by Andrew Greig
23rd May. Another depressingly fine day. Those descending today start to dismantle their tents.
Julie does lengthy interviews with Mal and me, discussing the decision to retreat and conditions on the mountain. Kurt, Julie and Danny are staying up here to do some more filming; I decide to stay, so does Jon, and Bob postpones going down.
This is the last chance for many of the promotional photographs of generously donated food and equipment, so we pose, self-consciously, with chocolate bars, radios and rucksacks in front of the big white mountains. Eventually the last figure sets off down the moraine and six of us are left with the big Mess Tent of ABC and our own thoughts.
I am already toying with the idea of going back up the hill. Kurt and Julie want some more footage of the lower slopes, and Jon and I talk about providing the actors.
24th May. Another fine day. Now I am sure I want to go back up the hill. Jon does not feel like climbing but will stay at ABC. Bob decides to descend. I am nervous of being thought a complete lunatic so I hedge my intentions around with talk of ‘just seeing what conditions are like’.
Weighing up the contents of my sack is a painstaking task, every ounce will count against me but warm gear is paramount. My precious woollen gloves are wearing thin, darned once already, so I add a second pair of overmitts as insurance. At least all the food and gas is in the snow-holes.
I give Bob the brief message for Base Camp that I am ‘going up the hill’ and Kurt, Julie, Danny and I set off towards the Raphu La. The snow is still deep and unconsolidated in most places and I am glad to let the film crew break trail. At the foot of the fixed ropes there is much delay as films are changed and Julie does an interview, but there is no great rush, I feel relaxed. Kurt films me setting off and then I wait as he packs up the camera and moves up to break trail for me.
He doesn’t falter, plodding steadily up the rope making solid steps for me to follow. The large camera and the small clockwork Bell & Howell together must weigh as much as my own pack. Near the top of the main slope, where it steepens, Kurt stops and passes me the clockwork camera. I film him briefly and pass the camera back. I judge conditions to be good enough to continue although we are shrouded in cloud by now, and tell him I will continue to the 2nd snow-hole. Kurt films me as I move away from him up the slope. I privately wish that he were climbing and not filming, he is impressively strong.
Higher on the knife-edge of the Ridge I emerge from the cloud and can see Julie’s tent at the Raphu La. Continuing slowly I reach C2, very tired at about 7.0 pm. At 8.0 pm Jon comes on the radio and we set up a routine for morning and evening calls.
I check the barometer, brew-up and try to get some sleep. I will leave my Gore-tex windsuit here and climb on in the down suit tomorrow.
25th May. Barometer steady. I am still weary this morning, quickly dismissing the idea of trying to make C4 in one push. This leg to C3 is the easiest and shortest section on the hill, but invariably I have felt bad and moved slowly here. Today is no exception. The sky clouds over and snow starts to fall as I wander along the Ridge. I almost turn back but decide to continue to the tents in any event.
I reach the collapsed tents early in the afternoon and spend three hours packing up one and erecting the other. There is still some personal gear here, overboots of Sandy’s and Mal’s Karrimat.
The evening is clear, giving a fantastic view through the tent door to Kangchenjunga. All is well at ABC. Kurt and Julie are filming through a telephoto lens.
26th May. Barometer still OK, up if anything. It is a glorious day, clear and without a breath of wind. An ideal summit day. The initial gully on the 1st Buttress is choked with unstable snow, and ploughing upwards is laborious. Out of the gully and the going is better, I feel a great sense of elation on this day, progressing well on to the rocks of the 2nd Buttress, and look out at the giants on my left and right, Makalu and Cho Oyu. Alone with my God on this Ridge, I would not be anywhere else.
At the top of the rock section is a bale of lightweight fixing rope. If I can carry anything on the Pinnacles it will be this, since it may prove essential for retreat. It is added to my sack, and I reach C4 in fair shape.
As soon as I am into my sleeping bag I start brewing up, tea followed by soup. This evening it seems more difficult than ever to force the necessary liquid down. Freeze-dried Chicken Marengo, could be worse. All the time I turn the options over and over, tomorrow will be decision time. On the radio I leave it open.
