The Abominable: A Novel

Saturday, April 25, 1925

Everest is still 40 miles away but already it dominates not only the skyline of white-shrouded Himalayan high peaks but the sky itself. I suspect that the Deacon has brought a British flag to plant at the summit, but I see now that the mountain already bears its own pennant—a mist of white cloud and spindrift roiling in the west-to-east wind for 20 miles or more, from right to left, a white plume swirling above all the lesser summits to the east of Everest’s snow massif.

“Mon Dieu,” whispers Jean-Claude.

The five of us, counting Pasang, have trekked ahead of the porter-Sherpas and yaks and climbed a low hill to the east of the pass, and while Pasang stands a few yards behind us and below the high point of the pass, holding the reins of J.C.’s little white pony, which is spooked by the winds here on Pang La—the last pass before Rongbuk and Everest—the four of us have to lie on the boulder-strewn ground or be blown away.

We lie unceremoniously on our right sides, like Romans on their couches at a feast, the Deacon furthest from me, propping himself on his right elbow as he attempts to hold his military binoculars steady with his left hand; then there is Reggie, who is lying prone, her boot soles looking like inverted exclamation marks, using both hands to prop a naval-type telescope against a low boulder in front of her; then Jean-Claude, sitting more upright than the rest of us and squinting southward through his snow goggles; finally me, reclining on my right elbow and somewhat behind the other three.

We’re all wearing wide-brimmed hats against the Tibetan sunlight, ferocious at this altitude—burning and peeling has been my bane the last weeks, as evidently it had been Sandy Irvine’s—and while the three of us men have simply jammed the hats as far down on our heads as we can in order to outwit the wind, Reggie is wearing a strange fedora—broad-brimmed on the left, front, and back, buttoned up on the right, which has an adjustable strap that goes under her chin and holds the hat tight. She said she had picked it up during a visit to Australia years ago.

We call out the names of mountains to one another like children exclaiming over Christmas presents: “Moving to the west, that tall one is Cho Oyu, twenty-six thousand nine hundred and six feet…” “Gyachung Kang, twenty-five thousand nine hundred ninety feet…” “That peak throwing its shadow on Everest is Lhotse, twenty-seven thousand and…I forget…” “Twenty-seven thousand eight hundred ninety feet.” “To the east there, Chomo Lonzo, twenty-five thousand six hundred and four feet…”

“And Makalu,” says the Deacon. “Twenty-seven thousand seven hundred sixty-five feet.”

“My God,” I whisper. One could take the highest peaks of America’s Rocky Mountains and they would be lost in the foothills of these white-fanged giants. The cols—the saddles—that were the low points connecting Everest and the other peaks started above 25,000 feet—3,000 feet higher than any mountain in North America.

Usually, according to Reggie and the Deacon, members of previous expeditions had been able to catch glimpses of Everest at other times during the trek west toward Shekar Dzong—especially if one was willing to detour up the Yaru Valley west of Tinki Dzong and do a little climbing—but we’ve spent the last five weeks trekking under thick, low clouds, often against freezing rain and blowing snow, so this sunny day atop Pang La is our first view of the mountain.

Reggie beckons me forward, and I lie prone next to her on the reddish soil and hard rocks—a strangely intimate moment—and she steadies the barrel of the telescope as I peer through it.

“My God.” These seem to be the only syllables I’m capable of this day.

Even at my young age—I’d turned 23 somewhere in Sikkim on April 2—I’ve had enough mountaineering experience to know that a mountain that seems unclimbable from a distance can reveal routes, perhaps even easy routes, once one gets close enough to it or actually on it. But the summit of Everest looks…just too large, too tall, too white, too windy, too infinitely far away.

Jean-Claude has crawled up to use the Deacon’s binoculars.

“You can’t see the North Col or the high point on the East Rongbuk Glacier from here because of the intervening hills,” says the Deacon. “But look along the North East Ridge. Can you see the First Step and Second Step nearing the summit?”

“All I can see is an endless plume of spindrift,” says J.C. “What must those winds be like on that North East Ridge right now?”

Instead of answering that, the Deacon says, “You can clearly see the Great Couloir—or what they’re calling Norton’s Couloir now—stretching down to the left from beneath the Summit Pyramid.”

“Ah, yes…,” breathes J.C.

It’s impossible for me to tell through Reggie’s slightly jiggling telescope whether or not that couloir is deep in snow and a pure avalanche deathtrap or not.

“The strong spring winds are good,” Reggie says, her voice almost lost beneath the Pang La wind hooting and whistling between boulders. “They clear away the monsoon and winter snows. They will give us a better chance of finding Percy.”

Percy. In my growing eagerness to get on the mountain and to start climbing, I’ve almost forgotten about Lord Percy Bromley and our ostensible reason for coming so far. The thought of the young man’s corpse up there somewhere on that unassailable, inhuman mountain with its impossible winds makes me shiver.

Pasang’s powerful voice comes up to us. “The lead porters are approaching the summit of the pass behind us.”

Reluctantly, eyes watering from both the wind and the fatigue of squinting so hard at the distant peak in the unrelenting light, all four of us stand, brush dust and pebbles from our heavy layers of goose down and wool, turn our backs to the wind from the west, and walk—half-staggering in the gusts now at our backs—toward the narrow trail leading across the saddle of this pass.

Sikkim had been all hothouse flowers, jungles of rhododendrons, air almost too thick and humid to breathe, steaming overgrown valleys, camping in clearings that weren’t really clearings, salting leeches off our bodies at the end of long days hiking through wet vegetation and avoiding the daks—tidy little bungalows that the Raj had placed every eleven miles, a long day’s march, on the long main route into Tibet toward the closest Tibetan trade capital, Gyantse. Daks, according to Reggie and Dr. Pasang, came complete with fresh food, beds, books to read, and a permanent servant, called a chowkidar, in each bungalow. But our group camped a mile short of each dak or two miles beyond, never taking advantage of the bungalows set there for precisely the purpose we needed them.

“British expeditions stay in the daks,” said the Deacon as we sat around one of our early campfires in the Sikkimese jungle.

“So do hundreds of other Englishmen,” said Reggie. “Trade representatives going north to Gyantse. Officials of the Raj. Naturalists. Cartographers. Diplomats.”

“But we’re none of those things,” said the Deacon. “One look at our climbing gear and miles of rope and the servants will send the word about us forward into Tibet.”

“How?” asked Jean-Claude.

The Deacon removed his pipe and smiled thinly. “We’re not quite as far off all maps as we feel, gentlemen. Even here in Sikkim. The Raj has run telephone and telegraph wires all the way north to Gyantse, across even the high passes.”

“It’s true,” said Reggie. “We won’t be off the main north-south trade route until we turn west toward Kampa Dzong, well into Tibet. But in the meantime, I believe the only ones we’re fooling with our rugged camping rather than spending relatively comfortable nights in the daks are some of the leeches we’ve encountered.”

Our starting out had been all downhill from Darjeeling to the Tista Bridge. The Sherpas had left before dawn on March 26 with the ponies and loads, and we brought our rucksacks and extra provisions as far as 6th Mile Stone in two rugged trucks, one driven by Pasang and the other by Reggie. There we joined the trekkers while Edward the chauffeur and another man returned the trucks to the plantation, and we and the thirty Sherpas and our ponies and mules continued steeply downhill to and across the Tista River to the Sikkim village of Kalimpong.

