Second Kiwi to reach Mt Everest summit looks back on triumph and tragedy exactly 40 years on

It was 40 years ago today that Nick Banks became the 2nd New Zealander to climb Mount Everest. I remember in 1972 while working at Aoraki Mount Cook in the mountain rescue team, getting a callout saying a group of young Taranaki climbers had traversed Mt Cook from Plateau hut, and one fell through a cornice on the summit ridge and pierced his thigh. The guy who was supposedly injured was Nick Banks. They were a very competent team and they had wrapped up the wound in Nick's thigh and when we came across him he was descending quite normally. That was the first time I met Nick and of course he went on to greater climbing feats. Nick is standing in the middle of the photo in a reddish shirt. Photo: Bob McKerrow

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Former New Plymouth climber Nick Banks was the second Kiwi to reach the summit of Mt Everest. His successful ascent on October 2, 1979 came 26 years after Edmund Hillary.

Nick Banks says the day he reached the top of the world's highest peak was the best he ever had in the mountains.

But, unbeknown to him, the triumph would be tinged with tragedy.

On October 2, 1979, Banks, now living in Wales, became the second New Zealander, and the 100th person, to climb Mt Everest after Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953.

Up until then, Banks, a former New Plymouth man, had never climbed a peak higher than Aoraki/Mt Cook.

He planned to remember the 40th anniversary of the feat at with friends and family in North Wales, where he has lived for the past 33 years with wife Lindsay, and owned a guiding business and a cafe. "I may even have half a shandy," he said by email.

   

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Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first people to reach the summit of Mt Everest in 1953.

Most people can name the first New Zealander to climb Mt Everest but few pick Banks' name as the next Kiwi to reach the top of the 8448m Himalayan summit.

The former Spotswood College pupil achieved the feat as part of an eight-strong West German-led party.

However, the expedition was touched by tragedy, with two of the climbers dying on the way down from the summit.

Since then another 49 New Zealanders have made the ascent, including two from New Plymouth - Andy Harris, who died while descending Everest in 1996, and Julian Haszard in 2004.

Few of Banks' expedition party will be at the 40th reunion, with most of the 13 climbers and Sherpas now dead, Banks said.

In an interview in 2004, Banks said climbing high peaks was a balancing act between "being afraid and staying cool, even though you know you're going a little bit crackers".

It helped to be a bit of a daredevil and be mentally tough, he said.

"Some people thrive while others hate it. The experience can only be enjoyed when it is all over."

Looking back on his Everest climb, Banks a retired mountain guide, said he only climbed for the views, and the physical and psychological challenge.

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Nick Banks, with wife Lindsay, sailing in the Western Isles in Scotland this year. The couple have lived in North Wales since 1986.

"I don't have a spiritual bone in my body," said the 67-year-old, who spends most of his summers sailing in the Scottish Western Isles.

Banks first climbed Mt Taranaki when he was 12 and went on to be the first to scale the six ridges and six faces of Aoraki/Mt Cook, and qualify as an international mountain guide.

But he had never climbed higher than Aoraki/Mt Cook before Everest, he said.

He was still grateful in his early climbing experience to have a group of Taranaki Alpine Club mentors, including the late Colin Wright, Eric Larsen, Dave Clough, John Jordan, Ted Thompson, and George Mason, who took him "under their wing".

Jordan said Banks was very skilled as a climber, and he was not surprised when Banks reached the summit of Everest.

"He enjoyed challenges, he wasn't reckless and was always keen to develop his skills further."

Mountaineers from around the world have gathered in Nepal for the spring climbing season. Nearly 300 people have died attempting to climb Everest, but the mountain continues to draw climbers

In 1977 Banks was a member of the NZ Everest Expedition which reached the South Col, a sharp-edged pass between Mount Everest and Lhotse, the highest and fourth highest mountains in the world, respectively.

The trip laid the foundations for the successful ascent two years later.

Banks became friends with Gerhard Schmatz​ and his wife Hannelore​, who invited him to join their Everest expedition in 1979.

In an NZ Alpine Journal article in 1980 Banks remembered the summit day was the best day he had ever spent in the mountains.

The night before he had felt the summit was a possibility, and later on the climb to South Col, just under 8000m, he felt the battle with the mountain begin, he said.

Banks was in the second party to summit after Schmatz had led another party to the top the day before.

