House of Snow

by Sir Ranulph Fiennes Ed Douglas

  Our route to the summit would follow the Khumbu Glacier up the lower half of the mountain. From the bergschrund 1 at 23,000 feet that marked its upper end, this great river of ice flowed two and a half miles down a relatively gentle valley called the Western Cwm. As the glacier inched over humps and dips in the Cwm’s underlying strata, it fractured into countless vertical fissures – crevasses. Some of these crevasses were narrow enough to step across; others were eighty feet wide, several hundred feet deep, and ran half a mile from end to end. The big ones were apt to be vexing obstacles to our ascent, and when hidden beneath a crust of snow they would pose a serious hazard, but the challenges presented by the crevasses in the Cwm had proven over the years to be predictable and manageable.

  The Icefall was a different story. No part of the South Col route was feared more by climbers. At around 20,000 feet, where the glacier emerged from the lower end of the Cwm, it pitched abruptly over a precipitous drop. This was the infamous Khumbu Icefall, the most technically demanding section on the entire route.

  The movement of the glacier in the Icefall has been measured at between three and four feet a day. As it skids down the steep, irregular terrain in fits and starts, the mass of ice splinters into a jumble of huge, tottering blocks called seracs, some as large as office buildings. Because the climbing route wove under, around, and between hundreds of these unstable towers, each trip through the Icefall was a little like playing a round of Russian roulette: sooner or later any given serac was going to fall over without warning, and you could only hope you weren’t beneath it when it toppled. Since 1963, when a teammate of Hornbein and Unsoeld’s named Jake Breitenbach was crushed by an avalanching serac to become the Icefall’s first victim, eighteen other climbers had died here.

  The previous winter, as he had done in winters past, Hall had consulted with the leaders of all the expeditions planning to climb Everest in the spring, and together they’d agreed on one team among them who would be responsible for establishing and maintaining a route through the Icefall. For its trouble, the designated team was to be paid $2,200 from each of the other expeditions on the mountain. In recent years this cooperative approach had been met with wide, if not universal, acceptance, but it wasn’t always so.

  The first time one expedition thought to charge another to travel through the ice was in 1988, when a lavishly funded American team announced that any expedition that intended to follow the route they’d engineered up the Icefall would have to fork over $2,000. Some of the other teams on the mountain that year, failing to understand that Everest was no longer merely a mountain but a commodity as well, were incensed. And the greatest hue and cry came from Rob Hall, who was leading a small, impecunious New Zealand team.

  Hall carped that the Americans were “violating the spirit of the hills” and practicing a shameful form of alpine extortion, but Jim Frush, the unsentimental attorney who was the leader of the American group, remained unmoved. Hall eventually agreed through clenched teeth to send Frush a check and was granted passage through the Icefall. (Frush later reported that Hall never made good on his IOU.)

  Within two years, however, Hall did an about-face and came to see the logic of treating the Icefall as a toll road. Indeed, from 1993 through ’95 he volunteered to put in the route and collect the toll himself. In the spring of 1996 he elected not to assume responsibility for the Icefall, but he was happy to pay the leader of a rival commercial expedition – a Scottish Everest veteran named Mal Duff – to take over the job. Long before we’d even arrived at Base Camp, a team of Sherpas employed by Duff had blazed a zigzag path through the seracs, stringing out more than a mile of rope and installing some sixty aluminum ladders over the broken surface of the glacier. The ladders belonged to an enterprising Sherpa from the village of Gorak Shep who turned a nice profit by renting them out each season.

  So it came to pass that at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday, April 13, I found myself at the foot of the fabled Icefall, strapping on my crampons in the frigid predawn gloom.

  Crusty old alpinists who’ve survived a lifetime of close scrapes like to counsel young protégés that staying alive hinges on listening carefully to one’s “inner voice.” Tales abound of one or another climber who decided to remain in his or her sleeping bag after detecting some inauspicious vibe in the ether and thereby survived a catastrophe that wiped out others who failed to heed the portents.

