The Everest Years

by Chris Bonington

  We were to have another puja at the gompa at Pangpoche, the last village of Khumbu, but I was walking with an English girl I’d met on the trail, overshot the turning, and by the time we had turned back the ceremony was over. However, we met Pertemba and a group of Sherpas who urged us to go along anyway to receive our blessing.

  The gompa was above the village, shielded by pine trees. Much smaller than the Tengpoche gompa, it was in the same style with a big dark chamber on the ground floor and a smaller room upstairs. We were ushered up a narrow winding staircase by an elderly Sherpani. An old monk and two Sherpas in lay dress were crouched behind a low table, the monk chanting from an open book, the Sherpas playing a horn and banging a drum. We were beckoned to a Tibetan carpet in front of the table and invited to sit down. A big jar of chang was produced and we were each poured a cup which, whenever we sipped, was immediately filled up. It was a cheerful affair, its very informality making it mean even more than the grander ceremony at Tengpoche.

  We then moved on to Pheriche, the little collection of what had once been yak-herders’ huts and were now Sherpa lodges, lying at the foot of a steep little scarp beside a flat-bottomed valley among some of the loveliest mountains of the Himalaya. Everest was hidden by the great wall of Nuptse but the eye was drawn to the dramatic spires of Ama Dablam and Taboche and, looking back down the valley up which we had just come, Kang Taiga and Tramserku.

  It was here that we were going to spend the next week acclimatising. It was a pleasant interlude, for there were no pressures and no schedule to follow. The sun was bright but the air still had a chill bite. Winter was barely over. I made a pilgrimage to a small peak immediately opposite the South Face of Nuptse. Gazing up at its huge wall I found it difficult to conceive that I had been there twenty-five years before. Ang Pema, cook to the trekking party accompanying our present expedition, had been with me to the top of Nuptse all those years ago. It had been his first expedition as a high-altitude porter. The previous year, on Annapurna II, he had been a kitchen boy. He hadn’t changed much, with his round almost moon-like face, open easy grin and a simple kindness that had perhaps stopped him from becoming as prosperous as some of his fellow Sherpas, but he had a few fields and yaks, and seemed well content with his life.

  Our most ambitious acclimatisation foray was at the end of the week. We split into two groups and four of us, Odd Eliassen, Ola Einang, Christian Larson and I set off up the Tshola valley to the north of Pheriche, hoping to reach the high col at its end and perhaps even climb one of the peaks that flanked it. We brought with us neither tents nor stoves, so that night gathered bits of scrub and dried yak dung to make a cooking fire.

  Over six foot and blond, in his early forties, Odd Eliassen was the archetypal Norwegian and also one of the most experienced members of the team. He had pioneered several new routes on the huge granite walls of his native Romsdal in the sixties and had been a member of that ill-fated International Expedition to Everest in 1971. He was one of the best expedition men I have ever been with. His practical skills, he was a carpenter by profession, were invaluable in making the many repairs that are always necessary on any trip but, much more than that, if there was any work to do, Odd would just quietly get on with it. He was a wonderfully kind, generous person.

  Ola Einang was similar. He ran a climbing school in the west of Norway. At first glance he looked like a Viking. Thickset with a great bushy beard, I could just see him standing helmeted in the prow of a longship, a double-headed axe in his hands. But here the resemblance ended. With a twinkle in his eye, a broad smile and ready laugh, he also was one of the quiet workers of the expedition.

  Odd bent over our smouldering yak-dung fire, trying to blow some life into it, whilst the rest of us ranged over the alp, covered in clumps of brown frost-nipped grass, looking for fuel. Across the valley, the tip of Ama Dablam was still catching the soft yellow light of the dying sun, while closer at hand the dark silhouettes of Taboche and Jobo Lhaptshan cleaved the sky. The Everest massif was hidden by Lobuche Peak which guarded the northern flank of our high valley. I savoured every detail, in the simple enjoyment of the moment and the anticipation of the following day with a walk up an easy, but unknown, glacier to a col which would bring fresh views of mountains, some of them familiar, others new.

