Waking at 4.30 a.m. in a cold tent on a glacier at the foot of the world’s highest mountain, with over a thousand metres of climbing ahead, can be miserable. The climb begins in the dark, in the clinging cold, followed by sweltering sweat-producing heat once the sun has hit the slopes. Lying there, slowly awakening, thinking about what lies ahead, can be daunting.
We use very warm sleeping bags on Everest and it takes an enormous effort to drag one’s sleep-drugged body out of the comfortably warm cocoon to face extreme cold, exhaustion and some danger. I always prepare by sleeping in most of my climbing clothes. Personal morale is low enough before dawn in the cold damp darkness of the tent without having to struggle into layers of damp mountaineering gear.
Most of the final layers of clothing are put on in a half-asleep, zombie-like state, but boots and gaiters are always difficult to sort out. The fingers seem to lose their feeling whatever precautions are taken. The rucksack is also normally pre-packed and carefully checked the night before. It is particularly difficult to search for essentials in the brain dead period preceding dawn.
Exiting the tent is a further miserable experience. Breathing through-out the night produces vapour which freezes into a thin coating of ice on the inside of the tent. Opening the tent inevitably causes a sprinkling of ice, which always finds a naked patch of skin. This can be much worse if it has snowed during the night. The snow has an amazing ability to penetrate into remote parts of the body in the same way that sand does during a day at the beach. Exiting from the tent is followed by a stumble to the kitchen to get some welcome hot liquid into the system. The cook boy will have been up hours by this stage, and his cheery greeting is difficult to respond to.
Around the kitchen, Sherpas and climbers sit in the darkened, steam-filled gloom, bent over, with hot drinks firmly clasped in two hands in an effort to gain the benefit of whatever heat the drink is throwing out. No one seems to want to say much. None of these huddled figures looks like they will be physically capable, in a short time, of taking on the turns, twists and dangers of the Khumbu Icefall. The Icefall is so-called because, like a waterfall, the frozen ice flows out over the lip of the Western Cwm, down to the valley below.
All too soon it is time to move on, to gain as much height as possible before the sun hits the slopes. Although the cold is extreme, it is easier to climb in such low temperatures, rather than the debilitating heat that can be generated once the rays of the sun strike the ice.
It can be a stumbling walk of over twenty minutes in the early morning blackness to reach the start of the Icefall, particularly for those teams whose camps lie at the bottom end of Base Camp. Some climbers use headtorches to guide their way through the maze of tents, others just stumble, head down, seemingly dependent on some invisible guidance system. Frequently, the early risers trip over tent-supporting guy ropes, much to the annoyance of the tent’s occupants, who still have another two or three hours of rest before a cook boy brings early morning tea.
One irritating Sherpa in 1996 would chant Buddhist mantras whenever and wherever he went, including on his pre-dawn journey through the middle of our camp.
On leaving the tented area the route becomes confusing. It is only a short journey on the right path, but climbers frequently go astray, with further damage to their morale. It can be really annoying to become lost so close to camp. Small piles of rocks – cairns – mark the route, but these were placed in the bright light of day. Even during the day, finding the way through this short section of the route is very difficult, and finding the way in the dark is another matter entirely.
At the foot of the Icefall, a small crowd usually forms as climbers stop to put on their crampons and climbing harnesses. Some exchange greetings, but most go about their task in anonymous silence. It takes some time to complete the job of putting on the gear. Sleepy brains and cold fingers mean that simple tasks can, on occasions, become minor epics, as buckles and fasteners seem to refuse to do that for which they were designed. Then it is time to move unrelentingly upwards, through the mass of beckoning dangers.
The lower section is generally easy-angled and provides an opportunity for climbers to warm up and flex cold, cramped muscles. Some of the small cliffs and snow ramps in the lower section of the Icefall are fixed with rope. There are, however, few dangers in this area, and the benefits of these ropes are doubtful.
During that first hour or so, the brain gradually clears, as much as it is able to in the oxygen-depleted atmosphere above 5,500 metres, particularly during the initial stage of an expedition when climbers are still trying to acclimatise. This early part of the upward journey becomes a trudge in a semi-conscious state. Almost in parallel with the increasing light of the day, the brain gradually awakens, and the climber becomes aware of and grows to appreciate the sheer magnificence of the Icefall and its surrounding features.
Some climbers prefer to travel on their own – I certainly do – whilst others seek the company of groups of various sizes. There are also the long lines of Sherpas, constantly moving supplies to the higher camps. There is not much opportunity for conversation as the climber moves progressively upwards, and daydreams of family, home and friends help to pass the time. There is plenty of time to think on a mountain.
