The Call of Everest Read online

  They soon came to know what the conquest of Everest would demand. To the horror of the old guard at the Royal Geographical Society, codgers who for the most part had never climbed higher than their desks, George Finch in 1922 argued that the “margin of safety must be narrowed down, if necessary to the vanishing point.” A climber on Everest must drive himself beyond exhaustion, “even to destruction if need be.”

  “We must remember,” George Mallory wrote on the eve of his return to Everest in 1922, “that the highest of mountains is capable of severity, a severity so awful and so fatal that the wiser sort of men do well to think and tremble even on the threshold of their high endeavor.”

  WITNESS TO THE OBSESSION

  My thoughts turn also to those who have born witness to our obsession with the mountain. I once met a Buddhist living in a nunnery at the base of Everest who had spent 45 years in isolated retreat, dedicating her entire life to the recitation of a single prayer. To those prepared to sacrifice everything in a quest to reach the summit of the world, such spiritual devotion may seem like a waste of a human life. Most Tibetans find it equally incomprehensible that one would choose to walk to heights where the air is so thin that consciousness is obliterated. To enter a death zone deliberately, to risk losing the opportunity of personal transformation and escape from the realm of samsara merely to climb a mountain, is for them folly, the actual waste of a precious incarnation. As the abbot of Rongbuk Monastery wrote of the British expedition of 1922: “They camped at the bottom of the mountain, then, I heard they camped for seven times for each level they reach, with great effort they use magical skills with iron nails, iron chains and iron claws, with great agony, hands and feet frozen … [Some] left early to have limbs cut off, the others stubbornly continue to climb … I felt great compassion for them to suffer so much for such meaningless work.”

  —WADE DAVIS Wade Davis, an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, is an author, photographer, and cultural anthropologist. His most recent book, Into the Silence, is a cultural history of the British Everest efforts of the 1920s.

  AMERICAN ED WEBSTER crosses through the free space over a huge crevasse using a Tyrolean traverse. In 1988 he and three teammates would attempt the summit via the Kangshung—or East—Face, without Sherpa support, supplemental oxygen, or fixed ropes.

  THE ESSENTIAL SHERPAS

  By now everyone realized that Sherpas were integral to most people’s success on Everest. They were incredibly strong at altitude and seemed capable of withstanding intense cold, large loads, and long days. Jim Whittaker, the first American to the top, joked about their capacity at altitude: “You don’t notice them until they take a deep breath. Then their lungs fill up, and they block the view.”

  Sherpas are inextricably interwoven into Everest history, and the record of their accomplishments on the mountain is legendary, although not often celebrated. Everyone knows of Tenzing Norgay, but hundreds of others could justifiably be called Tigers of the Snows. Dawa Tenzing was still carrying loads to the South Col at age 56 for the Americans in 1963. Nawang Gombu, who reached the top with Jim Whittaker in 1963, later replaced Tenzing Norgay as the director of field training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjiling. Pertemba Sherpa climbed the Southwest Face with Pete Boardman on Chris Bonington’s landmark 1975 expedition. Apa Sherpa, nicknamed “Super Sherpa,” has reached the top 21 times. Babu Chiri Sherpa, who climbed the mountain by several routes and summited ten times—twice within a 14-day period—once spent the night on top just because he wanted to, and climbed it once in 16 hours and 56 minutes. The list goes on and on.

  But not every team climbed with Sherpas. The Poles couldn’t afford them. Nor did a small British team of eight led by Alan Rouse that tried Everest in the winter of 1980–81, this time by the West Ridge, with no supplemental oxygen. It was an incredibly ambitious undertaking, and they were turned back by the cruel winter. Though nobody died on this expedition, three of the eight would make the ultimate sacrifice in the Himalaya in the coming years: Joe Tasker on Everest in 1982, Pete Thexton on Broad Peak in 1983, and Al Rouse on K2 in 1986.

