Against All Odds By Tom Whittaker ©1996

Just yesterday Andy and I were singly focused on the summit; today we would settle for our lives.

Trapped in the Western Cwm (pronounced koom, this is a glacial basin. At 21,500 feet, it is 1,500 feet higher than the summit of Mt. McKinely) by a storm that heralded the start of the monsoon, Everest took on a new dimension. With the blizzard came winds so ferocious that they'd knock us from our feet and constantly tear at the moorings of the tent. Food was low and gas to melt water was critical. Earlier that day we heard that five Poles had died in an avalanche and another, badly injured, lay marooned with his dead team mates.

Thus far in the spring of 1989, seven climbers had perished. Everest was wracking up some grizzly statistics, and still the storm raged.

Finally, on the fifth night the snow and wind abated. In pitch dark, with improvised snowshoes cut from plastic packing cases, Andy Lapkiss, four Sherpa and I made a desperate bid to escape the mountain's clutches. In the Arctic cold of a Himalayan night the snowshoes soon shattered. Continually changing the man in front, we wallowed through waist-deep snow as we ran a snail-pace gauntlet between the flanks of Nuptse and Everest.

As dawn broke, our plight seemed hopeless. In four hours of indescribable toil we had covered less than one and a half miles. It was the same distance again to the relative safety of Camp One. Beneath our feet, camouflaged by snow, crevasses (yawning chasms of ice) crisscrossed our path.

At 1:30 p.m., staggering with exhaustion from eight hours of plowing, we arrived at Camp One. Or rather, where Camp One was supposed to be. The storm had deposited ten feet of snow on the floor of the Western Cwm. Somewhere in that vast whiteness, four feet under our boot soles, lay the tops of our tents.

The weather had deteriorated in the last two hours. Now a decision had to be made between staying or going. Either alternative could prove fatal. To do nothing and die in the mountains clasp was not an option. Despite our fatigue, we went on. In normal conditions, we could make it to the food, shelter and our loved ones at Base Camp in two hours. Today it would be a crap shoot at best.

The Khumbu Ice Fall, with its myriad of crevasses, is one of the few places where ladders have become a bona-fide part of mountainering. Walking across an 18 ft ladder that drops into blackness below you takes a certain amount of single-mindedness. Add crampons, metal spikes on your boots, and an artificial foot and it becomes a high wire act, without a net. Twist the ladder into a contorted form and add pulverizing fatigue and the deadening effects of altitude to the picture and one's faith in God begins to go the way of the icefall, over the cliff! But not all of the crevasses closed. On several, the ladders did not reach all the way across the gaping abyss. Now you know you are in hell and all those stories about brimstone; just lies.

The hours crawl by like years as this hellish game of Blind Mans Bluff continues. Finally, darkness engulfs us and our isolation is complete. I am a Zombie. An amputee has to exert 35% more energy than someone with both feet. My prosthesis designed for ascending rock and ice is small and sinks deeper into the snow pack. The exertion has rubbed my stump raw and the discomfort in both knees, damaged in the same car accident that took my right foot, had gone from a dull roar to a temple pounding scream. And hour after hour the punishment continues. The three head-lamps that still functioned, searched the vast jumble of ice for clues. Then at last we saw faint pinpricks of wavering light, and like shipwrecked mariners, we embrace the men that have risked their lives to look for us.

Salutations over, we throw ourselves back into the blocks of ice and the darkness, but thankfully the trail is blazed. At 9:00 p.m., after 16 hours of continuous torture, I was greeted by a gruff handshake from my 72 year old father and a tearful reunion from my wife. The only people who hadn't written us off as dead, were those who loved us most.

Well that embrace was seven years ago, and still in moments of self doubt, I catch myself standing in that Himalayan night. Clouds and darkness engulf us as I hold my wife. I am always looking down on the scene from above, yet I feel the warmth of her body, and the silent thankfulness of her grief. In a plethora of relief and fatigue we cling to one another, and across the eons, and against all odds, two human souls meet and for the first time know themselves.

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