Three days of storms take us to the edge of the window we have to make our summit bid. The constant drone of the jet stream pounding against Everest grows stronger each day, and we grow weaker waiting for a break in the weather. The delay scrambles our small plans once again.
Kevin has recovered enough from his last big push with Albi to join James in climbing in support of Dwayne and me. Even though Kevin and James have lost their own chances for the summit by now, their commitment at this time in our long siege when everyone must be thinking of home astonishes me. Barry steps forward too, despite knowing he has his own summit bid to rest up for in four days’ time.
A lenticular cloud hovers over the summit pyramid. With no time left to wait, we choose to begin, hoping that the weather will improve by the time we are in place at Camp Six in three days’ time. In four days, successful or not, we will have played out all our time and strength and will descend in order for Albi and Barry to move into place.
In early afternoon we shoulder our packs. Jim comes out of his tent to see the five of us off. As we lean in for a huddle to hear him, he rasps, “I’ve got one piece of advice for you that might help keep you alive. Treat this like any other mountain. It’s not worth dying for.”
We all know that climbers have made irrational decisions to stand atop the world’s highest mountain—and died because of it. I know he is warning us to not allow this mountain of mountains to skew our judgement, though he himself has put aside his family, his job and four years of his life for this expedition. No one would do that for any other mountain, nor would any one of us have pursued a summit for so long. I sink under the burden of our teammates’ hopes.
We step into the wind at the top of the headwall. Barry insists that he take the lead to preserve Dwayne’s and my strength for the summit. The rope is buried beneath drifts of wind-hammered snow that have set like cement, and Barry stops every few steps to wrench it free. Then, for the rest of the way to Camp Four, he’ll fall to his knees to recover and repeatedly rise again to fight his way a few steps higher.
Halfway up, we stop at our abandoned Camp Three to check in with one another. Barry, James, Dwayne and I hunker down on the lee side of the snow wall to wait for Kevin, who is coming up last. We don’t speak, to spare our breath and raw throats. I fish for the string of the watch around my neck and pull it out to look at the time. We have been going for five hours already—twice as long as our best time to this point.
My gaze is pulled to the plume of airborne snow seething over the summit and spilling down the North Face, which makes my stomach lurch as if in sudden free fall. Everything is telling me to turn back, including Jim’s voice that whispers, Treat it like any other mountain, treat it like any other mountain. Dreading worse to come, in my mind I am already up there, days ahead and hundreds of metres higher, inside that maelstrom.
I watch Kevin below as he leans into the wind and still it lifts him and slams him against the face. He struggles to his feet only to get blown over again. His battle mirrors ours. It is the worst day yet, and I am sure we will turn around soon. If we do, it will be over for Dwayne and me, and our retreat will put a serious dent in the team’s resolve. I wonder too why Kevin has volunteered to support Dwayne and me. We haven’t climbed a single day together on this expedition. Once one of the strongest, Kevin is now the weakest among us today. The cost of that last push with Albi had finished him. So why is he here now? He seems angry, or is it fed up? I read it as resentment for my having taken Barry’s place in the order of summit bids. Or am I just losing my mind, thinking this way? Are his motives simply noble?
When Kevin finally arrives, instead of joining us out of the wind, he stops a couple of steps downhill. He plants his feet wide to brace himself and then looks at me and yells over the wind, “Well, what are we waiting for?”
“Jim told us to treat this like any other mountain,” I shout. “I wouldn’t be out here in these conditions if this was any other mountain.”
Kevin yells, “To hell this is like any other mountain. This is fucking Mount Everest! I didn’t spend all this time working my ass off to come this far and turn around. Look at me, I’m the worst of the lot of you and I’m goin’ on!” Then he pushes a shoulder into the wind as if to shove it aside, clips his ascenders onto the next rope, punches them upward and steps into the lead.
