Chapter 8 Chapter 6 Everest Base Camp

△Elevation 5365 meters, April 12, 1996 * The more unbelievable the situation, the greater the test of the climber, and the sweeter the blood will flow after the pressure is relieved.Potential danger only sharpened his perception and control.Perhaps the basic principle of all adventure sports is the same: you deliberately place more chips on effort and focus in order to get rid of all kinds of trivial things in your mind.That's the epitome of life, but with one difference: in everyday life mistakes are usually remedied, there is always a way of reconciliation, but ventures, no matter how short, are life and death.

A．Alvarez, Cruel Gods: A Study in Suicide A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide □□□ The climbing of Mount Everest was long and tedious, not like the mountaineering I knew before, but more like a rebuilding project for a mammoth.If the Sherpa employees are included, there are 26 people in the Hall team. At this elevation of 5,365 meters, you have to walk 160 kilometers to get to the nearest road so that everyone has something to eat, It is definitely not easy to shelter from wind and snow and maintain good health.But Hall was an invincible quartermaster, and he liked a challenge.At the base camp, he pored over a thick stack of logistical details printed out by a computer: menus, parts, tools, medicines, communications equipment, loading schedules, yak schedules, and so on.A born engineer, he loves basics, electronics, and gadgets, and spends his free time fixing solar power systems or reading back issues of Popular Science.

In keeping with the tradition established by Mark Siskley and most Everest climbers, Hall adopted a strategy of encircling the mountain.The Sherpa people will gradually build four camps above the base camp, each camp is about 600 meters higher than the previous one, and then transport heavy food, fuel and oxygen tanks back and forth from camp to camp until the elevation is 7925 meters until the South Col camp has enough supplies in stock.If everything goes according to Hall's grand plan, we will attack the summit from the highest battalion, No. 4, in a month's time. Although the expedition team will not ask us customers to share the responsibility of handling1, we must repeatedly push above the base camp to adapt to the altitude before we reach the summit.Hall announced that the first altitude acclimatization will be held on April 13th, and he will go to and from the No. 1 Camp at the top of the Khumbu Icefall in one day, with a vertical distance of 800 meters.

Note 1: Since the first attempt to climb Everest, most expeditions (whether commercial or non-commercial) have relied on Sherpas to carry most of their load on the mountain.Our guided team customers do not carry anything at all, and only bring a small amount of personal equipment. In this respect, we are very different from the non-commercial expedition teams in the past.author note April 12th is my forty-second birthday, and I spent the afternoon preparing climbing equipment.When we spread the equipment among the boulders, we sorted and sorted the clothes, adjusted the ropes, took care of the safety ropes, and tied the crampons to the hiking boots (the crampons are made of five-centimeter steel nails, embedded in the soles of the boots, and can be used on the ice. skids), the camp resembles an expensive backyard auction.I was startled and worried to see Withers, Hutchison, and Kasisker pull out brand new hiking boots that they admitted were barely worn.I wonder if they know how risky it is to go to Mount Everest in new shoes.Twenty years ago, I went on an expedition in new shoes, knowing that heavy, stiff hiking boots could grind your feet before they were comfortable, and the journey was painful.

Hutchison, a young Canadian cardiologist, discovered that his crampons didn't even fit his new boots.Thanks to Hall's resourcefulness in this regard, using various tools, he finally made a special strap that made the crampons functional. While I was putting the things I will use tomorrow into my backpack, I heard from my fellow team members that they had to accompany their families and have high work requirements. Last year, few of them had the opportunity to climb more than one or two mountains.Although everyone seems to be in excellent physical fitness, due to the limited environment, they can only do most of the training on the ladder trainer and treadmill, and they cannot really practice on the mountain.This left me speechless.Physical training is the key to climbing, but there are many equally important aspects that cannot be achieved in the gym.

