No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks by Ed Viesturs & David Roberts

Author:Ed Viesturs & David Roberts [Viesturs, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780767926416
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2006-10-16T19:00:00+00:00

By now, we’d given away so much of our supplies, we needed to restock our higher camps. Guy Cotter offered us oxygen bottles, and we received some from the survivors on Rob’s team. Even so, it took us a week to get all our stuff back up to Camp IV, on the South Col, in preparation for our summit bid. Everybody on the team was gung-ho to go by now, but at the same time we agreed with David’s assessment: “We’re going to make one safe, very conservative attempt. If it doesn’t work, then we’re out of here.”

We did a bit of filming on our way back up the Lhotse Face, but we knew that the crucial footage would have to come on the summit day. David’s a very demanding leader. If you’re not up to snuff, you’re going to hear about it. He has something of a reputation, in fact, for sternly reprimanding people who he feels aren’t doing their jobs. That’s fine with me: if you’re hired or expected to do a task, then do it. And, in fact, David’s never reprimanded me. I always made sure I did my job. And David’s acknowledged that, saying things like, “Ed, with you, I know that I won’t have to worry whether the tents are up at Camp III. I know you’ll have them there.”

David himself works harder than anyone. And he always leads from the front. That’s my definition of a good leader. I don’t think there’s anybody else in the world who could have pulled off what David did with the IMAX film.

And Robert Schauer worked his ass off, too. He was always by David’s side, handing him film, setting up the tripod, and so on. And every night in his tent, he had to reach inside a black bag and blindly reload the film magazines.

By the evening of May 22, we were established on the South Col, ready to go for the top in the morning. Sadly, at this point David had to tell Sumiyo that she wasn’t going to be part of our summit team. She was having severe problems adjusting to the altitude, wracked with coughing fits that strained her diaphragm even at 24,000 feet. David had already shot plenty of footage of Sumiyo lower on the mountain, but he was afraid that her weakness could jeopardize our summit effort. In “parking” her at the South Col, David was, as he later wrote, not “thinking as a filmmaker [but] thinking as a mountaineer.”

The plan was for me to leave camp at ten P.M., everybody else at eleven. Climbing without oxygen and breaking trail, I’d probably be slower than the others, all of whom would be breathing from their bottles, so I needed a head start. Ideally, they’d catch up with me somewhere around the Balcony, at 27,600 feet, where we could start filming at first light.

By now Paula had been in base camp since we’d started back up the mountain. I called her on the radio the evening of May 22.

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