Conquistadors of the Useless (41 page)

Our base camp was pitched at the extreme point of the mountain's north-east ridge. The tents stood in neat rows on a wide terrace of scrubby yellow grass just above the village of Tukucha. It was quite different from the towns of lower Nepal, with its roomy, flat-roofed stone houses, able to serve both as stores and hostelries to the caravans that passed through several times a day during the season, coming and going between Nepal and Tibet. There the heavily laden men and women driving their pack-beasts from dawn to dusk could buy the tea, sugar and rice which are the essentials of life to them, and the mules and yaks could find fodder to nourish them after the arid mountain pasture. All kinds of trade went on in the shade of those houses – including, it was rumoured, opium and guns. Despite the fact that the caravanserais were built in the traditional style of their own country there were relatively few Tibetans about, and most of these seemed to be servants of the Nepalese merchants.

In theory we had maps, made by Indian surveyors at the time of British rule, but although they were artistically executed they bore no relation whatever to the topography except in the immediate area of the valleys. The whole of this part of Nepal was in fact virtually unexplored in the modern scientific sense of the word, the only exception being the visit of the American ornithologists the year before. The one thing we were sure of was that there were two eight-thousanders in the vicinity, and we owed this certainty to the fact that in clear weather they were visible from the plains of India, whence they had been accurately triangulated by expert British surveyors.

For practical purposes mapless and without even photographs, we were feeling our way in the dark. This total ignorance of what to expect was the reason we had not decided in advance which of the two giants to attack: our plan was to reconnoitre them both, then to attempt the one that looked easier. Annapurna had always seemed rather the more probable, but Dhaulagiri was perhaps more desirable, being higher and very beautiful in its isolation. In the event we reconnoitred both summits simultaneously, and in order to cover the maximum ground with minimum loss of time we divided into four parties.

The only side of Dhaulagiri visible from the valley was the east face, so we decided to investigate it first. The lower part was really one great icefall, but we hoped that beginners' luck would enable us to find a way through it to the north-east ridge, which linked the summit with another, farther to the right, which we called Tukucha peak. The ridge rose at an almost uniform angle of forty-five degrees and gave every sign of being simple enough … if only we could get to it. We had begun to realise that the main problem on Dhaulagiri is to get started at all. Four separate parties tried to force the East Glacier in vain. Finally Oudot, Aïla and I got to within some six hundred feet of the crest, only to find the way barred by an impassable labyrinth of gigantic crevasses after all our risks. We retreated without any regrets, our route having been far too dangerous to justify any further attempts. Even if a few ropes might have got away with it, it was out of the question for the constant heavy traffic of an expedition.

We also tried twice to get on to the north-east ridge from its other, northerly, flank. A two-day march brought Oudot and myself to a col commanding a good view of the colossal north face, which seemed to consist of steep, overlapping bars of limestone like the tiles of a roof. It certainly did not look like a reasonable line of ascent, yet during the next few years five expeditions were to attempt Dhaulagiri by this route. The Argentine party of 1953 even reached the north-west ridge about a thousand feet below the summit, and some people have suggested that, given a little more luck with the weather, they would have climbed the mountain. Personally, I doubt it. By the time they got to the ridge they were exhausted, and their leader, my friend Ibañez, had such bad frostbite that he died of it later. At such an altitude a thousand feet of extremely jagged ridge would be a doubtful proposition for a fresh party, let alone one in their condition.

Nor did it look to us possible to attain the wide snow-saddle between the north-east ridge and Tukucha peak. As far as we could see this sector of the mountain presented nothing but impossible bars of séracs, which appeared to go on round the corner. The whole cirque was so threatening that the idea of making a route up it anywhere never even occurred to us. Yet history was to prove us mistaken: nine years later the sixth expedition to Dhaulagiri reached the snow-saddle by exactly this route, and the following year the seventh repeated it and went on to the summit.
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They found a dangerous gangway through the ice farther to the north, almost on the Tukucha peak itself, but it must have been far from obvious if well-organised parties of experienced mountaineers had succeeded in missing it for several years. It seems so extraordinary that I wonder if some major alteration to the glacier has not occurred.

