You can get hooked on feelings like those; they are the ultimate altered state. Drugs can’t touch them. I’m not saying this is real healthy behavior, you understand. I’m just saying it happens.
For instance, at the end of this particular intense day in the Hornbein Couloir, the four of us emerged at its top, having completed an Alpine-style blitz of it due in large part to Kunga Norbu’s inspired leads. We made camp on a small flat knob top just big enough for our tent. And looking around—what a feeling! It really was something. There were only four or five mountains in the world taller than we were in that campsite, and you could tell. We could see all the way across Tibet, it seemed. Now Tibet tends mostly to look like a freeze-dried Nevada, but from our height it was range after range of snowy peaks, white on black forever, all tinted sepia by the afternoon sun. It seemed the world was nothing but mountains.
Freds plopped down beside me, idiot grin still fixed on his face. He had a steaming cup of lemon drink in one hand, his hash pipe in the other, and he was singing “ ‘What a looong, strange trip it’s been.’ ” He took a hit from the pipe and handed it to me.
“Are you sure we should be smoking up here?”
“Sure, it helps you breathe.”
“Come on.”
“No, really. The nerve center that controls your involuntary breathing shuts down in the absence of carbon dioxide, and there’s hardly any of that up here, so the smoke provides it.”
I decided that on medical grounds I’d better join him. We passed the pipe back and forth. Behind us Laure was in the tent, humming to himself and getting his sleeping bag out. Kunga Norbu sat in the lotus position on the other side of the tent, intent on realms of his own. The world, all mountains, turned under the sun.
Freds exhaled happily. “This must be the greatest place on earth, don’t you think?”
That’s the feeling I’m talking about.
XII
We had a long and restless night of it, because it’s harder than hell to sleep at that altitude. Sleepiness seems to go right out of the mental repertoire, and when it does arrive, you fall into what is called Cheyne-Stokes breathing. Your body keeps getting fooled concerning how much oxygen it’s getting, so you hyperventilate for a while and then stop breathing entirely, for up to a minute at a time. This is not a comforting pattern if it is going on in a sleeping person lying next to you; Freds for instance really got into it, and I kept waking up completely during some really long silences, worrying that he had died. He apparently felt the same way about me, but didn’t have my patience, so that if I ever did fall asleep I was usually jerked back to consciousness by Freds tugging on my arm, saying “George, damn it, breathe! Breathe!”
But the next day dawned clear and windless once again, and after breakfasting and marveling at the view we headed along the top of the Black Band.
Our route was unusual, perhaps unique. The Black Band, harder than the layers of rock above and below it, sticks out from the generally smooth slope of the face, in a crumbly rampart. So in effect we had a sort of road to walk on. Although it was uneven and busted up, it was still twenty feet wide in places, and an easier place for a traverse couldn’t be imagined. There were potential campsites all over it.
Of course usually when people are at twenty-eight thousand feet on Everest, they’re interested in getting either higher or lower pretty quick. Since this rampway was level and didn’t facilitate any route whatsoever, it wasn’t much traveled. We might have been the first on it, since Freds said that Kunga Norbu had only looked down on it from above.
So we walked this high road, and made our search. Freds knocked a rock off the edge, and we watched it bounce down toward the Rongbuk Glacier until it became invisible, though we could still hear it. After that we trod a little more carefully. Still, it wasn’t long before we had traversed the face and were looking down the huge clean chute of the Great Couloir. Here the rampart ended, and to continue the traverse to the fabled North Ridge, where Mallory and Irvine were last seen, would have been ugly work. Besides, that wasn’t where Kunga Norbu had seen the body.
“We must have missed it,” Freds said. “Let’s spread out side to side, and check every little nook and cranny on the way back.” So we did, taking it very slowly, and ranging out to the edge of the rampart as far as we dared.
We were about halfway back to the Hornbein Couloir when Laure found it. He called out, and we approached.
“Well dog my cats,” Freds said, looking astonished.
