by Fergus White
Whatever water we boil must now be split three ways. There’re no other stoves; therefore, boiling up two lots at once is not possible.
“Let’s try moving the stove inside here with us. It’s a waste of time in the vestibule.”
“Anything at this stage,” Greg says.
“This’s the same shit that happened here yesterday, that’s what Angel said this morning. The lads couldn’t go for the summit because they’d no water.”
From the limited communication we have with the other tents, we piece together that we may also be suffering from a lack of manpower.
“There’s still no sign of Penba,” Greg says. “He’s got our gear. No one knows where he is. He set out early this morning from Camp 2, but that’s all that’s known.”
“Can you go without that gear?” I ask.
“Not really. And his job is to carry the spare tanks.” Greg shakes his head. “Even if he does get here now, he’ll not be in any condition to continue.”
“Same as yesterday.”
“One of Khalid’s Sherpas has also not made it yet.”
The wind rattles the tent cover. The eight hour climb today has dehydrated me. We’ve not poured any water into our bottles for the journey. The sun dips lower in the sky. The push starts in sixty minutes.
“What do you think, Greg?”
“We have a problem.”
I hold the mask a few centimetres from my face while talking, and then press it against my nose and mouth while listening.
“A disaster on the mountain isn’t caused by one big incident.” Greg says. “It’s a build-up of small screw-ups, little things, all going in the wrong direction. None of them big enough to cause anyone to say stop.”
“Yeah?”
“A series of small failures, compounded by poor judgement.”
“We’re short on water.” I check the pot on the stove. “Equipment is missing. Sherpas aren’t here. The wind’s picking up. A storm’s forecast for tomorrow.”
It’s decision time. Ade sits silent between us.
“What about the window on the twenty second?” I ask. “Every other window has been up and down. That one never moved. Every forecast said that’s the real gap. That’s when the monsoon moves up.”
“Go back down? Try again?” Greg puts his mask back over his face.
“Other teams are going for it. I think we know what could happen if we go up tonight. I’m parched. We might reach the summit, but after that?” I say.
“Camp 4 is the point of no return. I don’t know of many who retreat from here and try again,” Greg says.
“Nor I. Do we have a choice? Plan A is in pieces. What if I talk to the others? What if one of the guides will support us?”
“That would change everything,” Greg says. “Go back to Camp 2 tomorrow and try again in a few days. If a guide is with us, it’s the best option we have.”
“OK, I’ll go to the other tents and see if I can persuade Hugo or Angel. If they say yes, we go down. If they say no, we’ve to make a decision.”
“I don’t want to have to make that decision.” Greg looks at me.
“I’ll give it everything I’ve got. Ade, if we go back down, then you’re back on.”
“That’d be something.” Ade sits upright. “I could do with that.”
“Wish me luck.” I drag my tank behind me out of the tent.
The wind scours my face. We’ve less than an hour of daylight. I shuffle to the tent of Angel, Nurhan, and Yener.
“Hi guys.” I stick my head in through their tent zip.
In clipped words I sum up the situation. Nurhan translates for Yener. Immediate agreement is achieved. With Angel and the two Turks on board, Ade’s climb restarts. Greg and I have been saved from having to make a terrible decision.
“Be ready to descend early tomorrow,” Angel says.
Others may wish to join the train. I explain what’s unfolding to Roger, Khalid, and Jingbar from their vestibule. They tell me that the full team cannot try for the summit; the support is not here. They’ll descend in the morning.
I crouch down outside the entrance to Hugo’s tent. Battling the wind, I explain to him what’s taking place.
“You’re not going to try?” he asks.
“Can’t.”
“We’re ok.” He looks back to Charlene and Pete. “We spent the day in the tent hydrating. We’ve had food and our bottles are full.”
“You’re going to go for it?”
He turns to the others, then back to me.
“There are enough-” the wind blasts across his words.
“There are enough Sherpas to support a push by us three. You won’t try with us?”
