Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers

by Mark Horrell

  4. Monotonous dusty valley

  Sunday 14 June, 2009 – Paiyu, Concordia Trek, Pakistan

  An early but efficient start today. I'm nudged awake by Ian at 5.30, and by 6am we not only have all our things packed, but the tent packed away as well. Still, I'm the last of our team to leave Jhola campsite at 6.45 after I've breakfasted and washed. Apart from Bob, Gombu and our liaison officer Major Kiani of the Pakistan Army, whom I overtake about an hour out of camp, it's the last I see of the rest of them until I reach Paiyu campsite in the afternoon.

  About fifty metres out of camp I hear voices behind me, and it seems all 130 of our porters have decided to leave camp together. I step out of the way and let them all pass, but for the rest of the day I find myself leapfrogging them every few minutes. They walk more quickly than me, but only in short bursts before they have to stop and take a rest, and frequently I find myself stepping off the path to let a group of them by only to see them stop just a few metres later.

  In this way my walk continues for the next seven hours, and the scenery, although moderately dramatic, is monotonous. I continue to follow the Braldu River upstream, a wide grey steep-sided valley which snakes its narrow path along a broad flood plain. The path alternates from dusty trail to sandy beach to pebble-strewn beach, occasionally climbing a trail cut into the left-hand valley wall, but usually keeping to the valley floor. I'm in and out of sun all day as the clouds close in above the valley sides and keep the mountains hidden from view. The grand mountain views are still to come, and for the moment I have to be content with this dusty valley.

  I reach Paiyu campsite at 1.30. It's in a sheltered spot among broad-leaved trees, though as dusty as everywhere else. It will be our home for a day as we stay here a couple of nights to acclimatise. Although we've only been walking for two days and climbed just 350m, we're already at an altitude of 3400m and need to let our bodies adjust.

  At dinner this evening sleeping arrangements are discussed. Gordon now has a tent to himself and is feeling abandoned. Some people prefer their own tent, while others prefer to share.

  “You can sleep with Ian if you like,” I suggest.

  “Are you pimping me?” Ian replies.

  “I'll offer you two sheep and a goat,” says Gordon.

  “It's a deal,” I reply.

  “But what's in it for you,” asks Arian, looking in my direction.

  “Well, I now have a tent to myself and a goat,” I reply.

  But before I realise what I've said, everyone is roaring with laughter.

  5. Thoughts on climbing big mountains

  Monday 15 June, 2009 – Paiyu, Concordia Trek, Pakistan

  A rest day at Paiyu camp to help us acclimatise before climbing above 4000 metres tomorrow. At morning tea Anna's husband Philippe, who has set himself the formidable target of climbing Gasherbrum II, Gasherbrum I and Broad Peak this season, produces the research that he's done into the three mountains prior to coming out here. He's put together a little pack containing details of the trek into Gasherbrum base camp, day-by-day summit routes and camps for the three mountains, and photographs of the various routes. It's great reading, though I feel less confident about G1 after reading it. The introductory paragraph says that only 265 people have climbed it to date, but then it goes on to say, “it also has the lowest death rate of any of the 8000m peaks, though this may be because only really experienced mountaineers would consider attempting a mountain as technical as Gasherbrum I.” Hmm … make that really experienced mountaineers and me. The crux of the climb appears to be the Japanese Couloir, a 4 to 8 hour ascent on fixed ropes of slopes at an angle of 45 to 55º. This is steep, and Phil, who has been up it, adds that parts of it are up to 70º. I know I'm going to really struggle on this and may well find it a little beyond my abilities. The positive side is that we'll be tackling it after G2, and I'm sure a successful ascent of G2 followed by some rest will boost my confidence no end.