The body was wedged in a crack, chest deep in a hard pack of snow. He was on his side, and curled over so that he was level with the rock on each side of the crack. His clothing was frayed, and rotting away on him; it looked like knit wool. The kind of thing you’d wear golfing in Scotland. His eyes were closed, and under a fraying hood his skin looked papery. Sixty years out in sun and storm, but always in below-freezing air, had preserved him strangely. I had the odd feeling that he was only sleeping, and might wake and stand.
Freds knelt beside him and dug in the snow a bit. “Look here—he’s roped up, but the rope broke.”
He held up an inch or two of unraveled rope—natural fibers, horribly thin—it made me shudder to see it. “Such primitive gear!” I cried.
Freds nodded briefly. “They were nuts. I don’t think he’s got an oxygen pack on either. They had it available, but he didn’t like to use it.” He shook his head. “They probably fell together. Stepped through a cornice maybe. Then fell down to here, and this one jammed in the crack while the other one went over the edge, and the rope broke.”
“So the other one is down in the glacier,” I said.
Freds nodded slowly. “And look—” He pointed above. “We’re almost directly under the summit. So they must have made the top. Or fallen when damned close to it.” He shook his head. “And wearing nothing but a jacket like that! Amazing.”
“So they made it,” I breathed.
“Well, maybe. Looks like it, anyway. So… which one is this?”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell. Early twenties, or mid-thirties?”
Uneasily we looked at the mummified features.
“Thirties,” Laure said. “Not young.”
Freds nodded. “I agree.”
“So it’s Mallory,” I said.
“Hmph.” Freds stood and stepped back. “Well, that’s that. The mystery solved.” He looked at us, spoke briefly with Kunga Norbu. “He must be under snow most years. But let’s hide him under rock, for the Brits.”
This was easier said than done. All we needed were stones to lay over him, as he was tucked down in the crack. But we quickly found that loose stones of any size were not plentiful; they had been blown off. So we had to work in pairs, and pick up big flat plates that were heavy enough to hold against the winds.
We were still collecting these when Freds suddenly jerked back and sat behind an outcropping of the rampart. “Hey, the Brits are over there on the West Ridge! They’re almost level with us!”
“Arnold can’t be far behind,” I said.
“We’ve still got an hour’s work here,” Freds exclaimed. “Here—Laure, listen—go back to our campsite and pack our stuff, will you? Then go meet the Brits and tell them to slow down. Got that?”
“Slow down,” Laure repeated.
“Exactly. Explain we found Mallory and they should avoid this area. Give us time. You stay with them, go back down with them. George and Kunga and I will follow you guys down, and we’ll meet you at Gorak Shep.”
Gorak Shep? That seemed farther down than necessary.
Laure nodded. “Slow down, go back, we meet you Gorak Shep.”
“You got it, buddy. See you down there.”
Laure nodded and was off.
“Okay,” Freds said. “Let’s get this guy covered.”
We built a low wall around him, and then used the biggest plate of all as a keystone to cover his face. It took all three of us to pick it up, and we staggered around to get it into position wit
hout disturbing him; it really knocked the wind out of us.
When we were done the body was covered, and most of the time snow would cover our burial cairn, and it would be just one lump among thousands. So he was hidden. “Shouldn’t we say something?” Freds asked. “You know, an epitaph or whatever?”
“Hey, Kunga’s the tulku,” I said. “Tell him to do it.”
Freds spoke to Kunga. In his snow goggles I could see little images of Kunga, looking like a Martian. Quite a change in gear since old Mallory!
Kunga Norbu stood at the end of our cairn and stuck out his mittened hands; he spoke in Tibetan for a while.
Afterward Freds translated for me. “Spirit of Chomolungma, Mother Goddess of the World, we’re here to bury the body of George Leigh Mallory, the first person to climb your sacred slopes. He was a climber with a lot of heart and he always went for it, and we love him for that—he showed very purely something that we all treasure in ourselves. I’d like to add that it’s also clear from his clothing and gear that he was a total loon to be up here at all, and I in particular want to salute that quality as well. So here we are, four disciples of your holy spirit, and we take this moment to honor that spirit here and in us, and everywhere in the world.” Kunga bowed his head, and Freds and I followed suit, and we were silent; and all we heard was the wind, whistling over the Mother Goddess into Tibet.
