Ascent Into Hell- Mount Everest Read online

  Ascent Into Hell

  Fergus White

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-97342271-6

  Copyright © Fergus White, 2017

  The right of Fergus White to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright & Related Rights Act, 2000.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder.

  Cover photograph of the author by Greg Jack.

  Photographs by Angel Ezequiel Armesto, Blake Elliott, Greg Jack, Khalid Al Siyabi, Penba, Roger, and the author.

  The Climbers

  Ted (Canada): Team leader, Everest summiteer, professional mountain guide

  Angel Ezequiel Armesto (Argentina): Team guide, professional mountain guide

  Hugo Searle (Wales): Team guide, firefighter in the USA

  Mingmar Sherpa Salaka Okhaldhunga 6 Damar (Nepal): 3 Everest summits, professional mountain guide

  Ade (UK): Oil exploration

  Amit Kotecha (UK): Dentist

  Charlene (Scandinavia): Quit banking career to focus on Everest climb

  Doug Stuart (USA): Firefighter captain

  Greg Jack (USA): Surgeon

  Khalid Al Siyabi (Oman): IT expert for education ministry

  Linda (Canada): Nursing

  Matthew (Australia): IT

  Martin McHugh (UK): Construction business

  Nurhan (Turkey): Everest summiteer, professional mountaineer, author

  Nigel (UK): Businessman

  Pete Solie (USA): US Air Force, retired – space and missile operator

  Roger (Scotland): Oil industry

  TC (Canada): Second attempt at Everest, physical education professor

  Yener (Turkey): Professional mountaineer

  Fergus White (Ireland): IT consultant for banks

  BECAUSE IT’S THERE

  April 1

  Into the Himalayas

  This is a one shot only deal. I stare at the pilot in front of me. If he lands short, he’ll hit a cliff that drops six hundred metres into the valley below. If he needs a go-around on this final approach, he’ll smack the high terrain at the end of the runway. Through the windscreen I glimpse the short tarmac of the Tenzing-Hillary airport at Lukla. The encircling mountains, thin air, and its four hundred and fifty metre sloping strip have crafted one of the toughest landings in the world. The History Channel classifies it as the most extreme airfield on the planet.

  The small plane is not pressurised. Twenty of us fill it. I smell aviation fuel. Flying in at over 3,500 metres, I already feel a little groggy. I trust the pilot is doing better.

  I’m thrown forward with the sudden deceleration. Above the propeller noise, the tyres screech on the runway. We’re down. We’ve stopped. I glance around and share a smile with my fellow travellers. I won’t admit it to them, but I’m relieved to be out of the sky. At an altitude of 2,800 metres on the edge of the Himalayas, we’ve thrust deep into the rural heartland of Nepal.

  We kicked off at 5am in Kathmandu. Sleep had not come quick last night. It wasn’t the hotel; it was me. My mind wouldn’t switch off. I knew today wouldn’t be just another day. A year ago I set myself a target. This airport is an accumulation of events that finds me eight thousand kilometres from my home in Dublin and within eighty kilometres of my goal. The maths suggests ninety-nine per cent of the voyage is behind me, but not so. Those first several thousand kilometres were the easy ones.

  With every metre that we ascend from here, the comforts of Western living will fade into memory. As we climb higher, we’ll penetrate a region where no culture has ever survived. We’ll enter an inhospitable environment, where only the briefest of visits is possible before escaping. Many who try do not make it that far. Of those who succeed, not all return.

  I trained here last year. We attempted to summit the 7,100 metre Mount Pumori, seven kilometres from Everest. The expedition lasted a month. We failed. We reached 6,300 metres, at which point the leader decided the snow conditions were too dangerous. That ruling annoyed some of the mountaineers on the team; they wanted to risk the summit. But the judgement had been made and no doubt for good reasons. The mountain had already thrashed me. I more or less passed out twice on the day we retreated. Three weeks of depleted oxygen, poor food, worse appetite, and blinding headaches had left me but a shell. Grabbing only a few hours of sleep each night, in a subzero tent, had accelerated my body’s collapse.