  Philippe, who has climbed Everest, will be attempting the three summits “unsupported”. I'm not exactly sure what this means. He's only paying for base camp services from Phil, although he has also hired the services of Serap Jangbu Sherpa to assist him. Presumably he will be doing a little more load carrying than the rest of us, and also digging his own tent pitches, something we're intending to leave to our dream team – Phil's description of our team of Sherpas: Tarke, Pasang Gombu, Pasang Lama and Temba – as this can be quite exhausting at very high altitudes. Whether Philippe will also be helping to fix the ropes on some of the more technical sections, however, I'm not sure. When many teams are attempting to climb a mountain at the same time, rope fixing is usually done in cooperation, with teams sharing resources. So-called “independent” climbers rarely take part in the rope fixing, though they often make use of the ropes. In these cases, they are sometimes asked to make some sort of contribution, either financial or by providing ropes and anchors, though there is little other teams can do if they refuse. In Philippe's case, he is helping to fund Serap Jangbu's salary for the expedition, who will almost certainly be helping to fix ropes.

  Paiyu campsite, with the Trango Towers in the distance

  Our conversation leads to a discussion of just how much support you should take on an expedition. Phil believes in making life at base camp as comfortable as possible so that his climbers conserve their energy and are in the best possible shape for the climb. He tells us about an incident which occurred on Everest this year when a climber called Mike Farris purchased ‘base camp only' services from Phil's company Altitude Junkies, and hired no additional Sherpa support. His plan was to do all his own load carrying of tents and food, break all his own camps and cook for himself, because he wanted to be able to say he'd climbed Everest unsupported. To give him credit, he did reach the summit wholly under his own steam, but was reportedly so exhausted that he got into difficulties on the way down. Other teams noticed him walking in an uncoordinated fashion, and he ended up being carried back down the mountain by other teams, was badly frostbitten, and will almost certainly need amputation. If true, then not only does this sound incredibly stupid to me, it can hardly be described as climbing Everest unsupported, as climbing a mountain involves not just getting up, but getting back down again. Although he was probably in some degree able to assist his evacuation by walking (rarely does anyone stop to carry down an unconscious person from those altitudes), he would almost certainly be dead without their help. It can be said that he was taking liberties with the goodwill of other climbing teams and the Sherpas who have worked incredibly hard to save his life. Although he probably wasn't in any state to ask for this assistance, on a mountain as busy as Everest there are always going to be people who feel it their duty to assist a climber in danger of dying.

  I personally favour comfort on expeditions – you're supposed to be on holiday, after all. The 8 porters, 4 kitchen staff and 2 guides Mark and I hired for our Mera and Island Peak expedition last month may seem extravagant, but we completed the climbs with minimum fuss and camping was no hardship to us, so we could simply appreciate the scenery and enjoy ourselves. Gordon tells me about an expedition he once organised to Baruntse, near Makalu in Nepal (a mountain, it happens, that Mark and I walked past during our expedition). To save on costs, he told the Nepalese trekking agency he'd employed to arrange the logistics that they'd do without a kitchen tent and kitchen crew.

  “And then the f---ers brought a cook and kitchen tent for the porters!” Gordon continues. “Every night they were dining in comfort while we were trying to get MSR stoves working in the porch of our tent. Man, I'm never doing that again. And we didn't get much above Camp 1, so the whole expedition was a bit of a farce.”

  I spend most of today reading my book. There seems to be a bit of competition going on for the attentions of Cassidy. Yesterday, while I was ambling along slowly with the likes of Bob and Major Kiani, everyone else was shooting off ahead and reaching camp long before us. I ask Gordon, who's a few years older than most of us, why he was
walking so quickly – there's simply no point in over-exerting at this stage of the expedition, as this is what usually leads to altitude sickness and we have a whole two months ahead of us.

  “Well, I know it's better to go a little slower,” he replies, somewhat candidly, “but I didn't want Cassidy to think I couldn't keep up.” Hmm … methinks this is perhaps a decision driven more by the dick than the brain!

