Nine weeks later

Consciousness – the moment of awareness of ones’ continued being. We all go through it every morning, usually refreshed and rejuvenated after the blessing of a good night’s sleep. Yet, for some reason, in the unfamiliar interior of a recovery suite adjacent to the pristine and sterile environment of a hospital operating theatre, the consciousness regained after a general anaesthetic has an even sweeter taste.

This was my second operation under GA in Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary in two weeks. I felt none of the delirium or cognitive dysfunction sometimes associated with ‘waking up’ from the effects of the drugs that had rendered me ‘asleep’ earlier in the day. Over the past few weeks, January, February and now much of March, I had developed a sense of respect and awe at the skills and caring demonstrated by the clinical team in whom I had placed my faith in making a full recovery from the frostbite in my left foot.

Nine weeks after the incident that caused the injury, this operation had involved removing an area of skin from my left calf and stitching it over a porcine dermis implant graft that formed the soft tissue reconstruction of the outer side and small toe of my left foot two weeks previously. The advantages of the ‘Pelnac Dermal Substitute’, my surgeon explained, were that it was many times thicker than the ‘potato peeled’ human skin, and would help fill in the depression left by the removal of dead tissue, as well as act as a matrix to stimulate granulation and aid regeneration of blood vessels. Additionally I discovered the artificial (first) grafting had proven to be robust, important if the foot was going to stuffed back into a boot in the future, stable, infection-resistant, prevents evaporation loss, and, important for our cash-starved yet wonderful NHS, affordable.

The intervening weeks from initial admission on return from Kyrgyzstan had involved treatments with manuka honey aided by lattice scalping of the hard ‘tortoise shell’ encasement of dead material, followed by debridement (removal of dead tissue) with application, over two weeks of two legions of 100 aseptically-produced living larvae of the green bottle fly, Luciila sericata. Most importantly these larvae – aka ‘maggots’ – do not digest living tissue but achieve wound cleansing and reduce the chance of bacterial infection. For two weeks following the larvae treatment I was also fitted with an airtight dressing and integral tubing leading to a rechargeable suction pump and tank which sucked away at the mess day and night, emitting a pressure-equalizing ‘farting’ noise at seven-minute intervals. By this time I was released back into the community in a Red Cross wheelchair (Thank you Alison Jones!) and able to attend a play at the Live Theatre, discreetly muffling the embarrassing farting pump with a blanket!

More weeks not load-bearing nor wearing shoes were to follow, but how did this all come about?

In October 2018 Nick Smith, Meets Coordinator of the Alpine Club, contacted me with the proposed AC trips list for 2019 and asked if I would like to climb together. We had met previously on a joint Alpine Club-Climbing Club trip to the Anti Atlas Mountains. Of all the proposed trips, the one that most appealed was first on the list: winter climbing in the Tian Shan. I accepted Nick’s offer, contacted Andrey, the meet coordinator ‘on the ground’, who on return from two weeks skiing in Siberia accepted my climbing CV, and sent me information and topos. Flights were booked for 2nd January and a training regime implemented. On 29th December I received a call and Xrays from Nick as he sat in A&E in Dumfries having badly injured his ankle while running; he would not be climbing for some time to come. And so on the 2nd I flew out alone, meeting other team members in Istanbul en route to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan (during the Soviet era known as Frunze).

Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Tajikstan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, vast Kazakhstan to the north, and to the east, Xinjang Province of China. I had not been this far east since working in Papua New Guinea and Malaysia in the 1990s. Kyrgyzstan is just smaller in land area than the UK but 90% of the country is mountainous, with an average elevation of 2750m. The main range is the Tian Shan, three-quarters of which is under permanent snow and glacier cover. The Pamirs, Hindu Kush and Karakoram lie to the south, and the eastern border with China culminates at Jengish Choqusu, also known as Pik Pobeda, 7439m.

