Chapter 13 Chapter 11 Base Camp

△Elevation 5365 meters, May 06, 1996 * How much of the allure of mountaineering consists in simplifying relationships, condensing (like war) friendships into gentle interactions, substituting others (mountains, challenges) for relationships themselves?Adventure, toughness, unrestrained wandering, etc., are the indispensable antidotes to the comfort and convenience built into our culture. If you explore the mystery, the real inside story may be naive, unwilling to face up to aging, the lack of others, and interpersonal responsibility. , various weaknesses, the mundane slowness of life, etc.

The top mountaineer can be deeply moved, even sentimental, but only for the honorable comrade-in-arms who died on the mountain.In the works of Hermann Buhl, John HarIin, Walter Bonatti, ChristianBonington, and Dougal Hasten, there is a very similar tone of cold, brilliant band Come grim.Perhaps the ultimate mountaineering should reach Huston's situation, that is, if anything goes wrong, it will be a battle of life and death.If your training is good enough, you can survive, otherwise, nature will pay the price. Holz's Hour of Doubt David Roberts, Moments of Doubt □□□ At 4:30 in the morning on May 6th, we left the base camp and set out to attack the summit.The vertical distance from the top of Mount Everest is more than three kilometers, which seemed out of reach. I tried to only think about the No. 2 camp, the destination of the day.When the first rays of sunlight hit the glacier, I was already in the depths of the West Ice Cirque at an altitude of 6,096 meters. Fortunately, the Khumbu Icefall was already at my feet, and I only needed to walk back the last time I descended the mountain.

I suffer from the heat every time I cross the Western Cirque, and this trip was no exception.Harris and I led the charge, stuffing snow under our hats and moving as fast as our legs and lungs would allow, hoping to get to the tent as quickly as possible before the sun slammed us down.As the morning ticked by, the sun was shining brightly, my head started pounding and my tongue was so swollen it was hard to breathe through my mouth.I found it increasingly difficult to think clearly. At 10:30 in the morning, Harris and I trudged into Camp No. 2.I downed two liters of sports drink in one gulp and regained my balance.Harris asked: "Finally on the road to the summit, it feels great, doesn't it?"During the expedition, he mostly suffered from various diseases, and at this time his physical strength finally recovered.He is a talented trainer with amazing patience, usually ordered to escort the team and take care of the slow-footed clients, but this morning Hall let him walk freely, and he was very excited.As the new guide on the team and the only guide who has never climbed Mount Everest, Harris is eager to prove himself to his experienced colleagues.He looked up at the top, grinned and said to me, I think we can really kill this big fucker.

Later, 29-year-old Swedish solo climber Klopp passed Camp Two and was about to descend to Base Camp, looking exhausted.On October 16, 1995, he left Stockholm on a custom-made bicycle with more than 100 kilograms of equipment on board. He planned to go to and from Mount Everest from Sweden at zero altitude, without relying on Sherpas or Cartridge oxygen.This is an ambitious goal, but Klopp has the conditions to achieve it: he has expeditioned to the Himalayas six times and has climbed Broad Peak, Cho Oyu and K2 alone. He rode nearly 10,000 kilometers to Kathmandu. On the way, he was robbed by schoolchildren in Romania and attacked by mobs in Pakistan.In Iran, an angry biker hit him on the head with a bat so badly it broke, luckily he was wearing a helmet.After arriving at the base of Everest unharmed in early April with a camera team, he immediately began climbing the lower peaks, trying to get used to the altitude, and then left base camp on May 1 to head for the summit.

Klopp arrived at the alpine camp at an altitude of 7,925 meters on the South Col on Thursday afternoon, and set off for the summit just after midnight.Everyone in the base camp was on the radio all day, anxiously waiting for news of his progress.Helen put up a sign in our dining room tent that said: Go, Kropp, go! For the first time in several months, the peak was calm and windless, but the snow on the mountain was as deep as my thighs, so I could only walk slowly step by step, which was very tiring.Klopp made a tenacious push through the snow and reached an elevation of 8,748 meters below the South Summit at 2:00 pm on Thursday.Although he could reach the summit in another 60 minutes of climbing, he firmly believed that if he climbed up again, he would be too tired to go down the mountain safely, so he decided to turn back.

