“Those two are moving too slowly as well,” Al commented after they had passed. “Chances are they’re going to die.”
Seen in the context of the prevailing conditions there was not the slightest reason to think he might be right. I dismissed his chilling comment as a throwaway line. For the moment my attention was focused on our own situation and the devastating news that Brian’s third Everest attempt was effectively over before it had begun.
“So that decision is final, then? This is it?”
Barney looked to Al for confirmation. “Yeah. We’d best go back.”
“In that case we’ll have to film a conversation between you where you give us the reasons for the decision.”
Kees brought out the camera and filmed as I interviewed Brian, Barney, and Al. Brian was still talking about trying again the next day but I don’t think even he really believed it, because in the same breath he proposed another plan:
“Let Al take over. I’ll give him my prayer scarf to put on the summit, keep my promise to the Dalai Lama.”
We packed the camera away and prepared in silence for the climb down. The atmosphere was extremely tense; it was only by a narrow margin that the confrontation hadn’t become an all-out row.
Before we started the descent, I took one last look up the slope toward the two ascending climbers who would be the only people left on the Ridge once we were gone. They were stationary, bent over their ice axes against the force of the wind, about two hundred meters (656 feet) above us. Far beyond them, the tents of Camp Five were beckoning; they would be there within a couple of hours, I thought, envying their luck.
Then we turned away from the North Face above us and began the retreat to the Col. Al and I moved in front with Kees moving a little slower and Barney assisting Brian at the back.
My mind was in shock, numbed with a combination of anger and frustration. In thirty minutes flat, five months of training, planning, and climbing had been brought to an ignominious end that had come out of nowhere. All the momentum had resulted in nothing; phenomenal levels of motivation and belief in the project were what had fueled us this far, and now they were revealed as a complete waste of time.
What now? How to salvage a film from the wreckage? My mind was busy running through the options as we continued down to the Col. By rights we should now all descend, leaving the way clear for the second team to come up behind us for their attempt. If any of us chose to continue the climb, we would be overlapping with Simon and company, and thereby reducing their chances. At least that was what my oxygen-depleted brain was telling me.
In fact, as I realized after reaching the Col, that logic was adrift. The B Team wasn’t coming up to the Col tonight; they were due up the next day, leaving the possibility that some members of our team could still make a dash for the summit and—as long as we could clear out of Camp Six quickly on the way back—have no adverse affect on the others.
The possibility of turning my anger into something more useful was beginning to evolve. If I could channel this frustration, convert it into a positive rather than a negative force, then perhaps the situation would improve.
Twenty minutes of “anger control” later I had a question for Al.
“How do you feel about the two of us going for the summit?”
Al took his time taking off his snow gaiters while he considered it. If a flicker of doubt crossed his mind, he was kind enough not to reveal it.
“All right. But what about the film?”
“We can shift the focus of the film onto you. We’ve already got quite a lot of good interview and diary stuff with you, and Brian can give you his Dalai Lama scarf to put on the summit pole like he said.”
“We’ll have to check it out with Simon. How do you feel about going back up the Ridge after today?”
I knew what Al was questioning. Effectively we had blown an entire day’s energy on our abortive journey up the Ridge, energy that might be needed farther down the line.
“I reckon we’ll be all right if we get an early start.”
By the time Barney and Brian got back down to the Col, Brian was completely drained. His energy reserves were depleted to the point where he could barely make it back up the small rise into the camp. I realized with a sense of shame that Barney and Al had been right about Brian’s condition; he had looked strong on the Ridge but was actually weakening faster than he seemed. Looking at him now, as we filmed him collapsing onto the ground beside the tents, I was filled with remorse; nothing—not even my precious film—was worth pushing Brian into danger for. Barney and Al were perfectly right to pull Brian out of the climb when they did.
When Barney handed Brian a drink bottle, he barely had the strength to lift it to his lips. But he did have the ability to utter a few words once the camera was running.
