Because it’s there.
Everest Base Camp, for those attempting the mountain from the Nepalese side, is located amidst a jumble of boulders on the side of a large glacier just after it flattens out at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall. The tents are pitched beyond the range of avalanches and rock fall, which regularly crash down from the neighbouring peaks.
Everest has been climbed in all of the seasons, but the easiest times to climb the mountain are during April and May, and during September and October, before and after the annual monsoon hits Nepal. During these periods Base Camp becomes a village with hundreds of inhabitants. The village is sausage-shaped, measuring about 800 metres from top to bottom and up to 200 metres at its widest point. Teams who arrive early tend to pitch their tents close to the bottom of the Icefall, while teams arriving late have to make camp at the lower end of Base Camp. It takes up to half an hour, before first light, for climbers to stumble their way through a maze of tents and guy ropes from the lower camps to the foot of the Icefall, where the climbing begins.
Situated at the lower end is the helicopter landing site. The strong down draught of the larger Russian-built helicopters, which sometimes come into Base Camp, would wreak havoc in a tented area, so the landing site is kept well away from the inhabited parts of the camp.
Base Camp is a mass of vivid colour. Most climbers have their own tents, where they make themselves as comfortable as possible while they are not on the mountain. These tents serve as a home from home, with photographs of loved ones, private libraries and boxes containing jealously guarded delicacies which are brought from home to be eaten in small amounts, to break up the daily diet of monotonous camp food.
There can be dozens of brightly coloured tents, festooned with thousands of prayer flags swaying in the wind, allowing the prayers which have been written on them to float up to the deities. Flags also hang from poles which point skywards from the numerous stone shrines forming the focal point of each team’s area and where, at the start of the expeditions, a ceremony is held to seek spiritual blessings for the safety of the team members during their time on the mountain. For many this is the last opportunity to party before the serious business of climbing a mountain begins. The Sherpas serve up traditional brews with seemingly the sole intention of getting all members of the team very drunk. It is a fun-filled time, which can last several hours depending on one’s resistance to alcohol poisoning.
The smaller sleeping tents are located close to larger dining and kitchen tents. The dining tents can be quite luxurious. In 1996, those teams with clients paying US$64,000 certainly lived well at Base Camp, where staff were permanently on hand to serve their clients with delicacies brought from up-market Western delicatessens. Some tents had heaters and most had electric lights with electricity supplied by portable generators. They also had communications tents where members of other expeditions were allowed to send messages to the outside world, but at a price. One expedition leader, Rob Hall, charged members of other expeditions $50 per minute to use his satellite phone.
Our dining tent was not quite up to the standard of the eating establishments in the expensive commercial expeditions. It was affectionately known as ‘Ice Station Zebra’. We did, however, eat well, and I am not sure the extra luxuries enjoyed by other teams were worth their members paying an additional $40,000, which was the difference between what members of Rob Hall’s and Scott Fischer’s expeditions were paying and what each of our team members had to contribute to the cost of the expedition.
A long table, which seated up to twelve of us, ran down the centre of our dining tent. There were only rare occasions when all team members were in Base Camp at the same time and meals were seldom crowded occasions. At the far end there was a small radio cassette player which belched forth a complete cross section of music. Along one side we had the emergency first aid kit, the bookcase, and in the far corner the communications centre, which consisted of a laptop linked to the satellite phone. This was owned by the Danish members of our team and cost $10 per minute to use. Even this seemed expensive, but it compared favourably with the $50 per minute alternative.
Most climbers suffer from chest complaints on the mountain, and coughing up lumps of phlegm is a common occurrence. For decades, spitting has been banned in many countries around the world, because of the potential for spreading disease. Most climbers appropriately deposit their phlegm off to the side of the track. Despite having a doctor in our team advising against it, it became common practice for members of our 1996 team to spit on to the floor of our tent. This was probably another difference between teams paying $64,000 and our expedition. We did, however, have a solar panel charging system located outside our tent, whose thirst for sunlight was easily quenched by the intense solar rays found at high altitude.
Toilets are generally stone-built structures, about two metres in height, with a base of about one metre square. Four large flat stones form the rim of a hole into which a barrel is placed. The barrel is removed by a Sherpa who arrives from the lower valleys once a week to perform the task. Unfortunately it is difficult to calculate the exact need for this facility, and often the barrel has long been overflowing by the time the ‘shit-Sherpa’, as he is affectionately called, arrives to replace the barrel. It is common practice to shake hands when meeting Sherpas, but in the case of the shit-Sherpa, a simple ‘namaste’ and a wave sufficed.
It does require a delicate balancing act and a careful aim to use the barrel effectively – more than one climber has lost their balance and ended up with one foot in the barrel. Climbers who miss and hit the surrounding stones are hunted down and harangued by their fellow team members, until the offender agrees to return to the toilet with soap and a scrubbing brush.
