The terse finality in the email was no surprise by now. ‘Beijing says no.’
Years of rejection have forced me to become adept at preparing reserve plans. And this year the reserve objective was sufficiently inspiring for us to wonder if it ought to be our main objective anyway.
It had all come about after a small photograph in the 2011 American Alpine Journal had shown a spectacularly steep buttress on a mountain called Shiva in the Indian Himalaya. The photograph had been taken by an Italian mountaineer called Bruno Moretti, who had led one of only two mountaineering expeditions to have visited the Tarundi valley immediately to the east of Shiva. His objective was Shiv Shanker, or Sersank, 6,050 metres, at the head of the valley and, although his team did not get to the main summit, they reached a forepeak and got a fantastic view of what their report described as the ‘magic east pillar of Shiva’. As is so common in the small world of Himalayan mountaineers, Bruno was incredibly helpful. He confirmed our suspicions that none of the peaks around the valley had been climbed from this side and provided much advice and numerous additional photographs that I stared at with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
For such a rarely visited mountain it was a great coincidence that the same edition of the journal included a report from a Russian mountaineer who was part of the only team ever to have visited the valley to the immediate west of Shiva. Andrey Muryshev had attempted the north-west ridge and he too was incredibly helpful, providing fantastic photographs showing the buttress in profile from the west.
Soon, with remarkably little hassle, permits for Shiva were secured, tickets bought and bureaucratic hurdles overcome. And, as an added bonus, a dodgy operation to fix Paul’s back problem appeared to have been a resounding success. Pre-expedition excitement was building. And then, a month before departure, we received an email and more photographs from Andrey. The email did not make for optimistic reading:
Frankly I cannot imagine how you will do it. Do you mean the northwest buttress? It is c.700 metres of climbing after the col and it is northwest side in October – all the rock will be frozen. From the other hand, the ice will be scarce as the buttress is very steep. So it will be very hard dry tooling and very hard protection. I saw your route on Siguniang – it is much easier. Frankly I cannot imagine how you will do it.
That sounded bad, particularly from someone who was clearly aware of the detail of the climb that Paul and I did on Siguniang in 2002 and was pretty obviously clued-up in terms of assessing mountaineering difficulties. From the accompanying photographs it was clear that points of the compass had become rather confused; Andrey’s ‘north-west buttress’ was the same as Bruno’s ‘east pillar’ and was our intended line. And Bruno had already suggested that as much as the line looked stunning, the rock was likely to be terrible. Oh dear.
All in all it didn’t paint that positive a picture. But the photos Andrey and Bruno had provided spoke for themselves. Shiva is an isolated 6,000-metre peak in the Pangi district of the Indian Himalaya. Bruno felt the line was the best in the area and Andrey’s email ended by saying he thought it was inspiring. That was good enough for us. I did wonder if we were up to it, but loose rock, difficult climbing or whatever: we had to give it a go.
The Pangi district borders Kashmir and the troubles there had impeded access for the last twenty years or so. By 2012 the political situation had improved; roads were being blasted ever further into the Himalaya and mountains such as Shiva had become accessible in thirty-day trips from the UK. To further ease matters, direct flights from London to Delhi were available at much the same price as indirect ones along with, most attractively, a forty-six-kilogram baggage allowance. Times had certainly changed since my early trips to India where multiple flight changes were needed to keep the cost down and the first couple of days would be spent enduring bureaucratic misery retrieving freighted equipment from the Delhi customs warehouse. With all our equipment fitting easily in our hold baggage and with it now being possible to buy mountain gas cylinders in India rather than freight them from the UK, life was certainly a lot easier than it used to be.
Steve Burns and Ian Cartwright again made up our tried-and-tested four-man team, and in late September 2012 we were in Delhi marvelling at people braving the sweaty heat on the new competition-standard climbing wall at the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) building. It was Steve and Ian’s first time in India and they sat through the briefing procedure with a sense of extreme bemusement.
‘Your liaison officer, Rinku, will look after your needs on the mountain,’ announced the briefing officer.
‘What’s all this about? What needs?’ whispered Steve.
Clearly I had not briefed Steve sufficiently well about the usual course of events at these briefing meetings. I couldn’t help but remember the time back in 1993 when the first week of our four-week trip was spent negotiating permit issues with bureaucrats. A few curious briefing statements were small fry compared to the problems we faced then. And although we had only just met Rinku, we knew that he worked together with the agent we had employed to help us in India and he knew full well that we were paying him to get us to base camp and back with the minimum of fuss. And, of course, make sure that we didn’t do anything that we ought not to do – whatever that might be.
I must say that I used to always wonder why mountaineering expeditions to mountains like Shiva have to have liaison officers, whereas trekkers visiting the same area have no need for such close attention. Of course, asking tends to prompt responses along the lines that ‘it was all taught to us by the British’ and, thinking about it, there has been the odd incident that has led to understandable concerns about what mountaineering trips might get up to. The classic one was back in the 1960s when it was reported that the American CIA tried to use top mountaineers to place a nuclear-powered listening device on the summit of Nanda Devi. The device was designed to intercept signals from Chinese missile test-launches in Xinjiang province but was a lost in an avalanche and, so far as is known, has never been found. We had no nuclear-powered tracking devices with us but I have to admit that after incidents like that, I can understand why the Indian authorities might like to monitor exactly what mountaineering expeditions get up to.
There was one other duty to fulfil before leaving Delhi. I had agreed to give a mountaineering lecture at the IMF building. The audience size was underwhelming, but it was illuminating to be told that the thirty or so people present represented just about everyone in Delhi’s population of sixteen million that had an interest in technical mountaineering. It would seem that there is no tremendous pressure on India’s unclimbed technical gems from the indigenous population.
