Seven Summits

by Dick Bass; Frank Wells; Rick Ridgeway

  The trail followed the crater rim. To one side they saw the caldera of the volcano, looking like a devil's punchbowl of brown and sulfur lava rock, crater cones, and steaming fumaroles, to the other side the African savanna 15,000 feet below. Frank had his ski pole in hand for balance, and was breathing with his practiced huff-huff-style pressure-breathing that was now so habitual as to be nearly involuntary.

  The summit is still a ways, Frank thought, so I’d better be careful to pace myself.

  Even through their tinted glacier goggles the equatorial sun seemed to bleach all the color from the dry hot rock. The white light burned out textures, while dark shadows were like holes to the middle of the earth. It was a black and white world colored amber through heavy sunglasses.

  They were out of water, and each step seemed to wring from their bodies another measure of the little moisture that remained. Mouths felt dry from forced breathing of dry air, and, as they had now experienced several times on previous climbs, the thin atmosphere gave to their task a dreamy gloss so that the crunch of their steps in the lava trail seemed to come from a distance, like the soundtrack of a movie in which they were not the players but rather the audience, watching themselves in this slow plod.

  Keep the pace, Frank told himself. Step, breath, breath, step.

  Then he wondered, How much further?

  Step, breath, breath, step.

  And he thought, The register? Will it still be there?

  Step, breath, breath, step.

  What's that just ahead? A marker? And who's that? Dan Bass and Steve Marts? Good old Marts, there again with his camera filming Dick and me getting up another of the seven.

  Step, breath, breath, step.

  “Okay, wave your arms,” Marts yelled. “You're on the summit. Look excited!”

  Frank grabbed Dick and gave him a bear hug. Emmett had already summitted earlier and passed them on his hurried way down, wanting to rejoin his family, who had forgone the last little section. Then Frank sat down to catch his breath. He was there.

  “What a difference thirty years can make,” he told Dick when his breathing had slowed. “Damn, I feel great and last time I was here I was puking my guts out.”

  “Yeah, Pancho, you're definitely getting stronger as you get older. Kind of doing things backwards.”

  “But at least I’m doing them. That's what counts.”

  Then he thought about the register. There was a small concrete block with a plaque on it, and he looked there first. There was no register but the plaque read:

  “We the people of Tanzania would like to light a candle and put it on top of Mount Kilimanjaro to show beyond our borders, giving hope where was despair, love where was hate, and dignity where before there was only humiliation. Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere.”

  Frank thought how it was a beautifully poetic marker to find on a summit, but tragically ironic in view of the poverty and political chaos they had observed in Moshi and Arusha.

  But where was the register?

  Frank scouted the summit area, looking under rocks. There was nothing.

  “I didn't need it anyway,” he said to the others. “It's just as good as a memory.”

  And what a memory.

  Frank sat down again and scanned the savanna that stretched to the sky.

  I never could have imagined, he thought to himself, when I was here last time. Never imagined all the stuff that's gone under the bridge these intervening years. All the great stuff.

  The descent of the tourist track, or Kibo trail, was an easy but long plunge-step routine down wide slopes of volcanic sand. The Emmett kids made a game of it by racing ahead and reaching the base hut well before the adults. Word had preceded their arrival that a large group with two kids had climbed the Machame route, and now several of the hikers they encountered congratulated them.

  Emmett, pausing to consider the age range and the inexperience of their party, said, “You know, it was a hell of an accomplishment.”

  Back at the Kibo hotel they had a celebration dinner and discussed their next plan. They would fly back to Nairobi, from where part of the group, including Emmett's family and Dan Bass, had to return home. The rest of them—Frank, Dick, Marts, Emmett, Luanne, Marian—would fly to Copenhagen, where they would rendezvous with two additional team members, Frank Morgan and Peter Jennings, both friends of Emmett's. From there, as a complete team, they would continue to Moscow and then on to Elbrus.