“I haven’t got the strength to go back up. Al, you take over for me.” Then he collapsed in a coughing fit by the tent, looking dazed and shattered.
Later, we radioed down to Advance Base Camp and reported the day’s events to Simon. He was as laid-back as ever and didn’t sound at all surprised to hear that Brian’s attempt was off. Barney gave me the radio to put forth my proposal.
“Al and I want to carry on and try and film as high as we can. Is that OK?”
I could feel my pulse thudding in my temple during the slight pause.
“Yeah. I’ve got no problem with that. What about Kees?”
“He’s going down to shoot at Base Camp with Brian.”
“All right. Good luck. Give us a radio call from Five tomorrow night.”
Still stunned by the speed at which events had developed, I went back to the tent where Kees was brewing tea. The entire shape of the expedition had changed in just a few hours. Al—not Brian—was now the motivating personality we would follow in the film to the highest slopes of Everest. I was extremely thankful that we had taken the opportunity of filming Al at earlier points in the previous weeks. If we had had no material featuring him, then his late entrance into the film would have been extremely confusing for the viewer. Luckily too, Al’s blunt, practical personality came over strongly on camera.
But there were still important questions about the extra shots and sequences we would need to cover Al’s ascent properly. Not least of these was how Al would be filmed on the summit. I filed that question away under “to be resolved” in my mind, and took the earliest opportunity to sleep.
— 9 —
We crammed into Brian’s tent the next morning and filmed him handing his scarf to Al. The symbolism of the hand-over was more than just a token gesture. Brian had made a promise to the Dalai Lama at an audience he had had with the great man in his Daramsala headquarters that he would endeavor to place the scarf on the summit pole. He had failed twice to carry out the pledge. Perhaps the scarf would reach the top on this third try.
“Say a prayer for world peace,” Brian told Al, grandly. “Om mani padme hum, hail the jewel in the lotus!”
One hour later we said our good-byes. Kees took one of the cameras down with him to film Brian’s descent, and to shoot any radio conversations at Base Camp. Al and I packed our rucksacks and clipped onto the fixed ropes to set out again up the North Ridge.
The wind was stronger than it had been the previous day, gusting more powerfully across the Face. Nevertheless, we moved consistently, plodding up the incline without the long, dangerously slow pauses that had characterized the previous day’s climb. Mentally I was far better prepared for the Ridge; the need for speed was now firmly planted in my mind, and I concentrated on finding a rhythm that could be sustained without exhausting my legs.
Al forged ahead in silence, moving as strongly as ever, and pausing only to make tiny adjustments to his headgear and wind suit to keep the worst of the wind off his face.
This time I abandoned the technique of counting out the steps between each breath, it was too demoralizing when the numbers began to fall. Instead, I fixed my eyes on landmarks on the Ridge—prominent ro
cks, or the bright orange splash of oxygen cylinders, and set myself time limits to reach them.
All the complacency of the previous day was gone, I was hypersensitive to the fact that my performance today and tomorrow would be watched like a hawk by Al. Just as Brian had been, effectively, turned back, so could I be, if Al saw any weakness on my part. He knew how little high-altitude experience I had, and it was not in his interest or mine to pretend I was up for a summit attempt if it was going to lead me into trouble. His instincts as a guide would never let that happen.
Surprisingly, my mind felt a lot sharper than the day before. Perhaps the height gain we had made was not a waste after all. Although we had expended a significant sum of energy on what was apparently a wasted day, the extra acclimatization we had forced on our bodies now felt like a bonus as we rose toward 7,500 meters (24,606 feet) without oxygen for the second time.
“Climb high, sleep low” is the often quoted maxim, and that was what we had done.
It took us just three hours of almost continuous climbing to reach the high point where Brian had turned back; less than half the time it had taken us the day before.
