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The Mountain Herald podcast episode 047: Gawain Orkney (First ascent of Masherbrum Northeast face)
Transcript from: www.mountainherald.com/podcast/transcripts/episode-047
Dinadan: The Mountain Herald podcast is brought to you by Round Table Climbing, a Cardiff based guiding company for all your mountain sports needs. Whether it’s skiing, climbing, mountaineering or 8000ers, Round Table Climbing has got you covered.
Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 47 of the Mountain Herald podcast, today we have a special episode for you. Normally, this podcast focuses on bringing the spotlight onto the athletes and expeditions you might not have heard about and deserve to hear about, but today we’re breaking from that format a little bit.
Our guest today is a very acclaimed climber as well as a mountain guide, and my boss’ nephew. His latest exploit has garnered a lot of attention, both for its merits and for some less than happy reasons. But we’ll get into that more later. That’s right, today we’re sitting down to talk with Gawain Orkney, who I’m sure needs no further introduction.
He’s here to talk about his first ascent of Masherbrum’s Northeast face, without supplemental oxygen, which he accomplished with his climbing partner Lancelot du Lac, and with Lamorak Degalles, who tragically died on the mountain after summiting. Gawain, welcome to the podcast.
Gawain: Thank you, thank you. It’s a delight to be here.
Dinadan: I’m sure it is. First, and I think we need to adress it before we get really started, I was personally very saddened to hear about Lamorak Degalles passing. It’s an unfortunate truth of our sport that casualties do happen, but it doesn’t make it easier. My condolences of course go out to his family and his friends. Gawain, can you tell us a little bit about what happened?
Gawain: Yes, thank you, it’s important to start by talking about this. I’ve made my condolences personally, but I’d like to reiterate them now. Lamorak was a great climber and a stand-up guy. He will be missed. I didn’t know him too well before this expedition, but both Lancelot and I really enjoyed climbing with him and he was indispensable to our little team.
To be succint, he hit his head really hard on a fall while leading right during the descent, and died on impact. Lancelot and I did everything we could, but there was just nothing to be done. It was a huge shock, we were devastated.
This was a really personal climb for Lamorak, his father was a climber too and he died attempting the Northeast face about a decade ago. I was also on Masherbrum climbing another route when it happened, really horrible situation. Anyways, I’m happy he at least got to the summit, I know it meant a lot to him.
Dinadan: Certainly a curious coincidence, that you were there when his father passed away too.
Gawain: Yeah, it’s really tragic.
Dinadan: Well, thank you Gawain for this. Now, let’s backtrack a little bit to the beginning. How did this climb came to be?
Gawain: Well, Lancelot and I wanted to challenge ourselves and try to do a first ascent, and Masherbrum’s Northeast face is kind of notorious for its difficulty. I think someone described it as “the North Face of the Eiger with a Cerro Torre on top of it,” which, yeah, I can attest to that.
It had also been a while since we went on an expedition just the two of us, because life gets in the way and all that. But we both really enjoy just climbing together, it’s always a great time and we’re very well matched. So originally the plan was to go just the two of us.
But then, Lamorak heard through the grapevine that we were doing this (the grapevine being our mutual friend and yours, Tristan Kernow) and he contacted us, explaining why he wanted to join. We were both touched by the sentiment, so we happily accepted. And we ended up having a great time with him, he was just such a good sport.
Dinadan: Usually, you bring along a videographer, for your Youtube channel and your social media posts. Also a good friend of the pod, Palamedes Sharafi. This time, you didn’t. It was just you and the mountain. Was there a particular reason why?
Gawain: I mean, you’ve said it. It was just us and the mountain. We really wanted to just be connected to the place and to the physicality of movement. We wanted to do this climb for ourselves, without worrying about footage or social media presence. I feel like nowadays us athletes are having more than ever to make content, curate a social media presence and have this picture perfect life, for our followers and our sponsors–
Dinadan: You certainly do it more than most.
Gawain: –and it can end up taking away from the experience. I’m of course always very so grateful to my fans and to my sponsors, without whom I wouldn’t be able to do what I do, but I felt like this climb had to be just for the two – I mean three – of us.
Lancelot is not very online, as I’m sure you know, and it was nice to do things his way this time around. This is not the end of my collaboration with Palamedes, who is wonderful and with whom I’ve already got some future projects lined up.
Dinadan: Getting back to the climb, tell us a little bit about the style and logistics of this ascent.