  I didn’t doubt the potential value of paying attention to subconscious cues. As I waited for Rob to lead the way, the ice underfoot emitted a series of loud cracking noises, like small trees being snapped in two, and I felt myself wince with each pop and rumble from the glacier’s shifting depths. Problem was, my inner voice resembled Chicken Little: it was screaming that I was about to die, but it did that almost every time I laced up my climbing boots. I therefore did my damnedest to ignore my histrionic imagination and grimly followed Rob into the eerie blue labyrinth.

  Although I’d never been in an icefall as frightening as the Khumbu, I’d climbed many other icefalls. They typically have vertical or even overhanging passages that demand considerable expertise with ice ax and crampons. There was certainly no lack of steep ice in the Khumbu Icefall, but all of it had been rigged with ladders or ropes or both, rendering the conventional tools and techniques of ice climbing largely superfluous.

  I soon learned that on Everest not even the rope – the quintessential climber’s accoutrement – was to be utilized in the time-honored manner. Ordinarily, one climber is tied to one or two partners with a 150-foot length of rope, making each person directly responsible for the life of the others; roping up in this fashion is a serious and very intimate act. In the Icefall, though, expediency dictated that each of us climb independently, without being physically connected to one another in any way.

  Mal Duff’s Sherpas had anchored a static line of rope that extended from the bottom of the Icefall to its top. Attached to my waist was a three-foot-long safety tether with a carabiner, or snap-link, at the distal end. Security was achieved not by roping myself to a teammate but rather by clipping my safety tether to the fixed line and sliding it up the rope as I ascended. Climbing in this fashion, we would be able to move as quickly as possible through the most dangerous parts of the Icefall, and we wouldn’t have to entrust our lives to teammates whose skill and experience were unknown. As it turned out, not once during the entire expedition would I ever have reason to rope myself to another climber.

  If the Icefall required few orthodox climbing techniques, it demanded a whole new repertoire of skills in their stead – for instance, the ability to tiptoe in mountaineering boots and crampons across three wobbly ladders lashed end to end, bridging a sphincter-clenching chasm. There were many such crossings, and I never got used to them.

  At one point I was balanced on an unsteady ladder in the predawn gloaming, stepping tenuously from one bent rung to the next, when the ice supporting the ladder on either end began to quiver as if an earthquake had struck. A moment later came an explosive roar as a large serac somewhere close above came crashing down. I froze, my heart in my throat, but the avalanching ice passed fifty yards to the left, out of sight, without doing any damage. After waiting a few minutes to regain my composure I resumed my herky-jerky passage to the far side of the ladder.

  The glacier’s continual and often violent state of flux added an element of uncertainty to every ladder crossing. As the glacier moved, crevasses would sometimes compress, buckling ladders like toothpicks; other times a crevasse might expand, leaving a ladder dangling in the air, only tenuously supported, with neither end mounted on solid ice. Anchors securing the ladders and lines routinely melted out when the afternoon sun warmed the surrounding ice and snow. Despite daily maintenance, there was a very real danger that any given rope might pull loose under body weight.

  But if the Icefall was strenuous and terrifying, it had a surprising allure as well. As dawn washed the darkness from the sky, the shattered glacier was revealed to be a three-dimensional lands
cape of phantasmal beauty. The temperature was six degrees Fahrenheit. My crampons crunched reassuringly into the glacier’s rind. Following the fixed line, I meandered through a vertical maze of crystalline blue stalagmites. Sheer rock buttresses seamed with ice pressed in from both edges of the glacier, rising like the shoulders of a malevolent god. Absorbed by my surroundings and the gravity of the labor, I lost myself in the unfettered pleasures of ascent, and for an hour or two actually forgot to be afraid.

