Back in the UK after our attempt on Grosvenor, I was giving a mountaineering lecture in Edinburgh when I was unsettled by a comment during the usual question and answer session at the end. In response to a question about my next objective I openly wondered about the possibilities in east Tibet, and had just finished saying that I wasn’t aware of any mountaineers ever having climbed in this vast area when a hand rose and a voice politely announced that it had just returned from a wonderful trip there. There’s nothing like feeling silly in public. To say I was taken aback is something of an understatement. Having kept myself aware of developments on the remote mountaineering scene for many years, my initial reaction was one of disbelief. I didn’t recognise the chap who had spoken, chose not to seek clarification in a public forum and gave a rather bland response along the lines of ‘we must speak later’. With that I moved on to field rather more standard questions. But the response niggled and I couldn’t concentrate.
Visits to the Qionglai range in 2002 and the Daxue Shan range in 2003 had opened my eyes to the mountaineering potential in China, and an increasing number of photographs of east Tibet published by the renowned Japanese explorer Tamotsu (Tom) Nakamura had begun to whet my appetite.
At the time I had managed to arrange my tax office responsibilities such that although based in Nottingham, I was responsible for the shares and assets valuation office in Edinburgh. That meant visiting Edinburgh about once a month and so during subsequent trips I got to know Adam Thomas and Phil Amos. It was Adam who had spoken during the lecture and as we chatted afterwards it quickly become clear that there was no misunderstanding. Not only had they managed to visit the remote Nyainqentangla East range, they had gone with the intention of climbing Kajaqiao, an eye-catching peak that Tom Nakamura had described as the ‘Matterhorn of the Nyainqentangla’, and which was top of my provisional list of objectives in the area. Mistakes on their maps (pre Google Earth) meant that intervening ridges sprouted unexpectedly as they tried to approach from the south and they never managed to reach the foot of the mountain. But they were keen to return and it didn’t take long for us to agree to make up a four-man team with the intention of exploring the area further and having a go at Kajaqiao from the north, where access appeared to be more straightforward.
The more I researched the more I came to appreciate the mountaineering potential of east Tibet and the work of Tom Nakamura. Tom was a senior Japanese businessman and when he retired he approached the exploration and mapping of east Tibet in the meticulous way that I could imagine him handling difficult business issues. He was instrumental in getting the Japanese Alpine News published in English, which has been a great benefit to exploration-minded mountaineers in the West. His visits to east Tibet seemed to result in a never-ending stream of photographs of spectacular unclimbed 6,000-metre mountains, of which he reckoned there were over 250 in the Nyainqentangla and Kangri Garpo ranges. There was more than enough here to last me a lifetime, but Kajaqiao was the one that cried out to be climbed the most and, despite all the other offerings, it stayed firmly as our objective.
As usual we arranged to climb as two independent teams of two. From the outset we knew the trip would be expensive and my climbing partners of recent years were otherwise occupied. The search for a suitable partner led to Chris Watts. In years gone by Chris and I had enjoyed two greater-range trips together. He had been my climbing partner on my first ever trip outside Europe, to Peru in 1982. We had a wonderfully successful trip, making the first ascent of the south-east buttress of a mountain called Taulliraju in the Cordillera Blanca range. Our second trip together in 1984 had not been so successful. That was my first trip to the Himalaya and our plan was to make the first ascent of a 7,329-metre peak in Pakistan called Bojohagur Duonasir. Suffice to say that our inexperience at altitude showed and the trip was punctuated by numerous retrospectively laughable incidents stemming from our naivety. The end result across the team as a whole was: a fractured vertebra, a boot dropped at a crucial time, a lucky escape with a breaking abseil sling, food dumps lost under fresh snowfall, an unsuccessful attempt to melt snow in my helmet and such a poor relationship with our liaison officer that he threatened to report us for ‘littering the mountain’ because we had been unable to retrieve a cache of three or four ice screws. Meanwhile a Japanese walking club attempting the mountain from the other side joined our line, walked very strongly beyond where we ran out of steam and succeeded in making the first ascent. All in all it was a most memorable trip for all the wrong reasons. I remember writing an article about it and receiving a letter from a prominent member of the Alpine Club complaining that I was an embarrassment to British mountaineering and should be ashamed of myself.
Anyway, that was over twenty years ago. Since then, Chris and his wife Siobhan had built a successful outdoor equipment distribution business and Chris had kept himself in top shape by pursuing his original passion of cycling, together with irregular winter climbing trips to Scotland. Chris and I had climbed a lot together in Scotland during the 1980s and had developed a trust that I felt sure would stand us in good stead for another greater-range trip. The fact that he had done very little mountaineering since Bojohagur somehow mattered little. I knew him to be focused, fit, dependable and determined. All in all, these are more important than technical ability when it comes to greater-range climbing.
As the months went by preparations proceeded and the mound of pre-expedition paperwork grew. The frequency of my visits to the Edinburgh office increased markedly as Adam, Phil and I got to know each other better and we spent many fine evenings climbing on the outcrops around Edinburgh. The staff in Edinburgh must have wondered why it was suddenly necessary for their boss to visit so often.
