First Steps

It's a fitful night of sleep caused by the elevation, high winds blowing the tent around and the anticipation of climbing on Mount Everest for the first time.  The alarm goes off at 2:00 am and it's time to get moving.  Breakfast is at 2:30 and climber/Sherpa teams start to walk at around 3:00 am.  

I'm paired with Sherpa Fura, the same guy I climbed Lobuche with.  He's young, strong and a good climbing partner.  His skills far surpass his years and I'm appreciative of how free he is with tips, tricks and techniques for better climbing.  Fura and I leave at about 3:10 am.

The first stretch of walking is along most of Everest base camp heading generally north.  It would be an easy stroll except the snow from the day before has turned to ice from the passage of so many boots.  No time for sleep walking, the focus gets sharper and we move forward with a sense of purpose.  Hanging a right and entering the lower icefall, my grin widens.  What a dream to be here in Nepal starting to climb the highest mountain in the world.

After a few more minutes, we arrive at "crampon point" which is where we attach our climbing crampons to our boots in preparation for steeper terrain.  It's a quick process for the two of us and we leave just behind the two fastest climbers in our group, gaining back the 10 minute delay we had leaving camp.

It's quite dark and our path is lit by our headlamps.  In another few minutes of walking, it becomes obvious that all of the stories about the icefall are true.  It's basically an ice obstacle course out of some fiction writer's imagination.  Oh and it's moving imperceptibly all the time and dramatically some of the time.  We climb with our legs, arms sometimes and with the aid of ropes in a few places until we get to the start of the fixed lines.  These are ropes anchored to the mountain that we use for protection during climbing.  It's about this time that I notice how beautiful the moon is, sitting above the icefall.

Day breaks slowly and the climbing gets harder.  For some reason though, I feel like I'm getting stronger and happier.  Maybe hypoxia is setting in a little but who cares. It's a beautiful day and except for the 20-25 mph winds, its perfect for climbing.  Fura and I are a couple hundred yards behind the fast guys and there's nobody behind us for a while. It feels like we have the icefall to ourselves.  

We continue to climb up and through a maze of ice formations, with the aid of ropes and ladders.  Some of the ladder crossings are quite basic and a couple are pretty thrilling. One "horizontal" ladder in particular was off camber and sloped.  It was probably just fine when the icefall doctors installed it days ago but glaciers move and this was our obstacle. Thankfully we had two safety lines for protection.

The day continued to break and first light hit the summit of Pumo Ri, across the valley from Everest. 

Another 15 or 20 minutes of climbing and climbing we reach the "football field".  In past years, this was a very large flat spot sitting at around 18,800-18,900 ft.  This year its quite smaller and we can only guess that we've been climbing over the rest of it this morning on our way up. The three climber/Sherpa pairs are in a good mood after such a fun climb and we stay up here for some time before heading back down.

It took me and Fura 2:30 hours to get up to the football field and 1:45 hours to get back to base camp.  It was some hard work to be sure and even though gravity helped our descent, our focus remained sharp all the way down. After a quick breakfast, I needed a nap. For the record, this is the first nap since the "I'm Only Human" post.

Namaste