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Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go! |
—RUDYARD KIPLING
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Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go! |
—RUDYARD KIPLING
The monotonous chanting floated from the gompa, softened by distance and the new-fallen snow. Occasionally, horns would add impetus to the prayers racing heavenward. Shafts of evening sunlight behind the monastery gave it a new splendor. The place seemed in perfect harmony with the wild mountain walls that embraced it. A thousand feet below, the Imja Khola snaked about the base of the ridge, carrying the melt from the summit of the world. Ice-sheathed walls soared high, a pattern of delicate flutings and translucent knife-edged arêtes. Here man seemed to be reaching for something. His grip was tenuous, inconsequential, yet full of beauty and meaning. His was a world of peace wrought from wildness and latent power. The wildness culminated above the prayer flags, above the immense granite walls of Nuptse up there on the highest point on earth. Framed by dissolving cloud, it hung suspended in space, the final pyramid burning golden in the evening light. The summit plume raced eastward, yet could not free itself from the solid bastion which gave it birth.
The lamas of Thyangboche lived in enviable purpose. They were not halfway to heaven; they were there, their lives spent searching, probing the why of existence, seeking understanding. And maybe understanding could be found here, even of the thing that prevented my staying to seek it. That night Willi and I walked in the new-fallen snow. We were surrounded by peaks glittering silver in the moonlight: Thamserku and Kangtega, rising almost straight above our heads, the jewel of Ama Dablam shining, and the dark rock of Everest half-sensed over the Nuptse wall. It was a crisp, still night, as we stomped through the knee-deep snow. Chanting came from the monastery, and the rhythmical thump-shuffle of dancing Sherpa feet from a nearby house, turning our awareness to the world of men enclosed within.
Thyangboche lamasery and Everest (Photo by Tom Hornbein)
A yak train leaving Thyangboche (Photo by James Lester)
“By daylight, the scene is no less wonderful,” I wrote. “Frustratingly so, for I am at a loss to know how to capture it. The summit is there, and seems a long way off, now out of cloud. My mood is one of mid-afternoon lethargy, troubled by a macroscopic awe of my microscopic role in the scheme of things above me. Desire for our goal seems terribly strong, or else the dreams I’ve always cherished are coming more and more vividly close to reality. Emerson caught me gazing carefully and plottingly at a photo in Hunt’s book of the route from Advance Base to the West Shoulder, and chided me for perusing something to which we had both already devoted all the time and discussion imaginable. I smiled sheepishly and turned to a Playboy which showed up in our Base Camp food supply.”
I was not alone. Dave’s question had been planted and answers had grown: personal desire had separated us into what would ultimately be two expeditions if an attempt on the West Ridge proved feasible.
With clear weather, the snow vanished almost as fast as it had come. In the sunlit warmth we looked long through Bishop’s telephoto lens at the upper 1,500 feet of Everest, analyzing each detail of its left-hand skyline, plotting camps, speculating on the route and the problems the downsloping limestone posed on that side of the mountain. Filing by the soggy remains of a once well-stacked snow woman Jim Whittaker had created, to the delight of the Sherpas, we sought a corner of sunny isolation for a planning session. There were seven West Ridgers now: Dick, Jake, Dave, Barry Corbet, Barry Bishop (Barrel), Willi, and I.
The expedition had long before decided that once Advance Base was established, a reconnaissance to determine feasibility of the West Ridge should be the first order of business. We West Ridgers convinced ourselves that it would be best to send up the four “old Himalayan hands,” Willi, Dick, Barrel, and me, to do the sleuthing—logic underlain by our own personal desire.
Willi wondered, “Should we send up a bunch of old broken-down crocks on as vigorous a push as this? You could burn yourself out on this reconnaissance. All I can say is that we had better depend on not burning out.”
Dick agreed, and said, “The recon is going to be very early in the game.”
