Summit 8000 Read online

  It didn’t occur to me to pay someone to guide me up Everest, as many people do today. I’d always experienced adventure on my own terms, and I wanted to learn to be a climber and to climb the mountain under my own steam. Letting someone else take the responsibility and leadership away from me would be anathema. I would climb Everest completely under my own ability and resources, or not at all. I felt strongly that if I were to succeed in testing myself on the world’s highest peak, I would prepare thoroughly, and be fully capable of surviving in the harshest environment on Earth. No problem.

  Within a few months I’d arranged a transfer in the police force to a plain clothes investigations squad back in Sydney and joined both the Sydney Rock Climbing Club and the Army Alpine Association, better known as the AAA. I immediately threw myself into the rock climbing, and loved it. I climbed on every possible weekend or day off from work. The Blue Mountains, two hours west of Sydney, became my regular destination and I left many a piece of skin and more than a little blood on its raw sandstone bluffs over the ensuing years.

  With my rock-climbing skills coming along well, I needed to learn how to apply them to the alpine environment. As Australia lacks any serious mountains, I booked a mountaineering course in the Mount Cook National Park in New Zealand. The New Zealand alps are probably the most underrated alpine training ground in the world. Set on the west coast of the south island, they rise very steeply from the coast to the highest summit of Mount Cook at 3750 metres. Not significant in altitude—although certainly enough to give you a headache—they’re still substantial mountains, given that their base is almost at sea level.

  The course was everything I’d hoped for. The instructors taught us to apply rock-climbing techniques to ice and snow, to assess avalanche risk, to survive blizzards and to rescue one another from crevasses. It was exhausting and at times intimidating but totally exhilarating. I was hooked on this new sport, and I regularly returned to the New Zealand alps over the next few years, developing my skills for bigger mountains and more serious climbs.

  Invariably I wanted to push harder and longer than my climbing partners and I soon ran out of willing victims at home. I found myself just turning up at Mount Cook village and climbing with whomever I could find in the campground or bar at the village. Mount Cook was a climbers’ hub and it was pretty much guaranteed that I’d find someone with good skills to team up with.

  On one of those trips, I joined a highly accomplished rock climber from Australia, Lucas Trihey, for a climb up a couloir—a steep, narrow gully—on a peak called Mount Darwin. We set out at midnight, the usual ‘alpine start’ in New Zealand, to give ourselves enough time to climb to the top and back down the peak before the heat of the afternoon made avalanche conditions too risky.

  After crossing a glacier below the mountain, we started up the long and sustained couloir, using a ‘running belay’—a technique where both climbers are tied together and move in unison up the mountain. The lead climber places protection along the way, which the second climber retrieves when he reaches it in order for it to be used again higher on the mountain. While the safety benefit is less than that afforded by belays from fixed stances, a running belay allows for significantly faster climbing. Hour after hour passed as we forced our way up the never-ending steep snow and rock gully and, by the time we finally reached the top, it was right on dusk.

  A storm was forming and we couldn’t see the way down, so we elected to bivouac on the summit. There wasn’t enough snow to dig a shelter and we had only lightweight fleece jackets. Although we had no down clothing or sleeping bags, we were carrying survival bivouac sacks for shelter. After building a low wall of rock and snow to block some of the wind, we climbed into our respective sacks for what we knew would be a chilly night.

  Chilly? It was bloody freezing! We lay head to foot because the summit was so small. At one point I was shivering so violently I thought I’d lose control, but then Lucas started rubbing his feet up and down my back. That little bit of friction made quite a difference and I regained composure and persevered through the night.

  By the next morning the storm had cleared, and we emerged chilled and appreciative of the sun’s warmth. I thanked Lucas for rubbing his feet on my back in the middle of the night as it had really helped me. To my surprise, he responded, ‘I didn’t do it to help you. I was just so cold that I lost control and my legs started shaking!’

  We were both pleased to learn later that we’d opened a new route on the mountain by completing that ascent.

