Above the Clouds

by Anatoli Boukreev

  The Italians, who were experienced mountain guides, climbed out of the tent to say good-bye to me. When I asked about their plans, they waved their hands in disappointment. Their Jeeps were arriving in two days, so they had no time to try again. After their departure, I spoke with my Russian friends about Victor and Gennady. Everyone knew these men and each was suffering their deaths. They had not been seen for four days. Two big avalanches had come down below Camp I, covering more than half that route in a mass of snow. Another avalanche had obliterated the route between Camps I and II. Probably the bodies of our friends were buried in one of those.

  I stayed talking with the Russians more than an hour, then decided to descend to Camp II where I had left my tent. If the wind subsided, I would to try for the summit the next day. Seven Russian mountaineers and one Korean climber would spend another night at Camp III, hoping for a break in the weather. Two hours later, down on the plateau, I discovered the Italians and their tent were gone. I cooked some food and had a meager high-altitude meal. I reviewed my situation. That day I’d noticed right after lunch that the gusts of wind on the plateau had calmed down and the snow flags blowing from the summit crest had decreased as well. Projecting that the wind would continue to decrease, I thought the best time to reach the summit would be between 3 and 4 P.M. the next day. I rested a little more. Toward sunset I decided to move my tent to the end of the plateau and to set up camp in the shelter of the steep ascent to the ridge crest. That move would save an hour of time and effort the next morning. I had little strength left in me after that day’s work. When darkness fell, I was in the new spot cooking dinner.

  After fixing breakfast and filling my big thermos with tea, the next morning I strapped on my crampons, picked up my ice ax, and began my journey to the summit. It took one hour to reach the altitude of Camp III, but to my disappointment the wind was gusting to the same hurricane force as the day before.

  The Russians were in their tents. I climbed in with Vladimir Bashkirov. He told me that they had started out early, but had been unable to move far and had returned to the tent to wait for the wind to decrease. They planned to wait another night, though food and fuel were becoming critically low. I noticed that among this tent full of Russians, the Korean climber was sitting quietly at the back with his face to the wall. He was obviously uncomfortable in this circle of people he did not know. His English and the English of the Russians left much to be desired, so communication was limited. My Russian comrades regarded him with displeasure. When I asked how our friend from Korea was doing, they told me a funny story.

  In the evening some uneaten soup had been left to freeze in a pot near the stove so it could be heated up again in the morning. In the darkness that night, the Korean climber could not find his pee bottle. He did not want to disturb his tentmates by moving outside. Groping in the darkness, he found what he thought was an empty pot and relieved himself. In the morning semidarkness the climber assigned to cook put the soup on the gas stove to boil. The unbearable smell of hot urine soon filled the tent. That was the end of breakfast. The Russians questioned each other and quickly determined who had urinated in the soup. They did not scold him, but the unfortunate Korean now suffered in silence with his face to the wall.

  No one on the Russian team was interested in going out with me to face the crazy gusts of wind. I went alone and began to climb along the crest of the ridge, moving over along its gentler side where the wind had deposited a considerable mass of snow. After an hour’s climbing, the angle of ascent became more acute. The danger of snow avalanching from the overburdened slope increased. I chose my way precisely, going exactly along the crest, never stepping off to the left or right. In places, forced off the ridge by a boulder, I immediately became aware of the instability of the mass of snow below my feet. I ceased being aware of the wind and the time. The slope, though steep, posed no technical problem. The difficulty was the snow; occasionally it was up to my waist, and I could not sense that I had solid footing. Total awareness followed each step down into the snow. Tuning in to the exact amount of pressure that supported me, my progress was agonizingly slow. Absorbed by an excruciating level of stress, several hours passed with all my intuition, all my focus, riveted to the feeling of the powder beneath my boots.

