by Clint Willis
It was late. Chris and Mick dropped what was left of the rope they had carried up from Camp Five and descended. Tut followed Nick up and the two of them climbed another 40 feet to a patch of snow that looked as though it would take them to more snow: the Upper Snow Field.
They had climbed the Rock Band, the crux of the route, the barrier that had turned back no fewer than five expeditions. The top of the Southwest Face and beyond that the summit of Everest lay before them—not defenseless, but exposed.
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CHRIS HAD ALREADY decided that Doug and Dougal would make the first summit attempt. His plans called for two four-man summit parties to follow them. He had promised to include Nick and Tut in the second summit team—the first foursome—but now he changed his mind. Their recent efforts on the Rock Band might have left them too weak to reach the summit—and the climbers who had spent more time in support roles deserved a shot at some real climbing. Chris decided to send Nick and Tut down to Camp Two for now, assigning them slots on the third summit team.
They took it well; they were tired, and they knew that other climbers deserved a shot at the top. And they might yet get their own opportunity, if the weather held. Meanwhile, their success on the Rock Band had secured them at least a share of whatever glory the expedition would garner. They had done well and now they could rest, if only briefly.
That left four places to fill on the second team and two on the third. Chris had promised to include a Sherpa in the second summit party. He felt the Sherpas deserved a slot in the third group as well. Pertemba, the head Sherpa, picked himself and his deputy Ang Phurba.
That left four slots for British climbers. Allen Fyfe had not been above Camp Four yet; he hadn’t performed as strongly as the lead climbers. Ronnie Richards and Mike Thompson were relatively inexperienced. Hamish MacInnes was a different matter. He had now been to Everest four times, including three trips to the Southwest Face. He had paired off with Dougal at the start of this expedition, and they had climbed well together—but Hamish had not fully recovered from the avalanche. That left him out.
Mick Burke hadn’t climbed as well as some others, but Chris wanted a good film record of the climb. He put Mick on the second summit team, along with Martin Boysen. Martin had come on the radio the evening before to ask about his role. He had earned his shot by his work on this expedition and on Annapurna.
Peter Boardman had pulled his weight and was still climbing well. He was a thoughtful young man, sensible and unselfish. He was new to the circle, easier to manage than some of the old hands. Chris needed recruits to flesh out the ranks of his dwindling crew. Don Whillans was out of the picture. Ian Clough was dead. Mick Burke was increasingly taken up with his work at the BBC. Hamish had always been his own man, and at forty-four he was getting old. Dougal was loyal mainly to his own ambitions, which might not always coincide with Chris’s plans. Doug Scott had ambitions as well, and he had other climbing partners—his old mates from Nottingham, a rough-and-ready set who made their own circle. Mike Thompson was an old friend, but he wasn’t a front-rank climber; neither was Charlie Clarke. There was Nick, but Chris had come to rely upon him more than seemed fair.
The upshot was that Chris offered the twenty-three-year-old Peter Boardman a spot on the second summit team. Peter would rope up with Pertemba. That left one slot to fill on the third team, which so far included Nick Estcourt, Tut Braithwaite and Ang Phurba. Chris wanted that slot for himself.
He made his announcement on the radio at two o’clock on the afternoon of September 21. Each of the climbers scattered up and down the route listening grimly for his name. Charlie Clarke broke in when Chris was finished and asked to have a private word. The others signed off, and Charlie urged Chris to give up his plans to summit the peak. Charlie pointed out that Chris had been above 25,000 feet for more than a week; he was losing strength and lucidity; he slurred his words. Chris listened and promised to think it over.
Hamish now took the radio from Charlie and told Chris he had decided to leave the expedition. He needed to get lower for the sake of his lungs. Hamish agreed to assure reporters that his departure was the result of his medical condition, not expedition politics.
Chris considered Charlie’s advice, and decided to give up his own summit team slot to Ronnie Richards. Chris would make a final carry above Camp Five to support the summit climbers; that done, he’d descend to Camp Two to direct operations.
