The Climb Read online

  Excusing myself and leaving Lene and Scott to finish their conversation, I headed back to my hotel to make ready for my departure for Everest the next day, because Scott wanted me to go ahead of him and the clients to supervise the Sherpas in preparing our Base Camp and to coordinate efforts for establishing higher camps.

  Just after lunch on March 25, Boukreev’s friend Sergei, flying a Russian transport helicopter, took on the Mountain Madness cargo, Boukreev, and Ngima Sherpa and lifted off. For the passengers: no tea, no coffee, no cocktails, no emergency-exit drills, just cotton for their ears to protect against the deafening noise of the rotating blades.

  In less than an hour, after dodging gathering clouds and hunting his way up the Khumbu Valley, Sergei found the Syangboche landing area and put down in a gathering fog.

  The fog did not allow Sergei to return to Kathmandu, so he decided to overnight at a local lodge while Ngima and I descended to Namche Bazaar (3,450 m), where I had planned to spend the night and then depart the next morning for the Everest Base Camp. But on March 26, rain fell throughout the day. The steep trails leading from Namche Bazaar to Thyangboche (3,860 m) were slick, a serious problem for yak teams and porters.

  There were still a lot of problems even further up the trekking trail to Everest Base Camp. Snow was still lingering on many of its sections, and in places it was still several feet deep. Expedition porters and yak drivers who had shunted off the trail were holding in lodges and campsites until they could get a clearer passage.

  The trek to Base Camp, weather permitting, I planned to make in five days, a shorter time than would normally be required, because I had trained rigorously for this season. In Almaty I had been doing two speed ascents of 4,000-meter peaks in a week; in the past year I had spent more than five months in the Himalayas and climbed three 8,000ers, including Everest in 1995. Had I not spent that much time at altitude in the previous months, I would have allowed ten to twelve days, the number of days Scott and I had planned for our clients to take. Some of them were coming from sea level and would need at least that many days to make their adjustments.

  Finally, at noon on March 27, Boukreev was able to resume his trek and left Namche Bazaar, descending to the Dudh Kosi River (3,250 m) and from there ascending again to Thyangboche. It was a grueling workout for most trekkers, and Boukreev arrived tired, but without feeling any effects from the gain in altitude he’d made from Kathmandu.

  The next day, back on the trail, I came upon Ed Viesturs and David Breashears with their IMAX crew at a waterfall on the Dudh Kosi and had to maneuver myself out of their panoramic view to avoid spoiling their shot. That evening I arrived in Pangboche (4,000 m) in the upper reaches of the forested zone, and at the lodge in Pangboche was able to take in the sun setting on Everest and visit with Ed Viesturs and his beautiful wife.

  On March 29, I gained a kilometer of altitude, and as I climbed, I would occasionally come upon yak teams that had boldly ventured into the melting snow and mud that continued to frustrate the Sherpas who were driving them on the trail. It was slow and dangerous going for these teams, because often the yaks would break through the crust of snow and stand frozen in place until they were unloaded and pulled from the snow and back onto more solid ground.

  Boukreev spent his last night on the trail at Lobuche (4,940 m) in a Sherpa-owned guesthouse where he bunked with the IMAX crew. The unheated rooms, where everyone slept together on a sleeping platform, offered little privacy, but provided some shelter from the below-freezing temperatures that were still prevailing.

  On March 30, about 11:00 A.M., I arrived at the Mount Everest Base Camp. Advance teams like ours had come ahead of expedition members to stake out sites, choosing parcels of the rocky terrain to accommodate their camps. Several tents had already been pitched to house the Sherpas who were responsible for building the camps and to mark the perimeters of each expedition’s territory. Usually the pitching of tents is enough to establish a site, but this year one team had gone a bit further. The advance team for Rob Hall’s Adventure Consultants expedition in a prime location had spray-painted several boulders with NZ (for New Zealand) to mark a large area they wanted to claim for their camp. I had heard about this situation before leaving Kathmandu, and there had been jokes about the reaction that David Breashears, a dedicated environmentalist, would have when he saw the mess. Rob Hall had a good reputation for his concerns and care about the mountains, and everyone believed it must have been done, without his approval, by an overzealous Sherpa. Whoever had done it, I thought, they had a big job ahead to clean it up.

