Dead Lucky (13 page)

The Brazilians knew only Harry and Alex, so that night I chatted with Vitor, wanting him and Rodrigo to feel welcome among a tent full of strangers. Vitor explained that he and Rodrigo had been climbing partners and best friends for fifteen years, and that they had returned to Everest to put themselves back on an equal footing—both would be Everest summiteers.

“But this time it will be a little different,” he said. “I will climb without oxygen.”

“I've always climbed without oxygen,” I chipped in, “and on Everest, at twenty-seven thousand feet without it. The problem is that there's not enough oxygen to keep you warm or to let you think properly. If you want to think, you have to stop moving.”

Vitor smiled, and I felt I had said enough. I did not want to be telling someone who had already stood on the top of Everest how to climb the mountain.

“It will only be me without oxygen,” he continued. “Rodrigo will use it.”

I wished them luck.

IN LATE APRIL it was time for all of us, both the A-Team and the B-Team, to leave the glacier behind and move up onto the slopes of Everest itself. Members of the A-Team had hiked up to Advance Base Camp the day before, so they were fresh and rested when the B-Team arrived from Intermediate Camp late in the afternoon.

“Tonight,” announced Alex at the dinner table, “everyone will meet with the Sherpas. Those climbers who have asked for a personal Sherpa will meet him. Other climbers will meet with team Sherpas. This will be after dinner.”

Alex was never one to give advance warning of his meetings, probably because he did not see the point, and he wished to avoid questions ahead of time. Everything would be explained when necessary, so why worry? After dinner the Sherpas and climbers squeezed into the yellow tent. It was a tight fit, with many of us standing. Alex said a few words about the importance of the Sherpas' various roles, then introduced Mingma Gelu Sherpa, who was the expedition
sirdar
and in charge of the Sherpa crew. There were twenty Sherpas in total, all of whom had been busy establishing our three camps on the mountain—Camp One at the North Col, Camp Two at 25,000 feet, and our High Camp (or Camp Three) at 27,300 feet. Alex had proudly announced that the 7Summits-Club camp at the North Col had the only mess tent and toilet tent on the mountain. If nothing else, the extra loads meant that there had been no shortage of work for the Sherpas.

Mingma explained that all the Sherpas were from his village or district and were his brothers, cousins, or uncles. All of them had climbed Everest at least once, and several had climbed other 8,000ers as well (peaks above 8,000 meters, or 26,250 feet). All were well trained in the ways of the mountain and in the safest ways to use the fixed rope.

To me, it was a strange scene. Because of my very basic grasp of Nepali, I had come to know a couple of Sherpas who had traveled with us from Kathmandu; apart from that, I knew nothing about any of the crew assembled before us. However, those of us who had booked a Sherpa to climb with now had to choose or be chosen, and everyone's decisions had to be made in a matter of minutes. This was a decidedly odd way to select someone with whom you would be sharing life-or-death situations. But it was also classically Russian to get a result by setting the cats among the pigeons. We had no choice but to take Mingma at his word that all of his Sherpas were up to the job required.

The A-Team was heading up to Camp One at the North Col in the morning, so the priority was to get them sorted. Harry had already selected the two Sherpas, Pemba and Passang, to accompany him and Thomas. When the dust settled, there were not too many choices left. The ambience was similar to a school dance, when the last girls and boys finally stepped out onto the dance floor.

As the climbers who had linked up with their Sherpas went outside, the tent emptied. I saw four men sitting together, and among them I recognized Lakcha, one of the Sherpas who had helped us erect the giant dome tent in the snowstorm during our first morning at Base Camp. I remembered us joking together, his gold front tooth obvious every time he smiled. His English was at about the same level as my Nepali, which meant we could communicate readily. He was strong, solidly built, and outgoing—all of these attributes were obvious at first glance.

Lakcha indicated to me almost immediately that he would be able to hold the team of four Sherpas together. It was not a strategy on his part; he merely stepped up and introduced the other three—Pasang, Dawa Tenzing, and Dorje. Ironically, the others had better English than Lakcha. Dawa Tenzing was shy but prepared to say what he thought; Pasang was more forthright and definitely wanted to be treated as an equal; while Dorje, who could not have been long out of his teens, was initially reserved but very much aware of what was going on. He smiled broadly when I told him my younger son shared his name.