Naturally I have sometimes regretted not pushing my reconnaissance a bit farther, but taking everything into account I do not think we would have got up Dhaulagiri even if we had succeeded in finding the way to the snow saddle. In 1950 the time was not yet ripe for such an exploit. We were short of time, experience and equipment; and above all we were short of Sherpas. Thus we had neither the strength nor the knowledge to exploit such a long, complex and difficult route. The English mountaineer Frank Smythe, one of the greatest of his generation, a member of five expeditions, the conqueror of Kamet and a man who had reached twenty-eight thousand feet on Everest without oxygen, had said flatly: ‘Himalayan mountaineering offers such difficulties that it seems unlikely that any expedition will succeed on one of the dozen highest summits at the first attempt.' Smythe was a pioneer, and events have since proved him mistaken, but after all we were pioneering too, and Himalayan technique at that time had not progressed at all since his day. The weapons which brought success on Dhaulagiri in 1960 had not yet been forged: the party used an aeroplane to land some of their men and supplies on the snow saddle.

Herzog quickly came to the conclusion that Dhaulagiri was too tough a nut for us to crack, and without waiting for any further confirmation he switched all our efforts towards Annapurna. This mountain was difficult even to find, and at first we didn't so much as succeed in getting a view of it. We almost began to wonder if it was another figment of our fairy-tale maps. In fact it was hidden from us by the Nilgiri range, and we had to get quite high up on the flanks of Dhaulagiri before we could see it. So far as we could make out there were steep crags on the south and east, but the northern side, which we commanded in profile, was a vast medium-angled snow slope, scarcely more than thirty-five degrees. There seemed no particular reason to suppose any major change of character lower down, and if we were right about this the ascent ought to be comparatively easy.

These favourable omens restored our morale. But in order to climb our easy snow slope we still had to find a way to the foot of it, and this was beginning to assume the proportions of a mystery. The Nilgiris, seen from a distance, gave the impression of an unbroken chain, and Annapurna therefore looked as though it began in another system of valleys beyond. Apparently we were either going to have to make an immense detour round the north-west of the range or cross it at some point of weakness, always supposing that one existed. We chose the latter solution as being the quicker, and the first reconnaissance attempted to cross the range by following the course of the Miristi Khola, which led to a deep breach in the mountain's defences.

To tell the truth we were rather intrigued by the amount of water that came down this defile: it seemed too abundant to be accounted for solely by the relatively minor glaciers of the Nilgiris. We had an inkling, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it might drain the west face of Annapurna, or perhaps just possibly the north face; and the map, whose full inaccuracy we did not even yet suspect, appeared to bear this out. It showed the source of the river below the Tilicho col, and a straightforward path leading along it, over the col, and down to the Manangbhot valley on the other side. But it was too good to be true. Inquiries by the sirdar Angtharkay revealed that no one in the area had ever heard of Tilicho col or of any path leading up the Miristi and over the range. It was certainly puzzling.

Our European minds could not adjust to the idea that any map could be so inaccurate, and after all it seemed as logical to trust it as the word of a bunch of villagers who had little interest in the remoter parts of the mountains. Wishful thinking led us to suppose that knowledge of the trail might have died out owing to trade changes. Such things had happened before, and only recently we had found the greatest difficulty in discovering a man who could guide us up the valley to the west of Dhaulagiri, though when we got there we found not only a path but signs of erstwhile inhabitation. In the end we decided to see for ourselves. If the river could penetrate the heart of the range, why shouldn't we?

