‘No good, not enough contrast.’
I began to imagine the consequences if we had to circle round and round until we ran out of fuel. I suspect the same thought was going through everyone’s minds. Giles turned to look back into the passenger compartment, a wolfish grin on his face.
‘Don’t worry, Chris isn’t the only one who knows about bolt-holes.’
We swung inland getting height, flew through a bank of cloud into the sun, and there, between two high snow peaks, was a flat glacier. He flew over it, examining it carefully for hidden crevasses, did another circuit, and brought the plane down gently in the deep soft snow.
‘Just a matter of a little patience. I picked this place out a few years ago when I was based on Rothera.’
We waited there for a couple of hours with the radio open. We received the call that the airstrip was clear. We were in the air within five minutes, plunged through the low cloud and then, seeming almost to brush the waves, roared back down the coast. Cloud was still hugging the low hills round the airstrip but Giles didn’t attempt a circuit. He slid the plane between cloud and col, dropped it the other side, and suddenly we were bumping along the snow, racing past the parked Otters of the British Antarctic Survey. There was barely time for more than a few hurried words, a quick cup of coffee in the Chileans’ bunker mess while the plane was refuelled, and we were on our way once again, this time bound for Punta Arenas and civilisation, scheduled air lines, air beacons and traffic control.
Our adventure might have been nothing compared to what Shackleton attempted in 1914 when he sailed down into the Weddell Sea, hoping to cross the Antarctic continent, and then lost his boat and made one of the greatest retreats in history to get his expedition back to safety, but you have to live in, and make the most of, your own age and environment. Our adventure, in its compressed three weeks, had its own special quality. In many ways the star was Giles Kershaw. Without his skill, nerve and deep knowledge of flying in Antarctica we could never have reached Mount Vinson. Equally, without Frank Wells’ at times abrasive drive the adventure would never have got off the ground. I was very conscious of just how much I owed them all as we flew back over the turbulent waters of the Drake Passage to a Christmas at home.
– CHAPTER 16 –
A Promise Broken
‘My name is Arne Naess. I do hope you don’t mind me ringing you. I wonder if I could come and see you. I’m organising an expedition to Nepal and would appreciate your advice.’
He had a slight foreign accent but his English was fluent. I often get enquiries about expeditioning.
‘Of course. When do you want to come up?’
‘How about next week? What day would suit you best?’
‘What about Monday? Could you make it in the afternoon, say, just after lunch? I’m working flat out on a book at the moment and try to do my writing in the mornings.’
‘That’s fine. Have you got an airport near you?’
‘Not really. Newcastle’s the nearest, but that’s sixty miles away on the other side of the Pennines; but the train service isn’t bad. It takes just under four hours to Carlisle.’
‘I’ll check and get back to you.’
He phoned again, an hour later.
‘You’ve an airfield just by Carlisle. I’m chartering a plane. I’ll be with you at two o’clock on Monday.’
I was impressed.
It was early 1979 and I was working on my book, Quest for Adventure. He arrived by taxi promptly at two, presented Wendy with a side of smoked salmon, which he mentioned later he had caught in Iceland, and a couple of bottles of Burgundy of the very best vintage. Slightly built, with a mop of receding hair over irregular yet very mobile features, there was both an intensity and a boyish enthusiasm about him.
He told me that he was Norwegian and in shipping. He had climbed as a youngster but then had given it up to concentrate on his business. Having achieved success in this field, he was looking, in much the same way that Dick Bass and Frank Wells were to do a couple of years later, for fresh and different challenges. He was more of a mountaineer, however, having come from a family strongly associated with climbing and having shown talent in his youth. His uncle, a professor of philosophy, also called Arne Naess, was the father figure of Norwegian mountaineering who had made many new routes in Norway and led the first Norwegian expedition to the Himalaya. Arne junior had kept up his climbing in a spasmodic way over the years. He owned a pair of chalets in Switzerland at Verbier, climbed with guides from time to time and was a very bold and forceful skier. He now wanted to get back into climbing in a big way. He had booked Everest for 1985, so that he could lead the first Norwegian expedition to the mountain and, as a training climb, he was going to a peak called Numbur in the Rolwaling Himal in Nepal. He wanted to ask my advice on equipment and the general planning of the expedition.
