by Andrew Lock
Many commercial groups have at least one climbing Sherpa per client and we were woefully understaffed with just three. Part of our base-camp logistics was actually being provided by another commercial expedition through an arrangement between the two companies. I managed to strike a deal with the other expedition for their Sherpas to carry a few of our loads up the mountain—including, in my benign soft-heartedness, the clients’ sleeping bags.
Despite the equipment issues and the very different style of leadership required of me on this expedition, I revelled in being back on Mount Everest. It was sixteen years since I’d decided to climb this peak and much water had passed under the bridge in getting to this point, but here I was again on the mountain of my dreams. As well, I now felt very comfortable in the environment. I felt physically capable, powerful almost, and in control.
I doubted that all my clients would make it to the summit; in fact, I was quite sure that several of them wouldn’t. Given the poor equipment, limited Sherpa support and a deputy leader who was unproven at high altitude, my first priority was ensuring that everyone went home alive. I would send home anyone who seemed too great a risk. But I was confident that both the more capable clients and I, would, if the circumstances allowed, come to stand on the summit of the world’s highest peak.
*
With my clients’ basic training completed and having achieved sufficient acclimatisation, we were finally able to start the climb. We were going with pure siege style: ferrying loads up to higher camps and returning to lower camps to sleep. We interspersed these day trips with rest days at Base Camp, as some of the clients were pretty unfit and needed plenty of time to recover.
Within a couple of weeks, the stress of climbing at altitude had exposed a few frailties. One of the guys struggled to acclimatise, and another twisted his ankle quite badly in the Khumbu Icefall. Both were incredibly slow on the mountain and were looking for an opportunity to go home but didn’t want to be seen as quitters. I arranged for them to see a doctor at Base Camp, who confirmed that they were unfit to continue with the expedition, due to injury. This allowed them to save face, and they were soon on their way down to Kathmandu.
The stress of high altitude also revealed people’s characters, and one of the team, David, soon showed his true colours. Due to the collective inexperience of the group, I had made it a rule that they should never get ahead of me or Tim. As we prepared one morning to climb from Camp 2 to Camp 3, I saw that David had snuck out of camp and gone ahead of the team. He was nearly at the steep ice slopes of the Lhotse Face.
This was incredibly dangerous, as the face had several old ropes hanging down it, which had been seriously weakened by ultraviolet rays. I doubted whether David could tell the difference between the old and the new ropes, and if he hauled on an old one it could be disastrous. I raced towards the face, but David had started up it. As I approached I lost sight of him. He had fallen. I radioed the other members of the team and told them to stand by to help out with a rescue.
Our Sherpas had set off before me and were soon at the scene. As anticipated, David had clipped onto an old rope but thankfully had only climbed up about 20 metres when it snapped, so he hadn’t fallen far. He wasn’t badly injured but was shaken and very scared and had hurt his wrist. The incident stopped us from climbing to Camp 3 that day, because we had to escort him back to Camp 2 and tend to his wrist—and his bruised ego. The following day it snowed heavily and we were unable to reattempt the climb up to Camp 3, so we descended to Base Camp, having lost our opportunity. Such is commercial expeditioning.
A few days later we returned to Camp 2 and completed the climb to Camp 3. The climb to this altitude, around 7300 metres, is I think, the coldest part of the mountain, except perhaps the summit night. The Lhotse Face is west facing, meaning it doesn’t receive the sun’s warmth until late morning and a constant wind sweeps its broad, icy slopes. I implored the team to take care of their fingers and toes because frostbite could be a very real risk on that hill. The mistake that many climbers make in this situation is to continue to the destination with the intention of rewarming their freezing digits in the shelter of a tent, but that can be hours away and far too late to stop serious damage. Prevention is better than cure and rewarming en route is far preferable to waiting until later.
