Seven Summits Part 5

"It's going to be tough, oxygen or no oxygen."

Tough, but exciting. The adrenaline charge from that first view lasted until about nine in the evening two days later when they finally lumbered into base camp, the trucks wheezing in the thin air. If the trucks were feeling the alt.i.tude, the climbers were faring better, having benefitted from the days in Lhasa and then the overland drive, all at more than 12,000 feet. They quickly pitched tents, and settled in for a good night's sleep.

There was another team sharing the base camp site, a small but powerful four-man British group lead by the indomitable Chris Bonington. They proposed to climb the unscaled northeast ridge of Everest, and would be hiking upglacier with the North Wall team to a point where they would then diverge on a subsidiary glacier leading to their route. Bonington was England's best-known mountaineer and the veteran of at least eight Himalayan expeditions. He had been the leader of two previous Everest climbs, the last of which, in 1975, made the first ascent of the mountain's formidable southwest face. He had never personally reached the top, however, and he was hopeful this time he would make it.

The two teams spent the next day swapping stories while they worked around camp. The Americans had to sort gear and divide loads for yaks to carry to advanced base camp, to be located about eight miles up glacier, at a site just under 19,000 feet elevation.

Yaks, the s.h.a.ggy-haired oxen of Tibet and Central Asia-once described by a climber as the Mack Truck of the Himalaya-are temperamental but strong, able to carry 120 pounds on rocky, icy trails between 12,000 and 22,000 feet. In fact, they seem to perform better the higher they go; if a yak is taken to lower elevations it becomes sickly. Word went out that the climbers would need dozens of these beasts to carry loads up the margin of the Rongbuk Glacier, and soon the animals and their nomadic owners arrived.

For much of the distance the team hiked alongside a long chain of ice towers up to a hundred feet high, a fairybook icescape caused by diurnal freezing and melting. Even though the route gained little elevation, 8 miles at over 17,000 feet was still a bone-wearying long way, and for Frank and d.i.c.k the campsite came none too soon. Despite the available yak transport, both Frank and d.i.c.k had chosen, as had everyone else on the team, to carry heavy packs, to help them get in shape. This set the pattern for the next three weeks. While the lead climbers shared the job of scouting the best route from advanced base another 5 miles upglacier to camp 1, and then from there to the site of camp 2, at the foot of the great North Wall at 20,300 feet, everyone else including Frank and d.i.c.k shared the tiresome task of ferrying from one camp to the next the several tons of food and equipment.

Frank noticed this load-carrying was done with a tacit but barely concealed compet.i.tion, and that an individual's performance-or lack of it-did not escape unnoticed. Thus, when Jim Wickwire, struggling with a heavy pack, was slowly approaching advanced base camp and Lou got up to walk down the route and help him with part of his load, another team member stopped him: "Everyone has to carry their own weight around here." Thus Lou Whittaker, transporting equipment from camp 1 to 2, pulled two sleds instead of the normal one and was careful upon arriving in camp to leave them fully loaded and on display in the circle of tents. Without experience to compare, Frank a.s.sumed this was part of the stamina-building strategy necessary to climb high-alt.i.tude peaks (he would later learn that it had more to do with the inherent compet.i.tiveness of a team of professional guides who had among them a hierarchy of rank and skill). Without fully realizing it, Frank little by little became determined to prove his mettle. He told himself that while he might not have the stuff that would get him to the top, he would show everyone he could carry heavy loads between the lower camps, day after day.

For two weeks he did just that, carrying thirty to forty pounds a day, usually from camp 1 to 2. Meanwhile the lead climbers fixed ropes toward the Great Couloir.

d.i.c.k also was working hard carrying loads but edged ahead of Frank delivering food, equipment, and oxygen tanks first to camp 2 and then to 3. d.i.c.k found each day he was a notch stronger, and as he acclimatized he increased his payload to equal what the lead climbers were hauling, sometimes more than fifty pounds. At this rate he judged he might have a shot at the top, especially if the lead climbers fixed ropes most of the way. Maybe it would even work out that he could team with Marty as they had planned at s...o...b..rd, but he didn't want to build any unrealistic expectations.

