The drive along the Karakoram Highway is an astonishing journey through one of the most inspiring and wild regions of the world. Its construction transformed access to Pakistan’s mountains. When Mummery and his friends travelled to Nanga Parbat in 1895, they were two weeks at sea to Bombay on the P&O steamship Caledonia and then spent two days travelling by train to Rawalpindi, the largest military cantonment in what was then British India and a hub of colonial rule in the north-western sub-continent.
From Rawalpindi they travelled first to Murree, where Henry Whymper, brother of the Matterhorn climber Edward Whymper, established a brewery in the 1860s. But then, instead of heading north as we did, they turned east into the Vale of Kashmir. The Ghurka officer Charles Granville Bruce, who later led the first Everest expeditions, also travelled east from his posting in Abbottabad to meet Mummery at Baramulla, north of Srinagar, and help him organise ponies and porters to carry their equipment. From Baramulla they travelled by punt up the Jhelum river to Wular Lake, thick with water lilies, marvelling at the beauty of Kashmir, before reaching Bandipur and the road to the mountains. They approached Nanga Parbat over the Kamri Pass, from where they got their first sight of the mountain, still forty miles away. It rose, Collie wrote, ‘in dazzling whiteness far above all the intervening range. There is nothing in the Alps that can at all compare with it in grandeur, and although often one is unable to tell whether a mountain is really big, or only appears so, this was not the case with Nanga Parbat as seen from the Kamri. It was huge, immense; and instinctively we took off our hats in order to show that we approached in a proper spirit.’
The road ahead proved hard for Mummery and his team; at one stage they had to build a bridge to get their mules across a river. But finally they reached Tarshing, a prosperous trading village under Nanga Parbat’s immense Rupal Face on the south side of the mountain. We were also headed for Tarshing, but by a different route.
The Karakoram Highway, the ‘KKH’, begun in 1959 and still under construction in the 1970s, starts in Abbottabad and meets the Indus at Thakot seventy miles to the north. The road’s construction from here to the Chinese border was mythically difficult. The death toll among workers has been estimated on the Pakistani side at around eight hundred – one person for every kilometre of road between Abbottabad and the Khunjerab Pass into China. Two hundred Chinese died on the other side of the border as the highway continued to Kashgar, on the ancient Silk Road.
Three of the world’s greatest mountain ranges, the Karakoram, the Himalaya and the Hindu Kush, meet at Gilgit, a major staging-post on the drive north, so it’s hardly surprising that this area sees frequent earthquakes. In 2005, an earthquake that measured 7.6 on the Richter Scale struck north-western Kashmir near the city of Muzaffarabad. Official estimates suggest 75,000 Pakistanis died, although international aid agencies put the death toll at more than 100,000. Thousands more were forced to abandon destroyed farms and villages and take shelter in refugee camps, having lost everything.
From Thakot, we followed the churning brown waters of the Indus, reaching Komila after forty miles, joined to the village of Dasu on the far bank by the KKH bridge. Here the road plunged into the Indus gorge proper for the eighty-mile drive to Chilas. The landscape was desolate, barren, rocky wastes punctuated by occasional terraces of green where irrigation had brought the mountains to life. The highway wound through a tangle of side ravines, often spanned by improbable bridges and threatened by huge piles of rubble; it seemed you would need only to touch them to send millions of tons of rock into the river.
Further north at Shishkat, much closer to the Chinese border, the KKH had been flooded by a lake that formed in January 2010 when a massive landslide blocked the valley. Goods and people were being ferried by boat to get past the blockage. When the dam created by the landslide gave way in June 2010, a wall of water up to sixteen metres high hurtled down the valley, destroying villages and killing thousands. Hundreds of Sikh soldiers at Attock were swept away as the flood caused damage hundreds of kilometres downstream. This sort of event is not new in the area – Collie described how he walked through the Indus gorge north of Nanga Parbat where an earthquake had blocked the river in 1841, creating a lake in six months that covered thirty-five square miles.
