We were back at base camp by noon next day. Alex had completely recovered and was raring to go. We quickly threw together food and equipment for four days and left early the next morning.
After slogging uphill for a couple of hours, the pleasant grassy slopes gave way to roches moutonnées of deeply striated granite.[1] We climbed up beside the braided outwash stream to the bottom of a shattered icefall and found a secure location beneath a solid wall of ice that was perfect for hanging the Mac Tent. Alex drew the short straw for the doghouse that night. While melting snow for Tang, I did something I’d never done before, I spilled a full pan of water just as it was warm enough. None of us was amused. During the night, the sound of snow sliding down the nylon woke us and by morning several inches had settled. We left everything in a cache and bailed out for base camp.
The storm lasted two days but the third dawned cold and clear. At last the weather seemed to be settling down. With light rucksacks, we climbed quickly to our camp beneath the icefall and spent a second night there; early next morning we entered the chaotic labyrinth of seracs and crevasses above. It was the worst icefall any of us had encountered. We stopped for a mid-morning brew between two deep crevasses, but the pan of snow had only just been placed on the stove when a huge serac tumbled from above and crashed down onto the thin connecting ice bridge we had crossed just minutes before. Forgetting tea, we hastily packed up and set off up again. By the afternoon, we had negotiated the icefall and reached the upper glacier. We ploughed through deep snow to the bottom of a couloir that led to Hiunchuli’s east ridge and cut a second bivvy platform in secure surroundings.
It was another perfectly clear and still morning. Six pitches of steep ice, each of us leading two pitches, brought us to a col on a dramatic, razor-sharp and heavily-corniced ridge at about 6,200 metres. To our right, a three-kilometre ridge led to Annapurna South, a thousand metres higher. To our left, and much nearer, was Hiunchuli. The fantastic double and overlapping cornices reminded me of the ridge on Huascarán Norte that had stopped Alex and me three years before. But, with care, we traversed the ridge to the bottom of the final summit cone, ready at any moment to jump down the opposite side of the ridge in the event of a leader fall. We cut a precarious platform for the tent on the south side of the ridge and I boiled water for brews and soup with instant potato, tuna and cheese – a lavish meal which we ate in the fading light. René crawled into the tent while Alex and I lingered outside wearing every layer of clothing we had, and savoured the wonders of being high on an unclimbed route.
It became incredibly calm and quiet once the stove was turned off. Many thousands of feet beneath us, deep wooded valleys were broken only here and there by terraced fields and clusters of farms and small villages. I could make out Chhomrong where we had stayed at the Captain’s Lodge. The plains of Nepal and India lay far beyond, cloaked in a dark haze. A few small but steady lights shone out of it. The silence was almost tangible as the stars sparked into existence taking over from the dying evening light.
‘You see those lights way out there?’ said Alex.
‘Yeah, I see them. They look almost unreal. That must be Pokhara and I’d guess a few hotels must have generators for electricity.’
Alex and I had debated the future of Nepal during our evenings on the walk-in. ‘I bet you that in twenty years there will be electricity right up this valley,’ he said.
‘No way,’ I said. ‘What would be the point? There are only a few poor villages and the farmers just live a dawn to dusk existence.’
‘But is that what they really want?’ Alex asked. ‘In any case, it will be done as much for the trekkers and climbers. You’ll see. They’ll be arriving in their thousands.’
I wondered if maybe he was right and for some reason the idea depressed me. Alex unzipped the tent as the cold intensified and I had to get in first. It was my turn in the doghouse. Sleep escaped me most of the night as I fought to keep my body from sliding off the edge. Cheyne-Stokes breathing woke me every time I did drift into sleep. Next morning a vicious wind began to blow and clouds curled around the summits. I felt semi-relieved and said so. René was not amused. We decided we had done enough for the first acclimatisation climb and set off down, arriving safely back in base camp just after dark and woke our cook boy, Pemba, to demand a late supper.
The weather was in sync with our plans. It remained bad for three days, giving us time to rest and consider our next climb. On the other side of the glacier were two trekking peaks – the sub-6,000-metre Tent Peak and Fluted Peak at around 6,500 metres.
Fluted Peak had not been climbed from this side, but a long and attractive ridge we named Tower Ridge rose up to a plateau beneath its summit. From there, it would be possible to climb a second steep ridge to Glacier Dome (7,200 metres) and thus gain the main ridge that extended many kilometres from Annapurna. Attaining the ridge would allow us to spend time well above 7,000 metres and provide a final acclimatisation climb before returning to the face.
I spent the days reading or walking in the snow above base camp. Dinner in the damp kitchen area with its floor of black ice was squalid and the food generally unappetising as we tried to conserve our high-altitude goodies. Dinner each night was dal bhat with spicy pickles and some ten-year old meat bars left over from Antarctic supplies that a friend had donated. Alex and René often stayed on in the cook tent to drink Nepali rum while I went to read. Their conversations became loud and abusive as they swapped tales of lesser mortals. Al Rouse came in for particular criticism for having dropped out, and at one point I heard René suggesting they would be better on the main face as a twosome. I put the talk down to rum, and ignored it.
