Seven Summits (57 page)

“This is the last rock before the top,” Breashears said.

Dick reached down and pried loose a small stone and put it in his pocket. Breashears and Ang Phurba got up and Dick followed. The slope was still gradual and easy, and Dick was making one step, breathing several times, then making another. The only sound was his muffled breathing in the oxygen mask. He looked up and saw Ang Phurba and Breashears sitting on top of a snow mound off to the right side. Breashears was waving and Dick thought once again that Breashears was exhorting him to keep moving.

Dick didn't realize it, but Breashears was actually motioning him to slow down so he could get the camera out of his pack and film Dick making the last distance. They were now within 150 feet of the top.

But Dick kept moving. He was in a groove, climbing with a steady rhythm. He made ten steps, fifteen, then paused and looked up. To his right he saw Breashears and Ang Phurba starting his way. He moved his head to the left and saw the slope rise, then stop. Behind was nothing but purple-blue sky.

Is that it? he thought. How far is it?

He couldn't tell. Fifty yards, maybe a hundred? He wasn't sure; again, his depth perception seemed off. But whatever the distance, he knew he could do it. He was too close not to.

He had no uplifting thought, no growing joy knowing victory was imminent. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, on breathing evenly, on keeping a rhythm. He glanced up again.

Wait a minute, he thought. It's not a hundred yards at all. It's not fifty … my eyes are tricking me again. It's right here. I’m twenty feet away.

He felt a surge of energy—a sense of power—as the remaining distance closed. It was a sensation just like he had had on the other continental highs, only more extreme: that nothing in the world could stop him. He hummed in his mind the Colonel Bogie march from
Bridge on the River Kwai.
He straightened up, squared his shoulders, he was finishing in style, with class.

Thank you, God, thank you, God, he told himself. I’m here, I’m finally here. I can finally check “The Big Mother” off my list!

He stepped on top of the roof of the world.

He hunkered over his ice axe to catch his breath, then stood up. Breashears and Ang Phurba were only a few steps from joining him. He looked to the north, toward Tibet, but misty clouds hid most of the view. The other direction was also mostly obscured.

Too bad, he thought. I was hoping for a clear day. No, don't say that. Don't regret anything. Just thank the Lord I’m here safely, and ask Him to please help me get down alive.

He squatted down on one knee, arm over his ice axe. Now the exhaustion from his final charge hit him, and he was too tired for any emotion. Breashears and Ang Phurba made the top. Breashears lifted his oxygen mask, and hugged Dick.

“You made it, Dick … oldest man on Everest … first on the Seven Summits.”

“It's our victory together,” Dick said between gasps. “You got me up—and I know you'll get me down.”

“Let me check your oxygen,” Breashears said. He cleared the ice from the lens of Dick's regulator gauge.

“My God, Dick, you're on empty! We have to go down right now!”

“B.S.! We're not leaving until we get some pictures and I say my spiel.”

Dick was definitely determined to do his summit routine and at the same time suspected that Breashears was making up a story about the oxygen bottle being empty in order to keep Dick from wasting time.

“I’m telling you, your gauge is on zero.”

Without saying a word, Dick handed Breashears his camera from his parka and started fumbling in his backpack for his family pictures, flags, and note to Marty. He wasn't about to let an empty oxygen cylinder deter him from recording this moment to remember in his old age.

“First, get me holding pictures of my family.”

“Okay, but let's make if fast.” Breashears was reviewing what they had before them: getting down the Hillary Step, getting up the South Summit, descending the steep ridge below the South Summit, then the snow gully, then the steep rock sections they had climbed before sunrise. It was a long way, clouds were gathering, and Dick was out of oxygen.

