Here, we’re here, I’m here, hoping that my ability and the rest of the lads’ ability and the gods will see us OK. We’re gamblers, we’ve got no cash; we have lives, we love them, that’s the stake. The reward for me is to continue this life, on this planet, driving down the roads I know and walking through the doors of my friends’ houses … and in between that, Inshallah, a summit or two.’
Mal Duff at 8000 metres on Everest’s North-east Ridge:
‘Tony crouched on a rock 40 yards away, a small spark of life where none should exist. The spindrift swirled and battered, whirling over the ridge, pluming up 200 feet before hurling itself upon us … Reaching the lee of the rock and contacting Tony, another human in this madness, becomes all-important. A shattering pain suddenly erupts in my lower chest – a muscle rip in my diaphragm, can’t inflate my lungs! A moment of panic subdued by years of training. No matter what, I must try, try to live, to descend or even to die but I must try … I must try because this is the big one, the master problem that perhaps I’ve been seeking for years, unwittingly …’
AUGUST ’84 – 6TH NOVEMBER ’84
‘The Mustagh Tower was over, the ropes had all been sold or coiled away. We were sitting in Mrs Davies’ while monsoon rain fell day by day …’
The photograph is in front of me now: Mrs Davies’ hotel, Rawalpindi, mid-August 1984. Mal Duff and I are lounging in old cane chairs, smoking K2 cigarettes and laughing over some forgotten joke. We’re stripped to the waist but sweat still trickles from our arm-pits, for the air is torrid with the monsoon season. I notice with a shock how skinny we both are, how much weight we lost on the Mustagh Tower expedition.
But that was all over, my first and only Himalayan trip, the one that prompted me to take up climbing less than a year before, after Mal’s impulsive suggestion that I come along to support-climb and write a book about it. It had been a deeply satisfying expedition: I’d carried a load to Camp 2, and after many set-backs the four lead climbers all made it to the top and safely back again. It was the second ascent by the West Ridge, the third ascent in all of the Mustagh Tower’s 7,230 metres.
Now Mal and I were on our way home, thinking of bacon, beans and beer and the women we wanted to see again. We drank coffee, smoked and yarned while ineffectual fans whirred overhead, a flat-footed old servant hobbled by, and ghekkos clung miraculously to the wall as they stalked their supper. We were at peace, expecting nothing and looking for nothing.
The renowned Polish climber Voytek joined us, his eyes pale blue and direct, his air one of casual but absolute self-possession as we exchange potted versions of our trips. Then a Norwegian from the ill-fated Trango Peak expedition sat down. Two of his friends had disappeared while abseiling down from the summit; they hadn’t been found and, barring miracles, they’d had it.
There was nothing much we could say about that, so the conversation passed to high-altitude traverses. The Norwegian mentioned that he and his friends had an outside chance of pulling off one of the great ones – a traverse of Everest from North to South, from Tibet to Nepal. They had a permit for both sides of the mountain. But he added it was now unlikely that Norway had enough experienced climbers left to tackle both sides, and they would probably concentrate on the standard South Col route.
Mal seemed distant, only making conversation. I thought he was probably bored, or thinking of home and Liz. Voytek and the Norwegian left; I went to buy more cigarettes. When I returned Mal rocked back in his chair then said with elaborate casualness, ‘How do you fancy raising twenty grand and coming to Everest, Andy?’
A pulse beat in my neck, even though I knew he was joking. ‘Sure, why not?’ I replied, equally casual. ‘But I didn’t know you were interested in Everest.’
‘I’m very interested in the North-East Ridge, the Unclimbed Ridge. It’s the last big route left on Everest. Maybe we could pick up that Norwegian permit for the Tibetan side of the hill. Are you on?’
At least Mal’s jokes are big ones. I lit a K2 cigarette, tipped back my chair and considered for a moment. A ghekko pounced, its jaws closed on its prey with an audible snap. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Shall I tell her now, Andy?’
I lean on the bar in an Edinburgh pub and wonder where to begin after three alcohol-free Muslim months.
‘Tell me what?’ Liz Duff asks.
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ Mal replies. I shake my head at his low cunning.
‘You might as well tell me now.’
‘Well, ah … We’re planning to go to Everest in the spring.’
Liz lets go his arm for the first time since we landed in the UK. ‘Oh no you’re not,’ she says firmly.
‘I think I can get a permit for the North-East Ridge of Everest, but I’ll only go if you lads think it’s on and will come.’
Jon Tinker and Sandy Allan look at each other. They’ve just returned to London after the Mustagh Tower trip and found a message in Jon’s parents’ kitchen saying ‘Phone Malcolm’. So they have, and this is what they get.
‘Duff, you’re … crazy!’ Sandy says. A chuckle from the other end of the line. ‘Jon and I will think about it and phone you back.’
They do. ‘We’re coming, but neither of us have any money.’
‘That’s alright. On this size of trip we either get complete sponsorship or else we can’t go.’
Sandy puts the phone down. When he’d seen the message some premonition had told him it would be Everest. But the ‘Unclimbed Ridge’ – ! – Jon shakes his head, laughs, ‘Duff is mountaineering’s answer to Malcolm MacLaren. Or Bonnie Prince Charlie …’
A fantasy, yes. The North-East Ridge, China, Tibet … Malcolm is dreaming and scheming again as he puts down the pints, his right knee jumping restlessly, pulling on another cigarette. He’s a dietician’s nightmare: fuelled on constant coffee, sugar, lager, cigarettes and fast-foods, he has the nerve to be healthy. He is the most dangerous kind of dreamer – one who acts with absolute commitment as though his dreams were already fact, and thus sometimes makes them so. The Mustagh Tower had been a dream ever since as a teenager he’d read Tom Patey’s account of its classic first ascent; he’d planned it, froze and sweated and suffered and climbed till he finally stood on the top, one foot in Pakistan and the other in China. I have a very real chunk of summit rock in my desk drawer to remind me of the power of fantasy.
Mal, Jon and Sandy: they were the core of this latest ploy. They’d shared the Mustagh Tower experience and on the back of that felt ready for something bigger. Maybe one of the great 8,000 metre peaks … But Everest! Perhaps it had come too early, but they couldn’t pass up on the chance. The three of them debated the feasibility and basic strategy of the expedition; their nominations of additional climbers reflected their very different natures, and were to determine the nature of the entire party.
‘There was smiling Sandy Allan, that amiable Hieland honey-bear …’ Sandy with the pale, washed-out blue eyes, often obscured by thin reddish-blond hair falling over his forehead. Strongly built, solid with shoulder and arm muscles built up from rough-necking on North Sea oil rigs, which financed his climbing, he seems to be bigger than he actually is. A casual bear, giving the impression