Touching the Void (9 page)

With a groan I squeezed my eyes tight shut. Hot tears filled my eyes and my contact lenses swam in them. I squeezed tight again and felt hot drops rolling over my face. It wasn’t the pain, I felt sorry for myself, childishly so, and with that thought I couldn’t help the tears. Dying had seemed so far away, and yet now everything was tinged with it. I shook my head to stop the tears, but the taint was still there.

I dug my axes into the snow, and pounded my good leg deeply into the soft slope until I felt sure it wouldn’t slip. The effort brought back the nausea and I felt my head spin giddily to the point of fainting. I moved and a searing spasm of pain cleared away the faintness. I could see the summit of Seria Norte away to the west. I was not far below it. The sight drove home how desperately things had changed. We were above 19,000 feet, still on the ridge, and very much alone. I looked south at the small rise I had hoped to scale quickly and it seemed to grow with every second that I stared. I would never get over it. Simon would not be able to get me up it. He would leave me. He had no choice. I held my breath, thinking about it. Left here? Alone? I felt cold at the thought. I remembered Rob, who had been left to die…but Rob had been unconscious, had been dying. I had only a bad leg.

Nothing to kill me. For an age I felt overwhelmed at the notion of being left; I felt like screaming, and I felt like swearing, but stayed silent. If I said a word I would panic. I could feel myself teetering on the edge of it.

The rope which had been tight on my harness went slack. Simon was coming! He must know something had happened, I thought, but what shall I tell him? If I told him that I had only hurt my leg and not broken it, would that make him help me? My mind raced at the prospect of telling him that I was hurt. I pressed my face into the cold snow again and tried to think calmly. I had to cool it. If he saw me panicky and hysterical he might give up at once. I fought to stem my fears. Be rational about it, I thought. I felt myself calm down, and my breathing became steady; even the pain seemed tolerable.

‘What happened? Are you okay?’

I looked up in surprise. I hadn’t heard his approach. He stood at the top of the cliff looking down at me, puzzled. I made an effort to talk normally, as if nothing had happened:

‘I fell. The edge gave way.’ I paused, then I said as unemotionally as I could: ‘I’ve broken my leg.’ His expression changed instantly. I could see a whole range of reactions in his face. I kept looking directly at him. I wanted to miss nothing.

‘Are you sure it’s broken?’

‘Yes.’

He stared at me. It seemed that he looked harder and longer than he should have done because he turned away sharply. Not sharply enough though. I had seen the look come across his face briefly, but in that instant I knew his thoughts. He had an odd air of detachment. I felt unnerved by it, felt suddenly quite different from him, alienated. His eyes had been full of thoughts. Pity. Pity and something else; a distance given to a wounded animal which could not be helped. He had tried to hide it, but I had seen in, and I looked away full of dread and worry.

‘I’ll abseil down to you.’

He had his back to me, bending over a snow stake, digging down through the soft snow. He sounded matter-of-fact, and I wondered whether I was being unduly paranoid. I waited for him to say more, but he remained silent and I wondered what he was thinking. A short but very dangerous abseil from a poorly anchored snow stake put him down next to me quickly.

He stood close by me and said nothing. I had seen him glance at my leg but he made no comment. After some searching he found a packet of Paracetamols and handed me two pills. I swallowed them, and watched him trying to pull the abseil rope down. It refused to move. It had jammed in the snow bollard that he had dug around the snow stake above. Simon swore and set off towards the point where the wall was smallest, right on the crest of the ridge. I knew it was all unstable powder and so did he, but he had no choice. I looked away, unwilling to watch what I was sure would be a fatal fall down the West Face. Indirectly it would kill me as well, only a little more slowly. Simon had said nothing about what he would do, and I had been nervous to prompt him. In an instant an uncrossable gap had come between us and we were no longer a team working together. Joe had disappeared behind a rise in the ridge and began moving faster than I could go. I was glad we had put the steep section behind us at last. I had felt so close to the end of everything on that ridge. Falling all the time and always on the very edge of the West Face. I felt tired and was grateful to be able to follow Joe’s tracks instead of breaking trail.

