CHAPTER FIVE

Thank Your Way to the Top

“It’s cold and wet, but at least we’re starving.”

—Jimmy Chin

As I made final summit rotation preparations, I was getting mentally pumped as well. I wrote choice affirmations in a mini summit journal that I was taking on the final assault in order to save weight. I re-read my sports psychology notes for the hundredth time while copying down more key excerpts for the pivotal next six days. I was “getting my shit in one sock.” I filed my crampon tips to razor-sharp condition, knowing that they would be dulled by the shattered rock layers of the Yellow Band and Geneva Spur. I counted and recounted protein bars, energy gels and hard candies.

I had to do a little laundry, so I headed over to the solar shower area with a bar of soap to lather up my lacy underthings (Under Armour underwear and Smartwool mountaineering socks). As I was freezing my fingers in the barely-melted glacial bath water, I was suddenly stunned by an unanticipated feeling. A flash of deep contentment pervaded me as it occurred to me that I had done everything to the best of my ability. I had done everything right! I could do no more to prepare. It was time to do the deed. Win or lose, I realized I wouldn’t have changed a thing. It was a glorious, deeply calming reverie—a self-hug.

I mentally rehearsed the plan before my meeting with Phinjo: we would once again leave the Puja at 4:30 in the morning to be at Crampon Point at 5 AM; we’d spike up and head into the icefall for one last ascent. Reaching Camp One before 9 AM and the baking sun of the Western Cwm, we would hunker down for about six hours. When the clouds rolled in, we’d make a dash to Camp Two, preferably without baking our brains in the blast furnace of the gradual valley ascent between Camps Uno and Dos.

This would be the first time that I would be going from Base Camp to Camp Two in the same day. I was determined not to be doing it in blazing sun no matter what, as there was no benefit, especially on summit rotation, in getting scorched. Others in the Everest climbing community saw it differently. In the back of my mind was Dave Hahn’s admonition from 2007 that in order to have any chance to climb to the summit, one had to have the strength to go from Base to Camp Two in the same day. I was anxious to test my mettle in this regard.

After arriving in Camp Two, there would be a rest day and the final prep of our high altitude kit. Time to don the one-piece down suit, as we would be ensconced in that goose down cocoon for the following three days—from Camp Two, to Camp Three, to Camp Four, to summit, to Camp Four, to Camp Two again (we’d stop only to eat and drink at Camp Three on the way down)—if all went well, that is. Next would be the climb up to Camp Three, at 24,500 feet on the Lhotse Face. This very well could be the crux of the climb, as climbers need to pull into that camp in good stead and without supplementary oxygen.

At Camp Three, the summit attempt truly begins. Early in the morning, we would don our fighter-pilot-designed oxygen masks with eighteen-pound tanks, locked and loaded in our packs, and head to Camp Four at 8,000 meters, or 26,000 feet. At this juncture we will have entered the “Death Zone,” where life cannot be sustained for more than a few days, even with supplementary oxygen.

After pulling into Camp Four, we would hunker down and rest as much as we could under the circumstances. Drinking and eating all we could was crucial to fueling our motors, and hopefully we’d be able to muster a little battery-charging shut-eye.

At some agreed-upon time anywhere between 9 to 10 PM, the Super Bowl of climbing would begin. The idea was to climb to the summit and back down to Camp Four before noon the next day in order to avoid the commonly unsettled afternoon weather. Of course, summiting is only successful if you return safely, so after a night at Camp Four, post-summit, we would descend directly to Camp Two, spend the night, then make one last dash across the icefall and back to the safety of Base Camp.

That was the plan and I was sticking to it, even though I knew that a multitude of things could go wrong at any moment on “The Big E,” and quite commonly do. “Adaptability,” said Ernest Shackleton when asked to divulge the most important attribute that allowed him and his men to survive in the Antarctic for eighteen months after their ship was crushed to dust in the ice floes. I was learning the lessons of those who had come before me, as I prepared for the biggest mental and physical battle of my life.

“If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” —Sir Isaac Newton

Phinjo was all smiles as we met up on this last rest day before summit rotation. He had been following the weather reports and they looked ideal for the pivotal next few days. We needed at least four and preferably seven good weather days to get up and down safely. Our climbing team subscribed to two specialized weather forecasting services for Everest climbers–one in Seattle and one in Switzerland—to compare and contrast the data. These forecasts mainly involved two important factors. One was the jet stream winds, which we wanted to stay as far away from the summit as possible, preferably toward the Bay of Bengal, fifteen hundred miles yonder. It was simply impossible to climb in 150-mile-per-hour winds. I have turned around on several winter Mt. Washington ascents in New Hampshire because I literally couldn’t stand up in 60-mile-per-hour winds, being buffeted upside the head into submission by the famous “world’s worst weather.” That 6,288-foot peak has been my mountaineering mecca since my teens.

Factor two was the monsoon season, which traditionally nails the high Himalaya starting sometime in late May through early June; it makes climbing suicidal due to violent snowfall, high winds and increased avalanche activity. The rest of my team, barring the notable exceptions of Hahn, Sanduk Sherpa and Nicole Messner, were already stretched out between Camps One and Four.

It’s the luck of the draw as to who ends up on the same schedule when you climb unguided, as we were. My plan was to wait until the hordes left for the top—those who just couldn’t hold their horses after the Chinese delays, including those on my team of IMG. I had observed that in 2007, Hahn had waited until late in the season when there was less potential delay in critical spots up high. With the route in good shape, it made sense to me to bolt for the top on a stomped-in trail with less traffic on the ropes. Ironically, using the same strategy, Dave and his group were nearly weathered off their summit attempt at 26,000 feet, as they had to abort one attempt. Fortunately for them, they had enough oxygen to make another bid the next night, and they succeeded.

So the stage was set and I was feeling, all in all, spot-on. I had not let my disastrous last rotation and subsequent painfully weak ascent from down-valley put negative “thought-worms” in my head. Now that everything was scratched off the list, I needed to hit the fart sack. After dinner, at 7 PM Nepal time on May 19, 2008 (a year to the day after my 2007 partner Biggest Al Hancock from Alberta, Canada summited Everest), I crashed.

“I ain’t afraid of dyin’, I’m afraid of not tryin’.” —Jay Z

“You don’t have to worry about the world ending, because it’s already tomorrow in Nepal.” —Dr. Tim Warren

The next morning, I was up before I had to be, eager to get going but with the added attribute of…fear. It was a combination of loathing for what was to come, and excitement to see the project through. I had slept with my climbing pants, high-tech underwear and fleece on. My gloves and boot liners had been warming in my sleeping bag for the previous hour. The pack was ready; I just needed to slip in my ice axe and crampon bag. I pulled on the alveolite inner boots, then the stiff outers, and laced both up loosely to avoid the shin bruising known as “boot bang.” Then I zippered up the built-in Gore-Tex gaiters, and finally Velcroed the top shut. The whole boot apparatus came nearly to the knees of my six-foot frame. I adhered the tent flaps together, said sayonara to my home-away-from-home for the last two months, and set off through the glacial battle zone of rock and ice, and headed out for a date with Kaschi the cook.

