Doug MacLaren, Summiting of Mt Everest May 23rd 2001.

These E-mails are the last three of many that Doug, my sister’s son, sent while on this amazing accomplishment.  He sent other reports from the outset of this incredible adventure, which began in March. Many of the reports were sent by satellite from India and Nepal and of course, Mt. Everest. These last three reveal some of the staggering hardships and dangers to get to the top and the hardest part, to get back down safely with a friend and fellow climber who almost did not make it. He is no novice to climbing and has reached the summit of many tough mountains throughout the world. Peter.

Hello All.
As you gather from my last couple of e-mails, before we headed for the
summit, things were not overly optimistic in Base Camp. Seasoned leaders of
Everest expeditions were telling us that this year, no one was going to get a
crack at the summit. The Sherpas were convinced that the mountain was angry
and thought we should all just leave. Our own camp had never really recovered
from the tragic loss of Babu Chiri, and in addition, the weather was still
terrible. One by one, people were getting frustrated, bailing out, and
leaving. The Lhotse Expedition, camped between the Ice Field and us, had
started with twelve climbers and was now down to only four.

It was under these 'sunny' circumstances, that on May 19 we headed up through
the Khoumbu Ice Fields for the 11th time. (Initially, we imagined summitting
around May 7, and only having to go through the ice field six or eight times
in total.) The weather at this point was fairly consistent. Stormy at Base
Camp, but higher up it would be sunny in the morning, with clouds moving up
in the afternoon, followed by snow flurries, winds, and then, usually, by a
clear night. As long as we had a clear night and the following morning to
summit on, we could do it.

Camp II had become a second home to us, and although above 21,000 feet, we
now felt very comfortable here. (At this point we had spent more than a month
above 17,600 feet, and more than two weeks in total sleeping above 21,000
feet. As a reference point, Mt. Whitney at only 14,400 feet, is the highest
peak in the lower 48 States. McKinley, at just over 20,000 feet, is the
highest peak in all North America.) The sun, however,  had the potential to
make it a nightmare at Camp II. A climber on the NFB team registered the temperature
at 109 degrees in the concave snow bowl of the Khoumbu. This caused a great deal of
surface melting, and Brant and Rick ended up with a virtual lake under their tent. We
spent a great deal of time building up a layer of rocks between tent and ice to protect them
from soggy days and frozen nights. My tent had a glacial toe that had gradually formed across
half of it, pushing
me up against the flat terminal moraine of the far wall. The good news was,
the pace it was advancing to take over my entire tent was glacial as well.
The bad news was that so was the current pace of our expedition.

We spent a rest day at Camp II; leaving early on the morning of the 21st for
Camp III, and with the help of a cool breeze arrived there shortly and not
too melted. We were now carrying our 8,000-meter suits and all other
cold/high altitude gear, our sleeping bags and pads, our masks, regulators,
a bottle of oxygen, and our food - not to mention cameras and other
personal gear. It was probably the heaviest load we had carried on the
mountain to date, and following a night of restless sleep, on our final
summit push. We did not dare store any of this essential gear on previous
trips to Camp III, because this camp perched precariously on the Lhotse Face
and was always in threat of being blown away or crushed by an avalanche. In
fact, in testament to that, surrounding Camp III was a graveyard of nylon and
aluminium carcasses.  And, indeed, when we got there the tent looked as if it
had been built from plans drawn by Picasso.  Poles were bent, broken, and the
whole thing was completely torqued out of shape by the high winds and heavy
snows. It was still standing, however, and it would at least shelter us for
the night.

That evening a young climber far away on Lhotse fell down the face coming out
of the summit couloir. (Up until Camp III, Lhotse and Everest share the same route up through the Khoumbu. At Camp III you can see the bottom of the couloir
that leads to the Lhotse summit.) He was just sitting half way up the face,
not moving. No one was sure whether he was alive or dead. The young climber,
Thomas, had fallen, hit his head, and lost a crampon off one boot. He was
disoriented and did not know how to move across the steep, icy face wearing
just one crampon. With the use of his telephoto lens, and a radio, Brant
helped guide the rescue attempt from our vantage point at Camp III.
Eventually, as dusk turned to dark, a Kazakhstan climber, Simone, also on
Lhotse, managed to reach Thomas (at great risk to his own life), and help him
back to the Lhotse Camp IV. Had Thomas sat there much longer, we would have
watched him slowly die of exposure without the ability to reach him in
time. Two days later he was helicoptered to Kathmandu suffering only a
minor head injury and frostbite on one foot.

