As it happened our troubles were far from over. The boat carrying our five tons of gear – everything from kippers to bottles of oxygen – broke down in Cape Town, eventually arriving in Bombay a full month late. Fortunately, the RAF had flown out the absolutely vital equipment – radios, medical kit, together with enough clothing, ice-axes, pitons and ropes to enable us to get started. We borrowed food from the British Army Expedition to the north side of Annapurna, and Jimmy Roberts lent us tents, ropes and sleeping bags left over from previous expeditions.

Don and Mike left Pokhara on the 16th March; there was little point in Don waiting in Bombay for the gear to arrive, as planned. There would be a month’s delay, and I wanted him on the mountain. I asked Ian, therefore, if he would undertake the grim job of shepherding the gear through Customs when it arrived, and then across India. I decided to fly out to Bombay in order to help to smooth Ian’s way, before going on with the rest of the team.

The setback with our equipment was then overshadowed by reassuring news from Don, who met us in a narrow gorge leading to the foot of the South Face.

‘It looks even steeper than the photographs,’ he said, ‘but after I sat and looked at it for a couple of hours it seemed to fall back a bit. It’s going to be hard, but it will go all right.’

And so our Base Camp was established, with such a magnificent view that for days afterwards our people tended to stop what they were doing, and stare and stare at the whole gigantic wall of the South Face. Big avalanches were coming down Annapurna on either side of our chosen route, but it seemed that none was crossing the line we planned to go up; the more we studied our route, the more we liked it.

In many ways the South Face of Annapurna was super Alpine – presenting both the problems and the atmosphere I had known in 1966 during the ascent of the Eiger Direct. On Annapurna our Kleine Scheidegg was Base Camp, situated on a grassy meadow beside the lateral moraine of the South Annapurna Glacier, with the South Face a mere three miles away framed by a ridge of Annapurna South on one side and the moraine on the other. All we needed were the trippers’ telescopes and a better crop of tourists to be in business; but we did have a steady stream of visitors: a stray brigadier, hippies, climbers, earnest German tourists, Peace Corps people, and so on. The trickle that might well become a flood in years to come.

And then the way we tackled the South Face; once again very similar to the methods used on the winter ascent of the Eiger Direct. A continuous line of fixed ropes, climbers dashing back to base for a rest; a Base Camp that was in a different world from the face, with its TV team, a few girl visitors who had stayed; radio communications with the outside world.

Closer up, Annapurna looked by no means simple. Our way lay across the glacier and up a rognon, a sort of island of rocks round which the glacier flowed on either side. Here we established Camp I at 16,000 feet, pushing on towards Camp II at 17,500 feet at the foot of a protective, overhanging rock cliff. To reach this point involved a couple of ‘objective dangers’ – risks which have to be accepted if you climb in the Himalaya. These were both fields of séracs, areas where the slowly-moving glacier passes over obstacles and breaks up into a series of ice ridges and pinnacles. From time to time the pinnacles collapse, usually without warning. The séracs, however, are passed in only a minute or two, and the risk is normally considered acceptable. It was on the higher of these two areas, weeks later, that Ian’s luck ran out.

Don and Dougal reached the site of Camp III at 20,100 feet, halfway up the ice ridge, and with Base Camp growing every day and supplies flowing up the mountain, we could hardly believe the ease with which we had already climbed 6,000 feet of the South Face in nine days. Our complacency was short-lived.

It took a back-breaking, lung-bursting month to climb the next thousand feet, and we all agreed that it was as hard as anything we had ever done, with very little to show for each day’s trail-blazing. This entailed climbing down to Camp IV at the end of each day, it being impossible to bivouac anywhere on the ridge, then a wearying climb up the fixed ropes to begin work again the next day. With this kind of leap-frog climbing, we estimated that we climbed thirty Annapurnas before finally reaching the top!

My overall plan was to have a pair out in front at any one time, forcing the route, with the rest of the team distributed between the camps below, ferrying up the mountain. Once the front pair tired I pulled them back for a rest at Base Camp before going back to the mountain; they would do some ferrying and then go once more to the front. We were already short of manpower in the lower camps, but we were able to recruit six of the best local porters for the carry from Base Camp to Camp I which, though across a glacier, was comparatively easy. These local Nepalese porters made a tremendous contribution to our eventual success.

