Annapurna (25 page)

‘It’s made of nylon, and it’s elastic,’ I said to Lachenal, ‘otherwise the fabric would give way. Hell! I’ve forgotten to put my camera inside my sleeping-bag.’

I stretched out a hand for the precious object and slid it down beside me to the bottom of my sack, already cluttered up with my boots.

What a night! Lachenal slid further and further towards the edge, and I felt more and more suffocated. We looked at the time repeatedly. The situation was beginning to be alarming: I could no longer breathe. The weight of the snow was literally crushing me. Like a boxer on his guard I held both arms to my chest and so made a small space which allowed me to expand my lungs. The noise of the wind was ear-splitting, and every onslaught was accompanied by a high-pitched whistling. The tent poles bent over dangerously, while with the strength of desperation we tried to hold them in place. Why the tent was not blown down I don’t know. Our very worst Alpine bivouacs were as nothing compared with this unequal and exhausting struggle.

We were worn out and utterly weary, but the storm saw to it that we were kept wide awake.

Rébuffat and Terray, sceptical about the success of our attempt, went down towards Camp II. When they arrived they found Couzy and Schatz, who gave them the latest news. Rébuffat and Terray were dropping with fatigue and so, no doubt, were Pansy and Aila, for they disappeared into the Sherpas’ tent and were seen no more that day. Couzy and Schatz, in excellent trim, were pleased to be on a rope together again. Early the following morning they left Camp II, and as arranged, they followed us up, one camp behind.

Terray gradually recovered. He felt that the final attack was imminent and set about his preparations with his usual meticulous care. Rébuffat was busy writing. Early in the afternoon sleet began to fall.

‘Hallo, everybody!’

The white ghost who had just come in was Ichac!

‘The others are coming up.’

Oudot and Noyelle then appeared, shaking the snow off inside the tent with the cheerful carelessness of people coming from outside. It was 5.30.

‘It’s
you
!’ exclaimed Ichac. ‘We were expecting to see Schatz and Couzy.’

‘No – it’s only us.’

And Terray went on to explain how they had had to retrace their steps the day before without having been able to establish Camp V because Rébuffat’s feet showed signs of frostbite.

‘We’ll be off again tomorrow morning,’ said Terray.

Outside the sleet had turned to snow. Oudot was impatient to find out to what extent oxygen would be of use. Displaying his usual authority, he insisted upon our liaison officer going round with a mask on. His face became a snout connected by a tube to cylinders of duralumin full of compressed oxygen. He might have been exploring the moon! Poor Noyelle, with his ridiculous hat pulled down over his nose and ears – he was the only one unable to appreciate the comic figure he cut.

After the tests everyone collected in the tent and Ichac took some flashlight photographs.

‘I’m determined to establish a record for the highest flashlight shot.’

In fact this camp was not far off 20,000 feet high, and it was unlikely that many flashlights had been taken on Himalayan expeditions.

After dinner the sky cleared and the stars shone. The Great Barrier was clothed in a mantle of white and lit up by the moon. The latest news on the radio was alarming: the monsoon had reached the north of Bengal and, moreover, considerable disturbances were forecast from the west. The following morning – June 2nd – the sky was brilliant, it was going to be a glorious day. As usual Lionel had timed his departure for an early hour. He left camp with Rébuffat and two Sherpas at 6 o’clock, before the sun was up. (At Camp IV we were still sleeping soundly.) Ichac took some telephotos of them as they went up the avalanche cone.

Now the whole mountain was inhabited and as the hours went by activity increased. An onlooker would have seen an astonishing sight. At Camp II men were swarming round the settlement of tents. A little higher up Terray and Rébuffat with their two Sherpas, Pansy and Aila, were cutting fresh steps up the first slopes. Above, at Camp III, Schatz and Couzy, accompanied by Angdawa and Phutharkay, were preparing to cross the great couloir. And finally Lachenal and myself, with Angtharkay and Sarki, were once again ploughing through snow on the slope of the Sickle glacier.

During the afternoon clouds appeared along the bed of the
Miristi
Khola, and even on the plateau by Camp II. Through a rent in them Ichac was able to see, at the foot of the spear-shaped rib, a new black speck which he guessed must be Camp V. Would the final assault be made the following morning? That would be decided by the weather.