We camped beyond Kalimpong because Reggie did not want to give advance notice to the crotchety governor of Sikkim, Major Frederick Bailey, the official who (according to Reggie) had been sabotaging the Everest Committee’s permissions to enter Tibet just so that he might someday get a chance to climb the mountain himself. There was a border guard as we entered Sikkim—a lone Gurkha—who accepted Reggie’s Tibetan travel permit without protest, and we were all amused at the lone guard shouting orders to himself—“Right hand salute!” “Left turn!” “Quick march!” The Deacon informed us afterward that when a Gurkha lacked an officer or NCO to give him orders, he was quite happy ordering himself around.

Twice during our six days crossing Sikkim did brown men in police uniforms catch up to our line of Sherpas and mules and small white ponies, but in each case Reggie took the official aside, spoke to him privately, and—I can only guess—gave him money. In any event, no one tried to stop us in Sikkim, and in just under a week of breathing the over-sweet scent of rhododendrons while pulling leeches off any unprotected parts of ourselves after wading through waist-high wet grasses, we were approaching the high pass—Jelep La—that would bring us into Tibet. We were not sorry to put Sikkim behind us; it rained constantly, and soon all our clothes were sodden; not a day of pure sunlight in which we could lay our clothes and socks out to dry. I thought I was the only one who’d picked up a light case of dysentery during our Sikkim crossing, but I soon realized that it was bothering J.C. and the Deacon as well. Only Reggie and Pasang seemed immune to the embarrassing disability.

I’d been dosing myself with lead opium for several days before the Deacon noticed my illness and referred me to Dr. Pasang. The tall Sherpa nodded when, embarrassed as I was, I admitted to my intestinal problems, and then gently suggested that the lead opium would have some effect on the dysentery but that the side effects from the nightly dosings might be worse than the disease. He gave me a bottle of sweet-tasting medicine that quieted my guts within a day.

At first I would walk ahead of my white pony, carrying almost 70 pounds of gear in my pack, but Reggie convinced me to ride when I could and to let the mules carry most of my load. “You’ll need your energy on Everest,” she said, and I soon realized that she was right.

Weakened some by the dysentery from which I was just beginning to recover, I became used to our expedition’s habit of stopping in early evening, the Whymper tents and larger cooking tarp tent already erected for us by advance Sherpas and our sleeping bags laid out, and accustomed also to awakening to the soft tones of “Good morning, Sahibs,” as Babu Rita and Norbu Chedi brought J.C. and me our coffee. Next door, the Deacon would be drinking his coffee, and Reggie, always up and dressed before any of us, would be having her morning tea and muffins with Pasang by the fire.

It wasn’t until we climbed 14,500-foot Jelep La that I realized how the illness in Sikkim had weakened me. In Colorado with Harvard climbing friends a few years earlier, I’d all but galloped up the 14,000-plus-foot Longs Peak and felt great at its broad summit, able to do handstands, but climbing the switchbacks and then the wet and slippery stones—a sort of endless natural staircase—toward the summit of Jelep La, I found myself taking three steps, then leaning on my long ice axe and gasping for breath. Then three more steps. Since the high point of the pass was less than half the altitude of the summit of Everest, this was not a good omen.

I could see that Jean-Claude was also breathing a little harder and moving a little slower than usual, although he’d been atop enough 14,000-foot summits. Only the Deacon from our original party seemed already acclimated to the altitude, and I noticed that he had some trouble keeping up with Reggie’s fast hiking and climbing pace.

We reached Yatung in Tibet, and the differences between Tibet and Sikkim could not have been much greater. It had snowed on us at the high point of Jelep La, and the snow and driving winds from the west continued as we headed out onto the high, dry Tibetan plain. From the jungle riot of colors in Sikkim—pinks and rich cream colors and colors I didn’t even have names for but which Reggie or the Deacon identified as mauve and cerise—we’d emerged into an essentially colorless world, gray clouds low above our heads, gray rocks to either side, and only the dull native red of the Tibetan soil to add a little color to the universe. Our faces were soon muddy with that windblown red soil, and when the cold wind made my eyes water—before I learned to wear my goggles even at that relatively low altitude—the tear streaks would run like bright blood down my mud-caked cheeks.

We spend our last night of the approach trek outside the small, windswept village of Chōdzong on Monday, April 27, then the next day we head down the eighteen-mile-long valley to the Rongbuk Monastery only some eleven miles from the entrance to the Rongbuk Glacier, the proposed site of our Base Camp.

“What does Rongbuk mean?” asks Jean-Claude.

The Deacon either doesn’t know or is too preoccupied to answer. Reggie replies, “Monastery of the Snows.”

We stop at the windswept monastery long enough to ask for an audience with and a ritual blessing from the Holy Lama, ngag-dwang-batem-hdsin-norbu, the high lama Dzatrul Rinpoche. “The Sherpas aren’t as superstitious about this as Tibetan porters would be,” Reggie explains as we wait, “but it’s still a good idea to get such a blessing before we proceed to Base Camp, much less attempt to climb the mountain.”

But we’re to be disappointed. The Holy Lama with the title sounding like a tin can tumbling down concrete steps sends word that it is “inauspicious” for him to meet with us now. Dzatrul Rinpoche will summon us back to the monastery, his lama representative says, if and when he, the Holy Lama, feels it is auspicious to grace us with his presence and blessing.

Reggie’s surprised at this. She’s always had a good relationship with the monks and chief Holy Lama at the Rongbuk Monastery, she says. But when she asks a priest she knows why the Dzatrul Rinpoche is refusing to see us, the bald old man answers—in Tibetan, which Reggie translates for us—“The auspices are bad. The demons in the mountain are awake and angry, and more are coming. The Metohkangmi on the mountain are active and angry, and…”

“Metohkangmi?” asks Jean-Claude.

“Yeti,” the Deacon reminds us. “Those ubiquitous hairy manlike monsters.”

“…your General Bruce assured us three years ago that all the British climbers belonged to one of England’s mountain-worshiping sects and that they were on a holy pilgrimage to Cho-mo-lung-ma, but we know now that General Bruce lied. You English do not worship the mountain.” Reggie is interpreting as fast as the old monk is speaking.

“Is this about the dancing lamas and Noel’s damned motion picture?” asks the Deacon.

Reggie ignores the question and does not translate it for the monk. She says something in singsong Tibetan, bows low, and all five of us, including Pasang, back out of the monk’s presumably holy presence. The old man returns to spinning a prayer wheel.

Outside in the wind again, she lets her breath out. “This is very bad, gentlemen. Our Sherpas—especially our chosen Tiger high-climbers—very much want and need this blessing. We’ll have to set up Base Camp and then I’ll return and try to convince the Holy Lama that we do deserve a blessing for the mountain.”

“To the Devil with him if the old man doesn’t want to grace us with his damned blessing,” growls the Deacon.

“No,” says Reggie, gracefully swinging herself aboard her tiny white pony. “It will be to the Devil with us if we don’t get that blessing for our Sherpas.”

It was back in late March when we were camped just past the first major Sikkim village of Kalimpong that the Deacon had his visit from the Mysterious Stranger.

