The Next Horizon

by Chris Bonington

  I could see his point, but we were running out of time. I compromised. ‘Let Don and Dougal do one carry and no more. Is that clear, Mick?’ With Mick’s agreement, the argument seemed settled, but then Don came on the air with the effect of a small nuclear weapon. ‘I agree with everything you’ve said. Dougal and I left Camp V a week ago. It isn’t even consolidated and progress towards Camp VI has been so poor 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 time’s short and we want to get the route pushed out. Unless they can establish VI or at least find a way, they should make way for someone else.’

  It was the closest we came to acrimonious argument during the entire expedition. I did my best to smooth it out, then closed down for the evening. As always, there was something to be said for both points of view.

  Tom told me later that they were both so furious that Mick suggested taking all their rope and running it out next morning – just to show Don. They did, and this resulted in the most impressive push of the entire climb, with Tom and Mick reaching the Flat Iron, a spur of rock halfway up the Rock Band and very similar to the famous landmark in the middle of the North Wall of the Eiger. In getting this far, however, the two men burnt themselves out and the following morning they insisted on coming down for a rest. Mike, the great load carrier of the expedition, was also in a bad way, having collapsed just below Camp V but having recovered sufficiently to stagger back.

  This meant that we were losing people from the front faster than I could replace them so I set out from Base Camp, still feeling run down after four days’ rest. Meeting Mick Burke on his way down from Camp I, I reassured him when he said, ‘Don’t think we’ve come down out of spite – we just couldn’t have gone on any longer.’

  Mick had done magnificently, for together with Tom Frost he had spent longer above Base Camp than anyone else. I met Tom at Camp II the same day, when he told me: ‘I think you have destroyed the spirit of this expedition by pushing Don and Dougal in front, out of their turn. It was a real stab in the back for Nick and Martin.’

  Although I tried to explain equably that expediency on a big climb must sometimes overrule the principle of fair shares for all, privately I was appalled at how badly the people out in front seemed to have taken my decision.

  There was trouble at Camp V, a grim spot in the direct path of all the powder-snow avalanches which poured off the Rock Band whenever it snowed. Don, Dougal, Martin and Nick were all there when, during the night, one tent was crushed by the build-up of snow. Martin and Nick could have been suffocated but for a small gap left at the top of the entrance. Nick was badly shaken by this experience; Martin, suddenly becoming sick, was forced to return to Base Camp.

  With our strength running out fast, I pushed straight up to Camp V, Don and Dougal moving up to Camp VI with Nick carrying some rope for them. Unfortunately Dougal dropped the rucksack containing his down clothing, sleeping bag and food and, although Don tried to persuade him to sit out the night there with the stove going, Dougal, realising how cold it would be, returned to Camp V. It was about midday when Dougal returned and Don, who had by this time been without food for more than twenty-four hours, insisted on being fed before pushing on. Then they picked up a rope Nick had dumped about 400 feet below the Camp with the result that in the little time left they could do no more than round the corner of a buttress just above the tent, and look into a tantalising gully that seemed to lead all the way up to the top of the Rock Band.

  Nick and I remained at Camp V.

  At night most of us drugged ourselves with sleeping-pills. I found that two of them merely knocked me out from about 7 p.m. when we usually settled down for the night, there being nothing else to do, till two in the morning. From then on I used to doze intermittently, waiting for the dawn.

  Most of our camps caught the early morning sun, but our Whillans Box at Camp V was tucked into the bergschrund below the Rock Band. A huge curl of ice, frighteningly reminiscent of the sword of Damocles, guarded us from spindrift avalanches, above – if it collapsed at least we should know nothing about it. After every snowfall it was necessary to dig the Box out; the reason why tents were useless was that the build-up of powder snow simply crushed them.

  The interior of the Box was a nightmare rectangle, six-feet four-inches long, four-feet wide and four-feet high, with green, dreary walls, no windows and a zip entrance at one end which had to be kept closed most of the time to keep out the clouds of snow. The walls and ceiling were encrusted with ice which only melted when we were cooking on our gas-stove. Drips from the roof would then soak our sleeping bags – there was no way of drying them out.