Every year the monsoon brings flooding and rockfalls and the KKH is under constant repair. The husks of crashed buses and trucks were a constant reminder of the road’s formidable reputation for danger. Luckily for us, we were going only as far as Chilas, where there was an important police post. I’d travelled this way several times before, but on this journey we had a police escort all the way to Chilas. The security situation in Pakistan is often tense, but Pakistani Army operations against the Taliban in the nearby Swat valley were rumoured to have pushed Taliban fighters out of their bases to seek refuge beyond Swat’s borders. Further north in Hunza, Western tourists could be sure of a warm welcome, but the situation in Chilas, with its more Wahhabi-influenced brand of Islam, was edgier.
A year after our expedition, ten foreign climbers and a local expedition worker were murdered at Nanga Parbat’s Diamir Face Base Camp. Among the dead was Sona Sherpa, a good friend of Doug Scott’s, who had worked on Doug’s fundraising treks in Nepal. He left behind a young family. A few weeks after the massacre, militants killed three members of the army and police team who were investigating the crime. The Taliban claimed responsibility, but the reasons for the attack – and the identities of the perpetrators – are still a matter of controversy. The murder not long before of Shia bus passengers in the Nanga Parbat region suggests sectarianism is rife in the district. Tourism has since suffered very badly, with local operators losing business. The road sign at Juglot featuring Nanga Parbat, the ‘killer mountain’, was covered up. The connotations were no longer worth people’s attention.
The wild country around Nanga Parbat has always had a reputation for wild behaviour. The war correspondent Edward Knight came this way just before Mummery, researching his book Where Three Empires Meet. The heights of Nanga Parbat were, for Knight, a warning: ‘That white horizon so near me was the limit of the British Empire, the slopes beyond descending into the unexplored valleys of the Indus where dwell the Shinaka tribesmen. Had I crossed the ridge with my followers, the first human beings we met would in all probability have cut our heads off.’
How the people keep smiling is hard to understand, but they do, like poor folks everywhere I suppose, making the best of what they have even though it is incredibly little. Wealthy people like us drive by in big four-wheel-drives and the poor people who watch still smile and joke around. Beyond the headlines, there are millions of friendly people in Pakistan. Edward Knight might have feared instant decapitation, but Norman Collie was more open-minded. The people of Chilas might have appeared, ‘wild and unkempt, but throughout our expedition we found them to be friendly enough, and never experienced any difficulty with them.’ He even admired their mountaineering skill.
Our bus driver drove and drove with only the briefest of stops at roadside restaurants. The boys serving smiled as they dished up rice, lentils and freshly baked paratha, but the toilets were filthy and so we balanced our hunger with the fear that we might get sick before the climb. The parathas were irresistibly tasty but with each bite I wondered if this was the mouthful that would leave me running for the loo for a day, three days or even a month and send me home before the expedition had even begun. Illness at this stage of an expedition is common and can play havoc with the best-laid plans. I’ve known some climbers take antibiotics prophylactically in anticipation of getting ill, but our group didn’t entertain the idea. We knew any drugs could affect our performance. Our bodies would soon be at altitude and from long experience we knew that while acclimatising naturally may not be the fastest way to adapt, it is usually the best. If we took strong drugs now what would work when we got something we couldn’t shake off?
Twelve hours after leaving Islamabad, at around 10 p.m., we spilled out of the bus in Chilas, a district town to the north of Nanga Parbat. Our trekking clothes, fresh on that morning, now stuck to our dusty bodies. The Shangrila Midway House Hotel was a home from home for Rick and me, having stayed there on previous expeditions, and our host greeted us warmly. The Sherpas were fascinated by the hotel’s immaculately carved fretwork, both similar and different to the sort of carving so commonly seen in Nepal. Delighted to be off the bus, we made a vague plan for the morning before shouldering our rucksacks and drifting up to our rooms. Our main cargo was left strapped to the roof of the bus. I stood under the shower in our room, watching rivulets of water wash the dust from my body before climbing into bed.
