Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tedly, he did not object to the big national expeditions led by Zawada, the Yugoslav
Ales Kunaver, or the Japanese Yasuo Kato. Nor did he seek to demean them. Kun-
aver's team had an impressive list of successes, and had nearly climbed the south
aver's methods he said:
'This Yugoslav group is very cunning and very experienced, having successfully
completed a number of major projects like the south face of Makalu and the
Everest west ridge direct. After this type of 'training' the environment of big nasty
faces like Lhotse becomes much more acceptable. They know a lot more about the
environment and when it is reasonably safe to climb. They nearly succeeded on
Lhotse, and when the time came, they retreated without loss of life.'
[3]
But the big worry for Alex and all this generation of lightweight exponents was
that the big national teams would grab the last great problems before they got to
them. Makalu's west face was on Alex's list, as it was on Voytek's, and they were
delighted they had two chances to make the ascent. This was a much harder face
than Dhaulagiri and the tactics had to be absolutely right.
In the post-monsoon season, Alex and his Polish companions had two sorties
onto the mountain to acclimatise before venturing onto the face. First, they
climbed the original north side route to an altitude of 7,800 metres. On a second
outing, they placed a cache of food and gas for their descent, which would be down
this route if they achieved the summit via the west face. They spent one night
above 8,000 metres on the north ridge. They were now fully acclimatised for an at-
tempt on the west face.
This comprised steepening ice fields, broken by rock bands, and climbing at a
standard similar to the north face of Les Droites. These ice fields, 6,000 feet high,
took four days to climb and led to a rock headwall. 'At the top of the third ice field
we just ran straight into the headwall. One minute you are on ice, the next you are
pressing your nose on granite.'
The team had thought a rightward slanting line would lead them through the
headwall, but, as Alex reported, 'we had been too cunning by half. We had pieced
together an imaginary line that led up through the headwall to the top of the west
ridge at 8,300 metres. The headwall was 300 metres high but ED sup not D sup as
we had imagined.
'We clearly had several more days left to complete the route. We knew we would
be bivouacking each night at over 8,000 metres and there would still be 400
metres to the top once we reached the west ridge. We were without the necessary
gear, food and fuel to do it.'
