A week ago, we emerged from the icefall and returned to base camp after aborting our summit attempt high on the mountain due to heavy snowfall. It was the right decision but continues to weigh heavily on our minds. Three days after our return, the skies cleared and we were able to helicopter back to Kathmandu. Since then, we have been cooped up in our hotel in Kathmandu, with the city in full Covid lockdown, trying to figure out how to get home. All the regularly scheduled flights remain shut down by the government. It has been an interesting, at times emotional, week.
REFLECTING IN BASE CAMP
After we got back to base camp, Cyclone Yaas continued to pound the upper mountain, and base camp was feeling the effects. The snow just wouldn’t stop. After arriving cold and wet from our final descent, we were craving some of those sunny mornings sipping coffee outside the dining tent or lying in our tents in our long underwear relaxing, but we didn’t get any. Here is a photo of my tent and how it looked every morning as I crawled out to shake off the fresh snow.
So we had plenty of time for reflection and team conversations. It was a strange mix of having just been through an intense experience on the mountain, having fallen short of our ultimate goal, being unable to connect with our families due to the internet being knocked out, and not knowing when we were going to be able to get out of base camp. Josh jokingly suggested : “maybe we all actually died up there and we are now in purgatory “. It kind of felt that way.
Everyone needed to process what we had just been through, especially having not summited. Exceptionally goal oriented people have a hard time dealing with not achieving major goals. It was interesting to observe how different team members handled it. I kept reminding people, (including myself), that turning around at the right time, for the right reasons, is a major part of successful mountaineering. But I think there is something about Everest in particular that promotes a “binary” perspective on success: you either summited or didn’t. Probably it’s because people have prepared for years, invested heavily on multiple fronts to be there, and then spent many weeks on the actual expedition. And the expeditions are heavily focused on maximizing their success rate: getting as many people to the summit as possible.
Our team collectively has a pretty good perspective on things. We were committed from the start to a “go late” strategy and stayed committed to it. No strategy has a 100% success rate, and a go late strategy certainly doesn’t when two cyclones in three weeks obliterate the back half of an Everest climbing season. Despite that, if the Yaas-related snowstorm had followed the forecast, or arrived 18 hours later than it did, we would have summited with the mountain to ourselves. Conversely, if – after we called off our summit attempt- we had tried to stay at the South Col until Yaas blew through, we may never have returned. We made the right decisions.
I described in an earlier post how Everest typically offers up around 7 or 8 summit days a season, with more in good years and as few as 4 or 5 in bad years. We were hoping for a good year, and ended up with a really bad year. Depending on how you count, this year there were practically speaking three summit days. The two on May 11 and 12, when the Bahrain team and a bunch of other people summited, weren’t possibilities for us given the timing of our go late strategy. The third on May 24, when most of the rest of the people summited, was with 20-20 hindsight the one we missed. But at the time we were purposely waiting, in order to avoid crowds, and were not aware that a second cyclone was about to blow in. We played the probabilities as we intended to, and would do so again. As can happen, the probabilities just didn’t end up matching what actually occurred.
In reality, there ended up being a couple more summit days after Yaas cleared out, for those willing to take the risk. When the snow finally stopped on May 29, the winds over the summit dropped and the skies cleared. The problem was that the days of heavy snowfall had created dangerous conditions on the upper mountain, with particularly high avalanche risk. As an example, a large avalanche completely destroyed our cook tent at Camp 2, which hadn’t been taken down yet. If we had been up there at that time, lying in our personal tents less than 20 yards from the cook tent, we would have been less than 20 yards from never coming home. Other avalanches rolled down the Lhotse face, taking out tents at Camp 3.
Of the few expeditions still on the mountain, about half called off their efforts, unwilling to risk the safety of their members and Sherpas by climbing in those conditions. Some helicoptered down from Camp 2 rather than climbing, feeling that the risk of descending through the icefall was too high. The remaining teams pressed on, and some were rewarded with successful summits on May 31 and June 1.
Our departure from base camp happened really quickly. It was surreal. On May 29 we were sitting in the dining tent eating breakfast and sensed the cloudy skies starting to brighten. Suddenly Lakpa Rita walked in and said: “helicopters here in 30 minutes!” We ran to our tents and jammed remaining items into our duffel bags, like the sleeping bags we had just rolled out of.
This is how base camp suddenly looked, (that is again my tent in the foreground):
Before we knew it, we were climbing into a helicopter….