“Yes,” Willi said. “You won’t be acclimatized to the Cwm even, and you’re going to be busting trail up to 22,000 or 23,000. That can really wear you down. I’d welcome any comments on the makeup of the team, whether you think this is a likely combination or if we ought to include Barry or Jake or Dave, and drop one of us.”
Ama Dablam by moonlight from Thyangboche (Photo by Barry Corbet)
Stupa at Thyangboche in new-fallen snow (Photo by Richard M. Emerson)
“The composition of the team is sound, I think,” Dave said, “on the basis of experience.”
“O.K. Let me ask one question,” Dick said. “In the event that I’m not on the team, I would like to send my little Minifon recorder with someone to record your deliberation.”
“You’ve just insured your participation in this affair—no matter how sick you might be,” I answered.
Jake broke his usual silence: “Would it be feasible to have more than four on the initial reconnaissance?”
“The idea is to decide whether the route is worth messing with,” I answered. “To do this, ideally we should surmount the step at 25,000—or at least be pretty damned sure it’s passable. You need no more than four men, possibly as few as two. The number of possibilities along that step and the magnitude of the decision for the whole expedition suggest it is most desirable to have two ropes of two and possibly exchange routes on consecutive days to get a really well-founded opinion.”
“What we decide on the recon,” Willi said, “will probably be the most important decision made on the entire Expedition as far as we can foresee. Once we split into two routes we will have endangered the summit. The whole expedition could go down the drain.”
“But it will have been fun,” Jake volunteered.
“How far above the shoulder do you think you can go in a day?” asked Dave.
“At that stage of acclimatization it will be a miracle if we can do 1,500 feet,” Willi replied.
Untroubled by reality, I dissented, “If we go up that snow gully over there we can do 3,000 in a day.”
“You’d better have somebody along,” Dick said, “to temper Unsoeld’s enthusiasm for that crazy avalanche trap of a couloir.”
“I hope you mean Hornbein,” Willi corrected, trying to shuck himself of any connection with such a far-left route (it was a mile into Communist China).
“That’s right—Hornbein’s couloir,” Dick corrected himself. “I’m sorry.”
Our idea of the route was based upon photos a few of us had studied weeks before back in the States, but we had no pictures with us now, only our imaginations. Unfortunately, Unsoeld’s picture was different from mine.
“Unsoeld is a deviate to the right, I’m afraid,” I said with an air of superiority.
“I’m sort of a middle-of-the-road advocate myself,” Dick said.
“There goes straight-up-the-rock-wall Emerson,”I replied.
Barry attempted a severe frown. “I don’t know about sending all these wild men up there.”
“There’s this urge, as you approach the twilight years,” Willi replied, “to go out in a blaze of glory.” Returning to the original issue, he said. “You really have to press hard out there to cross the slabs of the North Face. You’d presumably have to try to get as far as the avalanche trap.”
“Just a minute. Let’s change the terminology,” I said, objecting to his description of the couloir.
“Very well; as far as Hornbein’s avalanche trap. You’d have to snoop pretty strongly up that. You might have to take two days. There’s also the other side of the whole damned Ridge.”
“Hornbein’s route is in another country, if anybody cares anything about that,” Barry reminded us.
“That shouldn’t be a mountaineering consideration,” I said. “Mountaineering should know no boundary lines.”
“Wouldn’t it be interesting,” Willi wondered, “if the Chinese were on the mountain this year, too? I don’t suppose anybody would have heard about it.”
Jake asked, “Our job would be to put in Camp 5 and 6? Is this correct?”
“Your job would be to establish Camp 4 and find a route to Camp 5,” Willi answered. “The general theory for operating on the Ridge would be in two-man teams plus Sherpas. We’d have three teams working in leapfrog fashion.”
“If everybody is in good health, we could have four teams,” Dave suggested.
“There’s going to have to be a continuous rebalancing between routes,” I said. “The thing that could hurt us is if things get really rough on the Col route we may lose personnel. We could stand the loss less well than they could.”
