Death Zone Read online

  As darkness fell, a radio call on the southern side of the mountain announced the first fatality of the season. Chen Yu-Nan, a member of the Taiwanese team, had left his tent at camp three on the Lhotse Face to answer a call of nature that morning, but had neglected to put on his plastic overboots and crampons. Wearing just the slick-soled inner boots, he slipped on the steep ice and fell seventy feet into a crevasse. He was rescued by Sherpas, but later died of his injuries.

  The Taiwanese leader, ‘Makalu’ Gau, was at the South Col when the radio call came through from IMAX team leader David Breashears at camp two to tell him that Chen was dead.

  ‘OK – thankyou for the information’ – was the Taiwanese leader’s reply – a terse response which Breashears found hard to swallow, having just raced up to the foot of the Lhotse Face in an attempt to save Chen and men had the harrowing task of bringing his body back down. Gau announced to Breashears, and the other climbers from Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness (who were also at the Col waiting to leave for the summit in just a few hours’ time) that the news would not change his intention to continue the climb.

  The assembled climbers – more than thirty of them, huddled into their sleeping bags to snatch a few hours of restless sleep before their midnight departure.

  *

  The sound of Kees unzipping the front of the tent woke me at 6.30 on the morning of the 10th. It was a crystal-clear dawn, with the mountain already so brightly illuminated mat I had to put on my glacier goggles to be able to look at it.

  ‘Looks perfect,’ Kees said.

  I laced up my boots and walked over the glacier to where Al and Barney were in conference.

  ‘What’s the verdict?’ I asked them.

  ‘We’re not happy about it,’ Al said.

  ‘What?’ I was flabbergasted. ‘It’s one of the best mornings we’ve had. Let’s go.’

  ‘You see those clouds?’ Barney pointed up to the norm where a milky haze clouded the upper atmosphere. ‘The whole system is unstable.’

  ‘We’ll hang on here today and wait and see how it develops,’ Al said. ‘There’s no point going up if the weather’s going to break tomorrow or the day after, we’ll just knacker ourselves for nothing.’

  I looked over to the Col, where a string of climbers were already working their way up the ice.

  ‘What about them? They think it’s going to be OK.’

  Al and Barney shrugged, and that was the end of the conversation. We trudged over to the mess tent to force down a plate of chappatis and jam, resigned to spending a further day at advance base.

  As the day wore on, my frustration increased. The sun was as hot as we had known it, so much so that the interior of the tent became uncomfortably muggy. For the first time on the expedition, we had to place the sleeping bags on the roof of the tent to cool the interior down. I already hated advance base after our first two miserable forays here, and now I had the dread feeling that we would be here for far longer than we had planned. Unable to concentrate on reading, I sat outside the tent restlessly pitching stones into the smiling mouth of a narrow crevasse.

  ‘Patience, Matt.’ Brian could see my growing frustration. ‘There’s always a window … we’ll get four or five perfect days. If it’s not now, then it’ll come later. We might have to wait until the end of May. But if Barney and Al say it’s not right, then we stay here. That’s the game.’

  In contrast to my own depressed state of mind, the Indian team in the tents next to ours was in a whirl of high excitement. Their lead climbers were going for the summit that day, the first attempt from the northern side since the season had begun six weeks earlier. All morning, they were gathered outside the green canvas army tents with radios in hand, trying to spot their climbers through binoculars. Mohindor Singh, the leader, was the most striking figure: equipped with mirror sunglasses and a magenta turban, he stood head and shoulders above the rest of his team.

  I wandered over before lunch to see them. ‘What’s the news?’ I asked one of Singh’s deputies.

  ‘We have six climbers just approaching the Ridge. Now we are waiting with bated breath!’ he told me. ‘Fingers crossed!’

