The Climb

by Anatoli Boukreev

  Wisely our clients had left early in the morning for Camp I, because as the day wore on, the weather began to deteriorate, and by nightfall the snow had begun to fall in large flakes. Only Sandy was out in it for any length of time, but because of her previous experience on Everest I don’t think she was ever in any real danger.

  By daybreak on April 18, more than six inches of snow had fallen on the Mountain Madness encampment as the climbers had slept at Camp I, but the snow had stopped by sunrise, and it was decided to proceed to Camp II and overnight there. Boukreev took a look at the clients, and to his eye, everyone was exhibiting a good samochuvstvie.

  The guides, each of us carrying a small load, moved at a steady pace with the clients through the fresh snow. Charlotte and Lene on this day were slower than the other climbers, but Sandy was robust and cheerful. Her only problem was her continuing cough, which, like Neal’s, was aggravated by the dry mountain air.

  After passing through the line of advancing clients, Boukreev, in just under three hours, made it to the location where the Mountain Madness Sherpas climbing ahead of them had already brought up supplies for Camp II. Tucked in at the base of Everest, their camp was sited on a flat of scree, fragments of rock distributed by the grinding of glacial action. Protected somewhat from the wind by their location, the tents in the camp would be warmed by the sun in the mornings, but toasted in the afternoons.

  When there is stationary air in calm weather and the sun is shining, the site for Camp II is soaked by solar radiation, and the heat at midday can become intense and cause dehydration and lethargy, so, when I arrived at Camp II, I began to help the Sherpas, who hadn’t yet gotten our mess tent erected. As I worked, the clients began to arrive, the first of them arriving in a cluster, then a last knot of them who had been trailing the first by about three hundred meters.

  As the clients arrived, Boukreev continued his efforts with the Sherpas, and when the mess tent was erected, the Sherpas dispersed to assist some of the clients who were setting up their tents. Having spent several days working with some of the same Sherpas at Base Camp before the arrival of the clients, Boukreev was surprised at the zeal with which the Sherpas threw themselves into the job, eager to demonstrate “good work” and to curry favor with clients, who, if they felt they’d gotten good service, would often tip them at the conclusion of a climb.

  Not wanting to appear a “competitor who was laying claim to their piece of bread,” and because he was tired from his earlier advance through the pack of climbers, Boukreev poured himself some hot tea and sat down on a rock to rest.

  *Some climbers, despite evidence to the contrary, still believe that prophylactic use of Diamox will prevent severe forms of altitude sickness.

  CHAPTER 9

  CAMP II

  As the sun settled behind Everest and the temperatures began to drop precipitously in the last hours of the day, the climbers in the narrow confines of their tents pulled on their high-altitude clothing. Hours earlier it had been shirtsleeve weather; now the Mountain Madness clients and guides were contorting themselves like circus acrobats, wedging themselves into goose down and Gore-Tex, preparing for their exposure to the evening cold, a dash to the mess tent, and their first night at Camp II.

  From this point on there would be no more overnights at Camp I. Most of the tents had been struck, though a few remained for gear and supply storage, a depository that the Sherpas could use in their relays to supply higher camps. But now, only in the case of emergency would the tents be occupied.

  In the evening, as the Sherpas prepared a dinner of rice and dal in the nearby kitchen tent, Neal and I and all of the clients except Pete Schoening, who had gone down to Base Camp earlier in the day with Scott Fischer, gathered around the mess tent table, hungry and satisfied with the day’s excursion. Everyone had an “arctic” look, dressed in their bulky clothes. Martin Adams, with whom I felt comfortable making jokes because we knew each other from earlier days, came to the table in a new, green climbing suit, and I greeted him with, “Hey, crocodile!” As my English was still not so good, I hoped that I didn’t offend, and Martin and some of the other clients laughed in good spirit.

  Seeing everyone’s good mood and that they were all feeling well, I turned to Neal and asked, “What’s the plan for tomorrow?” and suggested that after an early breakfast we consider an outing to 6,800 meters, to the face of Lhotse, where a run of fixed ropes began.

