The Boys of Everest

by Clint Willis

  Chris and Nick dropped their loads at the top of the Japanese rope and returned to their camp at the West Col. They reached their tent in the late morning. They rested and tinkered with their packing. They would make another carry, this one all the way across the snow shelf to the Southwest Ridge. They hoped to find a spot for one last camp that could serve as a launch point for their summit attempt.

  Chris the next morning led back across the fixed ropes and continued across to the end of the snow shelf. Nick followed and the two climbers peered around a corner at granite slabs that ended in snowfields on the South Face. A gap of sky between the Ogre and a nearby peak framed a tiny triangle of black in the distance. Chris recognized K2. He meant to lead a small expedition there next year. Nick was planning to go with him. It was unsettling to see the mountain now. Chris turned away from it; the sight of that black pyramid undermined this moment.

  They dumped their supplies and once more returned to the West Col. Chris and Nick took inventory of their supplies and found they had only enough fuel to melt water for three days. They considered descending to pick up more gas cylinders for their summit attempt, but quickly rejected the idea. Some spell had settled upon them. They were drawn on by a dubious but entrancing promise. They understood the falseness of it but the promise fed a half-skittish calm and they were attached to this calm. They lived at moments inside a brittle shell of quiet. They had woven the shell from the mountain itself—from bits of sand and fossil. Each man’s experience of the mountain was solitary, but they relied upon each other. One or the other would experience a flicker of doubt—and his partner’s presence would help to quell it.

  They bickered in the morning over whether or not to bring the tent for their high camp. Chris said they could dig snow holes. Nick worried the snow might be too shallow. The altitude had worn on them. Neither man picked the tent up as they left the West Col.

  They reached their high point quickly and set out to fix ropes across rock to the snow on the South Face. Nick led a pitch on mixed ground. Chris followed and then led higher. The climbing was very delicate. He scraped snow off rock and found dubious piton placements. At his back were mountains upon mountains; he half-turned and they seemed to rear up as if meaning to fill the sky itself. The view was a vast curtain or tapestry, seeming to assert that there was no other world but this one. The notion somehow glued him to the rock so that he felt as if gravity were suspended or reversed on his behalf.

  He climbed with great care for more than an hour. He reached snow. The snow was too shallow for a picket but the ice beneath it would take a screw. They were now at the start of the snowfield that led to a rock band at the top of the South Face. The snow looked dangerous: steep and unstable.

  They descended to a snow shelf and dug a cave. They were high now—6,650 meters, more than 21,800 feet. They had been above Advance Base Camp for a week, most of the time on steep ground. Chris woke Nick early the next morning. Nick wouldn’t get up. He wanted to take a rest day. Chris argued the point. They’d use up more of their dwindling supply of cooking gas and lose their window of good weather. Nick agreed to make an effort. The two of them pulled on boots and started up the route. Nick moved so slowly that Chris gave in. They’d take a rest day.

  They spent it sleeping and muttering at each other. Chris couldn’t shake his worry that they’d missed their chance for the summit. Nick felt better the next morning but Chris poked his head out of the tent and what he saw confirmed his fears. A huge bank of dark cloud loomed to the west. He tore into Nick—they should have snatched the summit while they could—but then he quickly apologized. There was no time or strength for childishness. They needed to climb the route today or retreat; there was only one gas cylinder left.

  They gathered themselves and their gear and climbed the fixed ropes to the snow slope on the South Face. A wind had come up and it grew worse. They suffered from the cold for the first time. The snow was too soft and shallow to carry their weight. The ice beneath the snow was very hard; their crampon points barely penetrated it. They placed a single ice piton at the base of each pitch. The leader ran out full rope-lengths. A fall would rip them both from the mountain. They would travel a tremendous distance. This struck Nick as an astonishing prospect; he thought of astronauts, space walkers.

  They had been climbing most of the day when they reached the rock band at the top of the South Face. The sky was entirely overcast. Chris wanted to continue. He thought they could reach the summit today.

