Hanging On by Boysen Martin

Author:Boysen, Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing
Published: 2014-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

– Chapter Eleven –

Cerro Torre

The 1967/1968 British Cerro Torre Expedition postcards, signed by Pete Crew, Mick Burke, Dougal Haston and myself.

It started in a pub in Derbyshire, during an Alpha Club dinner. As usual the pub was packed with climbers, for the most part gatecrashers assembled from far and wide in anticipation of a riotous late night’s drinking. They were not to be disappointed. The pub was decorated, perhaps unwisely, with an antique suit of armour, the perfect prop for an evening’s jousting. It only stopped when the distraught manager threatened to cut proceed­ngs short, and the armour was returned. Martial arts gave way to trials of strength but these also came to an end when the bottle walking resulted in a badly lacerated wrist. Next was tug of war, which removed a lavatory cistern at one end and the leg of a grand piano at the other. The club secre­tary began to look nervous, but at last the glass was swept away and the record player brought out. As the thump of rock music blasted out and the dancing began, the drinkers converged on the bar.

Battling through the throng, I caught a pungent whiff of Gauloises smoke and homed in unsteadily on its source: Mick Burke and Pete Crew.

‘I suppose you want one?’

‘Well if you’re offering … ’

‘We were just talking about expeditions.’

‘Moaning you mean.’

‘It’s time we went on one,’ said Mick.

‘Yes, we noticed. Getting a bit grey to be the Wigan wonder-boy for much longer.’ But Mick was very serious.

‘It’s no good waiting for an invitation to pop through the letterbox. If you want to go on an expedition then organise one’, Pete said with charac­teristic bluntness.

‘That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking, but idle buggers like me and Martin need a human dynamo, a whizz-kid like yourself to whip us into action.’

‘OK. Think of a fourth and decide where to go.’ Everything Pete did was done quickly. He climbed fast, drove fast, talked fast and made decisions with impetuous speed.

‘It’s no good thinking about the Himalaya,’ I said. ‘They’re closed from end to end. What about the Andes? The place that fascinates me is Patagonia. Have you seen the pictures of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre? Then there’s the Paine.’

‘Clough’s mob is going down there to climb The Fortress. Do you know of any good unclimbed peaks then?’ asked Mick.

‘Not really, but the peak which grabs me is Cerro Torre.’

‘Been climbed’, said Pete.

‘I know, but we could do a new route on it. Anyway I’ve heard a few interesting titbits about it recently.’

The history of climbing Cerro Torre was already being questioned. Walter Bonatti and Carlo Mauri had tried it from the Patagonian ice cap in 1958 while a rival Italian team including Cesare Maestri had looked at it from the other side. The following year Maestri pipped Bonatti to the prize when he returned with the Austrian ice climber Toni Egger. They succeeded, Maestri claimed, after an incredible epic, which involved nego­tiating hundreds of feet of near vertical ice.

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