I’d noticed the tall, thin man when Dr. Pasang led him into camp and Reggie started chatting with him, but between the traditional Sherpa-Nepalese clothing, the brown cap that was really more turban than cap, the brown skin and huge black beard of the stranger, I assumed that this was an unusually tall Sherpa, or perhaps a relative of Pasang’s, visiting us. I did note that he was wearing solid, if very worn, English hiking boots.

It turned out not only to be a white man, an Englishman, but a very famous Englishman.

Before a whisper of the stranger’s identity started buzzing around the camp, the Deacon’s personal Sherpa, Nyima Tsering, had come to fetch our friend. “A sahib is here to see you, Sahib,” said Nyima to the Deacon with his habitual giggle.

The Deacon and J.C. were both fiddling with the oxygen apparatus flow valve. When he looked up toward our visitor, the tall, bearded man in Nepalese peasant clothing but wearing solid English hiking boots, the Deacon leaped to his feet and jogged over to shake his hand. I assumed that the Deacon would bring the stranger over to the fire and introduce him to Jean-Claude and me, but instead the two men—rather rudely, I thought—walked away toward the nearby stream that flowed into the Tista River we’d just crossed. There we could just see through the screen of trees that the stranger squatted in a Sherpa-like manner, the Deacon sat on a small river boulder, and the two immediately became lost in conversation.

“Who is that?” I asked Reggie when she finally strolled over to see if we wanted some more coffee.

“K. T. Owings,” she said.

I couldn’t have been more dumbstruck if she had announced that the stranger was the Second Coming of Christ.

Kenneth Terrence Owings had been one of my literary idols from the time I was twelve years old. The so-called “climber-poet” had been one of the top five living British alpinists before the Great War, but also one of England’s more celebrated free-verse poets, easily ranking with Rupert Brooke and even the other great poets who’d died in the War—Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Charles Sorley—or those few who’d survived to write about it, including Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Gurney.

K. T. Owings had survived the War, after being promoted all the way from lieutenant to major, but he’d never written a word about the fighting. In fact, as far as I knew, Owings had never written another word of poetry since the War. In that sense he was very much like the Deacon, who’d been rather famous for his verse before the War but hadn’t published—or evidently written—a word since the fighting began. Nor had Owings returned to the Alps, where, like George Mallory and the Deacon (and often in the company of the Deacon), he’d become so famous as a climber before the War. K. T. Owings had simply disappeared. Some newspapers and literary journals reported that Owings had gone to Africa, where he’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro by himself and simply refused to come back down. Others were certain that he’d gone to China to climb unnamed mountains and been killed by bandits there. The most recent authoritative word was that K. T. Owings—to cleanse himself of his experiences in the Great War—had built a small sailing ship, attempted to sail around the world, and drowned in a terrible storm in the South Atlantic.

I looked through the branches again. There was K. T. Owings, dressed in something like clean rags, black beard with swatches of gray in it, squatting on his haunches and chatting away a mile a minute with the Deacon. It was hard to believe.

I stood, took my metal water bottle, and began walking toward the stream.

“Mr. Deacon wanted to be left alone with him,” said Reggie.

“I’m just going to get some water,” I said. “I shan’t bother them.”

“Make sure you boil it before drinking,” said Reggie.

I all but tiptoed down to the stream, keeping a thick screen of branches between me and the two men. Leaning to my left toward the screen of branches, the better to eavesdrop as I filled my large metal water bottle, I realized that the Deacon was speaking too softly to be heard but Owings’s voice was a deep rasp.

“…and I’ve reconnoitered high enough to see that there’s a serious step in the ridge, a rock face about forty feet high, just below the summit ridge…I can see it from the valley with binoculars and caught another glimpse climbing above the Cwm…”

What was this? Owings seemed to be warning the Deacon about the First or Second Step…probably the Second Step, since the summit ridge lay just beyond…on the North East Ridge of Everest. But we all knew about the First and Second Steps, although no one—with the possible exception of Mallory and Irvine on the day they disappeared—had yet gone high enough on the ridges to tackle them (especially the larger, steeper-looking Second Step). The two Steps had been visible in photographs taken since the 1921 expedition. Why would Owings be cautioning the Deacon about such an obvious thing now? And for some reason he’d used the term “Cwm” rather than Col for the North Col. Perhaps the poet-climber had his own names for various features that had been named since the 1921 recon expedition. Had Owings tried to climb Mount Everest on his own and been turned back by these formidable rock-step obstacles high on the North East Ridge? The Steps were a main reason—along with the terrible winds along the ridgeline—why Norton and others had moved onto the North Face to try ascending the near-vertical Great Couloir.

“…with fixed rope perhaps…” was all I could hear of the Deacon’s hushed reply.

“Yes, yes, that might work,” Owings concluded. “But I can’t promise a camp or cache right below that…”

The Deacon said something in low tones. He might have warned Owings to keep his voice down, since the famous poet-climber’s words were barely audible when the conversation resumed.

“…the worst part of all is almost certainly the Ice Fall…,” Owings was saying urgently.

Ice Fall? I thought. Was he talking about the near-vertical snow and ice face below the North Col at the head of the East Rongbuk Glacier? That was difficult, certainly—seven Sherpa porters had died in the avalanche there in ’22—but how could it be the “worst part” of an Everest expedition? Two expeditions had already climbed high above it, even transporting heavy loads up the ice face daily. Scores of trips. Last year Sandy Irvine had jury-rigged that rope and wood ladder to make the climb easier and safer for the porters. Even Pasang and Reggie, if she was to be believed—and I believed her—had free-climbed it, laboriously cutting steps into the ice face, and had been able to get to the North Col campsite and briefly above before bad weather pinned them down. We’d brought caving ladders and J.C.’s new 12-point crampons and his jumar doohickey to make the porters’ climb to the North Col easier and safer.

“I have the sequence,” Owings said, his voice a rasp. “White, green, then red. Make sure…keep them high, very high, and…”

This made no sense to me at all. Suddenly my boot slipped on a stone as I squatted by the stream, my bottle already full, and I heard the Deacon say, “Shhh, someone’s nearby.”

Red-faced, faking nonchalance, I capped my bottle, stood, and strolled as innocently as I could back up to the campsite, not sure if the Deacon and his famous friend could see me through the leafy branches or not.

The two moved a bit downstream, further out of sight and into a clearing where no one could crouch nearby unseen, and their intense exchange continued for another thirty minutes. Then the Deacon came back to camp alone.

“Isn’t Mr. Owings going to join us for dinner?” asked Reggie.

“No, he’s headed back this evening. Hopes to reach Darjeeling by tomorrow night,” replied the Deacon and looked sharply at me where I sat with my incriminating water bottle still in my hands. I looked down before I started blushing.

“Ree-shard,” said Jean-Claude, “you never told us that you knew K. T. Owings.”

“It never came up,” said the Deacon, taking his ease on one of the packing crates and resting his elbows on his wool-covered knees.

“I would very much have liked to meet Monsieur Owings,” continued J.C., his tone a shade accusing, I thought.

The Deacon shrugged. “Ken is a rather solitary fellow. He wanted to talk to me about something he did, and then he needed to get back.”

“Where does he live?” I managed to ask.

“In Nepal.” It was Reggie who answered. “Near Thyangboche, I believe. In the Khumbu Valley.”

“I didn’t think that white men—Englishmen—were allowed in Nepal,” I said.

“They aren’t,” said the Deacon.

“Mr. Owings went there after the War,” Reggie said. “I believe he has a Nepalese wife and several children. He’s been accepted there. He rarely crosses into India or Sikkim.”

