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  LIFE AND DEATH WITH AUSTRALIA’S MASTER OF THIN AIR

  SUMMIT

  8000

  ANDREW LOCK

  MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

  715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

  [email protected]

  www.mup.com.au

  First published 2014

  This edition published in 2016

  Text © Andrew Lock, 2014

  Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2016

  This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

  Cover design by Phil Campbell

  Typeset in Bembo 12/15.5pt by Cannon Typesetting

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Lock, Andrew, author.

  Summit 8000: life and death with Australia’s master of thin air/

  Andrew Lock.

  9780522871050 (pbk)

  9780522871067 (ebook)

  Includes index.

  Lock, Andrew.

  Mountaineers—Australia—Biography.

  Mountaineering.

  796.522092

  TO MY MOTHER, who for over twenty years stoically waved me goodbye, then acted as my personal assistant, answering my mail and paying my bills, all the time waiting for the dreaded phone call that said there was no point paying them any more.

  To those genuinely passionate climbers who followed their dreams purely for the spirit of the adventure but did not survive to tell their own stories and whose losses in great numbers have gone largely unnoticed.

  To three specific individuals, and all those like them in Scouts and other volunteer organisations, who give their time to inspire and develop the youth of this country: Adrian Cooper OAM, who introduced me to the thrill of outdoor adventuring; Bob King, who nurtured my outdoor passion through leadership and guidance; and Geoff Chapman, whose altruism and unceasing belief in me enabled and motivated me to keep going.

  Thank you, all.

  CONTENTS

  The 8000ers and Map

  Foreword

  Prologue: 30 July 1993

  1 Beginnings

  2 A Taste of Thin Air

  3 The Savage Mountain

  4 Frustration

  5 Turning the Key

  6 Summits and Betrayals

  7 A Dream Realised

  8 A Higher Goal

  9 High-Altitude Hollywood

  10 Good Days and Bad

  11 A Big Day Out

  12 The Most Dangerous Mountain in the World

  13 Getting Close

  14 Finish Line

  15 The Next Step

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary of Mountaineering Terms

  Index

  The 8000ers

  There are fourteen peaks in the world whose tops reach above 8000 metres, and it is these that mountaineers refer to as the ‘8000ers’. The altitude into which they tower is so extreme that it is known as the ‘death zone’, where climbers must reach their goal and descend in a matter of hours before their bodies shut down and they literally die from ‘thin air’.

  The 8000ers are not to be confused with the ‘Seven Summits’, which are the highest peaks on each of earth’s seven continents. Everest is one of those seven summits—it is the highest mountain on the continent of Asia—but the rest of the seven summits are lower than 7000 metres and as low as 2200 metres, in the case of Mt Kosciusko in Australia. The 8000ers are all to be found in the Himalayan and Karakorum mountain ranges of South Asia—India, Nepal, Tibet, China and Pakistan. The most westerly 8000er, Nanga Parbat, stands just above Pakistan’s Indus valley and the most easterly, Kanchenjunga, sits 2400 kilometres to the southeast, just above Darjeeling on Nepal’s eastern border with India.

  FOREWORD

  MOUNTAINEERING IS AN apex sport and as Hemingway apparently put it, ‘all the others are merely games’. So where do mountaineers go to reach the pinnacle of their sport? The incomparable Himalayas.

  The world’s fourteen highest mountains all exceed the 8000-metre mark (or just over 26 000 feet) and they are all in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges of Pakistan, China and Nepal. They are by far the tallest mountains on the planet. Shards of stone pushed higher than all the rest by extraordinary tectonic forces. Everest leads the pack by a commanding 250 metres over K2. (By comparison North America’s highest mountain, Mount McKinley, is 6194 metres and 2600 metres lower than Everest.) For mountaineers these huge Himalayan peaks—Kanchenjunga, Nanga Parbat, K2, Annapurna—are the stage where much dramatic history is acted out; they are the battle grounds of the ‘conquistadors of the useless’, as Lionel Terray aptly described his chosen pursuit.

