An hour and forty-five minutes later, they were on their way.
Chapter 2
They had been climbing for nine hours with barely a word exchanged. The dull ache of exhausted muscles made their movements clumsy and uncoordinated.
Luca led up a long, curving arete, plodding through the deep snow and breaking trail. From his waist harness, two eight-millimetre climbing ropes trailed down, snaking over the snow and outcrops of ice to where Bill was climbing, fifty feet below. They had been taking it in turns to lead, but as the hours passed the sinking snow had sapped every ounce of their strength. Both moved at the same unrelenting pace, an ice axe held loosely in their leading hand.
Trying to steady his breathing, Luca forced himself to slow his movements as he kicked down in the snow: once… twice… Only on the third attempt did he manage to stamp down enough powder to step forward. But every few minutes he would puncture through the crust, sinking down past his thighs. At the sudden jarring, his heavy rucksack would wrench him off-balance, jerking his body round painfully and Bill would simply wait, unable to help, while Luca wasted yet more energy trying to right himself again.
The morning’s clear skies had been replaced by a thick belt of dark cloud that loomed over the higher reaches of the mountain. With this came a strong wind that funnelled up the ridge and both climbers were forced to crook their necks to one side, sheltering under their hooded Gore-Tex jackets.
Just up ahead, the ridge hit the main vertical wall of ice that they had seen from base camp. They needed to camp further back from the wall, far enough away from falling rocks and ice. Checking his watch, Luca swung off his rucksack and began untying the shovel strapped to the back. As he began digging, Bill slowly closed up the remaining distance, arriving out of breath and leaning his hands on his knees, while he recovered.
‘What do you think of that cloud?’ he asked, breathing still laboured. ‘The forecasts said it was going to get worse tomorrow.’
Luca paused, a shovelful of snow sliding to the ground. He lifted his goggles off his face and wiped the sweat out of his eyes.
‘It’ll pass,’ he said, and carried on digging.
Bill nodded. He had climbed with Luca long enough to know not to question him about the weather. Whatever the forecast said, somehow Luca always seemed to get it right. It had become a standard joke between them. Whenever Luca lay down, everyone thought it was going to rain.
Unstrapping his own shovel, Bill started digging alongside him. In thirty minutes they had completed the snow hole and soon both of them were lying exhausted in their sleeping bags inside it, the soft roar of the MSR stove blocking out the noise of the outside world.
As soon as day broke, Luca punched through the thin wall of snow by his sleeping bag, letting the fierce morning light flood in. Cold air rushed through the gap, dispelling the stale air from the previous night. It had been a long, fitful night, neither man sleeping properly from the altitude.
Bill unzipped his sleeping bag and sat up, groaning as a headache split along the back of his skull. He stayed still, waiting for the pain to pass, while Luca shuffled forward, keeping his head bent under the low ceiling of ice. Reaching into the top of his rucksack, he handed across one of the granola bars and the tube of condensed milk. Sugar was the only way to get a climber’s body moving again in the morning.
‘Pass the water will you?’ Bill muttered, gesturing to the plastic bottle by the stove. ‘Must have got dehydrated during the night.’
‘Headache?’
‘Bitch of a one.’
After a few mouthfuls of water, Bill turned to look through the open hole in the snow, inspecting the sky outside.
‘You were right about one thing at least.’
‘The weather’s not the problem,’ Luca replied, stuffing his gear into his rucksack. ‘It’s the ice field. Did you hear the rocks coming down during the night?’
Bill nodded. Every few hours throughout the night, they had heard rocks ricocheting down the face and smacking into the hard ice of the glacier below. Both had woken with a start each time it had happened, but there was nothing to be said. They knew it was the most dangerous part of climbing Makalu’s western pillar.
They packed up in silence, methodically going through the process of striking camp, their minds on the climb ahead. They were over six and a half thousand metres up already and the ice wall was going to require some serious technical climbing. No more easy snow ridges or easy retreats.
‘You’ve planned the route,’ Bill remarked. ‘Why don’t you lead today?’
Luca didn’t look up from clipping the straps on his rucksack. ‘Sure,’ he said, hoping the nonchalance in his voice didn’t sound forced. ‘No worries.’
Twenty minutes later they stood out on the ridge, feeling the warmth of the morning sun. Luca had uncoiled the ropes and passed two of the ends over to Bill. He, in turn, swung a heavy sling filled with friends, ice screws and nuts off his shoulder and handed it over to Luca, who begun clipping them into his harness in a well-practised and deliberate order.
‘Never met anyone so anal about where they clip their hardware,’ Bill noted.
‘You know how it is — the higher up we get, the more stupid we become. At least this way, I know where everything is.’
Despite the dull ache in his head, Bill smiled. Back home, Luca’s flat was one of the most disorganised places he had ever set foot in, surfaces covered with unopened mail and abandoned clothes. Yet out here in the mountains he seemed to undergo a complete character transformation: exact, thoughtful, with no cut corners or laziness.
‘I’ll belay you up there,’ Luca said, pointing forty feet above their heads to a black outcrop of rock, clinging to the vertical ice. Then, with a quick nod to check Bill was ready, he moved forward along the ridge, adjusting the length of the leaches on his ice axes.
Moving up on to the wall so that his hips were almost pressing against it, Luca kicked in his crampons, sending tiny shards of ice tumbling below. With fluid, rhythmic movements, he hammered in his ice axes, working his way higher with each step and taking care to keep his front points balanced on the natural shape of the ice, rather than always kicking new steps. He didn’t look up, minutely absorbed in what was in front of him.
He knew he had to compartmentalise the climb. Had to focus on the first pitch, then the second. Nothing more. Thinking ahead to the summit ridge was just too far away. Above him, the cliff continued vertically for another thousand metres.
Hours passed — the same movements, the same rhythm. The sun slowly travelled across the sky, switching their shadows from right to left as they reflected off the polished ice. Both men moved silently upwards, just a few words exchanged as they handed over the hardware at the end of each pitch.
Luca dug his axes in and spread his legs wider, adjusting his balance. He unhooked an ice screw from his belt and wound it into a smooth patch of ice just by his shoulder. Clipping the rope through the carabineer, he leaned back against it, dropping his weight into the seat of his harness and relieving the intense pressure on his calves. Then he wound in a second screw, clipped in and peered down between his legs.
Following the line of the ropes, he could see Bill fighting his way up. That was the way he climbed when he got tired, always fighting. He would hammer his axes in, spraying ice everywhere, using strength not skill to move himself higher.
Somewhere off to the right, Luca heard a noise and a small collection of rocks, some the size of a man’s head, came clattering down the cliff-face. They were far enough away not to be any danger, but the sight of them bouncing off the granite wall in puffs of dust was unnerving. Even rocks that size would splinter straight through their helmets.
Luca saw Bill tilt his head up to watch the rock-fall and for a moment their gazes met. Neither said a word. Playing these kinds of odds was a choice they never spoke about.
Sending a cloud of frosted breath out into the air before him, Luca looked up, allowing himself a rare moment to check their progress. They had been climbing fast and were nearly two-thirds of the way up the face. A few more
