CHAPTER SIX

Where Am I?

“Nature never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”

—Aldous Huxley

“Hey Jangbu,” yelled Phinjo into the radio, “we have to turn around.”

“But why?” hissed Jangbu with alarm.

“’Cause there is no place higher in the world to go, ha!” said Phinjo.

Phinjo and I cried with heaving sobs as we hugged tightly on the summit, the tears instantly freezing to our cheeks in the minus twenty-five degree air. Phi wrestled off his pack and reverently pulled out a kata scarf that he had painstakingly printed with our names and the date, in English and Nepali. I thought, Cool, that is gonna look smokin’ in a frame back at my office, but alas, it was destined to be affixed to the summit for good karma. Like prayer flags, the good ju-ju was intended to go way beyond the expedition. As the scarf’s threads inevitably became airborne in the severe winds, it was believed that they would travel to all corners of the earth, spreading positive energy and good karma. Phi lashed the kata to a strand of prayer flags snapping violently in the wind. The already brutal wind was intensifying and I noticed the cold permeating my body, most notably the quadriceps of both legs—just where the tops of my overboots ended. I was frozen to the core the second I stopped moving. The cold seemed to add fifty pounds of weight to my already-stressed frame. I didn’t dare remove my gloves as I rummaged for my camera, knowing that I would lose my fingers to frostbite if I touched anything metallic in the incalculable wind chill. Phi appeared ice-indifferent.

As I removed the tiny Canon camera from my outside insulated pocket, I was stunned to see it entombed in ice. Evidently, dripping saliva from my breathing apparatus had seeped into the pocket and had frozen the camera into a brick. I couldn’t believe my good luck as I hit the power button and it came to life, needing only a little persuasion to open the lens cover. I was doubly glad I had put in fresh batteries at the South Col. I took shots of Phi alone and Phi with his kata. He took some of me wrestling the two flags I had brought for the event. In the relentless wind, I was hoping that the messages would remain clear in photos.

As soon as we radioed Tuck and Jangbu to check in, it was past time to go down. The cold and wind were too intense to force water and energy gel into my body, and my exposed cheeks were so wind-chilled I could no longer speak. Two other climbers came up as we saddled up our packs, smoothed our oxygen tubes and headed down. Altogether, we were on the summit seven to ten minutes. The wind was a steady twenty miles an hour, with higher gusts, and the temperature was estimated by others that day as minus twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. It was a perfect summer day…on Mars.

“It’s a big mountain, and me…not so big.” —Dr. Tim Warren

With one spiked boot in Nepal and one in occupied Tibet, Phi and I started down Mt. Everest’s Southeast Ridge, realizing full well that at the summit of any mountain you are, at best, halfway home. By far, the most scary and dangerous time is the descent. Nowhere is that more true than at Everest and the thirteen other 8,000-meter peaks. We now had to get down fast to preserve our fingers and toes, and our lives. Fifty-six percent of deaths on Everest have occurred while descending from the summit. Seventeen percent of deaths have occurred after turning around short of the summit. Out of every ten successful climbs, one ends in death. These scary stats were never far from my mind as I dedicated one hundred percent of my body and soul to safely descend with each step.

There is often a psychological letdown of attention post-summit, sometimes leading to a missed clip on a rope or a trip on a protruding rock with a crampon. The debilitating lack of oxygen pressure reeks havoc on decision-making and climbing technique, and the more time spent in the Death Zone, the greater the risk of cerebral edema, which routinely kills Himalayan climbers in their tracks. One moment lucid, the next comatose.

Bathed in the full light of day, we could not escape the gut-tightening exposure as we descended past broken rock and corniced overhangs. We had been running on pure adrenaline, having digested the last measly hundred calories of energy gel many hours before. It was just too dangerous to stop for a swig of water and more GU.

I couldn’t speak for Phi, but I began to feel mightily wasted as we dispatched the “easy” snow slopes and came to the top of the Hillary Step. The constant muscle ache of fatigue was building. At first we made good progress, but then we had to pass two slowly ascending climbers. It was impossible to keep clipped on the fixed rope, as there was no room to safely pass. Time was ticking by and the exhausted climbers, still an hour from the summit, were bent over at the waist with heaving lungs, completely oblivious to anything but their own suffering.

