The Climb

  “If Nestor’s really unconscious,” the doctor said grimly, “there’s no way two men can get him down the face from that altitude.”

  “We’ve got to help him!” exclaimed Dominic.

  Cicero glared at him. “You’re going to stay here and sit tight with the others. We’ll look for them.”

  Sneezy was surprised. “All of us? Shouldn’t somebody stick with the kids?”

  Cicero shook his head. “Zaph’s climbing without O’s. Maybe he can handle himself, but I doubt he’s got the strength for a rescue. We don’t want to drag ourselves all the way out there just to be caught short.”

  Babu nodded. “We’ll have to traverse to the face until we hit their fixed line. Then we can head up the ropes and catch them descending.”

  “If they’re not doing it headfirst at sixty miles an hour,” Sneezy said pointedly.

  Dominic nodded. “I’ll tell the others.”

  The team leader grabbed his arm. “You know what this means, right?”

  And Dominic did. There would be no summit bid tonight. Even if Cicero and the guides could effect a quick rescue and be back at Camp Four by midnight, they would be far too fatigued to set out for the top of Everest. In all likelihood, the team would have to retreat to ABC, or even Base Camp, to wait for another weather window.

  He swallowed hard. Everest was fickle. They might not get another chance.

  Dominic didn’t hesitate. It was the unwritten rule of mountaineering: A rescue takes precedence over everything. Even a shot at the pinnacle of the world.

  “Go!”

  * * *

  “The radio!”

  Pasang watched as Nestor’s walkie-talkie skittered down the Lhotse Face and disappeared from view. By the time it reached the Western Cwm more than a mile below, it would be traveling at unimaginable speed.

  He helped Ethan turn Nestor over on his back — not an easy task at over twenty-seven thousand feet. Ethan flipped up the journalist’s oxygen mask and listened tensely.

  “He’s still breathing. Thank God.”

  The boulder that hit Nestor had come out of nowhere, a flying projectile the size of a microwave oven. It had struck him squarely in the backpack, momentarily dislodging him from the mountain and leaving him hanging from the fixed ropes.

  “Breathing now,” Pasang agreed. “But what next?”

  It was a good question. Near the summit, the western ramparts of Lhotse straightened to near vertical, and the treacherous face sloped upward at eighty degrees in places. For two climbers to get an unconscious companion down even as far as Camp Three would be impossible.

  Ethan thought it over. The walkie-talkie was gone. Nobody knew they were in trouble. Descent wasn’t an option, so …

  “We’ll go up,” he decided.

  “Without rope?” the Sherpa exclaimed. “One slip and — ”

  “Down is ice,” Ethan argued. “Up is rock. Down is far; up is close. We can practically crawl to the summit from here, dragging Nestor behind us. From there, we can take the ridge down to the South Col. One of the teams is bound to have a doctor at Camp Four.”

  “No fixed ropes on ridge, either,” Pasang pointed out. “Cornices. Very dangerous.”

  “But possible. It’s Nestor’s only chance.” He slapped the unconscious journalist’s cheeks. “Come on, buddy, wake up!”

  Nestor did not stir.

  “All right,” Pasang assented finally. “We go to summit.”

  * * *

  Tilt stood on the black rocks of the South Col and gazed bleakly at the sun going down on the Western Cwm. It was one of the truly spectacular sights on Planet Earth, but he saw none of it.

  Stinkin’ Nestor!

  Every time he thought about it, white-hot rage boiled through his brain.

  Why this? Why now?

  When Tilt thought ahead to the future, every single thing in it depended on this summit bid! The summit was his future. And it was happening! From here at twenty-six thousand feet, the top seemed so close he could practically hit it with a spitball….

  And then that clown has to go and get himself nailed by a rock!

  He had always known Cicero was a jerk, but he never would have believed the mountaineering legend could be such a sucker. Why would he jeopardize the whole expedition just to rescue Nestor?

  Nothing against Nestor, but why can’t somebody else save him? His own expedition — they should be doing this! Not Cap! Not SummitQuest!

  But Nestor’s This Way Up teammates were all at Camp Two or lower. A group had started up the Cwm to help him on the way down. But by then this weather window would be history. There might be another; there might not. It would be decided by pure luck.

