by Sharon Wood
My gaze is pulled to the plume of airborne snow seething over the summit and spilling down the North Face, which makes my stomach lurch as if in sudden free fall. Everything is telling me to turn back, including Jim’s voice that whispers, Treat it like any other mountain, treat it like any other mountain. Dreading worse to come, in my mind I am already up there, days ahead and hundreds of metres higher, inside that maelstrom.
I watch Kevin below as he leans into the wind and still it lifts him and slams him against the face. He struggles to his feet only to get blown over again. His battle mirrors ours. It is the worst day yet, and I am sure we will turn around soon. If we do, it will be over for Dwayne and me, and our retreat will put a serious dent in the team’s resolve. I wonder too why Kevin has volunteered to support Dwayne and me. We haven’t climbed a single day together on this expedition. Once one of the strongest, Kevin is now the weakest among us today. The cost of that last push with Albi had finished him. So why is he here now? He seems angry, or is it fed up? I read it as resentment for my having taken Barry’s place in the order of summit bids. Or am I just losing my mind, thinking this way? Are his motives simply noble?
When Kevin finally arrives, instead of joining us out of the wind, he stops a couple of steps downhill. He plants his feet wide to brace himself and then looks at me and yells over the wind, “Well, what are we waiting for?”
“Jim told us to treat this like any other mountain,” I shout. “I wouldn’t be out here in these conditions if this was any other mountain.”
Kevin yells, “To hell this is like any other mountain. This is fucking Mount Everest! I didn’t spend all this time working my ass off to come this far and turn around. Look at me, I’m the worst of the lot of you and I’m goin’ on!” Then he pushes a shoulder into the wind as if to shove it aside, clips his ascenders onto the next rope, punches them upward and steps into the lead.
As I watch Kevin pull ahead, I resign myself to a new reality: we will keep going until we physically can’t. I drop my face into my hands and feel James’s arm slide across my shoulders and pull me in to let me know I’m not alone. Then we follow in Kevin’s willful wake.
It takes ten hours to climb to Camp Four. My heart sinks when I discover Dwayne and Barry have moved into the tent together, leaving the snow cave for Kevin, James and me. I keep watch for James, who pulls in a distant last—just after 10 p.m. The wind swipes at his pack as he shrugs out of it. He pushes it toward me, and I grab a strap and pull it through the tunnel entrance into the cave. When James doesn’t follow it in, I poke my head outside to find him doubled over, coughing and retching. He falls to his knees and holds his hand out to keep me back as he vomits. Once he is in the cave, Kevin and I peel off James’s puke- and ice-encrusted balaclava and strip him of his insulated oversuit before we get him into a sleeping bag with me. Kevin’s face is flushed red in contrast to James’s waxy grey pallor. Glassy-eyed, James shivers uncontrollably and his teeth chatter. Kevin mans the stove while I help James sip hot fluids. Between spasms of coughing and retching, James lapses into an unfocused lifeless stare. Kevin and I exchange glances and wrestle with the unspoken question: should we get James down while he is still conscious—keep him moving? Or wait out the night, praying he will recover?
I have never seen James so helpless. He has often been the one to look after me when I get into camp. Through that fitful night, we watch over James like fretting parents over a sick child. We check to see if he’s worsened each time we wake, and to our relief, he finally falls asleep toward the end of the night.
May 18: Day 2
Once, on a day filled with hope, I had dared to dream I would turn twenty-nine atop this twenty-nine-thousand-foot peak. But on this morning of my birthday, I don’t give the significance of the day a second thought.
Although James is weak, he is strong enough to be his stubborn self and insist that he can retreat without our help. We watch as he descends the first couple of ropes to be sure. He keeps his feet under him as the wind kites him across the slope to the limit of the rope’s arc and stretch. Soon we lose sight of his frail form as he dissolves into the blizzard.
Sometime on this day or perhaps the next, we learn that Annie and Todd started their summit bid and retreated when Todd fell ill at a higher camp. Then Annie made a second attempt with another teammate, Andy, but they turned around as well: too windy, too much avalanche hazard. Everyone else has given up. What makes us think we can still do this? What will it take for us to turn around?