Finally, I followed Phi’s lead and simply grabbed a handful of old ropes and literally swung down, Tarzan-style, past the last guy. There was 7,000 feet of nothing to my right and 10,000 feet of nothing to my left.

A slip in any direction would have meant our deaths, due to the fact that we were not clipped in. In fifteen years of climbing, I had never taken such risks on any pitch on any climb, and I chastised myself firmly. I was horrified with my behavior, but it was the only way to get around these dudes who barely moved. In that moment I opted for speed of descent rather than safe climbing technique. I got away with it, that time. The joke was that if you did fall, you should choose the 10,000-foot side because you’ll live longer. Ha, ha.

We moved with better speed for about thirty seconds, having picked a good, safe line. We found cracks for our crampons in the stone, and good hand-holds in the jagged rocks above us. This time, we were clipped in.

We were at the sphincter-puckering down-sloping rock of the Hillary Step, with Phi in front, when he snapped his head back and made eye contact with me. I couldn’t read his meaning, and we couldn’t converse in the screaming wind, but as I caught up to him and peered around the corner, my heart was instantly in my throat and epinephrine surged, skyrocketing my heart rate. A painfully slow train of ten climbers, barely moving a muscle, were ascending this most exposed part of the climb. There was nothing to do. We were trapped halfway up and halfway down the Hillary Step, stuck in the middle of an exhausted bundle of humanity operating on nothing but desire and muted messages from their reptilian brains.

Phi and I intertwined arms as close as possible to the rock wall on our left; I shoved one crampon halfway onto a three-inch shelf of rock, and made sure our safety loops were clipped. We clung to each other and to the vertical rock spine like spiders to a web. We didn’t move. Minutes dragged; at one point, two seemingly strong climbers tried to squeeze by us and essentially pushed and pulled a tiny member of the Nepali Women’s Team up the rock as her head lolled to one side. As these two “handlers” placed her boots on the rock and pulled her up, it didn’t appear that mentally she was on the planet.

Glancing ahead, I was stunned to see people on the South Summit trying to get an exhausted climber up on his feet. I had a ringside, albeit immovable, seat to a horrifying spectacle. This guy was fighting to stand up, failing, trying to crawl, failing again. His friends tried to hoist him up with rope, at which they succeeded, only to have the man topple over in a face plant without moving his hands to protect himself. I was flabbergasted by what I was seeing. My God, we are smack dab in the middle of Into Thin Air PartTwo, I screamed into my mask. I was six inches from Phi’s left ear and he couldn’t hear a word.

Here was bowled-over, shocked, scared-to-death madness, all in the most dangerously exposed and oxygenless environment on earth. People seemed out of control and completely unaware of it. Did I look as terrible coming up? I thought.

I was getting “sewing machine leg,” climber-speak for muscles that give way under too much exertion, so I hopped and cajoled my free leg to take the place on the three-inch shelf that the other leg had occupied for nigh on fifteen minutes. I couldn’t help but jar Phi a bit from his perch as I performed crampon gymnastics stuck to near-vertical rock at 28,800 feet. To his credit, Phi complained not a whit; it was just another day at the office for him (window office…with view).

Suddenly, I noticed Phi was extricating himself while studying the throng below. I realized, without exchanging words, that he wanted to bolt for it, and I was certainly going with him. The next instant, as the next climber headed toward us and collapsed on his heaving chest over his ice axe to rest, Phi was off like the wind. The two of us cut deftly between two climbers, seized decrepit ropes, and taking Everest-sized chances, lowered ourselves down the Step–unprotected. This is why there are no dead bodies up here, I snorted, they swan-dive for miles, ending up as frozen ooze.

The precipices were beguiling and terrible. No mistakes now, focus on every step and every clip, focus on every little movement, stay alive, I repeated over and over. Focus, focus, focus. Finally down at the catwalk, we scampered across to the South Summit. Slogging dog-tired up the thirty-five feet to the pinnacle, I whined, I don’t want go up anymore, I just want go down. There was no sign of the out-of-his-mind-and-body climber.

The route was a completely new experience, as it was pitch-black on the ascent four hours before. Even had it not been nighttime, all trails looked completely different in the opposite direction of travel.

