There was an emotional resonance behind his controlled voice, and we realized the depth of involvement Chris must have in the ‘Unclimbed Ridge’. He’d lost two close friends in their oxygenless attempt – no wonder he was emphatic. Mal also thought he was right.
‘But of course you can’t use oxygen,’ Chris added. Using oxygen would vastly increase the number of climbers needed to carry the cylinders (there being no Sherpas in Tibet to help with that donkey-work), which in turn would mean more tents, gear, food, clothing. We’d be talking about nearly 20 high-altitude climbers, and there simply weren’t that many in Britain. Nor could we raise the inordinate amount of money involved, or organize an expedition on that scale in the time we had. A major expedition normally takes two years to set up; we had less than five months before the date set on the Everest permit we hadn’t yet acquired.
Mal nodded, agreed. That was the heart of it: we couldn’t do it without oxygen, but we couldn’t take oxygen.
Even if we still wanted to have a go at it, Chris suggested we enlarge our proposed team from six to more like ten, to allow for the inevitable natural wastage arising from repeated load-carrying and nights sleeping above 7,000 metres. His experience had convinced him that a fast, lightweight, Alpine-style attempt on the Ridge was almost bound to fail, and fail dangerously. A serious attempt would mean a return to something like his 1975 Everest South-West Face expedition, the protracted leap-frog process of a siege-style assault, using many climbers, fixed ropes and camps slowly established up the mountain. But even at that, an attempt to go through the Pinnacles to the summit, leaving the unknown technical problems of the Pinnacles aside, would mean a minimum of three days and nights above 8,000 metres without oxygen – and nothing like that had ever been done.
‘Frankly, I don’t think you have a chance,’ he concluded, ‘but of course you should go for it if you want.’ We shook hands and left.
Discouraged, we drove back north through the rain. Bonington’s evaluation of our problems seemed realistic. Was it worth going any further? We knew the facts. At this point roughly a dozen people had reached the summit of Everest without oxygen; nearly half had died or had to be carried down on the descent. Other than the astonishing Messner and Habeler, they had all been helped by having companions with oxygen to break trail and help them down. Messner and Habeler had naturally taken the most straightforward routes up, a far cry from the North-East Ridge.
We could settle for having ‘an outside chance’ of climbing the Pinnacles only, without oxygen. That would still be a challenge from a mountaineering viewpoint, because above the Pinnacles the North-East Ridge joins the North Col route, so all the ground from there on up has been covered. The ‘route’, the unknown and unclimbed element, could be said to end above the Pinnacles. But that would mean kidding any potential sponsor that we intended to go for the summit; summits matter to sponsors and the public, whereas mountaineers tend to think in terms of ‘the route’ rather than ‘the top’.
‘Mal, it sounds like all we need is two cylinders of oxygen above the Pinnacles,’ I said.
‘Well, sure, but Chris explained why we can’t get involved in a massive oxygen expedition, and I agree,’ Mal replied impatiently.
‘But can’t we just use a minimum of oxygen?’
‘To carry two bottles through the Pinnacles, you’d have to use oxygen to make up for the extra weight.’
‘Well, why not? What I mean is, does oxygen have to be all or nothing? Could we not just use the minimum amount required to end up with two full bottles at the end of the Pinns, for giving you a real chance of going on to the summit?’
Mal drove on in silence, the calculations and permutations clicking through his head. Then he turned to me thoughtfully. ‘You know, it could work if you didn’t use oxygen before 8,000 metres. If two people each carried one cylinder through the Pinns … they’d need another cylinder each … Three days through the Pinns, that would mean …’
He glanced back at the road in time to avoid the oncoming truck that nearly ended the expedition right there and then. We pulled up at a café in Biggar, ordered coffees and began working out logistics on the back of an envelope. Starting from the desiderata of two full cylinders above the Pinnacles, Mal worked backwards using elaborate combinations of flow-rates, half-bottles, changeovers, support along fixed ropes without oxygen … More coffee and more cigarettes as the enthusiasm and excitement began to build and a solution began to appear. One of the most intoxicating moments of any adventure is this phase where you start mapping a dream on to reality and perceive it might just fit.
By the time we left the café, revving with caffeine, nicotine and adrenalin, Mal had concluded the outlines of a possible game-plan: with 13 oxygen cylinders, ten climbers, and some very complex and fragile logistics, we had a chance of making the summit.
When Mal wrote to him outlining the new game-plan, Chris Bonington seemed to agree, and said he would be happy to be our patron for the Expedition (which had now acquired a capital ‘E’ in our minds!). That was a step forward: Chris’s backing gave us some credibility. All we had to do now was secure the permit, raise a team and some £80,000, plan and buy 5 tons of food, tentage, clothing, climbing gear, stoves and gas. There was not time to do things in that sensible order. Instead we had to go full-steam ahead, trying to raise money as though we had a permit, put together a team and start ordering gear as though we had the money, and immediately negotiate with the Chinese as though we had all these. Mal gave up his off-season casual labour and threw himself into organization full-time, and I got my head down over the Mustagh Tower book, which now had a possible early deadline: early March, when we would fly to Peking.
Developments fell into place thick and fast, overlapping and obscuring each other like cards being rapidly shuffled and dealt …
The Team, We were looking for another seven lead climbers. They had to have proven high-altitude abilities; just as important, they had to be able to get on and work together over three intense and stress-filled months. To have any chance of success, this had to be a team effort, demanding a great deal of selfless and possibly unrewarded load-carrying from everyone – so no stars, no prima donnas.
There was a limited field for Mal, Jon and Sandy to choose from. The grim truth was they could number on one hand the surviving British climbers who had been to 8,000 metres, and enquiries proved that all of them had other ploys for spring ’85. There was a new generation of talented, thrusting young mountaineers, but they had concentrated on bold Alpine-style ascents, by very small teams, of hard routes on the ’smaller’ Himalayan peaks. So any team we took to Everest would all be operating above their previous height records just in getting to the foot of the Pinnacles at 8,000 metres. ‘It’s not ideal,’ Mal said, ‘but we’ve all got to start sometime and it might as well be on Everest.’
‘I just don’t know if you’re ready for it, Malcolm,’ Liz said one evening.
‘Look, Liz, what can you tell me about the North-East Ridge that I don’t know already? That it’s very long, very high, very hard, and it’s a death route? I know that. There’s only one way to find out if we’re ready, and that’s to go there. I’ve always jumped in at the deep end, it’s the only way to learn …’
Sandy nominated Bob Barton – an exiled Yorkshireman and self-adopted Scot, working as an instructor at Glenmore Lodge outdoor centre. He had the requisite Scottish and Alpine background, expeditions to the Hindu Kush, Peru, Kenya, Alaska, and two notable Himalayan successes on Kalanka and Bhaghirathi II. Sandy had met him in Chamonix and the Cairngorms and been impressed by his steady, unflappable temperament and quiet determination. A natural team-member, he thought: friendly, selfless, easy-going.