Ascent Into Hell- Mount Everest Page 11

  The Englishman descends. I take in my last views. Behind us, Pumori’s peak disappears among menacing clouds. Eight kilometres across the valley and three kilometres above looms the summit of Everest. We’ve seen enough; it’s time to return to Base Camp.

  I skip over the boulders and bound down the track. I wait for the other three every few minutes. I’d noticed this pattern six months ago. On ascents my speed is average at best, but on descents I come into my own. My light weight must make few demands on my knees and thigh muscles.

  We’ve turned left off the track and are hiking down the grassy slope. My legs respond and my lungs thrive on the extra oxygen compared to the top. Doug pants.

  “We’re going to stay in Gorak Shep for the night,” Ade says nodding at Martin. “We could do with some good food and a decent bed.”

  “And I’d best get on the internet,” Martin says. “Keep in touch with home.”

  “All right, lads, we’ll let Base Camp know. See you tomorrow.”

  Doug and I turn left. We’ve an hour and a half trekking ahead of us and a gain of a hundred and fifty metres in altitude. I can handle the flat sections, but the inclines bite my legs. Behind me Doug struggles. A combination of thin air and a lack of calories have conspired against us.

  We keep slogging. Thirty minutes pass. My head droops. My legs burn. I fish out my last reserves of the day: a chocolate bar. I break it in half and wait for Doug.

  “Here, mate, try that.”

  “Is that all you have?” Doug’s eyes are half closed.

  “That’s the lot.”

  I hope the sugar will jumpstart our muscles in about twenty minutes.

  Late afternoon draws in. The simple acclimatisation hike has granted the Himalayas another chance to kick us in the ass. We drag ourselves up onto the glacier. We trudge past the official entrance to Base Camp, knowing we face another half hour to our tents, or at this pace, longer. My eyes close as I huff. Behind me Doug falters further.

  The clouds thicken. Snow falls and builds on my jacket. This is far from the pleasant hike I had in mind this morning. I drain the last few drops of my water. I shuffle towards our target. Doug cannot stay with me. We’ll make it, but we’ll keep nothing in reserve. I visualise reaching the mess tent and gulping down a litre of warm water. Another fifteen minutes on the rocky glacier and we fall into camp. Doug slumps into his tent. I haul myself over to the mess.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Early evening finds us sitting in the mess tent for dinner and planning.

  “Tomorrow, the seventeenth, will be a rest day.” Ted puts down his mug. “Get yourselves ready for the first rotation. On the eighteenth, we’ll climb the Icefall and spend a night at Camp 1.”

  “Be good to see what’s up there,” Roger says.

  I’m just glad tomorrow’s a rest day.

  “Hugo and Angel will go up with you.” Ted leans forward to look at them down the table. “On the nineteenth, you’ll have a climb high-sleep low day to touch Camp 2. You’ll spend that night back at Camp 1. Then on the twentieth, you’ll descend through the Icefall back here to Base Camp.”

  “This is getting serious.” Greg nods to Khalid. “So that’ll be two nights up at Camp 1.”

  “What day is it?” I ask.

  “Eh, Saturday,” someone says.

  “No, maybe Thursday,” comes another offering.

  There’s no weekend here, no Friday night excitement or Monday morning blues. The days have a date but no name. But regardless of what we wish to call it, in two days’ time, the expedition will move up a gear. For an hour and a half, a DVD of Hollywood escapism in the mess takes my mind off reality. But alone in my tent tonight, I ponder that the suffering hasn’t even started.

  April 17

  Rest Day at Base Camp

  “There’re a lot of teams up in the Icefall,” I say. “Things have moved up a notch.”

  “Yeah, I heard teams setting off at three this morning,” Greg says.

  “Three o’clock? Stuff that. I’d prefer to be in bed at that time.”

  “They must know what they’re doing.”

  The early start gives climbers a chance to outdo the heat of the day. In theory it’s safer to climb through the Icefall when the sun isn’t beating down on it. This lessens the chance of an ice formation creaking forward and unleashing mayhem. On the other hand, the glacier itself could move at any time, day or night; therefore, vigilance is always required.

  “Well, it’s less busy than yesterday,” Ted says. “Almost an entire team quit and went home.”