  Obviously there was no water at Camp V – just snow, which had to be melted. It takes about ten panfuls of powder snow and about an hour of cooking to produce one pan of lukewarm water. Mike Thompson, who had organised our food, had been determined to produce an interesting high-altitude diet. In the event it was a little too original. He had cut out such mundane ingredients as tea and coffee, replacing them with a variety of fruit drink cubes, all of which became equally detestable after a few weeks. We had a choice of hot cola, orange or grapefruit for the breakfast brew, followed by a tin of mixed grill or perhaps some kippers or herrings in white sauce. If you could face it there was then Pumpernickel – thin black wafers of compressed rye bread – a cheese spread and those little containers of jam such as you get on airliners. The jam was acceptable, but the Pumpernickel had too strong a flavour for altitude and we all longed for plain biscuits. The favourite breakfast food for all of us was instant porridge.

  Cooking breakfast took about three hours – a single brew required more than an hour and you needed at least two brews before starting out: you are meant to drink seven pints a day at altitude to avoid dehydration.

  As the Box is only big enough to take two people lying side by side, you cook breakfast without getting out of your sleeping bag. If you are untidy, as most of us were, the interior of the Box quickly becomes a sordid mess.

  It is 5 a.m., the start of another day. Nick is still flat out, buried in his sleeping bag, only his nose sticking out. I light the stove, fill the pan with snow from immediately outside the door, being careful to take it from the right-hand side as we relieve ourselves during the night on the left (there is no question of going out of the tent – you just open up a corner of the entrance and shoot).

  By the time we have cooked breakfast it is nearly nine o’clock. I delay departure, putting off the grim moment of climbing out of a warm sleeping bag to face another day of discomfort and hard graft. Ten o’clock – if I am to do that carry to Camp VII cannot stall any longer. Harness on, then the struggle to fit crampons on to boots – metal so cold that it sticks to your skin; straps frozen solid like wire hawsers. It takes fifteen minutes to put them on.

  I dug out a 500-foot length of rope, and, with a walky-talky radio and a few Gaz cylinders, my load was around 35 lb. This did not seem too heavy at first, but having carried it a few hundred feet I began to feel like a very weary Atlas carrying the world on my shoulders.

  The route to Camp VI seemed endless. At that altitude it took an hour to cover fifty feet, slowly and laboriously. The last length of rope up on the Flat Iron was the most strenuous of all, taking two hours of lung-bursting effort to reach the top. From there, the crest of the Flat Iron curved in a sickle of snow for about 400 feet – an easy-going plod at ground level, but here, an agonising struggle. The tent was just visible at the top of the ridge – a tiny patch of blue, perched on a minute ledge.

  Resting five minutes between each step, it was 5.30 that evening before I reached the top camp, and eight o’clock in the gathering dark before I returned to Camp V, where a worried Nick reheated some supper for me. That night I gulped down a concoction of powdered soup, tinned meat and sweetcorn, followed by Christmas pudding. Mike had collected our food just after Christmas and Christmas puddings were going cheap; so we had them cold, fried and even stewed!


  Exhausted, the next day Nick and I stayed in the tent. It was a savage day with a bitter gusting wind and frequent snow showers. In spite of even worse weather at Camp VI Don and Dougal set out to force the route to the top of the Rock Band and managed to make 400 feet of progress.

  It was the 22nd May. Nick and I hoped to make the carry to Camp VI with the tent and camp kit which Dougal and Don hoped to pitch above the Rock Band. We decided to use oxygen sets to make the journey a little easier, in spite of the heavier load we should have to carry. Nick set off first, but I caught up with him at the top of the first fixed rope – he was hanging on it like a landed fish on a line.

  ‘Sorry, Chris,’ he said, ‘I just won’t make it. The oxygen doesn’t seem to make any difference, even at full flow. I’ll just have to go down.’

  There it was. Both he and Martin had burnt themselves out in support of the front pairs and in doing this they had sacrificed all hope of going to the top. It also meant we had lost another load carrier, and everything we were trying to carry up to Camp VI that day was of vital importance. I took the food bag from Nick, adding it to the length of rope I was already carrying. With the oxygen set my load weighed 40 lb.