I scolded myself that maybe I was just being great.Anyway, my teammates are obviously as excited as me when they think of stepping crampons into a real mountain in the morning. Our route to the summit is to climb the lower half of Mount Everest along the Khumbu Glacier.The Great Glacier starts from the back crevasse 2 at an elevation of 7,012 meters at the upper end, and flows down for four kilometers along the rather gentle valley of the West Cirque.The glacier slowly rises and sinks over the rock formations below the West Cirque, breaking into numerous vertical fissures known as crevasses.Some crevasses are narrow enough to be crossed; others are as wide as 24 meters, as deep as hundreds of meters, and as long as 800 meters.Large ice crevasses are a great obstacle to our climbing, and if there is a snow cover above them, they may also pose a major danger.Still, the challenges posed by the West Cirque's fissure over the years were predictable and not difficult to overcome.

Note 2: The bergschrund is a deep crack at the upper end of the glacier. When the ice body slides from the steep wall above, a gap is left between the glacier and the rock, and the bergschrund is formed.author note Icefall is another story.There is nothing that climbers on the South Col route fear more than ice falls.The glacier emerges from the lower end of the West Ice Cirque at an altitude of about 6,100 meters, and suddenly drops vertically. This is the famous Kumbu Icefall, and it is also the most technically difficult part of the whole journey. The glacier velocity of the Khumbu Icefall is estimated to be 0.0 per day.Nine meters to one.Between two meters, as it slid down the steep and irregular terrain from time to time, the huge ice shattered into a mess of crumbling serac towers, some as big as office buildings.Because the climbing route is under, around and in between hundreds of these unstable seracs, every crossing of the Khumbu Icefall is a bit like playing Russian roulette: sooner or later, a serac will fall without warning. The bottom is slumping, and you can only hope you're not down there then.In 1963, Hernbein and Ensold's teammate Bredenbach was crushed to death by a falling ice tower and became the first victim of the Khumbu Icefall. Since then, 18 climbers have died here.

Last winter, Hall, as usual, discussed with the leaders of all the expeditions planning to climb Mount Everest in the spring. It was agreed that one of the teams would be responsible for establishing and maintaining the route through the Khumbu Icefall, while the other expeditions would each pay their own way. $2,200 was paid to the team.This collaborative approach has gained wide acceptance in recent years, although there are occasional exceptions. The expedition began in 1988 with the intention of collecting money from other teams that crossed the icefall.At that time a well-funded American team announced that any expedition that planned to follow the route they had established at the Khumbu Icefall would have to pay two thousand dollars.That year, some teams did not understand that Mount Everest was no longer just a mountain, but a commodity, and were very angry. Among them, Hall, who led the poor team in New Zealand, was the most quarrelsome.

Hall complained that the Americans violated the spirit of the mountain and distorted the mountain shamefully, but the American team, led by the cool lawyer Jim Frush, refused to budge.Hall finally gritted his teeth and agreed to send him a check for permission to pass through the Khumbu Icefall. (Later, Fu Ruxu claimed that Hall bounced the ticket and failed to pay the arrears.) Within two years, however, Hall had changed his mind, arguing that it made sense to use the Khumbu Icefall as a toll road.From 1993 to 1995, he volunteered to open the road and collected the toll himself.In the spring of 1996 he chose not to clear the Khumbu Glacier, but readily paid the leader of a competing commercial expedition, Scottish Everest veteran Mai Duff, to take over the job .Long before we arrived at base camp, the Sherpas hired by Duff had already cut a zig-zag trail between the seracs, tied about two kilometers of rope on the surface of the broken glacier, and installed about sixty aluminum ladders .The owner of the aluminum ladder is an enterprising Sherpa from Gaole Snow Village. He rents out the ladders every season and makes a good profit.

Note 3: Although I use the term commercial in general to refer to all expeditions formed for the purpose of collecting money, not all commercial expeditions have guides.For example, Duff charges clients much less than Hall and Fisher's $65,000 to provide the leader and the main Everest infrastructure (food, tents, oxygen tanks, fixed ropes, snow, etc.). Ba people, etc.), but not as a guide.Such expeditions assume that the climbers on the team are skilled enough to reach Everest by themselves and then descend safely.author note In this way, at 4:45 am on Saturday, April 13th, I came to the foot of the legendary Khumbu Icefall and strapped on my crampons at the dawn of the severe cold.

