Annapurna (18 page)

There was not a single breath of air in this furnace and we longed for the first slopes. Crushed beneath our loads, we had to summon up all our resolution to overcome our breathlessness and lassitude. We climbed up the
rognon
, a rocky outcrop in the middle of the glacier, under huge overhanging seracs which threatened us with a forest of icicles that turned the sun’s rays into a rainbow of colour. Terray and I took turns at making the trail: the other two seemed utterly worn out. Our breathing was short and uneven as we approached the 20,000 foot level.

‘We’re not Sherpas!’ said Lachenal bitterly.

‘We didn’t come to the Himalaya to be beasts of burden,’ growled Rébuffat.

Terray was stung to answer:

‘A climber ought to be able to carry his gear,’ he said, ‘we’re as good as the Sherpas, aren’t we?’

Lachenal was bent over his ice-axe, Rébuffat had flopped down on his rucksack. Their faces were scarlet and running with sweat; they didn’t usually show their feelings, but now they looked really angry.

‘If we wear ourselves out now with this ridiculous porterage, how on earth shall we manage in a few days’ time? It isn’t the Sherpas who’ll be making a safe route through the seracs.’

At this, Terray saw red:

‘And you call yourselves Chamonix guides! Just bad amateurs, that’s what you are.’

‘The more you’re put upon, the more you like it,’ retorted Lachenal. ‘You’ll tell me next that you’re positively enjoying this job.’

‘When I have to carry a load, I get on with it.’

I tried to restore peace:

‘I know it’s hell, but it’s saving us two days. If the Expedition succeeds it’ll perhaps be on account of what we’re doing today.’

Rébuffat spoke again:

‘You and Terray can manage your loads, we just can’t.’

‘You’re supermen,’ went on Lachenal, ‘real supermen, and we’re just poor types.’

After this outburst, which seemed to relieve him, we went on. The ‘supermen’ took turns at making the trail. We were extremely tired, and our legs barely held us up as with slow, uneven steps we tried to wrest a few yards from the mountain. Each step was automatic, eyes glued to the heels of the man in front, and we had to resist the temptation to stop or relax our effort. Everyone knew in his heart that Terray’s hard words were justified even if not strictly necessary.

For some minutes we had heard yodelling behind us: it could only be Schatz. The route he had planned joined ours here. Had he discovered the perfect way up? Anyhow it was an excellent pretext for a good halt: we stuck our ice-axes in up to the hilt and wedged our sacks behind them to make comfortable seats. We opened some tins and seized upon our water bottles, but the sips were rationed for we had only a limited supply.

Schatz came up with his two Sherpas.

‘There you are! God, I’m tired!’

There were certainly signs of considerable fatigue on his face. No doubt we looked much the same, but he had been alone with his Sherpas.

‘Well, how did you get on?’

‘The route’s no good. If yours is at all reasonable we must rule mine out.’

‘Too difficult?’

‘Yes, and dangerous. Instead of being able to traverse easily from the top of the little spur to the plateau, we came to a secondary glacier, very steep and with magnificent seracs. We pitched our tent last night as best we could on a microscopic site. Then, this morning, we had to pass beneath a wall of seracs on the point of crashing down, and finally go up a very steep snow slope which I wouldn’t like to descend at any price …’

‘And then?’

‘Look here, isn’t that enough for one man? Then I caught sight of you, so I wound in and out between the seracs to join your tracks. But you’re making me talk when I’m dying of hunger.’

While he hastily swallowed a laboriously prepared lunch the mist came down on us – forerunner of the usual daily storm.

‘On we go,’ said Terray.

As we went up visibility decreased. Everything was blurred in the mist, and snow began to fall. The trail that Terray and I made by guess-work was certainly not very rational, but what did it matter? All we had to do that evening was to pitch Camp II somewhere towards the centre of the plateau, out of danger from avalanches. It was snowing heavily now and we took our thick capes out of our sacks. With Terray behind me, I could manage to steer some sort of a course. I must not turn round in a circle as I had once done in similar circumstances. As far as we could judge we had now reached the centre of the plateau, so we decided to pitch the camp where we stood – for the night, at any rate.

