The Ascent

by Jeff Long

  Texas up at Four. The summit team didn't call in, and that was more good news. It

  meant they were too busy climbing. No one mentioned the monk.

  Abe and Kelly geared up inside the tent, a clumsy process. Between the cramped

  space and the lines running from their oxygen bottles and headlamps and the dangling

  cookstove, their movements were knotted and cumbrous. They could have opened

  the tent door for more room, but that would have disheartened them. Though the

  mountain had gone silent, it was bitterly cold. The tent walls let them enjoy the

  appearance of cozy warmth for their final minutes at Four. At last they were ready to

  ascend to the high camp. And tomorrow, Abe thought with a pleasure too distant to be

  called joy, tomorrow the summit.

  Kelly unzipped the tent door and the cold poured in. Like deep sea divers, they

  clambered to their feet and stood upright by the cave mouth. Abe was unsettled by

  the darkness outside the cave. By this hour there should have been more light, even

  with the sun buried in clouds. If conditions didn't improve, Daniel and his team would

  have to use a flash to take photos of their summit triumph projected for noon.

  'It's so peaceful,' Kelly marveled.

  'The storm has passed,' Abe said.

  But he should have suspected otherwise when he placed one hand on the

  green-and-white checkered rope that led out of the cave and up the face. It was

  vibrating like a plucked guitar string and he realized that here was the source of the

  odd humming noise. Abe made nothing more of it and went ahead with his

  preparations. He clipped his jumars onto the rope and adjusted his goggles. Even in

  this darkness one could go snowblind. He stepped from the cave onto the face.

  The world turned upside down.

  Abe flew. He was swallowed into the air.

  It was instantaneous. The thought flashed past that he was falling, but he wasn't. It

  was utterly impossible.

  Far from disappearing, the wind had grown into a hurricane gale and with his very

  first step onto the face Abe was ripped from his front points and actually lifted ten or

  twelve feet up the mountain. If not for the rope, he would have sailed right off the

  face, a bit of dust swept into the jet stream.

  Abe lay plastered against the wall, too astounded to move, not certain he even could.

  He wasn't hurt, but his confusion was almost painful. He had to fight back his shock

  just to register bits and pieces of what was happening.

  The darkness was in fact a snowy whiteness so flat and dense his eyes could hardly

  see. Thunder had usurped the silence, indeed the silence was thunder, and the goggles

  were torn from his face. If not for the oxygen mask strapped across his mouth, the

  wind would have stripped the breath from his lungs. Loose pack straps lashed him

  where the skin of his face was exposed.

  Sucking hard at the oxygen mask, Abe hoicked his body around. Hand over hand, he

  hauled himself down the rope and back to the cave entrance. There Kelly helped to

  pull him inside. 'God, Abe. Are you all right?' She knelt beside him in the cave mouth,

  aghast.

  'Not good,' Abe said, crouching on one knee. The oxygen mask was dangling at his

  throat. 'And it's got to be worse up high. Daniel and the others, they've got to be

  pinned down.'

  'I don't think so,' Kelly said. 'If they were pinned in Five they would have told us.

  They would have made the radio call this morning. I think they're climbing. They're

  on their way.'

  There were other explanations for Five's radio silence, of course. Their radio

  batteries might have gotten used up in last evening's arguing or frozen overnight.

  Someone might have dropped the radio handset or they might just have slept in or

  forgotten to call. The other possibility, the worst one, was that Daniel and the others

  had set out in the early hours according to plan and the wind had exterminated them.

  Abe left it all unspoken.

  He couldn't get over the preternatural power of the wind and stared fearfully at the

  mountainside. There were no bench-marks – no tree branches or tumbleweeds or

  flags or wind socks – to help him gauge the force, nothing to even suggest the wind

  was blowing. Any loose snow had been scoured away. But for all its peaceful

  appearance, the North Face was now a gigantic maelstrom.

  'Do we stay here or go up?' Abe asked.

  Kelly didn't pause. 'We have to go up,' she answered. 'They'll need us up there.'

  Abe slipped an extra bottle of oxygen into his pack for ballast, then braced himself

  and stepped from the cave once again. This time, turning one of his jumars upside

  down on the rope and slipping both tight, he managed to keep his footing. Kelly did the

  same, and after the initial blast, they adapted.

  He looked up and saw a ball of purplish Saint Elmo's fire fifty feet higher along the

  rope. He'd seen such a thing on a friend's sailboat once, but never in the mountains.

  The ball of glowing electric flame had been drawn to the metal of their next anchor,

  and despite the wind it didn't move. Beyond that an immense dark white halo was

  crowning the summit. Abe forced himself to breathe deeply. It was imperative that he

  ignore this world of beautiful images. He had to concentrate on the climbing. He felt

  very afraid.

  The air was murderously cold and it shook and rattled their clothing. Even standing

  side by side at the rest stances, neither could hear the other over the din without

  shouting. But it gave them one advantage. It graced them with wings. Abe was

  carrying three bottles of oxygen plus his jump kit for medical emergencies, and even

  so his load felt lighter than empty. It was almost as if the mountain were sucking him

  higher and higher. He couldn't shake the feeling that he and Kelly were being drawn

  into an ambush.