As I watch Kevin pull ahead, I resign myself to a new reality: we will keep going until we physically can’t. I drop my face into my hands and feel James’s arm slide across my shoulders and pull me in to let me know I’m not alone. Then we follow in Kevin’s willful wake.
It takes ten hours to climb to Camp Four. My heart sinks when I discover Dwayne and Barry have moved into the tent together, leaving the snow cave for Kevin, James and me. I keep watch for James, who pulls in a distant last—just after 10 p.m. The wind swipes at his pack as he shrugs out of it. He pushes it toward me, and I grab a strap and pull it through the tunnel entrance into the cave. When James doesn’t follow it in, I poke my head outside to find him doubled over, coughing and retching. He falls to his knees and holds his hand out to keep me back as he vomits. Once he is in the cave, Kevin and I peel off James’s puke- and ice-encrusted balaclava and strip him of his insulated oversuit before we get him into a sleeping bag with me. Kevin’s face is flushed red in contrast to James’s waxy grey pallor. Glassy-eyed, James shivers uncontrollably and his teeth chatter. Kevin mans the stove while I help James sip hot fluids. Between spasms of coughing and retching, James lapses into an unfocused lifeless stare. Kevin and I exchange glances and wrestle with the unspoken question: should we get James down while he is still conscious—keep him moving? Or wait out the night, praying he will recover?
I have never seen James so helpless. He has often been the one to look after me when I get into camp. Through that fitful night, we watch over James like fretting parents over a sick child. We check to see if he’s worsened each time we wake, and to our relief, he finally falls asleep toward the end of the night.
Once, on a day filled with hope, I had dared to dream I would turn twenty-nine atop this twenty-nine-thousand-foot peak. But on this morning of my birthday, I don’t give the significance of the day a second thought.
Although James is weak, he is strong enough to be his stubborn self and insist that he can retreat without our help. We watch as he descends the first couple of ropes to be sure. He keeps his feet under him as the wind kites him across the slope to the limit of the rope’s arc and stretch. Soon we lose sight of his frail form as he dissolves into the blizzard.
Sometime on this day or perhaps the next, we learn that Annie and Todd started their summit bid and retreated when Todd fell ill at a higher camp. Then Annie made a second attempt with another teammate, Andy, but they turned around as well: too windy, too much avalanche hazard. Everyone else has given up. What makes us think we can still do this? What will it take for us to turn around?
The skies grow calmer through the day, but still, rogue gusts taunt us. We reach Camp Five late that afternoon. The only sign of it are the two snowdrifts that conceal the igloo and tent. Dwayne and Barry start digging them out while I search for the cache to find food and fuel for the night. I find six fuel cartridges. Not enough! I think, and I call Dwayne and Barry over. Dumbstruck and slow-witted from exhaustion and hypoxia, the three of us stare at the six canisters lined up on the ground. Not enough to last us tonight and tomorrow.
I thrust my hand out and say, “Where’s the radio?” Dwayne pulls it out of his inside jacket pocket and hands it to me. I grip it possessively as I raise Jim.
“Did you make it to Five?” Jim asks.
“Yeah, but where are the fuel cartridges?”
Jim tells us that Chris brought some up on the last carry.
Albi comes on the radio from Camp Two and confirms, “There were a bunch when we were last there.”
Jim adds, “Then there should be enough, somewhere else.”
“Well,” I say, “there aren’t.”
“Look around.”
“We have.”
“Count again.”
I snap, “We can count to six! Isn’t it obvious we have a problem here?” Dwayne and Barry back away as I unravel.
Dan’s voice comes on. “Sharon, I hear you’ve got six cartridges, right?”
I stomp and pace. “Come on, guys, this bid is off. I’m done!”
Kevin arrives and Barry nods his head toward the igloo, where they are sleeping for the night.
Dan says, “Just stay with me here, okay? Have you counted the ones on the stoves?”