The skies grow calmer through the day, but still, rogue gusts taunt us. We reach Camp Five late that afternoon. The only sign of it are the two snowdrifts that conceal the igloo and tent. Dwayne and Barry start digging them out while I search for the cache to find food and fuel for the night. I find six fuel cartridges. Not enough! I think, and I call Dwayne and Barry over. Dumbstruck and slow-witted from exhaustion and hypoxia, the three of us stare at the six canisters lined up on the ground. Not enough to last us tonight and tomorrow.
I thrust my hand out and say, “Where’s the radio?” Dwayne pulls it out of his inside jacket pocket and hands it to me. I grip it possessively as I raise Jim.
“Did you make it to Five?” Jim asks.
“Yeah, but where are the fuel cartridges?”
Jim tells us that Chris brought some up on the last carry.
Albi comes on the radio from Camp Two and confirms, “There were a bunch when we were last there.”
Jim adds, “Then there should be enough, somewhere else.”
“Well,” I say, “there aren’t.”
“Look around.”
“We have.”
“Count again.”
I snap, “We can count to six! Isn’t it obvious we have a problem here?” Dwayne and Barry back away as I unravel.
Dan’s voice comes on. “Sharon, I hear you’ve got six cartridges, right?”
I stomp and pace. “Come on, guys, this bid is off. I’m done!”
Kevin arrives and Barry nods his head toward the igloo, where they are sleeping for the night.
Dan says, “Just stay with me here, okay? Have you counted the ones on the stoves?”
“No, but—”
“Okay,” Dan speaks slowly. “Albi says that he just replaced a canister on one of the stoves before he left the other day. So at least one is new. That makes seven. You’ll use two tonight, at the most. So at the very least you’ll have five cartridges left for Camp Six.”
Barry, Dwayne and I stand together with our backs to the wind. They tilt their heads back to peer out at me from under their hoods. Barry holds out his hand to ask me to surrender the radio.
“Thanks, Dan,” he says. “I think we’ve got it sorted.”
I drop my head and rub my temples. “Guess I lost it there, eh?”
Dwayne smiles and rolls his eyes upward. “Just a little. I guess.”
Barry laughs, clasps my shoulders and shakes me. “Just don’t let it happen again!” He speaks into the radio, “Jim, so yeah, we’re all here now.”
Now painfully aware that I have just behaved like a child having a tantrum, I walk away to calm down. I didn’t expect Dan, who has lost his chance for the summit and is kilometres away, to step up as he did. Will I look back at my actions twenty years from now and feel proud of my part in this expedition as Dan, or anyone else, might? Dan’s example shifts my perspective: this is not just my climb—it is the whole team’s climb.
* * *
Dwayne and I lie on our backs, staring at the ceiling of the tent. Any movement feels as if it is in slow motion and takes a monumental effort. I wave my arm in front of my face, as I used to do to check out how high I was after dropping acid, and sure enough, it jerks across my field of vision in a series of delayed still-frame shots. In silence, I hold up our dinner options of freeze-dried chicken stew or ramen noodles. Dwayne points at the noodles. At this altitude, we
have no appetite: we eat for fuel and sip warm water for our headaches, waiting for the stove to melt enough snow to get us through the night.
The blood in my head thrums to the count of my pulse. Every breath of air and word uttered aggravates our dry throats, causing us to cough constantly. We speak little and in single sentences between breaths.
“Kevin looked pretty wrecked this afternoon when he pulled in,” Dwayne says.
“Think he’ll have the guns to make it to Six tomorrow?”
“Hard to say if any of us will.”
We drift in a state that erases time. The tent walls suck in and push out with the ebb and surge of the wind. I pull an envelope from the top flap of my pack. The sight of my mom’s perfect cursive handwriting makes me smile: Do not open until May 18!
“What’s that?”
“Birthday card from my mom,” I say.
“Oh shit, I forgot.”