  Abe approached the first anchor cautiously. The blue ball of flame was seeping up

  and down the rope around one of Daniel's titanium ice screws. Abe couldn't remember

  if the phenomenon carried a dangerous electrical charge. There was no way around it,

  however, and so he finally dipped his hand into the strange shimmering light to clip his

  jumar onto the next rope. His hand tingled, no more. He could smell ozone, but on

  second thought decided smell was impossible in such wind and through an oxygen

  mask to boot. One more illusion. He kept on climbing.

  They seemed to be moving much faster than human beings physically can at such

  altitudes. They had no choice in the matter. Kelly had the worst of it. Despite a

  hundred days of lost bodyweight. Abe still outweighed her by fifty pounds, and it told

  now in their footing. A dozen times Kelly was rocked and buffeted off her feet. Each

  time she patiently righted herself and dug her crampon points into the snow and ice

  and started again. She didn't complain.

  Abe positioned himself a few steps behind in an effort to cut the wind. He couldn't

  afford to lose Kelly. Things were getting stranger by the minute, and his sole comfort

  was in being able to watch over her. Love had nothing to do with it. This was altruism

  stripped bare. The only way he could identify his own welfare anymore was by looking

  after hers.

  Kelly's pace began to falter. She took more rests and h
er rhythm was off, afflicted by

  missteps and occasional wobbling. Abe was slow to fault her performance, blaming the

  wind. Finally he realized Kelly was in trouble. Her coordination was melting away

  before his eyes. She kept lumbering off to her right, plainly disoriented.

  Abe called her name, but she continued up. He called again, then plodded fast

  enough to catch her by one arm. 'Kelly,' he shouted. 'Are you okay?'

  'Cold,' she mumbled through her mask.

  The easy explanation was that she'd run out of oxygen. Abe hoped it was that. He

  stepped above her and fumbled for the cylinder tucked in her pack. The regulator

  showed three-quarters full. Next he checked her mask. It was a standard military

  issue for aviators, a diluter-demand system. It drew pure oxygen through a demand

  valve and mixed it with air drawn from outside the mask. It was a simple enough tool,

  but the exhaust valve and ports tended to freeze up. Abe had practiced dismantling

  the assembly and putting it together down at Base Camp, and prayed it wasn't the

  demand valve that had iced up. Fortunately it was the exhaust ports. He squeezed the

  rubber mask in his mitten and freed the ice. Then he fitted the mask back over Kelly's

  helmet and cranked her regulator up to two liters per minute.

  'Try that,' he yelled.

  She gave him a weary thumbs-up. After a while her pace improved.

  At the head of two more pitches, the Shooting Gallery's steep narrow cleavage

  opened wide and the angle of the slope grew more and more manageable. They found

  themselves breaking trail upon a snowy tilted plateau. Compared to the vertical

  gantlet of the last few days, the plateau felt almost level. They left the abyss behind

  them, out of sight, almost out of mind.

  The rope ended. Daniel had decided it was safe enough up here.

  They continued on for another hour or so in the deafening howl, then Kelly stopped

  and pointed. Not far in the distance, perhaps two hundred yards away, stood a

  solitary orange tent. Daniel had taken it from the cache of gear the New Zealanders

  had left in the cave. For the time being anyway, it represented the highest human

  habitation on earth. The camp was built on snow, at the intersection of the plateau

  and what Abe knew could only be the Yellow Band. Through his goggles the rock was

  lime green and plated like lizard scales.

  Kelly was pointing above the tent, though, and Abe moved his attention higher. He

  saw a thick wide shelf of snow that had accumulated three or four hundred feet above

  the camp. It probably held a thousand tons of snow, a perfectly formed avalanche

  ready to cut loose. Then Abe saw similar pockets coiled all along on the downsloping

  tiles. The whole region was primed for a catastrophe. The sight was almost enough to

  make Abe turn tail and descend as fast as possible. But one further sight held him

  steady, a rather sorry sight. There, almost within reach, stood the summit.

  Abe was disappointed. For all its majesty and fury, Everest didn't finish with a

  dramatic sculptured prow or a sharp pinnacle. Instead the mountain just rounded into

  a sorry little hump-back, a gray lump shrugging at the gray sky.

  The top was perhaps a half-mile away and a thousand feet overhead, but it looked

  much closer and very easy, an afternoon romp. Just as Daniel had said, you could see

  the summit tripod from here, a tiny, sticklike protuberance. The tripod reminded Abe

  of an altarpiece for ants, ridiculous and not at all triumphant.

  Kelly pulled at Abe's arm and shouted something. She had taken her glacier glasses

  off. Abe bent his head closer. Their helmets knocked. 'I can't see anyone,' she shouted

  above the wind, and Abe thought she'd gone snowblind.

  'Your glasses,' Abe shouted back. He gestured to her to put them on.

  Kelly didn't hear or else didn't care to. Either way she let the glasses dangle and

  whip about on the string at her throat. She pointed at the summit again.

  Abe realized she was hunting for some evidence of climbers on the summit slopes.