“No, but—”
“Okay,” Dan speaks slowly. “Albi says that he just replaced a canister on one of the stoves before he left the other day. So at least one is new. That makes seven. You’ll use two tonight, at the most. So at the very least you’ll have five cartridges left for Camp Six.”
Barry, Dwayne and I stand together with our backs to the wind. They tilt their heads back to peer out at me from under their hoods. Barry holds out his hand to ask me to surrender the radio.
“Thanks, Dan,” he says. “I think we’ve got it sorted.”
I drop my head and rub my temples. “Guess I lost it there, eh?”
Dwayne smiles and rolls his eyes upward. “Just a little. I guess.”
Barry laughs, clasps my shoulders and shakes me. “Just don’t let it happen again!” He speaks into the radio, “Jim, so yeah, we’re all here now.”
Now painfully aware that I have just behaved like a child having a tantrum, I walk away to calm down. I didn’t expect Dan, who has lost his chance for the summit and is kilometres away, to step up as he did. Will I look back at my actions twenty years from now and feel proud of my part in this expedition as Dan, or anyone else, might? Dan’s example shifts my perspective: this is not just my climb—it is the whole team’s climb.
Dwayne and I lie on our backs, staring at the ceiling of the tent. Any movement feels as if it is in slow motion and takes a monumental effort. I wave my arm in front of my face, as I used to do to check out how high I was after dropping acid, and sure enough, it jerks across my field of vision in a series of delayed still-frame shots. In silence, I hold up our dinner options of freeze-dried chicken stew or ramen noodles. Dwayne points at the noodles. At this altitude, we have no appetite: we eat for fuel and sip warm water for our headaches, waiting for the stove to melt enough snow to get us through the night.
The blood in my head thrums to the count of my pulse. Every breath of air and word uttered aggravates our dry throats, causing us to cough constantly. We speak little and in single sentences between breaths.
“Kevin looked pretty wrecked this afternoon when he pulled in,” Dwayne says.
“Think he’ll have the guns to make it to Six tomorrow?”
“Hard to say if any of us will.”
We drift in a state that erases time. The tent walls suck in and push out with the ebb and surge of the wind. I pull an envelope from the top flap of my pack. The sight of my mom’s perfect cursive handwriting makes me smile: Do not open until May 18!
“What’s that?”
“Birthday card from my mom,” I say.
“Oh shit, I forgot.”
“No worries, my mom didn’t.” Ha, I think, too bad I feel like I’m turning eighty-nine rather than twenty-nine.
I doze off when Dwayne slips out of the tent, and then wake when the door zipper rips open and an oxygen cylinder thuds down on top of Dwayne’s sleeping bag.
“Let’s party,” he says.
I sit up, turn off the stove and look at Dwayne, who is grinning. He shrugs and says, “I found a bottle that might have belonged to the Yugoslavs and it won’t fit our mask system. Someone may as well use it.”
We hadn’t planned to use oxygen during our ascent but we’ve brought some in case of an emergency. I question the wisdom of climbing above eight thousand metres without it. But by now we are pulling out all stops, and the plan is to turn the oxygen on tomorrow for the first time.
Dwayne cranks the valve open and oxygen hisses out into the confined space of the tent. Within a few minutes my head clears. The lines and colours grow sharp and vivid. I feel a smile crease my face and my fatigue lifts.
Dwayne says, “Good stuff, eh?” He pulls out the radio and speaks into it. “Okay, Jane, hit it.” And a chorus of voices sings me “Happy Birthday.” We leave the oxygen on just long enough to know what we are missing.
The boost of oxygen and a sleeping pill put me to sleep. I have never used oxygen before and am heartened by the difference it makes. We plan to carry two bottles each, enough for both tomorrow and summit day if used sparingly. But will it make up for the extra weight on our backs?
