Jane’s labour had been going well but the midwives and doctor began to get concerned about the baby’s racing and, sometimes, erratic heartbeat. They decided the baby needed to come out. Nothing had prepared me for the brutality of the final stages of the birth, but the fact that the doctor who had been wearing smart trousers and a delicate floral blouse suddenly appeared in what looked like a trawler-man’s outfit complete with wellies should have given me a clue. The bed was adjusted to a more upright position, as footrests were pulled out and a bucket slotted neatly in between them. Something with a fancy French name, which in reality was little more than sink-plunger, was attached to the top of our baby’s head and then pulled, as Jane was summoned to push. An alarm was sounded and more midwives rushed into the room. Two of them jumped on to Jane’s bulge as the doctor continued to pull. Our baby was propelled into the world and placed gasping on Jane’s stomach. It was a girl.
‘Hello,’ Jane had time to say before a midwife ran out of the room with the baby.
It was 1am on 27 April 2004 and our daughter Maisy had been born. It felt like the massively significant moment it most certainly was, however, I was unaware how much the magic, commitment and responsibility of becoming a parent would grow and change over time. In many ways, as this childhood was beginning my own very extended one was coming to an end. For nearly 20 years I had roamed the world’s mountains free of many of life’s responsibilities. It had been an incredible journey, from childhood explorations in the fields around my Leicestershire family home to some of the remotest mountains on the planet. Now another slightly more planned and controlled adventure was beginning. So much would be different, not least our shopping bill. Having for most of my years forgone a substantial degree of comfort in the quest for experience I was surprised by the amount of things a child needs and the consumption they generate. It soon became apparent that once you have children you inevitably become a mega-consumer like everybody else in the developed world, whether consciously or not.
Maisy’s arrival coincided with a relatively quiet period in terms of work and climbing commitments. I had a few lectures booked locally and an invitation to a climbing festival in Italy pencilled in for the summer, followed by a trip to Pakistan with Andy in the autumn. It was a time for visitors and visiting as we introduced our new daughter to family and friends.
Between the socialising I made plans. A web of contacts built up over many years in the outdoor community enabled me to begin piecing together a series of lectures for the winter. After my recent experiences with the media it was refreshing to be dealing once again with people who were straightforward and had no hidden agendas. Even so, it was time-consuming work and occasionally frustrating when promising lines led to dead-ends; at its best, arrangements fell almost effortlessly into place. I relied almost exclusively on the internet and email for information and communication, constantly marvelling at what these new tools could do. The logistics of a tour are complicated: dates, venues and travel between them all have to fit. The final piece of the jigsaw was to arrange the shipment of my books to various locations, so that I had copies to sell after each show. I was acutely aware I could have not have pulled together the whole venture by myself without the aid of communications that had only come into common use over the previous decade. I’d started with modest ambitions for the tour but boosted by success I widened its scope. In the end I filled the first three months of 2005 with engagements, taking in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Iceland. I felt quite pleased with my efforts.
I stood waiting in the departure hall at Manchester Airport with Jane and Maisy next to a trolley piled high with two huge kitbags — the rather cumbersome travel accessories of a mountaineer — hoping the heap would serve as a suitably conspicuous meeting point. Andy was late and I was becoming anxious about missing our flight to Islamabad.
The delay at least gave me time to reflect. Fifteen years earlier in the company of my regular climbing partner at the time — Sean Smith — I had made an attempt on a mountain called Hispar Sar on the north side of the Hispar Glacier in the heart of the Pakistan Karakoram. A huge couloir splits the mountain’s South West Face. The line looked so compelling that from base camp we had hiked for three days to reach it, suffered two nights of storm while attempting to climb it and then marched down for a further two days to regain our base camp. The memory of that perfect line and the quality of the climbing had stayed with me, coupled with a desire to return to Hispar Sar. A photograph sent to Andy convinced him to come along. Sometimes you find life going in circles; this particular episode had just taken a long time to come around.
I was beginning to resign myself to catching a later flight, with all the hassle and expense that was likely to entail, when Andy arrived. He was struggling to control a trolley stacked high with his own kit and looked stressed. One of his bags fell on to the floor and, red-faced, he wrestled it back on to the trolley.
‘Train from Sheffield was delayed,’ he gasped. Andy never seemed to have much luck with travel arrangements, but took great pleasure in relating this latest fiasco as we hurriedly completed check-in.
Once free of our bags, with boarding cards in hand, we all retired to a coffee shop to take stock and compose ourselves before the flight. I was used to these farewells by now — most of my adult life has been a series of them — but this was the first since Maisy had been born. It felt strange, even a little uncomfortable, holding our baby in my arms while trying to retain the focus I knew was required for the next month. We were, after all, going to travel halfway round the world to a troubled country and attempt an unclimbed peak in a remote location. Fatherhood certainly put the mountains and our efforts to climb them in a different perspective. Being a middle-aged survivor of a pastime that had been responsible for the deaths of many friends and acquaintances, my attitude had already shifted markedly with age and experience. Even so, as I hugged Jane and Maisy at the departure gate saying my goodbyes I was deeply conscious of the changed reality. I sneaked one final look at our beautiful daughter as I walked through the door into security and framed the vision in my mind for the weeks to come.
As it turned out it was also the end of an era on another level. It would be the last expedition on which I would be unable to contact others by telephone while in the mountains.