  In the mess tent Gordon, Arian, Ian and Cassidy play cards for forfeits such as making each other bed tea and carrying water for each other on trek. I sit alongside them reading my book and get accused of being a spoilsport, but why would I want to get up before 5.30 tomorrow morning to make tea for someone? When I finally do join in after the forfeits have ended, I have a lucky streak and beat them all easily. I end the afternoon with the wholly erroneous reputation of being a card genius which I'm only going to be able to maintain by not playing again.

  6. Onto the Baltoro Glacier

  Tuesday 16 June, 2009 – Urdukas, Concordia Trek, Pakistan

  Today promises much but delivers little as we continue up the valley in the direction of Concordia. This is supposed to be one of the world's great treks, with giant rock towers and ice peaks rising up all around us, but we've seen little evidence of them so far. Leaving Paiyu camp shortly after 6.30 this morning, I expect to be walking in shade for the first hour before slapping on the sun cream and sun hat and walking in sweltering heat for the rest of the day, but this doesn't happen.

  There is one positive: we climb away from the dust which has plagued us for the last three days when we reach the Baltoro Glacier just a few minutes out of camp. Beginning on the left-hand side of the valley, the path slants up and across to the right as it climbs up the snout of the glacier and onto moraine. I amble along at my own slow pace again, and am slower than everybody except Bob and the Major. With no view beyond the clouds that close in around me, the day passes in tedious monotony as I climb up and down ice ridges on loose moraine, stopping constantly to let porters pass, and put on my jacket when a snow shower begins, only to take it off again when the sun peeps through cloud.

  There is one brief moment of excitement while I'm traversing up a loose scree slope on a narrow path when some fool of a muleteer sends his horses down in the opposite direction before I've reached the top. There is nowhere for me to get out of the way and the first horse is panicking as it approaches me, with a steep drop below it on a path far too narrow for it to turn around, while I hurl expletives up the slope in its direction, screaming at its master not to let any more horses down. I hold my breath and squeeze as tightly against the slope as I can. There's not room on the path for both me and the horse, and it has to run straight over me to get past. It's a big horse, and if it steps on my feet that's probably my expedition over. I hold my breath. The first horse rushes past, bumping against me, but mercifully missing my feet. The second horse does likewise, and I look up expecting to see more, but the rest of the horses have now been held back at the top of the traverse. I breathe a sigh of relief and hurry to the top. I'm furious with the muleteer, but I pass by without looking at him and am in a bad mood for the next few minutes after my fright.

  A few minutes later I pass Ian and Cassidy on the trail, this time without Gordon and Arian, and reach Urdukas campsite at 2.30. Sitting on a grassy bank above the glacier, in terraces sectioned off by scrubby bushes, it's our last haven of greenery for two months. My arrival is timely: all our tents have already been erected by my fellow team members, and tea and biscuits are waiting for me. I spend a pleasant hour rehydrating and looking out across the glacier from our lofty perch.

  Evening meals in the mess tent are becoming an arena for Gordon's wise-cracking. He's an entertaining character, but I'm finding everything has says goes in one ear and out the other. This is quite a talkative group and with the exception of Philippe, Ian and I seem to be much the quietest members, sitting quietly while everyone else talks nonsense around us.

  7. Porters, porters, ice and porters

  Wednesday 17 June, 2009 – Gore II, Concordia Trek, Pakistan

  This morning begins with a porter strike. It's snowing when we get up at our usual time of 5.30 and pack the tents away. Everything is wet and covered with mud. As we finish our breakfast in the mess tent we learn the porters don't intend to leave camp until the snow has stopped.

  “This is ridiculous,” says Anna, who has only come here on a two week trek and doesn't have as much time as the rest of us. “Supposing it snows for four days, what then?”

  Gorgan is more outspoken. “The porters are gay,” he says. “We have gay porters.”