The sprinters among the climbers are quickly well clear of the pack and forge ahead out of sight. Amongst the remainder there is little overtaking as the line of climbers starts to spread. Most climbers prefer a steady plod up the Icefall. There is little physical benefit to be gained by overtaxing the body.
All too soon it is time to cross the rickety aluminium ladders held together by blue polypropylene rope. Some are not too rickety, whilst others bend, sway and tilt at amazing angles. On either side of the ladders, other blue polypropylene support lines, attached to anchor points, attempt to keep the bridges firmly in place.
Below the ladders, enormous and seemingly bottomless crevasses split the lower section of the Icefall at the point where the ice starts to flatten out and turn left at right angles to join the Khumbu Glacier on its journey down the valley to become a river and reach the sea.
Each climber wears a sit harness, with two loops for the legs, attached to a belt around the waist. At the front of the belt there is normally a loop, through which is clipped a karabiner, to which two tape slings are attached. At the other end of each sling are two more karabiners.
On either side of the aluminium ladder bridges, there are two safety ropes into which the climber clips each karabiner, which are at the ends of his two tape slings. The safety ropes are attached to anchors on either side of the crevasse, and if the climber falls off the bridge he should be left hanging to the safety line. I don’t know anyone who has completely fallen off a bridge, but I equally don’t know anyone who wants to try it. The spikes of the crampons on the climber’s boots usually fit neatly between the rungs of the ladder-bridge, and the snugness of the fit gives an added feeling of security.
Some climbers, when confronted for the first time with the bridges of the Khumbu Icefall, are unable to cross standing upright. Instead they bend over on all fours and adopt a strange crab-like posture. Others crawl across on all fours. Some climbers never get used to the bridges and always cross in this manner.
About eleven metres is regarded as the height where humans are subject to the optimum appreciation of vertigo. Below that height the effect of altitude diminishes and above it the level of fear is relatively constant, whatever height one looks down from. Most crevasses in the Icefall are far deeper than eleven metres and more often than not they appear bottomless. It can be unnerving to see Sherpas regularly crossing these bridges without clipping in, or, in some cases, without even holding on to the safety lines.
Sherpas are often seen in the Icefall without crampons and, in some cases, just wearing trekking boots. In 1996 I first met and spoke with Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa in the lower part of the Icefall. In my diary I noted ‘one Sherpa, with a ponytail, wearing jeans and training shoes, told us he was returning from Camp 2. He was 23 years old and already climbed Everest three times without oxygen.’ In six months this charismatic Sherpa would be dead, having been swept off the Lhotse Face by an avalanche.
The route through the Icefall is never boring and no two features are the same. Each major feature is given a name, for easy reference, so that climbers can give their positions by radio to their base camps, receding below them. In no time at all, Base Camp becomes an ant-like colony, far below.
In 1996 we had the ‘popcorn’, where boulders of ice rested on each other, like corn in a packet at the cinema. Then we had the ‘football field’, where, with a bit of imagination, the ice seemed flat and large enough to play football on. Then most alarmingly we had the ‘mousetrap’, where climbers had to move up left to right on a ramp, below an overhanging cliff which tilted each day further and further out from the vertical, making the ramp almost a tunnel by the end of the expedition.
If the climber needs to go to the toilet, it is just a matter for male and female alike to move off to the side of the track. There is no room for shyness between sexes on the mountain, and everyone quickly gets used to this uninhibited lifestyle during their time on expedition. Having a ‘dump’, as it becomes affectionately known, is a little more complicated, primarily due to the climbing harness and the layers of clothing which have to be removed in the process. It is also considered poor form to leave piles of crap lying close to the climbing line. Many of these actions and processes, which become habitual during the climb, have to be rapidly forgotten when climbers return to civilisation.
Most of the Icefall is fixed by rope, which is anchored at regular intervals. The anchors are formed by snow stakes – long aluminium pickets which are hammered into the ice, or by ice screws – short metal spikes which can be screwed (if they are ones with a screw-like thread running around the outside) or hammered into place. Climbers clip one of the karabiners from the slings attached to their harness into the rope and if they slip then they, in theory, will only fall as far as the next anchor point.
In 1996 it was Mal Duff, along with his team of Sherpas, who established and fixed the route through the Icefall. Mal’s team had arrived in March, several weeks before the arrival of the expeditions, to complete this task.