I rested a while when I saw that Joe had stopped moving. Obviously he had found an obstacle and I thought I would wait until he started moving again. When the rope moved again I trudged forward after it, slowly.

Suddenly there was a sharp tug as the rope lashed out taut across the slope. I was pulled forward several feet as I pushed my axes into the snow and braced myself for another jerk. Nothing happened. I knew that Joe had fallen, but I couldn’t see him, so I stayed put. I waited for about ten minutes until the tautened rope went slack on the snow and I felt sure that Joe had got his weight off me. I began to move along his footsteps cautiously, half expecting something else to happen. I kept tensed up and ready to dig my axes in at the first sign of trouble.

As I crested the rise, I could see down a slope to where the rope disappeared over the edge of a drop. I approached slowly, wondering what had happened. When I reached the top of the drop I saw Joe below me. He had one foot dug in and was leaning against the slope with his face buried in the snow. I asked him what had happened and he looked at me in surprise. I knew he was injured, but the significance didn’t hit me at first.

He told me very calmly that he had broken his leg. He looked pathetic, and my immediate thought came without any emotion, You’re fucked, matey. You’re dead…no two ways about it! I think he knew it too. I could see it in his face. It was all totally rational. I knew where we were, I took in everything around me instantly, and knew he was dead. It never occurred to me that I might also die. I accepted without question that I could get off the mountain alone. I had no doubt about that. I saw what Joe had tried to do and realised that, unless I could arrange an abseil, I would have to do the same. The snow at the top of the cliff was horrendous sugary stuff. I dug as much of the surface away as I could and then buried a snow stake in the mush I had uncovered. I felt sure it would never hold my weight so I started digging a wide snow bollard around the stake. When I finished I backed towards the cliff edge and tugged the rope. It held firm but I had no confidence in it. I thought of trying to back-climb the crest of the ridge where the cliff was smallest but decided it would be even more dangerous. I half-abseiled and half-climbed down the cliff, trying to get my weight off the rope. I felt it cutting through the bollard. It held firm.

When I reached the foot of the cliff I saw that Joe’s leg was in a bad way and that he was suffering. He seemed calm but had a sort of hunted, fearful look in his eyes. He knew the score as well as I did. I gave him some pills for the pain but knew they were not strong enough to help much. His leg was twisted and misshapen at the knee joint, and I thought that if I could see that through his thick polar-fibre trousers then it must be really bad.

I was at a loss for something to say. The change in our fortunes was too abrupt. I found that the ropes had jammed and knew I would have to go back up, alone, to free them. In a way, it took my mind off things, and gave me time to settle into the new situation. I had to solo back up the cliff, and the only way was right on the crest of the ridge. I was frightened of attempting it. Joe tried moving beside me and very nearly fell off. I grabbed him and put him back into balance. He stayed silent. He had unroped so I had been able to arrange the abseil and I think he was quiet because he knew that if I hadn’t grabbed him he would have fallen the length of the East Face. I left him then, and forgot about him.

The climb up the edge of the cliff was the hardest and most dangerous thing I’d ever done. Several times my leg broke through the powder into space. When I was half-way up I realised I couldn’t go back, but I didn’t think I would get up it. I seemed to be climbing on nothing. Everything I touched simply broke away. Every step either sank back, collapsed or crumbled down the West Face, but incredibly I seemed to be gaining height. I don’t know how long it took. It felt like hours. When eventually I pulled myself on to the slope above I was shaking and so strung out that I had to stop still and calm myself.

