The Abominable: A Novel

Sunday, May 17, 1925

As it turns out, it’s just Reggie and me plodding up this granite-slabbed rib toward Camp V today.

Jean-Claude had admitted that he wasn’t feeling so well—“a bit seedy,” he’d said, borrowing the Deacon’s English phrase—and we all decided that he should go down with the Deacon to help organize the load carrying to the North Col and then come up to Camps V and VI the next day.

“It will give me a chance to use my bicycle,” says J.C.

I don’t believe I’ve taken the time to describe the contraption that Jean-Claude hauled all the way across Tibet in pieces and dutifully assembled our first day up on the North Col. The device did have bicycle parts—a bicycle seat, pedals, gears, bicycle chains—but it also had an upholstered backrest (since the person on the contraption would be pedaling it while lying almost on his back, knees higher than his head) and metal support struts that went out six feet in four directions, each anchored deeply into the ice shelf with ice screws, hammered pitons, and a spiderweb of ropes. That bicycle-doodad wasn’t going to fall off that narrow shelf unless the North Col glacier itself calved off a huge piece.

A meter or so above the pedals, a nine-foot metal arm—J.C. had brought the components in three-foot sections—had been bolted together to become a sturdy horizontal flange, also reinforced by multiple tie-downs, which held a third bicycle gear and pulley assembly.

We’d only had time to test it with two loads before the storm came in on Friday, but the bicycle worked well, in its own crude way. In the 1924 expedition, Sherpas had dropped ropes to haul loads up the chimney Mallory had climbed in the final 200-foot ice wall, but the loads had to be fairly light. Pedaling with one’s legs and feet, with leverage gained through reduction gears, was infinitely easier than using one’s back and arms, and the loads tied onto the continuously circulating 400-foot strand of Deacon’s Miracle Rope could weigh up to fifty or sixty pounds. The bicycle was serious exercise above 23,000 feet, there was no denying that, but we’d each tried it out, and with two men—one to pedal and the other to untie and dump the loads as they came up to the level of the ice shelf—moving entire tons of matériel up to the North Col was now a real possibility, without endless lines of load-hauling Sherpas gasping and wheezing and constantly resting on the rope ladder or fixed ropes.

“If I’d just been able to haul in a small petrol-powered generator,” said Jean-Claude.

But J.C. is ill and recovering lower today, so it is just Reggie and me working our way up the slabs toward sunrise and Camp V this fine Sunday morning. The last thing Jean-Claude whispered to me before we left camp, Reggie yards away and preoccupied with getting the flow valve working right on her hissing oxygen set, was—“Besides, mon ami, the Deacon, Tenzing, and Tejbir put only two small two-man tents up at Camp Five. With my luck, I’d end up sleeping alone.”

Reggie and I haven’t roped up and I’m not sure why. I suppose it is because the first few hundred yards up the snowfields from the North Col were just a kick-step exercise, and above that we’ve been on these damned black granite slabs that require little more than giant steps up very high curbs to ascend. The few arêtes and serious rock outcroppings we’ve come up against on the ridgeline are easily avoided by traversing out onto the equally downward-tilting granite slabs of the North Face until we’ve climbed up and around the rock outcroppings and moved back left to the broad ridgeline.

This is not to say that a fall from this North Ridge—or what the Deacon sometimes calls the North East Shoulder (as opposed to the North East Ridge far above that leads to the summit)—would not be a serious problem.

The winds are intermittent this predawn morning, unlike the constant gales that the Deacon and his two Sherpas encountered on Friday. Those three had been forced to lean forward into the hurricane-force wind so far that their heads were lower than their knees and their noses almost touching the rock slabs in front of them. Reggie and I can walk hunched forward just slightly—like French and British infantry I’ve heard about at the Battle of the Somme leaning forward as if into a wind while walking into enemy machine gun fire—but the occasional gust rocks us back on our heels and makes us pinwheel our arms for balance. Of course, a backwards topple here will be one hell of a topple. At one place on the ridge, the winds suddenly seem to batter us from both directions at once, and Reggie has to fall forward, her mittened hands seeking a grip on the icy slab in front of her, rather than let the wind tumble her backward for a long, long, long fall.

We should be roped up. I know it—every bit of mountaineering sense and experience I have tells us that we should—but for some reason I can’t seem to suggest it to her or insist upon it. Maybe it seems like too personal a suggestion.

For the first time, I appreciate the problem that the Deacon and his two Sherpas—and both the high-climbing British expeditions before this—had dealt with in finding a place for tents. To our right, the west, the edges of the steep ridge and the North Face itself are exposed to the full force of the near-constant winds perpetually blowing from the northwest. A tent wouldn’t survive an hour there. But there is no flat place to pitch a tent, even a small tent, on the west side of the North Ridge at any rate.

