Dead Lucky (20 page)

Lakcha and I kept moving. I could feel a growing tension at the prospect of tackling the First Step, but it proved to be a simple rock-scramble, just on a larger scale than the other obstacles we had surmounted. At the top of the Step, I caught up with three figures, one of whom was Harry. I knew it was him because he flashed his light on me and waved me to sit down. We sat beside each other for a few minutes, saying nothing because of our oxygen masks. Lakcha sat with us. After doing nothing for a few minutes, I began to feel the cold. I felt encouraged by the fact that I did not need to rest.

“What's happening?” I asked Harry.

“Nothing,” he replied, lifting the edge of his mask. “We're just waiting for Thomas and Pemba.”

So, if Thomas and Pemba were not here, who were these other two people? It didn't really matter. We were all here for the same purpose.

“You might as well push on,” added Harry. “You're going faster than us.”

“Great. We'll do that.”

Lakcha and I set off immediately, with Dorje and Dawa Tenzing behind us at a slightly slower pace. The ridge had leveled off, but as we reached steeper ground, the trail again followed the rock-strata across the slope. We passed three more climbers sitting on a ledge, and I wondered how many were still ahead of us.

After a few steps I realized why they had stopped. The fault line that exposed the outward-sloping ledge suddenly disappeared. I was not overly concerned because the fixed rope continued across the rock-face. The familiar blue rope was anchored at the blank section, so that when I clipped my carabiner past it, I was in a safer position to clamber across to where the narrow ledge continued. The step across proved to be much easier than it appeared in the darkness. Lakcha had climbed up a few feet to another ledge system, which we followed around to a shallow amphitheater. I immediately noticed someone sitting up against the cliff off to the side, but with all of us wearing oxygen masks, there was no conversation. I shone my headlamp up the rock buttress beyond the amphitheater. Suddenly I realized from ropes hanging vertically down the cliff that we had reached the Second Step, and that no one was climbing it.

Lakcha wasted no time in moving across to the ropes. It was a slight step up into an alcove, which narrowed as it rose upward. This kind of feature is not welcomed by climbers because the holds invariably face downward, rendering them useless. Several ropes were in place, as different climbing parties sought the best option for scaling the obstacle. I stepped back while Lakcha quickly climbed up and disappeared from view. Then it was my turn, but I did not manage it well. I am a flexible climber, so I decided to bridge the gap with my legs, but I neglected to factor in the limiting effects of my down suit, the tight leg loops of my harness, and the weight of my cumbersome mountaineering boots. When I swung my right foot across, it only scraped the far wall and, for the first time on the climb, I fell. My weight was caught by my ascender-clamp locking on to the fixed rope. I was ten feet above the ledge, with my heart thumping.

Thankfully, the darkness hid the enormous drop beneath me. I was able to haul myself up to a level where my feet were on a narrow flat ledge, and while I was able to balance there, the handholds were very insecure. By moving up, I had shifted my weight to my feet. I reached down to waist level to slide my ascender up above me so that the rope could again take my weight. Unfortunately, the ascender was jammed—when I had fallen and swung to the right, one of the spare ropes had been caught by the clamp. I could no longer move the ascender in either direction. Had I been in a less precarious situation, I would have abandoned the ascender and climbed onward without the rope, but that was much too dangerous to contemplate. Otherwise, I could disconnect myself from the ascender, which was shaped for right-hand use and replace it with my left-hand unit. However, my left-hand ascender was at Base Camp. I slid my wind-protective goggles to my forehead in order to assess the problem—my main concern was that the rope which bore my weight might be damaged.

Time was ticking away, and Lakcha would be wondering what had happened to me. Thinking about Lakcha brought Dorje and Dawa Tenzing to mind, so I removed my mask and called out to them before realizing that they were just below me and ready to come up the ropes. I turned back to the jammed ascender and, in the light from my headlamp, concluded that the rope was perfectly safe. I grabbed the errant rope and jerked it strongly. With the first jerk, it came free and the problem was solved. Still, I was aware that mental processes could be suspect at 28,500 feet, so I reassessed the damage and came to the same conclusion. Only then, with Dawa Tenzing almost at the level of my feet, did I continue up the rope.