Thick cloudy conditions on the summit meant the the group could only spend 10 minutes taking photographs and shaking hands, before climbing down as their oxygen tanks emptied.

The lack of views and "grim conditions" at the summit did not take away "the pleasure and relief of having made it", Banks said.

He felt "pretty rapt" to be at the top but apprehensive about getting down.

Banks reached South Col camp four hours later and fell asleep.

In Banks' group were Schmatz's wife, Hannelore​, and American Ray Genet, who both tragically died on the descent when conditions deteriorated.

Genet had decided to descend solo, while Schmatz who stayed with him when his oxygen ran out, later collapsed and died from exhaustion. 

All the climbers were experienced but the lack of oxygen, and the freezing temperatures bite at their hardest during a descent, and mistakes are made, Banks said.

The conditions had been good and all the climbers were of a high standard "but sometimes that's no protection", he said.

Banks said he was reluctant to criticise anyone "who wants to do anything", including those who add Mt Everest to a lifetime bucket list.

"There is a lot of nonsense talked about the lack of experience and technical ability of people on Everest today," he said.

"The vast majority of them are very experienced and competent climbers.

"When I went to Everest first in 1977 I had never climbed anything higher than Mt Cook.

"I would question some people's behaviour on the mountain but when you get that many people anywhere a few of them are going to be bastards."

However he said the overcrowding on Everest was "ridiculous."

"It is just lack of will and lack of good management on the part of the Nepalese Government, and the totally ineffective liaison officer system," he said.

Banks would rather emphasise the big clean-up carried out by the Sherpas over the past years.

"Despite all the negative reports Everest is still an amazing place to be."

Thanks to Stuff for permission to reproduce the article and photos.    Mike Watson10:09, Oct 02 2019 Stuff

Mesca-Dawn: A Remembrance of Bill Denz

I climbed with Bill Denz on Boxing Day 1970. We climbed Glacier Peak and then Mount Douglas. There were four of us, Bill, Chris Fraser, Jim Cowie and myself. Years before this climb we were in the same club, the Otago Tramping and Mountaineering Club, and did other trekking (tramping) trips together. So today, being 46 years since we climbed Douglas, I searched the web to find more about Bill Denz  and found this wonderful article written by David "Zappa Bill Austin.. Thanks " for permission to reproduce this article.

New Zealand alpinist Bill Denz follows David Austin along a rivet ladder during their link-up of Mescalito and the Dawn Wall of El Capitan in 1978. Five years later, Denz would die in an avalanche on the West Pillar of Makalu. [Photo] David Austin

In a collaborative effort to profile the late Bill Denz for our spring issue,  to record his memories of one hard-fought link-up of Mescalito and the Dawn Wall of El Capitan in 1978. A snippet of Austin's story helps shape Denz's tough and tenacious character in "Boldness, Genius Magic: The Life of Bill Denz," Alpinist 42. Here, Austin tells the rest of the unpublished story.—Ed.

"Surely you heard about Bill Denz." The letter trembled in my hand. I hadn't.
Bill Lkilled on Makalu.

Bill, killed on Makalu. My God.

I sat stunned and alone in my apartment in Rio de Janeiro, so far from home, tossed into vivid memory.

"So Bill", I asked him one night high on El Capitan, "What is your life dream?"

"I want to be an old man puttering naked about me garden," he replied emphatically.

That didn't seem like much of an ambition to me then, in 1978. Now, as I stand on the edge of old age, it seems a wise and fine ambition. I putter around my garden, clothes on, and I sometimes think of Bill.

Our climb was a kind of lunatic epic and horror show. The sun baked us for days and days into halfwits. Sometimes we cursed and raged at each other. His epic adventures leaped out of his past, unwelcome, onto our adventure. Yet the truth of the matter is that we connected deeply and did a great climb at the limits of our endurance, emotional and physical. And we forgave each other soon thereafter.

Even now, 30 years later, his death hurts. I never asked him, would his be a vegetable or flower garden?

Bill was already a legend in Yosemite when I met him. Everyone knew about his grudge match with Tis-sa-ack: the flake, the savage gash in his leg, the rescue, long recovery, and then he went back and did it.

He was a real hardman. Everyone on the rescue site gave him a nod of respect that was seldom given.