There was however a notable absence of a letter of authority from the Chinese authorities. In theory, all of Tibet was ‘open’ to foreigners at that time, although in practice specific permits were required to visit specific areas. We knew the authorities tended to issue them at the very last minute, but as the months went by concern gradually grew. A particular frustration in dealing with the Chinese authorities is that I have never been able to make contact with the decision maker; there is always a middleman who I never manage to bypass. In the case of mountaineers wishing to climb in Tibet, the ‘middleman’ is the China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) and the message from them was consistently along the lines of ‘your application is being processed’. That was fine to begin with, but the week before departure stress levels were rising fast. Adam had resigned as a grants officer with the Big Lottery Fund and was staying in London; Phil was in Edinburgh, having booked four weeks’ unpaid leave from his job as an environmental engineer; and Chris and I were in the East Midlands, packed and ready to go. The plan was that as soon as the all-important letter of invitation was received, Phil would fly down to London, visas would be issued and we would be on our way. That was perhaps an optimistic timescale, but Phil had booked his flight in advance. Eventually the crucial moment came. My phone rang and it was Phil.
‘I’m packed and ready. Shall I leave for the airport?’
I opened my computer and checked my emails yet again. Nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. I had lost count of the number of emails I had sent over the last few days with no discernible progress. Much as no one seemed prepared to say ‘no’, it was equally apparent that no one was prepared to say ‘yes’.
I stared gloomily at the screen. If the Chinese were not going to be decisive then we would have to be.
‘Sorry Phil. It’s not going to happen.’
And so the 2004 British Kajaqiao expedition ground to a halt before it had even begun.
We decided to meet and discuss alternative plans. We met at my place, drank beer, peered at my box file, checked flights and gradually realised that we had been so set on east Tibet that nothing else would do. We decided to defer until 2005 and hope for better luck then.
‘At least these little problems keep the crowds away.’
This has become a stock phrase of mine. I can say it quite cheerfully when not caught in the thick of stress-related action, but right then I had to admit I didn’t feel quite so appreciative of the bureaucratic lines of defence that play such a large part in keeping these peaks unclimbed.
Adam and Phil drifted back to Edinburgh. Adam managed to return to the job he had resigned from, Phil cancelled his unpaid leave and Chris and I were left to contemplate. Chris suggested that we head out to Grindelwald and have a go at the Harlin Route (direct) on the north face of the Eiger. The thought didn’t particularly inspire me and I don’t know why I agreed to go really. I had climbed the original north face route with Mike Morrison back in 1980 and remembered that the upper section of the direct looked to follow a natural and inspirational line, but that the lower section looked to lack a clear line, involve lots of aid climbing and was generally not very attractive. I had harboured vague thoughts about one day following an alternative route to the Flat Iron (a point about halfway up where the original and direct lines cross) and then following the direct from there. Perhaps that was in my mind when I agreed to Chris’s suggestion.
We headed out to Switzerland in his people carrier. When we arrived in Grindelwald the cloud was down and the grey limestone walls of the lower section of the face were running with water. Enthusiasm levels were low. We hung around in a hostel drinking coffee and watching rather uninteresting games of ice hockey for a couple of days until, just when I was close to suggesting giving up, the temperature dropped sufficiently to keep the face frozen and we decided an attempt was worthwhile.
The direct route starts beneath the centre of the face and is the natural fall line for items dropped from higher up. It was rather disconcerting to find the base littered with a significant number of items that tend not to be dropped accidentally, such as old pieces of clothing. The history of the Eiger is a grisly one and, although it has lost much of its once-feared reputation, the relics of the past remain as a poignant reminder of epics gone by.
It became apparent that the temperature was not really cold enough and our ropes soon became wet and dirty. Every now and then the clouds parted and we could see the inspirational upper reaches, but we came to a point where the obvious way on was via a half-frozen waterfall that clearly would not take our weight. After an uncomfortably damp bivouac there was no improvement in conditions and all remaining enthusiasm evaporated. By evening we were back in Grindelwald. In an attempt to recoup something from the trip we walked up to the Schreckhorn hut, but our hearts were still longing for east Tibet and we were soon back at work in England.
The end result was in fact not all negative. I had saved fifteen days of my annual leave entitlement which I was able to bank, giving me extra flexibility for years to come. With my Himalayan trips taking about twenty working days (four weeks) I had long felt guilty about using so much leave on my annual Himalayan holiday. When I was in the lower grades the key to balancing the books with the family was the flexibility provided by the tax office’s ‘flexitime’ system, which enabled me to work long hours when I liked and take a couple of days a month off in lieu. I also became paranoid about unnecessarily using leave. Expeditions would be run to as tight a timescale as possible and I would always return home immediately after the climbing had finished thereby saving days wherever possible. After reaching the dizzy heights of Grade 6 (Senior Principal) in 2000, life became potentially more difficult as flexitime was not officially worked at that grade and there was a long-hours culture that my fellow Grade 6s appeared very comfortable with. I negotiated a certain degree of flexibility with my bosses, but always wondered how much my peers spoke about me behind my back when Fowler’s electronic diary was peppered with TOIL (Time Off In Lieu) entries which were notably absent from theirs. Leave arrangements were always a challenge, but saving those fifteen days as a result of cancelling the Kajaqiao trip certainly helped. Disappointed as I was not to get there I took the view that it is important to celebrate the good things that come out of unfortunate circumstances.