The sleeping pill takes me through half the night. I wake, mulling over questions and doubts. How hard will the rock climbing be through the Yellow Band? Can I climb technical ground above 8,500 metres in sub-zero temperatures with a heavy pack on my back? Will I be able to climb off the end of the ropes tomorrow after I have become so accustomed to the security? Surely one of us won’t make it through yet another night above 7,600 metres. By the way Kevin dragged himself into camp yesterday, I am convinced he won’t have the strength to carry to Six. How will Dwayne, Barry and I carry over 120 kilograms of gear and supplies for Camp Six and beyond between the three of us? Camp Six doesn’t even exist yet. Where will we put it?
Blowing snow has drifted in overnight and packs in between the wind barrier and the tent. The walls judder under the hammering wind. When I punch through a snowdrift to look out, I see Kevin already outside divvying up loads. I don’t know what to expect anymore, but to see Kevin first out and ready is the last thing I imagined. He paces between the four piles he has started, checking each item for weight and bulk. Stunned, I watch him for a few minutes as he dumps a food bag into one pile and picks up a tent from another.
When Kevin notices me, he straightens and looks me in the eye with a fierce intensity. “Well,” he says, “I don’t know about you but I’m going on till I can’t. What’s the worst thing that can happen to us by trying?” A gust knocks him off his feet. He scrabbles to his knees as it tears at him. “Fucking hell is what this is! But if I turn around now I’ll be wondering for the rest of my life whether we could have done it.” He’s right. We can at least go to the end of the fixed ropes. That would be a kilometre. We have to at least try after all we’ve done to get here.
Later, we stand mutely looking at the piles of gear. Barry plucks the radio out of his inside pocket and hands it to me with a knowing smile. More interested in lightening my load, I pause. The radio will be useless once we leave the ropes. If anything goes wrong, it will be everyone for themselves if one of us is in trouble. Rescue is not an option at eight thousand metres. So I reason, Why bother with the extra weight of the radio? I just want to chuck the thing, but the expectant look on their faces reminds me that the rest of our team is connected to this radio. I’m not thinking straight. I turn it up to full volume and tuck it in next to my body to keep the batteries warm and alive.
We pack up, each piling oxygen bottles on top of tent parts, sleeping bags and mats, stoves and pots, ice axes, hammers, snow stakes, pitons, ice screws, rope, two full water bottles each, and personal gear and food. I drag my pack up my leg and balance it on my knee, slip one arm through the strap and swing it onto my back. Then I slip my other arm in and stumble backwards under the weight. Our loads are the heaviest they’ve been yet. This weight could finish us.
I slide my oxygen mask over my mouth and nose and open the valve on the regulator to a two-litre-per-minute flow rate. If everything functions perfectly, a single bottle at that modest flow rate will last us ten hours. It takes all I have to shift my weight from one foot to the other, let alone make forward progress. Whether the low flow rate, the heavy load or exhaustion is the problem, I am alarmed at how poor my balance is. We each use a ski pole as a third leg to push ourselves out from the uphill side of the traverse and to help keep our weight directly over our feet. To push myself away from terra firma on a thirty- to forty-five-degree slope with more than a 1,500-metre drop below my feet is counterintuitive. Instinct urges me to lean into the slope. But when I do, my feet skate out from under me and the fight to stand up again on the loose down-sloping shale wastes too much energy. The more I push myself out from the slope, the harder the wind tears at me.
We climb one behind the other as we move up the Diagonal Ditch. Glimpses of the boys ahead of me wash in and out of view between gossamer sheets of snow. Spindrift avalanches pour down the face, streaming off our hoods and shoulders. Shrouded in three layers of one-piece suits, hoods cinched and face covered with balaclavas, masks and goggles, I feel like I am in my own cocoon. My sole focus is on the next step in front of me. Each shove from a gust and each jolt from a slip or a deluge of spindrift exacts a cost I can’t afford. Calm is the only way through. But I know we are moving too slowly; all it will take to turn us around is for one of us to say we’ve had enough. I’m convinced we’ll turn around once we reach the end of the ropes.
