Lessons From Everest: Seven Powerful Steps to the Top of the World

CHAPTER FOUR

The Faintest Glimmer Is All You Need

“We also rejoice in our sufferings, because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us.”

—The Bible

My home is at the end of a mile-long dirt driveway deep in the forest of Saunderstown, Rhode Island. I live near a stream that, in a fifteen-minute kayak trip, brings me to the childhood home of Gilbert Stuart, the eighteenth-century artist who painted the portrait of George Washington that graces our dollar bill.

I have several other “homes” as well: North Conway, New Hampshire is my home; Talkeetna, Alaska is another; Yosemite National Park and Santa Cruz, both in California, are my homes; Davenport, Iowa; Mendoza, Argentina; Jackson, Wyoming; Sedona, Arizona. I could go on and on. I could get dropped off from a helicopter in any of those towns and be a happy home-boy.

Everest Base Camp, at 17,300 feet, is also one of my homes. It is the same elevation as the highest camp on Denali, North America’s highest peak at 20,320 feet. For most of the year, it sustains no life whatsoever, and I knew the longer I lingered, the more I was dying: my body and mind were withering at the same slow, inexorable pace. It is a place that can rip your soul out a little shred at a time. It is a place of incomparable beauty, monumental views, and devastating fear and anxiety, a place where powerful spirituality coexists with the filth of melted-out privies, a place where childhood dreams subsist together with illness and threat of death.

It was my home for five months over a two-year period as I risked everything to chase my dream.

The most enjoyable day in Base Camp by far was the very first. Phinjo excitedly grabbed my pack and led me over the undulating broken rock and ice to my tent on a raised hump at the northwest corner of our camp. No tents obstructed my view all the way to Pumori behind me to the south, and to the icefall in front of me to the north. My closest neighbors to the west were Scott, the former NASA astronaut, and his climbing bud Adam. In front of and downhill from my perch was Ryan Campbell’s guided group of Rohan and Serge. A bit to my right and slightly downhill were Chip and Vance. From the “front door” of my tent I had an amazing, unobstructed view of the fascinatingly beautiful but deadly Khumbu Icefall. My tent was situated so that the icefall and the West Shoulder of Everest loomed large as I entered or exited my crib.

Last year I had a battered old Eureka! tent with a broken fly that allowed the wind to get through the cracks, making many nights a living hell—even when I was tucked into my Marmot forty-below-zero down sleeping bag. I was thrilled when Phinjo showed me a brand-new three-person brown Eureka! with multiple vents, huge storage space and zippers that actually worked! I thanked Phinjo profusely for his backbreaking landscaping around my prime hilltop real estate. I marveled at my waterfront property, which featured a twenty-by-twenty skating pond of ice a foot thick. Weeks later, as I arrived back to Base from my second acclimatization cycle, the constantly shifting glacier had opened a crevasse about eight inches wide and three feet deep directly in front of my tent. When the sun came out, the pond melted down the crack in twenty minutes.

Inside the tent, I was in my glory as I unloaded my three duffels of gear and organized the mess. Clothes, hats, glove combinations to the left rear; the left front was reserved for my collection of climbing gear, sunglasses, goggles and water bottles; to the right rear was the book collection, pee bottles and electronics; the right front was stacked to the ceiling with boxes of crackers, protein bars, peanut butter and Nutella.

The tent was equipped with multiple storage nets above my head and to the sides, and there I carefully placed my first aid supplies, journals, hard candy collection and iPod. The master bedroom suite consisted of two layers of thick sleeping pads separating my puffy Marmot sleeping bag from the frozen foundation, prominently placed in the tent’s center. Life just wasn’t complete until I hung my pictures of Rose and Kurt near the front entrance.

On top of the tent I had two portable solar rechargers, one of which would stay at Base affixed by cord, and a lighter get-up that was foldable and would go up the mountain with me. The cords and adapters threaded into openings in the door so that I could recharge in relative luxury. Knowing me to be a bone guy, my teammates obliged by collecting myriad yak bones lying around camp; these I festooned liberally around and about my tent making my outdoor landscaping décor to die for. I reckoned almost any Everest-aspiring chiropractor would dig my pimped crib. It was the bomb, if I did say so myself.

The Puja ceremony was to begin shortly, so I headed over to the six-foot cube of stone, which had been constructed by a hired stone mason from a distant valley. I recognized the wizened lama from last year as I nabbed a second-row spot on the blue tarp to sit and wait. The elaborate ritual of juniper boughs, incense, multiple Buddhist religious objects and rice for throwing was interspersed with mass quantities of food and drink ranging from tsampa, a barley snack with the consistency of butter, to chang, a warm opaque beer with chunks in it. Chips, soda and a lone bottle of whiskey completed the display of offerings. The tsampa was tasty, but after last year I swore off chang and stuck to milk tea.

