The Mountain

by Ed Viesturs

  On September 29, when I climbed back up to Camp II, I found the tent completely buried in new snow, with only the tip of the roof peeking out of the drift. It seemed like a warning sign, but I was still determined to go to 25,000 feet the next day. Now anxiety supplanted boredom. “A big mystery right now,” I wrote about the route ahead. “I’m excited, scared, worried, apprehensive. . . . Anxious about the snow—it could be great or it could be hell.”

  “Hell” was the right guess. Despite leaving Camp II at 2:00 a.m. in hopes of better conditions, I found myself punching knee-deep through a crusty surface into unconsolidated powder beneath. It took only forty-five minutes of slogging for me to acknowledge another defeat, because the risk of triggering an avalanche was too great. I turned back at only 22,800 feet.

  On October 9, I set out on my last attempt, still hoping to reach the summit in a three-day alpine-style push. By now, however, the strain of weeks of danger and solitude had gotten to me. As I wrote in my diary, “If anything [the snow conditions] have gotten worse. Agh! What to do? Rule #1—Don’t get killed!”

  With a 40-pound load on my back, I was off by 1:00 a.m. The sky was clear and the wind was down, but the snow underfoot was as unstable as ever. Angling up a steep diagonal slope, I took a few gingerly steps. All of a sudden the whole slope settled beneath me with a loud whompf! In that moment, I felt sheer terror. I knew that that kind of settling was the likely precursor to a massive avalanche. The whole couloir, it seemed, was ready to cut loose.

  At least the mountain had forced me to make the decision I’d dreaded for the last month. I headed down, holding my breath with each footstep. I was finished with the north face. In six attempts, I’d gotten no higher than 23,500 feet—a colossal 5,500 vertical feet short of the summit. What was most frustrating was the knowledge that it wasn’t my lack of technical ability or courage that had thwarted my attempt, but just lousy weather and insanely dangerous snow conditions.

  • • •

  I still wasn’t willing to give up entirely. If I could switch my objective to the traditional route, head up the East Rongbuk Glacier to the North Col, and then climb along the northeast ridge to the summit, I’d feel that my campaign was a success. So, on October 10 and 11, Tamding and I blitzed our way up to the basin just below the North Col. On the twelfth, I climbed to the col and pitched my tent there. By now, however, the constant snowstorms had given way to fierce winds. On the thirteenth, I got to 25,600 feet on the face above the col, but had to turn back. I waited for the winds to die down through the night of the fourteenth, but it just wasn’t in the cards. On the fifteenth, I made another try, but couldn’t even match my high point of two days before. The wind was not only bitterly cold—it made simply moving upward scary and dangerous.

  That evening I wrote in my diary, “The game is over. Everest wins/Ed loses.”

  On October 18, the trucks arrived at base camp to pick us up. Of all the parties on the north side of Everest that autumn, we were the last to leave.

  I felt a deep disappointment, but I knew I’d given it my best shot. Unlike my try at the Kangshung Face in 1988, it wasn’t objective danger or difficulty that turned me back in 1993. It was the ceaseless snowstorms that piled drifts into hair-trigger avalanche slopes throughout September, then wind too strong and cold to survive in mid-October. Later I would take some solace in the knowledge that of all the parties on the north side of Everest that autumn, including such world-class mountaineers as Jim Wickwire and John Roskelley, only two teams put any climbers on top. A total of six men reached the summit that season from the north, and none of them topped out after October 10.

  Himalayan climbing is always a crap shoot. That autumn, the monsoon simply refused to loosen its grip on Everest. It would be presumptuous to claim that, given better weather, I would have succeeded—but at least I would have had a fighting chance. No matter how well you prepare, no matter what shape you’re in, no matter how determined you are to succeed, an 8,000-meter peak can smack you flat. At least that autumn I’d obeyed my Rule #1: “Don’t get killed.”

  • • •

  My solo attempt on the Great Couloir represented my eighth attempt on an 8,000er. (In the spring of 1993, I’d tried Shishapangma, getting to the central summit, but balking at the horrendously corniced knife-edged ridge leading a mere hundred yards to the true summit.) I think it surprised even me that among those eight expeditions, five had been to Everest. I’ve never thought of Everest as the most interesting or challenging of the fourteen 8,000ers—those honors would fall to K2 and Annapurna. So why did I keep coming back to the world’s highest peak? There were pragmatic reasons—a chance to guide in 1991, a place on a team organized by Jim Whittaker in 1990. But Everest had somehow gotten under my skin. There’s something about that mountain that lured me back again and again . . . as it has lured other climbers, starting with Mallory.