“Sorry Hugo. I don’t mind taking crazy risks. I know that’s what it needs. But this one I can’t take. It just feels like suicide. I mean …. Sorry, I don’t mean to say that.”
“No problem.”
“Best of luck. Go big.” I give him a thumbs-up and escape from the wind.
Back in the tent, we’re preparing for a night at the South Col. The last few days have been a waste of energy and oxygen. On the positive side, we now know the route to Camp 4 and may gain a small acclimatisation advantage.
The light fades. Above the wind, we hear Hugo, Charlene, and Pete outside our tent making final preparations.
“I must get another tank.” Greg crawls over Ade’s legs to the exit. “I’ll wish the guys luck as well.”
A blast of icy air hits Ade and me as he exits.
“Oh shit. Get it,” I say.
The pot of water, which had almost come to the boil, tips off the stove.
“I don’t believe it,” Ade says.
A pool of water collects where Greg had been.
“Get a lump of snow from the vestibule, Fergus. That’ll soak it up.”
“I don’t know how that happened. Let’s wait till Greg’s back before starting another pot.”
Several minutes later, Greg wriggles into the tent.
“That took a long time,” Ade says.
“That was some mess out there.” Greg jams back in on the far side of Ade. “As far as I could tell, some of the Sherpas didn’t want to go. And some refused to carry tanks. There should be four Sherpas: one for each, plus Mingmar for Charlene.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“In the end, Hugo demanded to see the other three Sherpas standing in front of him. And he insisted on seeing the correct number of tanks on the ground where he stood. He wouldn’t set off until he saw them.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“There was a huge argument between the Sherpas. A fight broke out.”
“No way,” Ade says. “Was this not all trashed out a long time ago?”
“I thought this is what these guys did for a living. What the hell are they doing here if they don’t want to climb and assist? At the very least, I thought this crap would have been sorted out after yesterday. Nothing has been bloody learned.” I press the mask back over my mouth and nose.
“I don’t know who’s in charge,” Greg says. “Hugo’s a stud. He was having none of it and wasn’t leaving without his shit.”
“Well, someone paid these guys for a month’s work. This is a fine time to discover they’re unhappy.”
We hear our guys depart for the summit. Over the next hour we listen, as team after team walks past our tent. With each group’s passing, I contemplate that I’m not a part of it. We keep boiling water.
The wind buffets the tent. The temperature has plunged. We daren’t move for fear of knocking over the stove. Outside would be little worse. Should we have risked it? To have gone through so much to end up in this situation; no words give solace.
“All that matters,” I lift the mask from my face, “is that we get to the top. Then this gets put behind us. It’ll be irrelevant. Whatever suffering it takes, so be it.”
“Sounds good,” Ade says. “What matters now is that we get reset for a push on the twenty second.”<
br />
“Agreed,” Greg says.
“But man … this is really starting to piss me off.” I clamp my mask back on my face.
The plod of boots passing our tent ceases. However, we cannot close off the day yet. We still have a teammate unaccounted for on the mountain. It’s agreed that Penba is neither an experienced climber nor survival expert. He left Camp 2 about 4am. It’s now close to 8pm. A mini-rescue party of our Sherpas sets out to try and find him.
The wind fades. We start to settle down.
“My eyes are at me,” Ade says. “Stinging.”
“Let me see.” Greg turns and examines him by the light of his head torch. “Snow blindness.”
“What? Are you sure? I’d my shades on, like every other day.”
“It was the mask, Ade,” I say. “I remember now when we met you at the traverse; your shades were pushed down a little on your nose. The strap had interfered with them.”
“God, you’re right.” Ade puts his fist against his forehead.
The UV rays have burnt his corneas.
“Sun was overhead. It found the small gap. Is it bad?” I ask.
“I’ll live.”
Ade has dozed off. Greg tries to switch oxygen tanks; the one he had today has run out.
“I can’t get this nut off the fresh tank. Can you try?” he asks.
I try but cannot turn it. It’s frozen solid. We have a stab with everything we can think of, but it will not budge.