  Once again because of politics, to get out of Tanzania they flew a circuitous route to Addis Ababa, then back south to Nairobi, where they reunited with Luanne and Marian. In the Nairobi terminal Frank glimpsed a newspaper headline: “Russians down KAL 747, 269 feared dead.” The story had just broken and the report was brief, so in Copenhagen they asked their cab driver what he knew.

  “Everybody knows it was one of your CIA planes. So the Russians shot it down. What do you expect?”

  The hotel desk clerk said more or less the same thing. Next morning they rendezvoused with their other two teammates, Morgan and Jennings, and together discussed what to do. The International Herald Tribune made it clear it was not a spy plane, so now they were concerned a world boycott might cancel flights to Russia. They contacted the U.S. Embassy which, as usual, equivocated. They dialed the British Embassy and a counsular officer said they were advising their subjects not to travel to Russia. “Several flights have been canceled, and if you go, there is a good chance you will be stuck trying to get out.” Then they dialed the Russian Embassy and were connected to some gruff-sounding official with a two-pack-a-day voice.

  “You have visa?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have plane ticket?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ahh, then, you go Russia!”

  They were still uncertain if they should take the risk.

  “Pancho, I’m glad you picked Elbrus for that first practice climb,” Dick said.

  “That's easy for you to say. You climbed it. We jolly well have to go back.”

  The women were less certain. As it was they were coming on the expedition knowing they would have to spend most of it waiting in the hotel at the base of Elbrus, but adding to that an indefinite extension in Moscow was too much to contemplate.

  “Darling, I have only one consideration to add,” Luanne said to Frank, “and that is if we should get stuck in Moscow, you'll never hear the end of it.”

  Morgan and Jennings said they didn't mind waiting an extra day in Copenhagen to see what happened. “We've got some shopping to do, anyway.” But Frank was adamant they should get to Moscow, and finally he swayed everyone to his way. They would leave the next day.

  “Which means we better get our shopping done,” Morgan said to Jennings with a mischievous grin.

  “What do you guys need to buy?”

  “Lingerie.”

  “What?”

  “Brassieres and negligees,” Morgan said.

  “And don't forget the black panties,” Jennings added with a demonic gleam. Luanne and Marian glanced at each other with the same look of dismay.

  “What in the world?”

  “For gifts,” Jennings said. “You know, the women in Russia have to be starving for that kind of stuff. I mean, they'll go bananas when they see it. I can just picture their sweet young faces now.”

  “We'll be in like Flynn,” Morgan added wistfully.

  Frank Morgan and Peter Jennings, both bachelors in their early forties, lived in Jakarta, where Morgan ran a law firm assisting foreign companies doing business in Southeast Asia and Jennings headed up Fluor Corporation's Indonesian operations. Any resemblance the pair might have had to normal business types, however, ended with their job descriptions. The two lived Somerset Maugham lives like in a South Seas idyll. They each had beautiful homes with full staffs (Morgan even had one servant whose only duty was to care for his parrot) and they shared a weekend pad in Bali on the sand at an exclusive stretch along Kuta Beach (where the young French tourist girls were always sunbath
ing topless) that was so exquisite it had been featured in Architectural Digest.

  Emmett had known Morgan since they were roommates at Harvard Law School, and it was there these two best friends had made a pact that every year or two they would try to get together for some kind of adventure. They had been impressively faithful to their resolution; in the last fifteen years they had been on two climbing expeditions to the Himalaya (including the Bicentennial Everest Expedition in 1976, where I had come to know both of them), ski trips to the Arctic, jungle mountaineering in New Guinea, and white water rafting on uncharted rivers in Borneo. When Emmett had been invited on Frank and Dick's Russia climb, then, he had asked if Morgan could come along, and Morgan had brought his partner-in-crime, Jennings.

  When Morgan and Jennings returned from their shopping spree Emmett became concerned that the over $500 worth of lingerie the pair were trying to jam into their already stuffed backpacks might not make it through Moscow customs. In addition to the assortment of black lace panties and bras Emmett spotted something that looked like a deflated flesh-colored beach ball.