  At the site of the Mountain Madness camp Tashi Sherpa, a young man from Pangboche and a friend of Ngima, had already been at work for almost a week. He had been sent ahead with a small crew to construct platforms for tents from rock rubble, so that our tents would be above the pools of ice water that would form on warm days. Also, he and his crew had busied themselves with erecting the stone walls for what would be our kitchen and fashioning pathways that would interconnect our tents and prevent the occasional broken ankle that occurs.

  That afternoon I threw myself into physical labor with the Sherpas and worked steadily with them every day until our clients arrived. I would rise around 8:00 A.M. when the sun would hit the tents, have some steaming-hot, milky black tea, and go immediately to work. Around 10:00 A.M. we would break and have breakfast, chapatis with eggs, oatmeal, or tsampa, a barley-flour porridge. Then, in the evenings, a large meal: rice, lentils, garlic soup, and whatever fresh vegetables had been brought in by porters in previous days. For many Westerners I think it would be considered a monotonous diet, but I had become accustomed to it in my years in the Himalaya, and I’ve always preferred it over the packaged and exotic foods that many expeditions bring onto the mountain. Heavy on carbohydrates and always with a lot of hot liquid, it is perfectly suited to the physical demands of high altitude.

  Our work was strenuous at that altitude, but for me the work is part of my adjustment to altitude. Pushing the body, keeping it exercised and active at those elevations, is, I think, important and contributes to acclimatization. I enjoyed the measured, regular schedule and the rhythms of the work, and every evening the physical fatigue was so great that sleep came easily.

  *Fischer had embraced Lopsang as a friend and as his protegé. He was strong, with a natural aptitude for high-altitude climbing, and Fischer was devoted to him. Lopsang regarded Fischer as a personal friend and hero, and worked for Fischer although he offered Lopsang less money than his competitors.

  CHAPTER 6

  DOING THE DETAILS

  As Boukreev and the Sherpas made Base Camp ready, Gammelgaard, Fischer, and his publicity agent, Jane Bromet, waited in Kathmandu for the arrival of the rest of their team. Bromet, a climbing partner and close friend of Fischer’s, who was also from Seattle, had accompanied Fischer to Kathmandu and was planning to trek to Base Camp with him, the clients, and Dr. Ingrid Hunt.* In the months immediately preceding her arrival in Kathmandu, Bromet had been aggressively pursuing public relations work on Fischer’s behalf and had been successful in negotiating a job as correspondent for Outside Online, a Seattle-based provider of on-line news and features packaged for computer consumers of recreation and adventure news. Not a division of Outside, the magazine, Outside Online did have a cooperative relationship with Outside that allowed them to use the magazine’s logo and selected content for distribution.

  For Fischer and for Bromet, who was eager to establish herself in the adventure media industry, her successful negotiation of the Outside Online arrangement provided both opportunity and insurance. There was no guarantee of how Pittman would cover the expedition on the NBC Internet site to which she was reporting, no control over content. Bromet, loyal and devoted to Fischer’s objectives, could be counted upon to maintain the company line. There was one slight problem. Without Pittman’s resources, which included a satellite telephone, Bromet could hardly compete. Once she left Kathmandu and the hardwired telephone in her hotel room,
she was off the grid, out of luck. So, prior to departing Seattle, according to Bromet, she struck a deal that would allow her to use Pittman’s satellite phone. “The agreement was that I could use the sat phone that Sandy was provided by NBC… . I had talked with Jane, her secretary, saying, T need to use these sat phones. Is there a problem?’ ” According to Bromet, she was assured that her use of the phone would not be an issue. She was in business.

