Kongur: China's Elusive Summit

v

Contents

Foreword by H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh

Note by Sir Douglas Busk

Author’s Note

Introduction: Fragments of History by Michael Ward

1 A Wealth of Mountains

2 To the Karakol Lakes

3 Mountain Explorers

4 The Lack of a Kirghiz Phrasebook

5 The Koksel Basin

6 Northern Cul-de-sac

7 The Team Assembles

8 The Roof of the World

9 First Forays

10 Choosing a Ridge

11 The South Ridge

12 The Sting in the Tail

13 Eggheads and Superstars

14 A Long Plod

15 Snow Coffins

16 Going for the Top

17 The Hair’s Breadth

Appendices

I Members of the Expedition and a Diary of Events

II The History of the Exploration of the Mustagh Ata-Kongur Massif by Michael Ward and Pete Boardman

III Medical Science by Michael Ward, Edward Williams, James Milledge, Charles Clarke

IV Fauna and Flora of the Konsiver Valley by Charles Clarke, Martin Henderson and Chris Grey-Wilson

V Health and Medical Equipment by Charles Clarke

VI Some comments on Geology by Edward Williams

VII Equipment and Food by Joe Tasker and Charles Clarke

VIII Still Photography and Film by Jim Curran

IXBuzkashi by Sir Douglas Busk

X On Names by David Wilson

XI Select Bibliography

About the Author

Photographs

vii

Foreword

Buckingham Palace

Even the simplest mountaineering expedition requires planning, preparation, climbing skill, teamwork and the expectation of the unexpected. In order to mount the first foreign climbing expedition of one of China’s major mountains, the difficulty of all these factors was very much greater than usual. The Mount Everest Foundation spent ten years trying to organise a climbing expedition in China and it is due to the persistence and diplomatic skills of its China Committee that the Kongur expedition finally took place.

In the event, there were plenty of problems in all departments but the expedition was a great success, thanks largely to the vision and determination of Michael Ward, the generosity and support of Jardine, Matheson & Co., Limited, the mountain leadership and skill of Chris Bonington and the individual contributions of each member of the expedition.

It was not just a mountaineering success. After many years anew, if specialist, avenue of communication was opened with Chinese people and there can be little doubt that ripples of the friendly atmosphere in which the whole expedition took place will spread widely both in China and in Britain.

H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh

1982

ix

Note

by Sir Douglas Busk

Chairman of the Mount Everest Foundation 1980–2

The Mount Everest Foundation (MEF) was established as a Charity by the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society as a result of the successful first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 by the British and New Zealand expedition led by Brigadier (now Lord) Hunt. Under its constitution, it gives financial support to carefully selected British expeditions with both scientific and climbing objectives in the mountain regions of the world. Since it was set up the Foundation has made grants totalling over £280,000 to some 550 projects. The Foundation twice organised and ran expeditions itself – the first ascent of Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, in 1954 and the Annapurna south face expedition in 1970. In both cases the Foundation ultimately made profits, which enabled it to give more generous grants to other expeditions.

For over a decade the Foundation worked to obtain permission to mount a mixed scientific/mountaineering project in the vast area of Chinese Central Asia. Contacts were maintained with Peking and success came when Chairman Hua and his entourage visited London in 1979. The Prime Minister and Lord Carrington invited the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the MEF to meet Chairman Hua and it was agreed in principle that one of the many projects suggested by the MEF could be favourably considered. In the result, as set out in the introduction to this book, Mount Kongur was chosen. It has now been climbed and the scientific results will, when evaluated, be of great importance, not only to mountaineers, but in wider fields.

The MEF wishes to express its thanks to all who have helped during many years to achieve such a happy outcome and also to Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd. who not only made a massive financial contribution to the project and underwrote the costs, but who also placed at the disposal of the expedition their vast experience of the Far East and an assiduous organisational capacity that was beyond all praise.

