The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters Page 37
“You must down go” he pounded the edge of a box platform with his ice axe to give extra emphasis to his words and only added over and over again, “I vont give one millimetre . . .”
The Big Four had returned to the fray as they felt the summit was looming closer in good weather; they were determined to be at the sharp end from now on. For the past week they had been whooping it up at Base Camp where they had gone to welcome their leader, Karl, who had just returned from a flying visit to Munich to collect down clothing for the Sherpas. The Sherpas had refused point blank to go above Camp 2 without it. When Karl returned with his feathers he helicoptered as far as Pherichi at 15,000 feet. On arrival at Base Camp it was found that he had suffered a mild heart attack. Full use was made of the helicopter flight for Leo Breitenberger was sent back to Kathmandu as he was suffering from pleurisy. Hans Berger had gallstone trouble and Peter Bednar, who had been suffering from a cholera injection gone wrong, both retreated to Base Camp, but later returned to Camp 2. A Persian, Mischa Saleki, who was a member of the expedition (making its working title something of a misnomer), had been constantly bullied throughout the trip by the Big Four and now decided he could stand it no longer. According to a German press report, he stowed away in the helicopter at Pherichi, an extremely difficult thing to do, especially at 15,000 feet when even the passenger seats have sometimes to be removed to lighten the machine.
On such an expedition you get to know your companions well. You live in close proximity for months, get used to each other’s smells and habits and share danger and pleasure, be it a super-cold high-altitude view with peaks standing out as if fresh from a mould, or a piece of well-travelled cake which somehow escaped the hungry gauntlet of climbers in lower camps.
Well, the Big Four, or rather the Big Three, as Haim injured a knee near Camp 3 and had to be evacuated down the Western Cwm by improvised stretcher, didn’t get up the South-West Face. Felix, poor chap, later committed suicide back home in Austria. We didn’t have many laughs on the Herrligkoffer expedition; it wasn’t that sort of a trip. But an amusing incident happened on the bleak ice of Camp 1. One of the Big Four who suffered from constipation – an uncomfortable affliction in the cold of high altitude – was squatting in solitary splendour on the glacier close to camp. Imagine his dilemma when a crack appeared in the ice between his boots.
Doug, I discovered, is an idealist, a great companion on a big trip. He trained as a physical education teacher and taught in his home town, Nottingham, for ten years. His long hair didn’t endear him to the crewcut Germans, but it was inevitable that eventually they respected him.
We had acquired an assortment of rather useless items of clothing from the Base Camp coffers. Doug amassed a large pile of this jumble, not in the least suited for use on the mountain. No doubt it had been donated by well-meaning hausfraus back in the Fatherland. Realising that there was a ready market amongst the Sherpas for such draperies, Doug negotiated with a wily Sherpa called Dorge. Dorge, like most of his tribe, is a born trader. For example, on the steep wall between Camps 4 and 5, at over 25,000 feet, we had watched him wander nonchalantly over the face retrieving tatty bits of Japanese fixed rope, remnants of a previously unsuccessful expedition. A Sherpa, I concluded, who went to so much trouble to find tethering for his yaks was obviously a formidable business man. He cornered Doug’s clothing market by offering slightly higher prices than his companions on condition that the clothing was left with him at Base Camp and the money was collected from his wife at Ghat, a small village south of Namche Bazar.
On our way to Kathmandu when Doug called at Dorge’s house, his charming spouse confessed that she didn’t have a rupee in the place. Somewhat disconsolate, but philosophical, Doug shrugged his shoulders and said that he’d call later.