Although frequent rests at Base Camp helped to keep members of the team climbing at a reasonable level of performance over the course of the expedition, it imposed a heavy strain on our available manpower. A pair resting at Base Camp would take three days to get back up to Camp III, four to Camp IV, and so on. These were unproductive carries, for the climbers would probably have a fair amount of their personal gear with them, and therefore would be unable to carry much food or climbing gear while shifting from one camp to another. The most efficient system is to keep changes of camp down to the minimum, but this pays little heed to the psychological factor of the monotony of carrying day after day over the same stretch on a mountain, or the fact that the climbers out in front quickly burnt themselves out, so great was the physical and mental strain of tackling high-standard climbing at altitude.

Dougal and I finished the last pitch of the ice ridge in a snowstorm. Having run out of rope we cut steps in hard snow to the top of the ridge, propelled by curiosity about what we would find on top. The angle ahead of us did not seem too bad, was certainly easier than it had seemed in the binoculars from far below, but this inviting view did not extend very far. At the limit of vision, looming out of the snowstorm, was an ice cliff, about 200-feet high which seemingly cut off all further progress.

Although it is possible to climb ice cliffs, it is a slow, laborious job, screwing in ice-screws every few feet. In addition, an ice cliff at that altitude had never before been attempted and time before the monsoon was due was running short. The seeming impassability of the ice cliff was an unpleasant discovery, since we knew that above it was the 2,000-foot vertical rock band which we had decided all along would be the most difficult of the obstacles on the South Face.

Mick Burke led this part of the climb, from the start of the Rock Band. The method he used to fix rope in place was to climb on a 500-foot reel of 9-mm perlon, running out long pitches of up to 200 feet, then pulling the rope through till it was tight back to his second man, Tom Frost, fastening it off and letting Tom jumar up the rope behind him. In this way he was running out the fixed rope and climbing at the same time.

In three days they ran out 1,200 feet of rope, as much, in fact, as Boysen and Estcourt could keep ferrying to them. Eventually they took a rest from the face, when Burke dropped down to the dump at the top of the ice ridge to collect a load and Frost spent a day digging out the tent. We were now beginning to feel the strain of trying to keep open our communications. Ian Clough had been forced back for a rest but was now on his way back up the mountain. I was held down at Base Camp with an attack of pleurisy. Everyone on the face was badly run-down. We had already been using our local Gurkha porters, equipped with a variety of spare clothes and footwear, for the carry from Base Camp to Camp I. Some of these local porters were now doing the carry from Camps I to II, a fine achievement considering that they had never before been on a glacier. Various visitors to Base Camp also lent a hand. Two of them, Frank Johnson and Robin Terry, arrived on the 21st April and stayed for the rest of the expedition, ferrying loads as high as Camp IV. In doing this they gave us invaluable help. One of the TV team, Alan Hankinson, also rendered sterling service, carrying loads up to Camp III. This freed our Sherpas for work higher up the mountain and they were now keeping open the route from both Camps II to III, and III to IV; the latter run was considerably steeper than anything they had previously tackled.

On the evening of the 13th May, Tom and Mick were still at Camp V, immediately below the Rock Band at a height of 22,750 feet; Martin, Nick and Mike were in Camp IV, halfway up the ice ridge and Don and Dougal were at Camp III, on their way back up the mountain after a rest at Base Camp. Dave was with four Sherpas also at Camp III, having carried loads to Camp IV, while Ian, also on his way up, was at Camp I. From Base Camp, where I had not completely recovered from my attack of pleurisy, I opened up the wireless link.

‘You’re loud and clear, Chris,’ replied Nick, at IV.

‘How did things go today, Nick?’

‘Not too bad. I was shattered from yesterday and took a rest, but Martin and Mike went up to V. Mike only reached the ice cliff, though, and was so buggered he had to turn back.’

‘Don and Dougal will be moving up tomorrow,’ I said.

‘We’re aware of that.’