After a four-year absence it was wonderful to return to northern Pakistan. The events of 11 September 2001 and the western world’s response to them had made the country a no-go area. It was not that Pakistan had suddenly become more dangerous to travel in, more a question of governments acting against perceived risk. Many western nations had advised their citizens not to travel to Pakistan, thus invalidating normal travel insurance. The prospect of personally picking up the bill for a very expensive helicopter rescue in the event of an accident had meant that many trekkers and climbers stayed away. The mountainous area in the north of the country remained calm and peaceful and the people as welcoming as ever to visitors, but there had been virtually none. It was heartbreaking to see the tourism infrastructure I had watched slowly build up since the 1980s — when the opening of the Karakoram Highway boosted access and interest — lying empty and unused. Literally overnight the tourists had stopped coming and were only now, nearly three years later, beginning to trickle back in. The loss of jobs and income for what is an impoverished area anyway had caused much hardship, but with their typical stoic resilience the mountain people of Pakistan’s Northern Areas were getting on with life, hoping the visitors would return.
Six days after leaving Britain we arrived at our base camp. Jutmal, a small, grassy ablation valley high above the Hispar Glacier, is a magical spot. It looks out over a river of ice and rubble far below with a line of peaks either side running up to a snowy pass — the Hispar La — at the head of the valley. Our camp was a tiny oasis in a landscape so vast, stark and barren it looked every bit the geological building site it literally is. And yet here was perfection. A tiny stream ran through the grass, radiant butterflies fluttered between colourful flowers and the place hummed to the sound of grasshoppers. It had the surreal atmosphere of an exhibit in a garden show.
We paid off the 12 Hispar porters as we would not need them for the next two weeks. Only Nazir Ali, our cook, would remain, having secured the job because unlike others he was willing to be left on his own in such a place. When not working, Ali occupied himself by listening to cricket matches on his short-wave radio and fastidiously washing and drying his clothes. We were lucky he was so self-contained, as we were away for much of the time and the camp received not a single visitor.
Over the following week we made excursions to scope out our mountain from different angles and to move food and equipment to an advanced base camp. These outings also helped acclimatisation, though with a storm confining us to the base camp for two days, we were not as well-prepared for climbing as we would have wished. It would have to do; we were running on a tight schedule. On 25 September we took a well-earned rest. The previous two days had been arduous, climbing the steep, unstable moraine that formed the final approach to our route. Andy had found it particularly difficult, the limited mobility in his left leg preventing him from boulder-hopping, which was the simplest way of moving over such terrain.
Despite our small setbacks I felt happy, by a stroke of luck the rest day had fallen on Andy’s fiftieth birthday. Over the years, I had never really given much thought about Andy’s age. In many ways he seemed a timeless figure. His physical appearance had altered little during the time I had known him and his frugal lifestyle had remained similarly unchanged. I had only found out his birth date by chance, when I forwarded copies of our passport pages to the airline. Andy had made no mention of the milestone but I felt it was appropriate to mark the occasion. To this end I’d bought a bottle of duty-free whisky at Manchester Airport and decanted the precious liquid into a plastic water bottle to ensure it survived the journey. I waited until mid-morning when Andy was sprawled out on the grass in the sunshine painting, then presented him with the gift.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said with little ceremony. Andy examined the opaque white bottle with its yellow-brown contents cautiously. I understood his concern. ‘It’s not piss you know.’
Andy smiled, opened the bottle and sniffed at the contents approvingly.
‘Cheers,’ he said, taking a swig. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’ A bottle of liquor in Muslim Pakistan had obviously thrown him, but over the next few hours he warmed to the idea.
By the following evening we were back at our advanced base camp and ready to go. At dawn we crossed the remaining short section of glacier and reached a snow cone at the base of the couloir. Above, steep icy runnels over rock slabs gave some superb climbing before the angle eased. Route finding was not a problem; we followed the great gully until late in the day then moved right into a small snow basin, hoping to excavate a bivouac ledge below a rock wall. We managed to dig only a narrow shelf but reasoned we could sleep end-to-end; with no alternative it would have to suffice. In the twilight we hurriedly prepared for the night.
‘Merde!’ I heard Andy shout. A clump of three stuff sacks clipped to a karabiner accelerated away down the route.
‘That’s the food and the brewing kit gone,’ he said despondently, after prolonged swearing in his naturalised French.
‘We could always go down and get some more,’ I offered. Dropping the bags was an annoying mistake made in haste, but Andy was being hard on himself. Our position was hardly serious — a few hours of abseiling would take us back to the glacier and our camp. However, the look on Andy’s face told me thoughts of retreat had not even entered his head. A quick inventory revealed we still had most of the gas and instant noodles; a few chocolate bars also remained. As we bedded down for the night, Andy prepared what was to become our set evening meal — a bowl of instant noodles washed down by several cups of lukewarm water.
The night passed slowly, sporadic deluges of spindrift adding to our discomfort. It was a relief to start moving again at daybreak and we continued uneventfully up the more gently angled central part of the couloir in fine weather. A two-tiered bivouac in soft snow provided a more amiable place to pass the next night and a much simpler location from which to resume climbing the following day.
Our early start was fortuitous. As I led the first pitch it started snowing, bombarding Andy with regular avalanches. Steeper climbing, poorer weather and lack of food slowed our progress. Late in the afternoon an icefall gave access to the uppermost basin of the couloir; this blanked out above and Andy led a difficult mixed pitch to gain a knife-edge ridge. It was dark by the time I joined him.
