The Abominable: A Novel

Monday, May 11, 1925

It is a perfect day for an attempt to summit Mount Everest.

Unfortunately, we are just beginning our assault on the mountain’s flanks, trying to reach the North Col and establish a foothold there before the end of the day. We leave Camp III a little after 7:00 a.m. Tied in to our first rope are just Jean-Claude, then me, then the Deacon, then the Deacon’s strongest-climbing personal Tiger Sherpa, Nyima Tsering. The second rope is led by Reggie, followed by my smiling Sherpa Babu Rita and three more Tiger Sherpas after him, the string anchored by the Deacon’s big man, Tenzing Bothia. Pasang is still at Base Camp watching over Ang Chiri and Lhakpa Yishay.

It turns out that the Deacon hasn’t been quite as lazy over the weekend as he’d promised us. With soft snow, just the trek from Camp III to the base of the huge slope could have taken two totally exhausting hours or more of wallowing through waist-deep snow. But the Deacon, Reggie, and some of the Sherpas broke trail yesterday in the heat, so we are at the base of the actual slope and ready to climb within thirty minutes.

Our hope of all hopes over the past few days has been that the sun would melt the outer inches of snow during the day and the freezing-cold nights above Camp III would harden that surface snow to something like the consistency of ice for our new 12-point crampons. Now is the test…and J.C. and I are soberly aware that we’re no longer horsing around in Wales, pretending to be real Himalayan mountaineers. Jean-Claude’s newly designed crampons, ice hammers, jumars, and other devices—not to mention the Deacon’s Miracle Rope, which we’ll be betting our lives on each time we set up a rappel rather than chop steps for a descent—will either work and save us days of repeated effort, or prove to be a costly, perhaps fatal mistake. One fact looms large: achieving the North Col soon is absolutely essential if we are to come close to meeting the Deacon’s summiting date of May 17.

The first 300 feet or so of elevation consists of little more than a steep slope. Mallory and the others before him—including the Deacon—had spent entire days using their ice axes to hack footholds into the icy snow crust for the porters. Even then, the steps would soon fill with spindrift and new snowfall and would require more days of “maintenance” hacking—heavy work above 21,000 feet. And to minimize the exertion of the porters, the climbers had hacked the steps back and forth across the face of the snow slope in easy switchbacks.

Not today.

Jean-Claude is as good as his word and forges a crampon-kicked path straight up the 1,000-foot incline, keeping the line a hundred yards or so to the right of where the seven Sherpas had died in the avalanche in 1922. Even this close to the bottom, we’re putting in fixed ropes—the lighter three-eighths-inch cotton “Mallory rope” for this more casual incline at the base of the steeper slope—and every 50 feet or so Jean-Claude pauses as I use a wooden mallet to pound in tall, sharpened wooden stakes with eyelets atop them. We’re all carrying heavy coils of rope (with more in the rucksacks), and the thinner cotton rope goes quickly.

Even though “breaking trail” with 12-point crampons is infinitely easier than wallowing waist-deep in snow and hacking out steps, I can soon hear Jean-Claude’s heavy breathing. All of us fall into the rhythm of three paces, pause, gasp, then three more steps up.

“It’s time to go to the gas,” cries the Deacon the next time both ropes pause in our long vertical line.

This is the Deacon’s Rule—above 22,000 feet, all possible summit climbers will go to oxygen tanks. Rather than have us all climb with a full O₂ rig, J.C. has separated out one tank of English air for each rucksack carried by us four sahibs, and one tank each for Tenzing Bothia, Nyima Tsering, and the other three Tigers climbing with us. Those full sets we’ll save for assaults above the North Col.

“I don’t really need the English air yet,” calls up Reggie.

“I’m still all right,” calls down J.C. from his perch above us.

The Deacon shakes his head. “Feel free to set the valves at their lowest flow, but we go on oxygen from this point on while doing heavy climbing.”

I feign reluctance, but in truth the headache I’d gotten rid of yesterday is trying to creep back in—the pain throbbing to my pulse as I gasp for breath during each short rest break—and I’m relieved when, with the mask covering my face below my goggles, I hear the soft hiss of air. The flow valve can be set to 1.5 liters of air per minute—the lowest setting—or 2.2 liters per minute. I choose the lower rate of flow.