Our remaining climbers and trekkers filtered in and were joined by guests including Dr. Luanne Freer, the much-loved founder of the Base Camp Emergency Room. Our Sherpas looked great in matching caps and OR brand red climbing coats. Phinjo was a former child monk, until the Tengboche monastery burned to the ground, and that earned him his position once again to the immediate right of the head lama. Mingma, Crazy Joe’s Sherpa, was to Phinjo’s right.

Although we mikaroos didn’t understand a word of the two-hour ceremony, we got caught up in the moment while gazing over the stone stupa to the icefall, as the incense and juniper smoke wafted through the air. At one point about an hour into the ritual, Danuru, one of the studliest of Sherp climbers, climbed up the stone cube and was handed a twelve-foot cedar pole with seven strands of prayer flags attached. As much hooting and hollering commenced, Danuru expertly placed the butt end of the pole into the cube’s center, and the masses of flags were unfurled to about fifty yards in all directions and attached sturdily to rocks. On cue, the barley flour was passed around, and we smeared it into each others’ smiling faces to signify long life and friendship. Our previously placed ice axes, helmets, crampons and harnesses leaned on the stupa for the night, for an additional safety blessing. Phinjo presented me with a red string suundi previously blessed by the lama. I felt that I had my karma…covered.

The Puja was very important to the Sherpas and marked an auspicious start to a safe and successful expedition. To begin climbing into the icefall without the positive blessings and ceremony would be unthinkable. For me, a guy who practices no traditional religion, it struck a spiritual chord, a chance to give thanks to all the people that had helped me get there to follow my dreams, and to meditate on a safe climb for myself, my teammates and others on “the hill” as well.

When you do the math, there is a hellacious of amount of time spent at Base Camp during an Everest climb. In fact, the vast majority of time at Everest was spent being a slug, because that was the numuro-uno thing on the agenda at Base. The climbing was quite burly, don’t get me wrong, but when it’s time for R&R after a rotation, sloth and gluttony (S&G) prevail, and here they were not considered deadly sins.

Here is the skinny on what our (typical) Everest acclimatization plan looked like once we trekked to Base Camp. First, the aforementioned S&G for several days, followed by a little shake-down ice climbing on an immense serac (a large ice formation that is often unstable and broken off from a glacier) close to home just to check gear. This also gives the Sherpas a chance to roughly evaluate whether the Westerner has any clue at all regarding climbing, or whether he or she just bribed someone for a permit. Better to know than not know before the yak-patty hits the fan in the icefall. After this two-hour exhibition, there is at least another day of S&G. We ascend the icefall for the first time for two or three hours, to about 18,500 feet, and stop at the icy feature known as “the popcorn.” The jumbled ice blocks resemble gargantuan popcorn to some, and because they are famously unstable, it’s a good place to turn around for home. This gives the mildly acclimatized climber a chance to get his boots on the hill, cross a few ladders, do some heavy breathing, and get another grand of elevation for the body to acclimatize to. A return to base and another day or two of S&G follows.

Later, we take a break from ice and go rock, meaning we go behind camp and hike up to Pumori Camp One, at 19,000 feet, and hang out for an hour-long lunch, where it’s safe to laze without threat of avalanche; however, the risk of being pooped on by a gorak (raven) is high on this leg of the journey. This is followed by—you guessed it—two more days of S&G.

Then, however, the climbing gets very serious, very quickly. It was now time to go to Camp One, above the icefall at 20,000 feet, and spend the night, followed by a day hike to Camp Two, at 21,500 feet, and a return to sleep another night at Camp One before finally heading back to Base Camp. Climbing was now very hard work, a pain festival. The good news was that I had earned two to four more days of S&G.

Now it was time for the second big-time acclimatization rotation: up the icefall to sleep at Camp One; move lock, stock and ice axe the next day to Camp Two; and hunker down at this higher elevation for three to four nights. It can’t really be called S&G here, because it is a full-time job just to exist and have a pulse. All of us were deteriorating rapidly at this altitude, but we needed time there for the body to produce red blood cells to carry life-giving oxygen to our seventy trillion cells. In other words, we needed to go through this ordeal in order to make a serious bid for all the summit marbles come May. In normal Everest-climbing circumstances, we would have taken a little jaunt to the base of the Lhotse Face, at 22,000 feet, to acclimatize and get acquainted with the route. We were shut down in this regard in 2008 due to the presence of armed climber/guards on the Chinese payroll, who made sure no one climbed above that point until the Olympic torch-bearers on the Northeast Ridge route in Tibet got to the top, or died trying. That’s another story. Finally, we made an early exit after breakfast, made a three-hour dash down the terrifyingly beautiful icefall to Base, and had lunch, followed by a well-deserved four to five days of S&G.