‘Well, I want them to move straight through to V, and go into the lead. Mick and Tom can then go down to the col at the end of the ridge to pick up loads while you three carry on up the col. Don and Dougal, being fresh, should be able to push on up the Rock Band that much more quickly! Hello, Camp V – did you hear that?’

It was Mick, at Camp V, who replied. ‘I got that, Chris.’ Then: ‘As a matter of fact, I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Chris. It’s a lot easier going out in front than it is carrying. I don’t see any point at all in Don and Dougal coming up here – it would be much better if they did some carrying first from IV to V. We’ve been above Base Camp for twenty-eight days. If we had to go back to carrying now we’d have to go all the way back down for a rest. We’re just too knackered to carry.’ 

The argument went on. The crux of it was that I had originally agreed for climbers to take turns in leading out in front and in theory it was now the turn of Martin and Nick. Having been supporting Tom and Mick for a week, they had done the punishing carry from IV to V, a task so strenuous as to be almost impossible to do two days running. You needed a rest day in between, and at altitude you don’t get back your reserves of strength – you are deteriorating the whole time – even when resting.

Nick admitted that he was going badly, although Martin was still climbing very strongly. On the other hand, I felt that Don and Dougal were the strongest pair and climbed superbly as a team.

‘It’s not that we mind Don and Dougal going through,’ Nick said, ‘but I don’t think you have any concept of what it’s like up here. Gear is piling up at IV much faster than we can shift it up the mountain. It’d be much better if we could concentrate for a few days on stockpiling Camp V before pushing Don and Dougal forward.’

I could see his point, but we were running out of time. I compromised. ‘Let Don and Dougal do one carry and no more. Is that clear, Mick?’ With Mick’s agreement, the argument seemed settled, but then Don came on the air with the effect of a small nuclear weapon. ‘I agree with everything you’ve said. Dougal and I left Camp V a week ago. It isn’t even consolidated and progress towards Camp VI has been so poor it’s had me and Dougal depressed all the way up the mountain. I don’t know what Mick thinks he’s playing at, but time’s short and we want to get the route pushed out. Unless they can establish VI or at least find a way, they should make way for someone else.’

It was the closest we came to acrimonious argument during the entire expedition. I did my best to smooth it out, then closed down for the evening. As always, there was something to be said for both points of view.

Tom told me later that they were both so furious that Mick suggested taking all their rope and running it out next morning – just to show Don. They did, and this resulted in the most impressive push of the entire climb, with Tom and Mick reaching the Flat Iron, a spur of rock halfway up the Rock Band and very similar to the famous landmark in the middle of the North Wall of the Eiger. In getting this far, however, the two men burnt themselves out and the following morning they insisted on coming down for a rest. Mike, the great load carrier of the expedition, was also in a bad way, having collapsed just below Camp V but having recovered sufficiently to stagger back.

This meant that we were losing people from the front faster than I could replace them so I set out from Base Camp, still feeling run down after four days’ rest. Meeting Mick Burke on his way down from Camp I, I reassured him when he said, ‘Don’t think we’ve come down out of spite – we just couldn’t have gone on any longer.’

Mick had done magnificently, for together with Tom Frost he had spent longer above Base Camp than anyone else. I met Tom at Camp II the same day, when he told me: ‘I think you have destroyed the spirit of this expedition by pushing Don and Dougal in front, out of their turn. It was a real stab in the back for Nick and Martin.’

Although I tried to explain equably that expediency on a big climb must sometimes overrule the principle of fair shares for all, privately I was appalled at how badly the people out in front seemed to have taken my decision.

There was trouble at Camp V, a grim spot in the direct path of all the powder-snow avalanches which poured off the Rock Band whenever it snowed. Don, Dougal, Martin and Nick were all there when, during the night, one tent was crushed by the build-up of snow. Martin and Nick could have been suffocated but for a small gap left at the top of the entrance. Nick was badly shaken by this experience; Martin, suddenly becoming sick, was forced to return to Base Camp.

