I heard a shout from below. It was the porters on their way up. Jim Duff was with them and I dropped down a length of rope to give him a hand with his sack. It was good to see him, suave, relaxed Jim, with his ready smile through his dark beard. His sack was heavy but I felt that my strength had returned and I carried it easily up the fixed ropes. I made the Balti porters some tea and listened to the news from Base Camp. It was only after the porters had left that Jim told me, ‘Tut didn’t want me to tell you. He was going to leave a note. He’s going home. His chest hasn’t cleared up. He’s certainly under the weather.’
It didn’t surprise me, somehow. Quite apart from his chest, Tut had been thinking of home throughout the expedition and particularly of his girlfriend, Jane, whom he was planning to marry when we got back. I was sorry that he hadn’t felt able to tell me what he was doing, for I would not have tried to dissuade him and certainly wasn’t angry. We weren’t fighting a war. We were playing a game, admittedly a very serious one, and it must be up to the individual to decide whether he wants to go on or not and the level of risk that he wants to accept. Tut’s departure would leave us short-handed, but that was something we would have to cope with.
Jim and I were sitting in the sun, talking about Tut’s decision and expedition prospects. It was a wonderful cloudless, windless day. We felt relaxed, happy to be ensconced on this high perch surrounded by some of the most magnificent peaks in the world when suddenly, with little more than a muffled rumble, a huge avalanche billowed down the icefall between us and the main mass of K2. Instinctively I dived for my camera and started taking pictures. Jim shouted:
‘For God’s sake stop. The lads could be in that.’
‘They can’t. I’m sure they can’t. That’s just broken away from the icefall. They’ll be above it.’
But I stopped taking pictures. The avalanche poured down to the glacier over 400 metres below, forming a great boiling cloud of white that thinned, dissipated and then vanished. There were no signs of debris on the avalanche cone that had already been formed by repeated sérac falls. It was as still as it had been before. The sun blazed out of the blank sky, the mountains were changeless in the flat glare of midday, but we didn’t chat any more, just sat and waited. I tried to pretend there was nothing to worry about but switched on the walky-talky radio. Ten minutes dragged by, the crackle and hum of the radio the only sound.
‘Please, please, God, don’t let them have been in it.’
‘Hello, is anyone on the air? Over.’ It was Doug’s voice, distorted by static.
‘This is Chris. Are you all right? Over.’
‘Nick’s copped it. The whole bloody slope went and he was in the middle of it. Didn’t have a hope.’
‘Roger. Can you get back down? Over.’ Keep a tight grip. Hold back emotion. Get them back, find out what’s happened.
‘Yes, we’re on our way back now.’
‘Be careful. Take it steady. See you soon. Out.’
I switched off the set and crouched and cried. Nick, my closest friend, was gone, and the pain deep inside welled up, with the confusion of shock and a terrible growing sense of guilt. I had chosen that route. I had been so convinced it was safe. A figure came round the corner, tumbled and half- ran down the fixed rope into the camp. It was Doug. He slumped down beside the tent, his face in his hands. He was crying, too. I held his shoulder, felt very close to him and he started telling us what had happened.
On reaching the basin, Doug and Nick had decided to put a fixed line across it for greater security. The basin was full of fresh snow and if there were any small slides the rope would act as a handrail. Doug tied one end of a big reel of 5mm nylon cord round his waist, handed the reel to Quamajan to wind out, and set off, plodding through the snow. Nick set off after him. He was about seventy metres behind.
Doug had reached the other side and was just beneath the tent of Camp 2. Nick was in the middle of the basin. He hadn’t clipped into the rope and was just walking along in Doug’s footsteps when suddenly the entire slope above him and around him began to shift, breaking up into huge floes, jostling with each other, moving down inexorably, faster, breaking into small bits. And Nick was in the middle of it, struggling to stay on the surface until he was swept from sight over the séracs.
