The Everest Politics Show

We leave for Base Camp just after eight o’clock. Just as we’re leaving I see someone I recognise shout instructions to his porters from the neighbouring teahouse. It’s David Hamilton, leader of the Jagged Globe expedition, with whom I climbed Muztag Ata in the Chinese Pamirs a few years ago. I also recognise one of his clients, Denis, and his assistant leader Chris Groves, from previous expeditions.

They are just leaving for Base Camp themselves, so I chat to them as we walk along. They stayed in Dingboche like we did. They tell me that afterwards they continued up the Imja Valley to Chukung, and came back over a high pass, the Kongma La. They will be well acclimatised by now.

It’s a long time since I last saw Chris, when he led my first expedition to Aconcagua in 2005. Since then he has become one of Jagged Globe’s top 8,000m peak leaders, though this is his first time on Everest. Jagged Globe have had a remarkable success rate recently. Every one of their clients reached the summit in each of the last two years. Chris is non-committal when I ask him whether he thinks it will happen this time.

It’s another lovely walk, but the trail is bustling with trekkers and climbers heading to Base Camp. The land becomes increasingly barren. As we approach Pumori, standing sentinel at the end of the valley, the grassy outcrops present at Lobuche give way to scree and boulders.

We ascend a steep bank, then drop down to Gorak Shep and the last few teahouses on the trail before Base Camp. The lodges stand beside a huge sandy area which, in 2009, hosted the world’s highest cricket match.

We sit and drink Sprite in one of the teahouses while a group of Sherpas sit opposite sipping hot lemon. Dorje doesn’t introduce them, and they watch us in silence. We have been there for ten minutes when I suddenly recognise one of them. It’s Chongba, who stood beside me on the summits of both Manaslu and Everest. He will be climbing Lhotse with me too.

I rush over and give him a big hug and a warm handshake. He grins broadly, and I believe he may have recognised me earlier, but he said nothing. It says something of his character that we’ve shared such experiences, yet still he was reluctant to come over. It’s no surprise. Many of the older Sherpas exhibit this behaviour, which we take to be humility (though I don’t know whether this is true). The younger Sherpas are different. Most speak better English and are more confident with western clients.

There is a huge Taiwanese flag pinned to the wall, scribbled with the climbers’ names from a particular Taiwanese expedition. Mel has a big grin on his face as he reads it. He points out some additional Chinese characters scrawled across the middle.

‘See that,’ he says. ‘They are not from Taiwan expedition. It says “Taiwan belongs to China”.’

I’m too polite to ask whether he too believes Taiwan belongs to China, but judging by his reaction I suspect that he doesn’t give a toss, any more than I would care if someone scrawled ‘Las Malvinas belong to Argentina’ across a poster of a lonely sheep in a windswept field on the Falkland Islands.

It takes another thirty minutes to reach Base Camp, and it’s an exhilarating experience for me. I have read about this place so many times and carried a mental picture of it in my mind. Now I am seeing it for real. I recognise many of the peaks from photos. Pumori, Lingtren, Khumbutse, Changtse, the West Shoulder and Nuptse enclose this natural amphitheatre.

At first, I find it hard to piece things together. The Khumbu Icefall, our route into the Western Cwm, is hidden from view during the approach. It’s a secret opening onto Everest’s upper reaches from the south side, but until you realise it’s there, Everest appears to be guarded by impossible faces. For a long time I look at the towering glaciers and cliffs of the Lho La, believing it to be the Khumbu Icefall. This wall of rock and ice, which forms a pass into Tibet, looks nothing like the obstacle I imagined.

There are sections of rock leading me to speculate that there hasn’t been much snowfall this year. This feeling is reinforced when Everest’s black pyramid appears above the West Shoulder. It’s as bare of snow as it looked when we climbed it from the north side two years ago. Then gradually the opening appears to the right of the valley, and the Icefall spills out.

When they first explored Everest from the south side in 1950, Bill Tilman and Charles Houston must have had a similar experience. They would have needed to walk almost to the top of the valley before they spotted this route up into the Western Cwm. Only then would they have realised Everest might just be climbable from Nepal.

It’s a picturesque approach along a ridge of moraine. At 11.30 we drop down and cross a jumble of boulders to the maze of tents that is Base Camp. Tents of all shapes and sizes sprawl across the moraine like a shanty town. We see Phil waiting for us above the Altitude Junkies’ encampment. When he ushers us into the plush, carpeted dining tent, which I recognise from previous expeditions, it feels like I am coming home. Those of the team who have never been on a Junkies expedition are impressed.

The approach to Everest Base Camp. The yellow tents of Base Camp can be seen front left. Changtse is the rock peak back left. The Lho La is the pass in front of it. The main triangular peak in the photo is Everest's West Shoulder. The black summit of Everest can be seen peeping up behind the West Shoulder. The peak on the right is a shoulder of Nuptse. The Khumbu Icefall spills down the gap between the West Shoulder and Nuptse.

‘Mel graffitied “Taiwan belongs to China” on a Taiwanese flag at the teahouse in Gorak Shep,’ I say.

Mel looks horrified. ‘No, no,’ he says. ‘I not write it myself, I just said someone else write it.’

I feel embarrassed. He’s so upset that we might suspect him of such a mischievous deed that I end up having to apologise.

Our first happy hour of the expedition begins at four o’clock. Our chef Da Pasang serves red wine, cheese, Pringles and sushi in the dining tent. Ian leads the way. Every so often he gathers up the glasses to replenish them from the kitchen tent. The wine is very good. I’m already feeling light-headed after the first one, but Ian makes me drink three more.

Conversation inevitably turns to Everest, and we talk about Tilman and Houston’s Everest reconnaissance. The great British mountain explorer Bill Tilman made the first ever exploration of the southern approach to Everest in 1950 with American mountaineer Charles Houston. They had only two days to explore a possible route. On the first day they headed towards the Lho La. George Mallory had already looked down from here into the Khumbu Icefall and Western Cwm when he explored the Tibetan side in 1921. Tilman knew there were two keys to climbing Everest from the south. They needed to find a practical route from the top of the Western Cwm to the South Col, and there must be a route up the ridge from the South Col to Everest’s summit.

Their first exploration proved unsuccessful. As they walked towards the Lho La, a ‘trick of lighting’ (as Tilman described it) prevented them even seeing a route into the Western Cwm. Trick of lighting, my arse. As I noticed myself earlier today, the Khumbu Icefall spills down from a narrow gap. Tilman and Houston were a mile short of the foot of the Lho La when they turned around. The Icefall was still concealed, as it had been for me, initially. They spotted it easily the following day. On the second day they decided to climb Kala Pattar, the well-known viewpoint above Gorak Shep. Here they discovered what many trekkers know: a shoulder of Nuptse obscures the South Col from Kala Pattar. With the South Col hidden, there was no way of knowing whether there was a possible route up from the Western Cwm.

The second question, about a route from the South Col to the summit, also proved elusive. From Kala Pattar they thought the south ridge of Everest looked a bit too steep, but Tilman deduced correctly that he wasn’t looking at the ridge, but a buttress protruding from the South-West Face. In fact, Everest’s southern approach is not a south ridge, but a south-east one which is not as steep as the angle looks from Kala Pattar. Tilman’s friend Eric Shipton answered some of these questions the following year.

Phil is pleased to see us. He said the Sherpas made him eat on his own in the dining tent last night instead of letting him eat with them. He seems upset by this.

‘But what’s the problem with that, Phil?’ Louis says. ‘If you ate on your own then it means you were with all your friends.’