On May 6th, Klopp passed the No. 2 Camp when he was descending the mountain. Hall shook his head and pondered. The young Klopp's judgment was unbelievably good when he was so close to the summit but turned around and turned back.I really admire him, even more than he continued to climb and successfully reached the summit.Over the past month, Hall has been proclaiming to us how important it is to schedule the turnaround time.Our return time is around one o'clock in the afternoon, no later than two o'clock, no matter how close we are to the peak, we must abide by this time.Hall said: "Any idiot can reach the top if they are determined enough."Our goal is to get down the mountain alive.

Hall's easy-going appearance hides a strong desire for success. For him, success is very simple, that is, to bring as many clients as possible to the summit.To ensure success, he pays meticulous attention to detail, including the health of the Sherpas, the efficiency of the solar power system, the sharpness of the client's crampons, and more.Hall loved being a guide, and he was saddened that some famous mountaineers, including Sir Hillary, did not understand how difficult it was to be a guide and did not give the profession the respect it deserved. Hall announced that Tuesday, May 7th, would be a day off, so we got up very late, sat near Camp No. 2, and talked about the imminent summit attack with nervous anticipation.I fiddled with my crampons and other gear, and tried to read a paperback by Carl Hiaasen, but with the mountaineering in my mind, I kept skimming the same sentence or two without getting a word in.

In the end, I put down my book and took a few photos for Han Sen. He was holding the flag that the Kent town schoolchildren asked him to bring to the summit, and posed for the camera.I also asked him in detail whether it was difficult to climb the summit. He had only climbed it the year before and remembered it clearly.He frowned and said: When we reach the peak, I promise you will turn into a worm.Although Han Sen still has a throat problem and his physical strength seems to be poor, he wants to participate in the summit attack.He is right, I can't give up now, I have paid too much for this mountain, so much that I have to fight hard before I am reconciled.

Fischer walked across our campsite late that afternoon, walking back to his tent with a stern-jawed, uncharacteristically slow pace.He can always maintain an optimistic attitude unrelentingly, always saying: You can't reach the top if you are downcast, as long as we are here for a day, it is better to be happy for a day.But at this point he didn't seem happy at all, instead he looked anxious and very tired. He encouraged clients to go up and down the mountain independently during the period of adapting to the altitude. As a result, several clients had problems and needed escorts down the mountain. He had to rush between the base camp and the higher camp many times.He had made a few trips to help Madsen, Peter and Cruise.But on such an urgent day today, in which he desperately needed rest, he was forced to rush back and forth between Camp No. 2 and Base Camp, and came back to rescue his friend Cruise when his high-altitude cerebral edema relapsed.

Fisher had set off from base camp earlier than the client the day before and arrived at Camp 2 around noon, right behind me and Harris.He directed Bocclef to lead the team, not to stray too far from the team, so as to keep an eye on everyone.But Pokliffe ignored Fisher's instructions. He didn't climb with the whole team. Instead, he slept late and didn't get up to shower. When he fell ill at an altitude of 6,096 meters, Pokliffe was not around at all.Cruise's illness was reported to the No. 2 Camp by mountain friends who climbed the West Cirque, and Fisher and Beideman had to rush down immediately to deal with the crisis.

