Another rock tower barred our way. Surely it must be the top. I pulled over the crest but there before me was yet another. Don went into the lead, balanced across a short, steep wall, stepped up round the corner and let out a shout. He was on the top.
I followed, and found him sitting on a block-like summit the size of a small table. The sun, a red orb, was dropping into the snow-white mantle of the Patagonian ice cap; a huge glacier like a grey speckled puff adder curled down from the cap to an ice-dotted lake, now fast fading in lengthening shadows. At last we could see all round us, the ephemeral reward for weeks of struggle: the Cuernos’ sharp beaks down to the left, the Fortress and Shield, solid, seemingly impregnable, to the right, and in front, across another glacier, the Paine Grande, an ice-encrusted pyramid.
It was difficult to believe that the winds that had held us at bay for seven weeks could ever have existed, the feel of silent peace was so great, and yet our own memories were not so short. In the moment of elation there was still the worry of how we were to get down, the threat of what could happen to us, should the weather break.
We hammered into the summit block a Cassin Piton, just to show the Italians that we had been there, and then, I’m not sure whose idea it was, shouted in unison, ‘Big Ned is Dead!’
As we shouted I knew a second of superstitious dread. Were we tempting the fates in decreeing the death of the personality we had built these last few weeks? But there was no time for delay; the light was fast fading and we had a long way to get back to our bivouac gear on the shoulder. We left the summit, having spent a mere ten minutes on it, scrambled and abseiled back down towards the shoulder, reaching it in the gathering dusk.
We had been on the go for fifteen hours, without anything to eat or drink. It was now that we realised that when Barrie and John had turned back, they had all the food and the gas stove with them. They had even called up to ask if we wanted anything passed up to us, but at that point, all we could think of was the summit, and we shouted ‘No.’
We were parched with thirst; there was plenty of snow, but without a stove it was useless. We went through our sacs.
‘I’ve got a can of sardines and two Mars Bars,’ I said.
‘Fat lot of good that is. I can’t find my matches. I’m dying for a bloody smoke.’
Don made another search and found them. He was content for the night, thirst and all. It was a perfect, cloudless night, the sky clear and black, glittering with stars. Thirst and hunger seemed unimportant, to be savoured as a prelude to the food and drink we should have at our victory feast.
The snows of the ice cap were cherry pink in the light of the early sun, as we coiled ropes and packed our rucksacks. We were on the way down, full of victory, but part of me called out for caution. There was still 1,000 feet of sheer rock between us and solid ground. Fix the abseil rope, check the anchor, slide down, full of fear and caution. Will it pull free at the bottom? Thank God, it does; fix the next abseil, and so we go down.
Two rope-lengths from the shoulder, we meet the Italians. They spent the night in the groove, crouched on tiny ledges. First, there’s Aste and Aiazzi. They glower at us, but then, on the next ledge, is big friendly Taldo. He grins happily, shakes hands and says in broken English, ‘It is good you getting to the top. This is your route. We should not be here.’ In fact the Italians reached the summit at 5 p.m. that afternoon, the same time as Ian Clough and Derek Walker arrived (twenty-two hours after us) at the top of the North Tower.
We laugh and smile – we can afford to now – and carry on down. It’s the very last rope length. Derek, Ian and Vic are waiting for us at the Notch.
‘We’ve got some booze for you to celebrate with,’ shouts Derek, waving a bottle.
Don throws down the doubled ropes. They don’t quite reach the bottom. We slide down all the same, stopping on a square-cut block about fifteen feet from the base of the Pillar. Don starts pulling down the doubled rope – all 300 feet of it. It comes down in a tangle, its end jamming in a crack just below us.
The end in sight, raked by thirst and fatigue, it seemed too much trouble to untangle so much rope to descend that last little step. A piece of hemp rope was lying on top of the block – it was the same that had broken when Don pulled on it on the way up. We picked it up, gave it a tug.
‘Should be all right if we go carefully,’ said Don.
He tied it to a piton and started to slide down it – oh, so slow and cautious. He was down, and it was my turn.
