Death Zone Page 11

  ‘Just think of all those red blood cells changing and acclimatising. Incredible, really, isn’t it?’ he said in a burst of enthusiasm as we sat in the gloomy half-light of the mess tent.

  The only reply was the sinister slurping of soup. For the rest of us, acclimatisation was a grisly affair which had to be endured rather than enjoyed.

  On 19 April, when the time came to leave, we packed and headed down the glacier as fast as we could for base camp. The sixteen-kilometre trek, which had taken us three days to complete on the upward journey, now took most of us just eight hours.

  But for two members of the team, the descent of the East Rongbuk was not so straightforward. Brian and Richard, the Financial Times journalist, debilitated perhaps after the gruelling rigours of the first trip to Advance Base Camp (or camp three), both found their strength waning as the day went on.

  Most of us reached base camp just before nightfall, and as it got dark, we scanned the glacier anxiously for any sign of headtorches. There was no sign of approaching beams of light even though we could see for miles. By 7 p.m. we realised that Brian and Richard must be having a problem and, taking a Thermos flask of tea, a sleeping bag, and some extra survival clothing, Roger, Sundeep and I headed back to try and locate them.

  We had to retrace our steps for several hours, almost to the point where the East Rongbuk joins the Rongbuk, before we found Brian and Richard being ushered through the night by the ever-patient Barney, Simon and Al. They were both exhausted and close to collapse. Simon was mightily pleased to see us.

  Brian was slumped against a rock mumbling apologies: ‘It’s this bloody glacier. Just ran out of steam. Can’t seem to get the legs going at all.’

  Richard was in a stranger state, almost euphoric in his advanced state of fatigue. Perhaps through dehydration, half of what he was saying didn’t make any sense. He asked us if we had any beer then burst into hysterical giggles.

  ‘Richard certainly seemed to have the initial symptoms of acute mountain sickness,’ Sundeep later told me, ‘and for a while I thought it could be the onset of cerebral oedema. When we had a chance to examine him at the Norwegian camp we realised he was badly dehydrated.’

  After sipping some tea, both recovered enough to continue towards base camp, albeit at a painfully slow pace and leaning heavily on the Sherpas for balance and support.

  At base camp, which he reached at 3 a.m., Richard continued to behave irrationally, showing reluctance to drink. In the end Sundeep had to insist that Richard drank the liquids he was being offered, for his own good.

  The episode reinforced the dangers of altitude and shook my confidence in Brian’s physical condition. He had performed so strongly on the way up to advance base that I had not even considered the possibility of a problem on the way down.

  ‘Don’t worry, Matt,’ he reassured me the next day, ‘just a momentary blip. I’ve had it before, it’s always the same on the first trip up to ABC. I’ll be better on the second one.’

  It was typical of Brian’s generous personality that he sought to reassure me after his problem descending the glacier. He had gone through a very painful day, but showed not a shred of self-pity. After a couple of days’ rest he did indeed make a remarkable recovery and did not ‘hit the wall’ again in such a dramatic way.

  For Richard the episode had a less happy ending. On arriving at base camp he received the bad news that the bag stolen from the mess tent during our absence had been his. In it was his portable computer, and a quantity of money. To lose the cash was bad news but to lose the computer was worse. Richard’s reports for the Financial Times were to have been written on it.

  Understandably depressed by this, and perhaps still in shock from the sudden deterioration he had experienced on the glacier, Richard made a snap decision the next day. Hearing that a Jeep was leaving for Kathmandu with Ned Johnston, Richard decided to quit the expedition.

  He packed his remaining bags, shook hands with the bewildered team, and left, announcing that he would spend a few days in Kathmandu and then fly back to Europe.

  As a parting gesture Richard did agree to leave his luxurious tent behind. Brian and Barney moved in with impressive alacrity, ousting rival claims by the simple expedient of throwing all their gear into it approximately thirty seconds after the Toyota bearing Richard disappeared down the glacier track.