  By a strange quirk these great peaks that penetrate into the jetstream also coincide with the maximum physiological altitude that we humans can attain. In 1953 when my father and Tenzing first climbed Everest, the physiologists of the day debated whether it was even possible for humans to reach 8800 metres. So why take the risk? George Mallory put it most simply—and perhaps most memorably—when asked in 1924 during a press conference and a succession of mind-numbing questions about his motivations for why he would attempt to climb Mount Everest. ‘Because it is there,’ he said. And while climbing it may be a human contrivance, its presence is as genuine and beckoning as the Atlantic was to Columbus. And now we all know we can achieve these goals and this knowledge opens the doors to individual possibility. You can go there too! If you have the grit and the blinkered focus.

  Mountaineering in the modern era tackled issues to do with style and philosophy. ‘Alpine style’ changed the mode of ascent more than anything before. Bold and purist teams of unsupported climbers pushed elegant lines up the great mountains without oxygen and logistical support. The great exponents of this development were people like Hermann Buhl, Reinhold Messner, Jerzy Kukuczka, Jean Troillet and Doug Scott, who made numerous astonishing climbs that changed the way mountaineers saw what was possible.

  Interestingly, the current era in mountaineering has transformed substantially into everything from media stunts, commercially guided groups enabling ambitious CEOs to tag the top, speed ascents up prepared routes strung with rope, capsule style climbing, alpine style and bold solos by outstanding practitioners of Himalayan alpinism. You shouldn’t judge the media reports from Mount Everest today as being typical of Himalayan climbing, as they are not and Andrew’s story illustrates this well. Today all these expeditions are equipped with satellite telephones and internet connections. These distractions have made Himalayan mountaineering more complex and less focused; more summit-driven and less interested in climbing excellence. There is nothing wrong with it but the media soap operas are not the leading edge of the sport.

  The popular ‘seven summits’ (the highest peak on each continent) campaigns are, with the exception of Everest, more of an exciting adventure travelogue than a climbing-fest (and I completed the seven as a consolation prize when I couldn’t complete all the 8000ers I wanted to climb). By comparison the small number of mountaineers who have climbed all the fourteen 8000-metre peaks are the ‘real thing.’ The leaders in this quest climbed their mountains by establishing new routes and pushed frontiers like no one had before. They were armed with
superb technical skills, extensive alpine experience and an astonishing determination—Reinhold Messner of Italy, Jerzy Kukuczka of Poland and Erhard Loretan of Switzerland. They showed us, on their separate expeditions, what could be accomplished. They are to mountaineers what the 8000-metre peaks are to the Appalachian Mountains or the hills of Ben Nevis. They are giants.

  You never conquer an 8000-metre mountain giant. At best, you thread a line through its hazards to the summit where you simply turn around, for this is half way. The technicalities of descent are bedeviled by fatigue and wandering concentration. Gravity prowls the flanks of the peak; it neither holds dear nor respects innocence or reputation. But this is why we come, to tread the line of jeopardy and to assume responsibility for our own actions.

  This game is about commitment. Once in, you must go the distance. As Rob Hall told me once: ‘To summit an 8000-metre peak you must be pushy. Even on a good day. But if you are too pushy you won’t come home.’

  Andrew’s ambitions have been as steeply inclined as the peaks themselves. Because when you are out there—tired, frightened, thirsty—the only real companion you have is you. ‘You are all you have!’ That’s a very fundamental realisation and not many of us want to go there.

  When you see this man’s eyes … you know he has.

  Peter Hillary

  May 2014

  www.peterhillary.com

  Peter has climbed Mount Everest twice and his father Edmund Hillary

  made the first ascent with Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

  Peter is on the board of the Australian Himalayan Foundation.