  Beidleman and Boukreev discussed the idea with the clients, and among them they put together a plan that would get them out early in the morning, so they could return to Camp II in time for lunch, rest, and then depart for a return to Base Camp before dark.

  The plan agreed upon, Boukreev made another suggestion to Beidleman. “As we were coming into Camp II yesterday, I noticed Sherpas fixing ropes to Camp III. Why don’t we go even a little higher and take some of our ropes up to them?” Beidleman agreed with the idea, offering that he felt great enough to go all the way to Camp IV if he had to.

  With our clients we discussed again the necessity of proper acclimatization, and we reminded them that they needed to carefully monitor the condition of their bodies, being constantly aware that at high altitude their sensations and reactions would not be altogether familiar. We could do our jobs as guides and monitor them, but only they would know the interior truth. Between us we needed to be clear and communicate. The earliest symptoms of HACE and HAPE, for even the most experienced climber, can be confused with the usual discomforts of acclimatization, and a misunderstanding can be fatal. We reinforced the importance of always maintaining a reserve, not allowing yourself to get totally depleted, being careful to understand that “I can’t” usually means exactly that. You can’t and you shouldn’t. Stop, turn around, and save your life.

  After dinner, Fischer—who was still in Base Camp with Pete Schoening—was raised by radio, and the acclimatization excursion for the next day was discussed and approved. With a radio link established, Pittman dictated her NBC “journal entry” to Fischer, who patched it by satellite phone to the NBC offices in New York, where Pittman’s voice was “nearly inaudible,” but Fischer’s was “loud and clear.” In New York the message was keyboarded, digitized, and then fed to the NBC World Wide Web site. Instantaneously, thousands of electric Everest fans could catch the latest news: “We are set up here with food, supplies, and our trusty Sherpa staff.” A bwana couldn’t have said it better.

  The next morning most of the climbers didn’t have their enthusiasm of the day before, and at breakfast in the mess tent, the conversations didn’t have the animation or jokes of the night before. The increase in altitude from Camp I to Camp II was having its impact, but seeing nothing in their lethargy except the body’s usual struggle to adjust to altitude, Neal and I felt they were fit for our excursion.

  Boukreev and Beidleman both put a coil of rope into their packs and with the clients picked up the trail. Boukreev led and maintained a slow pace, keeping watch for narrow crevasses along the route, some of which were barely visible because they had been dusted with a light snow that had fallen the night before. About two hours into the excursion the slope of the trail began to increase, and Boukreev deviated left off the marked path, choosing a lower-angle slope over which they could travel the three hundred meters that remained between them and the start of the fixed ropes on the Lhotse Face.

  After about thirty meters on this new route I noticed something unusual ahead, something dark protruding from the snow. At first I thought it was a piece of equipment that had fallen down from a higher camp during a previous expedition, but as I moved closer, I noticed a pair of crampons attached to boots, and to the boots the lower half of a human body. Immediately there were questions: Who is this? What tragedy had befallen this person? I could only guess that this was a climber who several years earlier had fallen to his death from Lhotse, and whose body, drawn by gravity over a torturous trail, had been ravaged, broken apart, and brought finally to this place.

  Boukreev
pulled off his pack and stood quietly, looking down at the body as the other climbers, unaware of his discovery, moved toward him.

  The eternity and power of the mountains penetrated me. I remembered from school a story about a custom of the Romans. After a victorious battle, they would have a banquet of fine food and perpetual music, but at the height of the banquet, at the peak of their revelry, the doors to the banquet hall would be thrown open and the bodies of their dead comrades would be brought in and laid before them. In that somber moment they understood the price of the battle they had won.

