Touching the Void (11 page)

‘Mine were real bad. I thought they were frostbitten,’ I said.

‘It’s just the lowering. They really freeze up when I’m lowering. Can’t get my middle fingers to warm. They’ve gone altogether.’

He had his eyes tight closed, fighting the hot aches. A heavier burst of spindrift sprayed over him but he ignored it. It partially filled the seat I had been digging. I swept it clear with the side of my arm.

‘Come on. It’s getting bad. We’ll have to hurry.’

I lay beneath his feet, and when the rope came taut I shifted my weight off my foot and tensed against the prospect of another drop. He let me down with a rush and I cried out as my boot caught in the snow. I was looking at him when I cried out. He remained expressionless, and continued to lower me. He had no time for sympathy.

By the end of the fourth drop I had deteriorated. The shaking in my leg was continuous and unstoppable. The pain had reached a level beyond which it wouldn’t go. It remained constant whether I snagged my leg or not. Curiously, it had become more bearable, for I no longer winced and tensed at the prospect of catching my foot. I could adjust to the steady pain. My hands, however, were much worse. The rewarming, repeated at the end of every lowering, was less effective each time. Simon’s hands were even worse than mine.

The storm had steadily increased until the spindrift flowed continually down the slope, and threatened to push me off when I dug the seats. The wind gusted across the face, blasting the snow into exposed skin, and forcing itself through the tiniest of openings in clothing. I was close to exhaustion.

As the drops continued I lapsed into resigned tolerance. The object of the lowering had long since escaped me. I couldn’t think any further ahead than simply enduring the present. Simon said nothing at the change-overs, his expression fixed and rigid. We had locked ourselves into a grim struggle, my part was pain-wracked, Simon’s an endless physical battle to get me down almost 3,000 feet without a break. I wondered how often it had occurred to him that the seats might collapse at any moment. I was beyond caring about such things, but Simon knew all the time that he could descend alone quite safely if he chose. I began to thank him for what he was doing, and then quickly stopped myself. It would only emphasise my I dependence on him.

I dug the fifth belay seat while Simon climbed down to me. I didn’t get far. After clearing the surface snow away I struck water ice. I was standing on my left foot but it wasn’t kicked deeply in. I perched on the front points of my crampons, a worrying position because I could feel my calf muscles tiring from the strain, and the idea that I might slip preyed on my mind. It would rip us both off the mountain. To make matters worse, the effort of staying quite still made me feel nauseous and dizzy. I kept shaking my head and pressing it against the snow, terrified that I might faint. It seemed such a stupid way to die after we had been through so much.

It was a measure of how cold I had become to see how long it took before I thought of hammering an ice screw into the slope. The wind and constant avalanches had fogged my mind after numbing my body. Even when the idea did occur to me, it took some time to break through the lethargic apathy that engulfed me, and turning it into action seemed an achievement in itself. I was alarmed at my behaviour. I had heard of people succumbing to cold without realising it, reacting lazily and without thinking. When I had tied into the ice screw, I leant back on it and began a vigorous warming and waking exercise. I moved as much of my body as I could, flapped my arms, rubbed myself briskly and shook my head. I warmed gradually, and felt the sluggishness clear away. Simon noticed the ice screw. It was in the only ice we had so far found on the face, and he looked at me questioningly.

‘There must be something below us. A steep section, something like that,’ I said. ‘Yeah. I can’t see a thing down there.’ He was leaning out from the screw peering intently below him. ‘It does get steeper but I can’t see what’s causing it.’

I looked down and saw only the swirling clouds of spindrift whipping down. The sky was full of snow. It was either falling, or being blown by the wind. The end result was the same—white-out conditions.

‘It wouldn’t be a good idea to lower me if you don’t know what’s below,’ I said. ‘It could be anything…a rock buttress, ice fall, anything.’

‘I know, but I can’t remember seeing anything very large when we were on Seria Norte. Can you?’ ‘No. A few rock outcrops maybe, but nothing else. Why don’t you abseil down and give me some tugs if it’s okay to follow. I reckon I can abseil myself.’

‘We haven’t any choice. Right, I’ll put another screw in.’

