‘Couldn’t you get an American? It would make my job a lot easier in the States,’ asked George Greenfield, our agent, rather wistfully.
Not having any personal knowledge of any American who would be suitable, I had doubts, but we needed the money so I agreed finally. Various names came to mind, but one climber in particular interested me, and this was Tom Frost. Both Don and Dougal knew and spoke well of him.
Tom is a partner in a mountain hardware factory and is one of America’s outstanding rock-climbers. The rock walls of Yosemite in California present some of the smoothest and most compact mountain faces in the world. To climb these, Tom and a few others have developed new equipment and techniques and had since adapted these ideas to tackle even bigger problems throughout the breadth of the American continents. The approach has influenced climbers everywhere. His reply to my letter of invitation was characteristic:
‘I have just returned from Alaska where we succeeded in struggling up the tourist route on Mount McKinley. As a result of this experience I am somewhat confident in being able to ascend to 20,000 feet and on the basis of this credential hereby agree to come to Annapurna with you and will even attempt to climb.’
In fact, Tom had already been to the Himalaya and had climbed Kantega, a peak of 22,340 feet. He had also put up new routes in the Cordillera Blanca and the Alps. On learning that he was a practising Mormon, a faith which forbids strong drink, gambling, smoking, bad language, tea and coffee, I wondered how he would get on with us. Tom turned out to be not only a good Mormon, but also a splendidly tolerant one.
The party, now numbering eight, was certainly the strongest that had ever been assembled in Britain to tackle a Himalayan peak. In addition to the hard climbers it became evident we should need some men who would be prepared to concentrate on the more mundane but essential tasks of keeping open the lower part of the mountain and supervising the flow of supplies. Mike Thompson, one of my oldest friends, was not a brilliant high-standard climber, but had an easy, equable temperament coupled with single-minded individualism. He was ideally suited to the support role I offered.
We also needed a doctor; someone capable of reaching the upper part of a mountain yet content to remain in a support role. It is no use having the doctor out in front. Dave Lambert, a thirty-year-old registrar at a hospital in Newcastle, had heard of the expedition from a friend, and telephoned me. He called to see me the following weekend and I found him bouncy, talkative, and full of enthusiasm. He was even prepared to pay his own way to come on the expedition. Having climbed in the Alps, he was a competent all-rounder without being an ace climber and I invited him on the spot.
Having the right equipment and food flowing up the mountain, in the right order, would be one of the requisites for success and some kind of Base Camp Manager would be essential. Possibly an older, experienced mountaineer would have taken on this job, but he might well have had too many preconceived ideas. A member of the 1953 Everest Expedition, Lt-Col. Charles Wylie, a serving officer in the army, at my request, recommended Kelvin Kent, a Captain in the Gurkha Signals, then stationed in Hong Kong. Not only did he speak fluent Nepali, he was a wireless expert and had a sound practical knowledge of the logistic planning required on the mountain. An assault on a Himalayan peak is comparable with fighting a war – logistics and planning are the key to success. No matter how tough or courageous the men out in front, unless they are supplied with food and equipment they quickly come to a grinding halt.
It has been said that the ideal age for the Himalayan climber is around the mid-thirties and in this case we were slightly below, for the average age of our party was just over thirty. But at twenty-five I had acclimatised quite satisfactorily on my first trip to the Himalaya, and Don Whillans was only twenty-three on Masherbrum where he put up an outstanding performance.
Our team now numbered eleven climbers. We planned to supplement our numbers with six Sherpas – a small figure for an expedition of this size, but with the face so steep, it seemed unlikely that we should be able to use them for more than the lower slopes.
We had succeeded in selling our story to ITN and Thames Television and hoped to get away with taking a single cameraman/director, but understandably they insisted on our taking a complete film team of cameraman, sound recordist, reporter-director from Thames and finally, since this was a joint venture, a representative from ITN to look after their interests.