The ethnic majority are Kyrgyz (55%), the rest of the population comprising Russian Slavs, Uzbeks, ethnic Germans, Koreans, Tartars and Dungams (Chinese Muslims). A fascinating Central Asian history has been traditionally passed down through songs, poems and stories. The superhero of these poems is Manas. Heroic, warring histories continue to fascinate, as recent Western-produced block-buster series prove, but at twenty times the length of The Odyssey it is a shame the national Kyrgyz Manas epic is not more widely known.

There was little time to explore Bishkek before reporting to ‘Ak Sei Travel’, the mountaineering agency which would facilitate our transfer to the Ala Archa National Park. Our small team – just six of us without Nick – board a coach with around thirty Russian and Kyrgyz climbers for the journey to the base at 2,200m where we ate and slept in a backpacker hostel. Next morning I was glad of the option to pay for assistance portering our loads for the 1200m climb from the valley. Firstly through wooded slopes, dropping into cross-ravines and the moraines of the glacier, before tricky, exposed traversing and scrambling into the hidden upper valley system carved out by the retreating glacier.

The age range of our team quickly showed in the progress at altitude. Some members were in their 20s, some thirties and 40s, one in their 60s and one mid-seventies. I for one was pleased eventually to crest the lip of the upper corrie and find the old stone refuge, followed by a supplementary aluminium-clad shelter that would be the shared accommodation for our adventure. 

We are shown to a bench-style, double-bunked room of the Ratsek Hut, dump rucsacks and take in the barren environs outside. After an hour of recovery, Andrey leads us, with emptied rucsacks, over and down the lateral moraine to the glacier. Here we hack into the steel-hard ice with our axes, fill our rucsacks, and return to the hut, depositing the ice in a pile next to the kitchen annex. This will be melted as required by a team of Ak Sai cooks who will prepare Kyrgyz porridge, soups and stews for the combined climbing teams for the duration of our stay.

Meals are served in three sittings round a long table with benches, a twenty minute maximum turnaround, in a timber-clad hut with a hatch through which steam, bowls and flasks emanate from the cupboard-sized space. Around the walls, wood-cut framed engravings of Soviet-era expeditions of the past look down on the present day aspirants.

After our evening meal there is a pitch-black, clear sky vaulted above us with a myriad of distant galaxies beaming starlight directly upon us. At 3300m it is intensely cold and after a last visit to the tin cubicle long-drop toilet balanced over the far side of the moraine, it’s time to wriggle into sleeping bags on the bottom bench.

For an acclimatization climb, Andrey, Derek and I head next morning up a steep scree slope onto a shoulder leading to a ridge with widening views as altitude is gained. Derek is suffering the cumulative effects of three Himalayan expeditions in the last 12 months and rests before returning to the hut. Andrey, less than half Derek’s age, is fit and, before long, we can see the full extent of the ridge leading to a snow-covered dome. Descending teams of climbers offer advice (in Russian) as to summit conditions, and we stash axes, spare flasks and excess layers, and continue at speed into a snow trench forming a traversing ramp over a minor rock outlying top before the final dome of Uchitel (‘The Teacher’) and a brilliant 360 degree prospect from the 4527m summit. Andrey soon joins me and is able to point out surrounding peaks and great walls of ice we propose to attempt. A challenging spired ridge, reminiscent of the Chamonix Aiguilles, leads away towards the cumulating summits of the region. The hut is out of sight but below is the great chasm of the Uchitel Glacier. Across it rise is the combined ice and rock tower of ‘Boks’ Peak for which Iain and Tom made a 4am start for their ‘acclimatisation’ day.

Our six-man team set off as one the next morning to trek up the giant and elevated lateral moraine known as ‘The Crocodile’. Relatively static compared with the creeping glacier hundreds of metres below, it is still unreliable terrain. I had looked up at it as we traversed below on the first evening to collect ice. Huge boulders ranging in size from fridge to truck hung, suspectly cemented into a matrix of mud and gravel, immediately above our heads as we scurried the gauntlet. Various tracks up The Crocodile involved precarious negotiation of the edge of this crumbling cliff. Slippery snow had frozen to ice between the boulders but crampons remained in rucsacks to ensure sharpness for the real sport to follow. When The Crocodile meets the Uchitel Glacier as it trips over the hanging valley edge, we crampon-up and venture out into an area of weird seracs. We spend the day practising skills of tool and ice-screw placements in the brittle glacial ice, very different from the more accommodating hard névé of a Scottish winter climb.