Gawain: Right. So, we’ve done this climb alpine style, as did the team who attempted it before us. Lancelot is of course well known for his alpine ascents, and I really enjoy it too. Lamorak was very well known for expedition-style ascents, and wanted to challenge himself to do things differently. I don’t really have a marked preference in terms of style, but I find the stuff Lancelot does really beautiful, in terms of purity of style et cetera, so I always cherish opportunities to learn from him.
Dinadan: And in total it took you six days, right?
Gawain: Yes. It really is such a laborious climb, with a lot of different and difficult terrains. It’s really exposed and you’re constantly at a very high risk of avalanches, rockfall, serac fall, so we had to balance being as fast as we could and being prudent about weather conditions.
We ended up stopping for longer than we thought at Camp III, waiting for the wind to calm down. We wanted to make sure we were prioritizing safety whenever possible. And when you’re done finding your way through this maze of, like, seracs, steep rock, ice climbing, everything, you’re so close you can taste it, and you’ve still got this crazy headwall that separates you from the summit.
I mean, it looked intimidating from Base Camp already, but when we were right underneath it and had to just, start climbing, I think we all felt a shiver. It’s just really imposing. It was mixed climbing all the way up, and Lancelot leaded that just splendidly. He always makes climbing look like ballet. I’ve never seen someone look so graceful while holding ice axes.
Dinadan: Yeah, Lancelot is a beautiful climber. I was climbing with him for a while, I think this was before you guys really met, and it was always an absolute wonder.
Gawain: Before you traded your ice axe for a keyboard and your crampons for house slippers?
Dinadan: Sure, you can put it that way. Before my injury with Tristan and Iseult on Cordón Mariano Moreno.
Gawain: Man, it’s crazy how much time has gone by.
Dinadan: It sure is.
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Gawain: Well, you’ve got to make your money somehow.
Dinadan: …You’ve talked about the mountain being at high risk of avalanches, rockfall and serac falls. Can you talk a little bit about how you managed that, and what was your outlook towards it?
Gawain: Yeah, so Masherbrum in general but especially this Northeast face is pretty insidious when it comes to that sort of thing. I think partly we all just really wanted it, so we were all knowingly taking that risk and facing it. ‘Cause the precautions you can take only take you so far, it would be pretty naive to claim otherwise. That being said, we tried of course to always climb at night and early in the morning, and to keep moving as fast as we could through the more dangerous sections.
The topic of risk is one that’s talked about a lot in our sport, especially as of late, and you’ve had some great conversations about it on this podcast, so I doubt I’ll have much to add to that. Risk management is important, of course, and we’ve definitely come a long way in terms of technology. I mean, equipment, of course, but also weather forecasting and all that jazz.
My school of thought is that you have to learn to be comfortable with the existence of danger, it’s what makes our sport what it is. Like, if mountaineering was 100% safe it woudn’t be any different from a walk in the park. Not that that’s 100% safe. You never know, maybe a lion escaped from the zoo or something. In the end, there’s some risks you just can’t predict. In this case, what happened to Lamorak, it’s not something we could expect or try to prevent.
I think people are coming up with so many explainations on how it could have been avoided, blaming distraction, his or mine or Lancelot’s, and all sorts of other reasons. But when you’re there, you’re in the moment, things just happen. They do, even you’ve done everything you could to be safe, and if they do then it’s a terrible tragedy and there’s nothing to be said or done about it. All we can do is mourn and do that while respecting the decisions he made.
Dinadan: That’s definitely one way to think about it. So, despite the difficult climbing and the precarious conditions, you guys managed to summit, making the first ascent of the Northeast face of Masherbum, which was considered among the greatest unsolved problems of mountaineering. How did it feel to reach the summit?
Gawain: To be honest, it felt great. We had left our last bivouac in the middle of the night, so when we finally reached the top it was dawn. The weather conditions were great, we had just the most stunning view of the morning light hitting whole area, all the way to K2, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak and everything.
That’s always the most beautiful part. All the suffering and tiredness of the ascent, the apprehension for the descent, they all melt away for that brief moment. It’s a magical thing to share with a partner. And Lamorak too, of course, was very happy. As I mentioned, it was a really significant moment for him. I think he left a picture of his father on the summit or something like that. And we all had a great climb behind us to be proud of, so it was just a beautiful moment of taking that in.
We didn’t stay there as much as we’d have liked to, ‘cause we wanted to get down as fast as we could before temperatures rose, so we just had a quick cup of tea to rest on our laurels just a little bit before taking off.