Then the wind really began to pick up force, pelting us with pebbles of dark rock and chunks of ice. It was fortunate it came at us from the western side, for if it had been a headwind, it could have stopped us in our tracks. During the stronger blasts it was completely impossible to continue moving; the force was strong enough to blow us off our feet. We bent down low against the Ridge, all crampon points firmly entrenched into the ice for stability.
I noticed that Al had clipped himself onto the fixed rope, something he had done only rarely during the past weeks of the expedition. He realized, like I did, that the wind was vicious enough to blow us off the Ridge without the security of the lifeline.
Our speed diminished dramatically and it took us another hour and a half to make it to the top of the snow section. We could have done with some shelter for a rest but there was none. The North Face does not offer natural sanctuaries from the wind. Instead, we sat in the full thrust of the jet stream as we rested, barely able to shout at each other above the noise.
Five minutes there was all we could stand, and at that point our feet and hands were already turning numb. We started up through the rocks, following the wind-worn ropes, which, from the look of them, had been there for years.
Mentally, I was expecting Camp Five to loom up pretty quickly but the foreshortening effect of looking directly up the line of the Ridge had made the tents seem significantly nearer than they actually were. Barney and Al had been right again, Camp Five was definitely not an easy walk from the top of the snow.
In fact, the terrain was tiring, with frequent big steps up and loose rocks underfoot. Finding any regular rhythm was out of the question. The fixed ropes were a liability, snagging our crampon spikes and often complicating the route-finding. Many of them had been laid when the Ridge was still under snow, and now that it was gone, the ropes were flapping loosely in the wind, with their snow anchors banging uselessly on the rocks.
During one of our frequent stops, I watched a jet-black bird, a chuff, using the updraft of the wind current to gain height. These carrion eaters are attracted to the higher slopes for just one reason: the rich pickings left behind by climbers at abandoned campsites. As winter comes to an end, leftover food supplies, and human bodies, are exposed as their snow cover melts.
Spring is a good time in the Himalayas if you are a scavenger with wings.
I found it amazing that such a tiny creature could fight an upward track through winds that had threatened to blow us off our feet; and even more amazing that its lungs could draw enough oxygen to survive at an altitude above 7,500 meters (24,606 feet). I wondered what their altitude limit was, and if one had ever flown at the summit.
With its wings shifting and realigning to adjust to every new gust of wind, the acrobatic bird was gaining height incredibly rapidly. It had probably matched our seven-hour climb in as many minutes. Full of admiration, I watched it continue for some moments until it passed out of view among the rocks above.
Intent on keeping upright amid the jumble of rocks, I had failed to notice the bank of cloud that had swept up behind us. Now it enveloped us completely, reducing visibility to less than ten meters (thirty-two feet). The figure of Al periodically disappeared in and out of the gloom, but I preferred the cloud to the wind, which had now thankfully died down a little.
Inside the cloud, sound took on a completely different quality. The harsh, metallic clinks of metal against rock became muffled and deadened and, for the first time since leaving the North Col, I realized I could hear myself breathing. The sense of location, of elevation high in the Himalayas, was also completely lost now that we were deprived of any visual reference beyond our immediate surroundings. Apart from the incredible thinness of the air and the discarded oxygen cylinders that were scattered along the route, we could have been on a high ridge in the Alps.
“First tents!” Al’s voice yelled at me out of the gloom.
Camp Five was not what I had expected. In my mind I had imagined it as a flat area on the Ridge with space for ten or fifteen tents. In fact it is not a camp at all in the way that ABC and the North Col are, but is best described as a string of cleared platforms stretching for a quarter mile or more up the North Ridge. The more palatial platforms can take four or five tents at most; the majority offer very marginal space for one or two. There is virtually no shelter against the wind.
Since we had no idea exactly where the three Himalayan Kingdoms tents were positioned, the only way to find them was to continue climbing up the Ridge until we stumbled upon them.
