Chapter 21 Chapter 19 South Col

△Elevation 7925 meters, May 11, 1996 AM7:30 * Circling and circling, circles go further and further away, The eagle cannot hear the falconer's voice; Everything falls apart, the center cannot hold, Unrest unleashed, shocking the world; The blood-stained tides run wild, Innocent rituals perish everywhere. Yeats <The Second Coming> William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming □□□ On Saturday, May 11th, at around 7:30 am, I staggered back to Camp 4 and finally understood what had happened and was still happening.The truth is paralyzing.The one-hour search for Harris on the South Col had worn me down physically and mentally.I have to believe that Harris has been killed.My teammate Hutchison heard a radio page from Hall on the South Peak, which clearly indicated that our leader was in dire straits and that Han Sen was dead.Members of Fisher's team, who had been lost most of the night at the South Col, reported that Yasuko and Withers had passed away.Everyone believed that Fisher and Gao Minghe, who were more than 360 meters above our tent, had died or were on the verge of dying.

I could not face it all, and my mind withdrew into a strangely robotic state of detachment.My emotions are both numb and extremely clear, as if I have escaped into the bunker deep in my head, spying on the mess around me through a narrow spy hole.I looked up numbly at the sky, which seemed to have turned an unusually light blue, bleaching out all colors, leaving only the palest tint remaining.The jagged horizon was tinged with a coronal soft light that flickered and danced before my eyes.I wondered if I was spiraling into the realm of a madman's nightmare. After a night without supplemental oxygen at 7,925m, I was weaker and more fatigued than I had been when I descended from the summit the previous evening.I knew that my health and that of my teammates would deteriorate rapidly unless we got a little more oxygen or descended to a lower camp.

The acclimatization schedule practiced by modern Everest climbers such as Hall works very well: Climbers spend as little as four weeks above 5,200 meters, including a short overnight hike, and then walk up to 7,300 feet. At a height of 100 meters, you can attack the summit.However, the prerequisite for this strategy is that everyone has an endless supply of cylinder oxygen above 7,300 meters.Once the situation changes, the whole game is lost. Note 1: In 1996, Hall's team only spent eight nights above the No. 2 Battalion (6,492 meters above sea level), and then set off from the Base Camp to attack the summit, which is a typical altitude adaptation period today.Before 1990, climbers usually stayed above the No. 2 camp for a longer period of time (including at least one short-distance trip at an altitude of 7,924 meters) before setting out to attack the summit.The value of acclimatization at an altitude of 7924 meters is debatable (the adverse consequences of an additional stay in such terrain are likely to outweigh the benefits), but at 6401 meters It is undoubtedly safer to extend the current eight or nine nights at 7315 meters to adapt to the altitude.author note

I searched for the rest of my team and found Fishback and Kasisker lying in a nearby tent.Kasisk is deranged, snow blind, completely blind, unable to do anything, muttering incoherently to himself.Fishback appeared to be seriously frightened, but was doing his best to care for Kasisk.Tasker and Glenn were in another tent, both of whom appeared to be asleep or unconscious.Although I felt weak and unsteady on my feet, it was evident that, with the exception of Hutchison, it was worse than mine. I rummaged through tent after tent for oxygen tanks, but all I found were empty.The lack of oxygen combined with extreme fatigue resulted in a deeper sense of confusion and hopelessness.The nylon cloth flapped loudly in the wind, and it was impossible to talk between tents.The only remaining radio was dying.Hall and Harris were gone, and Glenn was still there, drained from the ordeal of the previous night.He was severely frostbitten, and was lying in the tent almost exhausted, at least for now, he couldn't even speak.