David Austin in Camp 4, 1978. [Photo] Bill Denz

So I was thrilled to sit at the picnic table with him talking about routes on The Captain. I had done it once, something like the tenth ascent of The Shield. It still had a rep back then, but I think that rep was demolished when John Flemming and I did it a year earlier. John and I joked that ours was the first turkey ascent of The Shield. Still, Bill thought it a good credential.

Bill was friendly and blunt. He took and he gave jibes and wisecracks. His opinions were strong and forcefully argued. His easy aura of hardman confidence needed no swagger. There was a pit-bull kind of toughness about him, like he would just clamp onto a climb and shake it dead. Here was a guy who would not easily back off. And he looked the part, compact and probably dangerous in a fight. I wanted badly to do a wall with him. I liked him immensely.

I had my eye on Mesca-Dawn, starting up on Mescalito and finishing on the Dawn Wall. It seemed to me then to be the true line that Harding and Caldwell should have taken. As far as I knew, we would be the third party up the section of wall bypassed by New Dawn. Bill thought it worth doing.

Bill warmed up as the conversation went on. Finally, he let on that he planned to solo Excalibur, starting in the next day or two. I was impressed. That route was for the chosen few. I knew the rack would be hard to manage because it included a pile of bongs and blocks to aid the wide cracks. No one imagined then freeing them because big cams had not been invented yet. I offered to help him carry his gear and ferry loads with my car. He accepted.

Austin follows Denz up to a belay on Mescalito. [Photo] Bill Denz

The next day or two, we staggered in with huge loads of water and gear, stashing them in a carefully camouflaged location in the forest just below Excalibur. Then we went back to Camp 4. The next day I dropped him off with a more gear and wished him luck.

I was surprised to see him a couple days later. He was a stubborn bulldog, but not a fool. The racks were just too huge to manage solo he said. Did I still want to do Mesca-Dawn? I helped him retrieve his gear and then we got down to planning.

We did the usual layout of gear. We agreed on food and bought it. Bill was big on carrying lots of water, so we scrounged a pile of water jugs. We thought that we would fix for one or two days, take a rest day, and then hump in our loads early and blast off for a six-day ascent.

It was normal-hot when we started fixing. No big deal. It kept getting hotter. The day we started it got blast-furnace hot. That wall is shining white rock that reflects the sun right back at you. Facing southeast, it catches the first rays of light and holds them until mid-afternoon. We guzzled water to avoid shriveling up in the cruel sun.

Bill was a great partner. His climbing was solid and he was a superb story teller. Our first night on the wall—dangling, he in his hammock, me in my portaledge—stories and conversation were heart to heart. Bivy conversations are a part of wall climbing not much talked about. Sure, there is a lot of dope smoking and listing to tunes, but some of the best conversations of my life have been with partners on a wall. Souls open up in ways that seldom happen when we plod the earth below.

Austin traverses out onto the rivet ladder. [Photo] Bill Denz

I asked him about Tis-sa-ack. He told me the story in detail. I asked why he went back to do it. "I wasn't going to hang me hammer up on that one," he stated as if there were no honorable alternative.

Then he told me the tragic tale of his friend, Phill Herron, killed in Patagonia. There was open joy in his voice as he spoke of the climbs they did in New Zealand, bold and tough. He said that Phill was his inspiration, that he was the one who dreamed up many of the climbs. Bill was clearly proud of him and loved him, like a kid brother who suddenly burst into glorious manhood and turned out to be an inseparable pal.

Then his voice changed to heartbreak—no tears, just tones of raw agony—as he told of Phill plunging into the crevasse. They had been used to unroped glacier travel in New Zealand. Patagonia does not forgive such a thing. Phill's companion had rapped down to him, just able to touch his fingers in the blue, frigid gloom. Phil was hopelessly wedged and frozen in, nothing to be done except wait for death. The two had talked for hours until Phill slipped into the long sleep of hypothermia. Bill got the news when a solitary figure trudged back to camp. I think that Bill would have preferred a bullet to it.

He left the mountains to find his wife, Christine, desperate for solace, for comfort in the wildness of his grief. But she had run off with an Argentine lover. Bill spent two weeks traveling all over Argentina trying to find her. When he did, she told him to "fuck off."

"Goddamn, Bill. What did you do?" I asked.