D.L.B. April 1982

xi

Author’s Note

The expedition book is very similar to the expedition itself and without the help not only of my fellow expeditioners, but many others as well, I could not possibly have written this book. I should like to give my special thanks to Michael Ward, the expedition leader, for his advice, support and the many invaluable contributions he has made to the text of the book, and the team members who provided their diaries and letters home, as well as contributing to the text.

I should also like to thank Sir Douglas Busk, chairman of the Committee of Management, who provided a delightful note on the origins of the game, buzkashi. To Martin Henderson, financial director of Mathesons in London, go my grateful thanks for the notes on the fauna of the area and to Christopher Grey-Wilson of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for identifying the flora.

My own home front has as always provided tremendous support, my wife Wendy sorting and helping select the pictures and my secretary, Louise Wilson, doing a first line edit and keying in all the corrections in the magical Wang word processor that I used for writing the book. Anders Bolinder of the Himalayan Club very kindly provided us with a wealth of detail on the climbing history and topography of the area, which was invaluable both in the main text and the historical appendix.

Chris Bonington

xiii

Introduction

Fragments of History

by Michael Ward

The mountains that form earth’s bones jut starkly out of the high deserts of Central Asia. This antique land has always stimulated the curiosity and imagination of travellers with a strong sense of history. Better known to older civilisations than our own and described for thousands of years as the ‘Roof of the World’, this is the home of gold-digging ants, of men who know the arts of levitation and self-warming without fire and of peaks on whose slopes grow herbs that cause heads to ache.

The ancient worlds of Greece, China and India joined in this vast upland waste of wind, stones and ice and the Silk Roads were the tenuous link between cultures. In 1951 when I was exploring the Nepalese side of Everest with Eric Shipton, he often talked of his years as Consul General in Kashgar. Every journey that he made on horseback outside this oasis town could bring him within minutes to the borders of the known world. This laid a train of hope that smouldered for thirty years. Expeditions are created by individuals and our venture in southern Xinjiang¹ bore the imprint of my desires, wishes and interests. In 1972 I started my extended search for a ‘passport’ to the uplands of Central Asia. Not surprisingly this failed, despite a request being taken to Peking by a mission led by Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

From occasional articles in Scientia Sinica and other sources, I knew that Chinese teams had been carrying out a series of projects in Central Asia, concerned mainly with geology and glaciology. In the course of these a number of peaks, including Everest in 1960, were climbed by them and medical research on the effects of altitude was completed. It seemed to me that a project with a similar pattern containing both scientific investigation and mountaineering would have the best chance of success. Also research and exploration have dominated my attitude and interest towards mountains. Over the next few years I wrote innumerable letters to the British Embassy in Peking and the Academia Sinica, and persuaded some of the relatively few people, politicians, scientists or businessmen, who were able to visit China to plead the cause of such a project.

In 1977 as acting chairman, and in 1978–80 as chairman of the Mount Everest Foundation, my main task was to bring this to fruition. My requests to the Chinese were always for areas that I thought would be politically insensitive xivand I therefore chose regions as far away from frontiers as possible. One of the main ranges of the world and one of the least known is the Kun-lun, ‘the Mountains of Darkness’, that separate the northern edge of the Tibetan plateau from the Taklamakan desert. This range stretches from the Pamirs on the Russian border with China eastwards for a thousand miles or more. In the centre is a peak called Ulugh Mustagh (7,724 metres) which was discovered by Sven Hedin during his travels in North Tibet over eighty years ago. This was my prime target, though I mentioned a number of other areas as alternatives.

Everest was one obvious choice, but this had been extensively explored and mapped on both the Tibetan and Nepalese sides by many expeditions of all nationalities from 1921 onwards. It is almost as well known as Mont Blanc. We wished to break entirely new ground and for this reason a number of other regions in China where peaks had been climbed were also ruled out. Central Asia is so vast that to return again and again to well-known areas would show a lack of imagination, enterprise, and more practically, could threaten the charitable status of the MEF, which was set up specifically for the purpose of exploration. In this respect it is like other research councils and bodies such as the Royal Society and the Medical Research Council, that provide money for pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge, not for repeating the same routines.

