Although all the 8,000-metre peaks and most 7,000-metre peaks have long since been climbed, and mountains like Everest or K2 now have as many different routes up them as Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn, there are still literally hundreds of faces and ridges in the greater ranges that remain unexplored. It is a tiny group of mountaineers from around the world that are attracted to these technically challenging lines on unclimbed routes. By and large, their achievements are ignored by the media who are still obsessed with Everest and the 8,000-metre peaks, even though most ascents on these mountains are by what have now become trade routes.
Today the world is more accessible than ever before with roads penetrating ever deeper into wild regions and travel by helicopter available to many places. Mountains remain one of the areas where the individual can truly explore and where helicopters cannot reach (their ceiling is around 6,000 metres). The story of the first ascent of the North Face of Changabang is an outstanding example of this style of climbing. The history of the mountain reflects the way climbing has evolved on the smaller peaks of the Himalaya. It also features some of the leading British climbers of the last sixty years. The first attempt to climb it was by a joint Indian-British expedition which I co-led in 1974.
Changabang forms part of the northern ramparts of the legendary Sanctuary of Nanda Devi, which, at 7,816 metres, is the highest peak entirely within India and the highest to be climbed before the Second World War – by Bill Tilman and Noel Odell. Just finding a way to the foot of Nanda Devi proved a major challenge, and Eric Shipton, that great exploratory mountaineer who found the way into the sanctuary with Bill Tilman in 1934, described how he sat for an hour fascinated by the gigantic white cliffs of Changabang. He also was the first person to set foot on the mountain when he climbed a gully out of the sanctuary leading on to the col to the immediate south of Changabang, only to find there was a precipitous drop down to the Rhamani Glacier on the other side.
The following year Frank Smythe, who made the first ascent of Kamet, gazed up at Changabang from the Dunagiri Col and wondered at, ‘The terrible precipices of Changabang, a peak that falls from crest to glacier in a wall that might have been sliced in a single cut of a knife.’
W.H. Murray, leader of the Scottish Himalayan Expedition of 1950 which made an impressive series of first ascents in the Garhwal and Kumoan ranges, was the most lyrical of all:
‘By day like a vast eye-tooth fang, both in shape and colour – for its rock was a milk-white granite – Changabang in the moonlight shone tenderly as though veiled in bridal lace; at ten miles distant seemingly as fragile as an icicle; – a product of earth and sky rare and fantastic, and of liveliness unparalleled so that unaware one’s pulse leapt and the heart gave thanks – that this mountain should be as it is.’
It was these descriptions that inspired me to apply for permission to attempt the mountain in 1974. There were ten of us, five from Britain and five from India.
Reaching our mountain proved almost as much of a challenge as the area had been for Shipton and Tilman, as we turned off up the Rhamani Glacier to approach Changabang from the west, its steepest and most spectacular side. It proved a trifle too spectacular for a team that had a wide range of experience and ability. We therefore decided to find an easier way to the top by crossing Shipton’s Col from the opposite side to Shipton, and then climbing the huge, but comparatively easy snow face and glacier of Kalanka to reach the col between it and the South-East Ridge of Changabang. It was a long and committing route but one with little technical difficulty that six of us, Martin Boysen, Dougal Haston, Balwant Sandhu, Doug Scott, Tachei and I completed successfully.
The following year a remarkable expedition took place, comprising two young British climbers, Joe Tasker and Dick Renshaw, who had an impressive alpine record that included a winter ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger. They decided to go to the Himalaya, bought a second-hand clapped-out Ford van, packed their expedition gear into it and set out for Dunagiri, a 7,066-metre peak to the immediate west of Changabang. Their liaison officer, unused to such small and frugal expeditions, turned back before they even reached Base Camp. They treated the mountain as they would have done an Alpine climb, set out up its long unclimbed South-East Ridge with six days’ food, took seven days to reach the top and a further four, very hungry and thirsty days, to get down.
They had plenty of opportunity to examine the massive West Face of Changabang, and Renshaw, on their precarious descent, to Tasker’s horror, even suggested they had a go at it after they had had a short rest. But there was no question of that. Tasker was exhausted and Renshaw had frostbitten fingers and a sprained ankle. On returning to Britain, however, Joe could not stop thinking of that huge West Face. Dick could not join him the following year since he was still having treatment for his fingers. Joe therefore invited Peter Boardman, who had just got back from my own expedition to the South-West Face of Everest. At twenty-three he was the youngest member of the group but proved to be a very strong, focused climber and reached the summit with our team’s sirdar, Sherpa Pertemba, on the second ascent. After that huge expedition, the thought of a two-man trip against such an obstacle was irresistible and he accepted Tasker’s invitation.