Drama over, we settled into our tomato soup and Ramen dinner. Unfortunately,
it turned out that the ground beneath our tent was even more twisted than its
palsied exterior. So Rick pirated an abandoned Japanese tent nearby, while
Brant and I curled up like pretzels and attempted to get some sleep. It was
somewhat futile so we arose early and headed up to Camp IV on the South Col,
disappointed that our last "solid" sleep before our summit attempt had not
been more sound.

The climb to the South Col was spectacular. It was dizzying exposure as we
traversed the top of the Lhotse Face, through the Yellow Band, and across the
Geneva Spur - with views all the way down the route to Camp I, thousands of
feet
below us, and miles away. (The Yellow Band, a rock formation 2/3 up the
Lhotse Face, is about 75-100 feet high and is made up of a particularly
yellow-hued rock.)

We had each brought a bottle of oxygen for this section to help us conserve
energy for the final push later that night, but I decided to save it at least
until above the Yellow Band. When I first tried it on, below the Geneva Spur,
I immediately tore it off. I felt incredibly claustrophobic and it completely
messed up my ability to see my feet. To carefully watch your feet placements
with your mask on as you front pointed your crampons in between the shale
rock and ice, you had to bend your head down at a ridiculous, uncomfortable
angle. Also, I could not tell if it provided any assistance to my breathing.
Frankly, it felt a lot better with it off. I got rid of it for a while longer until I finally figured that, helpful or not, if I was going to use it later that night, I had better get used to it now.

Rising over the steep slope of the Geneva Spur, I was suddenly exposed to the
great pyramid shape of the South East face of Everest. It was brilliant and
humbling, as you tiredly sucked in each breath, now above 26,000 feet, and
realized that, in just a few hours, how far you still had to go. We arrived
at the South Col around 12:30pm. The first order of business is usually, to
set up the tent, crawl inside and immediately begin melting water to
re-hydrate. The problem was, with Babu's death, Camp IV had never been
properly finished.  Boca and his younger brother, Pasang, who had recently
joined us, were supposed to meet us here with two tents to accommodate all
five of us. No sign of them. We threw on our 8,000-meter suits, dumped the
rest of our gear, and went searching for the stoves and fuel that had been
previously stashed. We had no luck, but the weather was not too bad and it
was not as difficult to breath in the "Death Zone," above 8,000 meters as I
had imagined. What it was currently doing to my body, I had no idea, but I
was not falling down gasping like a fish fresh from the bowl.

Speaking of what was happening to my body, I suddenly heard the call of
Nature and went in search of a fair sized boulder in this icy wasteland.
After completing the acrobatics of undoing the back part of my
climbing harness, unzipping the flap on my 8000m suit, digging inside to
unzip the side of my fleece pants, and hauling down my long-johns and
underwear, I balanced precariously with my cramponed-tipped space-boots, on
the slippery shale rubble behind a hardly adequate boulder. The icy winds
were wreaking havoc on my lower anatomy, and something to do with our
high-altitude diet required me to remain thus exposed for much longer than
otherwise desired. However, the thought of performing this symphony of
huffing and grunting now, or later somewhere above the Hillary Step,
encouraged me to continue this 26,000+ foot, deep freezing of the family
jewels until the conclusion of this event.  In retrospect, I think this
little experience was more tiring then the entire climb
 from Camp III to Camp IV and much more potentially dangerous!
To be continued,
All the best,
Doug

Hello All,
Sorry to leave you hanging at the South Col. Especially with that last image
of me being your last image of me! It's Still May 22 (well at least in this
e-mail) and we had arrived at the South Col to find no Boca or his little
brother Pasang, thus no tents, no stove, and no means of melting snow for
water. We were relatively warm in our 8000m suits and happily breathing away
at the thin air. A little before 2pm, Boca and Pasang showed up at Camp IV,
but with only one of the tents we had stashed at Camp III. We would now have
to cram five of us into one three man tent. No chance of catching up on last
night's lack of rest.

 We dug out a platform in the hard, loose rock, set up the tent, crammed in
and began boiling water. At this point, the five of us went back onto a low
flow of oxygen while we 'rested' for a few hours before another quick dinner
of Ramen, and a few hours of fitful sleep before our summit push. The reason
we go the same night we arrive rather than resting a night, is that even if
you can get some food in you (all of us had a healthy appetite), and some
sleep, your body is slowly breaking itself down. You want to spend as little
time as possible above 8,000 meters. Around 8:30pm, we started our last
preparations, filled our water bottles, put on our crampons, grabbed our
ice-axes, flicked on our headlamps and headed out. It was now 9:45pm, May 22.

The wind had come up, but was not too strong. Some other teams had headed out
before us, some would follow after. I don't know how many exactly, but I
would only see a few other climbers on the mountain that night. We started up
the large couloir coming down the middle of the pyramid. Boca and Rick took
off ahead of me, while Brant and Pasang were somewhere behind. It is quite
normal for us to spread out like this. Around 10pm was the last I saw of any
of them that night. Within 15 minutes we had so spread out that I was
completely alone on the mountain. My world now focused solely on the five
feet in front of me in the halo of my headlamp, and marching ever upwards.

The first part was fairly easygoing on, steep, hard packed, wind blown snow.
The only real hassle was the occasional rock band near the top of the
couloir. The rock was loose and once again, with the oxygen mask on, it was
difficult to get a bearing on your footing as you climbed these short
vertical sections. After crossing the rocky obstacle course and turning right
towards the Balcony, I hit a truly energy-sapping snow condition. I thought
of it as the Everest Sand Hill, and it would repeat itself occasionally on
the South East Ridge above. In some more protected spots near the rocks, the
wind blown crust was too weak for human weight and the drifts were deeper, so
a swath had been cut through the crust, forcing one to walk up through a
"sand hill" of dry, deep snow. It put you through this laborious process of
every two steps forward, sliding one step back. I slogged endlessly up this
section, and then after about five hours from leaving the South Col,
eventually reached the Balcony.

I was carrying two bottles of oxygen, with each one supposed to last six
hours. There is a gauge on the regulator that shows you how much oxygen is in
the bottle (if it is working properly - old Russian regulators and masks),
but it does not show you the rate of flow. That you have to do by sound. I
had played with it at Camp II and thought I had the perfect setting to give
me six hours. Too little flow, and you do not get enough oxygen. Too great a
flow, and you use it up too quickly and will not have enough to get to the
summit. With five hours gone by, I figured I would not have much time left on
my 1st bottle. When I checked it, however, it was still over half full. I had
incorrectly adjusted my flow at only ½ or 2/3 what it could have been.
Whether or not I could feel it, that meant I had spent a lot more energy en
route to the Balcony than planned. Energy I could not get back by cranking up
my oxygen now. It was just gone. I turned up the flow slightly for the next
section and continued up the South East Ridge.

This section was steep and steady, sometimes the ridge being thin and other
times quite beefy. As I wound up the snakelike backbone of the ridge, I could
look down the precipitous East face to my right, while the Southeast face
dropped to my left.

On I crunched in the dark, getting some sections of hard, windblown ice,
others of the Everest Sand Hill, and slowly rose above all the other peaks
in the area. Occasionally, I could see the firefly twinkle of other climbers'
headlamps in the distance ahead or behind me. But with the stars above, an
indigo blanket of darkness surrounding me, the icy wind accompanying me, and
no mountain peak even coming close to me except the one beneath my feet, I
felt as if I was all alone at the top of the world. And it was awesome.

Off in the distance to the South, East, and West, I could see huge flashes of
sheet lightning down in the valleys among the surrounding peaks. It seemed
strange to see lightning on the floor, but it was a floor that could be
23,000 feet, yet still be 5,000 feet below me. As the dawn broke, I was
hitting the upper section of the South East Ridge. I am sure that most
seasons, the entire ridge is covered in snow but despite all the recent
storms, this has still been an incredibly dry year for Everest, and I hit a
few pitches of steep shale rock. The only rock I expected at this altitude
was the famed Hillary Step, but now I was confronted by the Tenzing Tango and
the Babu Bugaloo as well. Peering over the oxygen mask through bulky goggles,
I picked my way carefully up these new challenges, sticking to as much packed
snow between the rocks as I could find for solid foot placements. I was just
starting to get a good gripe going to myself about this rocky addition to the
route, when I was thrown a completely new and startling curve. I started to
lose my vision.

Gradually, the lenses of my eyes began to fog up. I had the lasik surgery
three weeks before leaving LA, and although the doctor assured me there would
be no complications with altitude, I guess there just haven't been many
people to test that theory above 28,000 feet. The vision got steadily worse
as I got higher, especially in my right eye, which became almost completely
useless. It was like wearing a pair of glasses or goggles that had fogged up
from someone breathing directly on the lens. I could still see shapes, even
colors, but everything was through a white haze. The thought of turning back
because I was now partly blind, never crossed my mind. The only thing that
did was that I would reach the summit and not be able to see the view.