As I lay in bed waiting for sleep I thought about how easy our journey had been along the KKH. The road still featured big potholes and tight bends, but had improved dramatically over the years. There were now trees and shrubs colonising the thin dirt at the side of the road, stabilising slopes that had been blasted apart during construction. Landslides on this stretch had once been common, but not now. I thought of the plaque I spotted by the side of the road that said: ‘Some time in the future when others will ply the KKH, little will they realise the amount of sweat, courage, dedication, endurance and human sacrifice that has gone into making this road, but as you drive along, tarry a while to say a short prayer for the silent brave men of the Pakistan army who gave their lives to realise a dream now known as the Karakoram Highway.’
In 2012 we travelled comfortably in an air-conditioned bus, but I recalled my first journey along this road almost thirty years before, aboard an old converted truck with clunky suspension and clouds of diesel smoke. With wearying regularity we’d come across landslides where bulldozers and gangs of men with shovels were working to clear rubble. It used to be a continuous twenty-hour journey to Chilas, with the real fear of meeting robbers through the hours of darkness. Now it takes about ten to twelve hours to the North-West Frontier, gateway to our mountain and a relatively easy drive.
On that first trip, in 1984, I’d been on my way to Muztagh Tower. With my pals Jon Tinker, Tony Brindle and Mal Duff, who had gone from being elusive unqualified mountain guide to firm friend, we made the third ascent of the mountain and the second ascent of the north-west ridge. That was almost thirty years ago now – a lifetime of climbing.[1] When we came home from Nanga Parbat in 2012, people often remarked on our ages, as though what we were doing was somehow more remarkable because we were past fifty. I didn’t really understand it then, and I still don’t. In my head I still feel as enthusiastic and excited as ever, and while I’m not as strong as I used to be in my twenties and thirties, I’ve gained in other ways and don’t see any reason to stop climbing until my body says ‘enough’. I don’t think I’m unusual in this. Steve Swenson, who reached the Mazeno Gap with Doug Chabot in 2004, was in his late forties when he did it, and is still climbing hard in the Karakoram. The Spanish climber Carlos Soria Fontán didn’t do his first eight-thousander until he was in his fifties, and is still going strong in his mid-seventies, climbing Kangchenjunga aged seventy-five. Climbing is part of who I am. I still love doing it, so why should I quit?
Still, the body has to be kept in shape, and that doesn’t get any easier. For training, I cycled on my simple Dawes hybrid, squeezing in a session early in the morning or late evening around my local circuit, leaving my house in Newtonmore, below the crags of Creag Dhubh, passing by Balgowan and riding through to Laggan, past my friends the MacDonalds at Drumgask Farm and up the hill to Catlodge, alternating the route sometimes by going by the Slimons’ farm at Breakachy, or taking the longer hill towards Dalwhinnie and back along the old A9 to my home. The wind and rain were, more often than not, relentless. But I loved the hills of home slipping by and watching the wildlife – mountain hares, red deer and the occasional fox, with buzzards hanging overhead. Wild flowers changed with the season, and I once saw baby stoats playing among them on the verge. My most favourite of all was the evening call of the curlew, bubbling up from the darkening moors. It kept me company.
Fitness has never been much of a problem for me, whereas altitude can be. I take ages to acclimatise, absolutely ages. Even in the Alps I usually have to go high for a few days before guiding clients, playing Scrabble with the guardien at the 3,600-metre Cosmiques hut to kill time and adapt. That had been my plan before leaving for Pakistan but events had conspired against me. It didn’t worry me too much. I may take a while, but once I am acclimatised, I am among the strongest people I know. I feel at home, comfortable in my own body above 7,000 metres. Being able to move efficiently in such a hypoxic and extreme environment is a blessing because I simply love being up there. I am also blessed with good circulation, but when I get tired I seem to feel the cold acutely, even in the Alps and Scotland. Sleep is vital to my wellbeing. Oh, I thought to myself, lying awake in Chilas, how I love to sleep.
After Muztagh Tower, I’d gone to Everest again with Mal Duff, to attempt its north-east ridge, the unclimbed ridge where in 1982 British climbers Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker lost their lives as they tried to traverse the pinnacles. Rick and I tried that ridge twice, in 1984 and 1987. On the second attempt we asked Doug to be leader, knowing that he’d be able to bring in the necessary support. I remember leading with Rick in thigh-deep snow and Doug commenting that he thought we were incredibly strong to do what we were doing, breaking trail at such high altitude. I felt a little bit of pride at that, Doug having climbed the south-west face ten years before.