  But the oxygen certainly made a difference. On reaching the last desperate jumar pitch up on to the top of the Flat Iron, I switched to maximum flow. I could feel the extra energy coursing through my body, and managed to climb this stretch in about half an hour, compared with the two hours I had taken without oxygen.

  On reaching the tent Don and Dougal told me they had reached the top of the Rock Band that day. They had run out nearly a thousand feet of rope and had reached a point 200 feet below the top of the gully. It was on steep soft snow, but they had been so keen to get that precious view of the top that they had pressed on unroped.

  Don said: ‘It got us out on top of the Mini Rock Band and it looks a piece of duff to the top. Have you got the tent? We’ll be able to establish Camp VII tomorrow.’

  I had to confess I had brought up a rope in place of the tent, which Nick had taken down with him. Dougal suggested my moving up to Camp VI the next day, when I brought up the tent – I could then go with them to Camp VII and make the bid for the summit. Ian was due to come up to Camp V that evening and would be able to help make a good carry up to VI, so I accepted immediately.

  That night I returned to Camp V full of optimism but was dashed to find it empty. It had been fine on the upper part of the mountain but had not stopped snowing all day on the lower. Ian had been unable to force his way up to Camp V because of the weight of new snow. Camp V was a macabre place to be alone, and the following morning, loaded with the tent, food, cine-camera and my own spare clothing I set off at about ten o’clock. I managed to get a hundred feet above the camp before I realised that I could never carry a load of at least 60 lb all the way to Camp VI. It seemed to weigh tons.

  Returning in complete despair, I felt tired and finished. There seemed no chance now of going to the summit with Don and Dougal and I even wondered whether I had the strength left to make another carry up to Camp VI. Feeling utterly helpless, I sat down and cried, then, ashamed of my weakness, shouted at the ice walls surrounding me, ‘Get a grip on yourself, you bloody idiot.’

  Leaving my personal gear behind, it was midday when I left Camp V with the tent and food, and I reached the top Camp at six. Ian was waiting for me when I returned to Camp V and I don’t think I have ever been so glad to see anyone. I had been dreading another night by myself.

  Once again on the radio we adjusted our plans. It was agreed that the following day, Don and Dougal should establish Camp VII, stay there that night and then make a bid for the summit. Ian and I were to move up to Camp VI and Mick and Tom from Camp IV to V. In this way we should be able to make three successive bids on successive days.

  It seemed in the bag, though with the weather blowing even harder than usual that morning, Don wondered whether to play it safe and stay at Camp VI for the day. Yet he, like the rest of us, was impatient to finish the climb.

  He decided to leave for the top of the Rock Band, while we at Camp V also had our doubts, but set out all the same.

  That morning I had bad diarrhoea, an unpleasant complaint at altitude, and felt very weak – Ian and I only got away from the camp at eleven o’clock. Clouds of spindrift were blasting across the Face, blinding us with their violence, making movement almost impossible. Halfway up I had an irrepressible urge to relieve myself – I was in the middle of a gully swept by powder-snow avalanches. This was a tricky and exceedingly unpleasant operation. I was dangling on the fixed rope, and somehow I had to remove my harness, tie a makeshift one to my chest and bare my backside to the icy blast. And at that point a powder-snow avalanche came pouring down, filling my trousers, infiltrating up my back.

  Eventually Ian and I reached Camp VI at five o’clock that afternoon, to find the tent semi-collapsed by the build-up of powder snow, and barely big enough for the two of us. Five minutes later we heard a shout from above – Don and Dougal had been forced to retreat through the most appalling weather conditions we had encountered. Their clothes were encased in ice and Don was sporting a pair of magnificently drooping moustachios formed of pure ice. They had hoped to pitch their tent on what had seemed to be an easy-angled slope just beyond the top of the fixed rope but, not only was it much steeper than it looked: when they tried to dig a platform they quickly came to hard ice.

  There were now four of us in a two-man tent. I have had more than a hundred bivouacs in the mountains, but that night was the most uncomfortable of all, though Ian was the worst off, spending the night uncomplainingly crouched in a corner.

