Ascent Into Hell- Mount Everest Read online

  To my amazement, Hugo rests his bare hands in the large pockets at the front of his suit. He’s treating the morning with nonchalance. He has recovered his fitness after the illness on the trek. But not everyone feels so good today. Amit suffered a crisis of confidence in his tent. I don’t know the full details, but he’ll not travel higher. His climb is over. He will descend.

  I see no crevasses on this side of the valley. A smooth covering of hard snow surrounds us. We follow the trail that has been marked out by successive boots. Greg had advised that at altitude a climber should set a pace that can be continued till infinity. My breathing remains under control. I’ve no doubt I’ll make it to the Bergschrund.

  Just short of it, the gradient increases, and the fixed rope begins. My legs feel the demands. My breathing deepens.

  Heads Down as we Push Up to the Bergschrund

  1: Ted, 2: Hugo, 3: Me, 4: Roger, 5: Roger’s Personal Sherpa,

  6: Pete, 7: Ade, 8: Greg, 9: Linda, 10: Khalid,

  11: Sherpa, 12: Other climbers ascending, 13: Camp 2

  We reach the foot of the Bergschrund. Climbers swarm around it.

  “Let’s stop here for a break,” Ted says.

  “How’re you feeling?” Greg asks.

  “Not too bad. Yourself?” I pull my bottle out of its holder.

  “So far so good.”

  I glance at my watch.

  “Wow, that’s more than I thought. We’re at six thousand seven hundred. We’ve already gained two hundred and fifty metres.”

  “That much?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “That’s a good start to the day.”

  The altimeter on my wrist remains a constant, silent companion. Often, when I’m down, it picks up my spirits to reveal that progress has been better than expected. Every step this morning has been a new high for me.

  “There’s the sun. It’s either freezing or scorching in this place,” I say.

  Hugo has stripped off his down suit. He’s stuffing it into his pack.

  “I think I’ll copy Hugo. There’s not a cloud in the sky,” I say.

  I shove the down jacket into my pack.

  “It’d be difficult to take it off on that slope.”

  On my upper body I’m just wearing a long sleeve base layer the thickness of a vest. For now the cold does not worry me. Overexertion, overheating, and dehydration do.

  “Ok guys,” Ted says, “let’s go.”

  The ten metre vertical wall of ice and snow doesn’t look as formidable as I’d expected. The Sherpas have anchored two ropes up it, which minimises the backlog. They’ve also fixed dual ropes up the Lhotse Face for at least the first hundred metres.

  Our backpacks reset, Ted and Hugo ascend the wall. I follow. My cheek presses against the snow. My mouth hangs open. My feet find steps that previous climbers have kicked out. My fingers search for grip just above my head. My legs push from below. I switch my safety to the next rope. Sweat forms on my brow. I aim for the anchor point at the crest.

  I pull myself over the top onto my knees. Panting, I stand up and clip into the next rope. It is behind me. I’ve not flunked yet. I’ve climbed the Bergschrund and am now about to ascend the legendary Lhotse Face.

  The incline bearing down on us promises pain. My crampons scrape the ice underfoot. My leg muscles sting on the hard, slick surface. A line of climbers ahead has slowed up the pace, which suits me fine. I toil up in third place, Greg just behind. Without crampons, it’d be impossible to stand on this slope. Even an attempt to sit still would end with a slide back down into the Bergschrund.

  The Team Ascends the Lhotse Face

  Hard, slick ice reflects the sun’s rays.

  We labour up the slope. I monitor progress on the altimeter. We should reach the 7,000 metre mark by noon.

  “Six thousand, eight hundred.” I turn my head back to face Greg.

  He nods and breathes out.

  Lhotse Face – One Step at a Time

  From left to right: Ted, Hugo, Me.

  Two hundred metres up the face, we scramble over two ridges. Gasping, yanking on the jumar, I pull myself over them. Apart from that, the pace has been balanced, perhaps slower than I’d expected. For the most part, my mouth has been closed. I’d anticipated more problems in this thin air near the limit where humans can survive.

  “That’s odd.” I indicate above with my head.

  Greg stands at my left shoulder.

