Devtoli and the great fall and rise of Harish Kapadia
Devtoli and the great fall and rise of Harish Kapadia
It was a happy reunion at Camp II (6,187m) on Devtoli. Around noon on 13 June 1974, the summit party comprising Harish Kapadia, Mahesh Desai, Nima Dorje and Jagat Singh had pulled off the first ascent of the 6,788-metre mountain in Uttarakhand. After a quick rendezvous, they continued their descent to lower camps.
Zerksis Boga and Subash Desai looked forward to their own climb the following day as part of the second team. But when they turned to follow the progress of their descending mates, they realised something was gravely wrong. The party had come to a halt lower down. And they were now a man short.
They quickly followed their trail in the snow and arrived at the spot. The men were looking down a crevasse. As Boga peeped over the edge, he saw Kapadia lying at the bottom of it. Time was running out and he knew he had to act fast.
***
Devtoli lies to the south of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary in the Kumaon Himalaya. This peak is among the many towering sentinels that guard Nanda Devi (7,816m) – the highest mountain that lies entirely in India. It is a part of the range that connects Mrigthuni to the west and Maiktoli to the south-east, both of which had seen first ascents in the past. It made Devtoli an enticing prospect for a group of young students from “The Mountaineers” club in Bombay.
“Devtoli was an unnamed peak at the time. It is the exact dividing line between the outer and inner Sanctuary. And it looks down to the south, so we thought it could be a good opportunity to go there,” Kapadia says, sitting easy in the comfort of his living room in Mumbai.
“The route we had planned took us to the south Sanctuary, from where we would follow the Rishi glacier and move to the upper slopes to get to the summit,” he adds.
The team comprised Mahesh Desai, Subash Desai, Dilip Sardesai and Deepak Sahkari, a student of medicine. Kapadia and Boga were the more experienced climbers, who shared a tight bond after all that they had experienced in the high mountains.
On their first expedition in 1969, they were caught in an avalanche on Tharkot. Boga was buried under the snow, until Kapadia had come to his rescue. The accident left him with a fracture to the skull and collarbone, besides a couple of broken ribs. Two years later on an expedition to Bethartoli Himal, four teammates had been swept away by another avalanche.
“I had a bad feeling on Bethartoli and had refused to go to the summit. And Jaro (fatso, Boga’s nickname for Kapadia) had told me – Bawaji, you are just scared. But I have always followed my intuition in the mountains,” Boga says over the phone from the United States.
As they would soon realise, things were going to be no different on Devtoli.
***
The railway strike of 1974 made things difficult even before the team got to the mountain. They crammed into a crowded bogie along with the bulky bags of equipment to get to Haridwar, before taking on the long drive to Joshimath. On arrival, they had to move to a smaller bus to get to the road head at Lata.
“But we had no diesel, so the driver smuggled some from the army cantonment at Joshimath. It was a low budget expedition – if you compare it to the ones today, it would seem almost free,” Kapadia says.
At Lata, they united with their support team comprising local men and two Sherpas from Darjeeling. The expedition gear was distributed among the porters, while the ration was packed into sacks and loaded on goats that scrambled alongside them over the next few days.
***
The route into the Sanctuary – the motivation back then was to get to the base of Nanda Devi – had perplexed explorers for many decades. The mountain lies at the centre of two concentric rings of tall mountains, making any approach over the high passes an arduous one. The only feasible path was realised to be through the Rishi Ganga gorge. The Bombay boys had their own struggles to just get to the start of this gorge.
“From Lata, there’s a steep 5,000 feet climb to get to Lata Kharak. Then there are complicated ridges to navigate to get to Dharanshi Pass, before figuring out the right nullah to get to Malathuni. After that, you climb again to Malathuni Pass and descend around 4,500 feet to get to Dibrugheta and Ramani, where the gorge begins. It’s a complicated affair,” Kapadia says.
“It wasn’t a well trodden path and since no locals would go there, the only idea we had about the route was through Shipton’s writing,” he adds.
The steep walls of the gorge had been a tricky affair even for legendary British explorers, Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman, who eventually forged a way to the base of Nanda Devi in 1934. Looking into the gorge from a vantage point, Shipton recorded his observation in the book, Nanda Devi:
“It was a most fantastic sight; but then, ‘fantastic’ is the only way to describe the Rishi Ganga. The cliffs fell away almost sheer for 5,000 feet into the stream, which though by no means big thundered with a roar like Niagara. No wonder superstitions concerning the place abound – it was a ghostly feeling to look down into those inaccessible depths.”
Many decades later, it was no different for the team of youngsters. They had to traverse up and down steep, scree-laden slopes, and smooth, glistening slabs alike, making multiple ferries to get the loads across the gorge. Boga recalls the team setting up fixed ropes in parts, especially at a sketchy section called the Vaikunth Gully.
“Vaikunth means heaven. This was a narrow path cut into the rock, with heaven at either end. It was really steep, so it looked like you were climbing to heaven. And if you slipped and fell into the Rishi Ganga river, then too you would go to heaven,” Kapadia says, laughing.
Nine days into the march, the team finally arrived at base camp. After two days of rest, they started establishing higher camps.