To our left, the east, the ridgeline blocks some of the wind, but there is nothing on that side of the ridge other than very steep and very exposed slopes, snow couloirs that end abruptly in 5,000-foot drops to the main Rongbuk Glacier, the couloirs dappled with a giant jumble-maze of tilted rock in which a climber could quickly get lost, especially in bad conditions.

The Deacon and Mallory in ’22 and Mallory in ’24 had been worried about descending climbers taking a wrong turn into one of these dead-end, sheer-drop couloirs, and for that reason, Reggie and I are carrying more red-flagged bamboo wands this morning, embedding them deep along the main route wherever someone descending in a snowstorm might be tempted to take a wrong turn toward eternity.

We continue climbing toward the sunlight, our Crooke’s glass goggles still up on our leather-covered foreheads. The summit of Everest has been glowing gold since not long after we moved from snow to rock on the North Ridge, and now the tips of Changtse, Makalu, Chomolonzo, and other nearby high peaks blaze with light even while snowy summits far to our north also begin to welcome the morning. I’m eager for the band of morning light to reach our lower altitude along the ridge because it’s just so damned cold; even with all the new down clothing and felt-layered boots, only near-constant motion fights off the body’s insistence on losing core heat at this altitude, and near-constant movement is all but impossible.

The Deacon has demonstrated for all of us his and Mallory’s high-altitude trick of taking a deep breath—inhaling deeper and for a longer time than seems natural—then taking a step, exhaling while you pause, then inhaling deeply for the next step. But since both Reggie and I are using oxygen at the lower flow rate of 1.5 liters per minute, we can’t do this as dramatically as the Deacon has demonstrated for us. The regulators won’t allow it. Still, early on, Reggie and I loosen our masks long enough to try to make a full twenty paces before stopping completely to wheeze and gasp, but the best we’ve been able to do—on snow or these rock slabs—is thirteen short paces. And our pausing-to-breathe stops are growing longer and more frequent with every 100 feet of altitude we gain.

I keep looking down and around, rather than watching my feet as I should. I can’t help it. I’ve always loved the views from anywhere high, and nothing in my experience—nothing in my short life—has come close to this view from the North Shoulder of Everest as we approach 25,000 feet. The East Rongbuk Glacier valley, which holds our Camps I through III behind us, is still filled with heavy gray clouds that broil and roil and tumble over each other in the lower storm’s unsuccessful attempt to haul its heavy moisture-filled mass as high as the North Col. The air is so clear up here above those clouds that peaks 50 miles away look like they’re almost within reaching distance below and behind us. When I lean far over, I can see Camp IV on the North Col through the V of my down-covered and duck-canvased legs, the green tents already mere dark specks on the white snow saddle.

At the Deacon’s and J.C.’s urging, Reggie and I are doing this entire climb—including all the steep hiking up these interminable rock slabs—while wearing our 12-point crampons. At first I felt nervous climbing on rock with crampons rather than having solid boot soles beneath me—and the danger of catching the front points and tripping is always there if you quit thinking about how to lift your feet at each step—but after two or three hours of ascending, I’m clearly seeing the advantage of staying in crampons. There’s as much real contact with the rock as there would be with hobnailed boots, but the transitions to patches of snow and ice are much easier; you can kick your toe points in and keep climbing at the same rate as on bare rocks. Also, few of these rocks are actually bare; despite the high winds, the snows have left a thin glaze of ice on most of them. The crampons cut through and into that ice in a secure way that no hobnails ever could.

We’re using our long ice axes, of course, and every thirteen steps both of us pause and bend almost double, leaning on the axes as we hungrily let the oxygen sets hiss air into our laboring lungs. We’re carrying three O₂ tanks each—planning to use only one each on our way to Camp V—but rather than climbing with the metal oxygen rigs, we’re using the special rucksacks that Jean-Claude has adapted. It took a few more minutes to get ready with the rucksacks—oxygen lines and regulator valves have to be slipped through strategically placed holes that then lace up tightly—but we’re carrying extra food, clothes, and several other items that would have been unwieldy crammed into gas mask holders dangling on our chest or from our shoulders. I certainly feel the weight of the three tanks and their associated valves, hoses, and gear, but the total, thanks to both Mr. Irvine’s and Monsieur Clairoux’s alterations, is still under 30 pounds even with our load of extra items. And that includes another 10-pound Meade two-man tent we’re each carrying segments of.

