The Call of Everest Read online

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  Copyright © 2013 National Geographic Society.

  Foreword, “Everest Calls,” text © 2013 Thomas Hornbein

  All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the publisher is prohibited.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Anker, Conrad.

  The call of Everest : the history, science, and future of the world’s tallest peak /

  Conrad Anker; foreword by Thomas Hornbein.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN: 978-1-4262-1241-3

  1. Everest, Mount (China and Nepal) 2. Mountaineering expeditions-Everest, Mount (China and Nepal)–History. 3. Everest, Mount (China and Nepal)–Description and travel. I. Hornbein, Thomas. II. Title.

  DS495.8.E9A64 2012

  915.496–dc23

  2012045336

  v3.1

  SUCCESS! TENZING NORGAY holds out his ice ax into the thin air on the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, as he and Edmund Hillary became the first people to stand at the summit.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  FOREWORD

  EVEREST CALLS

  Thomas Hornbein

  CHAPTER 1

  THE MEANING OF EVEREST

  Conrad Anker

  CHAPTER 2

  THE BIRTH OF EVEREST

  David R. Lageson

  CHAPTER 3

  THE PEOPLE OF EVEREST

  Broughton Coburn

  CHAPTER 4

  THE NATURE OF EVEREST

  Alton C. Byers

  CHAPTER 5

  THE CLIMBERS OF EVEREST

  Bernadette McDonald

  CHAPTER 6

  THE AGONIES OF EVEREST

  Bruce D. Johnson

  CHAPTER 7

  ONE SEASON ON EVEREST

  Mark Jenkins

  CHAPTER 8

  THE FUTURE OF EVEREST

  David Breashears

  FURTHER READING

  CONTRIBUTORS

  Illustrations & Text Credits

  A SCOUTING PARTY during the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition appears as small figures in the foreground of Everest’s forbidding West Ridge. The group inspects part of a new route that will be used by Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein to reach the summit.

  In the spring of 2012 the National Geographic Society and The North Face sponsored the Legacy Expedition to Everest. Its goal and that of a companion expedition sponsored by Eddie Bauer was to revisit the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition’s journey nearly half a century before, with teams ascending from both the South Col route and the West Ridge. The plan, like ours in 1963, was to meet on the summit, with the West Ridge climbers descending, as did Willi Unsoeld and I, by the South Col route. Though the South Col part of this plan succeeded during one of the two brief windows of tolerable weather, excessive rockfall and poor snow conditions on the West Ridge made it too hazardous. This year’s was not an uncommon experience; the success rate on this route over the past half century has been around 10 percent of about 60 attempts, and the chances of dying have proved to be about the same as those of reaching the summit.

  This book, The Call of Everest, also celebrates that same 50th anniversary of the first American expedition to climb Everest (and also the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay). This volume is a natural for the National Geographic Society, which was a major supporter of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition (AMEE), not least because of the participation of one of their own, Barry Bishop, who was on the team both as climber and photographer. His photo of two tiny figures, Willi Unsoeld and me, on the crest of the West Shoulder, dwarfed by the mountain soaring seductively above captures for me the essence of what our West Ridge adventure was about—savoring uncertainty.

  The AMEE was successful almost beyond our wildest dreams. On May 1 Jim Whittaker, along with Sherpa Nawang Gombu, became the first American to summit Everest. Three weeks later four more followed. Lute Jerstad and Barry Bishop topped out by the South Col route midafternoon on May 22. A tad tardy, at 6:15 p.m. Willi and I completed the first ascent of the West Ridge (via what Willi liked to refer to as Hornbein’s avalanche trap, now known as the Hornbein Couloir). We headed down the South Col route, catching up with Lute and Barry, and we four finished it all off sitting out the night together above 28,000 feet in an unintended bivouac. We were very lucky to have survived the night and lucky that Willi and I had been able to pull off the first traverse of a major Himalayan peak.

  Our ascent of a new route on Everest was a predictable stage in the evolution of humankind’s relationship with mountains. The underlying theme of this quest is to perpetuate uncertainty: First we identify a goal worthy of our dreams, then figure out how to get to its base, and finally seek a way to its top. Once the mountain has been “conquered” (an abominable term), the next challenge is to find new paths to follow. This stage also begins to encompass style and, on Everest in particular, climbing without the aid of supplemental oxygen. Later in this evolution new uncertainties are added, like skiing or parachuting from the summit to be down in time for tea. Inevitably, as the human-mountain relationship reaches maturity, the advent of guided climbing brings less experienced aspirants to enjoy a taste of ultimate adventure.

  Though none of this evolution is unique to Everest, what is unique is the explosion in numbers seeking to be guided to the top of the highest point on Earth. Everest is being loved to death. But it’s not the mountain that’s dying.

