Gusting wind noticeably impeded my rate of ascent above the 8,000-meter mark. The effects of the previous days’ work told on my performance. I stopped to stash my small backpack at the beginning of the steep couloir that leads to Lhotse’s summit. Into the roomy pockets of my down suit I stuffed essentials—a headlamp, a flask of water, and a thermos of tea. My heavy Nikkormat camera hung around my neck. Alone, without belay, leaning over my ice ax, I climbed the acute angle of the couloir. In the narrow neck I fixed twenty meters of 8-mm climbing rope. Down-climbing that section in darkness would be more dangerous than ascending. The rope protection would speed my descent. I emptied the flask of water, leaving it as well, thinking to spare myself the effort of carrying more weight. The snowy couloir became wider and ended with a shallow gully. A metal stake for anchoring rope protruded from the snow at the top. Climbing the last meters, I left the protection of the steep walls. The wind buffeted me, trying to rip me off the mountain. I dug my crampons into the snowy névé slope and leaned low over my ax to maintain my balance. Terrible hurricane-force gusts deviled my progress. I took the left route up the last slope and reached the summit at 5:45 P.M., slightly more than twenty-one hours after leaving Base Camp.
Through breaks in the clouds, when the wind permitted, I looked over at our route to the summit of Mount Everest. Somewhere on the rock shelf about 8,300 meters was the body of Scott Fischer. His spirit is now in the sky somewhere higher. Everest’s summit is a springboard for those who dream of rising above earthly concerns to examine their lives, expecting the height of this mountain to provide a vantage point that allows them to understand themselves better, hoping that when they descend, something will have changed inside.
There is no simple answer to what went through the minds of Scott Fischer and Rob Hall as they waited for help that never came. Perhaps they were able to understand something essential about themselves, about our drive to get to these summits. My thoughts during the last few ascents have evolved. When climbing the last meters or even stopping on the summit’s snowy ledge, my understanding of the meaning of the achievement has changed. My sense of joy in the accomplishment and my satisfaction with being on the top is overshadowed by the wonder that one could make such an effort for the transitory reasons of human vanity. It is as though, arriving at the top, something has been forgotten or lost, and without that it is impossible for me to understand why I am standing there. A great emptiness fills me, and I experience tranquillity, knowing that when I go down, the world will be easier for me.
On the Lhotse summit, gazing at the route from the South Col to the highest point on the planet, it was important for me to believe that our ascent, achieved at such enormous cost and effort, had some lasting meaning. Something should change in the lives of those who aspire to climb to the summits covered with snow and rock. A human can be transformed by the effort that it takes to breathe the atmosphere above the clouds.
The wind intensified. Loss of ambition accelerated my desire to descend into the windless space. Reasons that down below had seemed so important had evaporated. Off the summit’s rocky point, I reached the protected slope of the couloir and relaxed. Abruptly, the hurricane wind ceased; my surroundings became perfectly still. Had the wind understood that its efforts to push me into the abyss were useless? The summit of Everest was absolutely calm in the clear evening air; blameless, every reality was quieted by the advancing coldness of the darkening sky. I was amazed by the overwhelming tranquillity of that moment. My consciousness relaxed, tension left me, and exhaustion rolled over my body and through my muscles.
As I descended one of the steep sections in the couloir, my crampon slipped off its rocky support. I lost my balance and flew down the slope. With the strength in my arms and legs spent climbing up, I could not arrest my fall with my ice ax. Gaining speed, I slid fifteen meters down the incline. Some force stopped my flight. My crampons stuck solidly into the névé on a shelf no wider than my feet. Where did the strength come from that allowed me to hold my ground after the sudden stop? Below me, my trajectory dropped several hundred meters into a rocky funnel where there would have been no possibility of arresting my fall.