  Bonington returned in 1982 with an all-star team of six, intending to climb the Northeast Ridge. Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker, well known in Britain not just for their climbing prowess but also their writing and filmmaking talents, were among them. The pair headed up the Northeast Ridge to an area called the Pinnacles at about 27,000 feet (8,200 meters). They were last sighted around 9 p.m. on the night of May 17, silhouetted just below the Second Pinnacle. The British casualty rate in the Himalaya was mounting. As historian Elizabeth Hawley observed, “A whole generation of British climbing has been decimated … Bonington is alive, but most of his friends are gone.” Only in 1995 would the entire Northeast Ridge be climbed, by a Japanese team from Nihon University, using full siege tactics, including 13 climbers and 31 Sherpas.

  At the same time that Bonington’s team ascended the Northeast Ridge, a Soviet team of 17 forced a bold, new, and difficult line on the buttress to the east of the British Southwest Face route. Eleven climbers reached the summit, heralding the Russian style of big-wall, Himalayan climbing.

  Finally, in 1983, the last of Everest’s faces was climbed—perhaps the most intimidating and dangerous one—the East (Kangshung) Face. It was so hazardous that the American team chose not to use Sherpas, reasoning that it wasn’t right to expose them to so much danger. Using supplemental oxygen, six climbers summited: It was the second new route on Everest pioneered by Americans. With this ascent, all three of Everest’s great faces—North, Southwest, and East—had been climbed.

  Two years later, another Everest first took place, and it presaged the future of climbing on the mountain. When Snowbird Ski Resort owner Dick Bass summited Mount Everest on April 30, 1985, he could fairly be classified as the first fully guided Everest client. It was his fourth try at the mountain, and he had David Breashears to thank for his success. “You got me up—and I know you’ll get me down,” he gasped to Breashears on the summit. Breashears did just that, for he fully understood the relationship. “He’s my responsibility: I have to get him down.”

  With the explosion of guided climbs that followed, many have criticized the business of guiding clients on the highest mountain on Earth. Guiding is an honorable profession with a long and illustrious history, particularly in the Alps. But it’s a different story above 8,000 meters. There are so many additional factors: the massive scale, the crippling altitude, the fierce storms, and the huge costs. Perhaps most important, the guide has higher stakes as well. Each is granted only one summit per season, not like in the Alps. It’s important to make each season count.

  CLIMBING NIGHT NAKED

  In the summer of 1986, possibly the most impressive ascent of Everest was made by Swiss climbers Erhard Loretan and Jean Troillet. After acclimating for five weeks, they left their advance base camp together with French climber Pierre Béghin. They began at 11 p.m. on August 28 and struck out for the Japanese couloir on the north side. Climbing through the night, they stopped at 11 a.m. at 7,848 meters to relax and rehydrate in the warmth of the day. As the evening cooled, they started up the Hornbein Couloir. After four hours of climbing, they stopped to wait for dawn’s light. Béghin turned around at this point, but the other two resumed their climb, reaching the summit at 2 p.m. After 90 minutes they started down, and since the snow conditions were superb, they chose to descend the entire face in a sitting glissade that took a mere four and a half hours, for a total of 39 hours round-trip. They took no tents, ropes, harnesses, or bottled oxygen. Polish climber Voytek Kurtyka (and frequent climbing partner of Loretan) called it “night naked” climbing. When the author asked Loretan, years later in 2010, what his most memorable climb was, he cocked his head, flashed a lopsided grin, and answered, “The Everest climb was very good … it was such a straight line.”

  The year 1988 was a conflicted one on Everest. Several amazing ascents were made, but in very different styles. A
massive undertaking called the Japanese-Chinese-Nepalese Friendship expedition, 254 members strong and costing seven million dollars, sent climbers up the Southeast and Northeast Ridges simultaneously, broadcasting live from the summit.

  In contrast, a small four-man international team was attempting a fierce new route on the East (Kangshung) Face via the Southeast Rib. Britain’s Stephen Venables, Americans Ed Webster and Robert Anderson, and Canadian Paul Teare hardly knew each other, yet they hoped to make the ascent without fixed ropes, without supplemental oxygen, and without Sherpa support. When Charlie Houston first heard of the plan, he bellowed: “Four against the Kangshung Face? You’re mad!” Judging by the features on their route, which they eventually called the “Neverest Buttress,” Houston was probably right. Filled with horrific overhanging snow and ice mushrooms, vertical ice walls, and gaping bergschrunds (where a glacier splits off from its base), the route was dangerous, steep, and sustained.