We had only been back in the UK for a week or so when Chris Bonington asked Doug and me to join his expedition to the South-West Face of Everest. He was due to leave in about four weeks. We didn’t hesitate. We both felt that we had a score to settle with that prodigious heap of rock and ice. After all, we thought, it would be a pleasant change to be on a properly organised trip. Chris doesn’t leave things to chance – or leave the Sherpa’s down clothing back home. Chris’s expedition now gave Doug a heaven-sent opportunity to visit Dorge again on the way back to Everest. But heaven had taken more than Doug under its ample wing. Dorge had gone into retreat, his wife told Doug when he called this time; he had taken up the god business and was going to be a lama. Once again Doug went away philosophically. It wasn’t until we went back to Everest again with Chris in 1975 that Doug at last caught up with the elusive lama. Tut Braithwaite and I were with him when we called at Dorge’s quaint house above the river. Dorge was at home. He had returned from his cave of meditation. He certainly seemed pleased to see us and we felt the same way, for we had shared hardships high on the South-West Face. He didn’t have any money now, he told Doug, but he had good chung, would we like a glass? We would, then another and another and eventually parted in good spirits, Doug telling the impecunious lama that he could forget about the long-standing debt.
The highest point reached by our 1972 expedition was no higher than that reached by the Big Four, or that other ill-fated assault, the International Everest Expedition of 1971, which was even more infamous for its discord, rocks and verbal abuse flying in rarefied air. When the Bonington expedition was defeated in 1972 we remained good friends after a great fight in hellish conditions of high wind and temperatures of –40°C.
When we started to clear the mountain, Dougal Haston and I went down ahead of Chris and Doug. It was 16 November when we left Camp 2. Mick Burke had descended the previous night so that he could get some film of us arriving at Base Camp. The Icefall was particularly dangerous. Earlier in the expedition Dougal and I had spent many cold mornings fixing ropes and placing ladder bridges over crevasses. We would set off at 3.00 am to do this work as the Icefall seemed to doze at this time of day and we were usually back down at Base Camp in time for a second breakfast. One section of the Icefall was so treacherous that I had put up a sign urging anyone crossing the area to clip on to the fixed rope which Dougal and I had secured across this passage of horrors. The ice seemed to be constantly moving, albeit slowly, but its groans resembled those of a great snake writhing in its death throes. Séracs leaned like Saturday night Glaswegians and we sneaked under these. When we had enough energy, we passed them at a run, not easy at almost 20,000 feet.
When Dougal and I came down that day at the end of the expedition this passage was worse than ever. I had spoken with Colonel Jimmy Roberts about it. Jimmy was Deputy Leader and in direct charge of the Icefall porters. I had told him that I thought the area would collapse in less than a week. Now over sixteen days had passed and it was complaining, with its belly-aching rumbles, even more persistently than before.
Dougal and I angled down on to the home straight to Base Camp, with only the minor worry of an avalanche from the Lo La to trouble us, peanuts compared to what we had just come through, and I said, “Thank Christ that’s behind us.”
“Aye, Jimmy,” said Dougal, “it’s no the place to dither about.”
Tony Tighe, a friend of Dougal’s, was just setting off for Camp 1 when we arrived. Tony was an Australian, a warm-hearted lad who had been working as a barman at the Vagabond Club in Leysin in Switzerland where Dougal lived. Though he wasn’t a climber, he was fit and had unbounded enthusiasm. He had been doing thankless jobs at Base Camp for the past two months and though he wasn’t an official member of the expedition and not supposed to go above Base Camp, Chris had agreed to allow him to go up to Camp 1 so that he could see the Western Cwm. We all thought this was the least that could be done to reward Tony for all his chores. There were about twenty Sherpas going up as well to collect loads from the camp. Though the Icefall was highly dangerous in places from falling séracs and subsidence, technically it was easy with all the crevasses bridged and ropes in the trickier sections. It was in fact as safe for o
ne person to go up or down as fifty. We wished Tony a good climb and with a wave he was off, a colourful figure. He had been pestering Chris for weeks to visit Camp 1 and this was his big day. Unfortunately, it was also his last and he never saw the Western Cwm.
Chris and Doug met him as they came down. Despite his fitness he lagged behind the Sherpas, who with the end of the expedition in sight had wings on their crampons. At Base Camp we had our first wash for many weeks and were sitting in the main tent when I said to Chris, “Well, thank goodness it’s all over safely, Chris.”
He flared up, a look almost of fear on his face. No doubt the memory of Ian Clough’s death on Annapurna was still fresh on his mind. Ian, a good friend of both of us, had been killed in literally the last hour of the expedition by a falling sérac.
