The Everest Years

by Chris Bonington

  We returned to the relative safety of the snow shelf where we had left our rucksacks. It was time to make ourselves a secure base on the edge of a very- uncertain unknown. We started digging into a prow of snow that gave promise of having sufficient depth for a cave. We were now at 6,650 metres and feeling the altitude. We had been above Advance Base for a week and had had just one rest day during that period. After three hours’ hard work we had a snug avalanche-proof cave that was just large enough for us to lie in. We set the alarm for two a.m.

  I was restless again that night and started cooking at one thirty, waking Nick with a cup of tea, followed by reconstituted plums and sugar puffs. Nick just groaned and said he felt terrible. He could barely stay awake to drink the tea. I was worried by how tired he was but keen to get going. We had now very nearly run out of gas though, ironically, we had plenty of food. Since most of it was dehydrated, gas was essential to melt the snow to reconstitute it. A day’s rest would mean one cylinder less for our summit push. I noted in my diary:

  It’s a perfect day and I want to get the climb over. Was not over gracious and Nick agreed to have a go but he was obviously in such a terrible state that I had to let him off. It’s now 7 a.m. and he’s lying comatose beside me in the snow hole. I only hope the one day’s rest will do the trick. He blew himself up on Annapurna. The trouble is in the last year he has been working too hard and not done enough climbing. I wonder if this has caught up with him? I am tempted to try to solo the last part of the climb if he is not fit tomorrow – have I the nerve?

  Later that day, Nick entered in his diary:

  Woke up at 10 a.m. feeling much better. The problem was probably accumulated lack of sleep aggravated by Chris’s snoring and thrashing about – how does Wendy stand it? Still wondering what the others are doing. Chris keen on the two man push but I would like the others to be around. Chris spent most of the day planning the K2 expedition for next year. Me, day dreaming about comforts of home or even Base Camp – or even Advance Base Camp!

  That afternoon I wrote:

  Fortunately Nick feeling a lot better – we should be able to make our push tomorrow. In retrospect I suspect this rest day will have been good for me as well as Nick. I feel a bit ashamed at having got worked up about it.

  We woke up at three thirty the following morning and I made breakfast. Nick was feeling much better but when I crawled out of the cave I was appalled to see a dark bank of cloud stretching across the western horizon. It had already covered Nanga Parbat and would soon reach us. In my worry, I lashed out at Nick, bemoaning the fact that we hadn’t gone to the summit the previous day, though immediately apologised for the injustice of my attack. We decided to start out anyway, since we now only had one can of gas left for cooking.

  By the time we had climbed the ropes we had left in place two days before and had reached the snow of the South Face, ragged clouds were forming round the Latok peaks and a cold wind, blowing plumes of spindrift, was blasting the face. There was about half a metre of unconsolidated snow lying on hard ice. It felt quite incredibly precarious. We had to pull the ropes up behind us since we needed them for the climb. We moved one at a time, the second man belayed to an ice piton, and the leader running out the full length of the rope, kicking into the snow, crampon points barely biting into the ice, the snow barely supporting the weight of the foot. We took it in turns to lead. I’m not sure which was worst, going out in front, trying to distribute one’s weight as evenly as possible, never feeling secure, or paying the rope out as second, all too conscious of the results of a fall. It was most unlikely that the ice piton belay would have taken a violent pull and, whilst stationary, the cold crept into one’s very core. Spindrift avalanches swirled down the slope, plucking at our cringing limbs, the icy powder finding chinks in our anoraks and penetrating to the chilled skin underneath.

  Pitch followed pitch, as we headed towards a band of rock that stretched the full width of the face. It was late afternoon when we reached it. The entire sky was now overcast with a scum of high grey cloud. Nick suggested going down but I was convinced we could make it to the top, a conviction that had taken me through threatening situations in the past. Even though the weather looked ominous I had a feeling that it wouldn’t break. Nick later commented in his diary:

  Chris would not take the hint that I wanted to turn back; became convinced that he was leading me to my doom.

  But he kept climbing and now led the most frightening pitch of the route. I was belayed to an ice screw that only bit into the ice for a few centimetres before being stopped by the rock underneath. It would never have held a fall. A rock rib barred our way to an ice runnel. Nick climbed above me to fix a high running belay and then, protected by this, descended the ice at the side of the rib until he was able to cross it with some tension from the rope. He then climbed up ice that was a bare centimetre thick lying on the steep slab. As he got higher, he was going further and further from his running belay, with the threat of a fatal fall for both of us if the ice shattered under his weight.

  I huddled over my piton, passing the rope inch by inch through my hands as he edged his way up the runnel. It was now beginning to get dark and I had time to question my single-minded drive. But suddenly there was a shout from above. The ice was thick enough to place an ice screw. He could bring me up.

  It was very nearly dark by the time I reached him. I led out two more rope-lengths in the gathering gloom, desperately looking for somewhere to bivouac. We could go no further. I dug into the snow but after a metre hit rock. There was not enough depth for a proper hole but at least we could have a bit of a roof over our heads. We spent the night in a sitting position, leaning back against the rock.

