The passage was shoulder-width and about five metres long. I had walked a dozen paces or so beyond when I heard a sharp crack, followed by a dull heavy crunch. Glancing behind me I saw that the fin, for no apparent reason, had broken off at its base and, like a vice, had closed the passage I had just walked through. It needed little imagination to visualise what would have happened had this occurred just ten seconds earlier. I was badly shaken. There was none of the adrenaline rush, in itself a stimulant, that you get from a fall or near-miss from an avalanche, just a dull, nagging fear with the knowledge that I was going to be exposed to this kind of risk every time I went through the Icefall. I made a weak joke about it to Arne, who had been behind me, and pressed on into the sunlight that had just reached the slope beyond. In its dazzling brightness the piled ice blocks seemed less threatening.
But the danger was still there, though at least now we were on top of the huge peeling flakes of ice. It was like a gigantic toy box into which had been tossed a pile of multi-shaped building bricks; shift one, and the whole lot would collapse. We had reached a stable island of ice near the head of the cataract. A good place to pause. Odd was already there.
‘Pertemba and Pemba Tsering have gone ahead,’ he told me. ‘I couldn’t keep up with them. There’s just one more big crevasse system between us and the cwm. They’ve climbed down into it.’
We sat in the sun and ate our lunch, constantly glancing across the waves of broken ice to the smooth haven of the Western Cwm, but there was no sign of Pertemba. An hour went by and then someone shouted.
‘There they are, you can see them, they’ve made it.’
They were two tiny dots dwarfed by the plunging walls of Nuptse but very definitely on the other side of the crevasse system and in the Western Cwm.
On his return Pertemba told us they had gone beyond the site of Camp 1 and that the Western Cwm looked straightforward. He was full of bounce and seemed happier than I had seen him so far on the expedition. I suspect that the sight of his fellow Sherpas going into the Icefall had begun to irk him. He was a good administrator but he was still a climber. His lightning foray had been important for his own self respect and perhaps even his standing with his fellow Sherpas, though on getting back to Base Camp he settled into his administrative role once again and showed no signs of wanting to go back to the mountain.
We were now ready to establish our first camp and Arne discussed the plan over lunch the following day. In deference to my lack of Norwegian, conversation when I was around was nearly always in English. He didn’t go in for formal meetings but used mealtimes as a forum for discussion and planning. He proposed ideas, listened to counter-suggestions, but it was always Arne that made the eventual decision and, through this, maintained an effective control. With the exception of Christian Larsson he was the least experienced mountaineer in the team but, nonetheless, he was a good leader with a combination of charisma, a good sense of humour and a quick analytical mind that enabled him to absorb a series of conflicting ideas and come up with a sound conclusion.
Odd, Bjørn and Stein were to move up to Camp 1 the following day and push the route on up the Western Cwm to Camp 2, which would be Advance Base – all good familiar stuff, for this was identical to the build up for the South-West Face. I enjoyed my position within the expedition. Arne had agreed that I should look after the logistics, which meant supervising the flow of supplies up the mountain. Although at times I found it frustrating, not being able immediately to implement my own ideas, I could be very much more relaxed than I had been on previous trips.
During the next two days, however, a difference in approach emerged. Arne announced at dinner that, in view of the danger and instability of the Icefall, he proposed keeping all the Sherpa force at Base Camp until we had ferried everything we should need for the climb beyond up to Camp 1. There was a sound logic in the idea, since it would reduce the number of days we would have big Sherpa teams moving through the Icefall. In addition, once everything we needed was in the Western Cwm, a major collapse in the Icefall need not delay the build-up of supplies.
Even so, I was not happy with his plan. I preferred dividing the Sherpa team between the camps from the beginning to maintain the forward momentum of the climb, trying to keep a stream of supplies behind the climbers out in front. I felt that this was psychologically important, so that the entire team would have a sense of urgency and drive. It would also mean we were making maximum use of the good weather we were experiencing. I didn’t say anything at the time but slept very little that night, exploring the implications of Arne’s plan. He was not at all well at this stage with a severe throat infection that he just couldn’t throw off. If you are feeling ill, this inevitably influences your judgement, and I was worried that Arne subconsciously was favouring a slower build-up on the mountain because of his throat condition.