I was worried about taking such a large self-contained group along, since an expedition imposes a strain on personal relationships at the best of times and a group reporting on us, yet remaining uninvolved, could have increased this danger still further. However, we needed the money and after meeting John Edwards, the Thames Television director, and Alan Hankinson, the ITN representative, I felt reassured. John was a fast-talking extrovert who would obviously fit happily into any group. Alan had a slightly whimsical, yet diffident air, not at all the kind of person you would expect to find in television. He had an unconsummated passion for mountaineering and seemed to be looking forward to our trip for its own sake.
And so the total strength of the party would number twenty-one. On top of this we should have mail-runners, cook-boys and perhaps some local porters – more people than I had ever been responsible for in the past – twelve men and three tanks having been my biggest command in the army.
We considered the ways of sending our gear, having decided that the entire team could fly out to India. We chose the sea route but found the only reliable schedules are those of passenger liners. The only liner going out to India at the right time would be sailing too early for us to have ready the enormous amount of gear we should need. The only other possibility was a cargo ship and I booked the gear on to one sailing from Liverpool on the 23rd January. We were barely ready in time and many items we had had specially designed were still not finished.
Two days before sailing date I had a phone-call from the shipping agents: ‘I’m afraid your boat has gone into dry-dock with engine trouble. It won’t be ready to sail for another three weeks.’
‘Isn’t there another boat going out?’ I asked.
‘I’ll try,’ the shipping agent said, ‘but I very much doubt it.’
I was on tenterhooks for the next twenty-four hours. We had quite enough against us on the mountain without this kind of delay. Then next day there was good news; he had found another boat which was sailing from London on the 23rd, the same date as the original boat.
A frantic dash to the docks to get all the gear loaded in time; more worries that there might be a dock strike or any of the dozen delays that seem to affect cargo ships, but it sailed on time – first stop Bombay.
I felt we had overcome the biggest problem of all. Nothing very much could now go wrong. Don and Dave would meet the ship in Bombay and have an uncomfortable trip across India on the backs of lorries, and we should be ready to tackle our mountain.
– CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE –
ANNAPURNA: THE CLIMB
As it happened our troubles were far from over. The boat carrying our five tons of gear – everything from kippers to bottles of oxygen – broke down in Cape Town, eventually arriving in Bombay a full month late. Fortunately, the RAF had flown out the absolutely vital equipment – radios, medical kit, together with enough clothing, ice-axes, pitons and ropes to enable us to get started. We borrowed food from the British Army Expedition to the north side of Annapurna, and Jimmy Roberts lent us tents, ropes and sleeping bags left over from previous expeditions.
Don and Mike left Pokhara on the 16th March; there was little point in Don waiting in Bombay for the gear to arrive, as planned. There would be a month’s delay, and I wanted him on the mountain. I asked Ian, therefore, if he would undertake the grim job of shepherding the gear through Customs when it arrived, and then across India. I decided to fly out to Bombay in order to help to smooth Ian’s way, before going on with the rest of the team.
The setback with our equipment was then overshadowed by reassuring news from D
on, who met us in a narrow gorge leading to the foot of the South Face.
‘It looks even steeper than the photographs,’ he said, ‘but after I sat and looked at it for a couple of hours it seemed to fall back a bit. It’s going to be hard, but it will go all right.’
And so our Base Camp was established, with such a magnificent view that for days afterwards our people tended to stop what they were doing, and stare and stare at the whole gigantic wall of the South Face. Big avalanches were coming down Annapurna on either side of our chosen route, but it seemed that none was crossing the line we planned to go up; the more we studied our route, the more we liked it.
In many ways the South Face of Annapurna was super Alpine – presenting both the problems and the atmosphere I had known in 1966 during the ascent of the Eiger Direct. On Annapurna our Kleine Scheidegg was Base Camp, situated on a grassy meadow beside the lateral moraine of the South Annapurna Glacier, with the South Face a mere three miles away framed by a ridge of Annapurna South on one side and the moraine on the other. All we needed were the trippers’ telescopes and a better crop of tourists to be in business; but we did have a steady stream of visitors: a stray brigadier, hippies, climbers, earnest German tourists, Peace Corps people, and so on. The trickle that might well become a flood in years to come.
