Thin Air Read online

  Lyell, back in ’06, has the dubious honour of the highest death toll, with nine. Maybe that explains his hold on the popular imagination: that, and the fact that he climbed within a few thousand feet of the summit, which gives his tale a crueller twist. Certainly, as I huddle in my sleeping bag with an electric hand lamp positioned beside Cotterell’s little book, I’m just as ghoulishly drawn to their fate as anyone else.

  They had climbed to a little over twenty-two thousand feet when, as often happens at altitude, a trivial error triggered disaster. They had paused for a breather when one of them accidentally knocked his rucksack a yard or so out of reach. He then compounded his error by trying to retrieve it alone, slipped and fell to his death. This catastrophe seems to have turned their luck, for soon afterwards, a blizzard forced them to abandon the ascent, and they had to retreat to the camp below, where they were snowed in for three days.

  Three days at twenty-two thousand feet! And this was in 1906, before oxygen canisters. All they had for treating mountain sickness was cognac and kola biscuits.

  At last the weather cleared, but as they began their descent, an avalanche struck. Edmund Lyell and Charles Tennant were unhurt; the others were engulfed. What earned Lyell a place of honour in the annals of mountaineering was his dogged refusal to abandon his fallen comrades. He and Tennant braved frostbite, icefalls and a coolie mutiny, and eventually recovered two dead and two alive, albeit terribly injured. After laying the dead to rest at the foot of the mountain, they set off with the injured men. Tragically, during the trek down the Yalung Glacier, both the wounded succumbed.

  Shutting the book, I light another cigarette and take a nip of brandy from my flask. So there we are. Precisely the kind of heroic failure at which we British excel. Although for all my cynicism, I do understand why Garrard and Kits revere Lyell. By any standards, it was an astonishing feat.

  I find it disturbingly easy to imagine what it was like. The joy on finding two of one’s comrades alive in the snow; then the slowly ebbing hope, and finally the heartbreak as first Stratton, then Yates died on the trek.

  Enough of this. It’s doing me no good at all.

  Kits says the Stratton cairn isn’t far ahead.

  * * *

  Well I never expected this. The glacier’s horrible. So much for sparkling pinnacles of ice; it’s nothing but rubble. The whole bloody Yalung Glacier is covered in filthy grey rubble, like some gigantic rubbish heap.

  Apparently, this is typical of Himalayan glaciers – ‘Which you’d have known,’ as Kits helpfully pointed out, ‘if you’d bothered to do any reading.’ Well I didn’t, and thanks for not warning me in advance.

  Two days in, and we’ve only done five miles. Like some loathsome dragon, the glacier flings obstacles in our way: ridges, crevasses, boulders bigger than cathedrals. It won’t even allow us a glimpse of the mountain.

  I stay where I’m most needed, with the baggage train, and Cedric plodding along at my heels. I didn’t have the heart to send him off with the yak-wallahs, and he seems quite at ease on the glacier, and instinctively knows to avoid crevasses.

  My fellow sahibs form the advance party, and trudge ahead with four Sherpas, hammering in pitons, setting ropes up the tricky parts, and marking the route with cairns. More bloody cairns. I do wish they’d use flags.

  So far, we’ve crossed dozens of crevasses; thank Heavens McLellan thought to bring ladders. They sag alarmingly as we walk or crawl across, trying to ignore the echoing gurgles far below. We’re roped, of course, but it’s a point of honour not to wobble, and that’s hard, with one’s ice-axe swinging by its safety loop, and Nima behind, carrying Cedric in a doko and muttering prayers against the mirgút – a sort of ‘Abominable Snowman’ who lurks in the depths and drags men to their doom.

  I’ve decided that the best way of dealing with Nima’s superstitions is to tolerate them. Besides, there’s a lot more to him than that. I think he and Pasang are related – although you’d never guess to look at them, young Pasang being quite extraordinarily handsome, with aquiline features and finely cut nostrils that would be the pride of an archduke. But the assistant sirdar treats the older man with deference, as do the other Sherpas, and I’m beginning to see why. Yesterday, I was behind Nima when we were traversing a particularly difficult stretch, and as soon as I started putting my feet where he did, it became much easier and less laborious.

  I shall be overjoyed to see the back of this glacier. At night, the temperature plunges to twenty below, but by day it’s an oven. One goes from frostbite to sunstroke in half an hour.