“I need this. I can’t just go to sleep with no oxygen, not up here.”
“Let’s keep trying, but no bare flesh,” I say. “Can we warm it up? Use a lighter?”
Greg holds a lighter under the nut.
“Guys, stop, stop.” Ade sits bolt upright. “No fire, no fire. You’ll kill the lot of us.”
We stare at Ade. We explain the problem.
“Let me find my penknife.” Ade rummages in his pack. “That’s pressurised oxygen. On high altitude parachute jumps, we weren’t even allowed lip balm; the oil in it was considered an ignition source. That tank has hundreds of litres of pure oxygen. Ok, here’s that penknife. Try the screwdriver, Greg.”
Greg makes the switch.
About 9pm, one of the Sherpas pokes in his head to say that Penba has been found. He was near the Geneva Spur and struggling. He was helped up to camp. He should recover.
In full down suits with hoods up, we tighten our sleeping bags around us. The oxygen mask hisses on my face. I switch off the head torch for a night in the death zone.
May 17
Climb Down from Camp 4 to Camp 2
I’d a rough night. We were packed in like three sardines. I’d carried up Greg’s spare mat yesterday, as it’s light and perfect for sitting on. But its thin, three quarter length design isn’t for a sleep at the South Col. My freezing feet woke me every hour. Each time, I spent fifteen minutes pulling them up off the tent base and massaging them inside my bag. It did some good, but the pain soon returned.
The scene in the tent reminded me of a ship that had strayed into Antarctica and got wedged there for a month. A layer of ice or frozen condensation encrusted everything: the sleeping bags, the tent material, the oxygen tanks, and the equipment. It was hard to believe Ade and Greg were alive under it. It would have made for a great photo, but I wouldn’t disturb the lads with a flash camera. That image, like so many others, will fade with memory.
“That was a cold one. It felt like I was sleeping on ice.” Greg sits up.
“Don’t ask.” I unzip my bag. “God, I feel groggy.”
“I’d a great sleep, one of the best so far,” Ade says. “I’d the mask beside my face, rather than on it. I just let the oxygen drift by me.”
“I saw that, good thinking,” I say. “The mask was hard to fall asleep in. Condensation kept running out of it and down my neck. My hands were locked in the bag; so, I couldn’t wipe it away. I didn’t want to lose any heat. But I didn’t want the water to freeze on me either.”
“So what did you do?”
“Just had a lousy night.”
We’re standing outside the tent. Our breaths hang in the air. My watch would go pear-shaped before I even loosened the strap. Up near the South Summit, seven hundred metres above, we can see a line of insects. They’re not far from the top.
“I just heard on the radio there’ve been summits,” Angel says.
Those black dots are climbers. And us here, we’re just campers. What set of events led this to happen? We laboured for six weeks and dragged ourselves to this frigid death zone eight kilometres up in the sky, only to stand here and watch others summit. There’s no point in dwelling on the last twenty-four hours any longer.
“Ok guys, gather round.” Angel holds a radio in his gloved hand. “Everyone, Sherpas as well.” He waits a moment. “I’ve been onto Base Camp. Here’s the latest forecast.” He looks at the circle of a dozen that has formed. “As expected, there’ll be a storm this afternoon. It might not be as bad as predicted. We could sit it out in the tents.”
Nurhan whispers in Yener’s ear.
“A gap in the weather is predicted for tonight. A summit bid is possible.”
I nudge Greg and raise an eyebrow.
“However, a huge storm is predicted for tomorrow. If we’re back down by noon, we should be ok. We can try again tonight or descend and wait for the window on the twenty second.”
“Angel, will you support us for either bid?” I ask.
“I will.”
“Ok guys, let’s go with a majority decision, but try for unanimous. Does that make sense?” I ask.
Heads nod.
“Look, I’ll shoot first,” I say. “We’re here. We’ve done the hard work. We can hydrate today. If the Sherpas can support us,” I look over to Teshi, “then I say: let’s go tonight. Teshi, what’s your position? You and the Sherpas, will you speak for all of them?”