And then the way we tackled the South Face; once again very similar to the methods used on the winter ascent of the Eiger Direct. A continuous line of fixed ropes, climbers dashing back to base for a rest; a Base Camp that was in a different world from the face, with its TV team, a few girl visitors who had stayed; radio communications with the outside world.
Closer up, Annapurna looked by no means simple. Our way lay across the glacier and up a rognon, a sort of island of rocks round which the glacier flowed on either side. Here we established Camp I at 16,000 feet, pushing on towards Camp II at 17,500 feet at the foot of a protective, overhanging rock cliff. To reach this point involved a couple of ‘objective dangers’ – risks which have to be accepted if you climb in the Himalaya. These were both fields of séracs, areas where the slowly-moving glacier passes over obstacles and breaks up into a series of ice ridges and pinnacles. From time to time the pinnacles collapse, usually without warning. The séracs, however, are passed in only a minute or two, and the risk is normally considered acceptable. It was on the higher of these two areas, weeks later, that Ian’s luck ran out.
Don and Dougal reached the site of Camp III at 20,100 feet, halfway up the ice ridge, and with Base Camp growing every day and supplies flowing up the mountain, we could hardly believe the ease with which we had already climbed 6,000 feet of the South Face in nine days. Our complacency was short-lived.
It took a back-breaking, lung-bursting month to climb the next thousand feet, and we all agreed that it was as hard as anything we had ever done, with very little to show for each day’s trail-blazing. This entailed climbing down to Camp IV at the end of each day, it being impossible to bivouac anywhere on the ridge, then a wearying climb up the fixed ropes to begin work again the next day. With this kind of leap-frog climbing, we estimated that we climbed thirty Annapurnas before finally reaching the top!
My overall plan was to have a pair out in front at any one time, forcing the route, with the rest of the team distributed between the camps below, ferrying up the mountain. Once the front pair tired I pulled them back for a rest at Base Camp before going back to the mountain; they would do some ferrying and then go once more to the front. We were already short of manpower in the lower camps, but we were able to recruit six of the best local porters for the carry from Base Camp to Camp I which, though across a glacier, was comparatively easy. These local Nepalese porters made a tremendous contribution to our eventual success.
Although frequent rests at Base Camp helped to keep members of the team climbing at a reasonable level of performance over the course of the expedition, it imposed a heavy strain on our available manpower. A pair resting at Base Camp would take three days to get back up to Camp III, four to Camp IV, and so on. These were unproductive carries, for the climbers would probably have a fair amount of their personal gear with them, and therefore would be unable to carry much food or climbing gear while shifting from one camp to another. The most efficient system is to keep changes of camp down to the minimum, but this pays little heed to the psychological factor of the monotony of carrying day after day over the same stretch on a mountain, or the fact that the climbers out in front quickly burnt themselves out, so great was the physical and mental strain of tackling high-standard climbing at altitude.
Dougal and I finished the last pitch of the ice ridge in a snowstorm. Having run out of rope we cut steps in hard snow to the top of the ridge, propelled by curiosity about what we would find on top. The angle ahead of us did not seem too bad, was certainly easier than it had seemed in the binoculars from far below, but this inviting view did not extend very far. At the limit of vision, looming out of the snowstorm, was an ice cliff, about 200-feet high which seemingly cut off all further progress.
Although it is possible to climb ice cliffs, it is a slow, laborious job, screwing in ice-screws every few feet. In addition, an ice cliff at that altitude had never before been attempted and time before the monsoon was due was running short. The seeming impassability of the ice cliff was an unpleasant discovery, since we knew that above it was the 2,000-foot vertical rock band which we had decided all along would be the most difficult of the obstacles on the South Face.
