The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters Page 36

  The last pull to the camp seemed hard work. I still felt the weight of the Krylenko exhaustion as I slackened my boots and the others climbed into the tunnel. It was a stony, bare, windy place, with little tent platforms. Clive and I slid into a bivouac sheet as the easterly wind battered at the tents. Tea and food filtered from the overcrowded tent as the wind hammered away at the slopes. Fine powder snow got into the top of the envelope and swirled wildly inside, sticking to Clive’s beard and getting even into the top of our sleeping bags, making us cough and suffocate. I failed to get my toes back to life as the wind howled through the darkness. Clive and I had shared many a dangerous and icy night travelling by motorbike. But this was a miserable night. Neither of us said much about it.

  In the morning my feet would not revive, and I remembered the months it took before they came back after the Caucasus Shchurovskiy climb in 1970. The two bivouacs on that were the worst that I have ever encountered, desperately uncomfortable, wet to begin and frozen solid by morning. I was not prepared to go so far again, even with better equipment, although the summit was only 2,500 feet above. Clive was in better condition and seemed to be standing the altitude better. I did not want more nights over 21,000 feet without a tent. It was windy and cold but the sun was coming. I announced my decision to Clive, put on outer boots and spoke briefly to those in the tent. Of our group I thought I was now weakest, though judged most of the other tent less able to continue. Without many words, wishing everybody luck, I set out slightly uphill on the first leg of the Lipkin Traverse, across the North Face to the safe descent spur.

  The shelf of the Lipkin Route is about a mile wide, cutting across the North Face of Peak Lenin and traversing over a long band of ice cliffs. There was little loss of height before it merged into a steeper ice and snow slope. As I trod out a deep rut, resting frequently to catch breath, a mysterious row of masked figures slowly came into sight. There was not an inch of human face to be seen, but they all appeared very short in stature as they slowly pushed their upward furrow to meet my descent. “Good morning,” in English evoked the same response, and a pleasant female voice went on to tick me off for wandering the big mountains alone. They explained the whereabouts of their ice cave camp of the previous night. Tired and still chilled as I was, I felt better, though I was still near level with our miserable bivouac. Later I was to become familiar with this morning lowpoint at altitude and with the subsequent recovery. The eight masked Soviet women turned away and began to climb on very slowly and steadily, and I headed out onto the vast avalanche-rutted slope leading down from the mountain. It took time to get crampons fixed but then the loss of altitude was rapid and the deep snow of the lower slopes of the Lipkin occupied me for the rest of a morning.

  There were two more meetings. Above the ice cave Eugene Gippenreiter and two other climbers appeared. He produced an apple and told tales of his fall on Chimney Route on Clogwyn du’r Arddu in North Wales, while I swallowed half of it – the apple, that is. After a few jokes we parted. Eugene was going up to try and keep count of the climbers on this route. I aimed for lamb stew at Base Camp. The sun made the 5,000 foot descent to the glacier very tough, but on a lower plateau Al Steck’s tanned face and twinkling eyes peered from the underside of a gnomic hat which he never seemed to take off. With Jock Glidden and Chris Wren he was intent upon reaching the summit, despite an earlier avalanche injury. Loaded with great pack frames which I thought must be full of down, they laboured up through softening snow.

  Ironically, after crossing numerous crevasses, I came near to being pipped at the post. A curious man-sized hole gulped me in within yards of the Lenin Glacier. Fortunately, as it appeared bottomless, my arms shot out and I stopped, nor was it particularly difficult to escape. The glacier and the Pass of the Travellers I took at full speed. Flowers carpeted the meadows below and I was in Base Camp for supper 10,000 feet below the spartan purgatories of the ridge.

