I pulled on my climbing trousers over the underwear and socks that I had not changed for five days. I put on another pair of thick climbing socks, pulled on my downing jacket and moved to the outer patio area. I laced up my Everest boots, all three layers, with great difficulty.
I was cold, tired, hungry and…actually, quite scared.
I climbed out into the darkness and looked around. It was pitch black, and my head torch picked out the little orange blobs of the tents littered around the glacier. I swung my rucksack on to my back, grabbed my ice axe and headed to the mess tent. I needed some sugar energy.
I peered inside – Iwan was already there.
“Morning.”
“Hey Jules! Gut morning!”
He was far too cheerful for this time of morning.
“Are yu ridy?”
“Er, yeah… I guess so.” I was far from sure.
The Icefall was the most dangerous part of Everest, nobody knew what condition it was in. This could well be my last day on earth, I thought.
It was very dark outside, but Iwan had switched on the solar bulb in the mess tent and there was just enough energy in the battery from yesterday for us to see to eat.
I grabbed a bowl and three Weetabix, pouring a pile of sugar and powdered milk on top. I pulled over one of the large hot water flasks and filled the bowl, mushing the whole lot up. It was like a bowl of very warm sugary porridge, and as I huddled there, cold and tired in the poor light, to me, it tasted fantastic.
I grabbed a mug and made myself a cup of Her Maj’s finest, lukewarm tea.
All this in the space of five minutes, as we had to get to the bottom of the Icefall for six to give us a good, clear two hours of climbing, and enough time to get back down before the sun came up and started melting the bloody thing.
Iwan looked over at me.
“Yu ridy?”
“As I’ll ever be.
We grabbed our rucksacks and ice axes, and headed out into the eerie darkness.
Iwan told me he had been to see Donald the night before, to tell him of our intention to climb the Icefall, and to clear it with him. Iwan was part of Donald’s team; he had been employed as a professional guide to assist Donald in his 8,000m peak charity challenge. Donald was OK about Iwan going, but told him to be extra careful – any injuries could result in bad publicity for his charity.
It was a cold, misty morning. The light from our head torches bounced along in front of us as we made our way down to the stream that ran alongside Base Camp, over the glacier. We crossed the stream and trekked alongside it for some 20 minutes, heading towards the base of the Icefall. We then ducked in among the eerie giant serac pillars, which towered some 30 metres above us, looking for the little red flags that showed the way to the official start of the Icefall and the rope the Icefall doctors had installed some weeks earlier. If you couldn’t find the start of the rope, you had no chance. In the earthquake, some of the flags had been blown away, so it was no mean feat just finding the base of the Icefall in among those ghostly pillars – they seemed almost to creep around in the dark.
I felt a shiver run down my spine.
We walked in silence, the crunch of the snow under our feet was deafening. Navigating around these huge structures was very difficult.
I breathed heavily. It was exhausting work, trucking through the fresh snow, trying to force a path. I could see my breath streaming out in front of me in the cold light of my head torch.
Iwan stopped suddenly. I did the same.
“What?” I whispered.
Iwan crouched down in the snow.
“Footprints.”
I looked down at the snow where he was crouched. He was right. There was a single set of footprints heading in the same direction as we were.
I thought about the yeti skull at Khumjong.
Casting my light forward, I saw the footprints continue towards the Khumbu Icefall.
“Ve follow,” said Iwan.
They were probably my footprints from the day before. I couldn’t be sure; I had no idea what route I had taken through the seracs.
Hold on, that didn’t seem right – they were fresh tracks – and it had snowed last night, so if they were mine they would be covered in fresh snow by now.
Whose were these then? Who could be foolish enough to take this route, at night, alone?
The wind continued howling through the giant ice pillars, dashing loose snow into our faces. I was very glad I was not alone. Even with my Polish friend, it was very eerie, and we were miles from any help.
We followed the footprints to the bottom of the Icefall, where we kneeled to put on our crampons.
Iwan broke the silence.
“After avalanche,” he said, “we found body over there.”
He pointed off in the distance. I looked, as if I would be able to see something.
“We – me and Donat – were telling people to go. Donat moved a tent and an arm [Iwan grabbed his right forearm with his left] was out of the snow. We dug him up. Frozen solid, blood everywhere.”
“Jeepers.”
The area where Iwan was pointing was a full 250 metres from Base Camp. This poor man would have been flung from Base Camp by the force of the avalanche, all the way over to the seracs.
“His teeth, his mouth, gone. His ears touching his nose. His legs wrapped around his head.”
Iwan put his hands inside his mouth and yanked them back hard, pulling his mouth wide open to demonstrate what the face looked like. I felt a shiver run down my spine again.
A grotesque image formed in my mind. Pure white snow splattered with blood.
“We tried to straighten out body…too cold. We wrapped in plastic, and he was taken away.”
Iwan’s face was wrapped up tightly now. Only his eyes were showing – two tiny windows into the soul. His stare bored into the distance.
There was silence for a time. Everybody at Base Camp that day had seen atrocities. We would all keep those vivid, lurid images until the day we died.
