Summit 8000

by Andrew Lock

  The acclaimed Australian mountaineer and author Greg Child once wrote, ‘Maybe Himalayan climbing is just a bad habit, like smoking, of which one says with cavalier abandon, “must give this up some day, before it kills me”’. It’s a great line but it contains a very real truth. Himalayan climbing does kill. It is only a matter of time.

  I decided to retire from 8000-metre climbing.

  It wasn’t a difficult decision. I could see there was no point pursuing a goal that wasn’t fun anymore. Nothing could justify the danger in those circumstances. I was saddened to realise that I was less passionate about the mountains than I had once been, but I was also at peace once I’d made the call. There were plenty of other adventures to be had—just not above 8000 metres.

  Once I made it back to Kathmandu, I threw a big party at Sam’s Bar. Climbers came out of the woodwork for free beer and pizza—a well-developed skill among the mountaineering fraternity. It was a fun night, and particularly meaningful for me to celebrate my retirement with my international peers. These people, more than most, understood the joy of climbing at high altitude, and what it really meant for me to hang up my ice axes.

  It felt surreal to be speaking of not returning to 8000 metres, like I was ending the longest relationship of my life, which in fact it was. But it was comforting to think that I could put the fear, the pain and the hardship behind me. From here on, life would be warm. And, finally, I could let myself relax and savour the success of Summit 8000.

  *

  On the flight home I reflected on the path that had brought me to this point. From that first slide show in the back room of a country pub to now, twenty-four years and countless expeditions later. What a ride. What rewards! I had stood on the summit of every peak higher than 8000 metres on this planet. They hadn’t come easily, and nor should they have. I could never have imagined, when I started out, the incredible highs, the lows, the treachery and camaraderie that the journey would bring. Certainly I’d not considered that it would become my one true passion, a need that drove me to a life uncommon. It absorbed me and blessed me with insight into another dimension of existence that only a lucky few will ever experience.

  All the hardships, the pain and fear, the costs—to my finances, my career and my relationships—the loneliness, and that bloody bone-penetrating cold … it was all worth it. I was glad that it was over but I knew I’d do it all again in an instant.

  Was it worth the cost in human life? Certainly it was worth the risk. I’d like to think that I managed that risk as well as I could, but I know also that I was incredibly lucky when others were not. Of course, I shall always feel great sadness for my friends, so many friends, who were lost to these mountains. I could not have conceived when I started this journey that over twenty of my companions would perish along the way. They paid the ultimate price for their quest to know themselves.

  And that, ultimately, is what high altitude is all about. The mountains are a medium through which we can discover who we really are. Altitude exposes our strengths and weaknesses, our true characters. I saw some of the worst but also some of the very best of human nature, and my journey was infinitely richer for having shared it with others.

  There was something grounding about not having achieved my goal of climbing Everest without oxygen. It kept my achievements in perspective and reminded me that the mountains are still wonderfully challenging—that adventure is still possible if you seek it. Sure, they can be conquered if you lay a rope from Base Camp to the summit and crank up the gas so much that you barely feel the altitude, but for those who want to test themselves, the big hills can still offer the most extreme challenges. I was living proof of that. Despite all my experience and successes, I’d been comprehensively defeated in my final attempt. That realisation kept my ego in check, and kept the mountains real and wonderful.

  Of course, there is more to the Himalaya than just challenge. There is a tangible spirituality, which, if you surrender yourself to it, rewards you with a clarity of vision and an enrichment of the soul that is unmatched by other environments. There is unparalleled beauty. There is camaraderie, humility, wonder and peace. How often have I sat outside my tent on a windless night, peering up at stars that seemed brighter than daylight, or gazed at mighty peaks of extraordinary savagery yet pristine splendour, deep blues of ancient glaciers and unblemished white of virgin snows? How often have I wandered through endless forests of blossoming rhododendron filled with birdsong, and quivered in awe at the sheerness of rock faces that tower to the heavens?

