Chapter 18 Chapter 16 South Col

△Elevation 7925 meters, May 1996 at 6:00 AM * I don't trust summaries, any kind of superficial description, any bravado claiming to have mastered the narrative.I think anyone who claims to understand but is very calm, and who claims to write with a calm retrospective emotion, must be a fool and a liar.If you understand it, you will tremble.Looking back is to return to the past and be torn apart. I admire the humble authority of the matter. Brocky "Manipulation" Harold Brodkey, Manipulations □□□ At six o'clock in the morning on May 11th, Hutchison finally shook me awake.He told me gloomily that Harris was not in his tent, nor did he seem to be in another tent.He should never have come back.

I asked: Harris missing?impossible.I saw him go to the edge of the camp.Shocked and confused, I put on my boots and rushed out to find him.The wind was still strong and nearly knocked me over a few times, but it was dawn and the weather was clear with excellent views.I searched the entire western half of the South Col for more than an hour, glanced behind the boulders, and probed into the dilapidated abandoned tents, but I couldn't find him.Adrenaline rushes through my veins, tears well up in my eyes, and my eyelids freeze shut instantly.How could Harris have disappeared?impossible. I walked to the place above the South Col where Harris slid down the ice slope, carefully retracing his route back to camp. He took a wide and almost flat ice ditch.At the spot where I last saw him when the clouds came in, there happened to be a sharp left turn, and Harris had only to climb a dozen meters along a rocky slope to get to the tent.

However, I also found that if he did not turn left but continued to walk straight along the ice ditch, he would be surrounded by a vast expanse of whiteness. Even if he was not exhausted or dulled by the mountain reaction, he would easily go wrong.In this way, he would soon be at the westernmost point of the South Col, and the gray ice slope of the Lhotse Face below was more than 1,200 meters deep, leading to the bottom of the West Cirque.I stood there, not daring to get any closer to the edge, when I noticed a vague crampon print leading from my side to the abyss.That crampon was probably left by Harris.

After entering camp the night before, I told Hutchison that I had seen Harris make it to the tent.Hutchison radioed the news to base camp, which then relayed the news via satellite phone to Fiona, Harris' live-in girlfriend in New Zealand.She was relieved to hear that Harris had arrived at Camp Four, but Mrs. Hall, who is now in Christchurch, New Zealand, had to do something unacceptable and call Fiona to tell her something Goofy wrong: Harris was in fact missing, probably dead.Thinking about the call and how I made such a big mistake, I drop to my knees, retching, and let the cold wind beat my back.

I spent sixty minutes searching in vain for Harris, and returned to the tent just in time to hear a radio conversation between Base Camp and Hall that he was calling for help on the summit ridge.Then Hutchison told me that Withers and Yasuko were dead and that Fisher was missing somewhere on the upper mountain.Shortly thereafter, the radio battery died, cutting off our communication with the rest of the mountain.The members of the IMAX team who stayed in the No. 2 camp lost contact with us and were very anxious. They called the South African team, because the tent of the South African team at the South Col was only a few meters away from us.IMAX team leader Brixels, who has known me for 20 years, mentioned something afterwards: We knew that the South African team had a very powerful radio, and it didn’t fail, so we asked their players in the No. 2 Battalion to call the team on the South Col. Dahl, listen up, this is an emergency.Someone above is dying.We must contact the survivors of Team Hall to coordinate rescue efforts.Please lend Krakauer your radio.Woodall refused.Lives are at stake, but they won't lend the radio.

Back from the expedition, I did my research for the Outside magazine article, interviewing as many members of Hall and Fisher's summit team as I could, talking to most of them several times.But Adams mistrusted reporters and kept a low profile in the aftermath of the tragedy.I repeatedly asked him to be interviewed, but he avoided it until the "Outdoor" article was published. I finally reached Adams by phone in mid-July, and he agreed to speak. I asked him to recount everything he remembered from the summit trip.He was one of the stronger clients that day and stayed at the front of the line, either in front of me or right behind me during the climb.His memory is remarkably reliable, and I was particularly interested to hear whether his impression of events matched mine.

In the late afternoon of the summit day, Adams descended from the Terrace Cliff at an altitude of 8413 meters. He said that I was still in his sight and walked about fifteen minutes earlier than him, but I went down the mountain faster than him. Not long to be seen.He said: The next time I see you, it will be almost dark, and you are crossing the flat land of the South Col, about 30 meters away from the tent.I recognized you from your bright red down jacket. A little later Adams was on top of the steep ice slope that had caused me so much trouble, and fell off the platform into a small crevasse.He managed to get out of the trap by himself, and fell into another deeper ice chasm.He mused: I was lying in the crack, thinking to myself, maybe this is my burial place.It took me a while, but I finally managed to climb out.I came out with snow on my face, which soon froze.That's when I saw someone sitting on the ice on the left with a headlamp on, and I walked in that direction.It wasn't completely dark yet, but the light was so dim that the tents could no longer be seen.

I walked up to the guy and said, hey, where's the tent?The guy didn't know who it was, and he pointed in a certain direction.So I said, yeah, that's what I thought.Then the guy said be careful, the ice slope is steeper than it looks.Maybe we should go down and get a rope and some ice drills or something.I thought to myself, fuck it.I need to get out of here.I took two or three steps, stumbled, and slid headfirst down the ice slope.As I was sliding down, the tip of the ice ax somehow hooked on something, I turned, and stopped at the bottom of the slope.I got up and stumbled into the tent, and that's about it.

As I listened to Adams describe the scene where he met an unknown mountain friend and then slid down the ice slope, my mouth became dry and the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end.After he finished speaking, I asked: Do you think the person you met over there would be me? He smiled and said: Damn, it's impossible!I don't know who it is, but it's definitely not you.So I told him about my meeting with Harris and a series of eerie coincidences: I met Harris at about the same time and in about the same place as Adams met the unknown.The conversation between Harris and me was eerily similar to that between Adams and the man.Also, Adams slid down the ice slope head-on, and I remember Harris skating the same way.

We talked for a few more minutes, and Adams was convinced.He said in surprise: So I was talking to you on the ice!He admitted that he must have been wrong when he saw me cross the flats of the South Col before dark.And it's me who's talking to you.Not Harris at all.Wow.Dude, I think you have something to explain. I was dumbfounded.I've been telling people for two months that Harris stomped to his death on the edge of the South Col, and it didn't turn out to be true.My misunderstanding only added to the pain of Fiona, Harris' parents, his brother, and many friends. Harris is a big man, 180 centimeters tall, weighs hundreds of kilograms, and speaks with a strong New Zealand accent, while Adams is at least 15 centimeters shorter than him, weighs about 60 kilograms, and speaks slowly Swallow a thick American Texas accent.How could I have made such an egregious mistake?Am I really so weak to stare at such a strange face and mistake it for a friend I've spent six weeks with?If Harris never returned to Camp Four after reaching the summit, what happened to him?