  *

  ‘The reading of the list.’ Simon was standing in front of us, notebook in hand, on the morning of 27 April, four weeks into the expedition. We were back at camp three – advance base camp – for the second time, and, as part of our acclimatisation programme, the whole team was primed for our first foray to camp four on the North Col.

  ‘Mug, spoon, jumar, harness, sleeping bag, water bottle, pee bottle. …’

  It was a perfectly clear day, with every detail of the North and North-East Ridges sharply defined in the brilliant light. The summit triangle of Everest, seen through a rippling haze of heat radiating off the ice, looked enticingly and deceptively close.

  Of the acclimatisation stages, the climb to camp four on the North Col was the most important and most committing test to date. For the first time we would be moving on steep ice, using crampon spikes on our boots and following the fixed ropes which had been placed by the Norwegians some weeks before. We knew it would be physically demanding and the psychological pressure was also high; the route is avalanche-threatened and the altitude is severe enough to reduce progress to a crawl.

  The Col had been the setting for one of the greatest single tragedies ever to occur on Everest’s slopes. In 1922, an avalanche had swept seven Sherpas to their deaths during the British expedition led by the Hon. C.G. Bruce. Mallory wrote about the horror of the event and the rescue that followed in which two Sherpas were pulled miraculously alive from the crevasse into which they had been carried.

  In more recent years the North Col had continued to prove its deadly reputation. In 1990 three climbers had been killed on the ice slope when disaster struck a Spanish team led by C.P. de Tudela.

  That knowledge, and the intimidating presence of the ice cliff itself, had worked predictably on our nerves. Few things focus the mind quite so effectively for the climber as the thought that millions of tons of ice might avalanche catastrophically from above at any moment.

  Al Hinkes was preparing for his first significant shooting day using the Digital video camera. The climbing of the Col was a key sequence in the film and the first time Al’s climbing cameraman skills would be put to good use on the shoot. I had high hopes that the lightweight cameras would now come into their own and we had spent several hours familiarising Al with the workings of the Sony.

  Kees and I would have plenty to occupy us simply to complete the physical challenge of the climb and I was not anticipating we would be able to give Al much help. I was acutely aware that the day’s climb would take me higher – several thousand feet higher in fact – than my previous altitude ‘best’. Without a comparable climbing experience to draw on, there was the sharp stab of fear in the pit of my stomach; the fear that ultimately, I would ‘hit the wall’ and fail to reach camp four. That would be embarrassing to say the least, and would leave Al and Kees with a huge burden of responsibility for the critical high-altitude stages of the shoot.

  I dabbed glacier cream on to a finger and smeared the greasy solution liberally on to my face and hands, taking care not to miss the underside of my nose and my ears, both vulnerable to the intense radiated light bouncing off the ice.

  We filmed the team assembling the final pieces of equipment and leaving advance base camp in a straggling line. The Sherpas had gone ahead earlier and were already visible as a series of black dots at the base of the Col as we filed off the rocky moraine on to the permanent ice of the glacier. We kept to the right, beneath the North-East Ridge of Changtse on the line first established by the early British expeditions.

  As was his custom, Al did not leave with the rest of the group but stayed behind pottering with
a pile of equipment outside his tent. When I looked back towards base camp after more than an hour of progress, I saw his lone figure leaving at a fast pace to catch us up.

  Why Al chose to do this was something which Kees and I had often discussed. There was no doubt that Al was faster than the rest of us, in fact considerably faster under most conditions; but surely he could have modified his pace and slowed down to join the rest of us? We all knew that Al was a ‘loner’, but sometimes it was difficult to interpret his behaviour as anything other than anti-social. I thought there was some sort of psychology at play – a subconscious statement perhaps to accentuate his superclass mountain reputation. If that was true, that Al was, as some members of the expedition believed, ‘showing off’, then it was unnecessary: we all knew that he was in a different league from the rest of us.