He spent a couple of hours with me and then returned to his waiting plane. As well as being impressed with his dynamism and success, I liked him as a person. I have met many successful businessmen and entrepreneurs over the years but none quite like Arne. He had a twinkle of humour, and the mind and attitude of a climber. I suppose even his work, which was a high-risk business, reflected this. We climbed together from time to time in the next few years. Funnily enough, most of our efforts were abortive. On a climbing weekend in the Lakes, it rained non-stop and we made a long wet walk to Scafell. During a skiing holiday in the Alps we set out to make a winter ascent of the Frendo Spur on the Aiguille du Midi as a single-day ascent. The route finishes near the top station of the Midi téléphérique and we planned to catch the last cable car down at the end of our climb. It was a typical piece of Bonington optimism and complete lack of research. After spending three hours on the snow-covered rocks at the bottom of the 700-metre spur, it was obvious we were not going to get more than a third of the way up in the day. We had an epic retreat in the dark through the steep forested slopes above Chamonix.
We also met up in Yosemite. It poured all weekend and we achieved nothing. But this didn’t harm our friendship or, amazingly, seem to dent Arne’s confidence in my ability as an organiser and planner, for he invited me to join his 1985 expedition to Everest. I had my own attempt in 1982 and so I temporised, asking him to let me make my decision in the light of what happened on the North-East Ridge.
Immediately after dropping out of the summit push in 1982, I consoled myself with the thought that I could return to Everest with Arne, but the death of Pete and Joe changed all that. In the aftermath of their loss I could not contemplate returning to the mountain and volunteered to Wendy the promise that I would never go back. I told Arne shortly after my return that I wouldn’t be joining him on Everest, but promised to do everything I could to help him. In the following months he played me rather like a fly-fisherman would a salmon, teasing me with questions about equipment or Sherpas and then mentioning that I could always change my mind. I remained firm into 1983, but my two trips that autumn to Shivling and Vinson had rekindled all my old enthusiasm. I thought about it whilst in Antarctica. Here was a chance of reaching the highest point on earth being handed to me on a silver platter – Sherpas, oxygen, the easiest route to the summit, the chance of indulging my penchant for organisation and planning, without the ultimate responsibility of leadership. I just couldn’t resist it.
I phoned Arne shortly after getting back from Antarctica to ask if the invitation was still open. He wasn’t surprised. But how to tell Wendy? As I had done frequently in the past, I put it off and it was by chance that she heard, when she came into my study while I was talking on the phone to Arne about the detailed planning of the expedition. Inevitably she was deeply upset and yet I suspect she always half-knew that I’d go back. It is the wives of climbers that are the courageous ones, who have to cope with real stress, who have to sit back and wait, and all too often break the news to wives of the ones who don’t come back. I had no excuse except the strength of my need to return to Everest. There were no recriminations
, except from my two sons who were indignant.
‘But you promised. You can’t go back. What about Mum?’
Wendy, having accepted it, gave me total support and concentrated on getting me fit for the climb. She has always been interested in diet, and has been a vegetarian for some years. We don’t have meat at home, although I do eat it when away. I am sure that a well-balanced vegetarian diet helped build up both my stamina and resistance to ailments whilst on the climb.
In the following year (1984) I enjoyed helping with the expedition planning very much on a consultancy basis. I advised on choice of equipment and the composition of the Sherpa team and played out the expedition logistics on my Apple computer, while Wendy used it to analyse the expedition diet. Yet I did not have that ultimate responsibility of leadership or the sheer hard work of implementing the plans I proposed. This fell to Stein Aasheim, a young journalist and climber to whom Arne was paying a salary as full-time organiser.
