Dave Hahn

Not everyone has size 14 feet. I pity those underdeveloped folks. How else are you going to see where you place your boots with an O2 mask on your lower face, ten inches of clothing on your chest and tricky, angled ground to negotiate.

My fourteens are bright yellow too, I'm not proud, I'll take any advantage. We stuck close together, Pinzo out in front, Heather next, then myself and Jim. A few other little headlights were out there, but now I was pretty well focused just on our four.

"We hit the Yellow Band. Besides being yellow, this rock is steep..."

After about forty minutes on moderate angled snow, rock and dirt, we hit the Yellow Band. Besides being yellow, this rock is steep. We entered a roped "gully" of sorts which is fairly strenuous. You don't want to put your weight on the rope since, chances are, it is anchored to something weird and possibly something mobile, but you are sure glad the rope is there. Alex had reported getting hit in the face a few times the day before by falling rock in this area, so we were being careful... didn't want to go away looking like Alex.

Guiding Jim in this area consisted mostly of carrying extra junk and watching him well. He was climbing strong, and so this worked fine.

"As the great climber George Dunn once said of the North Ridge route, 'It is tricky'..."

There wasn't much I could say that I hadn't said in days, weeks and months past. And there wasn't much he'd hear through my mask and his gear.

Up through the Yellow Band, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I must have been nuts to have done this part in '94 in new snow and largely without rope. None of the gully will impress a rock climber back home. It is like climbing onto the dining room table, then up onto the China cabinet, then over onto the thing that holds the table linen. With your crampons on, an axe in your hand and pulling rope around. (Don't try this at home, kids.) But none of that is impossible, even if you took away the carpet, the floor and the 9,000' of the basement to simulate the drop to the Central Rongbuk Glacier. But as the great climber George Dunn once said of the North Ridge route, "It is tricky." But also fun, and we were enjoying ourselves on the morning of May 26th.

That lack of stars was turning into a sheet of cloud as the sky lightened though. At six in the morning, as we pulled onto the actual Northeast Ridge, there was a wind. Not a terrible wind, but a real and persistent one of about 25mph.

— Dave Hahn, International Mountain Guides' Expedition Leader

DISPATCHES

COMPLETE INDEX OF DISPATCHES