Far, Far The Mountain Peak

by John Masters

  ‘Let’s have a look at the map,’ Peter said.

  Harry Walsh said: ‘It’s pretty late, isn’t it? Besides, we’ve been studying it on the ship, you know.’

  ‘Ah, that’s the Survey of India map,’ Peter said. ‘This is my working map, an enlargement I had made and have been filling in with information from all sources since nineteen-seven. I’ll go and get it.’

  ‘Really, I think---‘ Harry began.

  ‘You must eat here--except probably Lapeyrol and Cadez would be happier in the dak bungalow. They can take the kit over. The chuprassi will show them the way and see that they get a decent meal. Emily?’

  ‘Of course you must eat here,’ she said.

  Harry Walsh did not look happy, for it was past midnight, but such irruptions were not uncommon in India, and everyone was prepared for them. ‘It’s quite all right,’ she said.

  Harry said doubtfully: ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite,’ she said, smiling. Peter had gone to get the map, and Gerry must have gone with him. The two guides had left, with undisguised relief. The young man Lyon was tall and rawboned and as dourly Scottish-looking as his name. Harry Walsh was on his guard. There were lines of experience in his strong face now. At thirty-five he was acknowledged to be the soundest and wisest as well as the most technically expert English climber of the day--and he was Peggy’s husband.

  ‘Quite all right,’ she repeated as she went out to speak to the khansamah. She prayed that it would be.

  Chapter 14

  A few minutes after eleven o’clock at night the wind changed its note. For forty-eight hours it had been blowing a low, harsh chord among the guy ropes of the tents. During that time it had drowned all other sounds--except, when it slackened for a moment or changed its direction a fraction of a point, in the silence, Peter heard the moaning from the Rudwali porters’ tents. There had been snow in the wind most of that time, but it did not lie.

  When Peter noticed the change, and had waited half an hour to see if it was permanent or temporary, he struggled into his boots and coat and fur-lined Tibetan cap and went out of the tent. Some stars were dimly visible to the north. It was cold--howling, freezing cold--but nothing like the unspeakable cold of the first day of the blizzard. The weather was against him--as it had been all the way, since the torrential rain of the day they left Rudwal. That had raised all the mountain streams, and one of the porters was drowned well below the tree-line. They recovered the sack of flour he had been carrying, but most of it was ruined.

  He went back inside the tent. Harry Walsh looked up quietly and asked him: ‘What’s it like?’

  He had his boots off and was already snugged up inside the sleeping bag. ‘Better,’ he said. ‘The wind’s veering and there are some stars. We can push on tomorrow.’

  He could just see the other man in some sky-glow reflected off the snow and through the tent walls, and Harry seemed about to say something. There were only the two of them in the tiny tent. Gerry and Lapeyrol were in another, pitched ten feet away, and the porters in two slightly larger ones close to Gerry’s. Peter waited. Harry at last said: ‘Good night, then.’

  It was going to be bad tomorrow. He knew that, without Harry Walsh’s looking queerly at him and pretending to be too much of a loyal follower to speak. But only a fool would expect to conquer Meru, 27,141 feet--nearly 4,000 feet higher than anything yet climbed--without running into bad conditions and hard days. If Harry didn’t like what he was being asked to do he had only to say so, and walk back down this gigantic south-east ridge. There was no squad of soldiers waiting at the bottom to haul him off to be court martialled and shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy. Only the Alpine Club--and they’d be happier to believe Walsh than himself. He went to sleep.

  In the morning he aroused everyone before dawn so that they would be ready to move on as soon as the sun came up. It was a brilliant day, the sun so clear and pure on the new snow that his eyes ached for a while, even through the dark goggles. The porters were standing in a miserable silent cluster outside their tent with Naik Harkabir, the Gurkha corporal, fuming around them, trying to curse them into a better mood. Lapeyrol and Lyon were looking up at the mountain in front of them; Harry and Gerry were staring back down the ridge towards Juniper Camp, 3,000 feet lower, where Cadez and the rest of the porters were.