  *

  My first opportunity to experience significant altitude came in 1987, when the AAA organised a seven-week expedition to climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. McKinley is a big hill, standing 6194 metres, with its base camp starting point on an ice runway at an altitude of just 2150 metres, making an ascent of 4 vertical kilometres, more than most Himalayan climbs. Our team was big, too, with eleven climbers and a huge amount of equipment. We had to comply with the army’s requirement for a broad range of experience within the team, and to bring enough equipment to deal with every contingency.

  After driving north from Anchorage to the frontier town of Talkeetna, we flew in a Cessna aircraft equipped with skis to the massive Kahiltna Glacier, and from there we launched the climb. For the first month, on skis and towing sleds laden heavily with two months’ worth of tents, rope, food, fuel and all the extras, we ferried loads up a broad ridge on the mountain known as the West Buttress. This is the easiest route on the mountain and the majority of people going to McKinley attempt it. For us, though, it was only to be our acclimatisation phase, before we’d descend the mountain and traverse to the base of the more technical West Rib route, up which we intended to climb to the summit.

  Although not an 8000er, McKinley is still a formidable challenge, with temperatures regularly dropping below minus 40 degrees Celsius, and wind speeds of 100 kilometres per hour or more. That sort of wind chill freezes exposed flesh instantly, and frostbite is one of the most common injuries on McKinley.

  At the 4270-metre Camp 3, the team split, with four climbers electing to continue up the easier West Buttress route to the summit and forgo the West Rib challenge. The remaining seven of us, by then fully acclimatised, returned to our advance base camp on the Kahiltna Glacier and traversed around the mountain to the West Rib.

  A massive ridge of rock, snow and ice, and steeper than the West Buttress, the West Rib is difficult to get to, with a major field of crevasses at its base. For reasons best known only to himself, the leader elected Matt Godbold and me, the least experienced mountaineer on the team, to tackle the main challenge of fixing rope up a 600-metre couloir at the base of the West Rib. It took us two days to carry the hundreds of metres of rope up the gully and anchor it to the snow and ice so the rest of the team could follow safely.

  As it was my first experience of climbing with huge exposure below me on the steep face of a major mountain, it was an education. Like rock climbing, the focus required was almost meditative as we tentatively picked our way up the long, exposed gully, hyper-vigilant for loose snow or rock that could cause a fall or avalanche. At the top, we revelled in our accomplishment.

  When the team joined us, we pushed further up, eagerly seeking the thinner air with every step. For us, this was an unknown world. Altitude headaches pounded, nausea was a constant companion, and the cold, the bitter cold, cut through every layer of clothing. When, after some days climbing higher and higher, we made our dash for the summit, I was literally drunk from the altitude as my brain struggled to cope with the lack of oxygen. It took all my focus to stay on my feet and not topple from the mountain. I would learn, however, that headaches are just the introduction to high altitude.

  A short distance from the top, as I stopped to rest, I felt, or perhaps even heard, what seemed like the bursting of a blood vessel in my head. Instantly I felt a pinpoint pain and knew that something was seriously wrong. It was more than a little disconcerting, as I didn’
t know exactly what had happened or just how serious it might be, so I was quite pleased that I didn’t simply drop dead. There was nothing I could do to treat the injury near the summit of the mountain, but I knew that I had to get out of the high altitude so I immediately started to descend. It would take several days for the headache to ease and I just hoped that it wouldn’t kill me before I could get back to civilisation and see a doctor.

  Tired and feeling quite poorly, I had little patience for the plastic sled on which I was towing a heavy load. As we skied down the mountain, the sled kept sliding past me and then rolling over and stopping dead, which acted like an anchor and brought me abruptly crashing to the ground. After a couple of days of this, I lost my temper at the top of a massive slope known as Heartbreak Hill. I undid the tow rope and kicked the sled down the hill, expecting it to run for 20 or 30 metres and then roll over and stop. No such luck—the bloody thing flew down the hill in a perfectly straight line, all the way to the bottom.