Unfortunately, one of the guys ignored the advice and froze his fingers quite badly. Not only did he sustain the injury but he also hid the fact from me and I only noticed it when he struggled to hold a cup of tea in his tent that night. Back at Base Camp the doctor confirmed frostbite. Despite the client’s great protestations that he could continue, I had to order him home. It gave me no joy to do so but, once frozen, tissue is far more likely to refreeze. If he’d frozen those fingers again during that expedition, he’d almost certainly have needed amputations. That was unacceptable to me, irrespective of the fact that he was prepared to risk it.
I knew that sending clients home would annoy the company. It wanted statistics of success to attract future business, but I wouldn’t risk leaving bodies, or fingers, on the mountain for the sake of the summit.
Despite these minor issues, it was still lots of fun being on Mount Everest and Base Camp gave me plenty of opportunities to socialise with friends. Rick Allen, whom I knew from Nanga Parbat in 1995 and Broad Peak in 1997, was guiding a team. Christine Boskoff, whom I’d met on Gasherbrum 2 the previous year, was also there, as was Piotr Pustelnik, with whom I’d climbed on Mount McKinley in 1991. Sandy Allan, also from Nanga Parbat in 1995, was guiding a client on Lhotse, right beside Everest, and was sharing the same base camp.
The season progressed and so did our climb. We were ready to make our summit push on 15 May, although Tim had pulled out due to ill health and was waiting at Base Camp. There were actually four expeditions going for the summit on this night. The leaders met and we agreed that each expedition would take its turn to lead the way and fix rope over all the difficult or dangerous spots, in order to safeguard their members’ ascents and descents. A total of 800 metres of rope would be taken, 200 metres per expedition.
As we readied ourselves in our tents at Camp 4 on the bleak and barren South Col at 7950 metres, one of our three Sherpas suddenly declared that he had bad headaches and could not continue. This left me with significantly reduced support for our four climbers, plus me, and we had a fair bit of necessary equipment to carry—oxygen, rope, medical kit and spares. The clients and I were using the normal allowance of oxygen per person—a pair of 3-litre POISK oxygen bottles, each providing the climber with six hours of supply, and a single 4-litre bottle with eight hours’ worth of oxygen. That gave us a total of twenty hours of climbing time to get from the high camp to the summit and back. The Sherpas used two 3-litre bottles but at a lower flow rate, which gave them about the same climbing time.
I’d planned that each climber would carry two of their allocated three oxygen bottles, while the Sherpas carried both of their own bottles plus a climber’s third bottle. As we were left with only two Sherpas for four climbers, each of the Sherpas now had to carry four bottles, and each bottle weighed about 3.5 kilograms, giving them a load of 14 kilograms of oxygen, plus their personal gear. That’s a big load at that altitude. In those circumstances, I couldn’t ask the Sherpas to assist with my load, so I carried all three of my own oxygen bottles, as well as the first-aid kit and the rope. When we set out from Camp 4 that night, my load was 25 kilograms! I’d frequently trekked with that sort of weight at sea level, but at 8000 metres it felt like a tonne.
We set out from our tents on the windswept South Col at 11 p.m., aiming to get to the summit by midday the next day and then return to Camp 4 that afternoon. We climbed steadily, although my load put me under extreme stress and it was all I could do to keep up with my own team. We reached the point where it was my team’s turn to fix our rope, so I handed it to the Sherpas. With the loss of that weight from my pack, I immediately felt like I had a new lease of life.
Dawn came as we reached a
point on the ridge at 8400 metres known as the Balcony, at which time we changed to our second oxygen bottles. It was a stunning day, with little wind. Everybody was doing well, so we pushed on. At nine-thirty in the morning we reached the south summit, at 8750 metres, just 100 metres below Everest’s summit. I was over the moon. Not only did it look like I’d get my team to the summit, but I was about to realise my own dream of climbing Mount Everest, which had been sixteen years in the making.
It was now time for the fourth team to fix their ropes across the final ridge. We called them forward and waited for them to do their bit. But they just stood there. They hadn’t brought the rope … They hadn’t brought the rope!