Although not as friendly as Pemba, the cook from 2007 who decided he could make more money in New Jersey pumping gas, Kaschi was more of a fashionista. He always sported blue jeans, western shirt, fleece and a baseball cap, even on frigid mornings when his first order of business was to light the Buddhist ritual incense. As usual, I was the first mikaroo to breakfast and I helped myself to instant coffee, eggs and chapatti. I immediately gagged on each bite and, afraid I would vomit, quickly beat a hasty retreat out the dining tent door. I gradually got my composure, but realized there wouldn’t be too much in my belly for the four-hour marathon to Camp One. I tried some cereal, and it was marginally better. I finally slammed an energy gel, filled my two water bottles with hot water and headed outside to check on Phinjo’s progress. Having climbed with him for two years, I knew he was no fan of “alpine starts.” I pulled on my climbing harness and cinched it down. As soon as it was fastened, I feverishly ripped it off and waddled as quickly as possible to the latrine tent. Not pleasant, but at least I was still at Base and not out on the trail.

Beginning again, I slowly concentrated on the proper hook-up of my harness, as it was a lifeline to relative safety on technical climbs. It was a little over-sized on purpose, so that when it was worn with my Michelin Man down suit above Camp Two, it would fit perfectly. Finally, Phinjo showed up and it looked like it would be the two of us, with Mike Hamill and Dasonam Sherpa, to push the climb to Camp Two as a makeshift mini-team. We made the two-minute hike to the Puja altar, and I suddenly realized why Phinjo was a little late; he had already been to the altar and lit the incense and juniper boughs, making the oxygen-starved air billow with pungent ritual smoke. Both Sherpas were chanting in their sing-song, nearly under-their-breath manner. We passed the Puja cube on our right, its cedar pole and prayer flags fluttering their messages to the heavens—and we were off.

During the ten-minute tramp to Crampon Point, we picked our way around latrines, tents and the occasional yak in the gradually lightening sky. Our metallic accoutrements clanked against each other as we slowly moved across the undulating wasteland of broken rock and ice mixed with the flotsam and jetsam of dozens of international expeditions and their dream-chasing members.

A forty-foot-high serac of blue ice marked Crampon Point and guarded the entry way to the Khumbu Icefall—ground zero for Everest ascents. I pulled out my crampon bag with a feeling of satisfaction at seeing the twenty-four newly honed two-inch spikes. After fixing bayonets, we slung on the packs and quickly rousted Tuck out of bed with a radio call regarding our departure.

It was critical that I call Tuck periodically. He had to know what time we were leaving any of the climbing checkpoints and what time we arrived. He documented each of our climbers’ whereabouts and posted them on a poster board. This also gave Tuck the ability to gauge the strength of the climber in comparison with his companions, a kind of yardstick by which he inferred how much gas was in the climber’s tank. It’s not uncommon for an exhausted climber to hoodwink himself, or the team, with respect to his lack of power.

The slopes were littered with the corpses of climbers who made such mistakes while suffering from the strange disease known as “summit fever.”

I have never suffered from such a malady. In fact, whenever I decided that the conditions or my strength weren’t up to snuff, I turned tail, and climbed another day. I was even a bit excited about getting another chance at the same mountain. On my first Alaskan Denali expedition, I was in over my head, technically and mentally. On that high point of North America, the head guide, Craig John, determined that the threat of avalanche on the 18,000-foot “Autobahn” was too high. (This feature was so named for all the Germans who had fallen off of it; not to be confused with a different feature on Denali, the “Orient Express,” named because—you guessed it—an inordinate number of Asian climbers fell from it.) I was thrilled to be able to plan another trip back to tackle Denali again. Rob Scott and I returned four years later and, self-guided, climbed to the top over a four-week period in 2004. Same thing with the Grand Teton. It was such a cool mountain environment in Jackson, Wyoming, as well as on the crag itself, that my mates Bob D., Scott Schnackenberg and I went back in 2002 to summit “The Grand” after spinning in icy conditions in 2001.

And so there I was, on the biggest, baddest second try in my climbing life, and the game was on. This marked my nineteenth trip on the icefall, and hopefully my next-to-last. We cramponed over the smaller ten- to twenty-foot seracs for forty-five minutes before the route steepened. By then we had switched off our headlamps and had to keep moving to stay warm. I had been gagging and coughing since my poor attempt at breakfast earlier, but it let up if I quickly popped a hard candy in the hopper. I had a small five-and-dime-store-sized supply of hard candies just for this purpose and one more: it coated the throat and minimized the effect of Khumbu cough. Another lesson learned from the 2007 adventure, when I retreated down valley with my throat in a particularly foul mood. I don’t normally touch anything with chemical sweeteners, but high altitude was very rough on my tooth enamel; even with judicious flossing and brushing, it was a pain-fest in the dentist’s chair when I returned home both years.

Anyway, as time went on, my gagging became increasingly persistent and obnoxious. Finally, after ninety minutes of spirited, back-and-forth battle, I simply couldn’t hold back any longer. In a sudden fit of violent diaphragmatic spasm, I managed to discharge every calorie from breakfast and the energy gels, candies and water I had put in my system since the wee hours. It created an interesting mosaic of sight, smell and texture before it melted its way into the ice. Luckily, the four of us were perched on a tilted ten-foot square of broken ice, and not on a ladder section. I was on my hands and knees, heaving my guts out, and eventually Phinjo started rubbing my back to comfort me, and maybe just to get me to knock it off already. Hamill, putting on his guide hat for the moment, asked me how I was, and I said, “really, I feel great, believe me!” And I did. I was strong, setting the pace for a perfect icefall climb: fast enough to decrease the chance of getting killed by avalanche, yet not so fast as to waste myself.

I was concerned that Mike would suggest I turn around, or perhaps call Tuck and inform him that I was ill, and that he, in turn, would ask me to spin. In actuality, Mike Hamill, like all guides, was probably keeping his eyes on other climbers even when he was climbing just for himself, and he liked what he saw of me. He knew I was strong, and despite my having blown lunch repeatedly, he kind of inferred that if I was done ruining the view, we could finally get back to climbing. I was worried about my loss of food and water. What little I had been able to force into my stomach was now gone. You simply cannot climb safely at high altitude without fuel in the tank, especially with no water—and most certainly not on Everest. No time to cry over spilled vomitus, however, so I quickly inhaled two energy gels, pulled long and hard from my dwindling water supply and aimed my crampon front points to the next snow and blue ice obstacle.

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” —Lau Tzu

Maybe it was the cleaning out of my system, and the lightness I felt from the purging. I’m not sure what prompted it, but as I started to move again, an overpowering feeling of gratitude came over me. Maybe this was because I knew I didn’t have to turn around like I had the previous year. The thankful thoughts kept rushing through me. I was strong and motivated, and very appreciative. I was so thankful for Rose and Kurt, who loved me even if they didn’t totally understand my climbing—and were actually scared to death over it. I was thankful for my wonderful staff, who were my biggest fans and supporters, and who kept the office going in my long absences while I was on exotic climbing trips. I was thankful for all my great friends, climbing and otherwise, who supported me and rooted for me. I was super-thankful to my corporate sponsors and everyday people who dug into their pockets and bought t-shirts or adopted yaks or just purchased dollar stars in the office. I was filled with gratitude for Palmer, my doggie (his shedding white coat had left traces in my equipment bag on Everest). As I climbed each ladder rung, the sense of thankfulness kept coming. I felt like one of those Oscar recipients saying thank-yous to a long list of people, before the orchestra finally drowns him out. I felt connected to all of them in the early morning deep-freeze of the Khumbu Icefall. I felt all of them at once almost pushing me up the ice blocks, and I felt supremely honored to have earned their support. I remembered the ancient Chinese adage that all humanity is connected by an invisible red filament, and at 19,500 feet, I felt the love.