  It was exciting to think that the Indians were so high. We had made many friends amongst their team – largely through the efforts of Sundeep who, as a fluent Hindi- and Punjabi-speaker, had naturally become close to them. I found myself caught up in the excitement of the event and one of the two girls on the team brought me a cup of tea to sip while we squinted through the tiny binoculars, trying and failing to spot the climbers.

  The Indians had left camp six at 8 a.m. – a departure time which even I knew was worryingly late. But there was no outward sign of concern in the Indian team, only an overwhelming sense of expectation that the day might bring a great success against the odds.

  By mid-afternoon, the weather, and the prospects of success, had deteriorated. There was a large quantity of spindrift blowing off the North Ridge, and the summit plume was just detectable as a wispy tail curling menacingly behind the top. By 4 p.m., three of the Indian summit team had decided to return to camp six, leaving three more to continue in the ever-worsening conditions.

  Brian poked his head out of the tent. ‘I wouldn’t want to be up there now,’ he said. I had to agree with him. Now I was extremely grateful that we were still at camp three.

  Then, with virtually no warning, the wind picked up speed. At the same time the summit disappeared behind a broiling mass of cloud and the North Ridge erupted into a maelstrom of driven snow. Less than thirty seconds later we were running for the shelter of our tents as the first furious blasts of gale-force wind came hurtling down the glacier from the Col, ripping the pujah flags from their cairns and carrying loose boxes and rubbish high into the air.

  I made it to the tent just seconds after Kees, and we spent the next fifteen minutes clearing out the frozen spindrift which had followed us in.

  The temperature had dropped approximately twenty degrees in as many minutes.

  As the wind gathered strength, it became abundantly clear that this was a storm unlike any other we had so far experienced in the previous weeks of our expedition. The full wrath of Everest’s fury was unleashed all around us, with a blizzard potent enough to lift a climber off his feet and blow him off the mountain like a scrap of paper.

  Most afternoons above camp two had seen a deterioration in the weather conditions, with strong gusting winds and frequent snow-fall, but this was in a different and much more deadly league. Wind speeds over 100 miles an hour are not uncommon on Everest during such storms and by 5 p.m. the snow was driving horizontally through the air with sufficient velocity to draw blood from exposed flesh.

  As fast as the driven snow collected against the tents, it was spirited away by the wind as it scrubbed the mountain bare. The cloak of fresh snow which had fallen on Everest over the previous days – millions of tons of it – was now airborne and in the grip of far greater forces than those which had deposited it. The snow became granulated hard ice as it flew, beating a relentless drumming tone against the tight nylon skins of the tents, a mind-numbing white noise like the hiss of static.

  We soon realised that we should try to get some film footage to convey the severity of the conditions, but how to achieve it without damaging the cameras? The digital format is as prone to freezing and spindrift as any video system, and we still only had the two camera bodies to rely on for our summit attempt.

  Cameraman Kees, who has an answer to every technical problem I have ever thrown at him, went for a simple solution; he ripped up a plastic bin-liner and sealed the camera tight inside it with multiple layers of gaffer tape.

  ‘You think that will work?’ I asked him.

  ‘It’s that or nothing,’ he shrugged.

  We dressed in our layers of Gore-tex and went out into the storm to film. Wearing ski goggles to protect our eyes from the gravel-hard snow, the first problem was an immediate one – the condensed warmer air from the tent froze on
the interior of the goggles, reducing our vision to an icy haze. To have taken them off would have risked eye damage from the snow impact.

  There was not much to see or film. The white-out conditions were so all-encompassing that even our own mess tent was barely visible just ten metres away. I tried to take a couple of still photographs with my Nikon but after a single click the LED shutter speed indicator faded and died, the batteries disabled by the freezing temperature.

  Brian emerged from his tent and shouted over.

  ‘Any news of the Indians?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  In fact the Indian camp had gone horribly quiet after the storm came in. Now they were sitting in the leader’s tent, monitoring the radio, hoping against hope that their climbers would have the sense to pull out and get back down to camp six.

