Between Heaven and Hell - the Basic Mountaineering Course

Before

The sun is yet to emerge from its dark womb and the rooster’s siren, still submerged in twilight’s heavy breath. But the day is shaken awake by a false dawn of flickering flash-lights. And footsteps pounding on the false ceiling above. Batch 282 of the Basic Mountaineering Course at the Directorate of Mountaineering and Allied Sports (DMAS), Manali, is drawn out of its cozy blankets and quartered into ropes on the campus PT Ground.

Batch 282 was a motley mix of 80 individuals between 15 and 45 with little in common except for an unhealthy obsession with mountains and an inexplicable appetite for physical pain. There was a bunch of local Himachalis for whom the rigor of the course was just an extension of their rugged lifestyles; students from Army and sports schools hoping (somewhat optimistically in hindsight) for an easy way out of their annual examinations; officers from the Police and the Armed Forces looking to broaden their horizons while lengthening their CVs; and finally, urban slouches like myself, lured by the cool sound-bites and fancy equipment of adventure-television gods, oblivious to the sweat and toil behind their glamorous façades. Or what sleeping in those beautiful snow-covered tents really felt like…

Tied Down

The first task at hand was to figure out a way to segment our batch into ropes. The “rope” referred to a 60 meters long coil made of some of the strongest fibers known to man….and to the 8 course-members tethered to it. Your rope is the guys you will sleep with, the guys you will eat with, the guys you will climb with…The rope will pull you up when you are down and drag you to your death. The rope is the fundamental unit of social organization in a mountaineering expedition.

My own rope coiled around me after a random allocation process that included a 200 metre sprint the purpose of which was never entirely clear - 8 guys, 2 countries, 2.5 generations, 6 languages, 3 social strata. Antakshari inside the tent until 1 in the morning. The only ice seemed to be in the mountains up above!

Picnic at Hanging Rock

“Yes Sir” is a phrase of considerable utility in the aspiring mountaineer’s vocabulary. “Faster boys!” “Yessir!”. “Give me ten!” “Yessir!” “Nincompoop!” “Yessir!”…Day 1 of the 26 day program began with a red-eye “fully geared” run (rucksack included) around Manali’s undulating streets. “We’ll take things easy on the first day” chirped our course leader, patting my burdened back, “just a light jog, eh?!”. I was not inclined to let his outrageous suggestion pass without protest but considering my rapidly worsening wheeze and the possibility of my already constrained physical resources being further taxed with a “punishment”, “Yessir” seemed as sensible a response as any…We trundled past Bengali and Gujarati vacationers, our ungainly strides amusing them as much as our trainers’ colorfully-worded reprimands, encouraging the onlookers to throw in some of their own epithets. A child tugged at the ice-axe slipping out of my sack and a pebble bounced off my helmet. Unpleasant, I told myself stoically, but infinitely better than falling into a crevasse or being buried in an avalanche.

The persecution of our muscles and sinews continued through the first week, breaking down the defenses of fats and lipids tucked away in remote recesses of the body that had, until then, stood their ground against the most determined diets and gym sessions. The physical intensity of “morning PT” would typically be followed by activities that demanded more than just strength and stamina. The “Holds” and “grips” that lead a climber to the top of a sheer rock exist not so much on its walls as in the chisel of the mind and the hammer of the spirit. Arms and legs are but supporting actors in the will’s scramble get a handle on success’ craggy, capricious face...now an impossibly smooth boulder to scale, now a vertiginous drop to rappel down; now a freezing, vicious torrent to cross…but we were still in Manali – the glaciers, moraines and ice-walls were yet to come.

Axed

By the tenth day, we were deemed sufficiently cleansed of our sloth and frailty to be tested out in the mountains. My rucksack, already bloated thanks to a daily diet of sundry climbing aids, now had to swallow a pair of clunky mountaineering boots! Struggling to get my freshly reinforced frame on my feet, I betted heavily against my making it even as far as the campus gate but many breathless hours later, DMAS’ ski lodge at Solang, 15 Kms from Manali, turned out to be a stiff but surmountable challenge.

Our first brush with the snow was at the 4400 metre peak of Patalsu. Winter had overstayed its welcome in Himachal, hibernating inside its white sheets even though May was well underway. As a result, our target, normally a “non-technical” peak in summer, was judged unsuitable for a troupe of half-baked Hillaries and we were turned back, some 500 metres short of the summit.

The delayed departure of the snow made for an interesting afternoon when we arrived at our training base camp at Bakkarthatch, a couple of days later. A patchwork of campsites lay scattered around a mound of sodden earth that was presently embalmed in the last vestiges of winter, indistinguishable from the snowfields that stretched for miles around. A return to our previous camp of Dhundhi was briefly considered but with 80 able, if less than willing, young men at hand, the course in-charge clearly had options. Orders were barked, sacks opened, and ice axes, shovels and picks pressed into service, swinging in frenzied arcs between the dazzling sun above and the glistening snow below. The archaeological divertissement was an expectedly onerous one, beset with oxygen malnourishment and exposure to a treacherous spectrum of temperatures - from the coruscating intensity of the heat on our backs to the numbing cold chewing on our fingers. But our homing instinct eventually proved powerful enough to rescue the entombed base camp from over 5 feet of snow. I collapsed on the freshly leveled campsite to claim my reward for an utterly exhausting day – the sight of the vast white trampoline that was Bakkarthatch, hooked on to a cirque of towering poles, all over 5000 metres in height.

