Preston Mountaineering Club

Newsletter extracts

Everest - the Everest2k expedition

an extract from the Millenium Journal

by Mick Cottam

The view from my tent was spectacular, looking straight up at the North face of Everest, its features individually identifiable. To the left of the summit I could clearly pick out the three rock steps on the Northeast Ridge, our intended route. Centrally the view is dominated by the summit and the almost continuous line of the narrow Japanese and Hornbein Couloirs on the North Face rising straight as an arrow directly to the summit pyramid. This is the route taken by Loretan and Triollet in their lightening 36 hour ascent from the bottom of the face and glissading down the same route in just 4 hours. To the right the summit of Nuptse just appears over the base of the west ridge of Everest.

Getting to this point had been eventful in itself. From the comforts of Kathmandu we had travelled overland to the Chinese border at Friendship Bridge and Zangmu. We were held up there for three days by landslides that had obliterated the road and required porters to carry each item of equipment past blockages on two occasions. Eventually passing the last landslide we drove on to Nyalam at night, at one point those in the lead vehicle were convinced they saw a snow leopard cross the track in front of them. Apart from its infamous nightclub frequented by its equally infamous prostitutes, the main attraction of Nyalam is that it is at around 3600m and surrounded by ideal peaks for an acclimatisation walk so we spent a day there ascending to the snowline at around 4800m. The others carried on down but I decided to spend an extra hour higher up before descending to get the best of the altitude for acclimatisation. Feeling happy with my progress I descended back to the town and was sauntering down the main street when I heard a scuffle behind me then felt a sharp pain as something clamped on my leg. I automatically kicked out as I swung round catching the dog midriff and sending it flying. Back at the hotel with Rob Callingham, the expedition doctor, we investigated the damage. As I feared the dog had managed to draw blood and take a chunk out of my leg. I asked Rob his opinion.

"Without vaccine within 24 hours you could contract rabies" was the reply. "Is that bad?" I asked. "Well yes in 99% of cases it is fatal"

Enough said, however getting rabies vaccinations in the middle of Tibet is not easy. After running up a huge phone bill we managed to get some sent up to the border, I would have to travel down again that night, collect the vaccination and get someone to inject it the next day. This was managed, the path eased no doubt by the fact that our Liaison Officer had also been bitten by the same dog on the same day and also needed the vaccine. My next problem was to catch up with the expedition who had carried on through Tibet. So now I had to go straight to Tingri at 4300m -not good for acclimatisation as I was to find out later. When I arrived I felt OK and the next day went for a walk with the others up to 5000m. Here we got our first view of Everest, still a full days drive distant but a great photo opportunity as it shimmered in the distance and rose majestically above the rest of the horizon which included Makalu on the left and Cho Oyu on the right.

The next day we travelled to Base Camp at 5200m on the Rongbuk Glacier, a vast field of rubble and not much else. I set my tent up so that from its entrance I had the spectacular view of the North Face of the mountain. Setting up base camp took much of the day and we were all too hot and feeling the effects of the altitude to various degrees. Over the next few days as everyone else adjusted to the altitude I got worse, my disrupted acclimatisation taking effect and I eventually decided to descend to a much lower altitude until I could start again. With most of Tibet being above 4000m, this effectively meant going down to Kathmandu. A week later I was back, although once again things had not gone smoothly as the vehicle we came back in refused to stop where we wanted and went almost straight in to Base Camp.