With our strength running out fast, I pushed straight up to Camp V, Don and Dougal moving up to Camp VI with Nick carrying some rope for them. Unfortunately Dougal dropped the rucksack containing his down clothing, sleeping bag and food and, although Don tried to persuade him to sit out the night there with the stove going, Dougal, realising how cold it would be, returned to Camp V. It was about midday when Dougal returned and Don, who had by this time been without food for more than twenty-four hours, insisted on being fed before pushing on. Then they picked up a rope Nick had dumped about 400 feet below the Camp with the result that in the little time left they could do no more than round the corner of a buttress just above the tent, and look into a tantalising gully that seemed to lead all the way up to the top of the Rock Band.

Nick and I remained at Camp V.

At night most of us drugged ourselves with sleeping-pills. I found that two of them merely knocked me out from about 7 p.m. when we usually settled down for the night, there being nothing else to do, till two in the morning. From then on I used to doze intermittently, waiting for the dawn.

Most of our camps caught the early morning sun, but our Whillans Box at Camp V was tucked into the bergschrund below the Rock Band. A huge curl of ice, frighteningly reminiscent of the sword of Damocles, guarded us from spindrift avalanches, above – if it collapsed at least we should know nothing about it. After every snowfall it was necessary to dig the Box out; the reason why tents were useless was that the build-up of powder snow simply crushed them.

The interior of the Box was a nightmare rectangle, six-feet four-inches long, four-feet wide and four-feet high, with green, dreary walls, no windows and a zip entrance at one end which had to be kept closed most of the time to keep out the clouds of snow. The walls and ceiling were encrusted with ice which only melted when we were cooking on our gas-stove. Drips from the roof would then soak our sleeping bags – there was no way of drying them out.

Obviously there was no water at Camp V – just snow, which had to be melted. It takes about ten panfuls of powder snow and about an hour of cooking to produce one pan of lukewarm water. Mike Thompson, who had organised our food, had been determined to produce an interesting high-altitude diet. In the event it was a little too original. He had cut out such mundane ingredients as tea and coffee, replacing them with a variety of fruit drink cubes, all of which became equally detestable after a few weeks. We had a choice of hot cola, orange or grapefruit for the breakfast brew, followed by a tin of mixed grill or perhaps some kippers or herrings in white sauce. If you could face it there was then Pumpernickel – thin black wafers of compressed rye bread – a cheese spread and those little containers of jam such as you get on airliners. The jam was acceptable, but the Pumpernickel had too strong a flavour for altitude and we all longed for plain biscuits. The favourite breakfast food for all of us was instant porridge.

Cooking breakfast took about three hours – a single brew required more than an hour and you needed at least two brews before starting out: you are meant to drink seven pints a day at altitude to avoid dehydration.

As the Box is only big enough to take two people lying side by side, you cook breakfast without getting out of your sleeping bag. If you are untidy, as most of us were, the interior of the Box quickly becomes a sordid mess.

It is 5 a.m., the start of another day. Nick is still flat out, buried in his sleeping bag, only his nose sticking out. I light the stove, fill the pan with snow from immediately outside the door, being careful to take it from the right-hand side as we relieve ourselves during the night on the left (there is no question of going out of the tent – you just open up a corner of the entrance and shoot).

By the time we have cooked breakfast it is nearly nine o’clock. I delay departure, putting off the grim moment of climbing out of a warm sleeping bag to face another day of discomfort and hard graft. Ten o’clock – if I am to do that carry to Camp VII cannot stall any longer. Harness on, then the struggle to fit crampons on to boots – metal so cold that it sticks to your skin; straps frozen solid like wire hawsers. It takes fifteen minutes to put them on. 

I dug out a 500-foot length of rope, and, with a walky-talky radio and a few Gaz cylinders, my load was around 35 lb. This did not seem too heavy at first, but having carried it a few hundred feet I began to feel like a very weary Atlas carrying the world on my shoulders.

The route to Camp VI seemed endless. At that altitude it took an hour to cover fifty feet, slowly and laboriously. The last length of rope up on the Flat Iron was the most strenuous of all, taking two hours of lung-bursting effort to reach the top. From there, the crest of the Flat Iron curved in a sickle of snow for about 400 feet – an easy-going plod at ground level, but here, an agonising struggle. The tent was just visible at the top of the ridge – a tiny patch of blue, perched on a minute ledge.

