The Call of Everest Read online

  THE NOISES

  I remember listening to avalanches all day and night from my tent at Base Camp, watching their uncontrollable power and violent strength and feeling simultaneously afraid of and fascinated by the beauty of the noise and energy they emit. Then there was my first trip through the icefall at 3 a.m., and the acute fear that made my stomach plummet and brought tears to my eyes at the very real danger of it all. I remember the intense heat of the Western Cwm, watching the snow melt and evaporate into steam in a matter of seconds after I put it down my shirt in an effort to cool my boiling blood. I remember listening to the wind barrel down off of the summit of Everest from Camp II, like a freight train with no brakes. It would reach my tent moments later and suddenly I’m in the middle of a hurricane, the nylon ripping and floor trying to lift my helpless body off the ground. I remember the first night we slept at Camp III, the unusually calm evening that welcomed us after so many torturously windy ones. The glorious sunset I watched that night made me feel like the luckiest person on Earth. I remember summiting early in the morning on May 25 in the nuking wind and -50° temperatures and trying to consciously be aware and appreciative of where I was and what I had done—but also realizing that reaching the summit had the smallest fraction of significance to me in the grand scheme of what I had seen and felt and how I had changed as a person on this journey.

  THE PEOPLE

  I remember the mind-blowing strength and kindness of the Sherpa people, and how they always managed to be in good humor despite the massive amount of effort their jobs required. I remember the relentless respect and love I felt for both our Sherpa team and for my Western teammates. They all became my family, individuals whom I will never forget and with whom I will always be bonded.

  I also remember the bizarre community at Base Camp, like a small town with all the same drama and gossip, but also full of real people, with jobs and families and purpose. Passionate people with positive intentions who were there simply to fulfill a dream and to experience the enormity of the mountains. Like them, I too felt the allure of being in a place so much more vast and powerful than we can comprehend. It is overwhelmingly humbling and puts us in our respective places as human beings. Maybe that’s why people go there in droves. In addition to the tangible goal of reaching the top of the world, they’re searching to experience a place that’s so much greater than themselves, to struggle and suffer and fight and discover who they are, much like I did.

  I remember all of those things, I am immensely grateful for them, and I will never forget them.

  —EMILY HARRINGTON A North Face athlete on the Legacy Climb team, Emily Harrington is currently the only American, male or female, consistently placing in the top five in the Climbing World Cup competition circuit.

  EXPEDITION LEADER CONRAD Anker drew this map of the treacherous trail through the Khumbu Icefall. He’s marked the “Ballroom of Death,” where hanging seracs threaten to crush climbers at any moment.

  ACCLIMATING

  Through the month of April, Camp I, at 19,700 feet, and Camp II, at 21,200 feet, are established. Camp I, a windy, gorgeous place, lies on a bone-white rib of glacier between deep, wide crevasses. The Sherpas do not stay at Camp I, so it’s more like a climbers’ camp in Alaska or Peru—you do your own cooking and look after yourself. Camp II, as ugly as a city dump, squats on the left lateral moraine, tents pitched among the hundreds of shit piles left over from previous expeditions. We tramp up to Camp I for several days, then back down to Base Camp for a few days, then back up to Camp II, then back down to Base Camp. This monotonous yo-yoing is essential for acclimation.

  The boredom of days at Base Camp is relieved by the arrival of Dr. Bruce Johnson and four researchers from the Mayo Clinic’s Human Integrative and Environmental Physiology Lab. They’ve come to study the connection between high-altitude acclimation and one of the most common diseases in America, heart failure.

  “We have data that show many heart-failure patients get constrictions in the lungs,” explains Johnson, “which could be similar to what happens to climbers at altitude.”

  Heart-failure patients often have pulmonary congestion: Their lungs easily fill with fluid. Well-acclimated climbers have lungs that successfully balance pulmonary fluids. Johnson and team want to understand the specific mechanisms that facilitate this process.