  By the end of 1993, I was still struggling to scrape together a living as a full-time climber. I actually considered resuming a career as a veterinarian. In low moments, I wondered whether I’d squandered an advanced education only to become a part-time carpenter supporting a climbing addiction. Thirty-four years old, I was still living in a basement apartment, although I’d upgraded my windowless cell to a place that had big windows opening on a lawn with a matchless view of Puget Sound. I’d recently ended a serious relationship, because my girlfriend couldn’t suppress her animosity about my being away so often on long trips. The atmosphere between us had grown so tense that even talking about climbing or going to parties with other climbers got on her nerves.

  Then, out of the blue, sometime that autumn, John Cumming, an RMI guide friend of mine, called me up and offered to cast me as the leading sponsored climber for a new outdoor gear company that his father was financing, to be called Mountain Hardwear. It was a kind of “Hallelujah” moment, and I accepted without a second’s hesitation. I’ll never forget that phone call, which, along with Gil Friesen’s intervention the year before, which had won me MTV sponsorship, marked one of the true turning points of my career. Mountain Hardwear would continue to sponsor me through the completion of my Endeavor 8000 in 2005, and though I no longer represent the company, I’m lastingly grateful for the huge boost in my career those folks provided.

  Soon after the call from John Cumming, Rob Hall invited me to guide clients on Everest in the coming spring. I’d met Rob on K2 in 1992, where he was climbing with his inseparable partner Gary Ball. Hall and Ball, as we called them, were arguably the leading team running guided trips on 8,000-meter peaks, having founded a firm called Adventure Consultants. I was in awe of this pair of famous Kiwi climbers when I met them at base camp, but we got along well on K2, and I played an instrumental role in getting Ball down the mountain alive after he was stricken with pulmonary edema in our highest camp, at 26,000 feet.

  Sadly, the very next year Gary died on Dhaulagiri, when he again was felled by pulmonary edema. Unwilling to abandon Adventure Consultants, Rob invited me to help guide his clients in ’94.

  Everest for the sixth time, when I still had my sights set on other 8,000ers? Nonetheless, I didn’t hesitate to accept Rob’s offer. Guiding on Everest for a small salary sure beat slapping together houses in Seattle in midwinter sleet as a way to make ends meet. And as I contemplated the upcoming expedition, I came up with an idea that Rob quickly agreed to. If we got up Everest reasonably early in the season, and if we could buy places on someone else’s permit, Rob and I could give Lhotse, Everest’s neighbor and the fourth-highest mountain in the world, a shot. Acclimatized on Everest, we might be able to dash up Lhotse in alpine style in only a few days.

  I got to base camp below the Khumbu Icefall by late March, well in advance of Rob and the clients. With our six Sherpas, I puttered around, making our base camp habitable, building benches and tables out of rocks, and even carrying loads through the icefall, along the route that another team of Sherpas had trailblazed with ladders and fixed ropes.

  Our six
clients were an intriguingly mixed bunch. There were two Americans, Dave Keaton and Dave Taylor, and two Germans, Ekke Gundelach and Helmut Seitzl. Back for a second go at Everest was my friend Hall Wendel, whom I’d turned back at the South Col in 1991. Since that expedition, we’d become great pals. After Everest, Hall had hired me to guide him on peaks in Mexico, Ecuador, and New Zealand, as well as on an attempt on 23,494-foot-high Pumori near Everest. He also invited me on several sailing trips in the Caribbean aboard his beautiful yacht, during which we spent many raucous days and nights island hopping and scuba diving. We became such good friends that eventually I quit charging him for my time as a guide and just had him cover expenses. This year, on Hall’s return to Everest, I would be his staunchest supporter as he strived to attain the goal that he admitted was paramount in his dreams.

  The sleeper in our bunch was a Norwegian, Erling Kagge. At age thirty-one, he was already renowned in his native country for his polar exploits. In 1990, with Børge Ousland, he had completed the first unsupported journey to the North Pole. Then in 1992–93, he made the first solo unsupported trek to the South Pole, covering 814 miles in fifty-two days. He’d brought his book about this feat, Alone to the South Pole, along on the expedition, and, as a longtime devotee of polar literature, I devoured it in what little spare time I had on the trip.

