The Mother's Necklace Read online

  The Mother’s Necklace

  Life and death on Ama Dablam, the world’s most beautiful mountain

  Matthew Horan

  Text copyright © 2017 Matthew Horan

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedication

  For Patrick and Eloise,

  that they may become dreamers of the day

  Table of Contents

  About the author

  Preface

  October 2016 - Australia

  November 6 - Kathmandu

  November 7 - Kathmandu

  November 8 – Kathmandu, Lukla, Monjo

  November 9 – Monjo, Kyangjuma

  November 10 - Kyangjuma

  November 11 - Kyangjuma, Pangboche

  November 12 – Pangboche, Ama Dablam Base Camp

  November 13 - Base Camp

  November 14 - Base Camp

  November 15 - Advanced Base Camp

  November 16 - ABC

  November 17 - Camp 1

  November 18 - ABC

  November 19 - Camp 1

  November 20 - Camp 1

  November 21 - Camp 1

  November 22 - Base Camp

  November 23 – Camp 1

  November 24 – Camp 2

  November 25 – Summit day

  November 26 – Camp 2.9

  November 27 - Base Camp

  November 28 – Base Camp

  November 29 - Base Camp

  November 30 – Namche Bazaar

  December 1 – Kathmandu

  About the author

  Matthew Horan has been a journalist in Australia and the UK, is a former infantry officer and has run his own corporate communications firm. He took up climbing at 16 and has summited numerous peaks around the world.

  I, demens, et saevas curre per Alpes,

  ut pueis placeas et declamito fias

  Go madman, and hurry over the cruel Alps,

  that you may delight small boys and inspire feckless adulation

  Juvenal, The Satires

  All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

  T. E. Lawrence

  Introduction

  I’d originally subtitled this book “Triumph and Tragedy on Ama Dablam…”, but apart from being a bit derivative (every second mountaineering book, it seems, has the same subtitle), on reflection I don’t think it was accurate. Is it a “triumph” to stand on top of a mountain? I don’t think so. “Triumph” is what my wonderful wife Judy has done in beating cancer. My effort – and the fear inherent in it – is puny compared to the struggle she went through soon after. In any case, dozens of people climbed Ama Dablam in the autumn of 2016, and while to be counted among their numbers is surely a small personal triumph, I’m not sure it deserves the accolade.

  “Life and Death” is much more prosaic, and more accurate. Climbing does reaffirm life, in it being so close to death despite all the safety precautions we take. And death did, in the end, become a companion to our expedition. But the life part certainly overshadowed the death – which was undoubtedly a tragedy in a way the triumph was not. High on a mountain, snot dripping, lungs rasping, calves burning, eyes stinging, deadly chasms below and deadlier snow cliffs above, is a way to experience life that most people at sea level rarely get to do.

  But while this book is, in its small way, a memoir of what it feels like to grasp life and squeeze, it started out much more simply. When I set out to climb Ama Dablam, I searched high and low for a full account of what it was like. There were a few blogs, but many of them were simply “went from Camp 1 to Camp 2 today”. None of them conveyed the majesty of the mountain, or the effort that goes into climbing it.

  Ama’s also not a mountain which has many – if any - books written on it. It’s small, by the standards of the Himalayan giants which surround it, at 6850m, even as it towers over the highest peak of almost every other continent. It is, however, spectacular. Ama Dablam means “Mother’s Necklace” and refers to its South-West and North-West ridges appearing like the enfolding arms of a mother. The “necklace” is the dablam, the huge ice cliff just below its summit.

  Ama has enthralled trekkers and climbers in the Khumbu for more than 70 years, standing alone about two days walk from Mt Everest. Despite its relatively small height, it’s still an incredible undertaking, and as I describe in this book, our expedition leader, an Everest veteran, believes in many ways it’s a harder mountain. But at a lower altitude, and with plentiful logistic support and rescue availability, it doesn’t create the sorts of deadly “Into Thin Air” epics that grace most mountaineering bookshelves.

