FROM SEEING THE HIMALAYA FOR THE FIRST TIME

JOHN JACKSON

From here on up the hills don’t get any higher
But the valleys get deeper and deeper

Folk Song

Up DRAUGHTS OF HOT HUMID AIR made the aircraft buck and bounce as it lost height and the dark green jungle of Burma seemed to be reaching for the aircraft in which five of us were quietly working. But all was not quiet for every extraneous sound was drowned by the pulsating throb of the two giant piston engines of DC3 taking us to our rendezvous. Tree topped hills skimmed by and we sank yet lower. Then soon we could see hill paths like snail tracks twisting and spiralling down into the enveloping depths of tropical vegetation. Fleetingly we caught a glimpse of a clearing and of many tiny antlike figures rushing away from newly prepared and clearly marked DZ — dropping zone. The aircraft banked and turned tightly lining up on the DZ and inside there was a great activity as air gunners and navigators heaved and stacked supplies by the open door. These were jute sacks filled with rice or sugar, atta or dhal and weighing 100 lbs. apiece.

Red light on! — get ready — green light on — heave — and the pile of sacks off loaded 100 ft. above the ground hurtled to the earth at high speed. For over half an hour the operation was repeated until all the supplies were dropped to the isolated detachment of a long range penetration force in the Chin Hills. Finally we made a last flight round the clearing, waved from the door and dipped a wing of friendship and support to the gesticulating figures below. We climbed higher and on reciprocal course set off back for the air strip several hundred miles to the west in steamy Bengal.

By now down in the dark and deep cut valleys it was already night but at 12,000 ft the sun still shone and lit up the surfaces of clouds that in this cooler part of the day were condensing and forming along the ridges of the mountains. Katabolic air currents caused the silvered surfaces of the clouds to curve and flow into huge greying streamers of mist that seemed like gigantic waterfalls their veils of spray pouring down into the jungle. Over the east, the sky was darkening to a deep Prussian blue with a base of yellow greens and lilacs, whilst in the west the sun sank to the horizon and changed from gold to a blood red orb that was rapidly being eaten by the devouring earth. At first the propellers and the leading edges of the aircraft wings held a glint of burnished copper, followed by a fiery red that was finally quenched as the sun disappeared and the mountains, valleys, jungle and low lying mist slipped into the cool embracing arms of night. Very high cirrus clouds still caught the rays of the sun and once more reflected back the colour changes — pale gold, changing to orange and final bloody crimson whilst inside the aircraft a blue fluorescent glow from instrument panels provided a small but encouraging area of light. Following the half hour burst of furious activity at the DZ we again worked quietly, oblivious to the roar of engines, content with the success of the mission, and pleased that back in the Burmese jungle, men would be cooking nourishing meals over tiny jungle fires because of what we had done. I knew that my companions were glad to be leaving the hills behind. For them the hills were not friendly, but a constant threat. They knew that within seconds, they could render our giant craft and its powerful engines of many hundreds of horse-power into a screeching tearing mass of mangled metal.

None of us wanted to be part of that! Even so, I felt sad that my companions could not feel as I did about the hills. For me, they were friends not enemies and the evening sunset among the Chin Hills had been a beautiful and inspiring end to a successful mission. I found it to be the same on all such flights so that the mountains of Burma became familiar friends that regularly uplifted my heart with their interesting shapes, complexity of ridges and dark mysterious depths of valleys. Time and again they held out a promise for the future and of longed for journeys along dusty trails in unknown lands.

The journeys began for me on 3 September 1939. Several of us were climbing on the grit stone crags at Widdop on the Bronte Moor when Midgley Barrett, the water bailiff at the reservoir walked across the embankment and called up to us that war had been declared. At the same moment a drone in the sky made me look up to see a lone aircraft heading east. Where was it going? Where would we all be going? That was a question among so many that filtered through my mind and I felt bewildered, wondering if I and my companions were soon to part, never to see other again. Having discovered the freedom of the mountains and the moor lands it seemed such a waste of time at the age of eighteen to have to and fight in a war, but I treasured that freedom and so felt defiant. Perhaps that aircraft overhead had been an omen, for early in 1940 I joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve and became a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner.

Eventually, I flew in Burma and on finishing my first tour of operational flying was granted a short leave and went to Kashmir. There I first looked into the Great Himalaya range. My view point was from a 9000 ft. hill named Chergand from which I looked down on to Dal lake in the Kashmir valley and across to the Pir Panjal mountains to the south. North of me line after line of snow-clad peaks stretched far away and beyond Nanga Parbat, sixty miles away.