Within a minute, I feel as if someone has given me a shot of pure adrenaline. J.C. doubles his climbing speed even as the snow slope becomes much steeper and more treacherous and a gap begins to open between the four of us on the first rope and Reggie and her four Sherpas. Babu Rita and the other three porters are carrying and climbing stolidly enough, but they soon can’t match the pace of those of us on oxygen.

We run out of the Mallory-type clothesline rope precisely where we’d planned to, and the Deacon signals for us to switch over to his heavier Miracle Rope. The slope is steep enough now that we could rappel down it—if we learn to trust the new rope for such previously unheard-of long rappels—and we begin feeding it out minus the eyelet stakes.

At our next pause around 11:00 a.m., as we wait for Reggie and her Tiger Team to catch up, I realize that we’re more than 600 feet up the 1,000-foot snow and ice wall. The exposure is severe—the Camp III tents look very small and distant from here—but the combination of fixed rope anchored by ice screws at intervals and the almost unbelievable grip of our 12-point crampons and short ice hammers gives us a sense of real security.

It’s during this rest about 200 feet below the beginning of the sheer ice wall that the Deacon gestures for J.C. and me to trade places. Jean-Claude signs that he still has plenty of energy to spare, but the Deacon merely repeats his hand commands. For a minute both J.C. and I are untied and unbelayed as we trade places in the vertical line. In the lead now, I switch my oxygen tank regulator from the 1.5-liter minimum flow to the 2.2-liter-per-minute full flow rate. There should be enough to get me to the North Col all right, but I’ll be lowering that flow before too long. I’m sure that the Deacon will want Jean-Claude to take the lead on the vertical face of blue ice looming above us.

I admit that my thrill at finally taking the lead on this expedition is mixed with some disappointment that I won’t be the first to climb an ice wall at this altitude with nothing more than 12-point crampons and a short ice hammer in each hand. J.C. had enjoyed that honor.

As we stay stuck to the steep wall below the vertical section, even though I’ve stripped off all goose down garments and stowed them in my rucksack and have been climbing with only a wool shirt and cotton undershirt on, I’m all but drenched with sweat. The entire upper basin of the East Rongbuk Glacier and the North Col have been in direct sunlight now for some time; the Camp III area more than 60 stories beneath us is a glaring basin of bright light.

Reggie and her Tigers—I can see Babu Rita’s white grin from 50 feet away—catch up, a heavy coil of Miracle Rope is passed up to me, and after we’ve all had another minute or two of rest, I tighten my oxygen mask and start my own crampon-and-ice-hammer ascent.

Fifteen minutes into this I realize that I’ve never felt stronger on a mountain. My headache is gone. My arms and legs are suffused with a new energy even while my spirit is filled with a renewed sense of confidence.

This new type of ice climbing which J.C. says he’s stolen from the top German climbers is fun. I pause every 30 feet or so to set out and anchor the next strand of fixed rope—now dangling almost vertically past us—but I no longer need the rests to gasp for air after only four or five kicked-in steps. I feel as if I could climb like this all day and all night.

For the first time I’m beginning to believe that our little band might have a real chance at summiting Mount Everest. I know that the Deacon has been considering moving out onto the North Face from Camp V or VI, duplicating Colonel Norton’s 1924 attempt on the Great Couloir—traverse off the ridge to the right above the Yellow Band until reaching the scar of snow that stretches straight up to the snowfield below the Summit Pyramid—and if the quality of the frozen snow in that couloir is anything like that of the North Col face here, such a plan would seem to make sense. Climbing on oxygen, leaving the tent before sunrise—trusting our Finch-and-Reggie down clothing to keep us alive in the unrelenting cold—we could easily make the summit and be back before sunset if the climbing were as straightforward 12-point crampon and ice hammer work as today’s has been.

I pause in such thinking before my dreams outrun reality’s headlights. Even now, part of me knows that nothing really will “come easily” on Mount Everest. I’ve learned from listening to the Deacon and through reading and listening to others—as well as through our hard experience at Camp III—that everything this mountain gives, she plucks away just as quickly and certainly. Perhaps the Great Couloir will be part of our plans, but I remind myself that no part of this ascent will turn out, in the long run, to be “easy.”

