On 17 June with Chris down with a cold, Nick and Mo went up the route to push out the ropes towards the site of the first Japanese camp. On the following day Clive and Chris, who was now recovered, climbed over 600 feet right past the Japanese camp while Mo and Nick spent the day taking a rest and filming. On 19 June Nick and Chris left Advanced Base Camp at 2.45 a.m. carrying heavy loads of food and fuel reaching the Japanese camp now known as Camp I in three and a half hours. They descended as Clive and Mo continued above Camp I fixing rope until late afternoon before sliding back down the ropes from 19,500 feet. On 20 June Chris and Nick went up to occupy Camp I from where, during the next two days, they extended the fixed rope to 20,200 feet.
By working a shift system for a week, in various combinations, the four had fixed the way to just below the West Col by 23 June. On that day, Mo and Clive, after ten hours of climbing, returned to Chris and Nick at Camp I with the good news that the climb could now enter a new phase. The first 4,000 feet of the mountain had been climbed and fixed with rope to just below the West Col at 20,630 feet. The climbing had been up classic alpine mixed terrain of steep ribs of snow and ice, interspersed with steps and slabs of granite.
On their return to Camp I, Chris announced that he and Nick had decided that once the route had been made to the West Col they would set off for the summit. Clive recalls Chris’s reaction on hearing that they had reached the col as being ‘Jolly good! That means that Nick and I can go for the summit tomorrow’, about which Nick ‘looked surprised and sheepish’.
There had been a breakdown in communications. Chris later revealed his thoughts that, although good progress was being made, ‘some rifts in our team were beginning to show. Mo and Clive were altogether more relaxed in their approach and did not have the same sense of urgency that Nick and I shared. We believed that we should grab the good weather and make as much progress as possible, get ourselves established on the col, and then go alpine style for the summit. Mo and Clive, on the other hand, seemed to favour a more deliberate approach and preferred the idea of going for the West Ridge of the mountain’. (The Everest Years, 1986).
This is at odds with Clive’s recollections of events at this time. He and Mo had always thought the crest of the West Ridge, from the West Col, would be the most interesting route but during the climbing to the West Col, according to Clive, there had been a change of plan, ‘which had been discussed by the four of us, to climb the snowy south face up to the summit block together’.
Clive was put out, saying, ‘I thought we were meant to be climbing as a team’. Mo pleaded for a rest day, ‘And we can all go up together the day after.’ Clive recalled Chris being ‘unmoved by our protestations’ and was adamant that he and Nick would be heading off for the summit the next day.
Very early in the morning of 24 June, Chris and Nick set off up the ropes for the West Col carrying heavy packs containing food and fuel for a week. Mo and Clive awoke to find they were alone and decided to descend to Base Camp for further acclimatisation, ‘disgruntled and sulky’ as Mo wrote in the Alpine Journal.
Meanwhile down at Base Camp, Jackie, who had done a considerable amount of alpine climbing, readily took up my suggestion that we went and climbed a small rock spire that Clive, Ronnie Richards, Rob Wood and I had attempted two years previously. This was something both Jackie and Steph had always had in mind. In fact, Jackie was hoping to carry out a reconnaissance of a suitable peak to climb in 1978. Steph unfortunately was suffering from the altitude and maybe heat exhaustion. Jackie and I didn’t make it due to huge balconies of unstable snow which came crashing down in the afternoon heat, taking my rucksack with them. On our return to camp we came to know that earlier that morning Don Morrison, leader of the Yorkshire Karakoram expedition, had died. Don and Tony Riley were walking along the Baintha Lukpar Glacier following, by then, a well-used track in the snow, when suddenly Don fell through the snow down into a deep crevasse – so deep that Tony could not reach him or hear him above the noise of the subglacial stream.
The first we knew of the ‘separatists’ up on the South-West Spur was when Mo and Clive arrived in camp that evening. Clive had a set look on his hairy countenance that had us wondering ‘what next?’ It wasn’t so bad, just that they felt ‘disillusioned’ that Chris and Nick had taken off without a full and frank discussion. It seemed to Mo and Clive that all four of them needed more time to acclimatise, and go down for more supplies especially gas cylinders and more rope. Mo recalled I was ‘a bit disgusted’ at this turn of events, as related by Mo and Clive on their arrival at Base Camp.
