Kingdoms of Experience

by Andrew Greig

  By this time we had also acquired a large supporting cast. First an accountant to advise on and keep track of our finances, and then a lawyer. When a sponsor puts up £80,000 and the media put in additional cash, they naturally want clear contracts to ensure they have the exclusive rights and coverage they’re paying for. Pilks also engaged a PR firm to help create the media coverage and public awareness that would justify their sponsorship.

  For all of us, apart from Allen Fyffe, this world of contracts, promotions, logos, newsletters, interviews and press conferences was new and slightly alarming. At times it felt as though the original point of the Expedition – the desire of a handful of people to take on the private and personal challenge of climbing the North-East Ridge of Everest – was being obscured by the bewildering spindrift of publicity and business. But dreams have to be worked for in an imperfect world and most of us went along with it all.

  But we were taken aback by the scale and professionalism of the first press conference, where Pilkington’s announced the Expedition and their involvement in it. We drifted into the ballroom of a smart London hotel to find reporters and photographers waiting for us from all the national papers, in addition to radio and TV. Team jackets were laid out for us, each with the Pilks’ logo – the precise maximum size permitted on BBC – sewn across the chest. Beside them, the Expedition sweaters. Then labels with our names and roles in the team. A session at the free buffet and bar did little to diminish our sense of unreality.

  Then Dave Bricknell, Terry Dailey, Mal and Julie did their bit for the Media. They explained our objective, that the North-East Ridge was the last unclimbed pure route on Everest, and probably the hardest of the lot. They went into its short and tragic history, explained our intention to use limited oxygen above 8,000 metres if necessary, the frightening statistics of the ‘Death Zone’. Then came the questions, most of them sensible and informed. ‘I suppose you’ll have to give up that,’ said one journalist, pointing at Mal’s cigarette. ‘Not at all,’ Mal replied, ‘in fact I intend to smoke as high as possible!’ He went on to explain the theory, which goes back as far as the doctor on the first 1921 Everest expedition and still has its adherents among climbers, that smoking aids acclimatization to altitude. It restores the lowered CO2 level in the blood that controls involuntary breathing. (As a smoker, I naturally believe this.) ‘Besides,’ says Mal, lighting up another – ‘it does your body good to be accustomed to a certain level of abuse.’ This is the Mal Duff theory of Abuse Training, and he adheres to it rigorously.

  ‘Will Julie Tullis be considered for a summit attempt?’ The media had naturally centred a great deal of coverage on Julie. ‘Anyone who is still on their feet can have a crack at the summit,’ Mal replied. Then came the inevitable questions about the fate of Joe Tasker and Pete Boardman: where did we think they were? Had they fallen down the Kangshung Face, or were they still on the Ridge? What would we do if we found them? Mal’s answers were models of tactful evasion, and I was struck by how much he’d changed, in terms of public persona at least, from the irreverent and casual enthusiast of a few months before. He now seemed the very model of a serious, responsible and business-like leader of a major expedition – at how much personal cost, I wondered. His preoccupation with the Expedition’s overall planning and the demands made on him as our figurehead, had put a distance between him and the rest of us, and perhaps him and himself.

  ‘I can’t say I get any special thrill out of leading this trip,’ he later said to me. ‘It’s more that I really wanted to go to Everest and no one else seemed keen to pick up the ball and run with it.’

  Then one by one we were taken aside for photos and factual details, as if queuing for school medical examinations. Being processed. Name, age, role in Expedition. Then one of the photographers suggested we go onto the roof for team pictures. ‘Be careful up there,’ one of the hotel employees said nervously, ‘there’s ice on the roof.’ We said we thought we could handle that, and trooped up.

  ‘All I want to do is go climbing,’ Jon complained, voicing a general feeling.

  ‘So do I, Jon,’ Mal replied. ‘But it’s not as simple as that, not on this one.’