Their trip was only a little less frugal than the previous year’s. They set out in mid-August to climb in the post-monsoon period, took more climbing gear and food and had a slightly more comfortable Base Camp, although their liaison officer once again decided to stay in the valley. There were just the two of them confronting what was arguably the most formidable rock wall ever to be attempted at that altitude. It soars from the col at the head of the Rhamani Glacier for nearly 1,500 metres of pale grey granite, broken only by scanty ice smears up steep grooves and gangways. They started to fix-rope the route, encountering ferociously hard climbing on rock and ice, returning each night to a camp on the col, but the higher they got, the longer and more laborious became the chore of reaching the high point. Temperatures were bitterly cold, –25 °C at night and the wind rarely ceased blowing.
They tried to break loose from the fixed ropes but, after three extremely uncomfortable bivouacs in hammocks, they were forced to retreat to Base Camp with only half the face climbed. Time was running out. Many would have been tempted at this stage to give up, but they reassessed their plans, even climbed to Shipton’s Col to salvage some of the rope we had left in place two years earlier, and returned to the fray, establishing a second camp at around 6,100 metres. They pulled most of the fixed rope up behind them and, from this marginally more secure base, fixed some further rope and made their push for the summit, reaching it on 15 October 1976.
The South Face, a sweep of rock with ice slicks soaring up into a steep head wall, was climbed in 1978 by a powerful Polish-British team comprising Voytek Kurtyka, Krzysztof Zurek, Alex MacIntyre and John Porter. Technically the climb was as hard, if not harder, than the West Face but it had the great benefit of being in the sun. They climbed it in elegant, if painful, Alpine-style in a single push from bottom to top over eight days, running out of food on the fifth. Alex MacIntyre went on to make a very impressive Alpine-style new route on the East Face of Dhaulagiri, this time with Kurtyka, Ludwick Wilczyczynski and René Ghilini from France. In the spring of 1982 he made yet another bold first ascent with Doug Scott and Roger Baxter-Jones on the South-West Face of Shisha Pangma, and then tragically was killed by a single falling stone near the foot of the South Face of Annapurna that same autumn.
Changabang still held challenges. The North Face is the biggest and possibly the most formidable of all its facets but until very recently it was unattainable, being too close to the Chinese frontier and within the Inner Line and therefore forbidden to foreigners.
It took the political skills of Roger Payne to get permission for 1996. He has that quality, rare among talented climbers, of not only being a first-class administrator but actually enjoying the process. His love of climbing led him to train as a mountain guide but he then changed course to become National Officer of the British Mountaineering Council, a role that both Peter Boardman and Alex MacIntyre had held before him. He was so good at his job that he became General Secretary – senior civil servant of British Mountaineering.
Unlike some climbing bureaucrats he has always remained very much a climber, going on lightweight exploratory climbing trips each year with his wife and climbing partner, Julie-Ann Clyma. They had undertaken two expeditions in the Garhwal area, climbing the eastern summit of Nanda Devi in 1994 and the following year making an attempt on Trisuli West, as well as a couple of first ascents of peaks at the head of the West Bagini Glacier. A glimpse of the formidable North Face of Changabang was enough to determine them to attempt it. Getting permission and then weaving his way through the barriers built by Indian bureaucracy was a major challenge, but Roger Payne persevered and achieved what had seemed the impossible.
In contrast the approach to the mountain was easy – just two days from Delhi to the roadhead and an easy two-day walk up the Bagini Glacier to establish Base Camp at 4,000 metres. The face was still out of sight some eight kilometres away but it dominated the head of the glacier, a huge sweep of featureless granite to which clung improbable ice formations. A series of ice-filled gangways and grooves crept up the left-hand side of the wall, converging on an icefield about halfway up the face. From there just one line of weakness reached up towards the crest of the North-East Ridge of Changabang, the route by which we finished our climb in 1974.