  “What happened?”

  “They were shook up by a scare in the Icefall. They’d had their fill of adventure.”

  We hear that tragedy struck a Sherpa just below Base Camp. He’d ported goods up and didn’t look healthy on arrival. He’d shown signs of severe altitude sickness and was descending to recuperate. From what we understand he was travelling alone. It seems he lay down to catch his breath and didn’t get up again. One person tells us the porter died; another reported that he was revived by the staff at Everest ER.

  In the afternoon, the IMG squad organised a meeting of the major teams on this south side. They wanted to arrange cooperation on fixing ropes to the summit. Ted attended and reported back to us.

  “There’s seven thousand metres of rope at Base Camp, good rope, new stuff,” Ted says. “There’ll be a single rope all the way to the summit, with a double rope at bottlenecks. The Sherpas from six teams, including ours, will fix the route between Camp 2 and Camp 4. Himex will fix the ropes from there to the summit.”

  The Sherpas will also remove old rope from the Yellow Band and the Geneva Spur. The tripping hazard is easy to get tangled in and confuses exhausted climbers, who may follow it by mistake. They then discover they’re dangerously off route. Worse, a person might connect to a dangling thirty metre length of rope with no anchor point at its end. If a lost mountaineer falls forwards descending that, they’ll slide down past the loose end and into oblivion. All this talk of Yellow Bands and Geneva Spurs is as familiar to me as the Sea of Tranquillity or the Mariana Trench. I guess I’ll cross those bridges when I come to them, if I come to them.

  Charlene, meanwhile, is the star attraction at our camp. Three Finnish climbers from another team came to visit her. They looked very experienced in their matching red climbing gear. There was something hardcore about these men; I think they eat mountains for breakfast. A TV crew interviewed Charlene outside her tent. Media coverage back in her home country is reporting on the unfolding story here. I don’t know as yet how far above Base Camp her competitor, Anne-Mari, has acclimatised.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It’s late afternoon and I’m filling my backpack for tomorrow. I’ll carry only the bare essentials, but in no time the pack is full. The massive -40C sleeping bag takes up half the space, even squeezed into its stuff-sack. I’ve crammed in provisions for three days in a hostile environment. I’ll leave this mountain equipment at Camp 1 for the next rotation. I can’t fit my down suit into the pack. I’ll only need it above Camp 3; so, I’ll lug it up on the next cycle with other necessities like mitts and over-boots. I keep lifting the pack to test its weight and convince myself it’s light.

  “This weighs a damn tonne,” I call over to Ade.

  “Join the club.” He looks at a bulging pack outside his tent.

  “This is going to hurt.”

  At dinner I eat what I can, but I struggle. I’m not eating as much as I need for what’s ahead, but it’s all I can hold down.

  Night has fallen and I’m lying in my tent. My watch thermometer reads -7C. Outside the temperature is plummeting to -15C. The alarm on the watch is set for 5am. There are nerves. There is doubt. I hope there will be sleep.

  April 18

  Climb Up from Base Camp (5,350m) to Camp 1 (6,050m)

  Today we go big. Up to now we’ve achieved what many trekkers have: made it to Base Camp. On top of that, we’d a brief foray into the Icefall. It delivered
a taste of what life up high promises. It’s brutal. And that was without a load. Today I must climb to the crest of the Icefall and lug a sleeping bag, mat, food, and other essentials. My pack sits in the vestibule. It’s huge and it’s heavy.

  I pull on my mountain gear in the tent by the light of a head torch at 5am, and then crawl out. All around, people prepare for what awaits above us. I eat a small breakfast in the mess tent, take on a few mugs of warm water, and fill my bottle. At 6am, Greg and I thrust into the darkness towards the Icefall.

  “That’s the end of the rocks. Let’s put on the crampons,” Greg says.

  For half an hour we trudge up and then down the far side of each ridge. My breathing does not recover between them. My legs struggle to ascend the ice and snow steps. The mountain hits me much harder than our climb into the Icefall a few days ago; the pack causes the difference. My thighs sting as I descend. Again, it’s the pack. Its size and weight unbalance me and reduce my mobility. This will be a long day.