Suddenly we’re at the vertical ice. I pause again, breathing heavily but not gasping into my mask, allow the Deacon just below me to bang in the ice screws for the last section of fixed Miracle Rope, and—trusting my crampon points and the sunken adzes of the two ice hammers far more than I would have thought possible before today—lean far back to stare up at the gleaming wall of ice that is the North Col’s last full barrier before we beat her.

It seems impossible. To my right a few yards, I can see various cracks and tumbled ice boulders—all that is left of the ice chimney that George Mallory had free-climbed a year ago. I’d seen one photograph of that climb and heard Deacon’s description of it—Mallory’s moves being one part spider to two parts gymnast, his fast, vertical scuttle impossible to imitate even by the expert climbers coming up behind him. That’s where Sandy Irvine’s rope ladder had come in so useful to the porters and later climbers. We’d brought rope and wood caver’s ladders for just that purpose, but the plan was to lower them from the top of the North Col ledge, not fix them as we ascend.

I give the Deacon a thumbs-up—I can still take the lead onto the vertical ice if he wants—but he shakes his head and looks up and beyond me at J.C., who is directly above both of us now on the extremely steep slope. One gloved palm up—the Deacon is questioning whether Jean-Claude has enough energy for this final assault. I know that the Deacon himself will lead this 200-foot vertical pitch if Jean-Claude can’t. It’s the main reason that the Deacon hasn’t yet taken the lead on this morning’s climb.

J.C. gives a thumbs-up—his oxygen mask, goggles, and leather flying helmet hide his expression and features—and passes his rope and other loads down to Nyima Tsering next in line.

Once again he and I trade places, but much more gingerly this time since a slip here would lead to an almost certainly fatal fall. These ice hammers are wonderful for such frozen-crust and real-ice climbing, but none of us has adequately practiced self-arrest with them.

Then we’re both tied in again, and I let out a breath I haven’t even noticed that I’d been holding. This reminds me to dial my O₂ flow back to the lowest 1.5-liter level.

The Sherpas behind Reggie, except for the always grinning Babu Rita, look exhausted and anxious. They all wear our experimental climbing harnesses, and Reggie has helped them each clip a carabiner onto the fixed rope, but I notice that each Sherpa (again except for the trusting Babu Rita) is also hanging on to that rope more tightly than is really good for our group’s sense of security.

Suddenly Reggie unties from the Sherpa rope and quickly ties a 30-foot strand of Miracle Rope onto Tenzing Bothia’s harness. Thus freed, she moves up and down the line, using her long ice axe to dig more substantial cups in the snow for each of the porters. She then shows them how, by shifting hands without totally relinquishing their reassuring grip on the fixed rope, they can slowly turn around and lower their behinds into the cup-shaped depressions, all while keeping their regular 10-point crampons embedded in the frozen snow beneath them. Watching them take their assigned seats in the snow on that near-vertical hillside, I’m glad that we’ve brought underwear for the Tiger Sherpas as well as thick woolen trousers with a covering of Shackleton gabardine. Babu Rita giggles and laughs at the beauty of the views.

Now it’s time for the ultimate test of Jean-Claude’s new climbing apparatus and techniques.

My neck hurts from craning and I find that I’m leaning ever further backward, trusting, perhaps, too much to my crampon points and ice hammer adzes. But it’s hard not to watch Jean-Claude in this, his tour de force.

As he’d done on much safer ice in Wales, J.C. kick-scrambles his way up the sheer wall of ice like some gecko on a dak bungalow wall. For the first 50 feet or so he’s still tied on our rope—both the Deacon and I with our full-length sunken ice axes braced for belay—but at the end of that extra-long rope length, he drives in an ice piton, unties from our belay, and ties in his Miracle Rope for protection. He’ll do this every 50 feet or so on the 200-foot climb, since if he falls it will be vertical free fall, and not even the Deacon’s Miracle Rope could hold his weight without snapping after a 400-foot vertical fall.

About two-thirds of the way up the icy wall, J.C. pauses, fumbles in his rucksack, and pulls out his oxygen tank. The Deacon and I exchange guilty glances; the plan had been for Jean-Claude to do this part of the climb with a new oxygen tank, opened to its full flow of 2.2 liters per minute. We’d all forgotten to make the exchange; even Jean-Claude in his eagerness to start the most dramatic part of our day’s climb had forgotten.

Now he removes his oxygen mask and free-hanging regulator with its various tubes and carefully sets them in his rucksack, even while pulling out the empty tank, pinning it against the ice wall with his body while using just his free right hand to unscrew the connections.