“Yes,” said Barry. “On the other route I’m almost convinced that if all the Sahibs get sick, the route can still go ahead about the same.”
“Or faster,” someone said.
Jake sat scratching profiles of the mountain in the dirt with a stick. Barrel, remembering that this was meant to be a planning session asked. “Have logistics been worked out about hardware, ladders, fixed ropes?”
“Yes,” I replied. “We’ve started, for the recon group.”
“Do you know how many wire ladders we’ve got?” Barrel asked.
“Ninety feet,” was Barry’s answer. “Six fifteen-footers.”
Dick looked a bit alarmed. “That isn’t too much.”
“Maynard mentioned he has a couple of caving ladders along,” Barrel said.
“He won’t be able to go caving, will he?” Barry asked.
“If we take his ladder, he won’t,” was my reply.
Barrel was concerned. “I trust we won’t find too many spots like the one we had on Ama Dablam. At that altitude, we’re not going to get porters up any overhangs. How high do you anticipate Sherpas are going to have to carry, Tom?”
Tom Hornbein after drinking chang (Photo by James Lester)
“Are the summit teams carrying only oxygen up there?” Barry asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Thirty, thirty-five pounds, mostly oxygen. The others will be carrying thirty-five plus their oxygen bottle, making forty-eight pounds in all.”
“That’s a hell of a carry, isn’t it?” Barrel asked.
“Yep. We decided we’re going to have to hump ourselves on this route,” Willi said.
“No guts, no glory,” Barry added.
The problem of load-carrying over such difficult terrain made it seem desirable to place our final camp below the steep rock step we could see on the skyline, rather than above it. “But I don’t think you can hope that one assault party can climb that step and go clear to the top in one day.” Barrel said.
“That’s why there are two assault parties,” I replied. “The first one might be sacrificed on that step.”
“We’ve only got eight hours of oxygen,” Dave said.
“You’ve also got to leave time to get back down to camp by dark,” Barry said.
Willi thought back to a discussion during the approach: “Gombu told us, ‘Possible one night out, Sahib. One night sleep out—no bags, no tent, move out next morning.’”
“Up or down?”Barry asked.
“He didn’t specify,” Willi answered. “I was afraid to ask.”
“That’s introducing a thought that I just don’t like at all,” said Barrel, half-smiling.
I replied, “If you don’t lose too much fat, I won’t mind bivouacking with you, Barrel.”
“Well, I don’t know if we’ll ever come to that or not,” Willi said. “But maybe so. Standards are certainly moving up in the Himalaya. People are treating the high terrain much more casually than they have before.”
“It might be possible to survive the night, but I wonder how capable one would be the next day,”Barrel said.
“I don’t know that I’d like to bivouac too high up there,” I said. “I’m not sure my few remaining brain cells could tolerate it too well.”
“And if you had a wind...” Jake said.
“Yes,” Willi said. “Gombu had another interesting observation. During good weather the wind blows from Tibet and creams the Col; but we’d be protected on the Ridge.”
“Doesn’t look that way from here,” I replied. “And I would call this good weather. Looks like it’s creaming the West Ridge.”
“You’re right,” Barrel added. “I’ve never seen the plume go in the other direction.”
Looking down on Thyangboche, with Kwangde in distance (Photo by Al Auten)
The North Face of Mount Everest at sunset from the Lho La. The Hornbein Couloir slants up and right through the Yellow Band. (Photo by Ed Webster)
Boulders near Lobuje, Nuptse behind (Photo by James Lester)
Willi continued. “During bad weather Gombu says it comes like this!” Vigorously he pantomimed a windstorm as only he could.
“It doesn’t make any difference where you are in that case,” I said, impressed by the intensity of his wind.
Jake brought up another problem: “A mile out on the North Face. That couloir is a hell of a long way off.”
“But look where it goes,” I replied. “Right to the top of the mountain.”
