by Andrew Lock
Luckily, Andres, with the aid of Hector’s oxygen, was considerably more alert than he had been when I arrived, and he convinced Tom to at least take some oxygen. One of the Discovery Team’s Sherpas passed over his final bottle, receiving a wholly ungrateful response—‘I don’t need this! You people have ruined my expedition!’ I wondered whether that was the altitude or the character talking. With the aid of the oxygen, though, he too decided that the summit was no longer an option and agreed to descend.
The whole group, including Andres and Tom, then made its way down the slopes towards The Balcony, still a couple of hundred metres lower. Even with the aid of oxygen, Tom was very slow and shaky and had to be supervised by the Sherpas, lest he have some relapse en route to Camp 4. Luis and I continued our own descent more slowly than the others. I had to keep him on the short rope to safeguard him, and I was starting to suffer, having now run out of my own oxygen. Already I was feeling light-headed and unsteady on my feet.
I still had an obligation to Ted, but the hopeful suggestions that Ben had radioed through failed to materialise. Luis and I arrived at The Balcony without finding a single bottle along the way. Luckily, a Sherpa from another team, who was resting at The Balcony, still had a full bottle in his pack. I asked him for it, to give to Ted. Luis had improved significantly by that time, so I handed him over to the Sherpa, who escorted him down to Camp 4.
I’d been out of oxygen for a couple of hours by now, so I hunted around The Balcony for an extra bottle. I could feel the effects of hypoxia starting to grow—my vision was becoming blurry, it was an effort to think clearly, and I had to literally force myself to focus on what to do next. I hoped that my state wouldn’t deteriorate into cerebral oedema before I reached Ted with the oxygen he needed. Unfortunately, there weren’t any oxygen bottles to be found for me.
The idea of climbing back up to Ted seemed as hard as … well, as climbing Mount Everest. Again. I barely had the strength to continue descending. I waited at The Balcony as the last few climbers came down from the top, hoping Ted would be one of them, but he wasn’t. After half an hour I had no option but to start back up the ridge.
This was probably the most exhausting climb I had ever had to do. Every step was a mountain in itself, and I felt as though I was in a trance. I desperately wanted to lie down and sleep but knew that it would be fatal. In any case, Ted needed the full oxygen bottle I had in my backpack. From somewhere deep within my memory, I recalled the mantra sung by the lama who’d conducted the puja ceremony at base camp. It gave me something to focus on and actually eased the stress I was feeling a little. I continued up the mountain. The ridge and the valleys so far below swirled and moved in my vision, almost in time with the chant.
Finally, Ted came into view, slowly and unsteadily making his way down from the South Summit. He was the last person on the mountain. We must have been like two drunks staggering towards each other. When we linked up, he didn’t recognise me or remember that I’d gone to fetch oxygen for him. He could barely speak. I connected the bottle to his regulator and turned the valve to 4 litres per minute, double the normal flow rate, to ensure it acted quickly. As with the others, the effect was almost immediate and Ted suddenly had a new lease of life.
The descent to Camp 4 was dreamlike as the effects of altitude took control. I could lurch only a few steps before sinking into the snow to regain my breath and my balance. Ted became the fast one, while I tottered behind. I knew that the hypoxia was developing into cerebral oedema, just as it had for the others, but there was no one left to help me. Shaking my head to clear the fuzz allowed me to keep going for another few steps. It was like a strange race as I moved a couple of metres at a time, aiming for Camp 4’s lower altitude and renewed oxygen supply.
When Ted and I made it there, Hector was waiting for us. He tried to interview me for the documentary, but it was eight hours since I’d given up my oxygen and twenty since I’d set out for the top the night before. I was beyond exhaustion and couldn’t speak. With a fresh oxygen bottle, however, I too came back to life, warm and secure in the confines of our high-altitude nylon home.
Altitude is a funny business. For some reason, my body had held out without oxygen where others had failed. No matter what your experience, you never actually know how you will cope with extreme altitude. I’m glad that, on this day, I did.