I was still panting heavily from the adrenaline surge, so it was an effort to drag myself over the lip of the cliff and onto a steep snowy ledge. It was now an easy matter to climb up the soft snow to a pair of ladders lashed to the cliff. It seemed incongruous to have a ladder as the key to climbing Mount Everest, but no one even questioned it. The shorter of the two had been placed at the upper section of the Second Step in 1975 when a Chinese expedition made the second ascent of the mountain from the north. The first ascent of this twenty-foot-high obstacle by a Chinese climber, in 1960, had taken three hours at the cost of severe frostbite. In 1975 the Chinese had also fastened a tripod to the summit, but it was blasted away by the jet-stream winds within a year. The second and longer ladder had been donated by a client of Russell Brice so that climbing the upper step would become less time-consuming and, therefore, safer. I was thankful for its presence, as I had heard many stories about the Chinese ladder being just that much too short for an easy exit to the ledge above.

The ledge proved to be small, but once I had my ascender attached to the upper rope, I could see the difficulties were over. I looked down to check the positions of Dorje and Dawa Tenzing. Dorje was almost at the top of the ladder, with Dawa Tenzing waiting at its base. A final steep but straightforward snow slope led to the crest of the ridge, where Lakcha was anxiously waiting.

Paradoxically, the crest of the ridge felt much more exposed and, hence, more dangerous because there was no longer a cliff-face in front of me. Nothingness dropped away on both sides. The edge of the darkness was softening, but there was not yet a hint of light. The way was open, the deadly specter of the Second Step replaced by Chomolungma, Mother Goddess of the Earth.

THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

B
EYOND THE SECOND STEP I had the feeling of walking in the sky. A sudden breeze confirmed we had reached the crest of the main ridge. I could sense the space around me and wondered what could be seen when there was light. I stopped and put a gloved hand over the beam of my headlamp. In the darkness the ring of mountains surrounding Everest was only an amorphous presence below a sky still full of stars. I wanted to see those invisible mountains, just as I had wanted a visual register of the landmarks we had passed. The Exit Cracks, the First Step, Mushroom Rock, and the Second Step were names familiar to me, but my images of them had just been distorted views captured briefly in the narrow beam of my headlamp. A mountaineering instinct deep within linked my safety to my knowing the mountain intimately—the backbone of its ridges, the cold flesh of its snows, the surrounding landscape. I was impatient for dawn and the sights that would come with it.

I dropped my hand from the headlamp and the beam lit my way. Lakcha had drawn ahead, but after my short rest, it did not take long for me to catch up to him. Dorje and Dawa Tenzing were following but at a slower pace because they were breathing a lower flow-rate of oxygen from their tanks. Both had summited Everest in previous years and knew what they were doing. The gradient became gentle again and we seemed to be making good time.

I began to sense that the heavens were losing their blackness. Since leaving Camp Three, everything I had seen of the way ahead had been limited to whatever had been contained within my headlamp's moving circle of light. When I tilted my head too far to the left or right, the beam vanished into the sky; it did the same when I tilted the beam upward to where I knew the summit must be. But now there was some texture in the darkness surrounding the cast of my headlamp. Within minutes, vague shapes were appearing ahead of me. Most obvious was a dramatic increase of steepness where the Northeast Ridge melded into the heart of the mountain. It was impossible to judge the distance in the fading darkness, but I guessed that the summit pyramid, formed by the convergence of the Northeast Ridge, the West Ridge, and the Southeast Ridge, was only a few hundred feet away.

The line of fixed rope had been running ten feet below the ridge but now began to slant upward. Thirty feet ahead of me, Lakcha was approaching the crest. Against the gunmetal-gray sky to the north, I could distinguish Changtse and the indistinct mass of Gyachung Kang and Cho Oyu. These sights were familiar to me from 1984, as well as from the last two days. Now I was eager to reach the ridge and see the view to the south, across the Kangshung Face and east to the Makalu massif—country I had never seen from the west. I hurried, although of course the view was not going to disappear. When I reached the crest, I could tell that dawn was not long away. I was impatient to look down on Makalu, where seven years earlier storms had shrugged me off its slopes, but the granite pyramid was part of the darkness. A colorless sky silhouetted Kanchenjunga, over fifty miles away on the eastern horizon. The light was coming quickly now, and I could see that gray cottonwool clouds filled all the glaciers and valleys, lifting the giant peaks free from the earth. The Makalu massif took shape, but the main peak was as yet indistinguishable.