I did wonder if this situation had come about due to the fact that Chris and Nick had far more high-altitude experience than Clive and Mo. Mo had never been much above 20,000 feet previously, whereas the two thrusters had been above that height on numerous occasions and up to 27,000 feet on Everest’s South-West Face. Clive had been up to 23,000 feet on Pik Lenin so had a better idea than Mo, but still would lack the confidence of Nick and Chris who were totally mentally prepared for the debilitating effects on the body and the altered state of thinking processes that the lack of oxygen brings about. For Clive and Mo, climbing in those realms was still something of a mystery and so naturally they preferred to more cautiously feel their way forward.
There was a further reason for being in Base Camp and that was to check not only their wives but also what Tut and I were planning to do. They deduced from watching our movements that all was not well. Mo succinctly summed up the situation as ‘Mountain 1 – Climbers 0’ and later proceeded to suggest ways we might even up the score.
During the next few days the card school resumed and the Latok expedition gave up on their mountain and erected a cairn to the memory of Don before leaving. I suppose there is always an element of Schadenfreude when these traumatic events happen – to the extent that everyone not directly involved is relieved it wasn’t them. In actual fact it could so easily have been any one of us that had previously walked unroped along snowed-up glaciers. Our relief, no doubt, had the positive effect of making us more determined to survive by being more cautious in future. It seemed to me to be a particular waste of a good life; I had known him since I was a teenager working as a temporary instructor alongside the more experienced Don at the White Hall outdoor education centre in Derbyshire. He was a good man, with three children, and who, with his wife Pam, was intending to purchase and run a farmhouse in France. Over the years there had been several such accidents, so devastating for family and friends left to pick up the pieces. I knew that for Pam and her children, life would never be the same again.
On a couple of occasions Tut thought his leg had improved enough for him to have a go at the South Pillar but, after only a few hours walking out of Base Camp, it became obvious to him that his leg was not up to severe rock climbing. The idea of climbing the pillar was now abandoned in favour of accepting Mo and Clive’s invitation to join them on their rocky West Ridge route. This would at least give Tut and me some technical climbing. ‘Good to have you with us, Crip,’ said Mo to Tut.
On 26 June we all went up to ABC accompanied by Jackie and Steph. They too were carrying loads up and they also brought superfluous gear back down to help with the eventual evacuation of ABC. We would not see them again until back in Islamabad.
We had hoped to go from ABC direct to the West Col Camp II but it was obvious that Tut needed to carefully nurse his leg if he was to go all the way to the summit. We all enjoyed the slower pace and the view from Camp I, not to mention the craic. Mo was also able to get more film in the can during this period of exceptionally good weather.
By 29 June, after ferrying gear up fixed ropes, we were well ensconced on the West Col astride the West Ridge. Despite the fact that Nick and Chris were not flavour of the week, we all hoped they were safe and well and, in fact, began to worry as to how they were doing. Chris had left a note for Clive and Mo saying they had fortunately found more Japanese rope for fixing and that they hoped to be on the summit by 28 June. During the next few days we climbed up towards the Red Pillar on the West Ridge. It was so good to be up there where we were now able to see across Snow Lake and the Hispar Pass to all the peaks stretching out to the far horizon including Kanjut Sar, Distaghil Sar and distant Nanga Parbat way round to the south-west.
On 2 July we began to make preparations, at Clive’s suggestion, to go out on the route taken by Nick and Chris to see what had become of them since they were now two or three days late. During the night, while sharing a tent with Tut, I distinctly heard Nick shouting ‘Tut’. I awoke with a start and could not get back to sleep worrying and thinking of their wives, Caroline and Wendy. I put a brew on wondering if perhaps our concern for them over the last few days was fully justified and they had come to grief. Suddenly there were actual voices; thank God it was Nick and Chris arriving back at 05.30 in the morning.
Nick was absolutely wasted, his nose peeling from the sun and eyes wrinkled beyond belief like Hermann Buhl after soloing Nanga Parbat. Chris was hoarse, and Nick could not speak at all, so I spoke first and told them that Don Morrison was dead. There was some discussion of how easily this could happen to any of us and only then did I ask Chris, ‘Have you done it?’ ‘No,’ said Chris. ‘Good’ said Clive with a twinkle in his eye. Mo laughed delightedly! Over brews of tea we came to understand that Chris and Nick had returned from a magnificent, two-man alpine-style, but unsuccessful, push for the summit.