Once the route is established, it is the job of two Icefall Sherpas, nick-named the ‘Icefall Doctors’, to carry out daily maintenance. Every day they travel up and down the Icefall, checking anchor points and securing bridges. Often, the collapse of an ice cliff or the opening of a new crevasse means that the route is completely changed. Rarely will climbers make the journey up through the Icefall more than five times in the course of an expedition. These two Sherpas, between March and the end of May, will complete the journey through the Icefall more than sixty times.
It takes about four hours to climb the Icefall in the early stage of the expedition. Later, when the body becomes more acclimatised, this journey can be done in three hours. The sun has reached most parts of the Icefall by 9 a.m., so unless the climber has started particularly early, all will feel the effects of intensifying heat at some stage during the climb. And it does get hot. From temperatures well below zero in the pre-dawn darkness, it can get up to around thirty degrees Celsius once the sun has moved overhead.
As the climbers move upwards they become aware that the landmarks seen in the distance from Base Camp are now much closer, clearer and larger than they appeared from far below. The climbers soon reach the level of the Nangpa La, the pass to the left of the Icefall which leads to the northern side of Everest and from where George Mallory looked into the Western Cwm of Everest in the early 1920s and gave the cwm its name. Nuptse to the right seems so close, and Pumori, behind, seems less gigantic.
Sometimes avalanches fall from the slopes of the west ridges of Everest, up to the left, but fortunately these avalanches fall well clear of the route, which has been specifically planned to bypass the danger zones. Sadly, this was destined not to be the case for all future expeditions.
Several ice cliffs have to be climbed during the journey to Camp 1. The less vertical are ascended by pulling up the rope with a jumar – a clamp attached to the end of one or both of the tape slings. It will move freely up the rope, but lock on to the rope if it is pulled backwards. If the climber falls, the jumar should lock and leave the climber dangling from the rope.
Traffic jams on the lower part of Everest are not common. It is normally quite easy for climbers who are descending to move past those who are on their way up, and on some cliffs there is an up rope for jumaring, and a down rope for abseiling.
The steeper cliffs can be difficult to ascend, particularly in the early part of the season, before the passage of many climbers leads to the formation of staircases of large footholds, and if you have a heavy pack it adds to the difficulty. Sometimes the ropes hang well free of the cliffs, making it necessary to use two jumars. This can be particularly exhausting near the top of the Icefall, just below Camp 1, where more often than not the sun’s rays are hitting the slopes by the time climbers reach this point.
For the really high cliffs, the same kind of aluminium ladders which are used to form the crevasse bridges are lashed together and placed up against the ice. Some of these vertical ladder sections can be over eighteen metres, and several ladders lashed together do not make a rigid structure. There is an added fear factor as the cliff to which the ladders are attached gradually leans over from the vertical as the climbing season progresses.
The Icefall has a fearsome reputation, but fortunately careful route-fixing and management has reduced the number of accidents in this section, but would not, as we were to learn, prevent future catastrophes. There are times, however, when the climber considers what would happen if a crevasse should open and suck them in, or if a cliff collapses, dumping tons of hard ice on to them, crushing their bodies. In the mountains death is rarely instantaneous. Climbers can have their life grasped from them if they are hit by rockfall, in whatever fraction of a second it takes for the body to realise that it is dead, but more often than not death is a slow process – sometimes very slow. Death in an avalanche, in a fall from the side of the mountain, or death by cold and exposure, can all give a climber at least enough time to know what is happening before life is extinguished. More often than not the one line in a newspaper, reporting a climber’s death, could be replaced in reality by a page of painful detail describing how it really happened.
Of all the sections on Everest, the Icefall does provide some technical challenge and I enjoy its variety. A number of climbers have been known to take one look at the Icefall and then leave for home. For those, however, who persevere, it can become an enjoyable climbing excursion, particularly once the body has acclimatised and the ice can be climbed with less and less physical effort.
The top of the Icefall is normally marked by a high cliff, because this is the point where the glacier flowing out of the Western Cwm starts its journey downwards – just like the lip of a waterfall. It is also a dangerous area; despite Camp 1 being a short distance away, there is no room for complacency. The movement of the ice over the lip can lead to the formation of hidden crevasses, waiting to suck in the unwary climber. The ice at this point can easily detach itself from the glacier it has been part of for hundreds of years – a further danger.
The change in scenery at the top of the Khumbu Icefall is quite distinct. One moment, climbers are hauling their way up a vertical cliff, the next moment they are standing on the edge of a mountain Shangri-La, the Western Cwm of Everest.