It is a twelve- to sixteen-hour bus journey from Delhi to the ‘honeymoon town’ (as our liaison officer called it) of Manali in the Himalayan foothills. Ever keen to save time, the plan had been to catch the evening bus after flying into Delhi that afternoon. But the delay caused by my lecture meant that we were late and had to arrange a private vehicle instead. That was fine, but why all such vehicles have to have ‘Tourist’ emblazoned across the front does mystify me. I’m not quite sure why but I always interpret ‘Tourist’ as something of a derogatory term. Perhaps ‘Mountaineers’ would be better? Or maybe not. On reflection, perhaps nothing at all would be best.
This was my first trip to India where we negotiated an all-in price with an agent in advance. Previously I had taken the view that the agent’s cut was such that I would prefer to arrange everything ourselves. Perhaps I am getting old, but I quickly started to change my view after the normally hassle-packed problems were overcome with apparent ease and it became increasingly clear that Westerners tackling the problems themselves inevitably end up paying over the odds such that there ends up being little difference in the overall cost.
A relative of Rinku’s ran a hotel in Manali and this made for a comfortable night before starting off for the 4,000-metre Rohtang La pass. For better or for worse construction work was well underway to complete a road tunnel under the pass. When finished, it would make a huge difference to the villages to the north as the pass is closed over the winter months and sizeable towns such as Udaipur are more or less cut off. By 2015, if all went according to plan, these settlements would have an all-weather link to the lowlands south of the Himalaya. No longer would ‘tourists’ and ‘mountaineers’ face the challenge of dodging rockfalls caused by bulldozers pushing debris down on to vehicles coming up the hairpins below. I found this behaviour rather amusing, although my views would no doubt be different if I was ever on the receiving end. Paul, as a professional health and safety adviser, simply marvelled at the action. ‘It’s OK. I am not at work,’ he frequently announced.
Sometimes I wonder whether driving is the most dangerous part of a Himalayan mountaineering trip. Here our driver was clearly proud of his vehicle, a Force minibus, which looked a bit like a Ford Transit but could climb hills that seemed ten times as steep.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’
Paul is normally calm and serene in driving situations but, being in a position in the back well away from the doors, I could sympathise with the urgency in his voice. We were beyond the little village of Saichu and nearing the end of the road. The freshly bulldozed track that we were following was deteriorating badly but Rinku had been telling us about forthcoming elections and how those in power were making every effort to get the electorate on their side by pushing roads and electricity lines further and further towards remote communities. With such thoughts in mind we had every confidence that the track we were following would enable us to drive to the next village, Twan, which Bruno had told us was the last settlement in the valley. With luck, that would shorten our walk-in to just one day. Spirits were riding high at the prospect. But soon the zigzags became so acute and the surface so poor that concerns were becoming evident – at least in all but our driver, who ploughed on regardless with a distressingly manic grin on his face. At a particularly steep bend the wheels spun, the engine stalled and it quickly became clear that the handbrake wasn’t strong enough to hold the vehicle. As we rolled gently backwards towards a huge drop Paul could be forgiven for swearing from the back; I rested my hand firmly on the door handle as the now rather severe-looking driver struggled to get the engine started again.
But, as most dangerous moments do, the incident passed quickly. I suppose it had to really, one way or the other. The engine sprang back to life and a clutch-burning, wheel-spinning hill start saw us creep round the ridiculously steep bend to the next horizontal section. The track was clearly designed for four-wheel-drive jeeps rather than overloaded minibuses. Suddenly this wasn’t very funny. But at least the steepest section was behind us and Twan was now visible in the distance. Nevertheless the incident left nerves frayed and nervousness levels high.
‘All out,’ announced Rinku decisively.
Seldom have I seen a vehicle empty so quickly. The road had ended. Just like that. Without a hint of a turning spot it had narrowed to a path just a metre or so wide which traversed a forty-degree hillside. This appeared to have escaped the attention of our driver, who was probing relentlessly forward. Rinku’s shout caused him to stop and it was with considerable relief all round that his optimism faded as we abandoned ship. Doubtless thinking we were all complete lightweights, he reversed rapidly to a spot where he started a lengthy twenty- or thirty-point turn.
It had been a long day and ended with us camped on the track wondering how best to move forwards. But one of the things I have always found attractive about India is that things just seem to happen. Here, just as dusk and dreary drizzle arrived, a man with two mules appeared. I have no idea who he was or where he came from but it appeared that he owned several more mules and was happy to load them up and carry our kit into base camp.
Next morning arrived and miraculously so did the man and several mules. But it became clear there was a problem. He had a lucrative job lined up for two days’ time and this wasn’t long enough to get us to our intended base camp and him back to the roadhead. I felt a familiar ‘here we go again’ feeling come over me. But this time it was wonderfully different. We had negotiated a fixed price with our agent, and Rinku was in some kind of partnership with this agent and it was his responsibility to get us to base camp and back. I relaxed and sat back taking the view that the problem wasn’t mine. I was on holiday and so the day passed with idyllic trekking through deciduous forests and grazing pastures. In that delightfully Indian way negotiations seemed to carry on throughout the day.
By evening a new problem seemed to have arisen. An area of beautiful lush grazing meadows had been reached and, despite there being several hours of daylight left, the day’s walking was clearly over. That, however, was not the problem. The difficulty was that it seemed the mules ‘were unable to go any further’. This new challenge was more difficult to understand. Bruno had suggested that if water levels were low enough we should easily be able to get mules all the way to base camp. They were low so what was the problem? Apparently it was the bushes. ‘Too dense for the mules,’ translated Rinku.