He hammered the screw into the hard water ice and clipped the doubled rope through it. I untied from the rope, staying safely clipped into my own ice screw. When Simon reached the end of the rope he would organise a belay and then signal me to follow. I shouted to him when he had abseiled below me:

‘Keep a knot in the end of the ropes. If I faint I don’t want to go off the end.’

He waved acknowledgment and slid down into clouds of I spindrift. He was soon lost from sight and I was alone. I tried not to think of anything happening to him. I stood quietly on one foot, gazing into the snow swirling madly round me. There was only the sound of hissing as it sprayed off my jacket, and occasional tugs from the wind. It was a wild place in which to be alone. I thought of the sun on Yerupaja through the window in the snow-cave—that was this morning! God! It seemed so very long ago. Only this morning…and we had come down the ridge, and over those I crevasses, and then the ice cliff. A lifetime away…so much had changed. The cold crept through me again, and I could feel its heavy slowness spreading.

I started my warming routine again, flapping, rubbing, driving the intruder away. Then I saw the ropes jerk spasmodically. I grabbed hold of them and felt the tugs come up the ropes again. I fixed my belay plate on to the ropes, and removed the ice screw from which I had been hanging. I let my weight come down carefully on to the abseil ropes, watching the ice screw for any warning signs of failure. The ropes eased through the plate, and I slid down after Simon.

After twenty feet the slope dropped vertically under me. I stopped moving and glanced down. I could see the angle ease about fifteen feet below. Beyond there was only spindrift. As I abseiled past the wall I could see that it consisted of patches of ice plastered on to a steep rock face. It went slowly past me in short stepped walls with steep ice cascades in between. Once or twice I bumped painfully against the rock, but for the most part I found abseiling to be easier and a lot less traumatic than being lowered. I could control the speed of descent, which helped. The steep walls were entirely pain-free because I could twist away and let my injured leg hang free in space, and even on the cascades I managed to keep from snagging it.

I was concentrating on abseiling carefully, and had become quite engrossed in what I was doing, when Simon’s voice broke into my thoughts. I looked down, and saw him leaning back on an ice screw grinning at me:

‘There’s one more steep bit. I saw the snow slope running below it, so it can’t be far.’ As he spoke he reached out and caught hold of my waist, tugging me gently towards him. He was careful, almost tender, in the way he spun me round so that I was facing out from the slope when I came to a stop beside him. He clipped me into a second ice screw that he had placed beside the one on which he was hanging, and directed my uninjured leg to a foothold that he had hacked from the ice. I realised then that he had been fully aware of the pain he had been putting me through, and this concern was a quiet way of saying, it’s all right. I wasn’t being a bastard. It just had to be done. ‘Not far now. Maybe another four lowers after this next abseil.’

I knew he was guessing. He was trying to cheer me up, and I felt deeply grateful. For a short moment on the storm-swept belay we had accepted a warm sense of friendship. It felt like some cliche from a third-rate war movie—We’re all in this together, lads, and we’re all going to make it home. It also felt true and real, something unassailable in all the uncertainty. I put my arm on his shoulder and smiled at him. Behind his grin I could see the truth of our situation. It had taken a lot out of him and he looked drawn. His face, pinched with cold, showed all the tension he had been through, and his eyes didn’t smile. There was concern and anxiety there, and I could see that, despite his confident words, a dark uncertainty reflected the real story.

‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘The pain’s not so bad now. How are your hands?’

‘Bad, and getting worse.’ He grinned at me, and I felt a stab of guilt. It was costing him. I had already paid.

‘I’ll abseil down and set up the belay.’

He stepped away from the slope and hopped smoothly into the vortex of spindrift below. I quickly joined him at the large bucket seat he had excavated. We were back to lowering from nonexistent belays. I checked my watch. I couldn’t see the face, and was surprised to notice how dark it had become. When I flicked the little watch light on, I saw that it was seven thirty. It had been dark for over an hour and I hadn’t noticed! It made me realise how little I had had to do. Digging belay seats and closing my mind to the lowering hadn’t needed any light.