I felt no fear, nor did adrenaline give power to my movements. I wondered, “What kept me from dying this time?” As though every bit of strength had been used to make the stop, slowly I made a downward traverse to better footing. Absolute darkness enveloped me at the base of the couloir. I was wrung out physically as never before in my life. In the place I remembered leaving my backpack, I searched the ground, primitively coveting the bivouac sack, stove, and food it contained. Again I lost my balance, slipped off a steep, rocky shelf, and came to rest on a gentle slope of snow. As I fell, my down suit caught on a rock. The weak beam of my headlamp illuminated the finest-quality down feathers floating into the night air as I watched dispassionately. My excellent down suit! Analyzing myself carefully after the fall, I gave up looking for the pack; it might have been just a few steps away. I reached the fixed ropes at 7,600 meters and slowly continued my descent.
Sometime late in the night I arrived at Camp III. There was no wind; the sky held a blanket of enormous, bright stars. The same perfect sky had covered us one week before as we started out for the summit of Everest. My friend Michael Jörgensen, the Danish climber who had been with me on Everest in 1995, was waiting for me in the tent. I drank a cup of tea and slept.
I woke late the next day. There was no strength to follow the impulse to retrieve my backpack from above. I hardly had the power to make the short descent to shelter at Camp II, where I crawled into a sleeping bag in a sun-warmed tent, drank some tea, and slept until the next morning. My physical exhaustion caused me no concern. It was a relief that I was calm inside and that the oblivion of sleep came to me as a pleasure. The sad reality of Everest had drifted away and did not weigh on my brain and consciousness. My nerves relaxed and my heart became lighter, as if I had paid debts that had oppressed me for a long time. Physical labor had healed my suffering soul.
On May 19 I made my way down to Base Camp. No trace of the Mountain Madness expedition remained on the glacier. I borrowed a backpack from Michael and stuffed it full of my high-altitude equipment. After tea in the Himalayan Guides mess tent and reassuring friends that I was okay, about 6 P.M. I set out for the village of Namche Bazaar. Under a canopy of stars, I walked slowly down the Khumbu Valley, arriving at my destination, the Himalayan Lodge, early in the morning. Abruptly, I abandoned my cup of tea in Mingma’s kitchen when I heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter flying up the valley to Syangboche airstrip. Shouldering a heavy pack, I rushed up the hill to the airstrip. I found our team preparing to board the waiting helicopter. I felt as if I were running to catch a moving train, and that train was called Life.
Return to Civilization
AMERICA AND THE SUMMER OF 1996
The morning of May 20, 1996, the Russian-made helicopter gained altitude, leaving the village of Namche Bazaar far below. The highest mountain in the world was put behind us. Other expeditions continued their assaults. Taking advantage of a period of excellent weather, several climbers, Ed Viesturs among them, achieved success without incident. The South African climber Bruce Harod was defeated and died during his descent. For us existence on the border between and life and death was over. Charlotte Fox limped slightly, bandages covering the frostbite blisters on her toes; Tim Madsen and Lene Gammelgaard had light damage to their fingers. Klev, Martin, and Sandy looked only tired and thinner. In the ensuing days, the frostbite on my nose and fingers caused the skin to blacken and peel, but there was no threat of amputation from the minor injuries we’d sustained.
The reality of the experience could recede and be sent to the shelves of memory. Details of the stormy night were a vague dream that those who had endured, frozen and oxygen-deprived, would try to make coherent later. Pieced-together fragments of personal memory would become the facts of the total reality. At that moment we were all looking forward, absorbed with our retur
n to the real world, to the familiar world and atmosphere, which demanded no periods of acclimatization for human survival.
Civilization with its warmth and comfort was waiting for us in Kathmandu at the Yak and Yeti Hotel. Also waiting were members of the international press. It seemed the whole world knew about the tragedy on Everest, and mountaineering had become an interesting subject to the uninitiated. Reporters with television cameras met us at the airport. Lene Gammelgaard had a delegation of ten people sent from her homeland to record her return. In the face of the world’s continuing wrecks, wars, catastrophes, and disasters, if not for the tragic aspect of our expedition, our return would have generated little public interest. Destruction and death fascinate the general public, especially those ordinary people who try hard to guarantee themselves a comfortable existence. They avoid at all cost risking the loss of happiness, health, and life.
