The Everest Files (15 page)

As it happened they did see an avalanche, but it was some distance away on the west side of the Lhotse Face and didn't threaten any of the climbers going up.

Seven long rope lengths followed, Kami counting off the changeovers in his head.

Ten pulls. Rest. Ten pulls. Rest. Breathe in hard. Trying to fill the lungs with air so thin it hardly seemed to exist.

They ate a couple of energy bars for lunch and sipped from a flask of tea. Far below them they could see the three tiny dots that were Sasha and her two companions. They were already halfway down the Western Cwm.

‘Let's move,' Brennan told them, ‘We don't want to be arriving at the col in the dark.'

Then came the Geneva Spur, a long, undulating slope which seemed to go on for ever. False expectations kept cropping up and Kami often found himself thinking ‘there's the top of the rise.'

But it wasn't. The gradient up this final stretch of the Lhotse Face was relentless right until the bitter end. Kami was taking a dozen breaths for every step of progress and even Brennan was struggling. But finally they front-pointed up a section of windslab and found themselves on the flatter terrain of the south col.

Kami took a good look around, impressed by what he saw. In his mind he had anticipated the flat area would be something the size of a football pitch. In fact it was many times larger.

Everest is always bigger than you can imagine, Kami thought.

They lay down for a rest, sharing a flask of hot spiced tea as they watched Norgay and the cameraman coming up that same punishing final section of the Lhotse Face.

‘Now they're feeling it,' Brennan remarked with some relish.

At that moment Brennan's walkie talkie beeped into life and some unwelcome news came through;

A huge serac had collapsed in the icefall. No-one had been hurt but several ladders had been buried and the trail was closed for the next day or two while repairs could be made.

‘We won't get that extra oxygen now,' Brennan announced gloomily to Kami and the others. ‘We're really on our own.'

The four of them started out across the col, Brennan furious at the recent bad news, George so fatigued he was staggering as if he was drugged.

Kami could hear Brennan getting more and more irritated as they approached the area where the tents would be pitched. There were two dead climbers not far off, huddled figures which had been partly covered with small cairns of stones.

‘We need a shot of those dead guys,' he kept saying, ‘why aren't you getting this?'

George did not respond, and showed no sign he had even registered the command.

‘You want me to do it for you?' Brennan snapped finally.

The sarcastic tone seemed to wake George up. He roused himself enough to turn on the video, framing up a wide shot to record the impromptu graves.

As soon as the shots were completed the two Westerners threw off their rucksacks and collapsed onto the rocky surface of the col while Kami and Norgay put up the tents.

Brennan went across to the Japanese team to try and buy some oxygen to supplement the ten bottles his team had already stashed at the col. The answer was a firm ‘no' which put the American into an even more poisonous mood.

There was not enough oxygen for all four of them to summit.

Brennan and George disappeared into their tent as soon as it was up. They took two oxygen cylinders with them and now Norgay pulled two more cylinders off the pile and Kami followed him into the tent.

‘You tried this before?' he asked Kami.

‘No.'

Kami placed the mask against his face and took an exploratory breath. He smiled as he felt the precious gas flooding into his lungs, amazed at the instant feeling of warmth that suffused through his body.

‘Set it on one and a half litres,' Norgay told him. ‘It'll last for hours like that.'

Kami clicked the gauge around as Norgay had told him, then lay back on his sleeping bag to rest. He knew Alex and George would be waiting for tea in the tent next door but he was just dead beat.

‘Kami!' Brennan's roar shocked him out of his slumber. ‘You got the cooker going?'

‘Yes sir,' Kami called back.

While he waited for the ice to melt he noticed that his nose and cheeks were red raw with blisters. He had forgotten to put on his glacier cream that morning and later when he tried to sleep the pain just got worse. He tossed and turned all night, unable to find a comfortable position.

Only when he thought of Shreeya could he find a type of relief. He focused on happy memories of their time together, bathing at the village well in the warm air of the afternoon, watching the sun set from the high meadow.

