by Fergus White
The weather stays favourable. No longer must we confine ourselves to a narrow, dusty trail. We bound where we please on a long, grassy descent.
The vista changes and the valley opens up wide in front of us, we can see for kilometres. The Dudh Kosi River meanders through thick grasses. We identify brown specks alongside the water’s edge as grazing yaks. On our right flank, a mountain soars up to a snowy peak.
“Is that it?” Greg points to a village beneath us in the distance.
“Yeah, that’s Pheriche.”
“About a mile away?”
“Try again, about three miles. Everything’s big up here. We’ll be there in an hour.”
I was last here on the way down from Pumori. It had been the first day in weeks I felt energetic and enthused. That same feeling returns. Thicker, moisture laden air surrounds us. The chill of Base Camp is forgotten. Green vegetation sprouts about us. It’s a different world to the harshness of glacier living. We enjoy the last of the day’s walk, watching local farmers tend to their beasts of burden.
We enter the village at 4,400 metres on the flat banks of the river. Many of the locals cultivate potatoes and buckwheat, or raise yaks to earn a living. In the summer, some of its men find employment as guides and porters. We walk down the single clay street. No more than twenty stone buildings surround us. Several of them serve as hostels. We pass a small shop crammed with merchandise. In the centre of the settlement sits the Himalayan Rescue Association clinic. This will be our backdrop for the next week.
“Do you know the hostel to go for?” Greg asks.
“Yeah, the Pheriche Hotel. We’d lunch there six months ago. Everyone says it’s the best. Hugo tried to stay there when he was sick but couldn’t get a room.”
Inside the main room we find Hugo, Charlene, Mingmar and Khalid.
“Hey guys, how’s everyone?” Greg slides off his pack.
“Great,” Charlene says.
“I’m afraid it’s full,” Hugo says. “But the owner might be able to do something.”
“Let’s find him,” Greg says, “although, I’ll settle for any bed tonight.”
The owner appears and Hugo negotiates. He’s a cheery man, no more than forty. A few inches shorter than me, he’s eaten a few good meals in his day. The only rotund local I’ve ever seen in the valley.
“Sorry about tonight. You can sleep in the hostel behind. Then tomorrow, you’ll get three rooms in here. Ok?”
“Perfect. We’ll go there now?”
“Of course. Follow me, gentlemen.”
We get three rooms upstairs. A single layer of unpainted, un-plastered plywood, with the manufacture’s name printed across it, separates each room. I’ve two single beds in mine, each a wooden box with a thin mattress placed on top. A small window completes the decor. As ever, there’s no shelf on which to place anything or a hook on which to hang something. But the spare bed spoils me for storage space.
I step out into the corridor.
“Happy days, gents, there’s a real toilet.”
The inbound plumbing feeds a puddle of water on the wooden floor, but importantly, the outbound sanitation looks sound.
We head back to the main hostel and join the others at a table. In the centre of the room, a stove burns yak dung and warms us. The well-stocked bar catches my eye. But given the training, sacrifice, and risk of our endeavour, I stick to my dry commitment. I want to get fat and rested. I’d love to fall into a deep sleep and wake up with an unobstructed nose, not one full of blood. A hangover won’t help that process. I opt for a Coke, glad of its two hundred and fifty calories.
“How’re the rooms, Khalid?” I ask.
“Very comfortable, it’s a good place.”
“We should be here tomorrow.”
“And the food’s great too.” Charlene passes me a menu.
“But you’ve got to try the showers,” Khalid says. “Unbelievable.”
“Come on, Khalid, they can’t be that good.”
“Best ever. I feel fantastic.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The evening closes in. Even though a few electric bulbs overhead give off a faint glow, one of the young staff lights a candle on each table. Plates of food fly out of the kitchen. I feel like I’m in a restaurant. The teenager, his name is Kieron, takes orders and delivers food and drinks to the tables all night.
Well fed, we stroll to our lodgings next door and enjoy a night on a bed rather than a glacier.
A few days of this and I might just regain enough strength to climb the beast.