The bivouac was sensational; all we could do was hack out a small shelf along the crest of the ridge. I sat uncomfortably wedged against a small rock buttress while Andy lay out precariously below me. The night brought wind, snow and biting cold; as it got light I could scarcely believe that we had managed to sleep in such a place. If Andy had made any sudden movement or rolled over in his sleep he would have fallen from his perch.
Now he had work to do, methodically clearing rotten snow to climb a runnel of honeycombed ice up the side of the ridge crest. It was the hardest pitch of the climb. Our lack of sustenance was really taking its toll. I felt weak and slow as I moved up waves of exposed corniced ridge to a flat shoulder. It took until mid-afternoon before we reached the easy-angled slopes that led to the summit.
‘I’m tired,’ I said to Andy as he joined me at a stance. ‘Can we make it to the top and back before it gets dark?’
‘Weather looks settled. We could always go early tomorrow.’
I nodded my approval. What a bivvy site! The upper part of the Hispar Glacier lay below us to the east, rising up to the Hispar La; beyond was Snow Lake, while to the south the jagged outline of The Ogre dominated the skyline. I pulled my damp sleeping bag from my rucksack and spread it on a foam mattress. It was a neat place to do some drying. That evening we finished the last of the noodles and went to sleep happy, the alarm set for midnight. We did not sleep for long. The wind got up, cloud moved in and by ten in the evening we were enveloped in storm. Midnight passed with no improvement and we stayed put. By dawn conditions were no better. With only vapour left in the remaining gas cylinder it was folly to continue. We packed our rucksacks and started to abseil.
It was a long day. The storm intensified and the couloir we were descending excelled in its function as a natural drainage line. Lower down we were regularly swept by increasingly large powder snow avalanches and eventually conditions became so bad that we could only move at carefully timed moments between deluges. It was a relief to finally escape the fall line and to be able to wade down the snow cone to the glacier. At the foot of the slope I found our three bags of food lying mockingly in the snow.
It continued to snow heavily in the night, but we ate well and it felt luxurious inside the shelter of the tent. After a lengthy breakfast we loaded our rucksacks and staggered off down the glacier. The snow-covered moraine lower down proved tiresome but by midday we had only to cross the Yutmaru Glacier to reach the base camp. As we started across the storm blew in again and visibility dropped. Soon we were lost.
‘This is the first time I’ve not had my compass with me,’ Andy observed at one of our many stops to ponder where to go next.
We weaved around on the glacier, trying and failing to recognise features in the driving snow. The hours slipped by. To be benighted was the last thing we needed. Finally, with dusk approaching, the cloud lifted momentarily. We had wandered off the side glacier and were now on the Hispar itself, below the point where we needed to climb the moraine in order to get to Jutmal. We had to retrace some steps, but at least we knew where we were. Exhausted and relieved, we reached base camp and the comfort of the kitchen tent just after dark. Nazir Ali kept the stove roaring well into the night.
Walking out of the mountains, I had time to reflect. It was disappointing not to have reached the summit of Hispar Sar, to bag the first ascent of the peak and to get a view of the great mountains to the north. But we had climbed the couloir, completing what was a perfect line, and in that respect the circle was now closed. The vision of Hispar Sar’s South West Face would no longer occupy my thoughts, bidding me to return. My perception of the mountains of Pakistan and passion for climbing them was changing. This was the place I had spent my formative years of exploratory mountaineering, returning again and again. Here I had learnt to climb day after day while coping with extremes of heat and cold, hunger and thirst. It had been a formidable training ground and had served me well, but I sensed it was time to move on. The trip to Tierra del Fuego had altered me and shifted my perspectives. Perhaps the enforced absence from Pakistan had helped clarify my thoughts, focusing them increasingly on mountains free of human influence. People had lived in the Karakoram valleys for thousands of years and although the mountains themselves remained raw and elemental, even high on the glaciers there were clear indications of man’s presence.
Back in Gilgit I suffered a more telling reminder of the presence of people. The rudimentary sanitation that characterises much of the developing world threw me a dose of Giardia. It was my first reacquaintance with the disease for many years and I had forgotten how unpleasant it was. Our last night in town passed with a churning stomach, cramps and the signal sulphurous belches. Early next morning, on the flight to Islamabad, I suddenly felt very nauseous, made a dash for the toilet, but only managed a few steps before heaving a wave of vomit down the aisle of the plane.
‘What can we help you with today, sir?’ asked the assistant at the car rental desk. It was mid-January and I had spent late autumn and the festive season at home after the Pakistan trip. Now I was in Albany, the capital of New York State, to begin the lectures series I had organised the previous year. It felt exciting. For the next three months I would be travelling continually, climbing occasionally, meeting many new people and some old friends.
‘I’d like a car please,’ I replied with a dose of English sarcasm that produced no reaction. It rarely did in this country.
‘And what kind of car are you after?’ the man continued undeterred.
‘The smallest, cheapest one you’ve got.’
The man handed me a brochure and proceeded to run through the various models and insurance options. The vehicles all looked large to me.
‘Haven’t you got anything smaller?’
‘No, sir.’
None of the other rental companies had either. I hired the smallest large car available and spent a lengthy time locating it in a vast parking lot. At home it would have been called a family saloon. The trunk (boot in English) swallowed my kit bag and could have accommodated several more. On opening the driver’s door a metal arm came out and presented me with the seat belt buckle. Eventually I worked out that I could not put the automatic gearbox into drive without pressing down the brake pedal. It was like driving a sofa. The only pleasant surprise was when I came to fill the vehicle with fuel, to someone accustomed to European prices it seemed I would be motoring virtually for free.
