Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
taining the ridge would allow us to spend time well above 7,000 metres and
provide a final acclimatisation climb before returning to the face.
I spent the days reading or walking in the snow above base camp. Dinner in the
damp kitchen area with its floor of black ice was squalid and the food generally un-
appetising as we tried to conserve our high-altitude goodies. Dinner each night
was dal bhat with spicy pickles and some ten-year old meat bars left over from
Antarctic supplies that a friend had donated. Alex and René often stayed on in the
cook tent to drink Nepali rum while I went to read. Their conversations became
loud and abusive as they swapped tales of lesser mortals. Al Rouse came in for par-
ticular criticism for having dropped out, and at one point I heard René suggesting
they would be better on the main face as a twosome. I put the talk down to rum,
and ignored it.
We set off on the fourth day after Hiunchuli with food for five days and a mixed
rack for both rock and ice. Steep walls of gravel blocked the route off the glacier
onto the face but we negotiated these and were soon soloing up a rocky rib that felt
like a Scottish scramble. At around 5,000 metres we put on our crampons as the
ridge turned into an elegant crest of ice, and at around 5 p.m. cut a spacious bivou-
ac platform. My two companions seemed strangely detached from me as we stud-
ied our intended route on Annapurna that now rose up in sharp profile to our left.
Next morning, interesting ridge climbing on mixed ground allowed us to gain the
plateau below Fluted Peak. The snow was waist-deep in places and we agreed 200
paces each before handing on to the next person to break trail. René did his 200,
and then I took I over but stopped for a rest twenty short of my quota.
'You're getting old, Porter,' Alex said as he went past.
'Hey, I was only catching my breath.' When my turn came again I perversely re-
fused to hand over the lead and took us to the bottom of the connecting ridge that
led to the summit of Glacier Dome. René and Alex roped up and geared up and I
went to the back. Four pitches up, we came to a perfect ice sheet of around seventy
degrees - it was my lead.
'Pass me the rack Alex.'
'No way, I'll lead this. I'm not sure you're up for it.' René laughed and I wondered
what the hell was going on, but decided to stay quiet.
Alex traversed right onto the ice, which narrowed into a couloir above. He put in
an ice screw about thirty feet out and then cursed and shouted down that one of
his crampons had come off and was hanging by the straps to his boot. It seemed to
me the gods were making a point.
'You dumb amateur,' I shouted up. 'Lower off and let someone who knows what
he's doing lead.'