  I must admit that until the events of the 2012 season, and in spite of the tragedy of 1996 and some subsequent years, I was able to rationalize the growing numbers and pragmatically accept that guided climbing was as inevitable on Everest as on every other attractive mountain in the world. I reckoned that less experienced but fit people could be guided up Everest with a reasonable margin of safety. I was impressed that the mortality rate did not go up despite the increased numbers of novices. I attributed this relative success to the strategies adopted by thoughtful guide services working together, for example fixing ropes over any terrain where a fall could carry you off.

  I also imagined that the motivation of these current-day guided clients may not be all that different from my own. I had observed long ago that the intensity of this drive to succeed seemed to bear no relationship to the reasons driving us, whether to seek fame and fortune, to enjoy the intimidating beauty of one of Earth’s wild places, or simply to engage in some inner spiritual quest
where one seeks an answer to the question “Can I?”

  One of the starkest contrasts between 1963 and now was captured by Mark Jenkins’s description of events in 2012 (Chapter 7), and by photos, one of a thin, dark line: hundreds of climbers clipped to a fixed rope, snaking their way up the Lhotse Face and another showing climbers packed like sardines awaiting their turn to ascend the Hillary Step. Perhaps the biggest risk to climbing Everest these days is overcrowding and the risk of waiting in a queue, sometimes for hours. What fills me with even more dread is imagining that moment when these numbers high on the mountain intersect with the quirky forces of nature—a rogue storm, a massive avalanche—that are part of the roulette of climbing on big mountains. As with other natural disasters, perhaps the question is not whether but when.

  As a flatlander growing up in the Midwest, I met mountains when I was 13 and fell in love. That love has defined my life, not just as an amateur climber of mountains but also in many other ways—in my profession as physician, researcher, and educator and with my family and many others who have added seasoning and helped me to grow old with, I hope, a modicum of grace. When I was a teenager, Everest was part of my fantasy world, not a place I figured I’d ever see, much less climb upon. Looking back from this 50th anniversary, I feel blessed to have been born at the right time and given the opportunity to share in such an adventure at a time when the mountain belonged just to us.

  That Everest is past. Everest now, with its multitude, the social atmosphere at Base Camp and the ambience up high, is the antithesis of what mountains mean to me. My affair with this vertical world has been mostly a quiet one, wandering in wild places with like-minded companions. Even so, I think I understand the attraction this tallest of peaks has for those willing to brave its challenges; we share a similar fire to pursue dreams. This volume is aptly named—Everest “calls.” So turn the page, and let Conrad Anker get you started.

  USING A FIXED rope for safety, mountaineer Conrad Anker descends an ice step in the Khumbu Icefall. Considered one of the most dangerous parts of the route to and from Everest’s summit, the icefall is located about a third of the way down the Khumbu Glacier on the Nepali slope of Everest.

  On May 26, 2012, I look down from the summit of Mount Everest to three glaciers that have sculpted the mountain. For the past nine and a half hours I have been climbing the Southeast Ridge in near-perfect weather. At an elevation of 8,850 meters, there is no higher place on our planet. The world literally drops away below. To the east, the robust Kangshung Glacier pushes moraine into Tibet and in the process creates small glacial lakes. To the north, the Rongbuk Glacier is solid in appearance, yet I know that it is moving, ever so slowly. To the south and west, the Khumbu Glacier, cascading down the southern flank of the Himalaya, provides sustenance to the people of Nepal and India. The frozen snow on which I stand may eventually join the Ganges, slowly making its way to the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Perhaps this water will be recycled and deposited once again in the Himalaya to begin the timeless cycle of regeneration.

  Standing on the apex of our planet is humbling. I’m starved of oxygen, depleted of reserves, unable to eat, and bound by anxiety. This is a dangerous place. Yet the symbolism of standing on top of the world gives me a chance to experience time on a cosmic scale. During the half hour I spend on the summit, I reflect on the mountain—how it came to be, its significance to humanity, and my personal connection to Everest. For the third time I have the opportunity to stand at this unique spot on the planet.

  Humans frame time within the span of our own existence and, to a lesser extent, the history of humanity. We anthropomorphize time, as if what happens to humans is the only relevant measure. We are exhorted to live in the here and now. Yet on the upper reaches of the highest mountain, we live on borrowed time. Dillydally too long and we will die. When we face adverse situations, time is immediate. This immediacy provides a prism through which we can view our planet. How do we fit into the grand scheme of life? Everest, with its timeless immensity, highlights how insignificant human existence is. Standing on the summit, looking up through the troposphere to the blue, purple infinity of space, on a mountain of rock millions of years old, thrust up into the sky by a thin crust of earth floating on a moving mantle and carved away by gravity, I contemplate my place in the universe. I feel insignificant. The mountains seem to have conquered us long before we set foot on them, and they will remain long after our brief existence. This indomitable force of the mountains gives us humans a blank canvas on which to paint the drive of discovery and, in the process, test the limits of human performance.

