Touching the Void (20 page)

Jesus! Is that how it’s going to be? Just crawling to a standstill for the sake of water…I slid down the slope and began to crawl away from the snow cave. I thought that I would try to reach the moraines by midday and see how things looked then. Sitting on the glacier feeling worried wasn’t going to get me very far. Perhaps I wouldn’t make it, maybe I would. I didn’t care that much, so long as I kept moving and occupied. It was frightening and lonely to wait for it to come to me.

I crawled carefully. Since there were no tracks to follow, it was vital to try and keep my bearings. I knew that the crevasses were wide and numerous over to my left, so I hugged the right bank of the glacier which curved round beneath Yerupaja. Every now and then I hopped unsteadily on to my good foot to look ahead. The increased view never failed to surprise me. I could see far enough ahead to make out distinctive crevasses which I remembered from our outward trek. However, the nagging fear of unexpected crevasses wore me down, and I became increasingly conscious of how vulnerable I was while crawling.

After an hour I convinced myself that I might be able to walk. My leg, sliding smoothly along behind me, seemed less painful. It occurred to me that I might only have torn some muscles in my knee, and now, after a night’s rest, and it being so long since I had hurt it, perhaps it had got sufficiently better to take my weight. I stood up and swayed on my good leg, letting my right foot lie gently on the snow. I pressed down slowly. There was some pain but nothing I couldn’t bear. I knew it would hurt but with a bit of determination I reckoned I could keep walking through it. I braced myself and stepped forward on to my right leg. There was a twisting slip inside the joint and bones grated sickeningly.

I lay face-down in the snow, unsure whether I had passed out or not. Nausea threatened to swamp up my throat, making me gasp and retch. Agony boiled from my knee, and I sobbed and cursed at my stupidity. It felt as if I had broken it all over again. The cold bite of the snow on my face cleared the dizziness. I sat up and ate some snow to wash away the bitter sting of bile in my mouth, and then sat slumped forward. When I had stood up, the first series of crevasses running down to the moraines had been visible 100 yards ahead. As I couldn’t walk, I would be forced to crawl through the broken section, unable to see far enough ahead to be sure of taking the correct line. Now that I considered it I wasn’t certain of the line anyway. I remembered that we had weaved a complex path across the 150 yards of parallel crevasses between me and the moraines, sometimes crossing narrow bridges dividing crevasses, and frequently climbing short steep slopes to avoid the open holes. I doubted that I would be able to control a crawling descent of these obstacles.

I lay back on my rucksack and stared at the sky. My instinct screamed out against attempting the crossing, but my brain could find no alternatives. I ate snow mechanically and drifted into daydreams, abdicating from the inevitable decision to move. There were no clouds to look at, no birds flying by, yet I still lay there, eyes open but unseeing, and thought of anything but where I was.

I awoke with a start—‘‘Get moving…don’t lie there…stop dozing…mover! The voice came through the wandering idle thoughts of pop song lyrics, faces from the past, and fantasies of empty value. I set off crawling, trying to force the pace to salve my guilty conscience. I gave no further thought to what the crevasses might hold for me.

With frequent stops to stand and check the route, I slowly entered the crevasse zone. Dips in the smooth snow made me veer anxiously from side to side, and when I turned to look back, my sloughed tracks meandered crazily in loops and zigzags back to the smooth surface on which I had slept. As in a maze, I thought at first that I knew where I was going; at last I realised I was hopelessly lost. The splits in the ice became more contorted and numerous until I stood up and stared at a broken mess of fissures and covered hollows. It was impossible to judge where I was in relation to the vague map in my mind. I would recognise a crevasse, then look again and see that I was mistaken. Each one changed shape when I glanced at it a second time, and my head was swimming with the effort of concentration. A mounting horror of falling into a crevasse forced me into frantic guessing at the best path through the maze. The harder I tried, the worse my position became, until hysteria threatened to overwhelm me. Which way, which way? Over there…and there I would crawl only to find myself dead-ended by another menacing fissure. Time seemed to slow as I crawled back and forth. I crossed and recrossed my tracks, forgot what I had already seen until I looked at a taunting gap in front of my face once again. I fought the temptation to jump the smaller crevasses, narrow gaps which normally I would have jumped unhesitatingly, but dared not risk leaping off one leg. Even if I cleared the gap, I might slide uncontrollably into the parallel yawning slit immediately ahead.