  Nick was angry; he had begun to believe that his friend’s ambition would get them killed this time. He wanted to go back but instead he set out to lead a truly frightening pitch, a traverse across a span of fragile ice that seemed likely to collapse under his weight.

  Chris watched him disappear around a corner. Nick would kill them both if he fell now. Chris looked down. The vast space at his feet felt like a body of water. The notion was comforting. Nick’s voice when it came floated down through the gathering murk. He’d found a spot that would take an ice screw. Chris climbed up to him and took the lead to run out two easy rope lengths.

  It was nearly dark. The climbers stopped to dig a cave in the snow. The cave was too shallow for them to lie down. They had to sit up, their backs against rock. Nick didn’t sleep. He sat miserable and shivering through the dark hours, imagining what it might be like to die of the cold.

  The day’s first light illuminated another overcast sky. Nick once again pleaded with Chris to descend. Chris wanted to wait; eventually, patches of blue emerged from cloud. They set out for the col at the top of the face. They were at last approaching the tower that led to the Main Summit, but the tower presented a bleak prospect. Chris had hoped to find some gully or other feature that would offer a quick route to the top. There was nothing of the kind: only hard climbing on steep rock. They were short of pitons as well as food and fuel.

  Chris thought the West Summit, now off to their left, looked like a more reasonable goal. Nick agreed and the two climbers veered left toward the col between the two summits. The sky cleared as they reached it, and Chris once more changed his mind. He proposed to Nick that they should try for the Main Summit after all.

  Nick was by now convinced that Chris had gone mad with ambition; that he had lost track of what could happen to them. Nick’s voice shook with anger as he pointed out that regardless of the weather their supplies of food and fuel were dangerously short. Chris gave in quickly. Nick was right; Chris had in fact counted on his friend’s good sense to restrain his own impulse. The two climbers dug a snow hole in the slope just below the col, out of the wind. They were comfortable, and they began to relax. The hard climbing lay beneath them.

  They woke to good weather and moved quickly up easy snow. Chris was feeling strong. He moved ahead and onto steeper ground and up and onto the West Summit. Nick arrived soon after. They stared down at the Biafo Glacier—a furrowed gray-brown ribbon—and across at innumerable peaks. They looked back across the col to the Main Summit block. It didn’t look much higher than the spot they occupied, but it obscured their view to the east.

  IT TOOK CHRIS and Nick two days to descend their route. They wondered about the others—where had they been all this time? Chris worked himself up; as he came down the West Ridge with Nick he was close to tears thinking there might have been an accident.

  They found Doug and the other climbers at Camp One. There was news of the Latok I expedition; one of the climbers—a man named Don Morrison—had fallen into a crevasse and been killed. Chris had known Morrison slightly. He was too weary to absorb the news.

  Meanwhile, the Ogre’s main summit remained unclimbed. Doug and the others had been busy moving supplies up to the West Col and onto the West Ridge. They still planned to climb over the West Summit and down across and up to the Main Summit.

  Chris despite his weariness was horrified at the thought that the others might reach the Main Summit without him. He argued that they should return to Base Camp for more food and fuel. It wasn�
��t a bad idea—and it might give Chris a chance to recover enough strength to join this new summit attempt. Chris had his way. The six climbers descended to Base Camp that afternoon.

  Nick was unhappy with the new arrangement. He’d reached the West Summit, and that was sufficient. He longed to go home; he didn’t want the option to climb again. Chris felt surprisingly fit, and the idea of another chance at the mountain’s Main Summit filled him with satisfaction. He was one of the boys for a change. He’d begun to lose track of his role as a celebrity, a middle-aged Commander of the British Empire. And the mountain didn’t scare him much anymore. He’d been on it and most of the way up it, and that made an enormous difference. The Ogre was evolving from an imagined mountain to a real one.

  Chris lay in his tent at Base Camp and flirted with images from his days on the mountain, moments of climbing that transcended any notion of doubt. He drifted off to sleep and into a dream of being up there again.