In those first days members of our team were delighted with the small pleasures of civilization: the sun shining on the blueness of the water, the luxurious green of the cozy garden at the hotel, the variety of food, the sauna. For us the world was painted in more vivid colors and nothing was taken for granted. We lived in the moment, in that brief no-man’s-land of return, not yet involved with the television, the telephone, the stress of work and small family problems. In time the hustle and bustle of everyday life would make each of us forget that ordinary life held the possibility of such intense delight.
What drives an individual to climb mountains, to attempt the unnecessary, to risk life? What compels one to habitually abandon familiar comfort for such uncertainty? How can I explain this? Who has gone far away, experiencing the pain of separation, and not known the joy of homecoming? Who has thought life was lost and not rejoiced in the opportunity for a second chance? When the sense of wonder is dulled by the petty demands of civilization, I am pulled back to the mountains and their environment of primary contrast: stars of exceptional brilliance, great white snowfields, and the indigo sky melting to black in the death zone. The grandiose mountains and the blue glaciers strip the scales from a faded life and generate the same sense of awe and wonder that the sun’s warmth, the greenness of the plants, and the blue water inspired during the first few days of our return to civilization.
Neal and I bid farewell to the other members of the expedition and stayed on in Kathmandu for two more days. On his shoulders Neal carried the brunt of responsibility for solving the numerous organizational problems that remained: settling accounts with the Sherpas for their work, completing the official paperwork with the Ministry of Tourism and HimTreks, the local agent in Nepal for Mountain Madness. I helped finish up this business as far as my limited knowledge of English would allow. I needed a visa, as on May 24 we were flying to America. I had been invited to attend Scott Fischer’s memorial in Seattle.
The only legacy of the Communist era that survives in our countries is an archaic bureaucracy. Because the ambassador was out of town, the staff at the Russian embassy were paralyzed by my request for additional pages to be officially attached to my full passport. Kindly David Schenested, the American consular officer, circumvented the problem by giving me a U.S. visa.
With the business in Nepal finished, Neal and I passed through customs and relaxed in our seats on the plane that would take us to Bangkok. After overnighting there, the next day we would fly to Los Angeles. A few minutes before our take-off time, an airline worker requested I accompany him to the exit. Neal and I gave one another puzzled looks. I joked out loud that Interpol was probably interested in my narcotics business, and I guessed my work was coming to an end. When I asked the airline official why my departure was being delayed, he said a friend wanted to see me immediately. “Friends?” I joked in a serious tone. “I do not have any friends or business partners in Nepal, everyone is already in the hands of Interpol.”
Two television reporters with a cameraman were waiting for me at the exit; they asked me insignificant questions about my samochuvstvie, my future plans, and what had been the most meaningful part of the Everest experience for me. I had never experienced such attention from the media, not even after the most successful and difficult of my ascents in the Himalayas. This kept the plane waiting for fifteen minutes. When I returned, going down the aisle, I joked that the authorities did not have enough evidence to detain me. Neal and I drank a fair amount of Stolichnaya vodka and finally relaxed. We slept the sleep of those who are exhausted throughout the long flights to America.
On five previous visits to that country, my goal had been to get to know a different culture or to climb; this time I was going to pay my respects to the memory of a great American alpinist, Scott Fischer. I had no strength. I felt empty, tired physically and psychologically. Unpleasant dreams disturbed my sleep. I was caught in nightmares of struggle at high altitude, fatigued to the brink of collapse, rescuing endless numbers of people. The dreams did not end with my arrival in America; the scenario repeated itself night after night with ever-changing players. The two weeks before the memorial I spent recovering in Lynda Wylie’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, home. My body and mind were so fatigued that I slept fifteen to twenty hours a day. Waking exhausted, I would eat, lie down, and fall back to sleep, coming to disoriented, startled by the ringing telephone. Reporters found me, even in America. The Everest story was a sensation.