It was only when they were standing in the snow below the final tower that they realised they didn’t have the strength, or the food, fuel and equipment, to climb it. As compensation they settled on climbing the steep snow to reach the West Summit of the Ogre. They were now absolutely shattered from their week of hard and difficult-to-protect climbing across rock slabs and slabs covered with just two or three inches of snow, for pitch after pitch – all day until forced by dark to bivouac in snow caves or out in the open.
They had obviously both set off not fully acclimatised, particularly Nick, who had kept going on a cocktail of brews, codeine and Mogadon tablets and was now desperate to reach Base Camp and return home. He did manage to croak that he was prepared to wait for the rest of us before doing so. Chris, on the other hand, was still full of ambition for the summit, and managed to talk us into going back down for more food and fuel having pointed out how technical, and therefore time-consuming, it would be to climb the final tower. Mo was the only one to object, being persuaded ‘much against my will’ as he thought it was ‘a bit bloody stupid as the weather was fine and we had all the gear we needed’. The six of us descended back to Base Camp to pick up more supplies and to give Chris time to recover from his ordeal. Chris later wrote in The Everest Years that on meeting up ‘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.’
Looking back to that early morning catch-up at Camp II it seems a matter for regret that we could not all celebrate the success of two of the expedition reaching the West Summit of the Ogre in such fine style. We should also have been giving thanks that there had now been a thorough reconnaissance of the way to the Main Summit.
It was to the credit of Mo and Clive that after being ditched by Nick and Chris they could so easily forgive the past and accept Chris on to our team. That is not to say that Mo and Clive were not pleased to be descending for further acclimatisation, to see their wives as well as to collect more food, fuel and a bit more gear.
It was decided since time was running out and in order to give Chris, Nick and Tut more time to rest and recover, that Mo, Clive and I would go back up the ropes, first to the West Col snow plateau and then establish a camp at the base of the 1,000-foot Red Pillar. Over the next two days we jumared up the ropes and climbed the steep snow ribs up to the West Col at 20,670 feet (6,300 metres). From there, in baking sun, we plodded up a relatively easy south-facing slope of now thigh-deep snow to the foot of the Red Pillar. We found a reasonable, if exposed, balcony that would accommodate two tents.
So far I had done nothing much but hold on to jumars clamped to fixed ropes that I had not fixed, that only required a dull plodding routine to make upward progress. Snow flurries and cold did nothing to stimulate my interest in the climb. In fact, as we put up the tents I would have given anything to be at home with my family – Jan, Mike and Martha. Then only half an hour later inside my tent supping hot tea, I looked out of the entrance as the sun set and decided that there was nowhere else I would rather be than up there at 22,000 feet watching the sun dipping down, silver lining strands of cloud strung out over Snow Lake and the Hispar Glacier beyond. Range after range of bristling mountain peaks stood out silhouetted against one other, the nearer ranges sharply and darkly defined while those in the distance faded into the sun’s defused haze of yellow light. Above them all some 100 miles away, Nanga Parbat caught the last of the sun, while everywhere else was plunged into gloom. We zipped up the tent against a strong wind and snuggled content into our sleeping bags.
Mo had unearthed another coil of Japanese static rope which he was keen to fix along with our two climbing ropes. From our Camp III on 8 July, resting up from having left about 450 feet of rope fixed to the pillar, we spotted a lone figure climbing towards us. It turned out to be Chris, who, as he wrote later was, ‘worried about my reception’. There had been tension but it was now beginning to evaporate and, in fact, Chris wrote that he ‘almost immediately felt part of the team’ on arrival. Chris came into camp and we accepted him readily, earning our respect for having gone all the way up to the West Summit of the Ogre, all the way back down to Base Camp, and then, after only a couple of days’ rest, was back up at 22,000 feet. He had enormous drive, matched with the constitution of an ox. He is like our Border terrier which, once it has the scent of a rabbit, there is no stopping it; so it is with Chris when the summit is in sight.