Most of all, I was overjoyed to be living my dream: to be doing it, after dreaming and training for years. I was putting one spiked Frankenstein boot after the other in the direction of my dreams. I was so lucky, and I knew it. How many people get to live their dreams and experience such an amazing journey? At that very moment, whether or not I made it to the top of that hill was inconsequential.

I was appreciative of Phinjo’s quiet concern. I remembered that he cried right next to me in 2007 when I was so ill in the icefall, and made the tough but appropriate call to quit. I was grateful for each step as the hours crept by. It’s hard work climbing the Khumbu Icefall, but I had a lightness to me that I had never experienced before and haven’t since. I was so happy just to be propelling my body–which reminded me of my vintage four-wheel-drive Land Rover Defender, a superbly tuned, unstoppable machine.

I was thankful for my parents, who early on gave me a love of travel and living out-of-the-box. I was appreciative of Dr. Matt, who was adjusting all my patients. I was grateful to my patients, many of whom supported me monetarily, and all of whom supported me spiritually.

“The dude abides.” —Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski

Three-and-a-half hours after the spikes went on, four of us pulled over the final serac, climbed over the avalanche-prone rock-strewn “football” field, went up and down a couple of monster crevasses and suddenly came face to face with the tents of Camp One, at 20,000 feet, the first way station on our quest for the top of the world. I had never felt even close to this good at Camp One. I really disliked this camp, actually. I’d had a severe altitude-induced migraine here in 2007 that felt like a railroad spike had impaled itself in my temple. It was a condition caused by my failure to drink enough fluids; another lesson learned. At night, the winds blew through there like out-of-control locomotives. It was just so cold there in the mornings that people fumbled around like zombies in slow motion as they tried to get moving. Hamill told me that when he was guiding two clients there in 2006, a huge avalanche rampaged through the camp, just decimating the temporary tent town. It was a miracle that there were so few injuries and that no one died, but to this day, Tucker is upset that he lost his down suit. If he waits long enough, he could probably retrieve it in years to come, as all manner of abandoned or lost objects work their way, through gravity and avalanche, eventually to Base Camp. Body parts, helicopters and climbing supplies from decades past share space with the broken ice and snow of the Khumbu Icefall, and inexorably descend, in some form, to Base Camp and below.

The cold and wind was denied by the blast furnace heat of a cloudless, windless day at Camp One. That was our predicament on May 20; it was smokin’ hot. But again the plan was to rest until it cooled in the afternoon clouds, hydrate and eat everything in sight. It was especially imperative for me to accomplish these tasks, as I was seriously depleted from a nearly four-hour marathon of life-threatening ascent while demonstrating the “technicolor yawn.” The good news was that since we had the camp to ourselves, we could each stretch out in personal tents for naps. It was so hot in my tent that even with all the vents open and me naked with no body parts touching, it was barely tolerable. Mike sparked the stoves as I gathered snow to melt, and we set about the job of hydrating. We were joined by Walter Laserer, an Austrian mountain guide, and his client, a non-English-speaking German.

Despite my disdain for the camp, it was a fascinating and beautiful place. I was able to get in some snooze time before the first clouds moseyed overhead a little earlier than expected at 2 PM. Phinjo shyly asked if I was ready to go. “A little more eating and drinking, bro,” I replied. The truth was, I wanted more cloud cover. Magically, the clouds closed in just like we had hoped, and we saddled up. I was so tickled to be making this Camp Two jaunt the same day as leaving Base Camp that I was giddy.

I felt great, but my enthusiasm was tempered by my history of severe exhaustion on this stretch over the previous two years. This year was worlds better than 2007, when I was so slow that I just totally embarrassed myself in a puddle of pain, literally taking one step and resting thirty seconds before forcing myself to take another, for hours and hours. It was a mentally and physically brutal experience.

My two 2008 ascents through the Western Cwm had been significantly better, but still painful. Once, when climbing the last lip of glacial moraine to our camp at 21,500 feet, I was so knackered with fatigue that when I was greeted by Nicole and Hahn, I couldn’t even respond. I barely got my pack and crampons off before collapsing, supine, onto the nearest rock resting place.

The route from Camp One to Camp Two began with some gargantuan crevasse crossings, some ladder crossings and hairy proximity to the northwest Nuptse face. There were some terrifying hanging glaciers that most definitely would avalanche soon. I hoped for all of our sake that it would happen in June when the climbing season was long gone; otherwise, alpinists would be squashed into unrecoverable DNA-sized portions. This was the rub of climbing Everest: managing risk. You could take the route nearest to Nuptse and make better time, but expose yourself to a greater likelihood of deadly avalanches. We took the faster and hairier route, and ascended the gentle undulating terrain after the big crevasses.

I set a good pace for myself by rest-stepping my merry way very slowly. Rest-stepping works miraculously for conserving energy, but is slow as molasses running uphill–in winter–on Everest.

After an hour and a half, we crested a small ridge and moved out to the center of the Cwm. For the first time, we could see our objective: the first tents on the moraine next to Everest’s Southwest Face. I knew from experience that the destination never comes if you obsess about it, so I focused on clipping into the rope (hidden crevasses abound) and putting one foot in front of the other. I was delighted that the clouds stayed put, with only a few breaks of sun. I was dressed perfectly for this schizophrenic environment, where you needed to vent your body heat when the sun breaks through, but button up for the overcast skies. The temperature could and would swing fifty degrees almost instantaneously.

Mike and Dasonam got a little ahead of us, but I didn’t care, as we were making great progress, finally making it to the lower tents on the moraine. I didn’t like Camp One for its cold and wind, but Camp Two makes me nervous for another reason entirely: hidden crevasses. One of the most famous Sherpas of all time, Babu Chirii, died here several years ago by falling into a crevasse that was covered by a snow bridge. Chirii was famous for his speed ascents of Everest, and for once staying on the summit for over twenty-one hours without supplementary oxygen.

In 2007, I had seen a hole where a climber’s body had penetrated a similar crevasse but had been saved by his outstretched arms on the way down. The hole was black and bottomless as far as I could discern. The Sherpas joke that if you fall into a crevasse on Everest you will pop out in America. The ironic thing is that this dangerous area was only thirty feet from the safety of the glacial moraine of Camp Two. Like the entire Everest climbing experience, no one ropes up together. Roping up (tethering two or more climbers together by an outstretched climbing rope) would protect you in a crevasse fall, but would add to the risk in places like the icefall and especially the steep Lhotse Face. Here in this spot, roping up would be a safe decision, but no one, including ourselves, ever did. So I guess we, like Babu Chirii before us, were rolling the dice.

The usually hellish climb from the relatively flat glacial Western Cwm to the three hundred feet or so higher tent site of our Camp Two was easier than ever for me. No counting games of “twenty steps, then rest” in a futile attempt to distract myself from the grinding misery. The terrain was changing rapidly due to the daily melt of spring warmth trumping the nightly deep freeze of the great mountain’s west side. Converging streams of melt water gnawed their way through the previously bulletproof ice and rock conglomerate, causing us at times to dance, in twelve-point crampons, from rock to ice hillock, back to rock all the way up.

Gratitude continued to surge through me; I was so thrilled to be allowed to test my mettle on this, the greatest mountain in the world. The higher I went, the more I felt that the climb was my personal canvas, the background of which I had been painting for several years. And there I was, rapidly brush-stroking a grand finale. My personal masterpiece, my mission, my purpose, my Everest summit attempt. Whatever happened from then on—and a world of things could go wrong—I had done my best and was in the process of doing my best. It was the most glorious feeling in the world.

