by Dan Simmons
“…with fixed rope perhaps…” was all I could hear of the Deacon’s hushed reply.
“Yes, yes, that might work,” Owings concluded. “But I can’t promise a camp or cache right below that…”
The Deacon said something in low tones. He might have warned Owings to keep his voice down, since the famous poet-climber’s words were barely audible when the conversation resumed.
“…the worst part of all is almost certainly the Ice Fall…,” Owings was saying urgently.
Ice Fall? I thought. Was he talking about the near-vertical snow and ice face below the North Col at the head of the East Rongbuk Glacier? That was difficult, certainly—seven Sherpa porters had died in the avalanche there in ’22—but how could it be the “worst part” of an Everest expedition? Two expeditions had already climbed high above it, even transporting heavy loads up the ice face daily. Scores of trips. Last year Sandy Irvine had jury-rigged that rope and wood ladder to make the climb easier and safer for the porters. Even Pasang and Reggie, if she was to be believed—and I believed her—had free-climbed it, laboriously cutting steps into the ice face, and had been able to get to the North Col campsite and briefly above before bad weather pinned them down. We’d brought caving ladders and J.C.’s new 12-point crampons and his jumar doohickey to make the porters’ climb to the North Col easier and safer.
“I have the sequence,” Owings said, his voice a rasp. “White, green, then red. Make sure…keep them high, very high, and…”
This made no sense to me at all. Suddenly my boot slipped on a stone as I squatted by the stream, my bottle already full, and I heard the Deacon say, “Shhh, someone’s nearby.”
Red-faced, faking nonchalance, I capped my bottle, stood, and strolled as innocently as I could back up to the campsite, not sure if the Deacon and his famous friend could see me through the leafy branches or not.
The two moved a bit downstream, further out of sight and into a clearing where no one could crouch nearby unseen, and their intense exchange continued for another thirty minutes. Then the Deacon came back to camp alone.
“Isn’t Mr. Owings going to join us for dinner?” asked Reggie.
“No, he’s headed back this evening. Hopes to reach Darjeeling by tomorrow night,” replied the Deacon and looked sharply at me where I sat with my incriminating water bottle still in my hands. I looked down before I started blushing.
“Ree-shard,” said Jean-Claude, “you never told us that you knew K. T. Owings.”
“It never came up,” said the Deacon, taking his ease on one of the packing crates and resting his elbows on his wool-covered knees.
“I would very much have liked to meet Monsieur Owings,” continued J.C., his tone a shade accusing, I thought.
The Deacon shrugged. “Ken is a rather solitary fellow. He wanted to talk to me about something he did, and then he needed to get back.”
“Where does he live?” I managed to ask.
“In Nepal.” It was Reggie who answered. “Near Thyangboche, I believe. In the Khumbu Valley.”
“I didn’t think that white men—Englishmen—were allowed in Nepal,” I said.
“They aren’t,” said the Deacon.
“Mr. Owings went there after the War,” Reggie said. “I believe he has a Nepalese wife and several children. He’s been accepted there. He rarely crosses into India or Sikkim.”
The Deacon said nothing.
What’s the white-green-red sequence stuff all about? I wanted to ask the Deacon. Why is the ice face, or Ice Fall, as Owings called it, supposed to be the most dangerous part of the climb? Why was he talking about camping sites and caches? Has he found or left something on the north side of the mountain that the three previous English expeditions hadn’t stumbled upon?
“Did you happen to know Major Owings during the War?” asked Reggie.
“Yes, I knew him then,” said the Deacon. “And before.” He stood up and slapped his knees. “It’s getting late. Are we going to get Semchumbi busy cooking something tonight or just turn in hungry?”
Leaving the Rongbuk Monastery with many of the Sherpas grumbling about the lack of a blessing—grumbling at least until Dr. Pasang shouts them into a surly silence—the thirty-five of us trudge two miles down the valley and across the river toward the mouth of the Rongbuk Glacier until we reach the site of the three earlier expeditions’ Base Camp about an hour or so before sunset. The futile waiting at the monastery for the head lama Dzatrul Rinpoche to see us has wasted too much of our day.