  Three-quarters of the way to Camp One, Hall remarked at a rest stop that the Icefall was in better shape than he’d ever seen it: “The route’s a bloody freeway this season.” But only slightly higher, at 19,000 feet, the ropes brought us to the base of a gargantuan, perilously balanced serac. As massive as a twelve-story building, it loomed over our heads, leaning 30 degrees past vertical. The route followed a natural catwalk that angled sharply up the overhanging face: we would have to climb up and over the entire off-kilter tower to escape its threatening tonnage.

  Safety, I understood, hinged on speed. I huffed toward the relative security of the serac’s crest with all the haste I could muster, but since I wasn’t acclimatized my fastest pace was no better than a crawl. Every four or five steps I’d have to stop, lean against the rope, and suck desperately at the thin, bitter air, searing my lungs in the process.

  I reached the top of the serac without it collapsing and flopped breathless onto its flat summit, my heart pounding like a jackhammer. A little later, around 8:30 a.m., I arrived at the top of the Icefall itself, just beyond the last of the seracs. The safety of Camp One didn’t supply much peace of mind, however: I couldn’t stop thinking about the ominously tilted slab a short distance below, and the fact that I would have to pass beneath its faltering bulk at least seven more times if I was going to make it to the summit of Everest. Climbers who snidely denigrate this as the Yak Route, I decided, had obviously never been through the Khumbu Icefall.

  1 A bergschrund is a deep slit that delineates a glacier’s upper terminus; it forms as the body of ice slides away from the steeper wall immediately above, leaving a gap between glacier and rock.

  MUSIC OF THE FIREFLIES (JUNKIRI KO SANGEET)

  Khagendra Sangroula

  Khagendra Sangroula is a Nepali author who is famous for his unique style of satire.

  It was the first day of lessons. It had been appointed a name: the Adult Literacy Class. Three new, clear and bright kerosene lanterns dazzled brilliantly in the room. A few people gradually arrived as the dusk deepened. The first to arrive leaning on his cane and swaying in his kachhad wrap was the arrogant Somey. Close at heels came Katwal, who held a low opinion of the filching Somey. By eight o’clock a small crowd had gathered under the shed. Not a woman was among them. A few young men were there, with a lot more men of middle age and a few elders. To the right of the door was a large board hanging on the wall. A thin layer of straw had been spread on the floor and over it were arranged some straw mats.

  The natives sat on the mats. Kapil and Sheshkant, their beards dense as jungles, stood on either side of the board. A stranger stood near Kapil – gaunt, tall, skinny like a new stalk of bamboo.

  Kapil began the lesson. “Should I put out this lantern?” These were his first words addressed to the class. The natives who had congregated to listen to something new and learn something were astonished. It is a pitch-black night near a new moon. But, the bearded man asks if he should put out the lantern!

  “No, sir! No! Would be disastrous!” Katwal protested to rid the itch on his eager tongue.

  “But, why do we need these lanterns lit?” Sheshkant added to the elder beard’s threat.

  “The night is thick, sir. We’ll become lost,” Somey, squatting in the front row and leaning against the wall with his crooked cane still in hand, replied in a subdued voice.

  “How many in Simring village have the light in their eyes?” Kapil asked again, along with hand gestures. Those in the classroom looked at each other, some seemingly with a vague notion of understanding, and others without any comprehension.

  “You could say there isn’t a single pair,” Katwal said, the wheels of his mind turning as he tried to understand the meaning of the question. “Maybe I am the man with the dimmest light in him. And, after me, may be Younger Uncle has some in him.”

  “Katwal – what are you saying about understanding something or other?” Somey raised his voice a bit.

  “I understand a little, Younger Uncle.”

  “Tell us then – what do you understand?”

  “The thing is, Uncle, sirs here are asking who among the villagers has the light of education in their eyes.”

  “Oho! The boy seems to have some sense, after all. Or, isn’t that so, sir?”

  “He is right, Somey,” Sheshkant affirmed.