Alarms rouse us at 0330hrs, and an hour later, after porridge, we are heading back up The Crocodile by head-torch. Tom and Iain, the faster team, move ahead of Andrey and I. Derek and Rafal have stayed at the hut. Beyond the seracs – unseen in the dark – we rope up to move together on the Korona Glacier, tight-roping each other over crevasses into which head-torches plumb hidden depths. After three hours’ toil we rest briefly at the Korona bivvy shelter. Inside I count 8 sleeping bags, half of them on a bench, half on the floor, all covered in hoar frost. Andrey whispers in Russian to one down cocoon, all remain motionless. We continue at first light, steeply, to another hidden valley and glacier which we cross to the foot of the icefall of ‘Izyskatel’ (c4400m). We gear up on a ledge inside a giant cave that has formed in a widening of the bergschrund that balances above our heads.  

Andrey leads out over the overhanging roof of the cave, finds good ice for a screw and hacks upwards and out of sight. I am left alone in my icy tomb admiring the weird stalactites and straining on my belay to plumb its depths beneath my boots. I am very conscious that, unlike the hundreds of limestone caves I have explored which change almost infinitesimally over millennia, this bergschrund cave is very much a temporary space, with millions of tons of ice balanced at a very steep angle immediately above my head. Sixty metres of rope pay out. I have shouted a warning but we cannot see or hear each other. It is my turn to move. Once out of the tomb and onto the face, I’m in sunshine. It is well below freezing but I warm up climbing and tingle with pleasure at the incredible situation we are in. I lead the second 60m pitch, a constant 55 degrees on ice kinder than that of yesterday’s serac. From my belay I have only a foreshortened view of the route above – two or three more pitches to the summit? We have radioed Dmitri, the Kyrgyz coordinator on even hours – 10, 12, 14 – to report our position and status. We make the decision to retreat while daylight is still good. Iain and Tom on the mixed rock and ice ridge to the west of our face have also started to reverse their route. I build an Abalakov belay: two full-length ice screws are driven in at 60 degrees, then removed; the meeting point lies approximately 75mm into solid ice facilitating the threading of a piece of 6mm cord, tied with an overhand. It is backed up with a temporary ice screw for the first person in case the belay fails. Having built it, I offer to test it, and abseil down, crampon front-points barely leaving a mark. Once my weight is off the rope Andrey removes all the screws and uses my Abalakov to abseil down to join me without the backup. We repeat, and on the third ab are able to jump the bergschrund and continue down until the angle eases enough for us to de-gear. We descend down and across the glacier to reach the bivy shelter by dark. We still have the lower glacier and the dreaded ‘Crocodile’ to negotiate and I am happy to see headtorches near the foot. Iain has returned with Rafael, and offers to carry my sac. I don’t argue and stumble on down to the Ratsek Hut.

Everyone in our team needs a rest day. We chat about our different life experiences. Derek has a long CV of mountaineering expeditions across the world’s greater ranges. Iain’s brand new La Sportiva double boots have a jammed tensioning cable that will not release. He makes a bespoke tool with his ice axe file and I help him over several patient hours render the boot once more usable. I use the long-drop toilet, the contents of which have frozen into a stalagmite that has reached the hole in the floorboards!

We enjoy a sociable meat broth dinner with the Kyrgyz-Russian teams. Their organisation and discipline are impressive. Dmitry – who insists that each pair or team radio in every two hours – requires each man and woman to queue up every night to be checked over and assessed as ‘fit to climb’ by a team medic. We Brits are not included in this ritual and are left to our own judgement to determine our next ambitions in the harsh environment. So far, the weather is holding and I feel my body can also continue.