  Juniper Camp, at about 16,770 feet, was the base. One stunted tree stood there, and a trickle of water flowed by in the barren landscape, starting under the snout of one of the short, thick glaciers which ran down between all the Meru ridges, and disappearing a few miles off into the loess of the Parasian plateau. The camp they were now at was Camp I, at 19,700 feet. This was as high as he and Gerry had gone on their reconnaissance in 1911. About 4,000 feet farther up, say at 23,600, the ridge, which looked easy enough up to there, was blocked by a rank of huge rock needles, standing in single file, one behind the other, up the ridge crest. There were four large ones, two small, and, at the back, one particularly thin and spire-like, which he had named Cleopatra’s Needle. Once they had got over them, or round them, they would be at about 24,600 feet.

  It had been obvious that they must establish a camp, Camp II, at the foot of the Needles, and by now this should have been done. The blizzard had deranged that plan, because during it they had eaten most of the supplies that should have been used to stock Camp II. So now they would have to start again--the porters going down to Juniper, loading, returning here to Camp I today; tomorrow on to Camp II, dump loads, and go right down to Juniper, or perhaps stop over here on their way down. There was a long haul between camps--too long. He had over-estimated the porters’ stamina. They would have to be driven hard.

  However, the two days need not be completely wasted. Today four climbers could get to the Needles, make a preliminary examination, and return here to Camp I. Tomorrow they could do the same, but would not have to return so far, as by that afternoon Camp II should have been set up.

  He had decided to take Lapeyrol, Gerry, and Harry Walsh with him, leaving Lyon and Cadez in charge of the movement of the tents and stores. These last two were both hard men in their way, with plenty of driving power. They would need to be. The porters were men from the Northern Tehsils of the Rudwal district, and they were not used to carrying loads at these heights. The cold and the wind, on top of the long, hard approach march and the death of their companion in the river, had made them dispirited and at times surly.

  They were like that now, standing like sullen, hunched cattle, while Harkabir barked and yapped. Well, he’d have to trust to Cadez and Lyon to see that the job was done.

  It was time to go. He formed the climbing party into two cordées of two each, Lapeyrol and himself as the leaders, and set off.

  They climbed steadily. The ridge was never less than twenty feet wide and usually much more. Mostly the surface was thin snow, ending in an overhanging cornice on the right, but in many places the black rock stuck through where the wind had blown away the snow. Ahead the Needles waited like a row of soldiers, the sun full on the face of the front one, behind it the shadows, light violet on the green, black, and honey-coloured rock. The summit cone of the mountain, which had been clearly visible from Camp I, slowly sank behind the upper nevé above the Needles as they climbed, so that Cleopatra’s now seemed to be the final peak.

  Getting to that summit, even to the nevé, would be very hard. On the left a snow slope curved away from the Needles like the inside of a cup, very steep at the top, moderating farther down as it ran into the South Glacier; but the glacier was a vertical mile down. This tremendous bowl they had named just that--the Bowl. To the right of the Needles, and hence of this southeast ridge which they were climbing and on which the Needles stood, the mountain fell into the huge trench leading on down to the Great Chimney Glacier. The Great Chimney, a nearly continuous series of cracks, channels, and faults, led up from the glacier to about 23,600 feet at the head of this trench-cirque between the south-east ridge and the one that fell towards
the north-east and was called the Yangpa, after an ancient chorten some thirty miles out in the plateau from its foot.

  If only the Great Chimney had continued another thousand feet it might have presented a possible route to the upper nevé. But it didn’t. It ended below the face of a vertical black cliff, five hundred feet high, half a mile wide, and so smooth that it had been named the Mirror Wall. This strange formation, which would have been eerie enough on Cader Brith, and here aroused feelings of near-terror from its actual vastness and its apparent smallness on the sublimely vaster mountain, was flanked on the left by the Needles and on the right, short of the root of the Yangpa Ridge, by slopes of rock and ice, swept by avalanches and ice falls.

  So, although the south-east ridge was not altogether easy even without the Needles, and with them was extremely severe, it was nevertheless the least difficult of all the approaches.