We turned the “danger dial” way up for the last (before the summit attempt) acclimatization cycle to Camp Three, a veritable pain party at 24,500 feet. First the prerequisite icefall, Camp One, Camp Two for a couple of days; then the ascent up the nearly vertical bulletproof-ice Lhotse Face; and to Camp Three for what most agree is the most miserable night of their lives; then it was back to Camp Two; and finally, the dash to home-sweet-home—Base Camp. Next, the waiting began for a weather window and the chance, just a chance mind you, of making a summit attempt.

That wait—the break from the completion of the last rotation—can range from two days to three weeks, depending on the wind and weather conditions. If, however, we had to wait longer than ten days, we could lose precious acclimatization.

That was our plan, but there were multiple variations, and any plan had to be flexible to account for the inevitable flies in the ointment. The “Chinese situation” of 2008, the unforeseen months-long fly/ointment combination, affected all of our decision-making, always with the threat of not being allowed to even attempt the summit at all. For the brethren (and sistren) of Base Camp, the Chinese situation became the topic of endless speculation and gossip.

A little history refresher might be relevant here. China violently invaded the peaceful but backward country of Tibet in 1950. The spiritual head of Buddhism, His Excellency the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, escaped over the mountain passes to exile in Dharamsala, India, where he remains. The invasion resulted in China’s claiming half of Mt. Everest. (Should you ever have the extraordinarily good fortune to stand on the summit, you will have one foot in Tibet and one in Nepal.) Remember Eric Simonson’s demand that each of us sign that document? China has Eric, and any other guide or climber, at its mercy because of the reasons I cited in the last chapter. The Chinese would carry the Olympic flame to the summit on the North side—with no one else on the mountain, north or south, because China wants no one (read: Tibetans, who were beginning to demonstrate) to get any publicity that would reflect poorly on the Chinese human rights agenda (or lack thereof). Thus, we all had to agree to be no higher than Camp Two until after the Chinese summited with the “symbol of Olympic ideals” (flame). And, of course, we all had to agree not to shoot video or use satellite technology. In fact, this equipment was not allowed to be in our possession.

These restrictions resulted in the travesty of having armed guards with shoot-to-kill orders as high as 21,500 feet, and in the shutdown of communications and Internet use, preventing any potentially embarrassing stuff from getting onto the Web. China reportedly summited on May 8, though I never saw or heard of the event on any Olympic coverage. We were finally allowed free reign of the mountain so late in the season that our acclimatization could well have been compromised.

In the long run, China hoodwinked us all, including the Nepalese, whom they used as pawns to do their bidding. It was fascinating to have two former Soviet satellite inhabitants, Chip from Romania and Jaroslaw from Poland, on the team to regale us with stories of the similarities between life at Base Camp and their childhoods under Communist rule. Chip told us of his forced military days; in one tactic his superiors used to motivate the young conscripts, they declared that when the American imperialists “were soon conquered,” that “every Romanian soldier would get a VCR.”

An average day for me at Base on a S&G day was to get up around 6 AM, pull on my toasty-warm Mammut parka, gloves, hat and hiking boots, gather my empty water bottles and head to the dining tent, trying not to forget glacier glasses and sunblock. The world at this time of day was frozen solid, but by 8 AM as I finished my fifth or sixth mocha and a two- or three-course breakfast, the sun would start to peek over Nuptse, the 26,000-foot giant (nearly the fifteenth 8,000 meter mountain in the world) next to our encampment, and the temperature would skyrocket fifty degrees in ten minutes’ time.

Along with Dean and Crazy Joe, I was typically the first up in the morning, sitting outside while bundled up tightly in the crisp, thin air, gazing at the icefall. In the spotting scope, we watched other climbers ascend the bigger ice cliffs on their different schedules. After a group breakfast, several of us would again pull chairs from the dining tent and sun ourselves for several minutes, before becoming intolerably hot.

The only semi-comfortable place to escape the oppressive heat was the sanctity of my tent. So it was back to the mansion for some R&R from the rigors of the morning. I felt compelled to attend to the most pressing matters of importance first off on these mornings, so I put on the iPod and spun the dial until I had the rap song “Bust a Move” by Young MC. My goal was, by the end of the trip, to decipher and document Young’s poetic lyrics. A sample of his genius is as follows: “Next day’s function, high-class luncheon, food is served and you’re stone cold munchin’; music comes on and people start to dance, but you ate so much you nearly split your pants.” I challenge the most macho heavyweight champion mixed martial arts cage fighter to read that line and not become just a little moist. My hope was that someday, when my son Kurt is married, I will stroll to the front of the reception hall, take the mike, and beautifully croon the heartfelt raw emotion of Mr. MC’s life work.