Doug is a special man, with special abilities, and he passed on so much knowledge to me, perhaps unwittingly. I remember being with him high in the Karakoram, all of us freezing and complaining about the cold except for Doug. He was complaining he had a wrinkle in his sock that was bothering him, so he took off his boot while we stood there in the snow, freezing cold, shivering and urging him to hurry up. His feet were so hot we could see steam rising up out of his boot. I laughed so much that day, but I couldn’t get over how Doug kept himself so warm.
Trying that ridge on Everest in the mid 1980s had been an incredible long shot and the same was true with the Mazeno. I knew how long it would take and that reaching the summit was incredibly unlikely. I knew the American climbers who first traversed it to the Mazeno Gap were incredibly strong and no less experienced than we. Technically there was nothing that would stop me from climbing it. It was the high altitude and the freezing cold that scared me. I lay in my warm bed in the Shangrila, imagining the frost forming on my skin and hair, the freezing spindrift being driven by the wind through the zips of my clothing, insinuating itself like an unwelcome squatter against the back of my neck. The thought of having to bivvy high on the mountain in such unbearable cold had me drawing the blanket up to my chin. Surviving where life should not exist and climbing through such hostile places is truly rewarding, but deserves the utmost respect.
That’s why when Ewen Todd and other possible partners called to say they wouldn’t be coming, I felt paradoxically reassured. It helped me realise that Rick and I really were the best team for the job. All our previous attempts on impossible-looking objectives on 8,000-metre peaks pointed in that direction. Rick was breathing quietly, asleep in the next bed. There is someone, I reflected, who fights until the very end. He will try and try at the same problem, anticipating that it will give way eventually. That’s who he is, I thought, but it’s not who I am. We had spent years arguing about this route. There was no way I was going to try on the off chance that this time it might work out. We had to be able to reach the end of the ridge and still have something left.
‘It’s still impossible,’ I told myself, lying there in the dark, and yet somewhere in my brain was this unquenchable spark of belief, a kind of trust in the future. I knew inside me that we had the skills and the belief; Rick and I could do it. I just had to come up with a plan. And so I lay there, dreaming of the ridge, thinking of the audacity of what we were proposing, until sleep finally took me.
We rose late next morning – 11 June – and by the time we made it downstairs the Sherpas were smiling and happy, having ploughed their way through a huge breakfast. There was no rush. We took photos of Chilas and then climbed aboard the bus for the next leg of the journey. After twenty-five miles driving east, we turned south off the Karakoram Highway into the Astore valley and after a few hours reached the capital of Astore District, a town called Eidgah. We were now on the east side of Nanga Parbat. Here we switched to jeeps for the last bumpy stretch to the roadhead at the lovely village of Tarshing, where we pulled up at the Nanga Parbat Hotel. This was less a hotel and more a simple lodge, but with a large lawn in front where you could sit in the evening and take in the fabulous panorama of snow-capped mountains.
We were here much earlier than I’d planned. Our original idea was to go first to the Diamir, or north-western, side of Nanga Parbat to acclimatise. I thought we could climb a way up the Kinshofer route, perhaps to Camp 2 at around 6,500 metres. I’ve learned over the years that this is about the optimum height to get one’s body properly acclimatised before going up to try an eight-thousander. Wasting energy going higher seems pointless to me; in my earlier climbing days we sometimes took the time to climb much higher but then became tired and exhausted before the main attempt. But even before we arrived in Pakistan, our agent Ali warned us that the mountains were still buried in feet of snow after an unusually harsh winter. The summer thaw hadn’t yet cleared the way on the Diamir side, so in the interests of saving time, energy and the logistical complexity of having camps first on the Diamir side of Nanga Parbat and then moving everything to the Rupal side, we decided to focus our attention exclusively on our route up to the Mazeno.