***
Also Read
Baljeet Kaur, Mt Everest and the conquest of challenges
‘She’s given meaning to my life’: At 88, Bill Aitken’s love for Nanda Devi remains as young as ever
Trisul I, abode of Lord Shiva and a test for mountaineers
High on the hills! How Anurag Nallavelli conquered his fears and mountain summits
Bouldering ‘problems’ motivate many for first ascent as rock climbing gains popularity in India
Nirmal ‘Nimsdai’ Purja and his Himalayan mission to keep Everest free of trash mountains
***
“This area has a unique phenomenon. Post noon, the valley is full of clouds. Then it starts raining heavily, even leading to storms. Once the clouds lose their strength, they disappear and normalcy returns. We used to call this ‘the Matinee Show’. And we developed our style accordingly – setting up tents at the next camp at the appropriate hour, watching the drama unfold, before returning to the lower camp when on a ferry,” Kapadia says.
Boga too had made his observations while opening the route. He had noticed a gaping crevasse, about 20 feet long, that could be traversed via the snow bridge across it. But this was possible only in low temperatures when it was frozen, else the team had to take a half mile detour to get across it. He knew this would be a tricky proposition as the day warmed up and had warned his teammates about it.
“It wasn’t a technical mountain, but it had a lot of objective dangers like seracs and crevasses. The terrain would change as the slow melted. It’s exactly what happened – the snow bridge collapsed, leading to the accident,” Boga says.
“Then of course, in the euphoria of making the summit, one tends to feel like nothing can happen as you are on familiar terrain. And that is exactly when something happens,” he adds.
***
After falling into the crevasse, Kapadia hung onto the rope for 30 minutes, awaiting rescue. Attempts were made to pull him out, but the friction only caused the rope to sink deeper into the solid ice at the lip of the crevasse.
“I was suspended right in the middle, some 30 feet away from the wall. There were no harnesses at the time, and we simply tied the rope around the waist. And it was now constricting my chest,” Kapadia says.
He was soon struggling to breathe, the ordeal compounded by the thin air at that altitude (about 6,096m). A decision had to be made. Kapadia reached out for the knife in his pocket. In a flash, the taut, frozen rope snapped, dropping him to the bottom of the crevasse.
“About hundred feet below I saw snow, but didn’t realise there was hard ice under it. With a 20kg rucksack, I landed awkwardly and felt a shooting pain on the left. Only later was it diagnosed as dislocation of the hip,” he adds.
He lay writhing in pain for an hour and a half, before Boga reached him with warm layers, dry fruits and chocolates.
“Jaro was in bad condition. I realised his leg had slipped out of the socket, so I had to immobilise it. After securing him with slings and short ropes, I called out to the surface team to begin hauling him. The pulley system we had devised made the job a lot easier,” Boga recalls.
After over two hours since the accident, Kapadia was finally pulled out late evening and taken to the camp they had established nearby. The following morning, they created a makeshift sledge from a tent and started dragging him on the snow.
“My left leg had to be bent all the time. It was alright when I wasn’t moving, but while in motion, there would be shooting pain,” Kapadia says.
A flurry of cuss words would fill the tranquil mountain air, each time he would go over a bump and land with a thud. Things got even trickier once the snow ended and an area laden with rocks began. Kapadia had to be carried on someone’s back, connected at the waist by a rope. A stocky local teammate, Lakshman Singh, volunteered to tackle this rather unusual load, while two others held his hands to keep him steady.
“We would stop every 100 steps when Lakshman Singh wanted to catch his breath. Or if I was screaming in pain,” Kapadia says.
A runner was sent down to Joshimath to request the Indian Army for a helicopter evacuation. For the rest of the party, it was tedious progress each day. To Lakshman Singh’s relief, they found some old wood and prepared an improvised stretcher. Four days after the accident, they finally walked into base camp (4,206m). With monsoon in the air, the others continued on the return march to civilisation, while Kapadia and Boga settled in, awaiting the helicopter ride.
“Those two days at base camp really tested my mental state. Whenever I heard a sound, whether it was the sputtering stove or the tent flapping in the wind, I would think that the helicopter had arrived. It really played with my mind,” Kapadia says.
“He was affected more psychologically, than physically. I had to ensure his morale was high until the helicopter arrived. So even though I knew there was nothing, I would step outside the tent to check each time he said he heard something,” Boga says.
When the helicopter finally arrived, Kapadia’s spirits rose. He even insisted the stretcher be placed at the front, so that he could make photos of the landscape from above. He was taken to Bareilly, where they performed a procedure to set his joint right. For the next six weeks, a plaster hugged him from his chest to below the knees.
“Devtoli always leaves me with mixed feelings, somewhere between triumph and relief,” Kapadia says.
Kapadia’s accident created great interest in the Bombay press and made front-page news. After a lengthy period of convalescence stretching almost two years, he was cleared to wander the outdoors again. He instantly called Boga, and the duo set off on a 400km trek through the mountains of Sikkim.
In 1979, they teamed up yet again to make the first ascent of Chiring We – this time around, they stood atop the summit together.
“When I was born, an astrologer had said this boy will get very famous at age 28. I think what he really meant was infamous,” Kapadia says, laughing.
The author is a freelance writer from Mumbai who thrives on narrating a good story. Views expressed are personal.
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,
India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
What's Your Reaction?
