Page 16 - 2018 AMA Summer

GUESTWRITER
I pulled from the top of the overhanging ice gully, the final difficult pitch of day two. We had succeeded in finding a way through the steepest band. My fingers felt wooden. Paul joined me and together we began to excavate a ledge from which to pitch the small tent.
The weather in the range was complicated. Most days had sun, rain, snow, wind, sleet, cloud, storm, hail. No day was the same and the weather of the moment generally only lasted for a little while before some other form of meteorologi- cal bruising took over. This climb was not going to be one of those wait for a perfect five-day forecast, which was ok, given we had absolutely no way to get one.
That night I sat upright with a headache pulsing behind my right eye and a sharp pain in the eye itself. It wasn’t until the morning I realised I was suffering a mild form of snow blindness. I’m not sure Paul believed it as we had been in the shade and it had been cloudy for most of the previous day, but when he began to suffer exactly the same pain and in the right eye also, he knew my diagnosis was correct. We both wore sunglasses after that.
Dawn of day three. Looking up the face we hoped to link three snow fields on the right of our present position which would finally lead to the summit. However, with 800m remaining, the mixed pitches to join the snowfields looked steep and hard. Standing in the deep snow, with what we hoped was the most technical day below us, we didn’t really want much more of
technical and hard, we wanted an easy ride. A wide snow ledge, leading direct to the central crest, which in turn appeared to lead directly to the summit without too much obvious hardship, was the way we chose.
I’ve been climbing full time and writing and no fixed abode now for thirteen years. I
“Bears.” “Whatdoeshemean,bears?” “Bears.” Tashi repeated.
say this as a fact, it’s not a challenge or a boast so please don’t take it as such. But in this time, I have sat and watched many people rush and push and strain while attempting to wring the life from their short, precious period of time away. They almost appear to want to cram a lifetime of experience into a weekend and who can blame them as the life some people are returning to on a Sunday evening, I’m sure, is testing, not wished for, maybe even disliked. Have you ever stood back and watched, really watched, there is so much unsatisfied unhappiness? Life moves one way only.
Two more nights on the central crest, led at last, to the 7046m summit, a windblown snow sculpture that didn’t really mean anything but meant everything. After twenty minutes stood together on the summit Paul led-away following the East Ridge, the ridge which we hoped to descend until its lowest point, a good way away, where we would turn left to walk
down a gentle snow-slope back into our valley and finally basecamp.
Leaving the summit, as if, on cue, the clouds chose to wrap us. Yet somehow, like a homing pigeon, Paul led across ridges and down and around dubious snow-slopes, stopping whenever the cloud turned pea-souper. But the cloud became even thicker, and the snow whiter and the angle and territory more dangerous. And after falling into three bergschrunds, we stopped and pitched the tent in one of the holes found by Paul himself.
I wasn’t worried: we had summited and the weather wasn’t that bad. If only the cloud would bugger off and then tomorrow morning, in the clear, we could find the top of the hidden gully which would lead to the north face and the lower ridge, and finally the snow slope back to the valley bottom.
Soon after dark it began to snow, and snow and snow some more. I lay, not sleeping at all, while admonishing myself for not forcing the issue to abseil the line we had climbed. Now we were stuck somewhere teetering on a ridge above 6500m in a dump of snow with limited food and an even more limited knowledge of how to get off, while all of the slopes and faces that surrounded us became treacherous. What were we thinking? We had climbed the line, we had our prize, this was just the way off, it didn’t matter, it was a bloody way off, that’s all. And it was going to kill us.
Day six, still snowing and still white-out. We would have to stay put, but by 9am the winds abated, the snow stopped and we launched, well, we teetered and staggered. I couldn’t help but voice concerns about the amount of snow that had fallen through the night but what were we to do, sit there and hope for some kind of non-avalanche terrain miracle?
The Yorkshire homing pigeon pulled a master stroke finding the exit gully leading from the upper ridge to the lower ridge via several abseils directly down the north face. Paul’s ability to sniff out the line and cover technical ground was astounding, his years and years of Alpine climbing experience easy to see and easy for me to respect. Eventually, after covering several
Summit selfie’s. Photo: Nick Bullock
16 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER