April 17, 2002
Camp 1: 19,500 feet — At 5 a.m. the women leave base camp quiet, resolved and scared. Today they climb the Khumbu icefall, the most dangerous and unpredictable section of the mountain.
Two days ago, while the women were crossing a gaping crevasse on a shaky horizontal ladder during a practice foray into the lower ice, an avalanche ripped off the headwall above them. Everyone braced for the duck-and-run as a huge white cloud roared down the west shoulder of Everest.
Kim burst into tears as the reality of the danger sunk in. All she wanted in that moment was to see her fiance, Mike, again. She hugged Jody instead.
"What the hell are we doing here?" thought Alison, wishing she could be home with boyfriend Patrick rather than attached to this stupid fixed line.
"The icefall is everything I love and everything I hate about climbing, rolled into one," says lead guide Dave Hahn. He quickly assessed the situation: The avalanche would miss them, and it did, veering left as the team watched in amazement. But the lesson of the icefall hit home: Move fast or die.
That's a tall order when you consider that simply breathing is difficult at 18,000 feet. The entire Khumbu icefall requires clipping and unclipping from fixed lines (ropes attached to the mountain with pickets buried in the snow), and crossing dark, bottomless crevasses on shaky aluminum ladders while wearing metal spikes on your feet.
Occasionally, two or even three ladders are lashed together, making for an uncomfortable sway with every step. Sure, you have fixed lines to clip into and hold onto, but that doesn't make it any easier to trust that two metal points on your toe and heel will hold a thin metal rung.
"The trick is to concentrate on the rungs and let everything below that go out of focus," says Midge. Ignore her advice and take a good look into a deep crevasse: It's a long, long way down.
In truth, walking on ladders over crevasses can be fun. Climbing steep ice can be fun. What can't be fun is seeing large blocks of ice hanging over your head. As the heat of the day encroaches, the ice softens, creaks and moans. Sometimes it falls without warning.
"It's a 2,000-vertical-foot jungle gym on steroids," is how guide Ben Marshall describes the Khumbu.
A moving glacier literally falling over steep terrain, much like a waterfall in ultra-slow motion, causes the Khumbu icefall. It creates an ever-changing landscape of shapes, up and down and around gargoyle-like ice forms.
Ben and Lisa Rust are the assistant guides on this expedition. Their job is to supply Dave with extra sets of "guide eyes." Experience is what gives them this ability to see the big picture, such as dangerous steps to avoid and important places to crack the whip.
"You're insignificant in there," says Lisa Rust. "It's important that everyone keep moving efficiently."
By mid-morning, the team makes it into the upper icefall, an area that climbers call "the popcorn."
"It got steeper, more tortured and twisted, the crevasses got deeper, we started to see dark blue veins of ice in the seracs," recounts Kim. "The ladders were fewer, but crevasses were deeper. Never in my life have I stood in the middle of apartment-sized ice blocks."
"I felt like I needed another heart or another set of lungs," says Midge. "I was moving very slowly, but nothing in the world could have induced me to move faster, except for maybe a serac falling right near me."
At about 11 a.m., the team cleared the top of the icefall and everyone breathed easier. The landscape ahead was the Western Cwm, and popping over a ridge, the yellow tents of Camp 1 appeared mercifully closer than expected. The team rejoiced, ate, drank, rested and listened to rock and ice drop from the towering cliffs all around. Six hours and 15 minutes wasn't bad for a first attempt through the icefall.
The strategy on this acclimatization rotation is to "climb high and rest low." The team will spend two nights at Camp 1 at 19,500 feet. Then slog up the hot gut of the Western Cwm to Camp 2 at 21,200 feet. After two nights of headaches there, the women will return to base camp at 17,600 feet for several days of rest.
Then it's back into the icefall. In fact, the women will have to climb through the Khumbu icefall four more times if they're to make it to the summit. But that ultimate challenge is still several weeks down the road.
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