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To Camp VI - on the South Col at 7,925m
Time is passing and the upper Lhotse face is defeating the expedition. Those trying to establish a route above Camp V are not making the hoped for progress because of the extremely difficult conditions. The weather remains very unpleasant. Another larger team pushes on up to Camp VI, and relieves those up there. Your entire team of high altitude Sherpas is now on their way to Camp VII. Finally you beg the expedition leader John Hunt to let you and Tenzing go up to Camp VII and spur them on. You collect two open-circuit oxygen sets and make great time up the ice steps and fixed ropes of the Lhotse Face, arriving at Camp VII in four and a half hours. Tenzing's presence is a great morale booster for the other Sherpas, and you all settle down for a peaceful night. In the morning it is windy and very cold, you began cooking at 5:00am. At 8:30am your group crosses the deep crevasse above the camp and starts up the top half of the Lhotse Face. You are using oxygen equipment, although the Sherpas are not. Your two man team leads off across the great traverse, kicking and cutting steps in preparation. Two of the Sherpas are beginning to struggle without oxygen equipment. They are already tired and go slower and slower. Some are crawling on their hands and knees, and a few lie down on the snow to rest. You take an oxygen bottle each from their loads, add it to yours, and press on. Finally you both cross over the top of the Geneva Spur, the last obstacle before the South Col, and drop down to the wide and desolate expanse of the 7,925m South Col. It is a desolate plateau between Everest and Lhotse, a barren, icy wasteland, giving no shelter from the shrieking wind. You dump your loads, including your half used oxygen bottles, and climb without oxygen back up the slope to meet a large team of Sherpas coming over the top. It is a great day, fourteen loads were put in place on the South Col and you have achieved some success at last! The Lhotse Face has been defeated and the South Col Camp has been stocked. You and Tenzing collect an exhausted Sherpa and descend all the way down the Lhotse Face. At the bottom you meet the first summit party of two climbers, Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon, on their way up - no time is being wasted! They are using closed-circuit oxygen, and are on the long trip towards the South Summit. Will they make it further and head on to the final summit of Everest? They will be camping at Camp VI on the South Col tonight. Soon it is your team's turn to stay at Camp VIII at the South Col where the wind whines and screeches relentlessly hour after hour. It is so fierce that your small pyramid tent cracks like a rifle range! It grows worse, if that is possible, and you fear that it must surely be wrenched from the mountain, leaving you exposed and unprotected amongst the ice and boulders. You are jammed in tight with no room to stretch out. Just turning over results in a spasm of panting. Whenever you head touches the tent walls your brain feels as though it is under a pneumatic drill! Even wearing all your down clothing the icy cold seeps into your bones. I wonder if a terrible sense of fear and loneliness will dominate your thoughts as it did Hillary's that night at Camp VIII fifty years ago? Throughout the endless night you keep looking at your watch, wondering if it has broken, the hands move so slowly! Finally at 4:00am you strike a match and read the temperature, -25°C, and still pitch black. You nudge Tenzing, who begins to light the primus stove, and the tent starts to warm up a little.
Written from the descriptions in the books: |