  PROLOGUE: 30 JULY 1993

  FALLING! A nearly vertical ramp. I flail desperately with my ice axe, but it bounces off impenetrable rock and the abyss below rushes at me like a black hole that sucks everything into its void.

  I thrash desperately, clawing at the thin covering of soft, wet snow—my only hope of stopping the fall. The bottom of the rock ramp is just metres away, and below that is a vertical drop of over a thousand metres. Still sliding, I kick my feet out wide, using my legs to catch more of the snow beneath me. It’s a risk—if I build up too much snow underneath me, I’ll topple over backwards and lose all control. But it’s a risk worth taking—if I don’t stop right now, I am dead anyway.

  Nothing. Still sliding. A thought flashes through my mind: Christ, it’s all over …

  Then I sense the slightest slowing, almost unnoticeable. The snow beneath me forms a small wedge between my legs. The buildup between my arms gives me enough balance so I don’t topple backwards. Slowing, slowing … stopped.

  Temporarily safe, my body remains in overdrive. I gasp so fast that I literally scream for breath. Sucking in great frozen lungfuls, I cough violently as the cold, dry air tears at my throat. My heart pounds so hard my chest hurts.

  I latch on to the mountain like a drowning man clutches a plank. Get yourself together. Get control. Ever so gradually the tension eases—my heart slows, my reeling head steadies, my gasping reverts to simple panting. I cough again and spit thick, bloody sputum into the ice in front of me. My face drops into the mess, but I don’t care. Breathing is all that matters.

  I am still alive. Still. For this has not been an isolated slip that nearly ended badly, it’s been my descent for the last hour. A frantic, desperate series of uncontrolled leaps of faith. No, not faith, but hope. Hope that I will stop in time. Hope that I will slow before I pick up so much speed that I cannot. It is a hope born of hopelessness, as there is no other way down. I can stay up here and die in the thin air, or take my chances.

  I am unprepared for this. I’ve spent too long at high altitude. I’m tired and dehydrated, exhausted from what has already been eighteen hours of climbing above 8000 metres without supplementary oxygen. I’m way too inexperienced to have any right to be here. This has been my first successful 8000-metre summit, and it is on the majestic but notorious K2, which sits on the border between Pakistan and China. I can already hear the veterans laugh: ‘You climbed K2 for your first 8000-metre summit? Are you crazy?’ Maybe.

  All that’s on my mind right now, though, is survival. I’ve already seen the results of a K2 expedition gone wrong. He’s lying frozen and lifeless at our Camp 4, and I’m struggling simply to get down to the relative safety of that high-altitude cemetery. The mountain has turned nasty, and the slope we’d climbed earlier in the day is now virtually unable to be down-climbed, because the softening snow gives no purchase and the smooth rock underneath it is as hard as steel. There is simply nothing to hold on to.

  Just to my right is the end of the rope that we’d anchored to the face earlier this morning on our way up. We’d only been carrying 40 metres and had placed it on the most dangerous part of the climb, a traverse under a giant cliff of ice. My hand is shaking, more from adrenaline than from the piercing cold, as I reach out, ever so carefully, to clip a sling to it, fearful that even the slightest movement will dislodge me. I slump gratefully to let it take my weight, the security like a mother’s comforting embrace.

  My desire to sleep is almost overwhelming and I must snap my mind back to consciousness. With the safety of the rope I traverse across to another steep chute known as the Bottleneck, which leads down to a broad ice face below. Unclipping from the rope, I carefully kick each step and place the ice pick as though my life depends on it, which it most certainly does. I find that I am talking myself through every movement: ‘Focus … Look for a good handhold. Don’t relax now. Focus. Check that rock—is it loose? Get rid of it. Okay, step down. Easy … Easy. Okay, get the pick in.’

  This isn’t a sign of madness but a habit that I’ve kept up throughout my climbing career. It is when you are descending from a summit, exhausted beyond comprehension, that you must think the most clearly. Having put every bit of energy into the ascent, many climbers have nothing left in reserve when they turn to go down again. So they relax, take shortcuts, make mistakes. And die.