  So I wanted to convey some of what I learned on what Jon, our expedition leader, described as a “pretty spicy year”, as well as give some insight into what it’s like to be on a commercial mountaineering expedition. For most amateur mountaineers (like me) this is the sort of expedition we aspire to, and at four weeks long and half the price of the big 8000m peaks, is the sort we can afford in both time and money. I wanted to show the fun, the boredom, the terror and the exhilaration that comes from climbing a big pointy thing with some terrific people.

  I also wanted to make sure I put down in words some of thoughts and feelings I had on the mountain before they disappear. This book is dedicated to my children, because I want them to read and understand what I did. I also wanted a record of several dramatic days on the mountains, with two rescues and me spending a night out at 6300m without a sleeping bag in my own mini-epic. And tragically, to record the death of one of our team members and the effect his life and death had on us.

  I didn’t keep a fully detailed diary on the expedition, but I did write regular updates on Facebook and sent numerous emails to family, and I have relied on them to augment my memory, along with Facebook posts from the rest of the team. Steve Plain has some excellent accounts of his experiences at his Project 7in4 website (www.project7in4.com), one of which I have used with his permission. Steve supplied the stunning cover picture, which was taken a couple of days before the manic weather of our summit day. We all swapped pictures, so I apologise in advance if I have failed to credit anyone. My tentmate Dave Bradley’s Bradventure blog (www.bradventure.co.uk) also served to illuminate the story. I have also circulated this account amongst my teammates and many of them provided extra anecdotes that have enriched my effort. Some of them didn’t always agree with what I wrote, but the majority urged me not to change a thing. Our expedition leader Jon, who is fairly humble and tends to let his actions and achievements do his talking, was a bit embarrassed, I think, but made some very salient points which were crucial for accuracy. Another client, similarly humble, asked that I not mention him by name, and I have honoured “the Marine’s” request. In contrast, Irish Pete messaged me to say: “I don’t think you stressed my charisma and good looks enough”. In truth, I actually didn’t.

  It is, of course, my experience. Everyone experiences things from different perspectives. In the 1996 Everest disaster, every surviving Western climber ended up writing a book. Every book differed on crucial points. So there will be cases in this account where people who were climbing literally metres away from me may disagree with what happened, or have a different justification or explanation. However this is meant to record MY perceptions, and I’ve tried to be honest about what I felt in the moment. Many times I felt the wrong thing, and I’ve endeavoured to point that out, but it was what I perceived at the time.

  Perceptions aside, all errors and omission, of course, are mine, not theirs. My errors are substantially less than they were initially through the ef
forts of my uni friend Vanessa Jones, who went on to become a very good newspaper editor. ‘Ness, who has a love of mountaineering books and an irrational fear of emulating them, was invaluable in reviewing this account, which is better for her efforts.

  The support of my wife Judy, who understood the danger and effort, and our children, who didn’t, but knew it would involve presents at the airport 30 days later, were critical to my success on and enjoyment of the expedition.

  Particular thanks also to Tori Hadley and Chase Tucker, and the Base Camp Training community, for the sweat and encouragement.

  If this book inspires anyone, I highly recommend you visit www.timmosedale.co.uk, then follow the first rule of alpine climbing and “book the fucking trip”.

  A proportion of any profits from this book will be donated to the family of Thundu Sherpa.

  A note on distances

  All distances in this book are in metres, as that’s what’s used, even by Americans and British climbers in the Himalaya. I have followed the convention of describing most defined distances or heights with abbreviation, ie, “6850m”.

  October 2016 - Australia

  I’m halfway up a rock chimney – really just a very, very steep gully – on Mt Barney when my left leg cramps and spasms.