In the course of much correspondence with China, one letter I received does stand out. This described a meeting between Shi Zhanchun of the Chinese Mountaineering Association, Wang Fuzhou, who made the first ascent of Everest from the Tibetan side in 1960, and Sir George Bishop (former chairman of Booker-McConnell). Also present was Phundob, the first Tibetan woman to climb Everest in 1975 within six months of giving birth to her third baby. She breathed oxygen on the summit, but climbed it without. Shi told Sir George Bishop that at 8,200 metres he had found the rope, crampons and ice axe that could possibly have belonged to Mallory and Irvine.

As far as the MEF was concerned, perhaps the most important next event was a visit to Peking by the late Malcolm MacDonald, Sir Harold Thompson and Sir John Keswick on behalf of the Great Britain-China Centre. Sir John Keswick was a former chairman of Jardine Matheson, the well-known Hong Kong trading company. In the 1930s in Shanghai, he had lent a rook gun to Peter Fleming for his epic journey to Kashgar with Ella Maillart. He had also been very friendly with Chou En-lai and present members of the Chinese Government whom he visits every year. Edward Heath, also well liked by the Chinese, pleaded our case when he visited Peking and Lhasa in September 1979.

At about this time Sir Douglas Busk, a former Ambassador and vice-chairman of the MEF, and I learnt that Chairman Hua Guofeng would be coming to the United Kingdom at the end of the year. Naturally we had already been in touch with the Chinese Embassy in London about our plans and the xvrelevant departments of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. One way or another a great number and diversity of people were now involved in helping us, and thanks to Lord Carrington and the Prime Minister, some members of the MEF were able to meet Chairman Hua at a reception at the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. We were also able to spend some time with Huang Hua, the Chinese Foreign Secretary. He was very interested in the whole project, particularly as we wished to include Chinese members. The Cultural Revolution had blocked knowledge in so many fields that they were anxious to enquire about the latest advances in science. A direct result of this meeting was that we talked to Denis Thatcher, who became most enthusiastic about the project.

At the end of November, I received a letter from Professor Weng Qingzhang of the Institute of Sports Science Research in Peking, who mentioned that he had read my textbook, Mountain Medicine, published in 1975. This was the first direct contact that we had had with China. Shortly afterwards Sir Edward Peck, formerly of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and on the Management Committee of the MEF, sent me a cutting from a Chinese newspaper, Ta Kung Po, published in Hong Kong. This had been sent to him by David Wilson, the Political Adviser to the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Murray (now Lord) MacLehose. It said that eight mountains would be opened to foreign climbers. All these peaks had been climbed by British, American or Chinese parties except for one – Mount Kongur. It was amazing to me that five of the peaks were near a border and three, including Kongur, in Southern Xinjiang, one of the least known regions, were within a few miles of the Russian border. The Chinese must have felt very secure in Xinjiang.

The MEF were unanimous that Mount Kongur, possibly the highest unclimbed peak wholly in China and situated in the west Kun-lun, should be our choice. The Chinese Mountaineering Association was informed immediately. Their reply was that negotiations should take place in Peking at the end of February 1980. We all felt it would be better if I could be accompanied by one other person in these negotiations. As Chris Bonington was a member of the MEF Management Committee and a likely member of any team in China it was an excellent idea that he should accompany me.

The main and most recent information about Kongur was from an article in the Geographical Journal by Sir Clarmont Skrine, Consul General in Kashgar from 1922–24. Not only was he the first to identify Kongur as a separate peak, but he had explored the surrounding Shiwakte and Tigarman groups. His photographs and maps gave some flesh to our project.