Paul and I were particularly unimpressed. It sounded like a ruse to persuade us to cough up more money or face them returning to the valley for this lucrative work that apparently existed. Despite us being relaxed and on holiday, delay was something we couldn’t contemplate. A hasty reconnaissance was called for.
The valley forked, with the route we needed to follow up the Tarundi valley leading north towards the east side of Shiva. The right-hand fork, the Paphita valley, was apparently a through route, whereas the Tarundi valley had no easy pass at its head. It didn’t take long to discover that neither valley seemed to have a worthwhile track and crossing the river flowing down the Tarundi valley looked particularly challenging. This left just the true right bank of the Tarundi valley and soon Paul and I were thrashing about in dense, shrub-like bushes. A track of sorts was apparent but, after I had become stuck in the dense undergrowth such that a hand from Paul was the easiest way out, we had to acknowledge that maybe the muleteer had a point. We returned crestfallen to the meadows.
‘He’s right. The bushes are too dense.’
Steve and Ian looked crestfallen whereas the muleteer looked smug. I couldn’t help but think that we had missed something somewhere, but there was little we could do but accept that the mules could go no further.
The valley didn’t look to have any impasses other than the bushes. We couldn’t yet see Shiva but Bruno had told us that there was a good site for a base camp at about 4,000 metres, where both the bushes and the valley eased off. We don’t bother to carry altimeters and the like but our best guess was that we were just under 3,500 metres and three or four hours of bushwhacking might see us at base camp. The decision was made that we would carry a set of loads ourselves while Rinku would try and arrange some porters to bring the rest of the gear up later.
Midway through the next morning I lay on my back contemplating that I had never tried to carry such a heavy sack through such difficult vegetation. All had started off well and the others had surged off into the distance, leaving me to wander along contentedly at my own super-slow pace soaking up the scenery and generally enjoying myself. Eventually, I had to acknowledge that I had lost the track and there was no sign of the others. The bushes grabbed at my heavy sack and soon I was having to stand on the sturdy branches of lower bushes and force my way through the low branches of trees that formed the next level up. A bush collapsed under me, I fell sideways and suddenly I was upside down in a shallow gully, pinned to the ground by my enormous sack. I shouted hopefully but there was no response. Things were not going well. Himalayan approaches are nothing if not varied, and apparently variety is the spice of life. Extricating myself from under my sack, I struggled to get it back on and continue, reminding myself over and over again that this unusual terrain was spicing up my life. Weeks later, when we walked out, I noticed a good little track through this section.
I was a sweaty, branch-scratched mess when I came across Paul on the way back down several hours later. He was perky and full of beans.
‘Brilliant campsite up there. A few carries and we’ll be done,’ he announced cheerfully.
I mumbled something about the dangers of overexertion and the need for me to ‘prepare the base camp site’ while he bounded off for a second carry after having made appropriately disparaging remarks about my ability to follow tracks through undergrowth.
A little later, cliffs forced me towards the bed of the valley and here, sat amongst the water-worn rocks, I came across Steve. The weight of his sack was such that he had toppled over, damaging his hand. He too was marvelling at the Ramsden energy and appeared slightly relieved to have incurred an injury that he felt made it ‘unwise’ to do another carry immediately.
I relaxed as he wobbled on ahead and then followed him, scrambling up steps and over boulders in the streambed. My sack really was heavy and made it difficult to keep my balance – a situation not helped by my wearing 8,000-metre-rated mountaineering boots. This might sound a little odd, particularly with Shiva standing at a little over 6,100 metres, but a couple of years before I had taken the view that, after twenty-five years climbing in the greater ranges, it would feel silly to lose digits to frostbite now. As modern 8,000-metre boots have become increasingly snug fitting and good for technical climbing, Paul and I both had them for this trip. And to decrease the weight in my sack, I had decided to wear them for this gear-ferrying exercise. Unsurprisingly, my feet felt very warm.
Suddenly, a large boulder that I was stepping up on rolled over. A quick skip out of the way would have sufficed but, being weighed down by the sack and generally exhausted, I just sort of fell over as it landed on my foot and pinned it to the ground, demonstrating how the extra insulation in 8,000-metre boots is very good at absorbing the shock of heavy rocks.
By evening all the climbers had somehow arrived at an idyllic base camp site next to the river. Paul had managed two carries and the rest of us one each. Paul mentioned this frequently and in return I frequently I pointed out the marvellously flat site I had excavated for the tent while he had been doing his second ferry. He was actually so fast that I only finished it minutes before he arrived, but I didn’t feel it necessary to point that out.
Shiva was now in view, with our intended line forming the eye-catching right-hand skyline. But I felt tired and curiously intimidated. For some reason I had not been sleeping well and if there is one thing that subdues me as I get older it is not getting a good night’s sleep. I always seem to sleep badly for the first few days of a trip and put this down to excitement. On this occasion though, I felt I had hardly slept since we left the UK and was in danger of being consumed by a general sense of lethargy. That said, I couldn’t fail to note that the buttress, or the prow as we quickly came to call it, looked an even better objective than we had expected. Through my sleep-deprived haze it was clear that we had come across something rather special.
‘What do you reckon about the best way to approach the face?’ enquired Paul, peering intently through his binoculars.
It was a good question. Normally we readily make a decision on such matters, but it was clear that the base of the route was at the head of a very broken glacier and the memory of the Chinese crevasse experience was still fresh in our minds. I too stared through the binoculars, but it was impossible to see the full approach route from base camp. Tight timescale or not, it seemed sensible to invest a couple of days in reconnaissance.
