Dead Lucky (2 page)

Apart from such irregularities, which are to be expected, I had the different languages of cerebral edema and hallucinations to translate for my readers. Both these influences gave me a very different take on reality. My approach was to immerse myself in these altered states so that I could convey the experiences. My last three books have been about other people, so it is refreshing to write a story of my own again. One of the great satisfactions of writing is that in order to convey a feeling or a concept in my writing I am first forced to understand it myself; only then can it ring true for my readers. In the same vein, when I succeed in describing the nature of a landscape—as opposed to just throwing a few adjectives at it—I feel more connected to that place, to the point where the writing becomes a silent dialogue with the natural world.

This book is not a comprehensive account of what happened on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest in April and May 2006. It is my personal story. The conversations related here, if not always verbatim, are true in essence. Many are based upon recordings made on video cameras, iPods, and dictaphones, as well as transcripts of radio and television interviews. Several members of our expedition have been able to confirm details with me. Their contributions were particularly useful because I left my diary in a tent at 27,000 feet, and I was not able to retrieve it during the difficult descent that followed two days later. Perhaps, one day, a high-altitude archaeologist will stumble across my diary and will ratify the events contained in
Dead Lucky.
Far more likely, however, is that the tent where I left my black notebook will be destroyed by the wind, with the disintegration of the notebook itself following not long afterward. Pages will take off in the breeze like errant Buddhist prayer flags. But instead of holy messages, those fluttering pages will carry only jottings of homesickness, friendship, and the fulfillment of dreams.

EVEREST 1984

A
DEEP RUMBLE SHATTERED the peace of the mountainscape—the familiar, gut-wrenching roar of an avalanche. Alone and 3,000 feet above the Rongbuk Glacier, I felt safe, huddled in the embryonic hollow that was the beginnings of our snow-cave. Every avalanche of the last few weeks had taken one of two courses. Either they plummeted down the Great Couloir—a wide ice gully immediately to the east of me that split Mount Everest's North Face from its summit pyramid to the bottom of the mountain—or they peeled away from the slab that spread westward across the entire expanse of the North Face.

My bolt-hole in the mountainside was at this stage so small that I had to twist and wriggle to escape onto the three-foot-wide ledge I had dug along the slope outside. Within fifteen seconds I was on the ledge, a frozen porch set in the heavens. The tiny snow-cave, destined to become our Camp Two—our first camp on the mountain itself—was in the side of a spur that rose above the surrounding slopes like a shark's fin above the waves. I envisioned that any avalanche coming my way would be parted by the spur, just as the fin would cut through water.

Most of the avalanches occurred to the west of me, so I looked in that direction, across the vast snow-covered slab I had named White Limbo. My eyes were hungry for the unmatchable display of power that is a Himalayan avalanche. Still, I heard the roar, but there was nothing to be seen. I looked to the east, but the snow slopes of the North Ridge were frozen and motionless. The sound grew louder, the thunder bearing down. I lifted my head and gasped in horror.

The snow-load from the entire upper section of the Great Couloir had cut loose, creating a monster avalanche. Huge clouds of it fanned outward, too much to be funneled down the couloir. Within moments, the overflow would wipe me and my invincible spur off the mountain, like hairs shaved from an upper lip, such was the scale of this awesome place.

But I wasn't interested in the scale of things. I seized my only hope— there must always be hope—and groveled back into the snow-cave. Already claustrophobic, I peered anxiously through the low entrance, my heart furiously thumping. Within seconds the avalanche hit. A blast of air blew spindrift through the entrance, then hundreds of tons of snow roared by with the speed and momentum of an express train. More snow swirled into the cave and still more thundered past in a constant blur of white. Instinct drove me to wriggle out, away from the threat of being buried alive inside the slope. But as soon as I dragged myself out onto the ledge, I thought the avalanche would now crush me. It was too late to do anything but lie low on the ledge, facedown, my hands over my nose and mouth to keep out the snow. Time seemed to freeze, but the snow kept coming. I wanted it to be over, but also I wanted time to remain frozen so I could stay alive.

Then suddenly the whiteness vanished, and with it the noise. In its place was an incredibly bright sky, not yet blue but filled with millions of crushed snowflakes, particles sparkling as if the world's entire supply of glitter had been thrown into the sky above me. I lay on my back, laughing with delight and trembling uncontrollably. Our special spur had, in fact, proved to be invincible.

Suddenly I remembered my friends. I wanted to stand but did not trust my trembling legs. I crawled along the ledge and peered over the lip. Greg was only 150 feet below, his harness clipped loosely to the rope.

“You okay?” I shouted.

“Yeah,” he called, barely audible, his breath stolen by the avalanche. “But bloody cold. My clothing's filled with snow.”

“And Tim?”

“He's fine. Below me. Just out of sight.”

It was unbelievable that each of us was still alive. The rope, which Tim had tied to an aluminum picket hammered into the firm snow, had withstood the huge forces of the avalanche. If the picket had given way, Greg and Tim would have been killed. Instead, both men had not only survived but also continued on to the summit together one month later, achieving our expedition's goal of climbing a new route without supplementary oxygen.

THE HUGE AVALANCHE had come very close to killing the three of us, and the slope was still exposed to danger. Luck had come into play, and if luck is allowed to intrude into the dangerous sport of mountain climbing, sooner or later there will be bad luck and people will die.