Chris had brought up a sack full of much-needed food and the bad news that Tut and Nick had decided to stay down and wait for our return. Tut felt his injury would hold us up and Nick could hardly speak, so bad was his throat, and so emaciated his body. Mo, Clive and I had worked well together, really enjoying the climbing from Camp III up the West Ridge Red Pillar. In the Alps such a route would be graded très difficile (TD). Here in the Karakoram we were climbing at considerably higher altitudes where time was required between each series of moves just to allow enough oxygen back into our muscles. Chris and I went back down to Camp II for more food while Clive and Mo led up steep gullies above our previous high point to reach an easier-angled snow ridge. Chris found the return trip to Camp III very heavy going, putting in doubt his chances of reaching the summit. We decided to take a day off to give Chris time to gain strength knowing that to make the summit before consuming all the food we would now have to move really fast.
The next day, with the help of the Japanese ropes fixed to half the pillar, the four of us made good time climbing it to reach a snow ridge upon which we could bivouac. Clive and I dug out a platform in the snow for the bivouac tent while Chris and Mo dug out a snow cave. Mo ran out two climbing ropes and fixed them to the crispy snow to ensure a good start on the morrow. We sat resting from our labours supping mugs of tea, watching the sun set, without a breath of wind. We turned in, all of us quite optimistic of reaching the summit in the next day or so.
The following morning we set off across a thin layer of snow hiding hard ice underneath it, over which Clive and Mo led the way before reaching a rocky rib where we had lunch. I then led on, up to the West Summit, where we all sat, having made the second ascent, taking advantage of our bird’s-eye view of the final 800-foot tower. It was immediately obvious that Chris’s insistence that we should descend to bring up more gas, food and climbing equipment was not just out of self-interest. Had he been less than emphatic we might well have been up there quite ‘naked before the mountain’ (the title of Pierre Mazeaud’s book) – lamentably short of food and fuel to sustain our climb, which was already taking much longer than expected.
By late afternoon we had climbed down 400 feet of soft snow to reach the place where Nick and Chris had made their top bivouac, not so much a cave as a hollow in the snow. We had plenty of time to dig out quite a commodious cave, something which Mo and Clive especially were pleased about since they were concerned that the whole slope might avalanche. So we burrowed deep into this icy part of the mountain, inserting ice screws at the back of the cave from which we tied off.
Chris had been climbing very slowly in fits and starts, and not with his usual rhythm. He had, uncharacteristically, slipped, banging his elbow, while traversing a stretch of the rock pillar. As we were pottering about, in and out of the cave, I put it to Clive we might stand a better chance of climbing the final tower if he and I were again to rope up together as we had been on the 1,000-foot pillar. He agreed with me that Chris was slow and suffering from all his exertions over the past two weeks.
At this point I felt more comfortable climbing with Clive whom I had gotten to know over the last few years while climbing with him in Scotland, the Pamirs, and out here making a reconnaissance of the Ogre two years previously. As a climber he may not have been as driven as Chris, Nick and me, but he was an excellent rock climber given to making sound judgements and basically someone I had always felt confident to be with in the mountains. He let me know he was sorely tempted but replied, ‘Nah, I’m sorry youth but I’ve promised I’ll help Mo with his filming’, and, as an afterthought, ‘We’ll be right behind you.’
That evening Mo and Clive occupied the back of the cave while Chris melted snow and I rehydrated four freeze-dried meals of beef stroganoff followed by rehydrated apple flakes and numerous cups of tea. I snuggled into the down of my sleeping bag, well fed and content with the day’s climbing. There was time to register, in those moments of calm, after so much effort and frustration, excitement at being in this position, so well placed to be setting off up that final tower for the summit of the Ogre. I felt no anxiety, as I often did while packing my sack the night before a serious climb in the Alps; now there was only curiosity to see how it was up there and how I would manage.
Despite being up at 23,000 feet we all seemed to sleep well. In fact, I hadn’t even heard Chris’s notorious snoring or him pottering about preparing the porridge until he woke me. Mo and Clive lay in their sleeping bags intending to film from the cave and then catch us up later. Chris set off and I followed in his steps across deep, soft snow. He asked me to lead the steep, mixed ground to the left of the tower. For two rope lengths I found the climbing quite difficult (Scottish IV/V) and it only eased off as I approached the top of a minor pinnacle. We then roped down and across to the main rock tower now only 400 feet below the summit.
