‘Yeh Arne, I see what you mean. I’ll have a word with Chris, over. What do you think?’ he asked me.
‘Hell, put like that I suppose we’ve got to go.’
‘Hello, Arne, we agree with you. We’ll go with the Sherpas.’
I was determined to get away early this time, got my mask sorted out and was away first, but I didn’t stay in front for long. Sundhare and Ang Rita stormed past before I had got halfway across the ice slope and Bjørn caught up with me above the Yellow Band when I sat down in the snow for a prolonged rest. I felt profoundly discouraged and couldn’t help wondering whether I was going to have the strength to make it to the top. In theory the oxygen flow should have reduced the altitude to 5,000 metres or so but, in effect, it didn’t seem to be helping at all.
‘I don’t see the point in going on any further,’ I told Bjørn. ‘There’s no way I’m going to catch them up. I’m not going to burn myself out just for a bit of public relations.’
‘Oh well, I think I’ll go on a bit further. I’d like to see the view from the South Col,’ he explained diplomatically.
So Bjørn went on up the ropes, and I returned to the tents. I could at least have some tea ready when they got back. Bjørn never caught them up, but met them on their way back down. They had reached the South Col and fixed rope all the way. Bjørn went on to the crest of the Geneva Spur so that he could at least look across to the col. The route was now complete to the site of our top camp. All we had to do was stock it and we would be able to put in our first summit bid.
We dropped back down to Camp 2 that same afternoon. Christian Larsson and Arne, looking better although he still had a bad cough, had arrived there the day before. That night over supper we discussed the summit bids. Arne had already decided the obvious choice for the first summit bid would be Ralph, Håvard and Ola. He told us that he wanted Bjørn, Odd, if his haematocrit level allowed it, and me to make the second attempt, while he and Stein would make up a third party.
‘I don’t want to hold you guys up, and I could do with a bit more time anyway to get rid of my cold,’ he concluded.
The following morning Arne called a meeting in the cook tent. We now had sixteen Sherpas at Camp 2 and most of them crowded in. There was an atmosphere of relaxed, yet excited, anticipation. The gas stove was purring away and mugs of tea or coffee were being served by Ang Rinzay. The meeting mostly involved a discussion between Arne and Pema Dorje on the composition of the Sherpa part of the summit teams.
‘On that first attempt the Sherpas will not be asked to help the climbers at all,’ Arne told Pema. ‘The climbers must carry their own oxygen and get to the top without any kind of help, but on the second and third attempts the climbers will want some help. Their Sherpas can carry the spare oxygen.
‘We’ve got enough oxygen and equipment for any number of attempts. You Sherpas can make a fourth attempt of your own if you want. There’s no reason why anyone wanting to go to the top shouldn’t have a try.’
We spent an hour discussing the composition of the summit teams, the Sherpas listening and occasionally adding their comments. The important thing was that they felt fully involved and, even though the majority had no ambition to reach the summit, I’m sure they appreciated being given the opportunity.
The excitement was infectious. I was already suffering from an acute attack of summititis, was impatient of logistics and wanted to get back down to Base Camp or even lower to recuperate for my own bid for the top of Everest. But there was work to do. I had to check through the gear we were going to send up to the South Col in the next few days. The Sherpas did not want to stay at Camp 3 and preferred to make their carry straight through to the South Col from Advance Base, a distance of three miles and a height gain of 800 metres, carrying fifteen kilos without using oxygen.
Christian was going to be in charge of this vital phase of the expedition. He has a methodical thorough mind and questions the logic behind every proposal. It’s certainly an ideal quality for a Base manager, but that afternoon I was at my most impatient, like a small boy at the end of term time, unable to wait for the holidays to start. I found it impossible to concentrate, muttered bad-temperedly about needing all the rest I could get after staying so long at altitude and added aggressively that whatever happened I was getting back to Base that evening.
‘I’m sure you’ll manage,’ I told Christian, as I quickly packed a rucksack and set out down the Western Cwm. Bjørn and I met Stein in solitary residence in Camp 1. He had worked so hard in organising the expedition back in Norway but had acclimatised slowly and was now gradually making his way back up the mountain, hoping to get sufficiently fit to make a summit bid.