Resting five minutes between each step, it was 5.30 that evening before I reached the top camp, and eight o’clock in the gathering dark before I returned to Camp V, where a worried Nick reheated some supper for me. That night I gulped down a concoction of powdered soup, tinned meat and sweetcorn, followed by Christmas pudding. Mike had collected our food just after Christmas and Christmas puddings were going cheap; so we had them cold, fried and even stewed!

Exhausted, the next day Nick and I stayed in the tent. It was a savage day with a bitter gusting wind and frequent snow showers. In spite of even worse weather at Camp VI Don and Dougal set out to force the route to the top of the Rock Band and managed to make 400 feet of progress.

It was the 22nd May. Nick and I hoped to make the carry to Camp VI with the tent and camp kit which Dougal and Don hoped to pitch above the Rock Band. We decided to use oxygen sets to make the journey a little easier, in spite of the heavier load we should have to carry. Nick set off first, but I caught up with him at the top of the first fixed rope – he was hanging on it like a landed fish on a line.

‘Sorry, Chris,’ he said, ‘I just won’t make it. The oxygen doesn’t seem to make any difference, even at full flow. I’ll just have to go down.’

There it was. Both he and Martin had burnt themselves out in support of the front pairs and in doing this they had sacrificed all hope of going to the top. It also meant we had lost another load carrier, and everything we were trying to carry up to Camp VI that day was of vital importance. I took the food bag from Nick, adding it to the length of rope I was already carrying. With the oxygen set my load weighed 40 lb.

But the oxygen certainly made a difference. On reaching the last desperate jumar pitch up on to the top of the Flat Iron, I switched to maximum flow. I could feel the extra energy coursing through my body, and managed to climb this stretch in about half an hour, compared with the two hours I had taken without oxygen. 

On reaching the tent Don and Dougal told me they had reached the top of the Rock Band that day. They had run out nearly a thousand feet of rope and had reached a point 200 feet below the top of the gully. It was on steep soft snow, but they had been so keen to get that precious view of the top that they had pressed on unroped.

Don said: ‘It got us out on top of the Mini Rock Band and it looks a piece of duff to the top. Have you got the tent? We’ll be able to establish Camp VII tomorrow.’

I had to confess I had brought up a rope in place of the tent, which Nick had taken down with him. Dougal suggested my moving up to Camp VI the next day, when I brought up the tent – I could then go with them to Camp VII and make the bid for the summit. Ian was due to come up to Camp V that evening and would be able to help make a good carry up to VI, so I accepted immediately.

That night I returned to Camp V full of optimism but was dashed to find it empty. It had been fine on the upper part of the mountain but had not stopped snowing all day on the lower. Ian had been unable to force his way up to Camp V because of the weight of new snow. Camp V was a macabre place to be alone, and the following morning, loaded with the tent, food, cine-camera and my own spare clothing I set off at about ten o’clock. I managed to get a hundred feet above the camp before I realised that I could never carry a load of at least 60 lb all the way to Camp VI. It seemed to weigh tons.

Returning in complete despair, I felt tired and finished. There seemed no chance now of going to the summit with Don and Dougal and I even wondered whether I had the strength left to make another carry up to Camp VI. Feeling utterly helpless, I sat down and cried, then, ashamed of my weakness, shouted at the ice walls surrounding me, ‘Get a grip on yourself, you bloody idiot.’

Leaving my personal gear behind, it was midday when I left Camp V with the tent and food, and I reached the top Camp at six. Ian was waiting for me when I returned to Camp V and I don’t think I have ever been so glad to see anyone. I had been dreading another night by myself.

Once again on the radio we adjusted our plans. It was agreed that the following day, Don and Dougal should establish Camp VII, stay there that night and then make a bid for the summit. Ian and I were to move up to Camp VI and Mick and Tom from Camp IV to V. In this way we should be able to make three successive bids on successive days.

It seemed in the bag, though with the weather blowing even harder than usual that morning, Don wondered whether to play it safe and stay at Camp VI for the day. Yet he, like the rest of us, was impatient to finish the climb.

He decided to leave for the top of the Rock Band, while we at Camp V also had our doubts, but set out all the same.

