The Mountain: My Time on Everest

Introduction

Ed Viesturs is fond of twofers. No, not two burgers, but still two for the price of one. Ed’s favored twofers are 8,000-meter peaks. A high altitude mountaineer has to have a big appetite just to savor one a season. But two? Well first, twofers nearly halve the cost. An even bigger advantage is being able to shuttle from peak one to peak two while already acclimatized and not too wasted from the first effort.

This book, The Mountain, offers other twofers. Though it speaks to us with Ed’s first-person voice, it has two authors—Viesturs and Dave Roberts—two brains speaking through one mouth. Ed and Dave are friends. Both are climbers, though from different generations. Roberts’s profession has been as a writer and as a teacher of writing at Hampshire College. Over the course of three prior collaborations they have achieved a symbiosis in which the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

Another twofer in The Mountain: first is a rich and introspective account of Ed’s eleven Everest expeditions, integrated seamlessly within the broader context of his mountain journeys and of the rest of his life. The other part of this twofer is a concise, compelling account of the history of our human affair with the highest mountain on earth, from the discovery of Peak XV’s height through early exploration to its first ascent in 1953 to the pioneering of new routes in new seasons and climbing in increasingly purer style.

Viesturs is best known as the first American to climb all fourteen of the 8,000-meter peaks. His quest was a tenacious sixteen-year commitment from Kangchenjunga in 1989 to Annapurna on his third attempt in 2005.

One cannot but wonder what enables a few determined human beings to accomplish such a feat. From the perspective both of a climber and a high altitude physiologist, I will speculate a bit on how Ed Viesturs and his select community of high-altitude wanderers manage to perform so well on 8,000-meter peaks without the use of supplemental oxygen. Are they a different beast from the average climber? In some ways, yes. In others, no.

One difference is evolution in style. A half-century ago, as members of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition, a few of us attempted a new route. Willi Unsoeld and I were indulging in brief bits of high-angle rock climbing on our summit day, with nearly forty pounds of oxygen cylinders as ballast in our Kelty packs. Our use of supplemental oxygen effectively lowered the physiologic altitude, which (presumably) more than offset the weight handicap. In his seminal essay Games Climbers Play, Lito Tejada-Flores posited the need for uncertainty in climbing (and hence motivation, as Dick Emerson, our West Ridge sociologist teammate, opined). In 1963 there was plenty of uncertainty to keep us motivated, but each such element pushes back the boundaries of the unknown. To keep the outcome in doubt means ramping up the rules of the game. In mountaineering, that change has been toward a simpler, lighter, faster style. One example: Messner and Habeler’s 1978 ascent of Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen represented a major paradigm shift in the style of high-altitude mountaineering. Of Ed’s seven successful ascents of Everest, he topped out on three occasions just breathing the air around him. (When with clients, Ed believes the guide should also use oxygen to optimize the well-being of the entire team.)

Another big change in climbing these high mountains is the amount of time and effort committed to the task. Our 1963 expedition was gone from home for nearly five months, more than twice the time involved in an Everest climb nowadays. I remember coming down from our traverse of Everest in1963 a tad tired and many pounds lighter. Part of the exhaustion was inherent in expedition-style climbing, which involved days and weeks of hanging out at high altitudes, humping loads, breaking trail, and putting in camps. In contrast, the current alpine style of light, fast ascents once one is acclimatized adds up to a lot less work and a lot less time spent physically and mentally deteriorating in the so-called Death Zone. Back then, mountain twofers were beyond imagination.

Are individuals like Ed Viesturs different physiologically from others? Perhaps. Over a decade ago, my colleague, Dr. Robert (Brownie) Schoene, a pulmonary and exercise doc at the University of Washington, put Viesturs through his paces on a treadmill, seeking an explanation for why Ed performs so well at extreme altitude. The findings? Ed’s maximum work capacity is on par with that of an endurance athlete—his heart was able to deliver far more blood to exercising muscle than the average person’s heart. But at extreme altitude, a person can only work at 20–25 percent of his or her sea-level maximum; the heart’s ability to pump far exceeds the demands placed upon it. More intriguing was Dr. Schoene’s observation that Ed was able to perform sustained work at 85 percent of his maximum (VO2max); most mortals can manage only 55–60 percent of their maximum. Whether this difference in work capacity helps explain his exceptional high-altitude performance is an intriguing question that has yet to be investigated.