The Deacon said nothing.

What’s the white-green-red sequence stuff all about? I wanted to ask the Deacon. Why is the ice face, or Ice Fall, as Owings called it, supposed to be the most dangerous part of the climb? Why was he talking about camping sites and caches? Has he found or left something on the north side of the mountain that the three previous English expeditions hadn’t stumbled upon?

“Did you happen to know Major Owings during the War?” asked Reggie.

“Yes, I knew him then,” said the Deacon. “And before.” He stood up and slapped his knees. “It’s getting late. Are we going to get Semchumbi busy cooking something tonight or just turn in hungry?”

Leaving the Rongbuk Monastery with many of the Sherpas grumbling about the lack of a blessing—grumbling at least until Dr. Pasang shouts them into a surly silence—the thirty-five of us trudge two miles down the valley and across the river toward the mouth of the Rongbuk Glacier until we reach the site of the three earlier expeditions’ Base Camp about an hour or so before sunset. The futile waiting at the monastery for the head lama Dzatrul Rinpoche to see us has wasted too much of our day.

I confess that I’m feeling somewhat depressed by the time we reach the Base Camp site. All three expeditions have camped at exactly this spot—within the glacier valley but shielded from the worst winds by a 40-foot-high moraine-rock ridge to the south, view open to the north whence we’ve just come, flat spots for the tents (some even free of larger rocks), and a small melt lake where the ponies, mules, and yaks we’ve traded for can drink. A glacial stream runs nearby, and although the water has to be boiled before drinking because of the nearby animal and human waste, and we prefer to melt clean snow to drink, the stream gives us water for bathing.

But there’s also filth and debris from the three previous British expeditions: tatters of torn tent canvas and broken poles; a litter of discarded oxygen tanks and frames; low rock walls that the wind has managed to tumble in places, heaps of not-yet-rusting discarded tin cans by the hundreds, some still full of rotting uneaten delicacies from last year’s expedition; and to the left of the main camping area, an obvious spot for the latrines along a line of flat stones. We’re greeted by hundreds of freeze-dried human turds lining a trench neither dug deep enough nor filled in when Norton and the others retreated from this spot.

Even more depressing, just downhill from the trashy site of Mallory’s base camp rises the tall pyramid of stones that the previous expedition raised as a memorial to those who’ve died on the mountain. The top inset boulder had been painted to read IN MEMORY OF THREE EVEREST EXPEDITIONS and below that is a boulder inscribed 1921 KELLAS in memory of the physician who died during the 1921 reconnaissance expedition that the Deacon had been part of. Below that, Mallory’s and Irvine’s names are inset there, as are the names of the seven Sherpas who died in the 1922 avalanche. The rock-pyramid memorial seems to turn the entire Base Camp area into a cemetery.

But grimmest of all somehow is the un-Matterhorn-like massif of Mount Everest itself, still some twelve miles up the windblown Rongbuk Glacier valley. We can see its western flanks and ridges glowing in the evening light during a break in the snow and near-constant cloud cover, but even at this distance, the mountain seems misshapen and far too large. Rather than a distinct mountain like Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn, Everest seems more like one infinitely huge fang along an impossible barrier of gigantic teeth. The wind spume from its summit and ridges now extends beyond the horizon to the east, streaming high above nearby Mount Kellas and the taller—and also too large, too tall, too steep, too massive, too distant—Himalayan peaks which stretch like a wall built by gods to block our path.

I can sense the Deacon’s distaste at setting up a camp here, but the Sherpas will carry no further this long day. The Deacon had always wanted to set up our first Base Camp more than three miles farther up the valley, where Camp I or Advanced Base Camp had been in the earlier efforts. But this Base Camp is already at 16,500 feet—more than 12,500 feet below Everest’s impossible summit but still high enough to leave most of us gasping with our 60-pound loads. Camp I, according to what both the Deacon and Reggie have said, is at 17,800 feet, and—while it is said to catch the most sun of any of the Everest camps—it is often much more exposed to the winds whipping down off the North Face of Everest and scouring the glacier. There’s more ice than moraine rock up there, and Dr. Pasang has pointed out that it will be harder to recover from altitude sickness with even just another 1,300 feet of altitude beneath us. Reggie’s made a good argument during the five weeks of camp evenings that we should establish the first line of tents here—someplace to retreat to when altitude sickness strikes—and the Deacon no longer seems interested in arguing the point. He plans to cache almost all of the high-climbing equipment at Camp II, six miles above Base Camp.

Now he dumps the heavy load he’s been carrying, pulls an almost empty rucksack from it, and says to Reggie, “Go ahead and supervise the establishment of Base Camp here, if you will, Lady Bromley-Montfort. I’m going to reconnoiter up the valley as far as Camp One.”

“That’s ridiculous,” says Reggie. “It will be dark before you get there.”

The Deacon reaches into the almost empty rucksack and pulls out one of Reggie’s leather battery-lamp headpieces. He flicks its headlamp on and then off. “We’ll see if this Welsh miner contraption works. If not, I have an old-fashioned hand torch in my rucksack.”

“You should not go alone, Ree-shard,” says Jean-Claude. “And especially not onto the glacier. The crevasses will be impossible to see in the twilight.”

“I won’t have to climb onto the glacier proper just to reach Camp One,” says the Deacon. “I have some biscuits in my jacket pocket, but would greatly appreciate it if you would keep some coffee and soup warm for me.”

He turns and disappears up the valley of gathering shadows.

Reggie calls Pasang over, and within minutes they are organizing the tired Sherpa porters, unloading the yaks and mules, and deciding which tents to erect where in this strangely sad place. Pasang directs the lifting of a large Whymper tent rainfly inside one of the crumbling sangas, or rock walls, hangs curtains on the side, and declares this the medical tent. Several Sherpas line up for consultation and treatment almost at once.

Our valley is in darkness, but Everest blazes far beyond and above us in a cold, powerful, self-contained isolation. That strikes me as terrifying.

It was our last night in Sikkim—April 2—right before we crossed over the Jelep La into Tibet, when I celebrated my 23rd birthday. I hadn’t told anyone about the date, but someone must have noticed it on my passport, because we definitely had a celebration.

I don’t even remember the name of the tiny village some 12 or 13 miles between Guatong, where we stayed that night, and the border—perhaps it had no name, it certainly had no dak bungalow—but it did have what I called a Ferris wheel and what the Deacon called “a miniature version of the Great Wheel at Blackpool” and what Reggie called “a little version of the Vienna Wheel.” The thing was crude, built out of raw lumber, and consisted of four “passenger cars” that were little more than wooden boxes one crawled into. At its high point, this “Great Wheel” couldn’t carry a person’s feet more than ten feet above the ground, and the mechanism to make it work, once I’d been coaxed into sitting in one of the boxes, consisted of Jean-Claude pulling the next car down on one side and the Deacon pushing up on the other. The contraption must have been built for the village children, but we’d seen no children on our way into the village and would see none before we left in the morning.

Then they stopped me at the nominal high point—all eight of the village huts were spread out in panorama, their rooftops just a little higher than my knees—and Reggie, the Deacon, Jean-Claude, Pasang, and several of the English-speaking porters began singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” followed by a ragged chorus of “Happy Birthday.” I confess to blushing wildly as I sat there with my wool-stockinged legs dangling.