Breashears took still pictures of Dick. Then he dug in his pack for the movie camera. While he was getting it ready Dick gazed down through the clouds that had broken enough so he could see patches of the Rongbuk Glacier, his expedition home in ‘82. There was only a light wind, and other than the sound of his breathing through the oxygen mask, it was quiet. It seemed the right time to recite the prayer of thanksgiving he had composed in camp 2. He said silently:

Thank you Lord for getting me here safely. And I pray You will get me down as well. Without You nothing is possible. And I want to thank my wife, Marian, our children, loved ones, friends and co-workers who have supported and backed me these last four years while I’ve played hooky much of the time. And I want to express my thanks and deepest friendship to my partner Frank, who stood by me on the other summits, and who is standing by me in spirit here on this, the highest one. And I want to dedicate this achievement to my climbing mentor, Marty Hoey, without whose inspiration and guidance I wouldn't be here, and who lies below me here at the base of the North Face, cradled in the lap of Chomolungma, Mother Goddess of the World. And finally I also want to dedicate this moment to all the plus-fifties in the world who share with me the conviction that the second half of life can and should be the best, as so beautifully expressed in Tennyson's immortal poem, “Ulysses,” the last few lines of which are:

Though much is taken, much abides;

and though

we are not now that strength which in old days

moved Earth and Heaven;

That which we are, we are;—

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate,

But strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Dick reached in his pack for the plastic bag with the card to Marty. He pulled it out and read it silently to himself:

30 April 1985
Top of Mt. Everest

Dear Marty,

Well, I didn't train for this one either—still frenziedly fighting the Snowbird battle—but I made it anyway because ol’ “Thunder Thighs” was leading me all the way, looking over your shoulder periodically and giving me a thumbs-up. Thank you for throwing down the gauntlet with, “Bass, your hot air won't get you up that mountain,” and then paying your ultimate mountaineering compliment when I made it: “Bass, I don't believe you, you're an animal!” Those statements transformed my life and gave me a strength and will, as well as a mountaineering life-style I would never have known otherwise. I’ll be forever indebted to you—just like all who knew and loved you, and those who their lives touch as well. Yours was truly a class act, and God evidently didn't want to dilute it by letting it stretch out too long. With your favorite lines of “Lasca” in mind, I’ll close by saying: And I wonder why I do not care for the summits that are like the summits that were. Does half my climbing heart lie forever afar, by Everest's North Face below the Great Couloir? Requiescat in pace. Dick

P.S. The enclosed Snowbird patch went to the top of all the seven continental highs with me. And so did you—just like you said you would.

Dick slipped the card back in the bag along with the Snowbird patch, then reached in his pocket and added the summit rock he had picked up a few minutes back. He then sealed the bag, kissed it and tossed it over the edge of the North Wall, in the direction of the Great Couloir.

#8220;I’m not kidding, we have to start down immediately,” Breashears insisted again after he finished a few frames with the movie camera. Ang Phurba was anxious to begin the descent too. Throughout the morning he had been removing his goggles because they were fogging, and now he thought he was starting to go snowblind.

“I’m telling you, this is serious,” Breashears continued. “Without oxygen, it's going to be a close call.”

“There must have been a leak,” Dick said. “What are we going to do?”

Breashears checked his own bottle, which had about 400 P.S.I., enough to last almost an hour at two liters.

“I’ll give you my bottle,” Breashears said.

He took the bottle from his pack, and put it in Dick's. Then he said to Ang Phurba, “Keep your own regulator set at one liter a minute. When you get to the South Summit turn it off. Then when Dick's bottle runs out, we'll give him yours. Understand?”

The Sherpa nodded affirmatively, but Breashears wasn't convinced he understood.

“Remember, turn it off at the South Summit.” Breashears felt it was fair to ask him to do this since at that point he was physically the strongest of the three. Ang Phurba started down, then Breashears, then Dick.

When they got to the narrow side slope traverse with the icy patch that was like walking a tightrope, Breashears said to Dick, “Remember, make each step count. There are no unimportant steps.”

Never let your guard down,
Dick told himself.
Remember how much you have to come home to. I love you.
Concentrate on each step. Just like David says, there are no unimportant steps.

Dick again skipped across the icy section and could see Breashears waiting at the top of the Hillary Step.

