by Roland Smith
I just stared at him, relieved I didn't have to make the decision and stunned that he seemed to have read my mind. "How—"
Zopa held up his hand. "Sun-jo will not reach the summit without your help," he said. "I need to rest. And so do both of you. We have a hard climb ahead of us."
SUN-JO TOOK ZOPA'S ADVICE. I tried to sleep but couldn't. I joined Yogi and Yash at the fire. Yogi pulled out an oxygen tank and mask out of his pack. He showed me how to attach the mask to the regulator, then he held up two fingers, indicating I was to set the dial to two liters per minute. Then, using Yash as a model, he showed me how to put on the mask.
When he finished he took everything apart and had me put it all back together. It wasn't as easy as it looked. I had to pull off my outer mitts, and my fingers went numb in spite of the fact that I was still wearing gloves. This reminded me that I still had JR's little video camera in my pack. I had completely forgotten about it. I needed to start filming our trip. (Which should give you a little idea of how the brain functions, or doesn't function, at high altitudes.)
I managed to get the mask hooked up to the tank, then I put the mask on and tried to adjust the straps for a tight fit over my nose and mouth. The mask was cold, uncomfortable, and a little claustrophobic. Yash had a perfect solution to the discomfort. He turned on the oxygen.
In my entire life I had never felt anything so wonderful. The Os flowed into my body like some kind of magic elixir. For the first time in weeks I felt warm, sharp, and strong. The feeling was short-lived because Yogi turned it off almost immediately. Reluctantly, I took off the mask. The Sherpa brothers were smiling at me. Yogi said something in Nepalese, then held up five fingers.
"Got it," I said. "Not until Camp Five."
Theoretically, you could use Os all the way up the mountain. The problem was you would have to use a half dozen Sherpas to carry enough oxygen tanks to get up the mountain. The tanks didn't last that long.
Yogi and Yash left around noon. A couple of hours later Zopa came out of his tent looking like a corpse emerging from a tomb. Three mugs of hot tea seemed to revive him ... a little. I packed his gear, then roused Sun-jo, who looked a lot better after his nap.
We started out for Camp Four. This time Sun-jo and I had to wait for Zopa. About halfway there, he put on an oxygen mask and cranked it up. This certainly put a little more spring in his step. I was envious.
CAMPS FIVE AND SIX
BECAUSE OF OUR LATE START, I thought Camp Four was close, but we didn't get to the dreaded wall leading up to it until well after dark.
"We're climbing the wall at night?" I asked, shocked.
Zopa took off his mask. "It's the only way to get into Camp Four unnoticed. Everyone will be asleep."
They would be in their tents all right—the wind was howling and it hadn't stopped snowing all day. But from our last experience I knew they wouldn't be sleeping. If they were like me when I was up there, they would be lying in their sleeping bags wondering if there was enough air to keep them alive through the night.
The last time we were here it took me over five hours to reach the top and I nearly gave up on the way. The weather was worse now—and it was dark.
Yogi and Yash had thrown a rope over the side for us to use.
"You'll need headlamps," Zopa said.
"Right," I said.
Slide the jumar up the rope, step, breathe, jumar, step, jumar, think, look up, think again, step, rest, rest, rest, hug the wall, pray ... The same routine. But in a strange way the climb was easier, or at least less scary, with the headlamp. The light kept me focused on the ice and rock in front of me. I had no idea where the top or bottom was until a light appeared over the edge about ten feet above me. It was Yogi, although it was hard to tell, bundled up like he was. I managed to get to the top without his having to grab me. As I rested on my knees trying to catch my breath and not puke, I looked at my watch. I had climbed the wall in less than five hours this time.
Fifteen minutes later Sun-jo came over the top, looking like he was about to pass out. I shouted in his ear that he had made it up the wall a half hour faster than he had the last time. This seemed to cheer him up. He managed to get to his feet.