  Brian stumbled away towards the Indian camp, the bright blue and red of his weather gear disappearing rapidly into the white-out. I was tempted to follow him but I knew that the Indians would not welcome the presence of our camera at this sensitive time, with three tired climbers locked in a life-and-death struggle high in the Death Zone.

  My fingers, locked inside three layers of thermal insulation, were now beginning to freeze, as were my toes. Kees, who had to operate the camera with just one layer of gloves, was also losing the feeling in his hands very rapidly. Half blinded by the iced-up goggles, we snatched a few shots of flapping canvas and driving snow before the lens froze over with spindrift. We retreated back into the tent to thaw out. All we could do now was wait for news, hoping not only that the Indians would make it back to camp six but that the climbers on the southern side would be able to retreat to the South Col.

  Our ‘gut feeling’ on the weather had delayed our departure that morning. If we had left as we had originally planned, we would now be trapped in the storm at camp four … a far more dangerous prospect.

  There was little doubt in our minds, having witnessed the brutality of the storm here, that any team above camp five would be in mortal danger. Even if they had made it back to their tents, their safety would not be guaranteed. No tent could stand winds like these for very long.

  Then, at about 6 p.m., with the storm raging harder than ever, whoops and shouts pierced thinly through the screaming wind, along with a metallic drumming sound. I poked my head out of the flaps to see several members of the Indian team milling around outside their tents. At first I thought they were shouting a warning – perhaps they had received news of an avalanche or some other disaster or they were making a noise to enable someone to find the camp.

  Then I realised that their screams were of joy.

  ‘They’re on the summit!’ one of the team yelled over. ‘They made it! Three climbers!’

  ‘Great!’ I shouted back before retreating into the tent where Kees and I shared our total amazement at this news.

  ‘Jesus! They kept going! Why the hell didn’t they turn back?’

  Kees checked his watch. ‘I think they’ve got about another forty-five minutes of light.’

  The boldness of the Indians truly astounded us. To have battled on to the summit in that storm revealed an incredible tenacity which was either an indication of supreme confidence or a very foolish mistake. Not knowing the strength of the climbers involved, we were unable to second-guess which was the more likely.

  But the bottom line was clear even to a couple of novices like us. The three Indian climbers now had between six and ten hours of descent along a technically difficult ridge in a terrible storm and in the dark.

  A couple of hours later, one of the Norwegian team came over to give us the latest news from the Indian camp.

  ‘It’s not looking good. They can’t get radio contact with the three climbers and they haven’t made it back to camp six.’

  We knew what that meant. Out of oxygen, exhausted from their ascent, the Indians would have had little chance of finding their way down the precipitous North Face in conditions of near-zero visibility. Even with support at camp six, the chances of a rescue on the North-East Ridge were slim to non-existent.

  They would be extremely unlikely to survive a night out without protection, particularly as the northern side has precious few places to dig a snowhole for a bivouac.

  All that the climbers waiting at camp six could do was shine their torches out into the teeth of the storm in the faint hope that this would guide in the descending Indians.

  Meanwhile there was still no news from the southern side, where their base camp, like ours in the north, waited on tenterhooks for advice of the whereabouts of their teams. Radio communications are sporadic and unreliable at best on Everest; in the severe meteorological static of the storm, they almost ceased to exist. Call after call went out, with little hard information coming back.

  That night the storm continued to rage, and it decreased only in the early hours of the morning.

  We awoke to the bleakest possible news: the Indian climbers had still not returned to camp six. But worse was to follow: on the southern side of the mountain, more than ten other climbers – members of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer’s teams and the lone Taiwanese climber, Makalu Gau – were now missing somewhere between the South Col and the summit. Most incredible of all was the news that Rob Hall and Scott Fischer themselves were both in trouble and had not made it back to their high camps. After a full night out in the storm they would be in a desperate condition, and undoubtedly frostbitten if they were alive at all.

