My travel diaries
Sunday 13 May, 2007 - Everest North Col, Tibet
It's a remarkably civilised start for what is the equivalent of a summit day. Our wake up call is at 7 and we're away by 8.15. It doesn't take quite as long to get ready this time as it did for our ascent of Lhakpa Ri because certain items, such as crampons, harness and all the associated ironmongery, aren't needed until later.
We walk up through Advanced Base Camp (ABC) at a very slow pace, picking up Petr, who is staying at Klara's camp, on the way. Even before we reach him, however, Chris is lagging behind and is still tired after our climb two days ago. He decides the North Col is not to be for him, and turns back to head for his sleeping bag. We continue through ABC, a huge sprawling miniature town of tents, big and small, stretching for about a mile on lateral moraine along the right hand side of the East Rongbuk Glacier. We've only progressed a little beyond the end of it when Petr also decides to turn back.
The trek through ABC and beyond is steep, and I'm surprised how tough I'm finding what is effectively a walk across boulders. After about 250m of ascent we reach the end of the footpath and put our crampons and harnesses on ready for the day's real work. Up ahead I can see the apparently vertical wall of snow and ice which leads up to the North Col, the gateway to the summit of Everest, with lines of fixed ropes zig-zagging up it and disappearing out of sight. The face is crawling with climbers, most heading upwards, seemingly static and looking like an army of ants. This is the face we have to ascend, but before we get there we have to cross the glacier, a gentle ascent following a line of flags across soft snow, which I find exhausting. I'm the last in our group to cross it, and I collapse at the bottom of the wall, somewhat overawed.
"How the hell am I supposed to get up that?" I ask Mic, half jokingly, but panting with exhaustion.
The slope ahead of us has been the scene of some legendary accidents. When descending it for the very first time in 1921, Mallory and his climbing partner Guy Bullock noticed that their ascending track must have triggered a small avalanche. This was the precursor of a much greater tragedy the following year when seven of their porters were killed in an avalanche which swept them over a 50 foot ice cliff, bringing the whole expedition to a calamitous end. Then, in 1924, Mallory himself fell into a crevasse on these slopes, managing to save himself after only 10 feet of falling by jamming his axe into its walls. Sandy Irvine explains in his diary how expedition leader Edward Norton glissaded out of control during the same descent. Later in the same expedition two more porters slip while descending and are saved when team member Howard Somervell drives his ice axe into the slope and hooks the rope over it. When descending just below the lip of the North Col in 1935, Eric Shipton is 'disconcerted' to discover the entire surface of the slope has descended about quarter of a mile in a 6 foot slice, and crashed to the glacier below. The same glacier I happen to be standing on at this very moment, as it happens.
We have only a short rest at the foot of the wall, and all too soon it's time to get started. From being at the back I somehow find myself pushed to the front and am the first one on the rope behind Nima. I ask Ian if he wants to go before me, as he's always been quicker until now, but he ushers me forward. I take a deep breath, clip my jumar onto the first line of fixed rope and put my head down. "We only have 400m of this bugger to go up," I think to myself.
I start with a burst of energy which came from God knows where, and even Ian is struggling to keep up initially. We're easily keeping up with the climbers above us, and I'm finding it easier than expected because in addition to walking up the face with my crampons, I'm pushing my jumar as far up the fixed rope as I can and pulling myself up with my right arm - I have three limbs to propel me up the slope instead of just two. Also, when we stop to rest I can lean back and let the jumar suspend me on the rope, which is quite restful and allows me to get my breath back quickly.
Before long we reach the second fixed rope. A change of ropes involves unclipping my safety carabiner from the one I've just been climbing and clipping it to the one above to provide security while I switch my jumar from one rope to the other and continue ascending. Having the safety carabiner is not just useful for changing ropes. It also provides a back up in case of the jumar failing. Although it doesn't immediately lock on the rope in the event of a fall, as a jumar does, it will stop you falling further than the end of the rope you're currently climbing. My energy levels are well and truly up by now, and I'm asking Nima if we can overtake the climbers in front. This requires their cooperation, since we need to unclip then reattach our jumars and safety carabiners in order to do so, so they need to stop and let us past.
It's clear and sunny, and I'm wearing plenty of sun cream, but every so often strong winds blow a fresh layer of snow across the north wall and into our faces, causing us to button up and put our heads down. Our group begins to split, with Nima leading me and Ian in front. I stop for a rest about halfway up, and Ian goes past me. From here on we keep a steady stop-start stop-start all the way to the top of the face. At times the gradient of the climb has been no more than about 45 degrees, but the final steep section onto the North Col itself is nearly vertical. I'm exhausted, but I can feel people queueing up behind me, so instead of resting I speed up. I haul myself up 4 or 5 steps at a time, collapse for a few seconds, then repeat the process. Eventually I flop over the edge onto the rim of the North Col, and find Ian waiting about 20 feet away in a sofa of thick snow.
And here I am, on the ledge first trodden by George Mallory in 1921.
"That last bit was a f---er," I say to Ian, flopping myself down beside him with my rucksack as a back rest, a position I find so comfortable that I'm unable to move from it for some time. After 10 minutes Ian stands up and asks Nima to join him as he walks through the North Col camp, but I'm not moving anywhere. Eventually after half an hour, at 2.30, and with still no sign of the rest of the group, I get up and follow them. My altimeter was rather disappointingly reading 6980m when I arrived on the col, but by the time I get up to walk it's reading a slightly more satisfying 6995m, though this means the pressure must have dropped a little.