May 2 – May 8
Resting at Pheriche
The food is good, the egg fried noodles the highlight. I have them for breakfast each morning with a small pot of coffee, an unhurried start to my routine. I usually stroll into the dining room last and have the place to myself. Kieron looks after me, and he’s always cheerful. He puts in a long day, every day. He attends to the early risers at 5am, cleans down the room about 10am, serves lunch, fires up the stove at 4pm, and doesn’t finish delivering dinner and drinks till near 10pm. On top of that, he manages whatever maintenance jobs or guest requests come his way.
I’ve a double bed with two thick duvets, an unheard of luxury. A large window with a big sill affords a spot to store my bits and bobs. It’s the first place I’ve seen that has a few hooks on the wall for hanging clothes. Daylight floods in through the glass and allows me to read. Even at night, I can turn a few pages by the light of the dim LED bulb. We’ve a whole week in which to do nothing, and I enjoy it. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner provide the main focus each day.
The shower surpasses even the highest reviews given to it by Khalid. Three US dollars cover the cost of heating the water. Two porcelain thrones facilitate the necessities. Each sits in a small, spotless tiled room. Outside them, two hand basins with running cold water and a mirror allow me enjoy the simple ablutions of the day at a leisurely pace. Since all God-fearing people are long out of bed and on their way by the time I surface each morning, I’ve the run of the facilities to myself each day before noon. Shit in a bucket for three weeks, and the mind refocuses life’s priorities.
All week, the weather remains overcast and chilly. I usually step out for a twenty minute stroll each day. The only tourist feature stands next door. A two metres high memorial of polished steel has been fashioned into the shape of a split pyramid. A craftsman has etched two hundred plus names on it: a list of those who died on Everest. Greg and I reviewed the names and nationalities, pausing at engravings that we knew from stories and history. Some years are sparse. Others, such as 1996 (the year of the book “Into Thin Air”), are a roll call of the dead. Space has been provided for future additions. One man’s name is already overdue: the climber who perished on the north side while we were acclimatising. None of us travelled here to earn a permanent inscription.
Khalid busies himself in the internet shop next door for a few hours each day. I checked my email once and rushed through a month of emails. Nothing important, the world still turns, my job continues. I didn’t reply to anyone. I’d told people I’d be offline for two months and don’t want to confuse that understanding now. But the messages of encouragement lifted me. Charlene spends as much time as Khalid in front of a screen; keeping in touch with home, updating her blog, and uploading photos from our adventure so far. The others spend maybe an hour a day on the net.
A few small mountaineering groups are recuperating in the hostel. A constant flow of trekkers stay a night or two. One lunchtime, I struck up a conversation with a hiker from Dublin. He understood we were climbers. Towards the end of the meal he inquired as to which summit we were attempting. He almost choked when we told him. Being wrapped up in this voyage for so long and having spent the last month on the upper slopes of Everest, I’d forgotten that we’re aiming beyond the norm. For me, now, it’s just something to be done.
Three hardcore Finnish mountaineers provide the entertainment at the hostel. These are the men who’d visited Charlene at Ba
se Camp. They live it to the max. Whatever beers I’ve abstained from, they make up for, plus wine and anything else with alcohol. How they can train so hard and hit the booze is beyond me. Greg tells me they grab fresh air on a short hangover-cure walk each morning before I rise from bed.
They’ve climbed big mountains. One of them has hit the North Pole, and I hear plans for an adventure to the harsher South Pole. Two of them are aiming for Lhotse, while the third is heading for Everest. They look very professional in their matching red sponsored tops. They pack a handful of postcards: a composed photo of the three of them, fixed with unflappable stares. The chiselled looks of the youngest, and tallest, finds favour with the ladies. Greg and I should have got a few cards like that printed; although, we’d never pull off the uber-cool Nordic look. After a night or two in Pheriche, they become regulars at our table.
