Children on a haystack (Photo by Richard M. Emerson)
Each day was a small world, complete, sufficient unto itself. I jealously cherished the hours of walking, of sitting in the shade, of sharing hopes, of exploring the near beauty and the far. All was pure pleasure; not even growing enthusiasm for the West Ridge could detract from it. Thoughts of the approaching effort seemed to heighten the peace of the march. The time to push would come soon enough.
As we travelled eastward across the grain of the country, blisters healed, muscles hardened, and even the sunburnt red of my balding brow took on a pain-free tan. There was rarely a chance for us to become bored with the terrain. From Yersa we dropped steeply 2,000 feet to the Bhote Kosi, crossed a chain bridge, then climbed about 5,000 feet up the other side. The first half was quite steep—not much fiddling around with switchbacks in this country—but in the early morning shade it proved enjoyable. The rest, beneath the blistering sun, was fortunately more gradual, past terraced fields extending for thousands of feet above and below us.
At the pass a few deep red rhododendrons bloomed, and small white orchids grew in the gnarled bark of some pin oaks. The distant view was breathtaking enough to be hard on constantly stubbed toes. Ridges and valleys meshed to the north of us like fingers intertwined, each separated by steadily deepening purple haze. Shimmering ice-white in the morning sun, Gaurisankar and Menlungtse rose like gigantic teeth, separating purple hills from a deep blue sky. With binoculars we would follow the white rampart eastward over nameless peaks, searching. Always the object of our search was concealed behind the nearer ranges.
Our daily ups and downs did not quite balance. The farther east we travelled, the higher and more immense the country became until on the eleventh day we crossed into a different world. Our pre-dawn starts had been growing colder, and on this particular morning a light drizzle added to our shivering as we began our climb to 12,500 feet, our highest pass. An hour brought us to the monastery; another hour of gradual climb along the ridge to breakfast. Barry Corbet was at low ebb, pale and unstable after a bout of diarrhea, but he plodded gamely through the long day. Morning sun, streaming toward us through tall firs, brilliantly backlit the snow-dusted needles. We passed some zhos being milked. As the day wore on the clouds closed in on us.
Behind as usual, Willi and I strolled alone through a silent forest of gnarled, moss-hung rhododendron trees. In place of leaves, snow clung to the skyward edge of each branch. The thin winding track through the snow was stained brown by the passing of feet, some bare, impervious to cold. Fog wreathed the trees, subduing the winter color of the forest to black and white and grey. Existence began and ended here, enclosed by a mist that captured sound and concealed the view. None of the vastness outside seeped in.
Then the forest was gone and we were in high open tundra. Clusters of bamboo poles anchored by mounds of piled rocks marked the pass. The prayer flags at their tops would have flapped in the wind but a crust of rime immobilized them. We paused for a moment, then plunged down the other side, descending through open forests of tall firs, through a narrow wooded valley with a tumbling mountain stream on its floor, finally coming out on the high edge of a new country. Terraces were gone; instead rolling meadows had been cleared from the forest. Stands of fir and pine looked like cloud shadows on the hillsides. A stream wound silver along the valley floor. A few zhos and horses grazed beside green fields of spring-ripening wheat. Beside the trail strawberry plants were flowering and our mouths watered in anticipation. A cluster of well-ordered houses climbed the hill above the stream. Willi and I walked down the wide path toward the village, feeling that we had been here before.
FROM THE BEGINNING WE HAD SEEN virtually no wilderness. Rice terraces had climbed thousands of feet up hillsides, prayer flags flapped at the passes; paths occasionally edged with mani walls crisscrossed the country. For all the size, for all the intransigent power of the ice-encrusted wall to the north, wilderness, as western man defines it, did not exist. Yet there was no impression of nature tamed. It seemed to me that here man lived in continuous harmony with the land, as much and as briefly a part of it as all its other occupants. He used the earth with gratitude, knowing that care was required for continued sustenance. He rotated crops, controlled the cutting of wood, bulwarked his fields against erosion. In this peaceful co-existence, man was the invited guest. It was an enviable symbiosis. The Expedition surely must have affected this balance: a thousand porters living off the produce of the land, a mixing of peoples, the economic stresses, the physical impact itself. Although we touched each place for only a day and then moved on, I wondered how many such passings could be made before the imprint would become indelible. But awareness of our effect on the land was lost beneath the effect of the land and its people on us. At each day’s camp we watched curiously villagers curiously watching us. In the evenings we often escaped to the future, planning.
Children on a haystack (Photo by Richard M. Emerson)
A house and fields near Taksindu (Photo by James Roberts)
One evening we presented our calculations to the team, and there were plenty of questions. Everyone explored the possible combinations of two-man summit-assault teams by the West Ridge with two, four, or six by the Col. Only the six-man Col team was clearly incompatible with a West Ridge attempt. Our calculations showed that two-man West Ridge teams required the same number of carries as four-man teams on the other route.