“Hornbein always ignores the intervening steps in any route,” Willi said.
“There’s only one. That one right up there,” I said, pointing to Everest’s skyline, three miles above. Conversation stopped, as we stared. Then it was time for lunch.
AFTER SIX DAYS AT THYANGBOCHE, acclimatizing to the altitude and waiting for the snow to melt, we moved on toward the mountain on March 15. The walk began with a somewhat helter-skelter descent to the Imja Khola. Our new, unyielding Eiger boots skidded resolutely down the footpocked icy trail, totally in control of their wearers, who followed precariously after. The boots proved fairly comfortable in spite of their rocking-chair inflexibility.
We enjoyed many and changing views of Ama Dablam as we passed around it to the west. Everest dwindled and finally disappeared behind the Nuptse Ridge, but other peaks rose spectacularly into view. The higher we went the colder it got, and there was even a nippiness in the sunshine whenever a slight breeze blew. On the following day we climbed the terminal moraine of the Khumbu Glacier to Lobuje at 16,000 feet for the second phase of our acclimatization. Innumerable small peaks about us were tempting. Up-valley a portion of the West Shoulder peeked from behind the Nuptse buttress. The sun shining on that flat white crest stirred longings to be sitting up there looking at the mysteries still hidden. We sat about the breakfast table discussing the direction our acclimatization energies should take.
Norm started the discussion: “The weather is beautiful and I know lots of you are very eager to get started on the Icefall. You’d like to rush in there and immediately get up. Let me say right now, definitely not today. It’s too early. We are far earlier than any previous Everest expedition. I would suggest this for today. Do some minor scrambles; whether you want to climb boulders or go up on this moraine, or whatever—picture-taking—get used to the altitude. I’d like to find out how many of you would like to go up Lobuje Peak.”
As I listened to the plans being made I became uneasy. My only previous experience in the Himalaya had left me imbued with the Nick Clinch philosophy that you have to make every day of reasonable weather count. Particularly if we were to spread ourselves over two routes, we would need all the time we could muster come the end of May. Unable to contain myself, I dove in.
“Can we start the discussion over and first determine the demands on personnel for moving a team straight into the Icefall?”
“There are no demands,” Norman said, “because we are not going to move up to Base Camp tomorrow. I think Tom has been most outspoken about his eagerness to come to grips with the Icefall. If the Icefall has had much snow you can’t do much good on it—you won’t know where the best route is. Here’s my suggestion, and this is based on the experience of two previous expeditions. When we get to Base Camp, we have a lot to do: set up the radio station, unpack everything, organize everything, get used to the altitude. Then, by all means, conditions permitting, we should get started. But let us not be hasty. Let’s not rush like fools into the Icefall.”
Committed now, I tried to explain. “Well, Norm, I hate to always be sounding as if I’m in a damned hurry, but I guess I am, possibly. It seems to me that we should be taking advantage, as long as we’re feeling fit, of every day that we possibly can. I would frankly like to see a party move up on the 19th to Base Camp and start planning a route up the thing.”
Norm replied, “Tom, there’s only one thing. Those of you who are West Ridge bound, I can assure you, are going to have a nasty surprise when you get up on the West Shoulder, because of wind. If you get there too early, it’s going to kill you. It may kill you to such an extent that you don’t want to go on to the top.”
Thinking back to Makalu in 1954, Will agreed, “I don’t think you should ever underestimate the effect of the wind. It can knock you off faster than the altitude.”
“Yes,” I said, “but the only way to know about this is to actually bump into it head on, I’m afraid.”
“Tom, I am the last man to be defeatist,” Norm replied. “You will never find me defeatist. I’m just saying, I see no point, Tom, and I repeat it, for any of us to get into the Icefall before the 27th. Trust my judgment; I’ve been there twice. Don’t overestimate yourself, Tom.”