Back down through the Icefall, the upper section had collapsed yet again. The route wound through narrow corridors, across ladder bridges, warped by the shifting pressure of the ice, and over ice boulders jumbled from a recent fall. Odd had found a better line to avoid the death alley of the way up, but it went beneath a huge blade of ice that was going to collapse sooner rather than later. I ran beneath it, balancing over the slippery ice boulders. At last we were down but paused at the American camp to chat about their progress. They were now established high on the West Ridge, but still short of their top camp. Those at Base looked tired and drawn.
Back at our camp, great platefuls of boiled potatoes spiced with chilli awaited us. It was positively hot in the late afternoon sun. Bjørn Resse, the photographer from VG, the newspaper that was sponsoring us, lay stripped to his shorts, soaking up the warmth.
Kjell Torgeir had come down with us and the following morning carried out a transfusion on Odd, removing a litre of blood and replacing it with saline solution, in an effort to bring down the red blood cell count. Ralph and Håvard were on their way back from Pheriche. They had been there for four days. On my previous expeditions I had stayed at Camp 2 throughout the expedition and no one had gone below Base, but it certainly seemed good sense. Base at 5,400 metres is too high for fast recovery. In fact, at that altitude the body is still slowly deteriorating. Bjørn, Odd and I therefore decided to go down as well, but just before we set out Pertemba came over.
‘You know, Chris, I’d really like to go to the top with you,’ he said.
It was something that I had thought of, particularly after his little foray into the Icefall, but I had never liked to say anything to influence him. It meant a great deal to me, because of our friendship over the years, the link that he formed with my previous visits to the mountain and all the experiences, rich and good, as well as tragic, that those had involved.
We set off for Pheriche just after lunch. It was so easy, lightly laden, going down hill with halts at the tea houses at Gorak Shep and Lobuche. Night fell as we came off the terminal moraines of the Khumbu Glacier on to the flat valley floor. The kitchen-living room of Ang Nima’s lodge was crammed with trekkers and Sherpas sitting on the benches at the two tables and on stools round the open range. A cacophony of languages, English, French, Japanese, Italian, Dutch and Sherpa made the place a colourful Tower of Babel.
Ang Nima greeted me warmly. He had been with me on the Annapurna South Face Expedition in 1970 and on Everest in 1972, but his climbing days were over. He had a good head for business, had started his hotel in a tiny yak shelter in 1975, and had built it up over the years with a big bunk room and a well-stocked shop. That night we gorged ourselves on Sherpa stew, fried potatoes and fried eggs, washed down with copious draughts of chang. It was a different world from Base Camp with new people to talk to and fresh food to eat. It was difficult to believe that I had been only 300 metres below the South Col just three days earlier, and even harder to imagine going back again.
I spent most of the next three days sleeping but during my waking time I became increasingly tensed at the prospect of the summit bid. For the first time I felt isolated from my fellow climbers. Several Norwegians, friends of team members, had trekked into Sola Khumbu. Inevitably they talked amongst themselves in Norwegian. Experiences a
nd friendships that I hadn’t shared, as much as the difference in language, heightened my own sense of isolation and, through this, my homesickness, a longing for Wendy, a longing for the expedition to end so that I could get back to my Cumbrian hills.
But then the brief holiday was over. It was time to return to the mountain. In just five days’ time, with a bit of luck I could have climbed 5,000 metres to stand, at last, on the highest point on earth.
– CHAPTER 18 –
Fulfilment
All the doubts of the last three days dropped away. I felt energetic and refreshed as I strode out over the well-worn trail, past sleepy browsing yaks and the herders’ huts, with smoke seeping through their stone roofs. I was careful to skirt the small untidy mani walls on the left in the prescribed way. The high peaks, Ama Dablam, Kang Taiga and Tramserku, were lit by the first rays of the sun, whilst down here in the valley we were still in the chill shadows. The path began to climb the moraines of the Khumbu Glacier and the line of sunlight dropped slowly towards us, picking out the ochre brown of the trampled earth and the dusty grey-green of juniper shrubs. I climbed up on to the crest of a moraine ridge that overlooked the tumbling stream of the Dudh Kosi to feel the life-giving warmth of the sun’s early rays and revelled in anticipation of the climb ahead.