  They worked their way up through the desperate terrain all the way to the South Col. Then fatigue began to take its toll and Venables pulled ahead, alone. As he climbed through the night on May 11, he first assumed the others would soon catch up to him. Eventually it became clear that he was on his own: Either break trail to the summit—all the way—or admit defeat. He made the summit but failed to reach the shelter of the tent on the South Col on his return. Instead he bivouacked, hallucinating wildly, with visions of Eric Shipton warming his feet and Tibetan yak herders beckoning him to their fire. At dawn he staggered down to the tent, where two of his three mates huddled.

  But the story didn’t end there. After a frightening night, crammed together at the South Col and Venables half frozen, the climbers had to decide which route to descend: back down the Kangshung Face, or the easier South Col route. Despite its ferocious difficulty, they chose the face because they knew the way. After a series of wild free-falling glissades and miraculous recoveries, all but one had lost their ice axes. The story of their three-day descent, so completely out of control, is not a model to be repeated. Nevertheless they survived, garnering acclaim. Reinhold Messner called it the “best ascent of Everest in terms and style of pure adventure.” Chris Bonington was more specific: “Amongst the most remarkable examples of survival in the history of Himalayan mountaineering.” Survival it was, but not without cost. Webster lost the tips of seven fingers and a thumb, and Venables lost three and a half toes.

  That autumn, on the south side of the mountain, a small team of Slovakia’s best climbers tried to make the first alpine-style ascent of the Southwest Face, initially climbed in 1975 by Chris Bonington’s team. They used no fixed ropes, supplemental oxygen, or Sherpa support. The Slovaks succeeded on the face, but all four died on the descent. Because of the devastating loss, many began to question just what defined “success.”

  At the same time, Lydia Bradey, a flamboyant young New Zealand climber, was climbing with a New Zealand team that shared the Southwest Face permit with the tragic Slovak group. The New Zealand team, led by Rob Hall, did not reach the summit and returned to Kathmandu. All except Lydia. She climbed to the summit illegally via the Southeast Ridge without supplemental oxygen—making her the first woman to do so. The problem was that she had no watch to record the time, and her frozen camera had malfunctioned. She had no proof. Rob Hall dismissed her claim, stating that it was simply not possible. Yet he had an ulterior motive: Her illegal ascent might jeopardize his ability to guide in Nepal in the future. The summit claim was listed as “disputed,” thereby depriving Lydia the accolades for what should have been a monumental achievement. Only years later, after confirmation by a Spanish climber on the mountain, was Lydia Bradey finally credited with the first female ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen. Lydia was one of the few “firsts” on Everest for whom the accomplishment did little to change her life. She was a mountain guide when she climbed the mountain, and a guide she remained.

  VOICES

  SHOOTING FROM ABOVE

  Shooting a beautiful image on Everest isn’t hard. Being on Everest is hard. As a photographer shooting an expedition, the true challenge is to create a diverse montage of the experience peppered with emotional, storm-swept, descriptive, eye-catching, eye-keeping, storytelling images. I often have a hard time with those challenges at sea level. Bring those challenges up over 25,000 feet and it can be a bit overwhelming.

  Expedition shooting poses an interesting dilemma. There is the constant dialectic about whether one should focus on the climbing or the creative. One’s comfort level with the terrain and climbing often dictates one’s ability to shoot and be creative. I have a love-hate relationship with this challenge. I have built a career out of it. I have dreaded it. I have found some of my greatest moments of satisfaction in it. And it has almost killed me.

  BE PREPARED

  In general, I know that at any given moment there is always an amazing image to be created, but you can’t shoot all the time. You need to pick your moments, anticipate them, work them.