I continued on, with the upper reaches getting consistently steeper, right
below what I imagined to be the South Summit. I was climbing up a
particularly steep section when I rapidly started to loose steam. I went from
taking three to five steps between a brief break to catch my breath, to one
step before having to take 10 or 15 breaths. The crest of the hill, only 20
feet above me, suddenly stretched away like the end of a hall in some
nightmare.

This couldn't be it. Here? So close to the South Summit, I was just going to
run out of steam? I had felt much stronger only moments earlier. Tired, yes.
I was tired from not eating or sleeping properly for the last three days, but
I knew could push through it. I knew I had something left. I took a step.
Fifteen breaths. Another step. Fifteen breaths. I forced myself to take two
steps in a row. Fifteen breaths. Two steps. Fifteen breaths. That crest still
looked 20 feet away. Step. Breath. Step. Breath. Step. Breath. Step. Breath.
Finally, I flopped over the crest - now I really was like that goldfish lying
on the floor in a puddle of water amongst its broken glass bowl. I sat there
heaving in the air. As my breathing started to calm, I realized I had not
been keeping an eye on the time. My oxygen bottle was completely empty and
obviously had been for some time. I tore off the mask and breathed in the
cold, thin air directly. It felt good and, although I still could not see
properly through my milky eyes, it also felt good, for the moment, to be free
of my facial obstruction.

The moisture of my breath had caused a fat, squid-like icicle to form on the
outside of my mask. I broke it off, reached in my pack, unscrewed the
regulator from the empty bottle, and attached it to the fresh bottle. It gave
a satisfying hiss when I turned it on. I could not read the gauge properly
but trusted it was full, slung on my pack and continued for the summit. It
was hard to tell much difference with the mask back on, but there they were -
five, six, seven steps in a row, not just one. Before long I was on the South
Summit (the false summit as this is all you can see). This is only three
hundred vertical feet below the main summit but it can take as much as two
hours to get from one to the other.

I now had an unobstructed view of the Hillary Step but unlike most years when
a knife-edged ridge connects the South Summit to it, this year the dryness of
the season made the terrain very different. First, I had to climb down about
twenty-five feet, then make my way across icy rock slabs and around corniced
outcroppings to the base of the Hillary step. One still had the promised
exposure along this tightrope walk, with the 9,000 foot drop down the East
side to your right and the 7,000 foot drop down the West side to your left. I
like that kind of exposure, but it does possess its danger. That night back
at the South Col, I was to learn that not longer after I had crossed through
there, an Austrian climber fell in the same spot down the West Face to his
death. (By the time I left the mountain a few days later, there had been a
total of four deaths on Everest for the season, including Babu's). I made it
across safely to and over the icy Hillary Step, then headed up the final
ridge to the summit.

A thick fog moved in for the next half hour, but I knew with my eyes I was
not going to be able to see much from the summit anyway, and there was no
confusion about the route now. Just keep heading up. I plugged on, around the
back, down, up over a rise, and as the fog started to clear, there was the
summit before me. I could make out that there were already a few other
climbers on top and I wanted to run the last 100 feet up to join them, but of
course could not. Head down, a small smile starting to spread beneath my
mask, I continued my slow steady steps until, suddenly, I was there. It was
8:30am, May 23rd. I took off my pack and my oxygen mask so I could freely
breathe the rarefied air of 29,038 feet. It may have been thin, but it tasted
very sweet.

Rick, Boca and Pasang were already on the summit as were about five other
climbers I didn't know. Brant, unfortunately, had turned around at the
Balcony. He had some problems with his oxygen flow that had left him feeling
too gassed to continue. I pulled out my fancy camera from inside my down suit
where I had kept it to keep the batteries warm, but after a couple of quick
shots the mechanics completely froze in the frigid air and I could not warm
it up again. I had also brought a disposable camera for exactly this reason
and had clipped it to my harness, but it had disappeared somewhere during the
night. This diminished the amount of picture taking I could do at the summit,
but by no means my spirits. Someone else took some pictures of me.

