They were seventeen climbers and six tons of food and equipment, and it took a minibus followed by a caravan of bulbous fendered Chinese flatbeds to move them across the Tibetan Plateau. In places the road crossed rocky streambeds and they had to get out and help push the trucks through. On the fourth day, they crossed a pass and had their first close look at the mountain they had traveled half the world to climb.
Even at thirty miles the great summit dominated the skyline; on this north side the sweep of its pyramid was unobstructed, rising white and black, snow and rock. From the top the emblematic plume boiled to leeward a mile or more, like a banner off the lance of a royal knight: it marked the great altitude where the summit punctured the jet stream.
The climbers yelled to the truck driver to stop. They stared at the mountain in silence. It was a couple of minutes before anyone spoke.
“The Great Couloir looks straightforward but it might be a tricky exit.”
“I bet we can get it with five camps. Top one about twenty-six five, then go for it.”
“Long summit day, though.”
“It's going to be tough, oxygen or no oxygen.”
Tough, but exciting. The adrenaline charge from that first view lasted until about nine in the evening two days later when they finally lumbered into base camp, the trucks wheezing in the thin air. If the trucks were feeling the altitude, the climbers were faring better, having benefitted from the days in Lhasa and then the overland drive, all at more than 12,000 feet. They quickly pitched tents, and settled in for a good night's sleep.
There was another team sharing the base camp site, a small but powerful four-man British group lead by the indomitable Chris Bonington. They proposed to climb the unscaled northeast ridge of Everest, and would be hiking upglacier with the North Wall team to a point where they would then diverge on a subsidiary glacier leading to their route. Bonington was England's best-known mountaineer and the veteran of at least eight Himalayan expeditions. He had been the leader of two previous Everest climbs, the last of which, in 1975, made the first ascent of the mountain's formidable southwest face. He had never personally reached the top, however, and he was hopeful this time he would make it.
The two teams spent the next day swapping stories while they worked around camp. The Americans had to sort gear and divide loads for yaks to carry to advanced base camp, to be located about eight miles up glacier, at a site just under 19,000 feet elevation.
Yaks, the shaggy-haired oxen of Tibet and Central Asia—once described by a climber as the Mack Truck of the Himalaya—are temperamental but strong, able to carry 120 pounds on rocky, icy trails between 12,000 and 22,000 feet. In fact, they seem to perform better the higher they go; if a yak is taken to lower elevations it becomes sickly. Word went out that the climbers would need dozens of these beasts to carry loads up the margin of the Rongbuk Glacier, and soon the animals and their nomadic owners arrived.
For much of the distance the team hiked alongside a long chain of ice towers up to a hundred feet high, a fairybook icescape caused by diurnal freezing and melting. Even though the route gained little elevation, 8 miles at over 17,000 feet was still a bone-wearying long way, and for Frank and Dick the campsite came none too soon. Despite the available yak transport, both Frank and Dick had chosen, as had everyone else on the team, to carry heavy packs, to help them get in shape. This set the pattern for the next three weeks. While the lead climbers shared the job of scouting the best route from advanced base another 5 miles upglacier to camp 1, and then from there to the site of camp 2, at the foot of the great North Wall at 20,300 feet, everyone else including Frank and Dick shared the tiresome task of ferrying from one camp to the next the several tons of food and equipment.
Frank noticed this load-carrying was done with a tacit but barely concealed competition, and that an individual's performance—or lack of it—did not escape unnoticed. Thus, when Jim Wickwire, struggling with a heavy pack, was slowly approaching advanced base camp and Lou got up to walk down the route and help him with part of his load, another team member stopped him: “Everyone has to carry their own weight around here.” Thus Lou Whittaker, transporting equipment from camp 1 to 2, pulled two sleds instead of the normal one and was careful upon arriving in camp to leave them fully loaded and on display in the circle of tents. Without experience to compare, Frank assumed this was part of the stamina-building strategy necessary to climb high-altitude peaks (he would later learn that it had more to do with the inherent competitiveness of a team of professional guides who had among them a hierarchy of rank and skill). Without fully realizing it, Frank little by little became determined to prove his mettle. He told himself that while he might not have the stuff that would get him to the top, he would show everyone he could carry heavy loads between the lower camps, day after day.
For two weeks he did just that, carrying thirty to forty pounds a day, usually from camp 1 to 2. Meanwhile the lead climbers fixed ropes toward the Great Couloir.
Dick also was working hard carrying loads but edged ahead of Frank delivering food, equipment, and oxygen tanks first to camp 2 and then to 3. Dick found each day he was a notch stronger, and as he acclimatized he increased his payload to equal what the lead climbers were hauling, sometimes more than fifty pounds. At this rate he judged he might have a shot at the top, especially if the lead climbers fixed ropes most of the way. Maybe it would even work out that he could team with Marty as they had planned at Snowbird, but he didn't want to build any unrealistic expectations.
