“People might think that being born on the edge of the Yorkshire moors was hardly the place to begin a career of mountaineering. After all, the mist laden moorland where Bronte’s Heathcliffe roamed is not the sharp, pinnacled landscape of the Himalaya”
Adrian Burgess writes about his life in the mountains.
Pictures by Adrian Burgess.
For my twin brother and I, at fourteen years old, the Yorkshire Moors were as remote as the moon and offered as many challenges.
The small cliffs that rim the edges of these moors gave us our first opportunity to experience roped climbing, though the rope was nothing more than our mother’s washing line. That we survived those first years probably had more to do with our measured attitude to life than to luck. Though we were not old enough to drive a car we were certainly old enough to kill ourselves.
In those days rock-climbing was a small, but important part of the mountaineering game, unlike today when it has become an end in itself. So it was quite normal that we should continue our apprenticeship climbing in the mountains and on snow and ice. Scotland was the place to hone our skills and though the gales often howled and deep depressions dumped snow it served to only further stretch our determination and stamina beyond those of the average English schoolboy.
During the summer of 1966 we first crossed the English Channel and headed for the Alps with a “hit list” of climbs longer than the span of both our arms. There were many lessons to be learned that we hadn’t needed in England. Following long, complicated routes with brief descriptions taught us route finding and the frequently foul and rapidly changing weather showed us the need for speed and power. Something that holds true on our present day climbs in the Himalayas.
By the age of twenty-one we were fully competent to climb on the great faces of the Alps and were lucky because many important climbs had been made by famous names like Walter Bonnati and Rene Desmaison were demi gods in the world of alpinism. We wished to do those routes that had frightened off a generation of climbers. Routes that had been unrepeated in over a decade. There was the Red Pillar of Brouillard on the remote south side of Mont Blanc, or Bonnatti’s Eckpfieler routes with it’s hanging ice cliffs. But success did not come easily. Often we were not beaten back from the summits by ferocious ice storms and some of our hardest climbs were the ones we never completed.
Summer after summer we returned to the Alps and even though there were still some challenges they had waned. We needed something more. The Alps in the middle of winter was the next logical step. Temperatures drop to twenty below freezing and the ice is as black and tough as a bottle of Guinness. We had none of the modern day waterproof clothes and boots were of leather not plastic. The third winter ascent of the Direct route on the North Face of Les Courtes struggled with frosted up jackets and sweaters frozen to a board. We climbed with heavy packs and aching calves for three days and then on reaching the summit were rewarded with a snowstorm and a dangerous descent. It had been the hardest climb of our lives.
A year later in 1973, four of us bought an old van, stuffed it with food, climbing gear and two other friends and drove to India. It was the cheapest way we could think of to reach the magical Himalayan. Greece flashed past in a blaze of sunshine. The beautiful girls of Ankara contrasted with the dirty peasants of eastern turkey. The sophistication of Iran (pre Ayatollah) with the fierce Patans of Afghanistan. Pakistan was hot and India an overpopulated mess.
The mountain we had chosen stood alone, a perfect granite pyramid. It’s west face beckoned, we were charmed. A few weeks later we left with the first ascent a glowing memory. As my brother noted:
“It was a bloody long drive for one single climb”
The entire expedition had cost us one hundred and ten pounds each.
A few years later we began a twelve-month trip, which took us to the South face of McKinley, then to the southern tip of South America, Patagonia and then back to Peru. Each trip was unique and each mountain a completely different problem. On McKinley we climbed Alpine style with everything on our backs, as we would have in the Alps. The 9000-foot face committing but it was the altitude that debilitated us. The hard work and the altitude each night gave us skull-busting headaches. After five days we escaped the face and headed back to civilisation to celebrate and drink a few beers.
In Patagonia we aimed to climb Fitzroy, the famous granite monolith that sits astride the borders of Chile and Argentina. Though the rock climbing was technical and difficult and frequently coated with frosty rime it was the appaling weather that we battled against. The Patagonian storms are some of the worst in the world. The wind is savage and unrelenting. We needed both patience and a margin of luck. Twice we almost climbed it but were driven down, happy to escape with our lives. After three months of continued attempts most of our food was gone but we remained focused and resourceful. I baked some bread with the remaining flour and my brother stole the mists to rustle some sheep. We climbed to the summit carrying tasty mutton sandwiches.
After only minutes on the summit we began a series of breath taking abseils into the void with a storm nipping at our heels. When we arrived back to the safety of our ice cave the storm pinned us down for two more days before we could escape down to the waiting arms of our girlfriends. At least that’s what I’d hoped.