Exchanges with the CTMA continued throughout the following year and got as far as ‘Beijing is considering …’. At least communication channels were open and they weren’t saying ‘no’. The decision had to be made. Should we put ourselves through the stress and uncertainty of trying again or should we choose somewhere more straightforward? Based on Tom’s photographs and Adam and Phil’s first-hand experience we sensed there was something very special in Tibet that would make it all worthwhile in the end; so we persevered. This time our efforts were rewarded. By mid-2005 the CTMA had secured permits from the police, army, local governor, Beijing bureaucrats and several others and in mid-September we finally arrived in the once forbidden city of Lhasa.
The arrangements for mountaineering in east Tibet were new to us. The only way to secure permits seemed to be to agree a lump sum fee with the CTMA to cover all in-country costs. At approaching $5,000 per head it was far from cheap, but the arrangement made arriving at Lhasa airport feel like being on a package holiday. Jimi, our liaison officer, and Tenzing, from the CTMA, were there to whisk us to our hotel and, at long last, to a personal meeting with YangZhen of the CTMA. After so many emails between us I almost felt I knew YangZhen as a close friend. She sat resplendent in a smart leather jacket as thousands of dollars were meticulously counted out.
‘Couldn’t we have paid in sterling?’ I enquired, more to make small talk than for any other reason.
I tried to stare calmly and not reveal my irritation that we had followed instructions and paid commission to convert our sterling into dollars when there appeared to be no reason for us to have done so.
‘Have you been to Tibet before?’ she enquired as her minions studiously turned over yet more dollar bills.
I was still lost in following the counting but Adam stepped in briskly to enthuse about their visit to the Nyainqentangla East range two years previously.
‘How did you get to east Tibet?’ she enquired. ‘I have no record of any permits issued for that year.’
This was suddenly looking bad. I gave up following the counting and paid attention. Adam had moved on to explaining how they had arranged the trip through an agent who had been responsible for arranging all the necessary permits. I was expecting an awkward exchange but her response surprised me.
‘You made it. You were lucky,’ she said with a big smile.
This permit business was all very mystifying. I couldn’t quite work out whether it was some big joke or a terribly serious matter. It crossed my mind that we shouldn’t bother in future. But then I thought back. Without the necessary official invitation letters we wouldn’t have even been allowed to board the Lhasa plane in Beijing, let alone get anywhere near Kajaqiao. It seemed that Adam and Phil’s previous trip had been lucky enough to coincide with a rare period of less stringent regulation.
A couple of days later Chris and I peered curiously out of the window of our hotel in the town of Nagqu. This was a fair-sized town that we knew to be one of the coldest, windiest and highest in Tibet. It is best known for a huge nomadic gathering which takes place each year in August, when something like 10,000 nomads congregate on the vast grassland site and indulge in activities as diverse as horse and yak racing, tug of war, stone lifting and Tibetan opera performances. Today, it had a bleak and desolate feel. At an altitude of 4,500 metres the temperature stubbornly hovered below freezing and a dusting of snow blew around the courtyard. On the pavement a group of well-muffled yak herders with eye-catching fox fur hats leaned hard into the biting wind. There were few other people visible. At 6,447 metres the summit of Kajaqiao was about 2,000 metres higher. Whatever would the conditions be like up there?
The 250 kilometres of dirt track to the regional centre of Lhari built my respect for four-wheel-drive vehicles. After a full day driving through wild scenery, passing small mud-hut villages, a few nomadic tents and some impressively large piles of beer bottles, it was something of a surprise when the track suddenly changed to a concrete dual carriageway with street lamps down the centre and lock-up shop units down either side. This continued for a kilometre or so and then stopped as suddenly as it had started. There was no doubt about it: Chinese influence had well and truly arrived. On the pavement a group of nomads with traditional wrap-around yak-skin coats and red braids in their jet-black hair were busy cutting up a yak with an axe. The head had been removed and hung forlornly on pristine metallic railings opposite the Chinese shop units. It seemed a fine symbol of two cultures striving to live side by side.
The place had a wild feel and the prospect of spending a night was clearly causing Jimi and Tenzing some concern. It had to be admitted that it was a very curious spot. We were told that it was originally a sort of mobile village where animal-herding nomads from the plateau met each year to trade. They called their trading place Lhari and, gradually, it became a semi-permanent settlement.
‘Wow. This place has changed,’ announced Adam.
Two years previously they had found the road completely dug up, presumably in preparation for laying the tediously bland concrete highway. The fact that change was obviously coming fast was perhaps emphasised by the fact that the locals appeared not to understand the concept of a dual carriageway and simply treated it as two parallel roads, driving up and down whichever side took their fancy. To add to the faintly laughable atmosphere a police car cruised up and down with a loud hailer continuously delivering a message of some kind.
‘Probably telling them to drive on the right side of the road,’ commented Phil.
