– Chapter 2 –

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In the middle of the afternoon on 15 October 1982, Alex MacIntyre and the French/Italian climber René Ghilini reached a steep rock band at around 7,200 metres on the south face of Annapurna. The south face is one of the great walls of the Himalaya, a complex assortment of buttresses and steep couloirs three miles wide and a mile and a half high. Of the fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres, Annapurna has claimed the most lives for each attempt. Alex and René were trying a new route, a diagonal line starting from the right side of the face that would eventually lead them to the central summit. If successful, it would be the fourth route on the face. The three main buttresses had already been climbed by large ‘national’ expeditions. In 1970, a British team led by Chris Bonington climbed what was then the most difficult route on an eight-thousander. It went directly up the far left buttress to the highest of Annapurna’s three summits. The Poles climbed the central buttress in May 1981 and the Japanese the right pillar in October 1981. All three of these expeditions comprised many members and climbing the mountain took months with fixed ropes and permanent camps. Alex and René planned to climb the face in three days with two more in descent, just the two of them. If they failed on this attempt, they would be back to try again.

Together they surveyed the possibilities for climbing the thirty-metre wall that now blocked their progress. From base camp it seemed inconsequential, the width of a pencil set against a two-storey house. A tempting snow ramp led left, perhaps all the way to open snow slopes on the other side, but after sixty metres, the ramp narrowed to a thin smear of ice and then there was just a sweep of compact rock. It was impossible. They retreated to a crevasse at the start of the ramp and prepared to bivouac. Climbing safely down the 800-metre couloir to the foot of the face, they would have to start at dawn, while the mountain was still frozen. Brewing drinks, they discussed what equipment they would need to get past this band of rock on the next attempt.

It was after dawn by the time they started down. They were slowed by the initial difficult descent into the couloir. The sun reached the top of the face and slowly descended in a yellow veil toward them, growing stronger. At around 10 a.m., the two men were about halfway down the couloir. From below, where I sat watching them, they were two tiny specks in a sea of snow and rock. Then, in a moment, fate rushed to meet Alex in the form of a fist-sized stone accelerating from half a mile above. It smashed into his helmet with the accuracy of a sniper’s bullet. He crumpled then fell the remaining 400 metres down the couloir.

René clung to his ice axes, stunned for a moment, and then called Alex’s name. When there was no response, he descended as quickly as possible in a semi self arrest, kicking his crampons into the softening snow while jabbing his axes above his head in a controlled fall. When he reached Alex’s lifeless body, he understood death had been almost certainly instantaneous. There was nothing he could do. He forced himself to be calm, to control his own shock and continue his retreat alone. He placed the body in a recess just above a crevasse and marked the spot with Alex’s ice axes holding him to the face. Then he raced the remaining four hours toward base camp on the opposite side of the glacier.

I met him halfway across. I had been watching from the lateral moraine just above base camp and seen the accident through the lens of my camera. Al