  Before I could congratulate myself on a good decision, it suddenly veered sideways and shot out onto a broad crevasse-ridden basin about 50 metres off the track. It was my own fault, but inanimate objects that don’t perform the way they’re meant to bring me to a fit of rage. If I hadn’t kicked it down the slope I would probably have hacked it to pieces with my ice axe.

  From my position at the top of the hill I could see the faint lines under the snow that indicated major crevasses beneath. But I had to retrieve the sled as it had group gear as well as my own. At the bottom of the slope I skied ever so tenuously, heart in mouth, over to the sled, reattached it to my harness and gently picked my way back to the safety of the track. I vowed to keep control of my temper in future—at least on the mountains—as the odd malfunctioning computer has still been known to achieve free flight at my house.

  The ski plane out from the mountain deposited us back in Talkeetna, where we installed ourselves in the town bar, the Fairview Inn. A character-filled establishment, it is the perennial watering hole for visiting mountaineers, resident daredevil mountain pilots and locals. In the mood to celebrate, the team made up for our long abstinence, and before long it wasn’t just the locals who couldn’t understand what we were slurring.

  On the wall at one end of the bar hung a large, fairly kitsch painting of Denali National Park, with Mount McKinley in the distance and a brown bear standing proudly in the foreground. Over the years, climbers from about ten different nationalities had stuck cocktail flags from their drinks into the summit of the mountain. Not surprisingly, the US flag was at the top of the cluster. With alcohol-fuelled enthusiasm, one of our number suddenly jumped onto the bar, pulled the US flag from the summit of the mountain and stuck it into the bear’s bum. Not a good move, given the more than 2-metre stature of the lumberjack-like locals, whose pickup trucks sported enough bear-killing firepower to take on the entire Australian Army, let alone seven of its more inebriated representatives! We climbed over each other to replace the flag to its rightful place as quickly as possible, while throwing all the money we had into a pile to shout the bar. An international incident was avoided, although it would have been a very short-lived incident.

  Back in Australia, a CAT scan indicated that all was okay in my brain, but the doctors weren’t able to tell me what had occurred or whether it could happen again. However, I knew that I’d been very lucky to survive some kind of altitude-induced event. If I was to continue climbing at altitude I could not suffer another impact like that and I reflected on why it had happened to me and not other climbers in the team. The key point concerned the different speeds at which our team members had acclimatised on the expedition. I’d suffered altitude sickness and headaches more than most, despite following the same routine as the more experienced climbers. If I were to continue climbing these hills, I would need to ensure that I acclimatised at my own rate and not allow myself to be forced to follow others’ agendas. Mountains demand flexibility, not rigid adherence to itineraries.

  I had made some great friends on that trip, particularly Matt Godbold and Mike Pezet, and we continued to climb together for many years. Back home I threw myself into rock climbing with even greater gusto, attacking every route I could climb in the Blue Mountains. I also climbed further afield, including on the wildly exposed and unprotected slabs of Booroomba near Canberra, Frog Buttress in Queensland, and Australia’s rock-climbing mecca, Mount Arapiles. In doing so I formed new friendships as I discovered a kinship with people from all walks of life who enjoyed this strange sport.

  I loved the physicality of climbing—the careful execution of precise moves, balancing precariously on tiny edges, limbs stretched and every muscle tensed. And I revelled in applying the mechanical systems involved in climbing—placing protection that would jam in a crack and hold me if I fell; advanced techniques for belaying and, if necessary, rescuing my climbing partners if they fell; and self-rescue systems if my partner couldn’t help me.

  The real discovery for me, though, was within—finding the mental strength to push through personal fear and overcome the intimidation of leading climbs on vertical cliff faces, and forcing myself to commit to moves where any failure of my climbing equipment or a mistake by my belayer would be fatal for me. I came to relish that feeling of personal achievement. The greater the fear, the greater the victory when complete.

  The skills I developed would save many lives, including mine, in the years ahead.

  2

  A TASTE OF THIN AIR

  Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.

