8 Silent Witness
As I descended, the sense of menace threatened to overwhelm me. In contrast to the fury of the night before it was unnervingly quiet. I expected an avalanche to come hissing down but nothing moved. There wasn't a breath of wind to flurry the powder on the face, and even the snow kicked down by my steps slid away silently. It was as if the mountains were holding their breath, waiting for another death. Joe had died. The silence said so; but must they take me as well?
It was warm in the sun. The face caught its glare in the huge white bowl above me, and up there, thousands of feet above me, the snow shimmered in the heat. We had been up there yesterday but there was no trace of our passing. The night had swept it clean, and it waved gently in the heat haze. There was a dry foul taste in my mouth. Dehydration, no doubt; or a hollow bitterness rising. I stared at the mountain rising over me. Empty. It was a pointless thing to have done - climb up it, across it, and down it. Stupid! It looked perfect; so clean and untouched, and we had changed nothing. It was beautiful, immaculate, but it left me empty. I had been on it too long, and it had taken everything.
I continued the descent, stepping down with methodical precision. I could have moved quicker, but somehow there didn't seem to be any point. The windless silence closed over me. The glacier below my feet, encircled by ice mountains, remained quiet. There were no muffled ice collapses, or crevasses creaking open. I carried on down oppressed by the unnatural calm, and sensing that the hushed aura waited on me. I would let it wait. I wanted to do this thing with calm, and dignity. The sense of menace grew heavier as I carefully retreated.
Crusts of snow slithered quickly over a drop below me. I was standing on the edge of an ice cliff. I leaned out from the slope and peered over the cliff at least 100 feet down. I raised my eyes and searched the glacier directly beneath the cliff for signs of life. There was nothing. No tell-tale signs of a snow hole. So this is what he went over. My God! Why this, here! We never knew. The dreadful suspicion that I had nursed through the night was confirmed. Joe was dead.
I stared at the glacier below in shocked silence. Although I had feared the worst I had never expected to find this. I had envisaged a small vertical wall, a rock buttress even, but not this towering ice cliff. I looked back up the face and marked the descent we had taken during the lowerings in a plumb straight line down to where I stood. I felt cheated. The very means by which we had managed to rescue ourselves had caused the accident. I remembered the mounting excitement I had felt as we had progressed smoothly down the mountain. I had been proud of what we had managed. It had worked so well - and all Joe's pain, all his digging, and fighting, had simply speeded the inevitable accident on the cliff. Over to the side I could make out the descent we had originally intended to take, descending diagonally to the left, away from the cliff. When we had decided on that line we hadn't noticed the ice cliff on the right. We had never imagined we would be lowering straight down.
I turned away from the drop and glared sightlessly at the peak directly in front of me. The cruelty of it all sickened me. It felt as if there were something deliberate about it, something preordained by a bored and evil force. The whole day's effort, and the chaos in the stormy night, had been for nothing. What fools we were to have thought we had been clever enough to get away with it! All that time struggling just to cut the rope. I laughed. The short bitter noise rang loud in the quiet. It was funny, I supposed. In a sick sort of way, it was funny all right, but the joke was on me. Some joke!
Faced into the snow slope, I began traversing the lip of the cliff. My fatalism had gone. Anger replaced it, and resentment, and with this bitter fury my lethargy disappeared. The resignation had been swept away. Although I felt weak and drained I was determined now to get off the mountain alive. It wasn't taking me as well.
Every now and then I glanced over the edge of the cliff. The further right I moved the shallower the cliff became, but the ground I was climbing over became increasingly steep and dangerous. Eventually the cliff face merged into the slope I was crossing, and the soft snow gave way to hard water ice with the occasional shattered rock protruding from it. I began to make a diagonal descent, moving very slowly. The climbing was technically demanding, so I found myself concentrating totally on what I was doing, and the emotions of earlier were forgotten.
After descending fifty feet I came to a rock frozen into the ice. I stood on the points of my crampons on 70° ice which was becoming harder and more brittle with every foot I descended. On closer inspection, I saw that I was on part of a rock buttress bulging out from under the ice. Glancing down, I saw that the ice rapidly thinned, and greyish shadows told me that the rock was only inches from the surface. I hammered a piton into a crack in the rock and clipped myself to it.