Two days later I still hadn’t slept much and we weren’t a lot clearer on the best approach. We had however decided that the broken part of the glacier seemed to have only a thin snow cover, and we would give that way a go to see if it would give access to not only the prow but also to a small peak on the ridge north of Shiva, which we hoped to climb as part of our acclimatisation process.
Meanwhile Steve and Ian were checking out other possible objectives in the Tarundi valley and had decided to attempt the east ridge of Shiva, which was clearly best accessed by starting up the broken glacier and then heading off to a col on the left. Paul and I were very pleased about this and commented enthusiastically about how useful it would be to be able to follow a set of tracks down from the summit.
Having grown to like evening walkie-talkie chats with the others on Mugu Chuli I had brought a set along to Shiva. This was a first for Paul, who was suspicious about the extra weight.
‘We could pack another breakfast,’ he commented warily, weighing the handset in one hand and a dehydrated porridge pack in the other. It took some time to persuade him that we should at least use the set to keep in touch with the others while acclimatising.
Both teams set off together to acclimatise, Steve and Ian climbing the true right bank of the glacier and Paul and me on the opposite side. Our first use of the set was that evening and the news from Steve and Ian was useful if not encouraging.
‘Terrible snow over here; can hardly make progress.’
‘And there’s a difficult pitch to access the snow.’
‘And traversing below the snout of the glacier is not much fun.’
It didn’t sound very promising. Our side was far from perfect, but we had at least made reasonable progress on the badly broken ground.
By the end of the next day Paul and I had climbed the upper section of the icefall and were on the upper glacier plateau beneath the huge east face of Shiva. We could see that down below, Steve and Ian had been moving very slowly towards the col at the foot of the east ridge. A clearly visible trench leading to their little tent said it all. The snow on their side of the glacier was clearly appalling. Our side seemed more prone to freeze and thaw and, by starting early, we had been able to make good progress.
Above us an obviously difficult bergschrund gave access to the line we needed to follow to access the prow, while up to our right a previously hidden glacier looked to give access to the small peak on the ridge that we hoped would give us a good view of our intended line.
The next couple of days summed up the best of lazy acclimatisation in the Himalaya. A few hours of exertion first thing in the morning, pitch the tent, get the binoculars out, brew up, relax, admire the view, read and generally chill out in a way that I virtually never do at home. The small peak was climbed easily and did indeed give a fantastic view of the prow. Paul’s powerful binoculars gave such detail that we were able to clearly pick out a possible line and bivouac positions. It felt almost unethical using them. Knowing how tricky route finding can be when one’s nose is hard up against steep ground I wrote out a description and Paul, undoubtedly the better artist, drew a route topo complete with little tents at possible bivouac sites. To our relief and excitement the rock appeared to be more featured than we had expected. The clear-cut lines and golden colour suggested that in sharp contrast to the appalling rock we had come across thus far, the rock was solid granite. Nevertheless it did all look very steep and difficult and the warning contained in Andrey’s email still resonated clearly.
Frankly I cannot imagine how you will do it.
We could but give it our very best try.
Having completed our acclimatisation we retraced our steps towards base camp. The icefall we had come up was a bit of a problem. Ice pillars can collapse at any time of the day and, being keen to avoid as much danger as possible, our eyes were drawn to a rocky ramp that looked to be a way of avoiding the lower half. The ramp led out from the glacier on to broken slopes and we decided to see if we could get back to base camp this way and use it to return after fattening up for a day or two. Before doing so though, we decided to cache nearly all our equipment. This meant that a steep step at the bottom of the ramp would have to be tackled with minimal equipment, but it looked very straightforward and we didn’t anticipate a problem.
Soon however, I was spreadeagled on remarkably loose rock contemplating the fact that I had with me just a rope, an ice axe and a single karabiner. All the other climbing equipment had either been left at our cache or was down in base camp. What had looked easy was proving distressingly challenging. I cleared out cracks with the pick of the axe and dithered. It all felt very insecure and progress soon ground to a halt. Paul gleefully pointed out how easy it looked and how pathetic my efforts would look on camera. It took a long time before I managed to wedge the axe in a crack and leave it behind as the only vaguely reliable piece of protection on the pitch. But success was assured, Paul retrieved the axe and we gained access to the ramp which we hoped would lead safely up over the buttress flanking the glacier and easily down to base camp.
To begin with the ramp was pleasant, and we congratulated ourselves on spotting this sneaky way of avoiding the lower icefall. But soon we had contoured on to the north-facing side of the buttress and quickly began to appreciate the problems that Steve and Ian had been having. Despite having fallen over a week ago, the snow had seen no freeze and thaw. The ground comprised huge granite boulders, and by far the easiest way to make progress was to jump from one boulder to the next. Stepping on to the snow was an absolute last resort as sinking up to the waist was inevitable and made progress ludicrously slow and exhausting. Carrying virtually no equipment and going downhill we could spring comfortably between most of the boulders, but we knew that coming back up, laden for our attempt on the prow, would be much trickier. We sat and contemplated. With our crampons left at our equipment cache it was now impossible for us to climb up the lower icefall. For better or for worse we would have to get back to our cache through the snowy boulder field.
Emerging from the boulders the slopes eased and we followed separate lines down to the stream, converging not far above base camp. At this point Paul slipped and fell awkwardly. It was one of those horrible expedition moments. Being a stoical Yorkshireman, whinging is not in Paul’s character, but it was obviously a painful fall. As he lay still on the boulders I could see his ears and the top of his head going red. What could I say? ‘Are you alright?’ seemed ludicrously inappropriate. I said nothing and waited, wondering vaguely if the redness was sunburn or just a side effect of being semi-inverted. At length he squirmed upright.