“No worries, my mom didn’t.” Ha, I think, too bad I feel like I’m turning eighty-nine rather than twenty-nine.
I doze off when Dwayne slips out of the tent, and then wake when the door zipper rips open and an oxygen cylinder thuds down on top of Dwayne’s sleeping bag.
“Let’s party,” he says.
I sit up, turn off the stove and look at Dwayne, who is grinning. He shrugs and says, “I found a bottle that might have belonged to the Yugoslavs and it won’t fit our mask system. Someone may as well use it.”
We hadn’t planned to use oxygen during our ascent but we’ve brought some in case of an emergency. I question the wisdom of climbing above eight thousand metres without it. But by now we are pulling out all stops, and the plan is to turn the oxygen on tomorrow for the first time.
Dwayne cranks the valve open and oxygen hisses out into the confined space of the tent. Within a few minutes my head clears. The lines and colours grow sharp and vivid. I feel a smile crease my face and my fatigue lifts.
Dwayne says, “Good stuff, eh?” He pulls out the radio and speaks into it. “Okay, Jane, hit it.” And a chorus of voices sings me “Happy Birthday.” We leave the oxygen on just long enough to know what we are missing.
The boost of oxygen and a sleeping pill put me to sleep. I have never used oxygen before and am heartened by the difference it makes. We plan to carry two bottles each, enough for both tomorrow and summit day if used sparingly. But will it make up for the extra weight on our backs?
May 19: Day 3
The sleeping pill takes me through half the night. I wake, mulling over questions and doubts. How hard will the rock climbing be through the Yellow Band? Can I climb technical ground above 8,500 metres in sub-zero temperatures with a heavy pack on my back? Will I be able to climb off the end of the ropes tomorrow after I have become so accustomed to the security? Surely one of us won’t make it through yet another night above 7,600 metres. By the way Kevin dragged himself into camp yesterday, I am convinced he won’t have the strength to carry to Six. How will Dwayne, Barry and I carry over 120 kilograms of gear and supplies for Camp Six and beyond between the three of us? Camp Six doesn’t even exist yet. Where will we put it?
Blowing snow has drifted in overnight and packs in between the wind barrier and the tent. The walls judder under the hammering wind. When I punch through a snowdrift to look out, I see Kevin already outside divvying up loads. I don’t know what to expect anymore, but to see Kevin first out and ready is the last thing I imagined. He paces between the four piles he has started, checking each item for weight and bulk. Stunned, I watch him for a few minutes as he dumps a food bag into one pile and picks up a tent from another.
When Kevin notices me, he straightens and looks me in the eye with a fierce intensity. “Well,” he says, “I don’t know about you but I’m going on till I can’t. What’s the worst thing that can happen to us by trying?” A gust knocks him off his feet. He scrabbles to his knees as it tears at him. “Fucking hell is what this is! But if I turn around now I’ll be wondering for the rest of my life whether we could have done it.” He’s right. We can at least go to the end of the fixed ropes. That would be a kilometre. We have to at least try after all we’ve done to get here.
Later, we stand mutely looking at the piles of gear. Barry plucks the radio out of his inside pocket and hands it to me with a knowing smile. More interested in lightening my load, I pause. The radio will be useless once we leave the ropes. If anything goes wrong, it will be everyone for themselves if one of us is in trouble. Rescue is not an option at eight thousand metres. So I reason, Why bother with the extra weight of the radio? I just want to chuck the thing, but the expectant look on their faces reminds me that the rest of our team is connected to this radio. I’m not thinking straight. I turn it up to full volume and tuck it in next to my body to keep the batteries warm and alive.
We pack up, each piling oxygen bottles on top of tent parts, sleeping bags and mats, stoves and pots, ice axes, hammers, snow stakes, pitons, ice screws, rope, two full water bottles each, and personal gear and food. I drag my pack up my leg and balance it on my knee, slip one arm through the strap and swing it onto my back. Then I slip my other arm in and stumble backwards under the weight. Our loads are the heaviest they’ve been yet. This weight could finish us.