I was dumbfounded. What were they thinking? Neither we, nor they, could go on without the rope. Experienced climbers could possibly have continued, but our clients absolutely could not. And we couldn’t pull up the rope from below, as it was essential in case anyone had to descend quickly in an emergency. We were left looking wistfully at the top of the world, just 100 metres away.
It was cruel, but I had to turn my team around and take them down the mountain. The other teams did the same. As we descended, David fell constantly on the fixed rope, a combination of his extreme exhaustion and the effects of altitude. It was probably a good thing for him not to have gone on to the summit, as he may well have collapsed up there without hope of rescue.
We spent a night at Camp 4 but had neither the strength nor the oxygen supplies to reattempt the summit immediately. The next day we descended the mountain. It was a very disappointed team that straggled into Base Camp the following day.
I was just as shattered as everyone else, if not more so. My dream to summit Everest had been crushed by a most incredible act of idiocy. But my focus wasn’t on our failure; it was on what I would do next.
*
After climbing to such a high altitude as we had, most people are so physically exhausted that they can barely stagger around Base Camp, let alone consider climbing the mountain again. The body is so burned out that even the slightest exertion is exhausting. To walk on the flat may be fine, but the slightest uphill, just a few metres on a gentle track, will stop you dead as your lungs heave away again. Your legs feel like dead weights, like nothing will get them going. It takes a few days for that completely debilitating exhaustion to go away and a number of weeks to recover fully.
The other teams that had attempted the summit with us that day packed up their camps and trekked out to civilisation, but I could see no reason for our team to give up. We were tired but healthy, and we had just enough time left in the season to continue the expedition. And, importantly, while we were resting at base camp other teams were climbing and fixing that final length of rope.
I talked with the team about going up again. Having been well inside the ‘death zone’, we needed several weeks to recuperate. With the approaching monsoon, though, we had very little time in which to re-climb the mountain. In fact, we could take just two rest days before starting our next attempt. I didn’t know whether we could re-climb Everest with such little recovery, but I was adamant that we should at least try. I implored them not to give up. If we only made it as far as Camp 1 before we collapsed from exhaustion, we’d at least have given it our best effort.
Interestingly, the three members of the team who’d worked well and climbed within the guidelines I’d set were willing to try again. The less team-oriented member withdrew from the second attempt. The group performed exceptionally well on the climb back up. Although we had to physically dig deep, we made it through camps 1 and 2 and, after a rest day, continued up to Camp 3. It snowed heavily when we got there, a product of the rapidly approaching monsoon—so heavily, in fact, that I almost called a retreat because of the danger of avalanches. To assess the conditions, I led all the way to Camp 4, plugging steps in the fresh snow. It seemed okay to continue, and we arrived in the late afternoon, with Christine Boskoff and her Sherpa coming up shortly after for their own attempt.
After rehydrating and resting for a few hours at Camp 4, we set off at 10 p.m. and climbed through a cold and blustery night. Christine and another larger team had moved out just ahead of us, but we quickly caught and overtook them. We were climbing much more quickly than on the attempt a few days before—despite being physically exhausting, it had probably greatly enhanced our acclimatisation. We reached The Balcony at 2 a.m. and by 5 a.m. were approaching the South Summit, our previous high point.
It was not anywhere near the beautiful day we’d had the week before as a bleak dawn clawed through swirling clouds to lighten our way. The wind was so strong that I had to kneel on the ridge and haul in the rope, which was stretching in a great arc out over the void of the mighty Kanshung Face. Windblown frost encased my goggles to such an extent that I couldn’t clean them, and I had to go without. That caused the fluid in my eyes to freeze, so I could neither see nor blink. I had to cover my eyes with the sleeve of my down suit to allow them to thaw again:
Conditions on the ridge from the south summit over to the Hillary Step were better, so I led across. The step was a mix of rock and snow. Once across, it was relatively straightforward but not the place to lose your footing. The wind felt like 60 knots or so. Plugged on but the ridge seemed to go on forever. Lots of false humps. The rope finished at a big boulder on the southwest side. Staggered on towards the final rise.