Doug Scott and Dougal Haston and Ang Phurba left Camp Five on the morning of September 22. Doug was first on the fixed ropes that led through the Rock Band. Ang Phurba came next; Dougal brought up the rear. Three more Sherpas would follow later with loads, as would Chris and Mick Burke and Mike Thompson.
Doug was impressed by the difficulty of the terrain. Nick had done a superb job leading it without oxygen. Doug reached the top of the fixed ropes and climbed out of the gully. Ang Phurba arrived and Doug led another 30 feet of hard climbing; from there, he ran out 250 more feet of rope to a ridge of snow that would serve for Camp Six.
Dougal came up behind the others, happy to be here at last: the actual territory above the Rock Band now replaced the map he had carried in his head through three expeditions. Nothing, no one, stood between him and the way forward and up. It could be done: a stretch of steep rock and then some snow to the exit gully and then the top of the face; after that, a long but easy climb over to and up the Southeast Ridge.
Ang Phurba descended, leaving Doug and Dougal to their work of carving out the new site. They alternated digging, taking oxygen during their rests. The three Sherpas and then Chris and Mick and Mike arrived with their loads. The five British climbers chatted for a time. They were aware of their respective roles; for the moment it seemed right that Doug and Dougal should be the ones to finish this. Mick said he thought Camp Six would make a lovely spot for a bungalow. Chris did some thinking and announced that the six of them must be the highest people on Earth. The others conceded that he must be right: the Americans had just failed on K2, and there was no one on Kangchenjunga or Lhotse.
The load bearers departed down the ropes, near-staggering in their orange wind suits, cajoled by gravity, a hand at their backs. Doug watched them go, and felt a stab of gratitude. Their shapes blurred and shifted and faded; the jumble and span of black rock and gray snow and blue shadow framed and then swallowed them.
Doug and Dougal put up the two-man summit tent. They planned to fix 500 meters of rope the next day—a long traversing line across snow—and then return to their new camp. The day after, they’d follow the fixed rope across and then try to reach the summit.
They were comfortable in their tent. A gas stove flared up when they tried to change an oxygen cylinder. There was a moment of panic—Dougal pictured the tent in flames—but they averted disaster; Dougal turned off the stove and Doug fixed the leak. They exchanged curses and looks and crawled into their sleeping bags and slept like tired children.
Dougal led the first pitch in the morning. He moved across in deep snow that fell apart under his weight, and then climbed a short stretch of snow-slick rock. He felt at once small and oddly large, inflated by the pleasure of being at this work. The sky seemed empty but for the sun’s distant bulb, a blue wreathed in orange. He occasionally glanced up at the heavens, a witness to his doings.
Doug followed him, and then led through for a single pitch of easier ground. Dougal resumed the lead. He climbed onto snow-covered rock that offered very little purchase for his crampons; the rock was loose and there were no cracks for pitons. A slip here was unthinkable. He teetered sideways toward a tiny island of snow that might offer a stance. It did. He stood in the snow and leaned to place a dubious piton in the rock. He clipped the rope to it and took tension from the rope that stretched down and moved out onto rock again. He slipped once but the piton held and he at last came to deeper snow. He sucked in oxygen, his heart hammering, and gazed up, peering through his mask—the way ahead looked easier. They ran out the rest of their rope and returned to
their tent at Camp Six at the top of the Rock Band. They were tired, but by no means exhausted.
Dougal had concluded that the round-trip from Camp Six to the summit would be too long to accomplish in a single day; they would require a bivouac. They would need a tent sac—a sheath of windproof material—and a stove for melting snow. Each man would require two oxygen cylinders. They’d need three 50-meter ropes to fix on difficult ground to safeguard their retreat. They wouldn’t bring sleeping bags; they couldn’t afford the additional weight at this altitude. They made radio contact with Chris and the others at Camp Two; that done, they cooked corned beef hash and ate it and went to sleep.
