Travel Reference
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hired and the team had to shoulder much more weight themselves. It was not an
auspicious start and as the delay turned from days into weeks, it preyed heavily on
Alex's mind.
The bad feelings between Alex and the two less experienced members of the
team, especially Elaine Brooks, came to a head during continued bad weather in
base camp in late April. Doug found himself trying unsuccessfully to moderate
between the warring parties. 'For Alex, Elaine had only contempt, saying he always
spoiled a good atmosphere with his aggressiveness and took others with him.
Without realising it, they turned from sensitive beings into oafs.'
Elaine believed Alex was making the entire expedition an emotional nightmare
for her and others, especially Nick and Doug, while it seems Tut and Roger, known
as RBJ, sat on the sidelines, secretly cheering Alex on. Then Elaine decided to con-
front Alex head on about their differences and went to talk to him.
Doug asked her: 'Did it help?'
'He was brutally to the point,' she said.
Doug explained: 'Later Alex told me that during this conversation he had told
Elaine that he did not want her to come between him and Shisha Pangma. Alex
told her, “You are the problem of the trip - if you were not here there would be no
problem.” … I felt like a pig in the middle … as soon as Alex or Elaine's expecta-
tions appeared to be in jeopardy the negative energy that was generated put a
dampener on the whole enterprise.'
Such problems are all too common on expeditions; behaviour can become oafish.
I watched it tear into the goodwill between Alan Rouse and his teams on both
Everest in the winter of 1980 and on K2 in 1986. It would also greatly affect our
Annapurna trip only a few months after Shisha Pangma.
Despite very unsettled weather, the team agreed two acclimatisation peaks - Ny-
anang Ri (7,047 metres) and Pungpa Ri (7,445 metres) - as suitable objectives of-
fering the chance to sleep high and, in the case of the latter peak, a possible des-
cent route from the main objective nearby.
If Nick and Elaine were able to keep up and do their bit then that was okay. Alex
felt it would be a chance to sort the wheat from the chaff, and that soon proved the
case.
Nick became ill almost as soon as they set off for Nyanang Ri. The team stopped
to wait for him barely an hour out of advanced base. Doug told Alex to step back
and let Nick make his own decision whether to proceed or not. When he caught up,
Nick asked for another day's rest to recuperate. But Alex had already done his cal-
culations on the days remaining to the team and the days required to climb the two