After a short sleep, Andrey, Iain and I are up at 0330hrs for the three-hour trek up the Uchitel and Nauka Glaciers to the foot of Akimova (‘The Hourglass’) named for its recognisable shape and profile: starting wide and a steady 55 degrees, narrowing and rearing to its steepest for two pitches before again spreading, to a col. Andrey had pointed it out to me on our acclimatisation day. We gear up at a boulder and Iain breaks trail in thigh-deep snow to the bergschrund. As Andrey leads the first pitch, I have time to reflect on our position at the foot of our most serious undertaking to date. Tension builds. I am reminded of an apt description of this waiting time by the famous quadruple amputee climber Jamie Andrew. He recalls an electric charge of apprehension stored in one’s gut, like a capacitor, reserves of nervous energy that are released and dissipated as axes are swung and balancing front-points begin a progression into the vertical ice-world, leaving only frozen fresh air below.

Andrey builds a belay. When the ropes come tight Iain and I simul-climb a few metres apart. We cut a ledge mere millimetres wide to half-rest straining calves, and all lean back, trusting the screws. We repeat for the next pitch, and belay at the narrowing of the hourglass. I volunteer to lead the two steep crux pitches where the sands of time rush through. Yet strangely time stands still as I mentally concentrate on getting this right. The ice is brittle and must be tested for each axe placement before one’s weight can be transferred from one limb to another. Minimise the number of trial plants of tools, each showering shards of exploding ice particles onto belayed partners directly below, while ensuring no pop-outs of tools, or slip-offs of crampon points.

The angle rears up to 70-75⁰ and I am in my element. Despite the steepness I feel secure with 3 points of contact between moves. Movement keeps blood circulating and I try to minimize stops to place a screw protection at c 6-8 metre intervals conscious that a slip could still result in a 15m fall. At 60m, in the narrowest part of the hourglass, I fix a double-screw belay to bring up Iain and Andrey. The buttresses either side of us contain stacks of shattered balanced rock, detached from the mountain by endless cycles of freeze-thaw aggression. I lead another 60m pitch into the widening couloir before Iain takes over and leads up to the brêche to top-out our route.

The view is ‘gob-smacking’, with harsh grandeur and isolation that rewards the effort involved.

We share a flask, snacks, bear hugs and big grins, then belaying from reasonably fresh-looking ‘tat’ over a solid rock pinnacle, the other two take turns to descend. For some time I am alone with my thoughts and the wind whistling across the col. It is somewhere near minus-30⁰C, with the wind-chill penetrating my clothing. I shiver.

It comes to my turn to abseil from the pinnacle. Andrey has built an Abalakov belay which we all three share while we bring down the ropes and Iain descends further, to repeat. All moving separately downwards means lengthy waits at each belay. Each time I am the last to descend after removing the back-up screws, trusting only the 6mm cord threaded through the ice. The sands of time slow. It becomes dark and the descent continues, our headtorches identifying our relative positions on the face. Eventually, at the boulder we coil the ropes and begin the trek back down the glacier. I seem much more affected by exhaustion than the others, stumbling in the deep snow on the moraine, and snapping my walking poles between unseen rocks. Iain lends me one of his and encourages.

Aware of our delayed return, Dmitry has requested the cooks leave three meaty dinners in the mess hut and has stayed up to greet us. After 19 hours, it is bliss to slide into the bench bunk between shivering bodies and drift into the blackness of sleep. I am cocooned in my down bag when our team’s youngest pair, Tom and Rafael, leave at 0500hrs to attempt the multiple rock towers of the Uchitel-Baichechekey Ridge. They return early citing extreme cold making climbing impossible. Tom still has badly blistered and frost-nipped fingers from his first day with Iain on ‘Boks’. My fingers are not blistered but are very sensitive as I rest away the day in the main hut. Mid-afternoon Iain and Andrey set off to the Korona Bivy Hut at 4100m for a planned early start next day for Korona Peak. Derek, Rafael and I plan a relative rest day rock climb up Ratsek Peak (3972m). The Russians and Kyrgyz climbers have their oxymetry tests and Dmitry checks their hand-drawn topos and signs their logbooks.