  Were those coming up behind me honestly evaluating their preparedness for the upcoming ascent? Just a few hours before, thanks to the Sherpas who had carried the loads to Camp II, all of us had been enjoying a level of well-being that many people on the earth would consider luxurious. By whatever means we had gotten there, we were privileged, but not secure. In a few weeks, if all went well, we would be climbing again past this point on our way to the summit. Climbing above eight thousand meters, where any mistake is amplified in the rarefied air, where a swallow of hot tea from a thermos is the difference between life and death, no amount of money that had been paid would guarantee success.

  Of course, each one of us has an ambition to reach the summit, to overcome obstacles and to do something that many consider impossible. But maybe, I thought, the price of climbing Everest is now being calculated in a different way. More and more people, it seems, are willing to pay a cash price for the opportunity, but not a physical price for preparedness: the gradual development of body and spirit as you climb lower-level peaks, moving from the simple to the complex and finally to the 8,000ers. Isn’t there accomplishment to be felt in such a process, I wondered, or has high-altitude climbing forever been changed by the use of oxygen, advances in technologies, and the proliferation of services that allow the marginally prepared to climb higher and higher?

  As Beidleman and the clients advanced and encountered the body, Boukreev recalled, “Very little was said. Everyone considered it in his or her way. The quiet seemed to me respectful, maybe instructional.”

  As a guide on the Mountain Madness expedition, Boukreev was a player in a game that he had increasingly begun to question. He was with climbers considerably less qualified than himself, and he understood that their safety was his primary responsibility, but some things were out of his control. He was worried about Pete Schoening and his condition. His problems at altitude were starting to pull at the hem of full-dress effort. His health could be at serious risk, Boukreev thought, and there was the problem of O’s. At the beginning of the expedition Mountain Madness had what Boukreev thought was a sufficient supply of oxygen, even a surplus for unforeseen circumstances, but Pete Schoening had begun to sleep on oxygen at Base Camp, not a common circumstance. If he continued to use it, the expedition’s margin of safety could be reduced. The elder Schoening was stoic, determined and focused Boukreev thought, and Boukreev’s respect for his effort continued, but his concerns for Schoening’s well-being wouldn’t go away. Boukreev had hopes that his having to descend would be enough to convince Fischer to suggest to Schoening that he make no further ascents.

  In little more than fifty to one hundred meters after we encountered the body, we found ourselves at the start of the fixed ropes where the route became steeper on the icy Lhotse Face. Neal suggested that we leave our ropes at this place and return to Camp II, because the clients didn’t have crampons or ice tools with them and couldn’t safely go onto the ropes, but I looked at my watch and said that I would prefer to continue up the fixed ropes and work at putting in more of the route that would take us to Camp III.

  From my pack I took my crampons, a climbing harness, and a jumar, and then from Neal I took the coil of rope he carried. As I clipped onto the fixed rope to begin my ascent, Neal turned around to escort the clients down. Everyone had come alive after the slowness of the morning, and I was comfortable they would be safe with Neal in good weather and on the clearly marked trail. I envied a bit their lunch at Camp II on the way down, but I was also glad to have the opportunity to burden my system a bit more with work at a slightly higher altitude. In my experience the harder I work at a new altitude before I descend to rest, the better suited I am to that altitude when I return to it.

  In just less than an hour Boukreev climbed to around 6,900 meters, where the work of the Sherpas who’d been ahead had stopped, and he pulled a coil of rope from his pack. Over the next hour and a half, working at a steady pace, Boukreev continued to thread the route, putting down both the ropes that he and Beidleman had brought up the mountain and stringing more than two hundred meters of rope to an altitude of 7,100 meters. Somewhere around 4:00 P.M., still with some power but wanting to make it through the Khumbu Icefall before dark, Boukreev began his descent, pleased with the advance he’d made in the route. In just a few days, after the clients had rested from their first excursion to Camp II, they would be moving onto the fixed ropes and heading toward Camp III, and Boukreev didn’t want any delays. The window for the summit, when it appeared, could last for a day; it could last for a week; but an open window would be of no value to the clients if they weren’t prepared to climb through it. They needed to maintain their acclimatization routine and to advance they needed the fixed ropes.