Roger had invited two other climbers. Brendan Murphy, although short and wiry, made up for any lack of size with a quiet yet intense determination. He was a scientist who successfully managed to juggle climbing with an academic career. Andy Perkins was more ebullient and worked for Troll, manufacturers of climbing harnesses. Murphy and Perkins had made a very impressive attempt on a formidable unclimbed peak called Cerro Kishtwar (6,200 metres) in the Indian Himalaya, spending seventeen days on it using capsule tactics. The pair had climbed the steepest section but had run out of food, fuel and energy and were forced to retreat only 150 metres from the summit. Roger thought that a similar approach would be necessary on the North Face of Changabang, the two pairs taking turns with one out in front pushing out the route, while the other came up behind, ferrying all the gear.
They started with a couple of forays to acclimatise and get some good views of the face, reaching both the Bagini Col and the col immediately below the West Face of Changabang where Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker had had their camp. The route they chose followed a groove line leading to the right side of the conspicuous icefield. It took them three days of hard ice climbing with two uncomfortable sitting bivouacs to the side of the gully. Once the sun hit the face, snow and ice began melting and the base of the gully became a torrent, soaking the climbers. Their third bivouac was on the edge of the icefield but it took several hours of exhausting work to hack out two narrow ledges for their tents. At least now they could lie down.
They were all tired after three hard days’ climbing and two appalling bivouacs. As it that wasn’t enough, Andy Perkins went down that night with violent gastroenteritis, a nightmare halfway up a Himalayan face. They had already decided to take a rest the following day. They needed it and hoped that this would give Andy time to recover. But next day Andy was too weak to move and the weather had deteriorated, so they took another rest day.
They were running out of time and food, since they reckoned it was going to take at least three days to reach the crest of the ridge. Andy was still desperately weak, but very determined, so they decided to keep going. They now had to cross the steep icefield to the beginning of the line of weakness at the other side. Their capsule approach, in effect having a line of fixed rope, was now an encumbrance rather than a help. Traversing on fixed rope with heavy loads across ice is a slow exhausting business.
Roger took the lead, running out three pitches across the bottom of the icefield. Once they had removed the ropes behind them a retreat was going to be difficult since they would either have to traverse back the way they had come or launch themselves down unknown ground. In addition, the icefield was swept by spindrift avalanches whenever it snowed. Andy was getting progressively weaker and the weather was showing signs of breaking. They discussed what to do and there seemed no alternative but for all of them to retreat. That night they got back to the site of their camp at the start of the icefield. It snowed all night and was still snowing in the morning. They abseiled to safety in a torrent of spindrift avalanches. They had been defeated by Andy’s illness and the weather but even as they walked out of Base Camp Roger was already planning another attempt. The reputation of the face was becoming known and other talented climbers were looking at it hungrily.
One of these was Mick Fowler, the most successful innovative mountaineer of the last twenty years. He has never climbed an 8,000-metre peak, unwilling to take the length of time off work, but most years he goes to the farther ranges of the earth to snatch steep and challenging climbs on peaks of around 6,000 to 7,000 metres. Mick was born and brought up in north-east London by his father George, who did a bit of climbing and was a keen hill walker, taking young Mick with him on his adventures in a three-wheeled Reliant Robin. Mick, like me, started his career on Kentish sandstone, was a natural climber and was attracted by tottering rock walls which others had ignored or been afraid to tackle. He quickly established a reputation for bold new routes, particularly on the sea cliffs of Devon and Cornwall. He also revelled in transporting ice climbing techniques to the crumbling chalk cliffs of the south-east coastline.
While many climbers of his ability found ways of making a living around their climbing he pursued a more conventional course, ending up as a tax inspector, ascending the upper reaches of the Inland Revenue, despite the lack of a university degree and taking every possible day’s leave, and a few extra, to go climbing. In the 1980s he was the driving force in a group of London climbers who took off most winter weekends for the tar north of Scotland. They drove through the Friday night, snatched an unclimbed ice line in the far north-west of Scotland from under the eyes of the local Scottish experts, and then drove back on the Sunday night to be at work in body, if not in mind, first thing on Monday morning.
A British apprenticeship was accompanied by hard climbs in the Alps and then further afield – Taulliraju South Pillar in Peru and the superb Golden Pillar of Spantik in Hunza Pakistan. Taking a different line from Brendan Murphy and Andy Perkins, he reached the top of Cerro Kishtwar with Stephen Sustad in 1993 and made an impressive ascent of the North-East Buttress of Taweche in 1995 – all first ascents – an extraordinarily high success rate. Marriage and fatherhood had not diminished his appetite for hard climbing.