I had brought with me an Apple Mac computer that was powered by batteries and a solar panel. I was using it both for writing my reports and letters and also for calculating logistic problems. First thing next morning, as soon as the sun hit the tent, I switched it on and, using the spreadsheet, calculated the implications for the next ten days of Arne’s plan and of my own idea of distributing the Sherpas more evenly. I then went over to his tent before breakfast to show him my calculations, demonstrating that with the build-up we already had, we should be able to station a Sherpa team at Camp 1 the moment we had the route to Camp 2 opened. I suggested that I should also move up to Camp 1 to supervise the flow of supplies through to Camp 2. Arne saw the point and we agreed to a compromise. Six Sherpas would join me at Camp 1 the following day when we moved up.
I was going up with Ola Einang, Ralph Hoøibakk and Håvard Nesheim. The latter two were the strongest climbers in the expedition, one of the oldest and the youngest. Ralph was managing director of a big computer company yet, in spite of being forty-six and having a sedentary job, he was the only member of the team who was as fast if not faster than the Sherpas. When making the route through the Icefall, he had always been far ahead, often soloing steep ice in his search for the best route. He was not remotely interested in my computerised logistics.
‘I’m managing and planning all the year round. This is my escape,’ he told me. ‘I’m happy just climbing.’
Håvard, at the other end of the age spectrum, had the same attitude. He had just qualified as a doctor but was on the expedition as a climber. He held the Norwegian height record, having joined a Polish expedition to Lhotse, and reached their top camp on the Lhotse Face just below the South Col. Håvard came from Tromso in the far north of Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle, where the sun never sets in the summer and it never rises in winter. His personality perhaps mirrored his home environment. He was the expedition joker, flamboyant and full of laughter, yet beneath it there was steel. The jokiness was a thin protective layer over a strong ambition. He very much wanted to reach the top of Everest.
They moved up to Camp 2, sited on a bare rocky moraine just below the South-West Face, while I stayed at Camp 1, checking through the supplies as they came up from Base Camp. I learnt over the radio that Kjell Torgeir, our doctor, had recommended that Arne, Christian and Stein should drop back down to Pheriche to help get rid of their sore throats. Arne hadn’t delegated the command in any way, but at this stage it didn’t really matter since the expedition was now running in the natural pattern of a siege ascent. Ralph, Håvard and Ola were out in front making the route up the Lhotse Face and behind them the Sherpas were relaying supplies to Camp 2. Liaising with Pertemba at Base Camp and Pema Dorje at Camp 1, I was able to control the flow of loads and the distribution of Sherpas on the mountain.
My Apple IIc had stood up amazingly well to the dust and glacier grit, to temperatures ranging between –10°C at night and the mid-eighties inside the tent during the day, all of which computers tend to hate. It had been bumped on the back of a yak as far as Base Camp and then carried by a porter up through the Icefall. I could only operate it during the day
when the temperature rose above freezing and the power of the sun could charge the battery through the solar panel. It was to achieve a record of its own when I took it up to Camp 2 at 6,400 metres, as I suspect this is the highest on the earth’s surface that a computer has ever been used.
Once the three out in front had reached the middle of the Lhotse Face where we planned to establish Camp 3, the only people available to replace them were Odd, Bjørn and myself. I was beginning to look forward to being in the lead. It would be our job to make the route to the South Col which would put the other three into position for the first summit bid. I didn’t mind that. It seemed appropriate that it should be an all-Norwegian effort for the first push, but I was worried about my own stamina and was frightened of burning myself out while pushing the route up to nearly 8,000 metres. From my experience in 1982 I knew that my recovery rate had slowed down, an unwelcome product of my years.