I only met the entire team once before flying out to join them in Oslo in February 1985. However, that one meeting had been enough to reassure me that I should not find it too difficult to be accepted as part of a Norwegian expedition. For a start they all spoke excellent English and struck me as being relaxed and easy-going, and I knew that once we reached Kathmandu I would be seeing plenty of old friends, since quite a few of our Sherpas had been with me in 1975.
Originally there had been twelve on the expedition but in the summer of 1984 the two who were undoubtedly the most talented climbers in the team and, in fact, in Norway, were killed whilst descending from the summit of the Great Trango Tower in the Karakoram. They had died, presumably, in an abseiling accident after completing a very difficult new alpine-style route on its huge East Face. Stein Aasheim had been with them but had turned back earlier because of lack of food. It was a serious blow to the team, both emotionally and because of their considerable ability as climbers. It was also a severe shock to the general public in Norway, since there had been comparatively few Norwegian expeditions to the Himalaya and none of them had suffered fatalities.
I hadn’t been back to Nepal since our 1975 expedition and, as we walked from the plane to the terminal building in Kathmandu, the smell of wood smoke in the evening air brought rich memories of former times. The baggage collection and customs were as chaotic yet friendly as ever. After an hour’s shouting we had managed to clear a huge pile of boxes and kitbags containing oxygen equipment, film and camera gear, my portable computers and a dozen other items that had arrived at the last minute, without paying anything in customs duty. Pertemba, looking hardly a day older than when he had been with us ten years earlier, was waiting on the other side of the barrier. I had recommended him as Sirdar to Arne, who had written asking him to join us. Pertemba had replied that he would be happy to take on the job but that he had promised his wife Dawa that he would not go through the Everest Icefall again. I felt this did not matter too much, since the main job of the Sirdar is one of administration and this could be carried out from Base Camp. Arne agreed that Pertemba should be Chief Sirdar and that we would get a Climbing Sirdar to take charge of the Sherpas above Base Camp.
We spent three days in Kathmandu. I noticed that there were many more hotels, traffic and tourists, but the essential character of the city had not changed. The old bazaar was as colourful, noisy and dirty as ever, its narrow streets crowded with little shops selling everything from vegetables to transistors and tourist handcrafts.
I was sharing a room with Bjørn Myrer-Lund, a male nurse in an intensive care unit, and probably the most talented all-round mountaineer of the team. A first-class rock climber, he had made the only Norwegian ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger in winter and had also climbed the Cassin route on Mount McKinley. This was, however, his first Himalayan expedition. Tall and thin, and initially taciturn, with features that seemed drawn with an inner tension, it took a little time to break through his reticence to discover a wry but very rich sense of humour.
We were due to fly to Luglha, the airstrip twenty-four miles to the south of Everest, but the weather had been unsettled and no planes had been able to land there for some days. As a result there was a backlog of passengers which was going to take several days to clear. Arne, who was not accustomed to waiting, decided to fly us in by helicopter. On my three previous expeditions to the Everest massif I had walked in. We hadn’t had any choice for on my first trip, to Nuptse in 1961, there had been no airstrips and no roads beyond Kathmandu. In 1972 and 1975 we had been approaching Sola Khumbu at the height of the monsoon, when Luglha was almost permanently clouded in. We had walked from Lamosangu, about fifty miles from Kathmandu on the road to the frontier with Tibet.
It had taken us eight days from Lamosangu to reach the Dudh Kosi. It was a very important part of a trip, allowing one to sink gently into the rhythm of an expedition, giving a relaxed interval between the inevitable last-minute panic that precedes departure and the physical stress of the climb ahead. It was also a time to settle down together.
We were missing all this in the busy whine of the helicopter’s turbine as we chased over the familiar hills and valleys of Nepal. They were a dusty brown, still in the grip of the Nepalese dry season and winter. Paths I had walked in the past snaked round the contours of valleys and zigzagged up narrow arêtes in a ribbon of red or brown. We raced over houses clinging improbably to the crests of ridges, and there were tell-tale scars of brown and yellow, the signs of earth slides caused by the erosion from deforestation. The rivers in the beds of the valleys were little more than trickles, glinting blue, grey and silver in the sun. In the monsoon they would be a turbulent brown, carrying the precious topsoil of Nepal down to the Bay of Bengal.