  Peter thought back grimly to the reconnaissance of 1911. Without that he could not have believed--as Walsh and the rest hardly did now--that the other approaches were considerably worse: bitter cold ice walls, vertical ridges three thousand feet high, gullies where huge rocks bounded down in the glare of sun and powder snow, fluted cliff’s topped by snow cornices with fifty feet of overhang and a hundred feet of depth, ice falls fissured by immense crevasses. By God, the south-east ridge had to go.

  They did the 3,900 feet to the base of Needle One in just under five hours, starting fast and going noticeably slower as the altitude affected them. All the same, good enough. Eleven-twenty a.m. The Bowl stretched away to the left, the Mirror Wall to the right. He could see a hundred miles across the Parasian plateau to the south. Down there the earth was a pale gold, and a salt lake nearly seventy miles away was as blue and deep as when they had swum in it on the approach march.

  Eleven-twenty, and dark at seven. Three hours to get down the ridge. They should start back from here not later than four. Say four hours of exploration. He would take Gerry and look at the Bowl. Harry and Lapeyrol could go to the Mirror Wall. The Needles themselves were obviously a last resort, to be examined in detail only if no way could be found round them.

  They re-roped. Gerry waved his axe and shouted at Harry: ‘Bet you your sugar ration that we find a way.’

  ‘Nothing doing,’ Harry answered briefly. He had been a good second-in-command, and there had not been as many differences of judgement as Peter had expected. The two parties moved off slowly in opposite directions. The slope began to steepen as the ridge merged into the Bowl. The snow was fresh and true and Peter, leading, could cut steps quickly. He felt a little light-headed, with a touch of migraine. This was probably going to be it, if there was any route at all on this face.

  The farther they went away from the Needles, the more the slope sharpened. Soon he saw that in less than a quarter of a mile, if they worked on diagonally up and round the inside of the Bowl, it would be all but vertical. They might have to try that later, though it would be very dangerous. The combination of its angle and the fact that it directly faced the midday sun would probably cause it to melt a little every day at this season, and freeze again every night. He could not tell how thick the snow was there, nor what held it against the steepness of the slope, except that the constant freezing and melting might have made it into a sort of granulated ice. In the afternoon, when the sun dropped below the south-west ridge, this whole Bowl would fall into a deep indigo shadow--a great shield of darkness high on the mountain. They had seen it for days on the approach.

  He decided to go straight up the slope from where they then were, instead of continuing the traverse. This route would take them towards the foot of Cleopatra’s Needle.

  At first the snow was still firm; later, as the slope steepened, it seemed to change almost imperceptibly to ice. Step-cutting became a slow, dangerous business. The head of the South Glacier was 6,000 feet below and behind him. The breath came short into his lungs, and it was hard to hold the rhythm of the axe blows. As he climbed he felt that it was ice, not air, that he breathed. The Needles, on the right, did not look quite so impossible in profile as when seen from directly below. Remember that. That was how the Hornli was seen to be possible: look at it from the side.

  They had made four hundred feet and were almost level with the top of Needle Three when the texture of the ice began to change. Steps cut in this stuff would not hold. It was half-past two.

  He changed direction again, traversing the slope towards the Needles. After half an hour’s hard and dangerous work he could see that there was a deep bergschrund between the Needles and the Bowl. The lip of this bergschrund, running up like an irregular rim of the white Bowl, and falling vertically on the other side into the black trench of the bergschrund itself, might be the only possible way up this side of the mountain. It would be very delicate work, but it was possible--not now, though.

  The wind was rising. He turned to Gerry, who had been covering well, and motioned to him to head back down to the ridge. Gerry kept staring up past him at the steepening slope. Peter looked up and saw wraiths of snow devils dancing along the sky-line. Gerry’s goggles shone in the glare-back from the snow so that Peter could not see his eyes.

  ‘Let’s go on up,’ Gerry bawled finally. ‘Up--to the top.’ Peter thought: He’s lost his judgement--through some effect of the altitude, probably, for he had been going very strongly. He motioned sharply down with his axe, and after a time Gerry slowly turned and led on down.

  The next was a tense half-hour, since he was looking straight down into the South Glacier a mile below, and he did not know how badly Gerry’s normal habits had been upset. He kept the rope tighter than he would usually have done, trying to give the impression that it was a kind of banister rail, but still Gerry went much too carelessly, and it was only a question of time before he would miss a step and go down the Bowl, probably jerking Peter with him.