Although I had not yet been confirmed as leader, the vital factor was to decide the exact scope and form of our project. I had already decided that it should include scientific investigation and mountain exploration. In the back of my mind, too, was the hope that a diplomat could be taken as interpreter and the project be sponsored by a trading firm, thus extending its scope well xvibeyond most expeditions. Money, as ever, was a problem, especially in the United Kingdom. Alan Tritton, a director of Barclays Bank Ltd. and member of the MEF Management Committee, suggested Hong Kong might be a better source of funds. In contrast to Britain Hong Kong seemed to be fizzing financially, and there they were much more aware of the long term potential for trade in China and its place in world affairs. They understood too that things take a long time in the Far East and hurry is counterproductive.

Of the firms in Hong Kong, Jardine Matheson, whose 150th anniversary was to fall in 1982, seemed to be one to approach, especially as Sir John Keswick was able to give us an introduction to David Newbigging, the chairman and managing director of this celebrated trading house.

Xinjiang with its oil deposits has been compared to the Yukon. A far better comparison would be with California, as it is a hot desert country. Water is as precious as platinum; when it is available the desert blooms and rice, fruit and vegetables grow in abundance. Turfan grapes and Hami melons are famous throughout Asia. Jade and gold are also found, whilst wool from yaks and sheep is exported and Urumchi, the capital, is a manufacturing centre. Jardines already had some contacts in this developing region.

Mountaineering and research have often run together. In the life sciences the emphasis has been on the effects of chronic oxygen lack which affects mountaineers at altitude, and sea-level sufferers with chronic bronchitis and heart disease. However, since 1977 Jim Milledge from Northwick Park Hospital, Edward Williams from the Middlesex Hospital School and I had been involved in a field programme investigating the effects of prolonged exercise taken by hillwalkers and mountaineers on the fluid content of the body. This caused oedema or excess fluid to appear in certain places. Named ‘Exercise Oedema’ by a Lancet editorial, its significance was that, as the oxygen lack of altitude also caused oedema, the two combined could, we thought, cause lethal complications. Work carried out by the others and led by Jim Milledge at the Gornergrat (3,130 metres) in Switzerland, when I was on the Kongur Reconnaissance in 1980, produced some most interesting results and we could continue this in China in 1981. Also I hoped that this research could be communicated to Chinese scientists.

Another doctor, Charlie Clarke, by the use of photography had recorded both oedema of the optic nerve, which is a projection of the brain, and haemorrhages at the back of the eye, due to a change in permeability of the blood vessels, the result of the oxygen lack of altitude. This would extend our oedema studies.

Another project that was simple yet rewarding would be to collect, photograph and record any flowers and grass we found for the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The director, Professor Patrick Brenan, provided us with the necessary presses and collecting books for some very xviiamateur work, for they had no data of any sort from this part of Central Asia.

Having both a scientific and mountaineering aim could pose very great problems, as I knew from previous Himalayan expeditions. Both were demanding and jealous masters. I thought that I had an understanding of the way both groups thought and worked, and that success would depend on whom I chose and how the whole was structured. Right from the start I determined to have a group of four climbers whose main task was to climb Kongur, and four scientists whose main task was to do the research work. Both groups would act as subjects, whilst the scientists would be good enough mountaineers to support the summit attempt if necessary.

By the time the negotiations with Shi Zhanchun and the Chinese Mountaineering Association were ended, I had committed the MEF to a large investment, the cost of a reconnaissance in June and July 1980, as well as the attempt on Kongur in 1981. It was therefore an enormous relief when a meeting with David Newbigging, the chairman of Jardines, resulted in his board’s agreement not only to make a massive financial contribution, but also to underwrite the whole of the Kongur venture. I was elated and we were soon to discover how splendidly equipped this famous trading company was to give us maximum assistance. For Jardines had just opened an office in Peking which was managed by David Mathew, who proved really invaluable. Conveniently for me, the head office of their British subsidiary, Mathesons, was situated in the City of London, near to the hospital where I work, so I asked that our home-based administrative support should be run from there. Martin Henderson, the financial director of Mathesons, and his assistant, Pippa Stead, ran this side of things with all the professional skill and enormous facilities available to one of the world’s richest trading companies. There are not many expeditions that have had this advantage. They worked in conjunction with a sub-committee set up by the MEF under the chairmanship of Sir Douglas Busk.