I found it awkward setting up the abseil. The rope was still frozen from the storm, and my numb fingers seemed to refuse to tie the knot for me. When it was done I threw the rope clear and it hung from the piton, dropping over the steep ground and reaching the easy slopes 150 feet below me. I fixed my belay plate to the rope, unclipped myself from the piton, and abseiled slowly down the ice-covered buttress.
As I moved down the rope the ice cliff gradually revealed itself. It stretched away to my left in a huge dome-shaped wall. At the top of the dome I saw where our ropes had cut deeply into the edge the previous night. They marked the highest point of the cliff. The face of the cliff was overhanging. The wall of white snow-ice loomed out from the mountain, and the further I abseiled the more impending it became, until it seemed to hang over me despite the fact that I was well over to the right of it. I stared at it in amazement. It was huge, and I couldn't help but wonder why we had never noticed it. When we had approached the mountain we had walked across the glacier directly beneath it.
It wasn't until I had descended half the rope's length that I glanced down and saw the crevasse. I jammed the belay plate shut, and stopped abruptly. I stared at the endless black depths at the foot of the cliff and shuddered in horror. Joe had undoubtedly fallen into the crevasse. I was appalled. The idea of falling into that monstrous blackness yawning below me made me grip the rope tightly. I shut my eyes and pressed my forehead against the taut rope.
For a long nauseous moment feelings of guilt and horror flooded through me. It was as if I had only just that minute cut the rope. I might as well have put a gun to his head and shot him. When I opened my eyes I couldn't look down at the crevasse and stared hopelessly at the rock-shadowed ice in front of me instead. Now that I was virtually clear of the mountain, and assured of my own survival, the full impact of what we had been through struck me. In the warm and peaceful sun the events of the previous night seemed so distant that I couldn't believe they had been so terrible. Everything had changed so much. I almost wished it were still as bad. At least then I would be fighting something. I would have reasons to justify my survival, and his end. As it was, I had only the stark blackness of the crevasse to accuse me.
I had never felt so wretchedly alone. I could not have won, and began to understand the reason for my dreadful sense of condemnation in the snow cave. If I hadn't cut the rope I would certainly have died. Looking at the cliff, I knew there would have been no surviving such a fall. Yet, having saved myself, I was now going to return home and tell people a story that few would ever believe. No one cuts the rope! It could never have been that bad! Why didn't you do this, or try that? I could hear the questions, and see the doubts in the eyes even of those who accepted my story. It was bizarre, and it was cruel. I had been on to a loser from the moment he broke his leg, and nothing could have changed it.
I tried to break from these useless thoughts by abseiling lower, staring into the crevasse, trying to see, desperately wanting to see, some sign of life. As I moved closer it grew wider, and the depths gained perspective, and loomed deeper. I kept staring in but my brief hopes faded with every foot descended. No one could have survived a fall into such depths, and even if Joe had there was nothing I could do for him. There was not enough rope here, or at camp, to reach down so deep. I knew also that I had no strength for such a task. It would be a vain and hopeless act to go down into the crevasse, and I was no longer prepared to face such risks. I had had enough of dying.
'JOE!'
I shouted, but the sound echoed in the blackness, mocking my puny effort.
It was too big, and the truth too stark. I couldn't try to believe he was alive. Everything told me otherwise, and any efforts I made to the contrary were just so much conscience-salving. I had looked into that awful hole, and shouted into it. In return I heard an echo and then an absolute silence that said everything I already knew.
My feet touched the snow. The abseil was over, and below me a slope ran smoothly down to the glacier. Another 200 feet would see me safely on it. I turned and looked up the ice cliff. I was at its extreme right-hand and slightly below the outer lip of the crevasse. The rope marks were still visible at the top of the cliff, mute testament to what I had done. Some fine powder snow fell from the cliff top in a gauzy white cloud. I watched it drift softly down. This place was ageless and lifeless. A mass of snow, and ice, and rock slowly moving upwards; freezing, thawing, cracking asunder, always changing with the passing of centuries. What a silly thing to pit oneself against! The snow cloud settled on the roofed area of the crevasse further to my left. Joe had fallen through there. At least it had hidden his body from me, though I doubted I would have been able to see so far down.