  Now he looked, too. Their vantage point was ideal for spotting any movement up

  there. If they could see the summit tripod, there was no reason they couldn't see a

  moving figure wrapped in expedition colors.

  In vain Abe tried tracing a route upward from the orange tent to the top. Then he

  tried working down from the top along five or six different paths. Kelly took out her

  camera and screwed on the telephoto, and they took turns scanning the top. They saw

  no one. The climbers had disappeared.

  Kelly's eyes were streaming tears from the wind. She shouted something, but Abe

  shook his head, deaf in this hurricane. He tried replacing the glasses on her face, but

  his fingers had gone wooden with the cold. Besides that, he could see Kelly's tiredness

  and disorientation. He suspected her mask had packed in again with ice, and that

  would need more work still.

  'The tent,' he yelled.

  Abe led off, plowing his knees through the snow crust. He left it to the wind to blow

  Kelly in his wake. As they slogged up toward the orange tent, Abe tried to arrange his

  thoughts for an orderly discussion. Matters of search and rescue or simple retreat had

  to be weighed quickly and clearly and ruthlessly. But with each step he only got more

  confused and tired.

  It took them an hour to ascend the two hundred yards to camp. By the time they

  reached the orange tent, Abe's fingers wouldn't work and all Kelly could do was kneel

  and stare at the closed door. Finally he pried a flap open with his ice axe and slowly

  peeled it open. He was careful not to break the zipper, because if they couldn't close

  the door again the wind would surely kill them.

  Abe pawed Kelly's pack off, then his own, and dumped them in the snow. Then he

  pushed her inside and crawled in behind. It took five minutes to worry the door zipper

  shut again.

  'There's no one here,' Kelly yelled over the wind. She, too, had been hoping the

  climbers would be inside.

  Four sleeping bags lay heaped in the back of the tent. Daniel's team had broken the

  rule and entered the tent with their crampons on. Abe could tell by the ripped,

  punctured floor. Then he noticed that he had neglected to take off his own crampons.

  Kelly's were still on, too. He took them off.

  The tent walls shook so fast they buzzed. Abe was thankful the tent hadn't blown

  away. Kelly sat in the corner, staring, mask off, mouth open. Her lips were bright blue.

  They stared at each other, exhausted. Abe felt asleep. Or dead.

  Another thought came to him. 'Oxygen,' he said to Kelly. Her eyes had closed

  though. Abe set the mask back across her mouth. He checked the regulator on her

  oxygen bottle. It was a quarter full. He checked his own. It was empty. He'd been

  sucking on ambient air at 27,500 feet. For how long, he couldn't say.

  Abe pulled the mask off Kelly's face and strapped it to his own face. It was like

  robbing a child of candy. She didn't protest or even notice. He cranked the flow rate

  up to four liters per minute and breathed as deep as one could up here, a modified

  pant. After five or ten minutes, he felt warmer and less stupefied. His few priorities

  marched into view. They had to breathe, drink and eat.

  He unzipped the door. The
wind blasted him and the tent bellied in the rear. As

  quickly as possible, Abe opened his pack and pulled in two more bottles of oxygen,

  then closed the door. It took awhile, but he finally got a second oxygen set assembled

  with a regulator showing full. He nestled the second mask over Kelly's mouth and

  turned it on. It would be good for four to six hours.

  Kelly slept. Abe cooked. Rather than open and close the door each time the pot

  needed more snow, he simply ripped the floor apart and took snow from underneath.

  Since Kelly was out of the loop, Abe talked to himself. 'We're in trouble now,' he said.

  He wondered if the regulator had lied. It seemed likely he was out of oxygen again,

  but it was too much effort to check. He wasn't scared. To the contrary, a host of old

  friends and half-familiar faces had come from nowhere to offer encouragement. They

  were friendly and anxious for him, mumbling kind, if incoherent, advice. The tent

  seemed much larger than it was. It filled with dozens of visitors. Abe kept at his stove.

  There was suddenly so many to give water to.

  At one point, the tent shook harder than ever. More voices cried out, adding to the

  disembodied conversations Abe was enjoying. The tent door opened. More ghosts

  joined Abe's gathering of souls. He looked for Jamie among the new faces, but she was

  nowhere to be seen. Abe's father drifted through with his old oil-rig scars, and the

  Tibetan monk rested against one wall, smiling, bundled in yak skins, looking more

  boyish than ever. Daniel was there and Gus and all the others. The babble of voices

  sounded like the roar of the wind and the roar of the wind reminded Abe of one vast,

  unending prayer, a sort of high mass. And he was the priest. 'Water,' he offered one

  and all.

  Abe sat jammed against Kelly, who curled fetuslike. He handed out cups of melted

  water and went on with his cooking, scooping new snow through the hole in the floor.

  There was no room to work really – too many bodies in one tent – and he had to

  protect his hanging stove from their elbows and commotion. Finally someone

  volunteered to take over. It was Daniel. Pressed tight against Kelly and with someone

  sitting on one of his legs, Abe fell asleep.

  He woke slowly, still sitting upright. He was breathing oxygen through his mask.

  The tent was full of people, but everything seemed different. The people had changed.