We were now at the SPCC tent. Iwan grabbed a bit of rope from a coil that lay next to the tent, cut some off and used it to tie us together. There was about 10 metres of rope between us.
Without another word, he turned and began climbing the Icefall. Without a word, I followed, my crampons crunching in the snow and my ice axe gripped tightly in my right hand.
This was the first time I had set foot into the heart of the Khumbu Icefall. I was nervous – I’d heard so many rumours about how terrible and dire it was, how it was hell on earth, how you could hear the sound of seracs cracking and falling all around you. Here we were, climbing a route that everybody had said was impassable, and without any support…without knowing what dangers lay ahead.
The rope that the ice doctors had laid through the Icefall was usable in places, and we clipped in with our jumars. Strictly speaking, you shouldn’t use the rope to haul yourself up, but everybody does, and by now I was gasping for air. It was one step and four breaths, one step, four breaths. We hiked on upwards, sticking our crampons into the thick snow in front of us.
Because of the earthquake and avalanche, the whole thing seemed quite unstable. The rope at the side was quite slack; not much good at all. If a crevasse opened up beneath us and we fell connected to slack rope, we were going to fall quite some distance before it tightened up and arrested us – if it did at all before we hit the bottom...
Still, it felt better to be clipped on to something than nothing.
After about 20 minutes navigating the large lumps of ice and boulders, panting like mad the entire time, we arrived at the first aluminium ladder.
We were aware that there were some four sets of ladders to cross to get to an area called the “football pitch”. This area was not far from Camp 1, and was an unofficial resting place, as it was relatively flat and
open, and hence relatively – and I say ‘relatively’ in Everest terms – safe. The ladders are used to cross the crevasses. These ladders were the main reason we were told that the route was impassable – it was understood that they had all collapsed.
I was stunned; contrary to the rumour mill, the aluminium ladder – a little crooked, perhaps – continued to span the gap, along with the slack rope running next to it.
“Are you going first Iwan?”
“Tak,” he said, nodding.
I was very glad. Nothing seemed to spook this tough Polish climber, and if truth be known, I was a bit chuffed that he deemed me a suitable climbing partner.
I followed Iwan when he had successfully made it to the other side.
This was a double ladder, with the two ends overlapping by a couple of rungs and lashed together with a bit of climbing rope. There was no way I would do this at my farm and climb up it, but it was considered normal here, and there was no other way of spanning the crevasses. We just got on with it.
Moving with crampons is not easy, but walking over an aluminium ladder in crampons, with a 30-metre drop below? Bloody impossible. Luckily, my feet are of a decent size, so I was able to span two rungs with one step, with my back spikes hanging over the last rung and my front ones hanging over the front.
The ladder creaked as I crossed, the rope lashings in the middle tightening with my added 90 kilos. If it buckled, that was it; I would be sent plummeting into the abyss below, praying that the slack rope that I was clipped into would go tight before I hit the bottom.
If we both fell and the rope didn’t hold us, and we somehow managed to survive the drop, we’d be stuck at the bottom of the crevasse. No one would know where we were, and nobody would come to rescue us. We would die down there, slowly freezing to death.
I focused on each individual step, locking my crampon into the next rung ahead and trying to balance on these two very wobbly ladders.
At last, I took the final step off the ladder, on to the snow at the far side. I fell to my knees, exhausted, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. This was followed by five very quick breaths as I tried to get my breath back. I was exhausted.
Iwan patted me on the back. I dragged myself to my feet and we continued.
In places, the rope was buried under large lumps of ice, so we had to unclip, navigate the obstacle unaided, and then clip back in.
In spite of the fact that I could not get enough air in my lungs, I started to enjoy myself. I was really excited, now that Iwan and I were actually climbing Everest.
This was why I’d come to Everest in the first place. Doing Base Camp was fun, but this was the real deal – the adrenalin pumping, the sense of excitement and achievement. I’d felt a little lost at Base Camp, worried that the expedition wasn’t going to go any further. But here I was, climbing Everest – without any Sherpa support! It was a truly exhilarating feeling.
It was getting lighter by this point; we could actually see the route and a little of the view. I could just make out the white peak of Pulmori across the valley.
We came up to the second ladder. It had been set to enable us to climb a large snow step some five metres high, and it had managed to survive the earthquake intact. We clipped into the slack rope next to it and climbed it easily.
Our mood began to rise. The climb was hard, gruelling work, but it was clear that we were both in our element.
As we approached the third intact ladder, I saw them again. The footprints.
“Iwan, it’s those footprints again.”
He nodded.
“Someone has been up here – the rope has been pulled from the snow.”
That was true. Apart from the impassable parts of the route up the Icefall, the rope had been pulled out of the fresh snow. Somebody had already been up the Icefall ahead of us – but who? The ghost of a dead person? The thought made my spine tingle.
We carried on, soon arriving at a section where the ice had collapsed over the route and we had to find a way to climb up and over a huge ice boulder. This meant walking along a very small ledge on the boulder, some 10 metres above the snow below, and then scrambling up on top of it.
Iwan clipped into the slack rope and pulled it tight.