"What did I do? What did I do?" he said, voice rising to some climax. "Why, I just lay down on the grass and cried and cried. That's what I did, Zappa." The hero revealed that he was human.

Every story I had told him about love lost and friends killed kind of paled next to that one. It wasn't my story, but it broke my heart, too.

Austin continues his rivet traverse. [Photo] Bill Denz

Dawn blazed and the solar furnace brutally roasted us. Our first day had been pretty much getting started with all of our gear. We had to do two hauls at first. It would have been slow going anyway, but the heat hammered our schedule down to about two or three pitches per day. It was late in the season. Days were short and should have been cool, but there we were in the worst summer heat without summer daylight. At the end of the day, we knew we did not have enough water to make it.

We pondered the options. We had seen all the other parties on the east side of The Captain bail off to flee the heat. If either of us had tried to talk the other into bailing, it would have been successful. I am sure of it. But both of us were too stubborn and pig-headed give in first.

At that time, I had spent more time in Yosemite than Bill. My collection of Captain route lore told me that if we sacrificed one pitch, then our three ropes would just make it to the valley floor. We could rap down a pitch and fix our lines the next morning, get more water and be back at it the next day.

That night we talked about why we climb. Bill thought that climbing was like war. He had trained hard as a commando and was heartbroken when New Zealand pulled out of Vietnam before he could go. He had very much wanted to go. He spoke of his dentist, a World War II vet, who told him that young men must go into the mountains because they long for war.

I don't think that I quite agreed with him. I felt that climbing was more of a spiritual journey. Still, the force of his argument, like pretty much everything else about him, was hard to resist. Looking back, I think that much of what he said was right. Certain young men with no family to care for, no daily demands of compassion, are called by a fierce life. I was one of them and pretty much as ruthless as the next. To me, spirituality may have been a justification to paper over something more elemental. Bill rejected any kind of the climbing mysticism that I espoused at the time because it turned one away from reality. "You've got to be completely plugged into reality to climb," he told me with flat finality.

We executed our plan the next day. By the time we got to the bottom, the rope hung a short walk away from the wall. At no spot did it touch the wall.

That night Bill and I had split for a bit. I walked into Camp 4. As usual, I read the bulletin board. I saw a note, "BILL DENZ. EMERGENCY. CALL PARK DISPATCH," with a number. I grabbed it and headed back toward the lounge to find Bill. I handed it to him and off he went.

A while later he found me. "Bill, what's the deal? Is our climb still on?"

"It was Christine. She is in San Francisco. She was headed to London from Auckland, had a layover in San Francisco and stepped off the plane without her luggage. She had heard about Tis-sa-ack and felt bad about all that had happened between us. She stepped off the plane because she had to see me."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I told her if she meets me at the top then things will work out. I am not hanging up my hammer on this one."

Relieved, I slept well. And off we went the next day.

Austin negotiates the upper end of the rivet ladder. He was surprised and disappointed to find that Warren Harding and Dean Caldwell had continued their rivet ladder through the dihedral instead of protecting it with A3+ nailing. [Photo] Bill Denz

We hit the Harding-Caldwell rivet ladders the day we got back on the wall. There was Mescalito going off to the right, and the rivets going off to the left. There was a moment of decision. We went left. That was a mistake.

Up to that point we were nailing away. Sure it was bloody hot, but we had water. Nothing was really hard, just tradesman piton-craft and plenty of decent nut placements.

Mescalito had been a dream. On a couple of pitches, swarms of tree frogs jumped, surprised, out of the crack. They would launch into the air and then expertly maneuver with spread legs onto a perch. None went the distance. I remember having several on me while Bill was leading.

But the rivets, my God, those goddamn, fucking rivets—dumb-ass little aluminum plugs hardly punched into the rock. We quickly discovered that only #1 wedges, wee things with the cutest little wires, would strangle the rivets. We thought our pile of wires would do the job. We both thought that we had got the word on these things. Had we been smoking dope at the time? I dunno. We blew it. Anyway, all we had were six wires that fit on the rivets. Harding had popped some on the first ascent. My confidence in them was low.

When we made the discovery, we could have just said "fuck it" and gone right. We would have had a short-pitch day, but so what? I have no recollection of why we continued. I can only speculate that two super stubborn guys wanted a third ascent of the lower blank dihedrals more than we wanted to actually have a good climb. On we went, leapfrogging three wires, leaving the other three as imaginary protection to indulge delusions of safety. If any rivet had popped the leader would have gone the distance. A5 for sure.

