The Mother's Necklace

by Matthew Horan

  On the summit, with Everest behind

  Summit selfie with Jabu.

  I sidle up to Ray and Steve, who are ecstatic about finally tagging the top on their third go.

  “Hey guys – I’m worried I may not make it back to Camp 2 before dark. Is there room in your tent?”

  “Of course mate,” says Steve in his broad Geordie accent. “It’ll be a tight fit, but if you need it, it’s there.”

  I call Tim on the radio: “Base Camp From Matt.”

  “Go ahead Matt.”

  “I knocked the bastard off,” I say, echoing Hillary’s words from the top of Everest. It’s a bit cheeky, like reusing “One small step” after getting off a light plane flight.

  “Well done, congratulations,” says Tim. “Don’t hang around too long, you’re running out of daylight.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “I may have to bivvy at 2.9.”

  Tim’s shocked: “Say again? That’s not a good option.”

  I’ve not been clear enough – I’ve used the wrong words. “Bivvy” in mountaineering parlance, means to sit huddled on a ledge through the night shivering with no shelter. It’s from ‘bivouac”, which my friend and mountaineering legend Andrew Lock says is the French word for “you fucked up”. For me, staying in a tent with no sleeping bag probably qualifies, but I need to be clearer.

  I quickly explain to Tim: “The Geordies are here on the summit. They have a tent at 2.9 and I can stay with them if it’s too late.”

  “Ok,” says Tim, only slightly mollified. “But I highly recommend you try to make it to Camp 2.”

  “Ok, leaving now,” I reply.

  I am the last person on the summit. Of the maybe 20 or so people who left Camp 2 this morning, only nine of us have stood here today – four of them Sherpas.

  I take a last look around. Ray and Steve have just disappeared off the summit. I try to suck in the vista. I’ll never see this view again, certainly not from here. I know it has to last a lifetime.

  And then I turn away and start to descend. I am, after all, only halfway. I catch up to Jabu. He’s not my personal Sherpa, although he has a responsibility to the expedition. We’re climbing more as individuals, close together, rather than as a client/Sherpa team. Still, fuck it, I think. He’s more experienced than me. “Jabu,” I call. “Can you check my gear as I descend? Make sure I’m on the rope properly?” He nods. I’ve got heaps of experience in rappelling, but it’s 6850m, I’m tired, dehydrated and I wouldn’t mind a second opinion on my rope work. I’m still haunted by a near-fatal incident when I was 16 and had just started climbing, rappelling over the edge of a five-storey building when I noticed I wasn’t actually connected to the rope by anything other than my hands. Jabu checks, I sit my arse back and start rappelling.

  Within about 200m we’re stuck. Ray and Steve are there, and the German girl who held us up on the way up is now delaying us on the way down. Her rappelling skills are on par with her climbing skills. Non-existent. She’s stuck on one of the anchors below. We can’t clip in to that rope until she’s off. The way rappelling works, tension on the rope below will stop you from moving. That’s how you slow yourself, increasing the friction on your figure 8 device, your descender by tensioning the rope just below it with your hand. We sit in the snow and wait. And wait. It seems to take about 20 minutes for her to free herself.

  Ray gets on, zooms down. Then Steve, then me, then Jabu. And then we wait again.

  Ray and Steve are yelling for her to stop, to wait for us to pass her. Jabu is screaming at her Sherpa. But they either can’t hear us in the wind or ignore us. We’re finally down the summit slopes in about two or so hours. Half the time it took to go up, but probably double what it should have taken us with the delays. This is clearly what worried Tim. Not so much my ability, although he’d be right to be slightly worried, but the abilities of other people on the mountain that he has no control over.

  We keep descending. I stopped asking Jabu to check my ‘biners right about the time he starts insisting that I don’t screw them closed. “No need, no need,” he says. I’m not prepared to do that. It’s slightly faster to leave them unscrewed, but way more dangerous, even if they are "opposed" with the gates opposite to each other. A rope can twist, pushing down from the outside of a ‘biner and unlock it, leaving you off the system. With all the rappels we’re doing, maybe 20 or so to get to 2.9, I’d save a total of maybe 10 minutes by just clipping in and not screwing them locked. Not worth it.

