It had cleared during the night and after a quick breakfast we set out in the dark of the pre-dawn, plodding up the slopes above the camp. The beam of my torch picked out the purple gentians peeping through the lush grass. I felt a delicious sense of joy at the prospect of our adventure and the beauty of our surroundings, about the fact that there were just the two of us, that as far as we knew, there was no one else in the entire valley at that moment, that no one even knew where we were, though we had left a note of our change of plan among the boxes at our previous night’s campsite.
We were skirting the southern slopes of Kedarnath Dome above the Kirti Bamak and as the sky lightened with the dawn we could start picking out features on the black mass of Shivling. The mountain was like a gigantic fishtail jutting into the sky, the two fins being the two summits. The main one to the north-east, higher by around a hundred metres or so, had first been climbed in 1974 by an Indian paramilitary expedition. They had climbed from the north, using a large quantity of fixed rope. Since then Doug Scott, with Rick White, Greg Child and Georges Bettembourg had climbed the spectacular North-East Ridge. Nick Kekus and Richard Cox had nearly achieved the North Face, when Cox was killed by a falling stone. Earlier that summer a Japanese team had made a route up the East Face, reaching the summit ridge of Shivling just above the col between the two summits.
The South-West Summit remained unclimbed. The Japanese had also tried the South-West Summit from the north but had turned back. The route that attracted us was its unclimbed South-East Ridge, an airy rock spur that ran up to the South-West Summit. It looked feasible. The problem was how to reach it, for the mountain was guarded on its south-eastern flank by a series of huge bastions of crumbling granite, split by gullies leading into blind alleys of overhanging, probably rotten, rock.
Jim and I walked across the hoar-frosted grass in the early dawn, seeking the castle gate. We found it after about an hour. A broad gully swept down from a high basin cradled by the arms of the south-east and south-west ridges of our summit. The basin obviously held a glacier that spewed in a sheer tumbling icefall down the head wall of the gully. It would be suicidal to try to climb this, but a gully or rake seemed to slip across to the right and would perhaps bypass the barrier. At least it gave us a chance.
We crossed the Kirti Bamak, a wide expanse of smooth bare ice, and climbed the moraine wall on the other side. There was a little grassy nook with a small stream running through it, tucked amongst some boulders. The sun had now risen above the Bhagirathi peaks and it was agreeably warm. We got out the stove, made a brew and a second breakfast. But what to do? The icefall at the head of the gully was already in the sun. It was obviously an avalanche trap and caution dictated that we should laze away the rest of the day in this idyllic spot, then in the cold of the night, when stones would be frozen in position and the snow would be firm and hard, we could try to get round the danger area. It made good sense but we were impatient, felt we had already wasted too much time and, therefore with hardly any discussion, because both of us instinctively wanted to get moving, decided to climb the gully that morning.
We repacked our sacks taking food and fuel for six days, a light tent, sleeping bags, cooking gear, ropes and climbing hardware. The loads felt heavy and must have weighed about fifteen kilos each. We climbed a talus slope beside the long tongue of avalanche debris. At the base of the cleft we put on our crampons. The snow was packed hard, worn smooth by the passage of avalanches and stone-fall. The walls on either side were sheer, scored by more falling rocks and stones. The gully was about twenty metres wide, but we hugged the right-hand side, getting an illusory sense of cover from the solid wall beside us.
Jim drew ahead. I was feeling the altitude and the weight of my sack, was becoming increasingly aware of the threat posed by the icefall that now seemed to hang over us. There was no sound except the crunch of our crampons. We were about halfway up when a huge boulder, the size of a car, broke away high above us. It came bouncing down the gully, ricocheting from wall to wall. There was no cover, no point in moving, because you couldn’t tell where it would bounce next. I just stood there and tried to shrink into myself as it hurtled down. It passed about two metres from my side and then vanished below. Everything was silent once more.