Watching the clouds that in the late afternoon were disappearing below ridge after ridge I was reminded that in a few days I would once again be flying over the Chin Hills of Burma. These peaks and valleys were different to those jungle-clad mountains but they stirred my mind in similar fashion. Here were areas where perhaps man had never trod and for me there was a strong pull at the heart and in the mind. A cold land maybe where in the evening the snows would be turning pink then suffusing into purple shadows and I longed to trek into them, to get to know their environment and come to know the people who lived among them. That is what it was like seeing the Himalaya for the first time and I knew immediately I must return.

For almost sixty years I have been able to do so many times. On completing a further tour of operational flying at Kohima and the battle for Imphal I took leave and made a solo crossing of part of the Kashmir Himalaya via Kolahoi — the ‘Matterhorn’ of Kashmir. As a result I was then posted to the RAF Mountain Centre in Sonamarg and a short description of that time is written up in the article ‘Kashmir Memories’ FRCC Journal 1952. Equipment was basic, hemp rope, clinker nailed boots, long wood shafted ice-axes , jackets of Kashmir tweed, ‘Aussie’ bush hats, but no crampons. We became very proficient at cutting steps in steep ice! The rock was good and a number of Severe and VS rock climbs varied in length from 700 to 3000 ft. but no one was ever benighted. Because most of the mountains of Kashmir and Western Tibet (Ladakh) were unclimbed we used the occasional ‘rest’ days we had for making first ascents. Eventually four of us wrote a climbing guide to the mountains. Wilfrid Noyce was the editor whilst Harry Tilly, Gordon Whittle and I (all three Fell and Rockers) contributed different sections.

In 1952 I was climbing in the Garhwal at the same time as Eric Shipton was leading a team on Cho Oyu. It was a prelude to him leading an attempt on Everest, and by chance I’d met him for the first time some months earlier at the foot of Napes Needle — so we climbed it together. On behalf of Eric Shipton, Alf Gregory included me in a pre-Everest party he assembled for preparations in Switzerland, and though there was a leadership change I was chosen as a ‘reserve’ for 1953. There was to be a Spring attempt, but there were arrangements for a post-monsoon attempt if this was unsuccessful. Prior to selection, at a medical examination by Lord Horder, he thought my tonsils could be in better shape for high altitudes. Having just had four months in the Himalaya I wasn’t concerned, but being determined to be in top condition for any post-monsoon expedition planned to leave Britain on 24 July I arranged for a tonsillectomy. I was very fit and the surgeon snipped them out without any trouble. Then on 2 June my wife Eileen came to take me home from the hospital. I could tell she was excited for it was the Queen’s coronation day, but there was something else. She brought me a copy of The Times newspaper telling of the coronation but also with the banner headline ‘Everest Climbed’. This was tremendous news and we both felt very proud to have been a part of it in some small way. Then I had a thought — ‘Who reached the summit and when?’ I asked. ‘Ed Hillary and Tenzing on the 29 May’, she said. ‘Good on yet Ed’ I thought, it’s the day I had my tonsils out! Later in June, Basil Goodfellow, Hon. Secretary of the Himalayan Joint Committee wrote me a letter, the gist of which was as follows:

‘Unlike the rest of us who rejoice without reserve in the achievement of Hunt’s party there must be for you a feeling of disappointment when their success has destroyed your own chance of attempting Everest this autumn ... it is perhaps a consolation that there are plenty of Himalayan peaks left to climb and we plan to send many expeditions to them in the future.’ He was right, for in 1955 I was a member of the team that made the first ascent of Kangchenjunga, third highest mountain in the world, and before that was asked to lead an expedition in the Everest area to search for the ‘abominable Snowman’ just seven months after Everest was climbed.