Reggie had packed in all the makings for a seriously civilized cake, even icing and candles, and she and Jean-Claude and the cook, Semchumbi, baked it in one of the Primus and stone stoves before we all ate dinner that night. The Deacon produced two bottles of good brandy, and the four of us drank each other’s health deep into the night.

Finally, when everyone had staggered off to their sleeping bags in their own tents, I stumbled outside mine and looked up at the night sky. It was one of the few times during our days in Sikkim when it wasn’t raining.

Twenty-three years old. It seemed so much older, but no wiser, than 22 for some reason. Had Sandy Irvine been 22 or 23 when he died on Everest the year before? I couldn’t quite remember. Twenty-two, I thought. Younger than I was that night in Sikkim. The brandy fumes made me dizzy, and I rested against one of the splintery support props for the Not-So-Great Wheel as I continued looking beyond black treetops at a half-moon rising above the jungle. It was a Tuesday, and I was one day from dropping off most nations’ maps, into the high-desert wilderness of Tibet.

I thought of Reggie. Had she brought a nightgown? Or did she sleep in some combination of her clothes and underwear or in pajamas as most of us did? Or in the nude as the Deacon did, even in places where centipedes and snakes had been common?

I shook my head again to rid myself of that image of Lady Bromley-Montfort. At the very least, Reggie was a decade older than I—probably more.

So what? asked my brandy-liberated brain.

I looked at the half-moon rising—bright enough to paint the upper rain forest leaves silver and diminishing stars to invisibility in its slow climb toward the zenith—and imagined various acts of heroics I might perform during the coming trek or climb, something that would endear me to Reggie in some manner greater than, or at least different from, the mere friendship we seemed to enjoy now.

She baked me a birthday cake. She’d known the date of my birthday and carted in all that flour and sugar and canned milk—and found eggs somewhere in this village or the last—and worked with Semchumbi and J.C. over an open kitchen fire to bake it. I had no idea how that was done, but the cake had been delicious, down to its chocolate icing. And there had been a small conflagration of twenty-three small wax candles burning on it.

She baked me a birthday cake. In my calf love, I edited out J.C.’s and Semchumbi’s contribution to the cake and the Deacon’s hearty singing and back-clapping and the rare gift of the brandy. She baked me a birthday cake.

Before I started blubbering, I managed to crawl back into my tent, remove my boots, and struggle into the sleeping bag, trying to keep that single thought—She baked me a birthday cake—as my last before dreaming, but my actual last thought before falling asleep was—Now I’m 23. Will I survive to be 24?

My first morning at Everest Base Camp, I wake with a splitting headache and nausea. This is profoundly disappointing since I’ve only recently felt 100 percent after the bout of dysentery that Dr. Pasang cured more than a month earlier in Sikkim. I always thought, since I was the youngest, that I’d be the healthiest during this expedition, but it’s turning out that I’m the invalid of the group.

For a moment I can’t remember what day it is, so before crawling out of my warm sleeping bag into the terrible cold—our thermometer will show us later in the day that the high temperature will be minus nineteen degrees Fahrenheit—I check my pocket calendar. It is Wednesday, April 29, 1925. We’d fallen behind Norton and Mallory’s trekking time way back in Sikkim but made up for that with shortcuts Reggie showed us in the long trek west across Tibet to the mountain-fortress village of Shekar Dzong before turning south to the Rongbuk. We also spent only one night in villages where the previous expeditions had spent two. It was precisely one year ago that Mallory, Irvine, Norton, Odell, Geoffrey Bruce, Somervell, Bentley Beetham, and a few other high-climbers with hopes of reaching the summit had awakened to their first day in Base Camp at this very spot.

I realize that Jean-Claude is already out of his bag and stirring, and he wishes me a good morning as he lights our small Primus stove. He’s already dressed and has been out far enough from the campsite to bring back clean snow for melting for our first coffees. No Sherpas are showing up at our tent door with hot morning drinks as they had during the trek in, but presumably Semchumbi is using the largest, multiple-grill Primus to prepare our breakfasts in the large, round experimental tent which Reggie brought along and which we’ve been using for our common mess tent when a mere large tarp isn’t enough to shelter us from the increasingly harsh elements.

We are carrying three basic types of tents on this expedition: the heavier A-shaped Whymper tents used for so many years and on previous expeditions, which we plan to pitch only at the lower camps; the lighter but sturdy Meade-pattern A-type tents for the upper camps; and this igloo-shaped experimental tent of Reggie’s. It is a prototype of a specially framed hemispherical tent made by the firm of Camp and Sports, with its outer shell double-skinned in a Jacquard material. “Reggie’s Big Tent,” as we call it, has eight curved wooden struts, each of which can be folded in the middle for easy hauling. The groundsheet is sewn in, and up here in the cold, I’ve watched Reggie and Pasang supervise the setting out of a separate and thicker groundsheet that Reggie says was made especially for her by the Hurricane Smock Company. There are two mica windows in this exceptional domed tent—of course our other tents all have only tied-up openings and no windows—and the Big Tent has rather complicated but almost windproof lace-up doors. The Big Tent also has a ventilating or stovepipe cowl that can be turned in any direction to accommodate the winds. It’s made for four or five people to sleep in—comfortably—and we can easily squeeze in eight or nine during mealtimes.

The first day Reggie and Pasang erected this igloo-tent on our trek, the Deacon sourly announced that the contraption looked like a Christmas plum pudding minus its sprig of holly.

But, as it turns out, the Big Tent will be warmer and more windproof than any of our Whymper or Meade-pattern tents. I will make a note of this during our first days at Base Camp: future expeditions should bring smaller versions of the hemispherical tent, perhaps four hinged and curved struts rather than eight, for the most dangerous camps—IV, V, and VI, even VII if such a higher camp is ever pitched—up on the mountain where tent platforms have to be hacked out of snow and ice or laboriously created by moving stones. Not only would such a round footprint be smaller on the mountain, but the howling winds today will flow over and around the Big Tent, while our A-tents are already flapping with a noise like multiple rifle shots.

“What’s the weather like?” I sleepily ask J.C. as I accept my first cup of hot coffee from him.

“Look,” says my friend.

Taking care not to spill my coffee, I crouch next to the tightly ribbon-tied tent opening and peer out.

It is an absolute whiteout of a blizzard. I can’t see the other tents pitched nearby, not even the central Big Tent.

“Oh, damn,” I whisper. I’d thought it cold in our tent, but the high winds blowing in chill me through two layers of long underwear and the third layer I’d slept in. “Did the Deacon make it back from his reconnoiter toward Camp One last night?”

How ironic and sad would it be if our experienced climbing leader had been caught by the storm and died on his first night out from Base Camp.

J.C. nods and sips his coffee. “He came back about midnight, shortly before the heavy snow and higher winds started up. His face mask was covered with ice, and, according to Tenzing Bothia, Ree-shard was very hungry.”

“So am I,” I say as I finish the coffee. The nausea and headache are still there, but I’m convinced that I’ll feel better if I eat something. “I’ll finish dressing, and what do you say we see if we can make it over to the Big Tent for breakfast?”

It was April 18 during our trek in to Everest when the bandits struck.