  Most of the team on that trip suffered stomach disorders. Stronger men than me exhausted their supplies of anti-nausea tablets early. One climber recounted how he’d swallowed his last remaining pill and then vomited again a minute later. Alone in the dark outside his tent, he rifled through the dust and bile, by the light of a head torch, to find the undigested capsule. At the time it struck me as hard core, but not now. When the going gets rough up here, mountaineers do whatever it takes to survive. Dignity is an early casualty. I’ve already written mine off; I know what’s ahead. I hope I’ll act with integrity, but I’m under no illusions. Virtue untested is no virtue at all. This isn’t Hollywood, where heroes perform brave acts and bask in a rewarding finale. This is the real deal. When it hits the fan, and it will, I fear I might not acquit myself as a gentleman.

  April 1

  Trek from Lukla (2,800m) to Monjo (2,800m)

  “Carry your bags?”

  “Porting service, porting service!”

  Outside the fence of the tiny airport, scores of Sherpas clamour for business. Trekking and climbing pay the wages in this region. These men earn eleven euros a day to lug thirty kilograms of equipment uphill. Judging by their fervour, they know bleaker ways to make ends meet.

  We push through; transport of our mountaineering gear and tents, by yak, has been arranged in advance. We’ll rejoin our duffle bags at Everest Base Camp, 2,500 metres above this spot. For now, we’ll each just carry a backpack with a week’s kit.

  We’ll hike up through valleys for eight days to Base Camp. We’re planning a slow ascent with time for acclimatisation. No prizes will be handed out for sprinting. No one brushed aside Hillary’s accomplishment to inquire as to how long he took.

  “Head into that teahouse,” Ted says. “They’re expecting us. We’ll take thirty minutes.”

  Ted leads teams up mountains in the Himalayas, Africa, and America for a living. In his mid-forties and about five foot nine inches, a lifetime of outdoor activities presents a trim physique, the envy of many men his age. This wilderness is his office. He’ll bump into many old friends these next two months. He led the training climb up Pumori and ended it on making the call to retreat. He broke a rib on that trip; a chunk of falling ice whacked him through his tent as he slept.

  From Canada, he’s spent decades as a mountain guide, ski instructor, and outdoor medic. He’s scrambled in the Himalayas forty times and climbed on ten Everest expeditions. He reached the summit once and joined the small elite who’ve stood at 8,848 metres. When tough decisions have to be made over the next two months, it’ll be he who does so and there’ll be little dissent.

  His team of sixteen climbers, plus two guides, pass flasks of tea across tables. Another six mingle with us and will do so for the next ten days. They aim to summit a mountain called Island Peak. It soars up to 6,100 metres; although, only the last few hundred require crampons. If four of the group clamber to the top, we’ll count that as a success. Such is the hardship of performing day to day functions above 5,000 metres that at least one of them may not even get to step on snow.

  To complement our numbers, six trekkers will hike up the valleys alongside us. They hope to
see Everest and experience a night at Base Camp.

  Noise builds in the hostel as the mugs of tea disappear and final adjustments are made to backpacks and boots. Most of us only knew one or two of the others before we met up in Kathmandu two days ago.

  “Ok guys, ten minutes and we’ll push off,” Ted says.

  A few Canadians chat at the table in the corner, either trekkers, or climbers aiming for the summit of Island Peak. I’ve picked up the names of most of the team who are trying for Everest but cannot remember the others. Hopefully I’ll get up to speed as we progress higher through the valley. I feel a bit of an ass talking to someone when I’ve forgotten their name, particularly when they’ve already told me three times.

  “Hey Fergus, a last mug of tea?” a voice beside me asks.

  “Thanks.” I glance to my right. “Thanks, Nurhan.” Somehow I remember his name.