Fiddling with cameras had distracted me for a while, but now I took a good
look at my three fellow climbers. I had been up on the summit for only about
20 or 30 minutes without oxygen, but Rick and the other two had gotten there
at least 30 or 40 minutes before that, and for the first time I could hear a
real edge in Rick's voice and see on his face that he really needed to get
back down to thicker air. Fast. That old saying "The summit is the half way
mark" was already running through my head and it would still be a few minutes
before Rick would black out, before he would fall, before I would realize how
bad he really was. There was still over 11,000 feet of vertical descent and
three days to go before we would be safely back in Base Camp. An Epic was
beginning.
All the best,
Doug

Hello All,
Eager to get heading back down to the relative safety of Camp IV at the South
Col, Rick, Boca, Pasang and I packed our few things back up, put back on our
oxygen masks and headed on down. Rick and Boca left a few minutes before
Pasang. I was not far behind the three of them. Off the summit, down a hill,
up a small hill and then around a corner towards the Hillary Step I wound. As
I came around the corner I was stunned to see Boca and Rick were off the edge
of a very exposed ridge scrambling to get back up above what sloped into a
7,000 foot drop. Boca was trying to hoist Rick back up as Rick attempted
desperately to get some kind of footing. Rick is a personal trainer and an
incredible athlete who has placed in the top 20 in the Ironman Triathlon in
Hawaii. He had been making his way down when he completely blacked-out.
Something that has never happened to him before in all his long athletic
career. Because of the extreme exposure of the section he had been on, there
was a fixed line running along right where he was walking. Rick was not
clipped into the line, but was running it through his left hand when he
passed out and by fate/coincidence/will of Sagmartha; his arm got hooked
around the line as he fell. This gave Boca, who was clipped to the fixed line
right in front of Rick, time to leap after him and grab him before he
untangled and continued down the slope off the Southwest Face of Everest.
Rick came around as Boca was clipping him to the line and trying to haul him
back up. Although he was in a complete daze, he worked his feet feverishly to
get some purchase and get himself back on more solid ground. Pasang and I
came around the corner at that moment and were able to help get Rick back on
his feet, but he was incredibly disoriented. It was like dealing with someone
who was so drunk they could barely stand. Boca was great at this point.
Besides just having saved Rick's life, he stayed right with him and was
fantastic at getting him over to the Hillary step and down the vertical Rock
face. The other climbers who had been on the summit and were now coming down as well, passed us at this point or at some point during the next hour while
we were getting Rick across the sketchy terrain between the base of the
Hillary step and base of the South Summit. It was now just the four of us
left up high on the mountain. The hope is usually to do the whole decent from
Summit to South Col in about three hours. I told Boca that, given the pace we
were now going, I was going to need my third bottle of oxygen for the rest of
the descent which was now taking forever.

A quick note about the Oxygen. The whole reason Boca and Pasang summitted the same day we did (beside their own desires to summit), was that they had one
essential job to perform for us. Between the two of them they were
responsible to get a third "spare" bottle of oxygen to the South Summit for
each, Brant, Rick and me in case we needed it on the way down. I had not seen
our spare bottles stored at the South Summit on the way up, and imagined Boca
must have just kept them in his pack knowing he would see us on the main
summit. Wherever they were, I was going to need one if Rick kept up this slow
pace and I was planning on staying with him. And I WAS planning to stick with
him.

