The Everest Story by Tim Vicary. Part 10.
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Chapter eleven
One man alone – 1980
Since 1953, many hundreds of men and women have climbed Everest, most of them in large expeditions. Some groups have been very large indeed – in 1975 a Chinese expedition with 400 people managed to send nine climbers to the summit. They left a small metal tripod there, fixed to the rock. In 1985 a Norwegian expedition sent seventeen people to the top.
All these climbers, like Hillary and Tenzing, needed the help of many others. Almost all of them used oxygen, too. People have climbed Everest from the south, north, and west.
But the first climber to climb the mountain all alone, with no oxygen at all, was Reinhold Messner.
In 1978 two climbers, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, joined a large German-Austrian expedition climbing from Nepal. Most of the expedition were using oxygen but Messner and Habeler decided to climb without it. After ‘the success of Hillary and Tenzing in 1953 using oxygen,’ Messner said, ‘the whole world thought that this must be the only way.’
But the early climbers did not think so. In 1924, Norton climbed to 8,575 metres with no oxygen. So, Messner thought, perhaps it is possible to climb 273 metres more.
He tried twice. The first time he reached the South Col with two Sherpas, but they were caught in a terrible storm. Their tent nearly collapsed in the wind, and they spent two nights without eating or drinking before they came down. But a few days later Messner tried again, with Peter Habeler, and in ten hours they climbed from the South Col to the summit, with no oxygen at all. But back at the South Col, they were very ill. Habeler had a terrible headache. Messner had taken off his goggles to make a film, and the bright snow had hurt his eyes. Just like Norton in 1924, he lay in his tent all night, unable to see anything. The two men needed help to climb down from the South Col next day.
Two years later, in 1980, Messner began a new attempt. This time he went through Tibet, like Norton and Mallory in 1924. But Messner did not take a lot of heavy equipment and hundreds of porters. He just went with his girlfriend, Nena, and two Chinese people came with them to show them the way. They started at the same place as the British Base Camp in 1924, then, with three yaks, they climbed to Camp 3 at 6,500 metres on the East Rongbuk Glacier. Then the two Chinese went back to Base Camp, while Nena and Messner stayed at Camp 3 for ten days, getting used to the height.
On 24 July Messner climbed to the North Col, at 7,000 metres. But he felt very tired, and there was too much soft snow. So he and Nena returned to Base Camp and spent three weeks walking and climbing above 5,000 metres. Each day they grew stronger, and breathed more easily in the thin mountain air.
On 15 August they returned to Camp 3, and on 17 August Messner climbed up to the North Col again, much faster than before. Now he was ready, he thought. He came down to Camp 3 to sleep. That night he ate and drank, and slept for a while. Then he got up, dressed carefully, and packed his rucksack with everything he needed – food for a week, a small cooker, tent, sleeping bag, camera. He had a head torch, to see in the dark, two ski sticks, crampons, and a strong, light ice axe.
He touched Nena’s face gently with his lips, and stepped out of the tent into the night.
‘I shall be thinking of you,’ she said sleepily. ‘Bye bye.’
‘Bye bye.’ The words came out of the night, and then he was gone.
An hour later, he nearly died. When he was 500 metres above the camp, the snow suddenly collapsed under his feet and he fell into a crevasse. His head torch went out, and everything was dark. He had decided not to take a radio with him. Now he was frightened. He could see nothing, and it was not possible to call for help.
Then the torch came on again. He was standing on a snow bridge, about 1 metre square, above a deep black hole. He looked round. There was a small ice ridge to the left, going up. But to climb that, he needed crampons on his boots; and his crampons were in his rucksack. Very carefully, he got them out and put them on. Carefully, he reached forward across the crevasse with his arms. Then he stepped across onto the ridge – right foot first, then left. The crampons held in the ice. Slowly, he climbed up, out of the crevasse, into the night.
Far below, Nena was still sleeping in the tent.
He climbed on, up to the North Col. As the sun came out, the clouds and mountains turned from dark blue to yellow and then pink. There was good hard snow under his feet. He climbed quickly, taking fifty steps, then resting, then taking fifty more. The ski sticks made climbing easier.
As he climbed, Messner thought about Mallory and Irvine. They had come the same way up the mountain, long ago. They had oxygen, but their clothes and equipment were much heavier than Messner’s. Mallory and Irvine had no light tents and sleeping bags, no crampons, no ski sticks. But when Odell last saw them, they were high up on the North Ridge. Two tiny black dots on the snow, going strongly. Did they reach the summit, he wondered. Or did they die before that?
Far below him, Nena stood outside the tent, watching Messner climb higher and higher. To her, he was now a tiny black dot on the snow. ‘I would like to climb with him,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘One day perhaps, I tell myself… The further he is from me, the stronger becomes my love.’