Fisher rushed to Cruise and helped him back to the base camp after all kinds of hardships. Not long after, they met Pokrief, who was climbing solo on the top of the icefall, and Fisher sharply accused him of evading responsibility.Cruise recalls: Yes, Fisher slapped Pokleaf hard.He asked him why he was so far behind, why didn't he climb with the team? According to Cruise and other clients on Fisher's team, tensions between Fisher and Pokliffe escalated during the expedition.Fisher paid Pokliffe $25,000, an extremely generous amount as far as Everest guides are concerned (other mountain guides are paid between $10,000 and $15,000, and experienced mountaineering Sherpas only Take $1,400 to $2,500), and Pokliffe did not live up to his expectations.Crews explained that Pokliffe was strong, highly skilled, and had poor social skills.He doesn't pay attention to others.He just has no team spirit.I had told Fisher earlier that I didn't want to follow him in the mountains because I doubted whether I could rely on him in big moments. The problem is that Pokliffe's perception of responsibility doesn't match Fisher's.As a Russian, Pokliff grew up in a tough, conceited, hard-working mountaineering culture, and did not advocate caring for the weak.In Eastern European training, guides function more like Sherpas, carrying things, securing ropes, and establishing routes, and less like guardians.Pokliff is tall, blond and blue-eyed, with handsome Slavic features.He is one of the best high-altitude mountaineers in the world. He has 20 years of experience in the Himalayas, including climbing Mount Everest twice without oxygen.During his illustrious mountaineering career, he offered many unorthodox, uncompromising opinions on how to climb mountains.He was blunt and believed that the guide should not coddle the client, and told me: If the client cannot climb Mount Everest without the help of the guide, this client should not go up the mountain, otherwise there may be big problems on the mountain. But Fisher was furious at Pokliffe's refusal or inability to play the role of guide familiar to the Western tradition, and, in doing so, he and Bedleman were forced to take on more responsibility for the management and care of the climbing team.By the first week of May, the heavy workload was giving his health alarm.On the evening of May 6, he arrived at base camp with Cruise, who was sick, and then made two satellite calls to Seattle, complaining violently to business partner Karen and publicist Jane 1 that Pokliffe was too subjective.Neither woman expected that this would be their last conversation with Fisher. Note 1 Jane left the base camp in mid-April and returned to Seattle, where she continued to shoot the Internet newsletter of the Fisher Expedition for <Online Outdoors>.The main source of her reporting was updates from Fisher's regular phone calls.author note On May 8th, Hall's team and Fisher's team left the No. 2 Battalion and climbed hard along the ropes of the Lhotse mountain face.Just 610 meters above the bottom of the West Cirque, that is, below Battalion No. 3, a rock the size of a small TV fell from the cliff above and hit Harris in the chest, making him unsteady. , out of breath for a while, went into shock for several minutes, dangling on the fixed rope.If it weren't for the Kumar-style ascender on his body still hanging on the fixed rope, he would have fallen to his death. Arriving at the tent, Harris appeared distraught but claimed he was unhurt, insisting: "I might have been a little rickety in the morning, but that shit only got me a scrape, nothing serious."Before the falling stone hit him, he had been bowing his head forward, but he looked up just before the stone fell, so the stone only grazed his chin before hitting his breastbone, but almost hit the sky cap .If the falling rock hits me on the head, he only half-spoken, frowning as he unloaded his backpack. Since the only camp on the whole mountain that we don’t share with the Sherpas is Camp No. 3 (the platform is too small to accommodate all the tents), we have to cook here by ourselves. In fact, it’s just melting a lot of ice for drinking. water.Because breathing in such dry air will inevitably lead to dehydration, each of us consumes about four liters of liquid a day, so we have to boil forty-five liters of water, which is enough for eight clients and three guides. I was the first to reach the tent on May 8, and the job of cutting the ice fell to me.Within three hours, my companions came into the camp one after another and got into sleeping bags to rest. I stayed outdoors, hacked down the slope with an ice ax, packed several plastic garbage bags of ice, and sent them to the tent to melt.Doing this work at an altitude of 7315 meters is very tiring. Every time a teammate yells: Hey, Qiang!You are still outside, we still need some ice here!I can't help but clearly realize how much the Sherpa people have done for us on a daily basis, but we rarely really appreciate it. In the late afternoon, the sun moved slowly towards the wavy horizon, and the temperature began to drop sharply. Everyone entered the camp, except Kasiske, Fishbeck and Hall who volunteered to clear the rear.At around 4:30, the guide Glenn's radio received a call from Hall: Kasiske and Fishbeck were still about 60 meters below the tent, moving very slowly, could Glenn come down to help them?Glenn hurried back through the crampons and disappeared under the