by Ed Viesturs
At base camp, James Morris, working for the London Times, used runners and coded messages to get word of the triumph back to Britain at the very moment that Queen Elizabeth II was being crowned. An already giddy crowd went wild at the news. Some wit later called that event “the last great day in the British Empire.”
The expedition was carried out so efficiently that it seemed to proceed like clockwork. Hunt’s straightforward account of the climb, The Ascent of Everest, with its zest for logistical detail, reads at times as a methodical narrative of inevitable success. If there was high drama within the party, most of it escapes the book.
The most piquant details from the expedition were left out of Hunt’s book, to emerge later only in rumor or in the retrospective musings of the climbers. As he descended from the summit, Hillary’s blunt yet immortal first words to his teammate and fellow Kiwi George Lowe were “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off!” For several years, journalists frenziedly sought to learn which one of the conquerors was the first to set foot on top. Climbers know that that precedence was irrelevant, but Hillary and Tenzing had pledged each other to secrecy on the matter. It was actually Tenzing, in Tiger of the Snows, the biography written by James Ramsey Ullman, who first revealed that Hillary had been first on the rope and had stood on top moments before Tenzing had.
Hillary’s first act on reaching the summit was not to cheer with joy or embrace his partner, but to peer down the northeast ridge, hoping not to find any sign that Mallory and Irvine might have gotten there twenty-nine years earlier.
One of the few hints of discord came from Tom Bourdillon, the strongest technical climber on the team. He told his best friend on the expedition, Michael Westmacott, that he was sure he could have made the summit, had Charles Evans not run out of energy on the South Summit. Turning around, Westmacott recalled fifty years later, “was a decision Tom always regretted.” Others in the team, however, were convinced that both men would have perished had they pushed beyond the South Summit.
Bourdillon was killed in a fall in the Swiss Alps in 1956. Outside the world of Himalayan connoisseurs, he remains a forgotten figure today.
For the rest of his life, Tenzing resented the fact that the ascent of Everest had made Hillary the most famous climber in history, while he, as a Sherpa, became not even a close second. Recognizing that injustice, the expedition leader Russell Brice (himself a New Zealander), who has often been criticized for taking large sums of money to guide relatively inexperienced climbers up Everest, recently quipped, “You know who the first guided client on Everest was? Ed Hillary.” (Tenzing, after all, had climbed all but the last 800 feet of the route the year before.)
Perhaps the most beguiling anecdote from the expedition emerged in the words of Hillary himself. To my co-author, David Roberts, Hillary remarked in 2002, “Both Tenzing and I thought that once we’d climbed the mountain, it was unlikely anyone would ever make another attempt. We couldn’t have been more wrong.”
5
Something About That Mountain
After finally getting to the summit of Everest in 1990 on my third try, the last thing I had in mind was going back to the mountain anytime soon . . . if ever. There were so many other peaks I wanted to climb, and among them all, K2 loomed as the next challenge.
But at the same time, I needed to make a living. I’d pretty much given up any hope of crafting a career as a veterinarian, and guiding Mount Rainier in the summer, though it was still fun and kept me in good shape, couldn’t pay my bills for a whole year, no matter how frugally I lived. In the fall of 1990, I took a construction job that paid twenty bucks an hour, offered to me by a friend who was starting his own building business. Though I was no master carpenter, I learned by doing, just as I had with mountaineering.
Lots of climbers end up pounding nails to make ends meet. It’s the ideal job in a way, because you can usually take off on a moment’s notice for the next expedition. But building houses can be brutal work, as it often was during the freezing rain that’s so common in a Seattle winter. I’d also moved into a real dump of a basement apartment, just because the friend who had rented out the rest of the house offered it to me for fifty dollars a month.
Phil Ershler, who was three years older than me, was a veteran RMI guide whom I looked up to as a mentor. He’d actually started guiding on Rainier way back in 1971, when he was only fifteen—eleven years before I started. By no means an imposing-looking guy, Phil had a calm, calculated demeanor that made him a safe and successful climber.