As important as this noble quest was, I had other demands on my time, and one of these was, of course, to construct Shakespearean insults. I am sure Mallory and Sir Edmund himself would have shed tears of inspired awe at my results, if I doth say so myself. Here are just a few of the many I honed to perfection: thou bawdy bat-fowling barnacle; thou cockered clapper-clawed canker-blossom; thou froward fat-kidneyed flax-wench; thou puking knotty-pated malt-worm. Take that!

10 April 2008 Mo-Mos

Dahl-bat, mo-mos and Spam—all yummy! The first is a Nepali sauce of vegetables and melted cheese over rice (we have this a lot). Mo-mos, in addition to being a fun word to say, are thin pasta tidbits covering meat or vegetable, or both. Spam is just Spam (spare parts and meat?). I try to eat everything in sight, as I tend to lose more weight on climbs than others. On a hard day, we can easily burn six thousand to eight thousand calories, so I chow three huge meals plus two to three snacks per day. Six thousand eggs have been part of the six hundred and fifty yak loads that our expedition has required. Tomorrow, we’ll walk two hours down trail to Gorak-Shep to treat Phinjo and Passang to lunch. We will be ready for the heavy climbing the day after, as we ascend the icefall to Camp One, spend the night, then go to Camp Two, and then back to Base Camp. A favorite quote from a favorite movie; Anthony Hopkins in The Edge: “What one man can do, another can do.” —Dr. Tim

Most meals also included a variety of Khumbu Valley-grown spinach that I was leery of, having observed many of the tilled fields within inches, in some cases, of the family outhouse. Mid-afternoon meant a snack of Cheese Nips or Wheat Thins and a protein shake.

After several days at Base Camp, a mystery had arisen about certain stains high on the walls of the potty tents. It seems that poop was literally flying, or the person doing the defecating was standing on his/her head, or both. The only viable explanation was that somehow, diarrhea-prone acrobats from the Himalayan Cirque du Soleil let fly during some complicated maneuver. I hate to be graphic, but the stains were five feet up on the tent canvas. Maybe the offending depositor was attempting to clean up after himself, but it sure didn’t seem so.

The nasty nature of the crime was fodder for deep discussion at dinner time. As with the aged population, our bodily functions were fair game for casual conversation. I knew it wasn’t me, so I could assume a holier-than-thou attitude as the investigations into the perp’s identity continued.

My theory was that the dreaded HAFE (high-altitude flatus expectus) was partially to blame for the crime. HAFE is a documented condition; its one symptom is that you pass gas more at high altitude. (It’s physics 101: any gas expands at higher altitude.) I have also observed that some climbers can maintain a constant, almost musical tone much longer when afflicted, but that was just a theory—many more clinical trials must be published to prove that hypothesis.

At 14,000 feet on Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro in 1999, I heard what I believe was world-record gaseous emission length. I am talking minimums of twenty to fifty seconds of same-tone, same decibel scientific samples of toots. I believe that neither Craig John nor Scott Schnackenberg has ever received his rightful place in the record books but I, for one, am damned glad to know them. HAFE has my vote for all-time funniest disease.

There was high anxiety in our community, however, because the perp (as well as his bowels) was still on the loose. Back to my point regarding HAFE—I posited that since there was higher colonic internal pressure behind the “contents,” a sense of extreme urgency in the act of elimination resulted, and the offender prematurely (and before being in perfect alignment with the can) consummated the deed. I left it for other researchers to address why the person didn’t clean up. The mystery got so heated that a meeting was called by our fearless leader Mark Tucker to address the rising hysteria.

Ironically, just hours before the meeting, I slammed a couple of protein shakes as part of my fifth meal of the day; I felt a little uneasy while waiting for the after-dinner gathering. A feeling of bloat came over me as I finished meal number six. I started to sweat as dessert ended and Tuck began the solemn proceedings; at one point I was so full of gas I felt I could levitate. I resembled a sweating, stinking, helium-infused balloon of a climber.

I couldn’t pay attention to what Tuck was saying because I was contemplating my escape to the nearest latrine. I finally could stand it no longer and squeezed my way out of the crowded tent with mincing steps, hoping no one would notice. My buttocks were locked so tight I could have opened a Corona with them. With glutes-a-trembling, I tiptoed out the tent door and affixed my headlamp to begin the forty-yard obstacle course that led to my relief.

I was in a zen-like trance as I made my way. I was “one with the bum.” My focus was intense. I was going to make it! Finally, my objective was within my beam of light. Where is the freakin’ door on this thing? I muttered with increasing alarm. Damn, damn, damn. I began to lose hope as precious seconds ticked away. There were only four choices of door locations for the four-foot-wide tent, but I’ll be damned if I could find the Velcro opening. I realized that the universe was conspiring against me and all was nearly lost (in more ways than one, I may add), when with a last-ditch superhuman frantic pull, the way was revealed. No time to lose!

