I slept well that night at the first interim camp at 5,500 metres (18,045 feet) en route to Advance Base. I had taken three hours to get there at a slow trudge with a light rucksack, and still had no headache, no sickness and no loss of appetite. Sibu kept telling me to drink more water, and I had done so, mostly to keep him happy as I’m not normally a water drinker despite knowing (and indeed preaching) all the standard dictums on the blessings to be had from H2O.
Next morning our group moved on up the glacial valley, an ascent of 950 metres with sharkfin pinnacles of ice towering above each side of the trail, known as the Magic Highway. We crossed or skirted lakes of frozen melt-water, great glaciers curved down from high valleys to join ours, but all, we knew, were shrinking, the main glacier by over 100 vertical feet in the past ten years alone. I kept up with the others without trouble, and after five hours came to the tents of the second interim camp at 6,088 metres (approximately 20,000 feet).
I slotted my sleeping bag, boots and rucksack between the two other Brits, Ian and Jens – by chance, not chauvinistic intention – and welcomed a cup of tea proffered by Ian. We were all dog-tired and most of us had headaches since, despite our cautious acclimatisation to date, we were for the first time living and working well above 17,000 feet where the human body starts to deteriorate, indeed to rot. It literally consumes itself for energy. Sleeping becomes a problem, muscle wasting and weight loss take place, and this process of deterioration continues more quickly the higher the altitude. Scientific advice by 2005 strongly recommended that nobody stay at that height for more than an absolute maximum of ten days and that, at or above 26,000 feet, the so-called Death Zone, acclimatisation is not possible.
Ian asked me if I’d like to take over the cooking, for he was dog-tired, having a far heavier backpack than mine due to all his delicate photographic and TV gear. I declined as I was struggling with my first bad headache and felt nauseous, and so did Jens. This naturally irritated Ian who felt he was doing all the work, as though he were a paid Sherpa or guide. In such close quarters when tired, sick, wet and uncomfortable, folk can get easily irritable or offended. Ian did well to hide his annoyance at that time, and I only learned about it two years later in another cramped and difficult night spot.
I lay awake for a while listening to water dripping on to sleeping bags, the distant crackle of moving glacier ice and the muted rumble of some snoring neighbour. Then, with no warning at all and a nasty shock, I jerked up gasping for air with a terrible sensation of suffocation. My heart beat wildly. The phenomenon passed as quickly as it came, and I felt drowsy again. Within minutes, or maybe mere seconds, I was again jumping up in a panic. Again I felt as though I had been throttled. The instant the shock awoke me, my breathing reverted to normal, but as soon as I drowsed off again, the gasping for air routine was back. There was no way I could get any sleep.
Next day, after a sleepless, worried night, I learned from Fred Ziel exactly what my problem was – an ailment known as Cheyne-Stokes periodic breathing which occurs when the system which regulates breathing gets out of sync. The would-be sleeper responds involuntarily to a build-up in carbon dioxide by hyper-ventilating which in turn leads to the breathing centre responding by shutting off respiration. CO2 levels then increase and the unfortunate cycle repeats. A standard cure is for the victim to take Diamox tablets just before going to bed. Diamox blocks an enzyme in the kidney and makes the blood acidic, which is interpreted by the brain as a signal to breathe more. Diamox, therefore, enhances the physiological response to altitude by increasing the rate and depth of breathing. However, with my lung problem, I was already taking the maximum advised dose of two 250mg tablets daily. The only answer therefore, Fred advised, was to use oxygen whenever I needed to sleep at or above the height of that camp at 20,000 feet.
Early next day our group pushed on up the Magic Highway until we came to a great bowl of polished blue ice nearly a mile wide and rimmed by steep ridges. The trail then veered farther east, climbed abruptly over rough ground and, rounding a sharpish bend, revealed, all of a sudden, the stupendous mass of Everest’s North-East Ridge ever ascending to the wind-driven streamer that raged along the impossibly high summit ridge at a height of 8,850 metres (29,029 feet) where jumbo jets fly.
