And so, the move towards an alpine approach, while psychologically much more daunting, had some sound, practical merit, as pointed out by Messner. He had talked this over with Peter Habeler, a talented Austrian guide with whom he had climbed in the Andes and made a very fast ascent of the Eiger. He learned that he had permission for Hidden Peak during the Lhotse expedition. The timing was tight, for it was unlikely that they would have finished on Lhotse – successfully or otherwise – before mid May, the start of the climbing season in the Karakoram. Nevertheless, he resolved to go and, as soon as he got back to the Tyrol, plunged into preparations for the expedition. This introduced another conflict between his relationship with Uschi and his driving urge to climb. She could see an endless series of expeditions, with the period between devoted to preparations for the next one, to lecture tours, to a constant preoccupation in which their life together would be forever subordinate. Messner could see signs of trouble, but the need to go to Hidden Peak was all consuming; he could not give it up and Uschi would never have asked him to, knowing all too well that this in itself would forever have put a shadow over their relationship.
So a few hectic weeks after getting back to Europe, Messner was back in the Himalaya, this time in Skardu. He and Peter Habeler had a mere twelve porters to carry in the expedition gear, and reached their Base Camp below Hidden Peak near the end of July. They spent a fortnight reconnoitring the approach to their chosen route and then, on 8 August, set out in a dramatic dash for their objective. They bivouacked at the foot of the North-West Face and then, on the following day, climbed the 1,200-metre ice and rock wall. It was as steep and committing as the North Face of the Matterhorn, with all the problems of altitude thrown in. To reduce weight and commit themselves to fast movement, they had decided to leave the rope behind which meant, in effect, that each was climbing solo; a mistake would mean almost certain death. Even so, the psychological reassurance that each could give the other was tremendously important. This is what Messner had lacked in that first solo attempt on Nanga Parbat.
They climbed through the day, steep ice, rocks piled loosely upon each other, with the uncomfortable knowledge in the backs of their minds that they also had to get back down. Calves ached with the constant strain of being on the front points of their crampons; their lungs ached with the fatigue of their exertion as they thrust slowly upwards from a height of 5,900 metres to 7,100. And then, at last, they were above the face in a great snow basin on the upper part of Hidden Peak. The summit ridge, another thousand metres high, stretched invitingly, less steeply above. They camped in their tiny two-man tent and next day set out for the summit. Never had a mountain of this height been climbed with such élan, and complete commitment.
But Messner was to pay a high price for his single-minded devotion to the mountains. In 1977 Uschi left him. On returning to Nanga Parbat later the same year, once again hoping to make the solo ascent, he did not even reach the foot of the mountain – so great was his sense of desolate loneliness.
But there were other challenges. No one had ever reached the summit of Everest without oxygen, though people had got very close. In 1924, Colonel Norton had reached a height of about 8,570 metres on the north side of Everest and then, in 1933, Wyn Harris, Wager and Smythe reached the same height. The difficulty of the ground, as much as the lack of oxygen, finally forced them to retreat. The Chinese on their ascent from the north in 1975, made only partial use of oxygen, carrying a couple of bottles and passing one round whenever they rested, so that everyone could have a whiff. But nobody reached the top without using it at all.
There were many unanswered questions. Was the human frame capable of working at 8,000 metres without the help of an extra oxygen supply? It was certainly very close to, if not above, that critical height when there just is not sufficient oxygen in the atmosphere to sustain life. And what about the threat of brain damage? For Messner, however, the challenge was immensely appealing; it fitted into his philosophy of reducing all technical aids that intrude between the climber and the actual experience to the very minimum. It was also a unique dramatic statement. He described his attempt as being an attempt on Everest by fair means, implying that everyone else who had climbed the mountain had, in some way, been cheating.
But it is not easy to get permission to climb Everest. The mountain was booked for years ahead. An Austrian expedition, led by Messner’s friend Wolfgang Nairz, was going there in the spring of 1978, and he agreed to Messner and Habeler joining the expedition, almost as a self-contained mini-expedition within his own. In return, Messner was able to raise funds which would not have been available otherwise.
They worked well together as a team on the climb, with Messner and Habeler helping to make the route up through the Icefall, the Western Cwm and up on to the Lhotse Face. They abandoned their first summit bid without oxygen, Habeler because of a stomach upset and Messner defeated by a storm. At this point Habeler had momentary second thoughts and tried to join an oxygen-using team for his second bid, but the rest of the party’s arrangements had already been made and there was, anyway, a level of resentment among the others, since part of the deal had been that the oxygenless pair should have first go for the summit. Habeler’s resolution returned and on 8 May he and Messner reached the top of Everest without oxygen.
It was an extraordinary achievement and yet Messner felt a sense of anticlimax; he was already thinking about going back to Nanga Parbat: ‘When we were back in Base Camp again and I didn’t feel any joy in our success, but rather an inner emptiness, I filled this emptiness with the conception of this eight-thousander solo ideal.’