The next day, Bill was leading over a long, smooth bulge in the morning before thermals started roaring and violently fluttering our bits of loose gear. If I leaned out from my hanging belay, I could see him alright. Otherwise, he was out of sight. The slow, methodical pace of the aiding gave me plenty of time to take in the sights.

At the toe of the Nose, I saw a yellow dot making its slow, tentative way toward the bottom of the Dawn Wall. Finally, it stopped at the base below us
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Into the Shadow

This is alpine writing at its best.Read it now. Great stuff. Bob McKerrow

Into the Shadow Chapter 2

Nick Bullock

Posted on: September 10, 2015

This story is from Alpinist Issue 30—Spring 2010. From time to time, we republish stories from our past issues to share with our readers.

Alpinist is an archival-quality, quarterly publication dedicated to world alpinism and adventure climbing. Our small editorial staff works hard to create in-depth stories that are thoughtfully edited, thoroughly fact-checked and beautifully designed. Please consider supporting our efforts by subscribing. Alpinist Issue 30 is available for purchase.

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For more than nine years, a British prison guard fantasized about escaping his brutal surroundings for high peaks and undimmed night skies. After he finally quits his job, Nick Bullock begins a long odyssey that finally leads him up the labyrinthine North Face of Chang Himal—and into the shadowlands between dreams and reality, thought and act.

This is Chapter 2 of Into the Shadow. To read Chapter 1, click here.

Houseman following Bullock to the summit. Of the last two hundred meters over the wind-pummeled ridge, Bullock says, "placing screws wasn't worth it." [Photo] Nick Bullock

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Whenever I supervised gym time, hours felt like days. I jumped on and off, on and off the benches, to a pounding hard-house beat. Inmates' feet hammered the flaking varnish. Blue denim plimsoll shoes, some laced, some flapping, thumped on and off. The bench tops creaked. Blue cotton shorts, thin white legs, blue cotton vests, soft baggy drugwasted shoulders, hollow cheeks, sunken eyes rose up and down. The wind flapped snow across the room. A soft drift of powder cushioned the green pimple floor.

I tilted the angle of the running machine to up. A mountain summit twists into cloud. An unclimbed face appears through a hole in the mist. A moraine stretches and groans.

During my dinner break, I ran along the canal bank. A dealer stood in the dark beneath the ornate iron bridge. Scum and wrappers floated on the surface of stagnant water. Feet skidded in mud. Or is it ice? Shards of bottles glittered. Or are they slivers of glaciers? Crumbling red brick cotton mills, now empty, towered over the canal. My lungs were burning, my sweat stinging. Broken windows, rusty frames and graffiti dissolved into mountains. Just a few more minutes. Behind the clock hands, the arcing shadows traced their own time, ticking a silent beat. Better to stay asleep. Better to retreat. Better to dream.

From base camp I'd dreamed about the second rockband of Chang Himal. The fragile snow rattled my mind. We'd told Buddy, our cook, not to send for porters until we were above it. Buddy had a proud paunch. He'd lift his shirt and stroke it when he laughed, and we couldn't help laughing with him. He'd been on many expeditions, mostly to large, nontechnical peaks. His only trip to a small, difficult mountain had ended with the whole team running away. Buddy told this story frequently between bouts of laughter. Houseman and I had failed twice on our warm-up peak, an easy plod opposite Chang Himal. We didn't think Buddy had much faith in us.

"It looks OK," Houseman says, as he climbs from the snow ledge where we spent the night. I think the rockband looks steep and difficult. After about an hour, Houseman agrees. When I follow him, the hotaches burn in my hands. "You're obviously feeling OK, now?" I shout between screams.

Youth laughs atop the overhanging runnel. His face is ruddy with wind and health. One of his massive red mittens points. "One of three ways, I reckon?"

Three thinly iced corners invert. I don't like the look of any of them. Eventually I take the left-hand line. It's going to be OK. After the first thirty meters of good ice, my fingers are wooden again, my calves burn, and the voice in my head screams: You're going to fall. It's miles from anywhere. Write a will, mate. The angle of the face now bulges, and the ice turns thin and hollow. It creaks to me: Trust, security, friendship. I imagine it detaching in a sheet, my picks ripping out, my body bouncing, crampons catching, knee joints rupturing, pain jarring, and then a final dark thud.