In that way he managed to get a little sleep.

The next day was the first of their possible summit days but it seemed the wind hadn't read the schedule. A biting northerly blast was running hard on the summit ridge and the team made the prudent decision to rest for a day and do some filming if conditions improved.

At midday it slacked off a bit, allowing them to march across the col and do some filming on the ridge. Alex and Norgay formed a climbing pair, moving slowly up the ice band as George shot them from various angles.

Later he let Kami operate the camera for a few of the takes, giving him the freedom to choose the shots. It was thrilling to be in control of the kit and Kami loved it.

‘You've got a natural eye,' George told him. Kami was pleased with the praise.

It was savagely cold. A few minutes standing still was enough to numb fingers and toes. George began to complain about his feet.

Alex did a piece to camera: ‘We're in the death zone now. Well above eight thousand metres and it really feels extreme. My head feels weird, kind of like it's filled with candy floss. You can easily imagine how people just lie down in the snow and never get up again.'

Finally, they wrapped for the day, heading back for the tents. As they forged a trail back across the col George told Norgay ‘my toes still feel weird.'

He stopped and stamped his foot, trying to get the circulation going.

‘Not here,' Norgay told him. ‘In the tent.'

Back in the camp the climbers lay resting for a while then wearily stripped off their crampons, harnesses and wind suits. It took them an age to perform these simple motions; commands from the brain were running at half speed and their hands floundered at the tasks.

‘Let's see your feet, George,' Brennan said.

As George stripped off his two layers of boots there was a collective groan. Three of the cameraman's toes were badly frostbitten, the tips bloated with puffy white blisters, the skin to the middle joint unnaturally waxy and grey. He touched them gingerly, examining them with the expression of a man who doesn't quite believe what he's seeing.

‘That's it,' he said. ‘I blew it.'

‘Dead man's feet,' Norgay said with ghoulish relish, ‘That's what we call them.'

‘That's not helpful,' Brennan flashed Norgay an acid look.

‘Does it hurt?' Kami asked sympathetically. The frostbite looked horribly similar to Nima's fingers.

‘Not yet,' George told him, ‘but I guess I'll have to thaw them out.'

‘It doesn't look so bad,' Brennan said, ‘Maybe you can carry on.'

‘Not if I can't walk,' George pointed out with a catch in his voice. ‘If I lose these toes I'll never climb again.'

‘Bummer.' Brennan spat out the word, shaking his head in disbelief at this new stroke of bad fortune.

Norgay took hold of George's foot, examined it with an expert eye. ‘They won't have to cut them,' he said finally, ‘but your Everest is over.'

George tried to flex the toes, sucking in his breath as the pain began to strike. They brewed up some tea and drank it in silence, all four of them just staring at George's toes and figuring out what this would now change.

‘I take you back to Camp Three now,' Norgay said quietly. ‘Then Base Camp tomorrow.'

Kami thought Brennan might challenge this. Norgay was, after all, far more experienced than he was and might be more useful up high. But Brennan kept quiet and Kami remembered that the American had questioned the veteran Sherpa's motivation on more than one occasion.

Moreover, Kami knew how to operate the camera. That was probably the deciding factor, he thought.

George was close to tears. The pain was intense as his toes gradually thawed out and he was naturally freaking out at the thought he might lose them. The countdown to gangrene and putrefaction had started now and he knew that he had to get medical attention fast.

‘I've let you down,' George told Alex, ‘I figured I'd be good for the summit.'

‘Don't blame yourself, man. We'll still get some shots,' Brennan told him, but the tone of disappointment in his voice was impossible to miss.

They exited the tent and Brennan and George embraced. George slapped Kami on the back.

‘You're a good strong lad, Kami,' he said, ‘you take care up there and get some great shots, OK?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Go well, Alex,' George told the boss. ‘I know you'll make it.'

‘Thanks, buddy,' Brennan told him. ‘Get yourself down to Kathmandu and save those toes, you hear?'