Until this moment I had plodded slowly, regulating my breathing and saving my energy, but I now abandoned all economy of effort, kicked fiercely up the slope, lungs aching, sweat pouring down me, to escape the gun barrel as quickly as I could. As always happens, the point at which the gully forked, foreshortened from below, never seemed to get any closer. But at last we were on a slight spur to the side, the gully had opened out and we could see up the right-hand fork. It was more a rake than a gully, leading up to an overhanging head wall, but this in turn looked as if it could be bypassed by a traverse to the crest of the ridge on the right.
But the quality of the snow had now deteriorated. We waded through soft snow lying on shaly, slabby rock. I caught Jim up. He had decided it was time for a rope. A steep corner running with water blocked our way. I had no belay, so the rope simply meant that both of us would fall should Jim come off, but it somehow gave a psychological feeling of security as Jim straddled up the rock and continued above more easily. I led through another pitch, reaching a bunk-like ledge tucked beneath a huge roof overhang. Beyond, the angle became steeper, with wet snow lying thinly on smooth slabs. Jim flirted with them half-heartedly before retreating.
It was only midday, but the ledge provided a perfect bivouac spot and we could hope that after a night’s frost the snow on the slabs would have frozen, making the route out of the top of the gully both easier and safer. We settled down for the afternoon, clearing rocks and snow to give us two bunk berths, each about half a metre wide. We couldn’t do much cooking, for we had kept our fuel to the minimum, and had designed our diet so that the only thing we needed to heat was snow for our tea. All our food was to be eaten cold, a combination of biscuits, cheese, nuts, dried fruit, canned tuna fish, a Parma-type ham and Calthwaite Fudge prepared in Cumbria. We nibbled through the afternoon, snuggled into our sleeping bags, dozed and chatted.
But it didn’t freeze that night. The water dripped steadily from the overhang. In the cold light of dawn we assessed the situation. Jim, always realistic, questioned whether we should go on. But apart from hating the thought of venturing beneath the icefall once again, I had a gut feeling that we could do the climb.
‘I’ll just have a look,’ I said.
The snow over the slabs hadn’t frozen, but it was firmer than it had been the previous afternoon. About eight centimetres deep, it just took my weight. I tiptoed up to the base of the head wall; the angle eased slightly and the snow became deeper. I hammered in a piton and carried on for the full length of the rope. As Jim came up to join me, I was able to gaze down into the gully we had climbed the previous day. The hanging glacier looked not only nearly vertical but was eaten away by giant bites as if the entire tumbled mass of ice was ready to collapse. Our route was even more dangerous than we had judged from the bottom.
We picked our way over crumbling rocks and insubstantial snow, surmounted a small rocky peak and, almost two hours later, reached a col only twenty metres above where we had spent the night. This was a magical mystery tour indeed. A long traverse over snow-clad scree ledges and we were at last in the upper basin, a high cwm held in Shivling’s arms. But the sun once again had softened the snow that now clung to the steep icy slopes barring our way to the crest of the ridge. Another good reason for an early halt. We dug out a platform for the tent and settled down to a lazy afternoon.
We had gained about 300 metres and crept up into the freezing zone. The following morning the snow was iron hard. Crampons bit reassuringly and we were able to make fast easy progress across the bottom snow slope, choosing runnels of snow between the fingers of granite and hard black ice that ran down from the rocky cock’s comb above.
The sun had already tipped Shivling’s summit, lighting it with a golden sheen that now dropped quickly down its flanks. It was a race, for that sun with its rich strength-giving warmth would also soften the snow that provided our path to the ridge. It touched the crest of an arête just beside us, racing its thawing, melting fingers down the slope, but we had been cunning and had chosen a runnel that was protected from its rays for just a little longer. Jim was out in front, picking his way up the still-hard snow, reaching for the start of the rocks that would give us safe passage to the ridge.
