Camp 4/South Col and Summit!!!

May 20, 10 pm, Camp 4/South Col

What happened over the next roughly 30 hrs is even today a bit of a mystery to me.  Many of the details following below I added at a later time – about four weeks after returning back to the US.  This part would otherwise have been pretty short had I based it only on the things I recalled immediately following that day... 

The afternoon of May 20 slowly passed and, much to our distress, the winds continued to pick up.  Around 6 pm it was blowing with more than 50 mi/hr, we continued to sit tight, hoping for the winds to die down later that night.  The forecast was calling for just that, but a week earlier, under similar circumstances, it had turned out just the other way.  And in the deteriorating conditions, our first group had run into some major issues that resulted in frost bites, and temporary blindness - all of which could have easily turned out far worse.  So, we continued to wait nervously over the next few hours while slowly getting into our down suits, checking the oxygen equipment, and gathering up our gear.  Around 9:30 pm the conditions had improved some, and the winds were down to about 30 mi/hr.  With that, it was good enough to go, and around 10 pm we were ready to leave the Col for the summit.

The route started with a gradual incline across the Col and quickly got steeper.  Blowing snow limited the visibility, and I just followed the head lamps in front and then high above me while we were slowly climbing straight up the Triangular Face, towards the Balcony.  I am not sure how long it took to get there, I’d guess it was about 3 ½ hrs.  The last section is pretty steep, not unlike parts of the Lhotse Face.  The Balcony is also somewhat of a critical psychological mark.  Many climbers have turned around here, especially when looking at the towering ridge to the left that leads upwards into the darkness and towards the South Summit.  At the Balcony we intended to exchange our partly used oxygen bottle for a fresh one.  This will allow for a greater safety margin, and on the way down we then change back to the partly empty one we leave behind.  That was the plan, anyway…  When we got to the Balcony, we could not get a regulator to fit to the new oxygen cylinder, none of the spare ones worked either or the seals were sufficient due to the frozen O-rings.  Suddenly, the whole climb was again hanging on a thread.  An intense exchange with base camp followed on if, and how to proceed from here.  Without moving, it was suddenly getting very cold.  Pasang and me finally decided to swap our tanks, since he climbed with a lower rate of 2 L/min vs. me with 3 L/min. With this, we were allowed to proceed with the notion that we had to find some additional oxygen at or around the South Summit.  Speed was now critical, and over the next couple of hours we climbed steady and quiet upwards on the steep, exposed ridge towards the South Summit.  I don’t have much of a recollection of those hours, I remember the snow blowing from the right across the ridge, and that I climbed slow, but comfortable, with a detached sense of reality.   At some point we got to the rocks below the South Summit, sometimes referred to as “the Castle” where I stopped, trying to find a way around this sheer vertical rock section.  I remember looking back at Pasang while pointing at the ridge in front of me.  He was shaking his head, and just pointed straight up the face.  This section, probably rated around 5.2 is located above 27,500 ft and is a pretty taxing obstacle under those conditions.  I somehow managed to struggle up over the rocks and we slowly, but steady continued towards the South Summit.  Around that time, several sherpas passed us on their way down.  Pasang immediately took action and managed to get an extra oxygen bottle, only partly used, in exchange for mine.  I was incredibly relieved; we were set to go on.  Daylight had come up in the meantime, and shortly thereafter I climbed the last steep section of the ridge up onto the South Summit.  The view was breath taking, but looking down onto the knife edge ridge that leads over to the Hillary Step, it was rather intimidating.  We slowly climbed down onto the ridge.  I tried not to look over to the left where an orange sleeping bag containing the body of a Japanese climber who died a few days ago, was located.  I knew pretty much at this point that I was probably going to make it to the Summit, less than an hour from here.  Climbing up the Hillary Step was actually less difficult than I had anticipated, but the last few hundred meters to the top still seemed to take forever.

And then we were there, for a few minutes the summit was just ours, nobody around but us.  We quickly took some pictures; I took a short few steps over to the other side for a look down onto the Nordeast Ridge.  I remember feeling calm, and strangely detached from the whole scene, almost as if I was watching it unfolding in front of me as an outside observer.  After just a few minutes, Pasang urged me to get going again; we had indeed a long way back down to safety.  All in all, we spent less than ten minutes at the summit; the winds were still going with about 30 mi/h, and a temperature of about -40 degree.

Still high on adrenaline I slowly made my way back towards the South Summit.  At the Hillary step, one climber was on his way up about half way, and not moving much.  Pasang insisted that I continue down, and climb around the other climber by moving out and over the exposed rock section of the step.  I turned around briefly to figure out my next moves, but all I saw at this moment was camp 2 straight down, about 8,000 ft away.  Immediately facing back up I grabbed onto the rope with both hands to collect myself, then struggled with a few awkward moves across the rocks to the bottom of the step.  It turned out later that, without noticing, I had broken a rib here in the process.  I spent a few more minutes breathing hard and getting myself together for crossing the knife ridge back over to the South Summit, nevertheless I still managed to pick up three rocks from the bottom of the step and stuffed them into the pockets of my down suit.  In the meantime, more clouds were moving in again, now partly obscuring the long way back down on the ridge towards the balcony.  The last few hundred meters off the Triangular Face and across the Col back to our camp were agonizing slow.  I don’t quite remember the time we got back to our camp on the South Col, it must have been around noon.  The weather slowly continued to deteriorate, the winds were picking up again, and it started to snow.  We had been very lucky to make it back in time to the relative safety of the South Col.  We spent about 1-2 hrs at the Col, managed to drink some tea and tried to eat a few bites.  Since leaving the Col yesterday night, I had used only about ¾ L of tea and 3 energy gels.  The worsening weather did not leave us much time for rest and shortly thereafter we had our packs ready and started on the descent to camp 2.  Rappelling and down climbing the Lhotse face was a major effort, I was totally spent and could hardly keep moving downhill on my tired legs.  It was already getting dark when we finally got off the face, around 7 pm in the evening.  Four sherpas had come up from camp 2 and met us with some drinks, took our back packs and accompanied us down the remaining way to camp 2.  We arrived back at camp 2 at about 8 pm.  After some tea and hot soup, the tensions of the last more than 20 hrs started to ease.  I know realized how my whole body was sore, utterly exhausted, and I was not quite sure if I could get up in the morning and start the final descent back to base camp.  To make matters worse, a few hours later my eyes started burning and felt as if on fire.  First, I couldn’t open my eyes at all, later I noticed that I had hardly any vision at all.  For most of the night I kept sitting up and on my hands in order to prevent touching my eyes.  Things improved marginally in the early morning hours, but I could only see shadows and was in no condition to continue the descent.