I had been talking to the four men in Nepali, saying that I wanted us to climb as friends and that I hoped we would enjoy our time together on Sagarmatha, the Nepali name for Mount Everest. Then I turned to Richard, Christopher, and Mike, and we went through the introductions in English.

It had been a long day and now it was definitely time for bed. We agreed to meet in the morning, then said our good-nights. I slept well, secure in the feeling that we had a good crew to help us.

EVEREST THE HIGHWAY

T
HE 7 SUMMITS-CLUB Mount Everest Expedition officially began with a
puja
at Advance Base Camp. For both Buddhists and Hindus,
puja
is a word from the ancient Indian language of Pali meaning a ceremony of honor and devotion. No Sherpa will set foot on Mount Everest unless a
puja
has been performed. The 7Summits-Club Sherpas, who were already setting up camps and carrying supplies up the mountain, had attended an earlier
puja
of their own.

At Advance Base Camp, our ceremony began with the building of a
chorten,
which can be an elaborate structure but at 21,000 feet was a basic square stone tower 5 feet high. A vertical pole emerged from the
chorten,
with its tip being the point of attachment for radiating strings of prayer flags, which were fastened to an irregular circle of rocks on the ground.

With the place of worship established, the Sherpas laid a plastic tablecloth on the rubble at the base of the
chorten.
Food offerings were placed on it, and a Sherpa who was also a Tibetan Buddhist lama sat on a sleeping mat in front of the offerings. He began to chant prayers that were appropriate for Chomolungma, a Tibetan and Sherpa term that translates as “Mother Goddess of the World.” Several goddesses are believed to inhabit the upper reaches of Everest, but only Chomolungma is invoked as the mountain's name.

It was a beautiful day, perfect for a
puja.
The lama chanted constantly as he blessed the food. Sprigs of juniper were burned as incense on both sides of the
chorten.
The Sherpas placed their climbing tools—ice axes, boots, and crampons—on the
chorten,
and we climbers were invited to do the same. Mine were among the first. The wafting smoke from the burning juniper bestowed blessings on the climbing equipment, and the eating of the blessed food and drink did the same for everyone who chose to partake.

The expedition members, both Sherpas and climbers, sat on sleeping mats behind the lama. The ceremony lasted an hour, finishing with a crescendo of cymbals and the ringing of a handbell as we all threw handfuls of rice into the air and the flames. The lama handed to each of us a red thread of string “blessed by the Dalai Lama.” Climbers and Sherpas alike tied them into loops around their necks.

The festivities were over, but there was plenty of food still to be eaten. It was the day that the A-Team and their Russian guides and Sherpas were to head up to the North Col, so none of them sat around for long. Instead, they shouldered their packs and trudged up the path toward the mountain.

BEFORE WE HEADED UP to the North Col for the first time, we followed the main track one afternoon through Advance Base Camp to the uphill limit of the tent village. The highest camp, and hence the closest to the mountain, belonged to a Chinese expedition at 21,300 feet. That put them a half-mile away and 300 vertical feet above our 7Summits-Club camp. It doesn't sound like much of a hike, but after a big lunch in the stuffy mess tent, we did not have spare energy for walking. Nevertheless, we slowly set off, ever conscious of the need to acclimatize.

After a few minutes we reached an expedition where there was some camera work going on. Suddenly I recognized Bob Killip, an Australian climber I have known since the 1970s. I had heard he was on the mountain somewhere but hadn't seen him until now. Bob was a member of the Himalayan Experience (known as Himex) expedition, which led me to recognize the man at whom all the cameras were directed. It was New Zealander Russell Brice, the most experienced expedition operator on the north side of Everest.

At the same moment, Bob saw me, hurried over, and whispered, “G'day, mate.” The first thing I asked was why we were whispering.