“I’m not. I know I’m damned weak, Norm. But still you don’t know what the conditions are. You try them out and if the weather is good ...”
Willi came to my rescue. “This is Tom’s argument: that there is no question of beating ourselves to a frazzle on the Icefall, but it does seem reasonable to launch an early probe, in the orderly course of acclimatization and all, and find out the depth of snow. As you look at each other over the surface, you say, ‘O.K. we wait a week.’ But if it should be just that strange year that the route could be put in earlier, we’d be that much farther ahead.”
“We are right now,” Norm pointed out. “The way the plans are, we are twelve days earlier than the original plan and five days earlier than the revised plan.”
“That’s good,” Willi said. “But let’s be three days earlier than that.”
“I just don’t want to rush up there and right away kill ourselves sleeping too high,” Norm said.
“I agree with you,” I replied.
“It’s interesting how we manage to generate some tension just in attitudes when the actual plans that either of us suggest would be identical,” said Willi.
“I said it to individuals and I will say it to the whole group,” Norm said. “When we had the meeting to talk about the acclimatization period, I was being a bit cagey about it. My original plan was always to move toward the Icefall as straight as possible. I personally have been here several times, but I know a lot of the younger climbers wanted to try some first ascents. When the consensus came, I found everybody wanted the same. I couldn’t have been more delighted, but I didn’t want to be dictatorial, saying, ‘We’re going to go straight into the Icefall.’”
Noddy, Captain Prabakher Shumshere Jung Bahadur Rana, our small silent Nepalese liaison officer, sat listening, a little awed by the malleability that characterized democratic decision making. A few days later at Gorak Shep he was even more perplexed by the final turn of events. The Icefall recon group moved up to Base with Norman in the lead, and that same day Barry and I headed off on a two-day climbing lark on an appealing rock pinnacle.
GOING FROM GORAK SHEP TO BASE was like passing into still another world. Below there was natural shelter and a gentleness of tundra-covered moraine to offset the surrounding harshness. Passing through the towering ice pinnacles of Phantom Alley we entered the rock-strewn valley floor at the bottom of a huge amphitheatre. The end of the valley was enclosed by the dark rock walls of Pumori, Lingtren, and Khumbutse. From hanging glaciers ice would periodically calve, rolling valleyward like beautiful, short-lived waterfalls. From Lobuje we had been unable to detect the faintest hint of an access to the upper reaches of Everest but now it was there to see. Squeezed between Nuptse and the West Shoulder, the Icefall plunged in crumbling confusion from the mouth of the Cwm to the valley floor 2,000 feet below. Here it turned sharply to flow southward as the Khumbu Glacier. We set up our Base Camp at 17,800 feet on the lateral moraine that formed the outer edge of the turn.
Huge boulders lent an air of solidity to the place, but the rolling rubble underfoot corrected the misimpression. All that one could see and feel and hear—of icefall, moraine, avalanche, cold—was of a world not intended for human habitation. No water flowed, nothing grew—only destruction and decay.
Yet, as the red tents sprang up on carefully-constructed platforms of rock, Base Camp slowly acquired a feeling of warmth. Al Auten’s radio antenna linked us each evening with the outside world. Paths were cleared and bordered with rocks connecting the large living and mess tent with our satellite bedrooms. Within the large umbrella tent we placed our sagging table and folding chairs, the short-wave radio, Gil’s dispensary, and Jim Ullman’s carefully selected library. This would be home for the next several months, until the mountain was climbed.
Detail, melting snow (Photo by Richard M. Emerson)
Porters crossing the waters from Everest; Ama Dablam behind (Photo by Willi Unsoeld)
Waterfall near Imja Khola, between Thyangboche and Pangboche (Photo by Tom Hornbein)
Lingtren (Photo by Tom Hornbein)
Porters beneath the Nuptse Wall (Photo by Norman G. Dyhrenfurth)
Khumbu Icefall from Base Camp (Photo by Tom Hornbein)