I am in the lead when we exit the Diagonal Ditch and climb out onto the vast expanse of the North Face. Jane’s voice wafts up from inside my jacket, cutting through the thunderous din of the wind. “We’ve spotted them! We can see two, no three, coming out of the rocks onto the face!”
I halt to pull the radio out from inside my jacket, and the boys and I huddle around it to listen.
“This is Bob at Camp One. Looks like all four are on the snow now and clear of the rocks.”
Jim says, “Thanks, we see them now.”
“Hi,” I croak, “we can hear you guys.”
We hear cheers. “Way to go, guys!” Jane says.
Jim says, “How’s it going up there?”
We look at each other and I hand the radio to Dwayne. He slips his mask off and says, “Slow, but it sounds like you guys think we’re getting somewhere.”
“You’re going to do it!” Jim says. Other voices come on and I understand that they have divided into three different viewing parties at different vantage points. I envision some of them at the cache site over two thousand metres below, passing the binoculars back and forth; another group taking turns looking through the telescope at Camp One; and others peering through Dr. Bob’s telephoto lens mounted on a tripod at Camp Two. That is all I need to know. They are watching us. They are with us. I step away and rest my load against the slope to ease the strain on my shoulders. For the first time in what seems a long time, I bring my head up to take a look at the world beyond my feet. The sight of Dwayne, Barry and Kevin bent over the radio, their faces lighting up as they listen to our teammates, lifts me out of myself. I marvel at the difference in our perspectives. Ours is a plod from one foot to the other; theirs is convinced we are going for it. Our teammates’ voices transform what feels like an exercise in futility into progress. At well above 7,900 metres now, I lean back and look out from higher than I ever have before.
Barry and I are the first to reach the end of the fixed ropes near the entrance to the Hornbein Couloir at eight thousand metres. We take off our packs for the first time that day and clip them into the anchor. I feel so light I could blow away and am glad for the anchor to hold me down. I peer up into the deep gash that cleaves the North Face. Shaped like an hourglass, it starts wide and narrows to a body width before it fans out three hundred metres higher into a yellow band of rock. Spindrift cascades down and funnels through the narrows. Surges of flotsam spurt out the bottom, dispersing into rock-peppered spray that whistles by our heads.
I think of Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, who pioneered this route. Guided by a single black-and-white photo, they traversed the North Face to the base of the couloir and left their ropes behind them. They must have stood close to this same spot we are in now, looking up at the very same sight. I remember Tom’s first impressions: “The prospect of entering the gully was too much like becoming tenpins in a high-angle bowling alley.”
I put my head down, force my thoughts away from what lies above and bend into the task of unravelling a spool of rope into usable portions for the next day. Grateful for the distraction, I wrestle the kinks and tangles into coils while Barry turns the spool. Suddenly Barry shouts, drops the spool and flattens himself against the face. Trapped in my sluggishness, I freeze in confusion. Then, over the roar of the wind, I hear the telltale sharp cracks of rockfall, as startling as gunshots. A flush of adrenaline snaps my head upward as a barrage of rocks the size of basketballs barrels down the couloir. They explode against the walls and are heading straight for us. There is nowhere to hide. I grab Barry and tuck in beside him beneath our hanging pack. My body flinches as the rocks thud into the face nearby. I watch them hit, bounce, fly and vanish, along with countless irretrievable heartbeats, into the airy abyss below. Numbed and spent, we say nothing and resume our task.
Minutes later, Dwayne pulls in and Kevin drags in soon after. Kevin’s body heaves with each ragged breath as he slumps over his pole and ice axe. He is out of oxygen.
Dwayne, calm and unaware of what has happened minutes before, says, “Well, what are we waiting for?”
In a brief glance between us, Barry and I opt to not tell them about the near miss. There is no room for drama—and in any case I used up my quota over the cartridges. Now, I am stoic and all business.