After an hour I clambered up scree and loose boulders, over small melt pools and past the first outlying tents of the waiting congregation of aspirant summiteers, climbers of varying skills or, like me, none at all, from all over the world. This was Advance Base Camp (ABC), splattered like some multi-coloured rash up the rock-strewn moraine that lies in the eastern shadow of Changtse, a giant feature in her own right but a mere dwarf satellite to her neighbour Chomolungma, the Goddess Mother of the Snows to all Tibetans, Everest to us foreigners.
I caught up with Sibu after a three-hour trudge somewhere in the hugger-mugger labyrinth of tents large and small which stretched for at least 600 metres up the moraine, perched wherever a flat platform could be found or prepared by Sherpas smoothing out rock jumbles.
I was now at 6,460 metres (21,200 feet), higher than I had ever been. So far, I thanked God for small mercies, I appeared to have escaped retinal damage, severe headaches, heart pains, cerebral and pulmonary oedema, tensions with my fellow climbers, and even the hacking Khumbu cough that racked many climbers even down at Base Camp. Periodic breathing or Cheyne-Stokes syndrome would only affect me if I slept or dozed without oxygen, so my summit chances were still intact.
David’s plan, now that all the Jagged Globe group, apart from a badly coughing Rosalind, had reached ABC in good condition, was to have us sleep only one night there, then descend all the way back to Base Camp. This was part of the generally accepted acclimatisation policy of ‘climb high, sleep low’. We would recuperate for a while at Base Camp, then come back up (in a single day next time) to ABC and climb the formidable ice slopes which give access to the North Col. Then back down. And so on until we and the weather were ready for a final four- or five-day push from ABC to the summit. It was the yo-yo principle of bouncing up and down. This is how the body and the brain learn to cope with inadequate oxygen. By pushing the limits, then retreating to safety, repeatedly, human beings can gradually acclimate to the thin air of the high Himalaya. The thicker, more oxygen-rich air down below allows the body to sleep better and recover faster than at the debilitating altitude of ABC. The body’s metabolism begins to work more effectively. On returning to ABC, the body is as strong as it will ever be.
David and Neal were sympathetic about my Cheyne-Stokes problem and agreed that I could use oxygen from their precious supply of canisters, but I was to control the usage or flow rate to as low a setting as would allow me to sleep. Later, thanks to a sat-phone facility at Base Camp, I was able to ask Louise to organise an additional supply.
I slept hardly at all that night, finding it difficult to fit the oxygen mask so that it stayed tight when I moved in my sleep. Saliva slowly blocked up the inlet pipe and mouthpiece, which impeded the breathing process and produced a gurgling snore which my tent companion, Ian Parnell, found so distracting, he eventually banished me to sleep by myself. I was not alone in finding control of my oxygen mask difficult to master. No less a climber than Ed Hillary had described the same salivatory problems, I was pleased to discover later.
I was relieved to leave ABC after an early breakfast of cereal. I turned down the Sherpa chef’s kind offer of yak stew and set out downhill at a good pace. Alex was the only member of the group faster at descents, and he was a long-time adventure racer for a top South African team. The only obstacles that day, since the trail was obvious enough to preclude any chance of getting lost, were the intermittent traffic jams of yak caravans hogging the narrow mountain paths. The yak drivers were a wild-looking bunch with deeply wrinkled features and sleek black hair of which they were clearly proud, plaited beautifully and braided with precious gems and shiny bones.
My first night back down at Base Camp was blissful now that I knew how unpleasant it was to
sleep or even doze using oxygen. On subsequent days I heard the faraway muffled thud of avalanches. Over on the south Nepalese side we heard that Kenton Cool, my erstwhile Alpine instructor and Jagged Globe Everest guide, was doing well with his client group, the mirror image of our own gang. An avalanche had, however, struck at one of the tented camps over there and injured some of the climbers. I knew that avalanches are one of the main reasons for Everest deaths.