The last time I’d been to Tarshing was with Doug, Rick, Andrew Lock and Voytek Kurtyka in 1995, arriving on a new-fangled contraption called a mountain bike. Doug had managed to secure sponsorship from the bicycle manufacturer Raleigh, which is based in his home town of Nottingham. Part of the deal required us to cycle their new mountain bikes across the Deosai plains that lie between Astore and Skardu, now a national park. This high summer pasture, according to one anthropologist, was the location for Herodotus’ gold-digging ants – and that’s what we were, singing if not for our suppers then for the expedition’s coffers. Raleigh sent along cycling journalist Steve Thomas, who unfortunately got the runs, but did what he could and maintained our bikes for us. It took three days to cross the Deosai. The first night we camped above the beautiful Satpara Lake at 3,800 metres. The following day we reached the high plateau, often having to push our bikes along the stony, twisting track, wading rivers and crossing rickety bridges. The plain is high and remote, offering good grazing to flocks of sheep and goats. Local herders, as hefted[2] as their animals, seemed to merge into the landscape. I recall the whistle of marmots and huge drifts of wild flowers.
Crossing a high pass, our camping place that night was just beyond the Kalapani river, sixty-eight kilometres from Skardu. It was hard going for those of us new to off-road cycling and it rained hard next day as we crossed the Chakor Pass and then made the scary descent into the Astore valley. We reached Tarshing late that evening, splattered in mud and wet through, the bikes on the back of jeeps for the last bit along the road. Steve was to leave us next day but the torrential rain had washed away bridges and he remained trapped for a while. It was all great fun, but it left us depleted and full of colds and illness.
Like us, Mummery, Collie and Hastings arrived to discover bridges washed away, but from the south, not the north. Arriving at the village of Chorit, they found themselves unable to cross to the north bank of the Astore. No matter. There was soon a crowd of men on either side more than happy to help build a new one, as Collie described: ‘The bridge-building began; tons of stones and brushwood were built out into the raging glacier torrent; next pine trunks were neatly fixed on the cantilever system in these piers on both sides, and when the two edifices jutted far enough out into the stream, several thick pine trunks, about fifty feet long, were toppled across, and prevented from being washed down the stream by our Alpine ropes, which were tied to their smaller ends … after three hours’ hard work the bridge was finished.’
Tarshing was still a simple place, although not as simple as it had been in Mummery’s day. He had taken twenty-seven days to reach the village from Britain; we had taken three. Within minutes of our arrival the area around our parked jeeps had drawn a horde of porters – like bees to a new hive. They crowded round the jeeps, smiling and looking expectantly for our sirdar. It felt great to be among this crowd of mountain men. I drew the fresh mountain air into my lungs and rested my eyes on the verdant green of the irrigated fields. Then Samandar Khan stepped forward from the crowd and shook my hand, and then hugged me in a warm embrace. It was ace to see him again and a relief too to find that Samandar would be our local fixer. I had gotten to know Samandar when we were climbing the Kinshofer route from the Diamir side. At that time Samandar was acting liaison officer for a Korean expedition led by the country’s star climber Go Mi-Sun, who fell to her death after summitting Nanga Parbat, her eleventh eight-thousander. On rest days between acclimatisation forays I spent lot of my time shooting the breeze with Samandar as we sat in boulders around Base Camp. He lives in Bunar village, Chilas, and is married with five children. A thoughtful and kind man, he would share tales of his experiences of working with climbing expeditions in Pakistan. I made a mental note to thank Muhammad Ali for hiring Samandar.
We had met Ali in 2009 almost by chance. Rick and I, still dreaming of the Mazeno, had decided to climb Nanga Parbat’s regular route on the Diamir Face. The plan was to climb as high as we could and at the same time get an impression of the ridge over a long period of time as well as experience of a possible descent route. While organising the expedition from my home in Newtonmore’s old converted police station, I got an email from an Austrian guide called Gerfried Göschl who suggested I consider joining his much larger expedition. Gerfried had a lot of experience on 8,000-metre peaks, and had climbed Everest without supplementary oxygen in 2005. He also led expeditions for the Austrian Alpine Club.
