the nostalgia project - Ganesh VI, Nepal (1985)

The mountain

Ganesh VI (6480m) is one of the seven peaks of the Ganesh Himal, a mountain range in Nepal between Manaslu and the Langtang. The peak may also be known as Lampu. The summit lies on the Nepal - Tibet border. Climbing is not allowed and the peak may still await an ascent. The Nupri region surrounding the approaches to Ganesh VI (and several other peaks in the range) was closed to most foreigners until 1991, unless on an expedition with Nepalese climbers.

Ganesh VI from the west © "John"

The context

During my last year at university, a friend and I decided that we would go mountaineering in the Himalayas after we had graduated. "John" - not necessarily his real name - had some free time in the autumn before starting officer training at Sandhurst in January 1986, while I had inherited a few thousand pounds from my grandmother, which I planned to spend traveling overseas until it ran out.

John and I had somewhat similar backgrounds: unusually-old parents, much older siblings and had been pushed too young through dysfunctional boarding schools. We had bonded over the previous two years through rock climbing and that clichéed affectation of pretentious students: psychedelic drugs. Memorably we had bought and taken LSD at the last ever Stonehenge Free Festival, then a year later involuntarily participated in the Battle of the Beanfield when the police closed that event down. Though I had made my trips to the Swiss Alps, and John had climbed in Peru,  the only mountaineering we had done together was a slushy "winter" ascent of Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis in December 1984. Very optimistically, we considered this adequate preparation for the world's highest mountains.

At the time, it had started to become fashionable to climb "alpine style" in the Himalayas, rejecting the fixed ropes and multiple fixed camps used by big expeditions. Peter Boardman's book "The Shining Mountain", about climbing (sort of) in that style on Changabang in India in 1976, was very influential. By default, this would be our style, as no-one was likely to invite us on a proper expedition. It also meant that we didn't need much extra equipment. A cousin's husband, Rob, lent me an elderly but very functional down jacket. I guessed that adding a fleece inner to my existing sleeping bag would suffice for bivouacs. We both owned gore-tex bivy bags. I recall that the only major purchases were plastic mountaineering boots (a new concept, much lighter than leather double boots), a massive new backpack and quite professional-looking matching goretex jacket and gaiters.

New goretex plus Rob's venerable puffy. Packed for Nepal, September 1985

We also wanted to go somewhere unusual. John’s first suggestion was that we should try to enter Afghanistan - at that time occupied by the Soviet Union - and attempt a mountain somewhere in the Hindu Kush. He also mentioned, in passing, that it would be great to arrive at Sandhurst having already “killed a Russian”. I want to believe that he meant this metaphorically rather than literally; anyway, I thought it more likely that we would be killed. My counter-proposal, that we should “just” visit Nepal and climb in a restricted zone, was adopted instead. This idea was eventually refined further to visiting the Ganesh Himal. The key input was a two-minute conversation with the legendary Doug Scott after a mountaineering lecture. He had mumbled something gruffly about the Ganesh then added: "take care, youth!"

A few months later we were in Kathmandu. Our budget hadn’t extended to shipping any gear, so we just took all we could with us on normal scheduled flights. Mountaineering boots, gaiters and down jackets wore worn onto the plane. We spent a week or so in the city looking for a trekking firm that had the resources to take us to the Ganesh yet was dodgy enough to somehow obtain a permit for our objective. Their method was simply to obtain a legal permit that would allow us to the edge of the restricted zone, then casually hand-write "Ganesh Himal". It seemed unlikely to work.

The twelve day approach trek up the Buri Gandaki valley
This photo and all below © "John" 

Night at a guest house early in the trek

Terraced fields 

Drinking rakshi

The porters stopping for yet another meal 

The approach hike took twelve days. There were leeches and rain. On the positive side, we saw no other westerners. Our porters stopped often, for long periods, to cook dhal bhat (rice and red lentil gruel), occasionally augmented by potatoes or a scrawny chicken. Around day eight, the topography changed from wet green river valleys to drier steeper and more recognisably sub-alpine terrain. There was a checkpoint. Astonishingly our permits got us through. Beyond that point the people looked conspicuously different: harder, more angular faces. Hindu imagery was replaced by Tibetan prayer flags.

Entering ethnically Tibetan territory

First sight of the Ganesh Himal 

One evening our guide announced, apparently in all seriousness, that we should not sleep that night, as there was a guerrilla group in the area who would kill us. John was tremendously excited by this and assumed watch, sharpened ice axe to hand. I did my best to take this seriously but eventually fell asleep; human threat was hard to conceptualise in such an underpopulated place. (In the 1990s the western news began reporting on Nepal’s Maoist insurgency and I found myself re-thinking this episode.) In the morning, most of our lowland porters announced that they were abandoning us and heading home. Our guide managed to recruit some locals to replace them. 