Ted Atkins later drew upon his near-death experience on Everest, designing a new oxygen mask that he called the TopOut mask. More efficient than the older Russian masks that had been used for many years, Ted’s mask has since become the preferred choice in the Himalaya.
*
The next day, Hector and I descended from the mountain, our jobs complete. We stopped at Camp 3 to rest and found both Andres and Tom packing up their equipment. Andres was humble and grateful for our assistance the day before, but Tom was still hostile. He was also demanding that Andres source a Sherpa to carry his equipment down the mountain. Andres kept telling Tom that they didn’t have any Sherpas, so how then could he provide one?
This went on for half an hour or so, until Andres snapped. He picked up Tom’s duffle bag of equipment and threw it off the side of the mountain. It bounced down the steep Lhotse Face and dropped neatly into a crevasse, not to appear for another thousand years or so. He then turned and yelled at Tom: ‘Is there anything else you want a Sherpa to carry?’ Hector and I laughed so hard that we nearly followed Tom’s bag into the same crevasse.
A week or so later, a second window of good weather appeared, and Ben and Shaunna launched their own summit bid. By this time I’d recovered, so I asked Ben if I could attempt to climb to the summit without oxygen and he agreed. Despite the earlier epic I’d been through, I was feeling incredibly strong. I climbed direct to Camp 2 on the first day, and the next day continued straight to Camp 4. These were big jumps, each of around 1500 metres in altitude. In fact, I was feeling so strong that I overtook a couple of teams climbing from Camp 3 to Camp 4, and they were using oxygen!
A short distance before Camp 4, a strange feeling came over me. The hairs went up on the back of my neck and I experienced a real feeling of dread. I didn’t know what the problem was, but I knew that something was wrong. I’d had this feeling before. My inner voice was telling me to get out of there. Without hesitation, despite being just a day away from an oxygen-less summit of Everest, I turned around and descended. It seemed a crazy decision, even to me, because everybody else was continuing up, but the feeling was so strong that I couldn’t ignore it.
That night a storm blew in high on the mountain, although none had been forecast. Those who’d climbed to Camp 4 on the South Col that afternoon were trapped in their tents for several days while the blizzard raged. As the storm wore on, they used the vital supplies of oxygen, which they’d hoped to use during their summit push, but at least they were able to stay alive. Had I, with no oxygen, gone to Camp 4 at 8000 metres and then become trapped in that blizzard, I probably would not have survived. I’d always listened to my inner voice, but that experience was extremely powerful and reinforced for me the value of being open to my ‘sixth sense’. I’ve not ignored it since.
Neither Ben nor Shaunna was able to reach the summit that year, but the rescues in which we were involved provided all the action that the documentary needed. Our footage was eventually produced into a six-part mini-series of one hour each. Called Ultimate Survival: Everest, it was shown across North America and further afield numerous times, but it didn’t come to Australia, which was a pity, since it was a good one.
More importantly, those rescues demonstrated that the right ethic of helping those in trouble on the steep slopes of Everest was still alive among climbers and Sherpas. Too often, stories have been told of climbers turning their backs on those in trouble. In this case, climbers and Sherpas had come together to assist not just one but many others. I like to think that that is still the norm.
Summitting Everest for a second time was a good confidence booster after the disappointm
ents I’d had in 2003. I’d been strong on the mountain, probably stronger than in 2000, and, importantly, I’d had a really fun time with the team. Over the last few years I’d been starting to feel more at home in the mountains than back in the ‘real world’, and this trip only strengthened that emotion. Expedition life, for all its remoteness and hardships, felt more normal to me than civilisation. I needed my expeditions, because they filled the dissatisfying void that the pettiness of regular society created in me. I was becoming addicted to the thrill, the fear and the intense clarity of life that the mountains provided.
I was happy, too, to have been able to continue to perform at extreme altitude after giving up my oxygen. Although I’d been affected to a degree by the sudden loss of oxygen saturation, it hadn’t knocked me down as quickly as the others. I knew that I’d been lucky, but the experience reinforced to me that I have a physiology that copes well with extreme altitude. This wasn’t something to be blasé about, but it boosted my confidence to continue my project and finish the fourteen 8000ers, particularly as I still had some of the toughest peaks ahead of me.