  Not something you want to stake your whole future on.

  The attack came from behind. Arms reached around his sides, and someone wrestled him down. Shocked and afraid, Tilt hit the rocky ground and rolled free. His assailant was a Sherpa in full climbing gear, including oxygen mask and goggles. The man scrambled up and made another run at Tilt.

  “What do you want?” bawled Tilt.

  But the Sherpa kept coming, stumbling like a punch-drunk boxer. Terrified, Tilt backed away, casting a nervous eye over his shoulder. He was very near the point where the flat South Col rounded into the steep Lhotse Face — a deadly fall.

  “Get away from me!”

  The Sherpa reached for him. Then, as if the effort of lifting his arms had sapped all his remaining strength, he collapsed to his knees. A moment later, he was on all fours, gasping into his mask.

  Light dawned on Tilt. This guy isn’t fighting me! He’s so exhausted he can’t even stand!

  On Cicero’s orders, the teen climbers had moved to the guides’ tent in order to keep an eye on the radio. Tilt hustled the Sherpa inside and pulled off the mask and goggles.

  “Pasang!” cried Dominic in dismay. The normally confident climber was shivering uncontrollably.

  They wrapped Pasang in blankets. Perry made him a cup of hot chocolate to warm him up.

  “How’s Nestor?” probed Dominic.

  “Nestor very bad,” the Sherpa reported gravely. “I think maybe will die on mountain.”

  “What are you talking about?” cried Sammi. “Aren’t they bringing him down?”

  Pasang looked blank.

  Dominic grabbed his arm. “Cap, Babu, Sneezy, and Andrea left a few hours ago to help you guys up on the face.”

  The Sherpa put his head in his hands and moaned aloud. “Very big mistake! Very bad!” His eyes were filled with horror. “Ethan say, ‘No safe climb down face. Climb summit and down ridge.’ ”

  There was a breathless pause as the terrible truth sank in. Cicero and the guides were searching for Ethan and Nestor on the Lhotse Face. And all this time, the two had summited and were somewhere along the northeast ridge. It was a colossal mixup — one with consequences that could prove to be deadly.

  A roar of laughter broke the stunned silence. “This is just fantastic!” Tilt exploded. “We throw away our summit chance so Cap can stage a rescue, but there’s no one there to rescue anymore! Tell you what — when we get back to the States, we can go to Hollywood and sell the movie rights to Climbing with Morons!”

  “Come on, Tilt,” Perry said feelingly. “Nestor could die up there.”

  “No just Nestor!” Pasang’s horror story had one final wrinkle. After hauling Nestor’s unconscious body to the summit, they had started down Lhotse’s northeast ridge. Pasang took Ethan’s pack, and Ethan carried Nestor piggyback style. It was an unbelievable feat of strength — especially for someone climbing without oxygen. But after an hour of descent, Ethan had collapsed. It was not a misstep or a fall. The famous young alpinist had just run completely out of steam.

  “I try give Ethan my O’s,” Pasang went on, tears trickling down his frost-nipped cheeks. “But he say no — go Camp Four. Find Cap Cicero.”

  “If he wanted to climb with Cap, he shouldn’t have quit SummitQuest!” Tilt snapped irritably. br />
  “Cap has no hard feelings about that,” Sammi countered. “He was ready to go after Nestor and Ethan. He thinks he’s doing it right now, but he’s in the wrong place!”

  And then Dominic said, quietly but firmly, “We’ll do it.”

  “Do what?” Perry looked at him in alarm. “You don’t mean — ”

  “We’ll climb up the ridge and get Nestor and Ethan.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” warned Tilt. “I signed on to climb one mountain — Everest. Nobody said anything about Lhotse!”

  Sammi got in his face, pressing her oxygen mask right up against his. “I’m on to you, Crowley. You’re a jerk — but not a big enough jerk to let people die.”

  Dominic hunched over the radio. “Cap. Cap, come in please.”

  Cicero’s voice came out of the tinny speaker. The team leader sounded totally spent. “Doesn’t look good, kid. We’ve been on the face for three hours, and there’s no sign of them. I think maybe they fell.”