  “Even without the light of education in their eyes, the people of Simring have never stubbed their toes on the ups and downs of life and fallen on their faces. Nobody has had their knees knocked out by stumbling onto rocks. None has fallen into pits. No man has tumbled off a cliff. Nobody has drowned in the river. Or, have they?” Sheshkant staked out his argument.

  A line of answers jostled for attention.

  “Because our eyes are shut we stumble daily, sir, and fall on your faces.”

  “As we feel our way forward in the dark we have fallen down pits, sir.”

  “When our people have gone about without light in their eyes they have drowned in the river and died.”

  Somey turned his head to every voice and listened attentively. Then he said, “What have you understood, and what are you talking about?”

  “We have understood the talk about eyes, and now we talk about life. Younger Uncle – you are kin in name, and I don’t want to tell you off, but sometimes you are thick as a plank!”

  “Katwal – if you understand half of what’s being said, why do you make as if you understand everything?”

  “I have understood it all, Younger Uncle.”

  “Of course, you have, you dunce!”

  The two bobcats of the nettle bushes of Simring began snarling at each other. And, with the intention of sweeping aside their arrogance, Kapil appealed to Somey, “Brother Somey, regardless of anything, you have seen quite a few more winters than us. If we could please hear some things from your mouth...”

  “If you, sir, command and say – Somey, tell us a thing or two! – it may be so that I could tell you a thing or two.”

  “Please do, Somey, please,” Sheshkant moved to appease.

  “What I reckon, sir, is that by light of the eyes you mean reading and writing. How well placed is my guess?”

  “Very well placed, Somey.”

  “You sirs have been talking in a roundabout manner. Stumbling, knees getting knocked out, falling into pits, tumbling down cliffs, and drowning in the river – my guess is that by this you mean to talk about how the rich folks and the upper castes have been tricking and cheating and wringing and draining dry the poor folks of the lower castes. Well, sir – how well placed is my guess?”

  “Very well placed, Somey.”

  Kapil addressed his question to Mangaley, who sat in the middle of the group, craning to follow the conversation, “Mangaley, what are your thoughts on this?”

  “I support Uncle Somey on this, sir. No matter how long a rope is drawn, the ends always look the same. Now that I have lent it my ears and listened carefully, I think we are talking about receiving an education in order to light up our eyes.’

  “What does the rest think?”

  “That’s just what it is, sir,” Kaude Kanchha, sitting behind Mangale, watching with the one good eye he was born with, said in agreement, “The issue is resolved.”

  Sheshkant scribbled three large letters on the board in Devnagari. And, with a pen in one hand, he scanned the room man by man, as if hesitating to pick someone to ask the question. A middle-aged man sat in the back row, near the wall. He decided that the man was illiterate, and so Seshkant showed
the man the pen in his hand and asked, “Brother at the back – what is this?”

  “It is a pen, sir,” the man in the corner answered innocently.

  Sheshkant then pointed to the letters on the board and asked, “And what are those, brother?”

  “All dark blobs of ink are as beasts to me. I call this a buffalo!”

  “Katwal, tell us what this is.”

  “That, too, is a pen, sir.”

  “It was a buffalo to the brother sitting in the corner. How did it become a pen for you?”

  “It may be a dim one, sir, but there is a light in my eyes.”

  “May I say something?” Somey sought permission.

  “Please, do.”

  “A thought just came to my mind, sir – the truth is, the blind man sitting in the corner just now knocked his knee into a rock. But, Katwal, with his sight – he leapt across the rock and has reached the other side.”

  “What does the brother sitting in the corner have to say about this?”

  “They speak the truth, sir. I walked blindly, knocked my knee and fell on this side of the rock. Katwal had his eyes open, so he leapt across to the other side. The blind stumbled and fell, the sighted crossed over.”

  “What does a pen do?” Kapil began, twirling the pen.

  “A pen’s job is to write, I think.”