Our guides were all down, and Hutchison stepped up to fill the leader's place.He was born in the upper class in the English-speaking area of ​​Montreal, Canada. He is a neurotic and self-respecting young man, as well as a talented medical researcher. He participates in mountaineering expeditions every two or three years, and rarely has time for mountaineering.When the No. 4 Battalion was in danger, he tried his best to carry everything. I searched for Harris in vain. When I was trying to regain my strength, Hutchison found four Sherpas to form a search and rescue team and was about to go out to search for the bodies of Withers and Yasuko.Withers and Yasuko were left on the other side of the South Col while Bocliffe brought Charlotte, Sandy and Madsen back.The Sherpa search party, led by Keshiri, set out ahead of Hutchison. Hutchison was too tired to put on his boots in a daze. He tried to leave the camp in only light flat shoes until Lakpa pointed out his mistake. , he went back to the tent to change his boots.The Sherpas followed the direction Poklev walked, and soon found two bodies on a dingy ice slope scattered with boulders on the edge of the east wall.The Sherpas are extremely shy about death, so they stopped a dozen or twenty meters away to wait for Hutchison.

Hutchison recalled: Both bodies were half buried in the snow.The backpacks are all on the uphill, 30 meters away from the body.Their faces and bodies were covered with snow, only their hands and feet sticking out.The South Col is howling.He saw Yasuko first, but didn't recognize who it was at first, until he knelt in the strong wind and knocked off the three-inch thick ice shell on her face before he recognized it.He was startled to find that she was still breathing.Both gloves were gone, her bare hands were frozen stiff, her eyes were wide open, and her face was porcelain white.Hutchison recalls: It was horrific.I am at a loss.She was dying.I don't know what to do.

He turned his attention to Withers lying six meters away.Withers' head was also covered with a thick layer of frost.Pucks the size of grapes stuck to his head and eyelids.After Hutchison cleaned the ice from his face, he found that the Texan was also alive, and I think he was mumbling, but I couldn't make out what he was trying to say.His right glove was missing and badly frostbitten.I tried to help him sit up, but he couldn't.He has no way to recover, but he still has a breath. Shocked, Hutchison went up to the Sherpas and asked Lakpa for help.Lakpa is a veteran of Mount Everest with rich mountaineering knowledge and is respected by Sherpas and whites.He advised Hutchison to leave Withers and Yasuko where they were.Even if the two survived and were dragged back to Camp Four, they couldn't make it to Base Camp. Most of the others on the South Col would have trouble getting down the mountain safely by themselves, and trying to save someone would only endanger their lives.

Hutchison believed that Lakpa's idea was correct, no matter how difficult it was, he had no choice: let Withers and Yasuko resign themselves to fate, and use the manpower and material resources of the mountaineering team to save people who could actually be saved.This is a typical priority principle when resources are limited.Hutchison returned to camp weeping, lost like a ghost.At his urging, we wake up Tusker and Glenn, then huddle into their tent to discuss what to do about Withers and Yasuko.The conversation that followed was very painful, and everyone hesitated to speak.We avoid eye contact.But five minutes later all four of us agreed: Hutchison was right to leave Withers and Yasuko where they were.

We debated whether to descend to Camp II that afternoon, but Tusk insisted we couldn't leave the South Col while Hall was stranded on the South Summit alone.I don't even think about leaving him and starting.he announced.The argument was moot anyway: Kasiske and Glenn were too physically ill to go anywhere at this point. Hutchison said: "At that time I was very worried that we would repeat the situation of K2 peak in 1986.On July 4th of that year, on the second highest mountain in the world, seven veteran Himalayan climbers (including the legendary Austrian mountaineer Dimberger) set out to attack the summit.Six of the seven made it to the summit, but on the descent a violent storm blew high on K2, trapping them in an alpine camp at an altitude of 8,000 metres.For five days the blizzard blew furiously, and they grew weaker and weaker.When the storm finally stopped, only Dimberger and one other person made it down the mountain alive.

On Saturday morning, while we were discussing what to do with Yasuko and Withers and whether we were going to descend that day, Beidleman called Team Fisher from the tents and forced them to descend the South Col.He narrates: The previous night had made everyone physically and mentally exhausted, and it was really difficult to get the people on the team to get up and get out of the tent.I even had to punch some people to get their boots on.But I insisted on leaving immediately.In my opinion, staying too long at 7925m is asking for trouble if you don't have to.Knowing that someone had started to rescue Fisher and Hall, I hustled the client off the South Col and down to the lower camp.

