“…the worst part of all is almost certainly the Ice Fall…,” Owings was saying urgently.
Ice Fall? I thought. Was he talking about the near-vertical snow and ice face below the North Col at the head of the East Rongbuk Glacier? That was difficult, certainly—seven Sherpa porters had died in the avalanche there in ’22—but how could it be the “worst part” of an Everest expedition? Two expeditions had already climbed high above it, even transporting heavy loads up the ice face daily. Scores of trips. Last year Sandy Irvine had jury-rigged that rope and wood ladder to make the climb easier and safer for the porters. Even Pasang and Reggie, if she was to be believed—and I believed her—had free-climbed it, laboriously cutting steps into the ice face, and had been able to get to the North Col campsite and briefly above before bad weather pinned them down. We’d brought caving ladders and J.C.’s new 12-point crampons and his jumar doohickey to make the porters’ climb to the North Col easier and safer.
“I have the sequence,” Owings said, his voice a rasp. “White, green, then red. Make sure…keep them high, very high, and…”
This made no sense to me at all. Suddenly my boot slipped on a stone as I squatted by the stream, my bottle already full, and I heard the Deacon say, “Shhh, someone’s nearby.”
Red-faced, faking nonchalance, I capped my bottle, stood, and strolled as innocently as I could back up to the campsite, not sure if the Deacon and his famous friend could see me through the leafy branches or not.
The two moved a bit downstream, further out of sight and into a clearing where no one could crouch nearby unseen, and their intense exchange continued for another thirty minutes. Then the Deacon came back to camp alone.
“Isn’t Mr. Owings going to join us for dinner?” asked Reggie.
“No, he’s headed back this evening. Hopes to reach Darjeeling by tomorrow night,” replied the Deacon and looked sharply at me where I sat with my incriminating water bottle still in my hands. I looked down before I started blushing.
“Ree-shard,” said Jean-Claude, “you never told us that you knew K. T. Owings.”
“It never came up,” said the Deacon, taking his ease on one of the packing crates and resting his elbows on his wool-covered knees.
“I would very much have liked to meet Monsieur Owings,” continued J.C., his tone a shade accusing, I thought.
The Deacon shrugged. “Ken is a rather solitary fellow. He wanted to talk to me about something he did, and then he needed to get back.”
“Where does he live?” I managed to ask.
“In Nepal.” It was Reggie who answered. “Near Thyangboche, I believe. In the Khumbu Valley.”
“I didn’t think that white men—Englishmen—were allowed in Nepal,” I said.
“They aren’t,” said the Deacon.
“Mr. Owings went there after the War,” Reggie said. “I believe he has a Nepalese wife and several children. He’s been accepted there. He rarely crosses into India or Sikkim.”
The Deacon said nothing.
What’s the white-green-red sequence stuff all about? I wanted to ask the Deacon. Why is the ice face, or Ice Fall, as Owings called it, supposed to be the most dangerous part of the climb? Why was he talking about camping sites and caches? Has he found or left something on the north side of the mountain that the three previous English expeditions hadn’t stumbled upon?
“Did you happen to know Major Owings during the War?” asked Reggie.
“Yes, I knew him then,” said the Deacon. “And before.” He stood up and slapped his knees. “It’s getting late. Are we going to get Semchumbi busy cooking something tonight or just turn in hungry?”
Leaving the Rongbuk Monastery with many of the Sherpas grumbling about the lack of a blessing—grumbling at least until Dr. Pasang shouts them into a surly silence—the thirty-five of us trudge two miles down the valley and across the river toward the mouth of the Rongbuk Glacier until we reach the site of the three earlier expeditions’ Base Camp about an hour or so before sunset. The futile waiting at the monastery for the head lama Dzatrul Rinpoche to see us has wasted too much of our day.
I confess that I’m feeling somewhat depressed by the time we reach the Base Camp site. All three expeditions have camped at exactly this spot—within the glacier valley but shielded from the worst winds by a 40-foot-high moraine-rock ridge to the south, view open to the north whence we’ve just come, flat spots for the tents (some even free of larger rocks), and a small melt lake where the ponies, mules, and yaks we’ve traded for can drink. A glacial stream runs nearby, and although the water has to be boiled before drinking because of the nearby animal and human waste, and we prefer to melt clean snow to drink, the stream gives us water for bathing.
But there’s also filth and debris from the three previous British expeditions: tatters of torn tent canvas and broken poles; a litter of discarded oxygen tanks and frames; low rock walls that the wind has managed to tumble in places, heaps of not-yet-rusting discarded tin cans by the hundreds, some still full of rotting uneaten delicacies from last year’s expedition; and to the left of the main camping area, an obvious spot for the latrines along a line of flat stones. We’re greeted by hundreds of freeze-dried human turds lining a trench neither dug deep enough nor filled in when Norton and the others retreated from this spot.
Even more depressing, just downhill from the trashy site of Mallory’s base camp rises the tall pyramid of stones that the previous expedition raised as a memorial to those who’ve died on the mountain. The top inset boulder had been painted to read IN MEMORY OF THREE EVEREST EXPEDITIONS and below that is a boulder inscribed 1921 KELLAS in memory of the physician who died during the 1921 reconnaissance expedition that the Deacon had been part of. Below that, Mallory’s and Irvine’s names are inset there, as are the names of the seven Sherpas who died in the 1922 avalanche. The rock-pyramid memorial seems to turn the entire Base Camp area into a cemetery.
But grimmest of all somehow is the un-Matterhorn-like massif of Mount Everest itself, still some twelve miles up the windblown Rongbuk Glacier valley. We can see its western flanks and ridges glowing in the evening light during a break in the snow and near-constant cloud cover, but even at this distance, the mountain seems misshapen and far too large. Rather than a distinct mountain like Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn, Everest seems more like one infinitely huge fang along an impossible barrier of gigantic teeth. The wind spume from its summit and ridges now extends beyond the horizon to the east, streaming high above nearby Mount Kellas and the taller—and also too large, too tall, too steep, too massive, too distant—Himalayan peaks which stretch like a wall built by gods to block our path.
I can sense the Deacon’s distaste at setting up a camp here, but the Sherpas will carry no further this long day. The Deacon had always wanted to set up our first Base Camp more than three miles farther up the valley, where Camp I or Advanced Base Camp had been in the earlier efforts. But this Base Camp is already at 16,500 feet—more than 12,500 feet below Everest’s impossible summit but still high enough to leave most of us gasping with our 60-pound loads. Camp I, according to what both the Deacon and Reggie have said, is at 17,800 feet, and—while it is said to catch the most sun of any of the Everest camps—it is often much more exposed to the winds whipping down off the North Face of Everest and scouring the glacier. There’s more ice than moraine rock up there, and Dr. Pasang has pointed out that it will be harder to recover from altitude sickness with even just another 1,300 feet of altitude beneath us. Reggie’s made a good argument during the five weeks of camp evenings that we should establish the first line of tents here—someplace to retreat to when altitude sickness strikes—and the Deacon no longer seems interested in arguing the point. He plans to cache almost all of the high-climbing equipment at Camp II, six miles above Base Camp.