For the spring of 1991, Phil had organized a guided expedition to Everest with only two clients. They were Hall Wendel, the CEO of the Polaris snowmobile company, in his late forties, and his twenty-five-year-old daughter, Amy, an aspiring RMI guide. Hall had become a private client of Phil’s, and they had climbed together around the world. At some point that winter, Phil invited Robert Link and me to sign on as his assistant guides.
Given my financial situation, it was the proverbial offer I couldn’t refuse. On top of a free trip to the Himalaya, I’d earn a small salary. And there was a certain appeal to the project, since Phil was heading for the standard route on the south side of Everest—the side I’d never been on. A whole different approach, via the Khumbu valley in Nepal, which everybody who’d hiked it said was far more interesting and pleasant than the jarring truck ride to the desolate Tibetan plateau north of Everest. And a whole different route, through the Khumbu Icefall, across the Western Cwm, up the Lhotse Face, and from the South Col to the summit, if we could make it. I’d never even seen the south side of Everest, except in a glimpse from the summit in 1990, but I felt as though I knew the route step-by-step, ever since I’d read Sir John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest as a teenager. For me, the chance to retrace what was probably the most famous route on any mountain on Earth had a powerful allure.
Phil had introduced me to Hall Wendel in the parking lot up at the Paradise trailhead on Mount Rainier during the summer of 1990. I’d sized Hall up as an affable, very fit, successful businessman who had recently gotten the climbing bug in a big way. He had a wry sense of humor, and I liked him immediately. I already knew Amy through RMI. At the time there were very few women guides on Rainier, but she held her own amid that fraternity of tough mountain men.
Sometime during the winter, however, Hall and Phil had a serious falling out. I never did learn the reasons for it. What it meant, though, was that the expedition was off—unless Robert Link and I were willing to lead it by ourselves.
Guiding on Everest, of course, was a far more serious business than guiding on Rainier. The first guided client to get to the summit was the millionaire Dick Bass in 1985, when David Breashears shepherded him to the top. Six years later, guiding on the highest mountain in the world was still a relatively rare exploit. It would take another five years to produce the phenomenon of whole teams full of clients vying for places in the traffic jam on the standard Everest routes, as chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air.
Since Hall and Amy were still keen to climb Everest, Robert and I took charge of the logistics. During the winter of 1990–91, I rented a small warehouse in Seattle and ordered all the food and supplies we would need for our expedition. Robert came up to Seattle from his home near Rainier to help out whenever he could, but I took on the brunt of the planning. Packing everything into heavy-duty waxed fish boxes took an inordinate amount of time and energy. Each loaded box had to weigh very close to 65 pounds, a standard porter load. I bought the fish boxes cheap, but they came as flat sheets, so I had to fold them into shape and then staple the ends with a big foot-operated stapler. I spent many a weary night alone in the warehouse with the radio blasting away as the stapler went ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.
For safety and strength in numbers, we hired two more RMI guides, Darrin Goff and Dave Carter, to join the team. And two of the guys who’d been with me on the Peace Climb the year before also came on board. Steve Gall, who would also serve as a guide, was a strong climber from As
pen who’d gotten to the top with Robert in the first American team on May 7, the day before I did. Although he didn’t summit in 1990, Kurt Papenfus was a doctor. Having him along to take care of our medical needs gave me considerable peace of mind.
We got an early start, leaving Kathmandu on March 10. By the twentieth, we’d set up our base camp just below the snout of the Khumbu Icefall. It was a smooth-enough beginning to an expedition, but on rereading my diary, I find that I was constantly disappointed by my teammates’ occasional lack of energy or drive. On the very first page, like an epigraph to the whole diary, appears my exhortation:
I. STRENGTH
II. PERSISTENCE
III. DETERMINATION
WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE WEAK MAKE EXCUSES!!
And some of my diary entries are pretty sarcastic. On April 4, when we were supposed to make a carry through the icefall, three members of our party (as I wrote) “didn’t ‘feel well’ so they didn’t go. When do they realize the vacation is over and they have to earn their way to the top?” Ten days later, when most of us dropped down from Camp II to Camp I to pick up loads despite strong winds, one member never budged from the tent. “So much for the big talk [before the expedition],” I wrote witheringly in my diary. These less than stellar efforts simply reinforced the maxim I’d learned on my very first Himalayan expedition in 1987: Everest requires a level of effort that some climbers simply can’t deal with their first time “on the hill.”