Odd, Bjørn and I moved up to Camp 2 on 3 April. It was already a little village of tents perched amongst rocky mounds and, sadly, littered with the debris of former expeditions. With several large expeditions a year visiting the mountain this has become a serious problem on Everest. It’s not just the rubbish that has been left behind but also the pollution of water supplies. We had all suffered from Giardia, a form of dysentry, at Camp 1, almost certainly because the snow from which our water was melted was polluted from the latrines of earlier expeditions.
The previous autumn Dick Bass had financed a Nepalese police expedition whose main function was to clean up the mountain, though at the same time they were hoping to make a bid for the summit and for Dick to complete his seven summits odyssey. Unfortunately, through a series of misunderstandings with the authorities, Dick was forced to withdraw before they had even reached the foot of the Lhotse Face. The police pressed on, however, making a bid for the summit which ended with two of them falling to their deaths. They also cleared a large quantity of rubbish from the lower part of the mountain though, perhaps because of the sheer volume of it, there was still a great deal in the immediate environs of Camp 2.
The others that day had reached a point just below the proposed site of our next camp. They had had three hard days out in front and were keen to get back down for a rest. They told us that they had found the shattered body of a Sherpa at the foot of the Lhotse Face, a grim relic of the previous autumn’s expedition.
We spent the following day sorting out the camp, checking gear and getting ready for our move on to the Lhotse Face, deciding to make a carry in the first instance, and actually get the camp established before moving up. I was feeling fit and well acclimatised, largely due to my steady progress up the mountain, ferrying light loads and working on the logistics.
But it was good to be moving up into the lead, as we zigzagged through the crevasses that guard the upper part of the Cwm. The Lhotse Face, a thousand metres of bare ice leading up to the South Col, looked formidably steep. An avalanche cone dropped down from the bergschrund that guarded its base. The bergschrund itself was filled with snow but the wall beyond was sheer for about twenty metres. It had been a fine lead by Håvard Nesheim who made the first ascent. The previous day Sundhare and Ang Rita had carried up some ladders and put them in position.
Walking below the South-West Face, and now looking across towards it, brought many memories. Most amazing of all, though, was the site of our old Camp 4. The super-boxes, specially designed by Hamish MacInnes, were still there, faded into a brown-yellow, no doubt stuffed with ice, but clinging to the snow slope below the little rock spur we had feared would give all too little protection from the avalanches coming down from the walls above. The site had been better than we had thought, and the boxes themselves had more than justified their weight.
The Sherpas were pulling far ahead. Odd was with them. Bjørn and I went more slowly, pulling up the fixed ropes over endless slopes of ice, broken only by steeper bulges. The average angle was little more than forty degrees but the ice was so hard that it must have been intimidating to lead. I glanced up to see Odd and the Sherpas now on their way down. They had pushed beyond the high point of the others and had found a site for Camp 3. It was on a wide shelf, sheltered by a sérac wall. A small blue tent left by the Korean winter expedition that had attempted the mountain just a few weeks before hid from the winds in a little depression. We were at a height of around 7,400 metres.
By the time we reached Camp 2, Kjell Torgeir had arrived. He wasn’t a climber but was a keen cross-country skier, marathon runner and an excellent expedition doctor, conscientious, kindly and very capable. He had brought with him a small battery-operated centrifuge and was using this to check the haematocrit levels of the team. At sea level about forty-eight per cent of the blood is made up from the red cells that absorb oxygen from the lungs but, to help compensate for the lack of oxygen at altitude, the body manufactures more red cells. The problem occurs if there are too many, for then the blood becomes as thick as treacle and there is a danger of it clotting, causing heart attacks or strokes.
Kjell had just checked Odd’s blood to find that the haematocrit level was dangerously high, at about seventy per cent, and he had just advised him to return to Base in the hope that a loss in altitude would thin down the blood. Odd, who had been going so much more strongly than either Bjørn or I, was both shocked and depressed by the discovery.
And so the following morning it was just Bjørn and I who set out with Ang Rita and Sundhare for Camp 3. We were quickly left behind by the two Sherpas as we slogged up the ropes, weighed down with our personal gear, much heavier loads than the previous day. One advantage of this was that by the time we reached the camp the Sherpas had erected both tents. All we had to do was crawl inside and light the stove for our first brew.