The sun had now reached us but we were nearly there. The rock was already warm to the touch. It was grey granite, rough under hand, revealing cracks and holds as I clambered those last few feet to the crest. The view opened out. We could now gaze across the Gangotri Glacier to the Bhagirathi peaks and could see beyond them an endless vista of shapely jagged mountains. Time for a brew. We lay back on a rocky ledge absorbing the morning sun while the stove roared beneath a panful of snow. Soaring upwards, the ridges swept in a crescent towards the summit some 700 metres above. It was all rock, yet such a light grey that it was almost indistinguishable from the snow. The concave curve meant that we could see all the way to the top. The start looked comparatively easy-angled, comprising great blocks, dovetailed together, piled like gigantic building bricks in a crazy staircase towards the summit.
We climbed carrying our sacks, running out pitch after pitch under a cloudless sky, until in the late afternoon we reached the crest of a huge boulder. It was like a flying buttress leaning against the main structure of the mountain. Ahead the angle steepened; the rock appeared to be more compact and the way less obvious. It was a good place to stop for our third night. There was some ice down behind the boulder and I dug this out for our evening drink. We didn’t bother to put up the tent but found two level areas on to which we would curl in our sleeping bags, tied ourselves on and dropped off to sleep in the dusk.
I was woken by the wind. A great cloud was blanking out the starlit sky. Suddenly our situation seemed threatening. I woke Jim and we decided we had better erect the tent. In the confusion of doing this in the dark I dropped my head torch. It slithered crazily down a wide crack at the back of the chimney. But the storm didn’t materialise. The following morning there was no trace of cloud. We waited for the sun to warm the tent before starting to cook, made a leisured breakfast and got away from our bivouac spot by eight o’clock.
Now the rock was steeper, the holds smaller. The sack was too serious an encumbrance for the leader, so whoever was out in front left his behind. We tried hauling the sack but the angle was too easy. So it kept jamming and was being torn to bits by the sharp rock. We therefore devised a system by which the leader anchored the rope on completing each pitch, abseiled back down to pick up his sack and then jumared back up to his high point, followed by the second who would also remove any nuts or pitons. It was a slow and tiring process.
The ridge was flattening out into little more than a rounded buttress, losing itself in the upper part of the South-East Face. The rock was becoming more compact, there were few cracks and the holds were becoming increasingly rounded. It was my turn to lead. I couldn’t get in any runners and was faced with a move that would have been very difficult to reverse. I couldn’t afford a fall.
I retreated, picked out the line of least resistance, and made a long traverse on to the face, over easy-angled but smooth slabs, for a full rope-length. Jim followed, leaving his rucksack behind. We planned to abseil back down to rescue them both once we had completed our dogleg. It took us two hours to get back on to the crest of the ridge about thirty metres above our starting point. The morning had slipped away. The rock was now more broken but pitch followed pitch towards the crown of a small spur. We were becoming worried about a water supply. We needed snow but the rock had been bare for some time. We found some ice in the back of a crack on the crest of the spur, enough for a few brews, but it was hardly a luxury bivouac spot. There was barely room for both of us to sit down, yet it would have to do, for there seemed neither ledges nor snow above us.
It was only three in the afternoon, so we resolved to run out our two rope-lengths before trying to construct a bivouac site. It was my turn to lead up a rocky prow that was rich in holds, but above the ridge merged once again with the face in a steepening of slabs. Jim set off following a series of grooves. The cracks were blind, the holds sparse and his progress slow and hesitant. All I could do was watch the rope and gaze at the clouds boiling over the high walls of Meru and Kedarnath. Big thunderheads were forming to the west. Could this be a break in the weather, and, if there were a storm, how would we fare on the last of our rations, with the choice of a desperate retreat or smooth difficult rock above, leading to unknown ground on the other side of the mountain? I glanced across the face to the east. We were below the level of the col between the two summits and must be at least 200 metres from the top.
‘I don’t think this is going to go,’ shouted Jim. ‘I’ll abseil down and try out to the right.’
He fiddled with his pegs, trying to get a good placement. The hammering sounded flat and dull with none of the resonant ring that is the sign of a peg well in. We were uncomfortably aware of the dangers of abseiling. We had met three young British climbers in Delhi at the headquarters of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation. They had made an impressive new route up the West Ridge of Bhagirathi I, the fine-pointed peak we could see dominating the other side of the Gangotri Glacier, but one of them had fallen to his death on the way down while abseiling from a nut anchor. Jim was now abseiling from the piton he had finally managed to place to his satisfaction, stepping down carefully, putting as little weight on the rope as possible.