We skipped between clouds, slid over a high pass and were above the Dudh Kosi, the river whose source is the Khumbu Glacier on Everest. The airstrip at Luglha was little more than a brown stripe. There was a crowd to greet us as we hovered in, most of them trekkers and tourists who had been waiting several days to get out. They clamoured around the helicopter even before the doors had opened, anxious to get a seat and be on their way back to the bustle of cities and everyday life.
Our Sherpas were also waiting for us. I was constantly being greeted by old friends who had been with me in 1972 or 1975. After a day in Luglha, issuing the Sherpas with the gear and organising loads, we were ready to set out for Namche Bazaar. We were going to make a leisurely progress to Base Camp to enable the team to acclimatise and make up for the shortness of our approach.
Luglha had certainly changed since 1975. There were many more buildings, most of them so-called hotels, though they were really just hostels with dormitory accommodation. You could even get hot showers, though these were no more than an empty tin with holes punched in the bottom, set in the roof of a hut, through which a Sherpa lad would pour buckets of hot water. The men wore western clothes, but the Sherpanis still wore their traditional dress and apron. There was certainly more money around. This was reflected in the difficulty we had getting porters to carry our gear to Base Camp. We were using more yaks than we had done in the past and Pertemba was having a hard job finding enough of these. Our gear was going up the valley in a trickle. Gone were the big porter trains of the seventies.
I could remember Namche Bazaar as it had been in 1961, a collection of houses clinging in a little crescent to a basin-like valley above the Dudh Kosi. We had been given a meal at the police post and had had to eat traditionally without knives or forks, shovelling the rice and dahl into our mouths with our fingers. It was very different now, packed with new hotels, some of which really merited the title. The most lavish belonged to Pasang Kami, my Sirdar on the 1970 Annapurna South Face Expedition. Fine-boned and now wearing horn-rimmed glasses, he had always been more an organiser than a climber. He was one of the most successful Sherpa businessmen and, besides part-owning a trekking company with Pertemba, had built a three-storey hotel with a penthouse restaurant. It even had electric light, an innovation that had com
e with a small hydroelectric scheme for Namche Bazaar.
I walked up the hill behind, through the woods to Khumde and Khumjung, the two Sherpa villages from which many of our porters came. These had changed little since I had last been there – the same two-storey houses with the byres on the ground floor and living room up a steep ladder, on the first. True, the windows were bigger now and glazed, a partition divided the living room from the kitchen, and there was usually a cowl over the cooking fire to channel out the smoke which on my previous visits had filled the single big living room before finding its way out through chinks in the roof.
I dropped down to the bridge over the Dudh Kosi and sought out the tea house of Ang Phurba, the Sherpa with whom I had climbed on those memorable final days of our 1972 expedition. He was sitting on the porch, nursing his youngest child, a rosy-cheeked baby. We exchanged news of the expeditions we had been on in the intervening years. His wife offered me some chang, the Sherpa equivalent of beer, a thin milk-coloured drink made from fermented rice or wheat. It hardly tastes alcoholic but its effects are insidious and I felt slightly tipsy as I strode up the path leading to Tengpoche gompa, the monastery that is the spiritual centre of the Sherpa community.
We had our puja the following day. In return for a contribution to monastery funds the monks bless the expedition. The team trooped into the big dark temple and sat on low benches with the Sherpas while five monks with horns and cymbals played and chanted. To our western ears it was discordant and yet I found it emotionally moving and reassuring. At the end of the ceremony we lined up and were each given a thin red thread, blessed by the head lama, which we were told to tie round our necks. I kept mine on throughout the expedition, as did all the others. Mine finally disintegrated some months after returning to Britain.
The Everest Years Page 24