Zopa was last. He was in terrible shape. It took all three of us to pull him over the edge, and when we got him there he didn't move. I checked his oxygen tank. It was empty. Yogi hurried off and came back with a fresh tank and Yash. They got the Os flowing and carried Zopa to their tent. After an hour or so he recovered enough to open his eyes and drink something. A few minutes later he asked the brothers if they had heard anything from Josh.
The Chinese soldier climbers had reached ABC that afternoon and were planning on staying there a day or two before climbing to Camp Four. They had checked everyone's papers and searched all the tents. The climbers at ABC said the soldiers were in great shape and had made terrific time. There was no doubt they were going to try for the summit.
This seemed like the worst possible news, but Zopa didn't seem at all disturbed by it.
"You will be a day ahead of them. Tonight and tomorrow you will rest. The following morning, before light, you'll climb to Camp Five."
"What about you?" Sun-jo asked.
"Do you really think they are going to be worried about a sick old monk when they get up here? If they really are such good climbers, the soldiers will all want to try for the summit. Which of them will stay behind to escort the old man down the mountain?" He gave a wheezy laugh. "By the time they get back here I will be gone."
"Why can't we just go up to Camp Five when it gets light?" I asked. "We'll be just that much farther ahead of the soldiers."
"There will be a storm in a few hours," Zopa answered. "Tomorrow morning is your window."
THE STORM HIT US MIDMORNING. If we had left when I wanted we would have been about halfway to Camp Five. And we would have died, along with the three climbers who did leave that morning. None of them made it to Camp Five, and nobody could help them. The weather was too severe.
I tried to write in my Moleskine and found that I couldn't concentrate long enough to string more than two or three words together at a time. After a while I gave up and managed to get a little sleep, and so did Sun-jo, mostly because there was nothing else to do but lie in the tent. Zopa didn't want us wandering around camp (not that we had the energy), and the storm was so bad, everyone there was hunkered down waiting for it to stop.
About eight o'clock that night it did, suddenly. One moment the wind and snow were threatening to blow our tent away; the next moment it was perfectly calm. I stuck my head outside the tent, along with everyone else in camp, and saw a perfectly clear sky overhead scattered with bright stars.
Yash left for Camp Five three hours ahead of us to get the camp ready. Yogi stuck his head into our tent an hour before we were to leave and told us to pack our gear. We weren't taking much with us. Most of what we needed would be waiting for us at Camp Five yogi and Yash had hauled it up the last time we were at Camp Four.
Before we took off we checked in with Zopa. He was sitting up drinking a mug of tea. He was off the Os and some of the color had returned to his face, but he still looked pretty weak.
"Speed is everything now. If you stay in the death zone too long you will die. If you don't reach the summit by one thirty-five P.M. the day you leave Camp Six, I have asked Yogi and Yash to turn you around. It is better to get caught by the Chinese than it is to die on the mountain."
This seemed to contradict his plan to get Sun-jo over the top to safety, but he was right. From Camp Six you have to reach the summit and return in about eighteen hours. Oxygen or not, there was a limit to how long you could survive above Camp Six. If we made the summit we would have to reach the top camp on the other side in eighteen hours.
"Have Yogi and Yash been to the summit?" I asked. It had been a question on my mind since Zopa had announced he wasn't taking us there himself.
"Of course," Zopa said. "Three times."
"Good," I sai
d. "Does Josh know you're not coming with us?"
Zopa shook his head, then gave us a blessing and said, "I'll see you both in Kathmandu. Now go."
It was clear and bitterly cold as we left the dark camp and started up the north ridge to the summit. It was hard to keep my excitement in check. A night at Camp Five, a night at Camp Six, then the top of the world.
IT WAS MORE OF A FORCED MARCH to Camp Five than a climb. We hooked on to a series of fixed ropes. Yogi set the pace. I tried a regime of twelve steps, a minute of gasping to recover, then another twelve steps. After an hour it was down to about eight steps, and I'm not sure how many minutes to recover. It was hard to believe that some climbers had made it to the summit without any supplemental Os at all. Josh was one of them, although I suspected on this trip he would be sucking down the Os, if for no other reason than to stay sharp so he didn't lose one of his clients.