Before we left Base Camp for our next upward sortie, David and Neal arranged for a lama from the Rongbuk Monastery to conduct a puja or blessing ceremony for our climbers. Prayer flags were strung in long lines from a makeshift stone altar on a hillock, and the ensuing rituals lasted almost an hour with much chanting, hand drum-thumping, bell-ringing, throwing about of tsampa flour and rice, and the eventual handouts of good-symbol-necklaces to help protect us. I took mine but decided not to wear it, since I trusted that my own bog-standard Church of England beliefs would sort out whatever fate had in store for me.
By the time we left Base Camp for the second time, there were few folk still there other than temporary acclimatisers like us, the sick and wounded, and the camp guardians. There were also a few unlucky souls whose arrival had been delayed along the road from Kathmandu by the haphazard ambushes of the heavily armed Maoist rebels whose fight had begun in 1996, killing since then over 3,000 Nepalese and a few tourists.
My second return journey to ABC took a full day with no halts en route and far fewer yak jams to cause delays. After resting for forty-eight hours, I joined David and the others for my first trip from ABC to the North Col. We were starting out from a point already 1,600 feet higher than Mont Blanc (where twenty years before I had been violently sick from altitude) and, within ten minutes of climbing into what Tibetans call ‘the poison gas’ – the thin air of high altitude – I was already feeling geriatric. It seemed as though, at 21,000 feet, my personal tree-line was broached.
I could never match Alex for speed, but had previously kept up with all the others uphill and well ahead downhill. Now, all of a sudden, I lagged behind everyone, constantly needing to rest my lungs and my legs. It was a novel experience for I normally prized my ability not to need a rest for many hours of adventure racing and ultra marathons in wild country. I felt wretched and, when David dropped back to check on me, I apologised and felt ashamed. He was kind and stayed close as I trudged on for an hour over rocks, ice and snow to the base of the North Col ascent. Fixed ropes were in place all the way from this point to the summit of Everest, put there and maintained by Sherpas from all the groups.
Using a simple hand device called an ascendeur (to grip the rope when tugged downwards but to slide along the rope when pulled upwards), I followed David up a succession of very steep snow slopes. In my free hand I grasped my ice-axe. Everybody climbed in this manner, pretty much all the way up the mountain. You do not need to be a ‘proper’ technical climber for Everest. But you do need to be altitude-fit, which I clearly wasn’t. All the others in the group (except Rosalind who was back in Kathmandu seeing a lung doctor) made it to the North Col that day and spent the night there.
David saw me back down to ABC and gave me a gentle but not too subtle warning that my current form would not see me much higher than the North Col. My speed must improve.
Various other sorties followed, then it was back once more to Base Camp. With time on my hands I took a lift in a jeep down to Tingri, where I stayed for four days at a spa-cum-bed-and-breakfast. I went for a long walk every day and met up with an American climber in Tingri village. In the high street he pointed out two climbers striding past us.
‘Those guys,’ he muttered, ‘are both big US climbers. I mean Number One dudes. Ed Viesturs and David Breashears. Both have been up the Big E several times with and without oxygen. And all the other big peaks too. Hey! Isn’t that something?’
I agreed that it was, wishing only that I could make it up the North Col, using plenty of oxygen all the way. A few days later, on 27 April, I did manage the North Col, extremely slowly, but in time to make it in daylight and to spend the night there at 7,066 metres and using oxygen before heading back down to ABC.
After one more spell in Base Camp, we all (except poor Rosalind who had had to return home due to her lung trouble) made our last ascent to ABC by the third week of May and stayed there, with small local excursions from time to time, eagerly awaiting our chance for the final push. We were truly acclimatised, but were also in danger of general deterioration due to spending far too long above the 17,000 feet marker. We were living on borrowed time, according to every high-altitude book on the market.