The hard-core old mountaineer who has been born and died all his life likes to say to the younger generation: Survival depends on listening to your inner voice carefully.There are many stories about a climber who smelled something ominous in the air and decided to stay in his sleeping bag, only to escape disaster when everyone else died who didn't believe in the omen. I am a firm believer in the potential value of paying attention to subliminal cues.As I waited for Hall to lead the way, the ice under my feet made a series of cracking sounds like a small tree being split in two.Every crackle or rumble in the depths of the flowing ice made me flinch.The problem was, my inner voice was like a wimpy chick, and every time I strapped on my hiking boots, it screamed that I was dying, and I had to try to ignore the false imagination and stubbornly follow Hall into the eerie and scary world. Blue maze. Although I have never been in such a scary icefall like Khumbu, I have climbed many icefalls.Icefalls usually must have upright or even upside-down passages, requiring specialized skills with ice axes and crampons.Of course, the Khumbu Icefall cannot do without a steep ice surface, but they have already set up ladders or ropes, or even both. Traditional tools and ice climbing skills are superfluous. I soon discovered that even ropes, the typical climbing equipment, could not be used in traditional ways on Everest.A mountaineer is usually tied to one or two partners by a forty-five-meter rope, and each is directly responsible for the lives of others, which is a very serious and intimate act.But in the Kumbu Icefall, in order to facilitate everyone's climbing independently, each other's bodies are not connected in any way. Dufu's Sherpas had nailed a long, motionless rope from the bottom of the icefall to the top.Around my waist is a ninety-centimeter safety rope with a carabiner's shackle at the end.I was not tied to my teammates, but hooked the safety rope to the fixed rope and climbed up the rope, so it was safe.By climbing in this way, we can pass the most dangerous part of the Kumbu Icefall as soon as possible, and we don't have to pin our lives on teammates with unknown skills and experience.It turned out that there was really no reason for me to be tied up with other climbers throughout the expedition, without exception. The Khumbu Icefall does not require orthodox mountaineering skills, but more new skills are required, such as being able to wear hiking boots and crampons to step on a swaying aluminum ladder with its head and tail tied together. Tight cracks and more.We often have to cross the crevasse like this, and I have never been used to it. Once, I stepped on a wobbly aluminum ladder in the dawn to try to balance, trembling step by step, the ice surface supporting the aluminum ladder at both ends suddenly began to vibrate, like an earthquake.After a while, a large ice tower collapsed very close above, making a thunderous sound.I didn't move at all, my heart almost jumped to my throat. Fortunately, the huge ice fell from about 45 meters to the left and disappeared without a trace, causing no disaster.I waited for a few minutes, regained my composure, and staggered to the other end of the aluminum ladder. The constant flow of glaciers, often violently, adds an unstable variable to the transverse aluminum ladder.As the glacier slipped, the crack sometimes narrowed, twisting the aluminum ladder like a toothpick; sometimes it widened, hanging the aluminum ladder in mid-air, leaving only a fragile support, with neither end resting on the solid ice.When the afternoon sun warms up the surrounding ice and snow, the ice anchor 4 supporting the aluminum ladder and the rope will definitely melt out.Despite daily maintenance, any rope is at risk of being pulled down by the weight. Note 4: Ice anchors are 90 cm long aluminum stakes used to secure ropes and ladders to snow slopes.If the terrain belongs to a hard ice river, use an ice spiral, which is a hollow tube about three meters long that can be screwed into a frozen glacier.author note Although the Khumbu Icefall is difficult and scary to climb, it has amazing charm.When the dawn clears the darkness of the sky, the broken glaciers transform into a mysterious and beautiful three-dimensional landscape painting in front of your eyes.The temperature was minus fourteen degrees Celsius.With my crampons firmly planted on the glacier's surface, I meandered on a fixed rope through a maze of crystal-blue stalagmites.The steep rock buttresses were streaked by the ice, pressed from both ends of the glacier, and connected into one, like the shoulders of a naughty evil god.With so much attention to my surroundings and severe physical exertion, I was so intoxicated with the unrestrained joy of climbing that I forgot my fears for an hour or two. We had walked about three-quarters of the way to Camp 1, and during a break, Hall