I confess that I’m feeling somewhat depressed by the time we reach the Base Camp site. All three expeditions have camped at exactly this spot—within the glacier valley but shielded from the worst winds by a 40-foot-high moraine-rock ridge to the south, view open to the north whence we’ve just come, flat spots for the tents (some even free of larger rocks), and a small melt lake where the ponies, mules, and yaks we’ve traded for can drink. A glacial stream runs nearby, and although the water has to be boiled before drinking because of the nearby animal and human waste, and we prefer to melt clean snow to drink, the stream gives us water for bathing.
But there’s also filth and debris from the three previous British expeditions: tatters of torn tent canvas and broken poles; a litter of discarded oxygen tanks and frames; low rock walls that the wind has managed to tumble in places, heaps of not-yet-rusting discarded tin cans by the hundreds, some still full of rotting uneaten delicacies from last year’s expedition; and to the left of the main camping area, an obvious spot for the latrines along a line of flat stones. We’re greeted by hundreds of freeze-dried human turds lining a trench neither dug deep enough nor filled in when Norton and the others retreated from this spot.
Even more depressing, just downhill from the trashy site of Mallory’s base camp rises the tall pyramid of stones that the previous expedition raised as a memorial to those who’ve died on the mountain. The top inset boulder had been painted to read IN MEMORY OF THREE EVEREST EXPEDITIONS and below that is a boulder inscribed 1921 KELLAS in memory of the physician who died during the 1921 reconnaissance expedition that the Deacon had been part of. Below that, Mallory’s and Irvine’s names are inset there, as are the names of the seven Sherpas who died in the 1922 avalanche. The rock-pyramid memorial seems to turn the entire Base Camp area into a cemetery.
But grimmest of all somehow is the un-Matterhorn-like massif of Mount Everest itself, still some twelve miles up the windblown Rongbuk Glacier valley. We can see its western flanks and ridges glowing in the evening light during a break in the snow and near-constant cloud cover, but even at this distance, the mountain seems misshapen and far too large. Rather than a distinct mountain like Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn, Everest seems more like one infinitely huge fang along an impossible barrier of gigantic teeth. The wind spume from its summit and ridges now extends beyond the horizon to the east, streaming high above nearby Mount Kellas and the taller—and also too large, too tall, too steep, too massive, too distant—Himalayan peaks which stretch like a wall built by gods to block our path.
I can sense the Deacon’s distaste at setting up a camp here, but the Sherpas will carry no further this long day. The Deacon had always wanted to set up our first Base Camp more than three miles farther up the valley, where Camp I or Advanced Base Camp had been in the earlier efforts. But this Base Camp is already at 16,500 feet—more than 12,500 feet below Everest’s impossible summit but still high enough to leave most of us gasping with our 60-pound loads. Camp I, according to what both the Deacon and Reggie have said, is at 17,800 feet, and—while it is said to catch the most sun of any of the Everest camps—it is often much more exposed to the winds whipping down off the North Face of Everest and scouring the glacier. There’s more ice than moraine rock up there, and Dr. Pasang has pointed out that it will be harder to recover from altitude sickness with even just another 1,300 feet of altitude beneath us. Reggie’s made a good argument during the five weeks of camp evenings that we should establish the first line of tents here—so
meplace to retreat to when altitude sickness strikes—and the Deacon no longer seems interested in arguing the point. He plans to cache almost all of the high-climbing equipment at Camp II, six miles above Base Camp.
Now he dumps the heavy load he’s been carrying, pulls an almost empty rucksack from it, and says to Reggie, “Go ahead and supervise the establishment of Base Camp here, if you will, Lady Bromley-Montfort. I’m going to reconnoiter up the valley as far as Camp One.”
“That’s ridiculous,” says Reggie. “It will be dark before you get there.”
The Deacon reaches into the almost empty rucksack and pulls out one of Reggie’s leather battery-lamp headpieces. He flicks its headlamp on and then off. “We’ll see if this Welsh miner contraption works. If not, I have an old-fashioned hand torch in my rucksack.”
“You should not go alone, Ree-shard,” says Jean-Claude. “And especially not onto the glacier. The crevasses will be impossible to see in the twilight.”
