On the fifth morning at Base Camp Nick suddenly arrived with a team of Balti porters and enough poplar wood poles to make a stretcher. As it was being constructed Nick produced, from his rucksack, more food and also some very strong painkillers. All the way down the mountain, to this point, I had no pain relief, in fact we had no first aid kit with us. I had hoped to find at Base Camp at least some relief for my aches and pains but Nick had left nothing of the kind behind; I had a go at him about that which was incredibly insensitive of me after he had just slogged all the way back up to help us.

By midday I was on the stretcher in the midst of the Balti porters carrying me down the steep, and sometimes difficult, moraine-covered Baintha Lukpar Glacier. The Balti were dressed, as always, in their homespun tunics and cotton pantaloons, wearing sawn-off wellingtons and rubber sandals. For the next three days I was surrounded by them as they carried me along so carefully, with Chris walking alongside still coughing and spitting up colourful mucus.

It was a remarkable journey on that home-made stretcher, made up of wooden poles, climbing ropes and sleeping mats. Never once did they look like dropping me and I seldom felt a jolt. It was interesting to lie on the stretcher, listening and waiting, as they made decisions as to which route to take, the pacing of the journey, the choice of camping site, and who would fetch wood, water and stone for their bivouac.

They only seemed to make decisions after a gentle murmur of conversation had gone round the motley band. Perhaps it was the effect of the painkillers putting me on something of a cloud that their voices had blended into a sing-song melody of background sound completely in tune with the rhythm of their village lives. No one ever shouted or became overexcited and neither was there any obvious leader – they seemed to know just what to do and did it in a spirit of cooperation. They were all individualistic, all of them characters in their own right, yet easily capable of working to a common aim in complete accord.

Over the years I had been pleasantly surprised at the spontaneous generosity of people who had so little, with none of the amenities I take for granted, living on marginal land and whose lives are very much at the mercy of natural processes. Time after time my friends and I had received wonderful hospitality from such people who shared with us what little they had especially when the chips were down. Caring for complete strangers seemed to come so naturally to people living precariously on the edge.

On the fourth day the stretcher party put me down on a flat, well-grazed pasture just before their village of Askole. Within half an hour a helicopter appeared that Mo had arranged; a rather overweight pilot with silver pearl-handled revolvers on each hip stalked across the grass towards me announcing that there was only room for me and no room for Chris or Clive, whose frostbite had become infected. He had brought his batman along for the ride. He said, ‘No problem, I will be back in four hours for your friends’. During this announcement and discussion American friends, who had successfully climbed Trango Main Tower, stopped awhile to see how we were and if they could help. I flew off in the helicopter with the reassuring news that Dennis Hennek, who had led the American expedition, John Roskelley and other members of the team would arrange for their two doctors to check out Chris. If, as it seemed, he had pneumonia, they had the means to give him antibiotics intravenously.

It was a remarkable flight some 1,000 feet up above the Braldu River until we approached the helipad at Skardu. Suddenly there was a clonking noise in the engine which cut out and we dropped the final twenty or so feet without power on to an area of boulders. Although we had been thrown around the cockpit there was no further damage to me or the batman. The pilot however just sat there, ashen – if not green, with beads of sweat pouring down his face, in a state of shock. He said what had happened to the engine just above the ground could so easily have happened when we were 1,000 feet up.

Tut, who had walked out on hearing we were still alive, had been waiting for me and was the first person at the helicopter crash. He went along with me to the hospital where, after X-rays, both my legs were encased in plaster. I was instructed not to put weight on them. The next day I told Tut that I had to get out of the hospital. Tut, who had limped in with a stick said, ‘There’s only one thing for it – you’ll have to get on my back’. Luckily I was by then only skin and bone, well below my usual fighting weight. Tut staggered down the hospital corridor almost bent double with my weight – on either side were amputees missing arms and some devoid of both legs.

The crashed helicopter wasn’t going anywhere for a long time – there was a problem. In fact, it was to be seven more days before Chris could be brought out. He had spent the most frustrating week, staying in a dusty adobe house, thinking he had been abandoned, listening day after day for the noise of the helicopter, which never came. Everyone else had left, expecting Chris to be flying overhead at any time. He was visited by the two American doctors from the Trango Tower expedition who diagnosed and treated Chris for pneumonia. In total frustration Chris began to walk out and, of course, that same morning the helicopter appeared overhead at first unable to locate him.