“Somewhere children are singing, somewhere flowers grow,

But there is no joy for me at all

Because I just soiled myself and the tent wall.”

(With apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer)

What are the odds of that, I marveled, retracing my steps. Just as Tuck gives the lecture, I have to illustrate the point. Shamefaced, I asked Donchere for a pot of boiling water and stumbled back to the scene of the crime to scrub the evidence. Later, as I looked at the label on the protein powder, I noticed that it touted “New! Eight grams more fiber per serving!” I donated the remaining contents to the communal food storage bin.

After dinner, people typically played cards or chess, but not me. I prided myself in knowing not a single card game. The nuances and rules of Go Fish do not exist for me. My fellow climbers would dutifully ask me to join them as I filled my empty water bottles with hot water and steeled myself to face the frigid walk back to the tent, but they knew my inevitable response: It’s so sad, Vance, that you are so ill at ease in your own head that you must resort to ritualistic, mind-deteriorating activities such as whatever game you are playing, just to escape the total misery that is the sum of your menial existence. As the reader has undoubtedly correctly inferred, I am so the life of the party.

New for 2008 was a laptop complete with a hard-drive that didn’t freeze at altitude and allowed us the luxury of movie nights. Monty or Val would set up the speakers in the storage tent. We would pass around snacks and regale the mesmerized Sherpas with such western cultural movie masterpieces as Superbad and Kill Bill. Pemba was absolutely gobsmacked at Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

While watching movies, we were clad in our warmest articles but still could not stay warm, especially our feet. We set up elaborate layers of insulation from boxes of supplies to prevent any contact between our boots and the glacier floor, all to no avail. I resorted to my stash of chemical foot warmers, but many times I had to leave the storage tent early and hop in my sleeping bag with hot water bottles, just to get the feeling back in my tootsies. Not the ever-smiling Jamling Bhote, however. He never wore a hat or a down coat for movie night, and when leaving we marveled at his choice of footwear—rubber Crocs, sans socks.

Most days and nights at Base Camp and at the high camps, I would spend hours reading, journaling, studying my notes on sports psychology and reviewing my affirmations and visualizations. Picture me wrapped up in my sleeping bag at Camp Two. The wind is howling outside my tent, the noise so loud I can’t sleep. I get out my affirmations, sayings I had copied from many different sources, quotes that really helped me. I snap on my light, hold the paper in gloved hands and recite to myself in a firm, commanding voice: “I love this! I love the grinding, the pushing, the searching, the cold, the danger, the loneliness! It all serves me and makes me stronger and better!” And then, “I am totally prepared and have worked extremely hard to be here, and I deserve to be here. I honor the mountain by being as prepared as I am.” Next, “I will put myself on the line and I will never give up! I will not turn against myself in tough times, because I am physically strong as a yak, and mentally tough as nails! As long as life exists, there is hope to rebuild, repair, to become more, to emerge victorious in this, my greatest mental and physical battle.” I would skip down and find a quote significant for the moment as I lay in the cold grasp of wind that felt like a mighty hand, hell-bent on sweeping us all off this desolate place, a place where humans are just not supposed to be. Sometimes I wondered why I had put myself there. “I will take calculated risks and be in the present, and let go of the past. I will breathe deeply when tense or scared, have fun, and enjoy the journey. I trust myself and will participate one hundred percent without fear of failure.” The voice, the words, the wind, the cold, all joined themselves together for me. “I am relaxed, focused, and alert. I am alive, alert, well, and enthusiastic. I am a powerful athlete. I am incredibly attentive, talented, and confident. I am in control. I am calm and cool under pressure and I always make the right decisions. I am a masterful, efficient, glorious summit climber of Everest.” By the time I finished I was somehow warmer.

“Don’t hope – decide.” —Tsering Dokkar Sherpa

One of main things I did differently in 2008 was to make my mind an asset rather than a liability. I read many books that I found meaningful and relevant, especially Michael Johnson’s book Chasing the Dragon. I took notes and reviewed them constantly from my journal. I had brought my copy of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, to make sure I was on the beam with the law of attraction.

I simply could not afford to have any negativity or “mind worms” invade my cocoon of focus. Like Big Al Hancock said, I was here “to do a job, simply go to work.” And that’s what I did—I went to work. Many days I spent hours and hours in study and visualization. My mantra was “summit and safe return.” In my mind’s eye, again and again, I saw myself climbing this great mountain in good style with energy to spare, descending safely through the icefall and returning to Base Camp with all my fingers, toes and a pulse.

A million things can go wrong climbing the “Big E,” and, as you will see, an inexplicable series of events occurred that severely tested my will and, in fact, nearly caused me to give up and go home. I very nearly became a quitter, a beaten man, for a second and last time at the hands of the world’s tallest mountain without even making a true summit attempt.

