Into Thin Air: Chapters 6–9

Hall, however, was a quartermaster nonpareil, and he relished the challenge.

Some of the other teams on the mountain that year, failing to understand that Everest was no longer merely a mountain but a commodity as well, were incensed. And the greatest hue and cry came from Rob Hall, who was leading a small, impecunious New Zealand team.

Tales abound of one or another climber who decided to remain in his or her sleeping bag after detecting some inauspicious vibe in the ether and thereby survived a catastrophe that wiped out others who failed to heed the portents.

Problem was, my inner voice resembled Chicken Little: it was screaming that I was about to die, but it did that almost every time I laced up my climbing boots. I therefore did my damnedest to ignore my histrionic imagination and grimly followed Rob into the eerie blue labyrinth.

I soon learned that on Everest not even the rope — the quintessential climber’s accoutrement — was to be utilized in the time-honored manner.

This didn’t faze him, either: in March 1934 he hired three Sherpas, disguised himself as a Buddhist monk, and, defying the authorities of the Raj, surreptitiously trekked 300 miles through the forests of Sikkim and the sere Tibetan plateau.

I’d hoped that the giant, overhanging tower at 19,000 feet — christened the Mousetrap by some wag on Fischer’s team — had toppled by now, but it was still precariously upright, leaning even farther over.

The three teammates seemed unconcerned by the reports of Ian’s reprehensible behavior and rumors predicting their expedition’s imminent disintegration.

To keep Ngawang from having to exert himself, which would have exacerbated his edema, at several points during the descent, Beidleman picked up the ailing Sherpa and carried him on his back.

According to Hunt, the sirdar was adamant that Ngawang didn’t have HAPE or any other form of altitude illness, “but rather was suffering from ‘gastric,’ the Nepali term for stomach ache,” and that an evacuation was unnecessary.

Ebullient and direct, she’d grown up in northern California, where her father had introduced her to camping, hiking, and skiing as a young girl.

Fairly or unfairly, to her derogators Pittman epitomized all that was reprehensible about Dick Bass’s popularization of the Seven Summits and the ensuing debasement of the world’s highest mountain.

On Everest in 1995 he’d frostbitten his feet badly enough to lose some tissue from a big toe and permanently impair his circulation, making him particularly susceptible to cold; now this additional frostbite would make him yet more vulnerable to the cruel conditions of the upper mountain.

But four luminaries stood out even in this distinguished company—climbers who demonstrated such astonishing prowess above 26,000 feet that they were in a league of their own: Ed Viesturs, the American who was starring in the IMAX film; Anatoli Boukreev, a guide from Kazakhstan working for Fischer; Ang Babu Sherpa, who was employed by the South African expedition; and Lopsang.

Being the youngest member of the expedition, Lopsang was initially relegated to a supporting role, but his strength was so impressive that at the last minute he was assigned to a summit party, and on May 16 he reached the top without supplemental oxygen.