  One of Bromet’s first reports filed for Outside Online (http:/outside.starwave.com) from Kathmandu was an on-line interview with Fischer in which he described his clients and climbing guides, Beidleman and Boukreev.* In his responses to Bromet’s questions Fischer emphasized the “good mix” of his choice of guides, saying that their combination was “very good for safety.” Beidleman, he said, was “hungry to step on top of the world” and that he [Fischer] would feel comfortable, if problems arose with some of his clients on summit day, “to take somebody down [and] let Neal continue up with other climbers to get to the summit so everybody can sort of satisfy their goals.”

  Boukreev, Fischer introduced as his “head climbing guide” and extolled his achievements as a high-altitude climber who had summited several 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen. He went on to say about Boukreev’s role on his expedition, “Anatoli I know will not be using oxygen. Anatoli is an animal, a monster, that’s great.”*

  Introductions made, Bromet, before leaving Kathmandu, filed a number of dispatches that detailed some of the challenges immediately in front of Fischer’s expedition, including the possibility of delays on the trekking trail that Boukreev and the Sherpa team had already encountered.

  “From Kathmandu we’ve learned that yaks can’t get to Everest Base Camp. All expeditions have been delayed. There are now ten expeditions waiting to get to Base Camp.

  “Because of this, the porters have basically doubled their rates from 150 rupees to 300 rupees for the trip. The porters are asking for more because they have to work much harder and need more equipment under these conditions, and due to the demand for their services.”

  That problem, the oxygen delivery problem, the missing tent problem, were standard fare in the launching days of an expedition, and, according to Bromet, Fischer was “doing the details” as soon as their plane landed. “The moment Scott arrived in Kathmandu his telephone started to ring. The logistics of this whole effort boggle the mind.”

  One of the details that Fischer had to handle was professionally and personally problematic. Karen Dickinson contacted him from West Seattle to tell him that Gammelgaard, according to her books, still owed Mountain Madness somewhere around $20,000. “I sent Scott the paperwork while he was in Kathmandu. I said, ‘Either she signs this … what our deal is, or she doesn’t go. Don’t let her out of Kathmandu unless she signs this.’ “†

  Confrontation, especially with friends, was not something with which Fischer was comfortable. Bromet said of him, “He didn’t want to make people upset and wanted everybody to be comfy-cozy… . He hated, hated confrontation. He would just avoid it.” Fischer’s strength was elsewhere, according to Bromet. It was in his ability to take his expertise and natural abilities to perform in the mountains and to share that with his clients, to enable their own ambitions. And sometimes, he would promote those ambitions over his own. “He wanted them [the clients] to have their glory,” Bromet said. “He wanted them to feel the excitement and to feel the inner power and strength of what it’s like to stand on the top of Mount Everest and accomplish a goal like that. I mean, in a very kind, wonderful, almost tender way he wanted to impart that enthusiasm of the mountains and climbing to these people, as phony baloney as some of them were. To Scott it really didn’t matter what the reason was behind the clients’ drive. He just saw himself as being there to provide what motivation he could, a psychic motivation if you will. He was like a boat cruising full speed ahead, making a wake, and his clients would get caught up in the wake of this very positive, dynamic energy… . He was able to spread the good word and the excitement about climbing … even if you’re somebody that can barely tie your shoelaces… . ‘You can do it. We can do it,’ he would say. That’s who Scott Fischer was.”

  The itinerary that had been prepared for the Mountain Madness clients coming from the United States called for them to depart Los Angeles on March 23, to spend some time in Kathmandu, and then on March 28 to fly to Lukla (2,850 m). It was a prudent and conservative itinerary, designed specifically to help the clients avoid acute mountain sickness (AMS),* more commonly referred to as altitude sickness, which is brought on by going too high too fast, making large increases in elevation before properly allowing the body to adjust to the lower levels of oxygen that are available as one gains altitude.

  By planning to go initially to Lukla at 2,850 meters, Fischer was honoring a commonly held maxim: start below 3,040 meters and walk up, slowly. This routine is widely recommended by high-altitude specialists and has been incorporated in most of the more popular trekking and climbing guides for the Himalaya.*

  But, Fischer, just before the expedition began, announced a change of plans. Instead of helicoptering the clients to Lukla, he announced he was going to fly them with the expedition gear that had not gone with Boukreev and Ngima Sherpa to Syangboche on March 29.