fixed rope without a complaint. It was nearly an hour before he reappeared, and the others followed in his footsteps.Kasisk was so tired that he handed the backpack to Hall, and he staggered into the camp, pale, and muttered in frustration: I'm done.I am done.Physical strength is gone.Fishback showed up a few minutes later, looking even more tired, just refusing to hand Glenn the backpack.It's shocking how screwed up these two good climbers are.The sharp decline in Fishbeck's stamina was especially a blow, and I thought from the beginning that if anyone on our team could reach the summit, it would be one of them, the seemingly smart and strong Fishbeck who had climbed the mountain three times. When the night fell over the camp, our guide distributed the oxygen cylinders, regulators and oxygen masks to everyone and we had to inhale the concentrated gas after the mountaineering. The practice of using cylinders of oxygen to assist mountaineering has been hotly debated since the British first brought experimental oxygen equipment to Mount Everest in 1921 (the suspicious Sherpas immediately referred to the cumbersome oxygen tanks as British Air).The most vocal critic at first was Mallory, who attacked the use of oxygen cylinders as unsportsmanlike and therefore unsportsmanlike.But it soon became clear that in the so-called death zone above 7,620 meters, without supplemental oxygen, the body was susceptible to alpine pulmonary edema, alpine cerebral edema, hypothermia, frostbite, and a host of fatal hazards.In 1924, when Mallory returned to Mount Everest for his third expedition, he believed that he would never reach the summit without oxygen, so he resigned himself to using an oxygen tank. At this time, experiments in the decompression chamber have proved that if human beings are suddenly pulled into the air from the height of sea level and placed on the top of Mount Everest, where the oxygen content in the air is only one-third of the level, they will lose consciousness within a few minutes. will die.But many idealistic mountaineers still insist that gifted athletes with rare physical traits must be able to reach the summit without oxygen tanks after a long period of altitude adaptation.Purists push this argument to its logical extreme, arguing that using cylinders of oxygen amounts to cheating. In the 1970s, the famous Italian mountaineer Messner rose up and became the standard-bearer advocating anaerobic climbing, announcing that he would climb Mount Everest in a fair way, otherwise he would not climb.Soon after, he and his long-time Austrian mountaineering partner Peter Habeler realized what he had boasted about, shocking the global mountaineering community.At one o'clock in the afternoon on May 8, 1978, they climbed to the summit of Mount Everest from the South Col and the southeast ridge, all the way without supplemental oxygen.Mountaineers in certain circles believe that this is the real summit of Everest. But not all people in all corners of the world cheered for the historic deeds of Messner and Haberle, especially the Sherpas.Most of them do not believe that Westerners can do such things that even the strongest Sherpas can hardly do.Many people speculated that Messner and Hubler secretly inhaled the pocket oxygen cylinders hidden in their clothes.Nogay and other prominent Sherpas signed a petition calling for a Nepalese government-style investigation into their alleged summit. But the evidence shows that the two did reach the summit without oxygen.Two years later, Messner went to Mount Everest on the Tibetan side, and once again successfully climbed to the summit without oxygen, quelling everyone's doubts. This time he went alone, without the help of Sherpas or anyone else.At three o'clock in the afternoon on August 20, 1980, Messner arrived at the top of the mountain through thick clouds and snow. He said, I have always been in purgatory, and I have never been so tired in my life.He wrote a book about the climb called Crysfal Horizon, which describes how he struggled to reach the summit: At rest, except for my throat burning like fire when I inhale, I no longer feel alive and I can barely hold on.No despair, no joy, no anxiety.It's not that I can't control perception, it's that I don't feel anything anymore.All I have left is willpower, and even that will hiss away in endless fatigue every time I walk a few meters.At this time, I just didn't think about anything, let myself fall to the ground, and just lay there.I was in a dilemma, hesitating, and after a long, long time, I took another three or two steps forward. Once he returned to civilization, the ascent was avowed as the greatest mountaineering feat of all time. After he and Hubler proved that Everest could be climbed without oxygen, a group of ambitious elite mountaineers agreed that it should be climbed without oxygen tanks.Anyone who aspires to be considered a Himalayan elite must abstain from cylinders of oxygen.By 1996, a total of 60 people reached the summit without oxygen tanks, and five of them failed to descend alive. For all the ambitious among us, no one on Hall's team really considered going to the summit without tanks.Even Glenn, who climbed Mount Everest without oxygen three years ago, explained to me that he planned to use an oxygen tank this time because he served as a guide, and based on experience, if he didn't use the oxygen tank, his body and mind would be so weak that he couldn't perform