Extracts from Newsletter 12
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When If Michael grows up he would like to be a Mountain Guide. Meanwhile he poses as a ski bum. (He is really a part-time sandwich maker at the Anoch Moor Tea Hut), or he just poses wearing poncy Karrimor kit and flashing his knockers on page 3 (actually page 2) of their catalogue. He should try joining the Girl Guides. He needed to do a heroic climb to impress the Great Chief Guide but was stuck with geriatric John as a partner. John does not want to be a guide. Or a hero. He wants to stay warm and alive and not get hypothermia like the pensioners on the 'Help The Aged' leaflet. After a nasty time spent cold and starting to die while getting off a mountain, John had sworn that he would never go up another mountain that did not have an easy way down.
Michael is a big, strong, boy and very persuasive. He promised that there was a easy way down*, he said he would lead all the hard bits**, that he would carry all the gear***, and would only eat his share of the food****. He also said the weather was going to be good for a week*****.
Ever so early the next morning, before John was awake, Michael sneakily tied him to the rope and dragged him across the glacier to the foot of the North Face. Twelve hours later they were 4,000 feet higher (only another 2,000 to go) and rather tired. They had not passed a bivi site. "Look at that lovely view" said Michael. John looked at it. Huge mountains everywhere in the evening sun. John thought that only about three quarters of the view was lovely. The rest of it was the way down and it made John want to go to the toilet. The first 2 miles were up and down and along a cornice ridge, the next bit was a steep ice wall and the last bit was an ice fall overhung by seracs. Under these circumstances an experienced climber, like John, uses the ostrich method to make the problem go away. Just above them was a bank of snow left by the six storms that had made the earlier part of the trip so exciting. They got stuck into it and dug and dug and dug, thankful that Michael had brought a snow shovel. After 2 hours taking turns at sweaty digging alternated with freezing boredom they had a snow hole. It was not quite long enough or high enough or wide enough or level enough for them to lie down in comfort. It was their first snow hole. The only part big enough was the entrance. A mistake but it did hide most of the view.
John went out for his pre-kip pee. The mountains looked smaller and further away. The sky was vast and sprinkled with stars except for one black bit - the first cloud of their seventh storm.
The snow came in through the big entrance and they passed the uncomfortable hours trying to stop it but glad they were not outside, sorry they had not dug a better hole. It blew a gale all the next day. They dug their hole bigger, blocked the entrance better, brewed up and laid back to watch the spin drift shadows through the translucent roof of the hole. John was sincerely, deeply, truly afraid.
Their second night was physically more comfortable but a comfortable trap is not consoling. Sometime in the early hours it went quiet; for a minute the wind dropped. By first light the quiet lasted for several minutes together. John sent Michael out to see if the rest of the world was still there. It was. "We will have to consider our options," said Michael. This gave John a chance to exercise his sneery, sarky, scornful, schoolmasters' laugh. "Options? We don't have options. WE ARE GOING DOWN." So, thankful that the wind had swept the new snow clear, they front pointed down 3800 feet of steep ice and abed the last couple of pitches over the bergschrunds.
The Russian Rescue Chief had enjoyed a full-frontal view of their ascent. "It is foolish and dangerous" he said. Of the descent he said "It is foolish and dangerous."
John went along with that.
*A lie **A small lie ***Another lie ****A big lie *****Pull the other one
John Temple '96