The sun came up and gave us the best view of Everest's pyramidal summit yet. It was enormous. Coming off the top was a disk of ice crystals against the blue sky. The sight inspired my sluggish brain to remember the camera, which I had put in my pocket before we left Camp Four. I shouted ahead at Sun-jo to wait up, which he was more than happy to do. When I got to him I took off my outer mittens, pushed the record button, and tried to imitate JR as best as I could.
"What are you feeling right now?" I asked. "You're less than a mile from the highest point on earth." I had him framed perfectly against the summit.
"Frightened," Sun-jo said. "And hopeful. And worried about my grandfather. I had no idea it would be this hard."
That's about all my unmittened fingers could take.
"I can film you now if you like," Sun-jo offered.
"Nah, that's all right. We have to get moving."
About half an hour later we saw our first corpse. Sun-jo saw it first. I walked up to him as he was staring down at it. Yogi had breezed by as if he hadn't noticed but I bet he had. It was a woman. About fifty feet away was another corpse but I couldn't tell what it was because it was lying facedown.
I had never seen a dead person, let alone a frozen dead person. She looked more like a wax figure than a former human being, and in a way this was even more disturbing to me. She had been there a while if her shredded clothes were any indication. It looked like she had died sitting up and had fallen over on her side. She was only a few hours from her tent at Camp Four. I'm not sure how long we stood there staring, and we would have stood there a lot longer if Yogi hadn't shouted at us to hurry up. After five more corpses I stopped looking.
At noon we came to a steeper part of the north ridge. It was much colder. The fixed ropes were frozen and Sherpas had chipped shallow steps into the ice to make it easier to climb.
Yogi waited for us to catch up to him. He pointed to the tents down at Camp Four, then up to tents at Camp Five and said something in Nepalese.
"Halfway," Sun-jo translated. "Six hours to go."
To make that six hours worse, the wind picked up. We had to bend over as we climbed so we weren't blown off the ridge. My initial excitement was long gone. I think the only thing that kept me going were the Os waiting for me up ahead. I don't know what kept Sun-jo going. Probably the Chinese climbers behind him and freedom ahead.
We got to Camp Five a little before seven: 25,196 feet. It seemed impossible that we could ever go any farther. It was the end of the world. And it really wasn't a camp. It was a series of cleared platforms stretching up the north ridge for at least a quarter of a mile, with absolutely no shelter from the howling wind. The big platforms could hold five or six tents, the small platforms one or two. Several of the platforms had tents on them, but it was hard to say how many people were up there. I suspected most of the tents were waiting for climbers coming up from Camp Four, or down from Camp Six after their summit attempt.
Our tiny rubble pile was just big enough for two tents pitched on the garbage of the former occupants. Yash had water boiling for tea, but what I was interested in was the mask strapped to his face pumping Os into his lungs. He was moving twice as fast as we were.
I grabbed a tank from the pile, pulled the mask out of my pack, hooked it up, and stuck my face in it. The feeling I had with the first lungful of oxygen is indescribable. Bliss is about as close as I can come, but it was way beyond that.
Yash helped Sun-jo set up his rig, and when he got it on we looked at each other and started laughing.
We were going to live. We might even make it to the summit.
"THE CHINESE ARE HEADING UP to Camp Four tomorrow," one of the climbers from ABC told Josh.
"You're kidding!" Josh said. "What about acclimatization?"
"These guys are acclimated. One of our climbers speaks a little Chinese. They told her they were up on K2 when they were ordered to come here. They haven't said it, but I don't think they're coming back down until they take a shot at the summit. They're like climbing machines. When are you heading up?"
"The day after tomorrow if the weather's good," Josh answered. "I was going to hold off a little longer, but I took my people out for a climb today and they all did pretty well. The virus seems to have run its course."
"We're heading up to Camp Four in the morning. We'll see you on the way back down."
"Good luck."
"Out."
This was probably the last transmission we would hear. I wondered if Josh would be worried when he didn't pass me on his way up.