Shouting “Watch out below!” J.C. swings the empty tank one, two, three times and then hurls it to our right. We all watch, delighted and horrified at the same time, while the heavy oxygen tank bounces first off the ice wall itself and then off snow and ice for the full 1,000-foot drop to the glacier below. The noise it makes in its bouncing—especially its final ricochet off a snow-hidden boulder—is wonderful.

The Deacon pulls his own mask down. “Want to change leads?” he shouts upward.

On a windy day, I have no doubt that the shout would have been lost under wind roar, but today is almost perfectly still. I’m using the undershirt over my forearm to mop away sweat, even as we just stand here on the hillside below the vertical face, one arm around the fixed rope, both forward sets of crampon points and our left ice hammer holding us in place.

Jean-Claude grins, shakes his head, and looks up at the rest of the climb above him. Then he begins moving again, pausing more frequently now, moving a bit more slowly, but still climbing steadily.

Fifteen minutes more and we watch him thrust himself up, weight on his crampon points, and lean far over the lip of the North Col, sinking his right ice hammer deep into horizontal ice we can’t see. Then he’s gone.

A moment later, when he’s obviously tied in to some anchor he’s set on the surface of the Col, his head and shoulders reappear and a second rope begins snaking down.

“Send up the ladders!” shouts Jean-Claude.

We do, but not before all eight of us sitting and standing on the ice cliff below the last vertical wall send up a cheer for him.

The caving ladders are in 50-foot sections, and it takes all four of them to reach the lip of the Col. Not trusting just the attachments from one section to the next, J.C. comes down each 50-foot section and secures the next with short-cut strands of Miracle Rope, ice screws, and more pitons. It’s hard work, and J.C. is pouring perspiration as the last ladder is fixed in place. Then he’s at the bottom of the ice wall with us and we’re pounding him on the back and shoulders, voices hoarse in the high, thin air but filled with our congratulations.

The Deacon shows the Sherpas and the rest of us his total confidence in the rope ladders by unhooking from the common rope and clambering up, his crampons biting into the wooden rungs. One by one we follow, Reggie falling back to come up last behind the final Sherpa. I fall in behind my old friend Babu Rita, who clambers monkeylike up the rope-and-wood ladders, looking down and grinning at me until I become nervous for him. I want to shout up to him to remember the three-point rule—always keep three parts of you in touch with something solid while climbing (e.g., two feet, one hand; two hands, one foot; whatever)—but I’d have to remove my oxygen mask to make the shout and I’m still enjoying the benefits of English air. Babu completes his ascent without incident, and his hand is stretched out and waiting for me as we make the last, mildly nervous-making lurch up and over the lip of the North Col from the ladder. Babu grasps my hand and forearm in both of his strong hands and helps me to my knees and then up.

I move a few paces away from the top of the ladder and look at the dizzying sight.

We’ve climbed to the “Shelf,” where previous expeditions had set their tents—a sort of slumped area on the north side of the North Col where the upper ice ridge makes a nice protective wall. But where there had been room for dozens of tents in 1922, shrunken to a 30-foot-wide ice shelf good for only a thin row of tents in 1924, now the shelf is less than ten feet wide. Too exposed to the drop and too narrow now to serve as our Camp IV.

Still, it’s a good place to rest, and almost everyone is sitting slumped along the south wall of the shelf. I find my way down to the end of the line and slump along with them until Reggie comes up with the final three Sherpas. She warns them in Nepalese and Tibetan not to shed their loads yet—that they have to climb up and off this thin but sheltered shelf—and then she sits down next to me and tells me what she’s just told them.

Winds and avalanches have swept the ice shelf free of all the previous expeditions’ tents and signs of occupation other than for one collapsed green tent—wind-torn to rags, one tentpole still sticking up at a wild angle—right at our feet. I poke at the green canvas with my crampons and say to Reggie and Jean-Claude, “Just think—Mallory may have slept in there.”

“Not bloody likely,” says Lady Bromley-Montfort. “That’s the tent that Pasang and I brought up and shared last August when we were stuck up here for a week.”

