Seven Summits (39 page)

Here Dick Bass drew the line.

“Since I’ve been climbing I’m just used to going without bathing or shaving. And I wouldn't want to get weakened or spoiled, not until we finish these Seven Summits, anyway.”

The safari lasted nearly two weeks. Everyone left with indelible images of the largest congregations of mammals on earth—of the herding wildebeest which stretched from horizon to horizon moving in large oceanic swells, of the giraffe munching the leaves of the flat-topped acacia fifteen feet off the ground. For Frank, though, the most lasting image came on a day he overheard Dick talking to a tribal Masai:

“And the snow is this light powdery stuff that I’m telling you gets waist deep and deeper. So if you ever get a chance to visit, there's no place in the world like the Bird. Come ski me.”

The Masai, whose tribal warriors were among history's bravest, stood tall and proud. This one, dressed in a homespun cape and holding his long herder's spear, which he used if lions got too tempted by the cattle he was herding in his bare feet, politely nodded his head.

The summit of Kilimanjaro is less than twenty miles inside the Tanzanian border from Kenya, and since 1886, when Queen Victoria deeded the mountain as a birthday gift to her German grandson, there has been a border dispute. For the Seven Summits team it meant that instead of crossing directly into Tanzania, which was only a three-hour drive south of Nairobi, they had to fly first to Ruanda, then back to Tanzania.

Alan Eamshaw and his wife Moira had accepted Frank and Dick's invitation to join the climb. Earnshaw was new to climbing but Moira had been up Kilimanjaro several times, as a guide for the Outward Bound school. The team, then, consisted of Frank and Dick, Dan Bass, Dan and Rae Emmett and their two kids, Daniel and Roz, Steve Marts the cinematographer, and the two Earnshaws.

After landing in Tanzania they proceeded directly to the Kibo hotel at the base of the peak. The next day they loaded their gear in an open truck and drove toward the roadhead. The weather was stable and clear, and the mass of Kilimanjaro with its snow glaciers descending like frozen lava from the old volcano rim seemed to float unconnected above the acacia plain. They were headed for the less-frequented westerly flank of the mountain with the idea of trying a route different from the so-called tourist trail that Frank had followed thirty years ago.

Ian Allen, who knew Kilimanjaro perhaps better than anyone. They had met Allen in Nairobi and hosted him to an evening of drinking, and Frank had regaled him with tales of Everest, Aconcagua, and McKinley. Probably thinking he was with some Himalayan hotshots Allen had said, “You two don't want to take the tourist Kibo route. You'd enjoy it much more going up something more interesting, say the Machame.”

“But we've got Emmett's wife and kids.”

“They'll have no problem,” Allen assured. “Only a little rock scrambling near the top. Don't even need a rope.”

Frank, emboldened with a half dozen silver bullets (martinis), had agreed.

Now they were keen on this more remote western side of the mountain. Their buses left the main tarmac and continued on a rough back road that passed through banana groves, then ended at a few ramshackle huts. There fifteen native porters, people of the Chagga tribe, unloaded the vehicles of their supplies, which had been prepacked in trussed bundles for balancing on their heads, and set out through the thick forest. The team hefted their own backpacks, loaded with personal gear, and following the porters, started the four-day walk to the point where the climbing began.

Kilimanjaro is only two degrees south of the equator, but as a climber ascends its flanks he passes through five climatic zones that are roughly parallel to the vegetation zones you might encounter traveling from the equator north or south toward the poles. Only roughly parallel, however, because many of the plants in the biological bands that girdle the mountain are unique to Kilimanjaro and other high peaks of East Africa.

This first stage was through equatorial forest. The ground was carpeted in ferns and vines, the sixty-foot African rosewoods swathed in hanging moss, and the canopy dense to the point it allowed only occasional rays of sun to penetrate to the ground. It was damp and dark. Along a faint trail they followed the porters with their loads balanced on their heads. Just like in the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies, Dick thought. Without any extraordinary imagination you could see yourself some early explorer such as Burton or Speke, venturing for the first time into some hitherto unseen, unknown place. Especially for the Emmetts’ two kids, Roz and Daniel, this was big-time adventure, and they stuck close to the heels of Moira Earnshaw, the one person of the expedition who knew best the mysteries of Kilimanjaro.