….which ferried all of us and our duffel bags a short distance down the valley to the village of Periche. It took three round trips to get us all there.
In literally minutes, we had gone from winter to early spring.
While waiting for the chopper to return with more of our group, Tony bought some beers from the small tea house nearby. Here is Jangbu cracking into one.
Then the choppers ferried us further down the valley to Lukla, the village from where we began our trek to base camp in the beginning of April. In more minutes, we had moved from early spring to early summer.
After waiting in Lukla for several hours, we had a final, longer chopper ride back to Kathmandu. The city was in full Covid lockdown, with the normally chaotic streets totally empty and everyone indoors. It was eerie, but made for a quick ride from the airport to the hotel.
HANGING IN KATHMANDU
For the past five days, we have been holed up in the Yak and Yeti hotel trying to figure out how to get home. With all the regular flights grounded, the only practical option has been to get on a US Embassy- sponsored “repatriation” charter flight, but the Nepal government has to approve each of these flights on an individual basis and the process surrounding this has been murky. A total of around 40 climbers are the only guests at the hotel, all in the same situation. The vibe has been an adult version of “youth hostel” and “senior week before college graduation “, with a bunch of people who share a common experience all in a state of transition.
As at base camp, I have been struck by how everyone is processing their recent experience on the mountain. A number of the climbers here in the hotel summited. Those of us who didn’t are happy for them, and also quietly envious. Some people who didn’t summit are clearly haunted by it. A couple of days ago, Ben and I were sitting at breakfast when a climber from another team asked if he could join us. His group all went for the summit on May 24 and he was the only one who didn’t get to the top. He described all of this in detail, kept using the word “failure”, and kept talking about how he was driven to understand the source of his failure. I explained that I didn’t see it that way, but it clearly didn’t register. The next morning, he asked if he could join us again. Said he found talking about it with us really helpful. We said sure and let him talk some more.
I am not wrestling with feelings of failure. As mentioned previously, I am proud of how close we got to the summit, how we made the right decisions in challenging circumstances, and how we got ourselves down safely. I continue to feel that I got 90 percent of what I dreamed of from climbing Everest. But the remaining 10 percent does leave an emotional hole. You spend years of training and weeks of climbing to put yourself within a seven hour climb of the top of the world, and we were there. Before the clouds rolled in and it started snowing, I could see the route right in front of me, including the path in the snow created by prior climbers. I was feeling stronger and handling the altitude better than I ever could have hoped. I was headed to the top. Just like traversing the yellow band and Geneva Spur, I was picturing reaching the balcony, climbing the ridge to the south summit, and climbing over the Hilary step. I had rehearsed in my mind unfurling the Moor and Mountain flag and the photo of Jill, John, Holly, and Will on the summit.
I am already getting asked if I will go back and try again. Most of my fellow team members are sure that they will. Many people who eventually summit Everest do so on their second or third attempts. While it is way too early to say definitively, my initial instinct is no. Climbing Everest demands so much, on so many fronts, and impacts family members significantly. Standing on the summit, while a powerful dream, is not a core driver of my self identity. 90% feels pretty good, and I am very grateful to have been granted it. But never say never. If next spring you start seeing images of Himalayan peaks in my social media feed, you will know what is going on.
FINAL REFLECTIONS
Seventeen months ago I set out on my gap year, which Covid then helped turn into a gap year and a half. I wanted to get back in shape and enter some ski marathons, which I got to do. I wanted to climb some big mountains, which I also got to do. I wanted to do some long distance sailing, which I didn’t really get to do but can always do in the future. In particular, I wanted to climb Mount Everest, which I also got to do, despite waiting a year longer than initially planned and dealing with some complicated Covid dynamics. The past few days, while walking around the hotel gardens or sitting in my room looking out the window at the hills surrounding Kathmandu, I have been struck by how meaningful an experience it all has been. I have learned a ton, mostly about myself but also about others. I have lived through an experience that has impacted me significantly, making a mark that will never fade, generating memories that I will treasure forever. What more could I ask for?
I have said it multiple times, but I have to say it once more. The sleeper gift of my gap year has been this blog. Not so much the writing of it, although that has been meaningful, but the overwhelming feeling of support and interest I have felt from all of you. This includes family members, old friends, new friends, friends of friends, and people I only recently connected with. It has meant the world, and I am profoundly grateful for it. Namaste!
More on the good news front: our team cleared onto an Embassy- sponsored charter that leaves Kathmandu at 10:00pm tonight. We are headed home.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for being a part of my journey.