Sat 2 Dec '06 – High Camp 3700 mts - Decent Day
The beginning of the end?
By 11.00 am we’re all still dozing away, snug in our bags & as the sun comes around to start warming the interior of the tent we start to shuffle & get up. Grim looking day outside & not much point in going out unless you have to & at this stage, we don’t need to, so we stay where we are. This is a windy, bleak spot & apart from a view down the route we came up it is of little interest. The wind is howling & raising the spindrift & blowing it everywhere. The general consensus amongst most of the guides leading teams is that we should wait a few hours & see if the wind will drop to make breaking camp & getting out of here a little easier than it would be if we moved right now. The weather is difficult to predict here because you can’t see much & certainly can’t see behind the mountain from where it is coming from. Mid afternoon, we get a VHF report from VBC relayed through Camp 1 that the weather is expected to deteriorate & that a 3-4 day storm front could be about to break in the area. Accurate weather forecasting around here is very difficult simply because there is very recording done of the weather because there just isn’t much interest in it apart from the people located here. There is no regional ‘Met Service’!
At about 17.00 hrs the call went out from the guides that we were breaking camp & descending as soon a s possible. Most of the teams had started the process before us because they were already up & out of their tents & that 10 -15 min gap was later to prove to be vital. Breaking camp in conditions like this is always a big effort but it has to be done & if you don’t get on with it, no one else is going to do it for you. With strong winds, poor visibility, the tents half buried in wind driven snow, it was an effort to get them down & packed. The tents are always left ‘til last in a situation like this just in case we need to take shelter at the last minute. Ian did consider aborting the decent on account of the worsening conditions & discussed the option with one of the other guides of staying where we were & waiting it out. But all the other teams were ready to move out & if we stayed we’d be on our own. We could have stretch the little food we had to last 3 – 4 days & we had good shelter, so could have descended after the storm had blown through. But Ian had to make a decision, didn’t fancy being there on our own & opted to continue to move out. He did give the last of the other groups a bundle of wands & asked them to wand the early part of the route which hadn’t been marked out by now.
We were ready to go 10 – 15 mins after the last of the other groups but by now the weather had really got bad with gale force winds & visibility down to between 5 – 10 mts. The rope order was Fredrik at the front, myself, Richard, Jon & Ian at the back. Fredrik would be OK at the front because of his vast experience & I’d be experienced & strong enough to keep him out of trouble. Ian wanted to go at the back from where he could keep a watchful eye on Jon & Richard, so his strategy was sound.
Within 5 mins of leaving camp Fredrik was having some difficulty just spotting the next wand 10 mts ahead & at one point without having spotted the next one he started to wander about looking for it, which is always a dangerous thing to do. Sure enough he put his foot where he shouldn’t have & dropped into a hole. The rope between us was tight & I instinctively dropped into an arresting position & held him. He seemed to only drop up to his chest & within 2 mins we had hauled him out. A little shaken, partly from fright & partly from the physical effort of getting out, he struggled up into a hunched position, took a few deep breathes & then gave me a big smile & the thumbs up to say ‘thanks’.
At this point I realised that this was going to be a very difficult, dangerous decent & that we all had to be very vigilant not only about what we were doing but also what the person in front of us was up to because their life was potentially in our care. On we went, gradually getting closer to the crux of the decent, the most difficult section. Here the ground dropped off sharply & was riddled with crevices & gaping holes ready & waiting to swallow us up should we make a mistake. Fredrik had to stop at almost every wand to stare blindingly into the driving spindrift for the next safety marker. This was time consuming, frustrating & but absolutely essential if we were to make safe progress. At each marked crevice he would stop, turn around, point it out to me & await my signal that I was aware of it. I in turn was doing the same to Richard & so on back the rope.
We were now in the middle of the worst section & as we approached what was probably the biggest & perhaps the most obvious of the crevices we hesitated as Frederik crossed the snow bridge & then stepped sharply on down hill. I came to it & I remember saying to myself that this a mean looking one, but whilst it was a wide, it was open & had a good snow bridge that just needed 2 big steps to get across. Before I crossed I turned, pointed it out to Richard, he acknowledged & then on I went. About 15 paces or 20 secs later I felt a sharp pull on the rope that I somehow knew instinctively was more than the normal tug of a good tight rope between climbers. In one swift movement I dropped to the ground & managed to turn around & face uphill to where Richard should be. But he was gone! Vanished into thin air. Maybe I was just not able to see him because of the swirling spindrift & the now steepened ground between us, for I was now lower down the hill than he would be because of the sharp decent. With just a 5 mt rope length between us surely even in this poor visibility I should be able to see him. But no, he was gone & it wasn’t into thin air, it was into that damm yawning crevice. Oh shit! Now we have a real problem & this is just not the place to have it.