Boca clipped Rick into a fixed line at the bottom of the twenty-five foot
vertical snow section leading up to the South Summit and jugged on up,
shortly followed by Pasang. Knowing there was an extra rope up at the top of
the South Summit, I figured Boca had gone up ahead to fix another line to
belay Rick up this steep exposed section, so I waited with Rick, trying to
keep him from swaying right off the edge into oblivion. I gave him some water
and a packet of PowerBar Goo to help him get his head back. We waitied, 5,
10, then 15 minutes and no sign of Boca or Pasang. Rick was eager to move
somewhere. Anywhere. And wasn't really sure what the hell was going on.
Neither was I. Boca had now been gone 20 minutes. I know he couldn't have
taken off, because he still hadn't given me my other bottle of oxygen. I got
Rick's jumar hooked up to the line and with what little strength and focus he
had, he jugged and flopped his way up the vertical snow and literally rolled
onto the South Summit. I jugged up behind him to find no Boca, no Pasang and
no spare bottles of oxygen. I was at 28,800ft on the South Summit, 2,400ft
above the South Col with a 160 lbs drunk who was moving at a snail's pace and
quickly running out of oxygen.
I was furious with Boca. If he had just told me he was taking off we wouldn't
have wasted an extra 20 mins waiting or more importantly, if he had at least
left the spare oxygen. It was the first time that the thought of dying on
this mountain had crept into my head. Losing vision, running out of oxygen,
these were things I could deal with. They affected me alone and were mine to
tackle. Now I was at the mercy of someone else's fate. I was at risk of dying
not because I couldn't get down the mountain safely alone, but because I
wasn't alone and wouldn't leave Rick. There were a series of fixed lines
running along the upper section of the steep, Southeast Ridge but it was
relatively straight forward. I made sure Rick was clipped in and we started
to descend. We went a couple of rope lengths and Rick, although stumbling and
moving slowly, had recovered his wits slightly and was moving okay. He has
incredible will and determination and just kept on going, though I knew he
had a strong desire to just sit down and rest. I decided to race ahead and
see if I could catch Boca and get our extra bottles before it was too late. I
was also tired and with my limited vision, compounded by clouds rolling in,
flat light, and a slight snow falling, I kept misjudging the slope of the
hill, stumbling and falling as I raced down the Southeast ridge. I finally
caught up with Boca near the rock faces I had dubbed the Tenzing Tango and
Babu Bugaloo on the way up, which now felt like days earlier. Boca was
sitting down when I caught him. Whether I had actually caught him or he was
waiting for us I couldn't tell and at the moment didn't care. He had the
oxygen. I took a bottle and he agreed to wait for Rick to give him one as
well. I was to find out later that Pasang, who is Boca's baby brother, was
also incredibly sick, suffering from severe frostbite on one finger and
almost snow-blind from a stylish, but absolutely crap pair of sunglasses. ( I
later gave Pasang my down mitts and goggles to get him down the next two days
of descent more safely and for any future mountain adventures). Boca,
discovering the extent of Pasang's condition at the South Summit, had
switched his focus from Rick to Pasang, making sure his brother was safely on
his way down. The good thing was, although he was in a lot of discomfort,
Pasang had his strength and wits about him and was able to move quickly down
the mountain alone.
With Boca waiting for Rick, I continued on to the Balcony. The decent had
already taken far more time then it should have and I was starting to get
really tired. My plan was to get down to the Balcony, get some water, eat my
Balance Bar and wait for Rick. If he and Boca got in trouble, at least from
the Balcony I could do something. I knew the reality was, if I went any lower
than the Balcony, I would never make it back up. As I continued down the
Southeast ridge I continued to stumble and fall. With my poor vision, the
thick cloud layer and the snow, the whiteout for me had gotten worse. I
couldn't tell if a footstep was a foot or three feet down. And I was very
tired. I would fall, sit there in the snow, eyes closed, and suddenly realize
I was asleep. In my head I would be saying "you're asleep. What are you doing
asleep? Oh that's nice it's snowing. I'm going to sit here for a bit...NO.
Get up. Keep moving." I'd rouse myself, head on down, then fall again. Eyes
closed. Asleep. Up again. "Next time when you go down you're going to
immediately get back up." Down. Eyes closed. Asleep. "NO. UP!" I finally
understood how people just sit down and never get up again. It is not cold or
awful, it's quite comfortable and it is that well needed sleep that your body
has been craving for three days while you have subjected it to endless hours
of climbing and living on a whopping 200 calories of broth and noodles for
meals.
Somehow, I keep myself awake and moving forward and finally make it to the
Balcony, sit down and wait for Rick. I eat the Balance Bar and as I drink a
half a litre of water, I realize my bottles are almost full. I've been going
for over 14 hours above 26,500ft and I haven't had any water or food until
now. It revives me a little and at the same time, the snow stops, the clouds
move away and the sun lights up the Balcony all the way down to the South
Col. Rick and Boca show up a moment later and I am able to give Rick another
PowerBar Goo and a bunch of my water. He seems a little more stable, but we
are all glad to be able to see the South Col and the tents from our lofty
perch. My eyes had seemed to lose some of their milkiness, but it was
difficult to tell. The eyeballs felt like they were on fire and were now