The trail made a gradual ascent, and by late afternoon they climbed above the forest zone, and at about 9,500 feet entered the region of giant heather, trees up to forty feet high draped with gossamer strands of the mosslike lichen known as old man's beard. These trees were in stands between meadows of tough scrub, and they camped under open sky, the porters getting a meal going while the team set up their climbing tents. The food was first-class, and after supper the porters collected plates and cleaned pots while the climbers enjoyed a cup of tea. The afternoon clouds had dissipated, the temperature was mild, and best of all, there were no pestiferous insects.

“We deserve a comfortable one after all those weeks of snow and ice,” Frank said.

They hiked about five hours a day, gaining between 1,500 and 2,500 vertical feet each stage, passing through the Heather Zone into the Moorlands, a cloud-level stratum that is home to the giant groundsel, a bizarre plant rising twenty feet on a naked, rubbery stalk capped with a rosette of wide, waxy leaves that at night fold against the diurnal cold. Above the Moorlands they gained the open expanse of the Shira Plateau. This was the Alpine Zone, and now they trekked over miles of packed volcanic gravel peppered with football-sized pumice rocks. The only plant life was occasional tufts of tenacious grass tucked between the black rocks. Before them, imperceptibly closer with each step, was the great mountain. Kilimanjaro was different than any of the other peaks they had attempted: there were no surrounding summits, no deep valleys to conceal the goal, only the singular massive mountain that each hour revealed itself in greater detail. Now they could see the individual contours of the Western Glaciers, and they knew somewhere in the dark lava cliffs adjacent to the glaciers, through a notch called the Western Breach, lay the route known as the Machame.

On the fourth day they awoke at daybreak to the porters singing a mellifluous hybrid of tribal chants and Lutheran hymns. They broke camp and were on the trail by 9:30. Behind them all they could see was the pyramidal summit of Meru floating thirty miles in the distance above a sea of clouds that otherwise obscured the Africa plain. This was the final Summit Zone, and although devoid of all plant life save for the ancient lichen, they did see track of eland, the migratory antelope that venture to higher elevations in search of soda salt. It was in this zone, too, where in the 1920’s hikers on the regular route found the frozen carcass of a stray leopard, and the enigma of why this animal had climbed to such a desolate place set the mood in the opening of Hemingway's celebrated short story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Early that afternoon they pitched high camp at 15,800 feet near the tongue of the Arrow Glacier. Their plan was to get an early start, leaving all the porters except the three native guides who would go with them to the top. The porters would break camp and make a girdling carry to the regular Kibo route, where all would reunite late that afternoon as the climbers descended from their traverse of the mountain. It was a good plan except that it assumed everyone would be able to make it up the climb, because otherwise there was no camp to come back to. And looking up the steep rock cliff above them, some of the team were apprehensive.

“How are we supposed to climb
that?”
Rae Emmett asked.

There was no discernible way, and Dan Emmett asked the guides to point out the route.

“Maybe over to the left side, bwana,” said the first.

“No, route stays up straight to rim,” said the second.

“No, no, no, right side goes all the way,” said the third.

While they argued Emmett looked through his binoculars and decided he would treat tomorrow as though they were on a first ascent, and scout the way as they went. One thing for sure, it would take all day to climb the cliff, traverse the summit crater to the highest point, then descend to their rendezvous with the porters. And that meant they wouldn't have any time for much filmmaking, so Steve Marts suggested they spend the remainder of that afternoon shooting on the glacier near camp.

“Just one thing,” Dick said to Marts. “No more of that cockamamie repetition like you put us through on the summit of McKinley.”

“I’ve been meaning to tell you about that,” Marts said. “Some of it didn't come out too well.”

“What do you mean?” Frank asked.

“Well, the magazine must have been jammed or something, and I didn't know it. Anyway, only a little of the summit footage came out.”

“You mean to tell me,” Dick said, “we were marching up and down that summit umpteen times in front of all those females on that all-woman expedition making fools of ourselves for nothing!”