Visits to the Himalaya continued, with 1976 being a particularly good year. Though there was only two of us, with my wife Eileen we called ourselves the ‘Himachal Expedition’. After a drive from Snowdonia to India we were pleased to revise and re-edit the guide for the Jammu and Kashmir government. Our peregrinations brought back many memories of previous days in India and the Himalaya. We walked over the Wenlock Downs of the Nilgiris so well know to Howard Somervell (onetime RFCC President) and researched the lives of the enigmatic Toda people. This was followed by a journey to Darjeeling and Sikkim to see Kangchenjunga again and remember the first ascent in 1955 (FRCC Journal 1957). Way beyond Kangchenjunga were Everest and Makalu a reminder of my journey, the first one ever made, from Everest to the ‘Five Treasures’. That was at the end of the 1954 ‘Yeti’ expedition of which I was the mountaineering leader (FRCC Journal 1955 and ‘Thoughts about a Long Walk’ FRCC Journal 1996). Leaving Darjeeling we then spent two months in the Everest area with Dawa Tenzing and many other of our Sherpa friends. After visiting the ‘Soldiers on Everest’, a successful team led by Tony Streather we taught Sherpas to ski on the glaciers of Chola khola and Upper Dudh Kosi then enjoyed making minor ascents of over 19,000 ft. Our nine months of the ‘Himachal Expedition’ were packed with so many rich and fulfilling experiences and it only cost us £900 each from start to finish. It would have cost us that to sit at home in a deck chair! Following on from Everest we skied in Kullu with the India-Tibet Border Police on the Rohtang Jot at 13,500 ft and made a major contribution to the running of the first Kullu Summer Ski Festival in the Rani nala. Discovering that entry to Lahaul was newly open to foreigners we then backpacked over the Rhotang as far as Keylong and on the day of our wedding anniversary made a 7000 ft ascent to the Gangstang glacier. However, without any doubt for me, the icing on the cake was taking Eileen to Kashmir then on to the land of chortens — Western Tibet. On her 50th birthday we made an ascent of Valehead peak in Thajwas, the ‘Valley of Glaciers’.

It was shortly after this climb that we drove our ‘juggernaut’ (a Ford Transit Caravanette) along the newly opened military road through to Leh. The road had brought about many changes from the days when we had to walk all the way from the Kashmir vale into the Buddhist country of Ladakh and I was determined that with Eileen I would return and try to capture some of the feel of those earlier times. We did so in 1983 by trekking through Zanskar with Jeremy and Gillian Naish. Tents, stoves, and climbing gear we took out from the UK but as of old bought pots, pans, cooking utensils, rice, dal, and other food stuff in the bazaar and market of Srinagar.

Two ponies and two donkeys carried most of our gear and we pitched tents, cooked and did all our own chores. It really was a journey in time (with a double meaning) and it did recapture the atmosphere of earlier days. In particular the section via the Shillakang gorge over the Nu Zig la to Spantang and the Sir la. That wild and uninhabited track of land gave me once again the full flavour of the vastness and loneliness of Central Asia. I don’t remember why we missed out going to the Garhwal Himalaya but five years later we made up for it by going to the outer sanctuary of Nanda Devi and climbed Bethartoli Himal South (FRCC Journal 1983). On Trisul Eileen taught our two doctors to ski at 18700 ft enabling me to go higher and achieve a dream of skiing at 20000 ft. From the snow dome on Berthartoli we could see the mountains of northwest Garhwal, a reminder of climbing there in 1952 (Return to the Himalaya — FRCC Journal 1953 Tilly and Jackson) when we made the first ascent of Avalanche Peak, explored in the Bangneu and the Bhagirathi Kharak then in the end made an Anglo French attempt on Nilkantha — the ‘Blue Throne of Shiva’.

Other trips followed on, including a return to Kashmir in 1987 as leader of a Canadian expedition when we climbed Kolahoi 5425 m. and pursued fieldwork on geology and glaciology in the area. Our work on patterns of the Little Ice Age advance and retreat has assisted in establishing some form of global synchroniety. Though not high, Kolahoi is a peak of some quality rather than quantity, and in making the ascent and the environmental investigations the team had much fun and gained great satisfaction-that is what going to mountains is all about.

Finally I think of the millennium year when Eileen and I organized a group to climb Stok Kangri. It was Chewang Motup Goba (well known to many Fell and Rockers) who provided equipment and staff and our son John who led the party. Having seen them off across the Zanskar river at Chilling we two left footprints on the plains of Rupshu. Geographically it is part of Chang Thang or northern Tibet where the harsh winds whip through the dry grasslands creating a very cold environment. We camped at 15000 ft by the shores of Tso Moriri — a lake that is a glittering blue diamond surrounded by rolling whale-backed mountains of snow and ice. Nearby was the village of Karzok inhabited by rugged semi-nomadic Changpas. It was mid-September and the start of their harsh winter so flocks of goats, sheep and herds of Dzo and Yak were being rounded up for shelter. Harvest time had ended and each morning a steady line of Karzokis walked past our tent to visit the local monastery where a visiting Rimpoche gave each of them his blessing for a future of peace and plenty. Once again the Himalaya with its rich diversity of peoples, cultures, religious and environments had also given us its own blessing for the present and the future.

It has always been so. Only in one of the last 22 years have we missed going to some part of the Himalaya and as in those lines of the poet Edward Thomas:

‘Often and often it comes back again to mind, the day I passed the horizon ridge to a new country’.

SUMMERY

Recalling several visits to the Himalaya.

 

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