  The Himalaya is a place of extremes, a struggle between opposing forces. I have been crushed by the mountains’ harshness and nourished by their energy. I have been beaten and humiliated by them. But I have also felt such exhilaration and joy that I’ve whooped and shouted with carefree abandon. I’ve shared quiet cups of tea with the most financially impoverished but spiritually rich people on Earth, whose culture is born of, and sustained by, these mystic mountains.

  *

  I gazed out the window of the plane, catching a last glimpse of the Himalayan chain as it faded into the haze of the approaching monsoon. Summit 8000 had been an incredible experience, but the end of one project is just the starting point for another. Already those adventures were morphing into grand memories. And memories would not sustain me. It was my future adventures that would charge my spirit. I felt a surge of adrenaline just thinking of what they might be.

  EPILOGUE

  AT HOME, I went back to work and threw myself into my ambassadorial roles. In my spare time I pursued some local adventures and planned expeditions in fields other than mountaineering. At first it felt good not to be distracted by an impending expedition. I enjoyed not having to train relentlessly, or juggle my relationships and work. But life also felt a little empty. My memories of the cold and agony of high altitude diminished, while my desire to rejoin the fray grew ever stronger. The magnetism of high altitude is strong.

  In April 2014 I journeyed yet again to Nepal and trekked with friends through quiet valleys and across some high passes, ultimately reaching Everest’s base camp. By unfortunate coincidence I arrived there on the day of the worst disaster in the history of that mountain. Thirteen Sherpas and three other Nepalese high altitude porters employed by commercial guiding companies were killed when a serac from the mountain’s West Shoulder avalanched into the Khumbu Icefall, crushing them under tonnes of ice. The lifeless bodies of so many young men slung below rescue helicopters were a harsh reminder of the savagery of the mountain environment.

  Rather than a pall of despair falling over the mountain, however, there was great anger amongst the Sherpas; demands for compensation were made to the government of Nepal. Threats were levelled by some Sherpas against anyone, including other Sherpas, who attempted to continue their expeditions on the mountain. After some days, government representatives agreed to some of the Sherpas’ demands, but most expeditions were cancelled.

  While I am not a fan of the increasing commercialisation of these mountains, I was perplexed by the aggression shown by many Sherpas towards foreigners, as if the accident had somehow been their fault. I found that the focus on compensation for future accidents, rather than on identifying ways to prevent, or at least mitigate them, to be particularly worrisome. At the very least, I argued, this incident should serve as a catalyst for change to the mountain guiding system in the Himalaya, which is rife with corruption, incompetence and greed. Compensation is good but prevention is a whole lot better.

  In truth, I was not at all surprised that the accident had occurred. With the hundreds of inexperienced foreign clients and hundreds more unqualified Sherpa ‘guides’ each season, there simply weren’t enough skilled or trained decision-makers operating on the flanks of the world’s highest mountain. An accident had only been a matter of time. And it could have been much, much worse.

  The role of Sherpas on climbing expeditions has evolved significantly. When I’d started climbing in the Himalayas, most Sherpas were employed a
s high-altitude porters, not guides. Highly experienced foreign climbers led the way up mountains, including Everest. They conducted the risk assessments, found the safest routes, fixed the ropes and led their teams. Sherpas supported that role by carrying the necessary equipment for some teams.

  When guided climbing began on the 8000ers in the early 1990s, the Sherpas’ role expanded to include more ‘guiding’—to the point that many companies began using only Sherpas for all tasks on the mountain: route finding, rope fixing, portering and guiding clients. In fact, most Himalayan ‘guiding’ companies are now owned and operated by Nepalese, predominately Sherpas. On Everest, the job of finding the route and fixing the rope through the Khumbu Icefall each season has now been officially assigned by the Nepalese government to a team of ‘Icefall Doctors’, to whom all expeditions must pay a levy.