We were more than halfway through our five-week trek. We had spent two nights camping near the larger Tibetan town of Tinki Dzong and had just decided not to divert down the Yaru Chu Valley on the chance of getting a glimpse of Everest—the weather was terrible, constant clouds, sleet, snow, and wind. We were on the main trade route trail approaching the 16,900-foot pass of Tinki La, when suddenly horsemen clattered downhill and surrounded our group, herding the Sherpas and trailing mules up to the front with us.

There were about sixty men on horseback, all wearing elaborate leather, wild furs, and long-flapped hats. Their faces and eyes and skin color were more Asian-looking than the villagers we’d seen during our two and a half weeks in Tibet. Most of these bandits wore mustaches or wispy beards, and the leader was a big man, barrel-chested, ham-fisted, with cheeks as hairy as his hat. They all carried rifles, ranging from what looked to be muskets from the last century to ancient Indian Army breechloaders to modern Enfields from the Great War. I knew that Reggie and Pasang had each brought a rifle in a scabbard—for hunting—and I’d accidentally glimpsed the Deacon packing what must have been his Webley service revolver in his rucksack in Liverpool, but none of these three made any move to go for their weapons as the bandits galloped, trampled, and swooped around us, herding us together like sheep.

Many of our Sherpas—especially the non-Tigers—looked frightened. Pasang looked disdainful. The mules made an uproar at this interruption of their daily routine and then quieted. My little white Tibetan pony tried to bolt, but I planted my feet, grabbed its saddle, and half-lifted it off the ground until it calmed down.

The bandits’ larger Mongolian ponies were shaggy, but their manes and tails were elaborately braided, and they were closer in size to a real European horse than to our ridiculous ponies.

When the red dust settled, we were surrounded in two groups: the majority of the bandits encircling the Sherpa porters and ponies, and the leader with about a dozen armed men surrounding Reggie, the Deacon, J.C., Pasang, and me. The many rifles weren’t exactly pointed at us, but they weren’t pointed away from us either. All I could think of as I looked at these men was that we’d somehow traveled centuries into the past and come across Genghis Khan and part of his Horde.

Reggie stepped forward and began talking to the leader in rapid Tibetan—or some dialect of Tibetan. It didn’t sound quite like the Tibetan she’d used when talking to the djongpen headmen and villagers in Yatung, Phari, Kampa Dzong, and the many smaller villages we’d passed, bargained with for food, or camped near.

The bandit leader showed strong white teeth and said something that made his fellow bandits laugh. Reggie laughed with them, so I had to assume the comment wasn’t at her expense. (At J.C.’s, the Deacon’s, and mine, perhaps.) I didn’t care as long as the bandits didn’t shoot us—but even as I cravenly thought those words, I realized that when these bandits carried away our mules with all our gear and oxygen tanks and tents and food and Reggie’s and Lady Bromley’s money, our expedition would be over for good.

The bandit leader barked something, still grinning like a madman, and Reggie translated: “Khan says that it’s a bad year to go to Cho-mo-lung-ma. All the demons are awake and angry, he says.”

“Khan?” I repeated stupidly. Perhaps we had gone through some sort of hole in time. For whatever reason, it didn’t seem that odd to have Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes descending upon us.

“Jimmy Khan,” said Reggie. She said something to the oddly named leader, turned, went back to the mule that Pasang always kept tethered right behind her white pony, and returned with two small packing boxes. After bowing slightly and saying something with a smile, she offered the first box to Khan.

He took a curved blade not much shorter than a full scimitar from his leather belt and pried the box open. Inside, cradled in straw, was another, smaller box, this one made of polished mahogany. Khan tossed aside the packing crate, and several of his men—all smelling to high heaven of horses, human sweat, smoke, dung, and horse sweat—crowded their mounts closer so that they could see.

Khan sheathed his knife and pulled two chrome-plated, ivory-handled American western-type revolvers from the mahogany box. Boxes of cartridges were inlaid in red velvet. The other bandits gave up a collective “Ahhhhhrrrhhh”—half admiration, half anger or jealousy, it sounded like—and Khan snarled something at them. They fell silent. The other group of bandits surrounding our clumped-together Sherpas were watching carefully.

Reggie said something in this Tibetan dialect and offered Khan the second, larger box. Again he ripped open the carton and this time he held up a box and shouted at his men.

In the crate were stacked box after box of the distinctive Rowntree’s English chocolate samplers. Khan started tossing the boxes to his men. Suddenly the majority of the bandits shouted and fired off their rifles, and our Sherpas had to hold on to the ponies and mules for dear life. I lifted my panicked pony’s front hooves off the ground again.

Khan opened the first box, lifted an oval chocolate delicately out of its paper wrapper—his filthy fingers almost the color of the chocolate—and daintily tasted it.

“Chocolate over almond,” he said in English. “Very very good.”

“I hope you will all enjoy them,” said Reggie, also speaking English now.

“Be careful of the demons and yeti,” said Jimmy Khan. He fired his rifle, spurred his shaggy horse, and the Mongol Horde disappeared in a red dust cloud back toward the northeast whence they’d come.

“Old friend?” asked the Deacon as we managed to re-form our long line and begin the trek toward the Tinki La again.

“Sometimes business associate,” said Reggie. Her face was red with the dust that had been kicked up by the horses. I realized that we were all dust-covered and that the layer of dust on us was quickly turning to red mud in the freezing drizzle.

“Jimmy Khan?” I heard myself asking. “How on earth did he end up with that first name?”

“He was named after his father,” Reggie said and tugged at her stubborn pony’s reins to lead it up the first steep part of the trail toward the 16,900-foot-high pass called Tinki La.

For the first three days we’re pinned down at Base Camp. The Deacon is going nuts. I’m going nuts in my own way—worried to death that the altitude keeps giving me headaches, causing me to vomit at least once a day, stealing my appetite, and keeping me awake at night. Even rolling over—on the rocks under the tent floor, each one of which my body has memorized by the second night—sends me gasping up out of my light doze, laboring to breathe. It’s ridiculous. Base Camp is at a mere 16,500 feet of altitude. The real climbing doesn’t begin until we’re above the North Col, almost half again as high as this low base. Sixteen thousand five hundred feet isn’t that much higher than the alpine summits I’ve frolicked on in the past year, I keep telling myself. Why the trouble here and not there?

You usually spent less than an hour on those summits, idiot, my rational self explains. You’re trying to live here.

I don’t really want to hear from my damned rational self these miserable three days. I also do my best to hide my condition from the others, but J.C. shares the Whymper tent with me and has heard me vomiting, has heard me gasping in the night, and has seen me on top of my sleeping bag panting on all fours like a sick dog. The others must notice my lassitude when we share meals and planning sessions in Reggie’s Big Tent, but no one says anything. As far as I can tell, neither Reggie nor the Deacon is bothered by the altitude, and Jean-Claude was over his light symptoms on the second day here at Base Camp.

Despite the terrible cold, wind, and weather, we don’t spend all of our first days at Base Camp cowering in our tents. The first full day there, despite the blizzard and temperatures twenty below zero Fahrenheit, saw us staggering around in the whiteout, unpacking and sorting all the gear. The mules were sent back to Chōdzong with a few Sherpas since there was no grass here for them, and the yaks were tethered in a sheltered spot a half mile closer to the river north of us, where the poor hairy beasts could paw through the drifting snow on the riverbanks for what little forage they could find.

