Travel Reference
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Jones and Dave Alcock. There were five Polish climbers, most of whom spoke sur-
prisingly good English, and a sixth member who we decided must be the commun-
ist party minder. He was happy enough letting us play in the hills while he stayed
in the bar and got drunk. On one occasion, he made off with a Plas y Brenin
minibus to see the countryside on his own. I remember Dave Alcock, then director
of the centre, being more concerned he might hurt himself in a crash than being
angry about the potential loss of the minibus.
Andrzej Zawada, known as Andrez, was the one person in the Polish team we all
knew by reputation. He was tall, well over six feet, with chiselled aristocratic fea-
tures and a mild, well-spoken manner. The rest of the team proved to be a power-
ful, friendly and confident bunch, totally in tune with traditional climbing tech-
niques, although they rarely seemed to bother placing protection at all. We had a
great time, knocking off classic routes between the showers and spending the
evenings talking and sharing stories in the bar at Plas y Brenin.
Zawada was not a particularly good rock-climber, but a great mountaineer. He
was also wonderfully urbane and entertaining. He told stories of suffering on
winter climbs in the Tatra and the Himalaya and of his plans to climb Everest in
winter, realised less than five years later when his team made the first winter as-
cent via the south col in early 1980. Although he rarely admitted the fact, he would
have loved to lead expeditions on first winter ascents of all the eight-thousanders.
In the end he managed three successful winter expeditions: Everest, Cho Oyu and
Lhotse. He also led the first ever winter success of any peak over 7,000 metres -
Noshaq on the border between Chitral and Badakhshan in Aghanistan - and un-
successful winter attempts on K2 and Nanga Parbat.
By the end of the week, we were good friends and by the end of the three-week
exchange, the Burgesses and I were conspiring to be in 'pole' position to make the
return half of the exchange to the Tatra the following winter. So it came to pass. I
quit my job as a builder's mate and in late February 1976 the three of us, joined by
Mick 'Jimmy' Geddes, boarded a flight to Warsaw to begin a six-week climbing
trip.
In 1976, the world seemed frozen in its geo-political shape of East against West.
East meant anywhere behind the Iron Curtain under the Soviet sway. China was
closed and inaccessible and not in the reckoning for the average political com-
mentator. There were only two superpowers: the menacing, myopic, totalitarian
empire of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies that formed the
Warsaw Pact, and the United States with its xenophobic and God-fearing hinter-
land. The United States was allied firmly to the nations of Western Europe through
NATO, although Washington looked with suspicion at the inexplicable swings
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