In ones and twos Sahibs and Sherpas arrived at the site and put down their loads. We took hasty stock of the situation: it would not be wise to let the Sherpas go back by themselves to Camp I. So Terray, who was in good form, proposed to accompany them. It was late and still snowing very hard. Terray was in a hurry to leave, for the tracks of our ascent were already almost obliterated. He intended to bivouac at Camp I in Sarki’s sleeping-bag, after sending the Sherpas on down to Base Camp, which was easy to reach, and these men would then be available for carrying up more loads.

‘Lionel’s crazy.’ Lachenal made no bones about expressing his view of the matter. ‘He likes to make a martyr of himself. Gaston, would it ever enter your head to spend the night lying on stones that stick into you everywhere rather than go down to Base Camp and sleep in comfort – and on top of it all to boast about it?’

Rébuffat’s silent gesture was eloquent: the performance struck him as absolutely pointless. But climbers are all tremendous individualists; there is no more obstinate breed of men.

Our poor little Camp II was completely lost among the snow and ice. We were deafened by the continuous roar of avalanches and could not determine their whereabouts. For that night we
would
have to put up with only relative security. Amid flurries of snow and gusts of wind we got the tents up, fixed in the pegs and constructed some sort of level platform; an hour later we were all warm and snug inside.

I was with Schatz in the experimental tent that had served as a model for the construction of the other fourteen. It was slightly larger and Schatz assured me that with our heads at the back we should be ideally comfortable. All the same I had never spent such a bad night, and I would not for anything have repeated this miserable experience during which I was half suffocated; I prefer to have my head near the opening of the tent and so be able to adjust the ventilation. In other respects Schatz was a perfect companion. Snug in my sleeping-bag I watched him do the cooking; he served me with a substantial dinner where I lay. Sleeping-pills soon brought our conversation to an end.

Whilst we were thus making the best of the situation, Terray, bivouacking down at Camp I, was kept awake for part of the night by a violent wind. The thickly falling snow covered him up completely, so he shut himself right into the cowl of his cape, at the risk of being suffocated. After several hours he relaxed and slept the sleep of exhaustion with his head resting on the stones.

When we woke at 9 o’clock in Camp II, at 19,350 feet, it was already very hot, and the tents were suffused with golden light. But it was hard work to get our frozen boots on – they were just like blocks of wood. In future I put them at the bottom of my sleeping-bag. I poked my head out – the sky was blue and the view magnificent: a wonderful chain of peaks and ridges stood out round us at a height of 23,000 feet. Quite close above us was that jagged ridge which we called Cauliflower Ridge. It was a continuation of the north-west spur on which we had spent ourselves to no purpose. We could now see its whole length; we had, in fact, climbed only about a tenth of it! And to our surprise there was an enormous gap in the centre, cutting off all possibility of progress. So we had no more regrets.

Shining in the distance was a mountain of crystal – Dhaulagiri; and nearer us were the proud and inaccessible Nilgiris. To the right, towering above our Lilliputian camp, was the Great Barrier with its flanks falling directly to the basin of the upper Miristi Khola. To the extreme right, a great swollen glacier and a jolly
looking
peak – the Triangular Peak or Black Rock that we had seen from the East Tilicho Pass. I turned round: an enormous ice face bristling with seracs and seamed with crevasses sparkled in the sun. Far above, so high that one had to tilt one’s head backwards to see it, was Annapurna, resplendent, dominating everything as a goddess should.

I inspected the face we had to attack with some anxiety. It was all so disproportionate, on such a different scale from our puny resources. What was to be our plan of campaign? I had to estimate the party’s fitness, take into account the rather sketchy equipment we had at our disposal up here, and allow for dangers and difficulties and, above all, the time factor. There were such hundreds of things to bear in mind. But I had made up my mind to push on actively, establishing camps, whatever the weather, short of an actual blizzard. It could all be reduced to a mathematical formula: to pile up the maximum weight per distance during the day, at the same time taking care to conserve the physical form of the climbers for the final assault. On this last stage to the top deterioration would be bound to set in: at that moment we must be able to call up all our reserves of energy and resolution, without losing sight of the needs of the descent.

