The Boys of Everest

by Clint Willis

  Doug usually walked alone. The other three climbers often walked together. Georges Bettenbourg proved opinionated and disarmingly direct; he was also prone to horseplay and to hypochondria. His English was not fluent. His pronouncements often lacked nuance, which made it difficult to take offense. He was married but he shocked Peter by maintaining that it wasn’t always necessary to be faithful to one’s spouse. Doug made pronouncements of his own, informing the others that each of them had an allotment of only three trillion heartbeats: they should make the most of their time. Doug had recently become a vegetarian. He held forth at length on Eastern philosophies—sometimes in oppressively authoritative tones.

  They walked for eight days and came to a campsite on the Tamur River. They were anxious about the coming trial. They diverted themselves by climbing the boulders that stood near the water, working hard to outdo one another. Georges decided to play King of the Hill at the top of one of the boulders. He gave Peter a playful shove; Peter lost his balance and slid fifteen feet, landing awkwardly on his left foot. There was a snapping sound that seemed to come from his ankle.

  The others—in particular Georges—looked on horrified as Peter tried to stand. The ankle wouldn’t support his weight. He was furious; the injury seemed likely to make all of his planning and effort pointless even as it brought home to him the depth of his desire to climb their mountain. He couldn’t tell if his ankle was broken, but it seemed likely that he would be unable to climb, let alone carry loads.

  He decided nonetheless to stay with the expedition in hopes that he would recover enough to be of use on the route. The group hired porters to carry him up to Ghunsa, the last village on their approach march; that was another four days ahead. The porters produced a basket meant for carrying produce to market. They converted the basket to a makeshift chair for Peter. A porter would hoist the basket with its passenger onto his back, taking the weight on his forehead via straps, and would struggle along until relieved by one of his fellows.

  The other climbers walked with Peter and his entourage of porters for a time, but it was slow going and the trail was too narrow to accommodate even a small crowd. Doug and the others soon pulled away. Peter found that it was odd, being carried; in many places a slip by a porter would have sent him tumbling down the steep slopes of the gorge formed by the Tamur River. He wondered how he had managed to find himself in the hands of these strangers. He wondered what they must make of him. What could he make of them? His role as a burden made him anxious but it allowed a strange and reassuring intimacy with his bearers. Nima Tenzing, the expedition’s assistant sirdar—he helped Ang Phurba oversee the rest of the porters—had been on eighteen expeditions, including seven to Everest. Nima walked behind Peter’s little group, advising them and acting as Peter’s protector. Peter listened to the old man whisper prayers throughout the day; prayer seemed Nima’s ordinary habit.

  A family traveling to Ghunsa walked with the expedition. The family included a lovely young girl called Dawa, who wore a green cloak and smiled at the climbers. Some days her smile was like a question: Why leave this? A group of policemen traveling to Ghunsa with their wives also walked with the climbers and shared the expedition’s campsites.

  Joe dreamed one night that one of the four climbers—himself or one of his companions—had been killed in an avalanche. He woke and recorded the details in his journal. Joe and Doug each dreamed that Peter climbed Kangchenjunga. They were anxious to tell him about the two overlapping dreams, which together seemed to constitute a good omen.

  The climbers paid off their porters and hired new ones in Ghansa, the site of an ancient Buddhist monastery. The village had once been a prosperous trading community but now it seemed bereft; tattered prayer flags flapped in the wind and the inhabitants had neglected the religious monuments. Doug set up a medical clinic for the villagers. Many of them had developed eye troubles and respiratory infections from spending the winter months in their smoke-filled huts. The climbers lingered in the village for two days before setting out on April 2 to complete their journey to the mountain.

  Peter’s ankle was better. He left Ghansa before the others and hobbled along under his own steam. The party passed through Kangbachen, a tiny gathering of ten houses, the last habitations on their route, and walked on past the settings of legends—a sacred waterfall where saints had bathed, a cavern where someone had hidden the key to heaven.