I wedge into an overhanging corner and slot a large blue hex into a wide crack. Spindrift starts to pour. I swing left into a trough and tap at a greasy millimeter-thin sheen. Flakes of green ice spin, caught on the gusting wind, like plankton in a cold, vertical sea. "Watch me, Youth." Ridiculous: a normal phrase shouted all the time across low, sunny canyons. Up here it's the scariest phrase imaginable. Houseman, tied to the poor belay, must be willing me on. Watch me, Youth.

The weight of my pack drags. My granddad's voice resounds in my head, and I'm sure Houseman can hear his, too: If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. I need to work hard, to make up for lost time, to climb everything free. My picks are less than a centimeter in. The bulge pushes. More than a thousand meters of air pull. The ice is a slick on the surface of the ocean, and the snow is yellow-bubbled scum. Some inmates liked to add sugar to red-hot pans of oil, to make it stick to the skin and burn more. The mountains are not violent; humans are. Neither a borrower, nor a lender be.

Screwed against tiny rock edges, my frontpoints teeter. Ice skin peels, and snow lumps rip. With each move, I expect ice to break, feet to sheer, picks to tear, body to drop. Time would slow at first, then after ten, twenty, thirty-forty-fifty feet, the speed would increase to a blur. The smell of sweat, shit, fear. With numb fingers, wide eyes and burning arms, I tap, hold my breath, and tap again. My granddad would be shocked, but proud. The angle eases. The clock hands turn.

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CONFRONTATION IS UNAVOIDABLE. "What the hell have you done?" In the rafters of the cavernous prison warehouse, fluorescent tubes hung from chains. The gas glow projected shadows of railings on painted brick. It gave an eerie radiance to the white fatty fascia protruding from the length of the prisoner's forearm. "What the hell have you done?" He smiled at my question. He appeared pleased with my shock, pleased with the attention. "I cut myself."

Tattered with scar tissue, his flayed forearm revealed a crisscross of welts, fat, blood and congealed skin matter. He'd cut into the largest wound repeatedly, through the stitches and the veins. Prison officers walked past, too burdened with their workload, their life load, to be interested. He'd been a regular in the gym. I thought the exercise was helping his confidence.

Bullock, Day Two, embarking on the crux pitch (ca. 6100 m). Here, thin and rotten ice forced him onto the rock pictured to his left. Bullock called on his grandfather's work ethic to get through the runouts. "He would be shocked, but proud." For years Bullock had struggled with the expectations instilled by his upbringing. "Climbing appeared such an anarchic path...but the views from summits, the fulfillment from hard work of another kind, recognition from peers and from people I respected for their life choices-this would be my payment." As a climber Bullock has remained unconventional, climbing the sorts of routes many others avoid, "without guaranteed outcome." [Photo] Andy Houseman

"The doctors can't sew it together anymore," he said. "The skin isn't strong enough." We stared into the inside of his flesh, for a moment, unable to move or speak. In streaks of red and white, a hidden universe broke free.

Six years later, in North Wales, I'd seen a line like an overhanging razor-blade welt of pebble that sliced the far wall of the zawn, cutting directly through the obvious, classic climbs. The guidebook named it the "the softest line in the world" and "the best line at Gogarth." Only four people had ever climbed it. From the viewing promontory opposite, the salt wind and the crashing sea seemed to speak: It's there, just there. Why don't you climb it? It scares you. It's uncertain. You are useless, just another dreamer.

Opening climbing magazines and books, I kept seeing one of the first ascensionists, Paul Pritchard, his thin Lycra-clad legs tucked into socks, his hair dyed blond or spiked into a black Mohawk or shaded by a giant rhubarb-leaf hat. The pictures shouted: Skin-of-the-teeth, bold, crazy, thrilling, life-on-the-cusp-of-society, an individual's own rules, imagination, fun. The sea frothed white below him. The rock crumbled red, gray clay. Paul climbed the lines that others called "unjustifiable."