  Looking up, I saw a ski sticking up from the snow on the crest above, as though someone had unsuccessfully tried to ski down from the summit. Before the summit, a rocky gendarme forced me to traverse below it to the left on a steep incline. The snow on the surface was crusted by the wind, but just under the crust it had the consistency of free-flowing powder. On the slope below my steps was the fresh track of a snow slab that had peeled away. I moved like a tightrope walker, finally coming onto a small, rocky shelf—the beginning of the snow-covered summit crest. There, next to the skis buried in the snow, was a backpack. From writing in a diary inside the pack, I learned that the climber had been Slovakian. A picture of a beautiful little girl was folded in the pages of the book, perhaps the daughter of the mountaineer who left these things.

  After a short rest, I continued to the highest point on the summit crest. Half-covered tracks led to a landmark that was protruding from the snow. I arrived on the top at three-fifteen. As I had predicted, the wind had let up a little, though the gusts still had enough force to push me off-balance. I straddled the summit crest, riding it like a horse, and took pictures. Despite the wind the visibility was excellent; before me was the top of the mountain, a long, steep ridge that dipped and rose again. From my friends I knew that the southern point was 8,013 meters, by some calculations only five meters higher than where I sat. I considered the traverse, looking at the huge snowdrifts that had built up over the technically easy relief. They were weighted and ready to carry a person down despite every precaution. Experience told me that I had about a 10 percent chance of reaching the south peak alive. How the snow had felt coming up the ridge was fresh in my mind. I knew the conditions were not right for more gambling with my life. Inside me, as it would be with any mountaineer, ambition was raging, but continuing would go against all logic. I had put my life on the line many times in 1996, but for important reasons. I don’t know how other mountaineers will judge my actions, but I left the ridge with the feeling that I had climbed Shisha Pangma. Descending, I comforted myself that any other course of action would have been moronic recklessness. I stopped on the rocky ledge by the backpack and skis. What had happened to this man? He could not have descended in slippery plastic boots without his crampons or skis. Maybe he had tried to traverse the crest under conditions similar to this day’s. I turned my attention to getting down, and once again all my awareness was in my boots.

  I paused when I reached the Russian tents. Standing outside, I drank a cup of tea and talked with my friends. The next day they would follow my tracks to the summit or go down. The time and energy for climbing this mountain was coming to an end.

  I was in my tent before dark. After drinking copious amounts of tea and eating a light supper, I climbed into my sleeping bag. For a long time I did not fall asleep. I wanted to understand how I felt about the choice I had made on the summit crest. To me the top of Shisha Pangma was the ridge, which had a few meters of variability from one end to the other—a few meters that could not compare to the enormous scale of the mountain. The choice I had made to come down worked for me and only me. How would others assess this ascent? We go to the mountains to satisfy our own ambitions, not because others evaluate what we are doing. Perhaps that other question, the heightened concern for how we will be judged, leads to death in the mountains. I had been in a similar situation when I’d climbed Makalu in 1994. On my first ascent I was fifty horizontal meters away from the principal tower, and I’d climbed to a point fifteen meters lower than the main summit. Later I climbed Makalu again to satisfy my ambition, meeting the world’s standards. However, the second Makalu ascent posed no risk to my life, and I never entertained any doubt that it was possible. Was it interesting to ascend the second time
? Yes, but looking back I saw no important difference in the two efforts. Climbing high for its own sake is interesting, though to climb for the simple pleasure of contiguity with a mountain is difficult. To climb only as a means of ego gratification is stupid, though for humans that is a compelling reason. The important conclusions I came to that night were that I should not let my ego or my concern about what others thought of me kill me, or kill the deep joy I experience in communion with the mountains.

  The next morning, the day greeted us with good weather and no wind. My friends were lucky, and their days of waiting paid off. I was certain they would reach the summit following my trail. I wondered if they would decide to traverse to the south end of the ridge. When I arrived at Camp II on my way down, I was surprised to see my Italian friends and their tents. They shouted a greeting; watching me through a telescope as I struggled had inspired them to try again, and they planned to attempt the summit the next day. We took group pictures, shared tea, and they helped me load my pack full of equipment onto my shoulders.