  No point in denying that elements of publicity and its attendant gravy-train are fun – particularly the free drinks and taxis and hotel rooms. And it’s some recompense for parents and relatives after years of despairing of their off-springs’ dangerous, erratic and unprofitable life-style, to have them enter the public realm.

  I’d gone through the publicity process before in book promotions, and accepted it as a commitment made in return for someone else risking their money. Often it’s silly, sometimes you’re being asked to be false, mostly it’s good fun. But the lads were uneasy. Their private pursuit had become public property. If anyone takes up serious mountaineering in order to become famous, I’ve never met them. What climbers do is deeply personal, between them and the rock and ice. They are reluctant to speak seriously about it because they fear they will be misunderstood or misrepresented – as heroes, perhaps, or people ruled by a death-wish, or seekers after enlightenment, or squaddies without nerves or imagination. At most they want the respect and recognition of their peers, and among peers there is little need to speak of the why and what of climbing.

  ‘Still,’ said Sandy as he opened The Times next morning, ‘you don’t crack an egg because you want to crack an egg, but because you want to eat an omelette, eh?’

  Jon Tinker’s Glencoe Notebook, Jan – Feb ’85.

  Duff climbing on Cam Dearg Buttress. A helmet pokes into view, Garfield-like sleepy eyes check the turf. Crank and clatter, huff and puff. ‘You are definitely psychotic, Jon!’ ‘I blame it on Duff.’ ‘You always do.’

  Half an hour later they’re on their way back down to the Clachaig with a new Grade VI route under their belts. For these few weeks they’ll be guiding six days a week and climbing on their own account on the seventh. ‘Well, it’s better than training,’ says Mal, ordering another lager. Somewhat to their surprise they climb extremely well together in Scotland, swapping leads, silently urging each other on to the undiscovered limits of what’s possible.

  A semi-formalized relationship with Sandy. The bickering keeps the edge which lets us both perform at higher standards. Many’s the quiet giggle we’ve had at outsiders’ views on this ménage à deux.

  Andy G. going up beside Clachaig Gully – the fluency is there now – next step is to find the rhythm out in front.

  Liz too sensitive about her role. The Lizometer – check the age jokes. Does she know her role yet? At least she’ll stop Malcolm pining for the fiords. Don’t worry, kid.

  Pre-route manoeuvring – who’s going to make out on E., make it up and off. All a waste of time. Sandy and Bob the consensus so far. I’ll keep quiet on this one. There must be no pairing off at the beginning though.

  It’ll be relaxing being on the hill again with my mates – Mal, Sandy, Tony, Nicko and Wattie. The rest will be by the end. Monk-cowled figures staring into the thin. That bitter taste of altitude. The sweet smell of sweat and the soured deflation of success.

  Mal trains on beer and chips. Jon trains on fear and loathing. Tony trains on climbing and training. Sandy keeps quiet. Andy G. must learn to be stupid.

  One-pint Wattie – flair and apeshit. Watch this man go! A dark horse by inclination. That youth will go far.

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  ½ oz garlic

  ⅛ oz snuff (Black Death brand)

  2 slivers of red pepper

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  INSERT WHEN FACED WITH

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  Chris Bonington lecturing at the Clachaig. ‘I’ll be sitting on the South Col with loads of Sherpas carrying up t
ons of food and oxygen; I’ll look across at Mal Duff and his merry men and I’ll think “You poor buggers, hee hee!” … I hope they reach the top but even more that I reach the top.’

  Later, after the lecture, we had a quick talk. He thinks we’ve got a chance, and emphasized how bloody high, hard and long it is. I came away almost certain that I will not get above 8, 000 metres and even that will take all I’ve got. It’s quite nice to go without summit pressure or financial worries. Even load-carrying will be a privilege, so many people would sacrifice a lot to go on this sort of adventure.

