Page 38 - 2020 AMA Winter

MISCARTICLE
The Difficult Traverse Below 4
it could be a body. In any case he was not prepared to risk losing us in the hope that we might find the others. After nearly 3 days we were beginning to realise that something serious must have happened to them.
Our relief at not having to make the journey to Camp 7 was tempered by the thought that our chances of getting down safely to Camp 5 were also not good. We had spent almost a whole day getting to Camp 6, the weather was still against us and we were already losing daylight. The route back would be treacherous and the slightest mistake was likely to be our last. We were also very tired and my knee was worrying me a lot. Although the pain was bearable the joint was still quite unstable and I was not sure I could trust it on a long descent. Those thoughts weighed heavily on me as I gazed out over the face and all that I really wanted to do at that moment was to sink back in the snow and go to sleep. Charlie must have sensed it because he shouted across to me: ‘We have to go Tim, we have to go. We can’t stay up here in these conditions. I am absolutely sure we can make it back down but we must go together and we must go now’.
Maybe he was over-acting for my sake but it had the desired effect. Minutes after we had taken the obligatory photographs of ourselves and the camp we were moving. Charlie’s unshakeable belief in us also shamed me into doing more than my share on that retreat to Camp
5, belaying him down each long pitch before descending it myself and stripping the climb of anything we might find useful later.
We went on in the gathering gloom; Charlie concentrating hard on the route-finding, knowing that to miss the hanging crevasse in which Camp 5 had been pitched would probably mean a 1500-metre fall to the Nuptse Glacier when our strength finally gave out. Then, by what seemed a miracle, he found our tent in the darkness and we tumbled into it completely spent. I cannot remember calling base on the radio but my very detailed diary says we did. What I do remember is waking many hours later with the sun streaming in through the tent door and the sounds of Charlie cooking breakfast outside.
The weather was clearing again but we knew there would be no second attempt on the summit. We were fully acclima- tised but all of us had reached that high altitude cross-over point when the body deteriorates so fast that no amount of acclimatisation can compensate for it. Charlie and I had been eking out our food supplies and had made a single ration last 3 days but now that we knew we were going down for the last time we blew everything on a final meal. Then we stripped the camp, stepped out onto the whaleback and headed down to Camp 4.
We still had to cross the steep and difficult ground that led down through the other camps to safety. We had ice towers to pass, abseils to make, deep rifts in the central rib to cross and all the other obstacles between us and Camp 1 to overcome but we were also aware of being the last men on the mountain so we just took our time and left nothing to chance.
Everyone helped to clear the mountain. Neil Winship even made the hazardous journey up to Camp 4 to recover vital kit. All the lower camps had to be stripped, there was a lot of gear to recover and Charlie and I could not manage it on our own. ‘Many hands make light work’ and in the end it was very quick. On the 16th of May we had been at Camp 6 and by the afternoon of the 18th we were staggering into Camp 1 at the foot of the climb. Our sacs were bursting with tents, stoves,
ropes, karabiners, ice screws, pitons and other hardware. Once there Charlie and I were told that Pasang and David had died after falling from the long traverse back to Camp 6. David’s body was hanging on the face, identified by his blue helmet but Pasang’shaddisappeared.Wewillnever know what caused the fall.
If I learned anything from the Nuptse expedition it was not to pre-judge anyone. With his mild manner and slim build Charles Walshaw might easily have been taken for a ‘lightweight’ but high on Nuptse he was indomitable. Like most of us he had not had much formal mountain- eering training because in those days you were expected to ‘learn by experience’. What he did have was something extra, something you cannot get from training alone and that was what counted. He also had a big secret: a steadily worsening bipolar condition that finally destroyed him. Charlie took his own life just a few months after we returned, while I was on my bomb disposal tour in Northern Ireland.
My right knee still troubles me sometimes. When it does my mind goes straight back to the last days of that Nuptse climb and I remember Charlie with fondness and gratitude. His leadership, his skill as a climber, his unfailing cheerfulness and his determination to survive anything we faced enabled me to enjoy a life far beyond those days we spent together on the South Face of Nuptse 45 years ago.
38 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER
The Ruins of Camp 6