‘Shit!’ he announced peering at his right index finger, which was vying with head and ears for redness. It looked a funny shape. ‘It’ll be alright,’ he added.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Having the trip grind to a halt because of an injury like this would not have been good, especially with our objective looking so exciting.
Back at base camp, Pritam our cook and Devraj the kitchen boy were proving to be probably the finest we had ever had on a trip. While we spent a day resting they made it their business to supply unlimited quantities of fine food, including baked cakes (how do they do that?!) and my first experience of real chocolate scones in the Himalaya. Steve and Ian had returned and the day passed in a pleasant atmosphere of relaxing, chatting, drinking unlimited quantities of tea, eating fine food and generally enjoying an idyllic base camp. As suspected, the others reported that the snow on the north-facing slopes was awful, and, of greater concern from our point of view, the ridgeline of our intended descent was not much better. Faced with such conditions they decided to transfer their attentions to the highest peak on the west side of the Tarundi valley.
Donning heavy sacks Paul and I wandered up the interminable slopes leading to the ramp and our glacier cache. Somehow we followed a better line than previously and arrived at the point overlooking the glacier more easily than expected. All that separated us from a relaxing afternoon’s brewing and eating was a simple abseil down the pitch that had caused me so much difficulty a few days earlier. We rigged a sling over a spike and Paul went first while I sat in the sun marvelling at the Himalayan splendour surrounding us. The weather had been near perfect since we left the roadhead and showed no signs of changing now. Above us I could see the Prow of Shiva basking in the golden glow of the afternoon sun. Life seemed good and I snoozed gently.
An agitated shout from below suggested all was not well.
There was little I could do but keep my fingers crossed. At length the shouting eased, the rope became slack and I abseiled down to a disgruntled Paul whose underwear leggings had been ripped from thigh to knee by a rock the rope had dislodged. Fortunately, his leg was relatively undamaged so my input consisted primarily of sarcastic comments about the pitfalls awaiting those who wear just their underwear in the big mountains.
The snow cover on the glacier had melted significantly over the three days we had been away and there was now so much bare ice that it took some time to find a flat snow patch big enough to pitch our little tent on. I was looking forward to a relaxing afternoon brewing and reading but Paul’s gut was not feeling its best and I was frequently interrupted by him urgently exiting to leave little brown puddles on the ice. There was concern in the air but by morning the Ramsden body had made a pleasing recovery and we were soon trying to weave our way through the complex upper section of the icefall that separated us from the open slopes beneath the face. Several sections were unrecognisable and apparently less stable than a few days before and it was with some relief that we reached the open slopes of the upper glacier.
The sun glared on the upper slopes and drained our energy such that the final few hundred metres to a bivouac close to the bergschrund were completely exhausting. It was a joy to get the tent pitched, shade ourselves by draping our sleeping bags over the top and enter relaxation mode. The huge rock wall of the upper east face reared above us while the interconnecting snow couloirs we hoped to follow bounded it on the right and looked to be protected by a challenging bergschrund.
‘Bollocks!’
I couldn’t see what was happening as I was lying down relaxing, but Paul sounded uncharacteristically agitated. Sensing urgency I sat up suddenly to see him peering unhappily at his boot. The zip in the integral gaiter had broken and looked beyond repair. This was bad news. It meant it would be impossible to prevent snow getting into the boot and frostbite would be a real risk. If it couldn’t be fixed we might as well descend. Paul is a bit of a whizz at DIY and his gloomy expression did not bode well. But the weather was perfect, the route looked superb and we really didn’t want go down now unless we absolutely had to. A solution of sorts was found, using a penknife and a spare lace to tie both sides of the zip together. The upper section still worked normally, but the lower section was locked solid. Getting his boots on and off was going to be a major challenge, but for the time being at least, failure due to boot problems had been averted.
For the uninformed it often comes as a surprise that the heat is a major problem for Himalayan mountaineers below 6,000 metres or so. The couloirs that we planned to follow faced dead east and would catch the morning sun. If we didn’t reach a near-horizontal snow crest at the top before 9 a.m. we would be faced with an uncomfortable day stuck on hot, disintegrating snow with the occasional rock whizzing past. That was something we were keen to avoid and so a 1 a.m. crossing of the bergschrund was deemed necessary. That meant an 11 p.m. alarm. Ugh! An inspirational climb ahead makes such starts easier than early rising for tax office days, but even so I don’t exactly find them easy.
As juggling job, family et al. means I only manage one mountaineering expedition per year, it always takes a pitch or two to settle into the swing of things. Getting over the step formed where the glacier pulls away from the mountain can often be difficult, so quite why I volunteered to lead I am not sure. It certainly led to a harsh re-introduction to technical action. In the light of my head torch I struggled on a near-vertical shale wall, trying to make it safe by placing occasional ice screws in a slanting, overhanging wall of iron-hard ice that sat on top. I certainly felt fully exercised by the time I pulled out, gasping, into an ice runnel on the slope above.
Back in Britain I had envisaged that it would be straightforward to gain the crest of the buttress below the prow. In reality the angle was considerably steeper than I had expected and the combination of awful rock and powder snow made for tricky, poorly protected climbing. The amazing variation in the snow depending on the direction of the slope added further to the challenge. As we had experienced earlier, the north-facing areas were covered in remarkably steep, deep powder snow that slowed us such that the sun was well up by the time Paul led the final rope length to the crest.
‘It’s rubbish here. Just a collapsing knife-edge.’