“Tak, OK!”.
He grabbed his ice axe in his right hand and started to shuffle along the ledge, stabbing the axe into the snow above his head as he went. He got to the edge of the ledge and then had to pull himself on to the top of the massive boulder.
He threw his axe hard, high above him, and then slid the jumar up and pulled hard on both. If the rope was loose above him, or if it snapped, he would have to rely completely on the ice axe or he would fall…
He pulled hard and with one very swift and professional move, he disappeared out of sight on to the top of the boulder.
“Now yu!”
Jeepers. Was this really such a good idea, and should we carry on? I was rasping on the thin air and I had extreme doubts at this point. I could feel my sphincter twitching hard, but I didn’t want to let down my Polish climbing buddy.
I clipped in and edged out on to the ledge, whacking my ice axe into the ice above me as Iwan had done. As I edged forwards, I could feel myself falling backwards.
“I’m going!” I shouted.
“Pull da vope!”
I yanked hard on it and swung back on to the ledge. I was shitting myself. I kept the rope tight and shuffled very slowly along the ledge, moving my axe 15 centimetres at a time… nearly there… nearly there… And then I was at the edge of the ledge.
Now I just had to haul myself up on to the boulder…
I pulled hard on the rope with my left hand and swung the axe into the ice above me. I was firmly pinned to the ledge, but I couldn’t move. How the hell had Iwan pulled himself up?
“I can’t move!”
“Yu can! Come!” he shouted, encouragingly.
Shit. I couldn’t let him down… I pulled really hard and moved my right foot up, digging the toe of the crampons into the ice – would it hold? I pulled hard with both hands and moved my left foot… Shit, this felt very unstable. I jabbed my foot in.
I was still there, hanging on – not 30 metres below.
I lifted my right foot again, pulled up and peered over the top of the boulder. Iwan was sitting there, with a grin like a Cheshire cat.
“Come!”
One last pull. I yanked with all my might, cleared the edge and rolled onto the snow on top of the boulder, gasping for air. Iwan laughed. The thought of having to go down this hellish boulder again on the way back was horrific.
By now, it was nearing seven o’clock in the morning. We didn’t have much time; the sun would be rising soon and we didn’t want to be hanging around in the Icefall when that happened. The warmth from the sunlight would melt and weaken the ice, causing collapses everywhere.
We carried on, arriving at the third ladder not long after. This was three buckled ladders roughly strapped together with cord, lying horizontal across a huge crevasse, with a very slack guide rope at the side.
Iwan looked for a brief second and then went. The three ladders bounced alarmingly in the middle under his lean weight. I hoped to hell they would hold mine.
Once he was across, he glanced back and nodded, and I stepped out. The ladders started to bounce. I carefully placed my crampons across two rungs at a time… one missed placement and I would be down ten metres in a second. The ladders bounced like hell as I panted madly for air and with sheer adrenalin, and the hairs prickled on the back of my neck with fear. After what seemed an eternity, I made it to the other side.
We carried on through the thick snow. We were almost there.
Soon, we reached the fourth ladder – or where the fourth ladder should have been. This area was just short of the ‘football pitch’, which is just below Camp 1.
Tent
atively, we approached the edge of the wide, deep crevasse. In the dark depths, there was a shimmer of aluminium – the ladder had fallen way down below. The guide rope lay loosely across the gaping chasm.
“Ve go down, climb up,” said Iwan. “Or ve go back.”
The sun was rising – I could see the brightness in the sky. It had taken us two hours to get this far, and it would take the same to get back.
“The sun’s coming up,” I said.
He nodded.
“We go back.”
Iwan pointed down at the mystery climber’s footprints. He then pointed to the other side of the crevasse.
“He made it.”
I was very impressed. This mysterious person had climbed down the crevasse and back up the other side. In my mind, this was it – this was the proof we needed. The Khumbu Icefall was passable; the route to Camp 1 was navigable. We could easily replace this ladder. The expedition could continue and we could reach our goal. Reaching the summit of Everest was now a realistic, achievable goal.
We turned back, aiming to beat the sunlight to the foot of the Icefall.
In my head, I thanked the mystery climber for helping us prove that it could be done.
We moved quickly back through the Icefall, racing the ever-advancing line of sunlight that crept across the valley towards the base of the Fall as the sun rose on the far side of Everest. The line of the sun coming up the valley felt like a horse racing towards us, competing to beat us to the bottom of the Icefall.
Before long, we saw the welcome sight of the blue SPCC tent, abandoned at the foot of the Icefall. I wondered if anybody would return to collect it, or whether it would have to endure a rough winter at Base Camp, if the monsoon season didn’t destroy it.
In high spirits, we walked back through the maze of seracs to the now-familiarly dishevelled Base Camp.
We headed straight for the mess tent – it was breakfast time. We were excited to tell everybody our news, and we were also very hungry. At that altitude, the body is burning a huge amount of calories just to move, and we’d really been exerting ourselves up on the Icefall. We must have burned off the equivalent of five roast dinners.
Aftershock: One Man's Quest and the Quake on Everest Page 17