We set off on the fourth day after Hiunchuli with food for five days and a mixed rack for both rock and ice. Steep walls of gravel blocked the route off the glacier onto the face but we negotiated these and were soon soloing up a rocky rib that felt like a Scottish scramble. At around 5,000 metres we put on our crampons as the ridge turned into an elegant crest of ice, and at around 5 p.m. cut a spacious bivouac platform. My two companions seemed strangely detached from me as we studied our intended route on Annapurna that now rose up in sharp profile to our left.
Next morning, interesting ridge climbing on mixed ground allowed us to gain the plateau below Fluted Peak. The snow was waist-deep in places and we agreed 200 paces each before handing on to the next person to break trail. René did his 200, and then I took I over but stopped for a rest twenty short of my quota.
‘You’re getting old, Porter,’ Alex said as he went past.
‘Hey, I was only catching my breath.’ When my turn came again I perversely refused to hand over the lead and took us to the bottom of the connecting ridge that led to the summit of Glacier Dome. René and Alex roped up and geared up and I went to the back. Four pitches up, we came to a perfect ice sheet of around seventy degrees – it was my lead.
‘Pass me the rack Alex.’
‘No way, I’ll lead this. I’m not sure you’re up for it.’ René laughed and I wondered what the hell was going on, but decided to stay quiet.
Alex traversed right onto the ice, which narrowed into a couloir above. He put in an ice screw about thirty feet out and then cursed and shouted down that one of his crampons had come off and was hanging by the straps to his boot. It seemed to me the gods were making a point.
‘You dumb amateur,’ I shouted up. ‘Lower off and let someone who knows what he’s doing lead.’
The situation was too serious to continue an angry exchange. Alex tied himself off on the ice screw and, with difficulty, managed to get his crampon back on. I found myself arguing with René in the meantime, wondering why he hadn’t just told Alex it was my lead.
I was still fuming when we cut our next bivouac platform at around 7,000 metres. For the second time in a week, I tipped over a pan while cooking, this time losing half a pan of soupy snow just as it was ready to have powdered potato added. I had a miserable night in the doghouse, struggling for breath and listening to the mountains of the Annapurna cirque, their rumblings echoing back and forth as if in trollish conversation with each other. We were all awake half the night.
Next morning, a steep ridge led to the top of Tarke Kang where we rested and brewed up. A blanket of cloud now filled most of the Annapurna Sanctuary. Beneath us to the north-east, the shark fins of Machapuchare’s twin peaks cut through the white sea of cloud lapping halfway up the great sweep of Annapurna’s south face. Hiunchuli was now submerged. It was serene and beautiful.
As the stove hissed into action, I turned to Alex. ‘Sorry I got angry yesterday.’
‘Just get your shit together and no more mistakes.’
I suggested to Alex that we climb toward the Roc Noir to get a bit more altitude beneath our feet. At around 7,400 metres on my lead, the appearance of wind slab made the decision to descend easy.
‘Are you sure it’s wind slab?’ he asked.
‘Seems hollow beneath me.’ I kicked my crampons into the snow a bit higher, now doubting my own judgment. ‘Don’t like it – it’s got a nasty layered feel.’
I remembered reading a report of a fatal accident at about this point on the attempted first ascent of the mountain. We retreated to our bivvy at 7,200 metres and spent another night. In the grey dawn, a strong wind promised the arrival of a storm. We hastily packed up, trying to keep as much of the windblown spindrift out of our sacks as possible.
I took up the anchor position at the back as we began to descend. After about 500 metres, René, who was leading, turned right down a steep slope.
‘Where’s he going?’ I shouted to Alex.
‘We’ve decided to drop straight down the face. It will be quicker.’
‘Yes, more direct for sure,’ I thought, ‘but what’s the icefall going to be like?’
I found myself struggling to match the pace of René and Alex descending steep snow and ice facing outwards. Like Doug Scott on Shisha Pangma, I found myself turning to face in when the slope was above fifty-five degrees while Alex and René seemed perfectly at ease facing out.
Two-thirds of the way down, we came to a barrier of rock around which the ice separated and fell steeply down to the main glacier, now only 2,000 feet below. A few abseils down the barrier led to an isolated buttress of rock with a small summit. Vertically beneath, the icefall looked like a maze of ribbon candy, but to the right, about fifty metres away and at a forty-five-degree angle, there appeared to be a much less broken section of the glacier and the promise of escape. We had used the last of our rock pegs so now we hammered a warthog ice peg behind a loose flake of rock. We backed it up with a sling around the flake.