  They came to the Kangchenjunga Glacier and made their way up the rock-strewn slopes at its margins. They knew the world would grow smaller once they engaged their mountain, but now they were free to look up from their walking and lay their eyes on other peaks: Jannu, Nepal Peak, many more lacking even names. This profusion humbled the climbers. They could not hope to accomplish anything of note; their obsession was merely eccentric. They made camp. The porters—there were girls among them—danced in circles. Georges amused the porters in turn by performing cartwheels and by walking on his knees with his legs locked in the lotus position.

  The expedition reached Base Camp at 16,000 feet on April 4. The site was a grassy shelf suspended below low-angled rock slopes. Doug found a tent peg: a relic of the 1930 expedition.

  The proposed route followed the Kangchenjunga Glacier to a hollow between the North Ridge and a mountain called Twins Peak. The climbers established Camp One on the glacier on April 6. The site seemed reasonably safe from the avalanches that threatened the surrounding area from both sides.

  Joe and Peter lay in their tent that evening and listened to the grinding of the glacier beneath them. They occasionally heard the hollow crack and echo of an ice tower collapsing on the slopes above their camp. They had both been reading Goodbye to All That—Robert Graves’s memoir of his youth, including his service in World War I. They talked about whether shellfire would have sounded like this to the men in the trenches.

  On the Kangchenjunga Glacier

  PETER BOARDMAN, CHRIS BONINGTON PICTURE LIBRARY

  They rose on April 7 and set out with Doug—Georges was ill down at Base Camp—to find a safe site for Camp Two. Their route crossed an icefall to a snow basin. They stopped every so often to rest and to inspect the towers of ice that rose to their view like frozen Gods. The three climbers knew they were near the place where the avalanche had killed the Sherpa in 1930. No one had been here since that tragedy. They moved deliberately, probing the snow with the shafts of their axes. They knew the stories. They felt themselves entering—trespassing upon—older narratives, as if no time had passed. Nothing human had happened here for almost half a century; whatever had occurred here during that empty time was no part of history. The previous expedition was an old thing come to light in mint condition. This unnatural find oppressed and excited them at once.

  They chose a site for Camp Two. The site offered a view of the 3,000-foot wall they must climb to reach Kangchenjunga’s North Col—their jumping off point for the North Ridge itself. They dropped their loads and returned to Base Camp.

  The climbers devoted the next several days to ferrying gear between the lower camps. They spent a last night in Camp One on April 13. They were less frightened now at the creaking of the glacier. Even the occasional explosions from the surrounding walls failed to arouse much interest until Georges’s shouts brought Joe and Peter from their tent just after dark. The climbers stared briefly at a huge tide of white cloud that rushed and billowed toward them in the near-distance. They retreated to their tents and zipped the flaps against the wind and waited. The tents shook and the sky rained debris, but then camp was quiet again. The slide had run itself out before reaching them. Something in Joe had gone dead as they waited; he only noticed because now it ticked back to life.

  The four climbers moved up to Camp Two on April 14. Sherpa Nima Tenzing walked with them. The Sherpa carried a bag of holy rice. He tossed handfuls of the rice at the most dangerous-looking features along the route. Peter saw Nima arrive at Camp Two in the evening—the climber’s last before setting out for the wall that led up to th
e North Col. The Sherpa gazed up at the route, a seemingly endless series of towers gone blurry in the evening shadows, a scene mysterious as the surface of a jungle pool. Nima turned and swept his arm across the view. The rest of his rice skittered in the half-frozen snow that lay around the camp.

  THE CLIMBERS APPROACHED the wall the next morning. They were quiet. The mountain’s enormous scale threatened to swallow them. They walked for two hours to the gap where snow had melted from the base of the wall. This wall would offer the route’s most technically difficult climbing, but it was free of the glacier’s objective hazards. Doug and Peter left their loads and returned to Camp Two. Georges and Joe stayed to climb five rope-lengths of mixed rock and ice, fixing rope as they went.

  Doug and Peter took their turn the next day and made more progress. The two of them were back at Camp Two on April 17. The sky was cloudless and as they lay in the sun a huge slide swept the route that led from their camp to the wall. The avalanche deposited 10 feet of snow over tracks Georges and Joe had made on their way to the bottom of the fixed ropes that morning.