  Mt Barney’s not a big mountain by world standards, just 1350m high. It certainly looks spectacular – a big pyramid of volcanic rock that spears above the plain of Queensland’s Scenic Rim. Despite its imposing size – it’s got about 1200m of vertical gain from base to summit – it’s more a bushwalking destination than a climbing one. Nevertheless, I’m on Logan’s Ridge, which isn’t recommended for hikers, with a couple of bits of confronting exposure. I’m currently in one of those bits of confronting exposure, my leg’s gone to shit and I’m all alone.

  “How,” I think to myself, “will I be in six weeks?” Because in six week’s time I’m going to be substantially higher, with substantially more exposure and – despite the fact I’m currently dehydrated and alone on a snake-ridden ridge with minimal phone signal – I’ll be in substantially more danger than right now.

  In less than four weeks I’ll be in Nepal, on my way to Ama Dablam, which if it’s not actually the most beautiful mountain in the world, certainly makes the top three of anyone’s list. It’s bigger and nastier than anything I’ve ever climbed before and right now I’m wondering – no, I know – that my ambition is probably a bit out of sync with my skill level.

  It’s a mountain I’ve dreamed of climbing ever since I saw a poster from climbing equipment firm Petzl in the Canberra climbing gym I used to frequent. I’ve never been able to find the image again, but the picture of a climber high on the iconic South-West ridge of Ama Dablam has always entranced me, burning like a hot coal in the back of my vestigial climbing brain. A few years later in Sydney, the trekking firm World Expeditions asked me to host a function for them – a climbing wall in the centre of Martin Place for some charity or another. While interviewing various bankers and lawyers who tried the wall on the way back from their lunchtime run, one of them confided he was off to climb Ama Dablam. “Wow,” I thought, “must be an awesome climber”.

  A few years later at a dinner for the Australian Himalayan Society (got my Everest, The Hard Way book signed by the author, Sir Chris Bonington himself), I mentioned to a friend who I’d climbed with in Nepal that we should attempt Ama by the time we hit 45 (we were both about 40). Nothing eventuated.

  A couple of years later, in 2015, my coach Chase Tucker, quite an accomplished climber in his own right with various climbs in NZ and the Dolomites, led an expedition to Ama with a group of friends. Part of me was miffed I didn’t get asked – Chase had trained me exceptionally to finally get up New Zealand’s Mt Aspiring (it’s pyramidal shape giving it the nickname the “Matterhorn of the South”, much the same as Ama is the “Matterhorn of the Himalaya”) the year before, on my fourth go due to the notoriously crap weather on the South Island. I felt I was certainly fit and experienced enough. The other part was secretly relieved I wouldn’t get the chance to fail. Chase’s trip was guided by the indomitable Mike Groom, a Queensland mountaineering legend who lost all his toes on Kanchenjunga in the late ‘80s, and then survived the Into Thin Air disaster on Everest in 1996, guiding several clients to safety.

  They came back chastened. They’d got as far as just above Ama’s Grey Couloir before retreating out of justified fear at encroaching weather and deep snow. Groom had spotted something that made him uneasy, and given his experience of bad Himalayan weather in the Everest disaster, listening to his advice was mandatory.

  And yet here I find myself, one-and-a-half years later. Weeks away from boarding a plane for Nepal. I get myself off Barney eventually – glucose and water help, before limping down the south-east ridge in almost five hours (something that takes ageing bushwalkers three or four) and driving home with a bag of petrol station ice under my leg. Before I leave Barney I take the time to say hello to Innes Larkin, who runs Mt Barney Lodge and was on Chase’s trip in 2015. He asks me what I’m training for. Barney is spectacular by itself, but when you’re on your own you’re inevitably training for something. With a bit of embarrassment I admit that it’s Ama. I feel embarrassed because Innes is a bit of a climbing God in my eyes. I feel even more embarrassed when he says “Wish I was going with you – I didn’t get higher than Camp 1.”

  “Camp 1???” I say, shocked. I hadn’t heard much about the Ama trip from Chase, just that it was tough and cold and unsuccessful. I didn’t know how unsuccessful for some.

