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To Camp III - in a snowy hollow at the top of the Khumbu Icefall at 6157m
It is bitterly cold when you wake in the morning. Thank goodness you have double sleeping bags! You cook your breakfast on a small stove inside and because you fear frostbite you wait for the sun to strike your tents before moving outside. You all tie on your crampons and rope up before surveying the way ahead. You view it with trepidation. It looks extremely difficult, the ice blocks are even bigger, they are enormous...square cut with cliffs 30 metres high. You must try to climb between them, clambering over the shattered ice at their feet and staying clear of overhanging bulges which are known to split from their sides. The thin air makes you pant hard, and when you find a place which seems free of danger you sit down for a rest. One of your team-mates is not acclimatising well, and is finding it very hard going. For the next hour with fear gripping at your stomachs you work your way through the fractured ice, knowing that the ice is loose and unstable and can give way at any time, but you have to find a way through... somehow. You will change the lead with other climbers in your team, hacking hundreds of steps up steep icy slopes with your ice axe. Now ahead is a great ice wall... you have to find a way to get up it. Luckily you find a great ice buttress leaning against the wall. The leader hacks another great line of steps up the buttress, and at the top finds a belay for their ice axe, winds the rope tightly around, and everyone climbs on up. Next there's another ice bulge to get around and then you enter a large ice crack where you must cut steps on both walls to climb slowly upwards in the gloom - a world of soft green light and cold slippery walls. If those walls moved together when you are between them...? Finally your head pops out into the sunlight, you wriggle out on to the top and there... in front of you is the long sweep of the Western Cwm. Will you have an enormous feeling of excitement like Sir Edmund Hillary and his small team did when they realised they had done it - the icefall was behind them at last! You all quicken your pace, cross a solid snow bridge, climb a small slope and gaze down on a pleasant snowy hollow - an ideal spot for Camp III - safe with plenty of space! What a sense of delight and achievement you all feel having succeeded in finding a route through the very difficult and dangerous Khumbu Icefall. You rose to the challenge and kept at it until you succeeded, even though the going was very tough at times and it was a lot of very hard work. Well done, team - together you did it! Time for a few days break at lower altitude! The route is marked, but more work needs to be done before it is ready to use as a highway for laden men to begin moving themselves and all the expedition gear on up the mountain. Crevasses are bridged with sections of aluminium ladder, steps cleared of daily snowfalls, ropes fixed on the lower part, and the route is constantly being checked for changes as shelves of ice give way and seracs collapse. Before long a big party sets off on the first major lift of stores up the icefall. Eventually three tons of stores are carried through the icefall.
Written from the descriptions in the books: |
