We cobble ourselves together and strap our headlamps on. We will need them—soon. It is far too late to be here. I know we are in trouble. Although it feels like we’ve been on top for only five minutes, our teammates will tell us later it was half an hour.
Dwayne stands waiting for me. I roll onto all fours and struggle to stand as the ground shifts and rocks like an unsteady boat beneath me. I know I have broken a cardinal rule of mountaineering by abandoning my axe and the oversight rattles me. Without it to provide balance, I’m not sure I can walk anymore. Dwayne seems more confident than I am and I don’t want to know otherwise. I’m counting on his strength as much as he is on mine to get us down.
I take a long look at him to measure the cost of what I’m about to ask. “I feel a little wobbly without my axe. Would you mind short-roping me to the top of the first rock band?” I am admitting I’m weak in a place I can’t afford to be. I wonder if this admission will kill us or save us.
Dwayne tethers me with a short line of rope and falls in behind as if it is business as usual guiding a client in the Rockies. The slight tug of the rope is all I need to find my feet and head again. Dwayne keeps telling me to slow down. He seems calm and deliberate, and I force myself to mirror him.
We arrive at the top of first rock band in less time and with less effort than I thought it would take, which buoys my confidence. While Dwayne prepares the rope for our rappel, I hammer in the last of our pitons and connect the last of our rope to them. The fact that I can build a solid anchor is evidence that I can still think and function. I feel a rush of relief when I surrender my weight to the rope and it holds. At the bottom of the rappel I see my axe leaning against the rock wall waiting for me, and I push the vexing mistake out of my mind as if it has never happened. I watch Dwayne slide down the rope slowly and in control. It is just the way I want to see him—solid.
The footing back across the snowfield is better than I feared. With my axe in hand now, and pushing it against the uphill side, I pull ahead of Dwayne. It is all I can do to hold back from scrabbling. Threat propels me: we’ve been too high too long, we’re going to run out of oxygen and it is going to get dark. That clock is ticking louder and louder inside my head.
We turn our headlamps on halfway across the traverse. The arc of light limits my focus to one step at a time. Easier. I stop frequently to wait for Dwayne. Is he going slower or am I speeding up? Each time I wait for him to catch up, he reassures me with a nod and a wave. He’s stronger than I am. This is good. Use his pace to slow yourself down. My faith in him is my only comfort.
I imagine our teammates watching and willing us down safely, just as I did for Dwayne and Carlos two years ago. Here I am now, behind one of those faint and twinkling lights, living out the premonition that has stalked me ever since. It isn’t as terrifying as I feared it would be—at least when I am moving and focused.
I arrive first at the top of the Yellow Band and the fixed rope. Dwayne pulls up a few minutes behind. I study him again, and he reassures me that he is doing fine. It seems he is shepherding me ahead.
We need to descend the rope one at a time. Will the single strand of thin cord sever when loaded? Will the anchor fail? Relief follows when the first rope and anchor hold. As it does each time, resignation precedes surrender through a half dozen or more anchor transfers until I reach the end of the ropes.
The desire to sit and to sleep pulls at me as I wait for Dwayne at the bottom of the ropes. I know that if I fall asleep in the open in these sub-zero temperatures above eight thousand metres, I may never wake up again. Or that if I do, hypothermia or a paralyzing apathy will kill me. This threat keeps me standing, leaning against the cliff.
Fatigue overcomes me and I doze. The next thing I know, I am peering into the dark at Dwayne’s headlamp. His light streaks and swirls then disappears. Am I hallucinating, am I dreaming or am I awake? My mind slips and jerks between dreaming and lucidity. Cold seeps into my body. I swing my arms and legs, urging warm blood to reach my fingers and toes, but they stay cold.
I tell myself, I have descended climbs in the dark, been very cold, pushed past exhaustion, gone without food and drink for days at altitude. And I’ve survived acid trips gone bad. I have experienced all of this before—just not all at once.
Where is Dwayne? How much time has passed? Has he passed me? How could he have without my knowing—that is impossible.
I can’t trust what I see or think: I must have run out of oxygen some time ago. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock! goes the clock, and then its old-fashioned alarm clangs and my thoughts clamour: I better go down and get the stove on and the place ready for when Dwayne comes home. He may be in trouble up there. How can he be? He was so strong, so in control. I can’t climb up there. What if he’s on the rope? I am running on empty and losing my hold on reality. I hear Jim’s voice in my head: “You have to want it more than it wants you!” If I wait here any longer, I am going to be here for good. I start down.
I descend the couloir facing in, as if inside a bubble, until a silvery wash of moonlight jolts me out of my trance. I have no sense of how much time has passed and I panic. Have I passed our tent? I pan the beam of my headlamp across the widening expanse of the couloir for any sign of it. Should I start going back up? I can’t. I’m too tired. I continue down, stopping every few steps to look. The harder I stare, the more my vision blurs. Then I catch a glint of an oxygen bottle. It is all I can see of Camp Six.
My heart thuds when I open the tent and find it empty. Impossibly, I hoped Dwayne would be here. The tent looks long deserted—a home with its contents draped in white sheets. Spindrift has all but buried the tent. I start to dig, spooked by the way the mountain is erasing us and reclaiming itself. When I finally climb inside the tent, an overwhelming fatigue pulls me down onto my sleeping bag. My mouth feels as though it is lined with cotton wool. I fire up the stove and begin to feed the pot with snow. I lie back and fall asleep.
Later, our teammates will tell me it was around midnight when they saw our lights separate as I descended into the Hornbein Couloir. They locked their attention on the light stalled at the top. They knew one of us was in trouble and willed that person down for the longest time. It was 2 a.m. when they saw the first headlamp reach Camp Six. And another ninety minutes before they saw the second light get there too.
The crunch of Dwayne’s crampons outside the tent rouses me. It is the best sound I will ever hear, but my relief ebbs at the sight of his waxen face and glazed eyes.
He looks through me and speaks in a monotone. “Will you take my crampons off? My fingers are frozen.” As I guide him into the tent and sit him down, he says, “I ran out of oxygen and my mask was clogged with frost—suffocating me. It took me a long time to figure out what to do with my bottle. I couldn’t find anywhere flat enough to leave it so it wouldn’t fall down the couloir and maybe hit you.” Later he tells me that he sat down—gave up—didn’t care. Then something woke him and pushed him on.
No sooner do we settle in than the stove flame sputters and dies. I thread the last fuel canister onto the burner. It takes several flicks to get the lighter to spark, and when it does, the tent lights up in a sudden blinding flash. The walls suck inward then blast outward. I watch this happen, and our reaction, as if from a great distance. We unzip the doors and jettison the stove, pot, hats, gloves—everything that is on fire and then some. I am amazed at how fast we respond despite our exhaustion and hypoxic sluggishness. With the same degree of dispassion, I think. What irony—we’ve made it to the top and all the way back down to die, now, in a fire. I wonder what this spectacle looks like from below: the flaming stove streaking through the dark like a comet’s tail. Do they think it is one of us? Is anyone still watching?