Andrew Lock: 14 up in the death zone
By: Andrew Lock
| December-18-2009
With his successful ascent of Shisha Pangma in October, Andrew Lock became the first Australian to climb all 14 of the world’s mountains higher than 8000 m. This is his personal account of his 16-year odyssey to become a master of thin air. With VIDEO.
Tepid water laps softly at my feet as a barely noticeable breeze drifts gently overhead. The sand seems unusually warm today but that’ll be okay if I can just get the climbing rope to squash down underneath me a little more. And turn off that alarm. I snuggle down further as vague thoughts nudge me: “Climbing rope? Alarm?”
I open my eyes. It’s dark. And cold. Very cold. Ohhh. I’m not at the beach but in a brief dream as I doze in the claustrophobic confines of my tiny tent, high on a Himalayan peak. My altimeter is sounding the alarm to rouse me from the short-lived respite my climbing partner, Welshman Neil Ward, and I so desperately sought before the coming day’s efforts. We are at 7400 m on the north face of 8027 m Shisha Pangma, the 14th-highest peak in the world and the last in my quest to climb all of the world’s mountains higher than 8000 m – those peaks that reach into the so-called ‘death zone’.
‘Shisha’ is an underrated mountain and sees very few ascents of its true summit. Most expeditions choose to climb to its central or false summit and then claim to have summitted the mountain. It’s a bit weird; like climbing to the south summit of Mt Everest and then claiming to have made it to the top. Climbers wouldn’t get away with it on the world’s highest peak but, for some reason, it’s a very common claim on Shisha. In any case, on two of my previous attempts I’ve reached the central peak but it’s the real summit I want. It sits rather lazily at the end of a knife-edge ridge with precipitous drops on either side, several hundred metres away from the central summit but only 20 m or so higher in altitude.
For our attempt, Neil and I have decided not to try that ridge but instead traverse below the north face and follow a completely different spur to the top. Only a couple of teams have been this way in the past 30 years, and both took slightly different lines. Neil and I intend to take a route combining the best of both.
We’ve been on the hill for three weeks and to launch the bid now is extremely fast, but indications are that there will be a prolonged deterioration in the weather, so it may be now or never. If successful, I will finally achieve the real summit after five expeditions to the mountain; it will be the first Australian ascent of Shisha Pangma and see the completion of my 16-year quest to climb all the ‘8000ers’. I want that summit!
Oh, it’s so cold. Why on earth am I, a Canberra public servant, here and within hours of potentially achieving the grand slam of high-altitude mountaineering, the fourteen 8000 m-plus summits?
For the full article, see Issue 97 of Australian Geographic.