They felt like high-altitude navvies, forcing a trench up the trough in the flutings. Darkness overtook them and it was two tired, worried climbers who excavated a snow hole on the side of their chosen “flute”. It had been a frustrating and dangerous section, possibly worse for the second man who could do nothing but sit on his insecure bucket seat excavated from the loose snow and be covered in a cascade of spindrift sent down by his partner, who struggled up to his armpits forging the deep trench.
They were forced to spend the night in their unstable snow hole, hoping that it wouldn’t collapse beneath them: to go any higher that night would have been suicidal.
The next morning was 7 June. They were poised for the push to the summit which was only 150 metres away, but despite starting just after first light they didn’t top the summit cornice until 2.00 pm, relieved to be off those horrible flutings.
They stayed on the top for half an hour, taking photographs. Then gathering clouds to the east told them that it was time to move. They studied their way down, by the North Ridge. As this route had been first climbed by a German party in 1936, Joe and Simon had assumed it would not present them with too many difficulties but, seeing it now, they knew better. It looked horrendous, sweeping away to bristling cornices overhanging the West Face.
They set off down but were soon enveloped in thick cloud.
Simon takes up the story:
Shortly after starting the descent we were engulfed in cloud and snow, and lost contact with the ridge. At this point I became completely disoriented and was trying to lead Joe in totally the wrong direction. Fortunately Joe’s argument to go the other way prevailed and after a lot of nasty traversing through flutings at the top of Siula Grande’s East Face, we saw the ridge again through a break in the cloud. I led up towards it and when I was about thirty feet from the crest an ominous cracking sound filled my ears. This was instantly followed by a falling sensation and the thought that we were both going to die. After what seemed to be a very long time the falling stopped and I was left hanging upside down with an unnerving view of the West Face beneath me. It didn’t take long to realise that I’d stepped through a huge cornice. I climbed back up and informed Joe that I’d found the ridge! The event only served to emphasise the dangerous and unstable nature of our chosen descent route.
The ridge continued to be an assortment of snow mushrooms, steep flutings and occasional crevasses. The stress involved in descending it was immense. The fear was suppressed slightly by the concentration required for this technical down climbing and it left me with an uneasy feeling. The day came to an end with about a third of the ridge behind us. The wildest bivouac on the route, a snow hole in a near vertical fluting, did little to relieve my uneasiness.
Joe was in the front now, leading down the ridge, and he describes what happened:
I had thought that the worst of the ridge had been completed but soon found that this was not the case. It became very tortuous with large powder cornices and steep knife-edged ridges. It was not possible to keep below the line of cornices owing to the fluted and unstable powder slopes on the east side.
We descended roped together fifty metres apart. The climbing was never technically hard but always extremely precarious and very tense. Towards eleven o’clock the worst was past and the ridge now formed large solid broad whalebacked cornices. Simon was out of sight as I contoured round the first large cornice and approached the second one. Beyond the ridge dropped to our West Face descent point.
I was surprised to find an ice cliff on the other side of the cornice. This was about fifteen feet high at the crest of the ridge and nearly forty feet high further down the East Face. It wasn’t possible to abseil, as the snow on top was unstable and the ridge too dangerous to attempt. I therefore began traversing the cliff edge looking for a weakness, an ice ramp or a crevasse, by which I hoped to get down the cliff.
Suddenly a large section of the edge broke away beneath me and I fell twenty feet on to the slope of the East Face, and then somersaulted down. I knew I had broken my leg in the severe impact as my crampons hit hard ice.
Simon knew that Joe had fallen by the tug on the rope and he was worried:
The reality of the predicament did not come home to me until I had done the precarious abseil to where Joe was. I got out some painkillers from my rucksack and gave them to him. His right leg was quite obviously broken. My immediate thoughts were that the situation was quite hopeless and that Joe was as good as dead. But eventually I realised that I would have to make some kind of effort to try and get him off the mountain.
I traversed back towards the ridge and saw that reasonably angled snow slopes led down to the Col Santa Rosa. Fortunately Joe’s accident had occurred on the last technical part of the ridge. After returning to him, I then climbed up to free the abseil ropes which had stuck. While I was doing this Joe managed to traverse towards the ridge on his own.
Getting back up to the abseil point was for me the most frightening part of the epic. It involved climbing the ice cliff at its lowest point. This place, unfortunately, also happened to be on the corniced edge of the ridge. Climbing the ice solo took a very long time with terrifying views of Siula Grande’s West Face viewed through fracture lines in the cornice. When I reached the anchor point I made sure the doubled rope would now run freely and abseiled again. There was no trouble this time and the rope pulled down easily. I then caught up with Joe who was making slow and painful progress.
I’m not exactly sure whose idea it was, but a system for lowering Joe was devised. The two fifty-metre ropes were tied together. I sat in a seat-shaped platform dug out of the snow and started lowering Joe through a Sticht plate, a friction device. After fifty metres the knot which joined the two ropes together reached the plate. Now Joe took his weight off the rope so that I could swap the knot to the other side of the plate and lower him a further fifty metres. I then down-climbed to him and as I was doing this he cut a platform for me to belay from for the next lower. While I was lowering, Joe would lie on his left side to stop his broken right leg from being jarred. Even so it was obviously very painful but I only stopped lowering him when the pain was intense, because of the urgency of getting him off the mountain.