But Jimi and Tenzing seemed more concerned about security than the driving habits of the locals.
‘Best not draw too much attention to yourselves,’ they suggested.
We were travelling in two vehicles: a Toyota Land Cruiser and a canvas-covered truck. In the compound behind our very basic hotel the driver backed the truck up hard against a high wall and the Toyota was parked so as to block the exit. Nervous, and not wishing to risk losing any of our equipment, I volunteered to spend the night in the Toyota. I would say ‘volunteered to sleep in the Toyota’ but a combination of the altitude and adrenaline ensured that no sleeping took place. There seemed to be a wild club of some kind nearby which produced much raucous noise and a number of young men who urinated close to the lorry. Every time someone approached I would peer tensely into the darkness and strain my ears for the sound of equipment being removed from the truck. It seemed a threatening place and I couldn’t help wondering how any robbers might react if I disturbed them. It was not the most relaxing night.
‘Good sleep?’ asked Chris chirpily as he banged on the window in the morning. I refrained from comment and stretched grumpily to welcome the day.
And a very bleak day it looked too. A dusting of snow had fallen and the skies looked grey and threatening. Back in the UK I had heard a rumour that a Swiss team bound for Kajaqiao had been turned back here, and so felt that today could be the bureaucratic crux of the whole trip. As far as I was aware we had all the right permits, but I knew full well that it would only take one difficult official to bring us to a grinding halt.
We pulled up outside the incongruous blue glass of the police station and Tenzing signalled that I should come inside with him. At the reception desk we were immediately of great interest and a throng of uniformed officers gathered to test their English.
‘Where do you come from? How old are you? How many children?’
I tried to smile in an appropriately relaxed manner as they revelled in being able to communicate with this foreigner. Soon though I was led into a small room where a stern-looking official peered closely at the grand total of nine official documents that Tenzing placed in front of him. For a long time he stared blankly and I wondered if he even knew what he was looking for, increasingly fearing that incomprehension could lead to refusal. At length, and still without any facial expression, he gathered up the pieces of paper, said something to Tenzing and disappeared.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked fearfully.
‘It’s OK. He’s writing a letter of authority,’ Tenzing almost whispered.
I decided to smile sweetly and say nothing else until we were back in the Toyota.
I seemed to stand smiling inanely for a very long time before the man returned and I was able to leave clutching a police letter asking the headman of the local village to arrange for our equipment to be carried to our base camp. It seemed odd that a police letter was necessary effectively instructing him to help, but Tenzing explained that caterpillar fungus collecting gave the local communities so much income that they might not be interested in portering for us without a little ‘persuasion’ from the authorities. I breathed a sigh of relief. With luck, all the bureaucracy was now behind us and all we had to do was find the mountain and climb it.
From the outskirts of Lhari we caught a glimpse of Kajaqiao’s striking profile, forty kilometres or so away. But as the valley became more deeply cut and clouds shrouded the peaks it was far from clear exactly where it was in relation to us. It was crucial that the jeeps dropped us off at the right place – a small village called Tatse which our rudimentary map showed as being somewhere above the road directly opposite a short valley leading to Kajaqiao. Satellite navigation devices were relatively few and far between in 2005 but Adam, being young and technologically minded, had brought along a basic global positioning device that very vaguely charted our whereabouts. Through a combination of map reading, satellite signal and guesswork we called a halt in an area of meadow above the Yi’ong Tsangpo river. A few houses were visible a hundred metres or so above the road and we felt a certain amount of relief when their occupants confirmed that this was indeed Tatse and that Kajaqiao was somewhere up in the cloud.
Tatse has a population of about forty and is dominated by an immaculately kept monastery. The younger people in particular were friendly and very interested in what we were planning to do. They told us that Kajaqiao is pronounced ‘chachacho’ and the mountain is named after its likeness to hands drawn together in prayer. An elderly woman expressed concern that it would snow forever if anyone ever stood on the summit, but the younger occupants were enthusiastic at the prospect of us trying to climb it and told of a Japanese reconnaissance trip and attempt on Kajaqiao that we were not aware of.
We enquired about using yaks or horses to carry our equipment to base camp, but it seemed that since the introduction of motor vehicles animals are very rarely used for carrying anything and the associated skills are fast disappearing. I like to use yaks or horses as they tend not to argue as much as humans but, perhaps inevitably, it was decided that our only practical option was to use porters.
‘I think ten will be enough,’ announced Tenzing.
I looked around at the enormous amount of gear that he and Jimi had brought. There were huge gas cylinders, a massive marquee-style tent, several large yak steaks, numerous crates of beer … Ten porters seemed ridiculously inadequate. Tenzing obviously recognised the look of concern on our faces.
‘We will have base camp here,’ he reassured us, pointing just below the village to the meadows next to the river.
This was all very curious. With security in mind we had specifically clarified with the CTMA that Tenzing and Jimi would be staying at our base camp. Something had clearly been lost in the translation, but there wasn’t much we could do about it now. It seemed that the policy of the CTMA was to have base camp at the roadside wherever possible.