Mick Burke led this part of the climb, from the start of the Rock Band. The method he used to fix rope in place was to climb on a 500-foot reel of 9-mm perlon, running out long pitches of up to 200 feet, then pulling the rope through till it was tight back to his second man, Tom Frost, fastening it off and letting Tom jumar up the rope behind him. In this way he was running out the fixed rope and climbing at the same time.
In three days they ran out 1,200 feet of rope, as much, in fact, as Boysen and Estcourt could keep ferrying to them. Eventually they took a rest from the face, when Burke dropped down to the dump at the top of the ice ridge to collect a load and Frost spent a day digging out the tent. We were now beginning to feel the strain of trying to keep open our communications. Ian Clough had been forced back for a rest but was now on his way back up the mountain. I was held down at Base Camp with an attack of pleurisy. Everyone on the face was badly run-down. We had already been using our local Gurkha porters, equipped with a variety of spare clothes and footwear, for the carry from Base Camp to Camp I. Some of these local porters were now doing the carry from Camps I to II, a fine achievement considering that they had never before been on a glacier. Various visitors to Base Camp also lent a hand. Two of them, Frank Johnson and Robin Terry, arrived on the 21st April and stayed for the rest of the expedition, ferrying loads as high as Camp IV. In doing this they gave us invaluable help. One of the TV team, Alan Hankinson, also rendered sterling service, carrying loads up to Camp III. This freed our Sherpas for work higher up the mountain and they were now keeping open the route from both Camps II to III, and III to IV; the latter run was considerably steeper than anything they had previously tackled.
On the evening of the 13th May, Tom and Mick were still at Camp V, immediately below the Rock Band at a height of 22,750 feet; Martin, Nick and Mike were in Camp IV, halfway up the ice ridge and Don and Dougal were at Camp III, on their way back up the mountain after a rest at Base Camp. Dave was with four Sherpas also at Camp III, having carried loads to Camp IV, while Ian, also on his way up, was at Camp I. From Base Camp, where I had not completely recovered from my attack of pleurisy, I opened up the wireless link.
‘You’re loud and clear, Chris,’ replied Nick, at IV.
‘How did things go today, Nick?’
‘Not too bad. I was shattered from yesterday and took a rest, but Martin and Mike went up to V. Mike only reached the ice cliff, though, and was so buggered he had to turn back.’
‘Don and Dougal will be moving up tomorrow,’ I said.
‘We’re aware of that.’
‘Well, I want them to move straight through to V, and go into the lead. Mick and Tom can then go down to the col at the end of the ridge to pick up loads while you three carry on up the col. Don and Dougal, being fresh, should be able to push on up the Rock Band that much more quickly! Hello, Camp V – did you hear that?’
It was Mick, at Camp V, who replied. ‘I got that, Chris.’ Then: ‘As a matter of fact, I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Chris. It’s a lot easier going out in front than it is carrying. I don’t see any point at all in Don and Dougal coming up here – it would be much better if they did some carrying first from IV to V. We’ve been above Base Camp for twenty-eight days. If we had to go back to carrying now we’d have to go all the way back down for a rest. We’re just too knackered to carry.’
The argument went on. The crux of it was that I had originally agreed for climbers to take turns in leading out in front and in theory it was now the turn of Martin and Nick. Having been supporting Tom and Mick for a week, they had done the punishing carry from IV to V, a task so strenuous as to be almost impossible to do two days running. You needed a rest day in between, and at altitude you don’t get back your reserves of strength – you are deteriorating the whole time – even when resting.
Nick admitted that he was going badly, although Martin was still climbing very strongly. On the other hand, I felt that Don and Dougal were the strongest pair and climbed superbly as a team.
‘It’s not that we mind Don and Dougal going through,’ Nick said, ‘but I don’t think you have any concept of what it’s like up here. Gear is piling up at IV much faster than we can shift it up the mountain. It’d be much better if we could concentrate for a few days on stockpiling Camp V before pushing Don and Dougal forward.’
The Next Horizon Page 33