Summit Fever. Andrew Greig
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, it’s possible. Whether it’s desirable …’ He laughed, seemed to find the whole project amusing. But then he’d found being shipwrecked off Patagonia amusing. He’d obviously lost a few brain cells along the way. ‘Yes, if you’re very fit, can take the altitude, have considerable determination and are lucky – ’
‘That doesn’t sound like me at all,’ I interrupted him.
‘– there’s no reason why not. It may blow your mind a bit, but you’ll be safer than you think. Mind you, the Himalayas make the Alps look like a kiddies’ playground – but you’ve never seen the Alps, have you? And of course,’ he continued, smiling, ‘if something doesn’t go according to plan – and that’s bound to happen – you could be in real trouble. You’ve maybe one chance in twenty of snuffing it.’
We had another whisky and I looked over the photos on his wall. Douglas crawling beneath stomach-turning overhangs, Douglas on Patagonian mountains, Douglas and friends steering a 12-foot inflatable through a Greenland ice pack. A lump of quartz from a Patagonian first ascent. Mementoes of another world. Nice to have some souvenirs like that …
It’s the little vanities that get us going.
‘The trip’s a freebie,’ Douglas said. ‘Take it.’
After five days of indecision – or rather, of constantly changing decisions – I went home to Anstruther to talk it over with my parents. I wanted to hear their opinion; perhaps that would clarify my thoughts.
So, should I go?
Dad paused so long I thought he hadn’t heard me properly. A long, awkward silence, my mother at the other end of the table, waiting for his response. Then he said very slowly, ‘I’m too old to be asked a question like that.’ He looked at me, his eyes pale blue and slightly fogged over, set deep among the ridges, wrinkles, creases and weathering of eighty-four years. ‘You see,’ he said simply, ‘I can no longer see any appeal in experience for its own sake.’
How had I failed to see how old, how very, very tired he’d become in the last year? The hand that held the glass of wine had shrunk to skin and bone. He took a sip, grimaced. ‘I’ve even lost the taste for this. But in your position, at your age … Yes, you should go.’
Then