My only disappointment from the expedition was that I hadn’t realised my dream of climbing Everest without gas. That would remain a thorn in my side.
Postscript
In 2006 Andres Delgado disappeared on Mount Changabang in India. Hector, hoping once again to rescue his old friend, flew to India to search for him, but no trace was ever found.
10
GOOD DAYS AND BAD
Climbing and soloing aren’t worth dying for but they are worth risking dying for.
Todd Skinner
CHO OYU IS the easiest of all the 8000ers, despite being the sixth highest at 8201 metres. Its shape allows climbers to access its summit via a face that isn’t too steep, although it can be prone to avalanches. The face has actually been skied a number of times. Many commercial expedition companies use Cho Oyu as a preliminary ‘training’ 8000er for their clients in the post-monsoon season of one year, before taking the same clients to Everest in the pre-monsoon season of the following year.
I wanted to go back to Shishapangma but thought that I could quite reasonably climb two mountains in the post-monsoon of 2004. Cho Oyu is just down the road from ‘Shisha’, so it seemed appropriate to climb it first. I’d summit it and acclimatise at the same time, before heading back to my main objective, Shishapangma.
Taking the same death-defying highway from Nepal up and onto the Tibetan plateau, I endured the culinary delights of Nyalam again before continuing another four hours along the Friendship Highway to spend a couple more acclimatisation days in the small town of Tingri. The highway passed through numerous little villages interspersed among fields sown with corn and wheat, and dotted with almost identical Tibetan houses. All were made from mud brick and were flat-roofed with whitewashed walls, and painted simply but colourfully. Every house had a winter’s worth of cut timber on the roof. These villages would have been quite beautiful in their simplicity but for the ugly concrete compound each of them had, to house an ‘administration office’ that bore a Chinese flag and was staffed by uniformed military administrators. Clearly, my understanding of ‘autonomy’ needs revision.
The windswept outpost of Tingri has been the last point of civilisation for expeditions heading to Everest since the earliest exploration of her northern flanks. George Mallory and his parties, like many other great explorers before and since, experienced the dogs, the dust and a last beverage before turning towards the dominating presence of Everest and Cho Oyu in the distance.
Meaning ‘Turquoise Goddess’ in Tibetan, Cho Oyu is a striking peak that stands alone from its neighbours and astride the Tibet–Nepal border. As the sun sets across the barren Tibetan plateau, Cho Oyu lights up in brilliant hues, a luminescent beacon in an otherwise cold and oppressive land.
Less than 50 kilometres from Mount Everest, Cho Oyu was the fifth 8000er to be climbed. And it was done in fine style. An Austrian team of Joseph Jöchler and Herbert Tichy, together with Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama, completed a daring alpine-style ascent. To reach the mountain, the group trekked into Tibet from Nepal over a remote border pass, the Nangpa La. Without the Chinese authorities’ permission, they made a lightning-fast climb, reaching the summit on 19 October 1954. Like its peers, Cho Oyu has taken a reasonable toll of would-be summiteers. More than forty-five climbers have died on its slopes since that first ascent. It has an even darker political history.
The Nangpa La is not just an access point to the mountain for unauthorised climbers. Located just below Cho Oyu’s Base Camp, it has for many centuries provided a trading and pilgrimage route between the two countries. Several times we saw Tibetans with their yaks heading over the crossing with loads of salt. A few days later, having traded the salt at the weekly market at Namche Bazaar in Nepal, they’d return with fresh vegetables and other necessities. The route has also been used by Tibetans to flee Chinese rule. In 2006 the Chinese border police from a military base close by (in the Autonomous Region of Tibet) opened fire on an unarmed group of Tibetans as they crossed the pass, killing a 17-year-old girl and injuring many others. The incident was denied by Chinese authorities initially, but numerous climbers gave eyewitness accounts and video footage of the shooting was broadcast around the world. A documentary about the incident was released in 2008 called Tibet: Murder in the Snow.