said the Khumbu Icefall was in much better condition than he had seen before: the route this season was like a highway.But a little higher, at 5,791 meters above sea level, we climbed by rope to the base of a giant crumbling serac.The ice tower, as large as a twelve-story building, loomed eerily above us, tilted at a thirty-degree angle.The climbing route follows a natural trail that slams up the cliff face, and we have to climb and jump over an entire out-of-balance serac to escape the threat of its incredible tonnage. I know that safety depends on speed, so I walked towards the top of the safer ice tower at full speed, panting, but I am not used to the high altitude yet, and no matter how fast my pace is, it is just like crawling.Every four or five steps I took, I had to stop, leaning on the rope, desperately inhaling the cold and thin air, which caused my lungs to burn. The ice tower did not collapse. I climbed to the top of the tower and fell on the flat top of the tower with a plop. I was out of breath, and my heart was pounding like a hammer.After a while, around 8:30 in the morning, I arrived at the top of the Khumbu Icefall on the other side of the last ice tower.Although I arrived at Camp No. 1 safely, I still couldn't feel at ease, and kept thinking about the ominously slanted ice tower not far below.If I want to reach the top of Mount Everest, I have to go through at least seven times from below.Some climbers have dismissed the southeast wall route as a yak road, and I think they must have never crossed the Khumbu Icefall. Before stepping out of the tent, Hall explained that we had to turn back at ten o'clock in the morning, even if some people hadn't arrived at the No. 1 camp, so we could return to the base camp before the soft ice waterfall under the sun at noon.At the appointed time, only Hall, Fishback, Tusk, Hansen, and I arrived at Battalion One.When Hall radioed everyone to turn back, Yasuko, Hutchison, Withers, and Kasisk, escorted by guides Mike and Harris, had reached a place within 60 meters of the vertical distance from the No. 1 Battalion. The first time we saw each other actually climb, we could assess how strong or weak we were depending on each other for the next few weeks.Han Sen and Tasker, who is fifty-six years old and the oldest in the team, are both very healthy.But the gentle and soft-spoken Hong Kong publisher Fish Baker is the most admirable. He demonstrated the professional knowledge and skills acquired from the first three expeditions to Mount Everest. He walked slowly at first, but has been advancing at the same steady pace. .When he reached the top of the Kumbu Icefall, he had quietly surpassed everyone, and he didn't seem to be blushing or out of breath. On the contrary, Hutcherson, the team's youngest and seemingly strongest client, rushed out of the camp first, was exhausted soon, and when he reached the top of the icefall, he was not only behind, but also looked miserable.Kasisk, who suffered a calf muscle injury on the first morning of the hike to base camp, was slow but satisfying.On the contrary, the level of Withers and Yasuko is very superficial. Several times, Withers and Yasuko were in danger of falling from a ladder into an ice crevasse, and Yasuko seemed to know nothing about how to use crampons.Harris was a gifted and patient instructor, a junior guide tasked with accompanying the slowest client and spending the morning teaching her the basics of ice climbing. Note 5: Although Yasuko used crampons when climbing Mount Aconcagua, Mount McKinley, Mount Elbrus and Mount Vincent, the above mountaineering rarely involves real ice climbing, and the terrain is relatively gentle snow slopes Or gravel-like rubble piles.author note Despite the weaknesses of our group, Hall declared at the top of the icefall that he was very satisfied with everyone's performance.He said to his proud father, you guys are doing great for the first time above base camp.I think we have a very strong batch this year. The walk back down to base camp took just over an hour.I took off my crampons and walked the last ninety meters to the camp.The sun was so strong that it seemed as if it was going to drill a hole in my celestial cap.A few minutes later I was chatting with Helen and Jumba in the dining room tent when a severe headache struck.I have never tasted this kind of feeling before, the pain between my temples is splitting, the pain makes my stomach quiver, and I can't speak.Fearing I might have a stroke, I staggered away halfway through the conversation and lay down in my sleeping bag with my hat over my eyes. This headache was like a migraine, so severe that I lost my eyesight, and I had no idea what was causing it.I don't think it's because of the altitude, because it happened when we got back to base camp.It may be the reaction caused by the strong ultraviolet radiation that burned my retina and my brain.Whatever the cause, the