Another critical factor that may help explain better performance at high altitude (or any altitude, for that matter) is efficiency, the ability to perform work at a lower oxygen cost. One can perceive this gift of efficiency in the seemingly effortless movement of the virtuoso long-distance runner. Studies to quantify the contribution of efficiency to performance are not easy to design, yet that capacity to get a bigger bang for the oxygen buck is likely one more factor that separates the Viesturs of the high mountain world from the average climber.

Although the physiology of exceptional human performance is intriguing, a lot of the story of such accomplishment comes from the mental side. Ed Viesturs began his high mountain quest one summit at a time. He found he was good at it, and his need for greater uncertainty morphed into his quest to climb all fourteen 8,000 meter peaks, and he wanted to do it without supplemental oxygen. His was not a unique goal. Reinhold Messner did it first, and Jerzy Kukuczka was not far behind. As I write, the 8,000-meter club is still pretty exclusive, numbering approximately 30 persons, only about half of whom, Ed among them, have climbed all fourteen without supplemental oxygen. In that, he emulated Messner’s style, and, like Messner, he imposed his own personal limit on the amount of risk he was willing to accept.

By the very nature of their activity, climbers are anything but risk averse, but they differ greatly among themselves on just how much risk is palatable. At one extreme are the adrenaline junkies or stimulus addicts, who, if their life is not on the thin edge, come away feeling unfulfilled. That group has a high mortality. The majority of committed climbers aren’t that extreme—from my perspective, Ed Viesturs had (and has) a lower tolerance than most for the prospect of dying on a mountain. To have the will to turn around a few hundred yards short of the summits of Everest and Shishapangma, or to part company with his climbing partners on Annapurna and descend because he didn’t feel the conditions were right, bespeaks a perspective on life in which the climbing of a mountain is just a part. That’s often forgotten in the intensity of the moment. Perhaps out of all that Ed Viesturs has done in his climbing life, it’s this uncommon attribute that impresses me the most. If I examine my own past sins, Willi Unsoeld and I might well be accused of throwing caution to the winds on our West Ridge climb in 1963. True, back then, our feeling that this was a one-shot opportunity was part of the underpinning, but the tradeoff of a possibly shortened life simply did not intrude upon our thoughts. Ed seems different in the way he placed his passion into the context of life at large.

Several efforts to analyze the relationship between climbing experience (measured by numbers of expeditions) and expedition outcome (defined by success in summiting and death rate) have come to a common and curious conclusion. Analysis of the Elizabeth Hawley-Richard Salisbury database for all climbs on 8,000-meter peaks in Nepal has found that though the probability of reaching the summit increases appreciably with increasing experience, the likelihood of dying appears to be unrelated to the amount of experience. The reasons for this are unclear. Experience is not the same thing as one’s willingness (or unwillingness) to accept risk. To my mind, Ed’s thesis that the caution he has imposed upon his high-altitude sojourns has contributed to his long-term survival seems quite reasonable.

But I have to think that there’s been another, ephemeral player in the game: luck. Luck is an unpredictable event that, like risk, can be bad or good, which happens to us, and is not something of our making. It’s pervasive in all aspects of our lives, including wandering among high Himalayan hills. On our 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition, we had both extremes. Jake Breitenbach’s death in the Icefall was our biggest bad luck. Though not to downplay the role of commitment, our success on a new route on Everest and our survival of an unintended bivouac above 28,000 feet were in no small part a consequence of good luck, with near-ideal conditions at critical moments. Looking again at Liz Hawley’s database for about sixty attempts on our West Ridge route over the ensuing half century, a 10 percent success rate with deaths exceeding the number summiting gives a sense that we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. We were lucky. The word luck does not feature much in Ed’s personal account, but it seems to me an inescapable complement to his approach to the world’s highest places.

It’s clear from Ed Viesturs’s eleven journeys to Everest that this mountain holds a special place among his high-altitude wanderings. I hope you will be as entranced as I by his account of his affair with this thinnest of air.