Daily life in Base Camp starts well before sunrise, with the departure of climbers and Sherpa guides up the mountain. It is worth pitching tents away from the many paths, which wind their way through the camp, just to avoid the early morning noise of the departing climbers. Or more importantly as a precaution against them tripping over a guy rope and collapsing your tent.
For those who are remaining in camp, one of the cook-boys brings tea round to the tents shortly after dawn, which is a pleasant way to start the day. Most members doze in their sleeping bags until the sun hits their tents, raising the temperature to an acceptable human level.
A gong (normally a metal plate struck by a ladle) announces breakfast. Most meals are Western in nature and Scottish porridge is a regular feature of breakfast. Other meals feature chipped potatoes, which are readily available in the Khumbu region. Climbers tend to lose their appetites at altitude and it is difficult to replace the additional calories that are lost during the climb, with most climbers typically losing about twelve kilograms during the expedition.
During the morning climbers visit other teams, wash clothes or themselves, or just laze around. Occasionally forays are made out on to the glacier. During one of these trips on to the glacier, I found the remains of a climber from some past expedition. Some bones remained, including the backbone, from which tattered material of his climbing clothes was still evident. The remnants of a leather boot lying close by suggested that the climber came from a 1950s or 1960s expedition, when traditional leather boots were still worn. For the remains to travel this far down the glacier must have taken at least twenty years. After lunch climbers usually seek the warmth of their sleeping bags as the afternoon gets cooler, and then sleep, read, or catch up with diaries.
The evening meal is generally eaten with climbers wearing duvet jackets and woollen headwear – at least it was in our dining tent which didn’t have any heater. With the temperature well on the minus side of the thermometer, this almost al fresco experience – the tent making little difference to the temperature – is not the most comfortable way of eating a meal. This is followed by the hardier team members sometimes playing cards late into the night, while the more timorous of us seek the warmth of our sleeping bags as soon as the meal finishes. Some read by candles, others prefer to use their head-torches. There is plenty of time to sleep on expedition, and the lack of exhaustion at bedtime can mean long restless nights.
Life in camp is a mixture for some of rest and socialising. Most climbers give up drink during their time on the mountain, but this is not always the case, and sometimes impromptu parties last well in to the night. Sexual liaisons are not unusual. Perhaps it is the closeness of death and danger which encourages some to form relationships in a relatively short time in such a cold barren place. Marriages break up, long and short term relationships form – just like life in other villages throughout the world but condensed into a short period of time. But within Everest Base Camp it is difficult to meet secretly, and hurried meetings in tents soon become topics of gossip.
Our camp in 1996 was located in the middle of Base Camp, beside the main path leading to the Icefall and next to Rob Hall’s team. Maybe Rob advised his team members against visiting other teams. Certainly in the six weeks or so on the mountain in 1996, I cannot recall many visits by our neighbours – if they visited at all. Rob did pass by, but seldom stayed for long, presumably preferring the comfort of his own camp to our comparatively barren offering.
Our team title in 1996 was The International Everest Expedition, and we were climbing the Polish South Pillar route. This route shares the normal South Col route as far as the bottom of the Lhotse Face, where it splits and takes a direct line left up to the south-east ridge. The original South Pillar route took a harder and more direct line to the summit, but it has become more usual for teams attempting this route to join the south-east ridge closer to the South Col, where they follow the normal route to the summit. In 1996 it cost $70,000 for a permit to attempt the normal route, but only $50,000 to climb any other route, including the Polish South Pillar.
Our team leader was the veteran Scottish climber, Mal Duff. Intelligent and tough, with a great sense of humour, Mal was a first-class leader and the ideal climbing companion. The majority of the expedition’s members were experienced climbers, who paid Mal to organise the expedition.
Our team was made up of two Finns, four Danes and four British climbers. One climber had already left the mountain by the time I arrived at Base Camp having been ‘scared off’ by the hazards in the Icefall.
The Finnish climbers included Veikka Gustafsson, who had previously climbed Everest and K2. Veikka was an extremely fit professional climber, who was aiming to climb Everest without oxygen. The second Finn was Jaakko Kurvinen, a most likeable and capable climber with whom I would team up with later in the expedition. The Danes were really a sub-team in their own right and were all experienced climbers who had previously climbed together on several occasions around the world.
The other British climbers, alongside Mal and me, were Ginge Fullen, a professional diver in the Royal Navy, and Euan Duncan, an officer in the Royal Air Force with relatively little expedition experience. The British Army had climbed Everest in 1976 but there was still a desire in the other two armed services to achieve this feat. Ginge had paid for himself to come to Everest and his motivation and desire to get to the top was admirable, whereas Euan had been funded largely through support from the RAF.