While d.i.c.k gained strength, Frank found each day he was weakening. After three weeks he had lost nearly twenty pounds and had a cough he couldn't kick. But determined as ever, he took only one rest day a week. Those were days to be cherished, days when you slept in, then with great laziness washed your clothes, perhaps yourself, and, unless you took a nap, read a book or wrote a letter home.

The mail service on Everest, if you could call it that, had disappointed everyone; up to then, Frank was the only one who had received a letter, and at least it had contained good news from his former colleagues at Warner Bros. They had won the best picture Oscar for Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire.

Even though he didn't receive much mail (they found out later it had by mistake been held up) that didn't discourage Frank from writing home. Twenty-eight days after reaching base camp, Frank wrote to his family a progress report: 20 AprilDear Family,There are eight of us here at base camp on "R&R." No one is at camp 1 at the moment, but five are in camp 2, carrying each day to camp 3 where three are staying and trying, despite our first bad weather, to finish locating camp 4 at 23,700 feet. The ropes to camp 4 have already been fixed up a 45-degree slope, and now platforms for the tents have to be built in the snow. Each day decisions are made over the radio as to who should be in what camp and what supplies should be carried to the next higher camps, and things are in a constant change depending on the physical condition of each of the sixteen climbers, and the weather.The next step is to locate camp 5 at the edge of the Great Couloir, then camp 6 at the top of the Couloir, about 26,500 or 27,000 feet. That will be the last stopping (sleeping point) before the summit. We plan to begin using bottled oxygen above camp 6. This is a good deal higher than most expeditions start using it, but there have been three people who have summitted without using oxygen at all, and some of our young bucks may have a go at trying it this way as well.It is also significant that our expedition, unlike all but one previous Everest attempt, is using no Sherpas or porters (they're only available on the Nepal side). Since the yaks left our gear here at base camp, we have been on our own, and so far we're pleased with our progress.Now here are a few other things you may find interestig. First, despite my fairly intense training for eight months, I am not even close to the physical condition of the others, particularly the ten "hotshots" (my term) who as professional climbing guides have taken clients up Mount Rainier anywhere between 100 and 200 times each. You can't imagine what it's like "humping" thirty-five pounds from camp 1 to 2, moving as well as you can (but still slow, still breathing very hard) and to have someone like Marty Hoey come blazing past you whistling, yes whistling, some tune!Second, I simply lack the technical climbing knowledge these people have. I'm not the one who rigs the fixed ropes to ice screws; I'm not the one who picks the routes and campsites. This was understood at the outset, and I decided from the start it would be best to give my all to humping loads of equipment between the lower camps. So during the first seventeen days of the climb, I carried fifteen loads between base camp, camp 1, and camp 2. I was urged to take a few days off, but I felt strongly I had to do more carries than anyone to make up for my deficiencies.Well, all this came to a crashing halt a few days ago when our team doctor, Ed Hixson, sleeping in the next tent, heard my coughing all night and next day gave me a physical. I'd lost thirty pounds. That was no mystery, really, as it's common to lose weight at high alt.i.tude. You really need to eat 6,000 calories a day just to hold even, but it's hard when the food isn't great, when you don't feel like eating-because of the alt.i.tude-and when it's easy to skip lunch when you're in the middle of a carry. So I am weak from the weight loss, but my cough may also be beginning pneumonia. As a result, Hixson said, "No more carrying for now, down to base camp, lots of food, pills for the coughing, and I'll tell you when you can start carrying again."I guess I have to be honest and say it's a relief. Lou himself is here in advanced base for a rest, and he has told me I have already done so much more than anyone expected from a fifty-year-old novice. You have no idea how important these words were to me-said before half the team. I know, though, I have simply no chance of being one of those who reach the top. But if I leave feeling I have done my share of the work, and the team is successful, I will be completely fulfilled.So for the next month I will first repair myself, then begin again with fairly light carries. Then maybe in a couple of weeks or so, just maybe, on a nice clear day, I can go to camp 3, and from there-this is all speculation, as I doubt I'll make it-maybe camp 4. But I do a.s.sure you, one and all, that the route, with fixed ropes laid, is totally safe.So sometime around late May or early June, I'll be home. My G.o.d, you do get homesick, too, for so many, many things you haven't even thought about for so long. So I'll be home, maybe not much wiser, certainly a bit lighter, and probably a touch more content.Much love to you all,Frank d.i.c.k Ba.s.s rested his forearms on his knees to relieve the weight of his pack; he didn't have to bend far since the snow slope was steep. The jumar clamp he used to ascend the fixed rope was cammed firmly onto the line, and attached by a nylon webbing sling to his waist harness so he was secure in case he should slip. Looking up he could see, a few hundred feet beyond, the tents at camp 4. There was a climber leaving camp, beginning to rappel down the line; that would have to be somebody off the lead team who had been working to establish camp 5, probably coming down for a rest at a lower camp. d.i.c.k could see they would cross on the rope in a few minutes.

