Summit Fever Read online

  For Mal Duff 1953–97

  Master of revels, only begetter of these ploys.

  Thanks, pal.

  Thanks and much respect also to Sandy, Jon, Tony, Kathleen, Adrian, Alex, without whom no climbing, no fun and no shuffling doss.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Foreword

  Principal characters

  1 It’s There If You. Want It

  A near-stranger makes an outrageous offer.

  2 A Glencoe Massacre

  A novice is initiated.

  3 Sit-ups and Setbacks

  We prepare to bottle up and go.

  4 The Third-World Body-Swerve

  We get all shook up.

  5 Living on Balti Time

  We get a little higher.

  6 Stranded in Askole

  We fall apart and wait for deliverance.

  7 The End of the Beginning

  The Brits pull a fast one, the weak fall by the way, and the Bin-Men make heavy pastry.

  8 Move It on Over

  We learn to step high with Alex.

  9 A Walk on the Wild Side

  The author romps on the sleazy end of the glacier, the Four Aces push open the door, and we play high-altitude cricket.

  10 The White Tiger

  The author goes for his summit.

  11 Summit Fever

  We put it to the touch.

  12 Thunder in the Mountains

  Mal and Tony bale out and Sandy hangs ten.

  13 Coming Down

  We go our ways, the author discovers a new reticence, and Malcolm makes an outrageous offer.

  Postscript

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  Introduction

  In Summit Fever Andrew Greig, performing poet, musician, and novelist, suddenly finds himself in the role of budding amateur mountaineer on an expedition to the Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram. Quite an introduction to climbing! It was to be an attempt on what was once dubbed the unclimbable mountain’ with a disparate bunch of strangers by a man better armed with pen and note-book than cramponed boot and ice axe.

  In truth Andrew Greig’s role was primarily as the expedition writer with a chance to do some high-altitude load-carrying on the way. His task, to chronicle the adventures of the expedition, at first seems an extraordinary one given that by his own admission he had had ‘no mountaineering experience at all’ when Mal Duff cheerily invited him on the trip. The temptation to grab his notes and hurl them in the nearest river might be too powerful to resist. Yet the very fact that he saw this alien world of expeditions and ‘hard core’ Himalayan climbing through wholly innocent eyes gives Summit Fever a refreshingly honest ambience. It is an account by a ‘climber’ with nothing to prove – a rare breed – who has no need to bow to the traditions of understated machismo common to mountain writing and whose appreciation of the high, hard world of the world’s highest mountains is not tainted by the ennui of habitual acquaintance.

  As a portrait of an expedition – warts and all – it is a well-drawn piece with a dramatic and satisfying finale. Clearly written by a poet and not a hard-bitten climber he reveals a sensitive awareness of this strange world. It portrays all the frustrations of a mountaineering expedition – the insanity of third-world bureaucracy, and the surprising drudgery and sheer hard work of Himalayan climbing, the boredom of forever waiting for something to happen and then the explosive frenetic activity when it does, so often likened to warfare – 90 per cent boredom and 10 per cent terror.

  It was odd to read another man’s portrayal of people I have known, since my own knowledge and memory of them, my short experience of their lives, contrast with that of the author. There are however the immediately recognisable traits – the selfishness and wit of Jon, the sensitive determination and philosophic stoicism of Sandy, and Mal’s obdurate refusal to give up on a dream as he stubbornly forged upwards past never-ending false summits. Tony’s scary enthusiasm contrasted with the author’s incompetence and fearful expectations. Even Alex’s crazed Americanisms and the frustrated abuse from Burt are grimly familiar characteristics of so many other expeditions I have been on. I can see a part of all of them in myself, in all of us. Their very ordinariness made them exceptional.

  Summit Fever reminds me of the Alps, and the Bin-man winter, that time and place, and the sense of those days when we seem to be poised breathless on the edge of so many adventures. And we have had them all, and there are, for those that remain, more to come and fond memories of the past. Also, it reminds me of that winter of endless reggae beat and the excited enthusiasm for what could be, and the price we might have to pay.