  The remaining eight British climbers moved up with their two tents onto the harsh plateau of Peak Lenin on the day of my departure. Clive, Doug, Guy and Tut reached the summit the following day after an early start, but Alan North was the only member of the other foursome to do so. Leaving later than the others, he almost lost his life on the return as cloud and high wind obscured his retreat. As the eight came down the Lipkin two more Britons, Graham Tiso and Ronnie Richards, were among a number of groups reaching the summit via the Razdelny Route to the west. The Soviet women met them from the east and camped on the summit, intending to descend the Razdelny next day and make the first female traverse of the mountain. Now a major storm was forecast and the wind rose, clouds scudded across the high peaks and the temperature dived even at 11,000 feet. Over fifty climbers remained scattered over the two standard routes. Japanese, Soviet Ladies, and Steck’s group of Americans were all very near the summit of the mountain. Very large groups were also high on the Lipkin Route and at the Razdelny Pass.

  On 5 August the Base Camp radio had advised all groups remaining on the mountain to retreat as an exceptional storm had been forecast. Next day in atrocious weather came a radio report that the International Women’s group were in difficulties high on the Razdelny route. One of them, Arlene Blum, had already gone back in deteriorating conditions the previous day with Jed Williamson to Camp 3 on the Razdelny Col. The weather was now extremely bad with very high winds and blizzard conditions, as a small party led by Pete Lev moved up to help the remaining three down. They met the Bavarian, Anya, retreating after the night of violent storm and she was escorted down by Michel Vincent of the Grenoble group. François Valla and Jed Williamson went on to find the other two women, Eva Eissenschmidt and Heidi Ludi, unable to move down as Eva had collapsed with symptoms of advanced hypothermia. They were at about 21,500 feet in a very exposed position. Lev and Valla decided that there was no alternative but to attempt to move Eva down, and after trying to get her to drink, wrapped her in a tent and lowered her down the ridge with great difficulty. In practice they had to make a sequence of diagonal lowers along the north side of the ridge in a wind of about eighty miles an hour. After a series of such lowers a Bavarian, Sepp Schwankener, came up from Camp 3 alone after retreating earlier because of the bad conditions. With his help it was possible to lower her a little further through deep snow, but only at the cost of getting further and further out on to the North Face rather than keeping to the ridge. Tired and worried about both the women, they stopped and Valla went to Camp 3 with Heidi Ludi to get more help. Eva had stopped breathing and Sepp Schwankener and Lev gave her artificial respiration but despite considerable efforts breathing could not be restored. As the place was dangerous they secured her body and escaped from the slope on to the descent route, meeting Jed Williamson and others coming up to try and help. All then retreated to Camp 3 where some of the lighter tents were destroyed by the wind.

  Meanwhile, Jeff Lowe and John Roskelley had at last completed the American Route on Peak 19 where Jon Gary Ullin had died in the earlier attempt, but there was little respite in the Achik Tash. So many parties of such varied experience were on the mountain and in conditions so bad that it seemed inconceivable there would not be trouble.

  The eight Soviet women I had passed on my way down remained camped overnight from 5–6 of August on the very summit of the mountain. Initially, while the attempts to rescue Eva were going on, Elvira Shataeyeva contacted Base to say that one member of her group was sick and that their tents were unable to withstand the ferocious winds. Though they had been instructed to retreat like everyone else, they had initially persisted in their long prepared plan to descend by the Razdelny. But after an exhausting night they set out back down the Lipkin Route as directed, taking the sick woman with them. It appears that one woman died of exposure belaying the rest of the group down and the whole group stopped only a little way down the slope. By the evening of the 6th several more of the climbers were suffering the symptoms of exposure. The leader contacted Base in the evening and was instructed to continue down, even i
f it meant leaving those unable to go on. The weather remained diabolical, and late on the evening of the 6th only five of the eight women remained alive.

  Help with a rescue party was volunteered by French, Americans and British. Our hosts were desperately anxious and understandably wanted to handle this cruelly evolving tragedy themselves. Four strong Soviet climbers were already at Camp 1 below the Lipkin intending to render assistance. But so many people were still on the mountain and exposed to risk, at Camp 3 on the Razdelny, or very high on the Lipkin Route where there were embattled groups of Siberians, Japanese and Americans, that it made little sense not to put more experienced helpers back into the field. The senior Soviet climbers agreed and also called for help with helicopters from Dushanbe. But everyone who threw together gear for a rapid departure on 6 August knew that there was little chance of the remaining Soviet women surviving even if the conditions improved. At best we might save one or two survivors or help other climbers in trouble on the mountain.