  When the light is happening and there is a flurry of action, you’d better be prepared. Your food for the day and camera gear need to be prepped; you need to be dressed before everyone and out the door so you can shoot everyone coming out. You need to have your bag packed so you can shoot everyone else packing but still not fall behind when they leave, because you need to get ahead for the next shot! Shooting people from below with a big blue sky above is rarely interesting. Shooting from above to show the massive exposure of a sweeping face below them and the entire Himalayan range spread across the horizon is the shot you want.

  —JIMMY CHIN An unparalleled expedition filmmaker and photographer, Jimmy Chin is also a climber, mountaineer, and explorer in his own right. He is a National Geographic emerging explorer and a member of The North Face athlete team.

  THE RECENT PAST

  Almost every decade has offered up unique and creative advances on Everest: The 1920s and ’30s were devoted to exploration; the first summit successes came in the ’50s; new ridge routes began in the ’60s; the ’80s saw new routes and oxygen-free ascents. But what about the ’90s? According to American climber Ed Webster, “In the early 1990s the years of wonder on Everest seemingly ended.”

  Part of the reason is the vast increase in the number of climbers. The Nepal Ministry of Tourism sells more and more permits for the Southeast Ridge each year—a veritable gold mine. China has followed suit for the North Ridge. These are granted to climbers chasing the Seven Summits. Climbers chasing the 14 8,000-ers. Climbers chasing Everest. Many, including Messner, feel that Everest is no longer a true mountaineering experience. British author Ed Douglas called it “Himalaya Horribilis.” Thousands now throng the mountain via its most popular routes, and the vast majority of them are guided. Hundreds reach the summit each year feeling triumphant, for Everest has been their dream, their ambition, their obsession. Yet many others continue to die trying, some from falls, others from hypoxia, and most from sheer exhaustion.

  THE YEAR OF DISASTER

  The year 1996 was when too many died. The highly publicized disaster that killed a total of 11 people has sadly defined Everest in the 1990s. Many have analyzed the sequence of events that led to the tragic night. Fingers have been pointed. But as with most mountain tragedies, many factors contributed. Certainly, there were too many people crowding the route on summit day, creating gridlock and terrible delays. Communication problems created confusion about who was supposed to do what, and at what time. Some guided clients weren’t as experienced as they should have been, for they would have relied less on fixed lines and hand-holding on the epic descent. The rivalry between the leaders of the two commercial expeditions—Rob Hall, a New Zealand guide and owner of Adventure Consultants, and American Scott Fischer, head of Mountain Madness—probably also played a role. Fischer was the new guy on the hill, and Hall, the well-established Everest guide, had succeeded in getting his clients to the summit every year, except for the previous year. The pressure must have been fierc
e. Hall disobeyed his own rules of survival when he and his clients stayed too long above 8,000 meters. The year before he had followed those rules and, although nobody reached the summit, everyone had returned from the climb. In 1996 four of his team, including Hall himself, perished on their descent.

  Fischer was ill on the day his group summited, compromising his ability to look after his clients and bringing into question the strategy that he had developed with his Russian guide, Anatoli Boukreev. Boukreev was to guide from the front, and Fischer from behind. That strategy couldn’t succeed with an ailing Fisher. The clients needed more support.

  Other climbers on the mountain observed that all the guides were clad in relatively lightweight clothing, indicating perhaps overconfidence in their ability to get up and down the mountain quickly.

  The costs associated with guided climbs of Everest probably influenced some clients to climb beyond the point of exhaustion. They couldn’t afford to return.

  The most significant factor was, of course, the storm. According to some, it was the storm of the century. Others rated it just another storm on Everest. No matter how fierce, it combined with all of the individual elements leading up to summit day—illness, broken rules, miscommunication, lack of skills, exhaustion—to become the perfect storm. Nine people lost their lives that night. Even more would have perished had Boukreev not gone out into the night, again and again, to rescue climbers huddled in the blizzard on the South Col. Rob Hall was not so fortunate. After he helped a climber reach the summit, his oxygen tank froze, and he died in the blizzard.