A large Whymper tent has been set aside as J.C.’s workshop, where he checks the oxygen tanks, their frames, the Primus stoves, and our other equipment. He has a better set of tools than poor Sandy Irvine had a year ago, for all of Irvine’s excellent fixes and repairs and jury-rigging of ladders and O₂ sets, but the current tool kit is still relatively primitive. Jean-Claude can solder but not weld; take cameras, watches, stoves, lanterns, crampons, and other things apart and reassemble them with the right tools, but has a minimum of spare parts for replacement; he can bang metal back into shape but not forge new pieces if something is damaged seriously enough to warrant it.

Luckily, after two days of testing, J.C. informs us that only fourteen of our hundred oxygen tanks have lost pressure, and nine of them only partially, as opposed, the Deacon tells us, to more than thirty out of a total of ninety of the oxygen canisters in Norton, Mallory, and Irvine’s expedition the year before. Their thirty tanks had leaked so much by the time they got to Shekar Dzong and took inventory, the tanks were essentially worthless. Sandy Irvine’s redesign to the Mark V oxygen system during his trek in last year, combined with further improvements, especially in gaskets and valves and flow meters, via the talents of George Finch, Jean-Claude, and J.C.’s blacksmith-turned-industrialist-steel-manufacturer father, have evidently done the trick. If we fail on this expedition—fail even in our limited goal of finding Lord Percival Bromley’s remains on the lower half of the mountain—it shouldn’t be for lack of what the Sherpas call “English air.”

As I say, we aren’t idle. On the second day, after our yak and mule loads have laboriously been repacked into porter loads, other crates set out to stay here in Base Camp or set aside to be cached at Camps I, II, or III, we four sahibs and Pasang meet alone in Reggie’s Big Tent to finalize our strategy.

“Our date for summiting remains May seventeenth,” says the Deacon as the four of us crouch over the topographic and hand-drawn maps laid out on the circular floor of Reggie’s tent. A hanging lantern hisses above us. Pasang stands in the shadows, guarding the laced-up entrance from any random intruders.

“What’s your date for finding Cousin Percy?” Reggie asks.

The Deacon taps his cold pipe against his teeth—the air is already too thick in here and redolent of wet wool for him to add smoke—and says, “I’ve built in search days from each camp along the way, Lady Bromley-Montfort.”

“But your goal is still to summit Everest,” she says.

“Yes.” The Deacon clears his throat. “But we can spend time after the summit parties succeed—until the monsoon really hits—to continue the search for Lord Percival’s remains, if necessary.”

Reggie smiles and shakes her head. “I know the condition of the men who’ve achieved the high-altitude records here and not summited. Bruce with heart problems and traumatic shock and frostbite after his oxygen set quit working. Morshead, Norton, and Somervell too weak to descend safely in ’twenty-two and falling toward the overhang, saved only by tangled ropes and Mallory’s impossible belay of all three. High-climbing porters dead from brain embolisms and broken legs, others sent home due to terrible frostbite. Norton’s sixty hours of screaming in pain from snow blindness last year…”

The Deacon waves away her objections. “No one says the mountain’s not going to take a toll on us. We may all perish. But odds are good that even if we summit by seventeen May, some or all of us should be in good enough shape to direct the Tiger Sherpas in the search for Percy. We have advantages that none of the previous expeditions had.”

“Pray tell,” says Reggie. I can see Jean-Claude’s curious interest, and I admit that my own is fairly keen as well.

“First of all, the oxygen sets,” says the Deacon.

“Two of the three previous British expeditions used similar oxygen apparatus,” says Reggie. Her voice is calm.

The Deacon nods. “They did, but with apparatus not nearly as good. And not as many tanks. George Finch is sure that the problem was that most of the previous climbers, including me, used too little, too late. The altitude sickness begins eating away at our energy and reserves even here at Base Camp. You and I are acclimated, Lady Bromley-Montfort, but you can see the effect that just seventeen thousand feet has on some of the Sherpas and…others.”

His glance my way is just a flick of the eyes.

“Above the North Col,” he continues, “especially above eight thousand meters, our bodies and brains begin dying. Not just becoming fatigued and tired, but literally dying. Previous expeditions tended to dole out the oxygen tanks, even to porters, only when they were well above the North Col. And then almost always only when climbing. I plan for us to go on oxygen from Camp Three and beyond—including the Tiger Sherpas when needed—even when stuck in the tents. Even when sleeping.”

“Pasang and I spent two weeks on the North Col and climbed above it without oxygen,” says Reggie.

“And were you miserable the entire time?” asks the Deacon.

She looks down. “Yes.”

“Did you sleep well…or at all some nights?”

“No.”

“Did you have any appetite even when you still had food reserves?”

“No.”

“Did you rouse yourselves enough every day—after a while at that altitude—to get snow and to fire up the Primus when you needed to melt it for soup or drinking water?”

“No.”

“Were both of you dehydrated, sick with headache, and vomiting after a few days?”

“Yes.” Reggie sighs. “That comes with being on Mount Everest, does it not?”

The Deacon shakes his head. “It comes from our bodies beginning to die on Mount Everest near and above eight thousand meters. Oxygen from the tanks—just breathing a few liters at night while we sleep—can’t stop that slow dying, but it can slow it down a bit. Give us a few more days at altitude in which we can think clearly and function properly.”

“So we’re definitely going to use English air all the way up after the North Col, Ree-shard?” asks Jean-Claude.

“Yes. And on the North Col when we have to. I don’t like being stupid, my friends—and this mountain makes everyone stupid. And often causes hallucinations as well. At least above Camp Three at the base of the Ice Fall. In ’twenty-two, I climbed for two days with a fourth man on our rope…a man who didn’t exist. The use of oxygen, even at a low flow rate, day and night, will reduce that fatal stupidity a bit. Enough, I hope, to give us the edge for reaching the summit and for finding Bromley’s remains.”

I can tell that Reggie is not totally convinced, but what choice does she have? She’s always known that the Deacon’s—and Jean-Claude’s and my—primary goal is to reach the summit (although in the past two days of illness, I’ve been very discouraged about the odds of reaching that goal). She just has to believe that we’ll do our best in searching for Percy on the way up and back down—if there is a “back down.”

On the morning of the fourth day, as the snowstorm finally shows signs of relenting, we reconvene in the Big Tent and go over the Deacon’s strategy. “There’s a reason that all the English expeditions have been led by military men,” the Deacon is saying as we huddle over the map of the mountain. His gaze rests more on Reggie’s face than on J.C.’s or mine, and I understand he’s making a final effort at persuasion. “This way of attacking the mountain—carrying to Camp One, then Camp Two, and so forth up to Camp Six or Seven before attempting the summit—is classic military siege strategy.”

“Such as the sieges in the Great War?” asks Reggie.

“No,” says the Deacon with a tone of absolute finality. “The Great War was four years of trench warfare insanity. Tens of thousands of lives lost in a day for a few yards of ground gained…yards that would be lost the next day at an equal price. No, I’m talking about classical sieges from the Middle Ages on. The kind of siege of Cornwallis at Yorktown that your general, Jake…Washington…was taught by his French friend”—a nod at J.C.—“Lafayette. Surround the enemy where he can’t retreat—a peninsula worked fine as long as the French ships didn’t allow the Royal Navy to save Cornwallis and his men. Then bombard. Under bombardment, advance your trenches yard by yard, mile by mile, until you’re right up against the enemy’s defenses. Then a final quick assault and…victory.”