With his ice axe d.i.c.k cut a small platform in the snow and then unshouldered his forty-pound pack and balanced it on the level, connecting with a carabiner to his jumar so it wouldn't take off if he happened to b.u.mp it. With the pack's shoulder straps off he breathed freely and leaned on his knee against the steep slope to enjoy a well-earned rest.

As it had for Frank (until his illness, anyway), this expedition for d.i.c.k distilled down to a daily exercise of carrying loads at ever-increasing alt.i.tudes. He didn't begrudge the duty, for he knew that all the while he was learning-learning to handle the steep route, learning to pace himself, learning how his body reacted to high alt.i.tude. On that last point he was especially pleased; it seemed he was physically gifted for this sort of thing, and he was feeling stronger each day despite the alt.i.tude of almost 24,000 feet.

Still, he knew there was little chance he would reach the top. First, the expedition was struggling to get to camp 5, and above that, camp 6. The climbing was tough, and without any porters or Sherpas to help carry loads much of the expedition's strength was expended on that job. d.i.c.k was realizing that each pound of food or equipment that was ultimately delivered to the high camp represented considerable toil: it was a pound that had gone from one camp to the next, carried by climbers who were also burning the stove fuel and eating the food to get the energy to carry more food and fuel. Then when he considered the effort that would be required once they started breathing oxygen, above camp 6, out of cylinders that weighed seventeen pounds each, that had also been carried up one camp to the next, each camp a day's climb apart, the full scope of the task really sank in. It was easy to see how they had been working for thirty-five days and still had a long way to go.

So d.i.c.k was quite certain that when the time came there would be available provisions only for a few of the strongest climbers to attempt the top, and it was obvious that such a formula would exclude him, as it should. Even without a climb to the summit it was all marvelously worthwhile, not only because of the knowledge and experience that would be invaluable when he and Frank returned again to Everest as part of their Seven Summits dream (although they still had no idea exactly how they would do that), but also because of the unusual adventure, because of moments like this. Moments when you had a short rest from hard work, work that freed you instead of shackling you, good physical work that was half the world away from the bankers telling you what you could or couldn't do. Work that seemed to clear your brain of the fog that down below often muddled how you saw things. Up here the view was sharp-edged and crystal. Up here you sat on a perch like an eagle in an aerie, gazing over a domain of ice and rock. Over the Rongbuk Glacier, that frozen river moving inexorably toward the Tibetan Plateau, ice overlaying desert. Over the immense North Wall, that 10,000 vertical feet of rock and ice.

d.i.c.k looked up. That figure he had seen earlier coming out of camp 5 had now grown to a recognizable human with shining black hair emerging from a freshly laundered babushka.

"Mrty, it's great to see you."