I could then see Jon sitting down & locked into a holding position & at first I thought he was also half way down. I couldn’t see Ian at all because he was 5 mts back & the steep ground didn’t allow me a view over the top of what was the crevice & the snow bridge. Fredrik was 5 mts below me & instantly secured the line & himself with a snowstake. I was about 1.5 mt off the track & as I continued to dig my feet into a small ledge I also started trying to hammer my ice axe into the ground in an effort to secure my position. But in doing so my axe suddenly broke through yet another hole & I realised I was probably now lying over another potentially dangerous & weak hole. I’m not sure if I froze with fear or just the realisation of what could happen to me if I fell through, but I certainly froze for about 30 secs & then roared to Fredrik that I needed to move & would he please make sure he had a tight rope on me!! That was too close.
By now Ian had secured the line to Richard, Jon & himself & was working on setting up a pulley system to start hauling Richard out. My role was to secure the rope from my end as Frederik, staying tied into the rope moved uphill to assist Ian in the hauling. Richard was down about 4 mts & as usually happens when you have a big pack on your back was hanging almost upside down because he simply couldn’t maintain the physical effort to keep himself upright. In addition to his difficulties his rucksack was impeding any efforts to haul him out by getting caught on the angled side wall of the crevice. Fast & instant action needed to be taken & Richard in having great difficulty in getting his pack off was not going to be able to take it off & secure it to the rope to be hauled out separately so he decided that he’d have to drop it to the bottom of the crevice & say goodbye to it forever. But apparently he was now having trouble getting the buckles undone. To get his knife out of his pocket to cut the straps he needed to take his outer gloves off, but when he did so, his liners came off also & in the swinging & jostling around he neglected to ensure that they were secured to his wrists & in attempting to stuff them inside his jacket, he dropped them. Disaster!
He now needed to hauled out very quickly but he still had to drop his pack & by the time he finally got out the damage to his hands had been done. He was probably in that icy tomb for 30 mins which is long enough to chill you to the bone even with good clothing on. His hands were now badly frost bitten & he was also suffering from hypo-thermia. Ian had to make instant decisions about our next course of action & the only option we had considering everything, was to get some form of shelter up & quickly or Richard was going to have real problems.
This was not a good situation to be in. Richard had no pack & therefore no down clothing to put on, so I whipped my down jacket out of my pack & put it on him & as I did so I said to myself, ‘people are going to die on this mountain tonight’. As I comforted Richard, Jon was also in a bit of a state & Ian & Fredrik laid some sleeping mats down & set up the temporary Bivy shelter. Ian instructed Richard & Jon to get in & then asked me to stay with them & try & stabilise them by ensuring we all stayed as warm as we could. Meanwhile, Ian & Fredrik started to dig a snow hole but it was impossible due to the concrete hard ice 30 cm down. So their next option was to cut a ledge to sit down into, cover it with sleeping mats, then get the tent sheet over us & held down as best we could with our hands. Our packs were used as a protective wall behind our heads apart from mine & Ian’s which we took into the shelter with us. When we all got in & held the flimsy cover tight I pulled my down sleeping bag out to wrap around Richard & Fredrik who was now cold from being outside for so long. We used whatever else we could get out of the packs to stuff around us for insulation & then took a breather to assess our situation which didn’t take much to figure out, was not good. We had 2 bags of trail mix & a few bars between us plus hot water in my thermos & nalgene bottle & that was it. Everything else was outside in the packs making up the protective walls.
By now it was about 20.00 hrs & the priority was to stabilise our position, do whatever we could to retain as much body heat in the shelter & then try & make contact via our VHF radio with Camp 1 or VBC way down below us. It was a dire situation that was to get worse before it got better.