I had great confidence in the ability of the Finns, Danes and Ginge Fullen, and under Mal’s leadership, I felt we had a realistic chance of success.
Our support team was led by our Scottish Base Camp manager, Mick Burns. Well-travelled and full of wicked mischievous humour, Mick was a great companion at Base Camp. Not all teams have a Base Camp manager, and those that don’t leave the organisation of their support team to their Nepalese sirdars (the head Sherpa). The Base Camp managers have their costs covered, but are usually unpaid. Staying at Base Camp, for up to eight weeks, can be extremely stressful, particularly when team members are injured or killed on the mountain. Certainly, as far as our team was concerned, having Mick Burns to look after matters at Base Camp while we were on the mountain was a bonus.
Mick worked closely with our climbing sirdar, Kipa Sherpa, allowing the latter to focus on requirements on the hill. Like most sirdars, Kipa was a multiple Everest summiteer and one of the very few Sherpa guides who had climbed the technical south-west face of Everest. He was a burly, tough Sherpa with a sharp sense of humour who was well respected by all of the team members.
Kipa was supported by a team of ten Sherpas, including the two who were dedicated to maintaining the route through the Icefall. There is very little physical difference between the Sherpas who work for the teams on the mountain. They are generally all extremely strong and fit, with natural wit and intelligence. Promotion within the Sherpa hierarchy generally goes to the more worldly-wise, outgoing Sherpas who demonstrate leadership.
The second most important Sherpa in a team is the cook. Most of the seasoned cooks on Everest are able to conjure up the most amazing dishes with very basic ingredients. Quite often these cooks demonstrate similar temperaments to those exhibited by head chefs in leading restaurants around the world.
The cook is supported by the cook boys, who are employed to do the daily unskilled tasks around Base Camp. In 1996 we had two cook boys who, like the cook, worked extremely hard throughout the expedition. They were up at 4 a.m. every morning to light the stoves and prepare the breakfasts for the team members who were moving up the mountain. Their next daily task was to deliver tea and coffee to the members who were, that day, resting in their tents. They did this whatever the weather – which could on occasions be extreme. They would then act as waiters during all meals, as well as being on hand to prepare the numerous drinks which members require during their time at Base. The most physically demanding task for the cook boys was collecting water from the glacier which had to be done several times a day.
One of the cook boys always wore yellow waterproofs, rather like those worn by firemen. Both he and his trousers seemed to get dirtier and dirtier throughout the expedition. He was nicknamed ‘Baldrick’, after the man-servant in Blackadder – a very apt title.
Base Camp in 1996 was a truly international arena. At the bottom of Base Camp were the South Africans and the Yugoslavs. I had spent eighteen months in war-torn Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1994. I had lived, during the war, in several parts of the former Yugoslavia, a complex, but beautiful and passionate land and I felt at home with both Croats and Serbs. The Yugoslav team was made up mostly of climbers from Montenegro – an area of Yugoslavia of which I had become particularly fond. The team members were always hospitable and it was a pleasant excursion to walk down to their camp. They had brought with them a significant quantity of their national brew and it took a great deal of persuasion and diplomacy to leave their camp in the upright position.
Phuri, their sirdar, had been my cook on an expedition I had led to Annapurna IV in 1992 and it was particularly pleasing to see that this immensely strong Sherpa had gained promotion during the intervening years.
The South Africans were equally hospitable – provided that their leader, a complex character called Ian Woodall, was absent during the visit. I first came across Woodall in the late 1980s when I was working at the British Ministry of Defence in London. Woodall was a Territorial Army lieutenant in the Royal Army Pay Corps (a position he held for three years before he resigned – although he was later to make some very bizarre claims about what he did during this period) and he had put forward a proposal to lead a team to climb Everest. I was asked by my senior officers in the Ministry to meet Woodall and to make an assessment of his suitability to lead an Everest team. Woodall had co-opted Mal Duff to be his civilian adviser and the three of us met in a bar in Chelsea in London to discuss the proposal. I questioned Woodall about his climbing background and in my view he didn’t have the necessary experience to either lead or take part in an Everest expedition. I then checked further with his Territorial Army superior, before making my report to the Ministry which concluded that Woodall shouldn’t be allowed to take the proposal any further. An expedition by the Territorial Army to climb Everest in winter did take place in 1992, and included Mal Duff as a guide, but without Woodall.
I was very surprised when I found out some eight years later that a South African newspaper, the Sunday Times of South Africa, had sponsored Woodall and that here he was in 1996 leading a high-profile attempt on the mountain, an expedition which had the support of Nelson Mandela. In order to get the sponsorship, Woodall had claimed to be an experienced mountaineer, as well as putting forward claims about service in the South African and British military, claims which I thought were inflated from the evidence of my previous meeting, although that had been some years earlier. Even though they were agreeing to sponsor the expedition at a cost of tens of thousands of US dollars, the senior staff at the Sunday Times of South Africa did this without either verifying his claimed mountaineering experience, or his military service. This failure would later cause a PR disaster that would haunt the newspaper in the years ahead.