He pulled the ropes down and picked a way to his right in a long diagonally rising traverse towards what appeared to be a break in the smooth band of rock. In the meantime the clouds had rolled in to cover the sky. Our friendly ridge was looking bleak and threatening and I had now had over an hour to savour the isolation and commitment of our position. The rope had nearly run out.
‘Only ten more feet.’
‘I’m nearly there.’
There was a whoop of success.
‘It’ll go all right. Looks great.’
I shivered. ‘Come on Jim, we’ve still got to build a bivvy site.’
He anchored the rope, and picked his way back to join me. The ledge where we had left our sacks looked even smaller than it had been three hours earlier. Jim set to with a will, heaving rocks from the ridge to build a delicately balanced platform projecting out from the original tiny plinth. After an hour’s work we had quite a respectable platform, though the tent, once erected, was overhanging it at both ends and on the outer side. From outside it looked incredibly precarious but inside, though we could barely sit up it had a reassuring enclosed feel. We had chipped away at some ice and collected it in a pile by the entrance. The stove was purring and our first brew was almost ready. In our effort to save weight we had just the one pan and a single spoon.
It had begun to snow, pattering lightly on the tent. I suspect that Jim was wondering, in much the same way that I was, just how we would manage to get off the climb in bad weather, but we didn’t discuss it. There was no point. We chatted lightly and easily. Our climbing judgement and attitudes seemed so close that there was very little need to talk over plans or intentions. Whoever happened to be out in front took the tactical decision; it was as good and as easy a level of teamwork as I have experienced in the mountains.
It was now dark. Just one more brew before settling in for the night. Jim opened the tent door to get some ice, there was a rattle and our only remaining torch, which had been propped in the entrance, went hurtling down the slope, casting its beam erratically over the snow-plastered slabs.
‘That’d give someone a shock, if there was anyone down there to see it,’ commented Jim cheerfully.
We had now lost both head torches but we could do without them. At least it gave us an excuse to lie in until it was light in the morning.
About an inch of snow had fallen in the night, but this was quickly burnt away once the sun crept above the cloudless peaks to the east. We were away by 8.30 a.m., jumaring up to the high point. I had the first lead of the day up a steep crack line that yielded both holds and placements for protection. This led to an overhanging corner. It looked as if Jim had captured the crux. He bridged out widely, managed to get a running belay above him, swung out onto the overhanging wall and let out a yell.
It looked spectacular. He was moving steadily out over the bulge until he vanished from sight. Slowly the rope ran through my hands. There was a shout from above; he’d made it. Another pause and he zoomed back down the rope to pick up his sack. As I followed, jumaring up the rope, I was part envious that he had probably got the best pitch of the climb, and part relieved that it hadn’t been my turn. It looked hard and committing with widely spaced holds over a giddy drop.
The angle now relented but every ledge was piled with rocky debris which the rope dislodged on to the man below. Pitch followed nerve-racking pitch. We were now above the col but the top seemed as far away as ever. The higher we got, the more insecure the rock became, with great flakes piled precariously one on top of the other. We weaved from side to side, trying to take the safest line. There was no point in putting in any runners, for nothing was solid. Then, suddenly, I was nearly there. I pulled carefully over a huge block and found myself on steep snow just below the crest of the ridge. But I’d run out of rope. There was no alternative, I’d have to stop and bring Jim up. We were now both carrying our sacks and he hardly paused as he came alongside, excited to reach the crest and see the view from it. He kicked up it, feeling the lack of crampons, and peered over the top, a precarious knife edge of snow. The other side fell away in a precipitous slope that swept in a single plunge of some 300 metres to a snow basin far below.
The summit seemed barely a rope-length away. It was a slender tapering tower, sheer rock on the southern side, near-vertical snow on the northern; a mythical peak from one of those eighteenth-century pictures or perhaps a Chinese watercolour. It was now five in the afternoon. The snow of the final ridge would be safer after a night’s frost, so we decided to stop where we were. We cut away the crest of the ridge until we had a platform just big enough for the tent with crazy drops on either side.
