North Col soon is absolutely essential if we are to come close to meeting the Deacon’s summiting date of May 17.
The first 300 feet or so of elevation consists of little more than a steep slope. Mallory and the others before him—including the Deacon—had spent entire days using their ice axes to hack footholds into the icy snow crust for the porters. Even then, the steps would soon fill with spindrift and new snowfall and would require more days of “maintenance” hacking—heavy work above 21,000 feet. And to minimize the exertion of the porters, the climbers had hacked the steps back and forth across the face of the snow slope in easy switchbacks.
Not today.
Jean-Claude is as good as his word and forges a crampon-kicked path straight up the 1,000-foot incline, keeping the line a hundred yards or so to the right of where the seven Sherpas had died in the avalanche in 1922. Even this close to the bottom, we’re putting in fixed ropes—the lighter three-eighths-inch cotton “Mallory rope” for this more casual incline at the base of the steeper slope—and every 50 feet or so Jean-Claude pauses as I use a wooden mallet to pound in tall, sharpened wooden stakes with eyelets atop them. We’re all carrying heavy coils of rope (with more in the rucksacks), and the thinner cotton rope goes quickly.
Even though “breaking trail” with 12-point crampons is infinitely easier than wallowing waist-deep in snow and hacking out steps, I can soon hear Jean-Claude’s heavy breathing. All of us fall into the rhythm of three paces, pause, gasp, then three more steps up.
“It’s time to go to the gas,” cries the Deacon the next time both ropes pause in our long vertical line.
This is the Deacon’s Rule—above 22,000 feet, all possible summit climbers will go to oxygen tanks. Rather than have us all climb with a full O2 rig, J.C. has separated out one tank of English air for each rucksack carried by us four sahibs, and one tank each for Tenzing Bothia, Nyima Tsering, and the other three Tigers climbing with us. Those full sets we’ll save for assaults above the North Col.
“I don’t really need the English air yet,” calls up Reggie.
“I’m still all right,” calls down J.C. from his perch above us.
The Deacon shakes his head. “Feel free to set the valves at their lowest flow, but we go on oxygen from this point on while doing heavy climbing.”
I feign reluctance, but in truth the headache I’d gotten rid of yesterday is trying to creep back in—the pain throbbing to my pulse as I gasp for breath during each short rest break—and I’m relieved when, with the mask covering my face below my goggles, I hear the soft hiss of air. The flow valve can be set to 1.5 liters of air per minute—the lowest setting—or 2.2 liters per minute. I choose the lower rate of flow.
Within a minute, I feel as if someone has given me a shot of pure adrenaline. J.C. doubles his climbing speed even as the snow slope becomes much steeper and more treacherous and a gap begins to open between the four of us on the first rope and Reggie and her four Sherpas. Babu Rita and the other three porters are carrying and climbing stolidly enough, but they soon can’t match the pace of those of us on oxygen.
We run out of the Mallory-type clothesline rope precisely where we’d planned to, and the Deacon signals for us to switch over to his heavier Miracle Rope. The slope is steep enough now that we could rappel down it—if we learn to trust the new rope for such previously unheard-of long rappels—and we begin feeding it out minus the eyelet stakes.
At our next pause around 11:00 a.m., as we wait for Reggie and her Tiger Team to catch up, I realize that we’re more than 600 feet up the 1,000-foot snow and ice wall. The exposure is severe—the Camp III tents look very small and distant from here—but the combination of fixed rope anchored by ice screws at intervals and the almost unbelievable grip of our 12-point crampons and short ice hammers gives us a sense of real security.
It’s during this rest about 200 feet below the beginning of the sheer ice wall that the Deacon gestures for J.C. and me to trade places. Jean-Claude signs that he still has plenty of energy to spare, but the Deacon merely repeats his hand commands. For a minute both J.C. and I are untied and unbelayed as we trade places in the vertical line. In the lead now, I switch my oxygen tank regulator from the 1.5-liter minimum flow to the 2.2-liter- per-minute full flow rate. There should be enough to get me to the North Col all right, but I’ll be lowering that flow before too long. I’m sure that the Deacon will want Jean-Claude to take the lead on the vertical face of blue ice looming above us.