"Hi, Ba.s.s."

d.i.c.k hadn't seen Marty for over a week. She had been working to put in the high camp while he was hauling loads at mid-elevations. It was curious how on the climb you often went two weeks or more without seeing some of your companions; d.i.c.k hadn't seen Frank, for example, since he had contracted pneumonia two weeks ago. But he knew Frank was better and starting to carry again, and would probably be up to this level soon.

"Ba.s.s, I've been getting reports about how you've been carrying all these heavy loads. I'm proud of you."

d.i.c.k swelled up like a male grouse on display. "Marty, you don't know how much your compliment means to me."

"I'd have to be blind to miss that. You haven't forgotten about our deal have you? We're still going to the top, you know, me and you."

"Marty, I don't know. I think when the moment of truth comes there may only be room for a few selects on the summit teams and you'd have a lot better chance with someone more experienced."

"No way. Deal's a deal."

"We'll see when the time comes, but whatever G.o.d wills I want you to know I appreciate your still wanting to take me."

"How's everyone else? Seen Lou?"

"We came up to three together yesterday. Paid me a heck of a compliment, said I handled the rope better than anyone he'd been tied to this trip. But then that's because I had a good teacher."

Marty smiled. d.i.c.k continued. "Then we tented together, and his appreciation waned when I started to recite poetry. He kind of rolled over and cold-backed me. Guess he didn't want a large-mouthed Ba.s.s laying a poem on him at 23,000 feet."

"His problem. What poem?"

"Well, I've put Lasca to memory."

"Lasca! Ba.s.s, you know that's my favorite, well, one of my favorites. I've got the Xerox of "Evolution" you gave me in my pack. Boy, Lasca is a lot to memorize. I don't see how you did it."

"Unless you can sleep fourteen hours a day there's a lot of time lying awake in your sleeping bag."

"Think you could recite it now?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

Although there was no audience on the climb he would have preferred to Marty, he also knew how much she loved the poem so he made a silent prayer he didn't screw up. He recited it, though, without missing a word of the poignant story told by a cowboy of his half-breed woman who gave her life to save him in a cattle stampede.

Marty was thrilled.

"d.i.c.k, do those last lines again."

d.i.c.k recited the last lines over: "And I wonder why I do not careFor the things that are like the things that were.Does half my heart lie buried thereIn Texas, down by the Rio Grande."

Marty pursed her lips and fought back a tear. "Thanks d.i.c.k. That was great."

She turned and continued down the rope, and d.i.c.k noticed she was wearing those lapis earrings, and they matched her blue babushka.

Camp 5 was established at the base of the Great Couloir. After several days rest, Marty was back up the mountain, and with some of the others started the effort to establish camp 6 at about 26,500 feet. Once that camp was in and sufficiently stocked they would be in position for the first summit attempt. The team for that first effort was now chosen: Larry Nielson (the team member with perhaps the strongest physical endurance), Jim Wickwire, Marty Hoey. d.i.c.k and Frank were both excited for Marty; she was now in position to accomplish her dream of becoming the first American woman on top of Everest.

Meanwhile d.i.c.k had stayed in camp 3, each day humping loads up to 4, and now Frank moved up to join him. There was a third person in camp 3, Steve Marts, a Seattle-based climber and doc.u.mentary filmmaker who was a one-man cinematography team shooting and recording a 16 mm film of the expedition. Both Frank and d.i.c.k had been impressed watching Marts, using a camera with a sound recorder strapped on and a microphone attached to the top, single-handedly get synced-sound coverage of the expedition, including the climbing up to about 25,000 feet.

This was the first time since his illness that Frank had seen d.i.c.k, and as Marts was crowded by himself in the cook tent, Frank moved in with d.i.c.k. They were both pleased at the chance to share time together. They were the neophytes, the outsiders in a sense. Conversation relating to s.e.x and mountains was interesting enough, but nevertheless they both had other common interests which they enjoyed talking about.