That evening we finished most of the small quantity of food we still had. We were just thirty metres or so below the South-West Summit of Shivling but, having got up, we now had to get down again. Descending the way we had come would be a nightmare. The rope would almost certainly jam on all those loose rocks and, even if we got down the ridge, we would still have to negotiate the crumbling walls near the base and the bottom gully with the threat of the icefall. Yet descent on the other side didn’t seem much better. The snow slope was ferociously steep, the crest of the ridge knife-edged and it was a long way back to the col. We couldn’t have been much further out on a limb.
‘You know, we’re just about on top. We’ve climbed the route. Don’t you think we should start getting down? It looks bloody desperate to me,’ Jim suggested tentatively next morning.
‘Oh, come on Jim, we’ve got to finish it off. Don’t you want a picture of yourself standing there on top? Where’s your sense of glory?’
‘I’m more interested in getting down in one piece.’
‘It’ll only be twenty minutes or so. You’ll regret it for ever if you don’t go to the top.’
It took more than twenty minutes. It was my turn for the first lead and I set out, kicking carefully into the snow that was still soft even after a night’s hard frost. I ran out a rope-length and started bringing Jim up. I was barely halfway to the summit. As he came towards me, using the steps I had kicked carefully, my eyes were drawn beyond him to the line of descent. It looked quite incredibly frightening. The top of the ridge curled over in a cornice, making the crest itself dangerous to follow. That left the steep snow slope on the left, but was it secure?
Jim was now kicking into the snow above me, moving steadily. He reached a little rock outcrop, pulled up it and then he was there, perched on a tiny platform just below the top. He brought me up and offered me the summit with a sweep of his hand. It was just a single clamber to the perfect point of Shivling. I have never been on a summit like it. There was barely room for a single person to balance on its tip. I stood there and waved my ice tools in a gesture of victory, not over our mountain, but of joy in the climb we had completed, the beauty of the peaks and sky around us and the complete accord with which we had reached our summit. But then reality returned. We had to descend an unknown route that, from what little we could see of it, was going to be frighteningly difficult. We returned to the tent and packed up, leaving behind anything that we felt we definitely would not need again.
‘We might just as well solo down,’ I suggested. ‘I don’t think we’ll get any decent belays. If we’re far enough apart and unroped, if the slope does go, at least one of us might survive.’
‘Oh!’ said Jim. ‘It’s like that is it? OK.’
He admitted afterwards to being horrified by the prospect. He was less used than I to Himalayan snow slopes and hadn’t experienced an apprenticeship with Tom Patey, the legendary Scottish climber who rarely agreed to use a rope on anything but the most difficult ground.
I started down, kicking hard into the snow, trying to get the tips of my crampons into the solid ice beneath, hoping that the snow was just firm enough to take my weight and that the whole lot wouldn’t slide away. It was as frightening ground as any I have been on, steep, insecure and going on for a long way. I moved as fast as I could, concentrating on each separate step, trying to insulate my mind from the drop below and the scale of the danger. Just kick, step, kick, step, place the ice tools, balance the weight evenly, delicately yet firmly, and hold the fear in tight control. The knife edge went in a great curve and I kept just below the crest, slowly getting closer to the col, gradually lessening that terrifying drop. At last I was above the col and, if I fell now, I’d stop where it levelled out. It was broad and inviting. I turned outwards, started walking down with greater confidence, negotiated a filled-in bergschrund with care and then at last was on the level. I could relax.
I pulled off my sack, slumped onto it and looked for Jim. There was no sign of him. After twenty minutes I began to worry. I was just starting to retrace my steps when to my immense relief I saw him come round the crest of the ridge.
‘That’s the worst bit of ground I’ve ever crossed,’ he announced.