“Right, then!” Barry says. He hefts his pack onto his back, unclips from the last of the rope and starts up.
I lean back against my pack, slip into the shoulder straps, roll onto my hands and knees and push up to stand. I leave my pole clipped into the anchor, unclip myself and start picking my way up the rock-pitted and wind-strafed face. Ironically, the craters from the rockfall I step into are like stairs, which eases my straining calves. The face steepens as we move up into the outwash of the couloir. We thrust the shafts of our axes into the slope for a sense of security but that is all it provides. Now, with no fixed rope, we are tenpins at the mercy of a rock that finds its mark, or a gust of wind or an avalanche that sweeps us off. But, I reason, we have all survived and thrived in these unforgiving places before. We won’t fall—can’t think about it. Although each move upward takes me closer to what I have feared for years: being benighted on an eight-thousand-metre peak, I don’t entertain this thought because I can’t afford to. Instead, each step upward is a step in numb resignation, a new normal I would never accept on any other mountain.
As if conjured by a malign presence, spectral veils of spindrift envelop us. Pulses of ice and rock, beaten and tumbled into sugary grains, stream down the couloir and hiss as they part around my boot tops. This, I think, is John Lauchlan’s kind of day out. John was a friend, a talented, committed and visionary climber who defined a new generation of bold alpine climbing. He used to say, “Go big or go home,” and he would have bared his teeth to this mountain as if it were a blustering adversary. I can imagine John now, his eyes narrowing behind his pop-bottle-thick frosted aviator glasses and his wiry body leaning hard into the fight. But John went big on a solo climb several years ago and didn’t go home. I feel his spirit with us now.
Fatigue and oxygen starvation make me feel detached from all that is happening, and time is suspended. I have lost all sense of how long we have been climbing when Barry stops. I wake as if from a trance. We are in a small bay below a steep rock wall off to the side of the couloir. It is only when I see an old oxygen bottle, some splintered tent poles and pieces of tattered nylon sticking out of the snow that I understand why we have stopped. I recall our plan to camp for the night and it snaps me back to attention. I nod at Barry and we both start chopping into hard snow to set anchors and get our packs off our backs.
The view between our feet and the valley floor disappears into roiling snow. When I stand up straight and extend my arm, I can touch the face in front of me, which makes it about forty to fifty degrees. With no ledges to be found anywhere, we start to chip a platform into the face that is big enough for a small tent. We have forgotten a shovel, and without it the task will cost us hours. But we find one in the first few minutes of our excavation, which would seem miraculous anywhere else. Nothing surprises us anymore, and we pick it up without comment and keep digging and chopping.
There is only room for two of us to work at the same time, so we take turns resting with Kevin. In his all-or-nothing style, he cranked his oxygen to the full flow rate of eight litres per minute this morning and ran out halfway through the day. Now he sags, folded over his knees, sides heaving—spent. He has given his all to us even though he knows his chances to summit are over. Years later, I will apologize for saying nothing then—I didn’t have it in me. And he will say, “It’s just what I do, Woody. It’s what we all did. The whole team gave our best.”
Kevin and Barry stay longer than I thought they would to make sure we are well dug in. Our teammates will tell us later that they saw them start climbing down at 9 p.m. Dwayne and I watch them briefly as they descend the ground we worked so hard to gain, but we have nothing left for sentiment. We do know that regardless of the night ahead of us, and our dwindling chances, we cannot turn around tomorrow morning without trying. We owe them at least that for their commitment.
We work into darkness. Dwayne climbs into the tent to get the stove going while I stay out to tighten, check and recheck every attachment of the tent to the mountain. I prepare leashes for us both and clip them to an anchor for insurance. A scenario plays through my mind: a hit in the night, our tent swept off the face and us dangling in our harnesses off these anchors. I need to remain outside and occupied rather than give my imagination idle time to spin worst-case scenarios.
