For an instant of exquisite terror, Perry Noonan was off that mountain. Then, all in the space of a split second, his jumar snapped into place, and the device’s teeth bit into the rope, stopping a fall that had never really started.
He dangled there, motionless and palpitating, until his mind came back to him. Kicking both front points, he dropped to the face and hugged it as if he were trying to insert himself inside the ice.
“I’m alive,” he mumbled. “I’m alive …”
He was still repeating those words an hour later when he finally arrived at Camp Three. The feeling of being untethered from the mountain, waiting for gravity to pitch him into the abyss, was with him for a very long time.
* * *
At twenty-four thousand feet, Camp Three was a place unfit for human habitation. For starters, there was no real camp — not in the sense of a common area where people could sit and talk comfortably. Four two-person tents were perched precariously on ice that was pitched steeper than a log flume.
“Are you sure you made it small enough?” Tilt grumbled at Babu.
The Sirdar laughed. “Do you know how long it took four of us to hack out platforms flat enough for these tents? Nine hours. If you don’t like it, try the Hilton.”
They held a team powwow, nearly five miles above sea level across a slanted conference table of blue ice. The only way to do this was for the eight climbers to lie in the tents with their heads poking out the flaps, facing each other.
“I know exactly how you guys feel,” said Cicero. “You can barely breathe; you’ve got pounding headaches; and energy-wise, if you had to scratch your noses, you wouldn’t have the energy to raise your fingers that high. Now listen carefully, because I’m going to blow your minds: You’re ready.”
They looked at him dumbly.
“You are. We sleep here tonight, down to ABC tomorrow, and then back to Base Camp. Then we rest up and wait for good weather. And our next stop” — he rolled over and pointed straight up — “is there.”
All eyes followed along. The overcast was beginning to break up and, a vertical mile above, the pinnacle of Everest peeked out from behind the bulk of the southwest face. The powerful jet-stream winds blew a plume of ice crystals off the summit half a mile into the troposphere.
Tilt Crowley was watching The Matrix for the eighth time in the kitchen tent at Base Camp. Absently, he popped open his lunch, a single serving tin of tuna.
“Ugh!”
The tuna can was filled with sardines again! The merchants of Namche Bazaar were a bunch of crooks. They charged the expeditions top dollar and sold them mislabeled cat food. The word around Base Camp was that the French expedition had dropped a fortune on two cases of caviar and ended up with forty-eight single servings of refried beans.
Maybe I’ll get rich enough to buy Mount Everest and kick all the Sherpas out!
“Cap! Cap!” It was Sammi’s voice, obviously in a state of high excitement. A second later, she came bursting through the flap, Perry at her heels. “Where’s Cap?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” yawned Tilt, pitching his tin of sardines through the opening out to the moraine.
“Some Nepal government guys just helicoptered into camp!” Perry panted. “They’re nosing around, asking questions about Dominic!”
Tilt was instantly alert. “What did you tell them?”
“What do you think I told them?” Sammi snapped. “I said, ‘Dominic who?’ If these two were sent because of the National Daily, they could be here to kick Dominic off the mountain!”
Tilt leaped to his feet. “Where’s the shrimp now?”
They found Dominic in the This Way Up mess tent, drinking tea with Nestor, Pasang, and Gombu, the team’s Base Camp Sirdar.
Sammi filled him in on the developments. “You’ve got to hide!” she finished.
“Oh, come on,” scoffed Tilt. “What can they do to him? He’s on the climbing permit. He’s legal.”
“That’s not the problem,” argued Nestor. “The government here can drive you crazy, even if you’re legit. They’ll delay you for weeks, crawling all over you with a microscope. By the time you get the okay, the monsoon will roll in, and it’ll be too late in the season to climb.”
Dominic thought it over. “I’ll disappear for a while.”
“Whatever you do, do it fast,” urged Perry, peering out the flap. “They just left our tent, and they’re headed this way.”
Gombu flipped open the expedition’s pantry chest and began removing boxes of crackers, cookies, and cereal by the armload. “You safe in here!” he exclaimed, pushing Dominic inside. The others helped pile the light boxes on top of the fugitive.