We were now on the col and had joined the route by which the mountain had first been climbed. There was a snow bowl just below which dropped away in what we presumed was a hanging glacier. We certainly didn’t want to go down that. We could see the ridge that formed the boundary of the North Face of the main peak. It didn’t seem too steep.
‘That must be the way, surely,’ I suggested.
‘Looks as good as any other,’ Jim agreed.
So we roped up, for fear of crevasses, and started down, at first traversing across the ice slope at the foot of the West Face of the summit pyramid, then dropping down over the bergschrund with a two-metre jump into the snow basin. Getting across to the North Ridge was less easy than it had looked from above. We were soon on steep bare ice, traversing fearfully on the tips of crampons for three rope-lengths, until at last we gained the ridge. Down the sheer slope of the North Face we could see the gem-green oasis of Tapoban far below. But it was going to be a long time before we reached it.
I felt a constant nagging fear that is never present on the ascent. Then all one’s energy and thoughts are directed to reaching the top, whilst on the way back down, survival dominates the mind. But it is this very fear, the banishment of all euphoria, that helps one avoid careless mistakes that are the bane of so many descents and the cause of so many accidents to good climbers. The ridge seemed endless. We soloed some sections and roped up on others. Most of it was easy-angled, but it was slabby and smooth, the ledges piled with scree and the snow soft. There were no signs of our predecessors; none of the old fixed ropes that we had expected to find. We reached the top of a vertical step – time to abseil. We completed one rope-length but were still only part-way down, made another over a steep void, swinging awkwardly back on to the ridge.
We tugged one end of the doubled rope. The rock was broken and spiky, full of traps for the unwary abseiler. We had been careful and the rope was coming free but, as we pulled the end through the sling at the top, it fell in a wild arc over a rocky spike some thirty metres above us, looping round it in a knot that got tighter the harder we pulled. We had lost a rope which meant that we could now abseil only twenty metres at a time.
But the angle had eased once again and we climbed down unroped to a glacier that dropped down from the West Face in a great convex sweep. At first it was easy walking on ancient iron-hard ice, then it steepened alarmingly. We were still a couple of hundred metres above the valley floor. To escape the glacier we climbed up on to a broken ridge and were just wondering where to go next when Jim noticed a line of fixed rope across to the left. We had not only made a first ascent but we had found, inadvertently, a new way down. The original route went up a rocky spur in the centre of the West Face.
We were glad of the ropes, for the last hundred metres or so were on smooth water-worn slabs which would have been difficult. A last snow slope and we were on grass once more. It was five in the afternoon. We had just made a 1,500-metre descent, but were determined to get back to Base that evening. We were four miles from Tapoban, night was falling and we had lost our head torches. But it didn’t seem to matter. We were alive and we’d just completed one of the most wonderful climbs that either of us had ever undertaken. All we now had to do was put one foot in front of the other as we dropped down the side of the Meru Glacier.
It was ten that night before we stumbled into Tapoban, first passing the camp of a group of young Indian climbers from Calcutta. They were delightfully naive and ill equipped but full of enthusiasm and warmly hospitable. After having a cup of tea with them we walked another half mile to our own little campsite, to find Vijay pitched alongside the Poles and very relieved to see us. We had gone beyond fatigue and were in a state of excitement, needing to communicate everything that had befallen us in those five intense days. The Polish girls had climbed Meru and were also about to return.
The following day we all had breakfast together and started back for Delhi. We no longer had the red carpet of the tourist organisation and, squeezing on to a bus packed with pilgrims, were rattled for twelve hours to Uttarkashi and then for another eighteen dusty hours all the way back to Delhi, talking, laughing and swigging Polish vodka until we reached the bus terminal in the early hours of the morning.
Shivling had been a delight. It was an intense, fast-paced experience on a challenging and very committing climb in a tight timespan. It really was alpine style, not just in the way we made the climb, but in its entire spirit. Tapoban, with its little groups of climbers, had the feel of an obscure Alpine campsite and the mountains themselves were Alpine in scale. While the way we had been able to change our plans and react to circumstances had created a sense of freedom you can never feel on a larger expedition. It all added up to one of the best mountain experiences I have ever had.