Once in the helicopter Chris persuaded the pilot to take him direct to Islamabad and drop him near the British embassy. The most suitable place was a large international golf course where he was deposited. The helicopter flew off leaving Chris, totally emaciated, dusty, dirty and unwashed, with his bags at his side on the eighteenth green. He walked across to the clubhouse in his filthy red long johns, vest, with one arm in a sling, his beard and hair in a tangle. People backed away at the sight but eventually he got on to the telephone and Caroline, our embassy hostess, arrived to pick Chris up and take him away to the comforts within the embassy compound.

Chris arrived back at the embassy on 5 August where he met Clive and Steph as they were preparing to drive all the gear home. A few hours later Nick also arrived – he and Aleem had been stuck in Skardu with all the remaining gear. Nick had got it out just in time to pack it into the white van.

By 4 August, three weeks and one day after the accident, I was being plastered and pinned in Nottingham General Hospital. Tut, Mo and Jackie were also back in Britain. Chris flew out on 7 August, and finally, Nick, who – frustratingly – could not get a flight home until 12 August. Our little band of brothers on the mountain had shown what could be done in a crisis by a small team, isolated, cut off from the outside world, in some ways like a commando unit behind enemy lines, but in our case without radios or any other communication devices. Chris, Clive and Mo had got me with my two broken legs down the steepest part of the mountain. After Chris smashed his ribs on the Red Pillar, Mo and Clive worked tirelessly to get both of us down from 22,000 feet to the glacier. It was all done in a totally competent and controlled manner, thanks to their wide mountaineering experience, and natural humanity to stay and put it into practice. For eight days, from the accident down to Base Camp, I was looked after and cared for with total attention during the day and throughout the night. I doubt if any climbers in our position could have been in better hands. These two confirmed amateurs did a totally professional job in getting us down and out from the Ogre.

No single person did more for the overall success of the expedition, and getting us home again, than Nick. I cannot think of anyone more diligent; right from the start he took it upon himself to take charge of the food and the finances throughout the expedition, spending hours changing money in banks and haggling with porters over their pay. He had taken on most of the cooking at Base Camp. For someone who wanted to return home after his climb up to the West Summit it was a strange irony that it was Nick who had to wait patiently for our return, increasingly thinking we were all dead, and would have to announce this fact to our wives and families.

Nick had begun to fret about our fate from 16 July onwards, becoming ever more worried as the days passed until, by 22 July, he was convinced that we were all dead. This would have been a trial for anyone but especially for someone who was so conscientious. The awful thing is simply not knowing and agonising over likely scenarios, which is what Nick did. His diary records the thoughts churning around in his head: ‘All four down in a windslab avalanche, a multiple accident on a fixed rope.’ He was constantly vigilant on the mountain, peering through his binoculars, ‘Every stone on the glacier seemed to move … if you listened hard enough you can hear human voices in the sound of running water or falling stone’. And in another entry: ‘Hardly slept a wink, thought I saw a green flare up on the glacier – also a distinct shout of “Nick” – no further sounds though!’

Nick commented how incredibly fast things can change. After a final bad night, ‘no sleep – worried – how to break it to Jackie and Steph’, then Mo comes into Askole at 9 a.m. to such huge relief for Nick and Tut; Tut, who for many days had been holed up in a house in Askole reading books and resting his aching leg.

On the way back up with the porters on 22 July Nick nearly drowned after losing his footing while crossing a river near Mango; he was being swept away when a porter waded in, supported by his stick, and pulled him out, probably saving his life. That night the porters lit a big fire to dry his clothes. They too had recognised in Nick a selfless mountain man and took him under their wing.

I was well looked after in Nottingham General Hospital, with friends arriving from near and far, loaded with goodies of all kinds. Pete Minks brought a six-pack of Guinness from Liverpool and Jan came in twice a day with good home-cooked food as the hospital mashed potato and cabbage were of the same colour, and the meat was grey and tough as old boots. Mr Mulholland, the surgeon, well regarded in the East Midlands, gave me confidence before the operation by telling me that he had treated similar injuries amongst coal miners who had been extricated from a collapsed coal seam.

The impact had broken the end of the tibia and also split it some way up its length. The other leg was cracked above the ankle without being displaced. Three weeks after the accident, the surgeon put it all back together again with the help of four rather long screws – stainless steel of course, only the best from Nottingham General. I asked Mr Mul holland whether the healing process had begun and he said that indeed there were signs that the surfaces of the bone at the fractures were beginning to fuse but were still rather like wet cement. Mr Mulholland was easily able to manoeuvre the parts back together and clean up broken cartilage before sewing and plastering me up. He said that if it had been left another week he would have had to rebreak the ankle.