“There’s still some to come down that last bit!” Chris said tersely.
He was right of course and I wonder if just then he had a premonition. A short time later there were murmurings from the Sherpas. Though we hadn’t heard anything at Base Camp the Sherpas suspected that there had been a big collapse in the Icefall. This was confirmed presently by Phurkipa, our Icefall sirdar who had just returned. He told Chris of the subsidence.
An hour or so later Barney Rosedale, our doctor, came into camp. He and Tony had been the last Europeans on the mountain. He looked distraught and told us he had managed to get round the collapse by a dangerous diversion. He had seen no sign of Tony. Phurkipa, it transpired, had been the last person to see him. We tried to piece together the information we had on Tony’s movements and came to the reluctant conclusion that he must have been caught in the fall of ice. Barney told us that he had heard a deep-throated graunching noise at about one o’clock at Camp 1. This had been followed by a great mushroom cloud of ice particles. Some Sherpas had just left Camp 1 to go down to Base Camp and had almost been caught in the fall. An ice ridge on which they had been walking had collapsed beneath them. They came rushing into Camp 1 saying that Ang Tande, one of the Icefall porters, was hanging on the safety rope which Dougal and I had installed. He was swinging seventy feet above the new and equally unstable floor of the Icefall. It was fortunate that the Sherpas had made a point of clipping on to this rope and Phurkipa had duplicated my warning board in Nepalese for their benefit. Barney, acting decisively, managed to dash down to the scene of the accident with two good Sherpas and succeeded in rescuing the suspended porter. He then took all the Sherpas from Camp 1 down to Base Camp by a circuitous and hazardous route. He saw no sign of Tony Tighe on the way, however, and he didn’t think that there was another route through the chaos. It was obvious to us all that Tony had been buried.
As Mick Burke and Dave Bathgate were the freshest of our group they volunteered to go up and conduct a quick search. It was already late but they set off with some Sherpas. The Icefall was bathed in moonlight when they arrived at the scene. Crazy shadows reached out from the séracs and the crevasses were black slits. In the moonlight they could see that some of the séracs were still in a critical state, leaning Pisa-tower-like, which to any experienced mountaineer spells death. There was no sign of Tony, only the ominous grinding of the mills of the Icefall. Mick Burke said afterwards that being amidst that scene of destruction was the most frightening experience of his life.
Though Barney had taken all the Sherpas from Camp 1 down with him to Base Camp the previous day, there had still been fourteen Sherpas at Camp 2 doing a final clear up. They had now reached Camp 1 and somehow they had to be taken down. Also a further search for Tony was required in the stark light of day. Doug Scott and I volunteered to do this; Dougal had taken Tony’s death badly and had gone down to Pherichi to be on his own.
The scene at the lonely hanging rope was one of devastation. It was as if the immediate area had been subjected to saturation bombing. As Dave and Mick had reported, some of the ice towers were ready to fall at any minute, but when we picked our way under these, we tried to take our minds off the danger and made as systematic a search as possible. We had taken several Sherpas up and they were obviously terrified. So were we, but we tried not to show it.
As we neared Camp 1 Doug complained of a headache and pain in his eyes and I thought he must have got snow blindness. Eventually, we reached Camp 1 to be greeted by the remaining Sherpas who had spent the night there, having arrived after Barney and his group had left. They had tried to go down through the fall, but had turned back at the site of the danger.
We quickly made up loads to take back to Base, leaving all but the most essential equipment. The Sherpas, who normally leave nothing of even the slightest value on the mountain, raised no objection. I was concerned for Doug; his sight was deteriorating and I tried to contact Base on the walkie-talkie but without any luck. I thought extra manpower on the lower stretch of the Icefall would help us.
We retraced our route through the great blocks of ice, a valley of death. I remember at the time thinking that it looked like the destruction of a city of glass. Though we also searched on the descent there was no sign of Tony. There was no question of his being alive under such debris; the smallest of the ice blocks must have weighed several tons. We threaded our way down under a broiling sun, for the Everest Icefall can be one of the hottest places on earth in mid-morning.
