Nanga Parbat stands alone. It might be physically close to the great mountains of the Karakoram like K2 and Broad Peak, off to the north-east, but it is in reality the western wall of the Himalaya, the last flourish of a range that extends east in a narrow arc some 2,500 kilometres long to the fringes of China. Nanga Parbat translates from Urdu as ‘naked mountain’, a name that captures the idea of a peak that rises from the plains in full view. It is the ninth-highest peak in the world, one of the fourteen 8,000-metre peaks and the most westerly. Although the Karakoram peaks are close, its nearest 8,000-metre neighbour in the Himalaya is Dhaulagiri, some 1,400 kilometres further east.
This sense of grand isolation is deepened by Nanga Parbat’s incredible topography. The mighty Indus flows round its northern and western flanks at little more than a thousand metres in altitude, carving a deep gorge around the mountain some 7,000 metres below the summit of the peak. Nanga Parbat’s Rupal Face is around 4,500 metres high, the highest mountain wall in the world. It’s no coincidence that, at the time of writing, only two peaks over 8,000 metres remain to be climbed in winter: K2 and Nanga Parbat. And while K2 lies hidden up the Baltoro Glacier, many days’ walk away, it takes just a few hours from the road to reach Nanga Parbat’s base camps. Its sheer size and exposure to bad weather has stopped all comers.
So perhaps it’s all the more amazing that Nanga Parbat was the first 8,000-metre peak to be attempted – and back in the nineteenth century too. This amazing step into the unknown was taken by Albert Frederick Mummery, one of the leading alpinists of his day and a visionary when it came to both what was possible in the mountains and how his ambitions should be realised, by what Mummery called ‘fair means’.
He was born in Kent and as a sickly child might have seemed an unlikely contender to be the first man to climb an eight-thousander, but with his small team of just two others – J. Norman Collie and Geoffrey Hastings – that’s precisely what he set out to do in 1895, and in an amazing lightweight style too. Sadly, he perished in the attempt, along with two Gurkha soldiers acting as porters, most probably in an avalanche. There had only been a handful of Himalayan climbing expeditions at this point, and if Mummery was naive and overenthusiastic, his instinct for ‘fair means’ in the Himalaya has inspired subsequent generations, including Reinhold Messner, the first man to climb all fourteen 8,000-metre peaks.
Those who know the story of Nanga Parbat often describe it as a German mountain, in the sense that it was German climbers who tried again and again to make the first ascent in the 1930s, but unsuccessfully and with a grim loss of life. Great climbers like Willy Merkl and Willo Welzenbach met their ends in a sequence of terrible disasters. In just two expeditions, in 1934 and 1937, twenty-four climbers and Sherpas lost their lives. Altogether, thirty-one men died before Nanga Parbat was finally climbed in 1953 by Hermann Buhl. Seventeen of those men were Sherpas. This sequence of dreadful accidents earned Nanga Parbat the sobering nickname ‘killer mountain’.
Even after Hermann Buhl became the first man to reach the top, climbing in a super-lightweight dash that Mummery might have admired, many of the significant new routes done on the peak were German. This was partly because of the obsession of one man – Karl Herrligkoffer. He was the half-brother of Willy Merkl, who led attempts on Nanga Parbat in 1932 and 1934 and perished in a terrible storm that took the lives of three climbers and six Sherpas. Nanga Parbat was consequently Herrligkoffer’s obsession. He led eight expeditions there in all, including the 1953 climb when Buhl reached the summit, much against Herrligkoffer’s orders. Two more hugely important climbs were made by teams under Herrligkoffer’s command: a route up the Diamir Face in 1962 now known as the Kinshofer and the normal line of ascent, and the first ascent of the Rupal Face in 1970, when Reinhold Messner reached the summit with his brother Günther, who died as they descended the Diamir side of the mountain.
With the major faces of Nanga Parbat climbed, there was just one major feature left to climb, one so vast it barely merited consideration. But that’s what each new generation of climbers does – considers the impossible, and how it might be achieved. Nanga Parbat’s west ridge is more commonly known as the Mazeno. It takes its name from the saddle at its western end – the Mazeno Pass. Most likely, it’s derived from the local Shina word majeno, meaning the middle, or between two places, which the pass most definitely is for people living in Astore and Bunar. For centuries immemorial it’s been a handy route for bandits sneaking over from Chilas. The ridge itself is vast, around ten kilometres long, a dragon’s back with eight separate summits to cross before you arrive at a col known as the Mazeno Gap, just below the final summit pyramid. The highest of those intermediate summits is Mazeno Peak, at 7,120 metres, and just before the Mazeno Gap is a series of awkward, technical pinnacles – a real sting in the tail.