We talked it over on the phone and it became obvious that with economies of scale we could travel and climb the mountain much more cheaply and with less organisational input from me by joining his large expedition. A tremendous additional bonus was that we got to know Gerfried’s agent, Muhammad Ali of Adventure Pakistan. Ali had started his company in 2009, having worked previously for the Pakistan Foreign Office. As we camped and climbed with Gerfried we got to know and like him and many of his climbing companions. I found him to be a very kind and friendly individual, an exceedingly good climber and expedition planner – a chess player in negotiations. His father Rainer had also been a successful climber, part of Hans Schell’s team in 1976 that made an important first ascent on Nanga Parbat’s Rupal side.
Like many younger climbers, Gerfried was always taking photographs of himself, eager to please his sponsors. For someone of my generation, it’s all rather terrifying, but a necessary part of the game. Himalayan climbing is expensive and for a guide like me – or Gerfried – the loss of earnings while on expedition can cost us dearly. True, we’re away on ‘holiday’ having a fantastic time, but commitments back home carry on regardless. We still have to pay the mortgage and get the boiler serviced. Trying to anticipate what could go wrong is part of the preparation for an expedition so that there’s the minimum hassle for the loved ones we leave behind.
Over the years Rick and I have needed to manage our time carefully and one great advantage of Nanga Parbat was its short approach. Rick’s employers usually understand, but there’s a limit. Despite the pressures, we both have the ability to suss out the really important issues and let the rest go. I liken it to birds migrating on their vast journeys across continents and oceans. Even though they fly for days at a time, they have techniques that allow them to coast along not really using up much energy at all, even though it seems they flap their wings like crazy to maintain momentum.
It’s more difficult to explain to family that you love them and yet want to go away for several weeks to climb a beautiful but, as they see it, potentially dangerous mountain. As a climber I never think I’m not going to come home again; I’m confident the risk of an accident will be minimised and all will be fine. For family members back home, waving goodbye at the airport, there’s the unarticulated thought: ‘I wonder if I will see him again?’ And while I feel confident of coming home, the truth is that there are risks. It’s emotionally tough. In 2012 Gerfried himself disappeared attempting the Karakoram giant Gasherbrum I in winter, just three years after we climbed together on Nanga Parbat, when he added a new variant to the Kinshofer route.
Samandar had made all the necessary arrangements for the approach to Base Camp beneath the Mazeno Ridge. He had brought along an excellent cook with two young assistants and hired some experienced porters to help with all our equipment and supplies. In this part of Pakistan most loads are carried on mules but we anticipated that once we were at higher altitudes we would run into deep snow and the mules would most probably not be able to plough through it. Mules are worth a lot of money and the risk of injury would persuade the mule-drivers to turn back. So to make sure our loads got to Base Camp, we would take a few hardy men along as well. They would carry little at the start, but would increase their loads once we reached the snowline.
As the porters loaded up their mules in the village, local children passed by on their way to school, girls and boys together in their best school clothes. This was one of those rare occasions when we saw females mingling with the village crowd, even though it was only the children. Their mothers were out of sight, presumably busy in their homes. It was a part of Pakistani culture that I found hard to understand. How could a culture place such restriction on women’s freedom of movement? It was all a bit strange really, to see so many people milling around and all of them men. What impact must this have on young men reaching maturity? I looked at the strong mountain porters setting out on the trail to Base Camp. Did they simply not trust their women? Or themselves? Or was it visitors like us they didn’t trust?
The approach walk was wonderful. We left the village on a well-maintained path, dodging mule droppings, stepping across irrigation channels and ducking under coppiced trees until we were free of the village. The day was pleasantly warm and we were happy to amble along taking in the views. The noise and dust of the Karakoram Highway felt far away and the hassles of day-to-day life fell away. Soon we would be able to focus on our climb.
The green terraces of crops and grass disappeared abruptly as irrigation ended, replaced with the wild and desolate terrain of a glaciated valley. The trail now wound its way through awkward moraine until eventually we came to a patch of more stable ground used for pasture where we could camp for the night. Its name was Latabo, a tiny hamlet at around 3,500 metres directly below the Rupal flank of Nanga Parbat. The place was rudimentary, just enough to support a few local people herding their sheep and goats. Here for the first time we saw women passing by and doing tasks amongst the animals. Not for the first time I reflected that life in the mountains is usually more egalitarian. Hardship makes it so.