XIII
Fine. Our mission was accomplished, Mallory was safely on Everest for all time, we had given him a surprisingly moving burial ceremony, and I for one was pretty pleased. But back at our campsite, Freds and Kunga started acting oddly. Laure had packed up the tent and our packs and left them for us, and now Freds and Kunga were hurrying around repacking them.
I said something to the effect that you couldn’t beat the view from Mallory’s final resting place, and Freds looked up at me, and said, “Well, you could beat the view by a little .” And he continued repacking feverishly. “In fact I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” he said as he worked. “I mean, here we are, right? I mean here we are.”
“Yes,” I said. “We are here.”
“I mean to say, here we are at almost twenty-eight thou, on Everest. And it’s only noon, and it’s a perfect day. I mean a perfect day. Couldn’t ask for a nicer day.”
I began to see what he was driving at. “No way, Freds.”
“Ah come on! Don’t be hasty about this, George! We’re above all the hard parts, it’s just a walk from here to the top!”
“No,” I said firmly. “We don’t have time. And we don’t have much food. And we can’t trust the weather. It’s too dangerous.”
“Too dangerous! All climbing is too dangerous, George, but I don’t notice that that ever stopped you before. Think about it, man! This ain’t just some ordinary mountain, this ain’t no Rainier or Denali, this is Everest . Sagarmatha! Chomolungma! The BIG E! Hasn’t it always been your secret fantasy to climb Everest?”
“Well, no. It hasn’t.”
“I don’t believe you! It sure is mine, I’ll tell you that. It’s gotta be yours too.”
All the time we argued Kunga Norbu was ignoring us, while he rooted through his pack tossing out various inessential items.
Freds sat down beside me and began to show me the contents of his pack. “I got our butt pads, the stove, a pot, some soup and lemon mix, a good supply of food, and here’s my snow shovel so we can bivvy somewhere. Everything we need.”
“No.”
“Looky here, George.” Freds pulled off his goggles and stared me in the eye. “It was nice to bury Mallory and all, but I have to tell you that Kunga Lama and I have had what you’d call an ulterior motive all along here. We joined the Brits on the Lingtren climb because I had heard about this Mallory expedition from the north, and I was planning all along to tell them about it, and show them our photo, and tell them that Kunga was the guy who saw Mallory’s body back in 1980, and suggest that they go hide him.”
“You mean Kunga wasn’t the one who saw Mallory’s body?” I demanded.
“No, he wasn’t. I made that up. The Chinese climber who saw a body up here was killed a couple years later. So I just had Kunga circle the general area where I had heard the Chinese saw him. That’s why I was so surprised when we actually ran across the guy! Although it stands to reason when you look at the North Face—there isn’t anywhere else but the Black Band that would have stopped him.
“Anyway I lied about that, and I also suggested we slip up the Hornbein Couloir and find the body when Arnold started tailing the Brits, and all of that was because I was just hoping we’d get into this situation, where we got the time and the weather to shoot for the top, we were both just hoping for it man and here we are. We got everything planned, Kunga and I have worked it all out—we’ve got all the stuff we need, and if we have to bivvy on the South Summit after we bag the peak, then we can descend by way of the Southeast Ridge and meet the Indian Army team in the South Col, and get escorted back to Base Camp, that’s the yak route and won’t be any problem.”
He took a few deep breaths. “Plus, well, listen. Kunga Lama has got mystic reasons for wanting to go up there, having to do with his longtime guru Dorjee Lama. Remember I told you back in Chimoa how Dorjee Lama had set a task for Kunga Norbu, that Kunga had to accomplish before the monastery at Kum-Bum would be rebuilt, and Kunga set free to be his own lama at last? Well—the task was to climb Chomolungma! That old son of a gun said to Kunga, you just climb Chomolungma and everything’ll be fine! Figuring that would mean that he would have a disciple for just as many reincarnations as he would ever go through this side of nirvana. But he didn’t count on Kunga Norbu teaming up with his old student Freds Fredericks, and his buddy George Fergusson!”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I can see you feel very deeply about this Freds, and I respect that, but I’m not going.”