In a state of nervous exhaustion I collapsed on a narrow bridge of snow between two crevasses. I lay on my side looking bleakly at the narrowing bridge stretching away from me. There was something familiar about the bridge, yet I couldn’t recall what it was. I had collapsed in despair when I saw that the bridge narrowed, convinced that once again I would have to retreat. I had already approached this bridge several times before, but now I thought there was something significant about it. On the previous occasions I hadn’t dared attempt to stand on the narrow strip of snow for fear of the open holes on either side. I sat up and searched intently for some remembered landmark in the snows ahead. The bridge appeared to curl to the left and drop away. I would be certain that the building excitement within me was justified only if I stood up. Using my axe, I tentatively straightened up, swaying alarmingly and feeling very unsteady.

Beyond the bridge I saw the dark outline of a boulder on a flat snow slope. It was the beginning of the moraines. I dropped back to the bridge and crawled carefully to its narrowest point. The curl to the left led to the snow-covered moraines. There were no more crevasses.

I sat with my back against a large yellow rock, staring at my tracks coming down off the glacier. They weaved crazily through the broken ice as if some giant bird had been hopping around feeding on the snow. I felt utterly drained. It suddenly struck me as funny that I should have taken such a daft route through the crevasses now that I could see clearly the obvious line.

There was a taint of hysteria in my good humour, and the waves of weak shivers running through me left me in no doubt that I had been very lucky to get safely across. The glacier shimmered and waved before my eyes so that its gentle rolls seemed to move like the ocean. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. There was a blurred quality to the view before me, and when I turned to look at the dark moraines tumbling towards the lakes, I noticed that these too appeared hazy and out of focus. The more I rubbed my eyes the worse the blurring became, and sharp prickling burns made tears cloud my sight. Snow-blind!

‘Oh shit! That’s the last thing I need!’

My sunglasses had smashed when I had fallen from the cliff and broken my leg, and I had been unable to take out my contact lenses for the last two days and nights. I squinted my eyes tight and peered through the smallest of slits. When I looked at the blinding glare of the glacier my eyes burned unbearably and fat tears rolled down my cheeks. The dark moraines were softer, and I found that I could focus quite well there through slitted eyelids. I moved awkwardly to the other side of the boulder, facing the moraines, and that small distance of hopping confirmed my dread that the glacier was the easy part.

I lolled against the rock, feeling luxuriously warm and relaxed in the sun. I promised myself a good rest before attempting the moraines and immediately nodded into sleep. After half an hour the voice rudely disturbed my peace, coming into my dreams like the distant murmur of flowing water, with the same insistent message I had so far been unable to ignore:

‘Come on, wake up! Things to be done…long way to go…don’t sleep…come on.’ I sat up and stared in confusion at the dark river of rock flowing away from me. For a moment I felt disorientated and wondered where I was.

All those rocks! They were strange after so many days on snow. I hadn’t seen so much rock since before the summit. How long ago was that? It took several bemused attempts before I worked it out. Four days ago! It meant nothing to me. Four days, six, what did it matter? Nothing ever seemed to change. I had been in these mountains so long I felt as if I must remain here in this half dream state, waking occasionally in stark reality to remember the reasons for being here, before drifting back to the comfort of fantasy. Rocks! The moraines. Of course! I lay back against the boulder and closed my eyes, but the voice kept calling. Instructions tumbled in, repeated commands of what I must do, and I lay back listening and fighting the instinct to obey. I just wanted to sleep a little longer. I lost the fight and obeyed.

The melody of a song continued to play in my head as I organised myself. I found that I could vocalise all the lyrics word-perfectly, yet I was sure I had only been able to remember the refrain in the past. I mumbled it as I draped my sodden sleeping bag over the boulder, and felt content that it must be a good sign. My memory was working fine. I emptied my rucksack on to the snow beside me and sifted through the contents. The small shallow pan and stove were set to one side. I had no gas, so I placed the stove in the stuff sack for my sleeping bag. I took off my helmet and crampons and packed them into the small red bag. My ice hammer and harness just fitted in, and I was left with a torch, camera, sleeping bag, ice axe and pan. I picked the camera from the snow and considered putting it in the bag as well. I had already removed the film after the summit, so it was of no use. I remembered how difficult it had been to find the camera in a secondhand shop and put it into my rucksack. I stuffed my sleeping bag and torch in on top and closed the sack. The shiny aluminium pan was jammed between two small rocks on top of the boulder so that the sun glinted off its surface. I placed the red stuff sack at the base of the boulder and sat back content. It was good to leave things tidy and organised.