That morning I had bad diarrhoea, an unpleasant complaint at altitude, and felt very weak – Ian and I only got away from the camp at eleven o’clock. Clouds of spindrift were blasting across the Face, blinding us with their violence, making movement almost impossible. Halfway up I had an irrepressible urge to relieve myself – I was in the middle of a gully swept by powder-snow avalanches. This was a tricky and exceedingly unpleasant operation. I was dangling on the fixed rope, and somehow I had to remove my harness, tie a makeshift one to my chest and bare my backside to the icy blast. And at that point a powder-snow avalanche came pouring down, filling my trousers, infiltrating up my back.

Eventually Ian and I reached Camp VI at five o’clock that afternoon, to find the tent semi-collapsed by the build-up of powder snow, and barely big enough for the two of us. Five minutes later we heard a shout from above – Don and Dougal had been forced to retreat through the most appalling weather conditions we had encountered. Their clothes were encased in ice and Don was sporting a pair of magnificently drooping moustachios formed of pure ice. They had hoped to pitch their tent on what had seemed to be an easy-angled slope just beyond the top of the fixed rope but, not only was it much steeper than it looked: when they tried to dig a platform they quickly came to hard ice.

There were now four of us in a two-man tent. I have had more than a hundred bivouacs in the mountains, but that night was the most uncomfortable of all, though Ian was the worst off, spending the night uncomplainingly crouched in a corner.

Next morning the weather was even worse, leaving no choice but for Ian and me to retreat to Camp IV to keep the fitter pair, Don and Dougal, supplied with food. For the next two days it snowed non-stop and we wondered whether the monsoon had arrived and if, so close to success, we were now to be cheated. Don and Dougal had told us that morning that they hoped to establish Camp VII, but it seemed unlikely in the face of the appalling weather conditions.

I opened up the radio at five o’clock and Dougal came on.

‘Hello, Dougal, this is Chris at IV. Did you manage to get out of the tent today?’

‘Aye, we’ve got some good news for you. We reached the top.’

Don told me the story the following day. They had reached the top of the fixed ropes but unable to find a suitable place for a campsite they plodded on up through the soft snow on the ridge. They had not bothered to put the rope on, and were not using oxygen, finding that in spite of the very strong wind, the climbing was quite easy It was twelve o’clock before they found a suitable site for Camp VII but by then they were just below the final headwall of the ridge and the summit seemed very close. As there was no point in having a top camp so high, they just kept plodding.

The climbing became more difficult, up steep snow-covered rocks, the last fifty feet vertical with big flat holds. Don said:

‘Generally, I had done hardly any leading at all up to this point, but I felt completely confident, and it never occurred to me to use the rope.’

Once over the top of the ridge the wind immediately dropped and they found that the north side of the mountain was quite warm and pleasant with sun breaking through clouds. While waiting for Dougal to follow, Don looked around for the anchor point for the rope they would need to get back down.

The summit itself was a real knife-edge and there was not much to see from the top. The northern slope dropped away into the cloud, a great boulder field part-concealed by snow. The only tops visible were the other two summits of Annapurna; everything else, including the entire South Face, was blanketed in cloud.

Don said: ‘We stayed there for about ten minutes. At this stage we didn’t feel much in the way of elation – it was difficult to believe it was all over and anyway we still had to get back down.’

We had nearly completed our clearance of the mountain. Mick Burke and Tom Frost, forced back by the extreme cold, were now on their way down from the top Camp after their attempt to reach the summit as a second ascent of the South Face. We had been desperately worried about this attempt, since we knew that none of us had the strength to go to their help if they got into any kind of trouble. On the other hand, it seemed only fair and right that I should let them go – not only because their plea to go to the top had been so strong, but because they had their own right to taste the ultimate satisfaction of standing on top of that mountain to which they had given so much while making our successful ascent possible. Nevertheless, until the news came that they had turned back and were on their way down, I had spent twenty-four hours of sheer agony. I had a tremendous sense of relief – nothing could possibly go wrong now.