  Nick wrote:

  Had a brew, felt miserable and Chris snored all night. I sat and watched the swirling mist and wondered what it was going to be like to freeze to death. Didn’t exactly wake up early (never slept) but weather still very threatening. I wanted to go down, Chris to sit it out. He won. However a bit later (sixish) it improved and we decided to set off for the col below the final tower.

  Nick was out in front, with me following, at the full extension of the rope, when doubt at last began to set in. The cloud was swirling around us, whipped by a cold, insistent wind. We were now nearly level with the base of the Ogre’s head. From Advance Base it had seemed little more than a knobble of snow-veined rock. I had convinced myself that there would be an easy gully or ramp but now, at close range, it seemed to have no weaknesses; it was compact, massive, invulnerable. I suddenly became aware of the reality of our situation. We had only eight rock pitons, one day’s food, and just one gas cylinder.

  I caught Nick up.

  ‘We’ll never make it, we haven’t enough stuff. How about going for the West Summit? It looks a hell of a sight easier.’

  ‘Suits me.’

  And so we veered up towards the crest of the ridge between the West and the main summits. By the time we reached it, the cloud had rolled away. The dark threatening weather had vanished as if by magic. We could peer cautiously over a cornice down the dizzy North Face of the Ogre. Range upon range of peaks stretched to the north, and with the sun and the expansive view, my own spirits soared.

  ‘You know, we could still have a go at the main summit.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Chris, can’t you keep to a decision for ten minutes? We decided to go for the West Summit for a completely logical set of reasons that haven’t changed with a bit of bloody sun. You said that we didn’t have the gear or the fuel, not me. At least try to be consistent for once.’

  I was shaken by his vehemence and didn’t press the point. He was right. We dropped back down the slope about forty metres and started digging a snow hole. We had left the shovel behind so had to use our axes to carve out a broad veranda, this time big enough to lie on. We spent the rest of the day lazing in the sun.

  Nick commented in his diary:

  Chris havering – if he had his way he’d spend the rest of his days u
p here.

  It was a perfect dawn the following morning (1 July) and we set out for the West Summit, following the knife-edged snow arête. I led all the way. Nick had an appalling throat and was coughing up blood, while I was going quite strongly. Although the slope steepened just below the summit, it was comparatively straightforward, and suddenly everything dropped away below us. We were on top. The view was magnificent, with the Biafo Glacier stretched beneath us in its entirety, the great white expanse of Snow Lake and, beyond it, range upon range of peaks reaching to the far horizon on all sides but one. The main summit, a couple of hundred metres away, could only have been fifty or so metres higher than we were, but it blocked the view to the east, and its immense solid rock tower seemed to be mocking us. We had done the only sensible thing, but we turned and dropped back to our bivvy spot with a nagging sense of anticlimax that we had backed down from the real challenge.

  We ate all the food we had left, had a couple of brews and then started the long descent. We abseiled down the desperate stretch that Nick had led on the way up and went seemingly endlessly on down the slopes beneath it, until at last we were approaching the smooth slabs near the bottom of the face. I had been worried about how we were going to get across these. I’d had visions of the fate of Hinterstoisser and his party on the North Wall of the Eiger in 1936, when they had crossed the slab which became known as the Hinterstoisser Traverse, had not left a rope across it and then on their return had been unable to get back. They all perished as a result. Fortunately we were able to find a high anchor point from which to make a long diagonal abseil to the crest of the spur, reaching the relative safety and luxury of our snow hole at six that night.

  ‘It seemed like the Carlton Tower after the last two nights,’ Nick commented in his diary. But there was no sign of the others.

  Both of us quite worried about them – Bumbling? Accident? Bureaucratic hassle over the girls? Chris almost in tears at the thought of an accident to Doug (and Jackie).

  We hadn’t set the alarm but both of us woke at two anyway. We had got so used to our early starts and were also quietly anxious about the others. We set off shortly after dawn and as we came round a corner on the traverse back towards the West Ridge we saw, far below us in the middle of the plateau, two little tents with figures around them. The others were obviously all right, but what had delayed them? What were their plans? Already I was beginning to wonder about our chances of getting a second try at the Ogre’s main summit.

  – CHAPTER 6 –

  A Second Chance

  The others had been as worried about us as we had about them. They had not seen us for ten days but they said nothing as we approached the tents. Mo was crouched over a stove, cooking. Doug and Tut were packing rucksacks, Clive taking down one of their tents. They were obviously on the move.

  ‘Don Morrison’s dead,’ Doug stated flatly.

  An accident to the team on Latok had been one of our hypotheses for their delay. I found that I accepted it factually. I hardly knew Don and had only talked with him a couple of times at Base Camp. Our own isolation and the constant stress of risk we had been under in the last few days deadened my reaction still further. It wasn’t callousness, rather the acceptance of the inherent risk we constantly lived under, a reaction similar, I suspect, to that of the soldier in the front line.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He fell down a crevasse.’

  Tony Riley and he had been walking up to their first camp in the late afternoon. It was a route they had followed dozens of times, so they had stopped roping up. The snow had hidden a deep crevasse. Don must have stood on the critical weak point and had fallen in. It was so deep and narrow that they had been unable to reach him. They could hear nothing so it seemed he had been killed by the fall.