  The photo-call at the Clachaig. We play around on an ice-fall for the cameras. Kurt and Julie have seen it all before – they sit around – also they’re outside their home ground. A trifle ruffled by the lads trying to pin down what they’d done the day before. ‘We just went up the mountain.’ It transpires they went up Summit Gully – a descent route off Bidean Nam Beith which Mal not unkindly calls ‘a steep walk’. Later in the pub Kurt toasts Julie to a good day out ‘even though Mal says it’s just a steep walk’. I fall about. Legends can play this game better than most.

  Andy said that he hadn’t got the same excitement or sensed the same feeling about this trip. I think most of us feel the same. It’s too big to comprehend, so many people are involved.

  Andy playing guitar much later in the Lounge, Mal in babble-mode, Dave thumping his chair – it’s great having him on our side. Meanwhile I’m reading Hornbeim on thin cold air, Willi Unsoeld and the North Face traverse1 in a back issue of National Geographic …

  I needed to take the occasional weekend away from writing Summit Fever to go climbing in Glencoe and remind myself why I’d actually become involved in this game. There’d be little technical climbing for me on Everest, just the bottomless weariness of carrying loads at altitude, and from the point of view of training I’d have been as well just walking on the Scottish hills with a 40 lb rucksack. But I’d become addicted to the anxiety, adrenalin and purifying concentration of extending myself on a technical Scottish route.

  My literary friends, surprised as I was at the way my life had been hi-jacked by climbing, asked if this was not a form of escape, its excitement being a distraction from more real problems. At the time I shrugged; they hadn’t known what it was like. To climb is to know it’s the real thing. I was going to Everest and I didn’t care much why. What mattered now was a gradual physical and mental focusing – yes, a narrowing if you like – on the adventure ahead. Ask the big questions later when I had time to catch up with myself. Always later, sometime later …

  Dave Bricknell, the Pilkington Company Secretary, who had now definitely obtained leave to come on the Expedition, came up to Glencoe for his initiation into climbing. On his first route he suffered the agonies of hot-aches through wearing inadequate gloves, and quietly passed out on a belay stance halfway up. Mal heard a rattle and looked down to see only Dave’s feet resting on the ledge – the rest of him had slipped away and he was peacefully hanging upside down. Mal descended, put him on his feet again, and finished the route with an extremely embarrassed Dave struggling to make sense of it all through a confusion of axes, ropes, slings and gear.

  The second day he went out with Mal and Liz. Halfway up, Liz heard ‘Shit!’ drift down from Dave who was seconding Mal up above her. ‘What is it, Dave?’ she shouted up, concerned. ‘I think I’m beginning to enjoy this!’ came the reply.

  Dave was fitting in. ‘The Right Stuff – not half bad for a Company Secretary’ was Mal’s verdict. ‘Only trouble is he’s too fit and doesn’t drink enough. We’ll have to handicap him. Going climbing with a hangover and four hours’ sleep is the best rehearsal for altitude.’ Dave, who was beginning to adjust to the style of these shuffling dossers he’d fallen among, promised to try to put this good advice into practise. He made no effort to conceal his excitement at the adventure he’d been caught up in. I could easily empathize with him; the first trip is like no other.

  ‘The North-East Ridge is a typical modern mountaineering route – very bold, very brave, very stupid,’ Jon asserts in the Clachaig Bar. ‘Great!’

  ‘What’s our chance of climbing it?’ Dave asks.

  ‘At the moment I’d give us an 80 per cent chance of doing the Pinnacles, 30–35 per cent for the Summit,’ Mal replies.

  Jon, ‘I’d say we’ve nil chance of doing it, and it’s odds on someone will croak.’

  That’s their natures. Mal’s commitment and belief are absolute, they have to be. Not a ‘go out and see’ but ‘we will do it’. At the same time, a detached part of him is quite objective and realistic – he wouldn’t still be alive otherwise. Whereas Jon says we’ll go on till we drop, expecting us to drop.

  Mal stretches out his legs, relaxed for once. He and Jon have had a good day. ‘I don’t expect to die young,’ he observes into his pint. Jon turns to me.