  Before the Col, the terrain evens off on to a gently sloping ice plateau which fills the rounded valley end marking the southernmost extension of the East Rongbuk glacier. As a natural amphitheatre, sound bounces back and forth from wall to wall and even a kilometre away from the Col I could hear the calls of the Sherpas as they climbed. The clattering fall of rock from Changtse was another accompaniment, each sharp impact of stone creating a bang which echoed across the ice.

  With no clouds to filter the effect of the sunlight, the heat radiating off the ice was intense. By midday I could already feel my skin beginning to burn as the effect of the glacier cream wore off. I applied another layer and advised Kees to do the same. Being fairer in complexion, he had already worked his way through several layers of burned skin and his nose was permanently raw red from sunburn.

  Three hours after leaving advance base camp we reached the foot of the Col. My nerves, already stretched by the prospect of the climb to come, were not calmed by the vision above us. From a distance the ice wall is impressive; seen from its base it is little short of terrifying. The wall stretches up to the sky in a series of gravity-defying seracs (massive free-standing ice towers) and hanging glacial ice, a waiting mass of energy held together by nothing more than the adhesion of one tiny frozen ice crystal to the next.

  Half of the ice wall is smooth and rounded off like confectioner’s cream, shaped by the Tibetan wind and the eroding effects of sunlight and frost. The remainder consists of shattered pinnacles and gaping scars where avalanches have ripped uneven portions of the face away and dumped the remains on the valley floor below. Fresh avalanche debris was lying not far from the spot where I now stood with Roger.

  ‘Psyched?’ I asked him.

  ‘Definitely. The sooner we get up this thing the happier I’ll be.’

  We spent a further half an hour putting on our crampons and harnesses (the first time in ‘anger’), and I was surprised at how tiring this simple act was. Then, as I stood, I snagged a spike of one foot into the nylon snow gaiter of the other. Unbalanced for a split second, I fell on to the ice. My knee took the full impact. I unsnagged the spike from the ripped gaiter and lay for a few moments while the pain subsided. Glancing round, I saw that Simon and Barney were busy with their own gear and had not noticed my mistake. It only took a few minutes for the pain to disappear, but my anger with myself for the error burned away for a lot longer.

  Al had caught us up a short while before and the two of us left ahead of the main body of the team to film Brian and the others as they began the ascent. The first stage was one of the steepest, a physically demanding pitch up a rotten ice section into which deep steps had been cut. It was the first time I had ever climbed on fixed ropes, and to begin with I made the error of hauling myself up using the strength of my arms. Within a few minutes I was exhausted and completely out of breath.

  By trial and error I gradually got the hang of it, depending more on my legs for upward movement, and using my arms less.

  Compared with my inefficient and stumbling progress, Al was smooth and fast, looking completely at home on the ice. He was the only member of the team who ignored the fixed ropes, climbing free alongside them, utterly confident that his snow and ice skills would prevent a fall. But I was glad of the extra security the ropes gave. We made steady progress, quickly putting about one hundred metres of vertical ascent between us and the main group of climbers.

  ‘How do you want to play this?’ Al called back to me from ahead. He was already preparing the camera to shoot.

  ‘See if you can move away to the side and get a wide shot as they come up.’ I had to pause several times during this reply to get my breath.

  ‘OK.’ Al tied his rucksack on to one of the snow anchors which held the fixed lines and moved away easily across the steeply angled slope, his crampon points leaving no mark in the iron-hard polished ice. He found a position about fifty metres across the face and deftly cut a standing platform with his ice-axe.

  Al filmed the team members coming painfully up the steep first section on to the easier angled ice, calling across every few minutes to ask advice on the shots and tell me what pictures he was getting. Brian was making slow progress, pausing frequently for breath and, at one point, dramatically collapsing on to his knees. Behind him the others waited patiently, glad perhaps of the chance to rest.

  ‘Get a close up on Brian,’ I shouted over to Al.

