The Abominable: A Novel

Saturday, May 9, 1925

It’s unspeakably hot.

There’s not a breath of air in the two-man Meade tent that Jean-Claude and I slept in last night after being released from the Base Camp “infirmary,” and although the canvas doors to the tent are tied back and wide open, lying in here is like being buried in the Sahara in a shroud smelling of overheated canvas.

J.C. and I have stripped to our underwear but are still sweating profusely, and now we see the Deacon striding toward us across the uneven moraine-rock field.

Yesterday morning, Friday before dawn, when the Deacon, Reggie, Pasang, and the others had come to our rescue, they’d brought us down to Camp II, where both J.C. and I continued to drink cup after cup of cold water.

I’d assumed that they’d leave J.C. and me at Camp II while they helped carry Ang Chiri and Lhakpa Yishay down to Base Camp to have Pasang deal with their frostbite in the medical tent “infirmary” he’d set up there, but the Deacon insisted that all of us—including Norbu Chedi, with his frostbitten cheeks now liberally smeared with whale oil and axle grease—go all the way back down to Base Camp. After drinking so much water and then some hot soup, Jean-Claude and I were perfectly able to hike down the Trough with Pasang and half a dozen other Sherpas, but Ang Chiri needed to be carried on a jury-rigged stretcher, and Lhakpa Yishay hobbled down with a Sherpa friend supporting him on either side. It was testimony to the severity of our earlier dehydration that, even after gulping down so many cups of water, neither of us had to stop to pee during the descent.

The air at Base Camp—at only 16,500 feet—seemed rich and thick enough to swim in after two days and nights at Camp III’s altitude of 21,500 feet. Besides that, Dr. Pasang had “prescribed” that all six of us take some “English air” from one of the oxygen rigs being carried up to Camp III by porters. After dismissing Jean-Claude and me from the infirmary on Friday afternoon, he’d sent one bottle rigged to two mask sets—the regulator timed to dispense only one liter of oxygen per hour—and told us in no uncertain terms to use it during the night whenever we woke gasping for air or feeling cold.

With the English air to help us, J.C. and I had slept for thirteen hours.

The Deacon crouches next to where Jean-Claude and I sprawl half outside the tent, lying on our sleeping bags in the hot sunlight. The Deacon is down to his shirtsleeves, although he continues to wear his thick wool knickers and high puttees.

“Well, how are my last two hospital patients?” he asks.

J.C. and I both insist that we’re feeling excellent—great sleep, wonderful appetite at breakfast this morning, no signs of frostbite or the “mountain lassitude” remaining—and we’re telling the truth. We say that we’re ready to head back up the Trough and glacier to Camp III right now, immediately.

“Glad you’re feeling better,” says the Deacon, “but no hurry to come up to Camp III. Rest another day. One thing that Lady Bromley-Montfort and I heartily agree upon is the idea of climbing high, sleeping low. Especially after the winds and cold you chaps put up with for three nights.”

“You’ve climbed the ice wall to the North Col without us,” says Jean-Claude, and his voice sounds both disappointed and accusatory.

“Not at all,” says the Deacon. “We spent yesterday and this morning continuing to make the trail up to Camp Three safer and supervising the Sherpas as they haul more loads up there. Reg…Lady Bromley-Montfort is at Camp Two now, and we’ll be working on shuttling things all the rest of the day. Tomorrow, she and I thought we’d acclimate some more at Camp III, and if you fellows come up by late tomorrow afternoon, we’ll give that ice wall to the North Col a try on Monday morning.” He pats Jean-Claude’s arm. “You’re our official snow-and-ice man, old sport. I promised you that we wouldn’t take on the North Col until you were ready. Besides, the wind’s too high on the Col today. Perhaps it will die down tomorrow and the next day.”

“Wind?” I say. There’s not a breath of it down here at Base Camp.

The Deacon shifts to one side and extends his left arm as if introducing someone. “See how she smokes,” he says.

J.C. and I had been marveling at the blue sky and blindingly white snow on the North Face of Everest, but now we notice just how high the winds must be at altitude. The spindrift from the summits and North Ridge disappear beyond our field of vision to the left.