The first time I had allowed luck to enter the arena of my mountaineering had been in 1983, during our climb of Annapurna II. The mountain seemed to single me out. I was battered and bruised by a rock avalanche that cracked my protective helmet like an eggshell. In a separate incident I was struck by an ice block the size of a television and narrowly avoided being knocked off a cliff. After becoming the first climbers to reach Annapurna II's summit via the mountain's huge South Face, we were trapped in a snowstorm during our descent. The previous storm had lasted nine days, so we could not risk sitting this one out. For each of the next three days we battled our way down the mountain, not knowing if we would be alive at the end of the day, so great were the dangers from snow and ice avalanches and chest-deep snow. Luck had definitely come into play. When we were safely off the mountain, I declared that I would never again let myself be trapped by such dangerous circumstances.

However, only ten months later I found myself on the Central Rongbuk Glacier, two miles away from the base of the North Face of Everest, with a huge avalanche bearing down on us. It had looked as though the avalanche would hit us, but by the time the clouds of snow reached us, they had lost all momentum and the snowflakes fluttered down around us. That was our introduction to the dangers of the North Face, dangers we had to face for the next two months.

By the time we retreated from our highest camp at 26,700 feet, we had absolutely no resources left, not even the shortest piece of rope. It was a perilous descent, and if the weather had turned bad, it would have been the end of us.

At the end of that expedition, with a new route, without oxygen in the bag, and despite gaining my credentials as a high-altitude mountaineer, I vowed that it was time to give up big mountains. I had managed to climb within a few hours of the summit without oxygen, but if I continued to climb at this level, where we pushed the boundaries of what was possible, I would find myself relying on luck yet again. After a year of narrow escapes, I decided to call it quits and to focus my energy on the safer and less uncomfortable sport of rock climbing.

ONCE A CLIMBER, always a climber—or so it seemed. After becoming a father, I found that a day of rock climbing once or twice a month was enough to stop me getting restless. As my sons grew older and more independent, I became able to take a few weeks away to work as a guide on easier mountains in the Himalaya, the Andes, and Antarctica. The climbing of smaller Himalayan peaks nestled among the giants seemed like the perfect compromise—not too great a demand on my family, not too low-key for me. But there were times when I found myself looking up at the highest of all mountains, remembering how close I had come and what a great experience even retreating without the summit had been.

PART ONE

SINGAPORE 2004

W
E HAD BEEN LIVING in Singapore for almost two years when the phone call came. I was dripping with sweat, as I had not long returned from my evening run beside the canal behind our condominium complex. This evening I was content with my usual six miles, which came in at just under an hour's worth of jogging, door to door. Not superfast times, but I was in my late forties and had only just discovered the joys of running. It might seem strange to take up such a sport while living one degree north of the equator in the perpetually sticky heat of Singapore. I had not planned it that way; the catalyst was our younger son, Dorje, developing a sudden passion for roller hockey.

Dorje took to the game not long after we arrived. Already a keen inline skater, he picked up the new skills quickly and suddenly found himself in the selection squad for a hockey tournament in Canada. For a twelve-year-old, Dorje's skills and game sense were good, but his fitness was lacking. My wife, Barbara, suggested he skate back and forth along the exercise track beside the canal, with me by his side offering moral support. My lack of enthusiasm for this idea carried no weight. Three times a week I found myself running along the canal, oozing sweat while my son skated. Of course, Dorje skated in the bike lane at three times my speed, creating his own cooling breeze. Soon I began to enjoy the exercise and took to running the same distance he skated, which meant he was showered and watching television by the time I got home.

After the tournament in Canada, Dorje let his training go. By that stage I was hooked on jogging, having learned how to manage exercise in the tropics. I chose to run after dark, when much of the sun's heat had radiated from the tarmac path up into the sky. The hillside above the path was dense with jungle. The patches of yellow light that encircled the well-spaced street-lamps were flooded with moths and other insects. Every evening, not far above my head, bats made high-speed raids between the lamps, hunting their favorite moths and other strange equatorial insects. In such a setting it was impossible to forget the fertility of the tropics.

I finished my run, returned to our apartment, and stood in front of the slowly rotating wall fan near the dining table. I jerked the string-switch twice to bring it to full speed and fed on the cooling blast of air. The refrigerator was five steps away in the kitchen, and after two minutes in front of the fan, I darted in there, grabbed a low-sugar, low-fizz isotonic drink, and returned to the fan. It generally took twenty minutes for me to stop sweating, but tonight, after ten minutes, the phone rang.

It was Michael Dillon calling from Sydney. He was a good friend I hadn't heard from since we had moved to Singapore in 2002. In 1984 we had been on Mount Everest together, with Mike as cameraman and me as expedition organizer and climber; in 1993 we had the same roles in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. In Irian, our small team made the first-ever film of climbing Carstensz Pyramid, the highest peak in Australasia. That was an amazing expedition, involving Dani locals as guides, thick jungle, jagged limestone peaks, and glaciers only three degrees south of the equator. Mike was the ideal adventure cameraman. He had made several films with Sir Edmund Hillary, and almost a hundred other documentaries, many of them his own projects. Softspoken and terminally polite, Mike carried a camera at all times when he was working on a film, but he was as unobtrusive as a black dog on a dark night, which made him a great filmmaker—that and his superb ability to visualize exactly how each scene should be shot.

I was delighted to hear from him. Mike is not one for small talk. At school he would have been one of those children who speaks only when spoken to. This evening he had something to say. He wanted to talk to me about a documentary he was working on about a teenager from the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. At the age of fourteen, Christopher Harris wanted to climb the highest mountain on each of the continents, a quest known as the Seven Summits. Of course, the most difficult of these is Mount Everest. Mike did not exactly invite me to get involved with Christopher's upcoming Everest climb, but he made it clear he needed a high-altitude cameraman, a role I had performed on several mountains.