The situation was serious. If the ice peg pulled out and the block failed when René’s weight came on to the rope, not only would he fall into a deep crevasse but Alex and I would be left stranded. We watched in a state of tension as René gently eased onto the double ropes and with crampons sparking on the rock, lowered himself diagonally down until he reached the top of the first big serac. Using a combination of pendulums and acrobatics, he managed to get to the edge of the icefall. Alex and I gave a cheer. René hammered another ice peg into the rock and pulled the ropes tight. Alex safely followed on the abseil-cum-Tyrolean traverse. As I removed the large back-up sling, it occurred to me that I was probably the heaviest of the three of us and if the peg were to pull, I would be lost in the maze of crevasses beneath. I put the fear from my head, carefully checked my connection to the rope and gave the peg a last suspicious look. Had I been thinking, I would have changed my figure of 8 for a configuration of karabiners to act as a brake bar. As I dropped onto the rope, the crampon on my left leg caught in a sling hanging from my rucksack. My leg was now contorted and locked behind me, while the figure of 8 was jammed tight in the diagonal line. I swallowed a scream, half of fear, half of annoyance with my own stupidity, and forced myself foot by foot along the rope. It was painfully slow, but to the other two, I must have looked extremely comical suspended horizontally in space, fighting the rope, trying to prevent myself flipping upside down and losing my rucksack. Twenty minutes later, René and Alex dragged me up onto their stance. I felt like an amateur and a complete idiot.
When I regained my composure, I discovered the good news that from this point a snow slope led off the glacier on the right to ledges traversing beneath the south face, eventually joining the spur René and I had climbed up to the face two weeks before. René untied as soon as we reached the ledges and took off to recce the route. Less happy now we were back on rocky slabs, Alex wanted to stay roped and we soon fell behind. By the time we reached the spur beneath the face, thick cloud filled the Annapurna Sanctuary as it had the day before. There was no sign of René and no possibility of finding the right way down. We had no choice but to sit and hope it would clear.
With only a couple of hours of daylight left, it did. I soon found the right line down. Darkness overtook us when we reached the glacier and we continued by headtorch. René came out with his torch to direct us to the top of the moraine and told me off for not being faster. I said nothing. Despite the exertion of the previous few days, the dal bhat presented to us by our reliable cook Pemba was not appealing. I slunk back to my tent and retreated into my dry, base camp sleeping bag. I could hear Alex and René laughing and shouting in the cook tent as they opened a second bottle of rum. As snow began to fall heavily, I sank into an uneasy sleep.
On the final days we shared in base camp, Alex was subdued. Strange things happened at night. Alex and I woke several times dreaming of stone fall, but when we listened, only the silence of the high mountains greeted us. I was very disturbed, wanting to ask Alex was he sure he was in control? Was the climb now what he wanted, or was it what René wanted? Even if I were not ill, I was convinced I had been manoeuvred out of the team. I knew René was aggressively ambitious. Seeing the same behaviour from Alex in the mountains was a new experience for me.
Three days later, I was still suffering from diarrhoea and stomach cramps as I crawled out of the tent to see how they were getting on. The weather had improved and they were getting ready for the face which rose majestically with its plastering of snow two kilometres straight up. Alex was pulling the sheath off a forty-metre rope to use as a second rope for abseil. They would only use one rope to climb on. Two ice screws and three rock pegs comprised all the technical equipment they would carry.
‘You look like shit,’ Alex said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I think I’d better not go.’ I was torn with indecision. What I wanted to say was, ‘Fuck you guys, I’m part of this trip and I’m coming even if you don’t want me to.’ But I didn’t. ‘No. I’d be too slow in this state,’ I added, half in tears, and uncertain if I really did want to go.
René looked at me and snorted. ‘John, what has happened to you?’
Perhaps my state of mind had made me ill, given me the shits. I didn’t know. I did know that unless something remarkable happened now, the expedition was over for me.
That night, Alex spoke to me as an old friend. ‘I hope you get better and if we don’t do it this time, we’ll be back and you can come with us on the second attempt.’
‘That would be good Alex. I don’t know about you, but I have a bad feeling about all this and falling out, letting you down. Be careful up there. We’ve got lots more mountains to climb.’
There was a long pause and then Alex said, ‘you know, I’ve been having some scary dreams but I know how to find peace. Did I tell you I’m able to leave my body when I sleep and be with Sarah when I need to? It is the strangest feeling, very real. I can’t wait to get home to see if she experienced the same thing.’
I didn’t know how to respond. Alex was not one for flights of fancy. This was a personal revelation that I had no way of understanding. Why was he telling me this? Was he uncertain and needing an escape? Alex was split in two – one half completely committed, the other deeply troubled and seeking a way out of his own plan. It was a moment when perhaps Alex could conceive only one way out of his momentary depression. Go and do something positive, as he had always done with Sarah. Go and climb the south face of Annapurna.
‘Let’s just make sure we all get home, kid, so you can ask Sarah for sure.’
I walked a short distance up the moraine with them the morning they set off. The alpine flowers were covered in rime and small frozen pools held the grass suspended in time. Two brightly clad figures descended onto the glacier and were soon lost in the maze of humps and boulders.
1. Also known as sheep backs, roches moutonnées are irregular rock formations with steep sides on the opposite side of the direction of ice-flow and can make the approach to the base of receding glaciers difficult.[back]