I had no preconceived ideas about what to expect from this part of my tour, dealing with the logistics had taken time enough. I was aware that New England had some good ice-climbing venues and that was about the sum of my knowledge. I motored north into the Adirondacks where I had scheduled my first gigs. It was hilly, heavily forested country. Considering that the great cities of Montreal, Boston and New York are all relatively nearby, it was virtually empty, with only the occasional small settlement. I had been invited by an outdoor shop called ‘The Mountaineer’ to attend their annual ‘Mountainfest’ in Keene Valley, a pretty little town in the heart of the hills. The shop was easy to find: it was one of the few businesses in the place and right on the main road. Vinny, the owner, was a helpful sort who made me feel incredibly welcome, his easy manner typical of the folk around this very grass roots festival. Over the following days I instructed ice-climbing, drank and ate with the local mountain guides and on the Saturday evening gave my presentation to a packed school hall. It was all great fun, but the highlight was still to come.
I teamed up with a local guide and went to climb at Poke-O-Moonshine — a steep, clean, granite crag around a hundred metres in height that thanks to some seepage from the hillside above is one of the areas premier ice venues. Like many of the cliffs I visited, it was just a short walk from the road. The plum line was called Positive Thinking — a cascade in its upper section, reached by a striking streak of ice all the way from the ground up a steep rock slab. The climbing was sensational.
Then it was back on the road, a slow journey east out of the Adirondacks and into Vermont. On one of the rare sections of straight road I put my foot down. It was a mostly empty highway but not a well-timed move. A short time later I caught sight of red flashing lights in the rear-view mirror. The police officer was very polite and told me I was speeding. I tried pleading the ignorant foreigner, but he was having none of it and retired to his car with my passport and driving licence. He was gone for a very long time. I thought about going to ask what was the delay was but had been given clear instructions to remain in my car. Eventually he returned.
‘So you’ve been to Peru?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was that like?’
‘Very nice.’ He seemed more interested in the countries I had visited than my traffic offence. At least it explained the delay: I think he had simply been looking at the stamps in my passport. Finally, he gave me a ticket.
‘What should I do with this?’ I asked.
‘Fill it in and return it with payment for the fine.’
‘What if I don’t pay?’
‘If you commit an offence in New York State in the future you’ll be in big trouble.’
I took the officer’s advice and up to now have committed no further offences in New York State.
After talking in colleges in Middlebury and Colgate I returned to Albany and flew to Utah. Salt Lake City was brash and modern compared to the quaint towns and rolling landscape of New England. The people were similarly different. The city was also sitting in an unpleasant haze of photochemical smog. It was hard to believe I was still in the same country.
My host, climber and writer Mikel Vause, met me at the airport. Mikel is an English lecturer at Weber State University in nearby Ogden where, at his instigation, I spoke to a class of students on the theme of how to write mountaineering literature — not a subject on which I would claim great expertise, but I muddled my way through. We climbed ice, took a hike into the mountains above the cloud and in between excursions wallowed in the hot tub at Mike’s house. On the final evening I spoke at a charity dinner, before the smog delayed my flight home.
There was little time to settle into any domestic routine. In fact, I barely had time to recover from the jet-lag before I was getting into the car for a road trip lecturing across England. Then all too soon it was time to fly abroad again. Boarding the flight with Jane and Maisy I became aware of looks of dismay from passengers in the seats around us. It was a 12-hour flight from London to Los Angeles and, not surprisingly, they felt they had drawn a short straw sharing it at such close quarters with a nine-month old baby. The looks were similar when after less than three hours on the ground at LA we got on a further flight to Auckland. It was a brutal introduction to long-haul flying but amazingly Maisy was taking it in her stride. At the end of both journeys people commented on how marvellous she had been. I felt distinctly disorientated as we took a final flight to Christchurch on South Island.
Christchurch is home to the New Zealand Alpine Club who had arranged talks for me right across the country, starting in their headquarters city. Friends who had emigrated to the islands had already been in touch offering places to stay, so the club’s advanced publicity was obviously working. Gary Kinsey, who I had met on my first alpine summers in Chamonix many years earlier, and his partner Christine kindly offered the use of their house in Christchurch. It would serve as a base for our time in New Zealand.
Though we were exhausted by the flights there was much to do. We hired a car, met with Geoff Gabites, president of the NZAC to discuss further publicity, and dealt with newspaper interviews. I also became a first time user of a mobile phone. Up to now I had managed to avoid owning a mobile, however, I had been instructed to get one by the publicist who was handling the Australian leg of the tour. I did warn her that it might be of limited use in a place like New Zealand but she seemed undeterred. Much of one day was spent with a photographer on a crag above the city, as he tried to get just the photograph he was happy with. Then we left, driving south into the night.
It was a joy to wake upon the side of Lake Tekapo on a beautiful sunny day. Like most visitors, we were keen to experience New Zealand’s mountains and coastline and we stayed for several days with a friend in Glenorchy near Queenstown, walking in the hills by day and spending evenings around the barbeque. Later in Queenstown my phone picked up a signal and immediately started buzzing. I patiently listened to the messages. A few were from old friends wanting to say ‘hello’ and offer hospitality, but most were from Stephanie the publicist in Sydney. The first were simple instructions to telephone journalists, Stephanie’s voice slowly becoming sterner in tone. The later calls were of a more pleading and finally hysterical nature. She was audibly relieved when I spoke to her. Despite my warning, she was evidently struggling with the concept of a place without a mobile phone signal. In the end the journalists got their stories and I had a laugh. My new communication device had already caused a surprising amount of misunderstanding.