The last rotation began innocuously enough. I was strong through the icefall, even catching up to people I deemed stronger than me. I was on pace to get to Camp One at a personal record time of three-and-a-half hours or less, until we got to the jury-rigged ladder section, where four shaky lengths were lashed together with rope. The whole assembly was slanted down to the climbers’ right and the rickety thing was bridging the gaping maw of a sixty-foot-deep crevasse. It was slow going here, and a bottleneck of climbers began to build.

The sun wasn’t up so it was bone-chillingly cold. We stomped our feet and clapped our gloved hands together to get the circulation going as we waited in the growing queue. I passed a struggling Adam, who was suffering mightily with freezing hands. I quickly pulled out chemical hand warmers and set to work with Ang Nymga Sherpa, kneading some blood flow into his upper extremities.

Finally, it was our turn for the ladder section; we traversed the scary apparatus and picked up the pace to get to camp before the blast furnace of heat came with the sunrise. In our acclimatization travels, we crossed several hundred aluminum ladder sections that were painstakingly installed and maintained daily by the “icefall doctors.” The danger these entrepreneurial Sherpas subject themselves to makes Alaskan king crab fisherman look like crossing guards. No wonder some are raging alcoholics. Both years, I had set up a ladder in my yard at home and practiced walking with boots and crampons. I felt very comfortable putting my crampon front points onto a rung and dropping my heel down behind, even on these ladders—which appeared to be cheap, inferior, flimsy. The secret for me was to concentrate on foot placements and resist the temptation to look between my boots to the bottomless depths of the deadly crevasse below me.

Despite our best intentions of an early start, twenty minutes later we got crushed head-on by the sunrise; I wilted under its power as we limped up and down the last few crevasses and stumbled into camp. There’s nothing subtle about the sunrise on Sagermatha; it’s literally a slap of searing heat across the face.

There must have been twenty of us all together at Camp One, just chillin’ and hydrating and munching on snacks. I was telling a story of passing the Nepal Women’s Team in the first hour of the climb and my shock at how great they smelled, kind of like exotically spiced perfume; or maybe they were just cleaner than me and the people I chose to be with. After all, I took a shower once per month on Everest, whether I needed it or not.

As I told the story, I became alarmed because the Sherpas were just beside themselves with laughter. Big tears were rolling down their cheeks and they spoke excitedly in Nepali. I was concerned I had crossed the line culturally, even though I meant nothing. I usually don’t cause international incidents at high altitude (except that one time on Kilimanjaro when my feet smelled like air squeezed from a beached sea mammal), but I wasn’t so sure this time. Eventually, it blew over, and I never did get the joke.

The next day, we got an early start and went to Camp Two, a.k.a. Advanced Base Camp (ABC), at 21,500 feet, because it was safely plopped on the moraine out of avalanche danger, and we could have dining and cooking tents installed by the ever-helpful Sherpas. I felt fine on that leg, not super-strong perhaps, but I gradually began to lose that sense of strength as we climbed up the last few hundred meters to ABC. I was “pooped” but not “knackered” when we pulled over the last huge pile of glacial detritus and our yellow tent town. I was a little concerned that on the next time up for summit rotation, we would be going from Base Camp directly to ABC without spending a night to rest. I quickly put these concerns on the back burner and chalked it up to a bad day, the first one on the trip. I was due. The next day was a rest day, so it was a “no worries” day; the day after that was to be an easy tromp to the base of the Lhotse Face, a gently rolling ascent of two hours and a gain of a paltry 500 feet of elevation.

In the morning, I was wasted. Exhausted. Gas tank on Empty. I was shocked beyond words. We strapped on crampons and with an ice axe in one hand and a trekking pole in the other, set off on this easiest of climbs (relatively speaking of course, because anything at 21,500 feet is astoundingly hard). But from the get-go I just couldn’t get my breath and was so fatigued I could barely function. What the frig is the matter with me? I thought. (Note: I did not use the word “frig.”) I had meticulously watched my nutrition, but slammed an energy gel just in case; it did nothing to alter the growing fatigue and frustration. What’s happening to me? I took two steps on nearly flat terrain and had to stop and rest for thirty seconds just to take two more seriously labored steps, while sucking air like a locomotive. What the flug is the matter with me? (Note: I did not use the word “flug.”)

Phinjo, to his credit, said nothing but must have been seriously concerned. An easy two-hour hike had turned into more than three hours of physical and mental torture. Had I crossed that line and peaked too early? Could I rebound and get my strength back before the weather window opened? I was supposed to do the super-serious climb to spend a night at Camp Three the next day. Could I?