Phi didn’t stop for a second after going over the top. He just motored his way down. The sun was beating down, with no clouds visible, and still I shivered in the gusty wind. My hands were alternatingly frozen, so I changed the hand used for climbing paraphernalia and reinstated my thigh-slapping and finger-curling routine. The fatigue really started to build. My legs were feeling pretty fair, but my arms were so wasted that it took superhuman effort and concentration to apply the safety loop attached to my climbing harness to the fixed rope. Once a mindless habit, now I had to will my fingers to attach the safety carabiner to the rope at each anchor and to arm wrap (or arm “rap,” short for rappel). This procedure, along with my twenty-four two-inch spikes, were my only tenuous connections to life.

We descended mindlessly for hours, and I constantly changed the arm muscles being used, as I had lost the strength necessary to move my fingers, forearms and upper arms due to fatigue, decreased blood flow and low oxygen concentrations. I used the fingers on one hand to force the fingers of the other to grasp the steel snap-link. My fingers had become wooden and claw-like, as if they were prosthetics. I used a cadre of rope friction techniques to descend, including the arm wrap, using both arms, and angel rappels. I repeated my mantra from other climbs and hikes when I was knackered with fatigue: the trail never ends. Strangely, these words always gave me solace and hope.

Although I was freezing, my forehead and cheeks had become badly sunburned in the troposphere, the altitude at which 747’s routinely fly. I had not thought to apply zinc oxide upon leaving for the summit the previous night at 8 PM. Now it just wasn’t safe to stop. Sauron, the dark lord, was directing his legions to disintegrate my Anglo-Saxon epidermis.

I was aware that little mistakes like this one can accumulate, and increase the chances of an Everest emergency. Once again, I rededicated myself to safety.

My rubber oxygen mask was rubbing me raw in places not already sunburned, especially under my eyes and over the temples. With each labored respiration, the apparatus ground into the wounds like sandpaper. My wraparound glacier glasses were fogging badly, with moist air escaping the oxygen mask. I started to get angry. When I tried to vent one body part, another was chilled. I was getting upset. I elicited a moan and an epithet with each step.

To add to my accumulating irritation, Phi seemed to be taking off from me. He was twenty yards ahead, and not waiting. I mumbled angrily, and occasionally loudly, while generally bearing ill will to myself and the world, and two climbers came down behind me. I guessed they’d had enough because one of them (who turned out to be Walter Laserer, the Austrian mountain guide with his client whom I had met at Camp One several days previous) said, “Hey man, you summated, right?” and “You are with IMG, right?” Still not recognizing him with my altitude-addled mind, I answered affirmatively. “Dude, great place for a photo,” he said cheerily as he motioned for my camera. We snapped a couple of frames and Laserer and his client were quickly off like the proverbial new bride’s pajamas.

As I continued my solitary painful plod downhill, the thought occurred to me that I never would have stopped if not for Walter’s shaking my tree. I was unaware of the amazing world that I was at the top of, instead intent on moaning and groaning. Due to fear, I was in my own head and oblivious to what surrounded me: a pristine day, the snow, ice and rock of the world’s biggest mountain under my boots. Kanchenjunga, the third-highest peak in the world, Lhotse, the world’s fourth, and Makalu, the world’s fifth were my neighbors. And I was, for the moment, safe. I felt better because I had had human contact with someone who was enjoying the experience. Walter was upbeat, and it was contagious. I started to anticipate surviving to Camp Four.

Tears flowed suddenly as I realized I would never see this scene again. More tears came as I realized how lucky I was and how thankful I was. I am never going to be here again, so I will enjoy the moment, I murmured.

“Commonplace miracle: that so many commonplace miracles happen… A miracle, just take a look around: the World is everywhere.” —Wislawa Szymborska

“Seize the day and put the least possible trust in tomorrow.”—Horace

All we ever have is the now—the past is a memory, and the future a dream. All that exists is right-this-second. I remembered an exchange in Dan Millman’s The Peaceful Warrior: “Where are you?” asks the teacher; “Here,” says the student. “What time is it?” the teacher asks again; “Now,” replies the student. I repeated this passage while standing stock-still at 27,800 feet, completely wasted with fatigue.

After clipping into the next anchor, I sat on my haunches and took a moment, the first real mental and physical break on that amazing day. I reminded myself that I was right “here” and the time was “now.” I was in a beautiful, fascinating place; I was having an extraordinary experience and I wouldn’t miss it. I reminded myself to live in the moment and be aware. I wanted to etch the scene into my memory bank. On the other hand, I realized I must not linger, as a lack of focus can and would kill me.