Back in Christchurch I embarked on the lecture series, yo-yoing between venues up and down both the north and south islands. Mid tour, we spent three days walking the Queen Charlotte Track at the top of South Island in the Marlborough Sounds. Maisy slept much of the time in the papoose on my back and our bags were taken by ferry between overnight stops. Compared to the treks we had done in the Himalaya it was easy and very civilised — the perfect introduction for our young daughter.
After the trek we headed down the west coast and spent two nights with Alan Wilkie and his family. I first met Alan in the Alps back in 1984 and he had come to England for a while before returning to New Zealand. I had heard nothing from him since. We had quite a lot to catch up on.
Bizarrely, my last two engagements were in Dunedin down at the bottom of the South Island and Auckland up at the top of the North Island the following day. Flights were required for the final leg and Jane was left with a bit of a drive to return the car to Christchurch. The scheduling may have been a little odd but it did mean that we had seen a lot of the country and it had been very sociable. I look forward to seeing all those people again in another 20 years time.
My cousin Melanie lives in Sydney and she and her husband were waiting at the airport.
‘G’day,’ Bruce greeted us.
That evening, sat around their swimming pool, was calm and relaxed. The following days were not. Now I was in a large capital city and an up-market adventure travel company — World Expeditions — were calling the shots. They wanted to get as much promotion from my visit as possible. Stephanie had been very busy. A blur of travel, meetings, publicity and talks began with nearly a full day at the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation giving countless interviews. After two nights in Sydney I said ‘goodbye’ to Jane and Maisy and moved on to Canberra, Brisbane and Hobart where I paused for an extra day to catch up with a former climbing partner.
Paul Pritchard had been visiting Tasmania back in 1998 on a climbing road-trip with Celia Bull when he suffered an horrific accident on the Totem Pole — a world famous slender sea stack on a remote stretch of coastline to the east of Hobart. While abseiling to the foot of the climb he dislodged a rock with the rope; it fell some distance before hitting him on the head, bashing a hole in his skull. He was left hanging in the surf unconscious and bleeding profusely. Celia had somehow summoned the strength to single-handedly winch Paul 20 metres back up the stack, secure him to a ledge and then go and alert the rescue services. Her amazing effort saved his life, however their relationship did not last through his long and painful rehabilitation. Later, Paul returned to make a film about the events and became reacquainted with one of his intensive care nurses in Hobart — Jane Boucher. After a spell of living together in North Wales they married, returned to Tasmania, and started a family. The lecture tour had given me a great opportunity to catch up with an old friend and to see something of Tasmania — I doubt I would have been able to make the journey otherwise. Paul looked happy and relaxed in his new home and was able to show me a few of the special places he had discovered. Then it was time to move on again.
The tour concluded with consecutive nights in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. It was a good place to finish. My brother Matthew was a long-time resident of the city, having emigrated there in the late 1980s. Jane and Maisy had arrived direct from Sydney a few days earlier. Now there was time to relax and spend some precious time as families together before travelling home.
Towards the end of our adventure in Pakistan, Andy and I had inevitably got round to talking about future projects. He was keen to go back to Alaska and had in mind a route he had previously attempted solo. I had made a couple of visits myself, guiding the standard West Buttress route on Denali, the highest mountain in North America. I had thoroughly enjoyed the place and the mountains, and the other big draw was its accessibility. There was none of the tiresome and expensive bureaucracy involved with visiting many of the peaks of the Indian sub-continent, nor lengthy and time-consuming approaches. Despite being a wilderness, this was very much the developed world and motorised transport could be utilised all the way to base camp. It would be a simple and quick trip to organise.
We had done little in the way of preparation except apply for a Mount Everest Foundation grant to help out with our costs. With departure looming it was time to make some more detailed arrangements. I telephoned Andy at his Chamonix home.
‘Ah, Simon,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to call.’
‘We need to start sorting out a few things.’
‘Sorry kid, I can’t come.’ Andy sounded devastated. ‘My knee’s blown out. I’m going to have to have an operation.’
It was a bitterly disappointing turn of events for Andy, but not completely unexpected. The lack of mobility in his left ankle and hip consequently put more pressure on the knee. There was some good news though: the doctors expected him to make a speedy and full recovery. I wished him well with the surgery.
I still wanted to go away and climb but doubted if I could find a climbing partner at such short notice. There was another small problem: our proposed climb was Andy’s project and therefore I would need to find a new objective as well.
A few days later I received a timely email. Paul Schweizer, an American philosophy lecturer living in Edinburgh, wondered if I might be free to climb in North America in May. Though we had not climbed together before, we had met many times over the years and spent quite a bit of time in each other’s company at British Mountaineering Council winter meets, introducing visitors from around the world to the delights of Scottish winter climbing. At our last meeting, after a lecture I had given in Edinburgh, we had casually talked about climbing together, but I had thought little more about it until now. I knew Paul was a very competent mountaineer: he had quietly amassed a series of notable ascents around the world over a lengthy period, and as someone who had been around, I reasoned he was likely to stay around. More importantly I knew that we would get along. It makes the whole expedition experience so much more enjoyable if it is harmonious. Although you can never be sure how people are going to react in serious, potentially life-threatening situations in the mountains it certainly helps to not start yelling at each other. I gave him a call.
‘I got your email.’
‘And?’