Dick was still berating Marts as they hiked over to the nearby glacier. It was kind of a pecking order that had evolved: Frank to Dick and Dick to Marts. Unfortunately, Marts didn't have anyone to vent on. As the most tenured climber of the bunch, Emmett drew short straw to lead a 30-degree pitch where he could then belay the rope while Marts filmed Frank and Dick climbing. Emmett had to chuckle watching Frank. Even with all the expeditions he had now been on he was still awkward. Emmett held the rope snug, certain Frank would slip. He was right—a second later Frank caught his crampon on his pant leg, but he slid only a couple of feet before Emmett had the rope tight.

“Did you get that Steve?” Frank asked.

“No, Frank, how am I going to make you look like a folk hero if I record how clumsy you are?” Marts rejoined.

Emmett had to laugh. If Marts managed to turn Frank into a classical hero, it would only be by some incredible cinematic legerdemain. But even without old-fashioned heroes, Emmett knew Seven Summits was a good story. His favorite part was how the Seven Summits odyssey had changed Frank and Dick, and especially Frank. Dick knew at the outset what he was getting into (mainly because of McKinley), and if Dick had learned things from the climbs, it was probably more in the way of underscoring what he'd already done. But Frank really had changed since the beginning. Emmett felt that change started on the second Aconcagua climb, when Frank achieved his first summit. And although it was an important achievement for him, Frank realized there were other parts of the trip that were even more meaningful. There were the memories of the storm-bound story tellings, the sense of shared uncertainties and adventure, the new friends. He realized that now, by the time of the Kilimanjaro trip, for him the goal of the Seven Summits had changed from having a big challenge to having a good time with his newfound mountaineering companions. Frank had started the project motivated by achieving things that could be measured objectively, but now had learned that the real goal was to achieve subjective things that couldn't be measured finitely at all.

That evening they finished dinner early, since they would need to get up before dawn to get an early start on the summit. Before they turned in Frank said, “Bass, we haven't had a new poem for a couple of days. What have you got in that stack?”

Dick pulled the photocopied poems from his pack and leafed through the Kipling and Service.

“Have I layed on ya Robert Service's ‘The Rolling Stone’?”

“Haven't heard that one yet.”

“Well get ready. This is one of the best.”

Dick hardly had to read this one—he could recite most of it from memory. Everyone listened attentively:

“To scorn all strife, and to view all life

With the curious eyes of a child.

From the plangent sea to the prairie,

From the slum to the heart of the Wild.

From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,

From the vast to the greatly small;

For I know that the whole for the good is planned,

And I want to see it all.”

“Stop,” Frank said. “Recite that stanza again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just recite it, Bass, and listen to what it says.”

Dick recited it again, and Frank said, “That's it.”

“That's what?”

“That explains it. I’ve been trying to find some way of telling people how I feel about these expeditions, about quitting my job, about taking a year out of my life. And that says it right there: ‘And I want to see it all.’ “

The loose scree broke under each person's step, tinkling like shifting shards of glass, the only noise in the cold predawn. There was just enough light from a waning moon to see their way up the talus above their campsite. There was no wind, and the stars shown brightly in the clear sky.

For being so close to the equator it was surprisingly cold, only a little above zero. Kilimanjaro is one of the only places in the world, other than perhaps the volcanoes of the equatorial Andes, where you can go from rain forest to Arctic conditions in such a short distance.

They moved off the scree and onto a long rib of broken rock that angled about forty degrees to the crater rim. Finally the sun broke above the rim and it warmed quickly. This endless freezing and thawing had fractured the rocks into rectangular blocks that in places looked like the crumbling construction of some ancient civilization. Although the rock rib fell away steeply on both sides, it was easy scrambling and the only danger was one climber knocking a rock on another.

Near the top, however, the exposure increased, and although the climbing was still relatively straightforward, Emmett decided it prudent to rope his wife and kids past the worst difficulties. Frank and Dick seemed to be doing fine, even though Dick, as he was always wont to do, carried a heavy pack with a full assortment of “emergency” gear. Dan Bass, too, was keeping the pace and feeling strong. Both Rae Emmett and Alan Earnshaw suffered acrophobia, but they seemed to have learned quickly never to look down. Nevertheless, it was with no small relief to the two when just before noon they crested the crater rim.