  But only a very small number of Sherpas, perhaps thirty, hold international qualifications as mountain guides. Sherpas are not born with ice axes in their hands. They are like climbers from any other country: they need to learn the ways of mountain climbing, glacier travel, route finding, rope fixing and risk assessment. Indeed, until foreigners came to the Himalaya, Sherpas did not climb at all. With over thirty expeditions just to the Nepali side of Everest in 2014, let alone those to all the other mountains, there are simply too few internationally qualified Sherpa guides to go around. Not even one per expedition. While many Sherpas are now highly skilled and experienced, the majority of Sherpas employed by guiding companies are unqualified, despite both the companies’ and the Sherpas’ claims that they are ‘guides’.

  Blaming the clients for this situation is unrealistic, despite the media’s mantra that ‘Sherpa guides’ regularly perish while ‘carrying’ the rich sahibs to the summit. The Nepalese government welcomes commercial clients without restriction. Guiding companies sign up as many clients as they can get, with the promise of summit glory. And there is no lack of Sherpas willing to work for the guiding companies and take the risks because the money they can get is better than they’ll earn doing anything else. Clients just pay the fee asked of them to be shepherded up the mountains, without any real understanding of the underlying guiding system or their Sherpas’ experience, which means they, along with their Sherpa ‘guides’, are often thrust unwittingly into great danger.

  None of the current crop of ‘Icefall Doctors’ has international guiding qualifications. How can unqualified ‘government guides’ be tasked to find the safest route through one of the most hazardous icefalls in the world? How can they even be allowed to take on that role? How can unqualified high-altitude porters (who comprised the majority of the Sherpas killed in this incident) be expected to conduct genuine risk assessments of the route they are following, to determine whether or not they are climbing towards their own doom?

  No one could have predicted the precise moment at which the serac avalanche would occur. By all accounts, an even greater tragedy had been narrowly avoided: less than thirty minutes earlier there’d been more than sixty Sherpas in that very spot. But any alpinist with the slightest mountain awareness could have seen that the route was highly exposed to the threat of avalanche from that serac. Any alpinist could have seen that the bottleneck created by poorly placed ladders in the Khumbu Icefall was putting everyone, not just the Sherpas, at perilous risk. But these Sherpas were not all experienced alpinists.

  God forbid that my years in the public service have turned me into a bureaucrat, but the government of Nepal must regulate the guided climbing industry in their country. Because an industry is what it has become. Its regulation must consider, amongst many other issues, minimum training and accreditation standards, minimum wage standards, and proper licensing and monitoring of companies that conduct expeditions to the mountains. The appropriate numbers and experience of guided expeditions and their clients should be determined and allowances made for those skilled, unguided alpinists, who still seek genuine challenge without guides or Sherpas but who are being forced off these peaks by their unfettered commercialisation.

  Not all Sherpas are unqualified or untrained. Some have considerable alpine experience. And not all companies are unethical; some exceed the obvious ethical standards that are needed. But the industry has become so large and so disparate that only government regulation and monitoring can ensure, or strive for, fairness and safety across the sector. The government of Nepal reaps millions of dollars annually from issuing climbing permits to foreigners. The time has come for it to appropriately regulate the industry, in order to safeguard both its own citizens and those fee-paying foreigners.

  Banning all guided climbing expeditions in the Himalaya would safeguard the Sherpas and return the mountains to those who have the skills to climb them. But that is unrealistic, I know, and indeed the Sherpas themselves would protest the loudest. Theirs are the richest valleys in Nepal precisely because of the guiding industry. A balance must be found between guided climbing and private mountaineering. Currently, however, the commercialisation of the mountains is overwhelming all other interests, at the expense of both humanity and the spirit of adventure.

