This book is a biography of the Ogre in two parts: the first part is concerned with the geological evolution and exploration from ancient times; the second part is more personal, covering the first ascent of the mountain and the drama of the descent with my two broken legs and Chris Bonington’s smashed ribs.
The first section of the book involved a good deal of research that I found immensely interesting: I had been to many of the places the European explorers first saw, during eight visits to the Karakoram, the Central Hindu Kush of Afghanistan and Pik Lenin in the Pamirs. Without doubt most of what I have written has been said before, but not many can write it down so well and convincingly as Conway and Shipton, and, more recently, William Dalrymple and Rory Stewart.
This is to be the first of a series of books of a similar format. Over the next few years I intend to produce books about Kangchenjunga, Makalu, K2, Nanga Parbat, Everest and Baffin Island. The books will cover the exploration that first brought men to the mountains right up to the summit. To that extent these volumes will be innovative in that most books on mountain travel and exploration go no further than traversing the adjacent glaciers and crossing nearby cols. The climbing is from a different era – before satellite phones, the avail ability of accurate weather forecasts on a daily basis and before super-lightweight equipment and plastic boots filled with closed-cell foam.
This series will cover a golden age of British Himalayan climbing between 1970 and 1985. These were brilliant days when I, for one, could have gone from one expedition to the next without a break, pushing the limits of climbing rock at great altitude and to climb the highest mountains without bottled oxygen and some without fixed ropes in complete alpine style.
In the last year new material has become available to me – I came across a bundle of letters I had written to my wife and family during the expedition to the Ogre that I had not read since first writing them. Nick Estcourt’s diary has become available since it is now lodged with the Mountain Heritage Trust; Clive Rowland has made available his draft memoirs; and the 8mm film, together with supporting cassette tapes, have just been found by Jackie Anthoine forty years after Mo put them together.
I hope the reader will have a better understanding of those times and the part played in the climbs by my companions and the local villagers who helped us first reach the mountain and, in the case of the Ogre expedition, carried me down from it on a stretcher back to their village.
Each of the mountains I have climbed has been unique, presenting my friends and me with a new set of challenges every time. During the course of an expedition, and in overcoming these challenges, we became far more aware of ourselves and of each other. We were, for a time at least, able to return home wiser men, usually more at peace with ourselves and with more enthusiasm to do all that had to be done back home.