There was a crew of survivors at Camp Two that evening besides the group that I had come up with that day. We had Ryan Campbell’s guided group of Rohan Freeman and Serge Massad, as well as the team of Val Hovland and Monty Smith, with their Sherpas Phunuru and Passang Rinjing. Word came at the nightly radio call that our earlier summit team had left Camp Three, but two of our brethren, Scott Parazinski and Bob Lowry, had turned around from a blown lumbar disc and exhaustion, respectively, and would be heading down the next day to join us at Camp Two. Their summit dreams were over. However, Vance, Chip, Crazy Joe, Kurt, and Adam from our team would be getting into summit position the following day at Camp Four. They were just entering the Death Zone.

After dinner, I headlamped my way back to the tent and started sifting through gear and getting my head wrapped around the job to come. Almost as soon as I got back to my tent, I started to gag once again. Usually all I had to do was get a hard candy in my mouth to calm things down, but this was different. I couldn’t stop. I loudly lost my dahl-bat dinner outside the tent. I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed my offerings to the mountain gods; I saw a face look out from the tent across from me, and immediately look away. Shit, shit and double shit, I muttered under my breath in disgust. My worst fears were realized: Ang Passang had seen me!

Ang Passang was the autocratic climbing sirdar, kind of a vice president in charge of Sherpa climbing activity above Base Camp. At Camp Four, he was known to browbeat climbers who were too lethargic in getting out of the tents for their descents. He was just doing his job, of course, but I was scared of him nevertheless. I had gotten the distinct impression in 2007 that he didn’t think much of my fitness and climbing attempt. I thought that he may have been upset that his employee Phinjo missed out on a bonus (climbing Sherpas at IMG get their entire fee only if the client reaches Camp Four), even though I had given “The P-Man” a generous tip before leaving camp that year.

If he was suspect of my abilities in 2007, I really couldn’t blame him; I did suck. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but unlike the other Sherpas, Ang Passang wasn’t terrifically friendly in 2008. I just kept my distance. The long and short of it was that the sirdar could torpedo your summit attempt if he deemed you unworthy. My stomach contents being expelled in front of his tent at this stage of the game was not going to endear me to him, especially if he suspected AMS or HACE (acute mountain sickness or high-altitude cerebral edema). He could radio Ang Jangbu, who could talk to Mark Tucker, who could satellite phone conference with Eric Simonson in Seattle, who could suggest that I retreat. With the monsoon season closing in, that would be it for me: done forever on Everest just because I colored the snow a different shade. None of those conversations happened, to my knowledge. I wasn’t sick, just nervous and hyper. I hunkered down in my tent for the evening and listened to the B-52’s and The Offspring, then mellowed out to some Lucinda Williams and John Mayer.

As usual, bright and early, I made my way to the yellow Quonset hut dining tent, which was set up for the season on a more-or-less flat section of gravel and ice. Stones had been set around the perimeter for seating. It was always way below freezing in the early morning and after dinner, so we would pile up extra gear or sleeping mats on the rocks as additional insulation for our bottoms, despite at this point living twenty-four-seven in our down one-piece suits. I started the day the same way as in Base Camp, or at home in Rhode Island, for that matter: coffee. Here at 21,500 feet, four miles straight up in the air from the elevation of my North Kingstown, Rhode Island home, the coffee tastes just as good, even though it’s instant and the water has little white, unidentifiable floaty things in it. In order to get maximum hydration, I would refill the hot water when my mug was half-empty and only add more coffee on every fourth cup. Until it ran out, I would also add hot chocolate mix and just pound back the mixture. Hydrate or die.

I hoovered up dry cereal, eggs, bacon and chapatti pancakes as people gradually filtered in from the tents. My job for the last rest day in the expedition was to laze, eat, organize gear and upper mountain food, and check and recheck it all over again. I wiled away the time by reading my journal of affirmations and sports psychology notes.

Later that day, poor Scott and Bob came down from Camp Three just all beat up. Scott had a severe back injury flare up on him above 24,500 feet. In severe pain, he was barely able to stumble down the steep ice of the Lhotse Face. Bob Lowry, one of the funnier dudes on the team, had run his gas tank bone-dry with his effort to get to Camp Three, and had absolutely nothing left. He very wisely turned around. Their physical pain was rivaled only by their mental pain after having failed to meet the objective, the goal, the raison d’etre. I poked my head into Scott’s tent to offer my condolences and he said, “I have a really great life and I don’t need the summit to make me happy.” I wasn’t sure if he was telling me, or telling himself.

OK, it was going down! Everything was done. All I needed to do was get some sleep because I would, anyway you sliced it, be severely sleep-deprived from then on. I awoke at 3:30 AM on May 22, 2008 and once again stumbled over the broken rock moraine to the dining tent, where I was surprised to see another climber. Usually I am the first. It took me awhile to identify him, as he was hunched over with his head in his hands and bleeding profusely out of his nose into one of the large metal pots that the Sherpas use for food prep. It was Monty, who told me that during preparations for his summit attempt, his nose started to hemorrhage and wouldn’t stop. Blood was everywhere. It had soaked through whatever he had found for towels, and an alarming amount had collected in the pot. The Sherpas, Monty and his teammate Val were in contact with HRA in Base Camp by radio, but nothing seemed to be working—even the nose tampons that they tried to construct. There was nothing I could do but give him my well wishes. (I later learned that, indeed, the bleeding didn’t stop even after his retreat to Base Camp, and down valley. He had to be flown out in a helicopter rescue to Kathmandu with a loss of over twenty percent of his blood volume.) His summit dream was over. Mine was still in the works. I harkened back to my success affirmations to keep my climbing focus.

Phinjo and I met outside the tent and nodded at each other. Nothing to say now, just to do. Wordlessly, we fixed the crampons to our boots and cinched down our harnesses. There was nothing left to do but go up, way up. Mike Hamill and Dasonam were again in lockstep with us; Rohan and Panuru (not to be confused with Phunuru) joined in. We started up the broken ice ridges of camp and got into the more subtle grade and undulating terrain of the upper Western Cwm. It truly was living up to its moniker, “the Valley of Silence,” on this frosty morning.

I was psyched to get a move on and was supremely thankful that my gagging was somewhat under control when Hamill whispered under his breath that we needed to pick up the pace. I was honored that Mike was giving me support along the way, and almost imperceptibly we started to move faster. After an hour or so, we arrived at the base of the Lhotse Face, the most imposing of sheer walls. When Phinjo and I were here on my falling-down moments of fatigue on the last acclimatization rotation, we had seen rocks the size of suitcases tumbling wildly down the face, nearly decapitating several climbers affixed to the rope.

Not every climber wears a brain bucket (helmet) on this section, but I did, realizing full well that if I took a head-shot from anything bigger than a golfball, I was toast—helmet or not—and would likely be the next guy in whose memory a chorten would be constructed at Thokla Pass. Scrawled on my helmet was my blood type, A+. This was a poor attempt at gallows humor, because if any of us ever needed a blood transfusion, a supply and a phlebotomist would have to be delivered from home. I did hope that Monty hadn’t seen my lid that morning.

