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 metaphorical 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.
On the evening of 20 November, Kathleen threw an I Ching hexagram.
‘This is uncanny. Want to see?’
I looked at the reading:
Hexagram 62. Hsiao Kuo: Preponderance of the small.
Success. Perseverance furthers.
Small things may be done; great things should not be done.
It is not well to strive upward,
it is well to remain below.
My eye skipped on
…. Thunder on the mountain. Thunder in the mountains
sounds much nearer.
I put down the book, thought about it. ‘Were you asking about yourself or me?’
‘Both of us.’
‘Doesn’t pull any punches, does it?’
Silence from Kathleen. Then, quietly, ‘Please don’t go.’
I visited a climbing acquaintance to sound out his opinion. My wellbeing and safety rested largely on Mal Duff’s judgement and abilities. I scarcely knew him as a person, and not at all as a climber. What was his reputation in the climbing world?
‘Mal Duff? Can’t say I know him that well. A lot of people would put a question mark beside his name, but I don’t know why. Envy, maybe – he’s one of the very few who almost make a living from climbing. There was some kind of financial screw- up … No one’s ever suggested he can’t climb.’
I accepted a whisky and let him talk on. The climbing world appeared very intense, gossipy yet reticent, full of allegiances and rivalries. I was just beginning to learn to read the coded messages, and to try to sort out a sound assessment from bias.
‘He’s done a lot in Scotland in winter, some in the Alps. I think he was out on Nuptse twice, so he’s had some Himalayan experience. He’s possibly not as good as he thinks he is – but nor am I! I’ve heard of this other chap, Sandy Allan, but the rest of the Brit climbers mean nothing to me. The Mustagh Tower is a classic – did you know it was once called “the unclimbable mountain” and “the Himalayan Matterhorn”? – but it sounds a very odd expedition with these semi-climbers along. I’d be very surprised if anyone gets to the top.’
I nodded, looked into the bottom of my glass. How much of what I was hearing was envy? How much was climbing bullshit and how much accurate assessment? We talked a while longer about Malcolm and the trip – in that warm, Edinburgh flat it all seemed extremely hypothetical – till I asked the obvious question: is it possible for someone with as yet no mountaineering experience at all to go to 21,000 feet on a Himalayan peak?
‘Yes,
