Ascent Into Hell- Mount Everest Page 16

  “Boots fastened. Crampons in your hand.” He tugs my harness. “Harness tight. I see spare carabiners, a jumar, and a safety. Helmet’s secure, little to protect up there. Ice axe?”

  “I’ll leave it here, keep the weight down. We won’t need it en route. If I need one at camp, there’re plenty up there.”

  “Your backpack is firm.” He pulls the straps at the front.

  I’ve packed light. I’d left the sleeping bag, mat, and other essentials up the mountain last time. I should lug my down suit and other summit items up there today, but a heavy load will kill me and delay my arrival. This is no time for heroics. Today is about reaching Camp 1, or Camp 2, and nothing else. I need to convince myself, if not others, that I can master the Icefall. I hope to toil through in six hours. Sherpas might laugh at such a time. But it will knock two and a half hours off my record. I examine Greg’s equipment. Everything in place, we push out into the darkness.

  Conversation ceases. A triangle of light from our head torches pierces the black. I’m not slayed by a heavy pack. I stretch out each stride just a little wider than before. I’ve more flexibility, mobility, and coordination. On the vertical and near vertical sections, there’s no comparison to my previous whipping. Last time, every step was an effort, an achievement in itself. Now I lift up one boot and continue on up with the other.

  Our jumars slide along the fixed rope. We traverse horizontal ladders perched above crevasses.

  An hour passes and night gives way to dawn. Our vision extends beyond the snap shot the head torches provide. The Icefall displays its full brilliance. A decent portion is already below us. Few mountaineers litter the route or delay us. Our familiarity with the trail aids our momentum. Greg maintains an even speed, and I ascend a pace or two behind. I’d climb slower on my own, but I can just handle it. Ice boulders and snow press against us as we toil upwards.

  We turn an ice corner and see a climber ahead. He falters. I recognise the clothing and backpack from the rear.

  “It’s Doug,” I say.

  “Oh no,” Greg says.

  He’d set out early to grant himself a margin of error. He’d intended to clear the Icefall before the sun hit. Looking at his gait, I can’t imagine how he’ll beat the beams to the top. He hasn’t yet acclimatised to the Camp 1 altitude. We, on the other hand, have been as far as Camp 2. His blood is transporting less oxygen than ours.

  “He’s got a full pack. He has to carry everything today.” I take a swig from my bottle.

  We close the gap.

  “Hey Doug. How’s it going?” Greg asks.

  “Yeah.”

  He reminds me of how I looked near the top last time. But in the drooped head, the stooped shoulders, the thousand yard stare, I think more than just the physical pain hurts. I suspect he knows he may not get much higher. A decision may have to be made soon, a difficult one.

  He just never got his groove together near Base Camp. Like me, he found it difficult to eat. While I managed to force some food down, he rearranged it on his plate. I know how he must have felt at mealtimes. It was as much as I could do not to throw up. They were the worst times of the day for me, probably even worse for Doug.

  “Just keep it steady, Doug,” Greg says.

  “You guys go on.”

  We cannot assist. We climb up around the next corner of ice, and he’s no more. I wonder if I’ll ever see Doug again.

  The boulders release us from the claustrophobic white blocks. We trudge across a flat section of snow, half the size of a football pitch. Its presence confuses me. We’ve the trail to ourselves. I double check the time and altimeter on my watch. I recheck my maths. I figure out where we are.

  “Greg, I can’t believe it. This is where I met Angel. We’re halfway. In just two hours.”

  “Not too shabby, Fergus. A little water and we keep going.”

  We slog up a snow slope in silence. I’m setting the pace, with Greg just off my shoulder. Hugo appears from behind us. He comes alongside me.

  “Hi Fergus. Ok?” Hugo clips into the next rope.

  “Ok, steady.”

  He shifts in front of me. A small gap opens. I try to stay with him. My breathing rises. My legs cry out with the effort. The brief bond breaks, and the distance widens. The Icefall has not crucified me this morning, but I’m reminded that I’m only just inside my physical limit.