This time however I seemed to adjust and felt OK. One or two other members were not faring so well. Dr. Rob Callingham had not acclimatised at all and decided to go home and Richard Walker had suffered from eye haemorrhages and had to go down to Kathmandu. After a few days I felt ready to go up to Advance Base Camp (ABC). I went up to an intermediate camp at 5800m to spend the night. Dave Allason-Pritt, the expedition leader, and his wife, Freddie, who was also our communications operator also came up. The rest of the team was already at ABC and busy establishing the camps up the mountain. The next day I felt the altitude as I ascended past spectacular ice pinnacles and glacier formations to ABC at 6400m. On arrival I was exhausted and could not be coaxed into joining the home made game of 'Risk' that the others were involved in. The cook did a marvellous job of preparing food at ABC, managing such delights as pizza, chips and cake. However the effects of altitude dampened everybody's appetite apart from David Jewel, our New Zealand member, who somehow managed to eat everything that was put in front of him. The rest of us survived mostly on cup-a soup, in fact it was about all I managed while up there. Meanwhile on the mountain things were going well. North Col Camp (7000m) and Camp 2 (7800m) were established and stocked, our 4 Sherpas managing to carry loads and cover the distances in a fraction of the time taken by team members.

After several days at ABC I planned to go up to The North Col but the night before I had a bad night, was restless and breathless. I decided to descend to Base Camp again for a few days then come back up. I set off down and immediately felt terribly tired. Before long I was able to descend only 50m at a time before having to sit down and rest for half an hour. My body just wasn't working as it should. I had no power and could not get my breath. At one rest I started coughing and was surprised to see frothy red blood come up. I instantly knew what was happening -a sure sign of Pulmonary Oedema (fluid in the lungs). I knew that without immediate descent this was very serious and could be fatal. I was still well above 6000m and had a long way to go so knew I would need help. I stopped the next climbers who came up the path, they turned out to be a pair from the British Army team who we had previously struck up a rapport with. One of them was a medic, he immediately confirmed my own diagnosis. His companion carried on up to get more help while he started to accompany me down. Eventually we made it to a Japanese camp at 6000m. Members from my team arrived with the necessaries - oxygen and a Gammov bag. I spent an hour in the Gammov bag and felt better while inside but as soon as I came out to continue the descent, I felt as bad as before. With the lungs full of fluid there is very little oxygen exchange going on in the body. However with oxygen on 4 litres/minute (2 litres/min is normal for climbing at altitude) I could walk and continued the slow descent helped by various team members who took it in turns to carry the oxygen bottle for me. Each small undulation of the moraine had me gasping and I had to stop to catch my breath at the slightest ascent. By now it was snowing and dark, though thankfully not too cold. Over the last few hundred metres I was at the end of my reserves and almost collapsed with relief at seeing the tents. Once inside I struggled into a sleeping bag and a cup of soup was thrust into my hand. It was 2.30am. I had set off down at 9am the previous day and it had taken me over 17 hours for a descent that normally takes about 5.

I knew that I had to descend further to recover but was still not best pleased when informed that I could get a jeep down at 6am which was then only 3 hours away. I got in the jeep at 6am and promptly fell asleep again and remained that way for most of the journey to Zangmu where we stopped overnight before continuing to Kathmandu. It was several days before I could even climb the stairs of the guesthouse without being out of breath. By then there were only three weeks of the expedition left, not enough time to warrant going back in to base camp. In any case I could not be sure that the condition would not re-occur by going up again too soon, so I arranged to catch the next flight home. Richard was still in Kathmandu, his insurance had put him up in the best hotel in the city, so at a Jazz festival being held there one night we managed to find a back door in to avoid paying and as his eyes had not yet recovered I described the 'views' to him as we drowned our sorrows on free beer that we signed for all night on somebody else's room bill.

Up on the mountain things were hampered by bad weather, mostly high winds that blew straight across the ridge. Russell Brice, who has been taking commercial expeditions there for the last 4 years, commented at one point that it was the worst season for weather that he had experienced. The necessary weather window eventually arrived and on the 17th May, two of our team members, Fritz Vrijland from Holland and Paul Walters from Australia made it to the top. Fritz had made the first Dutch ascent of weather during the season and the expedition ran out of time at the end of May.

Acclimatisation to these altitudes is a fickle thing, the slightest ailment or disruption in the essential acclimatisation process can have serious consequences. My advice to anyone contemplating a similar trip is to listen to your body and more importantly - take a big stick!