Structured Chaos: The Unusual Life of a Climber by Victor Saunders

Author:Victor Saunders [Saunders, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912560684
Google: 9HohEAAAQBAJ
Published: 2021-03-04T12:26:12.425935+00:00

The Shina lesson over, Rafael demonstrated his dubious musical talents with a Danish song.

Denmark: nul points.

The wind shifted round to the south and snow plumes drifted in pennants from the summit ridge of the Mazeno wall. We watched this from our outdoor living room, a tarpaulin pinned to the earth by expedition kitbags and barrels. Rafael examined Lashkar Khan’s toe; he had dropped a rock on it some weeks earlier. Layer after layer of kerosene-soaked rag was unwrapped till a blackened nail but otherwise healthy doigt was unveiled. For lunch, I attempted to make a Spanish omelette, which looked more like a Spanish scrambled egg by the time I had finished with it, but everyone claimed to appreciate my efforts anyway.

After lunch, Rafael packed six days of food. I packed a pair of thin climbing ropes, which Shakar and Lashkar were anxious we shouldn’t leave on the mountain.

‘Snow coming, many problem,’ Shakar warned. ‘You stay rope here.’ I think they’d become quite attached to the ropes.

In the afternoon we staggered slowly towards our ABC, where we listened to a dull roaring sound during the night. There are many things this sound could have been: the background noise left in the cosmos after the big bang; a distant river buried deep beneath the glacier. The most likely explanation was winter winds tearing across the mountain’s summit ridges 4,000 metres above our heads. It was most disturbing.

We now started our acclimatisation climb, aiming to reach 6,000 metres on Ganalo Peak before returning to Rawalpindi to meet our official liaison officer. The line we chose involved reaching Two Finger Col again, where we bivouacked, and then finding a line through the confusing maze of gullies and buttresses above. We weren’t sure if it would go, but a promising icy gully disappeared round to our right and it led pleasingly to a fine exposed rock crest. This we followed for four pitches. It reminded me of Eagle Ridge on Lochnagar. While we climbed it, a massive avalanche billowed out across the lower half of the Mummery Rib. Now we knew the answer to the question of whether or not to try that line. The answer was not.

Above the crest was a section of glacier that needed a spot of front-pointing before we arrived at a big flat bivvy under a small sérac. We were now at 5,700 metres on the Ganalo ridge, and in two days had climbed 1,700 metres. Rafael constructed a small platform with typical enthusiasm. It had a spectacular position, overlooking two couloirs.

We spent a second night here, and during the evening Rafael told me about his time in Alyth. He had first stayed there in 1982 when he was nineteen years old, working for a tree nursery in Ruthven for seven months that summer, where he was introduced to Scottish drinking at the modest rate of ‘twenty-five pints and two nips a week’ in the company of Gordon Ingster and Doug Rennie. They introduced Rafael to rock climbing.

‘It was probably the best summer of the century for climbing.

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