“Incredible,” I say. “Is the Trough this bloody hot?”

“Twenty degrees hotter,” says the Deacon with a grin. “My thermometer registered over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit among the penitentes between Camp Two and Camp One. Even hotter up on the glacier. We’ve been giving the porters plenty of rest time and water, and still they stumble into Camp III too exhausted to stand or to eat.”

“How heavy are the loads, Ree-shard?”

“None more than twenty-five pounds between Camps Two and Three. Most around twenty.”

“Many trips up and down needed, then,” says Jean-Claude.

The Deacon merely nods absently.

“How are our four guys this morning?” I ask, realizing that I should have asked after our Sherpas first thing.

“Babu Rita and Norbu Chedi are carrying again already,” says the Deacon. “Lhakpa’s feet are black, but Dr. Pasang says perhaps he won’t lose his toes. Ang Chiri, on the other hand—well, Pasang says it’s sayonara to at least all of Ang’s toes and probably two or three fingers.”

I’m shocked to hear this. Ang’s feet had been swollen and hard-frozen white when we’d helped him squeeze those malformed feet into his boots at Camp III on Thursday morning, and I know that Dr. Pasang spent a lot of time with both Sherpas when we were all in the infirmary tent yesterday, but I had no idea that it would come to amputations.

“Some of the other Sherpas are already preparing Ang’s new ‘sahib boots’ with wedges at the end to make up for his soon-to-be-missing toes,” says the Deacon. “Ang’s morale is wonderful. Pasang will probably remove the toes and fingers—Ang’s three fingers look especially bad, as brown and shrunken and wizened as an Egyptian mummy’s—by Wednesday. Ang insists that he’ll be carrying again by next weekend.”

A sober silence follows this announcement. Finally Jean-Claude says, “Are you sure you don’t want us to come up to Camp Three today, Ree-shard? Jake and I feel well enough to climb, and we can haul some loads from here.”

The Deacon shakes his head. “I don’t want you hauling loads even tomorrow when you come up. It’s going to take an extraordinary amount of energy to get up that hill to the North Col…the snow is waist-deep on much of the slope, and you saw the blue-ice wall where Mallory’s beloved chimney used to be. Reggie and I are both leaving the trailbreaking on Monday morning to you two lads. We’ll be poking along behind, rigging the fixed ropes and cavers’ ladders.”

“Don’t forget my bicycle,” J.C. says.

The Deacon nods. “You can bring your bicycle up with your personal kit tomorrow,” he says. “Nothing heavier.”

Jean-Claude’s “bicycle”—its bicycle seat, pedals, and handlebars only rarely glimpsed when the mule or yak loads were being repacked—has been a source of some teasing and some real curiosity during the entire five weeks of our approach to Everest. I know that it’s not actually a bicycle—there’s been no glimpse of bicycle tires or wheels, and several people swear to have spotted strange folding metal flanges attached to the bicycle frame—but only J.C. and the Deacon seem to know what the damned thing really is.

“I only hope that this beautiful weather holds,” says Jean-Claude. “Minus this terrible heat, of course.”

“I’m sure that air temperature in the sun—out of the wind, at least—is well over one hundred degrees on the sunny parts of the North Col today,” says the Deacon.

“Tuesday and Wednesday nights at Camp Three,” I say, “it was thirty below and we were all certain that the monsoon had arrived.”

“Not yet,” says the Deacon. “Not yet.” He slaps his wool-covered thighs and stands from his long crouch. “I’m going to look in on Ang and Lhakpa again, chat with Dr. Pasang for a moment, and take a few of these boys uphill with me. We’ll be carrying loads to Camp Three until well after sunset this evening.”

“Ree-shard,” says J.C. “Did you not forget to ask us something?”

The Deacon grins. “Well, gentlemen,” he says. “What lessons have we all learned from your little carry-to-Camp-Three adventure?”

After Jean-Claude and I laugh, but before we can speak, the Deacon waves one hand and strides back toward the infirmary tent.