For those who know the Isle of Skye, it’s slightly shorter than the Cuillin Ridge, except that most of the Mazeno is at around 7,000 metres and not 3,000 feet. It might be possible to run along the Cuillin, but no one is running anywhere at this altitude yet. The Mazeno is also flanked on either side by huge drops – a real tightrope in the sky – and the only way to escape it is at either end: the Mazeno Pass to the west or the Mazeno Gap to the east, in the lee of the summit. Once you’re on it, you either have to retrace your steps or press on. There is no down. The Mazeno is no place to get caught in a storm.
These complications leave climbers in a classic dilemma. On such a long and complex objective you have to choose between carrying enough supplies to keep you going, and not making your rucksack so heavy that you end up moving slowly. This will cost you more time and mean, consequently, that you need more supplies, which in turn makes your rucksack heavier. Snow conditions are also critical. What might be a straightforward slope one day could take four times as long if it’s covered with unconsolidated snow. And when you have an objective as big as the Mazeno, all these problems are exponentially bigger.
It’s hardly surprising that over the years the Mazeno became one of the great unclimbed challenges for the world’s high-altitude climbers. It looked so vast and tempting, but how would they succeed?
First to try was a huge French team of climbers who fixed a lot of rope but only reached a small peak at the start of the ridge. I had no interest in a big, fixed-rope expedition. The real challenge of the Mazeno was to climb it as light as possible. Doug Scott led three expeditions in the 1990s, and on the first of these made some good progress. His team had initially climbed up to the end of the ridge near the Mazeno Gap via the Schell route to leave a stash of gear they could use coming along the ridge. But the climbers were strafed by rockfall and the Russian Valeri Pershin suffered bad injuries. When Doug did get on to the Mazeno Ridge, with Sergey Efimov and Ang Phurba, they made good progress until Ang Phurba called a halt in windy conditions. He too had been injured in the earlier accident and couldn’t go on.
Rick Allen and I joined Doug in 1995 for his third try. It was then that the Mazeno first got under my skin. In the early stages of that expedition I climbed with Voytek Kurtyka, the legendary Polish alpinist. When Doug left the expedition, suffering from a severe stomach illness, I felt strangely out of sorts, and eventually left to catch Doug up as I missed him so much. The remaining climbers stuck at it until they reached a spot on the ridge we’d dubbed ‘the point of no return’ – the spot where it would be easier just to keep going to the Mazeno Gap and descend, if necessary, from there, than it would be to turn back.
Voytek had another go in 1997, but didn’t get any further than he had before. The real breakthrough came seven years later when two strong Americans, Steve Swenson and Doug Chabot, raced along the ridge which was in excellent condition, to reach the Mazeno Gap in just four days. When they arrived that summer in the village below the Rupal Face, the locals asked them: ‘You trying Doug Scott route? Not possible. Schell route much better.’ Steve and Doug had proved them wrong. Yet when they got to the Mazeno Gap, Doug was sick and the weather was deteriorating. They opted to descend the Schell route rather than climb up another 1,200 metres to the summit. Four years later, two experienced German climbers, Luis Stitzinger and Josef Lunger, did pretty much the same thing, taking slightly longer and consequently running out of food and gas at the Mazeno Gap. Twice now, strong, well-acclimatised teams of two had managed to climb the ridge but had not been in good enough shape to carry on to the summit.
Much progress had been made in the thirty-three years since that first attempt on the Mazeno. Clothing and equipment were much better, as were attitudes and knowledge. In addition, weather forecasting was much more reliable. Yet this great beast was still unclimbed. Now, almost twenty years after my first attempt, I was on my way back for another try.
Stepping through the aircraft door at Islamabad airport, a blast of hot air rising off the tarmac hit me in the face. It was 10 June 2012. I had flown in from London with Cathy O’Dowd, and we were through customs in no time, spilling out on to the concourse where Muhammad Ali, our agent and the director of Adventure Pakistan, was waiting to collect us. He led the way with an entourage of airport porters to a four-wheel-drive truck.
