GUERILLAS IN THE GARHWAL

First Ascent of Thalay Sagar

JOHN THACKRAY

SMALL EXPEDITIONS can be compared to guerilla bands. They move swiftly. They adjust instantly to the twists and turns of fate in the mountains. But they can also be more vulnerable, prone to more stress — and more strung out.

The first crisis of our four-man expedition to Thalay Sagar (22,652 ft) happened on the second day of moving 18 loads southwards from the village of Gangotri. All but two of our ten base camp porters suddenly quit, complaining of the deep snow, which was quite unexpected in the first week of June. Not even our craven offers to double their pay could halt their defection. A typical large-scale outfit would have been traumatized right then and there, and perhaps bogged down. We simply cursed and fumed a little, sorted through already spartan stores and gear. The two loads we eliminated were hidden off the trail. We stooped to the initial burdens of half-loads, but built up to full ones by the end of the two weeks it took us to set up advanced base camp at the foot of the gargantuan granite north face of Thalay Sagar, which, by the way, is marked in some maps as Phating Pithwara.

The second crisis point was one of emotional sadness, when I told our liaison officer, Jai Singh Kashyap, we'd be climbing without him. Over the weeks of approach, we'd probed his previous experience, which was more than adequate for the traditional expedition. Indeed, he'd been to higher altitude than any of the rest of us. But in a lightning strike against a big mountain, every member must be equally capable of moving self-sufficiently over rock and ice. I tried to explain to Jai Singh the difference in our strategy and style. I don't think I succeeded: so used was he to thinking of the large expedition with fixed camps, high-altitude porters with fixed ropes, belayed abseils. I tried to mitigate his sense of betrayal by pointing out how rigorous our selection criteria for personnel had been — the deep technical backgrounds of myself, Roy Kligfield, Pete Thexton and Jon Waterman — speaking to him, too, about American climbers with more experience than he, who we'd turned down as inadequate. But I don't think he was persuaded.

The third crisis ripened on the fifth day of our ascent. We'd turned westwards of the north face, and spent two hard bivouacs within a long and steep couloir of brittle ice, thinly patched with neve. Our communal strength was ravaged by high-altitude sickness a common though brutal side-effect of the swiftness we'd imposed on ourselves. Kligfield and Waterman, both fine athletes, were gasping on their backs, half comatose. Feeling no great elation ourselves, Thexton and I left the good camp-site below the south face, and rock-climbed a day and a half, fixing about 500 ft of 7 mm cord, and a ropelength of 11 mm.
Photo 21

The fourth turning-point came on the summit day. We abandoned Waterman to his lonely battle with headaches and nausea. Three of us jumared up the South Face, breached the West Ridge, free-climbed the execrable black band of rotten rock of the upper North Face.

I thought of Jon often. And I thought of Jai Singh. The summit would have been so much sweeter with them both. There we happy warriors happily slept the night on narrow platforms stamped out of the snow crest. It had been eight days since we'd engaged the mountain.

Nerves were frayed on the long abseils the next day. That loathsome loose rock again, so unrooted to the face that it often slithered off at the merest touch. Several near misses went zinging and ricocheting near the guy below. Back at high camp we found Waterman in perfect shape. He'd only needed a little more time to acclimatize; but of course time was in short supply, due to nearly exhausted food reserves, plus uncertain and possible danger signals every day written in cloudy skies to the south.

Not a foot of rope was left behind on the mountain, no scrap of removable gear. A small expedition can't afford to discard anything that might be used in getting off. The 500 ft of 7 mm cord previously fixed on the south face eventually would prove a lifesaver. We'd retreated for a day and a half along the easy-angled western ridge that trails down to a notch near to Jogin. There instead of the gentle inclines we'd fantasized, were grim vertical faces of mud and shale, that same black and crumbly stone of the summit band, and tottering boulders poorly iced into the perpendicular. There was no choice but to abseil 1000 feet to the accompaniment of riotous rockfall above and below. Oftentimes we were helpless to prevent the single-strand rappel line from unseating slabs and rocks. Miraculously spared by many cannonades, we sprawled far out of danger on the glacier, elated by flows of excessive adrenalin, mild hysteria behind our laughter at being spared from harm. By nature small expeditions must thrive on their higher risk levels, the severity of their gambling with luck — but they endure only through nature's mercy.

Thalay Sagar N Face. (Photo: John Thackray)

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