The truth is, though, that the wind that spring was some of the nastiest and most relentless I’d yet experienced in the Himalaya. On April 19, I wrote, “Fuckin’ Nukin’!!! This wind is really slamming us! I’m the only one that made it to Camp III today. Took me 4:15 [four and a quarter hours], carried 15 propane cartridges. Wind blasted all day, but I was too stubborn to turn. Robo [Robert Link] was sick so he stayed at Camp II. Steve turned with Chuldum & Tamding [two of our Sherpas] at the base of the bulge. Darrin & Dave got about 3/4 of the way and then dumped [their loads].”
Neither Robo (as we all called him) nor I expected Hall and Amy to be as strong as us guides. It was our job to find the route, fix ropes, and establish camps. But we did hope that our clients could help carry some of the gear and food from one camp to the next. I didn’t want to overwork anyone, but a minimal show of strength and tenacity on Hall and Amy’s part would be critical to our success and safety. Everything gets much harder as you move up the mountain, and if you can’t perform on the lower slopes, there’s no way you’ll do well up high.
Thus it was disturbing when our clients gave up short of the day’s goal several times, even with empty packs. My diary entry sounds peeved, but it was more a feeling of alarm, as I wrote about Hall on April 19, “If he can’t get to Camp III the show is over!”
Hall had plenty of determination and ambition, and as he doggedly plugged along, he kept up a positive attitude. It was his hope, in fact, to complete the Seven Summits by reaching the highest point on every continent. But I began to worry that he was underestimating the mountain while he overestimated his own capabilities. As early as April 28, before he’d even reached Camp IV on the South Col, Hall was talking about putting in a Camp V between the col and the summit. I suppose he thought the higher camp would give him a better chance of summitting. The Swiss in 1952 and the British the next year had placed a camp between the South Col and the summit, but after 1960, nearly every party on the south side of Everest had decided that an intermediate camp would create more hassles than it solved.
Indeed, Hall’s plan struck me as a logistical nightmare. Just getting Camp IV established on the South Col was already taking a tremendous effort. Planning a Camp V 1,200 feet higher seemed utterly premature. I was beginning to feel that guiding on Everest was a no-win proposition. I wrote in my diary, “If we don’t put in a C-V and Hall fails, he’ll blame it on not having a C-V. . . . Gotta talk to Robo about [this].”
Yet by the next day, I’d agreed to put in a Camp V at around 27,200 feet. My diary recorded our rationale: “If Hall is so-so getting into C-IV, they [he and a guide or two] can use C-V. If he’s doing OK, they won’t use C-V. I say ‘they’ cause I won’t be on the first summit team. I’m in charge of putting in C-V with 2 Sherpa.”
As it turned out, we didn’t make our first carry to the South Col until May 1, when I alone got a load up to the site where we hoped to pitch Camp IV. After that, we all retreated to base camp for three and a half days of rest and recuperation. Camp IV didn’t get occupied until May 14. Meanwhile, the wind continued its fierce attack on the mountain. On the South Col on May 4, an Australian team and an American party led by the New Hampshire guide Rick Wilcox really got hammered. They retreated, the Aussies all suffering from frostbite. “They’re lucky to be alive!,” I wrote. “Nobody waits for the mountain to let ’em climb. They just blast up and try to fight it.”
Besides ourselves, there were four other teams that spring trying the South Col route. Compared with the mobs that descend on the route today, the sparse concentration of climbers in 1991 seems almost antiquated. One of the teams on the mountain that really impressed me was an all-Sherpa expedition—one of the first of its kind ever to try Everest. On May 8, three members—Ang Temba II, Sonam Dendu, and Apa Sherpa—reached the top without incident. None of the rest of us were even in position to make an attempt by that date.
