A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

It was nearly midnight when we left London. Our destination was an inn situated in the wilds of Caernarvonshire. Hugh had telephoned the proprietor and explained to him the peculiar state of ignorance in which we found ourselves. It was useless to dissemble: Hugh had told him everything. He was not only an experienced mountaineer, but was also the head of the mountain rescue service. It is to his eternal credit that he agreed to help us rather than tell us, as a more conventional man might have done, that his rooms were all booked.

We arrived at six o’clock the following morning, having driven all night, but already a spiral of smoke was issuing from a chimney at the back of the premises.

The first thing that confronted us when we entered the hotel was a door on the left. On it was written EVEREST ROOM. Inside it was a facsimile of an Alpine hut, done out in pine wood, with massive benches round the walls. On every side was evidence of the presence of the great ones of the mountain world. Their belongings in the shape of ropes, rucksacks, favourite jackets and boots were everywhere, ready for the off. It was not a museum. It was more like the Royal Enclosure. Sir John and Sir Edmund might appear at any moment. They were probably on the premises.

‘Whatever else we do I don’t think we shall spend much time in the Everest Room,’ said Hugh, as we reverently closed the door. ‘For the first time I’m beginning to feel that we really do know damn all.’

‘EXACTLY.’

At this moment we were confronted by a remarkably healthy-looking girl.

‘Most people have had breakfast but it’s still going on,’ she said.

The only other occupant of the breakfast room was a compact man of about forty-five, who was eating his way through the sort of breakfast I hadn’t been able to stomach for ten years. He was wearing a magnificent sweater that was the product of peasant industry. He was obviously a climber. With an hysterical attempt at humour, like soldiers before an attack, we tried to turn him into a figure of fun, speaking in whispers. This proved difficult, as he wasn’t at all comic, just plainly competent.

‘He looks desperately healthy.’ (His face was the colour of old furniture.)

‘Everyone looks healthy here, except us.’

‘I don’t think it’s real tan.’

‘Perhaps he’s making a film about mountain rescue.’

‘How very appropriate.’

‘Perhaps he’ll let us stand-in, as corpses.’

After breakfast the proprietor introduced us to the mystery man. We immediately felt ashamed of ourselves.

‘This is Dr Richardson,’ he said. ‘He’s very kindly agreed to take you out and teach you the rudiments of climbing.’

‘Have you ever done any?’ asked the Doctor.

It seemed no time to bring up my scrambles in the Dolomites, nor even Hugh’s adventures at the base of Mir Samir.

‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘neither of us knows the first thing about it.’

We had arrived at seven; by nine o’clock we were back in the station wagon, this time bound for the north face of the mountain called Tryfan.

‘Stop here,’ said the Doctor. Hugh parked the car by a milestone that read ‘Bangor X Miles’. Rearing up above the road was a formidable-looking chunk of rock, the Milestone Buttress.

‘That’s what you’re going to climb,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s got practically everything you need at this stage.’

It seemed impossible. In a daze we followed him over a rough wall and into the bracken. A flock of mountain sheep watched us go, making noises that sounded suspiciously like laughter.

Finally we reached the foot of it. Close-to it didn’t seem so formidable. The whole face was scarred by the nailed boots of countless climbers.

‘This thing is like a by-pass,’ said the Doctor. ‘Later in the season you’d have to queue up to climb it. We’re lucky to have it to ourselves.’

‘If there’s one thing we don’t need it’s an audience.’

‘First of all you’ve got to learn about the rope. Without a rope climbing is suicide. It’s the only thing that justifies it. Chris told me what you’re planning to do. If anything happens on that mountain, it may not get into the papers, and at least no one else will have to risk their necks to get you off if anything goes wrong. If I thought that you were the sort of people who would take risks, I wouldn’t have come with you today.’

He showed us how to rope ourselves together, using the proper knots; the bowline for the leader and the end man; the butterfly noose, a beautifully symmetrical knot, for the middleman; how to hold it and how to coil it so that it would pay out without snarling up, and how to belay.

‘You never move without a proper belay. I start to climb and I go on until I reach a knob of rock on to which I can belay. I take a karabiner’ (he produced one of the D-shaped steel rings with a spring-loaded clip) ‘and attach a sling to the loop of rope round my waist. Then all I have to do is to put the sling over the knob of rock, and pass the rope under one shoulder and over the other. If possible, you brace your feet against a solid block. Like that you can take the really big strain if the next man comes off.

‘When the second man reaches the leader, the leader unclips the karabiner with the sling on it, and the second man attaches it to his waist. He’s now belayed. The second man gives his own sling to the leader who goes on to the next pitch. Like this.’

‘What I don’t see,’ I whispered to Hugh, ‘is what happens if the leader falls on the first pitch. According to this he’s done for.’

‘The leader just mustn’t fall off.’

‘Remind me to let you be leader.’

The Doctor now showed what I thought was a misplaced trust in us. He sent us to the top of a little cliff, not more than twenty feet high, with a battered-looking holly tree growing on it. ‘I want you to pretend that you’re the leader,’ he said to Hugh. ‘I want you to belay yourself with a sling and a karabiner to the holly tree. On the way up I am going to fall off backwards and I shan’t tell you when I’m going to do it. You’ve got to hold me.’ He began to climb.

He reached the top and was just about to step over the edge when, without warning, he launched himself backwards into space. And then the promised miracle happened, for the rope was taut and Hugh was holding him, not by the belay but simply with the rope passed under one shoulder and over the other. There was no strain on the sling round Hugh’s waist at all, his body was like a spring. I was very impressed – for the first time I began to understand the trust that climbers must be able to have in one another.

‘Now it’s your turn,’ said the Doctor.

It was like a memorable day in 1939 when I fell backwards off the fore upper topsail yard of a four-masted barque, only this time I expected Hugh to save me. And he did. Elated we practised this new game for some time until the Doctor looked at his watch. It was 11.30.

‘We’d better get on to the rock. We wouldn’t normally but there’s so little time and you seem to be catching on to the roping part. Let’s go. We’ll take the Ordinary Route. You may think it isn’t much but don’t go just bald-headed at it. I’m going to lead. It’s about two hundred feet altogether. We start in this chimney.’ He indicated an inadequate-looking cleft in the rock face.

It seemed too small to contain a human being at all but the Doctor vanished into it easily enough. Like me, he was wearing nailed boots, not the new-fangled ones with rubber vibram soles. I could hear them screeching on the rock as he scrabbled for a foothold. There was a lot of grunting and groaning then he vanished from sight.

Hugh went next. It was easier for him as he was very slim.

Then it was my turn. Like a boa-constrictor swallowing a live chicken, I wriggled up it, with hideous wear and tear to my knees, until I emerged on a boulder slope.

‘Now we begin,’ said the Doctor.

‘What was that, if it wasn’t the beginning?’

‘The start. This is the beginning.’

‘How very confusing.’

The worst part was what he called ‘Over the garden wall’, which entailed swinging round a projection, hanging over a void and then traversing along a ledge into a cave.

‘I wish he’d wear rubbers,’ I said to Hugh, as the Doctor vanished over the wall with a terrible screeching of tricounis. ‘It’s not the climbing I object to, it’s the noise.’

There was still a twenty-foot chimney with a tree in it up which we fought our way and, at last, we lay on the top panting and admiring the view which was breathtaking. I was very impressed and proud. It wasn’t much but I had done my first climb.

‘What do you call this?’ Hugh said, warily. ‘Easy, difficult or something in between?’

‘Moderate.’