That night we slept on oxygen. On the South-West Face in 1975, we had only started using oxygen at Camp 5, at about 7,700 metres, but since we had plenty of oxygen bottles and the Sherpa power to carry it, it seemed to make sense to start using it at Camp 3 as Bjørn and I wanted to avoid burning ourselves out in this push to the South Col. Snuggled in my sleeping bag, the hiss of oxygen was reassuring as I woke from time to time through the long night.
The following morning I started cooking just after dawn, but we were slow in getting away and had extra brews as we waited for the sun to creep over the shoulder of Everest and give us the benefit of its warmth. I poked my head out of our tent and saw the Sherpas just emerging from theirs. Time to move. Bjørn and I were using oxygen that day, but the Sherpas weren’t. Consequently they were ready first, shouldering rucksacks filled with rope and climbing hardware. I was still struggling with my oxygen system. The straps of the mask were the wrong length. I couldn’t fasten one of the buckles, lost my temper and hurled the mask into the snow. Bjørn seemed quietly amused. By the time I had got myself organised the others had vanished round the corner of the sérac. I plodded behind them, feeling flustered and tired before I had even started. The oxygen didn’t seem to be doing anything at all for me.
I soon arrived at a steep little step. They hadn’t bothered to put a fixed rope on it. I climbed it clumsily, goggles misting up, and the snout of the oxygen mask making it impossible to glance down and see where I was kicking my cramponed boots. Why the hell hadn’t they put a rope here? I cursed them, cursed the mountain, cursed the whole expedition. Sundhare and Ang Rita were no more than little dots on the other side of a sweep of ice leading to the distinctive broken limestone rocks known as the Yellow Band and Bjørn was already halfway across the ice slope on his way to join them.
‘Come on Bonington; get a grip. You’re behaving like a small child,’ I told myself.
I was going so badly there seemed little point in trying to catch up with the others. Sundhare and Ang Rita were obviously capable of fixing the route and Bjørn would soon be with them. They had run the rope out almost horizontally across the slope towards the lowest point of the barrier formed by the Yellow Band. It looked as if it could do with a few intermediate a
nchor points, and that the approach to the traverse needed some fixed rope. I decided I might just as well spend the rest of the day doing this. I’d be conserving my energy yet doing something useful. I immediately felt better, dropped back down to the camp and collected some more ice pitons and rope, dumped the oxygen gear that had been so cumbersome, and returned to the fray in a much better humour.
I have always enjoyed putting in fixed ropes; there’s an element of craft to it, getting the rope to just the right tension and placing the anchors so that it is easy to transfer from one rope-length to the next. I was enjoying myself. Meanwhile I could see that the others were making good progress, slowly climbing up alongside the Geneva Spur.
After a couple of hours I returned to the tents to prepare tea for Bjørn and the Sherpas when they came back. They had fixed about 300 metres of rope, most of it salvaged from the many old ropes left embedded in the snow and ice. Sundhare had done most of the leading and it is in this that one major change since 1975 can be seen. Then most of the Sherpas had still been essentially load carriers, but today an increasing number of them are becoming first-rate mountaineers, accustomed on some expeditions to guiding their clients up the mountain. The Lhotse Face was familiar territory to Sundhare and Ang Rita. Not only were they much faster than we were, they knew the way from previous experience.
Next day both Bjørn and I felt terrible. We hadn’t slept well and had dysentery. Could the snow of Camp 3 be polluted too? On the morning radio call Bjørn spoke to Arne, who had now recovered from his sore throat and had moved up to Camp 2.
‘Chris and I are feeling lousy. We’ve both got the shits. I don’t think we’ll go up, but don’t worry, Sundhare and Ang Rita should make it to the South Col today.’
There was a long pause.
‘Hello, Bjørn, this is Arne at 2. I’m very concerned with what you say. You can’t leave it all to the Sherpas. What do you think the Norwegian press are going to say if it’s the Sherpas who reach the South Col while you’re lying in your pits?’
The Everest Years Page 26