“You don’t have to bury him!” Tilt exploded. “Nobody’s going to look in there anyway.”
That was exactly the problem, Tilt thought to himself. The government guys weren’t going to find Dominic unless Tilt ratted him out.
But how can I do that in front of Sammi and Perry?
“Shut the lid!” hissed Nestor. “They’re almost here!”
And then the two officials were upon them. They wore olive green paramilitary uniforms and black berets. One of them held a murky faxed photograph of Dominic, an old school picture reproduced from one of the articles in the National Daily.
“We seek this boy,” the leader said.
“He’s not here,” Nestor replied.
The two spoke to the Sherpas in Nepalese, and got very short answers and very long shrugs.
Tilt had the panicky feeling that they were about to leave. Both men were breathing hard — Base Camp was at high altitude, even for the people of Nepal. Search the box. He tried to send the message telepathically. He’s in the pantry chest. But why would they ransack any one tent before looking in the over three hundred others first?
He decided that the Nepalese needed a little help. Perched on a camp stove were four aluminum nesting pots. He could “accidentally” hip-check the cookware, which would clatter onto the pantry chest. With any luck, Dominic would be startled and cry out, thereby giving himself away.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Tilt mumbled and started forward. He was just angling into position, was about to deliver the blow, when —
“Who’s talking to my people without me?”
Cicero burst through the flap, angry and arrogant as only a legend can afford to be. Tilt had no choice but to retreat as his team leader confronted the officials.
The constable with the fax stepped forward. “Cap Cicero, this is your climber, no?”
As he reached for the picture, Cicero intercepted a beseeching look from Sammi and noted that Perry’s freckles were standing out like polka dots, so white was his face.
“Right,” said Cicero. “Dominic Alexis.”
“Where is he, please?”
Cicero never even paused. “Down in the valley somewhere. He’s not going to climb. Too young, too small.”
“A wise choice,” the other man approved. “This news will be welcome at headquarters.”
Perhaps closer to the truth, the news was welcomed by the two constables. They looked pathetically grateful to be able to head for their helicopter, which would take them away from 17,600 feet.
Ethan Zaph ducked in through the tent flap, peering quizzically over his shoulder. “What were those two guys doing here?”
Sammi fairly exploded in his face. “Like you don’t know, rat!”
Cicero put a hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy, Moon.”
Sammi was in no mood to be soothed. “Those two were looking to grab Dominic and kick him off the mountain!” she seethed at Ethan. “Because you’ve been feeding the National Daily lies about SummitQuest!”
Ethan stared at her, thunderstruck. Then he turned to Cicero. “What’s she talking about, Cap? I know you guys don’t like me because I quit your team. But why would you think I’d stab another climber in the back?”
“We don’t know what to think, kid,” said Cicero. “We’re grappling wit
h a lot of things ourselves. Don’t take it personally.”
“No, take it personally,” Sammi snarled. “That’s how I meant it.”
Ethan’s temper flared. “I haven’t done anything to you or your team! You can believe that or stuff it — I don’t really care! I didn’t tip off the Nepalese, but I’ll tell you this, though: They’re right. This mountain is mean, and it’s no place for a little kid. It’s not right for Dominic, who could be in danger, and it’s not right for the climbers who might have to put themselves in danger to rescue him.” The well-known smiling face that adorned so many ads for climbing equipment was bright red with anger. “I didn’t come into my own mess tent to take this kind of heat! All I wanted was a lousy cookie!”
He flung open the pantry chest and yanked out a bag of Oreos to find Dominic’s distorted face peering up at him through the clear plastic of a bottle of vinegar.
“Whoa!!”
The weather report sent Base Camp into a frenzy of activity. The forecasting services all seemed to agree. There were clear days ahead, and several of them. The moment for a summit bid was now.
Sneezy filmed Cicero’s pep talk, which turned out to be short.
“No panic. Same climb. We’re just going to the end this time, that’s all.”
They dug their crampons into the crisp blue ice of the Khumbu Icefall.