I love the early days of an expedition, arriving in South Asia, plunging back into the frenetic pace of city life there. Expeditions are really organised chaos, an exact reflection of life – or at least my life. The noise and chaos of the city were familiar to me, but rush hour hadn’t started yet, so the streets were relatively quiet. At the hotel where Rick and the three Sherpas were waiting for us, barriers across the entrance at the top of the drive blocked anyone from getting too close too soon, a protective measure against the terrorist attacks and suicide bombers that have made life in Pakistan so difficult. Police and hotel security guards pored over our passports and glanced over our baggage in the back of the pick-up. Only then were we permitted to drive into the hotel grounds.
Immediately, I spotted a bus parked in a corner of the compound loaded with expedition kitbags. As we’d arranged, Rick had got everything organised for a rapid departure. Inside the hotel Lhakpa Rangdu Sherpa, Lhakpa Nuru Sherpa, Lakpa Zarok Sherpa – the ‘three Lhakpas’ – and Rick were tucking into breakfast. We hugged and shook hands, and I grabbed a mango juice. It was so great to see them again. The otherwise empty restaurant was suddenly full of the energy of a great new adventure. It felt like years of planning were finally coming together.
Once I had introduced Cathy to the Sherpas, Rick explained everything was ready and we could start our drive up the Karakoram Highway straight away. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere without a shower. Cathy disappeared into Rick’s room and I used the Sherpas’, stepping over the chaos of an abandoned hotel room. An extra mattress lay on the floor, like Tracey Emin’s unmade bed, but without the backstory. I found some soap, a used towel and a disposable razor and luxuriated in the feel of warm, clean water on my skin. I knew that in a few days I would be dreaming of a hot shower in a half-decent bathroom and I wasn’t about to waste the chance now.
Changing into trekking pants and a T-shirt, I filled my wash kit with the remaining soaps and shampoos and rushed downstairs to where the bags holding all my important high-altitude climbing clothing and equipment were stacked on the lobby floor. Working quickly, I began to rearrange my gear and pulled out my ice tools. My heart sank. They were not at all what I wanted; certainly not the sort of axes you’d want on the climb of a lifetime.
This was largely my own fault. For the last few weeks I’d been working in Australia, helping to set up an industrial rope access division for a Scottish and Australian joint venture. I had been set up in offices in the trendiest part of Perth, with a personal assistant who seemed to know every secret detail of every important business in Western Australia. But the Scottish businessmen I was working for had kept me hanging on in Perth till the last minute. I had planned a week in Chamonix to acclimatise and recover my usual gear, but there had no longer been time for that. Rick reassured me there were adequate ice tools in our Pakistani stash, but, as I now discovered, they were cheap and low-quality knock-offs made in Eastern Europe.
Rick and I have different attitudes to money. I often crack a joke that the British fifty-pence coin has heptagonal edges so you can use a wrench to extract it from Rick’s hand. Then again, his sound approach to cash flow has bailed out our expeditions on more than one occasion. My life as an itinerant mountain guide means that I have quite a small income and, while I do also get some interesting work in the rope access industry, the money is soon gone on climbing and helping out my daughters.
My father often warned me about fast women and slow horses but I can’t have listened too well; a balanced bank account is not something I manage easily, nor, for that matter, is a lasting marriage. While I love being in the mountains, with all their austerity, when I’m in the Chamonix valley I have a tendency towards the luxurious, with a taste for expensive restaurants and vintage wines. I was reminded by one of my pals that my motto used to be that to die in credit was to die in disgrace.
In the 1980s, I went on expeditions with the poet and novelist Andrew Greig, including one to Lhotse Shar near Everest, where he wrote a poem about it in his book Getting Higher, called ‘Three Above Namche Bazaar’:
‘Sandy, feeling somewhat queasy,/squatted above Namche,/shat a five-foot worm. My life’s/like that, he said as we/laughed and took our photographs,/a thread of consistency/through unconsolidated crap.’ [1]
Much of what happens in life can be put down to chance, but even though I think I’ve had more than my share of good luck, when it comes to the basic rules of mountaineering, I am blessed with a very strong sense of discipline; to do things properly when required, and that includes having the right ice axes for the job.