  17

  DOUG, MO AND Clive spent two days at Base Camp before heading back up the mountain. Chris and the others lingered a third day. Tut was still limping from his accident, and Nick had a horrible sore throat. The two ailing climbers talked that afternoon and decided they weren’t fit to climb.

  Chris set off alone early on the morning of July 9. He was still tired but he couldn’t bear the thought that the others might reach the Main Summit without him. He had an anxious time crossing the snowfields that led to the first set of fixed ropes. Don Morrison’s death only days before on Latok I was a reminder of the dangers of traveling alone on a glacier.

  Chris reached the fixed ropes safely. The surface snow had melted from the wall, leaving ice that made it more difficult to work his way up the ropes. It took ten hours to reach the camp at the West Col. There was a single tent waiting; the other climbers had gone ahead to camp at the base of the West Ridge.

  Chris melted snow for tea and went to sleep without eating. He rose in the morning and followed a snow gully that led toward the West Ridge. He could look up and see figures at work on the ridge itself. The figures were climbing a stretch of sunlit rock. He wished for bad weather. He needed time to rest, to gather the strength he would need to keep up with the others.

  He reached the camp at the base of the ridge. Doug and Mo and Clive returned that afternoon, having made good progress. The friendliness of their welcome surprised Chris. He slept under the stars that night—there was only one tent—and his happiness returned to him. He hadn’t expected this second chance—at the Ogre, at being a certain kind of climber.

  Mo and Clive went back up in the morning to fix rope on the ridge. Doug and Chris dropped down to retrieve more gear from the West Col. The preparations were in place for a summit attempt, but Chris was still very tired. The sky filled with clouds that evening. Chris was secretly delighted when the others decided to put off the summit for another day.

  They left camp on July 11. Their heavy packs made them slow and awkward on the fixed ropes up the ridge. Chris climbed with Doug, who took the lead for a long traverse that avoided a difficult section of the ridge. Chris followed, moving awkwardly under the weight of his pack. He slipped at a difficult spot and swung out under a piton, smacking an elbow against rock. The pain left him weak and nervous. He climbed up to Doug and then led through snow that took them back up to the ridge crest. Doug followed, and they dropped a rope down to Mo and Clive.

  It was late. They had brought only a single small tent. Doug and Clive shared it. Chris and Mo dug a small snow hole. The party passed a reasonably comfortable night, and woke to good weather. Mo and Clive led up the ridge. Chris could sense Doug’s impatience; the big man’s drive was intimidating as well as impressive. The ground was dangerous at first—a thin layer of snow on steep ice—but after a time the climbers found deeper snow and kicked good steps in it.

  Doug passed the others and led Chris up the ridge and over the West Summit with barely a pause. The two of them reached the snow hole that Chris and Nick had dug on the other side, just off the col between the West Summit and the Main Summit tower. Mo and Clive arrived just behind them. The four climbers took turns digging to expand the cave, which lay on a bed of steep ice. Chris was convinced that the snow was safely consolidated. The others worried that it would simply slide off the mountain, but it was too late to start another cave. They took another look at the sky—still clear—and settled in for the night, hoping the weather would hold.

  Chris and Doug were up early and gone by five o’clock, leaving the others to follow later. The two of them moved together on snow for a time. The slope grew steeper and they moved one at a time, belaying each other. Doug led the first pitch of rock and then the next. He anchored the rope at the top of the second pitch so that Chris could climb it with his jumars, and went ahead to look for the best way to the summit.

  Chris finished the pitch and followed his partner’s tracks. He found Doug preparing to lead yet another pitch. Chris objected—he wanted a turn out front—but Doug told him flatly that this one was too hard for him. It was late; they had to move fast if they were going to reach the summit and descend to the cave before dark.

  Doug set off, but a tangle in the rope stopped him. He came down while Chris sorted it out. Doug led the pitch and Chris followed—but when he tried to retrieve the rope it jammed. It took Chris half an hour to descend and clear a knot from a crack; by now, he was cursing to himself. He could have led the pitch; it wasn’t that hard; he hadn’t come all this way to follow Doug up the mountain.