That night they slept at ABC and spent the following day resting on the Cwm.
Cicero had little sympathy for their impatience. “Think of it as a trip to Miami Beach. It’s the last heat any of us will feel for a good long time.”
The next morning they were up well before the sun in an attempt to be free of the Cwm before the day’s eighty-degree temperature swing. Miami Beach was fine for shorts and T-shirts, but not wind suits and heavy gear. Soon they were back on the Lhotse Face for another torturous slog up steep sheer ice.
It took every ounce of will for Perry to put himself back up there again. Surprisingly, it wasn’t quite as terrible as he remembered. How could it be? The acclimatization actually seemed to be working. He could almost breathe, and the effects of altitude felt more like a bad flu than a pile driver to the head. He had promised himself, though, that he was not unhooking his jumar from a fixed line if the entire British royal family wanted to get around him.
In fact, he did get passed, not by royalty, but by the first of several This Way Up summit teams. Ethan, Nestor, and Pasang climbed by on their way to the peak of Lhotse, dead ahead, yet impossibly far away.
Noticing the pure misery on Perry’s face, Nestor hefted his ice ax like a microphone and boomed, “ ’We have nothing to fear but fear itself!’ ”
“In that case,” Perry panted back. “I should be pretty darn scared.”
The other SummitQuest climbers offered their encouragement to Nestor and Pasang as they labored past. No one said a word to Ethan Zaph.
That night at Camp Three, Cicero held classes in Oxygen 101. For the rest of the climb, each SummitQuest team member would wear portable breathing equipment — an oxygen mask and regulator hooked up to a sleek, ultralight cylinder of compressed gas. Tomorrow they would be crossing the important threshold of twenty-five thousand feet. There was no camp there, or even any milestone. But twenty-five thousand feet marked the beginning of Everest’s infamous Death Zone.
“Supplemental oxygen helps you survive in the Death Zone. Remember I said helps. Because nobody, on any amount of O’s, can last up there for long. Make no mistake — when you go that high, you’re dying. Brain cells are disappearing, your heart beats at triple speed, and your blood gets thick like molasses. We’re all on borrowed time above twenty-five K. The O’s just let you borrow a little more of it, that’s all.”
Sammi, who included deep-sea diving on her list of extreme hobbies, had no trouble getting used to her oxygen mask. But the boys found them vastly uncomfortable, and even scary. Perry could not get over the feeling that he was suffocating, even though he was getting more oxygen, not less. Dominic found it spooky to hear the sound of his own breathing reverberating in his ears.
Tilt felt the same way. “It’s like Darth Vader breath,” he complained, tossing his mask aside. “I’ll get the hang of it tomorrow.”
“You’ll get the hang of it now,” Cicero insisted. “Nobody sleeps till you’re totally comfortable in that rig.”
Nobody slept anyway. The stakes were getting too high.
www.summathletic.com/everest/southcol
No, they’re not astronauts; they’re the youngest expedition in the history of Mount Everest in full high-altitude gear, including oxygen. At this point in the climb our heroes might as well be walking on the moon. The atmosphere is virtually unbreathable, and they are far beyond the rescue range of modern technology.
The route to Camp Four is the highest left turn on the planet, an ascending traverse across the Yellow Band — five hundred feet of steep, crumbling limestone. Next comes a rock climb in the sky over the Geneva Spur, a decaying black club overlooking the Cwm by nearly a vertical mile.
It is not far now — the South Col, at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere at twenty-six thousand feet. This barren wasteland of ice and stone is the site of Camp Four, the last stop before the summit. With nighttime temperatures of eighty below zero in lethal alliance with wind gusts more than one hundred miles per hour, this is not a relaxing place. Yet relax they must. For at midnight, they will walk right into the teeth of the worst conditions the mountain has to offer. CLICK HERE to see the SummitQuest climbers at Camp Four trying to grab a scant few hours of sleep before their final test on top of the world.
“I can’t sleep,” Dominic mumbled into his oxygen mask.
“Who asked you to?” roared Tilt. “I just need you to shut up long enough for me to get some rest!”