  Now Mal’s gone, and so many others besides, and one still wonders whether it was all worth it. Summit Fever prompts the questions and doubts in me and reveals a fundamental truth – that it has always been a magnificent obsession, an inescapable adventure, something which blesses the participants with a special aura, a confidence which hints at great things yet be done, if one only tries. I don’t think Mal ever lost that exciting expectancy for what life had to offer, or ever stopped trying.

  With Mal Duff’s death at Everest base camp this spring, Summit Fever is an especially poignant read. The whole idea of the Mustagh Tower expedition, and therefore the book, came from Mal, and despite all the chaotic, disorganised mess with which the expedition started, it was down to him and him alone that it ever finished. Andrew Greig’s description of Mal’s determination and proud competitiveness raised a wry smile of recognition and a sad thought that he will no longer be around. I remember his humour and unfailing optimism when the two of us made such a hash of descending Pachermo in 1992 and I got all smashed up and bleeding again. Mal was mortified that he had fallen and quite dismissive of the fact that he had saved my life. I’ll never forget him handing me his pen-knife with a mischievous laugh as he started to lower me towards the distant col, nor Liz saying years later, ‘It’s your turn to lower him now,’ as we talked of the funeral arrangements, and with Andrew Greig and many friends we did just that one sunny day in the cemetery of Culross churchyard. Maybe his favourite quotation from the Duke of Montrose says something of the life he chose to live.

  He either fears his fate too much

  or his deserts are small,

  that dares not put it to the touch

  to win or lose it all.

  Joe Simpson

  Sheffield, August 1997

  Foreword

  The characters who appear in this book may bear only a passing resemblance to any actual persons living or dead. On a long mountaineering expedition each member becomes a myth to the others, grotesquely enlarged like a Brocken Spectre projected on the mist. Each member has his or her own expedition. This is an account of mine.

  Until the November evening when Mal Duff banged on my window, I was purely an armchair climber, happy to enjoy mountaineering from a comfortable distance. (After that, common sense deserted me.) But I’d found that most climbing books left me vaguely dissatisfied in the same way as the freeze-dried meals we were to eat on the Mustagh Tower – something was always left out.

  Climbing books are written by dedicated climbers, people for whom mountaineering has become second nature and habitual. The result is there is much they have ceased to consciously notice, and an equal amount that they notice but don’t think to mention. They also have to observe the general ethos of mountaineers, and so adopt a certain style towards danger, fear, loneliness, endurance, ambition, exultation – usually jokey exaggeration or complete suppression in favour of purely factual accounts.

  The upshot is that, as with those cursed freeze-drieds, the contents are there but the whole juice and inner substance of the experience is missing. So I have tried to write about this adventure
freshly, as it all happened to me for the first time. Having nothing to prove as a climber, I can afford to be honest about how it felt.

  There is a very narrow ridge to walk between honesty and tact. My companions on this adventure have allowed me generous access to their diaries, time and inner lives. I have tried not to abuse their trust, but without glossing over (as many books naturally do) the emotions, irritations and incidents contained there. Himalayan climbing is an intense experience, and the mountains intensify rather than dissipate emotions. A small group of people are living and striving together in isolation for a long period under a great variety of stresses. Little generosities, selfishnesses and tensions become magnified. One gets it in proportion later, but an honest account of the experience necessitates recording how it felt at the time.

  All climbing, and Himalyan mountaineering in particular, is not just about the final summit push. The preparations, the walk in, the mountain villages, vacant slog, arguments, the porters singing and the stars at night, food, fantasies, memories, personal relations, summit fever, the walk out – all are part of it. It is the totality of the experience that I have tried to pack between the covers of this book.