Hugo revels in mountain talk with other climbers. He names the various peaks in the region for curious trekkers. He’s not the first Welshman to have an interest in the Himalayas. Back in 1847, the Surveyor General of India, Andrew Scott Waugh of the British Army, recorded the location of a mountaintop hidden in the nearby clouds. As a temporary measure, his department named it “Peak XV”. Nepalese and Tibetan authorities forbade the surveyors to enter their countries. The closest the explorers got to the mystery mountain was a hundred and seventy-five kilometres. His team of surveyors collated trigonometry measurements of it over several years. They took their readings from six different viewing locations, each over a hundred kilometres apart. In 1856, and after exhausting calculations, Waugh announced to the world that Peak XV was higher than all other known points on earth. Unaware of any local names for the mountain and not permitted to access the nearby villages to inquire, he struggled on a title for nine years. In 1865 he determined to call the mountain after his predecessor: the Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843, Welshman Sir George Everest.
Hugo makes it his personal goal to force Charlene to start writing her book. Much has been said about the novel, as yet no words have appeared on paper. She suggested that he or one of us might start it for her. I think a publishing deadline has been promised, but apart from a general Everest setting, the theme has yet to be defined. Hugo then changes tack and advises her to find a ghost writer and give up fretting about it.
Writing concerns aside, Charlene agonises about her race to the top. For us, the summit is the aim, an unequivocal success if we can climb it and return. But for her it is a duel. She has banked everything on being first. She quit her job a year ago to concentrate on training. The media back home has broadcast that one of their women will summit in May. She’s planned PR events, book launches, and speeches for her return. Her competitor, Anne-Mari, is preparing up at Base Camp. Charlene worries we’re too conservative in waiting for a safe weather window. Hugo spends an hour a day talking her down from the nervous edge.
Many fear that one of the contestants will jump the gun and become trapped in the jet stream near the peak. This hurricane force of over a hundred and sixty kph blasts the skies above earth between 7,000 and 10,000 metres, almost all year long. On our way up the valley from Namche, the plume of ice crystals stretching off the summit reminded us of its existence. A climbing window of a few days should open this month when the monsoon moves up over India and pushes the jet stream north above Tibet. An incorrect weather prediction will be fatal.
Hugo’s words put much needed balance into the race in which Charlene has become engrossed. A small glass of red wine each evening provides the remaining equilibrium.
As the debate rages around me, I often read. The hostel owner grants a reduced rate to guests who donate a book or magazine to his small library. I thumb through a few old issues of Men’s Health (Indian version) and learn everything I need to know about six packs, trendy clothes, urban chic, and chat up lines. In one issue, Hugo and I take a test on reading a woman’s mind by looking at her facial expression. Should I ever find myself in Delhi, the local ladies won’t have a chance.
I vanish into Michael J. Fox’s novel “Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist”. In bed or in the dining room, he shares his life with Parkinson’s disease and describes his foundation, which is trying to find a cure. He reveals the personal philosophy that carried him through his darkest hours, and how he became a happier person by recognising the gifts of everyday life.
But beyond the reading and fooling about, our minds are on the climb. Every day we receive updates on the rope fixing progress and the weather forecast. For each prediction that the summit window will be around the 17th, someone else projects that it will not be until the 22nd, almost three weeks away. Perhaps we arrived too early. We may lose our acclimatisation by that stage. Then another estimate would arrive between those two dates, or even earlier. We can only keep on eating and resting.
On May 2nd, the fixed rope reached the South Col at nearly 8,000 metres. We hear that most teams are continuing to acclimatise and that some have spent a night at Camp 3. Our Sherpas are porting oxygen bottles, stoves, fuel, and tents up the mountain past Camp 2. The weather remains quite dry, but high winds above 7,000 metres challenge the Sherpas. We heard from Alpine Ascents:
Today there were several big lenticular clouds over the higher mountains. Lenticular clouds are lens shaped clouds formed by high winds, and we are hoping we won’t see any of them tomorrow. If the winds are blowing the team can always wait another day at Camp 2 before going up.