“I won’t have to climb onto the glacier proper just to reach Camp One,” says the Deacon. “I have some biscuits in my jacket pocket, but would greatly appreciate it if you would keep some coffee and soup warm for me.”
He turns and disappears up the valley of gathering shadows.
Reggie calls Pasang over, and within minutes they are organizing the tired Sherpa porters, unloading the yaks and mules, and deciding which tents to erect where in this strangely sad place. Pasang directs the lifting of a large Whymper tent rainfly inside one of the crumbling sangas, or rock walls, hangs curtains on the side, and declares this the medical tent. Several Sherpas line up for consultation and treatment almost at once.
Our valley is in darkness, but Everest blazes far beyond and above us in a cold, powerful, self-contained isolation. That strikes me as terrifying.
It was our last night in Sikkim—April 2—right before we crossed over the Jelep La into Tibet, when I celebrated my 23rd birthday. I hadn’t told anyone about the date, but someone must have noticed it on my passport, because we definitely had a celebration.
I don’t even remember the name of the tiny village some 12 or 13 miles between Guatong, where we stayed that night, and the border—perhaps it had no name, it certainly had no dak bungalow—but it did have what I called a Ferris wheel and what the Deacon called “a miniature version of the Great Wheel at Blackpool” and what Reggie called “a little version of the Vienna Wheel.” The thing was crude, built out of raw lumber, and consisted of four “passenger cars” that were little more than wooden boxes one crawled into. At its high point, this “Great Wheel” couldn’t carry a person’s feet more than ten feet above the ground, and the mechanism to make it work, once I’d been coaxed into sitting in one of the boxes, consisted of Jean-Claude pulling the next car down on one side and the Deacon pushing up on the other. The contraption must have been built for the village children, but we’d seen no children on our way into the village and would see none before we left in the morning.
Then they stopped me at the nominal high point—all eight of the village huts were spread out in panorama, their rooftops just a little higher than my knees—and Reggie, the Deacon, Jean-Claude, Pasang, and several of the English-speaking porters began singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” followed by a ragged chorus of “Happy Birthday.” I confess to blushing wildly as I sat there with my wool-stockinged legs dangling.
Reggie had packed in all the makings for a seriously civilized cake, even icing and candles, and she and Jean-Claude and the cook, Semchumbi, baked it in one of the Primus and stone stoves before we all ate dinner that night. The Deacon produced two bottles of good brandy, and the four of us drank each other’s health deep into the night.
Finally, when everyone had staggered off to their sleeping bags in their own tents, I stumbled outside mine and looked up at the night sky. It was one of the few times during our days in Sikkim when it wasn’t raining.
Twenty-three years old. It seemed so much older, but no wiser, than 22 for some reason. Had Sandy Irvine been 22 or 23 when he died on Everest the year before? I couldn’t quite remember. Twenty-two, I thought. Younger than I was that night in Sikkim. The brandy fumes made me dizzy, and I rested against one of the splintery support props for the Not-So-Great Wheel as I continued looking beyond black treetops at a half-moon rising above the jungle. It was a Tuesday, and I was one day from dropping off most nations’ maps, into the high-desert wilderness of Tibet.
I thought of Reggie. Had she brought a nightgown? Or did she sleep in some combination of her clothes and underwear or in pajamas as most of us did? Or in the nude as the Deacon did, even in places where centipedes and snakes had been common?
I shook my head again to rid myself of that image of Lady Bromley-Montfort. At the very least, Reggie was a decade older than I—probably more.
So what? asked my brandy-liberated brain.
I looked at the half-moon rising—bright enough to paint the upper rain forest leaves silver and diminishing stars to invisibility in its slow climb toward the zenith—and imagined various acts of heroics I might perform during the coming trek or climb, something that would endear me to Reggie in some manner greater than, or at least different from, the mere friendship we seemed to enjoy now.
She baked me a birthday cake. She’d known the date of my birthday and carted in all that flour and sugar and canned milk—and found eggs somewhere in this village or the last—and worked with Semchumbi and J.C. over an open kitchen fire to bake it. I had no idea how that was done, but the cake had been delicious, down to its chocolate icing. And there had been a small conflagration of twenty-three small wax candles burning on it.