Two or three days later, via a brief but mesmerising visit to an ancient near-abandoned buddhist monastery, our crew dropped us in meadows by the toe of the glacier that entered the Ganesh from the west. We had not  budgeted on retaining a cook, or other basecamp support, so they all left. We asked our guide to return in a month. We had no means of communication nor any kind of backup plan, but as far as I recall, never worried about it.

Once alone, an obvious and urgent task was to check our food supplies. “Low” turned out to be the answer. Unknown to us, the porters had eaten most of the rice and lentils on the way up. Once again John’s military instincts surfaced and he eagerly instituted a rationing plan. From then on, hunger would be a constant background issue, at least for me, and would influence some key decisions for the worse.

It snowed heavily for the next couple of days, which didn't matter much as we both felt headachey and nauseous from the altitude - Google Earth suggests about 3800m, but we had no idea at the time - and couldn't summon energy for anything. My tent poles collapsed under weight of snow. Fortunately there was an abandoned goat-herder hut nearby with stone walls and rudimentary roof. I blocked the open doorway with a stick to keep out yetis. 

Showing off my broken tent poles outside "my" hut 

Our "base camp" with Ganesh 1 behind 

On day three or four we felt well enough to stagger up the glacial moraines for a few hours to inspect the mountains. Several 7000m peaks surrounded us. At some point during the day, the entire west face of Ganesh 1, on the opposite side of the glacier, slid. Years later, during an AST course, I studied photos of avalanches of varying intensity in the course book. Anything above a two is rare; I am fairly sure John and I witnessed a four. Oddly, knowing nothing about snow stability or avalanches, we observed with interest but didn't make the association that we ourselves were in a risk zone.

Around this time was my 21st birthday. I recall this earned me an extra plate of dal bhat and some slugs of rakshi. We also made a brief overnight recce toward Ganesh III, the closest 7000m peak on our side of the glacier. Snow was deep and we found ourselves wading at an early stage. At our highpoint we had made negligible progress so struck that peak off our list. More successfully, we spend two nights out climbing a small pimple, perhaps 5500m high, on the ridgeline between Ganesh VI and Ganesh I. From the summit we could look into Tibet.

Ganesh III

5500m pimple on ridgeline

Me snowplodding up the pimple

Me on the pimple summit, Ganesh I to right

Emboldened by summiting something, we set our sights on Ganesh VI, which we had been able to examine from new angles from the "pimple". But before we could set off to try it, we found we had company. An apparently-endless procession of porters, sherpas and mysterious other asians (Koreans, we eventually discovered, almost certainly this expedition) passed our little base camp, en route to somewhere further up the glacier. Their liaison officer, a Nepalese army chap with an officious moustache, correctly guessed that we should not be there, but to his great irritation could not evidence that from our permit. Thankfully satellite phones had not yet been invented, so there was no way for him to contact Kathmandu to check. We probably upset him further by cross-referencing his map with ours, and pointing that his expedition were intent on climbing the wrong mountain (they had Ganesh I and II confused). He left us with a stern warning not to leave camp and certainly not to climb anything. Naturally, we chose to ignore him.

The actual Ganesh map we brought. Our only information about the area.

The attempt

Ganesh VI with our route

A day or two later we crossed the glacier toward Ganesh VI, which helpfully, was out of sight of our new neighbours' basecamp. We had picked out a meandering route avoiding overhead hazard from some large seracs (that seracs and cornices were dangerous was more or less the only useful thing we knew about snow and ice). We bivouacked twice, once in an uncomfortable but sheltered rock cave and again on a much more exposed snow shelf. On the third day, it looked possible that we could reach the top. We climbed a steep snow-filled gully up on to an easier angled spur that looked quite close to the summit ridge.

Bivy sac "campsite" on the shelf

At this point, we made a decision which seems crazy in retrospect. John had started to feel a little unwell, had diagnosed altitude issues and decided he should descend. But he felt strongly that I should continue, so at least one of us could bag the summit. To which I agreed! Shamefully all I can remember of the decision is that I knew this would entitle me to the lion's share of our "hill food" - dehydrated meals, powdered eggnog and other treats - which was by far the best stuff not eaten by our porters on the approach trek. So we parted company.

Me at John's high point

A few minutes later the enormity of my situation suddenly hit me; that I was alone in the Himalayas venturing into the unknown. A couple of hours later I topped out the spur on to the ridge. Oddly I have no memory of the topography there, even though visibility was good. Google Earth shows very gently-angled glaciated slopes on the Tibet side of the ridge. I could see an uncomplicated line up the ridge to the summit, perhaps another 200-300m higher to the south. I set off in that direction - then almost immediately fell in a crevasse!