  Ade and Martin slurp in air beside me. Chatter has long died. Doug labours behind somewhere. The others have disappeared into the twists and turns of the Icefall. Those ahead, with the exception of Pete, Matthew, and TC, are assisted by a personal Sherpa. The lads close to me are all carrying their own gear.

  We’ve put two hours behind us. Darkness has passed. I resign myself to just lifting one foot in front of the next. The trio of Ade, Martin, and I look out for each other.

  “Looking good, Fergus, easy does it,” Ade says as I cross a ladder.

  I recognise the spot where we halted a few days ago. Above here, I push into new territory. After the holding cycle of the past week, I should be delighted to climb into fresh terrain. But the mountain has stolen my energy. Every step bites into my legs. Thin air, a heavy pack, and a lack of sugar in the blood stream inflict the reality of high altitude climbing.

  A white maze surrounds me. Bulges of ice and snow press against us. The wall of the West Shoulder blocks our escape to the left. The sheer face of Nuptse soars up on our right. I focus on what’s in between; that’s the route to the top.

  We ascend into the mound of popcorn. That’s what it looks like from a distance, but up close, these irregular shaped blocks of ice threaten our very existence. A lump the size of a car dangles above us. Puffing and panting, we climb across a block as big as a house. I’ve no idea where this ends. Looking up at an angle of forty-five degrees, I see only ice and snow. A similar view if I tilt my head back to sixty degrees. If I look straight up, I see blue sky.

  I can’t measure progress in here. Staring to my left, I line up our position against formations in the West Shoulder. I set small targets for myself. Keep going till I’m in line with the black mark in the Shoulder. Keep climbing till I reach that crack in the rock. Push on till I pass that hollow of snow. Glancing at my altimeter, I can see we’re gaining altitude, but the achievements are tiny.

  Below me, the Khumbu Valley has opened up. A panorama of each tent of every team in Base Camp presents itself. Orange, red, and yellow dots stretch for over a kilometre. Not many ever see this sight. It cries out to be captured on film, but I won’t root out my camera here. I’ve only put two hundred metres of this monster beneath me. Every muscle in my body wants to quit. I must keep ascending.

  A terrible sense of foreboding creeps over me. I reckoned a 6am start would be a decent compromise: leave too early and climb in the frozen morning darkness, or leave too late and be ensnared in the searing, energy sapping rays. Both are our enemy. The strategy was to put most of the Icefall behind us before the sun climbed high enough to find us. I remember how hot it was here a few days ago, so blistering that I saw no point in continuing and decided the day’s lesson was over. We’ve only driven a touch higher than that marker. This time I must reach the top, and with a full pack. It’s 8:30am. A glaring whiteness is tinging the edge of the West Shoulder.

  “Martin, I think the sun will be here in twenty minutes,” I say.

  “God no,” he says. “We’ve a long way to go yet.”

  We push on. It locates us. Light and heat bounces off every white surface. We keep climbing for fifteen minutes.

  “Jesus, this is scorching,” I say to Ade.

  Staring down, he shakes his head. I’ve no clue how far up the climb the others are, but I’ve not seen them since just after Base Camp. I flick up the ear covers on my hat that’s underneath my helmet. It brings some relief.

  The heat becomes cruel.

  “I’ve got to stop and strip,” I say.

  I take off my pack and clip it to the fixed rope, so it doesn’t slide away. I tie my jacket to the top of it; there’s no room inside. Ade and Martin remove a layer.

  We restart. The Icefall becomes a furnace. The mountain toys with us for another ten minutes.

  “This heat’s killing me.” Ade wipes sweat from his face.

  The altimeter places us less than three hundred metres above Base Camp. Seven hundred metres above it sits Camp 1. We’ve not even scraped to the halfway point. Sweat runs down my cheek. I lean forward under the weight of the pack. Dehydration is a certainty. I won’t make it in this condition. I need a major wardrobe adjustment. Much of what we’re wearing must come off.

  Chunks of ice weighing tonnes intimidate us. The sun beats down on their surface. At some stage, they’ll move.

  “Screw it, let’s stop here and get this stuff off,” Martin says.