incredibly itchy, watering and very sensitive to light. I had to keep them
squeezed practically shut. We continue to move down slowly and are blessed by
sunny clear weather all the rest of the way. On the lower section Boca takes
off for camp and I'm left alone once again with Rick, but he's showing that
Iron man determination and we make our way slowly back to the tent. Brant, who
has been back for hours and wondering what had happened to us, has water
waiting. We drink as much as we can and then all collapse.
That night I slept fairly soundly, but kept waking myself up to make sure
Rick was okay. At one point I woke up and just said "Rick. You still alive?"
To which I got a gurgled grunt that was part wet cough, part laugh and
satisfied, I went back to sleep. We all got up around 6:00am the next
morning, got some water going and began to pack up. Rick did not want to move
anywhere, but we knew we had to get him down. Between Brant and me, we packed
up Rick's and our gear. Boca packed up Pasang's gear and Brant, Boca and I
quickly tore down the tent. I literally have to attach Pasang and Rick's
crampons for them. For the trip down to Camp II, Brant still has a bottle of
oxygen left and we are able to find another semi-full one for Rick, but even
with the oxygen, he is moving at a snail's pace - stopping every 15 or 20
feet to rest. Though Rick is not as out of it mentally today, he is even more
tired after yesterday's decent from the summit and another night above
26,500ft. Today there will be no leaving him, and I stay right with him the
whole time. Even as we walk along the relative flat of the shale path from
Camp IV around the Geneva Spur, he sways a little off balance as if he is
about to fall right over the edge, and I have to grab the back of his pack to
keep him on track. It is also just too much work for him to clip the fixed
lines that run down the Lhotse Face so I unclip and clip him into everything
on the way down to Camp III. I think to myself, thank God he still has the
determination to power his own two feet. I do not think I have the strength
to lower and drag him off this hill. It seems to take forever to get down the
face of the Geneva Spur, across the top of the Lhotse Face and down through
the yellow band to Camp III. But I keep clipping, unclipping. Clipping,
unclipping. Nudging, guiding, grabbing the swaying pack in front of me. And
Rick determinedly plods on. At Camp III, I am exhausted and get Brant to take
over escorting Rick. I move on ahead. It feels good to move at my own speed
for a while and the quicker I can get to Camp II - to water, food, rest and
relief from the pack I'm carrying - the better. The sun is now high in the
sky and brutal as I make my way over the relative flat from the base of the
Lhotse Face back to Camp II. The trip from the Base of the Lhotse face to
Camp II usually takes 45 mins. It took poor Rick 4 hrs. Fifteen steps and
then he had to rest. 15 steps. Rest. 15 steps. Rest. He finally collapsed
into his tent at Camp II and began to wheeze and croak. We were sure he had
Pulmonary Edema and wanted to get him off the mountain. To just keep getting
him lower. But he was not coughing up any blood and he was convinced he was
just on empty. At this point, he did not want to move anywhere. He just
wanted rest.
We spent the night at Camp II and Pulmonary Edema or not, persuaded Rick to
use a spare bottle of oxygen we had there. The oxygen helped him sleep, and
although he was feeling a little better, he still did not want to move. He
wanted to rest another day at Camp II and get back his strength. Another day?
He needed a week. We let him rest another two hours. At this point we were
not working off any sound medical judgement, just climber's rules. Get him
lower. We told him he had to get down to Base Camp today.
We finally were able to rouse Rick, get him packed up and on the trail around
8:30am (Brant and I had been ready to go since 5:30am) I took over with Rick
again and the first section from Camp II down to Camp I went relatively
smoothly. The only thing causing me any real grief  was my backpack. I had
accidentally broken the buckle of my waist-strap up at Camp III the day
before and now had it poorly jury-rigged. It was loaded to the bursting point
with all the gear I had to bring down off the mountain and in addition Brant
and I had split up some of Rick's gear to carry as well. Without the strap to
transfer the weight to my hips all the weight of this oversized beast was now
digging uncomfortably into my shoulders while swaying a little out of control
as I crossed over the ladders. The quicker this trip down the better.
The last time we came down from Camp II to Base Camp through the Khoumbu
Ice-Fall it took me a total of 2 1/2 hours. Looking at my watch now, I
realized it had already taken us over 2 hours just to get from Camp II to the
top of the Ice-Fall. It was after 11:00am,quickly approaching the hottest
part of the day and we still had the trickiest, most dangerous section to get
through.
I have described the Khoumbu Ice-Fall as a moving Escher-print before, but
was never unfortunate enough to be in it while it was being re-sketched. It
was now in the worst condition I had seen it on the whole trip. Although the
route followed pretty much the same path it always had, there was not a foot
of it left unchanged in surface topography. All over were signs of melting,
decay and debris from the collapse of the larger walls.
Brant had moved on ahead, so it was just Rick and me again, and I continued
to stay right on his back, pulling the pack left or right for balance when
needed. Rick just managed to navigate the ladders and the balletic moves over
gapping crevasses, but was extremely tired. His wits were back for the most
part, but he just couldn't move more than 30 to 50 paces without stopping and
resting for a moment. And on the occasional uphill section no more than 5