Tom Hornbein

Estes Park, Colorado

May 2013

1

So Close, and Yet . . .

The first time I tried to climb Mount Everest was in the spring of 1987. It was a very different mountain then from the swarmed-over scene it’s become today. By that spring, there had been only 209 successful ascents of the mountain by 191 different climbers. A single person, the Sherpa Sungdare, had reached the summit as many as four times.

It’s become almost impossible nowadays to keep track of Everest statistics, but by the end of May 2012, the number of successful ascents was in the vicinity of 6,000, performed by about 3,500 climbers. Two indefatigable veterans, Apa Sherpa and Phurba Tashi Sherpa, have now reached the top of the world twenty-one times each.

In the spring of 2012 there were more than thirty different expeditions simultaneously trying to climb Everest via the South Col route, the line by which it was first ascended by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary in 1953. I saw photos on the Internet of as many as 150 climbers on the Lhotse Face, lined up like Depression jobseekers in a free-lunch queue, as they jumared their way up the fixed ropes. In contrast, on the north side of Everest in the spring of 1987, there were only three teams. Ours hoped to climb the Great Couloir from the head of the Central Rongbuk Glacier. A Swedish team had chosen the traditional route from the North Col up the northeast ridge. And a Canadian, Roger Marshall, was attempting a bold solo ascent via the Japanese and Hornbein couloirs—a route nicknamed the Super Direct.

In 1987, I myself was a different person from the mountaineer who, eighteen years later, would become the first American to get to the top of all fourteen peaks in the world higher than 8,000 meters (26,246 feet). I was twenty-seven years old, and though I’d climbed Denali in Alaska twice and had served for five years as a guide on Mount Rainier, this was my first expedition to an 8,000er. No matter how much I’d read about Everest, I was awed by the scale and majesty of the mountain, and not at all sure I was up to the challenge of scaling its north face by the Great Couloir.

The expedition was put together by Eric Simonson, a seasoned veteran who was also my fellow guide for Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. (RMI). Although Eric was only four years older than I, he had been guiding since 1973, and I looked up to him as a mentor. He’d already been to Everest in 1982, with a team led by our RMI boss, Lou Whittaker, that reached 27,500 feet on the same route—still 1,500 feet short of the summit. Eric had been hampered by a bad knee after a falling rock struck him high on this daunting face, and in 1987 he was determined to give it another shot.

Our expedition was a bit of a boondoggle, for a climber from Arkansas named Jack Allsup had approached Eric, offering to raise all the funds and pay all the expenses for five RMI guides, if we’d serve as glorified Sherpas for him and his buddies. The deal was that we guides would fix ropes, establish camps, and carry loads up the route, but not actually guide the Arkansas gang on their attempt—simply set them up so they could make their own independent push toward the summit. The official name of our team was the Arkansas Everest Expedition. Quite an irony: here I was, a guy who had escaped the flatlands of the Midwest to immerse myself in the rich Pacific Northwest climbing culture, only to be going on my first Everest expedition with a team based in the South!

I was grateful to be invited by Eric, who two years earlier had chosen me to serve as his assistant guide on a traverse of Denali with clients. For Everest, Eric also picked my fellow RMI guides Greg Wilson, George Dunn, and Craig Van Hoy. A free trip to Everest! Who wouldn’t jump at that opportunity?

Once our team was assembled, all five us plunged into gear selection and packing, but Eric took on the brunt of the logistical work. A smart, analytical fellow, he’s good at that sort of thing. JanSport jumped aboard as an expedition sponsor, supplying clothing, tents, and packs. They also offered to have our high-altitude suits custom-made by an experienced local seamstress.

I was pretty excited at the thought of getting a high-tech suit for an attempt on the summit. I imagined an extremely lightweight, trim-fitting down suit like the ones I’d seen Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler wearing in photos from their pathbreaking climb of Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1978.

Only a day or two before we had to leave Seattle, Eric and I drove up to our seamstress’s house to collect the suits. When I hefted mine, my jaw nearly hit the floor. The suits were filled with bulky synthetic insulation, and the outer fabric felt more like canvas than lightweight nylon. Unnecessary doo-dads such as stripes winding around the sleeves added another heavy layer to the already bloated suits. Rather than the sleek Maserati outfits I had fantasized about, we had no choice but to head off to Everest with these cumbersome monstrosities.