His comments were not encouraging. An interval followed during which I could pick out some energetic à cheval activity going on. This involves having a leg either side of the ridge and ‘riding’ along it, supposedly like riding a horse. Mind you, when riding a horse I would hope to go forwards whereas when using the à cheval technique on ridges I tend to jerk up and down and sink in rather than make meaningful progress. Fortunately Paul has mastered the technique. He shuffled out of sight and, after what seemed a long time, shouted for me to climb. When I was able to see him he was standing on the knife-edge crest with the rope looped around a large ice-cream-like dollop of snow, smiling broadly. At first I assumed it was my à cheval activity that pleased him, but that was not the only reason for his high spirits.
‘I think this could be a good spot for the tent.’
If you have never tried to pitch a tent on a knife-edge ridge this might sound like a rather odd comment. I am forever amazed at how an impossible-looking bivouac spot can be transformed into something quite comfortable. And if the snow is sufficiently deep and soft, knife-edge crests are among the very best features to work with.
The sun was hot and enervating and having reached our intended bivouac spot relatively early we had plenty of time to fashion a comfortable sleeping platform. We sliced off the crest and then, taking it in turns, stamped down and pushed away more and more snow. After thirty minutes we had a flat area the width of our little tent.
From this point the key is to get established inside the tent without collapsing the platform. Advancing years and improving equipment have led to both Paul and I carrying light inflatable sleeping mats; by first getting these inflated and inside the tent the weight of other equipment and human bodies can be spread such that, if all goes well, the soft snow beneath simply gets compressed and the end result is a remarkably secure-feeling position. On this occasion all went well, and whiling away a beautiful afternoon reading in the tent it was easy to relax, forget the huge drops on either side and trust that – if needed – our belay rope would not cut through the snow mushroom belay like a cheese wire.
Above us, the soft snow ridge looked challenging but the mixed buttress which started perhaps 150 metres up looked to offer perfect, safe climbing of the kind I scour the earth to find. By the time the sun hit us Paul had reversed the à cheval section and was trying to continue up the snow ridge to the start of the mixed ground. It soon became clear that even his superior riding technique was not up to the challenge of the amazingly soft and narrow crest. I took an appropriate number of photographs of him jigging up and down without moving forwards before it was decided that the face on the left might provide a better chance of success. This proved to be a steep ice slope covered in a few centimetres of sugary snow, not ideal but much more conducive to progress than the ridge crest.
By mid-afternoon we were underway on the prow proper, enjoying ice-choked cracks in perfect granite which led to a small balcony just on the east side of the crest. Below it the ground overhung steadily for at least 500 metres, while round on the cold north-west side, the way was barred by a completely smooth seventy-five-degree rock slab with an intermittent covering of verglas and powder. The only way on seemed to be up an overhanging fault line above the balcony, but that could be seen to cross the crest after perhaps ten metres and then disappear into the verglas and snow sticking to the slab. There really wasn’t anywhere else obvious to go. Bolts could have solved the problem but we both feel strongly that overcoming difficulties by drilling holes is no way to tackle adventurous mountaineering challenges. As I see it, not only do bolts damage the mountain and go a long way towards guaranteeing the outcome, they send an arrogant ‘if I can’t do it without cheating then you won’t be able to either’ statement to future generations.
But if we couldn’t do this pitch it could well be the end of our attempt. Our mountaineering dreams of the last year could end here.
Frankly I cannot imagine how you will do it.
I tried to push those words to the back of my mind. The overhanging start looked tricky, with loose-looking sharp flakes poised directly above the belayer. We alternate leads wherever possible, and this was Paul’s lead. I watched warily as he pulled on camming devices wedged between flakes, flicked a sling over a previously hidden spike and rounded the crest on to the blank-looking slab. The rope kept slowly snaking out until he shouted for me to follow. Brilliant! The fault line clearly continued across the smooth slab in a way that was invisible from below. It was a crucial pitch and it felt great to overcome a possible impasse and get fully established on the narrow crest of the prow.
The position was developing into one of the most spectacular I have ever experienced in the Himalaya. The angle steepened but there were more cracks that looked to allow reasonable, if sparse, protection. My pitch started by laying away off the true crest of the buttress. To my left, the huge sunkissed vertical to overhanging rock wall of the east face fell away to our approach glacier 800 metres below. To my right, the north-west face painted a cold, grey and inhospitable picture with just off-vertical slabs merging into vertical walls smeared with occasional streaks of thin ice. After thirty metres or so of weaving my way up the ice streaks and mixed ground on the north-west side the sun was getting low in the sky and the discovery of a perfect belay marked an obvious place to end the climbing day.
We had agreed to bivouac on the balcony ledge and so had left our sacks there. I really don’t like being separated from my sack in the mountains, nor do I like bivouacking anywhere other than at the high point. Here though, the balcony was such a good spot that abseiling down to it did feel like the sensible thing to do – although it meant that we would start the following day by jumaring (climbing up the rope using sliding clamps) up the rope to our high point.
Jumaring is far from my favourite activity. Firstly it feels unethical, all that hanging about on ropes instead of climbing, and secondly I hate doing it. I am also notoriously incompetent at it; I always seem to end up getting my slings the wrong length and being pulled backwards by my rucksack in a way that makes progress absolutely exhausting. Having seen the steepness of the prow during our acclimatisation outing, I had decided a refresher session at base camp was sensible, particularly as, for the first time, both Paul and I had purchased small-toothed pulleys which we intended to use both as sack-hauling and jumaring devices.
Close to base camp a very large boulder with a ten-metre overhanging face had provided a good spot for a bit of practice. I had attached the toothed pulley to my harness, threaded the rope around it and attached the jumar clamp higher up the rope. After a bit of fiddling with the lengths of slings I had pronounced myself ready to go and the others had sat back to marvel at my performance. To begin with all had gone well, to the extent that Steve, Paul and Ian had started to look rather bored. Suddenly though, the clamp slipped down the rope leaving the pulley holding my weight. Steve had stretched out for his camera and Paul had not been at his most understanding.