On June 7 Linda and I flew to Seattle, where we stayed in the home of Jane Bromet, Scott Fischer’s publicist. Before the memorial we were occupied trying to correct transcripts of a telephone interview with a reporter from Men’s Journal, a popular American magazine. There was great interest in the Everest event both by professional mountaineers and those who are far from our world. I tried to answer the questions posed by interviewers and my friends. Should I have avoided those conversations? For those who were truly interested in high-altitude mountaineering, it was important to know the facts of what had happened. For myself I needed to understand the reasons for the critical situation I had endured. I had no reason to keep silent and understood perfectly well the importance of the information I possessed. Previous experience climbing above eight thousand meters made my perspective different, but retelling the incident intensified my dreams and increased my psychological fatigue.
At the memorial service in Seattle, I met Scott Fischer’s family and friends. They were kind to me and I appreciated their words of gratitude for my efforts. His parents, sisters, and wife carried the heavy weight of suffering. There were familiar faces: most of our Mountain Madness team attended, and I met Henry Todd, who had flown in from Anchorage to attend the memorial. Moved by that outpouring of respect for Scott Fischer’s mountaineering life, I felt the springs of inspiration winding up inside me, momentarily creating a mental readiness to struggle for a higher level of achievement.
Though the life has gone from Scott Fischer’s body, in some ways he will always live: his ideas and his energy continue to exist in the common whirlpool of events. The American school of climbing will go in its own direction. Without doubt Scott Fischer made contributions to its development, both in his work as a guide and in his first American ascent of Lhotse. In a few years it may come to pass that only his close friends and family will remember him, but I hope that those good qualities he exemplified, those characteristics that surrounded him like a halo, are retained in the development of American mountaineering.
Scott was a strong man, able to keep all negative emotions deep inside him. In his relations with others and with the mountains, he was always more a romantic than a businessman. Providing guided adventure, he opened new worlds to others. In the short time we worked together on Everest, his ideas and way of thinking, that benevolence and strong spirit, gave a new impetus to my development as a mountaineer and as a person. His love of life and magnanimous nature awoke something in me. I want to preserve those feelings. I hope in the most difficult times, Scott Fischer will be my partner and that he will influence my way of thinking. I felt him with me during the storm while I was rescui
ng our clients. He was there as well on Lhotse, when I climbed in his memory. Looking back, I think that some unexplainable strength helped to accomplish that ascent, strength somehow linked to Scott Fischer and the power of his spirit.
I hope that our season on Everest has a positive influence on the psychology of those who entertain the idea of climbing that mountain. For strong people, it is a worthy task and an extreme test of the human spirit. Those who want to climb must not only be ready to pay with money; they must be physically and morally prepared for the ordeal of high altitude. Only in this way can they avoid the price of a higher penalty: their own lives or the lives of their guides. Each member of our team paid in full for the lessons he or she learned about preparation and experience. Somewhere we stepped over the permissible limit. It is easy to do this relying on bottled oxygen and the strength of others. Of course, if there had not been a storm, then everything would have been different. But random acts of nature conform to unidentifiable rules that we do not yet understand.
In Seattle there was no opportunity to sleep the fifteen to twenty hours a day that I was resting in Santa Fe. My energy and inspiration did not last; again my internal disequilibrium reached a critical level. I did not have the emotional strength to be with people day after day. I have a lot of friends in this country, and usually I am happy to see them; but this time I did not feel like meeting them. I flew to San Francisco, my body and muscles still unbelievably fatigued. I had only enough strength to write my thoughts, committing this story to paper, and to run in the hills with my friend Jack Robbins. Meanwhile, the dreams continued. I would awaken weak, possessed with ravenous hunger. I was devastated inside and indifferent to life. I traveled to Boulder and then back to Santa Fe. Thank God the dreams finally ended.
Friends called from all over the world asking about getting together or wanting to know my climbing plans for the coming year. This attention was comforting, but I was in no hurry to answer. I responded uncertainly to invitations to K2 and Everest. Aware of my fatigue and my slow recovery, I turned down an opportunity to take part in a Gasherbrum expedition with Dan Mazur. Answering questions and analyzing the situation, I arrived at several conclusions. I knew I wanted to return to the Himalayas and do something in a sports style. It would be difficult no doubt, but that prospect did not frighten me.
Above the Clouds Page 20