  I’m turning into a bit of a fusspot. Well, I have to be, it’s my job. I remind everyone to drink, even if they’re not thirsty, and to prevent chills, I make them carry a spare shirt in their rucksacks, and change the moment we stop. I also insist on hats, snow glasses and glacier cream, especially for McLellan with his freckles, and Garrard with his thinning fair hair and beaky nose (it’s peeling, of course). With our white faces and blank black eyes, we sahibs resemble those ghouls from the devil dance – albeit with beards.

  By far the worst thing, though, is that there’s no wind, and the air feels heavy, and strangely dead. I’ve read about ‘glacier lassitude’, it’s a Himalayan peculiarity, but I never thought it would be so unpleasant. I’ve a thumping headache and I’m tired all the time.

  Every afternoon, we pitch camp with the guardian peaks frowning down on us, and below them, the great, silent, uninhabited valleys. Now and then, there’s a distant boom, and an avalanche claws its way down from the heights. That’s why we’re keeping to the middle.

  Our nights are noisy. If it isn’t an avalanche, it’s the ice around us creaking and groaning, as if something’s struggling to get out. I’d find it disturbing if I didn’t feel so rotten.

  I hate feeling like this when the others don’t, and I’m doing exactly what I told them not to: I’m pretending I’m fine. I dole out aspirin for the coolies’ headaches, ammonium chloride for Garrard and McLellan’s mild lassitude, and a bromide for Cotterell, who’s a tad worse. Of course, bloody fucking Kits is ‘absolutely top-hole’. (Ill temper is another symptom, and I really ought to stop swearing, but it helps, so I don’t think I shall.)

  The one good thing is that I’ve just passed the Stratton cairn without even noticing. I only realised what it was when I glanced back and saw Garrard and Kits taking photographs. For form’s sake, I sent Nima to give the thing a stone on my behalf. And I was glad to see that Cedric padded past without turning his head; so clearly, he sensed nothing untoward.

  Well of course he didn’t, it’s a pile of rocks. I blame our old nurse for the fact that such nonsense ever crossed my mind. She used to say that people built cairns to stop the dead from walking. What rot. It annoys me that I should have remembered that now.

  * * *

  I can’t believe how much better I feel. The headache’s gone. And it snowed in the night; the glacier is transformed. All day we’ve been picking our way around my longed-for pinnacles. Some are a surreally dazzling white, while others have a strange, blue, wind-polished glisten. And there are lakes, too, of the purest, bluest blue you ever saw.

  The snow is knee-deep, but the advance party trudges ahead, breaking trail, so we in the baggage train are having it easy. ‘One could take a pram up this,’ remarks McLellan, ‘and not even bruise the baby’s bottom.’

  This afternoon, we camped on the eastern edge of the glacier, behind a big spur of moraine which will, we hope, protect us from avalanches. Kabru is behind us now, and to the right rises Talung, the final peak before our mountain. Kangchenjunga is only a couple of miles away – although still out of sight.

  It’s a glorious afternoon, and I’ve just spent a marvellous two hours alone in my tent, varnishing my sphygmograph readings. After weeks of enforced camaraderie, a little solitude has left me feeling calm and happy, like a glass that’s been refilled with clear water.

  The others are still having tea in the mess tent (with Cedric begg
ing shamelessly for scraps), and I’m heading off to climb that spur, and see what I can see. I mean the mountain, of course, but I daren’t name it, not even to myself. I don’t want to jinx my chances of seeing it at last.

  We’re at seventeen thousand feet, but I’m fighting fit, no more ghastly glacier lassitude. My breath is loud and strong as I crunch up the pebbly moraine. In the distance, there’s a sound like an express train. I think that’s the wind roaring over the peaks. The sun is scorching, but a chill westerly breeze is keeping me cool: no dead air here!

  About twenty feet above me, a flock of choughs is squabbling over something in the rocks. After scaring them off, I come upon a scattering of bleached bones. It looks like one of those wild blue sheep – which in fact aren’t blue at all, but a disappointing grey. I’m out of breath, so I throw myself down by the bones. And suddenly there it is. Kangchenjunga.