I was just finishing my doctorate in veterinary medicine at Washington State University in Pullman, out on the state’s eastern plains. I envisioned a career as a vet, although climbing was my true passion. To leave for Everest in March, I had to rearrange my senior-year schedule so that I could graduate two months early. Fortunately, my classmates and teachers fully supported my hobby, going so far as to buy expedition T-shirts. Still, in 1987 I could not have dreamed of making a living as a mountaineer. As it was, earning a modest income guiding on Rainier in the summers, but pouring that money into my tuition bills, I was living as cheaply as I could, renting a room in the Seattle home of my buddy Steve Swaim, who ran his own veterinary clinic. Just before the expedition, a woman I’d been involved with for two years abruptly broke off our relationship. I was hurt and baffled, but in another sense, comfortable with the freedom that gave me. I was fresh out of school, with no full-time job or major obligations, so taking off to Asia for an indeterminate length of time didn’t bother me one bit. As I wrote in my diary at base camp, I guess my life’s pretty simple & uncomplicated at this point—yahoo!

My Denali expeditions, the longest I’d been on so far, had each lasted about three weeks. But Everest in 1987 would turn into a three-month-long ordeal by logistics, weather, and high-altitude conditioning—literally eighty-eight days’ round-trip from Kathmandu. Although I’d never been above 20,320 feet, I’d already made up my mind to try Everest without bottled oxygen. The example of great mountaineers such as Messner had instilled in me a purist aesthetic. I didn’t want to lower the mountain to my level simply to reach the summit, but rather to take on Everest at its level. And the prospect of having to carry oxygen bottles and wear an oxygen mask on my face, in effect isolating me from the mountain, was unappealing.

Yet having made that decision, I approached the challenge with a lot of trepidation and self-doubt. As early as March 28, I wrote in my diary, I still wonder what it’s like up there without oxygen—have to see how I do as we go higher. It’d be great to do it without O2—gotta be strong though ’cuz the summit day is gonna be an ass buster, especially coming down wasted. Hope I at least get a chance for the top.

Today, a truck road leads through Tibet from Nepal, and a spur leads straight to base camp on the north side of Everest. It’s become a milk run—albeit a bureaucratically tangled one—for trekkers and climbers alike. But in 1987, the north side felt so isolated that Eric claimed it was like going off to the Moon! The Great Couloir route that we were going to attack is not the easiest or safest way to climb Everest from the north. In 1924, the third British expedition to the mountain reached the North Col at 23,000 feet via the East Rongbuk Glacier, a hidden tributary that the reconnaissance expedition of 1921 had completely overlooked. From the North Col, a shallow spur leads up to the high crest of the northeast ridge. It was on this route that George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine went for the summit on June 8, 1924, and never returned, launching one of the great mysteries in mountaineering history.

Our team, however, made no use of the East Rongbuk approach. Instead, we established an advance base camp (ABC) at only 18,300 feet at the head of the Rongbuk Glacier proper. From there, the face sweeps up in a daunting rise of more than 10,000 feet to the distant summit. The face is also far more threatened by falling rocks and avalanches than the North Col/northeast ridge route pioneered in 1924. Although Greg Wilson, George Dunn, and Eric Simonson had all tried Everest before without success, and all three desperately wanted to get to the top, Eric chose the harder north face route because he wanted to finish the line that he and George had attempted in 1982.

On a three-month expedition, there are bound to be tensions among the climbers. We had a cordial but ambivalent relationship with the Swedish team. Although we shared some meals with them at base camp and benefited greatly from weather forecasts their team received from back home, we had an uneasy truce about the route itself. The Swedes planned to go up the East Rongbuk to the North Col and follow the Mallory-Irvine route along the northeast ridge. It was only late in the expedition that they changed their plans and decided to go diagonally across the north face and go for the top via the Great Couloir, thereby overlapping with our line on the upper half of the mountain. This worried us, because it meant the Swedes would depend on our fixed ropes, and their presence in the Great Couloir might create additional hazards by virtue of having too many climbers on the same part of the mountain at the same time.