The mist grew thicker and calls for help were heard. Noyelle and Ichac went out to see who it was and found Angdawa and Phutharkay wandering in the mist. Having only one tent at Camp IV – the other was at Camp V – Couzy and Schatz had had to send their two Sherpas down.

The rest of the equipment for Camp IV was to be brought up the following day by the Rébuffat-Terray party who would strike Camp III and take it up with them. And the group at Camp II would move up the day after and re-establish Camp III.

At Camp IV morale was good, Rébuffat and Terray had just arrived and everyone was in good form. Terray meditated upon the unpredictable nature of conditions in the Himalaya: four days ago he and Rébuffat had climbed to Camp III with the greatest difficulty, taking seven hours to crawl up. This time they had successfully carried out an ambitious programme of which it would be hard to find the equivalent in the history of Himalayan climbing: leaving Camp II at dawn they had succeeded in reaching Camp III at about 11 o’clock in the morning; they had struck this camp and then carried everything on up to Camp IV, in this way gaining one precious day. Although there were only four of them they carried two high-altitude units as well as 22 lb. of food. Rébuffat, like Lachenal, had made a magnificent come-back.

There were two people who were mighty pleased to see them, and these were Couzy and Schatz. Otherwise, the next day these two would have had to carry up a complete camp themselves and they had not found this prospect particularly attractive. Thanks to aspirin, sleeping tablets and other drugs, and thanks also to a sense of tremendous well-being caused partly by good physical condition and partly by the imminence of a happy outcome, everybody passed an excellent night.

13

The Third of June

ON THE THIRD
of June, 1950, the first light of dawn found us still clinging to the tent poles at Camp V. Gradually the wind abated, and with daylight died away altogether. I made desperate attempts to push back the soft yet icy mass which stifled me, but every movement had become almost an act of heroism. My mental powers were numbed: thinking was an effort, and we did not exchange a single word.

What an abominable place it was! For all who reached it Camp V was to supply one of their most wretched experiences. We had only one thought – to get away from it. We should have waited for the first rays of the sun, but at half-past five we felt we could not stick it any longer.

‘Let’s go, Biscante.’

‘Yes, let’s go.’

Which of us would have the energy to make tea? Although our minds worked slowly we were quite able to envisage all the movements that would be necessary – and neither of us could face up to it. It could not be helped – we would just have to go without. It was quite hard enough work to get ourselves and our boots out of our sleeping-bags – and the boots were frozen stiff so that we got them on only with the greatest difficulty. Every movement made us terribly breathless. We felt as if we were being stifled. Our gaiters were stiff as a board, and though I succeeded in lacing mine up, Lachenal could not manage his.

‘No need for the rope, eh Biscante?’

‘No need,’ replied Lachenal laconically.

That was two pounds saved. I pushed a tube of condensed milk, some nougat and a pair of socks into my sack; one never knew, the socks might come in useful – they might even do as Balaclavas. For the time being I put them with the first-aid equipment. The Foca was loaded with a black and white film, but I had a colour film in reserve. I pulled the cine-camera out from the bottom of my
sleeping
-bag, wound it up and tried letting it run blank. There was a little click, then it stopped and jammed.

‘Bad luck after bringing it so far,’ said Lachenal.

In spite of all the precautions Ichac had taken to lubricate it with special grease, the intense cold, even inside the sleeping-bag, had frozen it up. I left it at the camp, rather sadly: I had looked forward to taking it right to the top. I had used it up to 24,600 feet.

We went outside and put on our crampons, which we kept on all day. We wore as many clothes as possible and our sacks were very light. At six o’clock we started off. It was brilliantly fine, but also very cold. Our super-lightweight crampons bit deep into the steep slopes of ice and hard snow up which lay the first stage of our climb.