‘Only you could make that happen.’
‘I didn’t do anything!’ I had protested, feeling both mystified and slightly embarrassed.
Returning to the fray I had made it to the top, but not without the clamp slipping a couple more times. Paul had then smoothly jumared up without any problems and we had retired for tea and cake at base camp. It bothered me that the clamp had seemed to slip for no reason, but it had only happened when it was jammed against the rock and I comforted myself with the thought that the toothed pulley seemed secure. I had firmly hoped I wouldn’t be jumaring on the route anyway. Yet here I was, right out on the crest of the buttress knowing that the next day would have to start with a seventy-metre jumar.
On closer inspection the ‘balcony’, as we had christened it, was not quite in line with the dictionary definition of safe platform on the side of a building (or rock face?) enclosed by a railing. This particular ‘balcony’ was a block of rock four metres long and one metre wide that appeared to be somehow glued – in what appeared to be a very unsafe manner – to a completely vertical wall of rock. Along most of its length a ten-centimetre crack separated it from the wall, such that it was not at all obvious what was holding it in place. We moved gingerly, making very sure there were good belays above it. As much as the structure seemed disturbingly precarious, it was pleasingly comfortable and just long enough for us to lie down nose to tail. As the sun set we brewed, chatted happily, ate our freeze-dried meal and generally enjoyed being high in the mountains.
Weather wise, it seemed we had timed things just right. Every morning the sky was clear and the weather glorious. Usually in the afternoon it clouded over, with a gradually increasing amount of snow, and then cleared again by the evening. On this particular evening, the clouds dropped such that we could fully appreciate our position: sat on the crest of the most eye-catching feature on the highest mountain in the area. People sometimes ask me why I never go for the headline-grabbing objectives on bigger mountains. Here, on this wonderful climb in a rarely visited part of the Himalay, I had my answer. Shiva was giving me everything that I could possibly want from my mountaineering.
The temperature was perhaps –15 °C and there was only room for two thirds of my body on the balcony. Despite this, and the inherently insecure nature of the whole arrangement, I slept really well – much better than in our comfortable hotel room in Manali. For the first time on this trip I awoke feeling fully perky.
First though, we had to regain our high point. Paul went first and then it was my turn. As I put my weight on the rope the overhang above the balcony meant that I swung out into space over a huge drop. Immediately I felt insecure. I was cold and stiff, the sling attached to the jumar clamp seemed to be the wrong length and I couldn’t help but recall it sliding down the rope at base camp. I hung there, unhappily fumbling to get my foot in a sling while my rucksack pulled me backwards and I rotated gently.
‘Bloody jumaring,’ I shouted loudly. Way above I could hear Paul cackling unsympathetically. No one seems to understand my jumaring problems.
Soon, after an immense expenditure of energy, I was round the overhang and facing a new problem. At this point the crest was very sharp and the belay was round to the north-west side. That meant that I had to make a controlled swing to get directly beneath the belay. In reality, it was more of an uncontrolled pendulum made memorable by the clamp starting to slide as I scraped across the smooth granite before coming to a gibbering halt hanging from the pulley. I so hate jumaring! By the time I reached the belay there was no doubt that I had fully warmed up.
It was a calm morning and the early morning sun was shining obliquely across the prow highlighting the features, and once I had recovered from the jumar I was able to enjoy the situation. It was Paul’s lead and I snapped away contentedly as a few uncharacteristic grunts and ‘watch me’ calls suggested challenging ground ahead. At length it was my turn to enjoy some hard climbing up ice-choked cracks in perfect quality granite in one of the finest positions I have experienced.
‘Don’t pull on the belay,’ announced Paul as I struggled to pass his precarious position.
I peered curiously and registered that we were secured by two ice axes hooked over a large chunk of ice frozen across a wide crack. It seemed a mildly insecure arrangement considering we were perched on the crest of the buttress with huge overhanging walls dropping away to our left. Paul noticed me peering closely at the belay.
‘Best get a good runner in quick,’ he commented wryly.
The only way to pass him without exerting extra pressure on the belay was via a sort of sliding bear-hug movement. Composing myself after this semi-intimate action it could be seen that the way ahead looked decidedly difficult.
‘Don’t like the look of your pitch,’ announced Paul, peering at the desperate-looking vertical fissures above the belay.
‘Frankly I can’t imagine how I am going to do it,’ I commented sarcastically.
The best option looked to be a wide crack up to the left that was completely choked with vertical powder snow and guarded by a blank overhang at its base. The traverse to the base yielded a secure runner that eased the tension a little but did nothing to solve the overhang problem. I was horribly aware that the crack was above a smooth, featureless sheet of rock that fell hundreds of metres to ice slopes below. The protection I had placed reduced the risk of injury from a fall but the prospect of ending up dangling over a huge overhanging wall left me particularly keen to avoid such an event. It was with some distress that I ended up with my feet inelegantly skidaddling around on the featureless granite, gasping lungfuls of thin air and trying to hook my heel over a stubbornly out-of-reach edge. Paul later commented that I made squeaking noises not unlike those of a distraught piglet. But the end result was access to the crack where I was able to wedge myself and calm my rapidly beating heart. More difficult and worrying climbing led to a patch of ice where I was able to place a solid ice screw belay and derive some satisfaction from seeing that the pitch made the Ramsden breathe heavily too.