‘I’m keen to go. Where were you thinking of exactly?’
‘Well, I went to the Wrangell-St Elias many years ago. I’d love to go back there.’
‘Sound’s good to me.’ I knew little about the ranges except that they were a vast area of heavily glaciated wilderness spanning the Alaska-Yukon border, and they contained Mount Logan — Canada’s highest mountain and the second highest in the North America. For me it was new territory and that made it particularly attractive. ‘Do you have something in mind?’
‘Not really,’ Paul replied thoughtfully. ‘But I can do some research. There’s plenty to go at.’
We quickly concluded that we needed to fly into the range with a pilot called Andy Williams based at Kluane Lake and booked flights to Whitehorse, state capital of the Yukon, for late April. However, we had still not found a climbing objective by the time I needed to travel again. My next speaking engagement was taking me to Iceland.
It was cloudy for most of the flight to Reykjavik and I only started to get an idea of the land below as the aircraft was making its final approach. The patterns were unfamiliar. What looked like streams or rivers were surrounded by crumpled rock split by cracks and fissures. Finally, I realised what I was looking at. It was lava covered in luminous green moss. I had seen nothing like this before.
My first point of contact was a man called Gummi who ran an adventure travel company. He picked me up at the airport in a huge four-wheel-drive complete with ridiculously outsized tyres. These were not for show, but essential for driving over icecaps and crossing rivers. Soon they were being put to good use. We quickly left the main road and headed into the hills — except these were not hills as most of us know them but small volcanic ash cones and craters. Occasionally there were pools of steaming water or bubbling mud. Then as we made our way back towards Reykjavik came more lava flows: some were bare, some covered in moss and others sprouting willows from within their fissures. As we neared the capital the landscape became more industrial with small power stations dotted across the horizon, networks of pipes crossing the land and linking greenhouses. It was hard to know what to make of it all.
The geothermal energy plants situated around Reykjavik — I would soon learn — tap into subterranean lagoons of super-heated water and produce two very useful products: electricity and hot water. Once the steam is put through turbines to produce electricity the wastewater is then piped around the city to heat homes and businesses. This meant that buildings were super hot, with windows left open despite the frigid temperatures outside. All hot tap water smelt strongly of sulphur and taking a shower had the odd effect of leaving you smelling worse than before.
Gummi’s family were perfect hosts and I spent a pleasant couple of days exploring Reykjavik before being passed from one group of interesting people to another. Although I had little idea who, if anyone, was overseeing these arrangements for me, they all seemed to work seamlessly. I met with a journalist who was writing an article to promote my lecture and was taken to the hot springs at Geysir and the fantastic Gullfoss, or ‘Golden Falls’. The setting of the Alping — Iceland’s original parliament — at Pingvellir in a rift valley formed by the parting of the North American and European plates, was particularly atmospheric. The weather throughout was variable in the extreme, temperatures fluctuating wildly from several degrees above freezing to many degrees below. There was snow, sunshine and rain — sometimes within a few hours of each other. I spent a long day winter climbing on the Trollwoman’s Horn, north of Reykjavik, visited the nearest icefield to the capital and spent an evening talking with a retired scientist who had worked on Iceland’s whaling fleet. My lecture — the reason, of course, that I had come to Iceland in the first place — ended up feeling like a sideshow, somehow slotted between a myriad of other activities.
On my final day I was picked up by a man called Haldor and driven through a blizzard into the lava fields outside Reykjavik. We stopped at what to my eyes looked like a random spot and set off walking across the snow-covered rubble. After a few hundred metres Haldor found the ravine he was looking for and we climbed down and entered a huge cave. It was the mouth of a lava tube and over the next few hours we explored deep inside. The tube gradually narrowed until it broke into a series of small tunnels that ended with the final dollops of lava lying on the floor. They looked like petrified cow turds. It was one of the most unusual days out I could remember.
I left with a set of unique impressions and a sperm whale tooth that now rests on our mantelpiece. Although I had no idea at the time, it would be the first of several visits to this geologically busy island on the northern fringe of Europe. I would come to relish its surreal, empty landscapes and make lasting friendships with some of its charming, quirky inhabitants.
Shortly after arriving home the Nottingham-based taxman and world-renowned climber Mick Fowler sent me a couple of inspiring aerial photographs of the huge West Face of Mount Alverstone. Paul soon discovered that only two routes had been climbed there and both avoided the largest section of the face. With just two weeks remaining before our departure we decided Alverstone was the mountain for us.
Whitehorse is a functional town on the banks of the mighty Yukon River. ‘One horse would be more appropriate,’ I commented to Paul, after we had completed what was an unavoidably short stroll around its centre. It looked like it could do with another gold rush. Still, at least we were able to orientate ourselves quickly. We also learnt there had been a month of unseasonably warm and settled weather.
We ate a late breakfast, shopped for food, packed, and booked a taxi to take us to Kluane Lake the following day. After hiring a satellite phone and buying some gas cylinders we were ready to head north. Once out of town the properties lining the road tailed away until there was just stunted pine forest. Some of the trunks had been shattered by the winter frost.
We stopped at Haines Junction to register as required at the Kluane National Park Headquarters. A ranger ran through some paperwork, before sitting us down in front of a television.