  Robert Macfarlane

  IN 1988 I made my first visit to Nepal to attempt a peak called Mount Pumori, which sits immediately adjacent to Mount Everest. Pumori means ‘beautiful daughter’ and, despite being completely dwarfed by the matriarch of the Himalaya, Pumori is a significant mountain at 7161 metres. It is a striking peak with a quintessential pyramid shape. I was twenty-six years old, and this was my first trip to a non-Western country. I was in for a shock.

  In the streets of Kathmandu I saw horribly disfigured beggars sitting metres from the opulent hotels where foreigners scurried, trying in vain to avert their eyes. But at the same time there was no better place to experience the hectic, bustling madness of an Asian city, with overloaded rickshaws, their horns constantly blaring, racing wildly through market streets packed with pedestrians, somehow avoiding dogs, children, chickens, cows and monks. I was quickly won over by the peaceful, friendly nature of the people and their acceptance of life, whatever their status, in this richly cultural but financially stricken country.

  There was one aspect of Asia, though, for which I was completely unprepared: the hygiene, or rather the lack of it. I picked up a succession of stomach ailments that stayed with me for the whole two months we were in Nepal and for some time afterwards. I have never been so sick. Course after course of antibiotics treated first one affliction, then another. By the time we started climbing, I’d lost more weight than I’d expected to lose over the course of the entire expedition. I spent most of my time at base camp, throwing up or bent double with stomach cramps.

  Another new experience for me was the expedition puja ceremony, where a Tibetan Buddhist monk is engaged, either at base camp or at a monastery en route, to seek from the gods safe passage for the climbers during their expedition. This was my first real experience of another culture’s beliefs. Food and drink were offered to the gods, and our ice axes and crampons, which would come into contact with the mountain, were blessed. For almost an hour the monk recited chants from an ancient handwritten prayer book, enclosed in slim, timber slats tied with string. I felt powerfully linked to the spirituality of the ceremony and that feeling has increased over the many puja ceremonies I’ve attended since.

  The south ridge of Pumori is very steep and provides few locations for campsites. Our first camp, at 6000 metres, was a tiny ledge hacked out of an ice ridge at the top of a near-vertical ice face. It was so narrow that
the edges of the tent hung over each side, with a 600-metre drop to the glacier below. It was exciting stuff, although we were careful not to toss and turn too much in our sleeping bags in that tent.

  To progress beyond the tents, we climbed along the ridge, but the way was soon blocked by 3-metre cornices—great mushrooms of wind-blown ice that accumulate on exposed ridges and dislodge easily—and we were forced to drop over the edge, onto the steep face below. Within a short distance, that way was also blocked and we had to dig a tunnel for several metres straight through the ridge to the face on the other side. The ice wasn’t too hard here and it only took a few hours to hack through the ridge. But it was hugely exposed on each side and very intimidating to gaze down to the glaciers below. This was real alpine climbing and I thrilled at the adventure.

  A couple of weeks after we’d started climbing, we were joined at our Base Camp by a small Norwegian–English team, whose four members were hoping to climb the same route as us. There were so few locations for tents on our ridge that we told them they’d have to wait until we were finished—potentially a month or more—or else climb another route. They chose the latter and found a steep and very challenging line on Pumori’s south-west face.

  For a while it was fun to look across and watch them, mere specks on a massive expanse of rock and ice as they worked their way up the mountain. Then one day we couldn’t see them. A few days later we learned that the leading pair of climbers had disappeared. Their teammates organised a Nepalese army helicopter to search the mountain face and the glacier below, but no sign of the two was ever found.

  Somewhat sobered, my team continued, and a bold dash to the top saw four of our seven members reach the summit. Their descent was successful but not without cost. One teammate, Armando Corvini, had suffered from cold feet during the climb and had added extra layers of socks to compensate. This complicated the issue, compressing his feet inside his already tight boots. The restricted blood flow and the freezing temperatures caused both frostbite and trench foot. As we peeled off his blood-soaked socks back at base camp, the entire soles of his feet fell away. He had to be carried back to civilisation by yak.