  It was an easy descent for me and I covered the distance from 7,100 to 6,500 meters in about an hour. As I had expected, Neal and the clients had already departed, but there was still activity among the tents as the Sherpas continued their work to secure the camp. Our cook, Gyalzen Sherpa, greeted me and kindly offered me some food and hot tea, and after a few minutes of rest I continued my descent and arrived in Base Camp before dark. Joining the rest of the expedition members in the mess tent, I exchanged a few words with Scott and Neal and then went to my tent, because after a full day’s work at altitude I was extremely tired and looked forward to the days of rest ahead.

  That same evening Sandy Hill Pittman transmitted her April 19 journal entry to NBC. Reporting on her encounter with the torso discovered by Boukreev, she said, “The discovery was a macabre ending to an otherwise successful climb.”

  On the morning of April 20, Boukreev had “no particular wish” to climb out of his sleeping bag as the sun hit his tent around 8:00 A.M. Even after he’d downed a cup of coffee brought to him by one of the Sherpas, he lingered, savoring the opportunity to rest after the excursion and work of the day before. Finally, in one of those off-to-work, propulsive bursts, he zipped out of his bag, got into his clothes, and headed for the mess tent.

  Most of the expedition members had already eaten and were sitting on their chairs outside the mess tent, some sunning themselves, others conversing. After a quick breakfast, as I was myself warming in the sun, I noticed Scott getting ready to go up with Pete Schoening, who wanted to attempt Camp II again and to try an overnight. Scott appeared tired, and I know he could not have been enthusiastic about having to climb, because it was my impression that he was worn out from the logistical problems with which he had been dealing and because he had taken little rest after his previous acclimatization excursion.

  Scott approached me and greeted me in a friendly way, then totally surprised me by saying, “Anatoli, you did your work poorly on the last excursion.”

  Boukreev was taken aback, caught totally off guard, because he had been pleased with his work and efforts of the previous few days, and asked Fischer, “What is this about my work?” Fischer responded in a friendly but firm way, “I’ve been told you’ve not been very attentive to the clients. You didn’t help them set up their tents at Camp II.” Not having a clue that his actions had been a problem, Boukreev explained to Fischer that upon arriving at Camp II, before the clients had arrived, he had begun working with the Sherpas who were setting up the mess tent, that he’d busied himself with that and then rested. True, he’d not assisted the clients, because they didn’t seem to be needing help and because he felt that some work on the route would contribute to their acclimati
zation. Fischer didn’t see it that way.

  I began to understand that there was a difference in understanding about why I had been hired or that somehow the expectations of me had shifted. It had been my impression that Scott’s primary interests were in my experience and what I could bring to ensure client safety and success on summit day, and I had been working with that in mind, focusing primarily on details that I thought would bring success and attempting to anticipate the problems that would prevent us from making a bid on the summit. It was not clear to me that equally if not more important was chatting and keeping the clients pleased by focusing on their personal happiness. For this role, I knew several guides in America, guides with less high-altitude experience perhaps, but guides who were much better qualified.

  Boukreev, who took great pride in his capacities as a climber, was in a quandary. Where should his focus go? Could he reasonably do what he thought had been expected of him and fulfill Fischer’s expectations? For some advice he spoke with Beidleman.

  I shared this problem with Neal and explained my concerns about what Scott had said. When I asked him what he thought, Neal said, “Anatoli, many of our members are at high altitude for the first time, and they don’t understand many of the simple things. They want us to hold their hands through everything.” I replied simply, saying that was an absurd position. I repeated again my concerns that we had to encourage self-reliance, and that our contributions to fixing ropes, getting the route ready, were just as important. About this Neal disagreed, saying that we had enough Sherpas to do this job. I told Neal that I thought, judging by our current situation, we were going to fall behind in the establishment of our high-altitude camps and our acclimatization routines could be compromised.