by Mark Horrell
Wasn’t that enough?
Epilogue – One year on
Saturday, 25 April 2015 – London, United Kingdom
When I looked up that day and saw the giant cloud of snow billowing across the Khumbu Icefall, and watched the helicopter bring body after body down on longlines, I never thought I would ever think of it as a straightforward climbing accident.
Everest has seen its share of multiple tragedies. As early as 7 June 1922, seven of George Mallory’s Sherpas lost their lives in an avalanche on the North Col Wall. More famously, eight climbers died in a storm on 11 May 1996, an event described by Jon Krakauer in his book Into Thin Air. Six people died in separate incidents on the day I reached the summit myself, the 19 May 2012.
The avalanche I witnessed on the 18 April 2014 trumped them all by some margin. Sixteen Sherpas lost their lives, and I found myself caught up in events beyond my ability to comprehend. I had seen strikes by mountain workers before. In Pakistan in 2009 our progress up the Baltoro Glacier was halted when our porters woke up to snow and decided to stay put that day. In Nepal the following year some of our porters refused to move one morning during the trek to Baruntse. Our sirdar, the same Dawa I met at Everest Base Camp during the puja-cum-rally, resolved it by reweighing their loads.
The events of 2014 were quite different, and unprecedented. Protests were more organised; there were leaders and speeches. Demands were issued. There was an undercurrent of violence.
I returned to Kathmandu shocked and bewildered. The avalanche had been traumatic, but it was easy to make sense of. The events that followed made my brain hurt. It was obvious there was something going on I didn’t understand.
As I’d expected, a media storm followed. It was almost entirely negative. We had seen a complex series of events, but the media focus was to blame western climbers and operators for what happened. Journalists often contacted me when I returned to Kathmandu, but I didn’t want to talk. I was still trying to make sense of things, and I didn’t want anyone putting words into my mouth. I could do that myself on my blog.
But I knew one thing for certain: I had no wish to return to Lhotse. I had learned what I needed about the south-side Everest experience, and I didn’t like it. It seemed quite probable to me that something unpleasant would happen again.
That was just my opinion, though. Many people who had their dreams shattered in 2014 decided to return the following year.
One of these was Edita. We had started dating when we returned to Kathmandu, and we discussed Everest a lot over the following months. She was not as cynical as me, and still harboured a desire to return. Margaret also chose to go back in 2015. And, of course, Phil and our old Sherpa friends Dorje, Pasang Ongchu, Chongba and Tarke were there as usual.
I was right about there being something unpleasant, but it happened in a way I could never have imagined.
Things were going well. A safer, steeper route had been found up the middle of the Khumbu Icefall. Edita and Margaret had just been up into the ice for a few hours.
When I woke up at home in London on Saturday, 25 April, the first thing I did was check my email. Edita had sent me a blog post to publish about her first climb into the Icefall.
I never got around to posting it for her, because a few minutes later a news item caught my eye.
The Junkies were taking it easy back in Base Camp that morning. Edita was drinking tea in the dining tent with Phil. As they sat talking they noticed the table starting to rattle, gradually at first, then faster and faster. They knew it was an earthquake, but there was nothing they could do. It continued for ninety seconds, but it seemed much longer.
When the shaking stopped they ran outside. They were OK, but what about the rest of the team?
They had no time to find out. Phil’s eyes were bulging like bowling balls as he looked up the hillside above camp. Edita followed his gaze and to her horror she saw something that brought the previous year’s avalanche into sharp focus, before shattering it like exploding glass. High overhead Pumori was collapsing in a giant cloud of snow and rock. It dwarfed the avalanche we had seen in the Khumbu Icefall and it was heading straight towards them.
‘Get back in the tent, get back in the tent,’ Phil screamed.
Shrieks of terror were echoing around camp. They raced back into the dining tent and fell down on the ground. A split second later they felt the impact as tons of debris pounded the roof above them. It lasted for another minute, but the tent held firm.
They had escaped death by the length of an ice axe. In less than five minutes Base Camp had been turned into a war zone. The whole of the central part of camp looked like it had been shelled. The Junkies’ storage tents were totally destroyed, but their sleeping tents and the dining tent were just outside the danger zone. Everyone in the team had survived without serious injury. It was a miracle.
But their ordeal was only just beginning. Edita could see injured people walking like wounded soldiers. Some were being carried towards IMG’s camp to receive help. It was only then that she realised the whole middle part of Base Camp had been wiped out.
They spent the rest of the day helping the injured. They carried boxes of medical supplies and injured climbers to camps that had been set up for triage and treatment. Many people were injured or dead. The previous year we had been sheltered from the full horror, but this time there was no way to avoid it. At the end of the day they returned to the Junkies’ camp and sat silently in the dining tent. There was blood on the table cloth, but it was not their own. They were completely shell-shocked, and nobody could speak a word.