I slide my oxygen mask over my mouth and nose and open the valve on the regulator to a two-litre-per-minute flow rate. If everything functions perfectly, a single bottle at that modest flow rate will last us ten hours. It takes all I have to shift my weight from one foot to the other, let alone make forward progress. Whether the low flow rate, the heavy load or exhaustion is the problem, I am alarmed at how poor my balance is. We each use a ski pole as a third leg to push ourselves out from the uphill side of the traverse and to help keep our weight directly over our feet. To push myself away from terra firma on a thirty- to forty-five-degree slope with more than a 1,500-metre drop below my feet is counterintuitive. Instinct urges me to lean into the slope. But when I do, my feet skate out from under me and the fight to stand up again on the loose down-sloping shale wastes too much energy. The more I push myself out from the slope, the harder the wind tears at me.
We climb one behind the other as we move up the Diagonal Ditch. Glimpses of the boys ahead of me wash in and out of view between gossamer sheets of snow. Spindrift avalanches pour down the face, streaming off our hoods and shoulders. Shrouded in three layers of one-piece suits, hoods cinched and face covered with balaclavas, masks and goggles, I feel like I am in my own cocoon. My sole focus is on the next step in front of me. Each shove from a gust and each jolt from a slip or a deluge of spindrift exacts a cost I can’t afford. Calm is the only way through. But I know we are moving too slowly; all it will take to turn us around is for one of us to say we’ve had enough. I’m convinced we’ll turn around once we reach the end of the ropes.
I am in the lead when we exit the Diagonal Ditch and climb out onto the vast expanse of the North Face. Jane’s voice wafts up from inside my jacket, cutting through the thunderous din of the wind. “We’ve spotted them! We can see two, no three, coming out of the rocks onto the face!”
I halt to pull the radio out from inside my jacket, and the boys and I huddle around it to listen.
“This is Bob at Camp One. Looks like all four are on the snow now and clear of the rocks.”
Jim says, “Thanks, we see them now.”
“Hi,” I croak, “we can hear you guys.”
We hear cheers. “Way to go, guys!” Jane says.
Jim says, “How’s it going up there?”
We look at each other and I hand the radio to Dwayne. He slips his mask off and says, “Slow, but it sounds like you guys think we’re getting somewhere.”
“You’re going to do it!” Jim says. Other voices come on and I understand that they have divided into three different viewing parties at different vantage points. I envision some of them at the cache site over two thousand metres below, passing the b
inoculars back and forth; another group taking turns looking through the telescope at Camp One; and others peering through Dr. Bob’s telephoto lens mounted on a tripod at Camp Two. That is all I need to know. They are watching us. They are with us. I step away and rest my load against the slope to ease the strain on my shoulders. For the first time in what seems a long time, I bring my head up to take a look at the world beyond my feet. The sight of Dwayne, Barry and Kevin bent over the radio, their faces lighting up as they listen to our teammates, lifts me out of myself. I marvel at the difference in our perspectives. Ours is a plod from one foot to the other; theirs is convinced we are going for it. Our teammates’ voices transform what feels like an exercise in futility into progress. At well above 7,900 metres now, I lean back and look out from higher than I ever have before.
Barry and I are the first to reach the end of the fixed ropes near the entrance to the Hornbein Couloir at eight thousand metres. We take off our packs for the first time that day and clip them into the anchor. I feel so light I could blow away and am glad for the anchor to hold me down. I peer up into the deep gash that cleaves the North Face. Shaped like an hourglass, it starts wide and narrows to a body width before it fans out three hundred metres higher into a yellow band of rock. Spindrift cascades down and funnels through the narrows. Surges of flotsam spurt out the bottom, dispersing into rock-peppered spray that whistles by our heads.
I think of Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, who pioneered this route. Guided by a single black-and-white photo, they traversed the North Face to the base of the couloir and left their ropes behind them. They must have stood close to this same spot we are in now, looking up at the very same sight. I remember Tom’s first impressions: “The prospect of entering the gully was too much like becoming tenpins in a high-angle bowling alley.”