The song in my head had changed when I finished, to be replaced by one that I hated. Somehow I couldn’t get its insistent chant out of my mind as, irritably, I set to work on my Karrimat, trying to forget the words,…‘Brown girl in the ring…Tra la la la la…A part of me performed tasks without conscious decision, as if already told what to do, while the other part insisted on vocalising a stupid meaningless song through my every thought.

I unrolled the yellow foam that on the snow beside me. It was far too long for what I had in mind. When I tried to tear it in half, I found that the tight closed-cell structure of the that was too strong. I hacked at it with the adze on my axe, making a crude punctured line across it. When I tore it again it ripped across in a jagged line between the cuts. I wrapped it twice round my knee and pulled it as tight as I could, wincing at the stabs of pain. With a strap from my crampons I buckled it tight on to my upper thigh and struggled with numb fingers to fasten the buckle. Another strap around my calf held it firmly in place. When I lifted my leg I was pleased to see that the knee remained stiff and unbending, but the that had slipped open at the knee. Two more straps from my rucksack completed the splint. I tightened them very close to the joint, one on either side, and then lay back exhausted. The knee straps had made me yelp when I pulled them tight, but gradually the constant pressure on the knee eased the pain to a throbbing ache.

When I stood up and leant heavily on the boulder, my head spun with giddiness and I gripped the rock harder to stop myself falling. The moment passed. I pulled my sack on to my back and picked my ice axe from the snow. The moraines tumbled away from me in a wide torrent of boulders. I knew that they were very large in the upper reaches of the moraine flow and gradually diminished to rock and scree near the lakes. There was no question of crawling. Walking was also out, so it would have to be hopping.

At the first attempt I fell flat on my face, cracking my forehead sharply on the edge of a boulder, and twisting my knee viciously under me. I screamed. When the pain ebbed, I tried again. I held the axe in my right hand. At less than two feet in length it made a poor walking stick, and I was hunched over like an arthritic pensioner as I placed it carefully on the ground. With all my weight on the axe, I hefted the useless right leg forward so that it hung parallel with my left leg. Bracing myself on the axe I made a violent hop forward. It was too violent, and I swayed precariously, trying to stop myself toppling on to my face again. I had made all of six inches’ forward progress! I tried again and fell heavily. The pain took longer to settle, and when I stood again I could feel my knee burning hot beneath the splint.

After covering ten yards I had managed to perfect my hobbling technique. It wasn’t very efficient, and I was sweating profusely from the effort. I had worked out that it was best not to place the leg in front of my good foot, and that, rather than making a violent hop, I could execute a swinging step and keep my balance. In those first ten yards I fell at every other hop, but at the end I could hop twice as far and still stay upright. I remembered the patterns I had employed when traversing the ridge and climbing out of the crevasse, and concentrated on the same technique. I broke the hopping down into distinct actions and then repeated them faithfully. Place the axe, lift the foot forward, brace, hop, place the axe, lift-brace-hop, place-lift-brace-hop…

I had started down the moraines at one o’clock. Five and a half hours to go before dark. Place-liftbrace-hop. I needed water. I wasn’t going to reach Bomb Alley. Place-lift…And on until I could hobble automatically and switch myself off. The falls brought me back each time, but they were unavoidable. My axe shaft would slip on a loose rock and send me tumbling half-way through a hop, or I would land on some scree and fall sideways into the boulders. I tried to protect my knee but it was no use. I had no strength in my leg with which to pull it safely to one side. Invariably I fell fully on to it, or bashed it cruelly against the rocky floor. The flares of agony at each impact never diminished but, for some reason, my recovery rate improved dramatically. I stopped screaming when I fell and found that it made no difference. Screaming was for others to hear, and the moraines cared little for my protests. Sometimes I cried, childlike, at the pain and frustration, more often I retched. I was never sick. There was nothing to vomit. When, two hours later, I turned and looked at where I had come from, the glacier was a distant dirty white cliff and my spirits rose at this tangible proof of descent.