I eased my way down the rope, transmitting as much of my weight as possible through my feet on to the wall. I came to the place where our 300-foot rope had jammed in the crack, paused to free it, and in that pause – or perhaps as a result of the tug I gave to the other rope – I put too much strain on the hemp rope. It parted and suddenly I was somersaulting backwards.
A lightning thought: ‘I’ll hit the snow at the bottom.’ I did, but didn’t stop and rolled on down.
‘God, I’ve had it.’ Scrabbling with my hands, rolling over and over, frantic, clawing at the rock. And I came to a halt on the brink of a 500-foot drop. I was trembling violently, panting with pain and horror. The others sat around, giving me time to simmer down; someone handed me a water bottle. I became aware of my limbs, noticed the agonising pain in my ankle and was convinced it was broken. I took my boot off and tried to wiggle my toes.
‘Looks firm enough to me,’ said Don encouragingly. I rested for an hour or so, and then we set off down; for me, there was no more exhilaration, just slow, painful movement and the realisation of how close I had been to death. But even that was engulfed by the reality of a pain-filled present. It took us two hours to get back to the hut.
I was on the point of breakdown from fatigue and shock, yet still felt compelled to write a report, for the Daily Express, of the successful climb and my near-accident. Once I had finished the report and had given it to John Streetley to take down, Don remarked, ‘You’d better do the cooking, Chris. I’m no good at it.’
It could have been a piece of fine psychology – and certainly worked out that way – but I suspect it was Don’s laziness. He really did hate having to cook. Anyway, I started cooking a magnificent spaghetti and Don did his best to cheer me up.
‘Tonight it’ll be agony; once the shock wears off. I had five days on my own on Masherbrum with a sprained ankle. It was bloody awful trying to get out of the tent for a shit. I ended up just sticking my arse out of the door. I reckon you’ll have to stay up here till the swelling goes down.’
‘Perhaps one of the others might feel like staying up here too,’ I said hopefully.
‘I very much doubt it. They’ll all want to get down to Base. What’s the point anyway? We can leave you plenty of food.’
Having had his spaghetti, Don pushed on down to Base Camp, leaving me to doze in the tent. Later on that afternoon, Derek Walker and Ian Clough, just down from the North Tower, came to the hut. I was relieved when they decided to spend the night there, and resolved, come what may, to stagger down with them the next day.
It should have taken less than an hour to reach the camp in the woods; it took me four hours of unmitigated agony. There was no question of getting all the way down to Base Camp, but the others were keen to get back to comparative civilisation – to gallons of white wine, fresh roast mutton and all the other fruits of our victory.
‘I’ve got to get a bit more film up here,’ said Vic. ‘I might as well stay up here with you and we can go down together tomorrow, if you’re fit.’
I suspect he made this excuse to salve my pride. He had a rare sensitivity and kindness in his make-up. I was deeply grateful for his company that night. Next morning the swelling had lessened and I felt sufficiently rested to tackle the long plod back to Base Camp. I tried to ignore the pain and, as a carrot to keep me going, fixed on a vision of Wendy coming to meet me.
At last, on the long grass slope leading down to the valley, I saw her. I had kept a tight hold of myself up to this point, but now,
in her arms, we both let ourselves go. The others had tried to underplay my narrow escape, but she had heard them talk about it amongst themselves. Somehow, this had made it worse. We clung close to each other in the hot grass; Wendy cried in agonised relief, and my tears mingled with hers. And then slowly we walked down, past the skeletons of dead trees, back to Base Camp.
My ankle was badly sprained – perhaps broken – and I obviously needed to get an X-ray. I resigned myself, therefore, to going to Punta Arenas, while the rest of the team began to think of a further objective. The weather seemed to have settled into a good spell, and they therefore decided to make an attempt on the South Tower of Paine.