  The German is off the Camp 3 platform by the time we arrive. It’s close to 5pm now, and we can see the sun getting lower.

  It’s brutally cold here at Camp 3. Jabu doesn’t want to stop – he’s on a mission to get down to Camp 2 – but my fingers are feeling painfully cold. I’ve still got my mitt off my right hand. It was much faster to descend off the summit slopes that way. Jabu wants to keep going. No way. I stop, slip my mitt back on and flex my fingers. They’re not numb, but they’re certainly cold.

  We’re down the little ice cliff onto Mushroom Ridge when my patience with Jabu snaps. In his haste to help me transfer an anchor, he unclips me completely from the rope system. There’s 2.5km of space to my right, just a short stumble away. “Fuck!!!” my mind screams as I snatch at the rope and clip myself back in. I’m seething, furious. I think to myself that I can’t rely on Jabu. He has the best of intentions, but Sherpas have a different tolerance for danger – a tolerance bred from experience – than many other mountaineers, and certainly me. It’s also a lesson that this high, even Sherpas make mistakes. And right now we have different goals. Mine is to get to 2.9, brew up and get some liquid into me before making my next move. Jabu’s is to push on to the “comforts” of Camp 2, without stopping. He’s basing his decision on his knowledge of how fast he’s capable of moving and his extensive experience on this mountain – I’m basing mine on my dehydration (I’m down to about 200ml of slush in the bottom of my bottle) and the fast-approaching sunset.

  He’s also leading me away from 2.9, I think quite stupidly. I suspect he wants to go over the ridge to the right, above it, rather than down the way we came. If we miss it, I think, he’ll simply say to keep going. Part of me wonders if I’m being irrational, and then I ask myself if thinking that I’m irrational means I am actually rational. No matter. Jabu feels a responsibility to Tim, not me, and Tim wants me down. I yell at him through the wind, rather uncharitably, that we need to get to 2.9, which is probably where we’re headed anyway. I clip onto the ropes I know go to 2.9 and start rappelling.

  “WHACK!” I’ve rappelled right into the anchor and flipped myself. Worse, down here the sun has now truly disappeared. It was getting dark, but this is Ama, and when the sun’s down, it’s down. I’ve still got my sunglasses on – my glasses are in my pack and I simply haven’t had the time to retrieve them and put them on, or get my headtorch back out. So it’s dark, I can’t see a thing and I’m upside down, with God knows how much air beneath me.

  I’ve well and truly fucked this, I think. There’s ropes everywhere, and I can’t seem to get enough purchase with my crampons on the face to turn myself around. Nothing to be gained from panicking, so as cool as I can, I twist myself around and manage to get myself into a stance. I clip myself into the anchor, slap a jumar on the rope above to relieve the tension below and proceed to unclip everything else and extract myself from the tangle of ropes. Jabu rappels down soon after, having felt the tension on the rope disappear. I don’t tell him about it, embarrassed that I’ve fucked up, wondering if I’d listened to him that it wouldn’t have happened (probably not). And not wanting to give him the satisfaction.

  Camp 2.9 appears about 10 minutes later. Ray and Steve are there, their headlamps on inside the tent.

  “Ey oop lads,” I say in my best Derbyshire. They’ve got a stove on and generously offer me some of their water. I’m not sure if they’ve had much themselves yet. I drink about 500ml straight away. Jabu is keen to keep going. I’m not. I know I could make it to Camp 2,
but it’s a solid three hours in the dark and to be perfectly honest there’s maybe a 10 per cent chance I don’t make it. I’m tired and I’m shaken by my upside-down trick coming into Camp 2.9. I’m getting unsafe. Ray and Steve have an extra bit of foam in their tent from an old tent platform nearby – it’ll be enough to insulate me from the ice, which is better than sitting on my pack, which is what I expected to have to do.