Once I climb inside the tent, we radio the rest of the team. Dwayne wheezes and coughs before he speaks. “We’ve just sort of got ourselves thrown in here. We’re kind of cold—pretty breezy still—still a factor as to how things might go tomorrow. Everybody did a fantastic job—put out lots of energy. I hope we get a shot tomorrow.”
Jim says, “You will get a shot tomorrow. Just remember, you’ve got to want it more than it wants you.” We startle as a rush of snow spills over our tent.
“Well,” Dwayne sighs, “I tell you, we put up with a lot of pain today to give it a shot.”
“That’s why you’ll get it.”
Laurie comes on from Camp Four. “How’s Sharon doing?” I am relieved to hear his voice in the mix.
“She’s hot.”
James says, “It’s a pretty long birthday climb for her. We’ll gab later, Dwayne. I hope you feel all the good energy we’re sending up to you.”
Jane comes on from Camp One. “How are you guys up there?”
Dwayne hands me the radio and I tell her, “We could be better.”
Dan says, “You’re supposed to have a plastic thingy over your face right now.”
“We just got the stove going and I don’t want to blow us up. That would be embarrassing.”
“How’s Dwayno?” Dan asks.
“About the same. He’s got cold feet. He can’t decide whether to fill his water bottle to warm them up or have a hot drink.”
“How’s the wind?”
“Real strong.”
“No protection, eh?”
I tell them we have the tent tied down so tight we aren’t going anywhere. “It’s bombproof.” But that vision of us hanging from our harnesses keeps playing through my imagination.
“Are you guys comfortable?” Jim asks.
“It’s all relative, I guess.”
Dan comes on. “You guys have the O’s on?”
Small sharp teeth gnaw inside my temples. “We’re using it when we can. It’s a contest between the oxygen and the stove. The oxygen is working excellent, except Kevin’s bottle gave up a few pitches below the Hornbein.”
Jim asks, “Is that why he was so slow?”
“We were all going slow because the wind was beating us around and we figured we were carrying thirty kilos each.”
“The main thing is, you did it. You got up there.”
I turn my headlamp on to look at Dwayne lying on his back staring into the void, his face swollen from surface edema. I sigh. “It’s going to take a wonder to make men out of us again.”
Jim reminds us to keep hydrated and get a good rest. He suggests he spot for us the next day through the telescope from out on the glacier near Camp Two. He can help guide us to the safest, most direct route to the summit once we exit the couloir.
I hand the radio to Dwayne and pop another lozenge. Dwayne says, “Yeah that would be helpful, Jim.”
“With any luck, it’ll blow itself out tonight.” Jim’s voice fades to an airy whisper.
A part of me can’t believe we are talking about still going on. By the way I feel and Dwayne looks, I think we’ll need a lot more than just the wind to die down. I can’t imagine how much strength we will need to simply stand up, let alone climb unroped six hundred metres higher over the hardest ground yet to reach the summit.
Laurie must be reading my mind when he comes on from Camp Four. “Even if you get no sleep tonight, with oxygen you’ll be okay. In ’82 we climbed nine hundred metres on our last push to the summit. I know it’s more technical ground, but you’re only six hundred metres from the top. If you’re feeling lousy, crank up your oxygen for five minutes at a time to get a richer flow. It makes a big difference. The fact that you’ve got oxygen might make up for the lack of sleep tonight.”
“Look,” Jim says, “I know you’re really tired and you’ve had a hard day, but don’t let that get you down. You guys are in a real good spot. Be positive about what you’ve accomplished.”
Dwayne says, “Thanks a lot, Jim. We need to hear that. We’re pretty psyched, or we will be as soon as we go to bed with our oxygen masks on.”
Jim says, “Be proud of what you’ve done and if it happens tomorrow, it happens. There’s no sense worrying about it tonight. Just relax and get some brews in you, collect some O’s and tomorrow will take care of itself.”
Dwayne sighs. “Yeah, it had to be done.”