She baked me a birthday cake. In my calf love, I edited out J.C.’s and Semchumbi’s contribution to the cake and the Deacon’s hearty singing and back-clapping and the rare gift of the brandy. She baked me a birthday cake.
Before I started blubbering, I managed to crawl back into my tent, remove my boots, and struggle into the sleeping bag, trying to keep that single thought—She baked me a birthday cake—as my last before dreaming, but my actual last thought before falling asleep was—Now I’m 23. Will I survive to be 24?
My first morning at Everest Base Camp, I wake with a splitting headache and nausea. This is profoundly disappointing since I’ve only recently felt 100 percent after the bout of dysentery that Dr. Pasang cured more than a month earlier in Sikkim. I always thought, since I was the youngest, that I’d be the healthiest during this expedition, but it’s turning out that I’m the invalid of the group.
For a moment I can’t remember what day it is, so before crawling out of my warm sleeping bag into the terrible cold—our thermometer will show us later in the day that the high temperature will be minus nineteen degrees Fahrenheit—I check my pocket calendar. It is Wednesday, April 29, 1925. We’d fallen behind Norton and Mallory’s trekking time way back in Sikkim but made up for that with shortcuts Reggie showed us in the long trek west across Tibet to the mountain-fortress village of Shekar Dzong before turning south to the Rongbuk. We also spent only one night in villages where the previous expeditions had spent two. It was precisely one year ago that Mallory, Irvine, Norton, Odell, Geoffrey Bruce, Somervell, Bentley Beetham, and a few other high-climbers with hopes of reaching the summit had awakened to their first day in Base Camp at this very spot.
I realize that Jean-Claude is already out of his bag and stirring, and he wishes me a good morning as he lights our small Primus stove. He’s already dressed and has been out far enough from the campsite to bring back clean snow for melting for our first coffees. No Sherpas are showing up at our tent door with hot morning drinks as they had during the trek in, but presumably Semchumbi is using the largest, multiple-grill Primus to prepare our breakfasts in the large, round experimental tent which Reggie brought along and which we’ve been using for our common mess tent when a mere large tarp isn’t enough to shelter us from the increasingly harsh elements.
We are carrying three basic types of tents on this
expedition: the heavier A-shaped Whymper tents used for so many years and on previous expeditions, which we plan to pitch only at the lower camps; the lighter but sturdy Meade-pattern A-type tents for the upper camps; and this igloo-shaped experimental tent of Reggie’s. It is a prototype of a specially framed hemispherical tent made by the firm of Camp and Sports, with its outer shell double-skinned in a Jacquard material. “Reggie’s Big Tent,” as we call it, has eight curved wooden struts, each of which can be folded in the middle for easy hauling. The groundsheet is sewn in, and up here in the cold, I’ve watched Reggie and Pasang supervise the setting out of a separate and thicker groundsheet that Reggie says was made especially for her by the Hurricane Smock Company. There are two mica windows in this exceptional domed tent—of course our other tents all have only tied-up openings and no windows—and the Big Tent has rather complicated but almost windproof lace-up doors. The Big Tent also has a ventilating or stovepipe cowl that can be turned in any direction to accommodate the winds. It’s made for four or five people to sleep in—comfortably—and we can easily squeeze in eight or nine during mealtimes.
The first day Reggie and Pasang erected this igloo-tent on our trek, the Deacon sourly announced that the contraption looked like a Christmas plum pudding minus its sprig of holly.
But, as it turns out, the Big Tent will be warmer and more windproof than any of our Whymper or Meade-pattern tents. I will make a note of this during our first days at Base Camp: future expeditions should bring smaller versions of the hemispherical tent, perhaps four hinged and curved struts rather than eight, for the most dangerous camps—IV, V, and VI, even VII if such a higher camp is ever pitched—up on the mountain where tent platforms have to be hacked out of snow and ice or laboriously created by moving stones. Not only would such a round footprint be smaller on the mountain, but the howling winds today will flow over and around the Big Tent, while our A-tents are already flapping with a noise like multiple rifle shots.