They had accompanied us on our South American wanderings but after four months of Fitzroy focused neglect by me; mine left me to the mountains. People often say to me that I must live a fantastic existence, wandering the globe, free as a bird but they don’t know of the emotional casualties, the heart-rending decisions that sometimes sever the cords of a relationship. My brother returned from an expedition on another occasion to find his wife, too, had up and left. The price can be high, the losses heavy.
In Peru we headed for the North face of Huascaran, a six thousand-foot sweep of ginger coloured rock glued together with ribbons of brittle ice. Another friend Brian, joined us to make the second ascent of this fearsome face. We again approached it in Alpine style but without enough respect for its size and difficulty. It took us a never-ending seven days of which the last three we starved. The only thing that kept us going was the thought of a whole roast chicken each when we got down to the small Peruvian town of Huaras.
“Think of the roast chicken” became our battle cry, echoing off the buttresses and ice field. Reverberating through the mists. It served us well but when we returned our stomachs were too shrunken to eat even half a chicken.
By 1979 we began more than a decade of expeditions to the Himalayan at the rate of sometimes two a year. We were enchanted and at the same time ensnared by the immense bulk and grandeur of those mountains, by their oxygen starved heights and the challenges they presented.
In the ancient capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, preparing to leave to climb Dhaulagiri, the seventh highest mountain in the world, I met a young American trekker called Lorna. Her sparkling blue eyes and gleaming white smile were framed by a wild mane of flowing light coloured hair. Together we explored this mystical city where Hindus and Buddhists have coexisted in harmony for centuries. Where Toyotas compete with rickshaws and plush restaurants with street vendors. Our parting was not easy when I left her for the world of snow, ice and rock.
Dhaulagiri is known as “The Mountain of Storms” and is well named. We were only six climbers on a mountain almost 27,000 feet high and it was hard work carrying food and tents up its wind ravaged flanks. We moved slowly into position from where we could make a strike for the summit. Alan and I were moving the fastest and so we were to try first.
The trouble with spring weather is that it is often clear in the mornings but cloudy and snowy in the afternoons when the valley clouds rise in the heat of the day. On our chase against time towards the summit we often cast nervous glances at the bulwarks of cumulus rising behind us. Even though we were moving as fast as we dared we knew we could never out run nature. When we stepped onto the summit after seven hours of climbing, the first flakes of snow were falling. Our harrowing descent in white out conditions and a vicious ground blizzard severely put to test our intuitive and well practiced partnership as twins. A month later and I was in Colorado, planning to marry Lorna. Some milestones had been reached but there were many others to be sought after.
For an itinerant Yorkshireman, living in Colorado is amazing. First of all it doesn’t rain very much and the climbing is fantastic. But the most wondrous of all the differences has been my life with Lorna. Her background I discovered, was hardly mill town working class like mine. She had been to a prestigious Ivy League college; been presented to society as a debutante and her uncle had even run for US presidency. She had also ridden fine boned thoroughbreds “to the hounds” from an early age and showed me the thrills of foxhunting. Well, it’s difficult for a person such as I to go through that kind of life without the odd “faux pas”.
We were sitting round the fine mahogany table having returned from a brisk horse ride. There was an unusual blend of horse smells mixed with furniture polish, while the chink of lead crystal and the clink of exquisite china interrupted polite conversation-mainly about horses. My horse had stumbled in the snow that day and I stated quite flatly “Gosh that’s the first time I’ve been down on a horse”. You could have heard a pin drop. Lorna’s younger sister almost took a bite out of her glass. Then while I waited for the ground to swallow me, her mother saved the day. “Yes. When that happens you have to give them plenty of head”.
Two weeks after we were married I returned to Nepal. Annapurna IV had never been climbed in winter and we wished to change that. Climbing on Himalayan peaks in the middle of winter was like making the step from climbing in the Alps in summer to that of winter but at a Himalayan level. Few climbs are as arduous or as demanding because the Jet Stream winds which normally circle the globe at heights of 30 000 feet and above, descend upon the Himalayas in winter to a level of around 20 000 feet. That meant that for the final 4500 feet we would be climbing in a screaming gale. It takes careful mental preparation to accept those kinds of conditions. I thought about it a lot.
By using a chain of three carefully placed ice caves instead of tents, we were able to work on the mountain, prepare ourselves and carry up supplies ready for the final push to the summit. We had reached the final ice cave a massive 3700 feet below the summit but our strength was beginning to ebb with all the effort and the debilitating cold. So we had to make the attempt from what we really considered to be too low on the mountain.