It’s the Yin and Yang of an Everest climb: success and death can occupy the same moment. I vowed to stop my bitching, whining and anger at myself and Phi, and live in the moment while redoubling my focus on safely descending. My entire existence became wrapped in taking the next safe step, all spikes in the ice, safety loop secure, arm wrap on fixed rope, with minimal slack. I refused to allow my thoughts to linger on pain and fatigue. Those thoughts, here as well as at sea-level, would not aid my survival.

“When we live in awareness it is easy to see miracles everywhere.” —Anon

I discovered after years of practice that one of my favorite things about climbing was that no room existed for extraneous cerebral subject matter when in a precarious situation. It’s a very simple life: do what you must to keep yourself alive for another few seconds, then worry about the next few seconds, and then the next. No time to think about paying bills, mowing the grass, or getting into a fight with your honey.

I realized then why Phi’s behavior had had me ripped; it was because I was completely and utterly terrified. This was a revelation at that moment, and I was amazed at its obviousness. I wasn’t ruminating on the myriad events that could potentially smite me down, but the possibilities must have been lurking in the la-la-land of my subconscious.

I rousted myself from introspective reverie, as I had big work to do: stay alive. I gazed down on the Balcony at 27,500 feet, but it seemed never to appear any closer, no matter how hard I worked. The switchbacks of rope were neverending, although my focus was renewed. I realized that to eat this elephant, it would take one bite at a time—the same way I got up there.

Finally, I met up with Phi at the queen bed-sized resting spot of the Balcony. I removed my pack and plopped exhaustedly down. Mike Hamill and Dasonam were gearing up to go down. I had always gotten a kick out of Dasonam, because he was a little overweight, with a cherubic face, and wore round wire-rimmed spectacles. However, the unassuming exterior belied a powerful athlete—he has summited Everest ten times.

At the rest stop, I found that my words to Phi were still sharp and whiny, so I realized I was still not in the moment. I was still selfishly in my own head, still focused on my own pain, with no thought to his. I looked him in the eyes and apologized. I told him I was deathly afraid and had been for the bulk of the previous twenty-four hours. He nodded, and accepted my apology in wordless understanding. He had been there many times before, not just physically, but experientially. He has been a devout Buddhist and an accomplished professional Himalayan mountaineer for many, many years; he knew the gig. He knew before I did.

Months later, upon reflection, I realized—not surprisingly—that Everest was different on many levels; there was nothing subtle, no gray areas. On other large mountains, I was in a state of low-level “focused fear” while climbing, sometimes for weeks at a time. The majority of time on the “Big E,” there was little conscious experience of fear—except for the nearly overwhelming variety experienced on summit day.

I squeezed a double-chocolate, caffeine-fortified energy gel with the consistency of cake frosting into my mouth, and chased it with a long swig of water. A quick check of my supplies was a bolt from the blue. In our nine-hour ascent and three-hour descent back to the Balcony, I drank a grand total of one long pull of water and one gel. Not enough to stave off depletion and dehydration while lazing at sea level.

Pre-climb at the South Col, I believed my supply of nine gels and two liters of water would be cutting close to the life/death line. I didn’t count on my inability or lack of desire to stop. I chalked my dehydration up to spectacularly exposed terrain and overwhelming terror. There were just no safe places to stop.

In speaking with my teammates later, in the comfort of The Rum Doodle Bar in Kathmandu (where Everest summiters eat free for life), I learned that many summiters experienced a variation of the same depleted state. The only explanation was that we ran on another type of fuel on Everest’s summit day: a high-octane blend of desire, motivation, and the ability to endure supreme suffering. I was not looking forward to the last fifteen-hundred-foot descent to the relative safety of Camp Four at the South Col. With the wasted state of my upper extremities, it was all I could do to affix my mask and pack. It was 8 AM and had been three hours since we stood on the Earth’s highest point and shed our tears. My whole existence that day was a surreal eternity.