I climbed solo but shared the permit and the base camp with an Australian Army expedition run by Zac Zaharias, the leader of the 1997 Dhaulagiri army expedition. Zac’s army team had varied levels of experience and progressed more slowly than me. I found myself socialising with other climbers, including Marty Schmidt, an American climbing guide who was then living in New Zealand. He was strong and fast at altitude, and I shared his preference for small, lightweight teams. He was also an excellent skier and planned to ski down from the summit. Marty had previously teamed up with my friend Hector Ponce de Leon on an attempt of the difficult North Ridge of K2. We were soon plotting adventures and lightweight climbs for the future.
I also met some of the who’s who of New Zealand mountaineering. A commercial expedition was supported by New Zealand guides Mark Whetu and Lydia Bradey. Mark had numerous ascents of Everest and other big peaks under his belt; indeed, he was the guide who’d assisted Australian Mike Rheinberger to the summit of Everest in 1994 on his eighth attempt. Lydia Bradey, an extreme alpinist in her own right, is credited with being the first woman in the world to have summitted Everest without oxygen, a feat she achieved solo in 1988. The world of dedicated high-altitude climbers is a small one, and I was gradually coming to know most of them.
The climbing was very easy, and I relished being on my own on the mountain, unencumbered by others or competing egos. I made my summit bid from Camp 2, rather than Camp 3, to save having to carry the whole camp another 600 metres up the mountain. The extra distance wasn’t too much of a chore, and I soon found myself on the massive summit plateau, facing a long and gently rising traverse to reach the mountain’s highest point. That effort was well rewarded, with a sensational view of Mount Everest’s north face, as well as Lhotse, Makalu, Pumori and Ama Dablam. I had summitted my tenth 8000er.
Brimming with confidence, I sauntered down the hill and collected my equipment, my mind already on the next goal: Shishapangma. I should perhaps have kept my focus on Cho Oyu, however, because as I descended on loose rock below Camp 1, I slipped and landed heavily on my backside, breaking my coccyx. I was able to climb down to Base Camp, but the injury was so painful that I couldn’t continue on to Shishapangma. Game over.
*
I was a little disappointed at not having summitted Shishapangma because it meant returning to Tibet yet again. I had expected to be done and dusted with that mountain by now, and there would be no further opportunities to climb it until the pre-monsoon of 2005. Winter gradually moved over the Himalaya, bringing furious jetstream winds and bitter ambient temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius—minus 100 degrees with the wi
nd chill. The Nepali Sherpas and the nomadic Tibetan yak herders retreated to lower valleys and the warmth of their fires. Life slowed, tourists stayed home, rivers froze and snow fell. Only the mountains, ever dominant, stood unmoved by the change, patient beneath their winter shrouds, as the locals and we so-called conquerors fled to the safety and shelter of the lowlands.
At home, I nursed my injured spine back to health and enjoyed the Australian summer. I divided my time between the beach and the Blue Mountains, a mecca for rock climbing, mountain-biking and canyoning. My girlfriend Julie, whom I’d been seeing for about a year, was a very strong rock climber and was eager to hit the cliffs as often as possible.
When I wasn’t adventuring, I gave some thought to which of the four peaks that remained on my list I would go to next. Among them was Annapurna. Although its name translates from Sanskrit as ‘Goddess of the Harvest’, Annapurna is anything but godly. It is the most dangerous mountain in the world. More climbers have been killed per successful ascent of Annapurna than on any other mountain. The main reason for all the carnage is avalanches. There just isn’t a safe route on the mountain.
Ironically, Annapurna was the first 8000-metre peak ever climbed. This milestone was achieved by the French in 1950, three years before the British ascent of Everest. The French explored both Dhaulagiri and Annapurna in their reconnaissance but missed an easy way up Dhaulagiri and so chose to climb Annapurna. They were successful, but both men who summitted—leader Maurice Herzog and Luis Lachenal—lost fingers and toes to frostbite. Herzog’s account of the expedition in his book Annapurna—essential reading for climbers and armchair mountaineers alike—describes in the most graphically chilling detail the agony of the primitive treatment, and the subsequent amputations, that both men endured. If ever there was a story to counter any glamorous or romantic notions of high-altitude climbing, that is it.