In 1997 I met him in a pub on the outskirts of Llanberis. Three friends and I were about to travel to India to attempt the Shark's Fin on Meru Central, a climb Paul tried in 1993 with Jonny Dawes, Noel Craine and Phillip Lloyd. Rain ran down the windows and the wind shook the privet hedge that bordered the dark lane. I'd only been climbing for four years. I was so in awe of him, I couldn't talk.

Last summer, he returned to Llanberis, and I had the courage to say, "Tell me about Rubble, Paul."

Paul's suntanned face cracked into a cheeky grin. Beneath the stubble, his laugh lines grew, and his crow's-feet deepened. His hair jutted out in all directions, bleached by the sun, feathered with blond streaks. His eyes burned bright. You could tell he was back in Wen Zawn, an amphitheater he'd lined with his routes and made his own. The rock echoed with his fall. On the boulders, the shadow of his body still seemed to lie unconscious as the sea rushed in. Just for a second, he was there.

And in that second, I was there with him, in a dark space lit by his stories. Salt stuck to my skin. The wind ripped through the zawn with the smell of seaweed. Gray seals circled beneath white and turquoise eddies. The sea crashed like rockfall. My hands touched greasy stone. My heart pulsed.

Then we were back in the packed pub, jostling and shouting, feet sticking to the carpet, in a fug of music, swaying bodies and sweat. Paul stood off-balance. A large support brace wrapped around his ankle. A sling cradled his arm. And the rain ran down the window.

"It's HVS...except for the E7 bits!" Laughing, he limped away, his pint sloshing as he bumped and merged into the throng.

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FAR AWAY IN THE DARK, a light flashes on and off, on and off, swinging yellow against a silver-green background, like the South Stack lighthouse over Gogarth's Red Wall. Buddy is signaling us from our Chang Himal base camp, as he does now, every night. I stand still, belaying Houseman. The cold penetrates my skin. The small bright spot warms me. I imagine Buddy's laughter ringing toward us. Youth climbs alongside me, and in the night we dig.

The wind slings spindrift. Stars glitter as the black sky slowly turns. After only a few minutes of chopping, we hit ice. A small shelf, probably one-and-a-half on the Fowler scale. "This is going to be comfy," Houseman says. I laugh. He has tried to sound positive ever since I bickered with him. "Only another six hundred meters."

"Two days, then?"

It's already Day Three. Light and wind sweep across a frigid wasteland. Peruvian-style flutings curve into deep, wave-like troughs. Walls of unconsolidated snow funnel spindrift. Arabesques of exfoliating and compact granite interlace—for an instant I'm back on Rubble, tearing at the zawn's quartzite fascia, feeling deep beneath what seemed like solid skin, through dirt and guts, pebbledash and veins, until I reach the end. I am not useless.

Midafternoon, three hundred meters below the summit of Chang Himal, we dig and worry. The flutings between us and the west ridge are convoluted monsters, layered and twisted with seams of rotten snow like driftwood grain. We've opted for a more direct approach. Just above our bivy, a peak of aerated snow rises ten meters. Like sand, it gives no support. I don't fancy climbing it so far from Houseman's belay.

But we have no clue anymore whether we can continue or not. In my mind I see us on some false summit, separated from the real by a thousand unconsolidated meters of snow, unable to cross the void. We've made a mistake. I know we've made a mistake. We're going to fail. We're so near and failure is going to tear my heart out. I've started climbing so late. How many ascents like this do I have left?

Spindrift slices into our small cave. Crystals like broken seashell gather speed, blow up my face and cut into soft exposed skin. Drohma Peak glows, a sharp red outline. I sit, holding the stove. The outside of the gas canister has frosted. The flame saws, beating blue.

All night in our small cave, while Houseman appears to sleep, I make conversation in my head: "Why did you fail?"

"We failed because of bad conditions, poor weather, dangerous climbing, sickness. Because we went the wrong way. Because the gear was stolen. Because we weren't strong enough, hard enough, good enough. Because we are useless dreamers."

For once, all I want is to answer the question, "Did you summit?" with a simple "Yes."

I imagine myself on the summit, teetering, smiling.

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AFTER DINNER, THE PRISON GYM WAS EMPTY, the inmates locked inside their own heads behind heavy doors. I lay on a bench. My head sweat smeared against blue plastic. I held a knurled Olympic weight bar with silver 10kg plates at arm's length in the air. I lowered it, until the bar touched my chest. I pushed, looked at the ceiling, and dreamed. Bend, dream; push, dream; bend, dream; push, dream.... Routine is a quick existence, the odor of sweat, shit and fear.