  The next pitch did look difficult, though, and Chris left it to Doug. Doug struggled up a thin crack until it petered out. Chris lowered him from his last piece of gear and Doug made several attempts to pendulum across to another crack. He kept missing his hold at the far end of the pendulum, and each time he came scraping and sliding back across the rock to hang panting on the rope. It was stupendously difficult work at this altitude but he learned something each time he failed, and at last he managed to jam fingers into the crack at the top of his swing. That stopped him from swinging back and he worked his way up the crack to easier ground and a foothold that allowed him a rest. He finished the pitch easily after that.

  Chris got his jumars out and followed the rope, retrieving Doug’s gear as he climbed. The sun had slipped across the sky. He looked back for Mo and Clive and saw that they had retreated to the snow cave. There might be time for Chris and Doug to make the top before dark, but it would be close.

  Chris wanted to lead a pitch. He set off up rock and came to an overhang. He put in a piton and brought up Doug, who stood on his partner’s shoulders to surmount the overhang and then brought Chris up on a tight rope. Chris finished the pitch and lay gasping for breath in the snow at the start of a gully. He would have liked to lead through—he still had his crampons on—but Doug was up and away. Chris could only grab the rope and put him on belay and sit hunched and shivering while Doug once more disappeared into the jumble of rock and ice overhead. Chris thought of other climbers: Whillans barging up the Bonatti Pillar; Dougal Haston at the top of the Harlin route on the Eiger. They had been strong, too. They had been like this one. He felt a stab of pain near his ribs. His chest ached from the wheezing he had done these last weeks.

  Chris lurched to his feet. He looked at his hands and the rope that moved in them. His mind wandered; he forgot where he was. He had the momentary notion that nothing was lost after all—even as he felt that he had missed something; it had gotten past him.

  Doug shouted down and Chris set off. He kicked steps in the snow until he came to a rock the size of a shed. The sky bled a science fiction purple; looking up was like being inside of a bruise. Doug was crouched on top of the rock. He had taken pictures; he was ready to go down.

  Doug set up the first rappel and disappeared. Chris waited for his turn on the rope. He looked around, hoping to remember something of this. He made out K2 once again, that black pyramid. He picked out other mountains—massive Nanga Parbat and the Latok group, b
lack teeth in the gathering night. He was alone for the moment and glad of it. He was glad he’d come back up, and glad that now there was nothing but the descent.

  He heard a scream and then silence. It occurred to him—he felt a strange calm—Doug must have rappelled off the ends of the rope in the dark. Chris imagined a huge wing—its shadow rushed toward and past him, swallowing the night.

  DOUG WAS IN a hurry. He had been in a hurry for days now and it had brought him to this. Night was upon them. They had no shelter and no sleeping bags, no warm clothes. There wasn’t snow on the summit to dig a cave. Chris could go on about the view if he liked, but it was time to leave. He set off down the rope, and spotted some pitons Chris had placed. Doug walked sideways, using the tension from the rope to get far enough across to reach the pegs. It would save time if he could rappel from them; otherwise, he’d have to set up another rappel anchor.

  The pegs were further away than he’d thought. He continued to traverse and the tug of the rope grew stronger; if he slipped, he’d swing a hundred feet or more—and as he reached the pitons his boot touched ice and he skated and fell. He swung on the end of the rope, describing an accelerating arc through the dusk. The swing itself was painless, exhilarating. He stuck his legs out as he gathered momentum and they took the impact when he at last collided with a corner. He had shut his eyes but they opened when he opened his mouth to scream.

  CHRIS HAVING HEARD the scream stood for a moment and then bent to pick up the rope but couldn’t—there was still a body on the end of it. Even then he was surprised to hear Doug’s voice again: I’ve broken my leg.

  His eyes filled. He shouted down to Doug to get his weight off the rope—it’s impossible to descend a weighted rope. Doug had in fact broken both legs but he was able to haul himself onto a ledge, grunting in pain and noting with grim satisfaction that his arms and spine still functioned.