He was already thinking of trying the North Face of Changabang during the first attempt – just in case they didn’t get tip-and had invited Steve Sustad to join him. Steve came from Seattle but had settled in Britain in the mid-1980s, making a living as a joiner and spending as much time as possible climbing. Easy to get on with, yet totally focused on his climbing, he had joined Doug Scott and the French climber Jean Afanassieff in an attempt to traverse Makalu, fifth highest mountain in the world, very nearly getting to the top before making a desperate retreat. He was making a solo attempt on the huge South Face of Aconcagua, when the snow hole in which he was sheltering was avalanched and swept away most of his gear, yet somehow he managed to make a hazardous descent. He was just hooked on climbing, but he had no desire to write or lecture about it. For him it was a very personal experience.
As well as these potential candidates Roger Payne had his original team to think about for his second attempt on the North Face. Andy Perkins, who was training to be a guide, felt he couldn’t get away, but Brendan Murphy was keen and had been talking to Andy Cave, another academic who had started his working life as a coal miner and was now completing his dissertation for a PhD on ‘The Linguistic Heritage of the Yorkshire Coal fields’. It became a team of six for their attempt in the early summer of 1997.
Mick Fowler was mildly bemused by the sheer efficiency of the organisation: ‘I had not been on a Payne-Clyma expedition before. Previous jaunts in the big mountains always had been on the basis of a sort of communal responsibility, vaguely steered by one person. Here, though, Roger and Julie-Ann were clearly in complete control. Prior to leaving for India, I had wondered about this. Roger and I met on the crag, only to discover that we hadn’t enough equipment to climb ... but now, organised computer lists of things to do in Delhi appeared with alarming efficiency in fact, in retrospect, things had been different from usual the moment we arrived at the airport. Instead of the chaos and confusion followed by the cheapest possible transport to Delhi, we were met by a luxury minibus complete with curtains, which whisked us away to comfortable pre-booked accommodation. A whole new experience for me.’
And so it went on. Roger steered them adroitly through bureaucratic pitfalls, ensured that their porters were adequately equipped and guided his flock to Base Camp with the minimum of fuss or inconvenience. They had already agreed that they would operate as three independent self-contained pairs. The problem, however, was that although there was a choice of routes to the icefield where they had turned back the previous year, beyond it there seemed only one reasonable line. In addition, the face had a very different look. In 1996 there was plenty of snow ice, easily identified by its creamy white colour, but this year the icefields were a dirty grey-green, signs that the climbing was going to be very much harder.
First they had to acclimatise. They set out to establish an Advance Base and make a recce over the Bagini Pass, intending to leave a dump of food on the Rhamani Glacier which they could pick up on their return if they made their descent down the other side of the mountain. But it was not to be; the snow was soft and deep, it was ferociously hot on the glacier and they camped well short of the Bagini Pass. For someone who has specialised in cramming Himalayan climbs into limited leave periods, Mick has the disadvantage of being slow to acclimatise. Feeling nauseous and lethargic, he and Steve Sustad took it very gently, spending a couple of nights on the glacier, before making a half-hearted attempt on Dunagiri Parbat, having two more nights at around 5,500 metres. They then decided they had had enough of acclimatisation and hoped that by returning to Base Camp, they would be at the head of the queue and get on to Changabang first. They had been beaten to it, however, by Brendan Murphy and Andy Cave, who had also been on Dunagiri Parbat, had acclimatised faster and were bent on being out in front on the main objective. They had both selected the same line. Mick wryly commented, ‘I made a mental note to think about ensuring that I am surrounded by slow and unhealthy companions in the future.’ Roger and Julie-Ann were still acclimatising and had chosen a line to the left of the one selected by the others.