As for the Arkansas gang, their sponsorship of our attempt was something of a mixed blessing. It’s true that the five of us could not have afforded an Everest expedition on our own, and we were very grateful to have our way paid. But several of the Arkansas climbers were, frankly, too weak to have a chance on Everest, and the stronger ones were infected with a mild case of hubris, underestimating the difficulty of the route and overestimating their own strength and ability.

In addition, tensions developed among our group of five guides. It was almost inevitable that the weeks of strain as we slowly advanced the route should produce conflicts. For various reasons, not everyone was able to contribute equally to that effort. That’s a given on big expeditions: good teamwork depends on everyone making the contribution he can muster. And sometimes your effort is diminished not by any unwillingness to pull your weight, but by illness or trouble acclimatizing. Eric had also hired five Sherpas, who helped carry loads, especially for the Arkansas team members, but we RMI guides accomplished all the leading and fixing.

Though a savvy expedition leader, Eric had a tendency to find fault with others if he thought they hadn’t performed up to his own high standards. One of the roles of a leader, to be sure, is keeping the expedition rolling at a steady and consistent pace, even if it means directing the show from below. But on April 7, after George, Greg, and I put in a strenuous day getting gear up to Camp III, Eric called us over the radio from Camp I and voiced his disappointment that we hadn’t moved faster. As I wrote in my diary that evening, Geo called him an asshole—only half jokingly—over the radio. Since George had been on Everest with Eric in 1982, their close friendship allowed this kind of sharp repartee. I didn’t say a word. I’d already long since formed my resolve in the face of criticism by someone who was my boss. As I wrote in my diary, I’ll just do my job and keep my mouth shut. Actions speak louder than words!

As I would subsequently learn on my thirty-one expeditions to 8,000-meter peaks, I almost never suffer at altitude from any kind of illness. I’d get the occasional mild headache after a long, hot day of climbing to a new high point, or a touch of traveler’s diarrhea, but nothing incapacitating. Part of this is attributable to the rigorous conditioning I always undertake before an expedition. A lot of it has to do with simply being smart and knowing how to take care of myself. But part of it’s the luck of my genes, which have given me a physiology that functions well with little oxygen in my lungs. I’ve never suffered frostbite or been afflicted by pulmonary or cerebral edema, which has stricken even the strongest mountaineers, including Simone Moro and Jean-Christophe Lafaille, who would become my partners on later expeditions.

But on Everest in 1987, from breathing the cold, dry air, I developed a sore throat so painful that I could barely speak above a whisper. It lasted for weeks, and added to my doubts about getting to the top. On April 17, I wrote, My throat feels like raw meat from breathing this dry air—really painful. The only way to alleviate it is to suck on hard candies. Two days later: I’m losing my voice—it’s rough and crackles and makes me cough. . . . At night my throat gets really dry and painful. Last night I sucked candy, drank some cough suppressants and finally had to take some Nuprin just so I could sleep. Augh!!

At ABC one night, desperate to halt the coughing, ease the pain, and get some sleep, I took twice the normal dose of hydrocodone, a morphine-based drug that not only has pain-relieving properties but is also a powerful cough suppressant. Sure enough, the pain and the cough went away, but the morphine filled my head with paranoid thoughts about how completely isolated we were and how far from any hope of rescue. My drug-addled anxiety kept me awake all night and I couldn’t wait for the sun to come up and the drug to wear off!

At one point or another, all five of us RMI guides developed dry, hacking coughs. That’s a common ailment on Himalayan expeditions. Climbers have even been known to break their ribs from coughing so hard. That’s exactly what had happened to Greg Wilson on a 1984 expedition to the north side of Everest, wiping out his hopes of getting to the top. But in 1987, the nonstop coughing that spread among us like a contagion didn’t help our morale, which through April and early May veered wildly up and down.

Slowly, however, we advanced the route, fixing ropes on all the hardest passages. And gradually my sore throat healed, and I began to feel really fit. Those days were long and arduous, and sometimes we didn’t get back to camp till sunset. The fixed rope came in huge spools. One of us would uncoil the spool while the other climber pulled the free end behind him as he moved upward, placing intermediate anchors along the way. Once they were in, the ropes allowed safe passage on each subsequent load carry, and we could zip down them, often using just arm rappels, as we descended.