Having pitched our tents we were immediately something of a local attraction. Just about all of the inhabitants of Tatse must have gathered to marvel at us. And we, of course, took the opportunity to marvel at them, in a mainly ‘looking-at-each-other’ encounter, as the translation services of Tenzing and Jimi were very limited. Much as they were both friendly and had a reasonable command of English I couldn’t help but feel that they were not very forthcoming. Jimi was a mountaineer and clearly relaxed and happy to chat about mountaineering, but when the subject turned to almost anything else he became reserved and unwilling to go into detail. The difficulties we had getting permits had left me feeling that, much as the area was classed as ‘open’, the Chinese authorities didn’t want to encourage foreigners. It might be that Jimi and Tenzing had been told to be reserved with us or it could have been that they were simply reserved characters. Either way, it was frustrating not to be able to gain a deeper insight into the culture and character of the area and its people.
Although we were around 300 kilometres from the nearest metalled road (aside from the one-kilometre concrete strip in Lhari) numerous young men had motorbikes. It appeared that they could put in a month or two of effort gathering caterpillar fungus and then be the idle rich, zooming up and down the dirt road for the rest of the year. Meanwhile the women carried on the traditional way of life and looked after the animals. It seemed that the police chief’s concerns could be valid. Somehow though, Jimi and Tenzing managed to persuade ten people to act as porters. They promised to report for duty the following day, although as I lay in my sleeping bag listening to the patter of sleet on the flysheet, I couldn’t help but wonder whether they would bother to turn up.
I was wrong to be concerned. The next day dawned bright and sunny and the porters arrived on time. It was clear that they regarded portering as something interesting, unusual and worth preparing for. Several wore what looked to be inappropriately clean and fashionable clothes and one sported a hair style which must have taken some time to prepare and would not have been out of place in a London nightclub. All were on motorbikes. Our bags were quickly scooped up and the bikes roared off down the road to a footbridge over the river a kilometre or so downstream. Recalling the concern about pilfering in Lhari the four of us did our best to run after them, but our efforts at running in big mountain boots were dismally slow and viewed with much hilarity by the group of children and womenfolk who had come to watch.
Once again, our worries were completely unfounded and the porters were excellent. Once over the bridge and loaded up it took only about six hours of uneventful, trackless walking to arrive at the site of the base camp used by the Japanese. The only evidence of their passing was a couple of roughly levelled tent platforms where we dumped our sacks before the porters helped us build a stone wall and arrange a tarpaulin to make a vaguely weatherproof kitchen shelter.
The mountains had not been visible from the valley and it was only on the final stretch to base camp that it became clear that there were two very spectacular mountains ahead, not one. The far one we recognised as Kajaqiao from Tom Nakamura’s photographs, but Jimi told us that peak was called Manamcho and that the near one was Kajaqiao. The joys of adventure mountaineering are such that life can be a bit uncertain at times. With permit complexities in mind we chose not to delve deeper and decided to discuss the situation and make our decision on what to do after Jimi and Tenzing had returned to the valley and we had done a bit of reconnaissance.
Our acclimatisation explorations revealed more. And our suspicions gradually grew that Jimi was correct and that Tom’s ‘Matterhorn of the Nyainqentangla’ was actually the 6,264-metre Manamcho. Kajaqiao had been hidden in Tom’s photo but was actually higher, at 6,447 metres. We were spoilt for choice between two of the finest looking mountains I had ever seen – and both were unclimbed. We could hardly believe our luck.
It was considerably colder than we expected, even to the extent that the eggs the porters had caringly carried had frozen solid … and were to stay that way for the duration. The amount of snow was also a concern. We awoke to perhaps twenty-five centimetres of new snow and by the time we were ready to attempt an ascent, a metre or so had fallen. This wouldn’t have been so bad with plenty of freeze and thaw, but with the temperature continually below freezing the snow simply accumulated as deep powder. We had not brought snowshoes so travelling around was exhausting. Despite this, we managed to reach a glacier plateau at 5,300 metres from where we were able to get a better view of both mountains and glimpses of the numerous others that had reared their heads as we gained height. We knew for certain that every mountain in the area was unclimbed and, with the exception of Kajaqiao, had never even been attempted. We felt privileged to be in this exploratory mountaineers’ paradise.
We had always agreed that we would climb in two completely separate teams, and after plenty of deliberation Chris and I decided to go for the mountain that appeared to be Kajaqiao while Adam and Phil would attempt Manamcho.
The deep snow and bad weather slowed us to the extent that it took two days of heavy panting to get to the foot of our chosen line. Crawling over large snow-covered boulders around the edge of a semi-frozen lake proved to be particularly trying. Clouds had prevented us from getting a good view from below but now, at 5,400 metres, we could see that the west face above us sported a series of left-trending couloirs leading up to the crest of the north-west ridge. The overall angle was not too steep, but it was hard to judge the difficulties.