Bocliffe stayed in Camp No. 4 and waited for Fisher, while Beidleman escorted the team members down the South Col slowly.At the elevation of 7620 km, he stopped to give Sandy another injection of dexamethasone, and then everyone stayed in Camp No. 3 for a long time, taking a good rest and replenishing water.When Beidleman and his party arrived at Battalion No. 3, Breciers happened to be there. He said: I was stunned to see these people.It was as if they had fought a war for five months.Sandy began to lose control of her emotions, she cried, it was terrible!I can only give up, lie down and die!They all seemed terribly frightened. Not long before dark, the last one or two members of Beidleman's team were struggling down the steep ice slope of the lower Lhotse Mountain, only about 150 meters away from the end of the fixed rope, when they ran into a few people who came up to rescue them The Sherpas of the Nepal Mountain Cleaning Expedition.As the group continued to walk down, a burst of falling rocks the size of a grape roared down from a height, and one of them hit a certain Sherpa on the back of the head.Beidleman, who witnessed the incident not far above, said the falling rock hit him hard. Cliff recalled: "It's really sad.It sounded like he had been hit with a baseball bat.The power of this blow cut off a piece of skin as big as a silver dollar from the Sherpa man's skull. He passed out, his heartbeat and breathing stopped suddenly, and he fell down and slid down the rope.Cliff jumped ahead of him quickly, managing to stop his fall.But after a while, when Cliff was holding the Sherpa in his arms, another rock fell and hit the Sherpa, giving him another solid blow on the back of the head. Although he was injured a second time, after a few minutes, he opened his mouth violently and breathed again.Beidleman managed to get him to the base of the Lhotse Face, where a dozen of his Nepalese teammates joined him and carried him to No. 2 Battalion.Beidleman said, at that time, Cliff and I looked at each other in disbelief, our eyes seemed to ask each other, what's going on here?What did we do to make the mountain so angry? Throughout April and early May, Hall was concerned that some of the weaker teams were in serious trouble, forcing our team to rescue them and ruining our summit drive.Unexpectedly, now Hall's expedition team is in serious trouble, and other teams come to the rescue.The three teams of the Alpine Club International Expedition Team of Berryson, the IMAX Expedition Team of Brixes, and the Commercial Expedition Team of Duff immediately postponed their summit plan to assist the suffering mountain. friend. The day before (Friday, May 10), when Hall's team and Fisher's team were climbing from Camp No. 4 to the summit, the Alpine Society International Expedition led by Prison and Jadens was about to arrive at No. 3 Camp. number battalion.On Saturday morning, as soon as the two heard that there was a mountain disaster above, they immediately left the client at an altitude of 7315 meters, handed over to the third guide Williams to take care of them, and both rushed up to the South Col to rescue people. At that time, Bridgers, Westers and the rest of the IMAX team were in the second battalion. Bridgers immediately stopped filming and put all the manpower and material resources of the expeditionary force into the rescue.First, he relayed word to me that a spare battery was stored in one of the IMAX tents on the South Col.I found the battery in the afternoon, and the Hall team regained communication with the camp below.Then Brishaws also gave the team's oxygen cylinders to the sick climbers on the South Col and the rescuers who were about to arrive. It was 50 cylinders of oxygen that they worked hard to carry to the 7,925 meters.Even though it might jeopardize his $5.5 million project, he didn't hesitate to send key assets. Yardens and Brixes arrived at Camp No. 4 at about ten o'clock in the morning, and immediately began to distribute the oxygen tanks of the IMAX team to those in need of oxygen, and then waited for the Sherpas to rescue Hall, Fisher and Gao Minghe. result.At 4:35 in the afternoon, while standing outside the tent, he suddenly noticed someone walking slowly towards the camp, with stiff knees and strange gait.He shouted to Yadance: Hey, come and see.Someone walked into the camp.The man's right hand was not gloved, and it was exposed to the biting cold wind, which was severely frostbitten.Jadance thought the man looked like a mummy from a low-budget horror movie.When the mummy wandered into the camp, Barryson realized that it was none other than Withers, who had risen from the dead. Withers had been huddled with Glenn, Beidleman, Yasuko and the rest of the team the night before, and it was getting colder and colder.My right hand glove is missing.My face was frozen and so were my