Andy and Brendan were ready to set out next morning. Quite apart from the satisfaction of route finding, there is a practical advantage in being first – there is nobody above you to dislodge rocks or lumps of ice. Because of this hazard, Mick and Steve opted to delay their departure for two days. Andy and Brendan set out for the foot of the climb at two in the morning on 21 May, each weighed down by twenty kilograms of climbing hardware, bivouac equipment and food and fuel for about eight days. They had two 60-metre ropes and a lightweight tent which they hoped to pitch on ledges hacked out of the snow arêtes they could see clinging to the face. They had chosen a route well to the left of the one used the previous year to take them, by a series of ice-filled grooves, to the left-hand end of the icefield. This would cut out the awkward traverse, giving them a much more direct line. They had reckoned it would take three hours to the foot of the real climbing. As so often happens they had underestimated the difficulties. It took them thirteen hours to reach what they had thought was the start. What had looked like an easy plod turned out to be soft snow lying on very hard ice. By the time they reached the start of the ‘real’ climbing they had broken two of their six ice screws, were tired from humping heavy loads and it had started to snow.
Brendan set off up an ill-defined, ice-smeared shield of rock, trying to avoid two cataracts of spindrift thundering down chutes on either side. Progress was now even slower and more precarious. By the time he reached the top of the pitch it was nearly dark but there was no sign of a bivouac ledge. Andy had to lead through the left-hand chute exposed to the full torrent of spindrift which penetrated his clothing, filled his gloves and got behind his goggles, nearly blinding him. The ice was steep and it was difficult to place any protection with their dwindling stock of ice screws. Axe and crampon placements were tenuous and he was encumbered by the weight and bulk of his sack. The climb had barely begun and they were already pushed to the limit.
He reached easier ground, searched around in the twilight, fingers numb with cold, to find a narrow ledge for a bivouac. It was dark by the time Brendan reached him and they had to go through the laborious process of clearing the ledge, unpacking sacks and preparing for the night. There was no room to erect the tent, so they just got into their sleeping bags, tied into their anchor point in case they fell out of bed. Shivering and parched with thirst, they were longing for a warm drink. Their stove was a Heath Robinson affair. Andy had been unable to find his usual Markill Stormy hanging bivouac stove before leaving England, so they had made one with bits of wire that they could suspend from a loop in the top of the tent. They called it Metal Mickey and it worked amazingly well – better than the production model which tends to starve the burner flame of the meagre amounts of oxygen present in the confines of a tent sealed from spindrift and the elements.
The following morning dawned fine but bitterly cold. They brewed up, delayed getting out of warm sleeping bags as long as they could, and then faced the slow painful process of forcing on cold plastic boots, pushing sleeping bags rimed with frost into stuff sacks, all the time terrified of dropping something. It was well after dawn when they were ready to set out on the first pitch. The climbing remained steep and demanding. Progress was slow and once again it started snowing shortly after midday, so their line of ascent became a cataract of rushing spindrift. On the third day, after a testing start, the difficulty relented slightly and they made better headway, reaching the left-hand end of the first icefield. This was like ‘a giant skating rink, tilted at 55°, with an impenetrable skin of steel that shattered and splintered until the sun softened it up’.
They were now down to three working ice screws. The ice was so tough that even for belays they could only sink a screw about halfway in, tying it off with a length of tape close to the surface, and backing this up by tying into the ice tools, whose picks penetrated little more than a centimetre. They couldn’t afford a fall.
This day took them to the foot of the big icefield which Brendan and the others had reached the previous year. It was an important landmark. They made good progress up one side to its top where they had the choice of very steep ice on the right or mixed rock and ice to the left. They chose the former despite their shortage of ice screws. Brendan led the first pitch and then it was Andy’s turn. The afternoon storm had started and quickly rose to a more intense pitch than on either of the previous days. Spindrift was pouring down the face, streaming across and even upwards as it blasted around them. The rumble of thunder and crash of wind over the summit merged in a roar of sound.
Brendan was hanging from a tied-off ice screw, which left Andy with only two – one for a runner and one that he would have to keep for a belay. The snow pelted him with ever increasing force as he teetered up, crampon points and the picks of his ice tools barely penetrating the steely surface. Twenty metres above the belay he tried to place a screw. It is not easy on steep ground at the best of times, but with avalanches of snow pouring over him, the weight of his sack pulling him backwards and the blunted bent teeth of the screw failing to bite in the ice, it was desperate. He was tiring rapidly, clipped into one of his ice tools and hung on it so that he could use both hands. It held for a few seconds and then ripped out. He toppled backwards, his crampon points flicked out and he fell on to his remaining tool, which miraculously held. Panting with exhaustion and fear, blinded by clouds of snow blown upwards into his face, hampered by the weight of the sack, he managed to kick in the front point of his crampons and stand up in balance once more. At last he managed to engage the teeth of the screw and keep turning until it was embedded halfway in. He tied in thankfully and brought Brendan up through the deluge of snow to join him. Brendan, usually the most stoic of climbers, was retching with the pain of frozen fingers and toes. The spindrift had penetrated everywhere, into gloves, down their necks, behind their goggles.