  Photographs fail utterly to convey its power. From my perch on the spur, the glacier leads towards it like a shimmering royal road – although that’s putting a human gloss on something which has nothing to do with humanity. Up and up my eye climbs, past sweeping, dark-red precipices and glaring white ice, to those immaculate peaks, the highest trailing a banner of wind-blown snow across a sky so intensely blue that it’s almost black.

  Kangchenjunga.

  It takes me with a twist of the heart that makes me gasp. How could I not have realised? The moment I saw it, my adult self peeled away and I was a boy again, gazing in awe at the Crystal Mountain in the fairy tale. It’s never gone away, it’s always been there, deep inside me, this longing for the summit. Like seen music, some climber once said.

  This is why I came. Not to escape the mess back home, but for this. It was always and only ever about this.

  Someone touches my shoulder, and with a cry I lurch round.

  It’s Garrard and Kits. I can see from Garrard’s ugly, transfigured features that it’s the same for him. ‘M-my God,’ he falters. ‘Lyell was right … All other mountains are female – but Kangchenjunga is simply “It”.’

  Kits mops his brow with his handkerchief and gives an embarrassed laugh. ‘Big, isn’t it?’

  Garrard, the dutiful friend, forces a smile. I don’t. I can’t. My throat has closed. No words come.

  Kits shoots me an impatient glance. He loathes displays of emotion; he thinks they’re bad form.

  As we watch, there’s a distant boom, and ice breaks from the Face of the mountain, shattering to powder on the lower cliffs and sending great white snow clouds billowing upwards. Kangchenjunga is giving us a show of force.

  Garrard and I exchange apprehensive glances, but Kits, ever the climber, is already studying the Face through his field glasses.

  I ask for a turn, but he doesn’t respond. I suppress a twinge of irritation at being demoted to the importunate younger brother: Oh please, Kits, let me have a go!

  When at last he hands me the glasses, it’s a shock to see the mountain up close. What to the naked eye appeared so beautiful is in fact horrific beyond belief. The tallest peak is blurred by snowstorms; I can almost hear the screaming wind. Below it, there’s a dreadful plunge to a gigantic ice shelf that slashes horizontally across the Face. Beneath that, appalling red granite precipices drop sheer for thousands of feet. To the left of these, ice tumbles from the end of the shelf like a vast frozen waterfall, down past a massive triangular buttress of stark black rock, and on to the glacier below.

  But the mountain’s very cruelty only makes me want it more. I don’t give a damn what Kits says, it’s unthinkable that I won’t be part of the team for the summit. This is why I came.

  Only this.

  8

  Base Camp at last!

  We’ve only been here a few hours, but already it feels like home. We’ve built a windbreak of packing crates around the sahibs’ and mess tents, with the coolies’ quarters downwind, near the cook-site and stores dump. From now on, this is GCHQ: an island of safety in all this immensity.

  Cotterell and McLellan wanted to pitch Base on the rocky knoll just left of the Buttress, as that’s where we’ll be starting the climb. Kits wanted it too, as it’s where Lyell had his Base, but the coolies flatly refused, because it’s also the site of the remaining Lyell graves. Thank Heavens for that. Who wants the shark’s fin of the past jutting into the present?

  So instead, we’re camped half a mile in front of the Buttress, which means we’re still on the glacier, but protected from rolling avalanche débris by several giant boulders. Behind us and on either side are the guardian peaks. Before us, the overwhelming Face. To its right, a saddle-shaped ridge sweeps down, then up to the lesser peak of Talung. It’s somewhere on that saddle that the lonely Yankee met his end.

  This is a cold camp, and full of noises: the rumble of an avalanche, the relentless crack of canvas, the distant roar of the wind across the Face.

  Directly before us towers the massive black wedge of the Buttress, with the Icefall rising like a chaotic staircase to the Great Shelf, impossibly far above. The summit is almost out of sight. The Sherpas call it Takste, Tiger Peak, as it’s the first to be touched with fire at sunrise.

  We’re so close to the Face that I can’t see it through my tent flap’s celluloid window. Instead, I’ve a view of a small, still lake a short way from camp. I don’t care for that lake, it’s too quiet. But there we are.

  We’re at eighteen thousand feet, so I’ve insisted on three days’ rest, to ‘acclimatise’. I think everyone’s secretly relieved; even McLellan, who for once seems content to relax his timetable.

