George Leigh Mallory and most other Everesters, Hall’s strategy was to lay siege to the mountain. Sherpas would progressively establish a series of four camps above Base Camp—each approximately 2,000 feet higher than the last—by shuttling cumbersome loads of food, cooking fuel, and oxygen from encampment to encampment until the requisite material had been fully stocked at 26,000 feet on the South Col. If all went according to Hall’s grand plan, our summit assault would be launched from this highest camp—Camp Four—a month hence.
Even though we clients wouldn’t be asked to share in the load hauling, * we would need to make repeated forays above Base Camp before the summit push in order to acclimatize. Rob announced that the first of these acclimatization sorties would occur on April 13—a one-day round-trip to Camp One, perched on the uppermost brow of the Khumbu Icefall, a vertical half mile above.
We spent the afternoon of April 12, my forty-second birthday, preparing our climbing equipment. The camp resembled an expensive yard sale as we spread our gear among the boulders to sort clothing, adjust harnesses, rig safety tethers, and fit crampons to our boots (a crampon is a grid of two-inch steel spikes that is clamped to the sole of each boot for purchase on ice). I was surprised and concerned to see Beck, Stuart, and Lou unpacking brand-new mountaineering boots that, by their own admission, had scarcely been worn. I wondered if they knew the chance they were taking by coming to Everest with untried footwear: two decades earlier I’d gone on an expedition with new boots and had learned the hard way that heavy, rigid mountaineering boots can cause debilitating foot injuries before they’ve been broken in.
Stuart, the young Canadian cardiologist, discovered that his crampons didn’t even fit his new boots. Fortunately, after applying his extensive tool kit and considerable ingenuity to the problem, Rob managed to rivet together a special strap that made the crampons work.
As I loaded my backpack for the morrow, I learned that between the demands of their families and their high-powered careers, few of my fellow clients had had the opportunity to go climbing more than once or twice in the previous year. Although everyone appeared to be in superb physical shape, circumstances had forced them to do the bulk of their training on StairMasters and treadmills rather than on actual peaks. This gave me pause. Physical conditioning is a crucial component of mountaineering, but there are many other equally important elements, none of which can be practiced in a gym.
But maybe I’m just being a snob, I scolded myself. In any case, it was obvious that all of my teammates were as excited as I was about the prospect of kicking their crampons into a genuine mountain come the morning.
Our route to the summit would follow the Khumbu Glacier up the lower half of the mountain. From the bergschrund * at 23,000 feet that marked its upper end, this great river of ice flowed two and a half miles down a relatively gentle valley called the Western Cwm. As the glacier inched over humps and dips in the Cwm’s underlying strata, it fractured into countless vertical fissures—crevasses. Some of these crevasses were narrow enough to step across; others were eighty feet wide, several hundred feet deep, and ran half a mile from end to end. The big ones were apt to be vexing obstacles to our ascent, and when hidden beneath a crust of snow they would pose a serious hazard, but the challenges presented by the crevasses in the Cwm had proven over the years to be predictable and manageable.
The Icefall was a different story. No part of the South Col route was feared more by climbers. At around 20,000 feet, where the glacier emerged from the lower end of the Cwm, it pitched abruptly over a precipitous drop. This was the infamous Khumbu Icefall, the most technically demanding section on the entire route.
The movement of the glacier in the
Even though we clients wouldn’t be asked to share in the load hauling, * we would need to make repeated forays above Base Camp before the summit push in order to acclimatize. Rob announced that the first of these acclimatization sorties would occur on April 13—a one-day round-trip to Camp One, perched on the uppermost brow of the Khumbu Icefall, a vertical half mile above.
We spent the afternoon of April 12, my forty-second birthday, preparing our climbing equipment. The camp resembled an expensive yard sale as we spread our gear among the boulders to sort clothing, adjust harnesses, rig safety tethers, and fit crampons to our boots (a crampon is a grid of two-inch steel spikes that is clamped to the sole of each boot for purchase on ice). I was surprised and concerned to see Beck, Stuart, and Lou unpacking brand-new mountaineering boots that, by their own admission, had scarcely been worn. I wondered if they knew the chance they were taking by coming to Everest with untried footwear: two decades earlier I’d gone on an expedition with new boots and had learned the hard way that heavy, rigid mountaineering boots can cause debilitating foot injuries before they’ve been broken in.
Stuart, the young Canadian cardiologist, discovered that his crampons didn’t even fit his new boots. Fortunately, after applying his extensive tool kit and considerable ingenuity to the problem, Rob managed to rivet together a special strap that made the crampons work.
As I loaded my backpack for the morrow, I learned that between the demands of their families and their high-powered careers, few of my fellow clients had had the opportunity to go climbing more than once or twice in the previous year. Although everyone appeared to be in superb physical shape, circumstances had forced them to do the bulk of their training on StairMasters and treadmills rather than on actual peaks. This gave me pause. Physical conditioning is a crucial component of mountaineering, but there are many other equally important elements, none of which can be practiced in a gym.
But maybe I’m just being a snob, I scolded myself. In any case, it was obvious that all of my teammates were as excited as I was about the prospect of kicking their crampons into a genuine mountain come the morning.
Our route to the summit would follow the Khumbu Glacier up the lower half of the mountain. From the bergschrund * at 23,000 feet that marked its upper end, this great river of ice flowed two and a half miles down a relatively gentle valley called the Western Cwm. As the glacier inched over humps and dips in the Cwm’s underlying strata, it fractured into countless vertical fissures—crevasses. Some of these crevasses were narrow enough to step across; others were eighty feet wide, several hundred feet deep, and ran half a mile from end to end. The big ones were apt to be vexing obstacles to our ascent, and when hidden beneath a crust of snow they would pose a serious hazard, but the challenges presented by the crevasses in the Cwm had proven over the years to be predictable and manageable.
The Icefall was a different story. No part of the South Col route was feared more by climbers. At around 20,000 feet, where the glacier emerged from the lower end of the Cwm, it pitched abruptly over a precipitous drop. This was the infamous Khumbu Icefall, the most technically demanding section on the entire route.
The movement of the glacier in the
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