  Andrew Greig

  South Queensferry February 1985

  Principal characters

  Malcolm Duff A Leader of Men

  Sandy Allan

  Alpine Bin-Men

  Jon Tinker

  Tony Brindle Mr Keen

  Andrew Greig An Author

  Adrian Clifford A Doctor

  Kathleen Jamie An open eye

  Alex Reid An American Slave

  Captain Shokat A Liaison Officer

  Mohammed Ali Changezi A Guiding Star

  Burt Greenspan Mr Phone

  Donna A Climber

  Sybil A Trekker

  Jhaved asnd Abdul Cooks

  Haji Mahdi Headman of Askole

  The Man from Lahore The Man from Lahore

  1

  It’s There If You Want It

  A near-stranger makes an outrageous offer

  17–23 November 1983

  Climbing was something other people did.

  I was quite content that it should stay that way, until one wet November evening Mr Malcolm Duff walked in and turned my life upside down.

  An evening at home in South Queensferry, idly watching television. Kathleen was reading, the wood stove hissed, the cats twitched in their dreams. Life was domestic, cosy and safe – and just a little boring. But what else could we expect? Then a sharp bang on the window made us start. Enter Malcolm: alert, weathered, impelled by restless energy. We’d met briefly twice and he’d reminded me of an army officer who was contemplating becoming an anarchist. He seemed, as always, to be in a hurry; a brief Hi and he went straight to the point.

  ‘It’s there if you want it, Andy.’

  I looked at him blankly. ‘What’s there?’

  ‘The Karakoram trip. The Expedition will buy any gear you need, pay your flight out and any expenses. What you do is climb on the Mustagh Tower with us and write a book about the trip. Rocky’s really keen on the idea.’ He prowled restlessly round our kitchen. ‘Well, what do you think?’

  I couldn’t think. I was running hot and cold together inside, like a mixer tap. Turning away, registering what had been offered yet unable to take it in, I went through the motions of making coffee, asked if he took sugar. That was how little we knew each other. I remembered now a drunken evening over my home-brew, how he’d said he’d liked my book of narrative climbing poems, Men On Ice, that he was going on an expedition to Pakistan. And I’d made some non-sober, non-serious remark about how it would be interesting to go on a mountaineering trip and write about it. And he’d said he would phone a man called Rocky Moss who was financing the climb …

  ‘Er, Malcolm … you do realize my book was purely metaphorical? I can’t climb.’

  For a moment he looked taken aback. ‘I’ll teach you. No problem.’

  ‘And I’m scared of heights. They make me feel ill.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘To heights, or feeling ill?’

  ‘Both.’ The sardonic – satanic – grin was to become all too familiar.

  ‘It’s just …’ Just what? Wonderful? Outrageous. Exciting? Stunning. I played for time and said I’d need to think about it.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied. We leaned against the fridge and chatted for a few minutes. I wasn’t taking in much. He drained his coffee, stubbed his cigarette and made for the door. ‘Let me know inside a week.’ Then he paused, grinned. ‘Go for it, youth,’ he said, and was gone.

  Leaving me sweating, staring through the steam of my mug at a mountain I’d never seen or even heard of – the Somethingorother Tower – waiting for me on the other side of the world. A week to decide.

  What does an armchair climber feel when offered the chance to turn daydream into reality? Incredulity. Euphoria. Panic. Suddenly the routines of ordinary life seem deeply reassuring and desirable. Why leave them? Familiar actions and satisfactions may at times seem bland, but they are sustaining. Armchair daydreams are the salt that gives them savour, nothing more.

  And yet …

  I talked it round and round that evening with Kathleen. She was torn between envy and worry. She didn’t want me to go. She wanted to go herself. I didn’t know what I wanted. If I stayed to finish a radio play – about two climbers, as irony would have it – we could afford to go somewhere interesting, hot and safe.

  As we talked it out, I wondered how often this scene had been enacted. It’s the one the adventure books always omit. Conflicting desires and loyalties, leaving someone behind. Any adventurer who is not a complete hermit must go through that scene. It makes some apparently callous and ruthlessly clear about where their priorities lie.