Two years later we were back again, with Chris’s 1975 expedition to the South-West Face. Now we were successful, with Doug and Dougal first to reach the summit, but tragically this time it was Mick Burke who lost his life. Mick was always a prickly customer, but it was Mick who, with Dave Bathgate, had unhesitatingly gone up to look for Tony that night and it was Mick, too, years before, who had played his part on the dramatic rescue on the West Face of the Dru in Chamonix in the French Alps.
Dougal was later killed in a skiing accident close to his home in Switzerland. Doug called at my house in Glencoe shortly afterwards when I was out, but he left a bottle of wine belayed to my front door handle. Attached to it was a note: “Take care, youth, there’s not many of us left.”
The Three-Hundred-Metre Fall
Marek Brniak
Polish mountaineers have a reputation for incredible toughness. Most of their high-mountain training is done in their native Tatras, a jagged range which they share with Czechoslovakia. Marek Brniak is a mountaineer, journalist and member of a rescue group which has been on many High Tatra rescues. Toughness is not a monopoly of the male climber, however, and in this tale we have a heroine. It is a story set in February 1977.
A hostile wind scoured the frozen lake below us. Swaying under huge loads, Jan and I staggered down in a maelstrom of driving snow, our clothing creaking and our beards encrusted in rime.
The great climbing days were at an end. Dim but welcoming lights from the Morskie Oko Refuge loomed ahead, inviting us to come and recharge our emaciated bodies with hot bigos and beer. Heads low into the blast, soapflake snow fluffing to our knees; a few more steps and we flung our heavy packs on to the floor of the log hut.
The place was packed and steamy, yet, tired as we were, we immediately sensed something was wrong. There was an unmistakably expectant tension. A shaggy-looking individual sitting at a nearby bench, eating soup with black bread, told us what it was all about.
“Something happened to a couple on Mieguszowiecki, you know. It’s Eva and Tomek, they’re on the North Face. Last night they were to signal from their bivvy to report progress and that all was well. When there was no signal we assumed that their torch had gone on the blink. But in the morning Eva’s boyfriend was getting worried and went to the bottom of the wall. He could see nothing through the snow storm. About an hour ago, some hikers called in here to say that they had heard someone calling for help.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the warden’s quarters at the end of the building. “The news has been radioed down to the rescue team in Zakopane. They’re due any minute.”
I took my place in the beer queue, always a respectable length at this time of day, especially with foul weather clamping in and little p
rospect of climbing. I glanced round the room again. On the surface everything appeared normal. There were girls in bright anoraks, men in warm climbing clothes, overweight hillwalkers and lean ones, some cheerful, others looking tired out. They were eating, talking, playing cards, reading. Someone was soulfully strumming a guitar. Fire danced in the stoves and the aroma of cooking mingled with the odour of wet greasy wool and the smell of wood smoke. Clothing and sleeping bags were drying, hung from the walls and draped over benches. Candle wax was splattered over the pine tables.
I had a feeling that these people didn’t want to accept their misgivings, their fears that an accident could happen to them too. I know only too well that in situations such as this people often mask their true thoughts with boisterousness and an overstrained jollity.
Stawowy, the rescue team leader, appeared and was forming a party of volunteers to back up his own professional men, who hadn’t yet arrived. The volunteers were out on the verandah sorting out equipment.
Jan and I had just realised our dream of bigos when we heard the deep throb of the rescue team’s four-wheel-drive trucks approaching. In a few moments the white pencils of their headlamps swept the refuge and the verandah swarmed with the men of the Blue Cross.
The Blue Cross is the Polish Mountain Rescue emblem. They were an impressive-looking bunch, with neat matching jackets and breeches that gave them an almost military air. Most of them were Górale, the local highlanders, who are tough dedicated men. They take great pride in their profession, feeling that to be a member of the rescue team is a special honour. Their roots run deep in the Tatra rescue service, the association being one of the oldest of its kind in the world. At one time they were volunteers, now they are full-time professionals financed by the state.