  Syangboche was the same village to which Boukreev and Ngima Sherpa had flown four days earlier. For them the increase in altitude from Kathmandu had not been at all troublesome, but for the clients, the dramatic jump to Syangboche was felt almost immediately. Pittman reported to her NBC World Wide Web site, “Almost everyone on the team is feeling the effects of our sudden jump in elevation. We’re out of breath just walking around.” Additionally, she reported, two people were in bed with upset stomachs, possible Kathmandu casualties. One of the stricken was Lene Gammelgaard. She had left Kathmandu with the team. Dickinson, in West Seattle, never got her signature on the agreement papers.

  From Syangboche, as Boukreev and Ngima had done, the Mountain Madness team trekked to Namche Bazaar, where they spent the next two days resting and taking short hikes, trying to acclimatize. For some, AMS symptoms continued to linger, normal enough for the first day or two, but indicative of problems if the symptoms persist.

  Many of the team members resorted to taking Diamox, a sulfa-drug derivative that helped them metabolize more oxygen. Used by climbers for more than twenty years, the drug has a proven record, and knowledgeable physicians, like Dr. Charles Houston, one of the world’s authorities on high altitude medicine, recommend Diamox as a preventive. However, the drug’s manufacturer warns in literature it distributes, “Gradual ascent is desirable to try to avoid acute mountain sickness. If rapid ascent is undertaken and Diamox is used, it should be noted that such use does not obviate the need for prompt descent if severe forms of high altitude sickness occur.”

  Internet trekkers, thanks to Pittman, were kept informed almost every day of the Mountain Madness team’s progress as it headed toward Base Camp. Curiously, for those who had been keyboarding into Bromet’s dispatches, they noted her Outside Online site had been quiet since shortly after leaving Kathmandu. What they didn’t know about was the Lobuche showdown. “So, we get to Lobuche, the armpit of Nepal, and Sandy is very, very uptight with me … and then she says, ‘You can’t use that sat phone anymore… . NBC’s … going to pull all the money, and they said that it’s too much competition.’ ”

  Neal had sent word through the Khumbu Grapevine (by means of Sherpas) that the expedition would be arriving in Gorak Shep (5,170 m) on April 6, and I was eager to meet all the clients and see how the trek had gone. Seeing that most of the work on the camp was done, I trekked for two hours over the Khumbu Glacier, circumventing huge lakes and ice extrusions caused by the warming weather. On my route I encountered members of Henry Todd’s expedition who told me that our oxygen supply had finally arrived in Kathmandu and that it was now on a yak caravan somewhere outside of Namche Bazaar. Arriving in Gorak Shep, I reported to Scott Fischer about the work tha
t had been accomplished. I warmly greeted Neal, whom I have known since 1990 when I first visited America, and then in generous terms Scott introduced me to everyone else. This experience was important to me because, while I had already heard something of their backgrounds, I learn a lot more from observing the physical appearance and demeanor of people. For me, even in my own country, it is not so much what people say, but how they behave. There was much I had to learn about the clients who, I knew, had been training hard.

  This was not the first time, I knew, that Sandy Pittman had tried to climb Everest. Her healthy appearance at this altitude gave me no doubt about her well-being.

  Lene Gammelgaard looked as good as she had in Kathmandu, and I thought she was in a great frame of mind to be the first woman from Denmark to climb Everest. I was mildly alarmed, however, when she declared her intention to climb without supplementary oxygen. Her lack of experience at high altitude, I thought, made that a not so very wise thing to consider.

  The third woman mountain climber in our expedition, Charlotte Fox, had experience in successfully ascending the 8,000-meter peaks of Cho Oyu (8,153 m) and Gasherbrum II (8,035 m), and she had also ascended Aconcagua and McKinley. Her friend Tim Madsen, a highly qualified mountain skier, I understood did not have high-altitude experience, but he had extensive experience in summiting lower-elevation peaks in the western mountains of America and as a mountain skier.