  If his accomplishments were shared out among us, we’d be the most experienced squad in the region. He’d summited five frozen 7,000 metre peaks in Russia by the time he was twenty-six. A year later, he hauled himself up Everest and became the first Turk to do so. He was the youngest person in the world to climb the Seven Summits. The pinnacle of the technical and dangerous K2 has had his company. Now, fifteen years after scaling Everest, he’s returned to repeat the feat. Only this time he’ll climb the hard way: without oxygen tanks.

  Nurhan and I are worlds apart, well almost. On arriving in Kathmandu he sported a dark scraggy beard and wild hair. Yesterday he transformed that into a clean, cool goatee and crew cut. He now looks every bit the hard-edged adventurer. I too flash a tight haircut. Our physical builds are the exact same: five foot nine inches and trim. If that’s what a world class climber looks like, then I may be more suited to this challenge than I’d given myself credit for. At least I have the hairstyle.

  I zip up my black fleece top and recognise that there’s no turning back now. Back at home, Dad had spoken little of the climb. He assured me that his prayers would keep me safe. I hope so, but my two duffle bags crammed with mountaineering gear should limit my reliance on luck. I know he thinks I’m crazy to set off on this venture, as my friends back in Dublin also do. But while I reckon my buddies get a kick out of the boldness of the attempt, these two months will only deliver dread to Dad. Our family has no history of climbing; I’ve even less.

  Several years ago I’d read a newspaper article on Everest. It had suggested that climbing it was within the grasp of anyone in good health. Prior to that, in my late teens and early twenties, I’d raced bicycles. I was still putting in over a hundred kilometres a week, although nothing competitive. I pushed the story to the back of my mind and went to work in the office the following morning.

  Four years ago, I’d got a burning desire to complete a marathon. I don’t know where the idea came from. Others had done it; so, why not me? The furthest I’d ever run at that stage was about ten kilometres, to keep fit. I printed off an eight-month training schedule from the internet, bought a pair of runners, and hit the road. Some training buddies joined me, but life commitments and injuries pulled them off the programme. Later that year, I fell over the Dublin finish line in under three and a half hours. Exhausted, I’d felt I could expect no more from myself physically.

  But every few months, an action, a comment, a magazine column would ring that bell within me once again. I couldn’t ignore the audaciousness, the nerve, the cheek of pitting myself against something that is so far beyond my reach. I don’t know what the purpose of life is; although, I know how it ends. For now, I’ve something I wish to achieve before that denouement.

  Thirteen months ago I’d begun to scour the internet for instruction. Two months later, I’d made email contact with Ted’s operation on the far side of the world. Uphill solo hikes with a weighted backpack then filled my evenings and weekends. Not being married or having to support a family left me with no excuses to miss training. The timetable ignored bad weather. I wasn’t even certain it was possible for a novice to achieve what I was attempting within a year. I pored over equipment lists and evaluated and purchased kit. Working abroad, on computer projects, had allowed me hide my lunacy from those at home. The opportunity to abandon the plan had remained a possibility. But the night before flying to Pumori for the training climb, my buddies in the pub had posed the obvious question: since Pumori is one of the more difficult peaks on the planet, then what exactly was I training for?

  I look around the room in which I now find myself. Ambition drives us forward, takes us to unexpected places, faraway lands. The acceptance of trying and failing defines those who follow a dream. But trying and quitting, I’ve never been good at that.

  “It looks like we’re off.” Nurhan rises to his feet.

  I nod back to him. Now for something that’ll be a feature of the next fortnight: comparing my health against how I felt at the same altitude six months ago. Last time, a headache crept in after three days ascending. Within five I knew I’d altitude sickness. A week in and it took all my energies to just stand up straight and perform basic functions. I plan to go much slower on this occasion and hopefully delay the start of trouble. If I can postpone its onset and intensity, that’ll give me a shot at reaching the upper camps.

  I feel perfect. The crisp morning air has invigorated me. As we ascend to Base Camp, I know my brain will fog over. A dull throbbing sensation will develop that might become a more persistent, intense pain. For the next eight days, we’ll retrace the route to Pumori. Just before Base Camp on April 8th, we’ll turn off that trail and into new territory for me. If I amble today, then, with a bit of luck, I’ll have a sharp, clear head tonight. After that, I’ll take it one slow day at a time.