hands.I felt really numb, couldn't concentrate anymore, and finally lost consciousness. That night and most of the next day, Withers lay on the ice, blown by a merciless wind, stiff and breathless.He didn't remember Porkleaf coming to fetch Sandy and Charlotte and Madsen, or that Hutchison had found him in the morning and cleaned his face of ice.He was unconscious for more than twelve hours.By Saturday afternoon, out of nowhere, his ribbon gyrus suddenly became active and he regained consciousness. Withers recalled: "At first I thought I was dreaming.When I woke up, I thought I was in bed.I don't feel cold or uncomfortable.I rolled slightly to the right, opened my eyes, and saw my right hand in front of me.Only then did I see how severely my right hand was frozen, and then I gradually returned to reality.Finally I came to my senses and realized I was in a bad situation, the rescue team wouldn't be coming and I'd better hope for luck. Although Withers was blind in his right eye and could only see a radius of about one meter with his left eye, he deduced the direction of the camp and walked forward against the wind.In case he got it wrong, he'd fall straight down the east wall, where the edge of the east wall was just the opposite.About ninety minutes later, he saw several unnaturally smooth, blue-glowing rocks, which turned out to be the tents of No. 4 Battalion. Hutchison and I were in the tent listening to Hall's radio from South Peak when Barryson rushed over.He called out to Hutchison outside the door: Doctor!Come and help!Pick up your dick.Withers just walked into camp, and he's in bad shape!Hutchison, who was too tired to be human, was speechless when he heard the miraculous resurrection of Withers, and immediately crawled out to see a doctor. He, Jadance and Prison helped Withers into an empty tent, covered him with two sleeping bags, put in some hot water canisters and put him on an oxygen mask.Hutchison admits: None of us thought Withers would survive that night.The last thing a person stops before death is the pulse in the carotid artery, and his carotid artery pulse can hardly be felt.His life is at stake.Even if I lived till morning, I couldn't figure out how to send him down the mountain. At this time, the three Sherpas who went up the mountain to rescue Fei Xue and Gao Minghe had brought Gao Minghe down and returned to the camp.They judged that Fisher was hopeless, so they left him on a rock shed at an altitude of 8,291 meters.But Pokliffe was reluctant to give up Fisher when he saw Withers, who had been left to his fate, enter the tent.At five o'clock the blizzard intensified, and the Russian set out alone to try to save him. Bocliffe said: I found Fisher at seven or seven-thirty maybe eight.it's getting dark.The blizzard was strong.His oxygen mask was on his face, but the tank was empty.He was not wearing mittens, his fingers were all exposed.The zipper of the down jacket was not closed, and it was pulled down from the shoulder, exposing an arm.I can't save him.he died.With a heavy heart, Porkleaf yanked Fisher's knapsack over his face as a shroud, leaving him where the rock shed was.Then he picked up Fisher's camera, ice ax and beloved pocket knife, and headed down the mountain into the snowstorm, which Beidleman would later bring to Seattle for Fisher's nine-year-old son. On Saturday evening, winds were stronger than those that had hit the South Col overnight.By the time Pokrief descended the mountain and returned to Camp No. 4, the visibility had dropped to a few meters, and he could barely find his tent. My first canister of oxygen in thirty hours (thanks to the IMAX team), and despite the crackling of the tent, I fell asleep in torment.Shortly after midnight, I had a nightmare of Harris dragging a rope down the Lhotse Face and asking me why I wasn't holding on to the other end, when Hutchison shook me awake.He shouted through the howling wind: Qiang, I'm worried about the tent.Do you think there will be a problem? I struggled to get up from the abyss of dream, as powerless as a drowning person emerging from the sea. It took a minute to understand why Sen was so worried: the strong wind had already flattened half of our residence, and every time there was a strong wind, the tent would collapse. Shaking non-stop.Several pillars were so badly bent that I shone a light on them with a headlamp and two large seams looked like they were going to tear.The air inside the tent was thick with fine snow particles, and everything was covered with hoarfrost.The wind was stronger than I have experienced anywhere in my life, even dwarfing the strongest wind in Patagonia, which is said to be the world's most violent.If the tent disintegrated before daylight, we would be miserable. Hutchison and I packed our boots and all our clothes and sat upwind of the tent.For the next three