I turned away, suppressing the idea of going back up for a second look. There was no point. There had to come a time for facing the truth. I couldn't stand there all day searching for a corpse. I faced the glacier and heeled down towards it feeling dazed.
When I reached the level snow of the glacier I dropped my sack in the snow and sat down. For a long time I stared bleakly at my boots, not wanting to look back at the mountain. The sense of security was overwhelming. I had made it! I just sat there thinking about the mountain, and all the days we had spent on it. I felt as if I were reviewing a year of my life, not six days. The glacier, walled in by ice faces, was a furnace of sun. Painfully white, it absorbed the heat from all sides and seemed to focus it on to me. I had taken off my jacket, over-trousers and thermal top without thinking. My actions had become automatic. The climbing and abseiling had happened without deliberate decision on my part. It was as if I had suddenly been transplanted to the glacier without any conscious effort, and my memory of the day's events had already faded into a blur of emotions and shocked thoughts. It was then that I realised how desperately tired I had become. The lack of food and water in the last twenty-four hours had taken its toll. Looking back at the ice cliff, which now seemed one small feature on a vast face, I knew I would never be able to get back up there. I wondered whether I would even manage to get to base camp. It would take days to eat, rest, and recover enough to mount a rescue attempt. Perhaps it's for the best then, Joe. At least you're dead. I almost spoke aloud to the distant ice cliff. The thought of finding him alive and terribly injured horrified me. I would have had to leave him to fetch help, but there was no help. When I was strong enough to return he would have died some desperate lonely death in the ice.
'Yes. It's best this way,' I whispered.
I trudged through the softened snow on the glacier, keeping my back to Siula Grande. I could feel its presence massed behind me, and yearned to turn and look at it again. I kept walking, head-down, staring fixedly at the snow until I reached the crevasses at the end of the glacier. The ice had twisted and fractured in hundreds of parallel crevasses as the glacier ground up against the rock moraines. Some crevasses were easily seen and avoided, but many were covered with snow. Rolling smooth slopes hid the dangers below, and without a rope I felt naked and vulnerable.
The early-morning paranoia returned with a vengeance. In a foggy daze of heat and thirst I had forgotten the line we had taken when we approached the mountain. The first feelings of panic built up as I stared wildly from one crevasse to another. Had we gone above or below that one? Or was it that lower one? I couldn't remember. The harder I tried the more confused I became, and eventually I was weaving a contorted and terrifying path, unsure of where I was heading. Only the few feet of surrounding snow concerned me, and I moved aimlessly across the slopes, zigzagging, sometimes backtracking, and at any moment I expected the snow to open a black emptiness beneath my feet.
When I reached the moraines I slumped down against a rock with my sack as a pillow, feeling the hot sun on my face as the fear of the crevasses melted away.
Raging thirst eventually forced me to my feet, and I stumbled unsteadily towards the widening boulder-strewn river which ran down from the moraines to the lakes above our camp. It was about four and a half miles to base, say a couple of hours' walking. I knew I could find water half-way down where melting snow streamed over a huge rounded granite boulder, and that was all I wanted. I could smell the water all around me. It trickled between boulders at my feet, and deeper in the crevices below the boulders I could hear it gurgling in full flow, yet unreachable.
After a few yards I stopped and turned for a last look at Siula Grande. I could see most of it but was thankful that the lower reaches were hidden by the curve of the glacier. I couldn't see the ice cliff. He was up there buried in the snow, but I no longer felt guilty about it. If I were ever in the same position again I felt certain I would act in the same way. Instead there was a slow ache inside, a growing sense of loss, and sorrow. This is what it had all come down to - standing alone amid the mountain debris thinking of the waste and the pity. I thought of saying a quiet farewell as I turned to leave, but in the end didn't. He had gone for good. The steady surge of the glacier would take him down to the valleys in the coming years, but by then he would have become a casual memory. Already, it seemed, I was beginning to forget him.