Our first bivouac was a remarkably good find. Perched on the crest of a projecting rib of rounded slabs, I was surprised that the snow was deep enough for us to cut a very comfortable tent-sized platform. The day had been an exhausting one, largely because of the vast amounts of soft snow that had accumulated on the lower part of the face. Technical wading is not my favourite style of climbing. But we had made progress and as the evening sun bathed us we relaxed in the tent and soaked up the view. And increasingly impressive it was too. The skyline to the west was opening up with a myriad of tooth-like unclimbed peaks while down below we could see Adam and Phil, tiny dots moving almost imperceptibly across the huge snow plateau that borders the west side of Kajaqiao and Manamcho. They looked small and insignificant against such a majestic backdrop.
The ground the next day was steeper, which was good as it meant the deep snow that had plagued us would not stick. But sections that had looked easy transpired to be granite slabs covered with a dusting of powder, and so the day proceeded cautiously. There was nothing particularly difficult, it just all felt uncomfortably precarious and insecure. At one point I was reduced to calling a gibbering ‘watch me’ on ground that we would have moved together on if the snow had been nicely frozen. But this part of the world seemed not to be over-endowed with nicely frozen snow.
Nevertheless, by dint of judicious route finding the day progressed safely, if slowly, and ended with an open bivouac on the left bounding rib of the main couloir line.
‘This is a crap bivouac ledge,’ announced Chris emphatically.
We had put a lot of effort into the ledge, but I had to admit Chris’s comment was disturbingly true. What had initially looked like a promising possibility for getting the tent up was ruined by an immovable block in just the wrong place. There had been nothing for it but to fashion a narrow nose-to-tail ledge out of a thin snow band. Fortunately, the clouds that had swirled around for much of the day lifted and a glorious evening had developed by the time we sat down to brew up and tuck into our evening meal of Chinese baby powder and fruit-flavoured sausages. This was one of two menu options, the other being noodles with a flavouring sachet. These were not meals we meant to choose but, after deciding to buy our food in the shops of Lhasa in order to avoid excess baggage costs, our Chinese and Tibetan had been exposed as woefully inadequate and we had failed to understand exactly what we were buying. On the bright side, both menu options were very light. And they were sufficiently unappetising for us to frequently fail to finish our meals, so the food was lasting longer than expected. That was handy, because all the grappling with powdery snow meant the climb was taking longer than planned. Despite the bland food and high discomfort level, we both snuggled down in good spirits, soaking up the remarkable view and looking forward to a good night’s sleep.
It was some hours later that I awoke with a start. I had been wrapped cosily in the tent fabric but now it billowed around me like a huge sail and spindrift was blowing uncomfortably into my sleeping bag. Moving too hastily to rewrap myself resulted in my end of the ledge collapsing and me spending the rest of the night perched uncomfortably on the remains. Chris woke briefly to curse the spindrift that was being funnelled directly on to his head before settling down and snoring loudly. By daybreak I had given him several good kickings with no positive response. Over breakfast he did mention that he didn’t feel he had had a good night’s sleep, which was comforting in a perverse sort of way.
Time and time again I come back to thinking that willpower and determination are two key factors that dictate success or failure in the greater ranges. Now, with a bleak and windy dawn, both were tested to the max. The climbing was initially similar to the insecure scrabbling of the day before. Above, we could see that the angle increased slightly, which we thought might make things more difficult, and we made a hesitant and weary team as we debated the best line. But mountains are nothing if not surprising and as the angle increased the snow conditions improved. We were able to move faster and by the afternoon were enduring a biting crosswind on the ridge. The choice now was difficult. On the windward side the wind was fierce and the ground technical, whereas on the lee side the excitingly steep powder was potentially avalanche prone and exhausting to climb. We alternated uncomfortably, reaching an easing of the angle above a prominent ice cliff an hour or so before nightfall.
‘Time for a snow hole,’ Chris shouted above the now roaring wind.
Snow holes have always distressed me. Perhaps it is because I have never had the time to dig out a nice, spacious one, or perhaps I have latent claustrophobic tendencies which only surface when I am surrounded by snow. The last time I had spent the night in a snow hole was when Chris and I had climbed Mitre Ridge in the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. Four of us had spent the day making the long walk in from Braemar and were keen to get an early start in order to complete our intended climb and walk out in time to get back to London for work the following day. Visibility was nil and the wind so ferocious that a night in a snow hole was deemed the best option. My recollection is that it took a couple of exhausting hours to dig one big enough and that it was impossible to prevent snow getting into my gloves and down my neck. The digging was a damp, exhausting and miserable experience. The night was just as bad. The hole had one entrance and the roof tapered towards the far end. The warmth of our bodies made it sweaty inside, the roof dripped and I was farthest from the entrance with the roof just above my nose. I tossed and turned, wondered what it would be like if it collapsed, and eventually turned round to a position where my head was lower than my feet but where the roof was at its thinnest. This markedly increased my physical discomfort level but did do a little to alleviate my concerns about being smothered. In the morning I exited at the earliest opportunity and was amazed to see two figures approaching through the mist. It turned out to be the well-known mountaineer Rick Allen and his wife, Alison, who had walked in that morning. They must have had a very early start but looked much fresher than I felt. I pondered what a small world it is, wondered why we had endured such a night and vowed to avoid snow holes whenever possible.