headache is too severe to bear.For the next five hours I lay in the tent, trying to avoid any sensory stimulation.As soon as I open my eyes, or even roll my eyes from side to side with the lids closed, the pain is unbearable.At sunset, I couldn't bear it anymore, so I stumbled to the medical tent and asked for help from the team doctor Caroline. She gave me a strong painkiller and told me to drink some water, but I only swallowed two or three gulps and immediately spit out the pills, water, and leftovers from my lunch.Caroline looked at the vomit splashed on her hiking boots and mused, Well I guess we'll have to try something else.I was instructed to slowly dissolve a small pill under my tongue, which would stop the vomiting, and then swallow two codeine pills.After an hour, the headache began to subside, and I was almost in tears with gratitude, and gradually lost consciousness. I lay down in my sleeping bag and took a nap, watching the sun cast a long shadow on the tent wall, when I heard Helen suddenly shout, Strong!Telephone!Linda is calling!I hurriedly put on my sandals, ran forty-five meters to the communication tent, and grabbed the phone while panting. The entire satellite phone-cum-fax setup is not much bigger than a laptop computer.Phone calls are very expensive, about five dollars a minute, and it may not be possible to get through.Still, I was amazed to think that my wife could dial the 13-digit number in Seattle to talk to me on Everest.Although the phone call brought great comfort, Linda's voice sounded resigned to fate, and it was impossible to hear it wrong even if it was halfway across the world.She told me I'm fine, but I wish you were here. Eighteen days ago she drove me to the airport to catch a flight to Nepal and couldn't help crying.Driving home from the airport, she confessed, I couldn't stop crying.Saying goodbye to you breaks my heart.I guess I more or less felt that you might not come back, and it all seemed worthless.It seemed stupid and unreasonable. We have been married fifteen and a half years.We talked about staying together for life less than a week before we went to the magistrate to sign the certificate.I was twenty-six years old at the time, and I had decided to give up mountain climbing and live my life seriously. When I met Linda, she was a mountain buddy herself, and she was very talented, but she broke her arm and hurt her back, had to give up climbing, and since then very disapproved of the adventurous nature.It never occurred to Linda that I should give up mountaineering, but my announcement of my retirement from the sport only strengthened her determination to marry me.However, I didn't realize that mountaineering had taken hold of my soul, nor did I realize how much purpose mountaineering could bring to my bewildered life.I had no idea how empty my life would be without mountaineering.After less than a year of marriage, I quietly took out the rope in the warehouse and went back to the rock wall.When I went to Switzerland in 1984 to climb the dangerous peaks of the Eiger North Face, Linda and I were on the verge of breaking up, and climbing became the core of our conflict. Two or three years after I failed to climb Eiger, our relationship was still rocky, but the marriage survived the ups and downs.Linda gradually came to accept my mountaineering, and she saw that my life would not be complete without it.She understands that the abnormal and unchangeable side of my personality is like the color of my eyeballs, which basically shows up in mountain climbing.It was during this delicate fix that Outside magazine confirmed that I would be sent to Everest. At first I pretended to be going as a reporter rather than a climber, pretending that I accepted the assignment because the subject matter of commercializing Everest was interesting and well paid.I made it clear to Linda and anyone who doubted that I was qualified to climb the Himalayas that I didn't expect to climb very high, I might just climb a little above base camp to get a taste of high altitude.I insisted. Of course this is bullshit.Traveling thousands of miles and spending so much time training, if you just want to make money, you might as well stay at home and take other writing jobs.I took on this assignment because I was fascinated by the mysteries of Mount Everest.In fact, the desire to climb this mountain is greater than anything I have ever aspired to in my life.From the moment I agreed to go to Nepal, I decided that I would climb as high as my mediocre legs and lungs would allow me to climb. Linda saw through my prevarication when she drove me to the airport.She realized how strong my desire was, and she was frightened to death. She said in despair and anger, if you die, you will not be the only one who will pay the price.You know, I also have to lose the rest of my life.Don't you care about that at all? I replied that I would not die.Don't be alarmist.