  Then he had an idea and made Gerry understand, by yelling into the wind until the roof of his mouth froze, that he was feeling groggy. Gerry stopped and seemed to collect himself, and went on down beautifully from that moment, treating him as a novice who’d suddenly got vertigo.

  At the bottom, when they were again standing on the ridge--it felt as broad and safe as Piccadilly now, though it was steep and badly tilted there--Gerry said: ‘I felt damned queer up there. Didn’t want to stop. Couldn’t see any reason to. You’re all right really, aren’t you?’

  He nodded wearily. Suddenly he felt appallingly tired. Gerry’s face twisted into a distorted, high-altitude grin; the cold seemed to freeze the exposed muscles so that no one had proper control over his lower jaw and the skin of the face.

  They’d been up to about 24,200 feet, nearly a thousand feet higher than the summit of any mountain yet climbed. That meant nothing, but he would have given a lot to know more about what had happened to Gerry’s mind. If Gerry’s judgement had gone, had his own? The summit was another 3,000 feet higher again. What might happen to a man’s brain up there? To his body, his heart, his lungs?

  He saw that Gerry had a touch of frostbite on the nose and cheeks, and Gerry shouted with a disproportionate, unlikely glee that he was in the same boat himself; so they rubbed snow into each other, and then went on down the ridge to Camp I. He was very, very tired; Gerry still going like a chamois.

  Harry and Lapeyrol were already back. They’d got cocoa and hot jam mixed into a delicious stew. Damn it, Harry ought to have had the self-control to keep a really good meal like that for Camp II, or higher. One of the porters’ tents had been taken down the ridge, one was standing. They’d have to crowd into that for a time. There was no other place where they could talk. The four of them were alone on the ridge now, and it was dark, and the wind blew in long, fitful gusts.

  Hunched round the lantern, he told them first what he and Gerry had done and seen. He gave them his opinion--that the only possible way up the left side of the ridge was via the rim of the bergschrund. He added that if the ascent were made during the two or three hours ast
ride dawn the hanging ice in the upper centre of the Bowl might be firm enough to take steps; and that would therefore be another possibility.

  Then he said: ‘But before we commit ourselves to either of those, the Needles will have to be looked at properly. The others--the Bowl before dawn, and the rim of the bergschrund--are going to be pretty desperate.’

  ‘I would say they were out of the question,’ Harry said, mildly enough.

  ‘Possibly,’ Peter said. ‘You might be able to see for yourself tomorrow. What about your side?’

  ‘The Mirror Wall is impossible. Unthinkable,’ Harry said at once. ‘It’s--well, it’s a mirror. It’s covered in verglas now, ninety degrees, five hundred feet.’ He closed his fist with a jerk.

  Lapeyrol, who understood English well enough, said in French that the Mirror Wall was the worst-looking piece of mountain he’d ever seen. ‘It’s in the shade--always, always--and the dim light crawls in it as though there are snakes under the ice, imprisoned between the rock and the verglas.‘

  Harry said: ‘But between the Needles and the Mirror Wall proper there is a kind of fault--you remember that split in this ridge, about half-way up? I think it’s a continuation of that. Or the Great Chimney fault, laterally displaced by the Mirror. It might go. We went about two hundred feet up it. It’s a hair-raising proposition, and it looks as though it might widen higher up, which would make it impossible. But we can’t tell until we try properly. From the east, the Needles look impossible.’

  ‘Absolutely?’ Peter asked sharply. ‘Do you mean that? If you do, you’re saying it’s got to be this fault or nothing.’

  Harry glanced at him and, when he answered, spoke deliberately. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said impossible. From what Lapeyrol and I saw--the east side only, remember--I would say that they might be climbed by a pair of extremely good rock men, in the pink of condition, climbing at under twelve thousand feet. As it is, the only man who’d attempt them is someone who has lost his judgement--either through altitude or for some other reason--and thinks more about getting to the top than about his own life or anyone else’s--or the elementary principles of mountaineering.’