But I digress. We were at over 6,000 metres on Kajaqiao and Chris suggested a snow hole with such enthusiasm that I found myself digging into the slope, even going so far as to lie on my stomach and hug vast quantities of snow against my body in my efforts to clear out what I had dug. Inevitably I sweated, snow ended up inside my clothing and I became damp, just like in the Cairngorms. The calm atmosphere in the hole was encouraging though. After an hour Chris pronounced it big enough, produced his sleeping bag, and settled down. I peered in. Length and width looked OK but the ceiling was flat and about fifty centimetres high. Hesitantly I decided to test my feelings before committing myself. It felt awful. A quick bit of experimenting revealed that even the weedy Fowler shoulders were broad enough to dislodge copious quantities of snow from the roof when I turned over. This snow tended to fall in my face and down my neck. I began to feel really cold and have flashbacks to that night in the Cairngorms.
‘No way. Sorry, Chris. Can’t do it.’
For me the last hour or so had been a complete waste of time and energy. I now had an urgent need to arrange something safe for myself or it was all going to go horribly wrong. Chris, who somehow appeared very comfortable in the snow hole, was very understanding and emerged to help. It was dark now and we struggled against the wind to erect the tent. After fifteen minutes we sat in the flapping fabric together. The hastily stamped-out snow platform was ludicrously uneven and the outer edge overhung the slope.
‘Sorry, Mick. Can’t sleep here.’
And so, as much as it might seem laughable, Chris ended up in the snow hole with me outside in the tent. Fortunately the wind dropped slightly, so at least my concerns about being blown away without Chris’s weight lessened.
There was a volcano-shaped mound in the tent ledge and I curled myself around this in as comfortable a manner as possible. For a few hours all was well and I slumbered uneventfully until suddenly I was awoken by the awful sensation of my small volcano erupting and taking me into the air. All hell let loose. A heavy weight pushed me downwards and planted my face firmly into something hard and cold. This was a new experience. Fortunately I had a small torch around my neck, the light from which revealed that the tent was now upside down and the cold hard things against my face were the crossed poles that are normally at the top. My immediate urge was to escape from the icy prison, but there were a few things to be done before then.
I struggled to sit up and push the heavy snow off the tent. That done, the next priority was to take a photograph. It is important to record such situations so they can be fully savoured later. But with the snow partially removed I could feel the wind gusting wildly. Jumping out hurriedly would risk the whole show being blown away – not a good idea. I was sleeping in all my clothes, including my Gore-Tex shell, so all I had to do to prepare myself was put my boots on. It was while I was doing this that I came across Chris’s inner boots. This was a worry. He must have only put his outer boots on when he helped me erect the tent. But where was he now? Clearly the tent had been hit by a snow slide. What had happened to the snow hole? Whatever his situation, he would certainly need his inner boots at some point.
Having located the entrance zip I emerged, stood on the tent fabric, cursed the situation that had ended up with us sleeping apart and scoured the slope above for signs of the hole. The narrow beam picked out nothing but windswept snow and snowslide debris. There was no sign of the substantial entrance we had dug the evening before. Securing things as best as I could I started to search the slope. I had only taken a few steps when a faint but urgent shout pierced the wind.
‘Fowler! Fowler!’
And then, after contact had been renewed via a tiny hole: ‘I’m stuck. Fucking well get me out of here.’
The weight of the snowslide had caused a section of the roof to collapse, leaving Chris disorientated and partially smothered. From outside it was easy to grab his extended hand and pull him to safety. But it turned my stomach to look in at the partially collapsed roof. In the confusion Chris had been unable to find his head torch and I could only imagine how terrifying it must have been milling around in the dark in such constricted circumstances, aware that there could be further collapses and not knowing in which direction the surface was closest.
Together we retrieved items from the remains of the cave, dug out the tent, put it the right way up and squeezed inside. It was good to be together again. Checking everything took time but, remarkably, nothing appeared to be lost or damaged.
It was light by now and I was uncomfortably aware that the hours had slipped past quickly. The wind seemed stronger than ever, we were in the cloud and it was one of those situations where a negative decision could be made all too easily. We decided to contemplate over a hot drink and half a chocolate bar. In the end two hot drinks were decreed to be worthwhile, after which we had gathered our wits such that we could recognise that there was nothing really wrong apart from the weather and some frayed nerves. There was no pressing reason to retreat. Like-minded thinking is crucial to Himalayan success. Onwards it would be.
The north (lee) side of the ridge was steeper than the day before and consisted of bottomless powder, a section of which had slipped down and caused us so much grief in the night. Fearful of a bigger avalanche, we were forced on to the rocky crest, which was technically challenging and outrageously windy. Nevertheless, clearings in the cloud revealed that we were making progress. Some maps show the height of Kajaqiao as 6,447 metres and others as 6,525 metres, but by mid-afternoon the 6,264-metre Manamcho was below us and we knew we couldn’t be far off. It seems incredibly old fashioned now, but at about 6,300 metres my camera ran out of film. The wind and spindrift meant that changing the roll was out of the question. Fortunately, for the first time ever, I had packed a cheap, lightweight spare.