I allowed myself one huge luxury, with the weather clear in all directions and confidence that I would reach camp safely. Having plenty of oxygen, I cranked my flow from three liters per minute to six. I couldn’t say that I felt any difference, but metabolically it would nourish me on multiple levels. Gazing almost directly below us, I saw our miniature tent city at the South Col and it appeared I could just step out with one big boot and be there.

We started the down climb as a group of four, but Mike and Dasonam moved at a quicker pace. Loose rocks constantly broke off the exposed slabs and careened crazily down the steep cliff. Several times we shouted the classic climber warning of “Rock!” or “Ice!” to Mike and Dasonam below us. The projectiles weren’t big enough to kill, but some could maim. Dasonam was unfazed and never bothered to even turn around.

Within minutes, we descended to the macabre scene of the three dead climbers. Upon arriving at the outstretched body of the one with his head encased in ice but his body exposed, we stopped a moment to offer a silent prayer. It bothered me that we were there, almost safe at camp, in perfect weather, so close we could almost reach out and touch our salvation, while next to us lay in eternity our fellow adventurers, dead, with exposed flesh like perfect white porcelain, and doubtless just as hard.

On the descent, the whole idea astonished me. Sure, I had signed the same body disposal documents that everyone had in order to get their permits. There are three choices on the mandatory form:

1.If a climber dies on the mountain and it is deemed safe, the body can be brought home for repatriation; this option can cost $50 grand-plus.

2.If a climber dies on the mountain and it’s safe to bring the body to a local village and have a Buddhist cremation ceremony, that option costs $20 grand-plus.

3.If a climber dies on the mountain, his/her mates can do their best to deposit the carcass in a crevasse, for free.

No brainer; I checked option three.

We all knew from multiple books that people die on mountains. And yes, I had had some near misses, and seen dead climbers on other climbs, but this was different. At that point, I was sure I would survive the trip, but found myself in an ice mausoleum with the (relative) safety of Camp Four less than two hours away in perfect conditions.

“Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.” —Winston Churchill

Upon reflection months later, I realized that both the living and non-living had all started with the same goals, motivations, and enthusiasm. Why do some die and some live? This question, in various forms and circumstances, has been bandied about as long as we have peopled the Earth, and it’s highly doubtful that I will come up with any cogent answers. In the mountaineering arena in which we played, I suspected that it had most to do with the right motivation.

Decisions, good and bad, are made based on motivation. Some climbers may feel pressed by monetary considerations, such as keeping sponsors happy, or a feeling that they have to summit because they have so much dollar-value personally invested. Others’ self-esteem may be so wrapped around the project that their attitude is “summit or die trying.” Perhaps others are missing home so much that they press the accelerator to the floor. Maybe time and business constraints force poor decision-making on the hill.

There have been a couple of cases of suspected “suicide by Everest,” in which people were so unprepared or made such bad decisions that the only clear conclusion is that they wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. My motivation was simple. Climbing Mt. Everest was something I wanted to do and I thought I could do it. I desired a huge multi-faceted challenge to reveal the outer limits of my potential. I wanted and received a quantum shift in my life. It was as simple as that and as profound as that.

Our journey continued down, and ironically I felt a bit less wasted. Maybe it had something to do with the mantle of fear being raised off my shoulders, or maybe it was because I had six liters per minute of life-giving oxygen feeding my tissues. The slope began to ease as we emerged from the shooting gallery of falling rocks on the Triangular Face.

As we descended, a young Sherpa with a heavy load approached us and seemed confused. He suddenly turned on his heels and descended; then, he collapsed in the snow a hundred yards away. We picked up our pace to get to him, and now he was up and approaching us again. I got in his face and asked him how he was, looking for signs of cerebral or pulmonary edema. He asked for water. Between gulps on my mostly unused water supply, he told us that he was a porter and aspiring summit climber trying to impress his boss (sirdar) by doing extra gear carries. He had gotten confused and dehydrated in the process. He tagged along on the last half-hour to camp, and we saw to it that he got back to his compadres.

It was 10 AM, and we were safe. During the last flat walk to our tents I felt no emotion, just a desire to collapse. It’s imperative to drink and eat, but all I wanted to do was pass out. We had been on the go for fourteen hours, and in that time I had drunk only one half liter of water and consumed two energy-gels. I had slept five hours out of the previous fifty.