  “Yeah, I didn’t expect that. What happened?” he asks.

  Ten metres ahead, Ted is leaning forward, hands on his knees, face half a metre from the snow. The altitude is laying into him.

  “I don’t know. A bad day?”

  Behind us, most of the team stands in a tight formation. We touched Kala Patthar two weeks ago without Ted. Last week, we spent two nights at Camp 1 and took a daytrip to Camp 2. Ted skipped that rotation. In addition, on this cycle, several of us broke the ascent and gave our bodies another chance to produce red blood cells during a sleep at Camp 1. Ted ascended to Camp 2 in one go, and now after three days is close to 7,000 metres. The safe formula is three hundred metre gains per day. He has thrust that schedule aside.

  With a hundred and fifty metres to go, the front half dozen rest on a flat section the size of a ping pong table. The weather remains favourable. Up ahead we see orange tents. The brutal day I expected has so far been postponed. All going well, I’ll reach another milestone within the hour.

  We start the last push. The eleven of us, plus personal Sherpas, keep a close formation. Six hours after leaving Camp 2, we close in on the finish. A glance at the altimeter rewards me. The 7,000 metre mark has been broken. The patch of snow under me looks no different to the spot twenty metres below it. But nowhere on earth outside of the Himalayas is as high as this. If I got no further, I’d at least know I’ve been above the seven line. An honourable failure is within my grasp. I turn back and point to my watch.

  “Greg, seven,” I say.

  He nods and smiles.

  The last rope climbs a vertical wall of snow to the tents. Greg and I push up towards it. Ted determines that a better route for the rope is to the left, around the sheer section. He loosens the ice-screws. Hugo assists, and Angel is called up from the rear. Trying to stand stationary on the incline burns the legs, and so, one by one, each of us turns and sits on the ice, with our crampons jammed in.

  Grey clouds drift across the sun. The temperature drops. I remove my backpack and clip it to the fixed rope. I pull out my jacket and get warmed up inside it. Even though I’m marvelling in the views of the valley, Pumori, and other mountains in the distance, I’d prefer to be moving. I struggle not to slide down the slope.

  Angel kneels on the hard snow at my right hip.

  “Don’t move, Fergus.”

  He unties the ropes from their anchor point. If he cuts corners, Pete, Greg, and I will be clipped to an unsecured line. It might be only for a minute, but a slip would be fatal. I watch Angel untie and retie half-frozen knots as he balances on this sharp gradient. Gloves and a backpack cramp his movement. He informs Pete, Greg, and me what he’s doing, where we’re to move and when. He steps across the face and re-anchors the rope. I’ve much to learn.

  We re-start. The last twenty metres deliver the slap I’d been waiting for. Maybe I got cold sitting still. Perhaps it’s the usual combination of dehydration and a lack of food. The gradient increases further. My crampons scrape across the hard ice. No footholds have been kicked in up here. I wheeze, mouth wide open. Only the fixed rope prevents me tumbling off the mountain and being dumped into the Bergschrund far below. Scrambling, tugging on the jumar, I close off the last few steps. I look to my right and see our tents. We are here. This is Everest Camp 3.

  Each team will pitch a camp somewhere between 7,000 and 7,400 metres. Ours lies at 7,100. Our tents sit on a ridge that runs perpendicular across the Lhotse Face. The Sherpas bashed it out further with ice axes and a shovel. It’s twenty metres long and two m
etres wide. I step onto it. The Sherpas have planted five three-man orange tents along it.

  I look along the ridge. The right side of each tent is within centimetres of the edge. A misstep there will be terminal. A small passage runs down the other side of the tents, where we can walk. To the left of that gap is a wall of packed snow. A rope trails along the walkway. To reach the last two tents requires extra caution; the line only runs to the third one.