I couldn’t and didn’t. The next day, I bagged the climb and opted for more rest at Camp Two, and maybe a walk about camp. I didn’t have strength even for that abbreviated schedule, so I just lazed and stressed about it for two days. Several long, cold nights were consumed by my endless mental loop of questions. What could have caused the flipping of the physiological switch that turned me into such a sorry sack of exhausted protoplasm? To add insult to injury, my stomach started to pain me mysteriously and severely. Sometimes it felt digestive in nature, and other times it felt like a severely spasmed internal deep core muscle that I couldn’t quite identify.

Days and nights I made small talk with my fellow climbers, but inside I was tortured. No one could help me. I had to deal with it as best I could by myself. My strength had been superb for nearly six weeks. Why had I collapsed nearly overnight? I obsessed day and night at Camp Two while each day planning to try the hike again just to check my status, but I couldn’t bring myself to get out there.

I finally resigned myself to having that labored trip to the base of the Lhotse Face be my highest point achieved before making my summit attempt. The date was May 12, 2008, and I was one dejected climber as I packed up and met Phinjo at the dining tent next to the oxygen cache at 6 AM, and headed back home to Base.

Little did I know as I began the descent through the valley-of-silence Western Cwm that my travails were only just beginning. I would have to find the fortitude to fight and win a huge unexpected battle—all this before the expected week-long war known as the summit rotation was to have begun.

Once in Base Camp, I gingerly made my way to the Himalayan Rescue Association (a.k.a. Base Camp ER), where the volunteer docs who man the white Quonset-hut tent are funded by each of the climbing groups and by donations. I was checked over, but they could think of no reason for my stomach pains. They checked my pulse-oximeter; at ninety percent, it was better than those of most climbers at that altitude (though a reading of ninety percent at sea level would land you in the hospital and under serious scrutiny). Breathing tests came out fine as well. And despite the horrid belly pain, my appetite was still strong. Good thing. Even with a strong appetite, I would have to force-feed myself even more than I had been if I was going to survive my summit attempt. At this point, I estimated I was down seven pounds of muscle and would need every ounce to summit and safely return.

In 2007, I had gone down valley to rest and heal in the thicker air, but I had not planned to do that for 2008. I remembered picking up the gastrointestinal bug in Pheriche that put the last nail in the coffin of the summit attempt that year. After the Base Camp Emergency Room visit, I decided once again to risk gut invasion by myriad third-world microscopic terrorists and head down. Maybe the oxygen concentration in Ang Nuru’s Himalayan Hotel, at 14,000 feet, would be a boon to my flagging energy stores. The climbing weather window was still not there, and I felt I could safely take two to three full days and three to four nights down low before trekking back up to Base, resting two days and then beginning the biggest physical and mental test of my forty-eight years.

Phinjo and I left the next morning and motored down trail before sharing an orange Fanta at Gorak Shep and heading for Lobuche. We probably talked more on this leg of the trip than at any time in the previous two years. Phinjo is the kind of guy for whom small talk just doesn’t fly. After you take care of the business at hand, there’s simply nothing else to say. Perhaps he was excited to be heading home for a few days and for the opportunity to be with his family in Phortse. This was a small picturesque community of superstar Himalayan climbers and their families, many of whom were on our team, having been recruited over the years by Ang Jangbu, a native of the tiny village.

From the get-go, I was in radio contact with Mark Tucker for the latest on weather, conditions and gossip from up high. I overheard Dave Hahn sharing his plans with his client, Nicky Messner, to leave later than the crowds, which is his modus operandi. It was my plan as well. “Patience, young padawan learner,” said the philosopher Yoda.

My shoulders were becoming increasingly angry with me as the pack straps cut the circulation to my deltoids and traps. Not even my expert ministrations with pack strap adjustments helped a lick as we descended the rocky trail. Finally, we rounded a corner and saw the sleepy town of Pheriche—still a good four miles of yak pasture away.

What made the hour’s hike more bearable was seeing the first green in weeks—living things like plants and occasionally flowers among the rock and streams and yak patties. The yaks and naks had evidently gotten busy, because the valley teemed with baby yaks, all balls of fuzziness and full of spunky play.

I loved it, and was excited to be there as I opened the door to Nuru’s tea house and he greeted me like a long-lost friend. I voraciously inhaled his vegetable picadas and fried mo-mos and delved into the first of many jugs of lemon tea. It tasted better than it had the previous year. After Phinjo’s lunch of dahl-bat, we said our goodbyes as he shouldered his pack and headed home to Phortse. I napped and ate, and chatted with the trekkers who came and went.

As the sun slipped over Taboche Peak and Cholatse, the temperature cooled noticeably; at 4 PM, a young Sherpa boy fired up the kettle stove in the common room of the tea house by lighting a mixture of dried yak dung and kerosene. I attacked the extensive book collection at Nuru’s the next day. The only trouble was, many of the editions were in Russian, Japanese, or Swedish, owing to the international nature of the Khumbu. I became engrossed in The Bourne Identity, and the hours quickly rolled by.