Joe recalls:
Simon was very much in control and all I had to do was cope with the pain and execute any manoeuvres as safely as possible. We both began to feel optimistic about getting to the glacier and the sanctuary of a snow hole that night. We worked well as a team and made steady progress down the 650-metre face. Already Simon had lowered me 200 metres to the col.
By nightfall we reckoned we were only two and a half rope lengths from the glacier. On what should have been the second-last lower, disaster hit when I was lowered accidentally over an ice cliff. The situation suddenly changed from possible to hopeless. When the lowering ropes reached halfway point at the belay plate I was hanging free fifty feet above a huge crevasse!
Simon, who could not now see Joe, was also in a desperate situation:
After about fifty feet the rope came tight, and I knew Joe had gone over a steeper section. I carried on lowering until the knot in the rope came up and gave tugs on the rope to tell Joe to take his weight off the rope.
Joe did not respond. I carried on tugging at the rope and screaming for Joe to do something. As time went by my screaming became more desperate. I was getting very cold. My already frostbitten hands were getting worse, my legs were going numb and the snow seat was gradually collapsing.
Back to Joe:
This, I thought was the end. I was exhausted and very cold, and felt cheated, as if something was determined to finish me off, irrespective of what we tried to do to prevent it. I was giving up the ghost.
In darkness, with avalanches pouring off the cliff edge above, a strong biting wind and a temperature of – 20°C, I felt too numbed to attempt anything. My efforts at prusiking failed as one of my frozen hands dropped a loop and I felt too shattered afterwards to do any more.
I di
stinctly remember thinking of Toni Kurtz who was left hanging on a rope from an overhang on the North Wall of the Eiger. He froze to death. I thought that at last I knew what he must have felt like. Approaching death wasn’t as bad as the books led me to think. I tried and failed – tough shit! I was spinning from my waist harness, too weak to hold myself upright, and I could see in my mind’s eye that horrific old black and white photograph of Kurtz’s corpse on the rope with long icicles hanging from the points of his crampons. My legs were numb and I was grateful because I could feel no pain now. I wondered if Simon would die with me and if anyone would ever find us.
The longer I hung there, the more relaxed I felt about everything, even feeling quite calm about knowing I was going to die fairly soon. In a lazy sort of way it didn’t really bother me, seemed to have nothing to do with Joe Simpson. It was just a fact of life – of death.
Simon must have had a terrible time on the slope above struggling to hold on to me and realising his belay seat was collapsing beneath him and all the time being in the full force of the avalanches.
Simon’s predicament was indeed desperate. He realised that if he didn’t do something soon they would both perish.
I remembered Joe had given me his Swiss Army knife for cutting abseil slings. After getting the knife out of my rucksack I cut Joe’s rope. It seemed a very rational thing to do and I did it very calmly.
On the end of the rope Joe must have known that what was about to occur was the only logical solution:
When I felt myself slip several inches I realised what was about to happen. I wondered whether he would be able to cut himself free in time. I looked down and knew I wouldn’t survive a free fall into the crevasse.
I was looking up the rope when I suddenly felt myself hurtling down. I wasn’t scared, more confused. I hit the snow roof of the crevasse very hard and twisted sideways as I broke through it, then accelerated down again. I couldn’t see but felt all the snow roof cascading past. Further down I hit a snow bridge in the crevasse on my side – very hard – and banged my knee, which made me cry out.
It took me a long time to recover and sit up. I think my left hip had been dislocated because when I moved it popped back in. I could only feel my knee at the time.
Simon had now to act quickly or he could freeze to death on the exposed face:
I immediately set about digging a snow hole as it was necessary to get into my sleeping bag as quickly as possible. Excavating the hole took a very long time. My mind was full of quite bizarre thoughts. At first they were speculative: what had happened to Joe? I knew we were nearly on the glacier and hoped Joe had not fallen on to the avalanche chute leading to this. I wondered if the fall had injured him further and if he could survive the night. Eventually I became convinced that my action was bound to have resulted in Joe’s death. I got into my sleeping bag and felt terrible. My mind was working at an incredible rate, jumping from one subject to another. Occasionally I would smell the water in the surrounding snow and wish for a drink. Eventually I had a little sleep.
Joe, after his fall:
That Sunday night in the crevasse was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life, for I suffer slightly from claustrophobia. The first thing I did was put an ice peg into the side wall of the crevasse and tie myself to it. Then I looked around with my torch. There seemed no way out but up. The roof I came through was about fifty feet above. It was impossible to climb up there but in desperation I tried four times before giving up.