I had been waiting at Camp III for this news, with Mike Thompson, Ian Clough and Dave Lambert, and so I set off down, back to Base Camp, to start wading through the mass of paperwork which the end of the expedition, and our success, inevitably entailed. The following morning, while sitting typing out the report of the successful end of our venture, I could hear Kelvin giving out the news over the radio. Suddenly there was a pounding of footsteps and Mike Thompson, panting, hurrying, came dashing up to the tent with the cry, ‘Chris – where is he – where is he? Something terrible’s happened!’ His voice was raucous, frightening, and immediately I knew – we all knew – that some ghastly tragedy had occurred. Rushing out of the tent I found Mike leaning over his ice-axe, having just collapsed on to the ground. I remember going down on one knee and holding his shoulders while he sobbed out the story of what had happened.

They were on the way down – Mike, Dave Lambert and Ian – and had reached the last possible dangerous section of our climb – the line of séracs which we had to pass under. It was an area which we had always known to be dangerous, but we had accepted the risk because we were only in this danger area for a few minutes. Mike described hearing a sudden, tremendous rumble from above. He looked back and saw this great tower of ice crashing down. Ian was just in front of Mike, who turned round and, with a split-second decision, ran back into the line of the avalanche. As he dived under the low wall to the sérac which was immediately above them, the ice avalanche came crashing over them. Mike just remembered lying there in complete darkness as the ice thundered down, convinced that he was going to die, and cursing the bitter futility of it. Then it all stopped and there was complete silence.

He found himself covered over in ice crystals as he pulled himself out to look for Ian. But Ian had not got back in time – he had been caught in the full force of the avalanche and had been swept down to his death. Down below, there had been a group of Sherpas coming back to pick up some loads from Camp II. Miraculously they had not been engulfed by the avalanche, and for a few minutes they all stood stunned with the shock, before starting to hunt through the debris. They finally found Ian’s body – he must have been killed outright.

And so, suddenly, in that moment of joyous victory, this tragedy had struck us. We had lost a close friend and one of the kindest, least personally motivated people that I have ever known. Ian spent much of his time repairing fixed ropes or giving the Sherpas that little bit of help and instruction. I think he was genuinely loved by the Sherpas and he was certainly the one person in the team for whom no one ever had a bad word. It seemed bitterly ironic that the person in the team who was, perhaps, the most safety-conscious should have been caught out by this cruel act of fate.

We took Ian’s body down to Base Camp and we buried him in sight of the mountain he had given so much to climb. It was Tukte Sherpa, our cook, who suggested the burial place. We had been looking round for a suitable place – a place which would be above any floods, and where Ian’s body could rest securely and safely. Tukte pointed to a little knoll, immediately below a rocky slab where Ian had spent many of his rest periods, teaching the Sherpas the various techniques they would need for their safety on the mountain. Tukte said, ‘This would be a good place for him to lie.’ We dug the grave and all the Sherpas – even the porters who had come up to help carry our gear – were scattered all over the hillside, picking the short blue Alpine flowers to make wreaths. And then we carried Ian’s body up to the grave. Standing there at its foot, I tried to say something that was remotely adequate, and at the same time to control my own emotion; and all I could say was, ‘He was a fine mountaineer and a very safe one – but most important of all, he was the kindest, the most unselfish and, I think, the most universally-liked person that I have ever known.’

After this Tom Frost said a short Mormon prayer, while I think most of us were either crying or doing our best to hold back the tears.

Inevitably, the question arises – ‘Was it worth it?’ Was a successful climb worth a man’s life – especially a man who was a close friend, who left a wife and a young child? But this is a question which has got to be faced and answered by all of us who climb, or base our lives round the mountains, because Ian’s accident could have happened to any member of the team – could happen to any one of us, anywhere in our climbing lives – in Britain – in the Alps or the further ranges of the earth. This was brought home even more forcibly, because just before Ian’s tragic death, we had received the news that Tom Patey, one of my closest friends, and certainly the richest, most wonderful personality that the mountains had produced since the war, had died in one of those inexplicable abseiling accidents – in this case on a sea-stack on the north coast of Scotland. His tragedy and that of his wife Betty, and his children, was as great as that of Ian, and all of us who go climbing must realise that we, also, could be killed by an accident over which we seem to have very little control. It is a cruel and difficult responsibility, particularly when we have wives and children whom we love. But once the mountains have bitten into us, we know, and the wives who love us know, that we could never give them up. All we can do is to try to be as careful as we possibly can, and pray that luck will remain with us.