  This will be our home soon. I expected worse. It’s palatial compared to our Camp 1 sleepover on Pumori. Back there, the Sherpas had pitched each tent on its own individual platform. The circumference of each had been just a few centimetres larger than the tent itself. On three sides was a vertical drop; a wall of ice had completed the fourth. We could not stand outside ours. Entering and exiting had required Houdini skills. Putting on a boot in the vestibule had risked kicking something out and down the mountain, or crueller, the boot itself. Before nodding off for the night, we’d attached a rope to our harnesses inside our sleeping bags. That rope had trailed out to a screw in the ice wall. If the ridge had collapsed or the covering blown away during the night, there’d have been no need to worry. We could have dangled in our bags in the frozen darkness, with a fatal drop beneath us.

  “We’ll take forty minutes to an hour for lunch,” Ted says. “Then head down.”

  We’re sitting on the snow, near the first two tents, looking down the face.

  “Camp 2 is tiny from here,” I say. “Isn’t that it on the right of the valley?”

  “Yeah, just dots.” Greg chews on a snack. “And what about Camp 1? I can’t see it at all.”

  “Nothing, I know where it is. I don’t think there’s anything in the way. It’s just too far away to see.”

  “And over there where the valley narrows, the Icefall must be at the end. Somewhere below it is Base Camp.”

  “Yeah. That’s some view.”

  Pumori reaches up dead ahead of us, perhaps ten kilometres away. Its peak is now only fifty metres further up in the sky. This adventure started as a trek. Bit by bit this month, I climbed closer to my highest altitude. Then step by step, I crept above it. Today, however, has been a masterstroke.

  To our right, Everest has revealed more of itself. A 1,800 metre brown pyramid stands above us. We can see up as far as the South Summit, about one hundred metres from the top. I’ve a good view of the Geneva Spur. I still can’t determine the route over that black outcrop of rock. I’ll leave that problem till next month, more confident that I may reach it.

  We sit for close to an hour and force our bodies to make one final acclimatisation effort. The grey clouds thicken and drop down on us. I’m not sure whether it’s the coldness creeping in, hunger, thirst, the thinning air or all four, but I want out of here. My appreciation of the views diminishes. I want to descend.

  This is the edge of the death zone; it must be the thin air that has dulled my senses and killed my earlier enthusiasm.

  “Ok, good stuff, team,” Ted says. “You can start the descent.”

  I’m sitting closest to the fixed rope. A dozen of us will create a queue. I’ve no wish to be a part of that.

  With only a light backpack, I race. My left arm trails behind me horizontally. I’ve wrapped the rope around it. I feed it through my right hand. Rather than abseil down, I arm rappel with big strides. My grip and the friction of the rope on my left sleeve act as a brake. Breathing heavy, I eat up the distance to the Bergschrund.

  Greg trails close behind. We’ve opened a large gap to the others. In the complex, steeper sections, I know I should ease off and abseil. But I ignore caution and manhandle myself down, grasping the rope as tight as I can with both hands. The rope scorches and stains the left sleeve of my orange jacket. The tips of two fingers on my right glove have worn away. I didn’t intend that, but I can tape them up later.

  In just over thirty minutes I reach the bottom of the Lhotse Face. I’d heard that Sherpas can descend from Camp 3 to Camp 2 in an hour; now I believe it. I consider arm rappelling down the Bergschrund but then think better of that plan. That’s a one way ticket to the morgue. I cool my jets and calm my breathing. I connect my abseil gear to the rope and then drop over the edge.

  Back down on the gentle slopes of the Cwm Valley, I walk towards Camp 2. The overcast afternoon closes in further. My legs want this day to be over. My breathing rises to keep me going. The helter-skelter descent was a little reckless, but on such an incline it would have been a shame to fight gravity’s momentum. I look back up the Lhotse Face. Team members disappear up into the lowering clouds. Greg approaches the Bergschrund. I’ll wait for him; there’s no point walking away.

  The clouds wrap around us. A light sleet lands on our jackets. We trudge in the last thirty minutes together. I struggle to close the distance to the finish.

  “Man, I’m thrashed.” I draw in air. “I’m running on empty. I won’t recover enough this evening to make it to Base Camp tomorrow.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yeah. I can get hydrated, no problem. But there’s no way I’ll eat enough, not that food. If I set out empty tomorrow, I’m in big trouble.”

  “Really?”

  “I mean it. I’ll be screwed.”