Norgay swung his pack onto his back and placed an arm around George.

‘Let's go,' he said. Then they were off, two small figures lost on the vast plateau of the col. Kami watched them as they headed for the top of the fixed ropes which would guide them down the Lhotse Face, George giving him a final wave of the hand just before they limped from view.

It had all happened so quickly, Kami thought. One moment the mountain is benign, the summit within grasp. The next you are hurrying down with a condition that could leave you disabled for life.

‘Looks like it's just the two of us,' Brennan said. ‘We'll wake at midnight and leave as quickly as we can. And at least we'll have enough oxygen now.'

Those hours before departure seemed endless to Kami. He was trying to sleep with the oxygen mask on and finding it almost impossible. The fibreglass shell of the mask had eroded a blister on the bridge of his nose and it was horribly sore.

Brennan had slumped back onto his sleeping bag, utterly burned out by the filming session. The American's cough was persistent, he spat phlegm into a handkerchief and sucked on throat lozenges one after the other.

‘Do me a favour Kami, can you brew up some tea?'

Kami flicked the lighter.

Brennan wriggled into his sleeping bag and wrapped himself up.

‘Wake me up when it's ready,' he said, falling straight away into a profound sleep.

Kami, too, was longing to lie down. The desire to sleep was almost irresistible and Brennan's gentle snoring only made it more difficult to stay awake.

But he knew the importance of brewing up the tea, and he forced himself to watch the ice through drooping eyelids as it slowly, oh so slowly and reluctantly, yielded to the heat of the flame.

But finally it was done and he woke Brennan and handed him the steaming mug of tea. There was no sugar to be had here at the col so they both poured sachets of muesli into the liquid to sweeten it and give it substance.

Brennan slept for a couple more hours as Kami melted more ice. Then, just before midnight, Kami began to notice that the fabric of the tent was no longer flapping around. He unzipped the outer shell and poked his head out to take a look.

The clouds that had menaced the summit for the last three days were now gone.

It was perfectly still. Not a breath of wind.

‘It's clear,' he told Brennan, shaking him awake. ‘Take a look.'

‘Cool. We're on.'

Then the dreaded process of getting dressed began – again. The struggle to climb into the down suit, arms and legs flailing in the tight confines of the tent; the swollen feet that had to be jammed into snug inner boots, the laces laboriously tied with traumatised hands.

When Kami emerged from the tent he found the night was brilliantly clear. An entire symphony of stars was playing across the heavens, so bright he could actually pick out the luminescence of their reflected glow on the ice beneath his feet. He reached up to the breast pocket of his wind suit, felt the precious shape of the little shrine bell there.

‘Today,' he whispered, ‘today if the gods allow.'

The Japanese climbers had left some time earlier; Kami had heard them move past the tent. Now, on the lower section of the South East Ridge, Kami could see three distant pin pricks of light moving up towards the balcony traverse. They were about two hundred vertical metres above the col, climbing slowly but steadily and the young Nepali envied their head start.

‘Give me a hand with the crampons will you?' Brennan asked. Kami took off his gloves and kneeled in the opening of the tent to snap the metal spikes in place, threading the nylon strap through its double rings and pulling it back tight.

Brennan shuffled forward on his backside to exit the tent and accepted a helping hand from Kami to get to his feet. He slapped his hands together to encourage some circulation and shivered as the frigid night air sliced through his protective clothing.

‘This is it, man,' he said. ‘Do or die. We're not coming back without that summit.'

He raised his hand in a high five which Kami returned. The Nepali smiled but Brennan's words had struck him as hollow and the American's eyes did not have the same flash of light they had possessed earlier in the expedition.

‘Let's do this!'

They turned on the regulator valves on their oxygen bottles and began to trudge across the col, Brennan leading the way slowly towards the ridge. Kami came after, his legs feeling weaker than he had ever known them. The five bottles of oxygen in his backpack seemed an unbearable weight during this first half-hour, but Kami knew the pain would ease as his muscles warmed up.