Now, this is the really hard part to tell. We were proper off the summit pyramid and Lamorak was leading on a pretty exposed part. Everything was going swimmingly until I felt the rope pull me down and heard a scream. Lamorak had put his weight onto some ice that I guess was just not stable enough to hold him and it collapsed under him.
Lancelot and I managed to self-arrest, but Lamorak hit his head pretty badly in the fall. When he didn’t respond to our cries we thought maybe he had fainted, and we managed to haul him up. It was kind of tough terrain to do that, not really stable and all, but Lancelot is just really strong so we were able to get him up pretty fast.
Sadly, when we had hauled him up, we realised he wasn’t breathing. We tried CPR and everything, but nothing worked. At some point we just had to go and we had to leave him there, we were really devastated and shaken but when youre in the mountains time is a big issue, and we still had a big portion of the descent ahead of us.
Dinadan: I’ts deeply sad that such a great and competent mountaineer, one of the best, had to go in such a way.
Gawain: There’s definitely a tragic irony whenever someone sadly dies while descending.
Dinadan: Now, Gawain, if you’ll forgive me for asking, theres been a lot of scrutiny and speculation upon your return from this expedition. People are insinuating that there was bad blood between you and Lamorak, putting the events under a magnifying glass. What are your thoughts on this?
Gawain: I think it’s absurd and, apologies, quite scummy. I’m gonna put it to rest once and for all: No, there was never any bad blood between me and Lamorak. I had only met him in passing before leaving for Pakistan this summer. And once we properly met we got along swimmingly, and he was a great climber so there were no issues with that.
Like everything in today’s media landscape, everything has to get polarised to get people’s attention. I think it’s really distasteful that the media are spreading these baseless rumors around just to get clicks or views or what, over such a tragic event. It’s exploitative.
Dinadan: Somehow, I was also under the impression that you guys didn’t get along.
Gawain: I don’t know how you could have possibly gotten that impression. I only really got to know him this summer, and found him a pleasure to have around. We went out drinking once back in Scotland, where I’m based, before leaving for Pakistan. That man could drink me under the table. Good times. So, yeah, I think people are just trying to find ways to profit off a tragedy. These are the times when I envy Lancelot’s very offline lifestyle, to be honest.
Dinadan: Don’t we all… Now, I’ve heard that there’s been talk of recovering Lamorak’s body. Are you going to participate in the mission, should it come to fruition?
Gawain: I think it’s either a little late or a little early to talk about it now. Even right after, it would have been nigh impossible for me and Lancelot to do anything to bring Lamorak’s body down with us, and Lancelot and I were absolutely exhausted by the whole week of climbing. With the season wrapping up now, and conditions worsening, we’re gonna have to wait until next summer for an attempt to recover his body to be possible.
Generally speaking, this is a mountain face that’s just been climbed for the first time, so going up there a second time will not be an easy feat. I suppose, when the time comes I’ll be thinking about it. But I think it’s important to be safe, and not to lose more lives on a body recovery mission.
Dinadan: My producer is unfortunately telling me we’re quickly running out of time and need to wrap this up. So, Gawain, before we go, do you want to tell our listeners anything about your future plans?
Gawain: After this whole experience I’m taking some time to rest and process everything. Then in December I’m going to be leaving for Nepal with Lancelot and my brother Agravaine, where we’re going to try climbing winter Manaslu without supplemental oxygen. So that’s exciting. But yeah, for now I’m resting, reflecting, spending time with family and loved ones.
Dinadan: Well then, if we don’t cross paths before then, best of luck for Manaslu, and thank you for stopping by the pod. Thank you everyone for listening as well, this was a different and heavier episode than what I normally do, and we’ll be back next week with out regularly scheduled programming, so to speak. Have a great weekend, get outside, and I’ll see you next week as usual.
***
In front of them, Lamorak was swiftly walking down a ridge. Gawain looked down, then turned around to look at Lancelot. He raised his eyebrows slightly. At this, Gawain knelt down and picked up a large rock that was right in front of his feet.
He picked up the pace a little, silently creeping up behind Lamorak. Slowly, Gawain raised the rock above his head. He struck Lamorak in the nape with one clean hit. Before he could even scream, Lamorak hit the ground.
Lancelot caught up with him and put a hand on Gawain’s shoulder. Together, they cut Lamorak off the rope that held them together and left him there. Some hundred meters below, Lancelot dug a hole in the snow with his ice axe. Gawain put the bloody rock in it and covered it with snow. Together, they kept climbing down.