  We slept under the stars that night and lit the fire two hours before dawn, drank cups of tea and gulped down muesli before starting out up a long scree slope that led to a higher alp. Picking our way over rocky spines and a frozen pond, we reached the crest of the moraine just after dawn. Loose boulder slopes and little scrambles followed. It was an adventure and, as so often, I wondered why this didn’t content me. It was such fun, and yet I could only savour it to the full because I knew that Everest was just round the corner.

  We reached the col at nine after a scramble up steep loose shale. It yielded an exciting view of the back of Pumo Ri, with steep snow leading to the summit, as shapely as the more familiar aspect from the other side. Beyond it was the great wall of Gyachung Kang, a peak of just under 8,000 metres and only climbed once, by a Japanese expedition in 1964. The view was dominated by the mass of Cho Oyu, at 8,153 metres one of the fourteen peaks over the magic 8,000-metre mark, but it was big and lumpish, and I quickly glanced past it to the west, where three distant peaks formed a perfect trinity. They were shapely pyramids of ice and rock, and I calculated that the one on the right had to be Menlungtse, a peak that has intrigued me ever since my first visit to the Everest region in 1961. Tantalisingly, it stands just over the border in Tibet and has consequently remained inviolate, even though it must be one of the shapeliest, and perhaps technically most difficult, 7,000-metre peaks in the main Himalayan chain. I had applied to the Chinese for permission to attempt it in 1987 and had learnt only a few days earlier that my request had been granted. I gazed at its tapering ridges through my binoculars before tearing myself away – back to the immediate challenge of Everest.

  They were already packing loads by the time we got back. It was planned to have two nights in Lobuche, at a height of 4,930 metres, to enable everyone to acclimatise, but I was impatient to reach Base Camp, wanted to look quietly at the Icefall to assess its dangers and try to pick a route through it. I therefore asked Arne if he minded my walking straight through to Base the following day.

  The Sherpas had been there for the past week and had already constructed the kitchen shelter, a dry stone wall structure with a tarpaulin roof. A few hundred metres away was another camp, that of an American expedition attempting the West Ridge of Everest. The following morning, 14 March, I left early with Pema Dorje, our Climbing Sirdar, to find a vantage point from which to view the Icefall. We scrambled up the broken rocks at the foot of Khumbutse, the peak immediately above Base Camp, to the crest of a small spur, until we were looking down on to the lower part of the Icefall and could see across to its centre. It was completely lacking in snow, very different from the two previous occasions on which I had been there, when many of the crevasses had been hidden by the monsoon snows and even the sérac walls and towers had been softened by the depth of their cover. Now it was bare, gleaming in the early morning sun, seamed with the black lines of crevasses and pebbled with a chaos of icy talus slopes, the debris of collapsed walls and towers.

  ‘Have you ever seen it as bare as this?’ I asked Pema Dorje.

  ‘Never. It looks very dangerous,’ was the reply.

  Pema Dorje was tall for a Sherpa, clean-cut and cheerfully eager. He had been to the top of Everest with the Canadian expedition in the autumn of 1982 and had done a lot of climbing with Adrian and Alan Burgess, the talented British mountaineering twins who now live in America. He spoke excellent English and I could see by the way he had scrambled up to our vantage point that he was a good natural climber.

  On the way back down we called in at the American camp. They were a larger team than ours, numbering twenty in all, but they had fewer Sherpas and a much more difficult route. They had already made the section of
their climb up to the Lho La, the col at the foot of the ridge, reached by a series of tottering spurs of loose rock and dangerous gullies. Some of the Americans were gathered around a petrol-operated winch when I arrived. They had just persuaded it to come to life. This was to be carried up to the foot of the final head wall of ice to winch up their supplies to their first camp.