Apa Sherpa was twenty-nine years old that spring, when he first reached the highest point on Earth. He would go on to become an Everest legend. In 2011, he reached the summit for his twenty-first time.
The strain of guiding in such an uncertain season was getting to me. On May 9, Robo and I, along with Hall and Amy, spent the night at Camp III at 24,500 feet on the Lhotse Face. Once again, our clients had been unable to carry any loads themselves. I recorded the tension in my diary:
Got into a shouting match with Hall. Now he wants Tamding [a Sherpa] to come up tomorrow to carry Amy’s gear to the col. I lit into him about him & Amy not proving that they’re strong enough to climb this thing and that Robo & I will draw the line anywhere above here if we think it’s too dangerous. Hall barked something about paying $200,000 to get up this thing and then we all started yelling.
By the next day, Amy had developed the telltale symptoms of acute mountain sickness. Both “Doc” Papenfus and I tried to convince her she had to descend immediately and that she should not attempt to go high again, but for two days she adamantly insisted that she could give it another try. I hated being stuck in this bind. Hall was paying the bills for the whole expedition, but Amy’s stubbornness could endanger the lives of all of us.
Battered by the wind, we decided to go down one more time. On May 11, we left Camp III, as some of us descended all the way to base camp, while others, including me, went just to Camp II. If only the weather would cooperate, and we could recover our health and energy, we could set out on the thirteenth on what we now knew would be our sole chance to go for the summit.
• • •
It wasn’t only Hall and Amy who were suffering. Steve Gall and Robert Link, who’d been so strong the year before, were, as I put it, “ill and mentally fried.” Only Darrin Goff and I, among the guides, were in anything like reasonable condition. But on May 13, we climbed back to Camp III. Hall and Amy once again dragged way behind, carrying no loads of their own. But the wind had died somewhat, which gave us hope. The plan was to reach the South Col and establish Camp IV the next day, then get up early on the fifteenth and go for the summit.
That evening in Camp III, however, Dave Carter started feeling weak, dizzy, and “out of it,” with a pulse of 120 beats per minute. We gave him bottled oxygen to breathe and diamox and dexamethasone to swallow, but he decided to go down the next morning. Then Amy came over to my tent. Sticking her head inside the door, she confessed that she’d changed her mind. She no longer had any motivation to go on, she said, so she’d descend with Dave in the morning. I tried not to show how relieved I felt.
On the fourteenth, I re
ached the South Col first, at noon, and set up a tent. Darrin got there an hour later and pitched a second shelter. Pury, one of our Sherpas, was the next to arrive, carrying Hall’s personal gear. To my alarm, Pury said that even though Hall was climbing without any load and with bottled oxygen, tended by another Sherpa, Wong Chu, he was still three hours away and running out of O’s. Despite feeling worn out by what I called in my diary an “ass-buster day,” I promptly grabbed a bottle of oxygen and started back down the Lhotse Face.
At the bottom of the Geneva Spur, I met Hall and Wong Chu. Hall was moving slowly and looked spent. He admitted that the climb had taken everything out of him—all he wanted now was to get to the South Col. And I told him in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t let him go any higher than that. We finally reached Camp IV at 6:30 p.m. I was wasted from an eleven-hour nonstop day.
It seemed that all the spirit had drained out of our expedition. Robo was still at base camp, and over the radio he sounded listless. “He just wants to pack up and get out of here,” I wrote in my diary. Steve Gall was also at base camp and seemed unmotivated to go higher. Amy and Dave Carter were out of the running. Doc Papenfus was content to go no higher than the Western Cwm.
Once he arrived at the South Col, however, Hall had yet another change of heart. He’d invested so much money and ambition in trying to climb Everest that he asked for one more chance. I told him that based on his performance the day before, as well as the days before that, I simply couldn’t risk taking him higher. I based my decision on his safety, not on his huge investment of time and money. I knew that I wasn’t the first guide to find himself in such an awkward position, nor would I be the last. Still, the whole situation really stressed me out. My heart wanted to take him higher, but my instincts told me to stop him there and then. To his credit, though he begrudged my ultimatum, Hall accepted it.