He had already applied again for permission for Nanga Parbat and he learned he had got it while on Everest. He returned to the Tyrol to spend a hectic month writing his account of his Everest climb, giving interviews and arranging the new trip. One advantage of making a solo attempt is that it requires delightfully little organisation. At the end of June the expedition set out. It consisted of Messner and Ursula Grether, a medical student in her final year who had trekked on her own to the Everest Base Camp where she had meet Messner. She was to be companion and doctor on the expedition.
In Rawalpindi they acquired a liaison officer, Major Mohammed Tahir, bought some local food and set out for the mountain. The challenge awaiting Messner was probably greater, and certainly very much more committing, than the one he had faced on Everest. He had made two attempts already and had failed because he had not been ready psychologically for so great a commitment. This time, perhaps, he had managed the right mix. His ascent of Everest must have given him still greater confidence in his own ability to keep going. With Ursula’s companionship as far as Base Camp, he would not know the debilitating loneliness that he had experienced on both his previous attempts, and he had come to terms with the break-up of his marriage, writing: ‘I still suffer from depression every now and then, but it does me good to think about her. I certainly don’t want to forget her.’
The approach to the mountain was delightfully relaxed; it was more like a trekking holiday than an expedition, with the little team of three becoming absorbed into the atmosphere of the society around them. Quickly they formed a close and easy friendship with their liaison officer; each took turns at cooking and the other minor chores as they walked through the foothills. At the foot of the Diamir Glacier, where Messner had now been on three separate occasions, they set up their tiny camp and looked up at the face. The fact that he had climbed down it in 1970 did not lessen the challenge, the quality of the unknown. It is the concept of being totally alone on that huge mountain, the obvious risk of falling into a hidden crevasse or bergschrund, the less obvious one of facing the appalling upward struggle of high-altitude climbing without encouragement, without the sustaining presence of another.
They had been at Base Camp for ten days before Messner felt ready for his attempt. He had the residual acclimatisation and fitness left over from his ascent of Everest as well as the ten-day approach march, going up and dow
n between 2,000 and 4,000 metres. Yet, even as he packed his rucksack that afternoon, there was a nagging doubt at the back of his mind. That night it was worse; thoughts and images galloped through his mind in that hazy, frightening realm that lies between wakefulness and uneasy sleep:
‘In my torment I sit up. Suddenly the vision of a body falling down the mountainside flashes before me. It comes straight at me. I duck out of its way. Fear engulfs my whole body. As it falls, this whirling body almost touches me, and I recognise its face as my own. My stomach turns over. I think I am going to be sick. It no longer makes any difference if I fall or cling on, live or die I must have uttered a cry for Ursula wakes.’
He did not set out the following morning. Instead, he and Ursula climbed a small peak above their camp and through this he gained the self-confidence he needed, together with a feeling of being in harmony with the face that was his objective and the peaks and the sky surrounding him. A few days later he was ready to start. As on Hidden Peak, he was basing his plan on speed; the longer he was on the mountain, the more likely it was for the weather to break, the longer he would be exposed to objective dangers of avalanche or stone fall. He therefore carried with him the bare minimum a lightweight tent, sleeping bag, ice axe, crampons, gas stove and a few days’ food. The lot came to fifteen kilos. This meant that he had to climb the 3,500-metre face in just three or four days, whereas a conventional siege-style expedition might have taken as many weeks, or even longer.
Setting out from Base Camp on 6 August, he walked up the easy dry glacier to the foot of the Mummery Rib; Ursula accompanied him and, that night, they camped beneath a large rock which Messner hoped would guard them from the effects of any avalanche from the face. The following morning he set out in the grey dawn up the glacier guarding the lower part of the face, picking his way through the crevasses and round the steep sérac walls. As on his fateful descent with Günther eight years before, he felt another presence and could actually hear its voice guiding him, telling him to go left or right to find the best route. He was making good progress, heading for the hanging glacier that turned the huge ice wall that barred the centre of the face. To be safe, he had to get above it that day.
The face was still in shadow, the snow crisp and firm under foot and he was above the great ice wall. He had climbed 1600 metres in only six hours. Although still early in the day, he decided to stop where he was and trampled out a small platform immediately below a sérac wall which he hoped would protect it from avalanches. He put up his tent and flopped inside. At altitude the contrasts are almost as great as those on the moon. In the shade it is bitterly cold, but in the sun, particularly inside a tent, it is like being in an oven, so warm that the snow packed into the tent bag, hanging from the roof, steadily melted through the day providing him with precious liquid and thus conserving his fuel. He heated the water and made soup, swallowed some cold corned beef and was promptly sick. The heat, the fast height gain, exhaustion had all played their part, but in being sick he had lost precious fluid, something that he could not afford. He sipped the melt water through the day, had another brew of soup that night, and then snuggled down into his sleeping bag for his first night alone on the Diamir Face. So far everything was under control, progress as planned.
And then came the morning of the huge avalanche. Much later he learned that this had been caused by an earthquake whose epicentre was in the knee-bend of the river Indus in its serpentine course through the mountains. All he knew was that the route he had followed the previous day had been swept away, that if he had started one day later, he would have been at the bottom of the face, in the direct path of the torrent of ice and snow. The size of the catastrophe emphasised his own lonely vulnerability. But it never occurred to him to start trying to find an alternative way back; his whole being was focused on the summit.