While Dick gained strength, Frank found each day he was weakening. After three weeks he had lost nearly twenty pounds and had a cough he couldn't kick. But determined as ever, he took only one rest day a week. Those were days to be cherished, days when you slept in, then with great laziness washed your clothes, perhaps yourself, and, unless you took a nap, read a book or wrote a letter home.
The mail service on Everest, if you could call it that, had disappointed everyone; up to then, Frank was the only one who had received a letter, and at least it had contained good news from his former colleagues at Warner Bros. They had won the best picture Oscar for Chariots of Fire.
Even though he didn't receive much mail (they found out later it had by mistake been held up) that didn't discourage Frank from writing home. Twenty-eight days after reaching base camp, Frank wrote to his family a progress report:
20 April
Dear Family,
There are eight of us here at base camp on “R&R.” No one is at camp 1 at the moment, but five are in camp 2, carrying each day to camp 3 where three are staying and trying, despite our first bad weather, to finish locating camp 4 at 23,700 feet. The ropes to camp 4 have already been fixed up a 45-degree slope, and now platforms for the tents have to be built in the snow. Each day decisions are made over the radio as to who should be in what camp and what supplies should be carried to the next higher camps, and things are in a constant change depending on the physical condition of each of the sixteen climbers, and the weather.
The next step is to locate camp 5 at the edge of the Great Couloir, then camp 6 at the top of the Couloir, about 26,500 or 27,000 feet. That will be the last stopping (sleeping point) before the summit. We plan to begin using bottled oxygen above camp 6. This is a good deal higher than most expeditions start using it, but there have been three people who have summitted without using oxygen at all, and some of our young bucks may have a go at trying it this way as well.
It is also significant that our expedition, unlike all but one previous Everest attempt, is using no Sherpas or porters (they're only available on the Nepal side). Since the yaks left our gear here at base camp, we have been on our own, and so far we're pleased with our progress.
Now here are a few other things you may find interestig. First, despite my fairly intense training for eight months, I am not even close to the physical condition of the others, particularly the ten “hotshots” (my term) who as professional climbing guides have taken clients up Mount Rainier anywhere between 100
and 200 times each. You can't imagine what it's like “humping” thirty-five pounds from camp 1 to 2, moving as well as you can (but still slow, still breathing very hard) and to have someone like Marty Hoey come blazing past you whistling, yes whistling, some tune!
Second, I simply lack the technical climbing knowledge these people have. I’m not the one who rigs the fixed ropes to ice screws; I’m not the one who picks the routes and campsites. This was understood at the outset, and I decided from the start it would be best to give my all to humping loads of equipment between the lower camps. So during the first seventeen days of the climb, I carried fifteen loads between base camp, camp 1, and camp 2. I was urged to take a few days off, but I felt strongly I had to do more carries than anyone to make up for my deficiencies.
Well, all this came to a crashing halt a few days ago when our team doctor, Ed Hixson, sleeping in the next tent, heard my coughing all night and next day gave me a physical. I’d lost thirty pounds. That was no mystery, really, as it's common to lose weight at high altitude. You really need to eat 6,000 calories a day just to hold even, but it's hard when the food isn't great, when you don't feel like eating—because of the altitude—and when it's easy to skip lunch when you're in the middle of a carry. So I am weak from the weight loss, but my cough may also be beginning pneumonia. As a result, Hixson said, “No more carrying for now, down to base camp, lots of food, pills for the coughing, and I’ll tell you when you can start carrying again.”
I guess I have to be honest and say it's a relief. Lou himself is here in advanced base for a rest, and he has told me I have already done so much more than anyone expected from a fifty-year-old novice. You have no idea how important these words were to me—said before half the team. I know, though, I have simply no chance of being one of those who reach the top. But if I leave feeling I have done my share of the work, and the team is successful, I will be completely fulfilled.
So for the next month I will first repair myself, then begin again with fairly light carries. Then maybe in a couple of weeks or so, just maybe, on a nice clear day, I can go to camp 3, and from there—this is all speculation, as I doubt I’ll make it—maybe camp 4. But I do assure you, one and all, that the route, with fixed ropes laid, is totally safe.
So sometime around late May or early June, I’ll be home. My God, you do get homesick, too, for so many, many things you haven't even thought about for so long. So I’ll be home, maybe not much wiser, certainly a bit lighter, and probably a touch more content.
Much love to you all,
Frank
Dick Bass rested his forearms on his knees to relieve the weight of his pack; he didn't have to bend far since the snow slope was steep. The jumar clamp he used to ascend the fixed rope was cammed firmly onto the line, and attached by a nylon webbing sling to his waist harness so he was secure in case he should slip. Looking up he could see, a few hundred feet beyond, the tents at camp 4. There was a climber leaving camp, beginning to rappel down the line; that would have to be somebody off the lead team who had been working to establish camp 5, probably coming down for a rest at a lower camp. Dick could see they would cross on the rope in a few minutes.