  In spite of that weight, I negotiated the footing down to the glacier. I spent the night on a moss-covered spot about two hours from Base Camp. The next evening, members of the successful Russian team joined me back at our camp. After a sober evaluation of the snow situation on the ridge, my experienced friends had decided not to try the traverse. The Italians also reached the peak of the north crest. They ventured a short distance along the ridge; the conditions of the snow mass under their feet discouraged recklessness, and they, too, turned back from the South Summit.

  What can I say in our defense? Those who hunger for blood will maintain the summit is the summit and not a meter less. Those are the rules of mankind. Each of us was physically capable of making that traverse under sane circumstances. The Italians had previously competed in a sky marathon, winning prizes for their efforts, so endurance was not the issue. The South Summit is definitely a little higher than the point we reached. Despite that, each of us was satisfied he had honestly climbed Shisha Pangma.

  October 12 found both our teams at the roadhead where the Jeeps were waiting to transport us back into the warm valleys of Nepal. We carried with us memories of the bright colors of Tibet. Somewhere on the slopes of Shisha Pangma are the bodies of my Ukrainian friends. On the slopes of Everest are the bodies of other people who are close to me in spirit. I learned that Everest had claimed others that season, young Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa among them. Lopsang had survived the tragic night the previous spring, but fate took him in the fall. People will always go to the mountaintops, led on by their ambition and the desire to test themselves against the powerful forces of nature. Individuals chart this course into the mountains. These summits do not give in easily. One must be excellently prepared for the challenge.

  On Cho Oyu, my Kazakh countrymen with their Japanese friends continued their assault, and that expedition had a tragic end. The most experienced of the Japanese climbers insisted on climbing without bottled oxygen. He moved much slower than his team. Though the Kazakh climbers urged him to use oxygen, he refused. As a precaution they carried an emergency supply for him. At 8,100 meters he stopped to rest. After drinking tea from a thermos, for no apparent reason he fell forward into the snow, losing consciousness. Immediately the oxygen mask was put on his face and the flow turned on, but that did not improve his condition. During the tortuous descent, when the unfortunate man roused to consciousness, he would sing songs to them, but he demonstrated no lucid understanding of what was happening. About one hundred meters from Camp III, he died. In a heroic effort, the three Kazakh climbers carried him all the way to Base Camp. The previous year he had successfully ascended to seven thousand meters in Kazakhstan, yet eight thousand meters in Tibet proved fatal.

  Many things at high altitude are dependent on the human organism’s readiness to endure in that atmosphere. Every professional alpinist who climbs 8,000-meter peaks searches for ways to prepare the body so that it will adjust to the variables. The environment at extreme altitudes is as alien as outer space; the dynamics play out in ways that we cannot fully understand. In those extremes each person has a personal boundary between life and death. The exact cause of demise can be wondered at or debated in this or that case, but realistically a mountaineer can only hope that a commitment to constant training will prop up his or her ambitions to explore the earth’s highest reaches.

  9

  EIGHTY DAYS, FLYING AT NIGHT, 19971

  In October 1996 when I returned to Kathmandu after climbing Shisha Pangma, Ang Tshering Sherpa, the owner of Asian Trekking, approached me. He wanted to know if I was interested in working as a consultant and climbing leader for the first Indonesian Everest expedition, scheduled for the spring of 1997. Though ascending Everest via the normal route is no longer interesting to me as a mountaineering problem and sports objective, the idea of leading an expedition was appealing. There are many ways to grow as a professional. Unfinished emotional business made me want to return to the site of the ordeal we had endured the previous spring. Somehow, I hoped to make respectful burials of the exposed bodies of Scott Fischer and Yasuko Namba. As I continue to examine my recollections and the opinions of friends and other professional climbers in the hard light of reality, I search for the lessons in that experience. What other option is there—when you have lived through a situation where the best you could do was not enough to prevent a disaster?

