying, his morale undoubtedly dented through being passed over by Don and Dougal.
I was now on my way back up the mountain, but our effort was like a rickety human pyramid: Don and Dougal at Camp 6 at around 7,300 metres, Nick Estcourt at Camp 5, Ian Clough and Dave Lambert at Camp 4, Mike Thompson and the Sherpas at Camp 2 and a growing number of exhausted climbers and Sherpas recuperating at Base Camp. I joined Nick Estcourt at Camp 5 on 15 May, finding it all I could do to struggle up those long slopes leading up to the Rock Band. Every time I coughed I had to hold my ribs to try to control the stabbing pain.
The carry from Camp 5 to 6 was the wildest and most exhausting so far. The ropes went diagonally across the face, over a series of ice fields and rocky walls. It was impossible to build up any kind of rhythm and the ropes stretched away, never seeming to come to an end. I did that carry, and most of the other carries I made in the next week, on my own. In spite of my exhaustion I could not help marvelling at the wild beauty of the scene. In the distance was the shapely pyramid of Annapurna II which I had climbed ten years before; to the south Machapuchare, now almost dwarfed as we looked down on to it, the great spread of the Annapurna Sanctuary, patterned with its crevasses into a crazy mosaic far below, and then round to the east the retaining walls of Hiunchuli, Modi Peak and the Fang. We were now almost level with their tops. But fatigue and altitude were taking their toll and it took me six hours to climb the 365 metres to just below Camp 6. I was so exhausted on getting within shouting distance of the camp that I dumped my load and yelled for Don to come down and pick it up; after all, he had had a rest that day.
Quest for Adventure Page 24