I was unprepared for how long this took, and soon found my body was simply not responding. Mentally I had assumed that reaching Camp Five would mean we would be able to rest. Now, like the army private who finds his checkpoint cruelly moving away from him at the end of a forced training march, my mind was bubbling with irrational anger at all this extra work we were having to do. I told myself it could only be another five minutes. Then another half hour. But an hour later we were still beating a painfully slow path up the Ridge.
Each time we saw tents above, my legs found new strength: surely this is our camp? Isn’t it? And each time we realized it wasn’t, my morale took a further dive. I began taking frequent stops, slumped on my side and staring out into the gloom. All motivation soaked away as I began to doubt we would ever find our tents. Forcing myself to stand up and keep climbing was getting to be a problem.
Al—who was in better condition—waited for me, passing the time with his favorite hobby, sifting through the debris of old tent sites.
“Looks like the Japs were here,” he muttered, showing me some noodle sauce packaged in a foil pouch.
I grunted a monosyllabic reply but my attention was wandering. An altitude weevil in my head was whispering again, What’s the point in finding Camp Five? Who cares about it? Why are you putting yourself through all this pain? There’s plenty of tents around—sleep in one of them instead.
The cloud was clearing, giving us dramatic glimpses of the glacier below. Then Changtse was revealed, and beneath it, the North Col. I could just make out the miniscule specks of our camp, where the B Team would now be resting, just one day behind us.
When we climbed up the next small rise, we found the three tents. Unknowingly, we had rested for ten or fifteen minutes just a few meters away. Hearing the noise, Mingma’s head popped out.
“Here!”
We sat in front of the Sherpas’ tent and drank some hot tea from Lhakpa’s thermos. They had spent the last two days waiting for us here, and were as relieved as we were that we had arrived. They had been sleeping on oxygen, which had helped, but they were nevertheless bored, and obviously keen to escape from Five.
“Bhaje go back?” Lhakpa used the Sherpa nickname for Brian.
“Yeah. Bhaje knackered,” Al replied.
“And the rest?”
“Simon’s coming up tomorrow with Roger, Tore, and Sundeep.”
“OK. We go to Six tomorrow?”
“Yeah. What do you think of the weather?”
With the professional eye of someone who has spent his life with fickle Himalayan weather, Lhakpa looked out of the tent toward the summit. “Maybe too much wind.”
I was gradually recovering as the tea worked its magic. While Al and the Sherpas talked through details for the following day’s climb, I began to notice the squalor our tents were pitched amid.
The platform was littered with the shredded remains of abandoned tents, with strips of fabric blowing in the wind. Pieces of rope, half-buried foil packets of food, and remnants of clothing were embedded in almost every inch of ice. Sharp metal snow stakes were sticking out at crazy angles, attached to lines that went nowhere. Large areas of ice were stained yellow from urine, and frozen feces were abundantly scattered around.
This mess had obviously been accumulating year after year, as expeditions abandoned their gear, or had it destroyed in storms. It was a depressing location, soiled and spiritless; I was already looking forward to getting out of Camp Five and we had only just arrived.
A more welcome sight was the pile of oxygen cylinders next to the Sherpa tent, stacked up on a platform that had been cut into the ice. Their presence here represented a huge amount of load-carrying, and was another sign of the utter professionalism of our Sherpa team.
In the tent, we arranged our mats and sleeping bags, and then dragged in a couple of oxygen cylinders. I screwed on my regulator, set the valve to one and a half liters, and put on the mask. It was the first time I had ever used supplementary oxygen, other than taking one or two puffs down at Base Camp to test the valve.
Here at 7,600 meters (24,934 feet), the effect of the trickle of pure oxygen was immediately noticeable. Within three or four minutes my head was clearing of the throbbing headache that had been nagging all day. Within ten minutes, the ever-present feeling of slight nausea was also gone, and within fifteen minutes I was laughing out loud with the sheer joy of breathing oxygen-rich air. Whatever a medic might say, I could swear I could actually feel the oxygen coursing through my blood supply, bringing warmth to frozen fingers and toes.
The Other Side of Everest Page 20