I’d shut off my oxygen flow and pulled the mask down to my chest, but now I wish I’d left it in place; it might have hidden this sudden, absurd blush. For a long moment we all just sit there staring out at the incredible view—most of the East Rongbuk Glacier winding away at our feet (we can see all the way back to Camp I from here) and the mass of Changtse seeming to hurl itself skyward to our left, the overhanging bulk of Everest’s shoulder and North East Ridge cutting the skyline into steep, serrated segments to our right.

Jean-Claude looks around at our sitting line of Sherpas and says, “Where is le Diacre?”

“Mr. Deacon?” says Reggie. “He went off with Nyima Tsering, Tenzing Bothia, and a stack of bamboo wands to find a better place for Camp Four.”

“What are we sitting here for?” I ask.

J.C. and I laboriously get to our feet, I turn my oxygen flow back on, and we walk on a narrow strip of ice separating the Sherpas’ outstretched legs and crampons from the 1,000-foot drop to the glacier to where we can follow the Deacon’s and his two Sherpas’ footsteps up and out of the shelf area, onto the North Col proper.

When we reach the level of the actual Col, Jean-Claude and I both have to stop and gape for a few seconds. The full North Face of Mount Everest is now revealed to us as if someone had drawn back a theater curtain. To our left, beyond the last giant snow seracs, the North Ridge rises from this saddle of the North Col in a 4,500-foot-high spur to where it meets the North East Ridge—what the Deacon still calls the North East Shoulder of Everest—at an altitude of 27,636 feet. From that juncture of the North Ridge and North East Ridge so far above us, it’s another mile’s trek along the ridgeline to the right to the actual summit of Everest. The North Face of the mountain, including Norton’s Great Couloir, looks absolutely vertical from this viewing spot, but I know that such looks are deceiving from the base of any mountain. That couloir might still be our best bet, especially if high winds keep us off the ridgelines.

Without fumbling for binoculars, J.C. and I can clearly see about two-thirds of the way up the North Ridge in front of us to a weakly pronounced recline, the point where the Deacon has been planning to set our Camp V. Below that area, the North Ridge is composed of an irregularly rounded rock buttress that soon blends into the humpbacked extension of snow and ice that connects to our low, snowy saddle here on the North Col.

It’s weird. We can easily see the spindrift blowing off the summit like a 20-mile-long white scarf set against the brilliantly blue sky, and more spindrift being lifted off the North East and upper North ridges as if by hurricane winds, but there’s hardly a breath of wind down here on the North Col. I remember the Deacon saying that when he, Mallory, and the others had first reached this spot in their 1921 reconnaissance mission, the winds everywhere atop the Col, except on the ice shelf behind us that’s now dwindled so much, had been too strong for a man to stand in for more than a few seconds. To stand where Jean-Claude and I were walking now would have been certain death. This, I thought, is the difference between climbing to the North Col in that narrow window of time between winter and the onset of the monsoon, and climbing during the monsoon season.

The cramponed boot prints of the Deacon and his two Sherpas are quite clear in the snow, and we follow them up and further west beyond the ice shelf. Behind us, Reggie has got Babu Rita and the three other Sherpas in motion, although they are plodding slowly under their loads here at 23,000 feet. Should any of the Sherpas get ill at this altitude, the plan is to give them oxygen; otherwise, only the four of us high-climbers are to use oxygen at North Col altitudes.

For some reason, I’m not prepared for all the yawning crevasses up here on the North Col. It makes perfect sense that they should be here; the ice of the North Col keeps breaking off and dropping onto the East Rongbuk Glacier proper far below. But I guess—despite reading and rereading all the earlier expeditions’ accounts and listening to the Deacon talk about how we’d have to pick our way through crevasses atop the North Col—for some reason I’d expected the Col to be more of a smooth surface.

It’s not. I realize that we’re climbing again as I follow the three men’s boot prints along narrow ridges between deep crevasses, up and over one massive ice bridge that the Deacon’s just marked minutes before with red-flagged bamboo wands, around and through a series of giant tumbled seracs leading out to a broader, more crevasse-riddled rising slope, and finally to where we can see the Deacon, Nyima Tsering, and Tenzing Bothia setting up tents in the lee of some giant drifts and seracs near the south edge of the North Col, right below where the Col meets the rising ice and snow of the North Ridge spur.