  On a sleet-driven grey afternoon the rescue party plodded off across the Achik Tash towards the Pass of the Travellers. Cloud hung in great banks over the foothills and Lenin was shrouded totally. The path down to the Lenin Glacier was muddy red, soaked with rain and snow in the days of storm. As the group of English, French and Americans reached the Lenin Glacier a harsh November-like wind swept down the moraines. Sleet became snow and Bernard, a tiny animated Chamoniard, donned a huge cape which covered him and his rucksack. This silver grey phantom, hunchbacked and bizarre, produced a few wry laughs even in these grimmest of circumstances. We were all quite fit, everyone had done their bit of mountaineering, so a few days after climbing the ridge, here we were, hiking across expanses of glacier to the foot of the Lipkin, a route down to which the French had skied, by Lenin’s North Face, only a short time before. At the camp below the spur three Russian climbers waited amid the bedraggled tentage. The snow swept in great curtains down the glacier and there was a pervasive damp chill. Clive crawled into a soaked tent and we brewed and rehydrated American steaks one after another.

  As darkness fell the others heard Elvira, the women’s leader, speak from over 8,000 feet above. “Another has died. We cannot go through another night. I do not have the strength to hold down the transmitter button.” In fact this was one of several transmissions which our Russian companions had received. Their faces were riven with frustration and grief at being able to do so little. Three of the women appear to have been alive on that storm-blasted plateau, with winds approaching a hundred miles an hour at over 22,000 feet. Later in the evening as we went through the seemingly empty motions of preparing to climb the mountain to their rescue, they came on again. Only two remained alive. By 9.00 pm the storm blew out to be replaced by a frost so bitter that we shivered in our best down so many feet below them.

  Early next morning Doug, Tut, Guy, Clive and I, Jeff Lowe, Vincent and Benoir Renard, Bernard and two other Frenchmen moved off early with Boris and the other two Soviet climbers, trekking all day in fine weather up the great slopes leading to the Lipkin Spur. Above, Al Steck, Jock Glidden and Chris Wren emerged from a prolonged bivouac within a short distance of a Japanese party which had adopted similar chrysalis tactics and they all struggled to the summit. They found the women, spread along the ridge leading back from the summit, most of them together in the ruin of their fatal final camp. The Americans, who had known nothing of the tragedy, reported their news on the radio carried by the Japanese. The latter had an inkling of the situation from their companions at Base and had once tried to fight the elements in an effort to find the women, but with no success in the maelstrom.

  In late afternoon the final slopes to the ice cave at 17,500 feet were swept by a cold but relatively innocuous Lenin wind. In its depths, still several thousand feet below the plateau, the report of events above was received. Everyone was now in retreat, with Americans coming back by the Lipkin, Siberians far on the descent of that route, and the beleaguered Camp 2 on the Razdelny relieved by John Evans and others from the American party. There was not a lot more to be done by us – in death it became a domestic tragedy. Guy Lee and I remained at the Lipkin ice cave for only an hour or so. The cave was crowded and the necessity which had brought us back dissolved. Several of the French had turned downwards already and while Tut, Doug, Jeff, Vincent, Bernard and the Russians opted to stay up for one night to plough a path with the Masters of Sport to meet the retreating parties, we turned back towards the valley, speeding down in a few evening hours to the camp from which we had emerged with so much toil that day. Next morning we fed tea to the groups fleeing from the Razdelny, storm-battered, shocked men and women – Heidi Ludi with blackening finger ends. In the late afternoon Tut and the rest came down and we quitted the Lenin Glacier for the last time, crossing the Travellers’ Pass, strolling down the Achik Tash Pamir past goats and flowers into Base.