The sun reaches us. I realize that the Michelin Man figure next to me is gesturing for me to put on my goggles; hers are already in place. I hate to do it because the special glass distorts colors and makes me feel—along with the damned oxygen mask—locked away in a different world, like a man in a heavy, metal-helmeted diving suit. But she’s right. We’re on a long stretch of rising slabs and low rock pinnacles now, not a snowfield around, but that won’t save us from snow blindness at this altitude. The ultraviolet rays alone will blind you if you climb too long, even on dark rock. Under our top layer of Shackleton anoraks, Reggie and I are carrying undersized military binoculars. These aren’t usually necessary for climbing on Everest, but they may help in the search for her cousin Percival. She hasn’t brought her glasses out yet, and I’ve seen nothing on the North Face to my right to make me reach for mine. Once when we pause to break a piece of chocolate and try to melt it in our mouths, I ask her if she’s been looking.

“Both sides of the ridge,” she gasps around the chocolate. “But…remember…Pasang and I looked…carefully…up to…Camp Five…last August. No sign…then…either.”

I’d almost forgotten that this climb to Camp V, so novel for me, was old territory for Lady Bromley-Montfort.

When we’d asked the Deacon how long it would take us to reach Camp V from the North Col, he’d given us the almost laughably precise number of five hours and ten minutes. But as with all things Deaconish, he’s actually gone through the records of the men in ’22 and ’24, including himself, climbing between Camp IV and Camp V while using oxygen, and come up with that exact figure.

After five hours and twelve minutes of climbing, we see the two small tents of the Deacon-established new Camp V just a few dozen yards above us.

My first thought is You must be kidding.

This is the worst campsite I’ve ever seen. In truth, there’s no campsite here. There’s a slight broadening of the slope, and in an area partially protected from rockfall and the wind by a high rock ridge, the Deacon and Tenzing Bothia and Tejbir Norgay have moved a few rocks to create two absurdly tilted platforms smaller than the tents that are set on them.

And the two small Meade tents aren’t even at the same level. One is off to the right of our line of ascent, tilting on the edge of nothing, and the other is in an even more precarious position 30 or so feet higher and to the left. This second tent literally hangs out over nothing—5,000 feet of open air to the main Rongbuk Glacier. For a moment I think this is some sort of sick joke prepared by the Deacon and his two Sherpas. We can’t spend a night here, I think. This is fucking impossible.

But then I see why the Deacon’s chosen the places he did; the rock ridge is good protection for the lower tent, while the more exposed-looking higher one has a web of heavy rope lines wrapped around three large boulders set next to it. There is new snow piled up on the windward side of each green tent, but neither one has collapsed or blown away.

Still, I can’t believe that we’re going to trust our lives to, much less actually close our eyes for a moment of sleep on, the slab slope of either of these insanely positioned sites.

But scan the ridge and mountain face as I may through my thick goggles, I can find no other possible tent sites.

Reggie turns around and sits on one of the large down-tilting slabs next to the lower tent. She turns off her oxygen flow and pulls down her mask. I do the same. The effect of drowning—of not getting enough oxygen to draw a full breath—is immediate and panic inducing. But it passes.

In slow motion, like one of the undersea divers I’d been imagining earlier, Reggie unlaces the tent’s door—the opening is toward the rock wall and away from the steep drop—and bends over to peer in.

“Sleeping…bags…and…everything’s here just where…the Deacon…and the porters…left it,” she says between audible pants. “Unna cooker and…Meta bricks, too. But…lots of…spindrift. Inside the…sleeping bags…we may be wet.”

Shit. Well, we’ve brought our own bags. The sun is so bright now that, out of the wind, it’s almost warm. I unzip my outer down jacket.

“Whisk…broom,” I manage and pat an outside pocket on the left side of my rucksack.

Reggie nods, retrieves the tiny broom, and somehow finds the energy to lean into the tent and brush most of the snow out. She turns the sleeping bags inside out and drags them out into the sunlight, weighting them down with rocks as protection against the occasional gusts of wind.

Then she pulls an altitude barometer from some inside pocket and consults it. “Twenty-five thousand two hundred fifty feet plus or minus two hundred feet or so given the weather,” she says and has to pant for air. I realize that she’s pointing downhill toward something to our left.

It takes me a minute to see it. Two patches of torn and tumbled green canvas on a snowy steep patch of rock. “Camp Five…in ’twenty-two…,” she says.

It gives me a certain stupid sense of satisfaction to know that we’ve come 200 or 300 feet higher than the iron men of the 1922 expedition before setting up our own camp.

“Where are the…tents…from…’twenty-four?” I ask.

Reggie shrugs. She’s said that she climbed to the site of the ’24 Camp V with Pasang last summer, so I suspect she knows where that site was but is too tired to tell me at the moment.

Whichever tent or tents we choose to spend the night in—and the thought of being in either precarious perch in a high wind makes my scrotum contract—I have a good sense from the Deacon’s and Norton’s and the others’ reports as to what the rest of this day will be like.