  “What's this?”

  “Our life-sized blow-up doll. Isn't she cute?”

  She was also very X-rated.

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “She's our climbing partner,” Jennings said. “We're going to leave her on the summit of Elbrus. It'll blow the Russians’ minds. Can you imagine the next group that comes up after us and sees her sitting there?”

  Emmett could also imagine the Moscow customs getting ahold of her, so as much as he hated to dampen the fun he felt obligated to draw the line: lingerie, yes; blow-up doll, no.

  He need not have worried, though. Just like in 1981, they were whisked through customs, and also like in 1981 they were greeted by the stainless-steel-toothed smile of Mikail Monastersky, the affable, vodka-loving head of the mountaineering division of the Soviet Union's All-Sports Federation, the same man who had hosted Frank and Dick on the last trip.

  They loaded in a microbus for the drive to the hotel. On the way Frank leaned forward and asked Monastersky, “Do you have any news about the KAL disaster?”

  “What is this?”

  “The Korean airliner you guys shot down.”

  “Oh, that. No, problem. Everything's okay.”

  “Okay? The world is up in arms!”

  Dick kicked Frank in the shin, but Frank wouldn't ease up.

  “There's going to be a boycott of flights in and out of Russia. We might get stuck here!”

  Waving his arm Monastersky said, “Oh, that will not happen.” Then, changing to what he seemed genuinely to believe was a more important topic, said, “Mr. Wells, we have everything taken care of for you. We are so happy you have returned to the Soviet Union, with so many of your friends. For this, we have decided to pay for all your expenses.”

  Monastersky waited for the translator to finish, then using his own limited English said, “You climb in Soviet Union free!” He broke into a wide steel grin, wrinkling his already grizzled face. He lit another cigarette, and concluded, “So tonight eat dinner, make party, drink vodka!”

  True to his word, the following day Monastersky had everything arranged. They toured Red Square, followed by an evening at the fabulous Moscow Circus. Part-way through the performance Jennings complained that an earache from an infection he had contracted two weeks earlier during an expedition in the interior of Borneo was hurting so bad he would have to excuse himself and go back to the hotel. (This was an expedition that I had organized and led to make the first direct coast-to-coast crossing of Borneo. We had started it only a few weeks after I had returned from Everest, and Jennings wasn't the only one who got sick; I nearly died from a severe bout of typhoid fever.) The interpreter who was accompanying them thought it might be better if they went to the hospital.

  Jennings told the others he would see them back at the hotel, then followed the interpreter as they left for the hospital. It turned out to be a depressingly drab building with bare bulbs lighting gray-green walls. An elder heavyweight nurse escorted them to a room, and soon a doctor came in and made a lengthy examination, asking Jennings for particulars about Borneo. He left, and Jennings was transferred to a gurney.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “He said they will have to make a cut in your ear to clean it. But it will be only a small operation.”

  Another heavyweight Russian woman wearing a babushka then wheeled the gurney to a bare-walled room with a concrete floor, and left. Jennings was alone, and worried. He knew he was within walking distance of the hotel. He got up and went to the window. It looked like he was up maybe three or four floors. The window opened.

  Thank God, he said to himself. A fire escape.

  Meanwhile the others had returned to the hotel with no idea of when or where they would next see Jennings. They were still awake when he walked in with a big grin, telling everyone about The Great Moscow Hospital Escape, and that he would be quite happy to put up with his earache, confident the best strategy was to let it heal itself.

  It took some patient diplomacy to calm the interpreter as well as the hospital staff the next day, but with everything in order they caught the flight to Mineral Vody, where they began the drive familiar to Frank and Dick up the Baxan Valley to the base of Elbrus.

  As was the case in Moscow, their itinerary was planned down to the least minutia. They met their guides as well as a distinguished gray-haired Moscow physician who was in charge of the Elbrus summer camp sports programs to which the Seven Summits group was assigned. He gave them a briefing:

  “This morning you will first have your physical examinations. Then in the afternoon you carry your equipment on the ski lift, then hike a short distance to the hut. There you will leave your gear and return to sleep here. This will help your acclimatization.”