  Back inside the maze and crevasses, Greg again leads. We climb past the spot where, a week ago, I slumped on an ice ledge and rubbed snow into my head. I don’t want to experience that ever again. But I know there’ll be more days like that, and very soon.

  We labour higher. Three hours have passed. The altimeter indicates less than a hundred metres to the top. During the summit push, we should ascend from Base Camp to Camp 2 in a single day. Before this morning, I didn’t believe I could achieve such a feat. I’ve no intention of climbing past Camp 1 today, but it does at least look possible.

  My nose presses against snow on a near vertical white wall. I kick in with the crampons. My legs push me up. Gloved fingers search for grip. My right arm tugs on the jumar that’s attached to the fixed rope. With each foothold gained, I slide the jumar up the rope and yank on it again. Perhaps I’m cheating. This is not pure climbing. It’s not man versus mountain. But it gets me up this face. There’ll be plenty of time for philosophy at a later date.

  Panting, I drag myself over the precipice. I can see the end of the Icefall. We’ll win this race against the sun. We face one last obstacle: the massive crevasse. We must climb down twenty metres into it. Then we’ll cross ladders anchored above unfathomable drops. If successful, we’ll ascend a steep incline to regain the metres we gave up. Finally, we’ll go vertical up three ladders that have been bound together and bolted to the ice. The last one will deliver us to the crest of the Icefall, a fitting finish to one of nature’s more dangerous ascents.

  The last time I saw this section, already jaded beyond use, I could have lain down and died. But now I’m just exhausted, thirsty, and breathless. I’ve enough strength to attack this last impediment. I descend into the monster, do what needs to be done, and get busy climbing back out.

  I gasp for air on my hands and knees, and stare at the Cwm Valley. An ice cold wind scrapes my face. I check the watch. The last time through had taken eight and a half hours.

  “Four hours, Greg.” I suck in air. “That’s some going.”

  We cannot savour the moment. We’ve escaped the ice maze, but crevasses encircle my sprawled body, the closest within reach of my fingers. The glacier shouldn’t move in the next sixty seconds, but at some stage it will. The longer we loiter, the greater the risk.

  “Let’s go over there twenty metres, away from the edge. Take a break.” I tighten my hood.

  “No, let’s keep going,” Greg says over the wind.

  “I need ten minutes, for my legs. I must take on something, and water.”

  “Ok.”

  We hunker down, bums on the snow and backs to the wind. After four hours of non-stop effort, my breathing calms for the first time since Base Camp. I munch on a small snack for what’s ahead and finish my water.

  “Four hours. That’s a good time,” Greg says.

  “Super. I’m amazed. And we avoided the sun. I could do with it now though. I’m glad we wore the jackets.”

  “The sun should be over Lhotse within thirty minutes.” Greg glances behind at the sky.

  “What a place for a break.” The wind blasts past me. “Angel would go nuts if he saw us here. Clipped in …,” I look at Greg, “my ass. It feels good though.”

  We rise to our feet and follow the rope to Camp 1. We must cross more crevasses, but otherwise we face a gentle gain of a hundred metres up to 6,050 metres. The wind gusts and tries to find a route inside my hood.

  Last time, I’d no idea where the tents were located. With experience on our side, we set a pace that we expect to maintain for just over an hour.

  About 9am, the sun’s rays bounce off o
ur white surroundings. On this frozen morning, I welcome its warmth on my face. Greg leads; he’s stronger than me. I trudge behind.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “There’s camp.” Greg points to a row of about forty orange and yellow tents pitched on a ridge.

  “Great stuff, about five hundred metres?”

  “Yeah.”

  A modest slope brings us to the ridge, and we stride into the finish.

  “That was an hour, five in total.” I slide my sleeve back over the watch.

  I’ve cut the ten hour climb by half, far more than I’d hoped for. The light pack and previous acclimatisation played a major part in the reduction. Improved speed at the connection points helped. I can’t even estimate how much time was saved by beating the sun. But the details do not matter. I’m back on track and have proved it to myself and the team.

  “I reckon we leave it here for the day. Recover, recoup our strength,” I say.

  “What? No way. Straight to Camp 2. From now on, this is just an emergency shelter.”