‘You’ll need to watch this video,’ he said almost apologetically. I soon understood why he perhaps felt it unnecessary viewing. The video was obviously pitched more at backpackers and skiers who could suddenly find themselves in unfamiliar environments and situations. Where Paul and I were going required a complete understanding of wilderness survival; if we didn’t know the stuff in the video already, we would be out of our depth from the moment the plane dropped us on the glacier. The formalities over, we got back in the taxi and continued to Kluane Lake. There was little at the airstrip other than a hangar and Andy’s house on the far side.
‘Come and see me in the morning,’ he advised. ‘If you need somewhere to stay there’s a bunkhouse.’ He pointed into the trees beyond the runway. I marvelled at how simply everything fell into place in this part of the world. It was a far cry from the mountains of Asia with its teeming cities, creaking infrastructure and dysfunctional bureaucracy. Here there was enough space and money for things to happen without treading on any toes. Nearby, in the mountains, there was simply beauty and space.
It was sunny in the morning and Andy’s plane was out of the hangar. We wandered over and found him inside.
‘The forecast is not so bad,’ he said. ‘But I’ve seen this weather before. We won’t be flying today.’ There was high cloud to the west and a few puffs hanging lower over the mountains. We spent a bit of time chatting and I warmed to Andy immediately. He looked to be in his fifties and spoke in the slow, deliberate, understated manner that I recognised from the mountaineering world in people who knew what they were doing. Us being demanding was not going to change his call. We would wait until Andy said he was ready to fly.
The low cloud had lifted by morning and Andy deemed the day fit to fly. We were delighted, having already exhausted the limited visitor attractions at Kluane Lake. After loading up the plane we showed Andy our map, pointing out where we hoped he could land us.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ was all he said.
The plane lifted gently from the gravel airstrip and flew low into a broad river valley to the west. Andy started to gain height up slopes to the south of the river. This was skilful flying. The plane gained lift each time we crossed one of the rock ridges that ran down the hillside. Soon we were flying high over vast plains of gravel and braided rivers that emerged from great glaciers. The mountains lay straight ahead.
The scale of the landscape was awesome and Paul and I sat silently trying to take it all in. Then Andy began pointing to the horizon.
‘Shit,’ I heard Paul say. ‘There’s cloud to the west.’ Where we had hoped to land lay hidden beneath it.
‘I can land you this side.’ Andy offered.
‘No, thanks,’ we replied in unison.
‘Okay. We’ll have to try again later.’ Andy turned the aircraft as he spoke.
Back at the airstrip a Canadian group had arrived. They were going to Mount Logan and, like us, would have to wait.
Next day Andy decided to take the Canadians in first. Logan was his bread-and-butter charter and he reasoned that he could take a look around before committing to our more unusual flight.
This time conditions were perfect and the plane was spiralling down below Mount Alverstone almost as soon as we had recognised it. We flew once over the upper section of the Alverstone Glacier and then Andy gently landed the Helio Courier on a high side glacier. We came to a halt, but Andy kept the engine running.
‘Get out!’ he shouted.
We jumped down, unloaded our kit and gave the thumbs up. Moments later the plane accelerated away in a plume of snow, bobbed down the glacier and drifted into the sky. The remoteness hit as soon as the engine noise faded away. The mountain landscape around us was vast and silent, its glaring whiteness amplified by the sun high above.
We set up camp in the lee of a rognon, then wandered in something of a daze up our little side glacier to a col. Below lay the huge Hubbard Glacier, running northwards towards the squat bulk of Mount Logan in the distance. The scale was so enormous that it was difficult to accurately judge distance. It was going to take some time to get the feel and measure of this place.
Looking back to our mountain, Alverstone’s West Face was golden in the afternoon sun. The prominent West Buttress on the left side of the face had been climbed in 1995 and the broad gully to its right a little later. The rest was an open book. This is what had brought us to this place.
‘What do you think?’ I asked.
‘Well, the couloir looks kinda compelling,’ Paul replied. On the right hand boundary of the main face was a good-looking line that led almost to the top of the mountain. Further right the face became more broken and was studded with threatening séracs.
‘I guess we can go and take a closer look tomorrow.’
Two evenings later we left our base camp. Andy had done a good job and the foot of Alverstone’s West Face turned out to be a mere hour and a half walk away. The skis we had lugged all the way from home were left behind to serve as tent pegs. We camped beneath the face with four day’s food and gas and a minimal rack of climbing gear.
Early the following morning we began solo climbing on reasonably angled hard névé. We made rapid progress up the gradually steepening slope, but soon the sun came round and warmed the shattered granite that formed the upper part of the face. Rocks started to fall — small at first, then gradually increasing in size and frequency. We were in the fall line. About eight hundred metres up the couloir narrowed. As we hurried to get through the dangerous bottleneck I heard the high-pitched humming of falling rock but did not have time to react. A pair of rocks hit me almost simultaneously on the left forearm and shoulder.
‘Fuck!’ I shouted, grabbing the arm, which immediately swelled and stiffened.
‘Are you okay?’ Paul asked with a worried tone.
‘Yeah,’ I replied feebly. ‘I don’t think it’s broken, but it might be time to dig the ropes out.’
It was a wise move. Soon the sun crept down the face, turning the névé to bare ice. To fall here would be fatal. The climbing was now on 50-degree ice with short steeper sections and the intense sun meant sporadic rockfall continued throughout the day. We moved diagonally to the right out of the central runnel to lessen the danger; even so occasional rogue rocks bounced our way. Progress faltered as the withering heat took its toll. But there was nowhere to stop. Finally, at nine in the evening, Paul reached a snow bank above a small icefall. We excavated a platform, 1200 metres up the face, put up the tent and slumped inside. I felt quite drained. We managed to make a brew and eat a little before the need to sleep overwhelmed us.
