Summit Fever. Andrew Greig

desperately on his McKinley warm-up climb, and finally gave up and went back to LA. There the doctors discovered his adrenal glands had packed in. Which meant he was simply not capable of doing two hard days back to back. Despite his quite phenomenal training, fitness and physical strength (we’re talking about a fifty-four-year-old who cycled from San Francisco to LA, some 450 miles, in thirty-six hours), there was nothing he could do about it. There was no chance of him climbing Mustagh or Gasherbrum 2.

      But he insisted we go ahead without him. He’d still back us.

      My first reaction was relief. I hadn’t realized till that moment how set I was on this adventure. I’d have been desperately disappointed had it been called off.

      My second feeling was sympathy for Rocky. He’d been so keen, so dedicated, so wound up for this Expedition. He hated ‘failure’. This happening just five weeks before departure would leave him devastated and disgusted.

      Then I felt gratitude – no, more than gratitude, respect—at his insistence that we press on and he’d still fund us. The trekking party that were going to accompany us dropped out, but we were still in the game. Again that selfish joy, the relief.

      Purely selfish too was the sense of loss for this book of one of its central, most colourful characters. How would I write about what we’d christened ‘Rocky’s Horror Show’ without Rocky? I’d been interested to see how his earnest American ‘there must be a solution’ approach to the climb would play off against the more anarchic, stoic and improvisational attitudes of the British climbers. I’d been interested to find out why someone who had so much going for him should want to risk his neck doing something like this.

      And I was all the more sorry now he couldn’t come, because I was impressed by the magnanimity of his gesture. It indicated a sense of community, of joint purpose, a kind of honourable seriousness one doesn’t associate with the ‘me-centered’ American ethos. He demonstrated as much of the Right Stuff in insisting the Expedition went ahead as he possibly could have on the climb itself.

      So at the last minute we had to rethink the Expedition. Many of the problems that were to follow stemmed from this. We had to drop the Sherpas who had been going to assist Rocky, Burt and Donna, and without their support we could no longer think of fixing ropes most of the way up. This made our chances of success that bit more marginal.

      What had at one point seemed something of a Himalayan circus had been whittled down to a more acceptable modern mountaineering team with a few extras. Much better style, but Burt, Donna and I were worried that with Rocky’s absence the spotlight would switch to us, and that we might just be tiresome baggage that would slow the others up. We’d have to work harder, do better, push ourselves further. The Expedition’s success might depend on how much support we could give the lead climbers. Were we up to it?

      Our chances of success? Mal reckoned it 80 per cent likely that at least one of us would make the summit of Mustagh. Most people considered that wildly optimistic. Roughly one Himalayan expedition in ten succeeds. We counted on one hand the number of active British climbers who’d stood on a summit the height of Mustagh or Gasherbrum 2. The list of those who’d been killed on such peaks took both hands. That was an alarmingly high rate of attrition. Yet we had to start some time, and a new generation of British Himalayan climbers had to appear. If this trip went well, it would establish some new names.

      All our lads swore blind that competition and ambition meant nothing to them, that they just liked climbing. Don’t believe it for a moment. Duff, Brindle, Allan, Tinker – they were all revved up and hungry for success, for the Mustagh Tower and the further glittering prize of Gasherbrum 2.

      *

      So even before setting out, we had our losses and setbacks: Brian Sprunt, Rocky, my father. In a curious way they all seemed to connect. In each case there was much sadness, then the determination, almost the duty, to carry on. It’s the best thing we can do, the only thing other than despair. Remember them when we’re out there, remember what we owe them, then – Go for it, youth.