Contact was eventually made with camp 1 by VHF radio & they relayed messages between us & the ALE team who were at VBC. We set up a system of hourly contact with them as we tried to figure out the best way to get us safely out of where we were. The other descending teams had not even reached VBC yet & some had stopped at camp 1, tired & exhausted after their own efforts to get down the dangerous headwall & the trek all the way back to camp. When the descending guides heard of our predicament they naturally wanted to assist but were also exhausted & very concerned about having to trek all the way back up into the storm. A decision was taken that it was not safe to do so at present but that the 2 Swedish ski-climbers Martin & Olaf would head on up to the base of the headwall, set up a tent & be ready to move on up when ever the opportunity arose. In the meantime we would simply have to do our best to get through what was going to be a very difficult night & also pray to all of our Gods that we would get out of this alive.
Ian went outside to try & recover some more gear & the 20 mins it took him left him exhausted, very cold & it was clear that moving from here was simply not an option. We could not descend this mountain with Richard in the condition he was in & the rest of us also beginning to struggle. By the time we’d have got out of the shelter, roped up, got our much needed packs sorted out & started moving, we’d be frozen stiff & in these conditions were very likely to have another accident. Richard would have needed to be carried or supported by 2 people & in the event of another fall we’d not have had the energy to get anyone out again. We would simply have stumbled on into certain disaster & death. As the hours rolled on through the night the only messages we heard from camp were those we didn’t want to hear…… 'sorry guys but we simply can’t get up the headwall I this storm & all you can do is hang on & wait' We knew the people down below us were risking their own lives in an effort to get to us & get us out, but we desperately needed help.
Morale was good & we were all keeping a positive outlook on the ultimate outcome which was important because if negative vibes started coming through we’d go down hill quickly. We kept prompting one another to ‘think warm’, wriggle our fingers & toes & do shoulder rolls to maintain circulation. We even sang a few songs & ‘Ten Green Bottles’ got the accolade for being the only song we managed to sing all the way through.
As the hours rolled on & on, the wind continued to hammer our shelter & we feared it might be ripped to shreds which would multiply our problems by 100 fold, because without that slender yet life saving shelter we would be totally exposed to the 50 mph winds & -40c temperature outside. That would probably have forced us into attempting to move on downwards to what we feared would our doom.
By 11.00 am we’re all still dozing away, snug in our bags & as the sun comes around to start warming the interior of the tent we start to shuffle & get up. Grim looking day outside & not much point in going out unless you have to & at this stage, we don’t need to, so we stay where we are. This is a windy, bleak spot & apart from a view down the route we came up it is of little interest. The wind is howling & raising the spindrift & blowing it everywhere. The general consensus amongst most of the guides leading teams is that we should wait a few hours & see if the wind will drop to make breaking camp & getting out of here a little easier than it would be if we moved right now. The weather is difficult to predict here because you can’t see much & certainly can’t see behind the mountain from where it is coming from. Mid afternoon, we get a VHF report from VBC relayed through Camp 1 that the weather is expected to deteriorate & that a 3-4 day storm front could be about to break in the area. Accurate weather forecasting around here is very difficult simply because there is very recording done of the weather because there just isn’t much interest in it apart from the people located here. There is no regional ‘Met Service’!
At about 17.00 hrs the call went out from the guides that we were breaking camp & descending as soon a s possible. Most of the teams had started the process before us because they were already up & out of their tents & that 10 -15 min gap was later to prove to be vital. Breaking camp in conditions like this is always a big effort but it has to be done & if you don’t get on with it, no one else is going to do it for you. With strong winds, poor visibility, the tents half buried in wind driven snow, it was an effort to get them down & packed. The tents are always left ‘til last in a situation like this just in case we need to take shelter at the last minute. Ian did consider aborting the decent on account of the worsening conditions & discussed the option with one of the other guides of staying where we were & waiting it out. But all the other teams were ready to move out & if we stayed we’d be on our own. We could have stretch the little food we had to last 3 – 4 days & we had good shelter, so could have descended after the storm had blown through. But Ian had to make a decision, didn’t fancy being there on our own & opted to continue to move out. He did give the last of the other groups a bundle of wands & asked them to wand the early part of the route which hadn’t been marked out by now.