But while they shared much, they were also very different from each other in some significant ways. d.i.c.k was open and gregarious, while Frank had a certain brusqueness that kept people at bay. Then, too, the pair were opposites when it came to the way they organized their lives. Frank was a delegating generalist, d.i.c.k the finicky, nitpicking do-it-himself type. Finally, they were at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Frank was a flaming liberal, d.i.c.k the arch conservative. And that led to some lively badinage during the many weeks they spent sleeping in the same two-man tent.

"Frank, what I don't understand is why you can't be more intellectually honest about human nature and get past your bleeding heart advocacy of socialism."

"I don't advocate socialism. I advocate social welfare."

"Welfare! The only way you'll help man is to get man to help himself."

Steve Marts, listening in his nearby tent, thought, Boy, these two really are The Odd Couple.

"Look," d.i.c.k continued, "it's not the duty of the government to support the people, but rather the duty of the people to support the government."

"You got to admit, though, Kennedy was more eloquent."

"But he didn't practice what he preached. Frank, I'm telling you, you're wearing blinders. Now I figure you and I have a lot of tent time coming up together if we're going to do these Seven Summits, and by golly if there's one thing I want to accomplish it's to turn you around politically."

Now Marts yelled over, "What's Seven Summits?"

Other than Marty, Frank and d.i.c.k really hadn't discussed their Seven Summits dream with anyone. It wasn't that they wanted to keep it a secret as much as they felt sheepish talking about such a bold plan in front of some of the world's best climbers, especially when they themselves were such amateurs. But now that the cat was out of the bag they saw no harm in describing the project to Marts.

"Come on over here and we'll explain it," d.i.c.k said.

d.i.c.k told Marts about the plan, and when he finished he suddenly had an idea. He was annoyed it hadn't occurred to him earlier, but here he was about to commit a great deal of time, risk, and money and he ought to have a film of it, if for no other reason than to show it to his children and grandchildren, and to remember his adventures once he was an old man. He visualized how it would be when he was ninety-five. He'd be in a rocker, and all he'd have to do was push a b.u.t.ton and a screen would come down and the movie would start, and he'd rock back and forth pointing at the screen yelling, "Look at that boy go."

"Marts, by golly, we've got to film the Seven Summits!"

Marts didn't say anything for a moment. d.i.c.k could tell he was mulling the idea over. Then he answered, "d.i.c.k, that's a fantastic story line. I mean it's commercial: two businessmen at age fifty either give up or jeopardize their successful careers to try to climb the highest peak on each continent. Do you realize with a film you could pay for your climbs?"

"You've got to be kidding!"

"Not only that, but you'd be a folk hero."

d.i.c.k nearly gagged at that.

"Marts, you're full of B.S."

"No, I mean it."

"You really think so?" d.i.c.k then looked over to Frank, who was reading a book. "What do you think, Frank?" "It'll never sell."

"Wells, sometimes you're such a wet blanket. What do you mean?"

"First, it's hard as h.e.l.l to even make your money back on an expensive doc.u.mentary. Second, we're probably going to have to climb Everest in the wrong sequence. Our most likely chance is to hook up with one of the groups going next spring, and that means the drama will be backwards. You want the hardest to come last, so it climaxes. The way we're doing it, we go up Kosciusko last, and that's a hike up a trail to only 7,300 feet. In fact, there's a gravel highway going up it. The whole thing's scripted wrong."

"Frank, I've been telling you what my life is like back home, with people always telling me I can't do this or that, dampening my enthusiasm, and here I am at 24,000 feet on the side of Mount Everest and the same thing's following me up here. Now you might be some great Hollywood movie mogul but that doesn't mean you know everything about this stuff, and Marts here, who has years of experience in this doc.u.mentary business, says it will go over like gangbusters. He even says we'll be folk heroes."

Frank smiled condescendingly and went back to his book, but d.i.c.k wasn't about to give up.

"You've got to think positive. There's a solution to this getting the sequence in order."