  Dominic took a deep breath. “Brace yourself, Cap — they’re on the northeast ridge.” He explained the latest developments from Pasang. “Nestor’s out cold, and Ethan — I guess he just kind of hit the wall. We’re going to climb up and see if we can bring them down.”

  “No!!” barked Cicero. “Stay put! We’ll come after them!”

  Dominic looked pointedly at Pasang. The Sherpa shook his head. Two hours minimum for the guides to return; perhaps another hour to recuperate before starting up the ridge. Nestor and Ethan didn’t have that much time.

  “We think that might take too long,” Dominic said carefully. “Nestor’s hurt bad, and Ethan’s got no oxygen high in the Death Zone.”

  “That’s an unknown ridge, and there’s maybe half an hour of daylight left! I absolutely for-bid — ”

  Sammi reached around the radio and pulled out the battery pack. The set went dead. “These things are so unreliable at altitude,” she said calmly.

  Their first stop was the equipment dump between the two tents. There, they loaded up — oxygen bottles, a spare breathing rig for Ethan, and helmet lamps. Perry was throwing heavy coils of rope over his shoulders and around his neck.

  “Whoa, Perry,” called Sammi. “We’re not climbing to Tibet, you know.”

  “There’s not a single fixed line on that ridge!” Perry shot back, stuffing his knapsack with ice screws. “If we don’t do this right, somebody is going to end up dead!”

  She squinted at his face, barely visible behind goggles and mask. He’s petrified, she thought, but maybe that’s a good thing. Perry’s fear made him a mediocre mountaineer, but it had also turned him into a master of ropes, pegs, screws, and pitons. He had trained himself to belay an elephant — not a bad guy to have around when the chips were down.

  Pasang had to be physically restrained from coming with them. “You won’t make it. You’re too tired,” Dominic told him kindly but firmly. “We can rescue two, but not three.” At last, the exhausted Sherpa agreed to wait for them in the tent.

  For safety, they roped themselves together in pairs — Sammi and Perry, Tilt and Dominic. It was not yet dark, but the temperature gauge on Dominic’s watch read forty-nine degrees below zero. They could only guess at the windchill.

  The first obstacle of their ascent was a towering triangular wall of wind-scoured ice. It stretched from the Col fifty stories up to the northeast ridge, which began at its tip.

  Perry tried without success to place a screw near its base. “The ice is barely an inch thick. I don’t think it’s safe.”

  Sammi front-pointed past him. “You know how to make it safe?” she called. “Don’t fall!”

  They were twenty feet up when Tilt’s crampons lost their hold of the thin rime. He slid down the wall, and as he did, Perry’s screws popped out of the ice one by one. Tilt was unhurt as he tumbled to the Col — but only because the accident hadn’t taken place four hundred feet higher.

  “You stupid idiot!!” he roared, not at his companions, but at Lhotse itself. “I wouldn’t even be climbing here if it wasn’t for lousy Ethan Zaph, whose record is going to stand forever! I can’t break it because I’m too busy rescuing him!”

  They climbed on, determined to reach the ridge before darkness fell. Perry inched along, stubbornly laying down a line. The others said nothing. They knew that the rope was practically useless. Anything heavier than a dictionary would rip the screws clear out of the mountain.

  But it’s a fixed route, he reassured himself. It took his mind off the truth — that he was hanging off the fourth highest mountain on the planet, supported by nothing more than the half-inch of front points he could plant in the wall. Somewhere much deeper inside him, he was repeating Sammi’s words: Don’t fall … don’t fall …

  A crampon shattered the thin layer of verglas, leaving him hanging on to his ax for dear life. Frantically, he kicked at the face searching for a purchase. But every stab of his foot broke the ice up even more, leaving nothing but inhospitable naked rock.

  “You okay, Perry?” Sammi called down at him.

  No, I’m not okay! he wanted to shriek back. Three hundred feet off the Col, and I’ve got nowhere to stick a crampon! It’s like trying to climb a moonbeam!

  But he knew that was the Death Zone talking. At extreme altitude, the brain wasn’t receiving enough oxygen to work properly. That was why so many smart mountaineers made bad decisions in the Himalayas.