We were ready to go 10 – 15 mins after the last of the other groups but by now the weather had really got bad with gale force winds & visibility down to between 5 – 10 mts. The rope order was Fredrik at the front, myself, Richard, Jon & Ian at the back. Fredrik would be OK at the front because of his vast experience & I’d be experienced & strong enough to keep him out of trouble. Ian wanted to go at the back from where he could keep a watchful eye on Jon & Richard, so his strategy was sound.
Within 5 mins of leaving camp Fredrik was having some difficulty just spotting the next wand 10 mts ahead & at one point without having spotted the next one he started to wander about looking for it, which is always a dangerous thing to do. Sure enough he put his foot where he shouldn’t have & dropped into a hole. The rope between us was tight & I instinctively dropped into an arresting position & held him. He seemed to only drop up to his chest & within 2 mins we had hauled him out. A little shaken, partly from fright & partly from the physical effort of getting out, he struggled up into a hunched position, took a few deep breathes & then gave me a big smile & the thumbs up to say ‘thanks’.
At this point I realised that this was going to be a very difficult, dangerous decent & that we all had to be very vigilant not only about what we were doing but also what the person in front of us was up to because their life was potentially in our care. On we went, gradually getting closer to the crux of the decent, the most difficult section. Here the ground dropped off sharply & was riddled with crevices & gaping holes ready & waiting to swallow us up should we make a mistake. Fredrik had to stop at almost every wand to stare blindingly into the driving spindrift for the next safety marker. This was time consuming, frustrating & but absolutely essential if we were to make safe progress. At each marked crevice he would stop, turn around, point it out to me & await my signal that I was aware of it. I in turn was doing the same to Richard & so on back the rope.
We were now in the middle of the worst section & as we approached what was probably the biggest & perhaps the most obvious of the crevices we hesitated as Frederik crossed the snow bridge & then stepped sharply on down hill. I came to it & I remember saying to myself that this a mean looking one, but whilst it was a wide, it was open & had a good snow bridge that just needed 2 big steps to get across. Before I crossed I turned, pointed it out to Richard, he acknowledged & then on I went. About 15 paces or 20 secs later I felt a sharp pull on the rope that I somehow knew instinctively was more than the normal tug of a good tight rope between climbers. In one swift movement I dropped to the ground & managed to turn around & face uphill to where Richard should be. But he was gone! Vanished into thin air. Maybe I was just not able to see him because of the swirling spindrift & the now steepened ground between us, for I was now lower down the hill than he would be because of the sharp decent. With just a 5 mt rope length between us surely even in this poor visibility I should be able to see him. But no, he was gone & it wasn’t into thin air, it was into that damm yawning crevice. Oh shit! Now we have a real problem & this is just not the place to have it.
I could then see Jon sitting down & locked into a holding position & at first I thought he was also half way down. I couldn’t see Ian at all because he was 5 mts back & the steep ground didn’t allow me a view over the top of what was the crevice & the snow bridge. Fredrik was 5 mts below me & instantly secured the line & himself with a snowstake. I was about 1.5 mt off the track & as I continued to dig my feet into a small ledge I also started trying to hammer my ice axe into the ground in an effort to secure my position. But in doing so my axe suddenly broke through yet another hole & I realised I was probably now lying over another potentially dangerous & weak hole. I’m not sure if I froze with fear or just the realisation of what could happen to me if I fell through, but I certainly froze for about 30 secs & then roared to Fredrik that I needed to move & would he please make sure he had a tight rope on me!! That was too close.
By now Ian had secured the line to Richard, Jon & himself & was working on setting up a pulley system to start hauling Richard out. My role was to secure the rope from my end as Frederik, staying tied into the rope moved uphill to assist Ian in the hauling. Richard was down about 4 mts & as usually happens when you have a big pack on your back was hanging almost upside down because he simply couldn’t maintain the physical effort to keep himself upright. In addition to his difficulties his rucksack was impeding any efforts to haul him out by getting caught on the angled side wall of the crevice. Fast & instant action needed to be taken & Richard in having great difficulty in getting his pack off was not going to be able to take it off & secure it to the rope to be hauled out separately so he decided that he’d have to drop it to the bottom of the crevice & say goodbye to it forever. But apparently he was now having trouble getting the buckles undone. To get his knife out of his pocket to cut the straps he needed to take his outer gloves off, but when he did so, his liners came off also & in the swinging & jostling around he neglected to ensure that they were secured to his wrists & in attempting to stuff them inside his jacket, he dropped them. Disaster!