I looked back and was amazed to see that Joe had started traversing away from the cliff. He was trying to help himself by contouring round the small rise in front of him. He moved so slowly, planting his axes in deeply until his arms were buried and then making a frightening little hop sideways. He shuffled across the slope, head down, completely enclosed in his own private struggle. Below him I could see thousands of feet of open face falling into the eastern glacier bay. I watched him quite dispassionately. I couldn’t help him, and it occurred to me that in all likelihood he would fall to his death. I wasn’t disturbed by the thought. In a way I hoped he would fall. I knew I couldn’t leave him while he was still fighting for it, but I had no idea how I might help him. I could get down. If I tried to get him down I might die with him. It didn’t frighten me. It just seemed a waste. It would be pointless. I kept staring at him expecting him to fall…

After a long wait I turned and went up to the snow stake. I rearranged the stake and then backed down to the cliff edge again. I prayed it would hold me, and when I touched down on the slope below prayed again that it wouldn’t jam. I had no intention of repeating the climb up the crest. The rope slid down easily and I turned with it, half-expecting to see that Joe had gone. He was still climbing away from me. In all the time it had taken me to get up and down he had covered only 100 feet. I started after him.

Simon suddenly appeared at my side. I had been unable to watch him climbing the crest. I felt sure he would fall. Instead, I thought, I had better try to get moving. I knew I would never get over the rise, so I began to contour it. I didn’t think of the consequences. I had seen Simon struggling on the powder. Progress was slow and tiring, but I was so focused in on moving carefully that I could ignore much of the pain. It became one more difficulty to contend with and merged with all the other problems—balance, the snow conditions and one-leggedness.

A pattern of movements developed after my initial wobbly hops and I meticulously repeated the pattern. Each pattern made up one step across the slope and I began to feel detached from everything around me. I thought of nothing but the patterns. Only once did I stop and glance back at Simon. He seemed to be on the very point of falling and I looked away quickly. I could see the endless fall of the East Face beneath my feet. It was tempting to think I could survive falling down it, yet I knew that despite there being evenly angled snow all the way, the speed of the fall would rip me to shreds long before I reached the bottom. I thought of falling down it anyway, but it meant nothing to me. I felt no fright at the idea. It seemed such an obvious and unavoidable fact. It was academic really. I knew I was done for. It would make no difference in the long run. Simon climbed past me and began stamping a trench across the slope until he had gone out of sight round the curve of the slope. He said he was going ahead to see what lay around the corner. Neither of us discussed what we were going to do. I don’t think we thought there was anything. So I got back into my patterns. The trench made it easier, but it still needed total attention. It struck me that we were both avoiding the issue. For over two hours we had acted as if nothing had happened. We had a silent agreement. It needed time to work itself out. We both knew the truth; it was very simple. I was injured and unlikely to survive. Simon could get down alone. While I waited on his actions, it felt as if I was holding something terrifyingly fragile and precious. If I asked Simon to help, I might lose this precious thing. He might leave me. I remained silent, but it was no longer for fear of losing control. I felt coldly rational.

The patterns merged into automatic rhythm. I was surprised to hear Simon ask if I was all right. I had forgotten about him, and had no idea how long I had been repeating the patterns; I had almost forgotten why I was doing them. I looked up and saw Simon sitting in the snow watching me. I smiled at him and he returned a lopsided sort of grin which failed to mask his anxiety. He sat overlooking the slope running down the side of the rise round which we had contoured. Behind him I could see the crest of the ridge.

‘I can see the col,’ he said, and I felt a surge of hope run through me like a cold wind. ‘Is it clear? I mean, is it a straight slope down?’ I asked, trying to keep the edge of excitement from my voice.

‘More or less…’

I hurried my patterned moves, and at the same time tried not to rush. Suddenly I was scared of the drop below. I could feel myself trembling and realised that if I had felt like this when I had set out I would never have got to this point. When I reached him, I slumped against the snow. Simon put his hand on my shoulder. ‘How’re you doing?’

‘It’s better. Painful, but…’ I felt small and useless telling him. His concern scared me, and I was unsure what was behind it. Perhaps he wanted to break the news to me softly. ‘I’ve had it, Simon…I can’t see myself getting down at this rate.’

If I expected an answer I didn’t get one. It felt melodramatic to have voiced it, and he ignored the implied question. He began untying the ropes from his harness.

I looked down to the col. It was about 600 feet below us and slightly to the right. Without thinking, I began to work out possible ways of getting to it. To descend directly to the col would be very difficult since it meant a diagonal descent crossing the angle of the slope. It would have to be straight down and then horizontally across to the col. The traverse appeared shorter than the slope I’d just crossed.