Brendan hardly paused at the stance, but just battled on up a brittle, ice-filled corner. At least movement created some warmth, but Andy, now belaying, was quickly frozen to the bone, shivering uncontrollably as he tried to keep himself warm by flapping his arms. Progress was desperately slow and it was getting dark. Andy climbed up to Brendan on a tight rope, screaming that he had to have something to eat. As he arrived, Brendan thrust him a food bar, which Andy bit into with the wrapper still on.
There was no sign of a bivvy ledge, so it was Andy’s turn to press on. The angle eased slightly and he was able to move faster, traversing to a snow arête which would at last provide a good bivvy site. He had already used all the functioning ice screws and spent twenty minutes pounding one of the broken ones into the ice, tied off on it and his ice tools and shouted down into the darkness for Brendan to come up, warning him, ‘The belays are shit.’
The rope pulled in all too slowly and jerkily, and then he felt a sudden violent heave. He was pulled straight off his stance. For an agonising moment he wondered whether the belays would hold. They did. He could just discern a blob of light through the driving snow and darkness as Brendan pendulumed twenty metres across the slope to a point where he was suspended directly below Andy’s belay. Fortunately he was able to climb straight up to rejoin his climbing partner. The only comment he made was, ‘That was lucky, I could have lost my torch’.
It took them another two weary hours to hack out a platform, pitch the tent and get a brew on. They were both frost-nipped, chilled to the bone and ravenously hungry and thirsty. Neither of them in their long and challenging climbing careers had encountered a day like this. They were undoubtedly lucky to be alive.
Next morning they decided to take a day off – they didn’t have much choice; they were so debilitated. They didn’t talk much. Brendan was a self-contained person, good to climb with, considerate and yet someone who was difficult to get to know.
Meanwhile, the others also set out. Mick and Steve had been surprised at the slowness of Andy and Brendan as they watched them from Advance Base, but once they started climbing on 25 May they discovered why. They made no better headway each day and suffered the same restricted bivvy ledges, but they were better placed on the afternoon of the storm that had hammered Andy and Brendan, being at the second bivouac in plenty of time to get into the shelter of their tent. Roger and Julie-Ann fared less well. They had set out on their independent line to the left on the day of the storm and, caught on steep ground, were forced into a standing bivouac, with their tent draped over them. It was a long bitterly cold and very uncomfortable night. It says something for their determination that they all kept going.
On 28 May, after a day lying in their tent drinking hot brews and eating, Brendan and Andy felt better. Brendan led three hard pitches but again there was no sign of a good bivvy ledge, so they abseiled back down to the previous night’s campsite, leaving their ropes in position. This led to a complication since Mick and Steve, who had been using the same bivvy sites, but had not taken a day off, now caught them up. Mick and Steve had mixed feelings. While they got on well with Andy and Brendan, they also believed in travelling as fast as possible with the freedom to stop where and when they liked. On terrain like this good bivouac sites were at a premium and whoever was in the second party would have second choice.
They discussed what to do and decided, at least on a temporary basis, to join forces. Andy and Brendan would stay out in front, take Steve and Mick’s ropes and push the route, then the second pair could pick up the two fixed lines to use for their ascent. Since each party still had their own protection gear and slings, they could easily revert to climbing independently. Another factor was that Brendan and Andy were on their sixth day and had only brought eight days’ food, while the other pair were not only just on their fourth day, but found they had a surprise surplus of mashed potato. This particular brand went further than any other they had used before, giving about six times the finished bulk, which meant they would have more than enough to feed all four members of the team.
That morning, day seven for Andy and Brendan, it took a long time to jumar up the ropes and they only started climbing at around midday. There had been ominous streaks of high cloud at dawn and the weather looked as if it was going to close in even earlier than usual. Mick and Steve delayed their departure, even enjoying the lie in. The climbing up above looked hard and was obviously going to take a long time. There didn’t seem much chance of getting one good bivvy ledge, let alone two, so they decided to stay where they were for the day and night and to follow on independently the next day.