I asked Sun-jo how he was doing.
"The oxygen helps, but I'm still concerned. I had a lot of trouble today."
"You're not the only one. It's hard up here."
"I have to make it," he said. "For my sisters and my mother."
Those were great reasons to risk your life, I thought. But why was I doing it? For Josh's business? For my ego?
Now that my brain had oxygen I found myself really missing the two Peas, my mom, and even Rolf. This got me to thinking about the corpses we saw on the way up here. Who had they left behind? These were very uncomfortable questions to fall asleep on.
THE OXYGEN WAS WONDERFUL, but the masks were a pain in the butt to sleep in. It was hard to find a position where the straps didn't dig into your face. Also, the exhaust system stank. Small pools of icy slime collected in the mouthpiece valve. When I moved my head slushy spit ran down my neck. Because of this, Sun-jo and I were up early.
We checked and rechecked our gear. Leaving something behind like a spare headlamp battery or a glove could be a death sentence.
Yogi took the lead this time, leaving Yash to take us up to Camp Six. Our first obstacle was a steep snowfield that we had to four-point with ice axes and crampons. Stupidly, I assumed that now that we were on Os, it would be like climbing at sea level. Nothing could be further from the truth.
By the time we reached the top of the snowfield my lungs were screaming for air. I thought there was something the matter with my mask or the tank had run out of oxygen, but everything was working perfectly. The two liters of oxygen didn't simulate sea level; it simply allowed me to stay alive above 25,000 feet. And there was a huge difference between lying in a tent doing virtually nothing and climbing a steep snowfield on all fours. I took the little camera out and filmed Sun-jo crabbing his way up to me. By the expression on his face I could see he was having the same O revelation I'd just had.
"I don't think I can make it." He gasped. "I'm serious, Peak; this is too much."
"We just pushed it too hard going up the field," I said with a confidence I didn't feel. "We'll just have to pace ourselves."
He nodded, but there was fear in his eyes. I knew exactly how he felt. We had passed another three or four corpses on the way up.
A few hours later I stopped to rest and looked at my altimeter watch. We had just passed 26,000 feet and were officially in the death zone. Every minute from now on we were dying a little.
We stumbled into Camp Six like three zombies. Yogi had the tents set up, but he didn't look much better than we did. He told Sun-jo to
get our stove going to boil snow and drink as much water as we could. The very idea of drinking or eating anything made my stomach lurch.
I turned on the video camera and shot Sun-jo lighting the stove, or trying to light the stove. It must have taken him fifty strokes to get the cigarette lighter going in the thin air. When it finally ignited his thumb was bleeding like he had sliced it open with a knife.
We gagged down as much water and food as we could, then wrapped up in our sleeping bags to wait. Sleep was out of the question.
The inside of the tent was filled with a thin layer of frost from our breath. Every time one of us moved, the freezing crystals fell on our faces.
They say that when you die your life flashes before your eyes. Mine was passing before my eyes in slow motion like a horror movie. I think it was the corpses that did it. I thought of Mom falling off that wall, the boy I'd never met falling off the Flatiron Building, Sun-jo hanging by a thread on that ice wall, and Sun-jo's father saving my father then dying of heart failure....
The only thing that stopped the depressing playback was the tent flap opening and the appearance of Yogi's masked face.
"We go," he said.
Well, not quite. It was more like: "We get ready to go." They made us drink more water, then told us to do our toilet, which is a lot easier said than done at thirty degrees below zero. Two hours later we were ready.
We left for the summit of Mount Everest.
I looked at my watch. It was 1:35 A.M. We had twelve hours to get there.
TOP OF THE WORLD
OUTSIDE CAMP SIX we picked our way across two snowfields. Yash led the way with Yogi sticking close to us. On the far side of the second field we started to encounter bare rock. I kept my eyes on Yash's headlamp. He was probably 150 yards ahead of us. Breathing was difficult and it was freezing out, but I started to think this might not be as bad as I thought. It was certainly no worse than what we had already been through.