  It was the worst storm within living memory in the area. High wind and a bare terrain threatened even the most modern tents on Peak Lenin. The wooden poles and zipless doors of the Soviet Ladies’ tents stood no chance so near the summit, despite the strength of the materials. Tactics, too, were a problem. The Soviet approach to climbing insists not unreasonably on the unity and cohesion of the party. The ladies had moved up Peak Lenin quite slowly, acclimatising gradually. Even in a team of eight this might have assured a successful traverse in less adverse weather. But the plateau is very high and long and to remain there long is risky for any party. In bad weather it is potentially highly dangerous, not least because of the possibility of losing the way, if the party has to move, and with risks of sickness, deterioration and even death if the group is caught in a storm. The ladies had been ordered back by Vitali Abalakov. They stuck too rigidly and bravely to their planned traverse in the teeth of ferocious weather. Nor would they consider leaving the summit with the last groups descending the Razdelny as the storm lashed into the mountain, after the fatigue of their ascent with loads to the summit.

  Possibly that was the critical point. Once one or two members became sick in the first day of the storm, only quick descent might have saved all or some of the party, as their equipment would not enable them to survive. Their commendable team spirit prevented them doing this as individual members weakened. Bluntly, descent would have meant leaving someone behind. They could not do it even when ordered to do so from below. Perhaps it was already too late and few would have had the strength to cross the plateau in such a blizzard. The likelihood of them meeting Japanese or Americans embattled in their tents on the lee of the peak was not great. About the entire event there was a fearful logic.

  As the tragedy unfolded in Base Camp emotion ran high. In particular there was a belief that helicopters might have speeded rescuers up the mountain with a hope of being effective. In practice this was not likely to have been of much real help. High winds, even low down, combined with poor visibility, could easily have caused a helicopter to crash at these altitudes. At most it might have taken a group of rescuers the day’s walk to the Lenin Glacier. Probably the main hope was that the lost Japanese might have found the party when they heard of the plight of the retreating group. But tough and resilient as they were, it was a condition of their survival that they did not stay out searching long or they, too, would have lost their way back and with it their lives. Even had they found the women, they might have had neither the strength nor the numbers to get them back to their camp, nor the equipment to shelter so many.

  The official inquest seems to have reached a similar conclusion. It was a bitter finish to a disastrous summer. Yet as always new things grew out of the wreckage. Speedy Smith married one of the Dutch contingent, a good number of the Americans turned towards the Himalayas where John Roskelley made an oxygen-free ascent of K2 in 1978, while Tut led the upper Rock Band of the South-West Face of Everest and Doug reached the summit in 1975. If one survived that bleak summer and the will to climb remained, what was there in the world that would destroy it?

 
As for Paul, he was to be killed in 1995 in a sérac fall in the Karakoram.

  Death in the Everest Icefall

  Hamish MacInnes

  I first met Doug Scott in 1972 when we joined forces with Don Whillans as members of Dr Karl Herrligkoffer’s European Everest expedition to the South-West Face of the mountain. To say that the expedition was a fiasco would be an understatement. It started with waves of suspicion amongst the rival factions and ended on the open sea of hostility. Though Herrligkoffer didn’t particularly want us as members of his team, he wanted the money which I had been promised by both the BBC and the Observer. We were quick to rename the doctor Sterlingscoffer when he was out of earshot.

  My opinion of German efficiency declined early on in this expedition when there was an obvious lemming-like rush to get to Base Camp and a disregard for the need to acclimatise. The main group survived this, but Horst Vitt, a German diplomat who was on his way to visit us, died of pulmonary oedema. Professor Huttl also fell victim to the altitude on his way to Base Camp to conduct physiological experiments and had to be evacuated to Kathmandu, then back to Germany.

  Despite international differences, we three were eventually established at Camp 4 at approximately 24,000 feet with the purpose of establishing Camp 5 some 1,500 feet above. It was here that we had what is probably the highest high-altitude quarrel in history. The so-called Big Four, Werner Haim, Adolf Huber, Leo Breitenberger and Felix Kuen, argued the toss with us. Felix as the climbing leader didn’t give us much choice.