I’m sure I went mad from about 11.00 pm to 3.00 am and I was convinced that Simon thought me dead. I had no reason to presume this, I just felt it in my bones. It was a living nightmare, a turmoil of thoughts ricocheting within my head. I reckoned it could take me days to die in that crevasse. I’ve never felt so isolated and abandoned in my life. I seriously thought of untying and jumping down the hole to my left into the bowels of the ice, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. I just huddled up against the ice wall like a frightened child and cried, shouted, moaned and generally felt very sorry for myself. I then tried to rationalise, thinking that we all have to die some time and that this was just my time, this was my way. I wondered how many others had died in a similar way and what they had done and how they had coped. It felt strange to think I was now just another one of those reports you see in Mountain Accident statistics. I had now an awful realisation of what all those tales of climbers’ deaths in the mountains really meant. I felt sad for all of them.
This went on and on, recurring thoughts, getting nowhere. I had deliberately not got into my pit – my sleeping bag or my bivvy sack. At about 3.00 am a wave of anger and resentment swept over me and I made a resolute effort to control myself. I decided, fuck it, I’ve got this far, why give up now? Maybe in the morning I’ll see a way out. I never once believed that Simon would find me or get me out. It was as if I had banished him from my mind. When I did struggle into my sleeping bag it was with the greatest difficulty. The pain was intense but eventually I did get some disjointed sleep.
I awoke about 6.00 am and at once started screaming, “Simon . . . Simon.” I felt dehydrated and it was difficult to shout. But no sign of Simon, perhaps he too had fallen? He wouldn’t be able to see me where I was and maybe my voice was too weak.
Dawn for Simon wasn’t a bed of roses either:
When I awoke it was still dark and I began to think about getting down to Base Camp. This made me very afraid. I was quite convinced that I would be killed as a form of retribution. When it got light I packed my rucksack and geared up, very slowly and meticulously as though it was a sort of peculiar last ceremony.
After getting out of the snow hole I saw the slope beneath ended in a cliff edge and below that the avalanche chute led down on to the glacier. I traversed rightwards above the cliff towards a couloir that I could see would bring me down on to the glacier. Once in the couloir I had to abseil and as I went down the doubled rope I could see across to the ice cliff that I had lowered Joe over. At the bottom of it was a huge crevasse. Joe had obviously fallen into it. I shouted, “Joe, Joe,” while abseiling, but I was totally convinced that he was dead, and didn’t bother going over to the crevasse.
Walking back across the glacier was tiring due to the deep snow and my general condition. Only when I reached the moraine was I convinced of my own survival. I began thinking then of how to break the news to Richard at Base Camp. I realised that I could fabricate a less controversial story to tell him and later other people, but I dismissed this idea immediately, knowing that I was simply not capable of it.
Coming over the final moraine before Base Camp I met Richard on his way up to look for us. I told him Joe was dead and explained how it came about. In a very subdued mood we went back to base.
Joe in the bowels of the ice decided to get to grips with his situation:
Look around, I told myself, see what it’s like. Is there a way out? Not up, impossible, not left, not right. Hang on. I can see a ledge. Is it a false bottom to the crevasse eighty feet down? There’s light on it. Maybe there is an exit from down there, I rambled on. No. Can’t go down deeper, don’t want to go down. But what if that snow floor is just a thin cover? I’ll never get back up to this ledge again.
I pulled the rope down from the blocks of snow in the roof above and saw the frayed end of nylon fibres. Seeing it sort of made my mind up for me, as if it confirmed the situation that I was in and forced me to face facts. If there was no escape down there then it would make no difference to me now. I was going to die if I stayed here so what difference would it make if I did so eighty feet lower? It was Hobson’s choice but I still cringed from going down. It might mean a quick death if I fell and I wasn’t as prepared for that as I had thought.
In the end I weighted the frayed end of the rope with karabiners and abseiled down. Once on this lower snow bridge or platform, I was delighted to find that the floor was reasonably solid though I didn’t detach myself from the rope.
I could see holes going deep
down on the outer side of the crevasse, so obviously it continued beneath what I was lying on. The floor must have been made by avalanches pouring in from above and they had formed a powder cone rising right up to the roof which began about twenty or thirty feet in front of me. At the top I could see a small circular hole, head width, with a column of gold sunlight angling in on to the back wall of the slot. Seeing this gave me the most incredible lift. All the time I was in the crevasse and especially then at its deepest point I had the most overwhelming sense of isolation and of being completely cut off and abandoned. It was the eeriest feeling, all light blue and shadowed, everything totally lifeless, like being in a crypt, where nothing living had ever been or would ever come again.
That shaft of sun however dispelled all this and gave me a link with the outside world, even though I had great doubts if I would be able to climb the slope, knowing how hard the climbing had been for me up above.
The angle was about 50° at the bottom, gradually steepening to 60° near the roof and in the region of twenty-five feet wide at the base and six feet broad at the top. I crawled over to it, still tied to the abseil rope fixed to the ice peg eighty feet above. It was very soft powder and after much faffing around I sorted out a system by which I could tackle it. I cut out then stamped down a small platform-step with another step just below it to the right, then I hefted my bad leg into this and with axes and armpits buried deeply above, executed a big hop to get my good leg on to the platform, then I lifted my injured leg up to it as well and started all over again.
The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters Page 42