Still, when we at last loaded my bags on to the bus, I felt a burst of optimism. After years of planning, thinking and dreaming, we were moments away from finally setting off. Cathy had sorted herself out much more quickly and was impatient with me for being so slow. I excused myself for being a man, unable to do several things at once. We said our goodbyes to Ali and climbed aboard to be driven away into the madness of Islamabad’s streets. Pakistani music blared from the vehicle’s radio, and I helped myself to the drinks from the cooler Ali’s people had filled for us. After just an hour and a half in Islamabad, we had, thanks to Ali, Rick and the Sherpas, already started the twenty-four-hour drive along the Karakoram Highway – one of the most amazing roads in the world – bound for the small village of Chilas, an important staging post on the highway.
Known in Pakistan as the KKH, the road is excellent at first, and we sped out of the city. True, we sometimes shrieked in fear as drivers yo-yoed between lanes at high speed without warning, braking dramatically and swerving to avoid overloaded trucks that wallowed like whales, or the three-wheel taxis and donkey carts. But after a few hours of this, the KKH narrowed to two lanes and we were out in the country, dodging massive potholes.
Every time we paused in the road, a horde of adults and kids tried to sell us drinks, snacks, cheap plastic necklaces and pretty much anything else, shouting loudly and holding their goods high up above their heads so we could see them through the bus windows. None of them got run over but I expected it constantly. A passing thought worried me: that my life could turn out this way, that at some unexpected moment some unpredictable event might occur to make me so poor that I would be forced by circumstance to try and earn my living selling wares to passing traffic. Constantly, when in Pakistan, I am reminded how much easier – and safer – our lives back home in Europe or North America can be.
As a mountain guide, my self-employed way of life does feel pretty fragile; there is no sick pay or affordable insurance cover so if I damage myself, or if clients do something unpredictable and I sustain an injury, I could be out of a job. On the other hand, here I was, squeezed in with my friends among all this gear and travelling to the start of a great adventure. I knew how lucky I was. I felt paradoxically excited and relaxed. Exhausted from the journey, I expected sleep to come but, watching the disorganised splendour of the Pakistani countryside, the hustle and bustle of towns and villages, I found myself captivated and happy to stay in the flow.
The rest of the team seemed equally lost in their thoughts. From my seat at the back of the bus I could see them all. Now that we were together, sharing a ride to the mountains, I felt content with how I’d put the team together. Seeing Rick on the bus, a couple of seats in front of me, explained a good part of my confidence: Rick wasn’t really chosen, he was simply the person I could trust most to be with on such a big climb.
Although in the valley we aren’t the closest of buddies, we have known each other for decades, cutting our teeth on hard winter climbs in Scotland and meeting in the Alps as young apprentices. We shared an incredible adventure on the south face of Pumori almost thirty years ago. Two days into that climb, we were hauling our rucksacks up steep ground late in the day when the tent, which was tied to the outside of Rick’s sack, got caught on a rock and came free, disappearing like a torpedo into the abyss. After a cold bivouac, the weather wasn’t promising. The sky was overcast and cloud was blasting across the face. Clinging to our ice tools, we were strafed by falling ice and spindrift, but it never occurred to us to turn back. We spent the next night in a tiny snow cave and two days later reached the summit as the weather improved and conditions on the face became easier.
Rick had endured an even longer first ascent on the south face of Ganesh II with Nick Kekus, a guide like me. That was a twelve-day epic of tough and often dangerous technical climbing on a peak that is, like Pumori, over 7,000 metres. Nick and Rick endured some desperate bivouacs and towards the end, the weather turned bad and they ran low on food and gas. It was, until Nanga Parbat, the longest Rick had spent on a single push on a mountain, and it gave him a lot of confidence in how far he could take things. He also had plenty of experience on 8,000-metre peaks; Rick had been part of an otherwise Russian team that made the first ascent of Dhaulagiri’s north face in 1993.
There have been very few new routes on 8,000-metre peaks by British climbers since the deaths of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker on Everest in 1982. Their loss, attempting an alpine-style first ascent of the mountain’s north-east ridge, cast a long shadow. To our generation, coming hot on their heels, there was a realisation that pushing big new routes on big mountains in the best style could be very dangerous. In 1985, Rick and I were part of an expedition led by Mal Duff that attempted the same ridge. We understood perfectly well what would be involved on Nanga Parbat. We had spent a lifetime preparing for it.