  The climbing leader, Jim Bridwell, was an old friend. I had last seen him on our search for Pete and Joe on the eastern side of Everest back in 1982. He was looking as cheerfully debauched as ever, smoking a Camel cigarette and coughing between puffs. Over cups of coffee and biscuits spread thickly with peanut butter, I listened to their plans. Their team were very different from my fellow Norwegians. Long-haired, bearded and macho, they were more extravagant in their claims and certainly much more individualistic. There was none of the self-disciplined restraint that marked the Scandinavians. But they were a warm-hearted, likeable group and I was to get to know them much better in the coming weeks.

  By the time I got back to our camp, the others were beginning to arrive, seeking out sites for their tents in the rocky rubble. By dusk the camp was fully established, the mess tent with its tables and chairs placed near the kitchen, and our own personal tents scattered amongst the boulders. But we couldn’t venture into the Icefall until the next day when the Sherpas would hold their puja to bless the Base Camp altar.

  It was the first time the entire expedition of ten climbers and twenty- eight Sherpas had been together. Up to now they had been scattered between Luglha and Base Camp, supervising the trickle of supplies up through the Khumbu valley. The bulk of the expedition gear had still not arrived.

  Arne got us all together and gave a welcoming speech aimed particularly at the Sherpas, expressing his appreciation of their quality and the work they were going to do for us. He was certainly right in telling them that they were the strongest team that had ever been assembled. Quite apart from Pertemba, who had now been twice to the summit, and Pema Dorje who had been once, Sundhare had the record, having reached the top on three previous occasions. In his late twenties, his first expedition had been with us to the South-West Face in 1975 when he had reached Camp 5. He appeared to be very westernised, loved pop music and disco dancing and cultivated the fashions of a smart young man about Kathmandu, with a trendy shoulder-length hairstyle and tight jeans. Ang Rita had perhaps achieved even more, having reached the summit twice without oxygen. He was very different from Sundhare. Stolid and very much a farmer, one felt he had a firmer hold on his own heritage and background. Three other members of the Sherpa team had been to the summit of Everest once before and over half the team had reached the South Col.

  After Arne’s speech the Sherpas conducted their puja, lighting a fire of juniper wood on the chorten of piled stones they had built in front of the camp. One of their number, a lay lama, chanted prayers whilst the rest stood around, drinking chang, chatting and laughing. The climax to the ceremony came when a big flagpole was manoeuvred into position on top of the chorten, with much cheering and shouting. It was an unsanctimonious jolly ceremony and yet, at the same time, it was very moving. They had built two other chortens at either end of the camp and the three flagpoles were linked by cords carrying gaily coloured flags, fluttering in the wind above our tents to give us protection from misfortune.

  It was 15 March and on the following day we planned to venture into the Icefall.

  – CHAPTER 17 –

  The Build-Up

  There are many rituals associated with climbing Everest, and their very familiarity was a reassurance, a series of signposts towards the summit. I enjoyed waking in the dark of the pre-dawn in my own little tent, then going across to the cook’s shelter which was so much warmer and cosier than the mess tent. The cooking stoves, which had been lit by one of the cook boys, were standing on a table of piled stones in the middle of the shelter, roaring away under the big detchies. Ang Tendi, our chief cook, was still in his sleeping bag, curled up on a mattress on top of some boxes at the end of the shelter. Ang Nima, one of the cook boys, poured me a mug of tea and I sat on a box.

  ‘What are the Sherpas having?’

  ‘Dahl bhatt, you want some?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Ang Nima ladled out a plateful of rice covered with dahl in which swam big red chillies. I nursed the hot plate as other Sherpas trooped in one by one. Soon the shelter was packed with Sherpas and the three other climbers going into the Icefall that day.

  There were no commands. The Sherpas drifted out, picked up the loads which had been allocated to them the previous evening, and then, pausing at the chorten on which a fire was smouldering, muttered a prayer, tossed on it a handful of rice or tsampa, and plodded off in the dim light towards the Icefall. I, too, always uttered the prayer that everyone would return safely from the Icefall that day.