He packed his gear, neatly folded the tent and set out once again in the bitter cold of the early morning, heading for the next barrier – a broken wall of rock and ice stretching down from the crest of the ridge. He was going more slowly than on the previous day, each step taking a separate effort of will. There was no question of racing the sun, and once this crept over the shoulder the bitter cold changed to blazing heat and the snow soon turned into a treacherous morass. And still he kept going, getting ever closer to the great trapezoid of rock that marked the summit block. He stopped just beneath it. He was now at a height of around 7,500 metres, another thousand metres gained, another long afternoon to savour his isolation. Intermittently he was again aware of another presence, this time a girl; tantalising, he could almost glimpse her at the extreme edge of vision. They talked. She reassured him that the weather would hold, that he would reach the summit the following day. And through the afternoon the clouds, strange mountains of cumulus, shifted and changed in shape and tone as the sun dropped down over the western horizon. That night in the lee of the long day, Messner felt at peace with himself, but the following morning was very different:
‘This sudden confrontation with such utter loneliness immediately envelops me in a deep depression. In the months after my break-up with Uschi it was often like this when I woke up. The sudden pressure which threatens to dash me to pieces, a well of despair bubbling up from deep sources and taking possession of my whole being. It is so strong I have to cry.’
But action has its own quality of reassurance. He peered out of the tent to see what the reality of the day would bring:
‘The play of the dark clouds below me both worry and fascinate me. Now and then, between the surging clouds, a mountaintop emerges. It is like being witness to the Creation. Like seeing everything from the outside. It doesn’t occur to me to be surprised at the threatening bad weather. It is a strange sensation. “Tike” [All right] I say; just that, a word that slips into my mind unbidden. I could blow soap bubbles and suspend the tent on them. For a tiny moment something warm passes through my dog-tired body.’
Now within striking distance of the top, he could hope to get there and back in the day; indeed, he had to, for he could no longer carry a fifteen-kilo load on his back; could not afford to spend any more nights at that altitude and continue to toil upwards. He left his tent, sleeping bag and food and, just carrying his ice axe and camera, started out for the top.
He was now well above the altitude where snow thaws and then freezes. Even in the early morning cold it was a deep slough in which he wallowed up to his thighs. After three hours’ struggle, he had made hardly any progress – the day and his own strength were racing away. There seemed only one chance, to take the steep rocks leading direct to the summit, even though this meant infinitely greater insecurity. He teetered around narrow ledges, no wider than a window sill; no chance of hard rock climbing at this altitude, in clumsy double boots with crampons.
The act of balancing on crampon points was bad enough. Snow-filled gullies alternated with rocky steps; his rests became more frequent as his limbs grew more and more leaden. There is no physical exhilaration in climbing at altitude; it is willpower alone that can keep you going, make each leg move forward with such painful slowness that the goal never seems to come any closer. He could hear his lungs roar, his heartbeat hammering at a furious rate and still he kept plodding on.
It was four o’clock when, at last, he reached the top. Suddenly, the snow dropped away on every side; the view was the same as he had seen eight years before and yet so different, for that ascent had been in the freshness of his experience. It was his first Himalayan peak and his brother had been with him to share that momentary euphoria. Messner writes:
‘I wander around in a circle, repeatedly looking at the view, as if I can hardly believe I am really here. There is no great outrush of emotion such as I experienced on Everest; I am quite calm, calmer than I have ever been on any eight-thousander. I often thought about that later and wondered why these swelling emotions which on Everest wracked me with sobs and tears, should have been absent on Nanga Parbat. I have come to the conclusion that being alon
e, as I was on top of Nanga, I could not have borne such a strong surge of feeling. I would have been unable to leave. Our bodies know more than we understand with our minds.’
He spent an hour on the summit, and took a series of photographs with his camera mounted on a screw head specially fitted to his ice axe. Using the timer and an ultra-wide-angle lens, he could include himself in the picture. A great mass of cloud covered the Karakoram; ominous tendrils chased across the sky, reaching out towards Nanga Parbat, yet Messner felt very little anxiety about his chances of getting back down by a different route from his ascent in the face of the threatened storm. No doubt his reactions were deadened by fatigue and lack of oxygen but, more important, so at one with the mountain did he feel that the very strength of this feeling gave him a calm confidence.
But it was time to descend. He picked a different route down and was able to make relatively fast, easy progress back to the lonely tent at the foot of the summit pyramid. That night he could sense the gathering storm. There was not yet any wind, but he could almost feel the cloud pressing in on the tent and then, next morning, with a banshee wail came the wind and snow. There was no question of moving now, for he could never have found his way down in the driving snow. But the storm might last a couple of days, a week, or even longer. If he conserved his fuel and food he could last for five days, and so he settled down in his sleeping bag to try to wait it out. But it wasn’t just a question of supplies, for at that altitude the body is slowly deteriorating. Already badly dehydrated, he was also exhausted and knew that he could only get worse, that even rest would do him little good. He was becoming clumsy in his movements, upset the stove a couple of times and burnt his sleeping bag. There was plenty of time in which to ponder his predicament, to try to work out the best line of descent.
Quest for Adventure Page 27