  When I entered into discussions with Ang Tshering, I needed to define some position in mountaineering’s emerging market that would allow me to earn a living. I wanted to work in ways that were congruent with my beliefs regarding climbing as a sport. The job for the Indonesians would let me clarify my role as a coach and climbing team leader. Admittedly my ego is as fragile as the next person’s. I felt maligned by the voices that had captured most of the attention in the American press. Acknowledged as some kind of mountaineering “superman” who was not a very smart guide, my years of experience, intelligence, and character had been discounted. If not for the support of European colleagues like Rolf Dujmovits and Reinhold Messner, I might have been depressed by the American perspective of what I had to offer my profession.

  After negotiating with Indonesian team organizers in Kathmandu, in late November I flew to Jakarta, where I met with General Prabowa Subianto. Suharto’s son-in-law was the official sponsor of the expedition. During conversations with the general, in stark, graphic terms I said his prospects for success on Everest with inexperienced climbers were marginal. Realistically, I projected we had about a 30 percent chance of summiting one individual, while the chance of someone dying was about fifty-fifty. Such odds were not acceptable to me personally. I asked the general to finance a year of training that would allow his men to gain experience climbing progressively higher peaks before taking on Everest. That request was rejected out of hand; I was given three months to train the team.

  My tradition of climbing promotes mountaineering as a sport, a reasonable sport, not a game of chance. The death of a team member always supersedes any summit success. There is an exponentially decreasing margin of safety for an amateur, even a well-conditioned amateur, in the atmosphere above eight thousand meters. In life each person bears the responsibility for his or her ambition. Gaining the top of the world’s highest mountain is an enormous human achievement under any set of circumstances. On Everest, every bit of preparation you can make still leaves you in short supply on summit day. The general could buy the benefit of my experience. He could pay for my advice, my services as lead climber, and my strength as a member of a rescue team, but if he wanted the summit of Everest, I wanted him to accept responsibility for the hubris of that ambition with inexperienced men. I could make no guarantee about their personal safety. The general assured me that his soldiers were motivated and well conditioned. They were patriotically committed to succeeding for their countrymen even if they were facing the prospect of death. In some ways, that was a shocking declaration, but it was realistic. I was not trying to sel
l an adventure tour to dilettantes. No guarantee of success was pledged, and I refused to accept the job unless the general gave me absolute authority to call off a summit attempt if I felt the condition of his men or those on the mountain prevented us from proceeding with reasonable safety. Expending psychological energy debating trivial issues with people who have a limited understanding of the difficulties ahead still seems like a waste of time to me. I was reassured that the Indonesian team would not need a social director. The role I outlined for myself gave the Indonesians every possible benefit of my experience while promoting their organizational independence. Those were the terms of our agreement.

  I left Jakarta for the United States on December 6. Doctors in the United States were going to evaluate and treat eye damage I had sustained in a bus accident in late October. For the ensuing three months, the organizational aspects of my job occupied my time. Colonel Eadi was the military commander of the expedition, and Monty Sorongan was his civilian liaison officer; these gentlemen made every effort to satisfy my requests and address my concerns. They provided us with the best possible support.

  Communication had been a huge problem during the Mountain Madness expedition, a problem that I had failed to appreciate completely until it was too late. Not only was the language barrier a source of frustration, but the system of radio contact between guides and camps had not been well thought out. In 1997, as well as radios for each member of our summit team, I asked that our duty officer at Base Camp have a direct line to our support personnel in Kathmandu. Also I requested daily weather reports from the meteorological service at the international airport in the capital. Technical advances in clothing and boots have made it much safer for an inexperienced climber to endure extreme temperatures. I saw the difference good equipment made in limiting injuries in 1996. Needing every margin of safety, based on my recommendations, no expense was spared outfitting our climbers with state-of-the-art equipment from American, Russian, and European suppliers.