paces at a time. I felt like part slave driver part cheerleader. "Come on
Rick. Keep moving. You're doing great, but we have to keep moving. Let's go."
The poor guy was already moving on will alone and would have prefered to
still be resting at Camp IV. He had already come down over 10,000 feet more
than his body or mind desired over the last three days on that will alone and
it was now stretching thin. The upper section of the Ice-Fall wasn't helping
either. It seemed that every trough and crevasse we had to walk or climb down
and then up the other side had sunk over the last week and just gotten
deeper. Places I remembered small ups and downs were now caverns you had to
descend into before climbing out. After climbing up a particularly steep hill
Rick collapses on the snow. We are only half way down, but I know the most
circuitous sections and the last of the big ups and downs are behind us. From
here it pretty much goes straight down, then through some more ladders and
then onto the relative flats and safety. But this next section, although
straightforward, is littered with the remains of fallen seracs, resembling a
steep trough covered in a jumble of oversized ice cubes.
As we sit there in the momentary silence, with the sun now high in the sky,
(it was around 1:30pm) somewhere off to the left I can hear a river forming
deep beneath the ice fall - steadily boring through the lattice-like
infrastructure we are now scurrying across. I feel like Harrison Ford in the
beginning of Raiders of the Lost Arc running from the giant rolling rock. I
cannot exactly see it, but I know it's out there and we are stumbling out of
time.
I get Rick up and we move on. There are fixed lines running down this steep
section. If Rick could grab them and put his weight on them he could just
slide down them a little letting gravity do most of the work. But with the
heat at this time of day, none of the anchoring ice screws or snow-pickets
are strong enough to trust your whole weight on. I send Rick ahead. Tell him
to weight-up the rope and just go for it. I stay back and give some
resistance to the rope to make sure the anchors aren't fully loaded. It's a
lot easier for Rick and he moves a lot quicker. He, too, is aware of the "ice
cubed" debris surrounding us and working his hardest to move quickly through
this last dangerous section. Once he's at the end of the rope, I can let go
and race down after him. My shoulders are killing me at this point from the
oversized pack and no proper waist harness. We have been moving for 6 hours
now -  a lot of that time in the heat of the day. Two or three more long
sections of sliding down the rope and we are able to stumble out of the last
of the really dangerous sections. Off across the last couple of ladders and
down onto the flats. Safety at last.
At the base of the Ice-fall we are met by Boca, Pasang, (cook)Dawa, and
Brant. Dawa has brought us some food - hard-boiled eggs, sardines and
Coca-Cola. An odd combination , but one of the most satisfying meals I can
remember having.
I left Rick in their capable hands and walked the last 20 mins to Base Camp.
As I head off I can hear Dawa asking Rick if he wants him to carry his pack
the last short distance back to Base Camp and hear the half coughed, half
gargled, but wholly adamant "no" in response. It's the principal. That
Iron man determination.
Back at Base Camp I dump my pack, kick off my shoes and socks and dig out a
beer. For the first time, now that we were all back down safely at 17,600ft,
I truly feel that I have summitted Mount Everest.
Later, we got Rick into his tent and got him as much liquid and food as he
could handle. His lungs still sounded horrible, but it was not Pulmonary
Edema. He did start taking a series of Diamox tablets - 250mg every two
hours. A total of 1000mg that night and was going to take the same the next
day. It started to make him feel better. I think so did the food, water, and
the lower altitude. He was going to be fine. It started to snow slightly and
knowing Rick was safely in Base Camp and on the mend, Brant and I settled
down for a big meal in the cook tent with the Sherpas. That night around
2:00am we were awaken by the enormous crash of a large section of the
Ice-Fall collapsing. We were told in the morning that many of the ladders and
much of the route we had crossed hours earlier were gone or destroyed. Anyone
still up at Camp II would be stuck there for at least two days while someone
tried to find a new route through. Any illusion I had that our last epic trip
through the ice-fall the day before was not as dangerous as we had believed
quickly vanished.
The mountain had thrown a lot at me. It had given me several opportunities to
walk away and to do so with a good excuse. I do not think many people would
have questioned us if we had just walked away when Babu died. In fact, many
thought and even expected that we should. The stormy weather - "the worst
season for weather since 1974" - had tried to discourage us. What could we do
about the weather? It wasn't our fault no one could blame us for walking away
because of lousy weather. Insufficient rest and food due to weather-torn
camps or missing tents. Running out of oxygen or misjudging gauges.
Corneal-edema from recent surgeries leaving me without the proper use of my
eyes. A sick friend to get off the summit (thankfully now recovering). Lots
of excuses to go home. To turn around. To give-up. To fail. The mountain
offered up a lot of these. Each tailored to the individual. You either take
the offered excuse, say thank you and go home, with something valid to offer
up to family or friends. Or you just keep charging on - no matter what it
throws in your way. Just keep charging on. For me, I am glad the road was not
too easy. In the end, It just made the victory taste that much sweeter.
All the Best,
Doug
 

P.S. Rick was eventually helicoptered out to Kathmandu and was able to fly
back with us to Los Angeles.