  “We’ve just gained seven hundred metres. Another four hundred is more than a kilometre. That’d be some strain on our systems.”

  “The plan is to go from Base to Camp 2. That’s what we have to do on the summit push anyway. We should be able to.”

  “Yeah, but think about it,” I say. “There’re three acclimatisation nights at Camp 2, before we touch Camp 3. Why not sleep at this altitude and then two nights at the next? It’s a lot more balanced on our bodies. We’ll not lose anything.”

  “True.”

  “We could have water on the boil here within an hour and start the recovery process. And I’ll tell you something, Greg.” I catch my breath. “Walking on to Camp 2 is one thing. But we’ll have to carry all our gear with us. That’s an entirely different ball game. I could do with fresh legs before I lug a full pack.”

  “I suppose,” he says.

  “Let’s ease back into this altitude today and then do the big carry tomorrow morning.”

  “Ok, I can’t fault you. This’s it for the day.”

  “Cool.”

  We drop our packs outside the same tent we were in last time. The sun sits high in the sky. The early morning coldness has passed.

  “Hi guys.” Hugo sticks his head out of the next tent. “Good to see you. What’s your plan?”

  “We’ll stay here for the night. Acclimatise.”

  “Me too,” he says. “Ted pushed on to Camp 2, just before you got here. Pete and Linda also went on.”

  “Ok thanks. We’ll settle in. See you later,” Greg says.

  I stroll out forty metres to collect clean snow. On my return, I set up the stove inside the vestibule; Greg had done all the work last time. This is our third day in this tent, and we know the formula. Our mats insulate us from the glacier. Greg repaired his at Base Camp with a rubber patch and glue. It’s holding up; there’ll be no cuddling tonight.

  “We’ve got six hours before the sun goes down.” I position a bottle to receive the first pot of boiling water. “We need nearly three litres each?”

  “Yeah, plus a bottle each for the night,” Greg says.

  “That’s eight litres. The pot’s a little smaller than a litre. It takes a half hour per pot, maybe a bit longer.”

  “Add in time to top up the pot. We’ve got to heat up the food; it’s frozen solid,” he says. “Five straight hours. That flame will be on the go pretty much till sundown.”

  A task which in a modern household takes no more than a few minutes will encompass our whole day. It frustrates me to put so much effort into such little return, but water will not appear by magic. If we’d a lump of ice half a kilo in weight, we’d get half a litre of liquid thirty minutes later. At Camp 1, the glacier is covered in a depth of snow that’d be the envy of any skier. It melts into almost nothing. To achieve a full pot of water requires constant topping up. We’re tempted to drink it once warm, but to be safe we must wait till it boils. A dose of bacteria at this stage, and our climb is over.

  Appetite abandons me. I force some food from a foil pouch, and some snacks, inside me. The small, individually wrapped pieces of processed white cheese taste divine. They contain fat, protein, and calcium, all packaged in a ready to eat format that needs no heating. I’m not sure how our bodies determine what they want and what to reject, but they crave this cheese.

  “I’m a little off.” Greg wraps his sleeping bag around him.

  “What? Serious? You think you caught something?”

  “Not sure, hope not.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, feel terrible.”

  “Just hunker down there for the day. I’ll tend to the water. We’ve got quite a bit anyway. I’ll go out and fill another bag with snow when this one’s empty.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Man, that was sudden.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The Bimble Brothers of Ade and Martin arrived some time ago. They rolled out the sleeping bags at their Café One. Khalid, and his personal Sherpa Jingbar, also split the journey to Camp 2. A few tents down, Amit and Roger decided this was far enough for today. Only Angel passed through, several hours ago, and pushed straight on to Camp 2.

  I return to camp with a sack of snow over my shoulder.

  “Hey Hugo. Is there any word on the others?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I was on the radio to Base Camp.” He pops his head out into the late afternoon light. “Doug turned back early in the Icefall. I think that’s it for him.”

  “Yeah, we saw him. It didn’t look good. Damn.”

  “TC and Matthew turned back as well, maybe halfway through.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re still on the climb?”