The scientific programme was financed from traditional sources – substantial grants from the Medical Research Council and St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Some very sophisticated equipment was provided for us out of those funds.

During our climbing negotiations with Shi Zhanchun in Peking in February 1980, I was also able to give a medical lecture after which I was approached by Professor Liu Dengsheng of the Academia Sinica and asked if I would like to take part in a meeting organised by the Academia in Peking in June. The subject was work carried out by Chinese scientists in both the earth and life sciences on the Tibetan plateau; the guest delegates talked about their work in the Himalaya and other mountain regions.

So before I joined the reconnaissance of Kongur in June 1980, I attended this meeting, read a paper and met Professor Hu Xuchu of the Shanghai Institute of Physiology. His department, together with that to which Professor Weng Qingzhang of Peking belonged, had been working on the effects of high xviiialtitude in man on the many ascents undertaken by the Chinese. (The proceedings of the Peking symposium were published at the end of 1981, run to 2,000 pages and are a monument to Chinese scholarship in Central Asia.) In 1981, before the start of the successful expedition to Kongur, Jim Milledge and I visited Shanghai where we lectured in his department and had a meal with his wife, a dietitian at the main hospital, and their family. We visited the theatre and also the Botanical Gardens, as well as contacting Michael Jardine, who had just opened Jardines’ office there. Whilst we were in Shanghai the others flew to Urumchi, where Charlie Clarke and Edward Williams lectured at the Xinjiang Medical College and then went on to Kashgar. In 1981 both Professor Hu, Professor Weng and Liu Dayi, our liaison officer, visited the United Kingdom as guests of the MEF who were given great assistance by the Great Britain-China Centre. They visited the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club and were also entertained by Jardine, Matheson and Sir John Keswick. The professors lectured at the Clinical Research Centre, Northwick Park Hospital, while Liu Dayi and Professor Weng also visited the Mountain Training Centre at Aviemore, where they climbed Cairngorm in suitably atrocious weather.

The foundation of our project was now laid. The Chinese had surrounded Kongur with elements of a legend. When asked why they had not climbed it, they admitted that it had posed unusual problems. They described it as enigmatic, and weather conditions were notoriously fickle. They were not able to give us any real information about the best approach. This was why reconnaissance was essential. Unlike Everest in 1951, when six of us explored one aspect of a mountain and discovered the route by which we made the ascent in 1953, on Kongur in 1980 there were only three of us to look at all sides of this elusive peak. Within a week this was dramatically reduced to a party of two and thereby hangs a tale.

1. Xinjiang is the modern Romanised spelling of Sinkiang . See Appendix X , ‘On Names’.

1

1

A Wealth of Mountains

19 February–3 March 1980

How does an expedition begin? For me it was at the Charles de Gaulle Airport on 19 February 1980, waiting to catch the Air France 707 to Peking, though for Michael Ward, who was sitting on the bench seat beside me, it had started some years earlier. For it was he who had not just dreamt of going climbing in China, as many of us mountaineers had done over the years, he had actually worked at it, firing off applications like space probes to a distant star system, hoping that some day there would be a return. And now there was; the two of us were on our way to China, emissaries of the Mount Everest Foundation, to negotiate permission to climb a mountain and carry out medical research.

It had happened very quickly, all part of the opening of China to the western world. Already a Japanese expedition had permission to attempt the north side of Everest that spring, while the West Germans were going for the only 8,000-metre peak entirely within China, nowadays spelt Xixabangma but perhaps more familiar to old 8,000-metre watchers as Shisha Pangma. Michael had received a copy of the Chinese regulations only a couple of days before we set out, with lists of rules and an even longer list of prices. They had opened up just eight mountains: Everest and Xixabangma in Tibet; Kongur, Kongur Tiube and Mustagh Ata in south-west Xinjiang; Bogda Ola near Urumchi, capital of Xinjiang, and finally Mount Gongga and Anyemaqen in China proper. With the exception of Mount Kongur, (7,719 metres) which as far as we knew was unclimbed, this represented the majority of main peaks already climbed within China. A look at the map emphasised just how much more there was still to do in the vast area that lay to the north of the serrated barrier of the Himalayan chain.