  I tell myself I will not relax, take shortcuts or make mistakes, and with every downward step, the angle of the slope lessens, until at last I am able to face out and walk the rest of the way back down to Camp 4. It is surreal descending these slopes in the dark of night, alone on the massive mountain face, having just survived the most dangerous experience of my life. The summit was good, but survival is even better, and I luxuriate in the feel of every breath, the warmth of my down suit, the energy of life.

  I am in good spirits as I approach the tent. It is 11.30 p.m. and I’ve been on the go for almost twenty hours. Two of my teammates, Anatoli and Peter, descended from the summit ahead of me, and as I reach the tent I hope that they’ve melted enough snow on the stove to give me the drink I desperately need.

  There is rustling in the tent and I hear Anatoli’s voice: ‘Peter, is that you?’

  ‘No, it’s Andrew,’ I reply, a little confused.

  Anatoli’s shocked face immediately appears through the tent door. I stop moving, a sense of dread suddenly upon me.

  Peter had left the summit with Anatoli. You can’t get lost on this route. If he’d stopped to rest, I’d have seen him in the bright moonlight. If I haven’t passed him, then he is no longer on the mountain. We scan the slopes above us, but there is no sign of another human life.

  So exhausted that it takes me twenty minutes just to remove my crampons, I crawl into the tent, hoping that I’d somehow passed Peter as he rested. But I know deep within me that the worst has happened.

  I am wrong, however. The worst is just beginning.

  1

  BEGINNINGS

  But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

  ‘To Risk’, William Arthur Ward

  I WASN’T BORN to mountaineering—far from it. With my two brothers, Dave (two years older) and Stew (six years younger), I grew up in the Sydney suburb of Killara. Our parents, Don and Margaret, sent us to the prestigious private school Sydney Grammar.

  Dad was keen for his sons to get into careers that
earned big money. As an only child who had grown up during the Depression, he had experienced genuine poverty after his own father had died when Dad was only five. Dad left school early and gained a trade as a fitter and turner. Desperate to build a better life, however, he put himself through night school, emerging as a manager and moving quickly into a career as a management consultant. Ultimately, he became a founding member of the Australian Institute of Management Consultants—a ‘poor boy done good’. Apart from his work, Dad also loved real estate. He excelled at identifying outstanding real-estate opportunities, buying beautiful but dilapidated houses on Sydney’s north shore and renovating them. In this way he provided our family with comfortable homes, as well as substantial profits on each purchase.

  I was different. I could never quite embrace a perspective that focused primarily on money and image. Indeed, throughout my life I have struggled to desire anything more than basic financial security. Life was what could be experienced after school and after work, away from career, family and society’s expectations. This was the cause of lifelong tension between Dad and me, and I never bonded with him in the way my brothers did.

  A teacher and then a publisher’s assistant editor, Mum was the emotional rock of our family and kept us going through all the turbulence of life. It was left to her to raise the family as Dad spent considerable periods away from home on work projects. A strict disciplinarian, she was quick to reach for the strap any time it was needed. With three wild young men to manage, that strap had quite a workout! But Mum also saw that life was about much more than work alone and encouraged us to engage in the outdoors, the beach and sport. I think my outlook was much more similar to hers than Dad’s, and I also believe I inherited her physical stamina.

  At school, I just didn’t fit in. Although I was athletic and had good physical endurance, I wasn’t a big kid and was no good at the usual sports. Nor could I get interested in my studies. I dreamed constantly of escape, which I found in the Endeavour Club, an outdoor-adventure group headed by one of the teachers, Adrian ‘Ace’ Cooper. I’d already spent some years in the Scouts, which I’d really loved, but the activities had mostly been daytrips. With the Endeavour Club, I did my first multi-day bushwalk over the Easter break of 1974, through the Budawang Range on the south coast of New South Wales.