  ‘It’s right on the end of the lens. It’ll be a bit wobbly.’ Al was hand-holding the camera and had no tripod to stabilise the images once on the end of the zoom.

  ‘Try it anyway.’

  ‘OK.’

  Twenty minutes later Brian and the rest of the group arrived at my snow anchor, Brian apologising for his slow progress.

  ‘So sorry, loves,’ he gasped, ‘just feeling a bit knackered, that’s all. But I’ll get up it, the bastard!’

  He looked dreadful. A frozen stream of spittle had congealed in his beard, and his face was ghostly-white from the glacier cream. I stood aside while Barney clipped him on to the anchor point for some rest. There was no doubt that Brian was having a harder time of it than the rest of us. His age alone was enough to give him a disadvantage, and although he had lost weight consistently since the expedition began, he was still carrying more than any other team member.

  Al and I put on our rucksacks and went ahead once more to find another vantage point for filming. The rhythm of the climb soon established itself again; step up, slide the jumar tight up the rope, pause, breathe, step up … and so on. With a determined effort I could manage ten to fifteen steps before I had to take a longer rest, but any more than that was unthinkable. I was shocked by how slowly I was moving but no amount of will-power could have speeded my progress. Climbing at this altitude – just a little under 7,000 metres – was like trying to drive with the brakes full on.

  Al, the powerhouse, was moving as strongly as ever and only stopped to let me catch up.

  The fixed ropes stretched on interminably, snaking up between two bulging flanks of ice and then disappearing to the left underneath a steep wall about 300 metres above us. From advance base camp we had often watched through binoculars as other teams made their way up this part of the route, and we had even wondered why they seemed to be moving so slowly; one group I watched took almost an hour to move up one fifty-metre rope pitch. Now, experiencing the full impact of altitude for the first time, I too was moving in slow motion, my target number of continuous steps falling from fifteen to ten … to five.

  Three hours into our climb up the ice wall I was down to a single step at a time, with a two- or three-minute pause between. I found myself leaning increasingly on the ice-axe for support, longing for rest. Frequent bites of chocolate kept my sugar levels up, but in the heat I had already almost finished my two litres of orange juice.

  About halfway up the face, the route crossed a snow-filled crevasse and then evened off on to a flat area large enough for ten or fifteen people to rest. I slumped in a heap on to this platform and drank the last few mouthfuls of fluid. From this vantage point the full splendour of the East Rongbuk glacier was laid out, the ice flowing as elegantly as any ri
ver away from the embrace of Everest and off towards the North. To the left, under Changtse’s North-East Ridge, I could just see the dots of coloured canvas which was advance base camp.

  By the time Brian reached the platform he was suffering badly. He collapsed on to his side, coughing and retching in a series of violent spasms. Barney helped relieve him of the rucksack, and handed him a water bottle.

  ‘Got to get someone to carry my bag.’ Brian’s voice was little more than a plaintive croak.

  Barney and Simon talked through the options and agreed that the only way Brian was likely to reach the top of the Col was if his rucksack was carried. But by who? They decided to call back one of the Sherpas from camp four to help Brian out. Shortly after, Kippa Sherpa arrived on his way back down and was given the task. As he had climbed to the Col already that day, I was staggered by the good grace with which he accepted this decision, which committed him to hours’ more work than he had been expecting. He shouldered the pack and struck off up the fixed ropes at a phenomenal rate.

  Brian rested for a while to catch his breath, then continued upwards, noticeably faster and happier without the weight on his back.

  Before reaching camp four, there was one further sequence to be filmed, a fifteen-metre-high ice pitch which was undoubtedly the hardest section of the climb. I knew that we would get excellent footage if we could get in position at the top of the ice stage, looking down on the climbers with the valley dropping away sheer beneath them. I also suspected that some of the team members would find the section physically very demanding; wrapped up in the struggle of the climb, I hoped, they would forget the presence of the camera and enable us to get some compelling footage.