The five days of physical labour that it took us to get from Manali to Bakkarthatch had me itching to get my hands on the curious implements that had burdened my journey. The next few days assured me that all of them had their uses for surviving the perilous vicissitudes of life over 4000 metres. But a workman needs more than just tools – standing on the edge of a sheer snow slope, preparing for a backward roll, all the preceding lectures about the commendable properties of the ice-axe in arresting a fall, felt about as reassuring as a politician’s promises. Ropes that would bend and twist at my every command back in Manali, assumed a stiff, icy and altogether uncooperative attitude in the mountains, chafing at my fingers and tying up my emaciated mental resources in knots more complicated than has ever been used in a climbing expedition. Ice proved a still harder nut to crack –tired, flailing ice-axes bounced off its unyielding walls in a pathetic imitation of the furiously energetic ice-climbs we were shown in the training videos!

26 days of training, I discovered, were somewhat inadequate to overcome the inherent ungainliness of a city-dweller but while my evolution into a mountain goat is still a few births away, I suppose I had imbibed enough to clear the battery of tests we were put through on our last few days (although to put things in perspective I am hard pressed to think of anyone who didn’t!).

Over the Edge

Kshitidhar was adorned with strings of black pearls that seemed to slithering, ever so slowly, up its slender neck. The molested mountain shook with fright and anger. Her tresses, white with rage, came undone and cascaded down her tremulous sides….I was at 16500 feet – at that altitude, it is not uncommon for the senses to indulge in a few games with the mind. But if I was unhinged, I was joined in my hallucination by a dozen-odd pairs of eyes, all of which were riveted on the same incredible spectacle. A rasping walkie-talkie shoved what seemed to be a wild illusion, firmly in the direction of reality…“The avalanche has passed and the white-out should clear shortly. Keep on the ridge – you’ll make it!!”

I was about half an hour late for an appointment with the top of Kshithidhar, which presently bore the burden of 20 of my batch-mates. Tired though I was after a 6 hour trek over 1500 metres, it was utterly frustrating to be stuck at the base camp while my colleagues were celebrating on top, just 400 metres above. But the rules were clear and made known to everyone before we left Backaerthatch: “Only three ropes – first come, first served”. That meant 20 members - I had reported into base camp at about 30. The consolation was that I had attained the qualifying height. Besides, our grueling stint in the mountains was now coming to an end.

All that now stood between me and civilization was a night of “jungle survival”. The clump of birches and firs amidst grassy slopes we were led to, 5 Kms from Solang, seemed to be stretching the definition of a jungle. Nor did the bears and leopards that purportedly ran rampage therein seem anything worse than a product of our instructors’ malicious imagination. Nevertheless, a stronger-than-usual evening shower and our arrival after sunset meant that this final hurdle of the Mountaineering Course was not entirely without its challenges. An enterprising rope-mate strung together a temporary shelter using our raincoats and although the wet earth continually pushed us down its slippery slope, my jungle survival experience largely involved snoring through an intense REM sleep.

Passed Out

The “passing-out ceremony” was a tad less glamorous than I might have hoped. No delirious crowds to wave my medals at – instead, a pitter-patter of feeble claps from my rope-mates, half of whom were busy being festooned with sundry trappings of mountaineering accomplishments themselves. The lunch that followed was certainly an improvement on the staple of rice and dal that we endured at Bakkarthatch but with trains and buses to catch, we were unable to fully savor the release of our repressed gastronomic desires.

The final hours at the mountaineering institute were charged with the sort of intense warmth that surrounds people who’ve been through a period of intense bonding but whose lives are unlikely to offer too many points of convergence in future. Not so much like a college farewell which alloys the despair of parting with the promise of continuity …More like a torrid affair that leaves nothing to be salvaged once its embers are extinguished….

Hung

The new joiners are just being bussed in. Batch 283 will be put through the punishing routine shortly. The heat of the training program will weld complete strangers into bosom buddies, ties that will be further reinforced by the ropes they are allocated to – stiff, gnarly little devils that constantly cut into your hands. Crude hill folk, pompous army-men, silly school-children. But up there, the only thing that stands between you and the deep gorges in the folds of the mountains…and the still deeper chasms in the folds of the mind.

The knots are gone now. My hands are free once again and the spirit soars to survey its re-annexed territories – much like the Golden Eagle that was the object of its envy during my confinement at Backerthatch. Yet there remains in these fickle fingers, a curious twitching for those ghastly ropes, irreconcilable with the calluses and cuts they’ve caused all over. The longing isn’t exactly an overpowering one – I’m done with knots and anchors and icy wastelands for the time being…but I know the scattered rope is regrouping even as I rediscover freedom….
The noose will begin tightening soon. It will get me in the end.

After