  “Yeah I was really disappointed – I think I got carbon monoxide poisoning in the tent from the stove,” Innes tells me. “I’d been training really hard – up and down Barney a few times a week with a full pack.” I shuffle nervously, thinking I’ve done Barney only twice now, with just a Camelbak water bladder. Shit, I think, I am well and truly undercooked. I hear later that the feeling on his expedition was that Innes was too fit. He’d led the trip into various camps every day, with a big pack, always shouldering the biggest load without complaint. Too high, too fast and the monoxide poisoning hit a body already fatigued and that was the end of his trip. It was a warning for Ama.

  Mt Barney in South-east Queensland. Logans Ridge is the jagged skyline on the right.

  My obsession with Ama Dablam became more than just a dream in about June 2016. I was nearing the end of an intense Government contract and was looking for a break after five years of running my own one-man communications consultancy. I really wanted to climb the Matterhorn in Switzerland, which had been a dream ever since reading an old Time-Life book on mountains as a seven-year-old. It was also more in line with my experience level after Aspiring and had the added benefit of being able to take my family to EuroDisney at the same time. The problem was I needed a small knee operation to clean out the detritus of a two-decade-old knee reconstruction (I love rugby, I really do, but it’s seriously hard on your body). That was going to put me out for July and probably August – which is when the Matterhorn season starts.

  I kept coming back to the idea of heading back to Nepal, where I’d climbed more than a decade before, reaching the summit of 6030m Kwangde Nup. Kwangde is a trekking peak – one of the harder ones, certainly, but the fact is that I was the only client on that trip with any mountaineering experience – two other clients with zero experience made it to the top as well. That’s how I came to know Mike, my “Ama at 45” mate. We could actually see the summit of Ama from Kwangde, poking through the clouds that were rising around us at 1pm on Anzac Day, April 25, 2002. As you do when you’re dreaming of things like this I’d been surfing websites to see what climbing trips were about, unsure, of course, that I’d be able to find the time away from work, or away from my young family.

  I kept coming back to Ama. Kept coming across it as I surfed the net for options and inspiration. I messaged Chase. “How high did you get on AD?”

  “No-one really knows,” he texts back. “Above all the hard cli
mbing, topped out of the Grey Tower, it’s about 6300-6400 why?”

  “Asking for a friend,” I text back cheekily.

  I was a year or so at least away from Ama, I thought. The plan was to get some more time on crampons – the Matterhorn/Mont Blanc/Eiger treble, then maybe the year after. But time and circumstance meant I could go now, or maybe just keep dreaming and keep putting it off. A week or so later and I have fulfilled what mountaineering writer Kelly Cordes describes as the first rule of mountaineering – “book the fucking trip”. Once you’ve booked it, you have to go. I end up on an expedition run by Tim Mosedale, whose Lake District-based company usually only goes to Everest (and Lhotse) in March, and Ama in November.

  Coach Chase is encouraging, as he always is when one of his group is planning a trip. He sends me a 10-week program, which is a killer. I’m already reasonably fit, from my regular morning sessions with Chase and not-as-regular lunchtime Crossfit, but the knee operation put me out for about a month. Now, I’m in his gym every day, usually with my other coach Tori, who’s a former international triathlon trainer. Their Base Camp business is a besser-block basement under a climbing gym and it’s a glorious place as far fron the corporate 24-hour gyms as you can find - all free weights, sandbags and sweat. They usually train people who’ve never done trekking for trips to Everest Base Camp and the Inca Trail, but there’s a growing group of mountaineers as well. I’m lifting, stepping (1000 box steps with a heavy pack isn’t an unusual workout, and that’s not even close to a full workout) for 90 minutes to two hours at a time. I’m in great shape, despite bronchial crap on my lungs from Brisbane’s annual August flu season and maddeningly painful tendonitis in my left achilles. Chase is excited: “I’ve never been able to train someone fulltime before”.