Suddenly, our Sherpas swarmed about and eased off our packs and untangled us from oxygen tubes. I was led to my tent, whereupon I collapsed onto a knee to remove crampons. I stumbled exhaustedly into my tent and started the process of boot removal; first rip the Velcro, then unzip the outer boot and untie the inner laces, then remove outer boot, then pull off inner boot, and repeat. I pulled my pack in and hooked up another oxygen bottle. Damned if I wasn’t going to get as much gas in my body as I could, especially since we were at the end of the climbing season and there was plenty for Hahn’s group, the only ones left from our team.

As I zippered the tent fly, I noticed that the entire ice floor of the tent vestibule was frozen feces. For all I knew, it could be twenty years old, as nothing much melted at 26,000 feet. I remember very little from that point on. I don’t remember eating or drinking, but know that I did. I passed out cold (no pun intended), as did everyone else who climbed that day.

It was still daylight when I awakened and pulled out the satellite phone to call Rose. With a twelve-hour time difference I knew it was late, or early, but she answered the phone. The first thing she said before I could get a word in edgewise was, “Honey, you did it!” I was clueless as to what she was talking about since I hadn’t told her I summited yet. How the hell did she already know? Later, I was able to piece together that when Phi called Mark Tucker and Ang Jangbu from the summit at 5:11 AM Nepal-time, one of them emailed Eric Simonson in Seattle, who crafted an email that went out to Eric’s directory, including my server at Explorer’s Web in New York City. This update on my website (www.lessonsfromeverest.com) was part of a dispatch to the thousands who followed my climb. Probably by 5:30 AM in Nepal and PM in America, people knew of our summit and the phone calls and emails were flying, even as we were stumbling down the Hillary Step.

Rose and I spoke for ten minutes, until the battery started to peter out. It was hell to hang up, but I could see the end in sight. All I had to do now was get down to Base Camp, safely hike out forty miles, fly to Kathmandu, fly thirty-six hours home and melt in Rose’s embrace. Easy! The only positive aspect of our being apart for two and a half months was that it coincided with Rose’s fashion season and we wouldn’t have spent much time together even had I not been a couple of continents away.

I stashed the phone inside my fleece third skin to warm the batteries. Next, I called Kurt and he wasn’t up, so I left a message that said essentially that I summited and was now safe in camp. As soon as I said “I summited”, I became so choked up I couldn’t speak.

It was the first time I heard that phrase come out of my mouth, and for the very first time I realized it really did happen. It wasn’t a dream anymore. It wasn’t some airy-fairy pie-in-the-sky statement to people who never believed I could or would do it. I knew then and there that I would be forever changed, not just because I had summited Everest, but that I had done something unequivocal, something nearly impossible for me to fathom. I simply could never again look at the world and my place in it the same way. Challenges and problems would forever be stacked up against Everest and would lose their power and magnitude. What difficulty could ever look the same when placed on one end of a beam balance, with the grandeur, grace and grit of Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World on the other?

Immediately after leaving Kurt’s message I felt smarmatose about my statement of being “safe” at the South Col. It’s true that in relation to everything above camp to the summit, I was safer, but in comparison to any other place in the world short of Waziristan, this had to be just about the most dangerous.

We had existed in the Death Zone, above 25,000 feet, for thirty-six hours, and we had twelve more to go before we could escape to areas of slightly lessened danger to our brain cells. I decided not to call in a new message to Kurt with this revelation; I just rededicated myself to safely descending to Camp Two the next day and to the total safety of Base Camp the day after that. The death of the Swiss climber three days before and fifty feet from our tent, cemented in my mind that it was no place to do any ra-ra-sis-boom-bah. I passed out quickly and was dead to the world with my oxygen tube attached, and felt not a thing until I awoke at 5 AM.

Wow, am I wasted or what? was my first thought, followed by, oh man, I have to get down the Lhotse Face to Camp Two in one piece today. We would bypass Camp Three on the way down, just stopping to grab gear and inhale calories. I was nervous as always, but more so because I was thrashed from the exertion and environment of the previous days. I was bone-tired, even though by my calculation, I had passed out for the bulk of the previous nineteen hours.

I vaguely remembered, in my catatonic state, that Val had some eye problems from the descent. Various radio calls ensued with Base Camp and HRA, before Hahn, at 24,500 feet at that moment, diagnosed it as eye trauma from blowing ice crystals during our nocturnal ascent. She was relieved, because it could have been something significantly more serious, like a high-altitude stroke. It’s a very tenuous connection to life, this high-altitude climbing business, and I for one was damn ready, mentally if not physically, to vámonos.