To me it was obvious that Chris had not fully recovered his strength from his previous attempt on the Ogre and this was completely understandable – in fact it was remarkable he was up there at all. I could not bring myself to tell Chris that if he did not hurry up we would never make it. I simply said I ought to lead the next pitch. There was only one day’s food left in the cave to see us all the way down to Advanced Base Camp. I knew we could survive several days without food on the descent but we were unlikely to have the willpower, or energy, to have another go at climbing up without food. Chris did not object. Later, I was surprised to read of his resentment of my ‘grabbing the lead’, although, at the time, there was no argument and he seemed to reluctantly accept it was for the best. As it was, the ropes got into a tangle and became jammed in a crack which took up another hour of our day.
We climbed a corner of wonderful rough, warm granite for 150 feet, protected from the wind, with a midday sun beaming down – it was a very enjoyable pitch at about VS/5.7 which normally Chris would have romped up in the lead. I traversed across to belay beneath the final blank wall. Chris proffered me the lead with no objection at all. I was now festooned with a whole rack of big wall climbing gear, a range of pegs, wires, hexes and a couple of tube chocks. I followed a crack climbing both free and on aid, mainly from wire chocks. Eventually the crack I was following petered out into a blank wall. I put in a wire as high as possible and asked Chris to lower me down so that I could start a pendulum, swinging from one side to the other, in the hope of reaching another crack system over on the right.
With all the rope out he managed to give me fifty feet, enough to enable me to gallop backwards and forwards until the arc of my swing was sufficient to gain access to the crack. As I was trying to arrange protection I slipped out and went clattering back across the granite. I pulled myself together and, after a rest, repeated the process several times without success. I put in one last determined effort, knowing my strength was fading fast and managed to get my hands well jammed in and climb up the crack to where I could place a peg. This crack I got into was less steep but now flared rather like those on the headwall on the Salathé on El Capitan. It would still take wire chocks and finger jams and the toes of my Makalu double boots.
I climbed it at grade VI, mainly free with some direct aid that eventually enabled me to reach the top of the wall and a belay on a snow ledge. Chris came up raving about the quality of the climb and the exposure.
It was certainly the hardest climbing I had ever done at that altitude. It had taken place on superb, brown, weathered granite without a breath of wind and with the sun beating down. I found it possible to climb the whole pitch without the encumbrance of gloves. I am sure, had it been otherwise, I would never have made it, not up there at nearly 24,000 feet. There was a final snow gully leading to the summit but to get to it meant negotiating an overhang. Chris made an attempt but couldn’t make it.
I had a go, stepping on his back since I was still without crampons. I managed with an almighty effort to reach over the little roof and wedge my shoulder into a recess, and find a finger crack to enable me to enter fully into the gully to kick steps in the snow to the summit. Just as I arrived on the summit, the sun disappeared below the horizon.
During the time Chris was coming up to join me, I had time to enjoy being up there in the middle of the Karakoram. In those precious moments alone I had never felt more ‘in the mountains’ for that was all there was to see – mountains and glaciers – in every direction.
Now, for the first time, the land to the north revealed its secrets – that is, to me, for it was down below that Eric Shipton, Eadric Fountaine and Sherpas from Nepal had spent three weeks during 1939 mapping the glaciers I was now looking down upon – the Sim Gang, Nobande Sobande and the Choktoi. Between the glaciers were shapely spires, some of them quite sharp, and in the distance fewer than fifty miles away was the magnificent pyramid of K2. A bit closer and just to the right of it, seemingly just as big and impressive, was Mustagh Tower.
Clive and Mo, who had been filming us from a snow pinnacle, had given up on climbing the Ogre for the day having realised how technical it was and that they were now too late to avoid being benighted if they continued. They returned to the cave to try for the summit on the morrow. In two abseils they made it down from the pinnacle back on to the track across the snow. They left their two climbing ropes fixed to the slope to help me and Chris back to the cave in the dark. Chris was soon up to join me on the summit to enjoy the same panorama of peaks now fading into the evening gloom. It was now seven o’clock on 13 July and we were both conscious of the beckoning darkness and that our sleeping bags and head torches were in the cave.