Ahead, the route continued via memorably thin ice on steep slabs, not unlike a lean day on the harder slab routes on Ben Nevis. Snow flurries interrupted the afternoon views but by evening a ledge had been cut and again provided a lie-down bivouac with a perfect view. The clouds dropped into the valleys and the evening sun kissed us goodnight. It felt a pretty perfect spot.
The next morning I awoke refreshed and it dawned on me that I had again slept really well. Most people I speak with think that being tied on to a twenty-centimetre ledge would impede their sleep, but it is amazing what the human brain can get used to. The skies were clear, the brain uncluttered by the trials and tribulations of everyday life and I guessed that the fact that my sleeping mat had deflated was the only reason that I had woken before the alarm. A flaccid sleeping mat was a problem though. The introduction of inflatable lightweight sleeping mats has made a huge difference to sleeping on snow and ice but when punctured they become next to useless. Presumably one of our sharp pieces of equipment had nicked the mat but, whatever the cause, the shrivelled piece of fabric now provided more hilarity than comfort. Paul was kind enough to cut his closed-cell foam mat in half and I kept the flaccid inflatable, more to avoid littering the mountain than anything else.
The next day was our sixth out from base camp. A few inches of snow fell in the night and it was gradually dawning on me that a descent down the line of our approach up the east face would be unpleasant to the extent that whatever lay ahead, it was better to persevere than descend. More thinly iced slabs, followed by wonderful ice grooves and intimidatingly steep mixed pitches, finally led to a snow band beneath an overhanging wall guarding access to the summit. From our viewing through binoculars it looked as though the band led rightwards round the crest to steep snow that would avoid the final wall. But luck was against us. Snow was falling as I headed off round the corner on to the north-west side. A gap in the ramp presented a challenge that would obviously require aid and be very time consuming. I retreated forlornly to a cold Paul. There was no way we were going to get up it that evening and had to admit that an ice-choked chimney splitting the headwall looked the only option for the morning.
Squeezed under the final wall was the one ledge on the entire prow where we could half pitch the tent. Getting the poles in makes such a difference. Shielded from the heavy overnight snowfall, we enjoyed a comfortable night and were ready to tackle the chimney first thing in the morning on day seven.
First though, there was the getting-up saga. On an average steep-ground bivouac we find it takes just under two hours from the alarm going off until we are ready to start climbing. It’s one of those processes that has to be gone through semi-automatically and is considerably eased if it’s cold enough to be able to keep all shell clothing and our climbing harnesses on inside our sleeping bags. If that can be done it at least avoids struggling with clothes and harness in a confined space while trying to stay securely tied in. Paul’s boot and my hands were particular challenges as we got higher. My hands suffer in the cold generally, but Paul’s boot became stiffer as it got colder and with the front zip partially sewn up it was more and more difficult to squeeze his foot in. By this bivouac it was most definitely a two-man job that required much judicious stamping and pulling in a position not exactly conducive to such activity. At length though, by 6 a.m., just within the regulation two hours from our alarm, we were ready to go.
It was one of those glorious cloud-free mornings and after a quick video clip in the morning sun – which ended abruptly when my footholds collapsed and I slumped on to the belays – we were ready to go.
The chimney was my lead. If we couldn’t do it then there would be a problem, but a quick glance suggested that there was fairly thick ice up the back and side walls. As a tight constricted chimney it was far from straightforward, but we were nearly at the summit and there was no way I was going to retreat. Eventually, after a battle, I sat in a cosy, sheltered niche soaking up the glorious view as Paul came up and led off out of sight to gain a short ridge leading to a cornice. It fell to me to break through this and enjoy the curious sensation of being able to walk around on a flat area. A summit hug was in order.
A two-day descent of the unclimbed south-east flank completed nine wonderful days in the mountains and a climb that we already knew would give us retrospective pleasure for years to come. It was, we agreed, one of the most enjoyable climbs that we had ever done.
On return to the UK it transpired that Paul had broken three fingers when he tripped and had then climbed the whole route without complaining! And the manufacturer put out a recall for the slipping rope-ascender devices that had caused me so much grief. That made me feel a little bit better, but did nothing to cure my aversion to hanging about on ropes.
The climb ended up winning Paul and I another Piolet d’Or award at a presentation in Chamonix. The Piolets d’Or had started in 1992, with the format being that a jury would select one climb for the award each year. Contentious from the outset there was controversy over whether awards were appropriate in mountaineering and the fact that it is very difficult to make meaningful comparisons between different climbs. Some very questionable decisions by the jury fanned the flames and in 2007 the Slovenian mountaineer Marko Prezelj went as far as to reject a Piolet d’Or award on stage to express his opposition to competition in alpinism. Thereafter the format was changed somewhat, with the jury being able to award more than one Piolet and the event becoming more a celebration of alpinism than an award for one climb in particular. Personally, I feel much more comfortable with this new format where the focus is on celebrating adventurous new climbs done in good style, with the climbers showing respect for others and leaving no trace of their passing. In 2013, a record six Piolets were awarded and I found the event a uniquely excellent few days of bringing my family into the mountaineering scene and enjoying the company of like-minded mountaineers from around the world. But it cannot be denied that choosing to showcase a few climbs leads to those who climbed them being regarded as ‘winners’. The debate and controversy will no doubt continue, but, as just about the only event that draws mountaineers together to celebrate in this way, I take the view that the pros outweigh the cons.
In 2013 two British teams were awarded Piolets: Paul and me for our Shiva ascent, and Sandy Allan and Rick Allen for their remarkable ascent of the Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat. Sandy, Rick and I were all over fifty-five, which prompted one of the other climbers there to ask: ‘Do you have any young mountaineers in the UK?’ It was a comment that struck home and made me more determined than ever to dream up initiatives to draw young blood into the Alpine Club.