Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season by Nick Heil

Author:Nick Heil [Heil, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, Autobiography, Biography, Mountaineering, Non-Fiction, Personal Memoirs, Survival
ISBN: 9780805089912
Amazon: 0805089918
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Published: 2009-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

THE NORTHEAST RIDGE

By three-thirty on May 14, Bill Crouse was back at Himex’s Camp Four, hunched by a narrow blue cylinder, sucking in deep lungfuls of sweet supplemental oxygen. Terry O’Connor sat nearby, inspecting his frostnipped fingers. In another hour or so, they would collect themselves enough to stand again and continue their wobbly journey down to the North Col, where they could safely stay the night. Considering the traffic jams earlier in the day, they’d gotten off lucky.

Team 2 had now also arrived at Camp Four, and the talk revolved around the crowds on the ridge. The climbers all carried radios and had overheard the tense exchange between Brice and the other team members that morning. More teams were moving into position a short distance below the Himex camp, and Brice was adamant that Team 2 be on the move by eleven that night. That was two hours earlier than a typical start, but better to be moving through extra hours of darkness than standing still at dawn.

Brice had placed Mark Woodward in charge of Team 2. Woody was from Queenstown, New Zealand, where he had a wife and three kids. He was forty-two but looked younger, with a thatch of short blond hair, blue eyes, and a narrow face that resembled Ed Hillary’s in his early days. He could be all business when he needed to, especially during the summit push, but mostly Woody was a jocular, chronically courteous Kiwi who was popular with the clients. If all went well, this would be Woody’s third summit in as many years. His first, in 2004, had been almost a fluke. He’d been leading a North Col trip when another Himex guide had bailed out of the climb. Woody stepped in and quickly found that he had a penchant for performing at altitude. It wasn’t long before he had a job taking clients to the top.

Team 2’s climbers included Cowboy, Inglis, Medvetz, Gerard Bourrat, the Aussie Bob Killip, and Max Chaya, from Lebanon. The group also included cameraman Mark Whetu, Phurba Tashi, nine other Sherpas, and a second Himex guide, Shaun Hutson, from Chamonix. Whetu was hauling two video cameras, while Phurba Tashi and another Sherpa, Tashi Phinjo, had been set up with high-altitude helmet cams.

As Brice had predicted, the weather had held to May 15. The temperature remained alarmingly low, but as long as his team kept moving it would be manageable. As daylight drained from the sky, the climbers retired two to a tent, where they melted water for the next day’s drinks, heated soup-in-a-bag, and sorted gear. Some changed into their last remaining pair of unsoiled socks, carefully preserved for just this occasion. Then, fed and hydrated, and mostly dressed for the next day, the climbers had little left to do but burrow into their bags and stare at the inside of the tent, their breath glazing the walls with ice crystals, the chill cinching slowly around them like a noose.

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