Before dinner on May 16, I radioed Tuck and was flummoxed by his report that the weather window was opening and that I should get back to Base double-quick. “What do you mean?”, I stammered, “What happened? I thought I had time for several days down here!” He mumbled a response that I didn’t catch, but I knew the game up here: things change quickly in late May for Everest climbers, and I had no time to waste. I had to turn my sorry butt around and climb back up hill tomorrow, well before I expected to. The Everest weather window waits for no one, so I just had to sit down, shut up and get crackin’.

On the spot I decided that I would leave for Base Camp as early as I could get fueled up with breakfast the next morning. Ang Nuru somehow linked a phone call (the phone looked like the old crank-up models) to Phinjo’s village of Phortse, and got me on the line with him to confer on the timing. For some reason, although we could understand each other face-to-face, communicating over the crackly, archaic phone system just wasn’t happening. Thankfully, Ang Nuru stepped in and acted as interpreter, resulting in the decision that Phinjo would meet up with me on the trail the next day and that I should leave on my own. I ate voraciously, consumed mass quantities of fluids, and filled and emptied my pee bottle several times during that last night. If Jason Bourne could get into tight spots and McGyver himself out, then so could I.

The next morning found Pheriche enveloped in low-hanging clouds. It was impossible to see the next teahouse fifty feet away, let alone the huge snow- and glacier-covered peaks that surrounded us. By 5:30 AM, I had packed my gear, including forcing my sleeping bag into the nooks and crannies of my backpack. I was the only one crazy enough to be up and ready to party at that hour. After my caffeine fix and fried eggs and chapatti, I hit the trail. Almost immediately, I exited the cloud cover and rock-hopped over streams, striding past lazing yaks chewing their cud. For the first time on this expedition, I was alone.

The hike between Base Camp and Pheriche demanded significantly more testosterone (or estrogen) on the ascent, for the obvious reason that I had 3,500 vertical feet to gain over eight hours of constant effort. In contrast, we took four full days to make this same ascent six weeks before, in our pre-acclimatized days. I figured eight hours at leisurely pace, stopping anywhere I wished to rest and recharge, would allow me to pull into Base about 3 PM. After the four miles of relatively flat yak pastures, the climb grew steep in a hurry as I took a hard right up dozens of long switchbacks of loose sand. I did not feel strong at all, although being alone made it impossible to accurately gauge my pace. I was fighting rising panic. What’s happening to me? I asked myself for the thousandth time. I fought a recurring thought that suggested that Everest just might not be in the cards for me. After all, I reasoned, there’s no shame in turning around on Everest, at least I have my life and my fingers and toes. This thought was tempered by one that repeated the singular question: Have I done my best?

Above Dugla, I passed a trekking team and tried to compare my strength to theirs. I assumed that I should be twice as fast as these newbie hikers ascending the long brutal hill climb to the land of memorial chortens. I depressed myself even further by barely staying in front of them up the long grind. At this point, I firmly decided that at the stone seats for porters on the ridge, I would call Mark Tucker and Ang Jangbu on the radio and have them pack up all my gear and send it down to me on a yak. I was convinced that with my feeble strength, I had no shot to climb the world’s highest peak.

“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe

Inexplicably, after gaining the ridge, I didn’t even sit down for a rest. I just kept walking, head down and straight ahead. Another thought came to me and gradually took hold in my conscious mind: I would not call Mark and Jangbu and quit the climb. What I would do was keep climbing, as long as a shred of hope remained. With increasing conviction, I realized that all I needed was a glimmer of hope—like a faint light emitting from under a door—to continue the quest. As long as relative safety allowed, and a tidbit of hope existed, I would keep putting one foot in front of the other in the direction of the summit of the world, and my dreams. I was suddenly soaring, like a Gorak riding a thermal. I had emotionally melted down, but had reformed and was made new. I started to feel a tiny bit stronger.

I barely stopped at all on the hike from Pheriche to Base Camp. I ate snacks and drank lemon tea from my water bottles on the way. I stopped only to adjust my pack straps when they painfully cut off the blood supply to my shoulders, or when I had to nitrogenize the rocks next to the trail. I mumbled “namaste” (this salutation can be used as a hello or goodbye and roughly translates to “I honor the godliness within you”) to the yak herders, porters and trekkers I encountered. I chugged two Fantas in Gorak Shep and thought for sure that Phinjo would have caught up by then. I cruised into Base Camp in six hours. I never told my teammates of the internal battle that waged in my head on that hike. It turns out that I was indeed hammering the pace, which speaks to why I was such a hurtin’ buckaroo. The mystery of the fast trekking group remained, however. Phinjo never did catch me.

“The bruise on the heart which at first feels incredibly tender to the slightest touch, eventually turns all the shades of the rainbow and stops aching.” —Erica Jong