Doug sensed the avalanche but before he could do anything the rope round his waist, trailing back into the fast-shifting snows, plucked him from his steps and heaved him down the slope. He was tumbling head-over-heels, helpless, ever closer to the rushing torrent of snow, and then suddenly the momentum stopped, the cord had broken. Upside down, half buried in the snow, he was alive. On the other side of the basin, Quamajan, his hands burnt from the rope, was also on the edge of the avalanche. Pete and Joe had seen the avalanche and climbed back down their fixed rope to find Doug by the tent, still covered in snow.
‘I’d written myself off there,’ Doug said. And they talked of Nick. Just before setting out over the basin Doug had remarked to Nick: ‘It looks like me and you going together for the top, youth.’
Pete and Joe packed a few items and they all started back across the firm avalanche-polished snow down to Camp 1. Doug joined Jim in his tent. They were close friends and had much in common. Pete joined me and Joe was sharing with Quamajan but joined Pete and myself to cook a meal and sit and talk. We avoided the accident or even the expedition, reminisced about Nick, telling outrageous stories about climbing weekends in Wales and booze-ups in the Peak District. I still half expected him to poke his head through the tent door; I hadn’t accepted that the avalanche had occurred.
That night neither Pete nor I could sleep. We talked occasionally or just lay wrapped in our own thoughts, waiting for the dawn. I thought out the future of the expedition. I felt we should go on. We had always known that an accident could happen and I felt that, however deep my grief, we should continue. Pete felt the same.
It was snowing in the morning, the sky a grey gloom. Dark buttresses on the slopes below loomed through the cloud. The mountains of yesterday had vanished. Doug and Jim had already packed as if this was the end of the expedition. I contented myself with saying, ‘Let’s talk it over when we get back down to Base and all of us are together.’
On the way down we each went over to search the huge avalanche cone at the foot of the sérac wall but there was no sign of Nick. Thousands of tons of snow had fallen but though, high above, a great sickle-shaped scar marked where the wind slab had broken away, the cone didn’t look any different from when we had seen it a few days before. Back at Base Camp we trickled in to the big mess tent. Sher Khan was brewing tea in one corner. There was a tense subdued atmosphere, born from shock and exacerbated by the knowledge that only we knew what had happened, that to Carolyn and the children, Matthew, Tom and Martha, Nick was still alive. They remained to be told.
Pete was the last to come in. Then we began to talk about what we should do next. I still felt that we should continue with the climb, not as a means of justifying Nick’s death, you couldn’t do that, but simply that this was part of what we had undertaken and somehow we had to come to terms with it. I had to fight hard to control my feelings, but I had thought it out many times in theory and now I was confronted with reality.
Doug had no doubts at all. He wanted to end the expedition, could see no point in going on and pointed out the agony that all our wives would have to go through if we prolonged our stay. Jim agreed with him and then, to my surprise, Joe also said he didn’t see much point in going on. Tut had already stated that he was going home. Tony, though, was keen to carry on, quietly saying that he had come out to make a film and that he wanted to complete it. So that left Pete, Tony and myself, wanting to continue.
Pete wrote:
Only Chris, with me, wants to go on. Nick would certainly have gone on, would have been consistent. I say, I just love being in the mountains, seeing more peaks emerge, that I am enjoying myself and that is what I am here to do. But a host of outside influences and problems are affect
ing Tut, Doug and Jim. Doug swings like an emotional, powerful pendulum, and he and Joe presumably have Nuptse this year to look forward to.
I want to give the mountain everything I have, to have a struggle amongst overwhelming beauty above 25,000 feet.
But it was no good with just three of us. Doug, Jim and Tut had certainly made up their minds. With the expedition so divided there seemed no other prospect but retreat. So we turned to the business of breaking the news to Carolyn and the rest of Nick’s family before the story got into the papers. We eventually agreed that Doug and I should go out together. I was split between my responsibility to the expedition as a whole and the fact that Nick was my closest friend. So Doug and I set out the next morning with Quamajan. There was a solace in action as we picked our way down the Savoia Glacier and then on down the Baltoro, glancing back al K2, towering, massive and now peaceful, at the end of the glacier. We walked till dusk and camped on a moraine about halfway down the Baltoro Glacier.