“To get down this,” Breashears said, “wrap the fixed rope around your arm and over your shoulder, like this, then around your other arm. Then slide down slowly and carefully.”

Breashears went first, then waited at the base to make sure Dick did it correctly. Dick was used to this technique and did it quickly and easily, for a change. When Dick was down Breashears told him to go first: they next had to climb uphill to the top of the South Summit, and Breashears knew that because he didn't have oxygen he would be slowest.

Even with oxygen, Dick was only slightly faster. Now he was starting to dig within himself to find the strength for each step. He recited some of his favorite maxims:

If you never stop, you can't get stuck.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

You're not a champion till you come up off the mat.

Dick got to the top of the South Summit and waited for Breashears.

“Where's Ang Phurba?” Breashears asked when he got there.

“He's already taken off. I think he's concerned about his snow blindness.”

Now Breashears was really worried. He checked Dick's oxygen bottle: it was next to empty.

“I hope Ang Phurba waits down there,” Breashears said. “Without his bottle I don't know …”

They rested a minute, then got ready to start off the South Summit.

“Let me know when you think your oxygen's finished,” Breashears said. “And remember, there are no unimportant steps.”

Now Breashears again went in front of Dick, stopping every few feet to turn around and check on him.

“Don't lean into the slope. Concentrate on your footing. Keep every point on the surface.”

They had hardly left the South Summit when Dick started feeling his strength diminishing, like someone had pulled the plug on whatever reserve he had left. He made a step, breathed three times, four, five, made another step, breathed again, again, again, trying to catch his breath. He pulled the mask off his face.

“David, I must be out of O’s.”

Breashears knew it was only a matter of time anyway, but he knotted up at the thought it was happening so soon, so high on this dangerous section.

Dick descended to him, and Breashears unscrewed the oxygen cylinder and let it fall down the steep mountain face.

“There's seventeen pounds off your back. That should help.”

This is what I get, Dick thought, for not acclimatizing more, for not getting in better shape before I left home.

He made another step, breathed, stepped, breathed. He breathed again, again, again. He halted, trying to catch his breath.

They continued to balance painstakingly down the hard-snow ridge where it was steeply exposed on both sides. Dick was too tired to have the same degree of fear he had earlier going up this section. Then it was a question of a lack of technique, of maybe slipping; now it was a concern about endurance, about just standing up. The angle eased slightly as they entered the section where loose snow covered the shinglelike shale rock. With each step Dick had to fight for his balance, and within five steps he had to stop and try to catch his breath. He gasped at air so thin it was like it didn't exist. His head was swimming, and it took a full minute or two before his breathing started to slow.

He shouted to Breashears, who was thirty feet below, “I can't handle this. I’m too weak.”

Breashears, remembering how Larry Nielson had slid on his fanny down this section two years before, yelled back, “Sit down and slide.”

I should have thought of that myself, Dick thought. He sat down, feeling like a kid about to have fun on a snow-covered slope. Unexpectedly, the tension in him broke, and he laughed. With all the fear, fatigue, uncertainty, here he was momentarily recharged and gleefully anticipating a slide down a snow slope.

The relief was only momentary. As soon as he pushed off with his hands he started going too fast. He was on the verge of losing control, of taking an 8,000-foot ride all the way down the Kangshung Face. He frantically dug in with everything he had: his heels, his buttocks, his elbows, his free hand, his ice axe. One second, two, three … he was still sliding and accelerating … four, five … then he slowed and stopped. He could feel his heart pounding against his chest, the pulse knocking in his temples. He was gasping for air and felt like he was suffocating.

It took a full five minutes for his nerves and breathing to calm. He was downslope from David's footprints, so now he tentatively started traversing over and back onto the track, still on his buns. He moved with all the deliberation he could muster.

Remember, there are no unimportant steps. Remember, there are no unimportant steps. Remember …

What just before he had guessed would take five minutes to get down was stretched to forty.

For God's sake, he said to himself, don't foul up now.