Hours rolled by and we made gradual vertical progress. Through much of the climb it seemed that we were in a battle against nature: the weather, the terrain, the lack of oxygen, and Sir Isaac Newton were all conspiring against us, but sometimes I found myself just cruising, and despite those self-same adversaries I somehow wound up on the same team again.

We were in the flow, albeit painfully. We were winning the battle — on points. The outcome of the war was far from being known; ten thousand things could go wrong, still, after all this time, effort and focus. No whining though, because it was a fair fight and the glory was just being able to put one foot in front of the other and make it six inches forward and six inches higher with each labored step and each pull of the jumar on the rope.

Blessedly, the day was partly cloudy with a light wind, so I stayed comfortable with the down suit unzipped down to my waist. So far so good, I thought to myself as I clipped into a rope anchor with Ryan and Serge to have a drink and a five-minute rest before shooting an energy gel into my mouth and continuing up the endless rope. After five hours and twenty minutes, and after passing two dozen tents of other expeditions, we were able to see the yellow Eureka! tents of our Camp Three at 24,500 feet. Our camp was in a small ten-foot-wide area that had been hacked out of the ice by our illustrious Sherpa team and was held on its perch by a spider web of ropes that were anchored into the flanks of Lhotse by snow stakes and ice screws.

“Climbing is hard, but it’s easier than growing up.” —Ed Sklar

I was deeply gratified to be there. I was tired, but definitely not wasted, incredibly better than when I was last there in 2007, and far better even than during my ill-fated journey from Camp Two to the Lhotse Face bottom ten days before. (I was still unable to rationally ascertain the reasons behind my total exhaustion of the previous acclimatization rotation.) There I was, thousands of feet higher but feeling much better; go figure. It made no sense, but I didn’t care a lick because I felt great (except for the continued gagging, that is).

I pulled out my British Royal Air Force-designed Top-Out oxygen mask and regulator, wrestled one of the eighteen-pound bulky IMG oxygen bottles from the back of the tent and plugged in at one liter/minute resting flow. Everyone else on the mountain used Russian Poisk oxygen bottle systems that have no heavy regulators but less capacity. I had been waiting for this moment on the climb for a long time. From now on, we would be sucking supplementary oxygen, and thank God. We were nearly into the Death Zone where, even with oxygen, our bodies and minds would be very slowly disintegrating, dying, even while just sitting. It was estimated that supplementary oxygen lowers the effective altitude by about 3,000 feet. In other words, with “gas” we had the physiologic oxygen usage of 21,500 feet while at Camp Three’s 24,500-foot actual elevation.

Phinjo came by with hot drinks, and a little later with boiling water to cook up our freeze-dried meal du jour. I had the tent all to my lonesome and good thing, because I started my obnoxious gagging once again. I just couldn’t stop coughing and croaking, even with my hard candies, and every two minutes I yelled an apology over the wind to Serge and Ryan, two flimsy tent fabrics away. I must have been driving them nutty. An hour later, I leaned over and before I could zipper the tent door completely open, threw up over my bandana, buff, food bag, and plastic dish and cup, half in and half out of the tent. (I whispered bad things under my breath during the totally nasty cleanup, but for the remainder of the trip, I never did my weird coughing/gagging combination or vomited again.) Could the fact that I was plugged into supplementary oxygen have countered the nerves of the summit attempt so far?

Supplementary oxygen has a big-time warming effect, which I learned first-hand in 2007 at Camp Three. I was freezing my rear-end off, even inside two sleeping bags and a down suit, as I only had one sleeping pad instead of two to insulate my body from the glacial ice. The intent, when there on an acclimatization cycle, was to get used to the thin air, and to use supplementary oxygen only in an emergency. After not sleeping and having to sit up to minimize my surface exposure to the tent floor for hour after painful hour while freezing to death in minus-twenty degree air, I said this sucks, and plugged into oxygen. Almost instantaneously, I passed out in a deep sleep and total warmth. I got off the tank another time that night, and then back on, with the same warming effect and instantaneous sleep. On the summit attempt, however, the name of the game was to rest, be warm and stay strong because the summit attempt really began there at Camp Three. I was plugged into “gas” for virtually all of the ensuing seventy-two hours.

Over the radio I learned that Rohan had turned around somewhere between Camps One and Two and ended his dream to become the first African-American man, as well as the first Jamaican native, to summit. More summit dreams were kaput.

I wrote a little, called in a dispatch to Joe in Rhode Island on the satellite phone, and crashed early, after checking and double-checking my gear. We would be out and gone by 6 AM, so I planned to stir early, at 3:30, to prepare. The very first vertical step and each subsequent one would be the highest I had ever been in my life. I was so happy and thankful, again, just to be there and “in the game.”

“Is it dangerous? What is dangerous is not living your dreams.” —Dr. Tim Warren

The dawn was clear and cold with negligible wind on May 23, just about perfect conditions for the day-long climb to the world’s highest camp, which was nestled among rocks at the South Col at 26,000 feet, a four- to seven-hour stint away. The snow gave a perky squeak as each of the twelve crampon points dug deep. I have always loved the sound when the points sink in. You innately know you have great purchase and are connected to the mountain. It’s a feeling of being in the right place, at the right time, working with nature, and in the flow.

I have never had the attitude that I was “conquering” any mountain. I realized that I was nothing more than a bug on her side and could be squashed at any moment. So far I had been “allowed” to climb big mountains, nothing more. I could never fathom the cocky audacity to conquer any mountain and especially not Everest, Sagarmatha: Goddess Mother of the World.

We had to traverse about fifty nerve-wracking yards to pick up the fixed lines out of camp. We had to dodge tent lines and all kinds of rope used to strap the tents on the mountain because of the incredibly tenuous space they occupied on the Lhotse Face. I was appreciative that we set the IMG Camp Three much higher on the Lhotse Face than other groups’ camps, because it was going to be a very long day even without adding another hour of tough ascent to the total.

It was mesmerizing to watch the gossamer bag inside the oxygen re-breather bottle expand and contract in slow motion with each labored inhalation. I felt a calming sense of safety even if there really wasn’t any to be had, anywhere. We clipped into the fixed line at 6 AM and started the ascent up the remaining 500 feet of the Lhotse Face. It was Phunuru, Val, Phinjo and me. Mike, Dasonam, Ryan, Serge and Panuru would leave right after us.

Val had rallied from her later-than-expected arrival at Camp Three, and was busily filming as well as climbing. I was totally concentrating on the climbing, and my engine and transmission. I had a virtual dashboard with multiple gauges in my mind. Energy? Hydration? Too hot? Too cold? Should I eat? Should I drink? How is my cramponing technique? Is it efficient? Do I need to alter my foot placement to balance the muscle load? Is my rest-step correct? Do I need to zip/unzip?

My right foot started to get cold—very cold. How could this be? I queried myself, it’s doing the same thing the left foot is. With a start I realized that I had made a very amateur blunder. I had not removed the spinal-pelvic stabilizer orthotics from my triple-layer boots to dry out in my sleeping bag while I slept. Moisture from the previous day’s climb had frozen in my boots and in the below-zero temperature was slowly, painfully reminding me of my oversight. Dopey slip-ups like this have cost people body parts.