In recent years, during the summer of 2009, Rick and I had reached the summit of Nanga Parbat via the Kinshofer route on the Diamir side. This was first climbed in 1962, on one of the many expeditions to the mountain led by Karl Herrligkoffer. (It’s known as the Kinshofer after one of the lead climbers, Toni Kinshofer. Herrligkoffer was an expedition organiser, not a climber. That could and did lead to tension.) Conditions had been very windy near the top, but our climb had been a happy experience. Even so, both on the way up and down, my eyes and mind were often on the Mazeno. I must admit that while it looked corniced and convoluted, and was without doubt a very long ridge indeed, I felt sure in my mind that if any team could climb it, Rick and I could. Indeed I was not alone in thinking this. At one point, when Rick and I had spent several nights at Camp 3 acclimatising, we came back to Base Camp for a rest and seriously considered abandoning our Diamir climb in favour of the Mazeno.
Fortunately, better sense prevailed; as we discussed it Rick and I realised we weren’t ready. I knew we hadn’t sussed out a sound plan that would give us a chance beyond the Mazeno Gap. Rick was happy to go and try; he would have gone on the Mazeno at any cost, knocking his head against any obstacle, but some of the world’s best had reached the gap exhausted and had needed to fight hard to escape the ridge and get back down alive. After careful consideration we decided to continue with our climb of the Diamir. It turned out to be a grand summit and the knowledge gained was well worth the time it took; having first-hand knowledge of the descent would come in handy for any future attempts on the Mazeno. Quite by chance, my sister Eunice also thought that with our ascent I became the first Scotsman to climb Nanga Parbat.
Even though Rick and I have a high level of trust in each other, we often have what Rick once described as ‘lively discussions’. Rick is tough – a hard, steely nut. In comparison, I am Mr Softy, too emotional and sensitive for my own good. Rick believes that if you hit a problem over the head often enough it eventually breaks. He uses phrases like ‘our efforts were vindicated’, as though climbing is a war against the elements. I have learned, sometimes through bitter experience, that pushing hard does not always work out well, in life as well as the mountains. I knew we had to come up with an alternative strategy. I wanted to get to know and understand every aspect of the mountain and work with it, to understand it and perhaps be lucky enough to co-exist with it long enough to reach the summit. Whether it would let you get down from the summit was a different matter, but that was a bridge we would only need to cross if we got to the top.
Rick and I had spent almost twenty years talking about the Mazeno, starting with that first attempt in the mid-1990s. That’s when the obsession began. It was a problem we couldn’t let go. It took many years for a plan of how we should climb the ridge to evolve. For a long time I argued we could do it on our own; Rick believed we should have a bigger team. He knew my cash flow was always tricky and I might have to pull out for financial reasons. Getting time off from his job in the oil industry took a lot of advance planning with his employer. If we went with a bigger team, then he’d have reserves if I pulled out.
I couldn’t see that bringing more climbers added anything, especially if they weren’t as experienced. Like a chain, the expedition would only be as strong as its weakest link. But, as the years passed, I began to see things differently. It became clear how physically and mentally exhausting reaching the summit from the Mazeno would be. Swenson and Chabot had arrived at the Mazeno Gap too depleted to continue. The fact that they had been able to reach the Mazeno Gap at all was inspiring enough, but there seemed little point in repeating the exercise. I did not want to be involved in yet another attempt that climbed the ridge but failed to reach the summit.
So I found myself conflicted about how to proceed. I knew I wanted to go back with Rick. But I also knew there was little prospect that we would have the energy to climb the ridge, carrying all the necessary gear and food, breaking trail for all those kilometres, over all those summits over 7,000 metres, and then continue up to the summit of Nanga Parbat at over 8,000 metres. Given the scale of the challenge and the cost of the enterprise, I asked myself again and again if we weren’t crazy just to contemplate such an adventure. It began to make sense to take more people.