  ‘How do you think you’ll die, Andy?’ This is not a question demanding an answer, but Jon’s characteristic testing-out. ‘The statistics say 1.3 people should snuff it on this trip, and you’ve got as good a chance of croaking as anybody else. More, I should say.’ And he leans back and laughs, eyes alight with mischief and something between malice and affection.

  I’d thought about it. Everyone had in their own way weighed up the risk and the hardship and the separations before reaffirming their commitment to going to Everest. It had been something of a shock when Pilkington’s came in and I realized this was really going to happen. This expedition was going to be much harder, more demanding and probably more dangerous than Mustagh, making that affair seem like a holiday jaunt. There I’d carried to 5,600 and it had taken more out of me than I’d ever imagined was there in the first place. This time Malcolm’s sports plan was for me to carry to 7,000 metres if possible, on to the crest of the North-East Ridge. I’d seen the photos in The Unclimbed Ridge, particularly the steep exposed traverse above their first snow cave, and carried them in the back of my mind ever since. From Bonington’s account, the weather at times would be desperate, light-years out with my experience. If anything at all went wrong up there, I’d be in serious trouble.

  So you think it all through again, consider your life as it is, with its problems and satisfactions and hopes and regrets, realize how very much you want to live and yet discover deep down a certain fatalism that verges on indifference. You weigh quality against quantity of experience. And in the end, because that is the way you have become, you decide yes it is worth it, yes of course you will go and give it your best shot and accept the outcome.

  Then your life becomes as simple as it’s ever going to be.

  ‘I suppose you do it for the money,’ my dentist says hopefully as he probes inside my mouth. In my choking laughter his pick digs into my tongue and draws blood.

  Walking back to the Clachaig after a day on the hill, Mal tells me he has phases of nightmares when he wakes up soaking with sweat but no memory of why. The only one he can remember is of being trapped in an airliner falling out of the sky from 30,000 feet, knowing it’s going to deck out, that he is falling and going to die and there’s nothing he can do, looking over at Liz to say goodbye …

  ‘Suppose it shows there must be a lot down there. Bit worrying that.’

  I nod and we talk about dreams and the anxieties one tries to suppress. It’s the first time he’s opened up with me for a while, being so preoccupied with the Expedition, and I know it’s something he does very rarely, except maybe with Liz. He’s like most good climbers in that respect: emotions are to be rigorously controlled; fear, anxiety and doubt are there to be overcome. That battle with oneself is at the heart of climbing. It’s appropriate in that situation, but restrictive and unhealthy in everyday life, I suggest. ‘I’m interested more and more in uncontrolling,’ I say.

  ‘With the state of your private life, that’s just as well!’ Mal laughs.

  ‘Yes, well … Better to ride wild horses than try to drag them to the ground.’

  This is definitely not a
climbers’ conversation, though it’s only possible because of the time we’ve spent together in the hills.

  ‘When I was 14 I discovered I could will myself not to feel anything I didn’t want to,’ he says casually.

  ‘Was that when you took up climbing?’

  ‘Soon after … It became a habit. Only recently I’ve come to think it’s maybe not such a good way to live. And living only for climbing is like abseiling off one pin – if that pulls, you’ve got nothing left. By the time you get to climbing in the Himalayas you’ve forgotten why you started in the first place.’

  We trudge down the road in silence through the gathering dark. The air smells of snow and moor, a three-quarter moon is rising yellow over Bidean. Ahead of us are lights where the world of warmth, laughter and climbing talk awaits us. These moments linger in the mind as significant pauses, as milestones in the Expedition we’re already on.

  In Aberdeen Andy Nisbet gets a phone call from an insurance broker. ‘I hear you’re going to Everest soon – have you ever thought of taking out life insurance?’ Andy laughs, declines politely, puts the phone down.

  Jon presses me persistently to tell him how much my recent Scottish Arts Council Bursary is worth. Eventually I say, ‘Look, I’m not telling you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s private.’