David allocated a Sherpa to each climber. I was matched with Nima Dorje Sherpa (or Boca Lama), the smallest and most humorous ever-grinning dwarf of a Nepali. He was also a lay-lama which, I mused, must be a plus point in these Buddhist mountains for whoever he worked with. More than half of all Sherpas live entirely off their seasonal tourism and mountaineering incomes. Whether high-altitude guides, cooks or camp staff, they are among the best paid people in Nepal, earning up to eight times the average annual income.
Whilst our group yo-yoed up and down between Base Camp and the North Col, our Sherpas were moving heavy loads up to and establishing the higher camps, often without oxygen. I could imagine the frustration of the many Sherpas whose clients fall by the wayside long before they reach the high camps, never mind the summit. Then their poor Sherpas have to bring down all the heavy gear they have just sweated blood to position at risk to life and limb. In 2005 on our side of Everest only sixty of the 400 climbers who reached ABC actually went on up to reach the summit, so there must have been a good many irritated Sherpas.
The high 2005 failure rate was due to many causes. The weather was average to bad, but altitude sickness, diarrhoea and the Khumbu cough took their regular toll. The dry air at altitude can wreak havoc with even the toughest climber’s prospects. Also known as high altitude hack, the Khumbu cough can be bad enough to cause broken ribs. One of the early British attempts to pioneer the northern route involved climber Howard Somervell in 1924. When a coughing fit wracked him just above the North Col, he found his throat was obstructed. He could neither breathe nor call for help, so he sat down to die. Then in desperation, ‘I pressed my chest with both hands, gave one last almighty push and the obstruction came up. Though the pain was intense, I was a new man.’ He had coughed up the desiccated mucous membrane of his throat.
The two main high-altitude sickness killers, cerebral and pulmonary oedema, are both caused by the body’s reactions to lack of oxygen. Many people who travel from sea-level to over 8,000 feet report symptoms ranging from headache to loss of appetite and nausea. Why? As the available oxygen falls, the body responds by increasing the blood flow to the brain, but it can overcompensate, whereupon fluid leaks from the blood vessels into the brain causing it to swell. The victim is then suffering cerebral oedema.
Not surprisingly, the greater the elevation gain, the more severe the swelling. In severe cases the brain can get squeezed down the spinal cord, which results in death. The way to avoid falling victim is to ascend gradually, about 1,000 feet per day over 8,000 feet, which gives your body time to acclimatise properly.
As the body tries to get as much oxygen from the air as it can, pulmonary oedema can result from the greatly increased blood flow through the lungs. The heart increases the flow by increasing the pressure, causing leakage from the blood vessels into the air sacs. It usually takes a few days to develop, and is exacerbated by overexertion. In bad cases, you can hear a gurgling of fluid in the lungs, and the victim brings up bloody sputum. This is a serious condition which can kill in only a matter of hours and again is best avoided by gradual ascent. Treatment is by an immediate descent of several thousand feet and use of oxygen if available.
The body also responds to the lower oxygen levels by putting more red blood cells into circulation. Up to a point, this is a good thing. However, if it goes too far, the blood becomes thick and prone to cl
otting. Clots which get dislodged float around and can cause strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms. Due to my own cardiac state, Professor Angelini had upped my daily blood-thinning aspirin intake from 75mg to 300mg whilst I was at high altitude.
The Times journalist who had been sent out to cover the entire climb, wrote cynical articles, humorous in a caustic sort of way, that covered most aspects of life at ABC:
There are normal people on Everest, but the proportion of glory-hunters is abnormally high when compared with that at sea level. As a BBC compère might say: if you liked ‘Fame Academy’, then you’ll LOVE ‘Advance Base Camp’. They’re all here, the star-struck and the fame-chasers, with their promotional stickers and funny logo’ed hats, their business cards and Americanised pidgin English, and for a journalist there is just nowhere to hide from these people – all want front-page coverage, preferably in The Times. So far I have met the sirdar who is to guide Tom Cruise up the mountain next year, the prospective first Punjabi woman and the first Bhutanese man to climb Everest. There is the bloke from Australia whose aim is to be the first one-armed Australian on the summit and another man who claims that he will be the first asthmatic to have reached the top.
Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know Page 31