  We’ve just had an excellent lunch of pressed tongue, macaroni and cheese with spinach, tinned pineapple, Golden Syrup and Garibaldi biscuits, and we’re lounging in the sun outside the mess tent. It’s odd to think that back in Darjeeling, I felt like the new boy at school. I’m more at home with them now, even though I’ve yet to prove myself on the climb.

  It helps that we’re all such a scruffy lot, in our canvas hats, motoring helmets, cricket sweaters, fishermen’s jerseys, Varsity mufflers, breeches, trousers, gaiters and puttees. What Garrard calls our ‘shrubbery’ is decidedly unkempt. His beard is wispy and fair, Kits’ is thick and brown, while Cotterell’s is a startling silver. (It makes him look older, which I don’t think he likes.) Despite lashings of Penaten cream, we’re all burnt the colour of mahogany – except for McLellan, whose peeling pink skin creates a bizarre effect with his carroty whiskers.

  He’s writing a letter to his fiancée, a missionary, and Cotterell is smoking his pipe. Garrard is clacking out a despatch to The Times on his typewriter, and Kits is struggling with his portable gramophone – so far without success, thank goodness. I’m grooming Cedric. He was startled at first – he’s probably never been groomed in his life – but he’s loving it now, slitting his eyes and sleeking back his ears.

  Suddenly, there’s a deafening boom. I glance up in time to see a gigantic slab of ice breaking off from the Shelf and rushing down the precipice. I see it strike the lower cliffs and shatter to powder. Then I don’t see anything because I’m diving with the others into the mess tent.

  Seconds later, the shock wave hits, roaring through camp and pummelling the tent.

  There’s no time to be scared; it’s over in moments. We stare at each other as we listen to the rumbles die away.

  Camp is several inches deep in snow, but those giant boulders have done their stuff and protected us from débris. The coolies, remarkably unfazed, are already dusting things off. ‘Tchum,’ Lobsang the sirdar says unnecessarily. Avalanche.

  No one’s hurt, even Cedric simply shakes himself, and we’ve lost no gear, except for Kits’ gramophone. But for a while, none of us speaks. We’re all thinking of those graves on the knoll, and of what an avalanche can do to a man. The mountain has sent us a warning: That’s what I did to the last lot.

  ‘Poor devils,’ Garrard says quietly.

  Cotterell glances at our taut faces, then clears his throat. ‘Cribbage,’ he says
briskly.

  ‘And medicinal brandy,’ I add.

  Keep calm, that’s the ticket. It doesn’t do to dwell on the past. Of course I feel sorry about what happened to Lyell, we all do. But that was then and this is now.

  * * *

  My headache’s back with a vengeance. Red-hot needles drilling into my skull, and the slightest noise an agony: Nima playing his wretched flute, Kits whistling as he scrambles up and down those fifty-foot boulders at the edge of camp. He says he’s doing it ‘to keep his hand in,’ but really he’s showing off.

  I’ve got diarrhoea, too. I’ve been postponing a visit to the latrine pit, but I can’t any longer.

  As I stagger past the boulder where Kits is ‘practising’, pebbles trickle down and he bellows a warning: ‘Below!’

  ‘Christ, Kits, why’d you have to shout?’

  ‘Sorry, old man!’ He peers down at me and pulls a face. ‘You look grim. D’you want a hand?’

  ‘No I bloody don’t, I can take a shit on my own!’

  A shocked silence. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Me too,’ I mutter. ‘Really. I’m not feeling too grand, that’s all.’

  ‘You look dreadful.’

  ‘And you don’t, you lucky bastard, so leave me alone.’

  I’m so beastly weak that I only just manage to pull down my breeches in time. Cedric trots over, swinging his tail, but I shoo him away, and he slinks off with a wounded look.

  Somehow, I make it back and crawl into my sleeping bag. Never felt so rotten in my life. Why doesn’t Nima come and do something?

  The tent flaps stir, but it isn’t Nima, it’s McLellan. He appears fine, apart from slightly inflamed eyes, so why is he bothering me?

  ‘What d’you need?’ I mumble.

  ‘Nothing. I heard you call. Thought you might care for some tea.’ He places the tin mug within reach.

  Touched, I feebly bleat my thanks.

  He scratches his orange beard, and asks diffidently if I’ve taken anything for the pain. It hurts too much to shake my head, so I merely frown.