It was inevitable that Andy and Brendan were going to dislodge blocks of ice as they hacked their way up, but Mick and Steve hoped that they were out of the line of fire, ensconced on the crest of a little snow arête. They were soon disillusioned. A roaring whirr signalled something much more solid than an ice block and a rock tore through the wall of the tent to miss Steve’s head by five centimetres. They screamed up at the others and spent the rest of the day wearing their crash helmets, cowering as close to the back wall as they could. Two more blocks of ice tore holes in the tent and the spindrift poured in covering their sleeping bags, mats and everything. They even discussed retreat, worried by the damage to the tent and the prospect of their being in the firing line for the rest of the climb but neither Steve nor Mick retreats easily. They decided to keep going.
It had been Brendan who had dislodged the rock and he felt terrible, but there was nothing he could do about it. The ice was hard and brittle, breaking off into blocks as they swung in their tools. Andy led the next pitch, probably the hardest and most elegant on the entire climb, up a thin and intermittent smear of ice plastered on smooth almost holdless granite. Pitch followed Fitch, all of them formidable, up the iced groove line, seemingly the only way up this vast wall of granite with its huge corners roofed by massive overhangs and tenuous cracks that petered out. It was like El Capitan at altitude, but much bigger, with ice and snow. There were no forest glades, winding roads and Camp 4 in the valley below – just the crevasse-seamed glacier and empty snow peaks.
But Andy and Brendan were beginning to revel in their isolation and the unrelenting quality of the climbing. They were getting ever closer to the top of this huge wall. Two more bivouacs, the first on the narrowest ledge yet, more difficult and committing climbing, and at last they reached a steep snow-plastered slab which led to a cornice. They cut through and were standing on the crest of the ridge that we had climbed back in 1974, which finally led to the summit of Changabang.
It was nearly dark and they hacked out a platform from a mushroom of snow. Next morning dawned cloudy and it was snowing by eight. They decided to sit the weather out. Andy had quite forgotten that it was his birthday. Brendan had not and produced six Snickers bars which he had stored away. They shared them and settled down to a day of hungry rest, feeling a deep sense of contentment at having fought through the eight days they had spent on that huge face in such appalling conditions. Andy wrote: ‘We had grown close on the climb and had become like an eccentric couple. We knew what soup or type of tea the other preferred, knew each other’s aspirations and fears. Philosophising high on that twisting corniced ridge seemed a luxury after the grinding face.’
They finished their food at their evening meal, but were looking forward to Mick and Steve’s arrival and to sharing their mashed potato surplus. Next morning they started up the ridge in a clear dawn. It was a delight to be on comparatively easy ground, though it was narrow and corniced. They were travelling light but felt weak from lack of food as the cloud rolled in and it took them an hour to wade through deep snow between the two horns of Changabang’s summit to reach the top. Then, as if the gods wanted to give them a reward, the cloud cleared away and they gazed at the magnificent twin peaks of Nanda Devi rising out of the mist-filled Sanctuary. But it was time to descend and they had a long way to go. They heard a shout and could just discern the figure of Steve Sustad as he came up on to the ridge.
Mick and Steve had followed a slightly different route, joining the summit ridge higher than the others. They had used the same bivvy ledges and had had a glimpse of Roger and Julie-Ann, far below but still climbing upwards. They could see Andy and Brendan’s tracks dropping back to the tent and decided to follow these down so that they could camp together that night, hoping to go for the summit themselves the following morning.
Steve was already starting down and Mick was just picking up the loose coils of rope, when Steve slipped. The wet afternoon snow had balled up between the points of his crampons, his boots skidded from under him, and he was off, sliding down on the south side of the ridge, his cumbersome rucksack stopping him from rolling into position to use the pick of his axe as a brake. He was gathering speed and the slope was steepening. Mick’s first reaction was to jump down the other side of the ridge, but the crest was too far above him. His axe, sunk in soft snow, was not much good but he quickly took the rope round his waist and braced himself: ‘To begin with, I felt I was in with a chance. I could feel my crampon points biting home and see Steve swinging around below me. But the farther he swung, the more the slope steepened and the more the strain grew. Ultimately, I crumpled to one side and came on to the axe. I felt just a token resistance as I was dragged down. My feelings were of total despair. All those promises to my wife and children.’