The final section to the base of the summit slope proved memorable. A shallow gully came up from the right and its far side was steep and technical mixed ground, blasted full force by wind-driven snow. It was with some relief that I completed this section and found a small but secure belay. Above me a snow overhang protected the summit slope. We were nearly there.
‘Your nose!’ I screamed.
Chris had arrived at the belay and what I could see of him looked mystified at my concern. Goggles fully covered the top part of his face and his balaclava the bottom part. In between, his nose was fully exposed and sported a white patch the size of a small coin. Being engrossed in the technical climbing in wild conditions he had no idea that his nose had started to freeze. I had never seen anything like it and could hardly believe it had happened so quickly. And with a fully exposed open slope above I feared that continuing could make matters worse. The thought of going down was even mentioned. But bodies are remarkable things: a further protective layer, a few deep breaths through the nose and a healthily pink glow returned. Lesson learned – these conditions demanded great respect.
Chris had an altimeter that read 6,500 metres as the slope started to ease off. The highest point was still five metres above us but we were aware of huge cornices overhanging the other side and had an uncomfortable feeling that we were pretty close to their breaking point. It was 6.30 p.m. The skies had cleared a little on the final section and I optimistically hoped for a glorious panoramic view. But the views east and north were obscured by the cornice and those to the north and west were hampered by inconvenient clouds. The wind still howled incessantly. My hopes for indulging in a photographic frenzy were dashed as I fought bravely to hold the camera still while taking shots which I knew were destined to be blurred and unremarkable. After not very long at all we retreated to our last ice screw and abseiled into the gathering gloom.
By nightfall it was snowing hard. The bergschrund at the foot of the slope overhung seriously at one point and looked to give protection from the waves of spindrift pouring from above. Somewhat nervously, we pitched the tent in the protected bowels of the crevasse, belayed ourselves well and did our best to settle down. But settling down can be tricky when heavy waves of snow keep roaring overhead. We managed a flavoured noodle meal and a cup of tea before it started to become clear that, much as it was not hitting the tent directly, the snow was building up against the outside wall and gradually pushing us into the crevasse. The thought of ending up hanging inside a tent inside a crevasse was not appealing. By the time we had finished our second cup of tea there was no doubt that the first of many digging-out sessions was necessary. That might sound straightforward but inevitably results in lots of snow entering the tent and, ultimately, the sleeping bags. I have been known to protect my sleeping bag by leaving it stuffed away while I survive the night wrapped in every available piece of clothing. Here though, the attraction of a warm bag was too much. It was really cold; the night before had been awful and we were on the way down with hopefully less severe nights to come. But by morning I had lost count of the number of tent-clearing exits that had been necessary and I couldn’t deny that dampness prevailed and my bag was in a sorry state.
A full day of abseiling in heavy snow took us more or less down the line of our ascent. I never really like abseiling in the Himalaya – putting all that faith in a single abseil point time and time again – and so I breathed a sigh of relief when we were on walking territory again.
‘Whooooahh!’
Suddenly I was riding a wave of snow. The slope had avalanched; I could hardly believe it. One minute I was waist deep in the snowslide debris at the foot of the face and the next minute the debris itself had avalanched. Mountains can be surprising places. The slope wasn’t steep and the angle eased not far below but nevertheless the experience was memorably unpleasant. I found myself floating along amid waves of cotton wool snow and coming to a halt after a hundred metres or so with my legs held surprisingly firmly. Chris shouted that he would wait until I had extricated myself and got away from the fall line. It felt faintly ridiculous digging myself out while my partner watched from a distance, but all seemed calm; I wasn’t hurt and as much as further slides were unlikely, it felt better to be safe than sorry.
That night was decidedly chilly. Our sleeping bags had suffered badly and the damp down had frozen into balls of ice. The bags were a shadow of their former warm and cosy selves. We were eight days out from base camp, tired, and the dropping snowline gave a clear indication that winter was approaching. We were both keen to get down as fast as possible.
The easiest way down was via a thirty-degree snow slope, but our snowslide incidents had reminded us of the dangers, so we chose to abseil straight down a steep couloir to the main glacier. The slope at the top was steep and open and we felt certain that it would avalanche with the slightest encouragement, thereby safely scouring the gully. It perhaps goes to emphasise how difficult avalanche forecasting can be that despite our best efforts, we were unable to start a slide and ended up abseiling down ground we judged much more likely to avalanche than the slopes we could have walked down. At least we felt relatively safe and secure attached to the abseil rope which we judged would hold us if waves of snow should rush past.
The wade to base camp was long and exhausting but by the end of day nine we had rejoined Adam and Phil. They had reached about 5,800 metres on Manamcho but had been stopped by the wild weather and low temperatures. Despite this, they were still smiling. Exciting mountains have that effect on people. And I was left with the germ of an idea. Even though I don’t like to return to places I have already been to, the north ridge of Manamcho, the mountain Tom Nakamura had christened the ‘Matterhorn of the Nyainqentangla’, was beginning to give me quite an urge. As we bounced back along a direct route across the plateau to Lhasa I contemplated that east Tibet was probably the most culturally interesting area of spectacular unclimbed mountains I had ever visited.
I knew I would be doing my best to return.