I now accepted our decision to call off the expedition and was even relieved. I was longing to get back to Islamabad to be able to phone Wendy and, at the same time, dreaded having to carry our news. In our own tiny microcosm of a world we had come to terms with the tragedy. It didn’t reduce my grief, but it was something that I could control, store away while I coped with our daily functions. Each day’s walk, the need to place feet carefully on the rocky moraines, the heavy fatigue all helped to alleviate the aching pain. But once we were back in Islamabad we would have to tell others what had happened.
It took us five days to get back to the roadhead, long hard walks, a frightening fording of the Korophon River, succulent apricots and mulberries at Dasso. With just Doug and myself together there was no conflict. The friendship, the mutual affection and respect that had grown over the years we had climbed and expeditioned together could flourish without the external pressures of group politics, different ethical stances on how to climb a mountain or raise funds. We found support in each other and although we knew that our climbing plans for the immediate future were almost certainly going to take different paths, in accepting this, we could also sustain our friendship.
And then we were at the roadhead, an afternoon’s bone-shaking in the jeep back to Skardu, and our peaceful limbo was over. We made our report to the District Commissioner. He was kind and sympathetic, promising to embargo the news until we had contacted the next of kin. We got a flight out the following morning. At the embassy our way was smoothed and I was able to phone home, giving Wendy the grim task of letting Carolyn know what had happened. As so often, it was our wives back home who had the toughest task, who had to sit it out whilst we played our dangerous game, and who, now, had to cope with the cruellest part of all.
I had already lost too many friends from climbing but this hit me the hardest of all. Nick was not only a superb mountaineer, but had given me vital support on all my major expeditions. Loyal, yet logical, he was consistent and totally fair, not just to me but to the concept of the expedition as a whole and to the interests of its members. Within an expedition he combined humour, a capacity for discussion and analysis and a selfless willingness to work for the group as a whole.
But most of all I had lost a friend whom I was always glad to see, whom I could drop in on at any time and with whom I had done some of my most enjoyable climbing. Mike Thompson had commented after the 1975 expedition on how, at this level of mountaineering, it was like being pre-maturely aged with so many of one’s friends and contemporaries dying around one.
I felt this acutely as I flew back to Britain with the responsibility of telling Carolyn exactly what had happened on K2.
– CHAPTER 10 –
Chinese Overtures
Two nights after I got back to Britain, a septic pustule over my old rib wound erupted and burst. It was as if my body had suppressed the poison until that moment but, now that my journey was over and I had talked to Carolyn, sharing her grief and reliving those final days of the expedition, my defences collapsed and the dormant bacteria hidden in my ribs burst forth. A week later a section of my lower rib was removed, leaving a gaping cavity that had to be allowed to heal from the inside, to ensure that no further pockets of infection remained. I had at least been lucky that I had osteomyelitis in a bone that I could do without.
I spent the summer convalescing and was beginning to look into the future. George Greenfield had suggested that I should write a book on the broader spectrum of adventure. I had thought little about it before the expedition but now welcomed it, almost as a therapy. It took me out of my own climbing experience to look at the whole field of adventure. In the next two years I was to go round the world interviewing the subjects for my book, Quest For Adventure, becoming immersed in the mystery of long-distance sailing, of polar exploration, flying the Atlantic by balloon and reaching the moon. It was intriguing to meet so many people from widely differing backgrounds with the common factors of a taste for risk and the passionate curiosity for the unknown that marks the adventurer.
The one who impressed the most of all was Geoff Yeadon the cave diver. I could not contemplate swimming and wriggling down passages far beneath the earth, visibility in the muddy water down to little more than centimetres, with the knowledge that if anything went wrong with the equipment, drowning would be inevitable. He found it equally difficult to contemplate rock climbing and was just as appalled at the prospect of making difficult moves above a long drop. I suspect though that our motivation for our different ventures was very similar, with the stimulus of risk, the fascination of the unknown and, in his case, the wonder of stalactite-filled caverns far beneath the earth. His ventures into the cave system of Keld Head, beneath the gentle limestone hills of Yorkshire, came closer to true exploration than any form of adventure on the surface of the earth today. The remotest spots can be reached by helicopter, or scanned from planes or satellites, but the only way of tracing the passage of a cave is physically to follow it.