“It had to be done and you did it. You’ve got everybody down here beaming you up as much positive energy as they can.”
Dwayne falls back on his sleeping bag. “Well, we’ll get an early start and even if the wind is up, we’ll see what happens.”
It must be close to midnight by now. When we first discussed our summit bid, “early start” meant 1 a.m. But with our long day up to Camp Six, we still have hours before we’ll be rehydrated.
Recovery is impossible at 8,200 metres above sea level. No one can survive at this altitude for long. We estimate that we have twenty-four hours to get up and get down to a lower altitude before our time is up. Our oxygen will help, but we only have a partial supply for the night and one bottle each for the summit push. Even as acclimatized as we are now, we know that vital functions steadily deteriorate. Death is imminent.
Bile rises in my throat at the thought of food. My stomach is shutting down. We both fear if we eat anything that we will throw up and lose even more energy and fluids, but we need fuel and force down a few raw cashews and some chicken noodle soup. We know we must drink as much as possible. We turn the stove on and off through the night, alternating between its off-gases and water, and oxygen and dehydration. It’s more apparent than ever that we and the stove compete for the same oxygen.
Spindrift avalanches pour over the tent and fill the gap between the outside tent wall and the mountain face. We punch the wall back in a fight for space but the buildup of snow is winning, reducing our space and pushing us closer to the edge of our platform. My consciousness drifts. A faint twinkle of Dwayne and Carlos’s headlamps in the night on Makalu stalk my memory. I sit up and turn my headlamp on to banish the eerie sight. Dwayne lies covered in a fine layer of frozen condensation and spindrift that has pressed through the walls and small openings. I’m relieved when he stirs and the white shroud cracks and slides off. His eyelashes are white with frost. We don’t need a thermometer to know it is minus twenty or thirty degrees.
We talk in abbreviated and disjointed fragments between dozing and waking through the night. Dwayne asks, “Are you going to wear two one-piece layers under your down suit or will that make it too tight?”
“Yeah, I tried that last time I was at Five and I couldn’t move very well. Do you think we should try our one-piece insulated suits over our down suits?” Small details can make the difference between success and failure, right down to a suit that even slightly constricts the thousands of moves we’ll make that day. Once we’re out there and moving, changing our clothing layers won’t be an option.
I say, “Think I’ll wear a mitt on my left hand and a glove on my right. You know, for a combination of dexterity and warmth?”
Time slips before I hear his voice again. “How long do you think it’ll take to get up to the Yellow Band?”
“Maybe an hour?” I top up the pot with more snow. “I don’t think it’s that far, and there’s no changing our minds once we start up.” I repeat the advice Annie gave me: “Trend right at first even though it looks harder. Don’t get sucked into the weakness on the left side of the Yellow Band.”
“Yeah,” he says, “that jibes with what Todd told me. Better not blow it. Guess we’ll solo to the narrows, eh? Whoever gets there first can stop and wait if we need to rope up.”
Sometime later, I wake up gasping. A sickly green flame sputters above our heads. “Are you awake?”
“Sort of. I don’t know what you call this state, but I’m hoping it’s rest,” he murmurs. “I’m thinking we should take all the pitons we’ve got.”
Every time we turn off the stove for a few minutes and turn on our oxygen, the conversation starts to make more sense. I ask, “What time do you think we should turn around?”
“Let’s take it one step at a time.”
“How much rope do you think we should take?”
“I say we take all of it. I coiled about 150 metres or so.”
“What’s your strategy for the O’s?” I ask.
“Turn it on for the first few minutes when we start, to get moving and get warm, then turn it off to save it until we get to the Yellow Band.”
“Dave says it will last ten hours if everything works perfectly,” I say, “which is hardly likely.”
“Yeah,” Dwayne says, “those valves freeze and the flow is inconsistent.”
“Do you think we’ll even be able to get out of this tent in the morning?”
He doesn’t answer.