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By Peter Krug - December 2002
Last week Alan Hinkes who is one of Britain's foremost climbers treated us to an extremely entertaining talk. Such was the attraction of the event that I dashed back from Nepal to be there.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the name, Alan Hinkes has climbed twelve of the fourteen 8,000m peaks on this wonderful planet of ours leaving him with Kangchenchunga and Dhaulagiri left to complete the tick-list. He has called this project "Challenge 8,000."
He split his lecture into two halves using both film and slides. The first half was devoted to his exploits over the past fifteen to twenty years and the second half concentrated on his successful attempt on Annapurna earlier this year. Naturally, as he is a Yorkshireman and because he needs funding to continue his quest to complete his challenge he also used the occasion to sell posters and a video that he has produced!
In the first half he talked about what drew him towards climbing and mountaineering which in common with many of us had it's roots in hill walking. In his case, the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. He simply took this much further than the rest of us. He showed slides taken at various locations from Rosemary's Top to the summit of Makalu, and described the colourful personalities that he met on the way some of whom sadly are no longer with us. He also talked about the mountain people such as the Sherpas and Hunza who are the backbone of any expedition to the remote regions of the Himalaya and Karakorum and he also talked about chapattis! He was famously airlifted off Nanga Parbat having slipped a disc as a result of sneezing on a chapatti. I particularly enjoyed the Daily Mail headline "The chapatti's over!" He also reflected on the worries that his daughter (he always carries a picture of her which he takes to the summit) has when he is on the hill.
He then talked about his ascent of Annapurna on a new route, which he achieved, in an incredibly quick time. He said it took only nineteen days from leaving Kathmandu (approximately 1,400m) to reaching the top of Annapurna (8,091m). He spotted a new route, which he felt was less avalanche-prone than the traditional route used by the French ascent in 1950. In doing so he had to overcome an arm infection, which he got as a result of falling over (pissed?) in Kathmandu and a lot of rain on the walk-in. Furthermore, he was thrown off the Indian Army Expedition that he was due to climb with because he was a "civilian" and this was not permitted on the climbing permit. In the end he had to find US$ 10,000 and a climbing partner who was to be a friend of his called Funurbu.
Having arrived at base-camp he decided on what he freely admits was a high risk strategy of pushing on up the mountain in one go without acclimatisation knowing that if he got stuck as a result of a storm somewhere high on the mountain he would be buggered. His reasoning was that out of 100 or so people that have summited nearly 60 have died and he simply wanted to minimise the time he spent on "Death Mountain." Anyway he got to the top with no worries but had to descend to Camp 3 in a whiteout and then had to spent another night on the mountain without food before he made it back to base camp. Now you might think that that was the end of it but there was a sting in the tail. To save himself a five-day walk out he decided to cadge a lift on the Indian Army expedition's helicopter which was so heavily overloaded that it barely could get off the ground. He showed a video clip showing the take-off which scared the shit out of me!
All in all it was a very impressive presentation littered with humorous anecdotes. I am trying to work out how mad he is considering the inherent dangers of what he does. Certainly he claims that he is not afraid to back off if conditions are not right (it took him three attempts to bag K2). I for one wish him all the best in the future and hopefully he will return in a couple of year time to talk about being the seventh "completist".
Peter