With his ice axe Dick cut a small platform in the snow and then unshouldered his forty-pound pack and balanced it on the level, connecting with a carabiner to his jumar so it wouldn't take off if he happened to bump it. With the pack's shoulder straps off he breathed freely and leaned on his knee against the steep slope to enjoy a well-earned rest.
As it had for Frank (until his illness, anyway), this expedition for Dick distilled down to a daily exercise of carrying loads at ever-increasing altitudes. He didn't begrudge the duty, for he knew that all the while he was learning—learning to handle the steep route, learning to pace himself, learning how his body reacted to high altitude. On that last point he was especially pleased; it seemed he was physically gifted for this sort of thing, and he was feeling stronger each day despite the altitude of almost 24,000 feet.
Still, he knew there was little chance he would reach the top. First, the expedition was struggling to get to camp 5, and above that, camp 6. The climbing was tough, and without any porters or Sherpas to help carry loads much of the expedition's strength was expended on that job. Dick was realizing that each pound of food or equipment that was ultimately delivered to the high camp represented considerable toil: it was a pound that had gone from one camp to the next, carried by climbers who were also burning the stove fuel and eating the food to get the energy to carry more food and fuel. Then when he considered the effort that would be required once they started breathing oxygen, above camp 6, out of cylinders that weighed seventeen pounds each, that had also been carried up one camp to the next, each camp a day's climb apart, the full scope of the task really sank in. It was easy to see how they had been working for thirty-five days and still had a long way to go.
So Dick was quite certain that when the time came there would be available provisions only for a few of the strongest climbers to attempt the top, and it was obvious that such a formula would exclude him, as it should. Even without a climb to the summit it was all marvelously worthwhile, not only because of the knowledge and experience that would be invaluable when he and Frank returned again to Everest as part of their Seven Summits dream (although they still had no idea exactly how they would do that), but also because of the unusual adventure, because of moments like this. Moments when you had a short rest from hard work, work that freed you instead of shackling you, good physical work that was half the world away from the bankers telling you what you could or couldn't do. Work that seemed to clear your brain of the fog that down below often muddled how you saw things. Up here the view was sharp-edged and crystal. Up here you sat on a perch like an eagle in an aerie, gazing over a domain of ice and rock. Over the Rongbuk Glacier, that frozen river moving inexorably toward the Tibetan Plateau, ice overlaying desert. Over the immense North Wall, that 10,000 vertical feet of rock and ice.
Dick looked up. That figure he had seen earlier coming out of camp 5 had now grown to a recognizable human with shining black hair emerging from a freshly laundered babushka.
“Mrty, it's great to see you.”
“Hi, Bass.”
Dick hadn't seen Marty for over a week. She had been working to put in the high camp while he was hauling loads at mid-elevations. It was curious how on the climb you often went two weeks or more without seeing some of your companions; Dick hadn't seen Frank, for example, since he had contracted pneumonia two weeks ago. But he knew Frank was better and starting to carry again, and would probably be up to this level soon.
“Bass, I’ve been getting reports about how you've been carrying all these heavy loads. I’m proud of you.”
Dick swelled up like a male grouse on display. “Marty, you don't know how much your compliment means to me.”
“I’d have to be blind to miss that. You haven't forgotten about our deal have you? We're still going to the top, you know, me and you.”
“Marty, I don't know. I think when the moment of truth comes there may only be room for a few selects on the summit teams and you'd have a lot better chance with someone more experienced.”
“No way. Deal's a deal.”
“We'll see when the time comes, but whatever God wills I want you to know I appreciate your still wanting to take me.”
“How's everyone else? Seen Lou?”
“We came up to three together yesterday. Paid me a heck of a compliment, said I handled the rope better than anyone he'd been tied to this trip. But then that's because I had a good teacher.”
Marty smiled. Dick continued. “Then we tented together, and his appreciation waned when I started to recite poetry. He kind of rolled over and cold-backed me. Guess he didn't want a large-mouthed Bass laying a poem on him at 23,000 feet.”
“His problem. What poem?”
“Well, I’ve put Lasca to memory.”
“Lasca! Bass, you know that's my favorite, well, one of my favorites. I’ve go
t the Xerox of “Evolution” you gave me in my pack. Boy, Lasca is a lot to memorize. I don't see how you did it.”
“Unless you can sleep fourteen hours a day there's a lot of time lying awake in your sleeping bag.”
“Think you could recite it now?”
“Thought you'd never ask.”
Although there was no audience on the climb he would have preferred to Marty, he also knew how much she loved the poem so he made a silent prayer he didn't screw up. He recited it, though, without missing a word of the poignant story told by a cowboy of his half-breed woman who gave her life to save him in a cattle stampede.
Marty was thrilled.
“Dick, do those last lines again.”
Dick recited the last lines over:
“And I wonder why I do not care
For the things that are like the things that were.
Does half my heart lie buried there
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.”
Marty pursed her lips and fought back a tear. “Thanks Dick. That was great.”
She turned and continued down the rope, and Dick noticed she was wearing those lapis earrings, and they matched her blue babushka.
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