I stumbled through the chaotic maze of boulders and scree. When at last I looked back at the glacier, Siula Grande was no longer visible. I sagged wearily against a boulder, letting my mind run haphazardly over my pain and sorrow. The thirst had become unbearable. My mouth was dry and I swallowed. What little saliva it produced failed to ease the discomfort. The descent had become a confused blur of endless boulder fields, burning midday sun, and the thirst. My legs felt weighted down and so weakened I fell repeatedly among the rocks. When loose rocks slipped suddenly under my feet, I found that I had no strength to prevent myself falling. I used the axe to steady myself, and occasionally flung a hand out for support. Fingers slapped unfeeling against sharp boulders. The sun had failed to revive any sensation in them, and they remained numb and cold. After an hour I saw the rounded boulder, with water glistening as it ran over its flank. I quickened my pace, feeling a burst of energy come through me at the thought of water.
When I reached the hollow at the base of the boulder, and dropped my rucksack on the wet scree, I saw that there was not enough flow to satisfy my craving thirst. Carefully I built a catchment area in the gravel at the base of the rock. It filled with tantalising slowness and, after sucking a gritty mouthful, was empty again. I crouched at the rock drinking and waiting, and drinking again. There seemed no end to the amount I could drink. A sudden clatter from above made me duck away to the side. A handful of rocks thumped into the scree beside me. I hesitated before returning to the water pool. We had rested and drunk from here on the way up. Rocks had also fallen on us then, and we had jumped away laughing at our fright. Joe had called it 'Bomb Alley'. The melting snow above the boulder released regular bombardments of small rocks as the day heated up.
I sat on my sack spitting bits of grit from my mouth. There were footprints in the soft muddy scree and gravel of the hollow, the only trace left of our attempt on the mountain. It was a lonely place to rest. In the huge chaos of the moraines I had sat down to rest at the one spot where I would be reminded. We had sat in the same spot six days earlier. All our keen excitement, and the healthy strong feel in our bodies, had become an empty memory. I glanced at the moraines which hid the lower lake. There was little time left for this loneliness. I would reach base camp in another hour, and then it would be finished.
I set off for the lakes, the water flooding a fresh strength into my limbs. I was worried now by the thought of meeting Richard, who would want to know what had happened. Everyone would want to know. I didn't want to face the prospect of telling him. If I told him the truth I would be forced to tell the same story when I returned to home. All I could think about was the disbelief and criticism I was inevitably going to be confronted with. I couldn't face it. I shouldn't have to face it! Anger and guilt clashed in my arguments as to what I should do. I knew above everything that I had been right to do what I had done. Deep inside I would always know that I had nothing to be ashamed of. If I concealed the truth it wouldn't be so bad. I would be avoiding a lot of unnecessary pain and anguish.
Why tell them that you cut the rope? They'll never know otherwise, so what difference does it make! Just say he fell down a crevasse when we were coming down the glacier. Yeah! Tell them we were unroped. I know it's a stupid thing to do, but damn it, loads of climbers die like that. He's dead. How he died isn't important. I didn't kill. It's lucky I'm here at all... so why make it worse. I can't tell the truth.
God! I hardly believe it myself... they certainly won't.
When I reached the lake I was still convincing myself that to tell the truth was stupid. I knew it would only cause me grief. I could scarcely bear to think what Joe's parents would say. After drinking again at the lake I walked on towards camp more slowly. My mind kept telling me what I should say. It was reasonable and sensible. I couldn't fault the logic. But something inside shied away from doing it. Perhaps it was guilt. However many times I persuaded myself that I had no choice but to cut the rope a nagging thought said otherwise. It seemed like a blasphemy to have done such a thing. It went against every instinct; even against self-preservation.
The time passed without notice. I had wrapped myself in tangled hurtful thoughts until I felt I must surely burst. I could listen to no rational arguments against the feelings of guilt and cowardice which insisted so painfully. With the same fatalism as before I resigned myself to punishment. It seemed right to be punished; to atone for leaving him dead as if simply surviving had been a crime in itself. My friends would believe me and understand. The others could choose to think what they wished, and if it hurt me, well perhaps I deserved it.