Further inquiries by the Sherpas confirmed that the lower gorges of the Miristi were indeed impassable, but we had had certain views from Dhaulagiri which suggested the possibility of joining the river higher up. The obvious thing now was to put all this to the proof, and accordingly Oudot, Schatz and Couzy, accompanied by Angtharkay and some of the other Sherpas, set out to explore. They were able to get through the dense jungle of the lower slopes thanks to a tiny track placed by a beneficent providence precisely where it was most needed. This led them up to open country again, where they bore more to the right until they came to a shoulder on the south-west ridge of the Nilgiris. Thence a four-mile traverse along the sole ledge between a couple of three-thousand foot precipices brought them back to the torrent just above the point where the gorges widened out into a valley again. By this time, unfortunately, they were exhausted from lack of food and could go no farther. Shortage of provisions forced them to turn back before they had explored the valley to its end.

The statements they made on their return did little to clear up the mystery that seemed to cloak the mountain. They were now quite convinced that the Miristi did drain at least the west face of Annapurna, and had also had a close look at a gigantic rock spur that appeared to lead to the north-west ridge. They had not found any obvious way of getting on to the glaciers of the north face, and the only possibility they could suggest seemed fantastic in its audacity: it consisted of climbing the spur and then the north-west ridge until the glacier could be gained from it. Presupposing that the hidden parts of the route did not reserve any nasty surprises, and given the fact that the main difficulties would come relatively low down, such a route was theoretically possible, but it was excessively complex and would raise technical problems so far never even considered in the history of Himalayan mountaineering.

None of this was exactly encouraging. Herzog, like the rest of us, felt that before committing ourselves to an enterprise of such uncertain issue we should find out definitely whether or not the North Glacier could be approached via the Manangbhot valley. While Oudot and I took a final look at the East Glacier of Dhaulagiri, therefore, Herzog, Ichac and Rébuffat would make a wide circuit of the range over the col separating the Nilgiris from the Muktinath massif. Though apparently unknown to the natives this pass offered no particular difficulties, but on the other side the party found themselves still cut off from Annapurna by an unknown chain of mountains which they dubbed ‘the Great Barrier'. They got back to Tukucha on 13th May, and the topography of Annapurna remained as baffling as ever. Our minds, accustomed to the less complex formations of the Alps, had difficulty in formulating the idea that the mountain and its satellites might, like Nanda Devi, constitute a closed circle without other issue than one narrow defile.

Oudot and I had returned empty-handed on the 12th, and for the first time since our arrival the whole party was together. Two days later Herzog called a council of war in our big mess tent. The situation was getting desperate: it was time for vital decisions to be taken. We had now spent over a month wandering around the complex and unexplored Dhaulagiri and Annapurna massifs without finding a practicable route up either of them, and the monsoon could be barely more than three weeks away. Yet we could hardly give up so easily. Surely all those years of hope and dedication, those youthful dreams, those desperate fights on the hardest climbs in the Alps, could not lead to such a tame ending. It is said that faith can move mountains; well, we still had faith, in spite of all the wearisome disappointments. The enthusiasm which had overcome so many obstacles was still fresh, and now that we were on the field of battle the disappointment of those who had believed in us and toiled for us was not to be thought of. It was obvious that we had really undertaken too much, but for honour's sake we must see it through. The gleams of hope might have grown somewhat dim but they were not totally extinguished. The important thing now was to choose between these two eight-thousanders, and then do our best.

The mighty and isolated Dhaulagiri had yielded us all its secrets. We were well aware that it had only one weak point, the north-east ridge. If one could only get to its base by a very long and difficult traverse of the Tukucha peak, the ascent would be theoretically possible. With the time and equipment at our disposal an optimist might consider making the attempt, but it would be verging on suicide.

Annapurna, by contrast, remained a complete enigma. We had seen the mountain from afar off, lording it over groves of seven-thousanders, but the closer we got to it the hazier our ideas of its topography became, for all our painstaking reconnaissances. Three of our number, aided by luck and the wonderful flair of the Sherpas, had eventually accomplished the remarkable feat of penetrating to the heart of the sanctuary via the cyclopean six-mile gorge, but even then the best they could say was ‘perhaps'. Now we had to choose between a most desperate enterprise and a complete gamble.