hours, exhausted, with our backs and shoulders against the broken posts, we clung to the tattered nylon tent in the hurricane as if we would live and die with it.I kept thinking that Hall was on the South Peak at an altitude of 8,748 meters, running out of oxygen, and bearing the power of the snowstorm without any shelter, but this was too uncomfortable, and I tried not to think about it. Before dawn on Sunday, May 12, Hutchison ran out of oxygen.Afterwards he narrated: Without oxygen, I felt very cold and hypothermia.Limbs gradually lost feeling.I was worried that I would be unhinged and maybe not be able to leave the South Col and descend.I feared that if I didn't go down that morning, I would never go down.I handed over my oxygen tank to Hutchison, poked around and found one with a little oxygen left, so we started packing and heading down. I worked up the courage to go outside and found at least one empty tent completely blown down the South Col.Then I found Dorje standing alone in the frightening wind, weeping for the loss of Hall.After the expedition, I told his Canadian friend Pod about his grief, and she explained: Dorje believed that his mission in the world was to keep others safe, and he often talked to me about this.This matter concerns his religious beliefs and his preparation for reincarnation in the next life.Although Hall is the leader of the expedition, Dorje still takes it as his duty to ensure the safety of Hall, Han Sen and others.They died, and he couldn't help but blame himself. Note 2: Devout Buddhists believe that through accumulating good practices for many generations, they will not enter the cycle of life and death in the end, and will forever transcend this world of suffering.author note Hutchison was afraid that Dorje would not go down the mountain due to his grief, so he begged him to go down the South Col immediately.At 8:30 in the morning, Glenn, who was severely frostbited, believed that Hall, Harris, Hansen, Fisher, Yasuko, and Withers were all dead at this time, so he dragged himself out of the tent and gathered Hutchison, Tasker and others. , Fishbeck and Kasisker, led them down the mountain. There were no other guides on the team, so I volunteered to lead the team.As our dejected troop filed slowly from No. 4 Battalion to the tip of the Geneva slope, I mustered up the courage to take a last look at Withers, who I thought had passed away during the night.I found his hurricane-flattened tent, saw both doors were wide open, peeked in, and was shocked to find that he was still alive. He was lying on his back on the tent floor, shaking constantly.The face was horribly swollen, with jet-black deep frostbite spots on the nose and cheeks.The blizzard had blown away the two sleeping bags that had covered him, exposing him to sub-zero winds, leaving his hands numb and unable to pull the sleeping bags back on him or zip up the tent.He saw me and wailed, "Fuck it!"His features were contorted with pain and despair.What the hell to do here to get a little help!He had been screaming for help for two or three hours, but the blizzard drowned his cries. Withers later said he woke up in the middle of the night to find the tent blown down by the storm and ripped open.The wind was so strong that the tent kept hitting me in the face and I couldn't breathe.Occasionally, it stops for a second, and blows on my face and chest again with a bang.Plus my right arm was swollen, and I was wearing this stupid watch. The arm got swollen and bigger, and the watch got tighter and tighter. As a result, the blood flow in my hand was blocked.My hands are in such a way that there's no way I can get the damn thing off.I shouted for help, but no one came.It was one hell of a night.Dude, when you put your head in the tent, I couldn't know how happy I was to see your face. I was so horrified to see Withers in the tent so miserable, and so unforgivable that we left him again, that I almost cried.As I pulled up the sleeping bag to cover him, zipped up the tent door, and tried to rebuild the destroyed tent, I lied through my tears and said, Don't worry, friend.Everything will work out. As soon as I settled Withers, I radioed Dr. Caroline at the base camp, calling for help in an uncontrollable voice: Caroline!What should I do about Withers?He's still alive, but I don't think he'll live long.His condition is really bad! She replied: Try to stay calm, strong.You have to go down the mountain with Mike and the rest of the team.What about Jadance and Prison?Ask them to take care of Withers, and then hurry down the mountain.In a frenzy, I roused Dennis and Barryson, who rushed to Withers' tent with a pitcher of hot tea.I hurried out of camp to join my teammates, and Yardens was ready to inject four milligrams of dexamethasone into Withers' thigh.It's admirable, but it's hard to imagine how much it could help him.