Perry tried to keep the peace in the close quarters. Due to the difficulty of ferrying equipment this high, the eight SummitQuest climbers were crammed into two three-person tents. “Come on, Tilt. We’re all nervous.”
This was not strictly true. The others were nervous. Perry Noonan was scared out of his wits. He was playing a chess game in his head in a vain attempt to divert his mind. But he could get no further than three or four moves before his discomfort and fear brought him back to the Death Zone.
“I’m so pumped,” said Sammi, pulling the mask from her face so she could be heard. “I mean, think about it. There’s nothing about this moment that isn’t extreme. Breathing extreme air in extreme cold and extreme wind, getting ready to take on the ultimate extreme mountain!”
Perry fiddled with his mask. “Who can sleep in this getup?”
Tilt pushed him back down on his sleeping bag. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t need rest. You’re going to quit before we hit the ridge. I’m going the distance tonight so — everybody — shut up!”
Dominic crawled to the entrance. “I’m going to check the radio. See if any of the other teams made the summit today.”
Outside, the arctic blast of wind nearly bent him double. Nylon flapped against aluminum poles at such high frequency that Camp Four gave off an electric buzz. The seven-foot walk to the guides’ tent seemed like a struggle. He poked his head inside. Dr. Oberman and Sneezy were trying to get some sleep. Cicero and Babu were at the radio. Babu was the only one not breathing bottled gas. He never climbed with it — not even at the summit.
The stout Sherpa was the first to notice him. “Who’s there?”
I must look like a storm trooper from Star Wars in this oxygen rig, Dominic reminded himself, pulling the mask aside.
Cicero yanked him in and zipped the flap shut. “You should be sleeping, kid.”
Dominic shrugged. Few ever slept on the Col prior to a midnight climb. The conditions, the altitude, and the nervousness seldom allowed it. After a summit push, when the body has had every molecule of strength, will, and, at last, awareness wrung from it — that was the time for sleep. “Did anybody get to the top today?”
Babu shook
his head. “The Guamanians are back. They didn’t get very far. Some of the Japanese are still out there. They made it to the South Summit before turning around.” He added, “But they’re doing fine.”
No sooner had the words crossed his lips than a barrage of angry words exploded from the radio. It was a full-fledged screaming argument — and definitely not in Japanese.
Cicero ripped off his mask, grabbed the microphone, and boomed, “This is Cap Cicero! Identify yourselves!”
“Cap, it’s me — Nestor!” The voice sounded as exhausted as it was enraged. “I’m with Ethan and Pasang! We’re above twenty-seven on Lhotse and — somebody messed up! I don’t know who — maybe the staff at Base Camp — ”
“What’s going on out there?” Cicero roared.
“We’re out of rope!”
Out of rope! Dominic could hardly believe his ears. There were many reasons for an ascent to fail — a storm, an accident, or the human body just reaching its limit. But to have to turn back because there wasn’t enough rope to stretch all the way to the top — that was agony. They were only a few hundred feet below the Lhotse summit!
“Don’t do anything stupid!” Cicero ordered in a commanding tone. “You climb without ropes, and somebody’s going to slip!”
“But we’re there, man!” Nestor was moaning. “We’re off the ice! No more crampons even! Just a rock gully all the way to the peak!”
“Is Zaph there! Let me talk to Zaph — ”
Suddenly, a Sherpa voice — Pasang’s — cried, “Rockfall!”
There was an audible thud, then Ethan yelled, “Nestor’s hit! Grab him!”
“What’s going on?” Cicero bellowed into the radio.
His only response was violent rustling and static.
“What’s happening? Who’s out there?”
Ethan’s voice, now distant, screamed, “Nestor! Wake up! Wake up!” and then the signal went dead.
Sneezy and Dr. Oberman weren’t sleeping anymore. By this time, the four guides and Dominic were crowded around the small radio. Cicero called all the other expeditions. No one was anywhere near the climbers in trouble. The closest teams were at Camp Four. The Guamanians were exhausted from their failed summit bid, and the Japanese were still on the mountain. SummitQuest alone was in any shape to offer assistance.