I admit that my thrill at finally taking the lead on this expedition is mixed with some disappointment that I won’t be the first to climb an ice wall at this altitude with nothing more than 12-point crampons and a short ice hammer in each hand. J.C. had enjoyed that honor.
As we stay stuck to the steep wall below the vertical section, even though I’ve stripped off all goose down garments and stowed them in my rucksack and have been climbing with only a wool shirt and cotton undershirt on, I’m all but drenched with sweat. The entire upper basin of the East Rongbuk Glacier and the North Col have been in direct sunlight now for some time; the Camp III area more than 60 stories beneath us is a glaring basin of bright light.
Reggie and her Tigers—I can see Babu Rita’s white grin from 50 feet away—catch up, a heavy coil of Miracle Rope is passed up to me, and after we’ve all had another minute or two of rest, I tighten my oxygen mask and start my own crampon-and-ice-hammer ascent.
Fifteen minutes into this I realize that I’ve never felt stronger on a mountain. My headache is gone. My arms and legs are suffused with a new energy even while my spirit is filled with a renewed sense of confidence.
This new type of ice climbing which J.C. says he’s stolen from the top German climbers is
For the first time I’m beginning to believe that our little band might have a real chance at summiting Mount Everest. I know that the Deacon has been considering moving out onto the North Face from Camp V or VI, duplicating Colonel Norton’s 1924 attempt on the Great Couloir—traverse off the ridge to the right above the Yellow Band until reaching the scar of snow that stretches straight up to the snowfield below the Summit Pyramid—and if the quality of the frozen snow in that couloir is anything like that of the North Col face here, such a plan would seem to make sense. Climbing on oxygen, leaving the tent before sunrise—trusting our Finch-and-Reggie down clothing to keep us alive in the unrelenting cold—we could easily make the summit and be back before sunset if the climbing were as straightforward 12-point crampon and ice hammer work as today’s has been.
I pause in such thinking before my dreams outrun reality’s headlights. Even now, part of me knows that nothing really will “come easily” on Mount Everest. I’ve learned from listening to the Deacon and through reading and listening to others—as well as through our hard experience at Camp III—that everything this mountain gives, she plucks away just as quickly and certainly. Perhaps the Great Couloir will be part of our plans, but I remind myself that no part of this ascent will turn out, in the long run, to be “easy.”
Suddenly we’re at the vertical ice. I pause again, breathing heavily but not gasping into my mask, allow the Deacon just below me to bang in the ice screws for the last section of fixed Miracle Rope, and—trusting my crampon points and the sunken adzes of the two ice hammers far more than I would have thought possible before today—lean far back to stare up at the gleaming wall of ice that is the North Col’s last full barrier before we beat her.
It seems impossible. To my right a few yards, I can see various cracks and tumbled ice boulders—all that is left of the ice chimney that George Mallory had free-climbed a year ago. I’d seen one photograph of that climb and heard Deacon’s description of it—Mallory’s moves being one part spider to two parts gymnast, his fast, vertical scuttle impossible to imitate even by the expert climbers coming up behind him. That’s where Sandy Irvine’s rope ladder had come in so useful to the porters and later climbers. We’d brought rope and wood caver’s ladders for just that purpose, but the plan was to lower them from the top of the North Col ledge, not fix them as we ascend.
I give the Deacon a thumbs-up—I can still take the lead onto the vertical ice if he wants—but he shakes his head and looks up and beyond me at J.C., who is directly above both of us now on the extremely steep slope. One gloved palm up—the Deacon is questioning whether Jean-Claude has enough energy for this final assault. I know that the Deacon himself will lead this 200-foot vertical pitch if Jean-Claude can’t. It’s the main reason that the Deacon hasn’t yet taken the lead on this morning’s climb.
J.C. gives a thumbs-up—his oxygen mask, goggles, and leather flying helmet hide his expression and features—and passes his rope and other loads down to Nyima Tsering next in line.
Once again he and I trade places, but much more gingerly this time since a slip here would lead to an