By morning we had forgotten the previous day’s weariness and were all ready to take advantage of the fine weather to go up and establish Camp III. Over the gaiters which we wore above our boots we adjusted the extra-light-weight crampons, which from now on we used almost continuously. We took one tent with us, leaving the other where it was, with some food. We each carried about 22 lb. Before leaving camp we took a last look at the whole of the ice face, all unknown ground. On starting out we tried to pick out in advance a route between the many ice walls blocking the way, for once among them we should be hemmed in and unable to see more than fifty yards ahead.

We roped up in the same order in which we had camped – Lachenal and Rébuffat together, and Schatz and I on the second rope. It was nearly 10 o’clock – high time to start. After carefully closing the one remaining tent at Camp II we steered towards the snow-shoot at the foot of the great central couloir which descends from the summit slopes. On the section of the plateau between us and the couloir there were few crevasses, so our route was
straightforward
. When we put our feet in the snow they were numbed by the cold, yet the air was so warm that we soon took off our eiderdown jackets. The gigantic wall of snow and ice seemed to tower higher and higher above us. On the left a ridge of bare ice, typically Himalayan in its formation, surprised me by its transparent blueness, which was intensified by the lateral position of the sun. On the right the Cauliflower Ridge, immaculately white, proudly displayed its tracery and seemed to taunt us: ‘If ever you get as high as me …’ In this strange world where everything tends towards the vertical, one’s notion of balance is quite peculiar: all these vistas of chaos render one’s first impressions unreliable.

After we had been going for an hour we had only got as far as the first slopes of the snow-shoot. But what worried me was what came next: thousands of tons of a titanic flood seemed to lie frozen in indescribable confusion. The nearer we got to the wall, the steeper appeared the average angle. Seracs crashed down with hideous din, and the rumbling of avalanches put us all on edge. For the moment there was nothing coming down the couloir. For some minutes we should be exposed to danger, for though we would cross it at a point where it narrowed – it was never very wide – every block that fell from the upper slopes would inevitably hurtle down this funnel. Lachenal crossed first. In turn, each of us followed in his tracks under the watchful eyes of the others waiting on the edge. Above us an enormous roof of ice, that turned a livid green as soon as the sun disappeared, constituted some slight protection. But would it be enough if an avalanche came down?

All went well, the danger zone was passed and we arrived out of breath on the opposite side. The place was scarcely suitable for a halt, for the slope was so steep that the snow no longer held firm, and we did not stop. The first party rapidly cut some tiny steps, barely sufficient for two spikes of our crampons. The ice was smooth and compact, like glass, and split off with a sharp noise beneath the axe. The chips broke off cleanly, went flying down into space and disappeared at high speed, starting up little avalanches. We continued to make over to the right under the protection of the seracs, and a rickety snow-bridge brought us to a snowy platform where we were at last able to stop. The fine weather held, for the time being, and we were cheered by the sight of a few healthy-looking clouds.

At our feet lay the plateau with Camp II which we now saw in its true dimension: we managed to pick out the microscopic tent only by following the tracks of our ascent. Higher up, the next part of the route was not very inviting, and 150 feet or so above our heads the way was barred by a huge vertical wall of ice. Not a hope either to the left or to the right. If we were to be held up like this so early in the climb …

Schatz and I went boldly to the attack. We sank in up to our waists, and the ice beneath the snow made us slide irresistibly down the slope. I seized hold of one foot with both hands and using the other knee as a fulcrum I brought my foot out several inches above the snow. Then I planted my ice-axe as high up as I could and pulled on it to free the other foot left behind. I slipped and came back to my original position. My heart thumped and I was weak for want of breath. Finally we had to clear a trough, and these 150 feet took us an hour to negotiate. We were now so close to the wall of ice that we shivered in spite of the heat. I examined the obstacle: a snow-covered ledge led up to a great overhang of ice. This proud colossus, smooth and chased by little avalanches, could be surmounted by cutting steps up it – a practical route after all. I told the second party that it would take at least two hours to reach the top of the overhang and that, during this time, they might as well skirt along the wall in search of an easier way.