I took the three Lhakpas and Cathy for a walk to show them the general direction of the Schell route. This we had earmarked as a possible descent route from the ridge, although to descend that way we would of course have to get all the way along to the Mazeno Gap first. Back at the planning stage Cathy kept highlighting that she really thought she would not get that far, and certainly not to the summit. However, I had a strong belief in her and felt she could, and would. I was pleased when she decided to accompany us for the walk. Unfortunately the summits were shrouded in mist so I could only point out the lower section of the climb, and from that distance there wasn’t that much to see anyway.
We only had a short distance to walk next day; without acclimatisation we could not really go much higher without risking altitude sickness. So after a few hours of walking along an impressive glacier junction we traversed up towards an interim campsite. After setting up the tents and drinking a cup of tea, Rick and I took a walk several hundred metres above camp, to a point where I felt my head pounding a little bit with altitude. That was enough. With my head still throbbing, I flinched a little when we got back to camp to see the mules fighting, their huge, yellow teeth biting at each other’s necks. I was sure one would get hurt and their loud braying pulsed through my head. I was glad when the porters and muleteers gathered them together and tethered the mules some distance from our tents.
We awoke to fresh snow on the ground and, as we gained height, the old snow pack became deeper, the mules sinking into the snow until only the longest-legged animals could continue. The rest of the mules had to be released from their loads, which were picked up by our porters. It was hard work freeing the mules in the deep snow, unstrapping the loads and rearranging them so a man could carry them. The daylight soon slipped away. Finally we got all our baggage moving again and at last came to the dry-stone-walled shelters used as base camps for previous attempts on the ridge, at an altitude of 4,900 metres. It was 14 June.
The snow was unseasonably deep and we had to hack away at it to reach hard ground on which to pitch our tents. All of us set to work. The cook and his team put up a much bigger mess and cook tent and, with slushy snow from a nearby pool warming up in a big pan set over a roaring paraffin stove, we began to pay off the porters. They drank and had a snack before we shook hands and waved each other goodbye. By the close of the day most had gone, although Samandar kept a couple on the payroll to help run Base Camp and organise our stores. One of them would also act as a runner for us, coming up to camp regularly with a supply of fresh vegetables from Tarshing.
As the sun set we were all still hard at work, trying to clear away snow and ice so as to have a base for our main mess tent. This would be our dining and living room during the day, somewhere to store equipment, eat our meals, hold meetings and rest. The snow was deep here and, with all the mule and porter traffic, had become quite consolidated. Yet by nightfall we had a large enough area cleared. We brought our barrels and climbing equipment inside and arranged it all around the walls, leaving a space in the middle for our collapsible tables and chairs. We also dug out our Honda generator and solar panel, which were connected to a car battery, so we could charge our electrical equipment. There was a vast array of battery chargers that turned into a bird’s nest of wires. Unhappily the generator proved unreliable. Every day one of us would tinker with it, cleaning spark plugs or fuel lines to get the thing to work for an hour or two.
We then dug a latrine away from Base Camp over a small moraine ridge and pitched a small tent over the hole for privacy and shelter. With the communal area sorted, each of us put up his or her own personal tent. It was essential to have our own space, somewhere we could put out all our gear and begin to prepare for the climb. Finally we were finished and could eat.
Base Camp was still rudimentary, but I knew that over the following days we would improve it, making it into a comfortable space where we could relax and recover. The simplicity of the mountains was seeping back into me. Norman Collie put it very well: ‘The sense of freedom, of perfect contentment with our present lot, blessed gift of the mountains to their true and faithful devotees, was beginning to steal over us. Languidly, we talked about the morrow, our only regret arising from our inability to catch a glimpse of that monarch of the mountains, Nanga Parbat and the ice-fringed precipices which overhang his southern face.’
Sleep came easily that night.
1. That expedition is recorded in Andrew Greig’s book Summit Fear (Canongate, 2005).[back]
2. ‘Hefted’ sheep instinctively stick to their own local area and thus do not need fences.[back]