Doug woke at one o’clock to the sound of wind pelting the tent with bits of snow and ice. He started the stove and melted snow for tea, and warmed up the leftover hash. Dougal was awake, too. The climbers put on their boots. They left camp at 3:30.
They climbed the fixed ropes above Camp Six in darkness. The wind rose and fell, tugging at their clothes and intensifying a sense that the night was a sort of ragged blanket. Dougal listened to the rattle of his breath in the oxygen mask. He watched the day begin; it gently spewed light west as snow swirled at his legs. Doug followed him up the last of the fixed rope, seeming to rise with the sun, a huge black-masked angel. He reached Dougal’s stance and they took some pictures.
Dougal set off into the long Exit Couloir. He climbed knee-deep snow between patches of rock. The rope sagged between the two men as they climbed. Dougal could find no cracks for pitons and no snow deep enough for a picket. Even so, any fear withdrew in the face of these immense spaces. The climbers were drawn toward the top of the face and the summit beyond as though the top of Everest were the end of everything. Dougal thought of something Robin Smith had once told him—how the American Indians would tap their enemies with a stick in battle, not to harm but to taunt them. Dougal meant to count coup on some version of death and death knew it, awaited his coming. Death was coming out to play. The notion, giddy and ridiculous, swirled behind his eyes like a flurry of snow.
His oxygen apparatus stopped working. He found a good stance on bare rock and fussed with the device. Doug suggested taking the thing apart, and they did so and found that a piece of ice had blocked the mouthpiece. Doug used a knife to cut the ice away and then set off to lead the next section. Dougal sat in the snow watching the rope snake through his gloved hands and found that he was trembling. A broken set would have forced him to turn back, and for the first time this day he was badly frightened—not of the climb’s dangers but of his desire to finish the route and what would happen if he failed. He looked up and his fear receded; Doug was climbing well.
Doug fixed rope on a difficult 60-foot section of rock. The two climbers carried on, at times lifting their eyes toward the South Summit at the top of the face, a table-sized dome of snow and ice at 28,700 feet. Dougal took back the lead for a time and sank in the snow to his waist. He waded on, using his arms to make progress. The angle grew steeper, and the two climbers found themselves half-swimming across slopes that seemed likely to slide at any moment.
They finished the worst of the snow. Doug took another turn out front. He passed a cave amid a group of rocks, and noted it as a possible spot for a bivouac on the descent. The climbers approached the South Summit and the top of the Southwest Face in a torrent of wind. Doug crawled across a section near the top, and then took in rope as Dougal followed.
They walked together to the top of the face and stood in the wind to stare across the brown of Tibet. They recognized Kangchenjunga, the world’s third-highest peak; Makalu, the fifth-highest, was closer and its summit lay well below them now.
The Southwest Face was below them too. They would savor that later—now they wanted to finish climbing the mountain. The way lay along the top of the Southeast Ridge, the route first climbed by Hillary and Tenzing twenty-two years before. They knew it from books and stories. There was a traverse of some 400 feet across wind-carved snow; they must take care not to step through one of the cornices that overhung the enormous Kangshung Face. After that, the Hillary Step—40 feet of steep rock or snow, tricky in certain conditions—and then the easy summit slopes.
Dougal suggested bivouacking here and setting out again at three o’clock the next morning; the soft snow might freeze in the night, making it easier to climb. He climbed into his bivouac sheet and melted water on the stove. Doug began scraping a hole in the snow to provide a better shelter from the wind—but he didn’t want to wait; he knew he would feel sick in the morning, far worse than now. He was a child on Christmas morning; he was afire to see what awaited him. He abandoned his work on the cave and set off to test the snow conditions. The snow was firm enough—reasonable—and he looked back and waved for Dougal to come.
CHRIS AND NICK and the others had spent the morning at Camp Two gazing up at the enormous backdrop of the face. They took turns with binoculars and a camera lens, and eventually spotted figures at the top of the fixed ropes on the upper snowfield. They watched the two climbers disappear into the gully that led to the South Summit. Chris thought of Noel Odell. Odell had stood on the north side of the mountain just over a half-century before; he’d watched George Mallory and Andrew Irvine climb toward the virgin summit via the mountain’s Northeast Ridge. Odell had seen the two climbers disappear behind a cloud; they had not been seen again.