The work wasn’t finished, and the following day they had to recover bodies from the wreckage of camp. Edita helped Phil to dig up one of the dead, and what she saw was too horrible to describe. A tent had been thrown hundreds of metres over a cliff. The body was all broken, and so much of it was missing that it no longer looked human. They knew how easily it could have been one of them, but by a random twist of fate it was not.
Unlike the previous year, when for a week we still hoped to continue our expedition, this time they knew it was out of the question. The earthquake had destroyed the route through the Khumbu Icefall, leaving hundreds of climbers stranded at Camps 1 and 2 in the Western Cwm. Regular aftershocks wrecked more of the route, and brought avalanches tumbling down from both sides. The stranded climbers eventually had to leave by helicopter in a series of evacuations that had been well rehearsed the previous year.
The Junkies couldn’t evacuate from camp, because the helicopters were for rescue only. The following days were calmer, but for Edita they were terrifying. She couldn’t sleep, because aftershocks continued to rock camp. Avalanches roared down every few minutes, and while Base Camp is usually a place of security, this time nobody could be sure. She moved in with Margaret, and every time an avalanche fell, they sat up and held each other. It was stressful for everyone, clients and Sherpas alike. They were all traumatised, and lived in fear of the next tremor.
They didn’t know what was happening in the rest of Nepal, but after a few days I was able to send text messages. I told Edita what I had learned from news reports. My own experience of the earthquake was trivial compared with theirs, but it wasn’t pleasant either.
When I learned that there had been a 7.8-magnitude earthquake close to Kathmandu, my immediate thought was not that buildings were demolished, and thousands must be dead in Nepal’s capital – instead I realised that such a powerful earthquake must have triggered another serac collapse on the West Shoulder. There was a high chance of more casualties in the Khumbu Icefall.
I believed that Edita was not among them because I knew she was back at Everest Base Camp. I sent her a text message to see if everyone was OK, but then I glanced through my Twitter timeline.
Twitter is not a nice place during an emergency. There were lots of rumours, and some of what I read caused me to shudder.
@alexgaven: Everest base camp huge earthquake then huge avalanche from pumori. Running for
life from my tent. Unhurt. Many many people up the mountain.
@ivanbraun: MIDCAMP ON SOUTH SIDE WIPED OUT, MANY PEOPLE MISSING.
@alexgaven: Huge disaster. Helped search and rescue victims through huge debris area. Many dead. Much more badly injured. More to die if not heli asap.
For the next four hours I didn’t know whether Edita, or my other friends at Base Camp, were dead or alive. She usually responded to my messages almost immediately, but this time I heard nothing. I scoured every source I could for information. I wandered around the park opposite my home in a daze. After what seemed an eternity I received news from a mutual friend on Facebook. She told me that all of the Altitude Junkies team were alive, if not entirely safe. Margaret had managed to call her husband by satellite phone.
The earthquake had triggered another huge ice collapse on the ridge between Pumori and Lingtren. This time, climbers in the Icefall turned out to be in the safest possible place, although they found themselves stranded as the route fell away beneath them. The collapse sent an avalanche powering through the middle of Base Camp, boulders flying like missiles. Nineteen people were killed, but the tents on either edge of camp were spared.
What happened in 2014 troubled me greatly for several months afterwards, but it was simpler than I thought. Essentially we had watched a climbing accident, followed by a labour dispute. We waited in expectation for a week, then went home dejected. For sixteen families life would never be the same, but for everyone else it continued much as it ever had.
The events of 2014 were quite minor compared to the 2015 earthquake. Outside Base Camp in 2015 more than 8,000 people were dead and thousands more were homeless. For two or three days parts of Kathmandu were without power or water, and people slept outside for fear of another major quake. It was some time before news filtered in from remoter parts of Nepal. Over a hundred trekkers were missing in the Langtang region, and Langtang village was completely destroyed.
Many teams at Base Camp didn’t know about the situation outside. They feared that hotels would be closed in Kathmandu and teahouses destroyed on the Everest Base Camp trail. Some chose to brave the unknown dangers of Base Camp and wait for news rather than trek to Lukla for a flight to Kathmandu. The Junkies team elected to stay, and when they left it was with a great deal of relief.
The media turned their attention to Nepal again, but this time the situation was different. There was sensational reporting, but not the tabloid-style blame of the previous year. In 2015 many more film crews and journalists travelled to Base Camp hoping for a story, but Everest reporting had improved since 2014. Journalists had done more homework.
They got their story, but it wasn’t one they expected. This time it was a clear tale of natural disaster without blame. While there were stories of human error and conflict too, they were outweighed by the positive human stories.