I constantly curled my toes and wiggled them to keep the circulation going, and gradually they re-warmed. It was exhilarating climbing because it was higher than I had ever been. As I leaned into the mountain to rest between kicking steps into the nearly vertical ice, I could look between my legs to astounding views thousands of feet down. Camp Three was not far away, but it was almost straight down! At times it was so steep that the fixed rope disappeared below me. The steepness of this vertical world, combined with the fact that my head was hanging down as I stared at the precipitous view below, made me suddenly dizzy. Still, I couldn’t tear myself away. The sheer ice all the way to the vast Western Cwm and Camp Two was sandwiched by the massive Nuptse on my right and the west shoulder of Everest on my left. At the end of the Cwm lay Camp One and the beginning of the icefall, where it plunged over the abyss. Cloud cover crept nearly up to the highest seracs of the icefall as the early morning progressed. Beyond the clouds, obscuring the icefall, was the stunningly beautiful Pumori, and beyond that still was Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth-highest mountain, deep in Tibet.

I felt no fear. I was simply astounded at where I was and what I was seeing. I tried to imprint the views in my cerebral cortex because the spot was far too exposed for me to fumble with the pocket camera on a leash around my neck. For the same reason, I would take no more than a handful of pictures over the next two days.

After ninety minutes we traversed the icy Lhotse Face, started heading north, and made for the Yellow Band, a vertical yellowish fifty-foot rock layer at about 25,000 feet. A vicious, unexpected wind blew down from above, a harbinger of the tougher climbing to come, with the added torment of reduced oxygen availability with each step. We were officially in the “Death Zone.”

I clawed my way up the initial vertical thirty feet of the Yellow Band in clumsy style. My ice climbing gloves had become impregnated with ice crystals, and banging my gloved hands on my legs did nothing to dislodge the stuff. Thus my grip was dangerously compromised, although I had good bite on the rope with my jumar (the jumar, or ascender, is a metal device clipped to the harness that allows the rope to glide through as you ascend; steel teeth prevent a backward rope movement). My crampon front points clanged uselessly against the featureless rock, denying any lower body purchase on the rock at all. To get over the lip of the rock, I did pull-up after pull-up, using entirely too much upper body strength. As I finally clambered over and flopped like a fish out of water at the top, the cold wind bore down relentlessly. I fought dizziness. My respiration rate was off the chart, and I could feel my pulse like jackhammer blows inside my skull. My resting pulse rate while sunning with Rose on Narragansett Beach would be a laissez-faire fifty beats per minute or less. Lying on my heaving gut at the top of the Yellow Band at 25,000 feet on Everest, in near-zero temperature with God knows what wind chill, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was blowing past two hundred.

Scrambling off after catching my breath and calming myself, I realized that I wasn’t really at risk of dying on the Yellow Band, as the jumar would have held me to the rope. But it was the first moment since my first attempt on Denali in 2000 that I hadn’t felt in control. In fact, I felt panicked. I hoped against hope that it would be the last of those experiences. I should have guessed it wouldn’t be. After all, this was Everest.

The Yellow Band pitch had left me shaken (but not stirred), so as I continued on easier terrain I gathered myself, focusing solely on the business at hand — good crampon placement, quick rest-stepping, making sure to rest on the bone structure and not the muscle to save every last microgram of energy, and safe and efficient transfer of the safety carabiner and jumar. I was scanning the dashboard of bodily function and performance gauges constantly, and was quickly in the zone mentally. I decided to not let panic gain even a little edge into my thinking because there was no doubt that the Yellow Band presented just the first of many opportunities wherein clear thinking and proper execution must prevail.

A long traverse of a snow slope led to the downward-sloping broken shale, which began the monstrous stone feature known as the Geneva Spur (a moniker given by the Swiss expedition of 1952). Just before the Spur, an exhausted descending climber was stumbling towards us. He stopped for a second next to me and just fell ass-over-teakettle. Luckily for him, he was still clipped into the fixed line. Otherwise he would have quickly been reduced to a red streak of tissue spread over 3,000 vertical feet. Before I could mentally process this event, Phunuru unclipped and rushed to his aid in blazing speed and at his own peril. In his mentally befuddled state and in the course of trying to right himself, the climber was attempting to unclip his safety loop. Phunuru screamed at him to stop. He listened and allowed Phunuru to help him to his unsteady feet and on his way.

Phunuru is a principal educator with the Khumbu Climbing School, an organization designed to improve medical training, climbing and mountaineering skills among the Sherpa. Foreign teachers included some of the biggest names in American mountaineering, such as the late Alex Lowe, Conrad Anker and author/climber Jon Krakauer.

Although a bit of a non-sequitur, I thought this story humorous. Phunuru, who like most Sherpas would have little need for a car or driver’s license, as there are no roads in the valley, let alone any sort of motorized vehicle, had earlier recounted an account of a trip to Spain at the behest of a mountaineering client of his who was a big-time Barcelona banker. He suggested to Phunuru that it was about time for his first driving lesson. So, in the city’s busy downtown, he took the wheel…in the man’s Ferrari.

We crossed paths with Kurt Wedberg and Adam Janikowski from our IMG family as they exhaustedly made their descent from their successful summit the day before. The Geneva Spur was mostly broken rock with little snow, so thankfully we removed crampons and kicked steps with our boots as we slowly moved up. Our oxygen setting since starting that morning was on the typical climbing flow of three liters per minute, and it felt good. I would not have had a prayer of summiting this mountain without supplementary oxygen. Only the freaks of nature, the superstars of climbing, could gut through such a process. The first persons to ascend Everest without supplementary oxygen were an Austrian, Reinhold Messner, and a German, Peter Habeler, in 1978. Some consider this to be the first “true” ascent. People who can climb an 8,000-meter (26,000-foot) mountain without oxygen are like the Lance Armstrongs or Michael Jordans of mountaineering.

Several hours into the climb, we had made slow, gradual progress up the Spur when suddenly the terrain eased and a traverse began from south to north. Twenty minutes later, tents appeared. I could barely believe that I was at the South Col, the saddle of windswept rock and ice between Lhotse and Everest.

After years of reading about this place, failing to get there the year before, and climbing all morning in an altered state of high altitude, I was just plain disbelieving. At 11:30 AM on May 23, we were greeted by the inhabitants of this strange village. This was one of the most debilitating and deadly places to be on this earth. People can only survive a few days there, even with supplementary oxygen. Two days before, a thirty-something Swiss climber had climbed up to this camp and promptly died in his tent less than fifty feet from mine.

IMG Everest Dispatch from Eric Simonson Dispatch #39 / May 23, 2008

IMG leader Ang Jangbu reports that Justin, Dean, and Jaroslaw made it back to the Col about noon (Nepal time). Tim, Val, Hamill, Ryan, and Serge made it up from C3 and are also at the Col now. Adam and Kurt are on their way down to C2. Nicky and Dave are taking another rest day at C2. Chip, Vance, Joe, and Rohan will be back in BC soon. End of Dispatch.

Despite the death-inviting conditions, some of our Sherpa friends are actually happy to be at the South Col. All are really strong dudes but aren’t, as of yet, “summit Sherpas.” They were there at 26,000 feet to cook and melt ice for drinking water, and to pay their dues in order to achieve summit Sherpa status down the road. It is worth Camp Four’s mind- and body-numbing environment for some, if it means getting brownie points with Ang Jangbu and Ang Passang.

The Sherpas kept the tents and equipment from blowing away in frequent storms. They also kept the stoves going and the ice melting for pre- and post-summit climbers, who were the mental equivalents of slow four-year-olds at that altitude and level of exhaustion.

It was time to hunker down and get organized for the final assault at 9 or 10 PM. The first order of the day was to replenish fluid levels, then chow down and repeat while resting all day on my backside. The second order of business was drying layers of boots and gloves. I re-learned that lesson, painfully, on that morning’s ascent with a frigid foot.