  Come on, Perry, he exhorted himself. Think!

  Carefully, he scraped his crampons along the exposed stone until he found a tiny ledge about the thickness of a pea. Pressing his side-points down on it, he heaved himself up to more stable ice. Kick, kick, thunk, and he was on the way up again.

  Night fell, forcing them to ascend to the apex of the triangle by the eerie glow of their helmet lamps. Once on the ridge, the going was easier, but no less hazardous. The feel of their crampons crunching into hard-packed snow filled them with confidence. But that same snow had been windblown to form massive cornices. It was impossible to tell where solid rock ended and unsupported cornice began. Break through, and your fate would be a mile-and-a-half plunge to the Kangshung glacier far below.

  Every step drew them farther into the Death Zone. The effort of putting one foot in front of the other became less an act of mountaineering and more an exercise in suffering. Even with bottled oxygen, breathing became gasping.

  Ten steps, then a break, Sammi ordered herself. Soon she was resting every seven. Then every five.

  For nearly a thousand vertical feet, they slogged over rock and corniced snow. Notches in the ridge created small cliffs, ranging in height from ten to fifteen feet. At home, they would have been routine scrambles. Here, more than five miles above sea level, they presented punishing obstacles that left the four sobbing with sheer fatigue.

  Agonizingly slowly, Perry twisted screws into the bulletproof ice and roped the jagged steps.

  “Hurry up, Noonan!” shouted Tilt from below. “We’re freezing to death down here!”

  Anywhere else, his words would be an exaggeration. But the altimeter on Dominic’s watch read 27,479 feet, and the air temperature had dropped to –66°F. Despite their exhaustion, Tilt, Sammi, and Dominic danced on the spot as they waited for Perry. Frostbite rarely struck a mountaineer in motion; it was the standing around that caused the extremities to freeze.

  “Where are Ethan and Nestor?” shivered Sammi, pounding her mitts together to maintain circulation. “We’re only a few hundred feet below the summit.”

  “The famous Ethan Zaph,” growled Tilt. “When we’re finished rescuing him, I’m going to throw him off the mountain!”

  Perry was near the top of the notch, looking to place one final screw. “I can’t find any ice!” he called down to the others. Here the wind had blasted the ridge down to bare shale. He looked around for another route up. The gash in the mountain continued on both sides as far as the glow of his helmet lamp would allow him to see.

  The frustration grew inside h
im, overshadowing even his fear. A human life depended on their success — two lives, probably. How could they turn back now?

  “Use the piton!” Dominic called from below.

  “I didn’t bring any!” Perry cried, beginning to lose control. He’d assumed the entire route would be covered with ice. It was a mistake — his mistake. And because of it, two people were going to die….

  “Your uncle’s piton!” Dominic insisted.

  Oh. Perry hesitated. That piton. Uncle Joe had sent five guys to the wilds of Alberta to recover that dumb peg. It was meant for the summit of Everest, not some no-name notch on Lhotse!

  He’ll be furious if I waste it.

  At that moment, it occurred to him how crazy that was. He was hanging off a rock a zillion feet up in a windchill of minus infinity — and he was worried about what Uncle Joe might say?

  “No,” he said aloud into the punishing wind. Then, louder: “No!” The thoughts came in an emotional flood, washing away the tension of the climb. I love you, Uncle Joe, but if I’m so spooked by you that I’d let two people die — that’s just plain wrong!

  He pulled off his small knapsack and reached inside, coming up with the twenty-five-year-old peg. Fifteen thousand dollars — more than its weight in gold, probably. That’s what Uncle Joe said it had cost to get it back — a weathered, rusty piece of iron.

  Well, easy come, easy go! Perry found a good crack and hammered the piton in with the flat end of his ice ax. Then he strung the rope through its ring and heaved himself up to the top of the step.

  And screamed.

  Sammi, Dominic, and Tilt jumared up the rope as fast as the altitude would allow their weary arms to move. One by one, they scrambled over the prow of shale. There they found Perry, on his hands and knees, dry-heaving into his respirator. A few feet in front of him, sprawled on the rocks, lay the dead body of a climber.