Death Zone by Matt Dickinson

Author:Matt Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446474815
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

*

The sound of Kees unzipping the front of the tent woke me at 6.30 on the morning of the 10th. It was a crystal-clear dawn, with the mountain already so brightly illuminated mat I had to put on my glacier goggles to be able to look at it.

‘Looks perfect,’ Kees said.

I laced up my boots and walked over the glacier to where Al and Barney were in conference.

‘What’s the verdict?’ I asked them.

‘We’re not happy about it,’ Al said.

‘What?’ I was flabbergasted. ‘It’s one of the best mornings we’ve had. Let’s go.’

‘You see those clouds?’ Barney pointed up to the norm where a milky haze clouded the upper atmosphere. ‘The whole system is unstable.’

‘We’ll hang on here today and wait and see how it develops,’ Al said. ‘There’s no point going up if the weather’s going to break tomorrow or the day after, we’ll just knacker ourselves for nothing.’

I looked over to the Col, where a string of climbers were already working their way up the ice.

‘What about them? They think it’s going to be OK.’

Al and Barney shrugged, and that was the end of the conversation. We trudged over to the mess tent to force down a plate of chappatis and jam, resigned to spending a further day at advance base.

As the day wore on, my frustration increased. The sun was as hot as we had known it, so much so that the interior of the tent became uncomfortably muggy. For the first time on the expedition, we had to place the sleeping bags on the roof of the tent to cool the interior down. I already hated advance base after our first two miserable forays here, and now I had the dread feeling that we would be here for far longer than we had planned. Unable to concentrate on reading, I sat outside the tent restlessly pitching stones into the smiling mouth of a narrow crevasse.

‘Patience, Matt.’ Brian could see my growing frustration. ‘There’s always a window … we’ll get four or five perfect days. If it’s not now, then it’ll come later. We might have to wait until the end of May. But if Barney and Al say it’s not right, then we stay here. That’s the game.’

In contrast to my own depressed state of mind, the Indian team in the tents next to ours was in a whirl of high excitement. Their lead climbers were going for the summit that day, the first attempt from the northern side since the season had begun six weeks earlier. All morning, they were gathered outside the green canvas army tents with radios in hand, trying to spot their climbers through binoculars. Mohindor Singh, the leader, was the most striking figure: equipped with mirror sunglasses and a magenta turban, he stood head and shoulders above the rest of his team.

I wandered over before lunch to see them. ‘What’s the news?’ I asked one of Singh’s deputies.

‘We have six climbers just approaching the Ridge. Now we are waiting with bated breath!’ he told me.

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