On arrival in Nepal, team leaders are required to meet with the mountaineering section of the Ministry of Tourism to finalise the paperwork and confirm payment of the peak fees before setting off for Everest. At the meeting the names of those who are on permit, and thus allowed to climb above Base Camp, are also confirmed.
Woodall had selected strong South African rock-climbers to be part of the team, including Edmund February, who was credited with hundreds of new rock-climbing routes and had, a few years before, proved good enough to feature on the front cover of the respected climbing magazine Mountain. Also on the team were Andy de Klerk, another leading South African rock climber with a penchant for BASE jumping at the end of a climb, and the experienced alpinist Andy Hackland. He had also included the British scientist-turned-photographer, Bruce Herrod. With degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge, Bruce was a very intelligent individual who had previously worked with the British Antarctic Survey.
It was assumed that the others on the permit were to be Cathy O’Dowd and Deshun Deysel, both of whom had applied along with 200 other female South Africans to compete for two places on the expedition. The two of them were taken as part of a final group of six women to the mountains of Meru and Kilimanjaro in Tanzania for the final selection. It later transpired that not only had Deshun been left off the permit, but Ken Woodall, Ian Woodall’s sixty-nine-year-old father, who was later to join the team at Base Camp, had been put on the permit.
By the time I got to Base Camp over half of Woodall’s team had mutinied or deserted, claiming that Woodall was too authoritarian. These included the doctor, Charlotte Noble, who according to rumours around camp had been sacked by Woodall for giving medicine to sick locals, and the three experienced male South African climbers, Edmund February, Andy de Klerk and Andy Hackland, who had decided that they couldn’t work with Woodall. This must have been a particularly hard decision for the three of them to make, given how much an opportunity to climb Everest must have meant to them, but it also reflected how far relationships in the team had broken down, at such a relatively early stage in the expedition.
I acknowledge that Everest is not a technical mountain, but it is enormous, and in my view requires experience gained over years to ensure that those who attempt it are able to look after themselves in extreme conditions. Cathy O’Dowd had limited mountaineering experience and had only applied to take part in the selection process four months before the departure of the team to Nepal. Deshun Deysel had also applied at the same time, without any previous mountaineering experience.
Deshun was a beautiful and intelligent black South African. She had been selected to go to Everest by entering the competition which Woodall had organised to select two female climbing members for the team. He had stated that only one of the two female team members would actually go above Base Camp and the final selection would be made when the team arrived at the foot of the mountain. Rather an odd and potentially dangerous selection given that Deshun had no snow and ice experience. It was also rubbish to claim to select climbers at Base Camp, because all climbers have to be on the permit to climb higher than Base Camp and this is finalised before teams leave Kathmandu.
The plot thickened when Woodall’s father turned up at Base Camp and it became apparent that Deshun had never been on the permit. Woodall’s father was a rather gruff man in his late sixties and he had great problems just making it to Base Camp – there was no way he was going to be able to go any higher. At $10,000 for an individual’s share of the permit, this did seem to be an expensive waste of the funding provided by the Sunday Times, and at the expense of Deshun who had gone to the mountain believing that she would have the opportunity to fulfil her dreams.
The editor of the Sunday Times, Ken Owen, and his wife later trekked in to the mountain, but after an explosive meeting during which it was reported that Woodall threatened ‘to bury’ the Owens, the Sunday Times formally withdrew its sponsorship, arguably a bit late since most, if not all, of its money had already been spent.
There were two other odd teams at Base Camp – one from Norway and the other from Taiwan. The Norwegian team had one member, Petter Neby, who intended, together with his Sherpas, to climb the south-west face of Everest. This route is normally in condition in the post-monsoon season, when a covering of snow makes some sections easier to climb. In 1996 the route was well out of condition with constant stone-fall, making progress exceedingly difficult. It didn’t take Neby long to appreciate the foolhardiness of his attempt, and after two or three weeks he abandoned Everest. This solo expedition was estimated to have cost well over $150,000.
The Taiwanese were an accident waiting to happen. They had started their project with a disastrous attempt on McKinley in 1995 by a team of seven climbers. During the attempt, one climber was killed and several others ended up with frostbite, which reduced their numbers to the two members who formed their Everest 1996 team. It became clear from the start that these two climbers lacked the necessary experience. This caused alarm amongst the other teams who understood that such a lack of experience would more than likely result in an accident, which the rest of us would be expected to respond to.
The cast were in place, but the drama was yet to unfold.