  But there was more than the shock of Don’s death that seemed to divide us. I felt uncomfortable, disappointed at not having reached the main summit and, at the same time, guilty now that we had attempted it and allowed ourselves to be drawn into unspoken competition with the others. I also sensed their relief, not only that we were alive and well, but that the Ogre was still unclimbed. Casualness concealed tension.

  ‘Did you make it?’ Doug asked.

  I told him. ‘But what are you doing? Are you going to try our route? It’s not too bad.’

  ‘No, we’re going for the West Ridge.’

  They had reached the crest of the ridge at the foot of a steep rock spur that eventually led to the West Summit and were planning to establish a camp at its foot. Already I longed to be with them but I was too tired and too much in need of a rest. I looked at the pile of food and gas cylinders they were about to pack.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

  ‘Yeh. Should be enough,’ said Mo.

  ‘I just don’t think it is. You’ve no idea how hard the final bit is and surely the West Ridge is going to take you a few more days. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up doing what we did, getting below that final summit block and not having enough fuel or food to go for it.’

  My reasoning was sound but my motivation was not entirely unselfish. If I could persuade them to return to Base Camp to get more supplies, Nick and I could grab our much-needed rest and then go for the summit with them.

  Nick had other feelings which he confided to his diary:

  Regrettably I kept quiet – also most other people, as it seems Chris got his way. Their route was only leading to the W. Summit and they had insufficient food and gas to continue to the main top. So Chris persuaded everyone to go back to Base Camp for more of same and to come back up. So, suddenly, just when I thought the trip was over, I was feeling satisfied and had survived, I have got another fortnight to contend with.

  Quite apart from his terrible throat – Nick could only talk in a harsh whisper – he was already nearly two weeks overdue for work, but now it could be a month or more before he was going to get back.

  We dropped down to Base that same day. Nick and I had been above the snow line for over two weeks and in that time had only taken two days’ rest. We had all but climbed a difficult and certainly very taxing mountain of over 7,000 metres, yet on the way down I felt quite fresh, stimulated by the fact that I still had a chance of sharing in the first ascent. Base Camp was an oasis of green. You could smell the grass, lie in it, feel it, revel in it. The harsh world of glaring snow, steep rocks and constant danger had ceased to exist.

  Paul Nunn and Tony Riley, quiet and subdued, were packing up their camp. They had built a cairn and memorial to Don Morrison on a little knoll above the lake. That night Doug and the others talked long into the night but I slid off to bed and collapsed into sleep. It was only the next day that I realised just how tired I was. Nick and I spent it sleeping, only getting up for meals. The others were in a hurry to get back on to the mountain. Doug, Mo and Clive were going back up the following day, giving Nick, Tut and myself just one more day at Base, after which we also would go back up the hill. But we were to spend a day clearing the gear that Tut and Doug had left at the foot of the Nose on their earlier attempt, before going on to join the others. Doug sent a message with Paul Nunn for Hadji Medi, the headman of Askole, to send us twenty porters on 12 July. We hoped to reach the top and get back down again by then.

  The decision-makers now were Doug and Mo; Clive tended to go along with what they said and Tut was at a disadvantage because of his leg. Nick was still almost speechless with his sore throat and I was very aware that having got the chance of a short rest, it was now a matter of fitting into their plans. I was so tired, there was little else I could have done anyway.

  The two days at Base Camp went all too quickly and on the third morning, 5 July, the three of us walked back up to Advance Base. It had that messy, neglected feel that comes to any transit camp on a mountain. Rubbish was scattered over the snow and the remains of spilt food littered the communal tent.

  We felt very much the B team the following morning as we slogged up the gully to the col where
Tut and Doug had left their gear, with the great granite wall soaring above us. Tut’s leg was giving him trouble and he pointed out where the boulder had come hurtling down. We were due to rejoin the others the following morning. But that afternoon in camp Tut and Nick decided that they had had enough, what with Tut’s leg and Nick’s sore throat. If Nick and I had been on our own I am sure I would have returned home quite happily, having reached the West Summit. But although I was tired, I still had a driving urge to reach the top of the Ogre. It was a combination of a feeling of failure that I hadn’t at least had a try at the summit block, and the very human, if somewhat childish, fear of being left out of a successful party.

  My resolution was not quite as strong at three the following morning. It had only just begun to freeze and the snow was still soft. I would have to cross the snow-covered glacier on my own. It would have been fairly safe if the snow had been hard frozen but in its present condition it would be all too easy to step through the snow cover into a hidden crevasse. Don Morrison’s death made the danger all too obvious. I decided to delay my departure a couple of hours to give the snow a chance to harden but even at five it was still soft. I set out all the same. I was carrying about fifteen kilos of food and gas cylinders. It felt too heavy even at the start.

  As I plodded in the glimmer of the dawn back towards the Ogre, each step was filled with trepidation. I constantly glanced around me, trying to glimpse hints of hidden crevasses indicated by slight creases in the dim grey snow. At times the crust would give, my foot would plunge, I’d experience a stab of terror, but each time it reached a solid base.