I could leave my gear here and travel light with just a rope for retreat and attempt to get as high as possible in one day, ideally to the top of the 1st Pinnacle to get photographs of the ground ahead, which no one alive has seen.
Alternatively I could take all my gear and push on for a bivvi on the Pinnacle with the aim to go through the Pinnacles and on to the summit. Or through the Pinnacles and on down the North Ridge, where Jon will field me. That really would be pushing the boat out, because what I fear most is a sharp turn in the weather. Retreating down the Pinnacle in a storm without fixed ropes would probably be fatal.
Believe firmly that Pete and Joe were not crazy, and that ascent without O2 is possible.
27th May. A bad night’s sleep. In the morning I still keep my options open, telling Jon that I will carry my gear to the foot of the Pinnacles and decide there. He nonchalantly accepts my plans and describes the scene at ABC. Kurt is now snow-blind from filming through a camera lens without dark glasses. Jon will move to ‘field’ me retreating down either the Ridge or the North Col. An accident like the Basque’s would happen very easily while descending exhausted. We arrange a listening watch every two hours.
Despite my efforts it is 9.30 before I leave C4 and move slowly along the Ridge past Mal’s abandoned oxygen set. At the foot of the Pinnacles are the tent, stove and food which I had dumped there on 20th May. Decision time.
Tattered lengths of orange fixed rope extend up the initial slopes of the 1st Pinnacle, but it is obvious that what remains of the fixed ropes run out three years before will not be enough to secure a retreat. It soon becomes painfully apparent that with food and gas for three days, a minimum of technical gear, sleeping bag, tent and a bale of fixing rope, I shall not be capable of climbing the steep ground ahead. There is nothing that I can consider leaving behind if I am to go beyond the 1st Pinnacle, and yet I do not have the strength left to carry it all. Decision made. I shall take just the fixing rope and climb as far as I can by early evening.
Movement is laborious over loose rock and unstable snow to a steepening shallow gully, which leads to a slight notch in the Ridge. I free sections of three-year-old rope and re-fix them in places to assist my descent. At the notch I gamble on finding more fixed rope higher up and abandon the bale I’m carrying, retaining just a water bottle, camera, a couple of slings and my axes.
An almost-empty rucksack is a positive joy, but I need all the freedom of movement on the steepening ground. On the right, rocks slope away into short cliffs, while on the left an icy cornice crest rears up above the precipitous seracs of the Kangshung Face. The snow overlying the slabby rock is soft and breaks away under my feet. The cornice itself is firm nevé so I climb as close to it as I dare, seeking firm footsteps. Much of the fixed rope has been frayed away on the rocks; security lies only in the axes in my hands and the crampons on my feet.
At an old peg a faded red day-sack is hanging, its bottom frayed completely away. I am now at over 8,100 metres, and breathing controls my being, every step demanding more from the thin, thin air.
Crossing a snow-covered rock section I am extended to my uttermost, small patches of windslab break away from under my feet and I arrive gasping and spent at a short overhung corner where three tangled skeins of yellow, orange and blue rope are hanging.
I clip in and look at my watch, it is 5.30. To regain the snow-hole at C4 tonight I must turn back, I shall not make the top of the Pinnacle. I start unravelling the yellow, orange and blue knitting to protect the descent and find, hanging from
a peg, a clockwork movie camera just like Kurt’s. It is Joe’s. It is strangely warming to find this new link with the man who inspired my early Himalayan ventures and whose footsteps I have followed to this point.
Eventually I have enough rope to cover the steepest ground below, and take some photos up and down the crest of the Ridge. This is probably about 8,150 metres, the same high point reached by Dick Renshaw on the first attempt on the Pinnacle three years earlier. I turn back, feeding out the yellow rope and securing it at intervals down the Ridge. The demands of the moment are completely absorbing; the time for anguish is later.
At the foot of the Pinnacle I re-pack my sack and stumble off down the easy section of the Ridge. It is getting dark and I make the 8.0 pm radio call a few yards short of C4. Crawling into the familiar confines of the snow-hole brings a tremendous sense of security and relief. Off with crampons, overboots, boots and into the pit. Start brewing. The yaks will arrive at ABC tomorrow evening. I do not believe that I can do anything further, I will go down.