Hope didn’t last. Aid poured into Nepal, but as I write these words, much of it remains unspent. Nepal’s politics remain impenetrable and insoluble.
Meanwhile Everest is still majestic. It towers aloof and unconcerned by the human intrigue that continues at its feet.
Edita lights a butter lamp for her friend Dorje Khatri and the other victims of the 2014 Everest avalanche
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the other members of my Everest and Lhotse team, including Caroline, Ian, Jay, Louis, Kevin, Margaret, Mel, Peter, Ricardo and Robert, for their patience and company.
I will never forget our amazing Sherpa crew for their cheerfulness, kindness and dignity in trying circumstances. My heartfelt thanks to all of them, including Ang Gelu, Chongba, Da Pasang, Kami Neru, Pasang Ongchu, and Tarke.
I reserve my deepest gratitude for Dorje, a hero and a gentleman.
To Phil Crampton for bearing the stress without losing his head.
To Edita Nichols for her moving account of the Nepal earthquake, and for being the silver lining.
To my editor, Alex Roddie, for his help polishing the text.
To all of you, readers of my blog and diaries. I hope you have enjoyed this one, and I look forward to welcoming you back sometime.
This book is dedicated to the sixteen who lost their lives on 18 April 2014: Mingma Nuru Sherpa, Dorji Sherpa, Ang Tshiri Sherpa, Tenzing Chottar Sherpa, Nima Sherpa, Phurba Ongyal Sherpa, Lakpa Tenjing Sherpa, Chiring Ongchu Sherpa, Dorje Khatri, Then Dorje Sherpa, Phur Temba Sherpa, Pasang Karma Sherpa, Asman Tamang, Angkaji Sherpa, Ash Bahadur Gurung and Pemba Tenji Sherpa.
Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest
A hill walker's journey to the top of the world
As he teetered on a narrow rock ledge a yak’s bellow short of the stratosphere, with a rubber mask strapped to his face, a pair of mittens the size of a sealion’s flippers, and a drop of two kilometres below him, it’s fair to say Mark Horrell wasn’t entirely happy with the situation he found himself in.
He was an ordinary hiker who had only read books about mountaineering, and little did he know when he signed up for an organised trek in Nepal with a group of elderly ladies that ten years later he would be attempting to climb the world’s highest mountain.
But as he travelled across the Himalayas, Andes, Alps and East Africa, following in the footsteps of the pioneers, he dreamed up a seven-point plan to gain the skills and experience which could turn a wild idea into reality.
Funny, incisive and heartfelt, his journey provides a refreshingly honest portrait of the joys and torments of a modern-day Everest climber.
First published in 2015. A list of bookstores can be found on Mark’s website:
www.markhorrell.com/SnowdonToEverest
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Photographs
I hope you enjoyed the photos in this book. Thanks to the miracles of the internet you can view all the photos from my Lhotse expedition online via the photo-sharing website Flickr.
Everest Base Camp. Nepal, April 2014.
About Mark Horrell
For five years I have been writing what has been described as one of the most credible Everest opinion blogs out there. I write about trekking and mountaineering from the often silent perspective of the commercial client.
For over a decade I have been exploring the world’s greater mountain ranges and keeping a diary of my travels. As a writer I strive to do for mountain history what Bill Bryson did for long-distance hiking.
Several of my expedition diaries are available as quick reads from the major online bookstores. My first full-length book, Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest, about my ten-year journey from hill walker to Everest climber, was published in November 2015.
My favourite mountaineering book is The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W.E. Bowman.
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Notes
1. The Discovery Channel released a one-hour document
ary of the tragedy not long afterwards. It appeared on YouTube while I was still in Kathmandu, and I watched it in the courtyard of our hotel. I appeared for about three seconds, right at the start of the film. ‘A huge avalanche swept across the entire width of the Icefall,’ I croaked in an oxygen-depleted voice.
2. We find out later that the government offered derisory compensation of 40,000 Nepalese Rupees (around $400 USD) to each of the victims’ families.
3. Two years later I went to the cinema to see a documentary film about the tragedy, Sherpa – Trouble on Everest, and was surprised to see Dawa appear briefly, addressing a gathering at Base Camp.
4. I learn later that this is Pasang Bhote, who was working for one of the Nepali agencies. Our UIAGM-qualified guide Pasang Ongchu, who knows most people in the Nepali climbing scene, told me that he had never seen this man at an expedition base camp before. Nor did he know whom he was working for.
5. Pasang Sherpa, a representative of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association (NNMGA), not to be confused with Pasang Tenzing Sherpa, or our own Pasang Ongchu Sherpa.
6. Ramesh Dhamala, President of the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal (TAAN).
7. Ang Tshering Sherpa, President of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA).
8. Pasang Bhote, whose status was unclear, but who appeared to be the leader of the protesters.