My gaze keeps rising to the North Ridge and North Face of the mountain. I can clearly see the downward-tilting black granite slabs on both the ridge and face, some partially snow-covered, others glistening as if covered with ice. Most alpine climbers—myself included—dislike climbing on such downward-tilting rock slabs; it’s too much like attempting to climb slick, slippery, treacherous tiles on the steep roof slope of some Gothic church. Sometimes the slab tiles themselves will give way beneath you.

Because of the maze of crevasses, the route through them marked only with the few red-flagged bamboo wands, J.C. and I rope up with the three Sherpas and Reggie on a single line as we continue to plod uphill toward this new site for Camp IV.

When we come up to the Deacon and his two Sherpas, our guys dump their loads and collapse in the snow while those who’ve come before us finish their job of erecting one heavy Whymper tent and two lighter Meade tents. Still staying on the last of my oxygen, I empty my own rucksack of the one 10-pound Meade tent and three sleeping bags I’ve hauled up with me today.

We’ve brought lots of water, thermoses with warm drinks, and some light food stocks with us—mostly chocolate, raisins, and other high-energy snacks—but most of our load carrying today has centered on bringing the tents and sleeping bags needed for Camp IV and, with luck, Camp V. One of the Sherpas has brought up a Primus stove—for serious cooking—but each campsite has been under orders, after J.C.’s and my near debacle at Camp III, also to have at least two spirit stoves and, more important, multiple Unna cookers with their Meta solid fuel to burn. The Deacon isn’t taking the chance of other advanced camps not being able to melt snow for drinking water, tea (however tepid at these altitudes), and soup.

Reggie, after telling her Sherpas what to set up where, is standing next to the Deacon and looking rather dubiously at the giant seracs that hide the view of the North Ridge from us here. “Are you sure that this will block the worst of the wind?” she asks.

The Deacon shrugs. There’s a glint of real joy in his eyes that I’ve noticed on the Matterhorn and elsewhere when he’s enjoying climbing to a soul-deep extent. “In ’twenty-one and ’twenty-two, we always noticed less wind in the lee of large seracs here on the west end of the North Col,” he says. His oxygen mask is dangling unused on his chest. “And Teddy Norton told me that other than the ice shelf, this would have been his choice as a site for Camp Four last year.”

Reggie does not look totally convinced. I remind myself that she and Pasang were kept prisoner here on the North Col for a miserable, windy week, waiting at every moment for their tent—the green canvas rags and broken poles I’d noticed back on the shelf—to blow over the edge of the Col. The North Col has to be a source of anxiety to her.

“It will be convenient for climbing to the North Ridge,” she says at last. “And better for anyone descending late from Camp Five or higher than the old ice shelf camp was…too many crevasses to avoid in the dark.”

The Deacon nods. Reggie gives more instructions to the Sherpas in both English and Nepalese. She wants the openings of the tents to face toward the great sunrise-reflecting bulk of Changtse to the north.

As the Sherpas finish their work, the four of us find something to sit on. J.C. and the Deacon are sitting on rolled-up sleeping bags, eating chocolate and staring westward above the seracs to the visible sections of the North Ridge. I join them.

“Any further today?” I ask.

The Deacon shakes his head. “This is a good day’s work. We’ll go back to Camp Two, get a good night’s sleep, and try to get at least three ropes of Sherpas up here tomorrow with food and other supplies, including for the high camps. Hope the weather holds for the next three days.”

“You’re thinking of a summit bid for day after tomorrow?” Jean-Claude says to the Deacon. This would be four days earlier than our original May 17 goal.

He smiles but does not reply.

It is Reggie who speaks. Her voice is determined. “You forget, we have to look for Bromley.”

“I did not forget, Madame,” says J.C. “I merely assumed that such a search will be part of our climb.”

Into the moment of somewhat awkward silence that follows, I say, “What about the crevasses up here on the North Col? Shouldn’t we check them out for…for…Bromley?”

“Kami Chiring reported seeing three figures far up on the North East Ridge,” says Reggie. “Then only one figure. I suspect we shall have to go that far before seeing any possible sign of my lost cousin. I know that there was no sign of anything between here and Mallory’s Camp Five last August. Also, Pasang and I lowered lanterns into all the crevasses that were here last summer. Nothing. Obviously we do not need to search new crevasses.”

“So all we have to do today,” I say, “is finish our lunch, finish setting up Camp Four, and head downhill for a good night’s sleep at Camp Two.”