Meanwhile, we cadged a lift into Cerro Guido, and then got the bus down to Punta Arenas. The town has a feeling of empty neglect; it is a place of greys and browns, of swirling dust and corrugated iron roofs. The general atmosphere reflected my own mood, for I longed to be back in the Paine, at grips with the South Tower, could imagine the others climbing under the hot sun, could almost feel the rough texture of the granite under my hands. The moments of joy and excitement of climbing the Central Tower were past and finished. The present was a swollen ankle, a sparse hotel bedroom and a drab hospital. I was X-rayed one evening and they discovered a hairline fracture on my ankle bone. I was put in plaster for a week, and had to eke out the time around Punta Arenas. Wendy and I spent much of the time in bed, playing interminable games of Scrabble, which Wendy invariably won. I have always been an appalling loser and ended up in a fit of temper, hurling the Scrabble set out of the first-floor window. Fortunately, the board didn’t hit anyone walking in the road below.
My gloom was temporarily lifted when we met Eric Shipton, who was passing through Punta Arenas after one of his many exploratory trips in South Patagonia. I had never met him before, but he had been one of my heroes in the early 1950s when I had started climbing, and his book Upon that Mountain had been my bible. His appearance certainly lived up to my early dreams. He was in his late fifties, with a mane of silvery hair, balding in front to reveal a high forehead, and sweeping back behind quite large but neat ears. But his commanding feature was his eyes – a brilliant blue, that forever seemed searching some distant horizon from underneath a pair of bushy grey eyebrows. There was an asceticism in his mouth, which was pursed, almost prim, and yet somehow this was softened by a manner that was distant, yet had a gentle warmth about it. He was a person that I felt one would never be able to claim to know well, yet at the same time could be a delightful companion in any venture. He gave the impression of a man at peace with himself – who had discovered the lifestyle that he wanted to adopt, and who would just go on quietly following it. With three companions, he had been investigating Mount Burney, to discover whether it was an active volcano. Characteristically, the weather had been continuously bad, and in the month they had spent in the vicinity of the mountain, they never actually saw its top, or enough even to work out a reasonable route to the summit. Shipton is not a man to remain idle, and they therefore circumnavigated the mountain, carrying all their gear on their backs and remaining on the move for seventeen days, in appalling weather.
Their daily ration was porridge for breakfast, a bit of chocolate and cheese for lunch, and a concentrated meat bar for supper. They had forgotten to take any salt, and I shall never forget Shipton’s look of quiet satisfaction when he remarked: ‘You know, we hardly noticed its absence at all. I think we might well leave it behind on our next trip.’ The remainder of his team did not seem quite so enthusiastic at the prospect of saltless porridge.
I couldn’t help comparing our two ventures. We had spent two months in one area, laying siege to a supremely difficult mountain. Without this persistence, we should never have attained the summit, for we had to lie in wait near at hand to snatch the odd fine day. Shipton, on the other hand, had covered a couple of hundred miles of exciting, unknown country, in the same period. He hadn’t reached the top of any mountain, had barely tackled anything harder than scrambling, but through weeks of grinding effort and discomfort, he had come into closer contact with the romance of wild country than we did. Our climb also had its mysteries, had certainly stretched us to the limit, had very nearly killed me, but the mystery was one of technical problems. We knew the way to the foot of the mountain – Derek and Barrie had already been there – the sense of discovery was in looking up at a stretch of rock and saying, ‘Yes, I think there is a route up there’, and then tackling it, using our skill and experience to confirm our prior judgement. In a way, it was just an extension of attempting a new route on a crag in Britain. The scale was bigger, the weather much worse, the risks greater, but the principle remained the same.
The mountain traveller is looking for something different – he wants to see what is beyond a mountain range, and having reached the watershed, and looked down the other side, he is driven on to the next horizon. Facets of individual mountains, even the summits, cease to have such importance. He is interested in a mountain range as a whole.
Shipton was on his way down to Tierra del Fuego to explore the Darwin Range. It was obvious that I would not be able to climb again in the next few weeks, so I resigned myself to taking on the role of the tourist and wandering across Southern Chile and the Argentine with Wendy, to meet the rest of the expedition in Buenos Aires on their way back.