  Phil thinks it's all a ploy by the porters to get a bigger tip, but surely it's more likely to have the opposite effect. When the snow finally stops and we leave camp at 8.15 after huddling in a cold mess tent for an hour and a half, I find I've lost a great deal of sympathy for the porters and become irritated by them. In previous days their start has been staggered, but now all the porters from several expedition teams are leaving camp at the same time, some 500 of them. Now if I move off the trail to let them by, as I've been doing on previous days, I find a line of quite literally a hundred of them behind, and once I've stepped off the path to let them by, none of them will let me back on it again, and I have to wait for several minutes to let them all past. So I stop letting them past, and this starts to annoy them as a line of them builds up behind me. I keep hearing the words, “excuse me, sir” behind me, but keep going because I know that if I stop, I'll have to wait for several minutes. I in turn become resentful of the fact that they are carrying only 25kg and are stopping so frequently that I have to keep letting the same porters past again and again. Why can't they walk more slowly and keep going? Why don't they overtake me, rather than wait for me to step off the path for them? I become very irritable and unable to enjoy the walking.

  In the meantime the snow returns and the views are non-existent. It's a monotonous glacier trudge once again, up and down over rocks. The terrain is not quite as difficult as yesterday, but still there's a lot of boulder-hopping. My day is dominated by porters and crappy weather, and the hours pass in grinding tedium.

  Army of porters and trekkers on the Baltoro Glacier

  I reach Gore II camp, in the middle of the glacier, at 1.30. The sun is threatening to come out, and for the first time in five days we have tantalising glimpses of the mountains around us. We've now walked past the Trango Towers and Masherbrum without so much as a sneaky peek at them. Now ahead of us we can see the glacier branches into two, and the flanks of Gasherbrum IV rise above the junction. We can now see most of it, although the summit remains in cloud. The junction is known as Concordia, and was named by the British mountaineer Martin Conway in 1892 after it reminded him of Konkordiaplatz, a junction on the Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland. The left branch leads north up the Godwin-Austen Glacier to K2, while the right branch heads south along the Upper Baltoro Glacier to Gasherbrum base camp, our destination. We will reach Concordia tomorrow morning, and it's regarded as one of the world's great viewpoints, though I don't expect we'll see anything when we get there.

  In the afternoon Phil, who carries his laptop with him whenever he goes on an expedition and has an internet connection via satellite, comes to my and Ian's tent to say he's just received an email from Michael Odell, one of our British friends, saying that he's now landed in Skardu and is ready to trek out and join us, but that Mark Dickson, who was supposed to be with him, is still in London and has had to stay due to work commitments. We're both very surprised and disappointed for Mark. It's out of character for him to put work before mountaineering, and it was his idea we all come to Gasherbrum this year in the first place. It was to be his fourth attempt at an 8000m peak, and perhaps his best chance yet of climbing one with all the time we've got on the mountain and Sherpa support Phil has put together for us. We understand Mark is still talking to PIA to get another flight and join us once his work commitments have been resolved, but by the time he g
ets here he'll be well behind the rest of us and running out of time if he wants to attempt both G1 and G2.

  In the mess tent later in the afternoon Phil tells us about the last time he and Mark attempted Gasherbrum II in 2007.

  “Some Germans wrecked the mountain for us. We had s—t weather for the trek in, like we're getting this time, and when we got to base camp there was a lot more snow on the mountain than usual, but suddenly the weather was beautiful. Instead of waiting a couple of days for the snow to consolidate and stabilise, the f------- Germans went up there anyway and caused an avalanche. Everyone went home after that. After the avalanche all the area between Camp 2 and Camp 3 was rock face, and it had become a rock climb. Nobody had come prepared for this. We needed anchors and pitons and s—t, and none of us had brought any, so that was the climbing over.”

  “It's actually mixed snow and ice, yeah?” says Arian.

  “No, it's normally just snow,” replies Phil. “It's straightforward. G2 was ruined, but if we had permits for G1 we still could have climbed that. That's why we've decided to do both of them this year.”

  8. Porter strike

  Thursday 18 June, 2009 – Gore II, Concordia Trek, Pakistan