  “What about the day after?” Greg asks. “Charlene should touch Camp 3 tomorrow. The following day she’ll head down to Base Camp. She’s with Mingmar. He’s top class.”

  “You’re right. Head with them?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “A full day here. I could nibble on biscuits or something. You’re right. And buckets of water. Ok, that’s what I’ll do.”

  Back in the mess tent I gulp down warm tea. Damp clothing sticks to me and chills my body. The others arrive in ones and twos.

  At dinner time, many of us just play with our food, excluding Greg and Pete who wolf it down. It stares back at me in the dim light. I force myself to take each mouthful, wash it down with liquid, and hope it stays there. What am I doing here? My head hurts. I’m shattered. This is unrelenting.

  “I could do with another day here to acclimatise. I’d like to stock up before heading down. Head back with Charlene.”

  “Sounds good,” Hugo says. “I’ll be hanging on for her anyway.”

  “Me too,” Khalid says. “I’ll take an extra day here.”

  Ted and Angel will descend to Base Camp tomorrow with the others.

  “Has anyone got Diamox?” Ted asks.

  He’d lectured us before on the danger of relying on the medicine Diamox. He maintains it should only be taken where there’s no alternative and should be followed by descent. It’s not appropriate for someone who intends to climb further uphill and might become dependent. Slow ascent and rest, or even a temporary drop down a few hundred metres, prepares the body best.

  “I’ve some in my kit.” Linda steps up from the table.

  “Once I get back to Base Camp, I’m descending to Pheriche,” Hugo says. “A few days of richer oxygen will do wonders for the body.”

  I’d been unconvinced of the logic in descending below Base Camp to recuperate. It’d sounded like two days of wasted energy trekking there and back.

  “The appetite improves. The food is better. You can take on a few decent meals and build yourself up,” he says.

  Slumped at a cold, grey Camp 2, pushing food around a plate, his arguments are compelling.

  “The body can’t mend at Base Camp. Small tears in a calf muscle, invisible things, they’ll never improve there.” Hugo takes another slug of tea.

  I must break the daily chain of burning more energy than I consume. After many dinners I suffer a mini-vomit. There’s nothing I can do to prevent it. I take Brufen morning and evening and Motilium before each meal, but their effects are limited. My body has taken as much of this mountain and food as it can handle. It wants out of here.

  “The walk to Pheriche and back, the energy wasted, we’ll regain it when we’re there?” I ask.

  “No question,” Hugo says.
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br />   “Ok. Count me in.” I nod to him.

  Greg had previously decided that he would descend.

  “Ok, I’ll join you guys down there,” Khalid says.

  “I improved a lot down there,” Charlene says. “I’m going back down too.”

  “When are you heading, Greg? Straight away?” I ask. “I’ll be a day behind.”

  “No problem, I’ll wait at Base Camp,” Greg says. “The day after you get there, we’ll trek down together.”

  “Thanks.”

  Hopefully, lower down the valley, the feel good factor will return.

  April 29

  Recovering at Camp 2

  “Ok, I’m out of here.” Greg pulls on his gloves. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Keep it steady. See you then.” I roll over; it’s 6am.

  I see no reason to be up and about. My head hurts. Someone has stolen my mojo. Touching the limit where most people stop acclimatising has taken a toll on my body. I can ask no more of it. If a person stays at this altitude long enough, they die. I should have gone downhill with the others. But where would I have found the energy? Lying here on this overcast morning does me no good either.

  Charlene has pushed out in the other direction with Mingmar. I presume Khalid and Hugo are resting in their respective tents. The subzero temperature still holds mine in its grip.

  Midmorning I eat breakfast in the mess. My body doesn’t want food, but it’s the one critical thing I must accomplish today. I have to munch on biscuits or something to get calories into me. I cannot underestimate tomorrow; a trip through the Icefall always requires respect, and it will need energy, lots of it. Hydrating myself with warm tea poses no challenge.

  I pass the day chatting to Hugo and Khalid or resting in my tent. Simple tasks challenge me. The only possible excursion is to stroll a little along yesterday’s path and then veer left. Ade mentioned that he’d gone off route on the way down from Camp 3.