  I whip off my hat and fleece jacket. Cooling air touches my body. I must strip off the over-pants that are above my insulated trousers. I push the harness down over my boots and crampons. I’m now sitting in the Icefall, not connected to the fixed rope. If the glacier moves, rescuers will find my harness attached to the rope but not me. And they might also discover a pair of over-pants floating in the wind. What a force of nature, what a way to go, would be the headline. I get the pants off.

  “That’s better,” Ade says. “Let’s get back to it.”

  We plod on. The top-heavy pack imbalances me further. We cross half a dozen crevasses via ladders. What water I packed is spent. I keep looking up to see an indication that the finish is near, but I see none. I’m not sure what I’m expecting to find, just anything to indicate that this torture will come to an end soon.

  Another hour of toil passes. Ice and snow press against my nose as we snake our way up, over and around the Icefall’s obstacles.

  The route opens out onto a flat, white section, half the size of football field. Just ahead I spy Angel, a friendly face at last. He’s standing fifty metres away in the middle of the level patch. I trudge up the slight slope towards him and collapse on the snow at his feet. I draw in air, my legs glad of the respite.

  “How’re you doing?” he asks.

  “Tough. Hot.” I roll into a sitting position.

  He doesn’t say how long he’s been waiting. Ade and Martin remain hidden in the maze; so, I can catch my breath without hindering progress. The top must be close. It can’t come soon enough.

  Sitting here, despite the exhaustion and encroaching dehydration, I can’t ignore the vista that’s laid out in front of me. The midmorning sun reflects off the brilliant white. The tents of Base Camp have become dots. For several kilometres, the glacier extends out beneath us. It turns left down the Khumbu Valley and out of sight. Straight across the valley stand Himalayan peaks and the bold 7,150 metre Pumori. I can see the route we took up it and the point where we retreated. I’m slumped at about 5,700 metres. If all goes to plan I’ll reach a personal high tomorrow, but right now that’s a long way away. Priority A is to slog on and make it to Camp 1.

  To our right, Ade and Martin emerge from the ice corridors. They lumber over.

  “Ok, let’s go,” Angel says. “Follow my pace.”

  We grind up a smooth drag. It doesn’t look steep, but at this altitude, anything more than level murders us. I place one boot forward, take a full breath in and out, and then lift the other boot past it. Almost five seconds elapse between each step
, but we can go no faster.

  Colossal ice boulders look down on us, the smaller ones the size of houses. The thought that one might roll and crush me is neither scary nor dramatic. I’m in too much pain to be bothered about events that may or may not happen. Looking over my shoulder, I suspect Ade and Martin are equally disinterested in the dangers around us. They too must be in their own personal torment: grafting hard with a bulging pack.

  We return to the claustrophobic surroundings of ice and snow. It reminds me of Superman’s home in the Arctic Circle. His kryptonite is my lack of oxygen. Each step tears at my legs. The pack pushes down on my shoulders. The sun maintains its assault.

  “Look, there’s Matthew.” Angel points to a climber, just ahead, who’s sitting on an ice shelf.

  He departed Base Camp before us. We’ve made pitiful progress. He must be shattered. Like us, he’s lugging a full load. We pause, and he then joins the back of our train, led by Angel.

  Five hours have passed since Base Camp. The heat cripples me. Sweat runs into my eyes. My blood must be less like liquid and more like treacle.

  “Let’s take five minutes,” Angel says. “Just there in the shade.”

  I plant my bum on a snow sill and take off my helmet. I scoop up a lump of snow, place it on my head and press down on it. My eyes close as I relish its cooling effect, just above what’s left of my brain. If only I could jump into a bath of ice water. Two more handfuls of coolant on my head, and we then rise to our feet. Up above I spot colourful prayer flags. The top is within reach, perhaps thirty minutes further.

  Up and up. We cross another ladder. We force ourselves over and around white boulders. We squeeze through gaps between blocks of ice. Struggling for breath, I jump across crevasses that open half a metre wide. I keep lifting one slow foot up in front of the other. My eyes close as my lungs search for oxygen. We reach the prayer flags. This is not the end. Why on earth someone hung decorations here is beyond me. They mark nothing. Overhead, all I see is more Icefall. We must continue.