mask, and stands gasping for a long moment before replying to Reggie’s question.
“Left…a little after…two a.m.,” he manages. “Camp…Five. Got there…yesterday…afternoon.”
I look at the Welsh miner’s lamp rigs still strapped over their wool caps just under their goose down hoods and have to smile. Between George Finch’s goose down garments, J.C.’s crampons and various other inventions, the Deacon’s new ropes and careful logistics, and my dashing, daring enthusiasm, we’ve all brought something special to this fourth and by far smallest expedition to Mount Everest. But it’s been Lady Bromley-Montfort’s damned miner’s lamps and idea of beginning the climb in the middle of the night, whether there’s a full moon out or not, that’s probably made the biggest difference in how high we’ll get.
“You made good time,” says Reggie. She unfurls her sleeping bag so that it’s at the Deacon’s feet. “Have a seat, gentlemen. But make sure your boot soles and heels have a good grip on something first.”
Pasang grins and continues standing, turning to look out at the view, then turning again to look at the Yellow Band, North East Ridge, and Summit Pyramid of Everest itself all looming so deceptively close above us. The Deacon takes great care in removing his rucksack—in 1922, he’d once told us, Howard Somervell had been somewhere around 26,000 feet when he’d carelessly set his pack down only to watch it fall 9,000 feet to the main Rongbuk Glacier—and propping it between two small boulders behind him as he slowly seats himself. Neither man has put on goggles yet; the Deacon’s face is burned so dark by high-altitude sunlight that he and Pasang might have passed for brothers.
“We…made good time,” the Deacon says at last, “because some…incredibly thoughtful…persons strung… hundreds of feet of…fixed rope on the few steep…parts.” He nods his thanks in our direction. “The red-flagged bamboo wands…through the…gullies were also…a…welcome touch.”
“It seemed the least we could do since we were coming this way anyway,” says Reggie with another warming smile.
“It’s good you…came up here a…day early,” says the Deacon. “Gives us a full extra day for searching the North Face.”
“We’re not going to search the
The Deacon smiles thinly and gestures downward. I notice that his lips are cracked and bleeding.
“We’ll follow the plan…of imagining a huge trapezoid…running down from the North East Ridge from…where the North Ridge meets it near the First Step.” He shifts awkwardly to look up toward the First Step, only the top of which is visible from this vantage point, and says, “My God, it all seems possible from here, does it not, Jake? But that
Reggie hands him her binoculars and the Deacon studies the Second Step the way I had earlier. “A bit of a rock-climbing problem, that,” he says. “But of course, that’s why we brought you along, Jake. You’re our leader on rock.”
“‘A bit of a rock-climbing problem’!” I exclaim. “I’ve been looking at that damned Second Step through the glasses for…the better part of an hour…when I haven’t been enjoying the sunrise…and it’s just as Norton or whoever it was at the RGS described it. The hundred-foot-tall vertical prow of a goddamned dreadnought coming out of the mists at you.” I take a few gulps of breath. “I apologize for the language, Reggie.”
“As you goddamned well should,” she says.
“Anyway,” continues the Deacon, shucking off his overmittens and opening gloved hands toward the steep expanse of rock below us, “we’ll search the trapezoid we…decided on earlier, but starting down from here, Camp Six, will be easier than climbing…from Camp Five.”
“Will you two have the energy to search today?” asks Reggie.
Pasang grins again. The Deacon makes a slightly sour face.
“We still have two full oxygen tanks left,” says the Deacon. “How about you two?”
“Two each,” I confirm.
As if reminded, the Deacon pulls his recently depleted tank out of his rucksack and disconnects it from the valves and rubber tubing. He starts to set it carefully between jagged rocks but Reggie stops him.
“Jake and I discovered something…fun…when we discarded our first tank yesterday evening,” she says.
The Deacon’s eyebrows rise slightly toward his miner’s lamp.
Reggie takes the tank from him, holds it high over her head with both gloved hands, and hurls it out and away from the North Face.
It hits about 60 feet down the slope, bounces another 50 or 60 feet before touching rock again, and keeps hurtling lower—a silver blur in the rich morning light—with echoing clangs that seem to go on forever. Then it disappears.
The Deacon shakes his head but grins. “If that lands on one of our Sherpa friends a mile below on the North Col,
“I’ll say what I said before,” Reggie says softly. “That’s still hundreds and hundreds of acres.
“Not quite vertical,” says the Deacon. “Thank heavens.” He reaches under his now unzipped down outer layer and pulls a folded sheet of paper from some pocket. As the Deacon unfurls it, I see a more formal version of a diagram he had drawn and which we’d discussed during the trek across Tibet and again at Base Camp.
Four horizontal lines in different-colored inks go zigzagging left to right and then back again across a sketch of the North Face of Everest stretching roughly between the North Shoulder, now to our east, and the Grand Couloir hundreds of yards to our west.
“Lady Bromley-Montfort,” the Deacon says formally, “you’ve been our prime climber so far, so if you’d be so kind as to continue on up about four hundred feet to the bottom of the Yellow Band above this basin and search from east to west along the ridge there below the Yellow Band gullies. I don’t believe…you’ll have to clamber up into any of the…gullies themselves. Just use your binoculars. The shelf up there sort of peters out just short of Norton’s Great Couloir, so please don’t go further than that. You can use the First Step on the ridge above as a guideline…just turn back before you get very far west beyond it.”
Reggie nods but says, “You’re not giving me the bottom of the Yellow Band because it’s the widest and safest and easiest ledge to traverse up here, are you?”
“On the contrary,” says the Deacon, his expression serious, “I’m giving it to you because that search route offers the longest fall. And also”—now his expression is mischievous rather than serious—“because it involves climbing and all the rest of us get to
“Yes?” Pasang says. It’s the first word I’ve heard from him today. He sounds no more breathless than if we were chatting at sea level.
“Would you be so kind as to descend a couple of hundred yards to that ill-defined rock rib…” The Deacon pauses and points it out. The “rib” is so ill-defined that it takes us all minutes to see it properly, but my guess is that it’s the same traversable “horizontal ridge” that Norton and Somervell had returned from the Grand Couloir on when Norton set the world’s highest climbing record of 28,600 feet last year—
“Please take that as far as it stays solid to the west, then drop down a few hundred feet and follow the best line back east toward the North Ridge,” continues the Deacon. He looks up at the tall Sherpa. “You did this morning’s climb brilliantly without oxygen, Pasang, but you might want to go onto English air for parts of the search. Just to help you stay alert.”
“All right,” says Pasang. He’s shielding his eyes and looking down at the steep rooftop slabs far below that will be his broad search area.
“I’ll take this large area of the basin between Dr. Pasang’s so-called ill-defined rib to the level of Camp Five,” says the Deacon.
“That’s a large area, Richard,” says Reggie. “And very steep. Very exposed.”
He shrugs. “And I’ll be very careful. Don’t forget to keep your goggles on, my friends. Even if you’re just on dark rock, remember…”
“Colonel Norton,” I say.
“Yes,” says the Deacon. “We’ll use one tank of oxygen apiece and try to keep the second tank in reserve for