He now needed to hauled out very quickly but he still had to drop his pack & by the time he finally got out the damage to his hands had been done. He was probably in that icy tomb for 30 mins which is long enough to chill you to the bone even with good clothing on. His hands were now badly frost bitten & he was also suffering from hypo-thermia. Ian had to make instant decisions about our next course of action & the only option we had considering everything, was to get some form of shelter up & quickly or Richard was going to have real problems.
This was not a good situation to be in. Richard had no pack & therefore no down clothing to put on, so I whipped my down jacket out of my pack & put it on him & as I did so I said to myself, ‘people are going to die on this mountain tonight’. As I comforted Richard, Jon was also in a bit of a state & Ian & Fredrik laid some sleeping mats down & set up the temporary Bivy shelter. Ian instructed Richard & Jon to get in & then asked me to stay with them & try & stabilise them by ensuring we all stayed as warm as we could. Meanwhile, Ian & Fredrik started to dig a snow hole but it was impossible due to the concrete hard ice 30 cm down. So their next option was to cut a ledge to sit down into, cover it with sleeping mats, then get the tent sheet over us & held down as best we could with our hands. Our packs were used as a protective wall behind our heads apart from mine & Ian’s which we took into the shelter with us. When we all got in & held the flimsy cover tight I pulled my down sleeping bag out to wrap around Richard & Fredrik who was now cold from being outside for so long. We used whatever else we could get out of the packs to stuff around us for insulation & then took a breather to assess our situation which didn’t take much to figure out, was not good. We had 2 bags of trail mix & a few bars between us plus hot water in my thermos & nalgene bottle & that was it. Everything else was outside in the packs making up the protective walls.
By now it was about 20.00 hrs & the priority was to stabilise our position, do whatever we could to retain as much body heat in the shelter & then try & make contact via our VHF radio with Camp 1 or VBC way down below us. It was a dire situation that was to get worse before it got better.
Contact was eventually made with camp 1 by VHF radio & they relayed messages between us & the ALE team who were at VBC. We set up a system of hourly contact with them as we tried to figure out the best way to get us safely out of where we were. The other descending teams had not even reached VBC yet & some had stopped at camp 1, tired & exhausted after their own efforts to get down the dangerous headwall & the trek all the way back to camp. When the descending guides heard of our predicament they naturally wanted to assist but were also exhausted & very concerned about having to trek all the way back up into the storm. A decision was taken that it was not safe to do so at present but that the 2 Swedish ski-climbers Martin & Olaf would head on up to the base of the headwall, set up a tent & be ready to move on up when ever the opportunity arose. In the meantime we would simply have to do our best to get through what was going to be a very difficult night & also pray to all of our Gods that we would get out of this alive.
Ian went outside to try & recover some more gear & the 20 mins it took him left him exhausted, very cold & it was clear that moving from here was simply not an option. We could not descend this mountain with Richard in the condition he was in & the rest of us also beginning to struggle. By the time we’d have got out of the shelter, roped up, got our much needed packs sorted out & started moving, we’d be frozen stiff & in these conditions were very likely to have another accident. Richard would have needed to be carried or supported by 2 people & in the event of another fall we’d not have had the energy to get anyone out again. We would simply have stumbled on into certain disaster & death. As the hours rolled on through the night the only messages we heard from camp were those we didn’t want to hear…… 'sorry guys but we simply can’t get up the headwall I this storm & all you can do is hang on & wait' We knew the people down below us were risking their own lives in an effort to get to us & get us out, but we desperately needed help.
Morale was good & we were all keeping a positive outlook on the ultimate outcome which was important because if negative vibes started coming through we’d go down hill quickly. We kept prompting one another to ‘think warm’, wriggle our fingers & toes & do shoulder rolls to maintain circulation. We even sang a few songs & ‘Ten Green Bottles’ got the accolade for being the only song we managed to sing all the way through.
As the hours rolled on & on, the wind continued to hammer our shelter & we feared it might be ripped to shreds which would multiply our problems by 100 fold, because without that slender yet life saving shelter we would be totally exposed to the 50 mph winds & -40c temperature outside. That would probably have forced us into attempting to move on downwards to what we feared would our doom.
posted by Kevin Dempsey at
2:19 PM
