I force myself to sit up and look at the disassembled brass pieces of the Primus now gleaming faintly in the weak light from the single flashlight and the dying ghee-candle dish.
I’m thinking, There may be no more idiot-proof piece of machinery in the world than a Swedish-built Primus stove.
The Deacon had bought mostly the new 1925 models, but except for being improved for high altitudes—some of the improvements suggested by a certain George Finch—they differed very little from earlier pressure stoves going back to 1892. We’d used Primuses from our stores for cooking all the way through Sikkim and across Tibet. None had ever failed to light.
As J.C. holds the burner up to the light yet again, making sure there is no blockage, I dully paw through the other pieces.
The simple little machine is a brass 1925 (O) Primus 210 model—the new kind with fixed legs. The procedure for lighting it is the same as for all the other Primuses I’ve used over my years of hiking and climbing. Primuses have always worked at any altitude I’ve been at.
First, one uses the pumping mechanism set into the main fuel tank to pressurize that fuel tank. This rise in pressure forces the kerosene in the main tank up and along the tube that rises to the burners. To preheat those burner tubes, one lights a small amount of methylated spirits—alcohol—in the built-in spirit cup encircling the burner tube.
We’ve done all that a dozen times this afternoon and now darkening evening with no luck.
Once those burner tubes reach a high enough temperature, a fine, almost invisible spray of hot paraffin gas is emitted through the central jet in the burner. When air mixes with that gas—even the thin air of Mount Everest—the stove’s simple and sturdy little flame ring forces the gas into a circle. Technically, it’s not the kerosene burning in the blue-flame ring of a Primus stove, it’s the plasma paraffin gas generated from the spray of kerosene. The noise from those flame-ring burners has always been loud enough that many climbers and campers have called their Primuses “roarers.” Indeed, there are few sounds more reassuring to an exhausted mountain climber than the roar of a Primus stove as it melts snow for drinking water, heats soup or stew, and generally adds to the warmth of a cold tent pitched high in the snow and rock.
Now…nothing.
“We can make tea and maybe even some soup on the little spirit burner stove,” I say. “Heat up some sardines.” The small alcohol-burning stoves are meant for the high camps—mostly to make hot tea—but are supposed to be included as a backup stove for every camp.
“There was no spirit burner in any of the packs,” says Jean-Claude. We exchange guilty glances, and I realize we’re sharing our sense of shame at having supervised our loads, Sherpas, and selves so poorly on this, our first real outing toward the mountain.
“So it has to be the Primus,” I say.
I stupidly move the brass tank in both hands but find no holes or leaks. Since kerosene would be spilling out if the circular tank had been breached, it isn’t the most clever troubleshooting I’ve ever done. As if hypnotized, I count eleven languages imprinted on the side of the metal tank. Only eight years after the Great War, and this Swedish company—B. A. Hjorth & Co., Stockholm, as it says on the Primus as well as on an accompanying card advertising “Practical Accessories for the Primus” (e.g., a spirit can with a nozzle, part No. 1745; a cleaning needle case, No. 1050; and, of course, a Wind Shield, No. 1601)—is selling the stove in at least these eleven countries.
This version of the Primus has only a triangular plate as a “wind shield,” but J.C. has blocked the wind with his body huddled over the stove each time he’s tried to light it, so the wind shield is not the problem. Technically, we’re supposed to use Primuses outside the tents, but there’s no hope at all of getting this thing lighted in the gale-force winds ripping at even the entrances to our tents.
“Not at fault,” says Jean-Claude as he inspects each disassembled piece: the burner nipple for heat and quench, the reserve cap parking boss, the burner collector collar, the flame ring, the nitrile seals, the lead seal in the burner itself, or the leather for the pressurizing pump.
He whispers under his breath, uses the few tools he’s brought with him—a screwdriver, small wrench, some wire probes—to reassemble the stove, and tries again to light it. Nothing.
“It’s not building up pressure in the tank,” he says at last.
“How can that be?” I force myself to say. One pumps a Primus and it builds up the pressure to force the kerosene up into the tiny pipes. It’s always worked for me.
Jean-Claude shakes his head.
Norbu Chedi speaks softly, almost apologetically: “On the Dongkha La, long before Kampa Dzong, Nawang Bura dropped his load down a steep incline. No sahib saw, since Nawang was back with the rear pack mules. There was a Primus that bounced free off large rocks for many yards downhill. Nawang Bura retrieved it and the other materials and repacked them without mentioning the accident to Dr. Pasang or Sahib Deacon or to Lady Bromley.”
“That was weeks ago,” I say. “Surely we would have used that…this…Primus since then.”
“Maybe not,” Jean-Claude says wearily. “We got into the habit of using the same Primuses at each camping spot. This one was taken out of reserve stores to go up the mountain. It’s one of the 1925 models adapted for higher altitudes.”
“Can’t you fix it?”
Our lives may depend upon his doing so if we’re trapped here many days. Hot soup and tea will be important, but melting the snow for drinking water is imperative.
“The tank isn’t leaking,” says J.C. “I’ve taken the pressurizing pump apart and inspected it and the leather bits more than a dozen times. I can’t see anything wrong or broken anywhere. It just…won’t…fucking…work.”
None of us says anything for a very long moment, but the silence is filled in with a wilder, louder howl of wind that makes all of us grab on to the floor cloth or tent walls to keep from flying away.
“Sandy Irvine fixed dozens of things, built the rope ladder up to the Col, and repaired and redesigned the entire oxygen apparatus at Base Camp or above,” mutters J.C. “And I—a Chamonix Guide and the son of a blacksmith and inventor and steel industrialist—can’t even fix a putain Primus stove on our second night out above Base Camp.”
“Without the Primus or spirit burner, what are our other options to get a controlled flame to melt some snow, heat some soup?” I ask. “We have the two pots. We have our tin cups. We have plenty of matches. We have some more alcohol. We have lots of kerosene.”
“If you’re thinking of dumping some kerosene into a cup and lighting it to put our pots on, forget it, Jake,” says Jean-Claude. “Kerosene by itself doesn’t burn in the way we need to heat things. To get a good blue flame we need…” Suddenly J.C. falls silent and takes the brass tank from my hands. He’s already pulled off the pressure-pump mechanism, but now he tries the permanent screw that I’ve always used to turn the flame up at the beginning of a cooking session and then turned the other way to shut the Primus off after its use.
“The damned vent screw,” says Jean-Claude. “It turned when I tried it each time, but it’s cross-threaded…it’s not opening to allow the pressurized kerosene jet to rise. In fact, the damned thing’s cross-threaded and bent enough that the tank won’t even hold pressure. The goddamned vent screw!”
He sets his wrench and small pair of pliers to work on the screw, but it won’t thread properly. And now it is stuck. I see him using all of his massive arm and hand strength to get the screw to turn. It does not.