  The news that Rob Hall was in peril was greeted with disbelief and shock. Hall was the best – the ultimate practitioner at this deadly game. What set of circumstances had put his life on the line? Many present at camp three simply did not believe that the reports were accurate.

  As the day wore on, pieces of radio conversations filled in more of the details as both the north and south base camps tried desperately to find out who was still alive and where they were. There was talk of rescue, but immediate help could only come from the highest camps where the surviving climbers were already exhausted from their own battle against the elements.

  How could it all have happened?

  7

  Rob Hall’s team had left the South Col for their summit attempt at 11.30 p.m. on the 9th. They were bang on schedule and conditions were clear after an earlier strong wind had blown itself out a few hours before. By midnight, Scott Fischer’s team were also on the trail, following the crampon tracks of the earlier climbers up the shoulder of the South-West Face towards the South-East Ridge.

  Both teams were operating to the ‘turn-around’ principle, by which they would turn back at a pre-designated time if they had not made the summit. This ‘golden rule’ was one which both Hall and Fischer normally regarded as sacred but, in a break from their usual operating practice, as they set out from the Col neither leader had announced a firm ‘turn-around’ time to their clients. The two most talked-about hours were 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., but in the subsequent accounts of the summiteers it is clear that no one was sure which would be applied.

  One of Hall’s American clients, Doug Hansen, a postal worker, had experienced at first hand the hard reality of a ‘turn-around’; in 1995 Rob Hall had turned him back just 100 metres from the summit. Now Hansen had returned for another try.

  By 4 a.m., the two teams, each with climbers ascending at different rates, were intermixed into one straggling line. This ‘bunching’ had the inevitable effect of slowing everyone’s pace, and left many of the faster climbers, who had orders to stay with their teams, in the frustrating position of having to wait in the sub-zero temperatures until their comrades caught them up.

  The first serious delay came at about 28,000 feet, at one of the sections where the ground is steep enough to justify fixing ropes for security. The original plan, as described by journalist/climber Jon Krakauer in his book Into Thin Air, had been for two Sherpas from both Mountain Madness and Adventure Consultants to join forces and fix the ropes in advance of the two teams. This would have entailed their leaving ca
mp four at least one hour before the main body of the climbers departed. In fact, for whatever reason, the plan had failed and no fixed ropes were in place.

  By mid-morning the slow progress was beginning to worry climbers in both teams. Increasingly chilled from standing in the queue, and already exhausted after eleven hours of ascent, three of Rob Hall’s clients – Stuart Hutchinson, Lou Kasischke, and John Taske – decided they would abandon their summit attempt. They went down to join Frank Fishbeck, who had already returned to camp four some hours earlier, and Beck Weathers, who had also halted his own ascent after experiencing problems with his eyesight. Unlike Fishbeck, Weathers had been too high to return to camp on his own and was now waiting alone lower down the slope for the team to pick him up on its way back down. Hall sent two Sherpas, Kami and Lhakpa Chhiri, down with his disappointed clients.

  There were now seven fewer climbers in the line, but still almost thirty people, including the Taiwanese contingent, were heading up. Inevitably, with such an unwieldy group, there were more delays ahead, particularly as the two cruxes of the South-East Ridge (the south summit and the Hillary step), were still to come.

  By noon, the lead guides, Neal Beidleman, Anatoli Boukreev and Andy Harris, were still fixing ropes to the south summit. One hour later Boukreev led the steep ice of the Hillary step and fixed that too. The first of the climbers began to filter up the exhausting pitch on to the final summit ridge.

  Boukreev, the Khazak hard man who, unlike all of the other guides, was not using supplementary oxygen, was first to summit at 1.07 p.m. Jon Krakauer, the fittest, fastest and most driven of any of the clients, was ten minutes behind him at 1.17 p.m. In the next thirty minutes, guides Andy Harris and Neal Beidleman also made it, followed by Martin Adams and Klev Schoening – two of Scott Fischer’s clients.