  Next morning the weather was even worse, leaving no choice but for Ian and me to retreat to Camp IV to keep the fitter pair, Don and Dougal, supplied with food. For the next two days it snowed non-stop and we wondered whether the monsoon had arrived and if, so close to success, we were now to be cheated. Don and Dougal had told us that morning that they hoped to establish Camp VII, but it seemed unlikely in the face of the appalling weather conditions.

  I opened up the radio at five o’clock and Dougal came on.

  ‘Hello, Dougal, this is Chris at IV. Did you manage to get out of the tent today?’

  ‘Aye, we’ve got some good news for you. We reached the top.’

  Don told me the story the following day. They had reached the top of the fixed ropes but unable to find a suitable place for a campsite they plodded on up through the soft snow on the ridge. They had not bothered to put the rope on, and were not using oxygen, finding that in spite of the very strong wind, the climbing was quite easy It was twelve o’clock before they found a suitable site for Camp VII but by then they were just below the final headwall of the ridge and the summit seemed very close. As there was no point in having a top camp so high, they just kept plodding.

  The climbing became more difficult, up steep snow-covered rocks, the last fifty feet vertical with big flat holds. Don said:

  ‘Generally, I had done hardly any leading at all up to this point, but I felt completely confident, and it never occurred to me to use the rope.’

  Once over the top of the ridge the wind immediately dropped and they found that the north side of the mountain was quite warm and pleasant with sun breaking through clouds. While waiting for Dougal to follow, Don looked around for the anchor point for the rope they would need to get back down.

  The summit itself was a real knife-edge and there was not much to see from the top. The northern slope dropped away into the cloud, a great boulder field part-concealed by snow. The only tops visible were the other two summits of Annapurna; everything else, including the entire South Face, was blanketed in cloud.

  Don said: ‘We stayed there for about ten minutes. At this stage we didn’t feel much in the way of elation – it was difficult to believe it was all over and anyway we still had to get back down.’

  We had nearly completed our clearance of the mountain. Mick Burke and Tom Frost,
forced back by the extreme cold, were now on their way down from the top Camp after their attempt to reach the summit as a second ascent of the South Face. We had been desperately worried about this attempt, since we knew that none of us had the strength to go to their help if they got into any kind of trouble. On the other hand, it seemed only fair and right that I should let them go – not only because their plea to go to the top had been so strong, but because they had their own right to taste the ultimate satisfaction of standing on top of that mountain to which they had given so much while making our successful ascent possible. Nevertheless, until the news came that they had turned back and were on their way down, I had spent twenty-four hours of sheer agony. I had a tremendous sense of relief – nothing could possibly go wrong now.

  I had been waiting at Camp III for this news, with Mike Thompson, Ian Clough and Dave Lambert, and so I set off down, back to Base Camp, to start wading through the mass of paperwork which the end of the expedition, and our success, inevitably entailed. The following morning, while sitting typing out the report of the successful end of our venture, I could hear Kelvin giving out the news over the radio. Suddenly there was a pounding of footsteps and Mike Thompson, panting, hurrying, came dashing up to the tent with the cry, ‘Chris – where is he – where is he? Something terrible’s happened!’ His voice was raucous, frightening, and immediately I knew – we all knew – that some ghastly tragedy had occurred. Rushing out of the tent I found Mike leaning over his ice-axe, having just collapsed on to the ground. I remember going down on one knee and holding his shoulders while he sobbed out the story of what had happened.

  They were on the way down – Mike, Dave Lambert and Ian – and had reached the last possible dangerous section of our climb – the line of séracs which we had to pass under. It was an area which we had always known to be dangerous, but we had accepted the risk because we were only in this danger area for a few minutes. Mike described hearing a sudden, tremendous rumble from above. He looked back and saw this great tower of ice crashing down. Ian was just in front of Mike, who turned round and, with a split-second decision, ran back into the line of the avalanche. As he dived under the low wall to the sérac which was immediately above them, the ice avalanche came crashing over them. Mike just remembered lying there in complete darkness as the ice thundered down, convinced that he was going to die, and cursing the bitter futility of it. Then it all stopped and there was complete silence.