  The climbers finished fixing rope to the North Col on April 20. They left Camp Two the next day. They hoped to establish a camp on the North Col that evening. That camp would put them in position to follow the North Ridge to the summit. Once established on the col, they hoped to make a one-day foray up the ridge to learn what they could of its difficulties. They would then retreat to Base Camp to rest before returning to set out for the summit.

  They moved heavily laden up the fixed ropes at the bottom of the wall. The wind rose and it began to snow. Small avalanches surged past them as they hung on the ropes. It was foolish to continue in these conditions. They retreated to Camp Two for the night and continued down to Base Camp the next day to rest and wait for better conditions.

  They stayed at Base Camp for four days. They slept and talked and ate—gorging on fruit, eggs and potatoes—as snow continued to fall on the mountain. They were out of range of avalanches. The fear left their bodies for a time but gradually returned as the hours and days of their rest slipped away.

  Peter brooded about the risk of climbing so high without supplemental oxygen. Messner and Habeler had suffered hallucinations and other side effects on Everest. This route was almost as high, and considerably more difficult. Once they regained the North Col, it would take them another two miles up and across the North Ridge. It was a long way to travel at such heights.

  The climbers sniped at one another. Georges fussed about his liver or made optimistic chatter that annoyed Joe. Doug shirked cooking. He made remarks about people’s diets, and quoted more philosophy at them; he was reading the I Ching and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

  The climbers left Base Camp on April 26. They spent the night at Camp Two below the wall that led up to the North Col. Joe woke up feeling ill. The others decided to give him a day to recover. Peter was impatient. He was sick of delays and rests, eager to be at the climbing and also eager to have it behind them.

  The four of them returned to the wall on April 28. They moved clumsily with their burdens, breathing heavily—gasping at times—as they hoisted their bodies up the fixed ropes. Doug and Georges went first. They took off their packs to climb the last section of the wall, an overhanging rock chimney that led to a final snow slope. They hauled their gear up after them, dislodging debris. Peter looked up into a sky that seemed to rain rocks. He lurched sideways as the missiles exploded around him; one hit his arm, and the impact staggered him. The shower passed and he found his footing and drew off his gloves to find swelling and a frightening gash. He felt sure that he’d broken a bone. His despair welled up like blood, black and thick.

  Peter gave Joe an angry message for the others—they might have killed him with their carelessness—and started back down the ropes. He forced himself to calm down as he made his way back to Camp Two. He dressed his wrist and spent the next day resting and watching the North Col through binoculars. Once he caught a glimpse of his friends. He wondered if they’d go for the summit without him.

  His arm was not as bad as he’d imagined. He set out to catch the other climbers the next morning. Nima Tenzing and Ang Phurba followed him; they were carrying supplies for the camp on the col. The three men set off up the ropes at the base of the wall; almost immediately, a small powder avalanche poured over them. The snow carried a fist-sized rock that struck Nima in the back. The injured Sherpa retreated, bruised and shaken.

  Peter and Ang Phurba climbed to the col, where they found the others at work consolidating their new camp. The camp stood on top of a huge ice tower, which creaked and groaned beneath the tents. Georges saw Peter’s look and hurried over to assure him that the tower would stand at least long enough for their purposes.

  The climbers woke the next morning to sun and cold, and to the feeling that they had at last come to grips with the mountain. The smaller peaks that had loomed above them on the glacier now stood far below, diminished spectators; the climbers could look upon these other mountains without the prospect of obliteration. The Ridge was safe from avalanche. Everest’s East Face—the fearsome Kangshung Face—shimmered and glowed in the distance, a mere seventy miles away.

  Joe’s headache had returned. It was very bad; he would have to go down to try to recover in the thicker air of the lower camps. He took his leave with reluctance, full of concern that his companions would finish the climb without him.