  It’s about 6.30pm when I call Tim on the radio. “I’m going to stay here the night,” I tell him.

  “Are you sure you can’t get down to Camp 2?” Tim says. “It’s a lower altitude and I’d feel a lot better if you were back in there tonight”. Tim knows he has more support at Camp 2 if I go down like Adam did. “Get a brew into you and see how you feel.”

  “Tim, I’m worried I’m getting unsafe here. I don’t want to descend in the dark. There’s a tent here with the Geordies, a foam mat and it’s warm inside. I’ll come down in the morning. Jabu is going to descend now and I’ll come down with the Geordies.”

  “Ok,” says Tim. “Good decision. Call in the morning.”

  Jabu can’t get out of camp quick enough. He knows it’s a long way back alone in the dark. I feel a little guilty making him descend on his own, but he’ll move faster, and more safely, without me.

  I settle in with Ray and Steve, wedging myself in between them. I loosen my boots to provide more circulation and crack another couple of chemical handwarmers for my mitts. With three people inside, the tent’s actually a lot warmer than it would normally be, although it’s still well below -10. But I’m reasonably comfortable – swathed in down and PrimaLoft.

  I have one of my best sleeps of the expedition.

  November 26 – Camp 2.9

  I’m awoken at about 7am by a growling stomach. For two reasons. First, in the past 38 hours I have eaten the grand total of one Snickers bar, and one Cliff Bar. Second, the Immodium I took at Camp 2 has worn off. I get out of the tent fairly hurriedly, or as hurriedly as you can wedged between two 60-something Geordies. I relieve myself off to one side, under the hanging icicles of death, and kick some snow, ice and rubble over the top.

  It’s relatively warm outside, definitely well below zero but without the massive winds of yesterday. My down jacket goes in my pack, along with my down mitts. I feel free – I’ve had the jacket on for more than 24 hours now and while warm, it’s bulky and restricts your movement. I check my watch – and there’s a crack running through the sapphire glass on it. I can’t remember banging it yesterday, and in any case, it was swathed in tree or four layers of clothing and gloves. The only explanation I can think of is that the temperature drop was so intense the glass couldn’t cope. It still works though, and it’s about 7.30am when we set off.

  It’s a communal tent – put there for any expedition to use – so we don’t need to pull it down. The final crew up will “clean” the mountain of ropes, anchors and tents. So Ray and Steve pack their gear away into heavy packs while I melt them some water. We all refill our bottles – about a litre each should be enough, a balance between time spent melting and what we absolutely need. I munch another Cliff Bar. We climb up the five metres or so to the top of the ridge again and start descending.

  It’s glorious.

  I climbed up in the dark, but descending now I can revel in the beauty of this mountain. Not the aesthetics of its shape from a distance, which is what attracts people to climb it. But the little things, the ice crystals, the hanging sheets of glassy iced-up snow, the fragility of the cover and the firmness of the ice beneath. It really is magical climbing. Well, downclimbing. We rappel down towards the Grey Couloir fairly swiftly.

  It’s still taking time, because there’s three of us and only one can be on the rope rapelling at any one time. Ray takes the lead at first, rappelling down while Steve and I wait. Then one of us will clip on and descend, then the next one. The rappels themselves don’t take too long. Making sure we’re safe in between does. And even then, “safety” is often more of a feeling than a hard concept.

  “Matt, don’t clip on until I’m off this rope,” Ray yells from about 40m below. “The anchor is really dodgy.” I see what he means when I traverse across there. The “anchor” is a short piton – a metal spike about 15cms long – hammered into a crack. And that’s it. Except it’s not hammered all the way in, only about halfway. There’s about three or four ropes hanging off it, all looking equally death-dealing. Normally when a piton won’t go all the way into the crack, the technique is to tie off right at the base of the piton where it meets the rock face – that way physics works in your favour.