I now kick myself for my lack of curiosity, but I was too tied up with climbing, wanted too much to be on the South Tower. Even so, once we had made the decision, had our rucksacks packed and a flight booked to Puerto Montt in Southern Chile, I couldn’t help catching Wendy’s excitement, for this was her voyage of discovery. We were well laden, being equipped for almost any eventuality, with a heavy mountain tent borrowed from John Earle (one of Shipton’s party), Wendy’s guitar, a box of oil paints and easel, a huge rucksack, a suitcase with our respectable clothes, and various string bags full of bits of food, cooking pots and other items.
From Puerto Montt we followed the tourist trail through the Chilean Lakes, beneath the volcano Osorno, to Bariloche. Sometimes we stayed in cheap hotels, sometimes we camped. Soon I was able to forget the Paine, stop envying the others on the South Tower, in the idyllic present of our wanderings.
We spent three weeks on our own travels, wandering through the lake country, catching steamers and local buses. For a couple of days we camped on a volcanic shelf that jutted into the clear, limpid waters of Lake Llanquihue, cooking over a wood fire, drinking cheap local wine and swimming nude, unworried at being overlooked. Then on to Bariloche, and up to San Martin Los Andes, where we stayed with an old friend of Eric Shipton who ran a little guest house. We went riding through scrubby hills, sunbathed below the blazing sun, and just absorbed the country around us. It was all over too soon – time to return to Buenos Aires to meet the others. In those weeks of happy-go-lucky wandering, the Paine had already receded from my mind, and I had ceased fretting about the superb climbing I might be missing.
As it turned out, I had missed little. They had been forced to turn back from the South Tower after making a lightweight push up its South Ridge, hoping that this would give the easiest route. But they found it to be a great whale-back of a knife-edge ridge, with serried gendarmes, each of which would have taken a long time to surmount. At the same time, the Italians had tackled it from the north, which was steeper, and displayed difficulties of a more concentrated nature. In addition, perhaps, they were more forceful, having been beaten in the race for the Central Tower. They reached the summit, and our team then turned their attention to the Cuernos, the other attractive unclimbed peak quite near our Base Camp, but failed on this as well.
I must confess, I could not help feeling relieved that I had missed nothing. It made the retrospective enjoyment of our own little holiday that much greater. I was looking forward to our return to England, to finding a place to live, with a new career – of what, I wasn’t sure – to carve out.
– CHAPTER FOUR –
WOODLAND
; ‘Where shall we live? How about Wales? Or the Lakes? Or perhaps even the Peak District?’ This was a freedom I had never known before and which, I suppose, comparatively few people ever know. Where I lived had always been conditioned by my work, first for the army, and then for Unilever.
But now I was a freelance – in what, at this stage, I wasn’t at all sure. We got back to England at the end of March. Our possessions consisted of a few clothes, plenty of books, Wendy’s guitar and paints and my climbing gear. I had spent most of the money I had made from climbing the North Wall of the Eiger on taking Wendy with me to South America. I now had an advance of £500 for the book I had been commissioned to write by Livia Gollancz of Victor Gollancz. But most of this went on our first essential, a vehicle to get around in. We bought a brand-new Minivan – the first vehicle I had ever owned.
The immediate future was quite clear: I had my book to write and in the autumn I had some lectures. Beyond that I wasn’t at all sure, and, in fact, downright frightened. People had a habit of asking, ‘How long can you keep up this climbing business?’
‘Oh, well into my forties,’ I’d reply.
‘Yes, but what are you going to do then?’ they’d ask.
I’d put on a brave front and reply, ‘Well, I’m going into the communications game – to learn how to write and talk about climbing. If I can do that successfully, I’ll be able to make a real career of it.’ They’d look sceptical, and I’d felt little conviction in what I had explained.
But in the present, there was a book to write – my first venture in the communications game – and I put off starting it time and again, frightened of the sheer scale of the project, of all those words I should have to spew forth. At that stage my total writing experience consisted of four articles in mountaineering club journals; and so I chased after easy alternatives, and there were no shortage of these.
The Next Horizon Page 6