  “Well yeah, but they’ve got to get back into it. Not making it to Camp 1 at this stage, you know, it doesn’t look good.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I’m tending the stove back in the tent. Clouds roll in late afternoon. The temperature plunges.

  “We may as well get ourselves sorted before six, while there’s still some light and heat,” I say.

  “I’m pretty much set for the night already,” Greg says.

  “Let’s hope a good sleep brings you round. Let me know if you need anything.”

  We each have a bottle of water at our side. I leave my watch on my wrist; it died here last time. I presume it’ll be about -15C in the tent tonight, but I should be snug in my bag that’s rated as “Comfortable” down to -22C. I hope I don’t have to test its “Transitional” capabilities, which extend down to -32C. It sounds a nice term, but I suspect the transition from comfortable to uncomfortable is anything but pleasant. I’m certain I don’t want to assess the bag’s “Risk” qualification that’s rated all the way down to -57C. Fifteen below zero will be quite all right for the next few hours.

  It’s been a triumphant day. The fast ascent has put my climb back on track. If Greg recovers and the weather stays favourable, tomorrow should be a straightforward hike to Camp 2. Despite the exertions of the day, sleep doesn’t come quick. Altitude maintains its relentless assault, even when lying still. My heart beats about a hundred times a minute in a vain attempt to pump sufficient oxygen around my body. Eventually I succumb and drift away to the land of Morpheus.

  April 26

  Climb Up from Camp 1 to Camp 2 on Second Rotation

  “I feel ok.” Greg sits up in his bag. “Whatever it was, I think it’s gone.”

  “Great stuff. Today shouldn’t ask too much of us.”

  “I hope not. This one took us two and a half hours last time.”

  “Yeah, but this time we’ve got all this gear to haul up.”

  After breakfast we prepare ourselves. Panting, I force the huge sleeping bag into its stuff-sack. I’ve no choice; the only way to squeeze all the equipment into the pack is to first compress this bag down to a fraction of its normal
size.

  We drag our packs out into a bright morning. Hard, white snow crunches under our boots.

  “We let the time get away from us. Most of the others are gone,” I say.

  “Yeah, we should have pushed out at eight. Those stoves are useless. What’s it now?”

  “Half past. The sun will be here soon.” I look up the valley over Lhotse.

  “There’s no wind. It’ll get hot.”

  We must gain four hundred metres today. We strap on our crampons and haul our packs onto our backs. At sea level mine would just be heavy, but up here it feels like a ship’s anchor. We check each other’s gear and push out.

  The hundred metre rise out of camp wallops me.

  “Hold on, Greg, I’ve got to strip.” Sweat drips off my nose.

  I tie the fleece top and helmet to the side of my pack. On my uppers I’m wearing a thin base layer and a sun hat.

  We negotiate crevasses just above Camp 1. We climb down several metres into each and cross a ladder. The bulging pack throws my balance on the rungs. I focus on the aluminium bars, not the descent into oblivion on either side. As I ascend the far side of each, the pack tries to drag me back into Hades.

  Crossing a Crevasse above Camp 1

  This ladder only has one rope to grip.

  “I think the next one is the last crevasse,” Greg says. “Look, there’s Khalid and Amit on the other side.”

  Amit’s recording the scenery on a camcorder. Khalid’s catching a few shots on his camera. I slog down to the edge, my pack threatening to push me down into the abyss. Struggling for air, I clip into the cross-over rope. I try to bring down my breathing and then place a cautious foot onto the first rung of the ladder.

  I’m halfway across, leaning forward, my right hand clenching the rope. I concentrate on the next step.

  “Smile,” Amit says. “Say something to the camera.”

  I’ve more pressing matters on my mind. He’ll edit the audio playback before a family viewing.

  Now we face the long walk to the rocks. The route rises up the Cwm Valley and over to its left flank. My memory of this trail has been rose tinted. I’d been ecstatic to make it to Camp 2 last time. It’d put my climb back on track after the protracted ascent to Camp 1. As I retrace my footsteps, I remember this trek in vivid detail. Even with a light load it’d punched me. There’s nothing for free at this altitude. I had to earn every step of the way a few days ago. Now I must do so again.