  The three remaining climbers on the col hoped now to discover what sort of climbing the North Ridge would offer—whether it would be more difficult than they hoped. They set out up frozen snow that took their crampons well. Georges was very eager this morning; he led the others up the windswept slopes and onto new ground. The climbers enjoyed a sense of the past falling away. Something untouched lay before them, receding as it beckoned. The present seemed a shabby thing compared to the empty ridge above them. This ridge merged with the sky without even the notion of seams; there was no evident distinction between the snow on the ridge and the sky from which the snow had fallen and to which it would return, drawn by the light that spiraled everywhere around them.

  The climbers had loosed the ties that bound them to the earth and its inhabitants and even to each other. Peter had no thought of what was behind or beneath him. It would not have surprised him to vanish into the thin air that he greedily sucked into his lungs at each step. His movements were labored and yet there was a lightness of step to his plodding. The view grew wider to include the purple hills of Tibet. The sight calmed Peter. He was aware of his companions now and of the fact that their presence helped to lay the foundation for the delight that flooded him at moments, receding only to return at these moments of calm.

  The party came to the base of a rock buttress that stretched 600 feet up the ridge. They had named the buttress; they called it the Castle. The climbers dropped their loads of food and gear at its foot. A gully of snow split the rock to within a hundred feet of the roof of the Castle. They had climbed 1,800 feet on the North Ridge.

  A storm rose as they descended the snow above their tents at Camp Three on the col. They carefully noted and followed their own crampon marks from the morning. They took this precaution to avoid falling through one of the enormous cornices that overhung the face beneath the ridge.

  They reached the North Col in an hour. They lay in their tents and talked of the weather, which seemed to deteriorate in the afternoons. This pattern might cause them trouble later. They’d want a full day of good weather to make the round-trip from their eventual high camp to the summit.

  Peter went out in front of the others in the morning. The wind was strong; occasional gusts made him stop and cling to the slope. The climbers waded through new snow to the base of the Castle, where they dug a snow cave that would serve as a base for the final stages of the climb. It would shelter their gear and food and protect them from the wind. They dug until the cave was enormous, and settled in for the night. They spent the hours of darkness dozing and melting snow
to make tea. All three climbers were deeply lethargic. They were approaching an altitude of 25,000 feet. They felt the cold more than they would have felt it lower on the mountain.

  The weather was reasonable in the morning—clouds but not too much wind. Doug led into the gully that split the Castle. Georges and Peter followed, kicking steps in snow that seemed dangerously unstable. Peter took note of a layer of ice just beneath the surface; the ice could serve as a chute for the snow that lay on top of it. The gully grew steeper. Doug at last came to rock and managed to place a piton.

  The three climbers convened at Doug’s anchor to discuss their next move. All three men felt ill. They carried on anyway, up low-angled ground to a view of cliffs and huge snowfields. The snowfields culminated in a triangle of black and white, the summit pyramid. The climbers turned back. They spent the rest of the day fixing ropes down to the cave at the base of the castle.

  They rose late the next morning. Doug and Peter argued over who should cook; in the end, Georges made breakfast. The three of them pulled on boots and crawled outside to follow the fixed ropes back to their high point. The wind was very bad. They couldn’t see past the whistling particles of dust and ice that stung their faces. They stopped and considered, shouting to be heard. They climbed higher, heading across to a notch that would take them to the other side of the ridge. That would get them out of the wind, which had climbed to hurricane force; Peter estimated that it blew at eighty or ninety miles per hour.

  They struggled up to the notch. They passed through it to huddle on a slope that offered shelter from the gale. It took three hours to chop a ledge in the ice and pitch their tent. They were nearly exhausted. The summit lay a mere 1,200 feet above them. They would hang on and make their attempt in the morning.

  They woke in the darkness to the sound of wind—a wall of it rising from depths they couldn’t imagine. They clung to the tent’s framework; they hoped to prevent the wind from destroying their shelter. They took turns at this work, each man holding the tent poles until his fingers grew numb in his mittens. The climbers used their breaks to pursue the awkward and painful work of getting their feet into half-frozen boots. Doug poked his head out of the tent entrance and saw that the wind had pulled the tent anchors from the snow. The tent was drifting across the ledge, carrying the climbers. They’d soon slide from their perch; they’d be dragged off a cliff in a bag.