He smiled and said softly, “Russell's got six Sherpas just about to get to the summit. He's watching them through his telescope and talking to them on the radio. The three guys with the big cameras are making a doco for the Discovery Channel, so we have to keep it quiet.”

I nodded, then whispered, “Maybe we should catch up later, when we're on our way down.”

Bob gave me a thumbs-up and turned back to watch the action. We had arrived at the Himex Camp at a crucial moment in the 2006 season. The Sherpas had climbed to the summit ahead of all foreign climbers in order to fix a continuous line of rope from the bottom of the mountain to its very peak. On the world's tallest mountain, hundreds of lengths of rope totaling many thousands of feet were put in place every pre-monsoon season by the Himex team. Other expeditions contributed by supplying rope, Sherpa labor, or money to help cover the cost of both. The expeditions that did not contribute still used the ropes put in place by Russell's team, invariably leaving him out of pocket for the service he provided.

The morality of rope use was certainly not an issue I had had to deal with. On the big mountains I had climbed, the only fixed ropes I used were those placed by me and my climbing mates. We set up ropes only on difficult sections where it was impractical or dangerous to carry the heavy loads needed to establish and stock the high camps. Between the roped sections we used our ice axes to gain purchase on the snow or ice. When the shaft was shoved deep into a snow slope, it provided a solid handhold; when the pick of the ice axe was chopped into ice or hard snow, again it provided a secure grip. When we encountered rock, we climbed it as we would at sea level—pulling upon ledges and edges with our hands, then holding ourselves in balance while we stepped up with our feet. There was joy in the acrobatic maneuvers as well as in finding a route through the obstacles. We had a different attitude to fixed ropes—ascending a fixed rope with a big pack full of supplies was necessary drudgery, just another part of the hard work of climbing a big mountain. Pleasure could be experienced on fixed ropes, but it came from the scenery and the physical workout, not from the ascent. The climbing of fixed rope is a repetitive process of sliding a special ascender up the rope, with the one-way clamp securely attached by a short line to your waist. With this system, there is little need for handholds or ice axe placements.

OUR FOURSOME plodded slowly up the trail away from the Himalayan Experience Camp. Because the walk was not something we were compelled to do, I felt less energetic about the task. There was no campsite we had to reach, as our tents were below us. It was the perfect example of being motivated by a goal or, rather, of being unmotivated because we had set no real goal for the afternoon. We were here only to explore and acclimatize.

We sat at our high point and took in the view down the broad gully. With more than a hundred tents, Advance Base Camp looked like a jamboree where the organizers had got their map coordinates wrong. The scene was extraordinary, given the altitude. Also surprising was that Russell's Sherpas were summiting on April 30, very early in the season, thanks to impeccable weather up high. The heavy snowfalls at Base Camp were a low-level aberration during what had been a perfect few weeks.

Richard turned back, and Christopher followed shortly afterward, but Mike and I sat there taking in the view. I told Mike the story of how I first met Russell.

“It was February 1978,” I began, “and Tim and I were training hard for our first Himalayan climb. We slogged up to Plateau Hut, an amazing place on the edge of a huge ice shelf halfway up Mount Cook. In the hut we met two guys who were on a quest to climb all of New Zealand's ten-thousand-foot peaks in one alpine summer. Turned out they were Russell and his Irish mate, Paddy Freaney. They had climbed Cook and Tasman, the highest peaks in the country, and were waiting for a chance to tackle Mount Dampier, a rocky bump on a ridge between Cook and Tasman. They had been holed up in the hut for seventeen days straight, waiting for a good day. They were tough characters and did not believe in niceties for the sake of it. After seventeen days, they didn't believe in niceties at all. Eventually they ran out of food and left. But they came back later in the season, climbed Dampier, and knocked off the remaining ten-thousanders as well. You have to remember that the lowest glaciers are at an altitude of around three thousand feet, so we're talking about significant climbs here.”

We began to walk down the slope, and Mike related his first dealings with Russell.

“I first met him at Thyangboche,” he began. “It must have been 1980 or '81, after he had just climbed Ama Dablam.”

“Must've been 1980,” I said. “It was the North Ridge. We climbed the same route in '81 but with a variant start.”