“Why is that?” Lute asked.
“The Dump we’re figuring on the West Ridge essentially amounts to an extra camp,” Dick replied.
When the suggestion was made to split the carrying power equally between the two routes, Norman voiced his concern. “I’d like to give a word of warning. Let’s not go overboard on the West Ridge. I am just as excited about the West Ridge as you are. I’ve thought about it, I think, a good deal longer than most of you. But let’s not jeopardize the South Col. Let’s not make the mistake of throwing all the power, all the oxygen, into the West Ridge, because the Col is still our guarantee of success.”
“This brings up the question,” I said, “of the size of the South Col party, assuming the West Ridge is going to be tried. It’s been debatable between two- and four-man teams. I know there are different impressions about where we stand on this.”
“Tom, I don’t think we can make the final plan yet.” Norm said. “Everybody has to be at Advance Base.”
“I agree,” I replied, “but if you want to succeed in climbing both routes, the chances are increased by not having a four-man assault on the South Col. Putting two-man teams up the South Col permits a stronger effort on the West Ridge and also increases your chance of success on the South Col.”
Gil Roberts reasoned differently: “Given four men in Camp 6 as opposed to two men, I think you’ve got a better chance of making the summit. If you have only a twoman team and one of them craps out that shoots your whole attempt.”
A woman tills a field while a child sleeps on her back. (Photo by Tom Hornbein)
Detail, barley field (Photo by Richard M. Emerson)
The bridge across Dudh Kosi, near Jubing (Photo by Willi Unsoeld)
Gil’s statement was true as far as it went. But weather was less dependable than health. If you put all your hopes on a four-man team and had a bad day all four would be shot down. It would be better to send up teams on successive days, and it would require half as much equipment and manpower for two-man teams as for four-man teams. This was my reasoning and Will Siri agreed.
Norm was puzzled. “Somehow this doesn’t look right,” he said. “I mean there have been several expeditions that have been uniquely successful with large summit teams. Dhaulagiri is one, Jannu is one, Makalu is—there are arguments on both sides.”
Will answered, “Yes, but these have all been peaks that are substantially lower than Mount Everest.”
“Dhaulagiri isn’t, without oxygen,” Norm observed; “that makes it just as high.”
I considered the number of carries required just to move our ton of oxygen bottles to the upper slopes of Everest, and answered, “No, it doesn’t, Norman. Logistically it makes Dhaulagiri a hell of a lot easier.”
“Let me inject one thing here,” Will said. “I think everyone is aware of the enthusiasm that permeates the whole group, the drives and everything else. The ultimate decision, let’s face it; has to rest with Norman. He’s been here before. He knows the problems and he can see the overall picture; and furthermore neither Norman nor I are motivated by the desire to get to the summit of the peak. Neither of us entertains any hope of getting to the summit. Maybe to the South Col, yes, possibly; but I think this gives Norman a little more objectivity than the rest of us, plus a vast amount of experience which the rest of us don’t possess, and I think you’re going to have to go along with him on certain items, certain concepts here.”
“Unspoken consensus on that point, Will,” Dick said.
Will continued: “I think we should agree at the outset on this. Each of us has his own drives, motives, and inclinations in this no matter how objective we try to be. This is going to influence our thinking. Furthermore, this Expedition as an organization has certain overriding obligations. The mountaineering one is to get to the summit of Everest. The most obvious route, or the route with the highest probability at the moment, is certainly the South Col. If it gives us a higher measure of assurance of success so far as the Expedition is concerned, then this has got to be pushed through.”
“Yes,” Jim Whittaker said, “we all agree on the fact, Will. We must reach the summit. That’s the utmost in our minds and all of us agree that the South Col is the obvious route. There is no question of that in our minds.”
“‘As long as that is clear,” Norm said.
Jim replied, “That is clear. We know we have to get the mountain.”
“Yes.” Dick added, “All of us understand that the West Ridge is just frosting on the cake and nothing more.”
As Willi seconded Dick’s statement, I sat silently thinking I much preferred frosting, and Jim said, “Norman, I think as long as we can have these talks like this and we can align our thoughts so that we can know that your desire is to do exactly what we’re trying to do—I mean as long as we feel, or as long as you feel, we’re not sacrificing anything on the South Col for this and that, I think that we’ll be able to move ahead in the right direction.”
“I think you know me well enough by now,” Norm replied, “to know that I am not a dictator, never will be.”
There were nods of agreement. “But there are some basic things I will have to insist on.”
“Right,” Jim said. “That’s fine as long as you let us know, so we don’t go off half-cocked.”
Kangtega and evening clouds, from Pheriche (Photo by Gil Roberts)
Porter and pup (Photo by Barry Prather)
A taped conference and audience: Dick Emerson, Dick Pownall, Willi Unsoeld, Tom Hornbein, Will Siri (Photo by James Lester)
Climber at Base Camp; Khumbu Glacier with Pumori in background (Photo by Richard M. Emerson)