I do not pray but think incoherently in the direction of God and pass into an uneasy torpor.
28th May. I woke in the early hours and put on another brew. In the morning I am even slower than usual, fumbling with overboots and crampons before stumbling out into another cloudless day. Mentally more than physically I have admitted the end and turn downward without hesitation.
Allen Fyffe has arrived at ABC to complete the packing up of the camp and he listens at pre-arranged intervals for my calls. Adding some personal gear and a tent to my sack at C3 leaves me very heavily burdened and I plead with Allen to meet me at the Raphu La.
Descending wearily and warily over the familiar ground I finally reach the glacier and begin to follow the marker wands. At the bottom of the steeper section I can see a figure dancing in the haze above the surface of the snow. It moves forward and meets me.
At Base Camp, perfect day followed perfect day as we waited for the yaks and for news from Rick. We went through a phase of hating the mountain for its mocking indifference, averting our eyes from it like rejected lovers. But while we each struggled to make peace inside ourselves with the outcome, there was time now for relaxation and conversation, for bridge, ma-jong, chess, whisky and laughter. It had not been the most intimate of expeditions, due largely to its size and logistics (only Andy and Urs ever climbed roped together, for everyone else it had been endless slogging up and down the Ridge, in effect alone), yet even in our disappointment and with the strain off now, we were coming out of it genuinely friendly.
Time now to wash, to lie in the sun and feel the grime and fatigue slip away. Liz cuts our hair, we trim or shave off our beards and start to look like regular humans again. Cuts begin to heal, the panda eyes fade and flesh returns to the bone. Whispers become voices. When weather permits, we put on jeans and shirts for the first time in two months and with them feel our street selves again, at once reassuring and restricting. We count off the days till we get home, knowing full well that once there we’ll wish we were here again. We day-dream of reunions with family and friends, and at night talk over plans for the next expedition and the one after that. Almost everyone wants to come back to the North-East Ridge, though those with jobs know it will be some time before they can return to the Himalayas.2 We seldom mention Rick, though he’s on our minds. Another non-topic is our individual feelings about the call-off and decision not to extend our time here.
These last few days I lie for hours at a time in the lee of a boulder near Base, looking at the extended, absolute sky as if there were answers there. Sometimes Sandy joins me and we speak our thoughts leisurely as they drift and re-form and disappear like the white clouds overhead. I want more and more silence, the silence of wind over rocks and distant water, the silence of this vast, uncluttered place. I want to go home. I never want to leave here.
‘Would you like to come on the Gangapurna trip, Andy? I think we need a singer … Could be a good jest – death on a stick, actually! No, it’ll be good value … This is the only place I feel at home any more …’
Silence, the sky dark blue above, modulating through to pale turquoise at the end of the valley where we’ll be heading in a couple of days time. By the time we’re back in London we’ll appear nearly normal, and Everest and the stripped, exhausted beings that forced their way up it with the bitter taste of altitude in their mouths will seem like a dream even to us.
‘Maybe there is such a thing as mountain wisdom. A feeling … Pity it doesn’t survive the journey home.’
‘Yeah – hellish, ain’t it!’ Sandy laughs, at peace for a while. ‘That’s why we have to keep coming back. To remember it again.’
Sandy The important point of all this Pilkington Everest Expedition exercise is that we learn something, and put this experience into some useful context later, and that any new creases that have formed round our eyes and along our foreheads are creases of experience rather than creases of time spent learning nothing.
As long as we’ve all moved a pace forward.
May 26. Another clear, calm day. Everest is definitely taking the mickey. We wander down to the Rongbuk nunnery to do some bouldering and lie in the sun. I amble alone in a trance of sky, my shadow moving ahead of me over the stones. The ice-lake has almost gone now, leaving only dry stones. A tiny purple flower astonishes our eyes.