Having decided to enlarge the team, we looked around for climbers to join it. This is always a lot harder than people might imagine. There aren’t so many people around who have the depth of experience, talent and ambition to take on a challenge like this. I spend a lot of time in the Alps among kindred spirits and great friends who are constantly climbing magnificent routes there and around the world. They are amazingly competent and ambitious mountain climbers. But when I asked them to come with me to the Mazeno Ridge, none of them seemed that interested. One young pal, a guide, showed some real interest but his mate and regular climbing partner wasn’t so sure. His wife had just had a baby and the Mazeno was no place to think about your duties as a new father.
Rick also mentioned Andrew Lock, an Australian he had climbed with a lot. Andrew had also been with us in 1995 when we first tried the ridge with Doug Scott and so he knew the challenge of the Mazeno well. I’d run into Andrew since then, and discovered just how reliable he could be. I had been guiding a private client up Everest when I discovered some-one had wandered off with my ice axe, which I’d stashed at Camp 3 on the Lhotse Face. Fortunately for me I met Andrew, on his way down from the South Col. I asked him if he would lend me his axe, and he didn’t think twice about it. Only a true friend does something like that. So I was tempted to go along with Rick’s suggestion, but I was still having doubts about the tactics we should be using on the mountain. I wondered again whether someone else, even another strong climber, could contribute enough, knowing they would simply add weight with the extra food and gas. Our dreams drifted along, half-formed and uncertain.
Then a friend and fellow mountain guide called Ewen Todd said he wanted to come. Ewen is a great guy, a wild card indeed. He and his older brother Willie, who is also a guide, grew up in the village of Braemar, a place almost as remote as my home village of Dalwhinnie. Ewen had climbed the north face of Les Droites above Chamonix at the age of sixteen. At that time, a fair few years ago, the Droites’ north face was a testpiece and Ewen had climbed it with ease. Both of us work in the world of industrial rope access and I have known him for years. Even though we had never really climbed together, I just knew it would be great fun to be on the mountain with him.
Ewen’s wife Carrie invited me to their house in Aviemore, where their fantastically energetic children were climbing over the furniture. I took with me a large framed print of a photograph that had hung on my wall at home for a number of years. Taken by Doug Scott and gifted to me by my former wife, it showed the Mazeno Ridge in all its complex splendour. Drinking tea at Ewen’s house I explained the objective, tried my best to point out the main features and my simple plan for climbing it. I could see the immensity of the ridge quickly made an impression, and then the extra bit, the 8,000-metre summit at the end … Ewen already knew all about Nanga Parbat and its famous tales of death and destruction. We talked a great deal and I felt at home with them and left with a positive feeling. But a few days later Ewen called to say that he wouldn’t be joining us.
We weren’t having much luck, but, despite these setbacks, the idea of having a couple more strong climbers with us on the ridge had become a concrete plan. I thought of my good friend Lhakpa Rangdu, who I had met guiding in Nepal. I first hired Rangdu – and Zarok too – through my agent Chowang Sherpa who runs Arun Treks and Expedition in Kathmandu. He worked a lot for my old pal Mal Duff and it was through climbing with Mal that I began to get to know Chowang. When Mal died on Everest I decided to use Chowang’s company as my Nepali and Tibetan agent for my guiding company Team Ascent.
Rangdu has a warm smile and a long fringe and is a sensitive man, not at all macho. Most importantly, he has that sound balance of judgement you only find in the best. Lakpa Zarok has a longer face than Rangdu, and a toothy smile. He is happily married to a wonderful Sherpani, Pasang Limey Sherpa, who hails from Namche Bazaar, the Sherpa capital. ‘Zarok’ is actually a nickname, being a small village situated between Namche Bazaar and Khunde where there is an experimental yak-breeding farm. Between expeditions he spends much of his life with his wife looking after their trekking shop in Namche. Like many Sherpas, the hard and risky work on expeditions can bring in relatively high wages, allowing their children to attend private schools in Kathmandu while their parents spend a lot of time travelling back and forth between Namche Bazaar and the Nepalese capital.
Zarok and Rangdu have become good friends, working with me on several of my commercial Himalayan guided expeditions. We’ve pulled off some good ascents with our clients. Both men are very strong, but Lhakpa Rangdu’s leadership and his understanding of Western psychology are very shrewd, acquired over many years working as a sirdar, or lead Sherpa. He climbs well and has travelled widely. Like many Sherpas, he started his career as a humble cook boy, working his way up to cook before eventually becoming a climbing Sherpa and then, thanks to his management skills, responsible for the running of expeditions. As he climbs technically very well he has been accepted to become an IFMGA mountain guide and as I write this he is diligently working towards becoming fully qualified.