I've finished the climb and am now simply walking through camp, but I'm finding it exhausting, taking 5 or 10 steps before stopping for a deep breath. There are probably 100 to 150 tents at the North Col, though in a much more concentrated area than ABC. This is more like walking through a cramped music festival site than the sprawling shanty town that comprises ABC. There is a difference, though: instead of wallowing in mud I'm wading through thick snow. Most of the tents are buried right up to their roofs because people don't spend much time up here, moving between Base Camp, ABC, the North Col and higher camps as they exercise and acclimatise to prepare themselves for their summit push.
I find Ian and Nima at the end of all the tents, sitting in snow beside the path. In front of them is a huge drop to the glacier, and an amazing view along it, with ABC running along its left hand side about 600m below, and Lhakpa Ri forming the horizon opposite. I feel a great sense of achievement, and my altimeter is now reading a much more satisfying 7060m. I collapse next to them again, and behind them the cloud clears briefly to reveal the big one: the familiar profile of the north ridge leading up to the summit of Everest just 1800m above us, not much more than the height of Ben Nevis. Beyond us is the Northeast Spur, leading up to the Northeast Ridge another 1000m above us. I fumble clumsily with my camera and grab a shot, but the cloud closes and I'm not sure what the photo will come out like.
A man approaches his tent near us only to find it buried in snow after several days away. He's not carrying his ice axe and begins to dig his way in with his hands, so I lend him mine. After about ten minutes Mark arrives and tells us the others are not far behind, but Ian and I decide we've been here long enough now. This is the end of the climb for us: the North Col was always our ultimate destination and we only have permits to come as far as here. Along with Nima, we stand up and head back down.
We pass the others on our way and stop to exchange handshakes. Then, surprisingly, I see Klara staggering her way past, having just reached the top of the fixed ropes herself. The last time we saw her she was just arriving at the start of the glacier. Until now I've only ever seen her looking a picture of good health, and it's a surprise to see that she gets tired just like the rest of us. Walking behind is her expedition leader Tashi Tenzing, grandson of the great Tenzing Norgay, the first man to reach the summit of Everest. He shakes my hand and answers my questions about their climb. He tells me this is their fourth visit to the North Col, and this time, after a night here, they will be pushing onward to Camp 2 at 7700m, Camp 3 at 8300m and then, hopefully, the summit. Looking at Klara now it's hard to believe she will be on the summit in three days time. She's a more experienced climber than I am, but I can't help wondering if she can, why not me some day? [And sure enough, three days later, she makes it].
Meanwhile, Nima is starting to behave a little eccentrically at the top of the fixed ropes. He's unsure whether we should abseil down them or attach ourselves with prussics. He takes my figure-of-eight abseil device and starts stroking one of the ropes with it. I take it back and decide independently that a prussic attached with a klemheist knot is the thing. An abseil is only possible if there's nobody sharing the rope with you, as the tension caused by someone on the rope below you means your abseil device will be unable to slide (notwithstanding the fact that even if you could, you would abseil right into them!). The first section of rope is very steep, and I can't see if there's anyone below, but I don't want to take the chance. I attach the prussic, face inwards, and begin descending. Halfway down I see someone else trying to come up the same rope, so I move sideways onto a second rope running parallel to the first. This is slightly time-consuming as I have to bring my jumar out again and secure myself before untying the prussic and reattaching it to the second rope. Just as I finish this manouevre and begin descending again I hear a voice below me shouting up: some idiot has started coming up the second rope as well, without noticing that I've already had to switch ropes once. I shout angrily down to them that I've no intention of switching back onto the same rope I was on in the first place, and they should have been paying more attention. I keep going. I had wondered what the etiquette would be for use of the fixed ropes. With two ropes running parallel to each other for most of the way, would one be for 'up' and the other for 'down'? The answer is clearly no. The climbers coming up are attaching themselves to whichever rope takes their fancy, regardless of whether anyone happens to be coming down the rope at the time.
Shortly below this Nima starts to make a nuisance of himself. Each time I reach the end of a fixed rope and need to attach myself to the next one down, he insists on fiddling about with my harness and doing it for me. I start to get irritated by this, as I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself, and I appear to be the only buffoon on the mountain with his own personal sherpa fiddling about at the level of his groin every time he needs to change ropes. I tell him I'd prefer it if he left me alone; I even make him watch me tie the klemheist to prove that I can do it, but the worst is yet to come.
Our descent is swift and the ropes become quieter the closer we get to the bottom. The last rope is clear and I decide I fancy an abseil. Leaving my safety carabiner clipped into the rope above, I wait patiently for Ian to finish his descent below me so that I have the rope to myself to abseil down. But as I'm hanging there, Nima arrives and unclips my safety carabiner, so that I now have nothing to hold me should I fall. As if this isn't enough, he then invites a fall by trying to attach my abseil device to the rope below while Ian is still pulling down on it. I actually stumble, but thankfully recover my footing. By now I'm furious, and usher him away from me so that I can reattach my carabiner to the rope above and wait in safety while Ian finishes his descent. I enjoy my abseil, but am very angry with Nima. I know that I shouldn't be, as he's a nice enough guy who was only doing his best, but I can't understand why he didn't realise that I didn't appreciate his help.
Ian is waiting at the bottom, tired out, but I don't stop and join him. I continue onwards on the long, tiring walk back, across the glacier and down through ABC. I get back to camp at 5.15, where Pasang and Dawa are waiting with cups of tea and soup. Ian arrives about 15 minutes later. We're both shattered. We have a couple of mugs of tea each, then head for our sleeping bags without waiting for the others, who may be some time yet.
I don't know what time Mark arrives, but he's inside his sleeping bag when I'm woken by Pasang at the tent door to tell us meat, potatoes and soup are being served in the mess tent. I don't know what time it is, and were I not so tired I'm sure I would have been more polite to him; or perhaps I would just have sat up and laughed. But I don't. Instead I thank him, grunt, and go back to sleep.
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