  “Another similarity between high-altitude climbers and heart-failure patients,” says Johnson, 54, “is that they both chronically hyperventilate. This may cause the brain to inhibit breathing, and in some cases trigger sleep apnea.” Why and how this happens is another subject of scrutiny.

  GLACIAL GUINEA PIGS

  To gather heart- and lung-function data, we all have a tiny computer, smaller than the smallest cell phone, taped to our chests, which will remain in place the rest of the expedition. This multi-thousand-dollar device is wired to two electrodes attached just below our nipples. A high-resolution accelerometer and miniature electrocardiogram, the machine that measures heart rate and the interbeat interval, takes 400 readings per second. Heart rate variability is one measure of stress on the system.

  HILAREE O’NEILL CLIMBS the base of Lhotse Face. Everest’s dry conditions during the 2012 season meant that stretches of the climb were on slick, hard ice instead of the more typical snow cover. O’Neill is heading to Camp III during an acclimation trip.

  Over the course of a week, the Mayo team performs a series of tests on us and themselves. Blood is taken, fat pinched with calipers, and a jelly-smeared ultrasound wand slid back and forth across our chests. Machines measure our lung size and airway function. Our cognitive skills (or degeneration thereof) are measured with computer games similar to those once given to astronauts. In one, we stab a plastic pen on the screen whenever a square appears—this is to measure hand-eye coordination. In another we match the color of a word—for instance, the word red printed in the color green—with the name of the color—not the word—below. Finally we do a grip-strength test and a step test, jumping up and down on a small stool like Jane Fonda.

  After both torturing and entertaining us, Johnson and his Mayo cabal pack up and head home to Minnesota to crunch the numbers. (They take our geologist, Dave Lageson, with him. He is not only sick but has to attend to family issues. Rocks collected on the summit by our Sherpas will be sent to him for analysis.)

  Which tent scene suits your style? The 1953 pig pile for human warmth, or the NASA-monitoring intensity of today? The 1953 team is actually listening to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth—radio was available—while the communications tent in the 2012 expedition includes Wi-Fi with its full array of amenities.

  “Our goal is to learn as much as we can about the physiology of the cardiopulmonary system under extreme stress,” summarizes Johnson as he departs, “and then apply these findings to treating heart-failure patients.”

  VOICES

  WHY CLIMB EVEREST?

  Thirteen thousand feet above sea level. That is about the highest elevation that I had ever been to before going on this Everest expedition. Though I am a climber and a lover of the mountains, mountaineering has never been a realm of the sport of climbing that has entered my mind. I dream of steep rock and ice, and mostly as single pitches. Having been offered an opportunity to attempt the world’s highest peak as a part of the National Geographic/The North Face Legacy expedition team, I was compelled to expand my understanding of climbing in the big mountains and of being on a proper expedition. Still, I was vexed by all of the uncertainty that I knew I would experience in the commitment of an entire spring season. As I reflect back now, just a few months from standing on the summit of the world, I am certain that the experience did change my life.

  INNER PURPOSE

  It was a long trip, and very challenging at every level of my existence—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and of course physically. As it was my first major mountain expedition, I had no skills to understand what or how I should feel internally. The days were long, and in such a basic and raw
and extreme environment, there is nowhere to escape. There are no distractions to remove the mind from where it is: quite simply, a place where people weren’t meant to be. Our mortality and true fragility are so apparent there, so much so that our bodies are literally killing themselves. Unable to obtain enough calories, they start consuming themselves. The immune system is depleted, running on fumes, so sickness is inevitable.

  I had two crippling bouts. One was a gastrointestinal nightmare, and the other was a throat and upper respiratory infection from hell. Both of which required antibiotics. However, there is always a silver lining.

  This experience allowed me to sift through my life by forcing me to be present, live slowly, and confront reality. It exposed my true self over the weeks, pulling back layers like those of an onion. And it forced me right up against the tough questions: Who should I be? What is this life for? What do I want?