I did, in a very modest way, share the adventure of sailing with Robin Knox-Johnston, joining him in Suhaili, the boat he had sailed single-handed non-stop round the world to win the Golden Globe race. He was enjoying a family sailing holiday with his wife and daughter and I sailed with them from Oban to the Isle of Skye. The deal was that I should show him climbing in return for learning something about sailing. Mildly seasick, I clutched the tiller as we approached Loch Scavaig in a choppy sea. Then it was my turn. I took him up the ridge of the Dubhs, several hundred metres of rounded boilerplate slabs of gabbro. Halfway up the route was barred by a sheer drop and it was necessary to abseil. Robin didn’t like the look of the standard climbing method and insisted on using a complicated system he had devised for going up and down his mast. I learnt a great deal in those few days at sea, both about sailing and sailors.
A few weeks later I was near Houston, Texas at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center. Reaching the moon might have been man’s great adventure of the twentieth century, but I felt little in common with the astronauts I met there. It wasn’t just their dependence on technology, it was also the way they had been selected, almost programmed, for their roles. But some days later in a small town called Lebanon, in his home state of Ohio, I met Neil Armstrong, then chairman of an engineering company. As we started talking I couldn’t help wondering what we would find in common and yet, as he described his work as a test pilot flying the X15 rocket plane that reached a height of 63,000 metres and a speed five times the speed of sound, I could see that the way he was exploring the limits of what the aircraft could do was very similar to the climber taking himself to his own limits on a stretch of rock.
In choosing my adventures I had set myself the guidelines that each adventure should represent a major innovative step into the unknown in that particular field – the first men on the moon, the first to row the Atlantic, cross deserts, explore the Poles or push forward the bounds of climbing. As a result of my self-imposed rules I found my book populated by men. Women, whilst being increas
ingly involved in almost every type of adventure, were still following, albeit very closely, in their footsteps.
The one area, however, where they seemed on an equal footing was in the realm of adventurous travelling. There is a long tradition of great women travellers like Gertrude Bell, Annie Taylor, and Freya Stark, who ventured into places few, male or female, had ever reached. One great modern-day traveller came to stay with us. Christina Dodwell had been wandering across Africa, using horses, camels and dug-out canoes for transport. In the course of her travels she was threatened on several occasions, sometimes with amorous advances, sometimes because she was a lone white, but by keeping cool and taking a positive stance, she managed to talk her way out of each situation. In some ways her sex might have been a positive advantage, since a woman does not offer the same potential threat as a man and is also better at avoiding confrontation.
I took her off climbing one afternoon and in spite of being caught by a rainstorm that turned the rock into a vertical skating rink, she quietly worked her way up it without a trace of fluster. My research for Quest For Adventure certainly broadened my own outlook and brought me new friends scattered across the world but my love of climbing was undiminished. I used the excuse of a lecture tour on the west coast of the United States to visit Yosemite, climb some obscure rock towers called the City of Rocks in Idaho, and crumbling old granite near Mount Shasta in North California. But I was not planning any other expedition and had even withdrawn from a venture that Nick and I had planned together to climb Rang Taiga in Nepal in the autumn of 1979.
There was also more time to enjoy my family. Daniel and Rupert were growing up fast and were now twelve and ten years of age. Although they had the inevitable sibling rows, they basically got on well together, playing endless games of soldiers, as I also had done as a youngster. I suppose it is inevitable that parents enjoy trying to pass on their own pursuits to their children and equally probable that their children will want to find other outlets, if only to establish their own identities. Daniel quite enjoyed climbing and occasionally came out with me. He wasn’t a natural gymnast but had a good head for heights and remained cool under stress. Rupert, on the other hand, though small, had a superb athletic build and was already able to outrun me without much trouble. He has no head for heights, however, and consequently did not enjoy climbing. It was in skiing that we could share the most. We had our first ski holiday together in the spring of 1979 in Verbier. It was a delight to see how quickly the lads caught up with my own fairly timid performance and then began to outstrip me.
The Everest Years Page 14