With unsteady bobbing and weaving, I crawled out of the tent with all my top-of-the-world possessions, and with new and different focus turned my gaze to the summit route. Realizing with sadness that I would never be there again in person, I allowed myself the five-minute luxury of a meditative connection to the summit experience before leaving it all behind. I hated to admit it, but I also had the fleeting feeling of disappointment that the great mountain had succumbed to my assault. Almost immediately after that reflection, I stuffed the idea down deep inside, as I definitely didn’t want to go there. Was my self-esteem showing a fatigue fracture? Was it the inevitable contemplative ending for a many-years-long goal attained?

We left the South Col at 7 AM and scraped our way down the disintegrating down-sloping stone shelves of the Geneva Spur, to the long snow traverse, to the Yellow Band. We ran into Hahn and his group on their way up. Congrats were offered and accepted. My eyes got watery as Dave relayed that everyone at camp was totally stoked that I, in particular, was successful on my second seeking of the Holy Grail of mountaineering.

My intention was to be a helpful, supportive, non-obtrusive asset to my climbing brethren on this expedition. I knew I had been successful on all fronts when Dave told that story while five of us chatted, attached to safety cordage at 25,500 feet.

I hadn’t always had Dave’s respect. In 2007, he stirred stuff up with me at Camp One regarding the ruse of my using bad radio etiquette with Tuck. That changed in 2008 when, after the first acclimatization cycle, I remarked at dinner that the icefall route seemed easier than it had the previous year, and he broke in and said, “No, the route is always hard, you are different.” Stupefied, I couldn’t even respond to the compliment. Dave has the most non-Sherpa ascents of Everest, at twelve, and has no remotely close competitors, with twenty-seven ascents of Vinson Massiv in Antarctica.

As we continued the descent, the sunshine became intense, but since it was around twenty degrees, I was thankfully not overheating in my down suit with overloaded pack.

I was descending alone when, little by little, I realized that I couldn’t stop staring at my shadow in the snow. With the angle of the morning sun, my shadow was to my left the majority of the time. I was mesmerized. I simply could not stop staring at the dynamic, strangely hypnotic sight. It was fascinating.

Slipping my safety loop at an anchor in the ice, and arm-rappelling down the fixed rope with stumbling feet, while obsessively focusing on my shadow was no way to safely descend any mountain. I suddenly felt totally wasted. My arm and leg muscles felt sodden, water-logged. It was nearly an out-of-body experience. I had the feeling of watching a slow-motion movie, only the show was my undulating shadow in the snow. I snapped to attention. It occurred to me that this was not remotely good; in fact, it could kill me. This could be a symptom of cerebral edema and possibly end-stage.

In cerebral edema, the brain swells inside the skull, where there is only so much extra space, sometimes squeezing down the foramen magnum and compressing the medulla oblongata, which houses the respiratory and cardiac centers. If swelling persists, a climber can be dead before he hits the ground. Beginning symptoms are not unlike inebriation; in fact, sobriety tests are administered to document a suspected case. In all cases, it’s fatal, unless you lose altitude double-quick. I had carried four milligrams of dexamethasone tablets all the way to the summit, and although they were still in my top pocket, I wasn’t ready to self-diagnose. At the time I didn’t see the irony–I was seemingly safely descending post-summit, but with a rapidly swelling brain I could die any second. After a seventy-day expedition in which I had harnessed my brain power so successfully, my brain might actually do me in. I flipped open my mountaineering watch; the altitude read 25,280 feet.

Phinjo was way ahead, and it would get lost in translation anyway if I told him my concerns, so I stopped at the next anchor to try to bring a halt to the horror. I traced my oxygen tube as far as I could; there were no twists in it that I could see. Next, I checked my mask. Unbelievable, I croaked. The sewn-on hood of my down suit had become adhered to the ambient air intake, and was cutting my oxygen flow to near nil, resulting in my being dumb as a box-o-rocks. Whew, dodged that bullet, I thought; instantly, my lungs expanded with life-giving gas. I berated myself for making another mistake.