He was now free-falling in mid-air. There was a huge thump. He felt a sharp pain across his face and, almost to his surprise, he realised he had stopped. He explored himself cautiously. His nose was bleeding but he did not seem to have broken anything. He called Steve. There was a painful pause and then Steve croaked, ‘My ribs hurt, I don’t feel too good’.
They quickly ascertained that he had broken several ribs. It was now five in the afternoon and they had fallen about sixty metres below the crest of the ridge. They were very lucky that it had not been further. A broad snow ledge had saved them. It was the best campsite in days but they had a disturbed night, Steve gurgling and groaning, both wondering how they were going to get back to Base Camp. The following morning they climbed up to join the others, who had spent their third night on the crest of the ridge.
Thanks to Mick’s potato surplus they at least had some food, but they were in a precarious situation. They had two choices: either to abseil down the face they had just climbed, the option that Steve favoured, or to take the easier but much longer descent down the south side. This would entail crossing Shipton’s Col, abseiling down on to the Rhamani Glacier, climbing up that and over the Bagini Col to get back on to the Bagini Glacier and their Base Camp. The others favoured this longer route and they set off taking the rest of the day just to reach the col between Kalanka and Changabang. Steve was in considerable pain from his ribs and one of Andy’s fingers was frostnipped. Next morning they started down the Kalanka Face in near white-out conditions, following a broad gangway diagonally across it. It was blowing hard and bitterly cold. The ropes were frozen and they were moving slowly in their exhausted state, feeling their way down in unfamiliar territory. A break in the clouds showed they were on the right line and did not have far to go to reach easier ground but, just as they were getting their bearings, the cloud rolled in once again.
Mick was the first to abseil down. It was over an overhanging sérac wall, and would have been hell for Steve. There seemed a better line out to the right. Brendan volunteered to go across and fix an anchor. It was easy ground and he traversed across the snow slope unroped. It took him twenty minutes to find a good placement and screw in the piton. Andy and Steve chatted while he worked A muffled rumble interrupted their conversation. They glanced up to see a series of avalanches triggering each other off far above and then sweeping down in an ever-growing cloud towards them.
‘Brendan, Brendan!’ Andy screamed to warn his climbing partner, as he drove his own axe into the snow and clipped himself to it with a sling. Brendan had no sling, no rope, not even his axe. He tried to grab on to the ice screw as the snow silently engulfed him. Avalanches are very different from what you see on television. There is practically no sound, but their power is vast. Brendan was swept away out of sight and a few minutes later it was as if the avalanche had never taken place. They were left in a numb horror at what had just happened.
They camped a very short way below on a small spur and the next day continued down, looking at the huge ice cliffs over which Brendan had been swept. They shouted his name again and again but the sound was absorbed by the still silent ice walls and snow slopes of Kalanka. There was no reply, no sign of their friend.
They spent that night on the Changabang Glacier and set out at one o’clock the following morning to make the long climb up the gully leading to Shipton’s Col. It was tough going in crusty snow that sometimes held their weight but would then give way, causing legs to plunge deep into the soft powder below. It was agony for Steve. Once at the col, the face on the other side is steep and sheer, comprised mostly of rock. The abseils were once again painful and very time-consuming. They camped on the Rhamani Glacier and ate what little was left of their food, and they still had another 1,000-metre climb over the Bagini Col. They dumped practically all their gear as they went and reached the site of Advance Base the following afternoon. Mick and Steve decided to stay there but Andy wanted to share the dreadful news with Roger and Julie-Ann. He was also worried about his finger which was now black, swollen and suppurating, so he pressed on to Base Camp.
Roger and Julie-Ann had only got back the previous day and were still asleep, exhausted by their adventure, when Andy arrived. They had spent ten days on the face, joining the route the others had taken just below the second icefield and reaching the upper icefield on the day the fierce storm hit the others on their way down. They had sat out the storm, buffeted by avalanches, and then made their own precarious retreat.
The worst had happened. A friend was dead, though it could so easily have been more. Steve could have died on the face when the rock missed him only by inches. Mick and Steve were lucky to survive their fall on the summit ridge and all six of them had been pushing the limits, often with negligible protection in appalling weather throughout the climb.
It was a magnificent piece of mountain exploration, adventure in its fullest sense. Did they push the risks beyond reasonable limits? Perhaps, but that is in the nature of adventure.