More accurately, my legs and torso had vanished into a narrow slot but my shoulders and backpack had saved me. It wasn't too hard to extricate myself. It seemed odd that a ridge could be crevassed, and I think this realisation - that I did not understand these mountains much at all - made it very clear that my summit bid was over. It was still quite early in the day, perhaps 3pm, but I decided to bivy there and review in the morning. Anyway, I had a lot of food to eat. There were no clouds and the view sensational. I could see hundreds of Himalayan peaks in all directions. Certainly Manaslu quite close by to the west, and I imagined perhaps Everest a long way to the east. I stayed awake studying my world in wonder (and, strangely, in no real fear) until long after sunset.

In the night the wind picked up. I surfaced at sunrise to find myself in the clouds. Somehow (I don't recommend this) I managed to light my stove and brew up inside my bivy sac. Then I set off down. I was able to follow the previous day's footprints quite easily at first but lower on the mountain, near John and I's last camp, winds had redistributed the snow and I was reduced to following tenuous scratch marks that I believed to be from John's crampons during his descent. At some point, I tripped and fell on an icy slope that I was traversing. It took several attempts to manage a successful ice axe arrest. Had I failed I would have slid several hundred meters to cliffs. I don't remember much of the day after that, except that it was stressful and tiring. I had to bivy again, at the cave that we had used three nights before. In the morning I stumbled down to the glacier - and was greeted by John. He had been watching out for me from moraine ridges above the glacier and had set out to meet me when I came into sight.

The sun came back out the next day. I wandered aimlessly around our base camp suffused with bliss at being alive. John, on the other hand, had recovered fully from his alleged altitude problems, was itching to get back on a mountain and had a plan. So began the final and most surreal episode of our Nepal adventure ...

John had taken a walk on the glacier beyond the Korean's basecamp and had stumbled over an unattended "advance base" tent packed with edibles. He had returned with a few "borrowed" samples; spicey instant noodles and glorious sugary biscuits are what I mainly remember. His plan was complex and wholly insane. We would get up early the next day, take climbing packs and all our emergency supply of US dollars, sneak past their basecamp again, help ourselves to more of their presumed-inexhaustible food supplies, attach ascenders to their fixed ropes rising above the glacier, climb to their high point, then offer them our dollars to join their team and attempt their (incorrect) mountain with them. Really! However, all I registered was the part about scoring more food.

Remarkably we executed all of the plan as far as "attach ascenders to fixed rope", and then climbed up a hundred meters or so. At this point, a very irate sherpa, who I guess had been watching us from somewhere above, descended the fixed ropes, obstructed our path and escorted us back to their base camp. Along the way, inexcusably, one of us (possibly me) scrawled "anarcho-alpinists rule OK" with a trekking pole in the snow beside the glacier trail. We met the liaison officer again. He was apoplectic. We would be arrested and charged, he assured us, though it was unclear how, and he indicated that we should return to our camp. He added a short speech on the theme of anarchy being no joke in his country (obviously someone had found our snow-graffiti). Somewhere in my brain, the much-suppressed and malformed neurons that handled guilt and respect for others flickered; it was possible, I realised, that we were annoying immature jerks.

The next day was spent intermittently worrying that we might actually be in trouble while feasting on Korean ramen (no-one had thought to check our packs). Then our guide and porters reappeared. Our month was up and it was time for our return trek. We were saved!

Me during the return trek - I had not washed or looked in a mirror for a month

Subsequent non-attempts

John and I talked a few times over the next few years about going back to the Ganesh Himal, though never seriously. Thanks to the anarcho-alpinism in his resume (or perhaps not?), John spent almost all his time in the army packing boxes for well-funded expeditions to big peaks like Shishapangma and Everest then not quite summiting them. A few years later, in the early 1990s, he would find his true calling in sport climbing and become one of the first Brits to climb 8b+/ 5.14 (though receive no attention in the UK climbing media for it).

Meanwhile, for various reasons, I had soured on mountains and in fact wouldn't do anything resembling alpinism for almost thirty years. In late 1987 my resolve on this was tested by some London friends who I discovered had a permit for Ganesh III for spring 1988. By then I had become a working stiff, programming for a software house specialising in very dull insurance applications. Not-coincidently (it probably accounted for me getting the job) the founder of the firm was a climber. He said I could take the time off but pointed out that I might eventually need to take a career more seriously. I didn't go. Possibly a pivotal moment in my life.