  Through the window of the teahouse, the sun is rising into a blue spring sky peppered with light clouds. We’ll hike about fifteen kilometres to the tiny village of Monjo on an undulating track. Despite the ups and downs, our altitude tonight will be same as here, at 2,800 metres. But given that we flew in from Kathmandu at 1,000 metres above sea level just an hour ago, this evening will see us a lot closer to 8,848 metres than when we woke up.

  I place down my mug of tea and take in the room. Dire memories of this hostel flood back to me. Six months ago we’d hiked off the mountain after the Pumori expedition. Flushed with oxygen and returning appetites as we’d descended, we’d bounded along and ate and drank our fill. But a few kilometres short of the airport here, food poisoning had walloped me. Over and over my stomach had ejected whatever it could find inside me. Very few spend time in this valley and remain healthy.

  As the sun had dipped below the hills, I’d no choice but to continue; there was nowhere short of Lukla to sleep. I’d stumbled for three hours, dehydrated, in a near daze. My climbing buddy had held me upright under the weight of my backpack, so I didn’t collapse into a pool of my own vomit. The night had drawn around us and the track had emptied. Sometimes I only staggered a few paces before stopping. Eventually, to make any progress, my mate had to carry my pack.

  I had slumped onto a bed above this teahouse, while the lads on the team disrobed me. They fed me antibiotics and anti-nausea tablets. I threw up again. Lucky enough, we’d been well stocked and were saved a fishing trip. They nursed me more pills and waited twenty minutes till I’d digested them. Only then did they head to the pub. I’d be fortunate to have those guys on this climb. I must avoid illness on this trip, or my preparations and training will have been in vain.

  Thirty of us lift our packs onto our backs and file out of the teahouse. Half a dozen of the others have personal Sherpas, which swell our numbers further. These men will act as individual assistants. They’ll carry some of the mountaineer’s load. Down here it grants little advantage; a few extra kilos in a backpack won’t tire the legs. But up high where the air is thin, the gradient steep, and each step gruelling, every gram will punish. The personal Sherpas should accompany their climbers all the way to the summit. I’ll attempt the challenge without a Sherpa as far as Camp 4. On the l
ast day, one of them will assist me with the weight of oxygen tanks.

  One of the Sherpas approaches me.

  “Hello Fergus, remember me?” He stretches out his hand.

  “Ang Nama, of course. How’ve you been?”

  “Very good. Good to see you again. What’s new?”

  He’s much older than the climbing Sherpas, probably well into his forties. He’ll bring up the rear on the trek to Base Camp. I’ve never seen him other than cheery. His smooth face contrasts to the weather beaten visages of many of the locals. Leaving the airport of Lukla behind and to the sound of eighty or so boots meeting hard clay, we chat about our upcoming adventure.

  On our right, the green valley wall stretches upwards. To our left, the foliage slopes down to a river. The floor extends for a few hundred metres, and on the far side lies farmland. As we move in deeper, the farms give way to forest. Trekkers, porters, and yaks crowd the trail. Everyone carries something, but the heaviest and bulkiest loads burden the porters. Everything for the villages above must be lugged up, as this trail is the only route in or out. Food, beverages, building supplies, plumbing equipment, detergent, crockery, life’s necessities; a yak or a back provides the transport. Some of the loads blow my mind, but regardless, there’s a fellow who’ll haul it for a price.

  After nearly three hours trekking, we pull into a teahouse at a small village for lunch. We take on powdered soup to start and rice with some flavouring for the main. Not appetising, but I eat as much as I can. I must lose as little weight as possible over the next two months. Altitude devastates appetite. In the 1960 Himalayan scientific expedition, most people working at 5,700 metres shed about two kilos a week. Last time I entered this valley, I weighed seventy kilos. I exited a month later at sixty-one. On this undertaking I’ll push myself for twice as long. With the exception of rest days, I expect to burn up four to six thousand calories per day. I sense weight loss in my future, lots of it.