“That’s all,” says the Deacon, and I’m not surprised at the slight tone of irony in his voice.

The Deacon leads us down. The descent takes less than an hour and would have been even faster than that if the Sherpas could have rappelled down the way J.C. and I did for entire sections, testing the Miracle Rope. Above us at the westernmost reach of the North Col, we’d left six heavily anchored tents—two Whympers and four Meade tents—buttoned up and provisioned with sleeping bags, blankets, various types of cookers, Meta solid fuel, and kerosene cached outside.

Jean-Claude and I had volunteered to come down last so that we could test the rappel strength of the fixed ropes (although we cheated a bit by taking turns belaying while the other climber rappelled), and a rappel from that kind of exposed altitude is always a thrill. J.C. and I had expected an easier climb this day, but neither of us had imagined having so much fun.

Finally, when we come off the fixed ropes of the lower slope—the last 200 feet or so down to the level of Camp III didn’t need fixed ropes, we’d decided that morning, since it’s a relatively gradual snow slope—we find Babu Rita standing there waiting for us in the growing evening shadows, stamping his booted feet to stay warm. He’s removed his crampons (the only remaining problem with them and our new rigid boots is that the crampon straps still tend to cut off circulation, which leads to cold feet despite the extra layers of felt we’d put in the newly designed “stiff” boots), and now J.C. and I do the same.

“Very good day, yes, Sahibs Jake and Jean-Claude?” asks Babu, grinning from ear to ear.

“A very good day it’s been, Babu Rita,” I say. All three of us start down in the sunken footsteps in the snow, but then, on a whim, I say, “Would you like to see how real climbers go down a slope like this, Babu?”

“Oh, yes, Sahib Jake!”

Making sure that my crampons are secured safely outside my rucksack in a spot where they won’t stab me if I fall or have to go to self-arrest, I hop up out of the trough made by the party’s earlier ploddings, keep my long ice axe out, and begin glissading down the long snow slope, my hobnailed boots kicking up a rooster tail behind me, guiding myself with the pick end of the long axe.

“Race you!” cries J.C. and jumps onto the snow surface firming in the shadows. “Stay here, Babu. Look out, Jake!”

Jean-Claude glissades faster than I do and is soon trying to pass me. Damn Chamonix Guides! We slalom our way lower, swerving to miss the few boulders near the base of the slope, and J.C. comes across the imaginary finish line on the flats at least 15 feet ahead of me.

Laughing, stamping our cold feet here at the edge of the moraine, we turn to watch Babu Rita posthole his way down the trough path of deep footsteps.

“I, too, also!” cries the short Sherpa, and he steps out of the footsteps onto the snow crust, sets his ice axe behind him like a tiller, and starts imitating our glissade.

“No, don’t!” cries Jean-Claude, but it’s too late. Babu is glissading quickly down the slope and laughing like a madman.

Then he pushes too hard on the pick or adze of his ice axe, a common beginner’s mistake in glissading—the guiding point must touch the snow ever so lightly—the pick embeds itself deep into the snow, Babu is jerked around violently, and then he’s on his back, arms spread wide, picking up speed as he hurtles down the slope on his back, his rucksack spilling personal items as he slides. If anything, he’s laughing even harder now.

“Self-arrest!” I bellow, cupping my hands to make a megaphone. “Self-arrest, Babu!”

He’s lost his ice axe, but he still has his hands—and when the mittens get pulled off, he should be able to dig his gloved fingers deep enough into the snow to slow his rate of descent. We’ve trained and rehearsed all the Sherpas in self-arrest techniques.

But Babu’s splayed body is spinning around in circles now, first head up, then down, hands and heels merely slapping at the ice-crusted snow. All this time he’s laughing even louder as he hurtles closer to us.

Fifty feet from the bottom of the slope, Babu goes over a hidden snow ramp. “Oopsies!” he cries in English as he flies eight feet into the air, still headfirst.

There’s a strange sound as he strikes what looks to be a large pillow of snow and he quits laughing. His splayed form spins a final three times and slides to a stop not 30 feet from us. J.C. and I are running now, postholing our way over to the suddenly silent Sherpa. I’m praying that he’s just had the wind knocked out of him.

Then we notice the long smear of red on the otherwise white snow. The “pillow” of snow Babu had hit, headfirst, is a snow-covered boulder.