  Yet Erling had never climbed a real mountain of any kind before. To make Everest the goal of your first mountaineering venture was pretty bold. But if he succeeded (with our help), he’d be the first person to claim the “three poles”—90 degrees south and north and the highest point on earth.

  During those preliminary days, as I put it in my diary, I was “the only white boy on the hill.” I amused myself by observing the Sherpas’ antics as they carried loads through the icefall. “It’s funny to see some of the Sherpas trying to look very fashionable and a bit glitzy . . .” I wrote of their dress and demeanor. “Too bad there aren’t any women up there to impress! Then there’s the old guard—climbing in tattered sweaters, old wool hats, & jeans.” There was also a not-so-subtle rivalry to prove who was fittest and could move fastest. “Nima, Norbu & Ang Dawa are always battling for the lead. Tashi & I are just behind them & then Chombi & Tenzing follow behind us. . . . It seems there is a bit of competition going on between the Sherps & also to show off for the white boy. I just hang with ’em to show that I’m not a pushover.”

  On April 6, Rob arrived with his wife, Jan Arnold, who would serve as our base camp manager, and the six clients. Hall and I reconnected immediately, although his hyperness got on my nerves a bit. As I wrote,

  Hall always wants to play cards [at base camp] —I’m not always into it. I want some solitude, think time & relaxation. . . . Hall gets bored quickly, but he doesn’t want to work or haul loads. So he gets antsy. He doesn’t realize the amount of work that goes on while he’s twiddling his thumbs. . . . Great guy, though—hopefully many more adventures together.

  As I had first discovered in 1991, being a paying client can lend itself to a certain complacency; it’s as if the money a guy forks out makes him think he’s bought the privilege of being waited on. There were times in the first weeks on Everest in 1994 when this penchant drove me a little crazy. On April 24, I complained in my diary,

  At lunch we discussed what [the clients] should carry to Camp III tomorrow to sleep. Food, tent, [sleeping] pads, bags—it’s all up there. All they need to carry is clothes, headlamp, cup & spoon. Some balked because they had to carry their own fucking plastic cup! Come on!

  Still, all six of our clients were good people, and they were performing well as we moved steadily through the icefall and across the Western Cwm. That spring we were blessed with some of the best weather I’d ever experienced on Everest, and Rob and I began to believe that we could make our summit attempt early enough to give the two of us ample “leftover” time for our crack at Lhotse.

  After making a single push to Camp III at 23,500 feet to acclimatize, the clients and Rob headed all the way down to the hill town of Dingboche. It was Rob’s idea that relatively thick air, good food and drink, and three days of rest would rejuvenate the whole team. In the meantime, the Sherpas and I kept hauling loads all the way up to the South Col at 26,000 feet. In the end, that splitting of forces maybe wasn’t the best idea. At base camp, the Sherpas and I had control of our food preparation and kitchen hygiene, and we were relatively isolated from members of other teams who might be suffering from various illnesses. But at Dingboche, eating food prepared by locals, some of our clients came down with unpleasant gastrointestinal problems. “Most of the clients,” I wrote on May 3, “didn’t feel that the trip down valley was really worth it. It’s humid, lots of yak shit, some got the shits, etc. They’re all back [at base camp] and happy to be here.”

  Amazingly, the weather stayed almost perfect, day after day of clear skies with relatively light winds. Our plan was to leave base camp on May 5 to start our summit push, aiming for May 9 as the day to go to the top. Among the other teams on the south side that year was a party guided by Todd Burleson, as well as an Everest clean-up expedition that included my partner from K2, Scott Fischer. Despite the considerable experience of those climbers, they seemed to wait for Rob to give the signal when it was time to head up the hill.

  This wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last time that I bore witness to what I called “summit fever.” As I wrote in my diary on May 4, “Tomorrow we go—the Swedes go; Scott’s team goes! The lemming effect!! No one wants to be out front, alone. If I was alone I’d be up & gone Johnson—get away from the crowds. (‘Herd’ is more like it!)”