At 8 p.m. I threw my keys down a slot. Behind thick Perspex, other prison officers waved goodnight and pushed the button that opened the electronic door. The door creaked and slid: Come again soon, dreamer. No one resigns.

Outside, a yellow sulfur glow blinded the night. I turned my face upward and imagined the stars in a slow spinning sky. The exhaust air smelled like escape.

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The night wears through me. Tired from thin air and the sense of failure, I start the stove early. Gas fumes choke. The stars quiver. I shout at Houseman. He mumbles and shuffles. Neither of us is good at rising from bivies. I shout again. We'll need all the time the day will allow. We have one day of food, but we'll spend two or three days more if necessary.

I plunge arms and legs into and over the snow dune above our bivy. Relief: a steep runnel sidewall leads into another runnel system. The line wavers, direct as a ray of sunset across a soft-lapping sea. Straight to the summit. It's on. It's really on. I want to tease Youth by keeping the good news to myself. Instead, I shout, "It's on, mate."

We leave our packs in the snow cave. We hope the decreased load will help us levitate.

The cold sears my lungs. I try to take my mind off the pain. All I can think about is Tom's question: What makes you want to put yourself in that position?I dig into the snow, looking for ice, for something solid, but find nothing. Two of my friends from the Shark's Fin expedition, Jules Cartwright and Jamie Fisher, are gone. So is Phillip Lloyd from Pritchard's attempt. In the valley, the losses make no sense. But up high, surrounded by thousands of mountains, something seems to expand briefly: minutes swell to contain hours; infinity bursts within an instant; one life holds many lives, many possible ascents; one existence races along several paths, each way leading to liberation; and nothing good or bad ever ends. In such moments, mountaineering makes every sense.

Houseman leads out of the fluting and onto a broad, dazzling crest. We meet at a snow bollard. Youth is silent. His eyes are hidden, but I know they're shining. Home is a lifetime away. Home is here.

Taking no gear apart from what I collected on the way, I continue. The sun lights my soul. Snow crystals catch on the wind, spark with light, then blow out into the clear blue sky, never to return. I try not to stop kicking, but the gusts push me back. Between imagination and memory, I've been here before: battling the wind and the invisible, leaning toward the slope, driving the shaft of the axe, into the light, the emptiness, the solitude. Ice granules scour my skin like pumice. I pray for no more false summits. Kick, breathe, pray. It's all HVS...except for the E7 bits!

Crystals fly like sea spume. The sun refracts into rainbows. Just a few more meters, and all that I had dreamed out of the shadows will take form. My axe cuts the crest. Through the slot appears Kangchenjunga's huge serac-strewn north face and its three summits—a distant parallel universe. Jannu is a dark gravestone. I turn and shout to Houseman. He doesn't hear. Above his stooped body, a thousand days of despair catch on the wind and dissipate like grains of salt across the vast Himalayan chain. But in an instant, the hands of the clock quicken.

During the long descent into the next evening, Houseman searches for solid anchors amid the crumbling rock. Somehow, he always finds them. I look up. In a slow-spinning sky, innumerable stars flicker. And from below, in the still night, the soft jangle of yak bells floats across the creaking moraine. Even before we reach the ground, Chang Himal has dimmed into the past. With the door about to shut, the key unlocks another image. Youth fantasizes, his new success behind him: Where do I go from here?

[Summary of statistics The North Face (ED+: m6, 1800m), Chang Himal (6802m), Kanchenjunga Himal, Nepal, October 29-November 1, 2009, Nick Bullock and Andy Houseman, first ascent.—Ed.]

The North Face of Chang Himal, showing the route and bivies of the first ascent. Note the distance Houseman and Bullock traveled on the first day, despite House- man's illness. When the pair left their high camp on Day Four, they expected to run into a dead end. Instead, they found the summit ridge. In The Kangchenjunga Adventure (1931) Francis Sydney Smythe noted of this immense snow-fluted aspect: "Its very aggressive- ness challenges the mountaineer to pit himself against it, yet what mountaineer would accept the challenge...?" After years in the British Prison Service, Bullock had grown accustomed to the idea that "confrontation is unavoidable." [Photo] Andy Houseman