The ruins of the nunnery are scattered among the more ancient ruins of a huge rock-slide. Under rocks there are piles of the clay figures which Urs says contain the ashes of the dead. Personally I doubt it, because there are thousands of them. The chortens have all been decapitated and split open by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. All the buildings, so organically worked into the rock-slide, have been pulled apart. Rain has turned the clay to mud, which drips down over the faded remains of murals. We find three exquisite Buddhas carved on slate, each deliberately broken across the middle. Beneath a trapdoor we find an underground shrine carved into the rock, with fresh tsampa and prayer-scarves laid out in front of an altar. It seems that passing yakkers still make offerings here. In the remains of the largest house a blue Buddha in Paradise smiles tranquilly as his body dribbles down the wall.
It is hard to feel much sorrow or anger amid these ruins, partly because they are in accord with the Buddhist principle of the inevitability of change and decay. Here we are surrounded by retreating and advancing glaciers, avalanches, the moraine rubble that was once the peaks of great mountains, which were themselves on the sea-bed not that long ago. Danny fretfully tries to pin these forces down in his sketches, endlessly dissatisfied.
In this immensity, nothing is tragic. Here we can begin to accept the outcome. The disintegrating blue Buddha smiles. It is, after all, only a stitch in time.
Bouldering at altitude is exhausting. We walk back to BC to finish packing our barrels so we can go home so we can prepare to go somewhere else. We’re still Westerners, restless spirits with the next horizon in our eyes. That night in the Mess Tent someone said, ‘I think we come here to be humbled as much as to succeed.’
The yaks turned up, and Allen Fyffe nobly volunteered to accompany them to ABC to help pack up the gear there. In truth, scarcely anyone else was capable of walking that far in a day. Mal’s decision not to extend may well have been hasty, but it was a brave and responsible one in view of the pressure we all inevitably felt and himself in particular from the media, public awareness and our sponsors. The decision to call a halt is the hardest mountaineering decision, because you’ll never really know what would have happened if you’d pressed on. When people are killed through persisting, the decision was wrong; if you quit the mountain and everyone survives, the question will always remain: could we have done more?
Better to have everyone alive. In the end Mal put our safety above an outside chance of success as he saw it. Though the ‘If’ and ‘Should we?’ and ‘Maybe’ persist, no one was seriously going to argue with the principle of that decision.
Throughout these last days
each of us was trying to digest what the Expedition had meant to us and to adjust to its outcome, in the way that when one reaches the ending of a book or film, one reconsiders everything that went before in the light of it.
In the face of acute disappointment, the necessity is to come to terms with it without self-deception. From the time the Expedition was conceived, only the summit and ‘success’ mattered – as it must. Getting to the top was the point of everything. But when an Expedition is over, the value is gradually redistributed away from the summit. (If we judged life by its outcome, it would seem a pretty negative affair!)
It was like the end of a long relationship, all the sensations of loss, disappointment, frustration, emptiness, self-questioning, finally easing into an appreciation of all the good things along the way. The bitterness of regret remains and there’s no point in denying it, but it is diluted by consideration of the sweetness of the whole. The value of the North-East Ridge for anyone who goes there does not reside exclusively in the Pinnacles or the summit, but is spread along the whole soaring length of it, stretching all the way back through Tibet, China, to the months of planning that went into making the Expedition.
On 29th May, the anniversary of the first ascent of Everest, Rick, Allen and Danny returned to Base with the yaks and the ABC gear (Jon had come down the day before with a précis of Rick’s adventure). For the first time Rick seemed truly worn out. He was congratulated in a restrained way, for there were many mixed feelings about his solo climb; his effort of reaching as high as anyone alive on the Ridge underlined how near we might have been to making a breakthrough on the Pinnacles. The main emotion was one of relief that he’d got off with it.
I sit with my sleeping bag up to my shoulders in front of my tent tonight. We’ll be leaving here the day after tomorrow. It’s midnight, but orange lights still glow in a few of the tents where people lie listening to music, finishing diaries, thinking of home or the events of the least three months. Tonight I don’t feel we’re separate, just individual: apart yet together. There’s laughter from the Mess Tent, where Mal, Liz, Bob and Andy are locked in a bridge session amid strenuous efforts to finish our whisky before we depart. The hills are Danny’s darkest charcoal, only Everest glimmers like a ghost of itself. The night is cool and windless; the moon has not yet risen and the stars are like the remains of a vast, smashed chandelier.