  *

  Uncomfortable at the tangible tension across base camp, and greatly saddened at the terrible loss of life in this single incident, I walked about fifteen kilometres down a valley to the house of Lama Geshe, one of the most senior and highly qualified Lamas in Nepal, who conducted a puja ceremony for me. After the ceremony, and through an interpreter, we chatted about the accident and the impact it would have on Sherpa families throughout the Khumbu region. It seemed that every village in the area had lost a relative in this one incident. It would have been easy to say that the mountain gods had expressed their dissatisfaction with the disrespectful masses polluting their way up Chomolungma’s slopes, but I felt that the disaster simply highlighted all that is wrong with unrestricted commercialisation of these sacred summits.

  Before I left, Lama Geshe presented me with a blessed prayer string and a Khata scarf for good luck. Returning to base camp several days later, I placed the scarf on a small chorten, in offering to the dead men’s souls. I vowed to do what I could to bring about necessary changes to the mountain guiding industry in Nepal. (After returning home to Australia, I sent comprehensive letters to Nepal’s Prime Minister, the Minister for Tourism and several Nepali newspapers, highlighting what I considered to be the problems and the necessary corrective measures.)

  Later, I walked to the edge of the icefall and gazed up at its incredible façade. The ominous threat was not lessened by the earlier avalanche. Everywhere, giant towers of ice teetered precariously, seemingly held aloft by the air itself. But at the same time it was beautiful, inviting. A thousand metres higher than me, the Western Cwm contorted between the sheer walls of Nuptse and Everest’s southern flanks, as it led to higher and even more wonderful mountain revelations. Up there the misery and angst of base camp was forgotten. Up there the mountain invited climbers to pit themselves against her, to test themselves, to ask questions and to seek answers.

  I found myself trembling—not from cold or fear, but from excitement. I could taste the challenge. I could feel the thin air searing my throat. My heart pounded and, involuntarily, I started to breathe more heavily. To suck in those lungfulls in anticipation of the fight.

  How could I possibly want to re-enter that deadly milieu? Particularly after this most recent and harshest reminder of the mountain’s mercilessness. But I did want to. That oxygenless ascent of Everest still tempted me.

  Should I try again? I thought about why I’d quit high altitude in the first place. Something about the cold. Or was it the pain? Already these were just vague recollections. I looked up and imagined myself high on the Lhotse face, its majestic slopes sweeping across and below me for kilometres, a vista of such unparalleled magnificence as to make the Earth seemingly fall away beneath the clouds, leaving me alone and aloft, at the top of world. It was where I wanted to be. Still.

  I realised I had not lost my passion at all. J
ust my confidence. Nearly dying does that to you. But that’s the time you have to dig deepest. I had not been defeated on my last attempt; I’d just failed. I recalled my own oft repeated mantra when I’d nearly faltered on so many high summits: Don’t give up. Never give up. Of course these summits don’t come easily; that’s what makes them worthwhile. I want to go back up there. I’m not yet done with my journey of self-discovery, and I still have questions to answer. There remains in me a compelling need to revisit 8000 metres. Not just so I can test myself, but to enrich my soul, in the most magnificent environment on Earth. I know that I should stop climbing into such thin air … but I wonder if I can.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  FIRST AND FOREMOST, my thanks go to Margaret Gee, my literary agent, without whose passionate championing of my story over several years, to myriad publishers, editors and potential co-authors, this book would never have been published. Margaret pushed me to dig deep and search within and, in the process, I gained more from my expeditions and learned more about myself and my relationship with the high mountains than I’d ever previously understood.

  Thanks also to Brent Waters, who provided wise counsel and much-appreciated administrative support behind the scenes.

  Thanks to Julian Welch, who provided editorial review and guidance throughout the writing process and without whom the book would not be nearly as coherent, nor the story as fulsome, as I hope it now is.

  Thanks to Sir Chris Bonington, Doug Scott CBE and Peter Hillary for their kind words in endorsing the book. Acknowledgement by one’s peers is gratifying, but acknowledgement by the greats in one’s field of endeavour is the very highest praise.