The path dropped down towards the river. I crossed it by a small bridge, passed some yak herders’ huts, now turned teahouses, and waited on the other side. Time for a second breakfast in the morning sun. Odd and Bjørn were just behind. We sat and talked, sipped black tea and nibbled biscuits. We were just ready to leave when a bizarre figure arrived. He was clad in navy-blue shorts, matching Lifa long-johns and vest, with a little white sun hat on his head and a furled umbrella clutched in his hand. It was Dick Bass, with his broad Cheshire Cat grin and unquenchable enthusiasm. He had arrived at Pheriche the previous afternoon and he, also, was on his way to Everest.
Dick had bought his way into Arne’s expedition on the agreement that he would be allowed to make an attempt on the summit, employing his own Sherpa team, but using our camps and fixed ropes, once the Norwegians had completed their summit bids. He had with him just one other American climber, David Breashears, who had made the first ever video transmission from the summit of Everest on his 1983 expedition. David had the job both of filming Dick and also guiding him to the top. They had arrived at Base Camp whilst I had been up at Camp 2, but since Dick’s agreement with Arne dictated that he could not venture on the mountain until we had finished our climb, he had turned tail and returned to Namche Bazar, just to keep himself in trim and to start getting acclimatised.
‘Hell, my feet are killing me,’ he told us.
He took off his boot to show some of the worst blisters I have ever seen. He had carried a heavy pack back down to Namche and with typical guts, but also lack of experience, had ignored the tell-tale stabs of pain on the heels and soles of his feet with the result that he was not only blistered but badly bruised as well. But this did not affect his irrepressible spirit. He was planning to make his bid for the summit immediately behind our third attempt, even though this would mean he had barely time to become acclimatised. He admitted that he wasn’t fit. Snowbird, as usual, was full of problems and he had been working flat out trying to sell apartments in a huge new block he had built, right up to the day he flew out to Nepal.
We walked the rest of the way up to Base Camp with Dick. In spite of his obvious pain he kept up a good pace and his usual flood of talk. It was also a royal progress. He had become a favourite of the Sherpanis running the teahouses and lodges all the way to Base. He loved flirting with them and treated them with a gallantry they enjoyed. At Gorak Shep we met up with Pertemba who had come down to order some local rations. We all crowded into the tiny kitchen of the single-storeyed shack to eat potatoes, washed down by chang and hot rakshi. Then on to the glacier over stony moraines and past little groups of trekkers returning from their pilgrimage to Base Camp.
The following morning Kjell Torgeir checked Odd’s haematocrit level. It was still on the high side but much better than it had been before the transfusion.
‘It is up to you,’ Kjell told him. ‘You must decide for yourself.’
Odd decided to go for the summit, but it was a decision that didn’t come easily. He has a strong sense of responsibility in everything he does, particularly in relation to his family, but he felt the risk was acceptable with the highest point on earth seeming so very accessible.
There are many parallels between climbing a mountain and fighting a war. This is perhaps why the vocabulary is very similar – assault, siege, logistics. The dangers of climbing the higher Himalayan peaks are probably greater than those encountered in most wartime battles, yet the essence and spirit of climbing is very different. The climber doesn’t fight anyone or, for that matter, any thing. He is working with, and through, the natural forces. He doesn’t fight the storm; he works his way through it, perhaps shelters from it. But a climb, particularly one using set camps and a support team, needs planning that is very similar to a successful military assault. It doesn’t matter how talented the lead climbers are. If their supplies don’t reach them, they are going to be forced to retreat, just as a brilliant military advance can be halted through lack of fuel or ammunition.
We were now like troops at the start line for a big offensive, programmed to move from one holding area to the next. It was 18 April. Ralph, Håvard and Ola were at Camp 3 and would move up to the South Col, while Ang Rita and Pema Dorje would go straight through from Camp 2 to join them at the top camp. Odd, Bjørn, Pertemba and I were moving up to Camp 2 that same day to come in behind them for the second summit bid.