While Frank read, d.i.c.k lay thinking of possible solutions and forgot the time. He looked at his watch and said, "Darn, forgot to turn on the radio for the afternoon call. I wanted to get news on how they're doing above."

"We'll get the morning call," Frank said, and went back to his book. d.i.c.k slept hardly at all that night, pondering the film problem; at first light he shook Frank.

"I got it," d.i.c.k said.

"Got what?"

"Got how to end this film. How we're going to climb Kosciusko last and still have a great ending. You and I'll put on running shorts with packs on our backs and we'll jog up there-that'll give it some interest-and while we're doing that we'll have had our wives and best friends flown over there and get the longest black limos we can find and they'll be in tuxes and evening dresses, see, and while you and I are jogging up the road they'll come by in this limo and lean out the window and the sun will glisten on their studs and jewelry and we'll be sweating-that'll get a good laugh-and when we get to the top I have this Swiss chef named Hans who is the consummate sculptor and can take a huge hunk of ice and carve it into a horse's head or an eagle-any darn thing you want-like no one you ever saw, so we'll get him down there and have an ice carving on the summit and a banquet table waiting for us. It'll be a feast that would make Nebuchadnezzar envious, and the others will be waiting ..."

"I'll get my mother, too," Frank said, "and a few other friends ..."

"... and then we'll go behind a rock," d.i.c.k continued, "and out will fly our T-shirts and jock straps and then you and I will emerge looking resplendent in our tuxes, then we'll hug our wives and friends and we'll go to the food spread where there'll be a pig with an apple in its mouth, pheasant under gla.s.s, oysters and shrimp and caviar piled high-remember the eating scene from Tom Jones, Tom Jones, Frank? Heck, that was nothing, this will be sensual like that-gorging ourselves on gourmet delights while overlaying this-now close your eyes and imagine it-overlaying this are scenes of us with ice in our beards, and the wind blowing snow, and all this misery we got up here right now eating gruel out of tin cups, it'll be the juxtaposition of the incongruous that'll make it hilarious, Frank, and then we'll pop the bubbly and fade out, walking down the road into the sunset with our backpacks on over the tuxes and champagne in our hands." Frank? Heck, that was nothing, this will be sensual like that-gorging ourselves on gourmet delights while overlaying this-now close your eyes and imagine it-overlaying this are scenes of us with ice in our beards, and the wind blowing snow, and all this misery we got up here right now eating gruel out of tin cups, it'll be the juxtaposition of the incongruous that'll make it hilarious, Frank, and then we'll pop the bubbly and fade out, walking down the road into the sunset with our backpacks on over the tuxes and champagne in our hands."

Frank was smiling. "Not bad, Ba.s.s, not bad. That might work."

Buoyed with enthusiasm for his plan, d.i.c.k started dressing for that day's carry up to camp 4. Marts was in the other tent making breakfast for the trio. It looked like it would be another fine day and d.i.c.k wondered how things had gone yesterday.

"Get your mush," Marts yelled.

d.i.c.k crawled out and brought back two bowls of oatmeal and finished dressing while he ate. He thought again about the climbers above. If they managed to get camp 6 in yesterday they could be in position for the first summit bid tomorrow or the day after. Which reminded him, time for the radio call. Frank picked it up and turned it on. Almost immediately Whittaker's voice from camp 1 came on the air.

"h.e.l.lo camp 3. Camp 3. Frank or d.i.c.k. Do you read?"

"Morning, Lou. Frank here."

"We've been trying to get you guys since yesterday evening. I'm afraid I have some very, very bad news. We had a tragedy late yesterday afternoon, just below camp 6. We're not sure yet exactly what happened, but apparently her waist harness came unsecured and Marty fell to her death."

d.i.c.k dropped his oatmeal and stared at the tent wall.

d.i.c.k felt as if somehow his nerves now extended through his skin so each pore burned as though he might incinerate on the spot, vaporize and disappear. He prayed he could purge his memory of what he had just heard, that he could edit out that overwhelming despair, that he could come back and things would have returned to the way they were before. But the burning stayed and he started to scold her, saying to himself, Marty, d.a.m.n you, why did you foul up? You are the one always preaching safety, always yelling at me on McKinley about the proper use of my ice axe and crampons and rope. How can you expect me to listen if you don't follow your own preaching? How can we ever go and climb the Seven Summits now that you've done this? Without you ...