Nick Estcourt, peering through the camera lens at four o’clock, shouted that he’d seen Doug and Dougal at the top of the exit gully. The others took the lens from him, passed it around—surely the climbers were on their way down at this hour? But no, they were moving up, toward the summit.
Darkness came. Chris slept poorly, restless in his anxiety for his friends. He woke from time to time and lay shivering and tried to keep at bay his understanding that Doug and Dougal might be dying even now, freezing to death in the dark. He resisted as well the whispery thought that they might have reached the summit. He pictured them ecstatic in their suffering. He envied them with a force that balanced the grief that massed like a bank of clouds in the distance so that he slept again amid dreams of darkness.
DOUGAL AND DOUG were moving up the Southeast Ridge, still the afternoon. The ridge fell away to their left. Steep and weirdly shaped monsoon cornices—huge wind-built shelves of snow—overhung the abyss to their right, blocking their view. The climbers moved carefully, with a sort of rigid glee. The Hillary Step—the steepest bit of climbing on the Southeast Ridge—was covered with snow. It was Dougal’s turn to lead. Doug belayed him and took pictures. The situation was very dramatic. The snow made the climbing easy but there was no real protection if it gave way under Dougal’s weight.
It didn’t. They were going to reach the top of the mountain. Doug felt a curious sense of déjà vu. He felt himself at home as he followed Dougal up and took over the lead, moving again in deep and difficult snow. His mind broke into two minds. One spoke to the other, making suggestions—stay away from the cornice; be careful, go slowly, not too slowly. The advice comforted him. He carried on without questioning this new state.
The climbers could see a red flag, the relic of a Chinese expedition. Dougal led again up the final slope. He waited for Doug and they walked to the summit together. Doug was surprised at how his joy flooded him. The climbers took off their oxygen masks. Doug saw that Dougal was looking at him, was smiling broadly—Dougal never smiled at you that way. They hugged each other and thwacked each other’s back.
They stepped apart and looked around them. Doug took note of countless gray peaks in Tibet—high mountains without much snow—and of his own feelings. He was not relieved. His feelings overlapped those of a man who contemplates his own approaching death and decides that he will miss his difficulties.
Far away, a line of black clouds approached; lightning flickered in it. Mallory and young Irvine had disappeared on the north side of the mountain, which lay now at Doug and Dougal’s feet. Had those two earlier climbers been here? If not, Doug was the first Englishman
to climb Everest—Edmund Hillary was from New Zealand. Doug took pictures of Dougal and then handed the camera to him: Here you are, youth. Take one for me mother.
Dougal took a picture of Doug and handed the camera back. The two of them stood watching the sun sink behind clouds that then dipped to unveil it once more—explosions of light, bright intervals in a series of sunsets. The true night would soon be upon them. They shouldered their packs and took a last look around them and set off down on snow that had begun to harden in the cold of dusk. They knew that falling on this snow would be close to falling on ice; you must stop immediately or you would not stop at all.
They tried to move carefully, but staggered with fatigue. They reached the top of the Hillary Step. They had fixed a 40-foot section of rope here to protect their descent. They rappelled the pitch, the drama of the ascent already fading. The rope stuck when they pulled on it so they left it behind.
They carried on across and reached the beginnings of their snow cave at the South Summit Col as the first clouds arrived to cover the sky. Lightning punctuated the spaces between mountains; Doug saw the shapes of various peaks in what seemed the near distance. There would be no moon to light their way down. The climbers considered the option of descending further in the dark. Dougal in his impatience walked 50 feet down the southwest side of the ridge, but wind had blown away the climbers’ tracks, and his hands and feet quickly grew numb. Dougal returned and set about helping Doug make the cave big enough to keep the wind from them.