Apa Sherpa’s team reported on May 2nd:
We woke up this morning to 5 inches of snow at Base Camp and the same amount at Camp 2. The weather forecasts have just upped the amount of snow for the rest of the week. Apa and everyone else at Camp 2 are coming down as soon as possible.
Khalid and Angel stay up to date with the weather forecasts and predictions via the internet. We may as well relax here as be further up the mountain. Another climber, Scott Woolums, recorded what he saw:
Last night was a bit rowdy with high winds and a lot of snow. No sunshine this morning … Can hear huge winds up towards the summit … Yesterday we came up from Base Camp directly to Camp 2 … Was incredibly hot yesterday on the way up, quite a contrast to now.
And from the Adventure Consultants team we heard:
Last night was quite a spectacular storm and being perched on an ice ledge on the Lhotse Face was more than a little menacing. So much for trusting weather forecasts! … Fortunately, the snow that fell blew away or was otherwise redistributed before an avalanche hazard within our path developed.
In fresh snow, teams will achieve little progress; it’s heavy going underfoot. Climbing in a blizzard risks death, unless trying to escape, in which case there’s no other option. The high risk of avalanche poses a bigger threat. New snow sits above a harder layer or on ice. On a steep slope it can slide without warning. Camouflaged crevasses lurk. Rope fixing above the South Col was postponed while the surface settled.
We heard that several teams were stuck in Camp 2, unable to go up or down. But despite this, word arrived that Linda, from our team, is aiming to summit on May 6th. The news stunned Charlene. She can’t understand what has led her to be down the valley, when one of our squad is shooting for the top. Hugo explained that the race is not worth an injury. The debate ebbed and flowed for days. Hugo illuminated how the mountain is bigger than all of us. He has waited years for this opportunity, as many have. Now is not the time to throw away that preparation with a rash decision. When the monsoon pushes up from India in mid-May, the real weather window will open. Some people gamble on a mini-window, just wide enough to sprint to the peak and back. The gap might exist, but if something goes wrong, there’s no margin for error. The clouds will swirl back in and steal away anyone they find up high. A mountaineer on the Sky Climber team expressed his opinion on Linda’s preparations:
To aim for the 6th of May summit feels totally insane for us. To follow the Sherpa team fixing the ropes would extend the summit day at least to 20+ hours. Ev
en at the best of circumstances the summit would be reached way too late for it to be safe. Also, the strong winds forecasted to hit the summit on 7th May might return earlier than expected, perhaps already in the afternoon of the 6th of May. The safety margins for the 6th of May summit are way too narrow for our liking. We have decided to be patient and wait in the safety of the Base Camp for a longer weather window. Impatience rarely brings anything good but in mountaineering it can get you killed.
Word filters to us that Alpine Ascents had to turn around on May 3rd, unable to make it to Camp 3. They’ll try again when there’s a break in the weather.
Then we heard what we’d been waiting for. At noon on May 5th, nine Sherpas on the rope fixing team completed the last stretch to the summit. The mountain is open for business. So what are we doing down here?
We re-examine the plan with each new development. Angel and Hugo know the difference between mountaineering in favourable weather and being trapped in a storm at altitude. It will take us a day to get from Base Camp to Camp 2, where we’ll have thirty-six hours rest and re-acclimatise. Then we’ll climb for a day to Camp 3 and another to Camp 4. We’ll set out late that fourth evening and ascend through the night to the summit, planning to revert to the South Col on the afternoon of the fifth day. If capable, the team will continue the descent. If not, we’ll spend the night there and then set out for Camp 2. Then after a night’s sleep, our squad will slog amidst the Icefall for the last time. We require a straight week of clear conditions for success. Any wind or heavy snow in that window and few of us will return.
With more news of Base Camp and expected weather windows, the ER doctor joined us for lunch one day. She was trekking down the valley, having completed her sojourn at Everest ER. They’d a busy month and had attended to over two hundred and twenty people. From forecasts and based on what teams told her, she predicted a rash of summits this week. She reckons her replacement will be finished in two weeks. Charlene was agitated to hear this; her nemesis lurks above somewhere.