Later the slope became slightly less steep and more uniform. Sometimes the hard crust bore our weight, but at other times we broke through it and sank into soft powder snow which made progress exhausting. We took it in turns to make the track, and often stopped without any word having passed between us. Each of us lived in a closed and private world of his own. I was suspicious of my mental processes; my mind was working very slowly and I was perfectly aware of the low state of my intelligence. It was easiest just to stick to one thought at a time – safest, too. The cold was penetrating; for all our special eiderdown clothing we felt as if we had nothing on. Whenever we halted, we stamped our feet hard. Lachenal went as far as to take off one boot which was a bit tight: he was in terror of frost-bite.

‘I don’t want to be like Lambert,’ he said. Raymond Lambert, a Geneva guide, had to have all his toes amputated after an eventful climb during which he got his feet frost-bitten.
¹
While Lachenal rubbed himself hard, I looked at the summits all round us; already we overtopped them all except the distant Dhaulagiri. The complicated structure of these mountains, with which our many laborious reconnaissances had made us familiar, was now spread out plainly at our feet.

The going was incredibly exhausting, and every step was a struggle of mind over matter. We came out into the sunlight, and by
way
of marking the occasion made yet another halt. Lachenal continued to complain of his feet. ‘I can’t feel anything. I think I’m beginning to get frost-bite.’ And once again he undid his boot.

I began to be seriously worried. I realized very well the risk we were running and I knew from experience how insidiously and quickly frost-bite can set in if one is not extremely careful. Nor was Lachenal under any illusions. ‘We’re in danger of having frostbitten feet. Do you think it’s worth it?’

This was most disturbing. It was my responsibility as leader to think for the others. There was no doubt about frost-bite being a very real danger. Did Annapurna justify such risks? That was the question I asked myself, and it continued to worry me.

Lachenal had laced his boot up again, and once again we began to force our way through the snow. The whole of the Sickle glacier was now in view, bathed in light. We still had a long way to go to cross it, and then there was that rock band – would we find a gap in it?

My feet, like Lachenal’s, were very cold, and I continued to wriggle my toes, even when we were moving. I could not feel them, but that was not unusual in the mountains, and if I kept on wriggling them it would keep the circulation going.

Lachenal appeared to me as a sort of spectre – he was alone in his world, I in mine. But – and this was odd enough – any effort was slightly
less
exhausting than lower down. Perhaps it was hope lending us wings. Even through dark glasses the snow was blinding and the sun beat straight on the ice. We looked down upon precipitous ridges which dropped away into space, and upon tiny glaciers far, far below. Familiar peaks soared arrow-like into the sky. Suddenly Lachenal grabbed me:

‘If I go back, what will you do?’

A whole sequence of pictures flashed through my head: the days of marching in sweltering heat, the hard pitches we had overcome, the tremendous efforts we had all made to lay siege to the mountain, the daily heroism of all my friends in establishing the camps. Now we were nearing our goal. In an hour or two, perhaps, a victory would be ours. Must we give up? No, that would be impossible. My whole being revolted against the idea. I had made up my mind irrevocably. Today we were consecrating an ideal, and no sacrifice was too great. My voice rang out clearly:

‘I should go on by myself.’

I would go alone. If he wished to go down it was not for me to stop him. He must make his own choice freely.

‘Then I’ll follow you.

The die was cast. I was no longer anxious, I shouldered my responsibility. Nothing could stop us now from getting to the top. The psychological atmosphere changed with these few words, and we went forward now as brothers.

I felt as though I were plunging into something new and quite abnormal. I had the strangest and most vivid impressions, such as I had never before known in the mountains. There was something unnatural in the way I saw Lachenal and everything round us. I smiled to myself at the paltriness of our efforts, for I could stand apart and watch myself making these efforts. But all sense of exertion was gone, as though there were no longer any gravity. This diaphanous landscape, this quintessence of purity – these were not the mountains I knew; they were the mountains of my dreams.

The snow, sprinkled over every rock and gleaming in the sun, was of a radiant beauty that touched me to the heart. I had never seen such complete transparency; I was living in a world of crystal. Sounds were indistinct, the atmosphere like cotton wool.

An astonishing happiness welled up in me, but I could not define it. Everything was so new, so utterly unprecedented. It was not in the least like anything I had known in the Alps, where one feels buoyed up by the presence of others – by people of whom one is vaguely aware, or even by the dwellings one can see in the far distance.