  THE IRRESISTIBLE CALL

  Chomolungma, as the denizens who live within the shadow of Everest have referred to it for millennia, has always been revered as a spiritual abode. The mountain gained recognition within the Western mind only in 1849, when its measurements were announced by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. More than a century after it was quantified as the tallest point on Earth, Tenzing Norgay and Ed Hillary climbed Everest on May 29, 1953. After eight expeditions that cost 13 human lives, the goal had been reached at last—Earth’s third pole. This landmark of exploration signified the culmination of terrestrial exploration. We had crossed the seven seas centuries earlier, mapped the ranges and rivers in due time, and reached the axes of our planet at the turn of the 20th century. Now the last and ultimate landmark had been reached.

  The first ascent of Everest came at a time when humanity needed relief from two world wars. It was a unifying and inspiring event, signifying the drive to reach our greatest potential. Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa born in the shadow of the great mountain, reached the summit with Edmund Hillary, an enthusiastic beekeeper and mountaineer from New Zealand. That an Easterner and Westerner teamed up for this historic ascent signified a new era of cooperation and a transition away from colonial rule. Times were changing, and Everest was symbolic of this change.

  AN AMERICAN DREAM

  By the time the United States launched an expedition in 1963, nine people had reached the summit. On May 1, 1963, when Jim Whittaker, the first American, reached the summit of Everest, I was all of 156 days old. I wasn’t aware of my own existence, and crawling about my crib was the extent of my climbing experience. But mountains were already part of my heritage.

  Our family valued the serenity, beauty, and physical challenge of the mountains where my ancestors had settled, in Big Oak Flat, California, and we embarked on annual pack trips to camp in the High Sierra each summer. We climbed peaks together, and I remember asking my father as we looked out over the landscape, “Where will we go next?” I was wondering what the extension of our summer vacations in the gentle, granite-ringed meadows might be. Dad spoke of the Himalaya, the most dramatic mountain range on Earth, and pointed me to a book that was part of his library. With a seed of possibility planted, I would leaf through Tom Hornbein’s illustrated book The West Ridge and dream of giant glaciated peaks and the remote people who lived beneath them. My eyes were opened to a world beyond North America. I dreamed of being out on the edge, and becoming a climber was the way to get there.

  THE 1963 AMERICAN team, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, ascends Everest to Base Camp. The expedition was spearheaded by Swiss climber Norman Dyhrenfurth and included 19 Americans, 32 Sherpas, and 909 porters carrying 27 tons (25 metric tons) of gear. The team’s purpose was not only to reach the summit but to carry out scientific research in physiology, psychology, glaciology, and meteorology.

  WHAT’S BEYOND?

  A scant 16 years after Tenzing and Ed’s 1953 ascent, humans reached the moon. In July 1969 our family huddled around a flickering black-and-white television to watch it happen. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Yes, exploration was alive and well. In a span shorter than a generation, humans had gone from the top of our planet to the one celestial body that Earth casts its shadow upon, providing proof that we exist within a greater scope. The next morning, as my mother recalls, I rode my bicyc
le around with added vigor as I pretended to be an astronaut. Lunar exploration had supplanted terrestrial exploration.

  Still, Everest continued to offer a test of human limitations. In 1978, when Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed to the summit without the use of supplemental oxygen, unaided by life’s most essential element, humanity was again inspired by their accomplishment. In 1980, when Messner returned to climb it alone, again without added oxygen, he pushed the standard a notch higher. A decade later Everest transitioned from the cutting edge of alpine climbing to a mountain that, given the right amount of training and resources, became a goal attainable by the average person. The early expeditions were an extension of imperial power, starting with the three pioneering expeditions of 1921, 1922, and 1924. As large national expeditions gave way to commercial guided climbs in the early 1990s, Everest became a mountain for the individual rather than the nation-state.

  THE MALLORY MYSTERY

  In 1999, I was invited to take part in the Mallory and Irvine research expedition to the north side of Everest. Seventy-five years earlier, on the last of the initial three English Everest expeditions, George Mallory and his young partner, Sandy Irvine, climbed within striking distance of the summit when they disappeared into the clouds. They failed to return. Could they have made it, on June 8, 1924, 29 years before Hillary and Norgay? The question became one of the most debated in mountaineering history. We will never know whether they made the summit. The mystery remains, symbolic of Mallory’s pithy answer offered when asked why humans choose to climb Everest. His four words—“Because it is there”—probe into the fundamental question of what human existence means.

  My team set out to solve the mystery by finding a missing camera that may have documented a summit. Instead, on May 1, 1999, I discovered the frozen and preserved body of George Leigh Mallory at an elevation of 26,700 feet (8,140 meters) on the north side of Everest. In the half hour that I spent alone with his body, I felt connected to the expedition that long ago had set the stage for where I was that day. The drive to reach a summit and the planning that goes into one goal—a goal that offers only intrinsic rewards in the face of great risk—were the same motivations that drew me to the mountains. Though separated by 75 years, Mallory and I were partners in our life’s ambition.