I therefore made the mental note not to leave any future fractures too long before seeing the surgeon. I tried to keep fit in the hospital doing pullups and press-ups but it soon became obvious that I would have to cancel the expedition to Nuptse I was planning for the autumn. By mid October I went out into Derbyshire with Tim Lewis for a first post-op climb. I followed Tim up Suicide Wall on Cratcliffe Tor without too many aches and pains. By late November I had recovered enough to play my first post-op game of rugby for the Nottingham Moderns.

As with most injuries to joints we inflict upon ourselves when young, they do tend to catch up with you in later life. In my case I subsequently had the screws removed and the ankle fused in 2015 as the joint had become arthritic. Unfortunately, it became infected and I developed septicaemia which entailed another ten days in hospital being fed antibiotics intravenously. For the last two years the ankle has recovered and allowed me to continue hillwalking and gentle rock climbing.

As for the climb, looking back, I can see that after Everest I thought I was invincible, that I could do anything. I was far too arrogant believing in my own myth. There comes a time when a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Sometimes he does it gently, feeling his way, sometimes he goes at it like a bull at a gate and that’s when he gets hurt. On Everest, Dougal and I climbed with great circumspection, caring for each other as we proceeded with humility to the summit. On the Ogre I was far too gung-ho. I remember standing at the bottom before going up for the final attempt, saying to myself as I looked up at it, ‘Right, I’m going to get this body from this grass to the top of that mountain whatever happens’. After all the energy I had expended in getting to the base of the mountain during the recce, organising things back in Nottingham, then sitting around waiting for Tut’s leg to heal, I had built up, like Chris, a head of steam for the climb, boiling over with curiosity to know the lie of the land up there and how I would cope on steep rock at 23,000 feet.

An interesting postscript to our expedition was that the route was almost repeated. In 1978 the Shizuoka Tohan Club, then under the leadership of Yukio Katsumi, returned to rechallenge the South Face after being avalanched off in 1974. His team members were Kimio Itokawa, Shiro Aoki, Tetsuji Furuta, Toshiro Kitamura, Shosaku Kato and Masanobu Yonezawa.

The first we knew of this was when we received a cassette of used film, taken by Chris that he had left in his rucksack, and found by the Japanese about 200 feet below the summit. According to the account in the Iwa To Yuki, February 1979, three of the team – Katsumi, Itokawa and Kitamura – had a real struggle to climb the final overhang. They managed to surmount it but were so drained they retreated only ten metres from the summit. ‘They were satisfied only to climb the South Face of “Ogre” without accident.’

Nearly a quarter of a century elapsed between the first ascent in 1977 and the second in 2001. Despite many attempts, including one by French climbers Michel Fauquet and Vincent Vine, who climbed the South Pillar to the upper snowfields in 1983, nobody reached the summit for twenty-four years.

In 2001 Thomas Huber from Bavaria and two Swiss friends, Iwan Wolf and Urs Stöcker, succeeded in making the sixth ascent of the South Pillar. They then went on to climb the South Face snowfields and after a total of two weeks of climbing reached the summit early on 22 July. Thomas later came to Cumbria to interview and film Chris and me, to give the film his team had made of their climb a historical perspective. It was only then when reliving the expedition, and in particular the climb up, that we fully appreciated what an interesting climb it was. The whole expedition had been dominated in our minds by the epic descent.

Thomas said that, in his opinion, after doing some research, that what we had achieved on the final tower was the hardest climbing ever done at the time at that altitude. That was good to hear, but I should add that Thomas and his friends climbed in wild and windy weather whereas for Chris and me there wasn’t a breath of wind blowing over the rough red granite of the summit tower.

The third ascent of the Ogre was made in 2012 by a new route and for the first time in brilliant alpine style by the Americans, Hayden Kennedy and Kyle Dempster. They left their Base Camp on the Choktoi Glacier on 18 August accompanied by Josh Wharton until he was stopped by altitude sickness at the last bivouac. They followed a circuitous line up the south side of the mountain on snow, ice and difficult rock to reach the summit on 21 August. They all arrived safely back at Base Camp on 23 August after six days of inspired route finding and hard climbing thirty-five years after the first ascent. For this impeccably executed climb they received a Piolet d’Or in 2013.