David Rose - Regions of the Heart: The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves

Paul Nunn was tragically killed six days before Alison in an accident on Haramosh II, a mountain in the same range as K2.

Mallorys body was found in 1999.

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First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1999
Published in Penguin Books with a new afterword 2019

Copyright David Rose and Ed Douglas, 1999
Afterword copyright David Rose, 2019

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover image Tom Frost

ISBN: 978-1-405-94389-5

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For a few moments more Alison Hargreaves lingers in the dark shelter of her tent. Her mind is racing with excitement, a free-wheel release from tension after days of bad weather have forced her to sit still at base camp and do nothing but fret. As though shes leaving the house to go on holiday, Alison forces herself to stop and run through the list of things she has to remember, tracing the thin beam of her torch across the tents floor. If she forgets something now, her chance of climbing K2 may be lost.

She looks at her rucksack and thinks about each item, the layers of fleece clothing to insulate her body from the penetrating cold of high altitude, as she tightens the laces of her boots, battery-heated to keep the blood flowing to her toes and to protect her from frostbite. She imagines her hands inside her multi-layered mittens grasping her ice axe, its shaft scratched and worn from use; sees herself looking from behind dark glasses through half the air of sea level at the glare of the sun. She feels the warm thickness of her down-filled suit, the thin crackle of her windsuit, the hood wrapped around her head adding to the disorientation, the strange, dreamy world of high altitude. She hears the rasp of her breathing, the constant haul of her lungs on the depleted oxygen. Sometimes she has felt that this is all she is, two desperate lungs and the will to keep going.

Every item in her rucksack has a purpose; nothing extraneous is left in. Every ounce has to be carried on her back, and she wants nothing that will merely weigh her down. Alison has always been practical and logical in preparing for a mountain, arranging the gear in her tent better than any man she has climbed with so that everything she needs is close at hand. She has climbed alone for years and knows the full meaning of self-reliance.

Outside, in the indigo night, the sole remaining member of her expedition is also preparing to depart. They are committed to climbing together but they are new friends; they have not shared a rope before this expedition. She wont be alone on the mountain, but she is prepared to be, if it means success. The sky is washed with stars and dagger cold, promising a clear dawn. They are leaving now to make good progress before the sun rises, draining their energy even as it softens the snow.

In a separate base camp close by, other climbers move about their tents, preparing to leave with them. They are part of a different expedition. Alison knows and likes them, but they are no more than affable half-friends, sharing a common interest but not a common life. They know little of what she is facing at home. As she pauses inside her tent, those closest to her, those who know her and love her best are thousands of miles away.

Her children, Tom and Kate, the centre of her universe, will still be asleep at home in Scotland, breathing evenly in their warm beds, unconscious of her. She has thought often, in the previous days of bad weather and frustration, about their tearful parting weeks before. She was home for only two weeks after her triumphant return from Everest and much of that fortnight was given over to media interviews and meetings. At night she has cried in her tent with her longing to be home. She can see their faces, wonders how they will have grown or changed; wonders how they will be with her when she returns. The end of the expedition is near. When she comes down the mountain, she will be coming down to them. She will be putting them to bed herself in only two weeks.

In the cold tent she thinks about her husband. Her marriage has stuttered and she has agonized over whether and how she should finish it. The tension is there with her at K2 base camp, in the strained letters and faxes she has sent and received from home. Piled on top of this emotional confusion is her fear about money. She is here because she thinks she has to be, trying to climb for her living, trying to do something that will secure the new future she is planning for herself and her children. She thinks about the freedom she felt as a young climber. All these things have whirled round her mind as she sat killing time beneath the mountain for day after day, waiting for her life to start again.

Beyond the thin nylon skin of her tent, the mass of K2 soars 11,000 feet above the glacier, a huge bulk of snow, ice and rock reaching into space. She has already climbed all but the last 2,000, so the first part of her journey to the summit will be on familiar ground. It should take her three or four days to the top and another two to come down and start on the long trail home. Less than a week. Still, she cant escape a tightening in her stomach as she contemplates the final unknown section.

In Britain she tried to shrug off K2s reputation. Now she has plenty of first-hand experience, knows how quickly the weather can change and how bad it can be on the worlds second-highest mountain. Climbers coming down have been trapped by bad weather, forced to linger in the too-thin air, growing weaker, the life slowly fading from them. She knows that only four women have reached the summit and two of them died trying to get back down. The ascent looms over her, nagging at her consciousness. Nothing can progress until she has finished with this examination she has set herself. After that she can turn to the rest of her life.

Spread around her tent are things from home. Face creams to protect her skin from the strong sunlight, notes she has faxed to her children. They are the links with her other life that has dragged at her heels in the long weeks on the stony glacier, her mood lifting and falling along with the capricious weather. Each time she has gone on the mountain Alison has felt she was closer to going home; each time she has come back unsuccessful she has felt the urge to throw it all up and go back to her children. But there are people at home who expect her to do well. She expects herself to do well. When will she have this chance again? She looks around the tent one last time. When she comes back it will all seem different. Then she zips the door shut, and goes out into the darkness of the early morning to climb the mountain.