A bad night, loud snoring two bodies away prevents sleep. I feel inexplicably far too hot and pull down my sleeping bag. I reach down to check an odd sensation in my left foot and my fingers slide into a gap in the skin on the outer side. In the dark I use a headtorch to examine but wait until morning to determine what’s happening. I show Derek before dawn and excuse myself from the Ratsek climb. Both my small toes are purple and the left one is a pussy mess and devoid of feeling. Later in the day Dmitry has found the medic who assures me, through interpreter Daria, that it is not frostbite; he cleans the pus and applies antiseptic gel and dressings to both feet. In the evening the procedure is repeated and this time the interpreter is Nina. Both are great company, broad smiles, grace, smooth-skinned fresh faces belying an inner toughness made obvious as they describe a multi-day, high level expedition to the 7000m Khan Tengri, one of the most shapely and beautiful peaks in the world, and certainly the jewel of the Tian Shan Range. Interesting insights also with the older, rougher-featured Russian men discussing the post-Soviet freedoms to explore and climb in Nepal and South America after the restricted yet superhard exploits within the former state between the 1960s to the 1990s.

A strange acceptance of enforced inactivity settles over the next days without any expected ‘cabin fever’. However, the altitude of 3300m and the sub-zero temperatures make recovery of damaged flesh and blackened toes unlikely. Perhaps my body is in shock for I find myself wearing six layers, including duvet, hat and using hand-warmers within fleece mitts INSIDE the hut! I’m also worrying how to get back down the challenging approach-march return to the valley, as my feet refuse to be booted. Dmitry asks if I have rescue insurance and I show him my AACUK membership card. He expresses doubt as to whether there are any available rescue services in this part of Kyrgyzstan, but walks up the moraine with his radio.

Without warning, 20 minutes later, there is a throb of ‘chopper’ blades booming above the hut. Iain offers to stuff a rucsack as I pole myself painfully up to the flattened moraine top to be squeezed as a fifth person into a four-man cabin. The pilot refuses the rucsack on weight limit grounds, and within seconds has eased the helicopter off the rocky terrain, and aiming momentarily at the icefall of the glacier, performs a 180 degree turn within the canyon and is then dropping past great rock walls into the valley below. In just 5 minutes we pass over the base camp hostel from where our 5 hour approach march started, and continue onwards towards Bishkek. I find I am squashed up against Kyrgyz Begimai and Kadyr who have chartered the helicopter to enjoy an aerial view of the mountains. They were not expecting an unscheduled landing on a glacier to share their ride with an unshaven and scruffy climber! We land on a private helipad and are offered coffee and cakes in a warm and cosy lounge. I can hardly believe my deliverance.

Begimai is enjoying a rest-day before flying to Milan to model on a fashion catwalk. I don’t know what I’m doing next, but I’m hoping it doesn’t involve the trek down the mountain. Timur, manager of Ak Sai Travel, arrives and I realise he is giving up his Sunday afternoon to drive me back to Bishkek to find a staffed hospital, which we eventually do. I am glad to have Timur’s support, nothing is straightforward. To enter we must first purchase sterile overshoes, but are then directed back outside, round the back of the hospital to the bin yard, up four flights of stairs – a challenge – and persuade a staff nurse to find two doctors. They look at both of my feet, discuss, find instruments and cut away more dead skin, certify 2nd degree frostbite burns and re-bandage. They ask for 1000 som (~£11.50), I ask for a receipt but this is impossible ‘because it is Sunday’. Timur drops me at Central Hostel where a shower and clean sheets await.

The following day the team arrives, and, in inner boots and with poles, I venture out to explore the immediate environs of the capital Bishkek, including the Dubovy Park, the main Ala-Too Sqaure, the Stalinist ‘White Horse’, statues of the mighty Manas and, demoted but not destroyed, the former Soviet icons of Vladimir Lenin, Mikhail Fronzo and, whispering together (with names removed) Marx and Engels. When my feet complain, Derek, Iain and I ride an ancient Ferris Wheel in the otherwise deserted Panfilov Park. In the evening the whole team assembles for a farewell traditional Kyrgyz meal.