  With raised eyebrows Emmett glanced at Morgan. Formulized mountain climbing was something new to them, but the Russians really were doing it all in a concern for their safety.

  “Then the following day you return to the hut and sleep. The next day you spend at the hut to acclimatize, and the next you start early and climb to the summit.”

  Emmett thought it made a very long summit day but again the Russians were so polite it seemed out of place to suggest anything contrary. Besides, Emmett rationalized, they probably had some residual acclimatization from Kilimanjaro, that is other than Morgan and Jennings. But then Jennings’ earache was still bad, so he was probably sidelined from the climb anyway. That meant only Morgan would have to gut it out. None of them felt too bad for Jennings, however, who had been assigned a personal female doctor to look after him. She was an attractive, big-bosomed woman, but at the same time rather serious and professional.

  “We'll get her turned around in no time,” Jennings grinned. “Wait till I lay a couple of black lace bras on her.”

  Luanne accompanied them when they left next morning on a short bus ride to the small, rickety aerial tramway that took them from 7,500 to 10,500 feet; then a single-chair ski lift took them all to 11,500, the summer snow line. Now they continued on foot, hiking up moderate snow slopes for about 1,800 vertical feet to the metal-sheathed hut, the one they recognized from their previous climb and which looked like a huge Airstream trailer. Here they saw the Russian Olympic ski team at their summer practice. Luanne, wearing pink on white tennis shoes, stepped out smartly, staying up with Frank, who was huff-huffing with his habitual pressure-breathing. When they got to the hut at 13,300 feet, she said, “So that's all there is to this mountain climbing business? Big deal!”

  The next day they returned to the hut although Luanne, as planned, remained at the lower hotel with Marian.

  “One day is all I need to get a taste of mountain climbing,” she said, “Besides, staying down here watching Jennings is sure to be more entertaining.”

  At the hut they were scheduled to have an additional acclimatization day, so Steve Marts, knowing that the actual climb of El
brus was for the most part a boring slog up a long snow slope, took advantage of the “rest day” to film a climbing sequence on a steep, rocky serac on the glacier near the hut. As had happened on Kilimanjaro, Emmett would lead the hard section, with Frank and Dick following. And again, Dick got up okay, but Frank slipped and was held by Emmett's belay. Morgan stood on the sidelines, watching.

  “What kind of documentary is this?” Morgan asked.

  “A new genre,” Emmett answered sarcastically, “called a ficumentary.”

  They got to bed early that night, as their guides promised a predawn start. True to their word, they woke everyone at 3:00 A.M., and they were on the trail by 4:00.

  It was cold, close to zero. There was wind, but the predawn sky was cloudless and promised good weather for the job. For nearly two hours they followed the trail, moving between rock and snow patch until they reached the base of a continuous snow slope where the guides motioned they should fasten their crampons. This was much lower than where Frank remembered putting on crampons that first climb, but this year there was more snow.

  As he fastened the crampon straps over his boots Frank remembered how on the first climb he had been too exhausted even to do this simple chore. How things had changed. Frank felt like the ninety-eight-pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his eyes, disappears to lift weights, and comes back to take care of the bully.

  Frank felt great and made good time up the slope. The guides, apparently assuming everyone was climbing well enough not to need assistance, made even better time and soon pulled ahead. Marts and Emmett were also ahead although not quite as far, when they came to the only steep part of the ascent, a back-and-forth traverse up an exposed snow slope. Marts climbed it, showing skill and agility despite his pack full of heavy camera gear. Then it was Emmett's turn. He felt confident, but moved carefully. His crampons squeaked as they bit the hard snow. This was perfect snow for cramponing, as long as you didn't pull a “Wells” and catch your pant leg and trip. Emmett looked down. It was well over a thousand feet until the slope started to ease. A slip here, unroped as they were, would be fatal.