  The way started gently over rocky debris past the American camp, then wound through shallow valleys between fins of ice and piled boulders, onto the lower slopes of the Icefall. It was a steady crescendo of drama; the first little ice towers, the first crevasse, and then a complete network of them, which we laddered one by one. The first hint of danger came as the towers became bigger and we reached the debris of collapsed séracs, a slope of ice boulders, one piled on top of the other, smooth, hard, slippery and insecure. I disturbed one the size of a kitchen table and Bjørn lunged out of the way only just in time as it bounced down the slope, dislodging others in a domino effect.

  We nibbled away at the route through the Icefall, the climbers divided into two teams taking alternate days. As is always the case, what seemed frighteningly dangerous on first acquaintance quickly became familiar with the introduction of ladders and fixed ropes. The higher we climbed, the more insecure it became, so that what had seemed appalling one day became comparatively safe in contrast to the next barrier.

  It was nerve-racking yet invigorating, trying to pick out a safe route through this maze of ice. We were also starting to work as a team, not just the climbers, but also with the Sherpas, who took their full share in route finding. Each day we pushed the route out a little further but it was taking too long. A week had gone by and we still hadn’t broken through into the Western Cwm. It was the morning of 22 March and I was having breakfast in the Sherpa kitchen when Pertemba came in, dressed for the hill.

  ‘I think I’ll have a look at the Icefall today,’ he said.

  I certainly didn’t mind. Apart from anything else it meant that I was not the only one to have broken a promise to his wife! Pertemba wanted to get things moving and to see for himself why we hadn’t pushed the route through to Camp 1. But I don’t think that was the only reason. I had sensed his growing frustration with his administrative role on the expedition, grappling with the problems of getting all our loads ferried to Base Camp in the face of a porter and yak shortage. Whilst relations between Sherpas and climbers had been getting steadily stronger as we worked together in the Icefall, back at Base Camp, as so often happens, petty misunderstandings were causing tension. It was all about money and food – it nearly always is.

  Arne and Christian Larsson, our Base Camp manager, were used to doing business in the world of shipping with firm contracts which were honoured to the letter, every dollar accounted for. Business in Sherpa country is different. Pertemba had had to pay over the odds for both porters and yaks. In sending back some of our high-altitude porters to bring up a consignment of ladders which had got no further than Pheriche, there had been a dispute over their ration allowance. But the greatest irritant of all was over food. The Sherpas had opted to be paid a ration allowance so that all their food could be bought locally but then, almost inevitably, they had yearned for the chocolates, sweets and biscuits that the climbers were eating.

  It all came to a head over a load of fresh oranges. The trekkers who had come in with us to Base Camp had chartered a helicopter to take them back to Kathmandu from Pheriche and Arne had used it to bring in the oranges. Ang Tendi asked if th
e Sherpas could have some but was told they were reserved for the climbers. It was the only time I had anything approaching a row with Arne.

  ‘It’s inevitable they’re going to want to share in the goodies,’ I pointed out. ‘You always want something all the more if you’re not allowed to have it. It’s human nature.’

  ‘It cost me a great deal of money getting those oranges in,’ he replied. ‘The Sherpas said they wanted to buy their own food and we’ve already paid out a hell of a lot for it. They should stick by their agreements. Anyway, if we shared out the oranges amongst everyone at Base Camp, there’d hardly be enough to go round.’

  ‘But can’t you see? We’re going to depend on the Sherpas’ enthusiasm to get us up this mountain. What on earth are a few oranges compared to keeping them happy? It’s worth making concessions at this stage when it could make all the difference between success and failure later on.’

  In the end Arne agreed to share out the oranges and, once the concession had been made, very few Sherpas bothered with them. We ended up throwing most of the oranges away after they had become rotten. As the expedition progressed Arne and Christian became much more relaxed in their dealings with the Sherpas and consequently their relationship with them got better and better.

  That morning Pertemba wanted to escape from all these niggles and grapple with the much more tangible problems of the Icefall. The worst section was near the top. A tottering cliff of ice about seventy metres high barred our route. The only way to bypass it was through a canyon filled with ice blocks spawned from the sérac walls. About halfway along a huge fin of ice protruded. Instinctively I chose the narrow passage behind it. It seemed to give what could have been little more than psychological protection from the threatening wall above.