Teshi represents them and confesses they’re not in a position to support a push tonight for the full team. There’s a lack of food and manpower, the same problem as last night. His preference is to descend, regroup, and acquire supplies from Base Camp. I hear no doubt in his voice. His vote carries a lot of weight.
“Nurhan, you’re the most experienced. What’s your opinion? And can you speak for Yener also?” I ask.
“Summits of this nature are undertaken during a weather window, not a gap in a storm. The weather window is May twenty-two / twenty-three. It has been for some time. Trying to summit tonight is an unnecessary risk. We should descend and retry. That is mountaineering.”
“Right gents, I’m changing my mind, sorry. Based on what I’ve heard, I’m now voting to descend.”
It kills me to be so close and yet leave with nothing. Precious energy has been wasted. Climbers are standing on the summit behind us as we speak. Some are making the return journey.
Everyone expresses their feelings, concerns, and disappointment. Each makes a free choice. But within a few minutes, Greg, Khalid, Ade, and Roger have all declared that we must wait for another day.
“All right, let’s pack up and get out of here to Camp 2 as quick as possible,” Angel says. “We’ll take down the tents and cover them to protect them from the storm.”
Ade and I drag everything out of our tent. Inside we find sheets of ice where Greg had slept. It seems I’d not soaked up all the spillage last night.
The Sherpas protect the flattened tents with rocks. My pack bulges with the addition of the mountain sleeping bag. I’ve not had any water or food this morning, I doubt Greg and Ade have either. Nor do I have anything in my bottle. The emphasis is on escape. Going downhill should not be too testing.
“Angel, I’m out of oxygen. Can I get a tank?” I ask.
“Here’s one. It should do. The needle’s at five.” He hands me a tank.
“Five? Twenty-five is a full tank.”
“Yeah, but we can’t waste them. Now we’re making a second attempt, we must preserve them. We need to leave the full tanks up
here. That should be enough to get you close to Camp 3.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah, from there you can make it without oxygen.”
I haul the heavy pack onto my back and set off with Greg. The two of us make good progress along the Geneva Spur slate ridge; it’s in our favour.
We’re walking in single file. Greg moves past a slower mountaineer on spotting an opportunity. The man plods in front of me. The gap to Greg grows. I cannot pass the climber. To the right, a rock slope and a kilometre and a half tumble down to Camp 2 threatens. My safety slides along the horizontal rope on the left. The man has not clipped himself in. He’s just running a hand over the line. His feet look unsteady. He’s not wearing an oxygen mask. I’m walking two metres behind him. He’s unaware of my presence.
He strolls to the right and off the edge. The rope stays trapped under his armpit as he falls down the broken slate. I’ve tied myself to the ship’s anchor. His momentum yanks the line and slingshots me over the verge. I’m not sure if the connection point will hold the weight of two flailing men.
My crampons scrape the rocks. We judder to a halt.
We climb back up to the trail. He trudges on, still oblivious to my existence.
Greg’s waiting in line at the bottleneck at the top of the abseil section. We sit down on a snow ledge for ten minutes. Conversation is a casualty of the masks.
Greg then clips in, leans back over the edge, and disappears. I’m up next. I’m connecting the fixed rope to my harness. The climber without the oxygen tank crouches down beside me. He’s untying the anchor point.
“Hey, hold on, stop that,” I say.
He continues to fumble with the knot.
“Hey, stop. What are you doing?”
“These ropes are wrong, the knots are wrong. They should be the other way.” He tries to undo our route out of the South Col.
“Jesus, stop. They’re fine. I just watched five people descend on this rope. So did you.”
“They’re in the wrong place. They should be over there.” He points to a rock three metres away.
I’m connected to the rope with a twenty metre sheer drop behind me. I’ve nothing with which to help the man; I’ve limited oxygen in my tank and no water. Nor can I go over the edge. He may be moments away from reaching for a saw knife.