“We need you along, George! Besides, we’re going to do it, and we can’t really leave you to go back down the West Ridge by yourself—that’d be more dangerous than coming along with us! And we’re going to the peak, so you have to come along, it’s that simple!”
Freds had been talking so fast and hard that he was completely out of breath; he waved a hand at Kunga Norbu. “You talk to him,” he said to Kunga, then switched to Tibetan, no doubt to repeat the message.
Kunga Norbu pulled up his snow goggles, and very serenely he looked at me. He looked just a little sad; it was the sort of expression you might get if you refused to give to the United Way. His black eyes looked right through me just as they always did, and in that high-altitude glare his pupils kind of pulsed in and out, in and out, in and out. And damned if that old bastard didn’t hypnotize me. I think.
But I struggled against it. I found myself putting on my pack, and checking my crampons to make sure they were really, really, really tight, and at the same time I was shouting at Freds. “Freds, be reasonable! No one climbs Everest unsupported like this! It’s too dangerous!”
“Hey, Messner did it. Messner climbed it in two days from North Col by himself, all he had was his girlfriend waiting down at base camp.”
“You can’t use Reinhold Messner as an example,” I cried. “Messner is insane.”
“Nah. He’s just tough and fast. And so are we. It won’t be a problem.”
“Freds, climbing Everest is generally considered a problem.” But Kunga Norbu had put on his pack and was starting up the slope above our campsite, and Freds was following him, and I was following Freds. “For one big problem,” I yelled, “we don’t have any oxygen!”
“People climb it without oxygen all the time now.”
“Yeah, but you pay the price for it. You don’t get enough oxygen up there, and it kills brain cells like you can’t believe! If we go up there we’re certain to lose millions of brain cells.”
“So?” He couldn’t see the basis of the objection.
I groaned. We continued up the slope.
XIV
And that is how
I found myself climbing Mount Everest with a Tibetan tulku and the wild man of Arkansas. It was not a position that a reasonable person could defend to himself, and indeed as I trudged after Freds and Kunga I could scarcely believe it was happening. But every labored breath told me it was. And since it was, I decided I had better psych myself into the proper frame of mind for it, or else it would only be that much more dangerous. “Always wanted to do this,” I said, banishing the powerful impression that I had been hypnotized into the whole deal. “We’re climbing Everest, and I really want to.”
“That’s the attitude,” Freds said.
I ignored him and kept thinking the phrase “I want to do this,” once for every two steps. After a few hundred steps, I have to admit that I had myself somewhat convinced. I mean, Everest! Think about it! I suppose that like anyone else, I had the fantasy in there somewhere.
I won’t bother you with the details of our route; if you want them you can consult my anonymous article in the American Alpine Journal , 1987 issue. Actually it was fairly straightforward; we contoured up from the Hornbein Couloir to the upper West Ridge, and continued from there.
I did this in bursts of ten steps at a time; the altitude was finally beginning to hammer me. I acclimatize as well as anyone I know, but nobody acclimatizes over twenty-six thousand feet. It’s just a matter of how fast you wind down.
“Try to go as slow as you need to, and avoid rests,” Freds advised.
“I’m going as slow as I can already.”
“No you’re not. Try to just flow uphill. Really put it into first gear. You fall into a certain rhythm.”
“All right. I’ll try.”
We were seated at this point to take off our crampons, which were unnecessary. Freds had been right about the ease of the climb up here. The ridge was wide, it wasn’t very steep, and it was all broken up, so that irregular rock staircases were everywhere on it. If it were at sea level you could run up it, literally. It was so easy that I could try Freds’s suggestion, and I followed him and Kunga up the ridge in slow-slow motion. At that rate I could go about five or ten minutes between rests—it’s hard to be sure how long, as each interval seemed like an afternoon on its own.
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