  I had none of that certainty. Yet how could one turn down an offer like this?

  ‘Try saying No,’ Kathleen suggested.

  I phoned Malcolm the next evening to say I hadn’t made up my mind but maybe it would be a good idea for me to find out more about the Expedition. Such as what, where and who. At the end of five minutes my head was spinning and my notepad was crosshatched with names, dates and places, and some alarming vertical doodles.

  The mountain was called the Mustagh Tower. It had been climbed only twice, and that twenty-eight years ago; we were going for the Joe Brown–Tom Patey route. I tried to make knowledgeable, approving noises. It was just under 24,000 feet high, in the Karakoram which were apparently part of the Himalayas, ‘third turning on the left before K2’. At least I’d heard of that.

  We’d be leaving in June, for two or three months. Our second objective was called Gasherbrum 2, some 26,000 feet high. I was pleased to hear I wasn’t expected to do anything on it. That ‘gash’ bit sounded vicious, and the ‘brum’ was resonant with avalanche. At the moment there were four British lead climbers, a doctor and myself, four Nepalese Sherpas and three Americans whose experience was limited largely to being guided. One of them was the intriguing Rocky Moss who was paying for the trip. I wondered what he had against writers. The plan was to fix ropes on the steep section up to a col at 21,000 feet – that would be my summit – then the lead climbers would try to finish the route, establishing one or two more camps on the way, and the Sherpas would give the less experienced climbers a chance of the top. No oxygen, except two cylinders at Base Camp for emergency medical use. An American Slave, to serve us at Base Camp.

  Even from my limited reading of mountaineering books, it sounded a very strange expedition, more like a circus. I’d never heard of anyone being guided up a demanding Himalayan peak.

  I sat by the fire, frowning at the notepad and trying to memorize the jumble of figures, names and places. They all sounded vague, unlikely, entirely fanciful. Yet these names could acquire faces, the places could be all around me, and they could all become part of the most powerful experience of my life. The rap on the window, the surfeit of home-brew, my book of metaphorica
l climbers, could propel me into the one great adventure we all daydream about.

  Or into fiasco, failure, or worse.

  A week to decide. The world outside me went on, but neglected as a flickering TV during a barroom brawl. I went through the motions of living and working, blind to everything but my inner debate. A couple of climbing acquaintances eagerly filled me in on the quite astonishing variety of ways of croaking in the Himalayas. Falling off the mountain seemed the least of my worries. Strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary oedema, cerebral oedema, frostbite, exposure, pneumonia, stone fall, avalanche, crevasse, mountain torrents and runaway yaks – each with a name and an instance of someone who had been killed that way. Climbers seemed to love good death-and-destruction stories, and at first their humour appears callous and ghoulish.

  I could picture them all, every one. My fingers turned black from frostbite while clenching a fork, ropes parted as I pegged out the washing. I stood on the col bringing in the milk, then was bundled into oblivion by avalanche as I let in the cat. I chided myself for being melodramatic; the truth was I had no idea what I was up against. All I knew was that many people had died in many ways in the Himalayas – how prepared I was to take a chance on it? Life was too pleasant and interesting to lose, yet to turn down an experience like this …

  My enthusiasm diminished noticeably by nightfall. By the time I lay in bed, exhausted by visions of blizzards, bottomless crevasses, collapsing cornices, avalanche, it was clear I wouldn’t go. The only realistic decision. I was not a climber, nor meant to be.

  In the morning, contemplating another quiet day at the typewriter set against the adventure of a lifetime in the great mountains of the world, it was obvious: go, you fool. Enough shifting words around a ghostly inner theatre. I’d always hungered after one big adventure. Then I’d come home, hang up my ice axe and put my boots in the loft. There was some risk, but that was the condition of adventure. It seemed inevitable that I’d end up going.