“But none of your English generals here on Everest,” says Jean-Claude, “have moved their trenches close enough to the summit for that successful final assault.”

The Deacon nods agreement, but I can tell he’s distracted. Perhaps by Reggie’s unwavering gaze. “The ’twenty-two and ’twenty-four expeditions both planned to establish a Camp Seven at around twenty-seven thousand three hundred feet, but neither achieved that goal. Mallory and Irvine and all the rest of us before them started our summit assault from Camp Six at about twenty-six thousand eight hundred feet.”

“That’s only five hundred feet difference,” says Reggie, moving her gaze down to the map of the Rongbuk Glacier and the mountain.

“Five hundred vertical feet can mean half a day’s worth of climbing at those altitudes.” The Deacon plays with his unlit pipe. “There’s no only to it.”

“Didn’t Norton and Mallory fail to establish a Camp Seven because the porters gave out?” I ask. I’ve heard and read all the reports. “Were just unable to carry tents higher?”

“In part,” says the Deacon. “But the sahib climbers also gave out, in terms of carrying loads, above Camp Six. And that includes Finch and me in ’twenty-two. Besides, Camp Seven was always the plan for a final assault without oxygen; when Mallory decided that he and Irvine would make an attempt with the O-two apparatus, the extra five hundred vertical feet didn’t seem to make that much difference.”

“But you think it did,” says Reggie.

“Yes.” If she’d been attempting irony, the Deacon’s tone suggests he hadn’t noticed it. He presses his pipe stem down on a point on the map above our inked-in Camp VI and below the juncture of the North Ridge with the long North East Ridge. “The problem isn’t just altitude up there—although that’s debilitating enough. The slabs are steeper as one approaches the North East Ridge, and there’s much less packable snow—very few places to carve out a platform for even one tent, and the climber doesn’t have enough energy to be moving stones to create a platform. But mostly it’s the wind up there. Camp Six is bad enough, but closer to the North East Ridge, that wind rolls over and down most of the time. It can carry away a climber, much less his tent.”

“You originally wanted a rapid alpine assault from Camp Five at twenty-five thousand three hundred feet or lower, Ree-shard,” says J.C. “The three of us climbers carrying just a rucksack, bread, water, chocolate, and perhaps a flag to plant on the summit.”

The Deacon smiles wryly.

“And maybe a bivouac sack,” I say. “For when we get caught by the sun setting while we’re descending the Second or First Step on the way down.”

“Aye, there’s the rub,” says the Deacon, audibly scratching his stubbled cheek. “No one’s ever survived a night bivouac at those altitudes. It’s hard enough to survive in a tent with a working Primus at Camps Four, Five, and Six. That’s why I’ve decided that we have to make the assault from Camp Seven, or, failing that, from a high Camp Six, as Mallory and Irvine did. But start earlier. Perhaps even at night as Reg…as Lady Bromley-Montfort has suggested. Those little headlamps work pretty well. But I haven’t worked out how we avoid freezing to death while attempting to climb before dawn—or after sunset, for that matter.”

“As far as surviving,” begins Reggie. “Excuse me a moment…” She leaves the tent and snow blows in. Pasang remains behind, retying the door cords.

The Deacon looks at us but we shrug. Perhaps he’s said something to upset her.

A few minutes later she’s back from her own tent, brushing snow out of her long black hair, her arms full of what we first think are extra Finch goose down duvet balloon jackets.

“You three have laughed at me bringing my treadle sewing machine on the trek,” she says. And before we can speak, she insists, “No, I’ve heard you complaining. Half a mule’s total load, you said. And I heard you sniggering in the evenings along the trek when I was in my Big Tent sewing and you heard the treadle going.”

None of us can deny that.

“Here’s what I was working on,” she says and hands out the bulky but light items.

Three pairs of sewn and hemmed goose down trousers. So that’s why she took our measurements back at the plantation, I think.

“I believe that Mr. Finch solved half of the problem,” she says. “There’s still too much body heat lost through the silk and cotton and wool of the climber’s underwear and trousers. I’ve made enough of these for all of us, Pasang, and eight of the Tiger Sherpas. I can’t promise that it will allow any of us to survive a night bivouac above twenty-eight thousand feet, but it gives us a fighting chance to keep moving before dawn and after sunset.”

“They’ll rip and tear,” says the Deacon. J.C. and I are busy shedding our boots and squirming into our new goose down trousers.

“They’re made of the same balloon cloth that Finch used on the parkas,” says Reggie. “Besides, I have a waxed-cotton outer shell for all the trousers. Not heavy. Tougher than the anoraks you wear over the Finch duvets. Notice that all of your trousers, inner and outer, have buttons for braces and a button fly. That last was extra work, I tell you.”

I blush at this.

“I’m also using the last of the balloon fabric to make buttoned-on goose-down-filled hoods for our Finch duvet jackets,” says Reggie. “And I must say that using that sewing machine treadle at this altitude is hard work.”

The Deacon clamps down on his cold pipe and scowls. “Where on earth did you get balloon fabric?”

“I sacrificed the plantation’s hot-air balloon,” says Lady Katherine Christina Regina Bromley-Montfort.

Jean-Claude and I spend twenty minutes or so parading around Base Camp through the blowing snow and minus-fifteen-degree temperatures while wearing our three layers of mittens, Finch coat, Reggie trousers, Shackleton windproof anoraks, Reggie’s just-finished button-on goose down hoods, and our tough duck trouser shells. With our three layers of glove-mittens and our leather and wool aviator caps pulled down under our new hoods, balaclavas and goggles on, it’s a strange feeling to be so warm in such terrible conditions.

Reggie comes out in her full gear. She no longer looks like a woman, I think. In truth, she no longer looks quite human.

“I feel like the Michelin Man,” says Jean-Claude, laughing through the mouth flap in the wool-lined balaclava covering his face. Reggie and I also laugh. I’d seen the Michelin Man on posters and billboards, a pudgy shape made all out of tires advertising the brand, that had been on show in Paris since 1898.

“Add the oxygen gear,” says Reggie, “and we’ll feel like men from Mars.”

“We shall be men from Mars,” says J.C., laughing again.

It strikes me then that we might well feel very removed from the human act of climbing—of interacting with rock, snow, and the world—in the days and weeks to come.

The Deacon emerges from his tent. He has his long ice axe and is wearing his Finch duvet, full mittens, and headgear, but from the waist down he is still all stout English woolen knickers, puttees, and leather boots.

“Since we’re all outside anyway and the day’s promising to clear,” he says, “what do you say to the four of us hauling some Whymper tents up to Camp One and then taking a look at the glacier above there? We won’t need crampons or the short axes.”

“No Tigers?” says Reggie.

The Deacon shakes his head. “Let’s make this first recon a sahib-only outing.”

We go back to fetch our larger rucksacks, some ropes, and long ice axes. The Deacon supervises loading each of us with about forty or fifty pounds of tent parts, stakes, more ropes, loose oxygen tanks, Primus stoves, and some canned food; even Reggie gets her full load. Pasang—wearing only the cotton robes and scarves he had on in the Big Tent—stands outside with his arms crossed and a powerful scowl of disapproval on his face as the four of us sahibs lean into the wind and snow to stagger around our rocky ridge-barrier and then up the boulder-and-ice-strewn valley of the Rongbuk Glacier.