We set out before dawn, just short of the top of the Icefall there had been yet another collapse. There was a deep valley where the previous day it had been a precarious walk over chaotically piled blocks. Now our ladders were down amongst the rubble, twisted and broken in the collapse. The Sherpas were already trying to rebuild a route, digging out the ladders and looking for a way through new-formed walls of ice.
I clambered up a ridge on to what had appeared to be a ledge, only to find that it was a sharp honeycombed fin with deep crevasses on the other side. I edged across it. An ice block broke away underneath me and went bouncing and clattering into the depths beneath. I froze, heart pounding, then slowly and carefully balanced across the fragile arête to reach solider ground. ‘This must be the last time I ever go up through the Icefall!’ I promised myself.
But soon we emerged into the sun and the Western Cwm. The danger was over. A serpentine track was formed by the scratch marks of crampons and a trail of marker poles, most of them flying bright red bunting, the occasional one with a prayer flag to bless us on our way.
Christian greeted us at Camp 1. He had come of age in the course of the expedition. He had started as a gauche bright young man of the town, finding it difficult to relate to the Sherpas, and was abrupt and terse in giving orders in an environment that was strange, perhaps even hostile to him. But he had learnt a great deal in those weeks and had formed a warm friendship and sound working partnership with Pema Dorje in masterminding the stocking of the South Col. The fact that our move was being made with this military precision was largely due to Christian.
19 April was to be summit day for Ralph, Håvard and Ola. We made a leisurely start from Advance Base, just having to reach Camp 3, halfway up the Lhotse Face. I walked steadily but slowly, soon dropping behind the others, but I didn’t mind, feeling that I was maintaining a steady rhythm, of pushing up the jumar clamp, kicking crampon points into the hard ice and of measuring the slow, slow progress upwards against landmarks that had become all too familiar – a rock sticking out of the ice, the foot of the Geneva Spur. A great plume of cloud was flying from the summit pyramid; gusts like whirlwinds picked up flurries of spindrift and chased them across the face.
I was just short of the camp and noticed a figure coming down the fixed ropes from above. It could only be on
e of the summit team. Had they made it? As the figure came closer, moving slowly, ponderously even though it was downhill, the face hidden by oxygen mask and goggles, I somehow didn’t think he had. It wouldn’t have mattered how tired he was, he’d have waved, there would be more spring in his step. I reached the tents first. The approaching figure staggered those last few metres, sank into the snow and pulled off his mask. It was Ralph Hoibakk.
‘How did it go?’ asked Odd.
‘We didn’t make it.’
They had set out at four that morning and made steady progress with Ralph breaking trail for most of the way. He had reached the South Summit forty minutes in front of the others.
‘The wind wasn’t too bad when I got there and I was tempted to go for the top, but we’d agreed we’d all go together. So I waited. But the wind got worse and worse. By the time the others arrived it was hurricane force. The Sherpas wanted to turn back and so we did too.’
They had been so close. Now we were in line to make the first ascent of the expedition. That didn’t mean very much to me – I’d be the seventh Briton to reach the top of Everest – but Bjørn and Odd had the chance of being the first Scandinavians to get there.
The following morning we climbed the fixed rope to the South Col. It was less windy than the previous day and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I handled the ropes with care. Sundhare and Ang Rita had done a good job, but some of the old ropes we were using were frayed and knotted in great clusters at the anchor points.
It was a surprisingly long walk from the top of the Geneva Spur to the South Col, over slaty rocks that resembled tiles on a roof. Looking back down the Western Cwm, I was level with the summit of Nuptse. The col itself was more extensive than I had ever imagined, a wild flattish expanse the size of a football field, covered with the same slaty rock I had just crossed, and littered with the debris of previous expeditions; the skeletons of tents, oxygen bottles, old food boxes in little clusters – ugly memorials to the ambitions of our predecessors. The final slopes of Everest rose on the other side, in not so much a ridge as a face of snow and broken rocks that looked steep and inhospitable. Three tents, moored down by cradles of climbing ropes, were pitched near the centre of the col. The Sherpas, Dawa Nuru and Ang Lhakpa, had come up from Camp 2 that same day and were going for the summit with us. Neither of them had been to the top before.
The Everest Years Page 27