After a long day of fixing rope and hauling loads, getting back to camp didn’t exactly amount to rest and relaxation. Outside the tent, we had to remove all of our climbing gear—crampons, harness, packs, and hardware. The first person into the tent took off his boots and outerwear, then started the stove to begin the tedious process of turning snow and ice into water. After drinking as much as we could and filling our water bottles, we had to scrounge up a dinner out of whatever we found in our food bags. Altitude and fatigue played havoc with our appetites. Dinner might mean ramen noodles with tuna and freeze-dried peas, or dehydrated lasagna, or instant mashed potatoes with cheese. If we were too tired, we’d settle for a cup of soup and some crackers. Rehydrating was more important than eating well. After hours of kitchen duty, we could finally crawl into our sleeping bags, but it was a rare night when we got enough sleep.

On May 14, we established Camp IV at 26,800 feet, only 2,200 feet below the summit. That may not seem like such a great distance to overcome, but the Great Couloir stays technically serious all the way, and a summit push over such terrain can take everything you’ve got.

Because of our deal with the Arkansas members, we also had to step aside at some point and give them their shot. We agreed that once we guides had made our own summit bids, the Arkansans could make their attempt. We went first not because we were selfish, but because it was up to us to establish the camps and fix the ropes. Privately, the five of us had our doubts that our patrons would be up to such a challenge, and we all dreaded a scenario in which, as they gave it their best try, they’d get in trouble and we’d have to go to their rescue. As it turned out, though, they were wise enough to know when to turn back. In the end, none of the Arkansas team got above 25,000 feet, and none of them got in trouble.

My own mood, after almost two months on the mountain, was a mixture of excitement and apprehension. As I wrote in my diary, After all this time & effort it’s exciting to start goin’ for the top of this mother!!! . . . I have my fears and doubts about the last 2000'. How will I do? Can I handle the lack of O2? . . . If I summit, how difficult will it be to descend?

We decided that on May 16, George Dunn and Greg Wilson would get the first try to go to the top. As the other three of us lingered in a lower camp, resting to build up strength for our own attempt, George and Greg pushed up the route over several days. On May 16, I wrote, Waiting, watching, waiting! We paced around camp all day like expectant fathers at the maternity ward. We watched the upper mountain with binoculars all day.

Both George and Greg had suffered previous disappointments on the north side of Everest. In October 1984, both were members of another team led by Lou Whittaker making a postmonsoon autumn attempt via the North Col and a diagonal traverse into the Great Couloir. Despite breaking his rib from coughing, Greg had set out with three teammates from Camp V at 24,900 feet. Strong winds forced them to turn back short of the couloir, then pinned them in their camp for two more days. After that, Greg generously agreed to act in a supporting role to give three teammates—Jim Wickwire, Phil Ershler, and John Roskelley—a last-ditch chance to summit.

Phil and Jim were planning to use supplementary oxygen, but John would go for the summit without. By 1984, Roskelley was widely considered to be the strongest American high-altitude climber, having spearheaded routes on Makalu and Nanda Devi, as well as making the first ascents of such technically difficult mountains as Uli Biaho, Middle Trango Tower, and Gaurishankar. In 1982, in fact, Reinhold Messner, then in his prime, had declared that he thought Roskelley a stronger mountaineer than he was.

On October 20, the three men woke early at Camp VI, pitched at 26,600 feet in the Great Couloir. Wickwire had decided during the night that he would opt out of the bid to reach the top. As he later wrote in the American Alpine Journal, My drive to reach the summit, which had been untrammeled in 1982 . . . was now inexplicably diminished. His teammates knew, however, about the terrible string of fatal accidents in recent years of which Jim had had the misfortune to be an eyewitness. And they knew that he had lost part of a lung to surgery after making, with Roskelley and two others, the first American ascent of K2 in 1978. On the descent, he had barely survived a solo bivouac in the open just below 28,000 feet, then had nearly succumbed to pneumonia and pleurisy that forced his heli-evacuation from the Baltoro Glacier.

At 6:15 on the morning of October 20, Roskelley and Ershler left the tent. John led the difficult pitches through the Yellow Band. But conditions were unusually severe, and no matter how hard he climbed,