  Perhaps it would have been better not to allow my mind to go so deep, especially given all of the responsibilities of our important expedition—but, as I said, I had no reference for what I should feel or think. I actually believe that part of the reason for my being there was to provide a fresh, unbiased perspective. I have no doubt that what happened to me there was because I needed it. Thankfully, we delivered on our obligations and were fortunate to summit as well, but in retrospect those things were like the cherries on top.

  Most important, Everest allowed me to look at my life differently and to reconsider it. For this I will be eternally grateful both to those who believed in me enough to allow me to go … and to the mountain itself.

  —SAM ELIAS A dedicated alpine skier, sport climber, and winter climber, Sam Elias pursues challenges all over the world. He is a North Face athlete and was a member of the Legacy Climb expedition team.

  OMENS OF THE SEASON

  By the end of April, three deaths have occurred on the south side of Everest, all Sherpas. One died of a stroke, another of alcoholism, and one, failing to clip into the safety lines, fell into a crevasse in the icefall.

  On April 26, half of our team is collected at Camp II and the other half at Camp III when a coxcomb of ice on the west ridge of Nuptse explodes, sending a monstrous avalanche down into the Western Cwm. A hundred feet deep, blasting along basketball-size boulders of ice, the avalanche tears right across the route from Camp I to Camp II. At certain times during the day, 50 to 100 people are traversing this path. Miraculously, only one person is caught in this avalanche. Blown into a tomblike crevasse, Nima Sherpa breaks three ribs and two vertebrae and bites through his tongue. Rescued by the Benegas brothers, Argentinian Everest guides who regularly save climbers, Nima is choppered out to Kathmandu.

  CORY’S COLLAPSE

  The following morning, Cory and Conrad set off to recon a route up to the West Shoulder, the beginning of the West Ridge. They reach a high point of 23,000 feet, dodging falling rocks whistling by like missiles, before deciding that the route is simply too dangerous to climb. Turning around, Cory begins to experience chest pain and shortness of breath. By the time they have dropped back to Camp II, Cory is gasping, dry heaving, and desperately weak. Over the next hour, we have Cory rest, relax, and drink. Visibly fatigued, his eyes anxious, Cory keeps repeating, “I just can’t catch my breath. I feel like I’m suffocating.”

  We bring in two doctors from another team to examine Cory. Although his heart rate and arterial oxygen saturation are normal and he has no gurgling, wheezing, or signs of fluid in his lungs, his respiration rate and lower-left-side chest pain will not go away—the contradictory symptoms lead the docs to a diagnosis: “He may have a pulmonary embolism,” says one. “A life-threatening emergency,” says the other.

  Eight Sherpas from Camp II, including Panuru and Danuru, volunteer to drag Cory down to Camp I. The Sherpas, Cory’s photo assistant Andy Bardon, and I run down the Western Cwm, pulling Cory like a child in a toboggan. Black, low-slung clouds at Camp I eliminate the opportunity for a chopper evacuation, and carrying Cory through the icefall will take hours. Instead, cranking his oxygen up to four liters per minute, Cory, with the help of Panuru, stumbles down through the icefall and is immediately flown out of Base Camp for medical attention.

  THE TEAM PRESSES ON

  This leaves Conrad without a partner for the West Ridge attempt. Flamboyant Italian climber Simone Moro, veteran of some 40 Himalayan expeditions, briefly considers teaming up with him. However, after analyzing aerial photographs of the West Ridge’s notorious Hornbein Couloir, which is no longer snow but blue ice and exposed rock, he declares any attempt suicidal. “I didn’t come here to die. On this route, this year, you will die.” Both Conrad and Simone reluctantly decide to climb the South Col.

  TEAM MEMBER AND photographer Cory Richards started to feel short of breath at 23,000 feet (7,000 meters) while fixing ropes with Conrad Anker. He descended to Camp II, where doctors gave him supplemental oxygen and then suggested a descent. Richards then made his way to Base Camp, sometimes on a Sked rescue stretcher (far right), but also under his own power through the treacherous icefall (opposite, at left). Doctors performed additional tests at Base Camp, from which he was evacuated to a medical facility near Lukla, Nepal.