The next day at the airport I am happy to be allocated three seats on which to curl up for the first leg to Istanbul, before a less comfortable 4 hour flight to Stansted. Derek helps me to a train connection north, and John Spencer delivers me directly from Central Station, Newcastle, to the Royal Victoria Infirmary to commence what becomes a 5 month journey of recovery.

During the train journey north, through the flat lands of England, I have time to reflect on my Kyrgyz adventure and the experience of frostbite. Derek, who lost a finger to frostbite in Norway, has put me in touch with two of the UK’s foremost experts in damage prevention and long-term treatment of frostbite but John Spencer assures me the Burns and Plastics Department in Newcastle’s RVI will be the best place to receive the expert attention required. Reality is only slowly dawning that such injuries take time to heal. Mountaineering literature reminds us of achievement followed by suffering: Maurice Herzog on Annapurna (1950); Hermann Buhl on Nanga Parbat (1953); Herbert Tichy on Cho Oyu (1954); and more recently Stephen Venables, Ranulph Fiennes and Jamie Andrews. Over the next few weeks and months patience and submission to incapacity will be lessons I must learn.

Throughout my hospital treatment, pre and post-operations, I am thankful for the great support, both practical and psychological. Despite the ugliness of the messed-up foot, and the frustration of prolonged non-load bearing, I am encouraged to stay positive. The wheelchair is discarded after two weeks, two crutches are replaced with one, strapped to my bike crossbar and, with cycling, comes the sweet taste of independence and speed! At one happy out-patient appointment I surrender the second crutch and walk/cycle home. Next I try pull-ups on the fingerboard over my stairs: not possible, I am completely out of condition.

Sensing my claustrophobia, John Spencer whisks me off to Crag Lough. The great Whin Sill atop (?)/beneath Hadrian’s Wall. The walk-in is a challenge. The Severe ‘Face Route’ has comfortable ledges on which I can stand up in John’s borrowed climbing shoes, four sizes too big to allow room for padded bandages.

A few days later we repeat the test with a first visit to Stanhope Ashes Quarry, but the vertical sport venue spits me out as pumped arms fail and oversized shoes cannot smear. As Jesmond Dene walks become tentative daily runs I feel ready to return to the Saturday morning Park Run on the Town Moor, with a turnout of 700 others for company. My Tuesday evening biking pals welcome me back on Day 139, and in early June I join the Climbers Club trip to the Outer Hebrides for some Lewisian gneiss sea-cliff climbing. Approaches and abseils are difficult but the climbing is safe, in spectacular surroundings, with Atlantic rollers smashing into the cliffs beneath our feet. Bryn Roberts and I fly a kite on the extensive Traigh Uige beach near where the Lewis Chessmen were discovered. Each evening we huddle round a wood-burning stove outside the campervan, exchanging stories with other CC friends. For contrast we go bike-touring through Harris and Berneray, and swim with seals off Camastianavaig on Skye.

The six month anniversary of the frostbite incident is the same week as the NMC Annual President’s Meal Meet in Langdale. I set myself the target of poling up to Gimmer Crag, and enjoy leading ‘Bracket and Slab Climb’ (Severe). The trek back down to beautiful Langdale takes its toll, but the reward is good company, a meal and a pint in the Old Dungeon Ghyll.

The very reverse is true, on both counts. I no longer set credence in being a certain ‘chronological’ age for this presumes a misplaced importance on what he have done (in the past) with our lives to date. Better, rather, to project time forwards in terms of active and meaningful life yet to come. Some gerontologists now subdivide ‘old age’ into ‘young-old’ and ‘old-old’. NMC members John Vaughan (70) and Alan Mitchum (76) have, this summer, completed ascents, respectively, of the Frendo Spur on the Aiguille du Midi and the Grand Couloir/Bosses Ridge ascent of Mont Blanc. The outcome for each, in good physical condition, is a sense of self-esteem and well-being that can only be registered as ‘off the scale’. As the columnist and novelist Lucy Kellaway recently observed ‘…..life begins (to get interesting) at sixty!’ I for one am happy to put myself in the category ‘aged adolescent’ and get on with planning the next adventure!