It was like a mountain reserve, preserved for some future generation, for in the last thirty years the main Himalayan chain in Nepal and the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan have been thoroughly explored. Before 1950 a bare handful of mountains had been climbed in the Himalaya, the highest being Nanda Devi (7,816 metres) in the Garhwal range in India, but since then, all the peaks of over 8,000 metres and almost every mountain of over 7,000 metres has been climbed; many have more than one route up them. Almost every valley has been explored, every pass crossed.

But the mountains of China, guarded by political turmoil before the Second World War and then by the isolationist policies of her government after the 2success of the Chinese Communist revolution, have remained almost untouched, with only a handful of her thousands of mountains climbed. There were complete ranges on the north side of Tibet with mountains of over 7,000 metres that had not even been explored. It was these that we were most interested in. The Kun-lun range stretches for approximately 1,000 miles to the north of the Tibetan plateau, forming a high wall between the cold, arid sweeps of upland Tibet and the vast expanse of the Taklamakan desert. Probably the highest mountain of the Kun-lun is Ulugh Mustagh (7,724 metres) and this one particularly interested Michael. We resolved to apply for this even though it was not on the list.

The original approach by the Mount Everest Foundation had been for a joint Chinese/British expedition which would have both a scientific and mountaineering programme. This had seemed a sound approach politically, since the suggestion of cooperation seemed essential and we knew that the Chinese had had a strong scientific content in all their expeditions. Later Michael learnt to his surprise that his work was well known to those scientists in China who were concerned with high-altitude research on the Tibetan plateau. Over the past twenty years he has established himself as a leading authority on the diseases of cold and altitude and had written the first definitive textbook on mountain medicine.

We had a couple of hours’ wait for our connection. I must confess if I had been alone, I should almost certainly have read a book, but Michael Ward, who is a hard worker, opened his briefcase and suggested we start costing out the expedition. Only now that we had the regulations could we do any detailed planning. It had been decided in principle that there would be a team of four climbers and four mountain scientists, but that was all. At this stage not even the leader of the expedition had been formally nominated by the Mount Everest Foundation. Michael at that time was chairman of the foundation and had provided all the initial drive. This concept of a combined mountaineering and scientific project was quite different from the type of Himalayan expedition with which I am normally associated. Only a medical scientist with an extensive knowledge of both field research and mountaineering could plan and coordinate this type of party.

Michael Ward was fifty-five, nine years older than myself, and had made his first climb at the age of fourteen, just before the start of the Second World War. At Cambridge in 1943 he joined the University Mountaineering Club. It was during this period that he met Menlove Edwards, probably one of the finest rock climbers of the pre-war and war-time era, and led a variation finish to Longland’s Climb on Clogwyn Du’r Arddu, which was certainly as difficult as anything that had been done at that time.

Once the war was over he was eager to get out to the Alps and expand his horizons still further. He was talented and very ambitious but essentially an 3amateur climber in the traditional mould of British alpinism. There was no thought of throwing everything up and making a living around climbing. In those days there was very little chance of doing this anyway, but it probably would never have occurred to him. The son of a colonial civil servant, he learnt about independence and self-reliance the hard way at Marlborough. From there he went on to Cambridge and a medical career. But his imagination went much wider and farther than that of most young climbers or, for that matter, doctors. Even though he had never been to the Himalaya and had only experienced one Alpine season, he began planning a reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest in 1951. Eric Shipton, who had just returned to England from a post as British Consul in Kunming in China, was the obvious choice as leader, since he was not only one of Britain’s best-known mountaineers but also had been a member of some of the pre-war Everest expeditions.

The expedition found the way up into the mouth of the Western Cwm of Everest and showed that there was undoubtedly a route from there to the summit. Eric Shipton, an inveterate mountain explorer,