Kingdoms Of Experience. Andrew Greig

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      Pre-route manoeuvring – who’s going to make out on E., make it up and off. All a waste of time. Sandy and Bob the consensus so far. I’ll keep quiet on this one. There must be no pairing off at the beginning though.

      It’ll be relaxing being on the hill again with my mates – Mal, Sandy, Tony, Nicko and Wattie. The rest will be by the end. Monk-cowled figures staring into the thin. That bitter taste of altitude. The sweet smell of sweat and the soured deflation of success.

      Mal trains on beer and chips. Jon trains on fear and loathing. Tony trains on climbing and training. Sandy keeps quiet. Andy G. must learn to be stupid.

      One-pint Wattie – flair and apeshit. Watch this man go! A dark horse by inclination. That youth will go far.

       Dr Aido’s PATENTED GO FASTER (GRADE V) PILL

      ½ oz garlic

      ⅛ oz snuff (Black Death brand)

      2 slivers of red pepper

      2 grains of cocaine

      1 cut-down amphetamine suppository

      MIX WELL AT BASE CAMP. ALLOW TO SET.

      INSERT WHEN FACED WITH

      – Grade V

      – FAILURE, DEATH, PANIC

      – BORING PARTIES

       EFFECTS UNCERTAIN BUT IT WILL MAKE YOU GO FASTER!!!

      Chris Bonington lecturing at the Clachaig. ‘I’ll be sitting on the South Col with loads of Sherpas carrying up tons of food and oxygen; I’ll look across at Mal Duff and his merry men and I’ll think “You poor buggers, hee hee!” … I hope they reach the top but even more that I reach the top.’

      Later, after the lecture, we had a quick talk. He thinks we’ve got a chance, and emphasized how bloody high, hard and long it is. I came away almost certain that I will not get above 8, 000 metres and even that will take all I’ve got. It’s quite nice to go without summit pressure or financial worries. Even load-carrying will be a privilege, so many people would sacrifice a lot to go on this sort of adventure.

      The photo-call at the Clachaig. We play around on an ice-fall for the cameras. Kurt and Julie have seen it all before – they sit around – also they’re outside their home ground. A trifle ruffled by the lads trying to pin down what they’d done the day before. ‘We just went up the mountain.’ It transpires they went up Summit Gully – a descent route off Bidean Nam Beith which Mal not unkindly calls ‘a steep walk’. Later in the pub Kurt toasts Julie to a good day out ‘even though Mal says it’s just a steep walk’. I fall about. Legends can play this game better than most.

      Andy said that he hadn’t got the same excitement or sensed the same feeling about this trip. I think most of us feel the same. It’s too big to comprehend, so many people are involved.

Andy playing guitar much later in the Lounge, Mal in babble-mode, Dave thumping his chair – it’s great having him on our side. Meanwhile I’m reading Hornbeim on thin cold air, Willi Unsoeld and the North Face traverse1 in a back issue of National Geographic …

      I needed to take the occasional weekend away from writing Summit Fever to go climbing in Glencoe and remind myself why I’d actually become involved in this game. There’d be little technical climbing for me on Everest, just the bottomless weariness of carrying loads at altitude, and from the point of view of training I’d have been as well just walking on the Scottish hills with a 40 lb rucksack. But I’d become addicted to the anxiety, adrenalin and purifying concentration of extending myself on a technical Scottish route.

      My literary friends, surprised as I was at the way my life had been hi-jacked by climbing, asked if this was not a form of escape, its excitement being a distraction from more real problems. At the time I shrugged; they hadn’t known what it was like. To climb is to know it’s the real thing. I was going to Everest and I didn’t care much why. What mattered now was a gradual physical and mental focusing – yes, a narrowing if you like – on the adventure ahead. Ask the big questions later when I had time to catch up with myself. Always later, sometime later …

      Dave Bricknell, the Pilkington Company Secretary, who had now definitely obtained leave to come on the Expedition, came up to Glencoe for his initiation into climbing. On his first route he suffered the agonies of hot-aches through wearing inadequate gloves, and quietly passed out on a belay stance halfway up. Mal heard a rattle and looked down to see only Dave’s feet resting on the ledge – the rest of him had slipped away and he was peacefully hanging upside down. Mal descended, put him on his feet again, and finished the route with an extremely embarrassed Dave struggling to make sense of it all through a confusion of axes, ropes, slings and gear.

      The second day he went out with Mal and Liz. Halfway up, Liz heard ‘Shit!’ drift down from Dave who was seconding Mal up above her. ‘What is it, Dave?’ she shouted up, concerned. ‘I think I’m beginning to enjoy this!’ came the reply.

      Dave was fitting in. ‘The Right Stuff – not half bad for a Company Secretary’ was Mal’s verdict. ‘Only trouble is he’s too fit and doesn’t drink enough. We’ll have to handicap him. Going climbing with a hangover and four hours’ sleep is the best rehearsal for altitude.’ Dave, who was beginning to adjust to the style of these shuffling dossers he’d fallen among, promised to try to put this good advice into practise. He made no effort to conceal his excitement at the adventure he’d been caught up in. I could easily empathize with him; the first trip is like no other.

      ‘The North-East Ridge is a typical modern mountaineering route – very bold, very brave, very stupid,’ Jon asserts in the Clachaig Bar. ‘Great!’

      ‘What’s our chance of climbing it?’ Dave asks.

      ‘At the moment I’d give us an 80 per cent chance of doing the Pinnacles, 30–35 per cent for the Summit,’ Mal replies.

      Jon, ‘I’d say we’ve nil chance of doing it, and it’s odds on someone will croak.’

      That’s their natures. Mal’s commitment and belief are absolute, they have to be. Not a ‘go out and see’ but ‘we will do it’. At the same time, a detached part of him is quite objective and realistic – he wouldn’t still be alive otherwise. Whereas Jon says we’ll go on till we drop, expecting us to drop.

      Mal stretches out his legs, relaxed for once. He and Jon have had a good day. ‘I don’t expect to die young,’ he observes into his pint. Jon turns to me.

      ‘How do you think you’ll die, Andy?’ This is not a question demanding an answer, but Jon’s characteristic testing-out. ‘The statistics say 1.3 people should snuff it on this trip, and you’ve got as good a chance of croaking as anybody else. More, I should say.’ And he leans back and laughs, eyes alight with mischief and something between malice and affection.

      I’d thought about it. Everyone had in their own way weighed up the risk and the hardship and the separations before reaffirming their commitment to going to Everest. It had been something of a shock when Pilkington’s came in and I realized this was really going to happen. This expedition was going to be much harder, more demanding and probably more dangerous than Mustagh, making that affair seem like a СКАЧАТЬ