Rangdu has reached the top of Everest nine times, as well as the summits of other 8,000-metre peaks in Nepal, like Cho Oyu, Kangchenjunga, Manaslu and Lhotse. Zarok had climbed Everest seven times, as well as Cho Oyu and Kangchenjunga. Even though Zarok and Rangdu are outstanding high-altitude workers, lugging clients’ gear up and down the slopes of the normal route on Mount Everest, they also try to get work on more exciting adventures. In 2009, three years before our trip to Nanga Parbat, Rangdu and Zarok had worked for me guiding a client called Becky Bellworthy to the summit of Baruntse, where she became the youngest person to climb that peak. (She also climbed Everest in 2012, after recovering from a stroke she suffered there in 2011.) It was on that Baruntse trip that I really began to think that these two Sherpas were truly exceptional and that they would be great partners to have on a big new climb like the Mazeno. I showed them some photos I had on my laptop and asked them both to visit Ang Phurba – the same Ang Phurba who had accompanied Doug Scott on his first exploration attempt on the Mazeno back in 1992. He had also been an important member of Chris Bonington’s Sherpa team on the south-west face of Everest in 1975.
I knew Ang Phurba would advise them well. On another expedition we had spent a lot of time together shooting the breeze, drinking tea at his family house in Khunde and their other teahouse at Sanasa, a small hamlet on the main Everest Base Camp trekking route. Although Rangdu lived mainly in Kathmandu, he spent a lot of his time in the Khunde area, where Zarok lived in the adjacent village. I told them both to get Ang Phurba to explain in their own language about Pakistan and how long and difficult the climb would be. I asked them to think hard about the Mazeno as it was such a serious undertaking. I wanted the two Lhakpas to fully understand as much as they could about the climb and what it involved. Given the problems of finding the right people, it was still more or less a pipe dream in my own head – although I knew that, eventually, I would be going back to attempt the Mazeno again.
I suppose to other climbers peering in at our expedition it was a strange decision. Why would I want Sherpas when there are so many Western climbers? Perhaps some people don’t understand that some Sherpas are more than capable of doing a climb like this. They assume Sherpas are all about carrying bags for other people. That view of the Sherpas is very outdated now, with so many training to become qualified IFMGA guides. On commercial expeditions Zarok and Rangdu routinely work out in front fixing ropes or supporting other lead Sherpas. The number of Western climbers strong enough to do this sort of work, fixing rope and breaking trail while carrying heavy loads, is fairly small. As we get older and our strength diminishes, we have learned to trust the really good Sherpas to get on with it and they do an exemplary job by themselves.
Some Western clients don’t give sufficient credit to climbing Sherpas. They sometimes give the impression on their websites or in expedition reports that it is they themselves who lead the trip. Plenty of well-known Western leaders and clients benefit from the Sherpas’ hard work but fail to mention it in their dispatches back home. But as mountain guides taking clients to the higher peaks most years, ours and many others’ expeditions would have little success at all if it were not for the Sherpas. They are truly exceptional. When I was younger, and once I was acclimatised, I could just about keep up with the Sherpas. They would sometimes call me Sherpa Sandy, which I took as a huge compliment. But even back then I was glad to get a heavy pack off my back and grab a quick rest, or to take it easy by following in the footsteps of a Sherpa when the chance arose.
The Sherpas do this too, taking care of each other, leading for a while and then letting someone else take over. They have good systems of leadership and teamwork – much of it unspoken. The younger ones defer to the experience and wisdom of older Sherpas. I feel so lucky to have witnessed this system of apprenticeship and sense of brotherhood. As I have grown older I find it harder and harder to be out in front. When climbing in pure alpine style it’s necessary, but progress can be achingly slow when the snow is unconsolidated and you have to break trail. Friends like Russell Brice, an amazing climber in his own right and one of the best Western operators on Everest, says the same. We can keep up for a bit, but doing it day after day like the Sherpas is no longer possible.