  On May 5 our whole team climbed to Camp II at 21,000 feet in the Western Cwm. We rested there for a day, then moved up to Camp III on the Lhotse Face on the seventh. On the eighth, we climbed to the South Col. I’d decided to use bottled oxygen on this ascent, because as a guide, I thought it more responsible to use that aid in case any of the clients got into trouble. I first turned on my set as we moved through the Geneva Spur just below the South Col. The weather was still holding.

  That night I tried to sleep with supplemental oxygen, but gave up—the apparatus has never felt comfortable to me. To Rob’s and my delight, the clients were all faring well. Hall Wendel had learned from 1991. This year he was in far better shape and better prepared mentally. As we’d climbed through the Geneva Spur, he stayed right on my tail.

  We awoke at 11:00 p.m., as the Sherpas served us tea. Rob always had two extra Sherpas at high camp whose chief role was to melt ice for water and keep everyone hydrated and fed. They would also act as back-up support in case we needed more manpower on the climb above the South Col. That night it was clear and starry, with virtually no wind. I couldn’t quite believe our good fortune. Each client carried two bottles of oxygen, which at a rate of two liters per minute should last him through the whole twelve-hour trip to the summit. The Sherpas carried a third bottle for each client to be used on the descent. I carried three bottles myself, as did Rob.

  Everything went as planned. Just behind Ang Dorje, our Sherpa who took the lead, Hall Wendel moved confidently upward. He seemed unstoppable, and I was quite impressed with his performance. Hall reached the summit at the early hour of 10:15 a.m. In the middle of the pack, I topped out at 10:30. I stayed there an hour with Rob, as one by one, all six of our clients reached the summit. Three of our Sherpas—Ang Dorje, Nima Norbu, and Norbu—also got to the top.

  On the way down, Hall ran out of gas, but he was still able to move, albeit slowly, under his own power. I ran sweep for our team, arriving with Hall back at the South Col at 6:00 p.m.

  The same day that we climbed to the top, Scott Fischer made his first ascent of Everest, doing so without bottled oxygen. I was really proud of my old buddy’s achievement, and let him know. Four days later, Burleson’s entire team summitted. All in all that spring, a total of thirty-seven men (no women) reached the top via the South Col route.

  Everest is never easy, but that was by far
the smoothest ascent of any 8,000er I’d had in the eight years since I’d started climbing in the Himalaya. It was very gratifying when Hall later told me, “Ed, you were right to turn me around in ninety-one. We did it right this time. I can’t believe how great it feels!” The trickle of doubt I’d harbored since then now evaporated. Instead, my conviction that I should always listen to my instincts and never let myself be swayed by clients’ or teammates’ desires was reinforced.

  As for Erling Kagge, he impressed all of us. He easily picked up the basic climbing skills, and he was so strong and so comfortable with Everest’s “arctic” conditions that he fit in like a seasoned mountaineer. Upon returning to Norway, he would write a book about his triple triumph, called Pole to Pole & Beyond.

  By May 11, all of us had arrived back at base camp, and the next day, the clients started the hike out, guided by the Sherpas and Jan Arnold. Rob and I still had as much as three weeks before the monsoon would hit. We rested for a day, then headed back up the route we knew so well.

  In a mere four days from base camp to the top and back, we climbed Lhotse alpine-style, stopping to camp only twice along the way. We carried one small tent and a single sleeping bag that we zipped open and shared like a blanket. Rob used bottled oxygen; I didn’t. We stood on the summit on May 16, just seven days after reaching the summit of Everest. By that date, the “herd” that had thronged the south side of Everest had vanished, everyone having headed down the Khumbu valley to civilization. Descending from Lhotse, Rob and I had the whole Western Cwm and the Khumbu Icefall to ourselves. It was a magical experience.

  We nicknamed our feat a “twofer,” as in “two for the price of one.” I would go on to apply that tactic on a number of subsequent seasons in the Himalaya and the Karakoram. With Lhotse, I’d now topped out on four of the fourteen 8,000ers, and come within a hundred yards of the top of a fifth, Shishapangma. Even as I headed home from Everest, I was planning a trip to Cho Oyu with Rob for the fall of 1994. And for the first time, I really began to ponder the possibility of climbing all fourteen. With the four highest 8,000ers under my belt, and the security blanket of Mountain Hardwear sponsorship, I felt that this was a tangible goal. I didn’t care so much about becoming the first American to climb all fourteen. What motivated me was the conviction that trying to reach the summit of all the 8,000ers was the kind of lifetime challenge I had always sought.