First, Reggie and I will get out our little list of necessaries—there’s already an Unna cooker here, so we’ll save ours for the higher camp tomorrow—and crawl into or onto our sleeping bags, luxuriating in the false sense of warmth under the sun-warmed tent canvas. Too exhausted to do anything constructive, we’ll just lie in our respective bags and stupors for forty-five minutes to an hour, perhaps taking the rare shot of English air to offset the headaches already roiling in our skulls like the shifting cloud mass in the East Rongbuk Glacier valley so far below.

Then one of us—I hope to God it’s Reggie—will find the energy to crawl, with frequent rests and more frequent groans, out of her bag, out of her daytime tent, and across the terribly steep slope to the nearest patch of clean snow—about ten paces from this tent, only about four paces from the hanging-over-nothing tent above us to the left—and will use the last of her energy to fill two big aluminum pots with snow.

Then we’ll take turns groaning and moaning as we work together to light the damned Meta burner and to open some tins and bags of food—not a small accomplishment at this altitude—taking two hours to prepare a dinner we don’t want: pemmican, perhaps, or some bully beef (which the Deacon must be fond of, since he packed so much of it), and then “boil” some lukewarm tea with lots of sugar and condensed milk.

I gag just thinking about it. Perhaps I’ll just sleep all day and night instead. We still have water in our thermoses. That will do me until tomorrow. Or forever. Whichever comes first.

So I’m amazed—beyond amazed—when Reggie says, “What do you say…to going…up to…Camp Six?”

“Today?” I manage in little more than a squeak.

She nods, pulls a delicate lady’s watch from somewhere under her unzipped Finch duvet, and says, “It’s not quite noon. The Deacon says…they climbed from Camp Five…to Camp Six…in just under…four and a half hours. We can be there long before….dark.”

For a moment I’m certain that this is sheer bravado, that Reggie can’t be serious, but then I look at her sunburned face and beautiful eyes above the tugged-down oxygen mask and beneath the raised goggles and realize that she’s totally serious.

“They made that climb…starting…in the morning,” I say. “When they were rested.”

Reggie shakes her head, and I see curls of her blue-black hair trying to escape the wool cap she wears under the goose down hood. “You don’t really rest…up this high. Just…hurt. Lie…awake. We might as well do it…seventeen hundred feet…higher…tonight. Start hunting for…Percy…in the morning. Come downhill.”

“The Deacon and J.C. will expect us to be here…at…Camp Five,” I manage.

Reggie shrugs. “I’ll write them a note.” She takes a small leather notebook and small pencil from an inner pocket.

Jesus Christ, I’m thinking. She really means it!

I play my trump card. She will have no answer to this. It will save our lives…or at least my life. “There’s no…Camp Six…up there,” I say, trying to fake a sound of regret in my voice. “We wouldn’t know where…to put one. We couldn’t…get one…set up before nightfall. We’ll die…of exposure.”

“Oh, nonsense,” says Reggie. She’s writing busily. Then she pushes the partially dried sleeping bags back into the tilted tent and shows me the note before setting it atop the closest bag, weighting it with a rock. The brief note, our death warrant I am sure, reads At Camp V at noon. Both well. Decided to go up to establish VI around 27,000. Will begin search on Face in morning.—Reggie.

She ties the tent flaps closed, and we gasp and moan getting to our feet. I have a second of vertigo that almost sends me headfirst the 2,000-plus feet down to the North Col, my arms flapping like vestigial wings on some flightless bird. Nothing between here and the drop-off beneath us would stop me if I did tumble backward. I continue to teeter groggily, flailing my arms in a vain attempt to find my balance, and then feel Reggie’s firm hand on my upper arm, holding me in place.

When I find my balance and some semblance of normal breathing, she slaps me on the shoulder as if nothing had happened.

“We can dump the first oxygen…tank…when it empties,” she says before pulling her mask back up. “Maybe we should use less…of the air…for the second part…of the climb. Have more…for…tomorrow.”

“Sure,” I pant over the top of my own mask. “Whatever…you say…ma’am.”

We turn around, facing up the impossibly steep heap of murderously slippery black granite slabs and snow, and prepare to take our first thirteen steps. Almost 6,000 feet above us, the West Face of Everest’s snowy Summit Pyramid begins to glow in the very cold and increasingly low early afternoon light. Spindrift is again being hurled out for miles to the southeast. I start to imagine what the wind will be like up at 27,000 feet, our destination just a few hundred feet below the Yellow Band that is the last physical landmark and dividing line beneath the North East Ridge and that straight—if almost certainly impossible—ridgeline route to that summit. But then I have to shut down my imagination or just sit on a boulder and start weeping like a child.

We take our first of thirteen steps.