Chapter Twenty
Doc stood at the edge of the precipice. Her headlamp hardly made a dent in the gaping blackness, but it reflected brightly off the makeshift bridge of four aluminum ladders lashed together end-to-end. It was the only way across the chasm facing us.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she said.
Admittedly, this was an intimidating first Khumbu Icefall ladder crossing because it was so long. The fact that it was still black outside was a blessing, though. At least she wouldn’t know this crevasse was probably one of the ones so deep you couldn’t see the bottom.
“Congratulations, you’re not in Base Camp anymore,” I joked, trying to help her relax.
Doc unclipped from the rope with a resolute snap, stepping back to clip in behind two of the A-Team clients. “I need a minute.”
I could empathize with her hesitation. Crossing the ladder bridges—which occur on the Nepal side of Mount Everest and nowhere else in the world—is terrifying the first few times.
Two clients later and Doc was next in line again.
“Come on, Doc, no sense stalling,” I said. “There are about ten more of these you’re going to have to cross before Camp One.”
“That isn’t very encouraging.”
“Most of them aren’t this wide.”
There was a groan from deep within the bowels of the perpetually unstable icefall. That got her moving.
Her crampons clunked dully as she placed her first foot on the rungs of the frost-covered ladder. Taking another step, she shook her head. One more step, and she’d be standing above the open air of the chasm, feeling the full wobble and vibration of the ladder. “This is insane,” she said, but she kept going.
Doc exhaled loudly as soon as her feet were off the ladder and back on snow. I tipped forward to the fronts of my crampons and bounced my heels a few times to stave off the shivers in the five-degree air as I waited for the rest of A-Team to cross. Five degrees wouldn’t be bad at all if I were moving, but standing around in it was torture.
By the time the sky was lightening, I was so frozen that I eagerly anticipated the warmth of the coming sun, even though with the warming came added risk in the already unstable icefall. Because of their enormous size, the ice blocks all around us gave the illusion of stability, but in reality, the blocks were like sandcastles at the ocean’s edge. The daylight increase in temperature gradually melted their foundations and each block could potentially be just a breath away from tipping.
Ideally, we would have been out of the icefall by this time, but there had been some traffic jams on the ladder bridges with the Go Big expedition coming down from a rotation. I’d heard reports over my radio that the Cuban team had already reached Camp One, but the tail end of A-Team had at least another hour to go.
I let my ascender hang on the fixed line so I could wiggle some feeling back into my freezing fingers and toes, and then I caught back up to the last client: Phil. His progress had been steady but tediously slow.
The sky grew lighter until we no longer needed our headlamps. I followed Phil through a maze of ice into a foreboding slot canyon, then up out of it using a vertical ladder. Even through the thick layers of my mittens, the cold from the metal zapped away any warmth I’d gained from wiggling my fingers.
On this plateau there was a clear view of the top of the icefall, after which would be the tents of Camp One. But first, we had to get through the rest of the icefall. Phurba, Glissading Glenn, Dorje, and Johnsmith were far ahead of us now. There was a block of ice as big as an office building to our right, and it was leaning at such a threatening angle that I longed to sprint away from Phil and up the plateau to get out of its way.
“You’ve got this,” I said. “Just keep it steady.”
He nodded, but instead of starting to walk again, he coughed. “I’m fine,” he said through a few more coughs. “I just need a minute.”
“Take one minute if you must, but it’s really best to keep moving,” I said.
Halfway through Phil’s minute, there was a crash louder than thunder.
It took a few seconds to register that the crash was near but thankfully not on top of us. Thinking immediately of the men just ahead, I ripped off my backpack to grab the avalanche shovel and probes.
After several frantic radio calls, Jim had it all sorted out. All Global clients and guides were accounted for. It was a serac collapse somewhere between the rest of A-Team and us.
Tashi.
Now I was thankful for Phil’s slow progress. Elated, actually. And I wanted out of this icefall. Right now.
Jim was on the radio from Base Camp, echoing that exact sentiment, urging the remaining A-Team laggards to hurry up and get out.
Five minutes of walking later, we reached the site of the serac collapse, where the fixed line dove eerily into a field of slushy snow. The outline of where the block had pulled away from the wall wasn’t large by Khumbu Icefall standards, but large enough to have been deadly for anyone beneath it. We had indeed been lucky.
“We’re going to have to come off the line,” I told Phil. “We’ll be able to pick it back up as soon as we’re through this.”
Phil was clearly shaken, but he was able to mimic my steps as I pulled my ascender off the line and clipped it to my harness. Honestly, I was shaken up, too. A serac collapse like that is exactly why you don’t want to be in the icefall when the day starts heating it up.
The slope was barely angled more than a beginner ski run, but to be safe I got the spare rope out of my pack and tied us together with a pair of figure eights through our harnesses. I sent Phil out in front of me, and when he was about ten feet ahead, I began walking, too.
This was the normal way to travel on a mountain. A mountain that did not have a collective pool of money to string twelve miles of fixed rope up the mountain like a handrail straight to the summit. I’d never traveled on a two-person rope team with just me and a client, and it was not a good feeling. Phil was skinny, but he was tall, and if he fell, the force would easily take me down, too. Thankfully, the slope was so gentle that a fall was unlikely.
So, then, why was I nervous about this? My crampons crunched unsteadily through the mix of packed snow and ice. That unsteady sound was my answer. I hadn’t been through the icefall this year, and I didn’t know what this rubble was covering. What if we were on top of a crevasse?
“Phil!” I yelled. I motioned urgently for him to follow me back to the side we’d come from.
We had to get back to solid snow immediately. Sweat broke out across my forehead. I waved him on faster. As much as we needed to get out of the icefall, we had to do it the right way, even if it meant backtracking so we could belay each other across the rubble.
Even through the panic, I worried that I was being paranoid. That method of crossing would take a half hour, at least. A half hour that we didn’t have.
I desperately wished Dad or another Global guide were here to weigh in on what the best option was. But there was no one; just me and my client. This was being a high-altitude mountaineering guide. There is no one else.
Just as my feet hit solid snow, there was an explosion, followed by a distinct whoosh and drop.
The rope hissed and cracked as loud as a bullwhip.
I didn’t even have time to scream.