Rangdu was delighted when I invited him to Nanga Parbat and Zarok also seemed excited and pleased. When Cathy committed to the expedition, helping us to secure the necessary funding, we had the resources to pay the Sherpas’ expenses. I also sent an email to Chowang at Arun Treks seeking a third Sherpa. He recommended Nuru, and I was really pleased with the suggestion. Although I hadn’t climbed with him we had seen each other on the same big hills. Lhakpa Nuru, with his cool glasses and spiky hair, had also summited Everest nine times and his uncle is Ang Phurba, who offered such good advice to Rangdu and Zarok.
It should be clear now that finding the right Western climbers hadn’t been that easy. The thought of carrying the weight of supplies required, for eight or ten days and up and over eight 7,000-metre peaks, just to get part way along a ridge, was a big disincentive. They knew the chances of success were incredibly thin. So, with all the usual human complications, the newly born babies, the happy marriages and so on, committing to such a vast enterprise was daunting. Me, I was happily divorced, my daughters were adults and while work was fine, there wasn’t much to stop me. I had the time and the inclination. I also knew I had enough control over my own emotions to make the right decisions. The thought of actually losing my life on this route never even entered my head.
If Rick and I can help support the Sherpas, I thought to myself, sitting in the bus, and we all get through to the Mazeno Gap, then surely Rangdu and Zarok will still have the energy to go on to the top. Cathy was just in front of me, her long, freshly washed hair catching the sunlight. I knew she’d be strong on the hill and having a sound female influence in the team could only be good. I was so glad she was here. Years before we had climbed together on Lhotse West above the Western Cwm and since then we have run into each other in interesting cafes from South Africa to remotest Tibet. Cathy’s contribution to finding sponsors had made this expedition possible. She would be running the expedition’s website and online social networking, and had bought all sorts of battery-hungry communications equipment to meet these needs.
In planning the expedition, she had said a few times there was no way that she would even get to the summit pyramid and would probably have to turn back. That was the reason I had decided to invite a third Sherpa, to take her down safely. I explained to her that Rick and I would push hard and not go down until we got to the Mazeno Gap, on the basis it was safe to do so. She understood we would want to make the most of our attempt and not waste the effort and resources we’d put into getting us up there. The level of commitment was incredibly high, and we couldn’t lose sight of the main objective just because one of us got exhausted or disenchanted with the idea. If Cathy, or any one of us, had to turn back then we would have to go down with a Sherpa. That was a given.
Even so, I had no doubt at all that Cathy would get high on the ridge. I liked her energy and I knew her strength, her determination and her intelligence. Over the years Cathy has been caught up in a lot of controversy, little of it her fault. She had climbed Everest in 1996 during that famous, tragic season captured in Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air. She had been part of that first South African Everest expedition, which had the backing of Nelson Mandela. Cathy was still feeling her way as a climber back then, but the team had included some of South Africa’s best-known climbers and mountaineers. They had fallen out with the leader, Ian Woodall, and taken their toys home, assuming that the inexperienced Cathy would soon give up. She didn’t, and both she and Ian reached the summit, although a third team-member who also reached the top, the British photographer Bruce Herrod, died while descending. Cathy and Ian later climbed Everest from the north, Cathy becoming the first woman to summit the peak from both sides. She and Woodall had been married but were now separated; Cathy I think was still feeling bruised by their separation and Nanga Parbat would be a welcome distraction. In all the years I’d known her, Cathy had shown commitment in the mountains and incredible determination.
Of course we would miss anyone who had to go down, but as a high-altitude climber you have to be a chess player. Years of working in extreme environments, whether in remote mountain areas or on the North Sea, have taught me something: to keep plans very simple and avoid building in complexity – that way I can react quickly to whatever happens. We were all equals on the Mazeno; the Sherpas were climbers in their own right. It was not their role only to carry and support us and they would certainly have the strength to keep going if Rick or I became exhausted on the ridge.
I didn’t much care whoever got to the summit, only that some of us did. That was my goal. We would all look after one another and do everything possible to support the stronger climbers and then get down safely when the time came. Each of us would be climbing for the others, six people with one mind, with the primary aim of getting as many of us as possible to the Mazeno Gap so that maybe, just maybe, there would be enough supplies to give some of us the energy to continue to the summit.
1. Getting Higher: The complete mountain poems (Polygon, 2011).[back]