As Lakcha and I approached the Third Step, the sky continued to lighten. Sue Fear had told me that the step was straightforward, that the snow slope above was long and tiring but only because of the altitude. She had added that the summit itself lay back beyond the snow slope and was reached by an awkward, circuitous traverse across the top of the North Face. All I could see beyond the step as we drew close to it was the line of blue fixed rope disappearing up the snow slope.

The ridge became very narrow, which put us at the lip of the Kangshung Face. There were a couple of rocks to be stepped around, which required focused attention. While Lakcha dealt with the obstacle, I looked down and across to Makalu, its majestic shape now apparent. To me, 28,765-foot-high Makalu is the most beautiful mountain in the world, a feeling that dates from when, as a young mountaineer, I first saw its dramatic profile in the pink light of sunset. Its magic has never faded for me.

As I looked down on Makalu from Everest, I felt a different kind of joy. Being above the world's fifth-highest peak gave me no sense of conquest. Rather, there was a sense of fulfillment now that I could see for myself the classic Everest-climbers' view of Makalu, an image already sharp in my mind from photos taken by others during the last stages of Everest's Southeast Ridge route. Although I was high on the North Ridge, the view of Makalu was very much the same. The message that came to me from this glorious sight was that I would climb Mount Everest.

The summit was less than 500 feet above me, and I knew in my heart that nothing would stop me reaching it. Another two or three hours of lung-busting climbing and I would be there. I was already a thousand feet higher than I had been on the North Face in 1984, and my determination to succeed, should the chance ever come my way, had strengthened with each of the twenty-two years that had passed. I was in good shape, with adequate oxygen, perfect weather, and the company and support of three great Sherpas whom I had come to know and trust.

As I took in the view and its implications, my thoughts delayed me. Lakcha continued toward the Third Step. I glanced down the ridge and saw that Dorje was only thirty feet below me. Dawa Tenzing was another hundred feet behind. I raised my hand, my thumb up in encouragement— the only kind of communication possible when wearing an oxygen mask. Then I turned and stepped over the rocks blocking the ridge.

It was only a few minutes to the low cliff of shattered rock that formed the Third Step. With less snow, it may have been more difficult, but today it looked straightforward. Lakcha sat down as I approached and pulled a thermos from an outside pocket on his pack. Suddenly, it seemed like a very good idea to take the weight off my feet. Without removing my pack, I sat on a rock and leaned back in the snow. I unzipped the front of my down suit and pulled my water bottle from one of the large inside pockets. I was pleased that my Black Diamond high-altitude gloves had kept my hands warm enough through the night. The weather was definitely on our side. There was scarcely a breeze, but I was beginning to feel cold, even though I had been inactive for only a few minutes. I wondered if I was cold because I had taken off my oxygen mask to take a few sips of water. Dorje arrived and flopped down into the snow, and a few minutes later Dawa Tenzing did the same. I zipped up my down jacket and tightened its hood around my face. Whether it was inactivity or the few minutes without oxygen, I was ready to get going. As soon as Lakcha stood up, I was behind him, and we turned to face our next obstacle.

The difficulties of the Third Step were limited to a few steep chunks of rock at the very beginning. Snow had accumulated over the rocks above the initial steep section, giving us the straightforward option of climbing the snow. Where the angle eased a little, there was a body slumped in the snow. Harry had warned me that we might encounter the body of Marko Lihteneker, who had been with Alex's 7Summits-Club expedition the year before.

It was only the extreme effort required at altitude that made the snow slope a difficult climb. The snow was in perfect condition, soft enough for a foothold to be kicked into the surface but firm enough for it not to collapse. The height gain of around 150 feet demanded much more than 150-feet's worth of work. There was some respite when the line of footsteps turned right and we began to traverse the slope so that we could edge around a large rock buttress onto the uppermost section of the North Face. The snow thinned until we were climbing completely on rock, still traversing at first, then heading straight up the cliff. Mercifully, the cliff lay back from the vertical, making it the most enjoyable rock climbing I had encountered on Everest so far—and there was not much left on the mountain to surpass it. The climbing was not particularly difficult but was continuous, and no doubt some of the enjoyment came from the fact that this cliff would take us to the summit. It would have been even more pleasurable had we been in the sun.