  In the past half century, the physiognomy of Everest has changed dramatically. Back in the days before global warming, it was a snowy peak. Today the snowfields and glaciers have receded substantially, uncovering loose, friable rock. Due to an extremely dry, windy spring, during April both the Khumbu Icefall and the Lhotse Face have been more dangerous than usual. Several Sherpas have been seriously injured by falling rock on the Lhotse Face. One was hit by a collapsing serac, and the car-size chunk of ice broke an arm and leg. Two teams, including Himex, the largest on the mountain, have abandoned their attempts due to the excessive risks.

  Snowstorms in early May finally, if temporarily, glue the mountain back together, and the Sherpas manage to fix lines up to the 25,900-foot South Col camp. On May 18, lines are strung up to the top by the Sherpas, led by none other than our own Kagi. The next day more than 200 people swarm to the summit. Four clients will die in the effort.

  MARK JENKINS PASSES by debris left on Everest after being beaten by winds above Camp III on the Lhotse Face.

  EMILY HARRINGTON, Sam Elias, and Hilaree O’Neill (left to right) savor a rare windless evening at Camp III. Clouds hang over the Western Cwm, and Everest’s West Ridge rises to the right.

  We hold our fire, watching, waiting, and recuperating at Base Camp. The next window of opportunity, according to satellite-assisted weather predictions, appears to be May 25. We rest and sleep and eat as much as possible. We are now reduced to a team of six, for Phil Henderson has developed a respiratory infection and magnanimously taken on the role of Base Camp manager.

  Our summit push begins at the crack of night, 2 a.m., on May 21. We reach Camp II before noon and spend two days there—again eating and sleeping—before five of us ascend to Camp III. Conrad intends to come up the following day with the Sherpas.

  VOICES

  REFLECTIONS AFTER EVEREST

  Being on Mount Everest made me realize what a great life I have. It made me think of my own mortality and what is important. For me, family and mountains are very important. It helped to be able to call home and talk with my four-year-old daughter to wish her a happy birthday and to hear the voices of her and my wife.

  It made me realize what a small creature I am in the bigger picture of the planet. I would often notice the small differences of life at Base Camp, such as the glacial movement underfoot and the sound of serac fall in the night. To have the opportunity to see this small part of our planet close up was remarkable.

  FULFILLING GOALS

  I quite often found myself hiking in the icefall alone and being completely comfortable. Being alone in the mountains is something I have always been comfortable with. However, being alone on the highest mountain in the world, where the risks are high, and still feeling content—that will always be a memorable part of the expeditio
n. It told me that all the years of being in the mountains had in fact prepared me for this expedition.

  I really tried to not worry about what happened. If I reached the summit, great: That would be the icing on the cake. My main focus was to make a positive impact and contribution to the expedition, the team, and the others around me. I feel I was able to accomplish all of my personal goals—with the exception of reaching the summit. There were so many other important things besides just getting to the top, though. I remember thinking about the three minutes of my life when I couldn’t walk or move—the momentary effects of a football injury. Put in that perspective, just to be walking through the icefall on Mount Everest was a blessing for me. It made me think of how many people have given up on life or activities for whatever reason. It made me thankful that such a life-changing injury still did not keep me from moving forward. I feel blessed to have had this experience. This was a pinnacle of life for me.

  ALWAYS WITH ME

  There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about this expedition. For whatever reason, unlike my thoughts about any other expedition, I don’t see it changing anytime soon. This was another life-changing experience for me. It will help me keep life in perspective. It is the best example I can think of to show why it is important for me to have expeditions as part of my life.

  —PHIL HENDERSON a veteran mountaineer and senior field instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), Phil Henderson was a member of the 50th Anniversary Legacy Climb team.