We arrived at the top of the crumbling Yellow Band; as with the trip up, my gloves were etched deeply with ice and nearly useless to grab hold of the rope. To this day, I have no clue why I didn’t grab my figure-eight rappel device and go over the lip backwards for safety, but I didn’t, and I nearly met my maker. The only viable explanation for this unforgivable misstep was that I was still dangerously under the influence of cerebral edema.

I was clipped in, of course, but as I went over the lip and committed my body weight to the rope, I started to slide due to my ice-encrusted gloves. I tried to brake myself by stabbing my crampons on the rock-and-ice vertical wall, but if I applied too much pressure I knew I would launch myself out into space. They would find my body, as it was attached to the fixed rope, but it would be a nasty sight. Even if I lived through that potential fall, no one could rescue me with two broken legs at 25,000 feet. In fits-and-starts, I was able to slowly lower myself to the snow below the Band, using up valuable strength.

There was no cavalry to come to the rescue, and that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. The long and short of it was that for the third time since the start of the summit descent, I was the poster boy for sorry, unsafe amateur climbing and, like the ascent at this same spot, it left me shaken to the core. The Yellow Band, both up and down, was the technical crux of the entire Everest climb for me. Who would’ve thunk it? No one else, to my knowledge, has ever had an epic at this Everest feature; it’s always either above this point or below. My mistakes were accumulating.

Finally, Camp Three was visible below us and we gradually reeled it in, pulled over and got the “pigs” off our backs. I was toast physically, but hoovered more food and drink into my gullet while I repacked my gear. Off with the down suit and on with Gore-Tex and fleece for the last stretch of climbing down the monumental Lhotse Face to Camp Two. The familiar total wasting of my arms, forearms and hands slowed my progress downhill to a labored, shuffling gear check and double-check ritual. My decisions and safety technique seemed focused, but I was losing control of my body. It simply didn’t have much more to give. The “fun-o-meter” was pegged at the lowest setting.

Again, I was furious at myself for not rappelling off a couple of vertical ice cliffs, and had burned energy that I sorely needed. Not to mention the fact that my safety decisions were becoming increasingly suspect. A heavy cloud cover had crept up-valley and enveloped the entire Lhotse Face for most of the down climbing, which stifled the burning rays of the Death Star. At last, some good news.

Hours passed. I finally caught up with Phinjo and told him of my plans to rappel the remaining steep sections of the Face. He looked at me funny for a second and politely agreed. It was then that I glanced around in the swirling mist and laughed out loud. We were already down! In the lost visibility we had cranked down the entire Lhotse Face and I didn’t even know it. Phi must have thought I was smoking crack.

A safe, easy, and happy one-hour stroll down 500 feet to Camp Two and a home-cooked meal of dahl-bat followed. I passed out cold for the remainder of the afternoon and didn’t leave the tent till the next day, when we prepared for the final mental and physical hurdle: the very last trip through the icefall, number twenty for me over both years.

I didn’t want to jinx myself, but the icefall was the last thing that could kill me on Everest, unless of course I was crushed by rampaging skinhead yaks on ecstasy in a Khumbu Valley mosh pit.

Three hours after leaving Camp Two at 6 AM on May 26, 2008, we removed our spikes at the now familiar crampon point and exhaustedly trudged the last ten minutes across a running-with-meltwater, disintegrating Base Camp. For years I had dreamed and meditated about that moment—summit and safe return.

No bands played; there was no fanfare, just Mark Tucker waiting for me outside the communications tent with three radios chirping in his ears, and busting my beans, saying, “Well, you got that monkey off your back.”

The cook staff Sherpas came out, congratulated us, and smilingly offered a round of orange Fantas. It was the best tasting, most satisfying liquid that has ever crossed my lips.

26 May 2008 Summit and Safe Return

Sorry, it’s been awhile. I can’t talk about the last forty-eight hours yet…it’s too surreal. I am journaling and will share when I can stay awake for more than a few minutes. I got to the safety of Base Camp a few hours ago, totally spent. Actually, I have been totally spent for days. I have been where humans are just not supposed to be and the corpses are in plain sight as a reminder. As for me, I have all my fingers and toes; I have lost a few brain cells, but the remaining ones are smarter. Talk soon. Love, Dr. Tim.

“Where am I? Here. What time is it? Now.” —Dan Millman