Outside, I stretch and take a few careful steps away from the snow-heaped tents. Too many steps and I’ll be in crevasse territory or near the edge of the Col. When I’m sure I’m on safe ground, I pause and look down and up and around.
What an incredible sight.
The moon is waning somewhere between half and quarter full, but there’s enough light from that bright sliver and from the full sky of stars to make the snow slopes and summit of Changtse behind me and Everest above me glow white and bright as if generating their own cold lunar radiance. To the north, below the Col, heavy moonlit cloud masses churn in the milky light, surging as thick as overflowing cream to within 200 or 300 feet of the top of the North Col. Camp III and everything below is socked in—as I would later hear my biplane-pilot friends use the term—but the sky up here is bright with stars and the moon. Farther to the north, rising out of the clouds like the finned spine of some great glowing saurian thing, I can see a procession of snow-topped 8,000-meter peaks marching deep into Tibet, perhaps into China.
“An impressive view, isn’t it?”
I just about jump off the Col at the sound of the soft voice behind me. The Deacon’s been standing there all this time.
“How long have you been up?” I whisper.
“A while.”
“Is that the monsoon piling up down there?”
The Deacon-shadow shakes its head. “Remember, the monsoon comes from the west and south. That’s just the storm from the north that’s been bothering us. There’s a lot of weather from the north until about ten days to a week before the monsoon arrives from the west. That week or so is the best climbing weather of the year for Everest.”
He pours something from a thermos and hands me the cup. I drink it greedily: tepid Ovaltine.
“Do you think we’re in that window of good weather?” I whisper.
“Hard to tell, Jake. But I think we should push on to Camp Five today.”
I sip my drink and nod. “Shall I wake the others?”
“No, let them sleep,” whispers the Deacon. “Jean-Claude’s worn out. I notice that Reggie’s not sleeping well…had to use the oxygen repeatedly. I’ll make breakfast for you climbers starting in an hour. You can sleep until five or so.”
“‘You climbers’?” I repeat. “Aren’t you climbing to Camp Five today?”
“I don’t think so.” He’s speaking to me, but his eyes are constantly scanning the moonlit North Ridge, the North East Ridge, and the summit of Everest. “With luck, the two Meade tents that we positioned there will still be up there waiting for you. You and Reggie and Jean-Claude can settle in and prepare for the search for Bromley. I think to do a search in the right way, we’ll also have to have a Camp Six as close to twenty-seven thousand feet as we can. I’ll go down when you three start climbing and come back up later today with Pasang and the strongest Tigers. We’ll use Jean-Claude’s bicycle apparatus to get heavy loads up to the North Col and then repack food, oxygen rigs, and at least one tent for the highest camp and get it to you tomorrow morning. Monday.”
“Today’s summit day,” I whisper. “The seventeenth.”
I can see the Deacon’s teeth gleam in the moonlight. “If it weren’t for this search, it could be. All four of us push straight on and make the bid for the summit, returning to Camp Five by dark.”
“But you’re not going to do that? I thought you—the three of us—were going to make a dash for the summit and search afterward. What made you change your mind?”
The thin shadow shakes its hooded head. “I could lie to Lady Bromley-Montfort and tell her that we’d look for her cousin’s remains on the way down from the summit, but I’ve been up above twenty-six thousand feet, Jake. She was right in Darjeeling. One shot at the highest ridges on Everest and this damned mountain just takes everything out of you. One day you’re filled with adrenaline and ready to go for the summit come hell or high water. The next day, Sherpas are helping you stagger down to Base Camp—your energy gone, your heart enlarged, your eyes half-blinded, and your toes and fingers frozen. I almost set the summit dash for today, but I promised the lady that we’d search for Percival, and we’ll spend a couple of days doing just that before we decide if we’re still strong enough for a summit attempt.”
I look up at the snow-to-black whaleback of the North Ridge rising steeply above us. I haven’t brought an oxygen rig out, and I find myself gasping for breath just to keep standing there. Part of me is relieved at this reprieve—I don’t want to disappear up on those heights the way Mallory and Irvine did last year—but a larger part of me is bitterly disappointed. This may be the end of our summit dreams. Why has the Deacon changed his mind at this late date? Our goal has always been to climb the damn mountain.
“That will mean a lot of time spent above eight thousand meters,” I finally say aloud.
“Probably too much.” He seems to be acknowledging that he’s decided to throw away our best chance at climbing Mount Everest, but he’s not telling me why he’s decided this. Especially so late in the game. I can see the North East Ridge gleaming like a highway of diamonds far above us. All the way to the summit. And no hint of the usual killer winds.
“Do you think there’s much chance of actually finding Lord Percival?” I manage at last.
“No,” says the Deacon. “Not one chance in a hundred would be my guess. But we promised we’d try. We took Lady Bromley’s money.”
I have nothing to say to that. I hand back my empty cup, and he screws it onto the top of the thermos.
“Go get some more sleep, Jake. Take a few whiffs of good old English air, stay warm, and sleep if you can. I’ll wake you when I get breakfast heating on the Unna cooker.”
Before crawling back into the tent, I take a final look around at the magical landscape: Everest and its lesser attendant peaks glowing in the starlight, clouds clustered below the level of the North Col, only the slightest visible streamer of spindrift coming off the summit of the ultimate peak we’re climbing toward in a few hours. For the first time since we’ve set out from England, part of me feels, with real assurance rather than abstract bravado—We could have climbed this damned mountain today. We still can climb it in the next couple of days if we don’t waste a lot of time hunting for a dead man. It’s possible.
Sunday, May 17, 1925
As it turns out, it’s just Reggie and me plodding up this granite-slabbed rib toward Camp V today.
Jean-Claude had admitted that he wasn’t feeling so well—“a bit seedy,” he’d said, borrowing the Deacon’s English phrase—and we all decided that he should go down with the Deacon to help organize the load carrying to the North Col and then come up to Camps V and VI the next day.
“It will give me a chance to use my bicycle,” says J.C.
I don’t believe I’ve taken the time to describe the contraption that Jean-Claude hauled all the way across Tibet in pieces and dutifully assembled our first day up on the North Col. The device did have bicycle parts—a bicycle seat, pedals, gears, bicycle chains—but it also had an upholstered backrest (since the person on the contraption would be pedaling it while lying almost on his back, knees higher than his head) and metal support struts that went out six feet in four directions, each anchored deeply into the ice shelf with ice screws, hammered pitons, and a spiderweb of ropes. That bicycle-doodad wasn’t going to fall off that narrow shelf unless the North Col glacier itself calved off a huge piece.
A meter or so above the pedals, a nine-foot metal arm—J.C. had brought the components in three-foot sections—had been bolted together to become a sturdy horizontal flange, also reinforced by multiple tie-downs, which held a third bicycle gear and pulley assembly.