  Not here. Here whoever set up this anchor just clipped into the ring at the top. Which, as I can see, means physics is most definitely not working in our favour. The piton is creaking ominously as Ray weights it and leans back for his rappel. Not just creaking, now it’s actually bending, flexing away as Ray carefully, oh so carefully, edges downward. None of the bouncing “Police Rescue” style of rappelling here. When he’s off, I provide the same warning to Steve, who’s now arrived, and with a sense of fatalism make the same careful journey down. My ‘biners are clipped into several other ropes, so if I do fall, I’ll hopefully only fall as far as the next anchor. But given most of those ropes appear to be tied into the same bendy, dodgy piton, any illusion of safety could very well be just that. Illusory. A few heart-stopping minutes later and I gingerly get to the bottom of this pitch. Ray and I slowly step away from Steve’s fall line. Just in case.

  I shudder as I think we’ve not only descended on such a dodgy anchor, we ascended it as well, with maybe four or five people all clipping in and hauling away as we climbed up yesterday morning. Part of me wishes I had descended last night in the dark, if only to miss seeing this horror show anchor in the light of day.

  Me descending the Grey Couloir, with Camp 2 in the background. This is a couple of pitches below the bendy piton anchor. (Photo: Steve Berry)

  It takes us almost three hours of wonderful climbing – anchors aside – to reach Camp 2. Jabu is waiting there for us and I call Tim. I take my heavy boots off for the first time in almost 36 hours, strip off the two layers of damp, sweaty socks and luxuriate in the cool midday air on my feet in the warmth of the tent. It takes me about 30 minutes to pack everything up and I shoulder a heavy pack once more. Jabu, bless him, has forgotten, or is at least ignoring, my unnecessary ill temper of the previous night, and offers to carry down my mountain boots, which saves me about 1.5kg and a lot of bulk. I forgive him the imagined indiscretions of last night. I still won’t let him near my ‘biners.

  It’s an exhausting haul down to Camp 1. The terrain I loved so much coming up is still awesome, but I still haven’t eaten much. I’m at the point where I know I need food but my stomach has shrunken to the point where I can’t face it. At least not at Camp 2 with its odour of shit and fresh urine. But I know I’ll need something, and soon. I’m keeping the water up, which is good.

  On the snow ridge just below the Yellow Tower I pass Dan and Richard, who are heading for Camp 2 to stage a summit bid in the morning. Dan’s in good form, looking strong. Richard is still struggling from his flu and admits he may not make it past Camp 2. I tell them it’s seriously tough, but doable for them, and fill them in on 2.9 and the capacity to sit out a late one there if it all turns to shit. They followed the action last night on their radios and are a little bit horrified that I even contemplated it.

  I’m at Camp 1 around 2pm. Tim’s group is there on their last acclimatisation rotation. Our Marine is there too, inside a tent resting. I get the story in bits from him and from Peris, a serving Royal Marine Sergeant in Tim’s group. Our Marine and Pete descended from below the summit, but got separated on the way down as Pete was faster. Pete got in to Camp 2 just after dark. His call to descend was spot on. The Marine, however, apparently got in about 10.30pm – at least three or four hours after sunset, dehydrated and exhausted. He’s hauled himself down to Camp 1 today but that was as far as he wanted to go
, or was able to. The fact that he’s in this state shows he made the right decision to go down when he did.

  I know how he feels. I’ve been on the go for about seven hours today – and almost 18 straight yesterday, at altitude – and I’m chinstrapped. I think to myself that the Marine is onto a good thing and start looking around for a tent to crash in for the night. Trouble is, with Tim’s group on their rotation, there’s no room. I resign myself to a long walk, check in with Tim, tell him I’ll see them tonight.

  Peris sees my condition, and comes over with not just water, but with a noodle meal. Lifesaver. He’s been working in the Khumbu – his wife is a doctor who volunteers here – for about three months so he’s much more lucid than anyone else at this altitude. He makes me eat it. I throw a bit of it up a few minutes later, trying to clear my throat from the phlegm which is still blocking it. This concerns a few of the team (they think I’m altitude sick – I’m not, I’m just a bit sick-sick), but I shake it off and start to descend.