The warmth of feeling on the abseil belay stayed with me through the next drop, and I had to resist the urge to giggle excitedly as the descent continued. I felt childishly irrational. The thought of reaching the glacier and a snug snow-cave had become irresistible. It flooded through my mind like the images of a hot meal in front of the fire after a long cold day on the hills. I tried to push it away, fearful that to think this way would be to invite disaster. I want never gets, I told myself, but it didn’t work. The lowering went quicker and easier. The pain stayed with me but it was secondary: getting down was all I could think about.

The system of lowering became second nature, as if we had been practising it for years, and as we slid down unseen through the storm the sense of optimism snowballed with every foot descended. Simon’s grin widened at every meeting and his eyes, bright in the light from my head-torch, said it all. We had regained control of the situation, and it no longer felt as if we were fleeing in disarray or fighting desperately against the odds. We knew we were making a controlled and orderly descent. I hunched my shoulders against an unusually heavy rush of spindrift and braced myself until it spent itself. Moving again, the build-up of snow between my chest and the slope flowed down over my legs, and I brushed the powder from the belay seat I had dug. The weather showed no sign of improving, but at least it was not getting worse. Simon appeared from the murk above me. His light flashed yellow off the clouds of snow. I kept looking at him so that my head-torch light would guide him down. He reached me as another avalanche swept over us. We both ducked. ‘Bloody hell! That one before nearly knocked me off.’

‘They’ve been getting bigger. Probably because we’re near the bottom. There’s more snow to build up on the way down.’

‘I was thinking of unroping. Then I won’t take you down if I get hit hard.’ I laughed. If he fell past me, leaving me the rope, I would be able to do nothing with it.

‘I’d fall anyway, so you might as well stay roped. That way I won’t have to think about it…and I can blame you!’

He didn’t laugh. He had almost forgotten that I was hurt, and now I had reminded him. He settled himself into the seat and arranged the ropes for the next lowering.

‘Two lowers to go at the most, I reckon. This will be the eighth, plus the two abseils, so we’ve covered two thousand seven hundred feet, or thereabouts. It can’t be more than three thousand, so this might even be the last one.’

I nodded in agreement, and he grinned confidently at me as I slid down the slope and he faded into the snowstorm. Earlier, I had noticed that the angle of the slope was gradually easing. I took this as an encouraging sign which indicated how close we were getting to the glacier. However, soon after I lost sight of Simon I noticed the slope steepening again. I slid faster, and snagged my foot more frequently. I was distracted by the pain and discomfort, and thought no more of the slope. I struggled vainly to clear my foot from the snow before giving up and accepting the torment. The sense of weight on my harness increased, as did the speed. I tried braking with my arms but to no effect. I twisted round and looked up into the darkness. Rushes of snow flickered in my torch beam. I yelled for Simon to slow down. The speed increased, and my heart jumped wildly. Had he lost control? I tried braking again. Nothing. I stifled the rising panic and tried to think clearly—no, he hadn’t lost control. I’m going down fast but it’s steady. He’s trying to be quick…that’s all. I knew it to be true, but there was still something wrong.

It was the slope. Of course! I should have thought of it earlier. It was now much steeper, and that could mean only one thing—I was approaching another drop.

I screamed out a frantic warning but he couldn’t hear me. I shouted again, as loud as I could, but the words were whipped away into the snow clouds. He wouldn’t have heard me fifteen feet away. I tried to guess how far I was from the half-way knot. A hundred feet? Fifty? I had no idea. Each lowering became timeless. I slid for ever through the boiling snow without any sense of time passing—just a barely endurable period of agony.

A sense of great danger washed over me. I had to stop. I realised that Simon would hear nothing, so I must stop myself. If he felt my weight come off the rope he would know there must be a good reason. I grabbed my ice axe and tried to brake my descent. I leant heavily over the axe head, burying it in the slope, but it wouldn’t bite. The snow was too loose. I dug my left boot into the slope but it, too, just scraped through the snow.

Then abruptly my feet were in space. I had time to cry out, and claw hopelessly at the snow before my whole body swung off an edge. I jerked on to the rope and toppled over backwards, spinning in circles from my harness. The rope ran up to a lip of ice and I saw that I was still descending. The sight vanished as a heavy avalanche of powder poured over me.