To my minor horror, I realized that my food bag never made it up to Camp Four with the equipment carries. However, Monty’s did, and since he was being helicoptered out with excessive blood loss, I pilfered the contents. I was amazed that I didn’t have my panties in a bunch with this news. Normally on a summit day, I would have my Type-A anxiety going on, and every upset would raise my blood pressure another few millimeters of mercury. It was incredible to me that on the biggest mountain in the world, and certainly on my biggest day of danger and uncertainty, I was well within myself, focused and relaxed.

This is a new experience, I mused. The stress-less mindset deteriorated as I rested and tinkered with gear while the afternoon wore on. Something was up with Val and Phunuru. They were playing out the age-old (in this case high-altitude) parry-and-feint male/female dance. Then I got it: Phunuru was smitten. Now it all made sense. By plugging my brain into the iPod and following Phinjo’s lead of indifference, I kept my tenuous connection to “the zone.”

We were pounding more and more calories, but we were down to bottom of the barrel, freeze-dried pseudo-food. I daydreamed for my own food bag, which held my handpicked food stores—anchored by my summit delicacy of Funny Bones. Ever since 1982, when I ran my fastest marathon (2:53), I carb-loaded by devouring a box of Bones before a big physical event. In 2007, since I didn’t summit, others on the hill had enjoyed my chemical-laden delicacy. In 2008, I was ready—I took great pains to pack them in crush-proof containers wrapped in duct tape, all for naught. Although I was very lucky to have Monty’s stash, I pined for my Bones.

I didn’t sleep at all, but lazed on my back all day. We had decided, or I should say the Sherpas decided, that we would be leaving at 8 PM, not 9 PM as previously planned. There were twenty other people in camp going for the top, and we wanted to get in front of them and not get stuck at bottlenecks on the route.

In hindsight, I realized I had only thought about the ascent, not the descent. But at the time it sounded like a sane plan.

Amazingly, as with other tent sites on the mountain, if it was clear and not windy, it got warm in the thin air of the tent, even at 26,000 feet. I was quickly able to dry my gloves, and most importantly all layers of my boots, before the sun set and May 23rd got cooler and cooler. As this process wended its way, I started to add layers, with three hours to go before climbing started. First, I put the down suit back on, but only halfway. Then I put socks and gloves in my sleeping bag to keep them toasty. Then my hat went over my hoodie, followed by the upper part of my down suit, while I continued to pump fluids.

I had gone over my summit gear all afternoon. I would carry two liters of water in my inside insulated down pockets, a camera and spare batteries in my outside down pockets (along with nine energy gels), and in my outside non-insulated pockets I carried clear Home Depot safety glasses for nighttime protection from blowing ice crystals, along with glacier goggles for the next morning, when the sun would be out. In the remaining pocket I stashed my med kit, including four tabs of dexamethasone for cerebral edema (brain swelling), and pulmonary edema (lung swelling), the drug of choice for the latter being none other than Viva Viagra itself. These two conditions have killed many a Himalayan climber, and although I deemed it improbable that I would become afflicted, I knew I might be called upon to help others.

In my Wild Things pack, which zips into a tight sleeve for the oxygen bottle, I carried my ski goggles and extra-super-warm mitts. I had Kurt’s baby shoe clipped to the back, and my ice axe in the holder. Within a secret compartment, I had two flags to fly at the summit. One read “Chiropractic at the Top of the World,” and the other was—top secret.

At 7 PM, I started to open the chemical hand warmers; as with the rest of the trip, I couldn’t get them to fire up. It seems they need oxygen to activate, and leave it to me to be in the world’s worst place for that element. I finally got one to engage, and pressed it into my right glove. My socks warmed to perfection in my sleeping bag; after putting them on, I slid my inner boots into the bag to warm. The balaclava went on as I opened an energy gel and squeezed it into the hopper along with a last half-liter of water. Things were really picking up steam in a slow-motion, hypoxic, not-too-bright-four-year-old kind of way.

I was thrilled to be at the South Col of Mt. Everest and became teary-eyed when I thought of all the people who helped me to be there. Within an hour I will be leaving for the Top of the World, I thought incredulously. I could barely believe it. As I re-read my journal to write this account two years later, I can still barely believe it happened and remain very, very thankful, especially because I lived to tell the tale.

The activity level outside the tent reached a fever pitch all of a sudden, as I pulled on inner boots, unzipped the tent flap, and pulled on the outer boots carefully, making sure to prevent blister-causing creases. Any and every glitch that can be prevented or avoided is huge at altitude, and especially on the last leg of Everest. I dragged myself out the tent door into the night, and clicked on my headlamp. The tent town was abuzz with headlamp beams crisscrossing the Col like light sabers. I need to be a Jedi Knight, at least for the next eighteen hours, I mumbled to myself.

I had my pack on and affixed to the oxygen apparatus, but was having a heck of a time getting one crampon on, as I had allowed the strap to become encased in bulletproof ice in the tent vestibule; it wouldn’t pass through the buckle. Count that as a glitch that could have and should have been prevented. Luckily, Justin Merle, an IMG guide who summited with his clients Jaroslaw and Dean earlier that day, took the bull by the horns, did his guide magic, and pulled the strap through without muss or fuss.

There was nothing left to do except climb Mt. Everest. Totally freakin’ unreal, was all I could think. The first part—travelling over the flat Col—was an exercise in avoiding garbage, from decades-old rusted cans to brand-new, abandoned food and equipment. There were brand-new carabiners and other hardware that in any other situation I would have grabbed as booty. Even in my hepped-up state I remember thinking, Wow, this is the only part of this mountain that is not absolutely pristine; in fact, it is absolutely filthy. Were it not such a low snow year, I wouldn’t have noticed the half of it.

The grade started to increase as we approached the low end of the triangular face, so named for its, get this, triangular shape. Val rushed in front to film us as we walked by, and I marveled at how much energy she had. Our little team consisted of Phi, Mike Hamill and Dasonam, Serge, Ryan and Panuru, and Val and Phunuru.

I entered an altered state of existence whereby I was encased in a sarcophagus of down suit and hood with my face covered by the oxygen mask, leaving only my eyes exposed. I was climbing in a yellow goose-down burka. Communication was impossible, except shouting at very close range. The entire world existed in the six-foot beam of light coming from my squash.

Hours rolled by and we kept climbing up, up, up. Sometimes I sensed others around me and came to a standstill; most of the time I was quite alone. At one point, I lifted a leg to get on the other side of the rope and inadvertently booted Mike Hamill, square in the chest, crampons first. Twelve sharpened two-inch spikes right to the chest. I screamed an apology that I knew he wouldn’t hear, and was waved on. I just kept going. Days later at Base Camp, I apologized again, but he had no idea what I was talking about; evidently, it was somebody else (or it was Elvis).

IMG Everest Expedition Dispatch #40 / May 23, 2008

IMG leader Mark Tucker just got off the radio with the climbers, who report that Val and Phunuru, Tim and Phinjo, Hamill and Dasonam, Ryan and Passang, and Serge and Panuru left the Col at 8:16 PM. They left early to get ahead of the bulk of the climbers—there are only a few ahead of them. Weather is good. Remaining in support on the South Col are Ang Karma, Datenji, and Tshewang Lendu. We’ll keep you posted on their progress. —Eric Simonson. End of Dispatch.