It’s several hundred metres or more from the south summit to the top. Took over an hour. Finally reached the top at 6.30 am. Very windy and cloud only 50 metres below, but blue sky above.
I’d forged about 50 metres ahead of the team to kick steps in the snow as they plodded slowly but steadily along the final summit ridge, so I had ten minutes to myself on the top of the world. It was an intense and deeply personal moment. After sixteen years and a near miss just a week before, I’d finally realised my dream. Better still, I’d led my team safely to the top.
Christine and her Sherpa joined us and we took a few photos, but the wind was really blasting and it wasn’t the place to swap stories. By 7 a.m. we had to escape the wrath of the storm, so we beat a hasty retreat down to Camp 4. Having summitted so early in the day, we were able to down-climb all the way to the relative luxury and comfort of Camp 2 on the same day, before hitting Base Camp next morning. After just a day at Base Camp, we packed up and left.
*
We trekked into Lukla, from where we planned to fly back to Kathmandu, and were told that the airport would close the following day to allow the dirt runway to be tarmacked. The stormy weather of the monsoon had caused lots of flight cancellations that week, so the airport was overflowing with literally hundreds of climbers and trekkers clamouring to get on the last flights. Everyone was desperate to avoid an additional few days’ trekking, followed by a 12-hour hell ride on a local bus back to Kathmandu.
Our trekking agent had managed to obtain seats on different flights back to Kathmandu, but only some of the scheduled flights managed to get into Lukla due to the bad weather. One of my clients had an international departure the following day and needed to get back to Kathmandu, but his flight out of Lukla was cancelled. It’s the luck of the draw—sometimes your flight arrives, but just as often it doesn’t. My plane arrived, but I had plenty of time up my sleeve, so we swapped boarding passes and I resigned myself to a few days of hard trekking and dhal baht for dinner, rather than the cold beers and yak steaks I’d been dreaming about.
As I stood there watching the passengers board the very last flight of the season, I decided to try to bluff my way onto the plane. The Twin Otters could seat about eighteen passengers, but I knew they always kept an empty seat or two at the back—probably something to do with the load limit at altitude, although I didn’t know for sure. I walked over to the plane, climbed aboard and just sat in the back.
My new boarding pass was for a different company, let alone flight, and the poor Nepali stewardess frantically tried to explain that I had to get off the plane. I played dumb until she went to get th
e pilot. He too told me that I couldn’t go on that flight. I replied that the seat was evidently empty and I wouldn’t be getting off. Perhaps because of my slightly crazed, just-summitted-Everest look, he didn’t immediately summon any of the numerous armed police and soldiers at the airport, but muttered something about crazy Americans—heh, heh—then strapped himself in and away we went. Best flight of my life.
Back in Kathmandu, and after several yak steaks and cold beers, I reported the details of our climb to the Nepali Ministry of Tourism. Interestingly, the other expeditions that had summitted on the same day as us had advised the ministry by email from base camp, which meant the official statistics listed their ascents as having happened ahead of ours, whereas in fact we’d reached the summit some hours ahead of them. In the records of who has climbed Mount Everest, therefore, we are listed about fifteen positions lower than we should be. But in the scheme of things, that matters little, and I shall forever remember those ten minutes I had alone on the summit of the world, early in the morning of 24 May 2000.
8
A HIGHER GOAL
Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.
Hermann Buhl
CLIMBING EVEREST WAS the realisation of a dream born in 1985 in the back room of a country pub. Having finally achieved it, what next? I hadn’t tired of climbing the big peaks—indeed, I enjoyed it more with each expedition. While the goal of summitting Mount Everest had finally been realised, my need for high altitude had in no way been sated. It was time for a new goal.
Despite my successes to that date, even with seven 8000-metre summits under my belt, I’d never really considered attempting to climb all the 8000ers. It was the absolute grand slam of high-altitude mountaineering and has been likened to winning successive gold medals over numerous Olympics.