Our attempt began at first light on the morning of 21st December-the shortest day of the year. The thermometer at the entrance to the cave read -40 degrees centigrade. There was Roger; Alan and I strung out on one rope and all moving together in the protective lee of a snow ridge. When the wind hit us full force after only one hour, it snatched away any possibility of vocal communication. We crept and stumbled upwards, hunched against the wind, our specially made one piece down suits protecting us from the elements. At a broad, exposed pass, the wind roared like a jet engine, pushing and beating us around so that we staggered like rag dolls in a gale. Still we continued, doggedly, punch drunk but determined. Then after twelve hours of lung labouring effort we crouched at the peak. There were no feelings of elation only relief that we could finally go down. We had two hours of daylight to return to our cave or we’d have to sleep out in the open and that possibility drove us down like wild men, running, stumbling and sliding, anything to lose height. The pink light of dusk had just faded when we crawled, tired but jubilant back into the cave. We'd got away with it again.
Year followed year and one after another, expeditions came and went. Some were fun and others disappointing but all were instructive. In a whole life time one can never learn all there is to know about big mountains. After one expedition where I’d climbed to within six hundred feet of the summit of Lhotse (the fourth highest peak) only to be halted by a freak and sudden storm, I had come to understand that success is a complex and relative term. After three months of climbing with three other people we had never exchanged a harsh word. We had worked as an intimate and cohesive team and would have climbed the mountain if it hadn’t been for bad luck with the weather. No one had been hurt or even slightly injured. How could I call that a failure?
In the spring of 1989 I sat in Everest basecamp, staring at high clouds breaking up around the summits. The next day would be good and I had a chance to try for the summit, though it would still be three days away. If the weather held. My biggest regret was that my brother would not be going with me. He had descended to one of the sherpa villages for a break and had not returned in time. A thick mist enveloped me as dawn broke and I wove my way through the toppling ice blocks and crevasses that formed the Khumbu Icefall. Ice debris lay everywhere from recent collapses with the occasional thud keeping me very much on my toes. It is a very dangerous place and I sped through in a mere one and three quarter hours. Then another couple of hours and I arrived at camp 2 deep in the silent valley of the Western Cwm. I felt confident and fit. Above lay the Lhotse Face, a wall of five thousand feet high and at an angle 45-50 degrees. That would wait until the next day. I ate well and fell to sleep.
Roddy and two sherpa friends were to climb with me and we all left together at dawn the next day. Though many climbs have traditionally climbed to the last car on the South Col in two days we felt strong and able to climb it in one. We previously fixed ropes on the ice and could set our own pace for the hours ahead. I climbed along with the sherpas, joking in pidgin Nepalese and English, “are you okay guys?” I teased them as I passed while they took a break. I know they were but they didn’t much like a Westerner asking them. They set off after me with their teeth set. When I stopped a little later to catch my breath they swept passed “Okay, sahib?” The cheeky bastards. I took off after them. All morning we played the game of chase and pass but as I tipped the rocky Yellow Band at 25000 feet they had the final word. They’d stopped for a cigarette break. “You like to smoke sahib?
It had only taken seven hours to reach the final camp at 26000 feet and so we melted water all afternoon to ward off the dehydration that we know can slow down and even stop climbers when at that altitude. It was a long and laborious task collecting chips of ice and waiting for hours for them to melt but everything depended on it.
At midnight under a cloak of stars we left the tents and began climbing by the lights of our head torches. It was cold and only by keeping moving did we stay warm. We chose not to rope up, so that each of us could move freely, unimpeded by the extra distraction. Kick and step, kick and step. My mind focussed on the small patch of illuminated snow. It was harder work than I’d ever expected but we gained height quickly. At 27 500 feet we reached the ridge and waited for the grey light of dawn before continuing. As the sun rose across the high Tibetan plateau I shall never forget the awesome sight that greeted us. A vast dark, triangular shadow stretched out across the low valley clouds, piercing the blue horizon where the Earth curved away a giant projection of Everest. Gasping, we turned and stood on the highest point of the planet. It was seven-o clock in the morning.
As I look back at all the events, all the mountains, all the struggles and all the defeats, I cannot help but realise they are nothing more than the result of one persons dream. The things that give us reason to live. That enriches our lives and gives us passion. For without passion we are really nothing at all. So as long as I can dream I will climb.