I sensed huge voids on either side of me, but my beam of light revealed nothing. Hours into the climb, I witnessed a diamond sky reveal itself in glorious fashion. Fourth of July fireworks in Wickford Harbor couldn’t begin to be as dramatic. Some parts of the climbing route were very steep, and others were straight up. At one point I glanced to my right and saw a dead body, completely uncovered except for his head, which was embedded in ice. He wore a blue one-piece suit festooned with Italian logos, presumably those of his sponsors. His cramponed boots lay gently on the snow and ice. Except for his head, he had the body habitus of a man just taking a breather…and perhaps that was exactly what he did in his last minutes. In quick succession, two more bodies. There must be a hollow or a jet stream wind deflection in that area that allowed the bodies to stay where they were in that God-forsaken place, and not be blown into Tibet.

In 2007, the gossip at Asian Trekking’s bakery at Base Camp was that Scott Fisher’s body had become visible in the ice that year. Fisher was a famed American climber and guide who passed away in a storm on Everest in 1996. I presumed that he was one of the deceased I observed.

Suddenly, after pulling up on the ascender and stomping in the steep terrain of a snow gulley, I found myself in a flurry of frantic activity. I realized that this flat place, with about ten people shouting into radios in multiple tongues, was the Balcony (27,500 feet). A woman asked if she could get in front of me, as she had clients to take care of; I recognized her as Lydia Bradey from New Zealand, the first woman to summit Everest sans supplemental oxygen.

I quickly popped a GU and took a long slurp of water as Phi took it upon himself to change my oxygen bottle. Was he cool or what? I really wanted to do this myself in order to make absolutely sure I was in charge of my destiny, but he started the process and damned if I wasn’t going to let him finish. The wind picked up tremendously, as the balcony was quite exposed. I wrestled my clear glasses out of my pocket, but then realized I had broken them. Screw it, I thought, just keep going. I stashed the broken parts in my suit as Phi chattered on in Nepali with Ang Jangbu at Base about our timing and progress. We started off.

We may have stopped for five minutes, tops. Same altered existence, for more hours and hours, more alone than together now. At some point, Phi’s headlamp died, and we had to rely on just mine. I was glad I changed the batteries at high camp. It was just another thing that could kill you on Everest. If we had no light we would be immobile, and could freeze to death. A seemingly innocuous event like losing a glove would also be fatal. The hypothermia would infiltrate your body, slowly shutting it down, and eventually ending your life.

I asked Phi what time it was, as I couldn’t read my watch. He said, “It’s 3 AM.” It was May 24, 2008 and Phi and I had been on the go for seven hours since leaving high camp. At that point, I had not slept in twenty-four hours, and except for the eight hours at Camp Four, we had been climbing steadily in the death zone that whole time. Minutes later, Phinjo motioned ahead and said, “South Summit.” I followed his gesture with my gaze, and before me rose an immense vertical feature, that of the lesser summit of the top of the world.

The South Summit is at 28,800 feet—approximately two hours from the true summit. It was also the site of the sadness and death poignantly described in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. This is a common turn-around point for climbers too exhausted to continue; later, we learned that Ryan and Serge made the courageous and intelligent call to do just that.

My hands had been cold, but not numb. One of my chemical warmers was working and I alternated warming fingers. When my safety cord was attached to the line, I took those few seconds of safety to slap my deadened digits against my thigh to keep the circulation going. Alternating my hands on the cold metal of carabiner or jumar was important too. Mercifully, my feet remained warm.

I couldn’t help thinking of Rob Hall, Doug Hansen and Andy Harris, who each met their end at or near this area. We began the short descent to the catwalk between the South Summit and the Hillary Step, where the exposure was tremendous. I had a feeling of immense voids on either side. And even though I couldn’t see beyond my torch light, my heart was in my throat with fear. This was the major leagues.

The catwalk took brass balls (or brass ovaries). This was the feature that filled me with loathing just hearing about it in 2007. We clambered across and came to an area of relative safety amongst the rocks, and at this point I realized with a start, Holy hell, we might summit in pitch darkness!

The sky was brightening ever so slowly as we continued our ascent, and I mimed to Phi my intention to stop for a drink, as we had taken no nourishment in the hours since the Balcony. He didn’t react at all. I took this to mean that the terrain must be more dangerous than I’d realized, and I set off after him. Phi screamed over a now rising, very cold wind, “Hillary Step.” I was just flabbergasted—gobsmacked was more like it—at my whereabouts. I was so thankful to be there at mountaineering’s most fabled feature, but I was simultaneously “shitting a brick and a wooden nickel,” with chest-constricting fear. We ascended, but found it difficult to locate the year’s fixed rope (installed a few days earlier by our friends Dawa and Danuru Sherpa) among all the tattered rope remnants of years past. Some were rotted to nothing more than an old clothesline’s frayed core. As we scaled a rock trough and climbed upwards, we engineered a tricky dance on a downward-slanted, table-like rock, where the crampons scraped like fingernails on a blackboard. At this point we had a 7,000-foot void directly below us. I nearly spotted.

“Fear: an energy source designed to increase performance.” —Laird Hamilton

Except for the significant mental and physical hazards of exposure and altitude, the difficulty of the Step wasn’t huge. If this pitch were at home in the White Mountains, Rob Scott and I wouldn’t have roped up for it. At the Hillary Step on May 24, 2008, nearly five-and-a-half miles into the sky, I was shaking like Palmer the pup passing a peach pit.

We just climbed the Hillary Step, I kept repeating. With forty-five minutes to the summit of heavily corniced but relatively safe snow slopes, I realized for the first time since leaving Base Camp that I just might summit Mt. Everest! I might just summit this thing!

With so many potential problems to derail your climb or even kill you, it just hadn’t occurred to me since setting out that I would actually summit. Almost on cue, the sky brightened. It was a sign that I would survive.

An arctic wind picked up, and penetrated my down one-piece. In a few minutes, two descending climbers came into view and I fist-bumped Phunuru and Val Hovland. She was one strong climbing chick, summiting in such good style while filming periodically. She also has the significant baggage of frostbite-damaged feet sustained in a disastrous climb of Shishapangma in Tibet two years before (with Monty Smith of unstoppable bloody nose fame). Monty had stumps for pinkie fingers as a lifelong reminder of the same climb.

Shuffling up the snow slopes, Mike Hamill and Dasonam were suddenly next to us, and we screamed our congratulations over the wind as they dropped below. Twenty minutes of head-down, focused slogging, while intently staring at the snow to make sure I wasn’t stepping on a fracturing snow cornice, brought us to a sudden standstill. There was no higher to go. We were at the top. We were at the top of the world! We were the tallest knuckleheads in the world!

An ephemeral pile of prayer flags, a single Poisk Oxygen bottle, a framed picture of the Dalai Lama…and Phinjo Sherpa and Tim Warren were at the top of the world! It was 5:11 AM Nepal time on May 24, 2008. Standing there, six feet tall, my eyes gazed at the curve of the earth below me, from 29,041 feet.

IMG Everest Expedition Dispatch #41 / May 23, 2008

IMG leader Mark Tucker reports that the IMG team reached the summit at sunrise, and have now all started their descent. Congrats to Val and Phunuru, Tim and Phinjo, Mike and Dasonam, and Passang Sherpa. Ryan and Serge turned back from near the South Summit and are now at the Col. —Eric Simonson. End of Dispatch.

“There is no passion to be found living small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” —Nelson Mandela