It was late when we woke. My arm felt sore and had developed some colourful bruising. We were still tired and needed to re-hydrate. The morning passed to the accompaniment of a constant roar from the stove. It was early afternoon before we were ready to leave and the sun was glaring directly on to the face.
Easy-angled slopes led right from our campsite and then up more steeply to the edge of the upper rock buttress, bordered by a gully on its right hand side. Regular salvos of rocks peppered the gully, but we had to cross it. I watched nervously as Paul waited for a lull before making a lung-bursting dash to the far side. It was one of those mountain moments that are unavoidable sometimes — you simply have to chance your luck. I rolled my dice and our lucky streak held.
Seven more rope lengths of good 60-degree ice led to a flat col on the summit ridge. The top looked to be close. We dumped our rucksacks, untied the ropes and wandered silently up to the summit. For the first time we could see Mount Kennedy to the east, its huge north buttress illuminated by the evening sun; Mount Hubbard appeared to the south.
‘Hey, well done,’ Paul said simply as I joined him on the summit. We shook hands and slapped each other’s backs. It was time to savour the views and take a few photographs.
Back at our rucksacks we put up the tent. The sky became hazy as the evening drew on and a strong smell of wood smoke hung in the air. Somewhere beyond all this snow and ice a huge forest fire was blazing. The night was still and bitterly cold. In the morning we wandered easily down Alverstone’s north flank to the Great Shelf and peered down into the upper section of the Alverstone Glacier.
‘There’s no easy way down there,’ I said disappointed, ‘and it faces west, so it’s going to get some rockfall.’
‘We could try dropping down into the Dusty Glacier and getting back to the Alverstone from there,’ Paul replied thoughtfully. ‘We should be able to get down over there.’ He pointed to a col on the other side of the shelf.
‘Got to be worth a try.’
It was short walk to the col and although we could not see the complete route to the glacier the snowy face below did not look too steep. We decided to go for it. An abseil took us over the cornice and on to the face and for a while we walked comfortably down snow slopes, but the angle gradually steepened. Now the slope was broken with bands of threatening séracs. Avalanche debris lay far out into the glacier below. With no prior knowledge of the face, route finding between the séracs was a little nerve-racking. Lower down, we reached a sérac that stretched right across the slope. It was impossible to skirt around.
‘We’re going to have to abseil,’ I told Paul.
I chopped a bollard in the snow and set up the ropes for the descent. The thought of using snow as an anchor and trusting all your weight with it is never pleasant. I descended slowly, trying not to put any unexpected load on the rope, but the ground got steeper. Then my heart sank. There was a huge crevasse at the base of the sérac. I abseiled gently towards it, knowing what I’d have to do but not looking forward to it one bit.
With a deep breath I kicked off the icy wall and let myself free-fall to a clumsy landing on the lip of the chasm.
‘Safe,’ I shouted, knowing we were not.
As Paul came slowly down I viewed the terrain. The sérac band we had abseiled was unstable and had obviously collapsed recently. The slope stretching down to the glacier was covered in debris. Paul arrived looking worried.
‘We need to get out of here,’ he said solemnly.
‘You’re not kidding. Let’s get the ropes down and leg it.’
We hastily pulled the ropes, packed them into our rucksacks and sprinted down between huge blocks of ice lying in the snow. At the limit of the avalanche debris we threw down the sacks and rested. Hours of trudging up the Dusty Glacier followed until we called it a day.
Our last remaining gas canister provided breakfast and then expired. It left us in a serious position, but the weather was holding and I reasoned we would be back at base camp within a few hours. We set off for a col that we knew led to the upper Alverstone Glacier.
‘Don’t you think that col looks a better option?’ Paul asked a little below the pass, pointing to another lower col further to the west.
‘I’m not sure,’ I replied, having not given it much thought.
We debated the change of plan and went with it. The col was further than it looked. The view from the saddle was not the one I had hoped for.
‘We’ve gone too far west,’ I told Paul. A lobe of the Hubbard Glacier lay below us.
‘Oh man, I’m sorry,’ he replied, viewing the disappointing panorama.
The slopes down to the glacier were unpleasant but the real penalty for our mistake was the climb out. A long, gently angled ridge led out of the basin, attracting the full force of the afternoon sun. Paul dug deep and broke trail to the watershed and the welcome sight of our tents. We finally reached camp, tired but happy, in the early evening. Our descent, with the crossing of three watersheds, had taken as long as the climb and in some ways had been more demanding and dangerous.
I immediately made a satellite phone call to Andy at the airstrip.
‘We’re done here,’ I told him.
‘I’ll be with you in the morning,’ he replied reassuringly.
It was not to be. We woke to fog and had to call the airstrip again. Andy told us to call again once the weather improved.
Four days later the storm began to clear. With two weeks’ food and fuel remaining our situation was hardly desperate, but the whisky had run out. Two phone calls to Andy secured a well-timed exit. As we flew out, I looked down on the Wrangell-St Elias ranges in all their great emptiness and with virtually limitless climbing potential. It was that siren call again. Just as in Tierra del Fuego, I knew I would be coming back. We had been in the mountains a mere 11 days, yet it felt like many more.
Back at the Kluane Lake airstrip we celebrated our good fortune with some Yukon Gold Ale. The bottles carried the advertising slogan ‘Melt the snow. Brew the beer. Life is good’. We drank to that simple but fine philosophy.