At the end of the second small lake I climbed the final rise of the moraines and looked down on the two tents at base camp. The thought of food and drink and medication for my frostbite made me hurry down the cactus-covered hillside above the tents. I had forgotten about the dilemma of what to say to Richard and was almost running in my haste to get down. I slowed down to scramble over a small hillock, from the top of which I saw Richard walking slowly towards me. He was carrying a small rucksack and was bent over looking at the ground. He hadn't heard me. I stood still, shocked by his sudden appearance, and waited for him to come to me. An awful weariness rushed through me as I waited silently. It was all over, and the relief flooding me deepened the sense of exhaustion. I felt as if I were going to cry but my eyes remained stubbornly dry.
Richard looked up from the path and saw me. His anxious expression changed to surprise, and then he grinned broadly, his eyes alight with pleasure as he hurried to me:
'Simon! It's good to see you. I was worried.'
I could think of nothing to say and stared blankly at him. He looked confused and searched behind me for some sign of Joe. Perhaps my face told him, or he had been expecting something bad!
'Joe? ...'
'Joe's dead.'
'Dead?'
I nodded. We fell silent. We couldn't look at each other. I dropped my sack to the ground and sat heavily on it, feeling as if I would never be able to stand up again.
'You look terrible!'
I didn't reply. I was thinking about what to say to him. My plan to lie was all very well but I couldn't summon enough energy to tell it. I stared at my blackened fingers helplessly.
'Here, eat this.' He handed me a bar of chocolate. 'I've got a stove, I'll get some tea going. I was just coming up to look for you. I thought you were lying hurt somewhere... Did Joe fall? What's happened ...'
'Yeah, he fell,' I said flatly. 'There was nothing I could do.'
He chattered on nervously. I think he sensed that I needed time to adjust. I watched him preparing the tea, passing me more food, and searching in the medicine bag he had brought up. Eventually he gave it to me and I took it without saying anything. I felt a sudden deep affection and gratitude to him for being there. I knew he would have killed himself in the crevasses on the glacier if he had managed to get that far. I wondered whether he had been aware of the danger. He glanced up and saw me watching him. We smiled at each other.
It was warm sitting on the hillock. Without realising I was doing it I told Richard exactly what had happened. I could have done nothing else. He sat silently listening to all that I had been through, not once questioning me, nor looking surprised at what I was saying to him. I was glad I was telling him the truth. Not to have done so might have saved me hurt, but I knew as I told him that there was so much more we had managed to do that should be told. The rescue in the storm, the way we had worked together, the way we fought to get down alive. I couldn't say Joe had fallen into a crevasse when stupidly walking unroped on the glacier, not after he had been through so much trying to survive. I couldn't do him the injustice of lying, and my feeling of having failed him made it an impossibility to lie. When I had finished Richard looked at me:
'I knew something terrible had happened. I'm just glad you managed to get down.'
We packed away the remains of his provisions, and he put them in my big sack and then shouldered both sacks. We walked quietly down to the tents.
For me the rest of the day passed in a sluggish haze. I lay wearily in the sun outside the dome tent with my gear scattered around me drying in the sun.
We talked no more of Joe. Richard busied himself producing a hot meal and endless cups of tea. Then he sat near me and talked of the long wait he had endured, gradually accepting that some disaster had overtaken us until he could bear the uncertainty no longer and had set out to find us. For six or seven hours I did nothing but doze and eat in the sun. It was difficult to adjust to the luxury of camp. I could feel my strength returning and lay in half sleep feeling my body mending itself.
Towards early evening the clouds massed in from the east, and the first heavy raindrops spattered us. There was a heavy roll of thunder and we retreated to the big dome tent which up until then I had been reluctant to enter. Richard brought his sleeping bag over from his tent and began cooking another meal on two gas stoves in the entrance. By the time we had finished eating the rain had turned to snow and a strong wind was shaking the tent. It was freezing outside.
We lay side by side in our sleeping bags listening to the storm. The candlelight flickered red and green off the tent walls, and by it I saw Joe's possessions shoved untidily to the back of the tent. I thought of the storm the previous night and shuddered. The picture remained in my head as I fell asleep. I knew how bad it would be up there. The avalanches would be pouring down, filling the crevasse at the ice cliff, burying him. I fell into an exhausted dreamless sleep.
Photos
The dangerously crevassed glacier at the base of the West Face Siula Grande.
Base camp.
Simon recovering.