it. professional task.Glenn, like most experienced Everest guides, believes that while he can climb without oxygen, which is indeed aesthetically superior, it would be irresponsible to lead others to the summit. Hall uses the latest Russian-made oxygen system, including the hard plastic oxygen masks worn by MiG fighter pilots during the Vietnam War, connected with orange-red steel and Kevlar oxygen cylinders with rubber tubes and rough regulators (this oxygen cylinder is stronger than water Lung oxygen tanks are much lighter, weighing only three kilograms when full).Although we didn't wear oxygen masks to sleep in Camp 3 last time, now that we have started the summit attack, Hall strongly urged us to carry oxygen through the night.He reminds us that every minute spent at this altitude or higher is physically and mentally debilitating.Brain cells die, blood thick as sewage, very dangerous.Spontaneous hemorrhage occurs in the microvessels in the retina.Even when resting, the heartbeat is extremely rapid.Hall assures that the oxygen in the cartridges will slow decline and help you fall asleep. I wanted to take Hall's advice, but the underlying claustrophobia took over.I put the oxygen mask on my nose and mouth, and kept imagining that I would be suffocated to death. After an hour of pain, I quickly took off the mask.I spent the rest of the night without oxygen, struggling to breathe, tossing and turning, checking my watch every twenty minutes to see if it was time to wake up. The tents of the Fisher team, the South African team, and the Taiwanese team were generally dug on the slope below, 30 meters from our camp, and the environment was as precarious as ours.The next day (Thursday, October 9th) early in the morning, I was putting on my boots and preparing to go up to Camp No. 4. Chen Yunan, a 36-year-old iron factory worker from Taipei, climbed out of the tent and got on the big one, wearing only the flat bottoms of hiking boots. Lin, this is a serious misjudgment. While squatting, he stumbled and fell on the ice, rolling all the way down the Lhotse face.It's unbelievable to say that he fell head and foot into an ice crevasse after only sliding about 20 meters, and didn't roll down again.The Sherpa who witnessed this incident hung down a rope, quickly pulled him out of the gap, and helped him back to the tent.Although he was hit and severely frightened, he did not appear to be seriously injured.At the time, no one at Hall (including me) even knew about the misfortune. Shortly thereafter, Gao Minghe and other members of the Taiwan team left Chen Yunan in the tent to recover from his injuries, let two Sherpas accompany him, and then set off for the South Col.Although Hall and Fisher thought that Gao Minghe would not reach the summit on May 10, the captain of the Taiwanese team apparently changed his mind and planned to set off on the same day as us. That afternoon, Jiangbu 2, a Sherpa who hauled supplies to the South Col, stopped at Camp No. 3 on his way back to Camp No. 2. After checking on Chen Yunan's condition, he found that his condition had deteriorated to the point where he could not recognize his direction. , and painful.Jiang Bu decided that he had to retreat, so he got two other Sherpas to escort him.They walked down the Luozi mountain wall, and when they reached a place 90 meters away from the bottom of the ice slope, Chen Yunan suddenly fell sideways and lost consciousness.After a while, Bridgers' radio rang in the No. 2 Battalion below, and Jiang Bu reported in a panicked tone that Chen Yunan had died. Note 2: This Jiang Bu is not the mountaineering Xuebatou Jiang Bu of the Mountain Crazy Team, but a member of the IMAX expedition team.Editor's note Bridgers and his IMAX teammate Westers rushed up the hill to see if they could revive him.They arrived at Chen Yunan about forty minutes later and found that he had no signs of life.That evening, when Gao Minghe arrived at the South Col, Bridgers radioed him and said: Makalu, Chen is dead. Gao Minghe replied, yes, thank you for telling me the news. .Bridgers was taken aback.He said angrily: I just closed his friend's eyes for him.I just dragged down Chen's body.Makalu actually only said yes.I don't know, I guess maybe it has something to do with culture.Maybe he thinks that continuing to attack the summit is the best way to remember Chen3. Note 3: For Gao Minghe's considerations in deciding to continue to attack the summit, please refer to page 149 of his book Nine Deaths.Editor's note Several serious accidents occurred during these six weeks.Before we reached base camp, Tenzing fell into a crevasse.Topch suffered from alpine pulmonary edema, which continued to worsen.On the Duff team, a young and strong British climber, Furren, suffered a serious heart attack near the top of the Khumbu Icefall. His fellow team member, Dane Sejber, was hit by a falling ice tower at the Icefall and broke several ribs. .However, no one has died so far. Rumors of the accident spread from tent to tent, and the news of Chen Yunan's death shrouded the entire mountain like a dark curtain.However, with thirty-three climbers heading out for the summit in just a few hours, the gloom was soon to be lifted by anticipation.Most of us are too caught up in the frenzy of reaching the summit to contemplate the deaths that have already been lost.We thought that when everyone came back from the summit, there would be plenty of time to think about it.