Then he was swept with guilt. He hadn't told Frank, or anyone except Marty, about the psychic in Dallas and what he'd said, that there would be a tragedy on Everest and someone would die. But he had told Marty back on Aconcagua, and she had said that that someone just might be her and now it had all come true, and was it somehow because he had told her in the first place about the prediction? Was he somehow an unwitting agent who created in her a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Then he started to cry. Frank too.

Wickwire showed up a short time later, visibly shaken, and told them the details.

"The others were about a hundred feet above, looking for a site for camp 6, and Marty and I were at a rock in the middle of the Great Couloir. The weather was deteriorating and we could see the others only intermittently through the mist. I heard a call down from above for more rope, and I was just moving to put my pack on when Marty said, 'Let me get out of your way.' Then I heard this rattling of carabiners and I looked over to see her falling backwards. She grabbed for the fixed rope but couldn't quite reach it. She really gathered speed and then was gone. I looked back and saw her jumar still attached to the rope and to it her open harness, just hanging there. I guess she didn't loop the belt back through the buckle, and it pulled through when she leaned back. I'm sure she went the whole way, 6,000 feet of vertical."

Over the radio Whittaker told everyone to take the day off, and d.i.c.k and Frank descended with Wickwire to camp 2. Some of the others climbed over to the base of the North Wall to see if they could spot anything. There was no sign, and it was felt that Marty had probably disappeared into the heavily creva.s.sed area that separated the wall from the glacier. In the camps there was quiet mourning. Nearly everyone on the team had worked with Marty for years, and to some she was a best friend.

There was some talk of what to do regarding the expedition, and everybody was agreed that the next day they would resume the climb. They were now in position to make the first summit bid, and they knew Marty would have been upset had they pa.s.sed on such a chance, especially after working so hard. But of more immediate concern was how best to get word to Marty's parents. Marty's mother-the Mayor, they called her-had already lost two of her kids, and now her third and last. They knew she would, of course, want whatever possessions Marty had left, so d.i.c.k and some others circulated around camp and collected them. There wasn't much, as Marty didn't cotton to material possessions, owning only what she needed. There was something, though, that d.i.c.k looked for in particular. Something he couldn't find. And that was good, because it meant she had them with her when she fell, and that's the way d.i.c.k wanted it. She had to be wearing those lapis earrings.

5.

EARTHBOUND.

The day after Marty's death Larry Nielson, who after the accident had stayed at camp 5, was joined by two others of the lead climbers and together they made the first attempt to reach the summit. They climbed from camp 5 back up to their previous high point at camp 6, 26,500 feet. The next day they awoke early to make preparations to leave for the summit, but it was so cold they feared a predawn start would end in certain frostbite. Worse, their oxygen cylinders showed 25 percent less pressure than they should have, and without a full charge they decided it made more sense to leave the heavy bottles behind.

So at the late hour of 7:00 A.M. the three set out. Even without oxygen Nielson kept a good pace. One of the other climbers, Eric Simonson, however, had an injured knee and couldn't keep up, so the second man, Geo Dunn, stayed with him while Nielson continued solo.

Climbing without a rope, he made steady progress. As he got higher, though, he found the climbing increasingly steep and difficult. At one place he was forced to remove his mittens so he could grip the rock, and it only took a few seconds before he felt his fingers start to freeze. He realized his only chance of success was if the climbing difficulties higher above would ease. But soon he encountered a section in the rock band that was near-vertical.

This would require careful consideration. He glanced down the steep North Wall below his feet.