That first day above ABC began after a mini-Puja....We skipped the whiskey and rakshi. We tried to focus for a minute on happy thoughts and good smoke (more juniper) and not on our cold fingers and the packs we were getting ready for our reconnaissance. The Sherpas, led by Pa Nuru and Ang Pasang, headed out and up as if they were already well acclimatized to 21,000 feet, but then Conrad had that look too. I guess everybody looks well acclimatized when you're well behind them. I was, but I kept chugging along up the busted rock path.

The medial moraine we were traveling originates from a steep side of Changtse. Changtse is the lesser mountain across the North Col from Everest, and Everest is doing everything in its power to make Changtse even lesser still. The Mother Goddess of the Earth is sending two of her best glaciers to rip the hell out of Changtse. That damage inflicted by the East Rongbuk results in a big and constant supply of rock being deposited in what becomes a neat ribbon of rock the length of the glacier. Neat from the window of a jet plane perhaps. When you are standing on it, or worse, trying to walk on it, the moraine is a mess. Sharp, loose, odd sized rock...with crevasses! The crevasses aren't that big a deal really, unless you step in them. The ice is squeezed pretty tightly together in this area, but you do get some fractures in the black ice of the medial moraine that could cause bone fractures if the climber happened to be concentrating a little too much on how far behind he was or on his tax returns...or whatever.

On this particular morning, I had no such problems. I reached the upper end of the moraine as the sun was getting full-on and strong. Putting my crampons on, I noticed (as had everybody else) that there was an absolute lack of snow about. Normally, in mid-April, there'd be some remnant of the past winter's snow on the moraine, maybe just six or eight inches or so. This time, not even that much. As I stepped out onto the blue ice of the glacier, I had to marvel at the lack of any recent snowflakes there either. A strange year indeed. There could not possibly be a better set of circumstances for a team coming to look for clues and relics of a long-past expedition. But more immediately, this utter lack of snow was going to make for some interesting climbing on the way to the North Col.

When I caught Conrad and the Sherpas at the base of the steep slopes, they were puzzling over how to tackle the task. Their puzzling was verging on the kind done with boots and spikes. Pa Nuru and Ang Pasang wanted to get halfway up to the Col as a way of seeing whether a jumbo crevasse could be skirted on its left, making for a fairly direct (translated as "steep as all get-out") route to the Col. I remembered that crevasse from last year. I had just figured that normal precipitation would have filled or bridged it. I also thought we were just going to come out and look from down on this comfy, flat bit of ice on this day and save the high angle stuff for another day. But the Sherpas were hot to go, and it seemed a shame to dampen such enthusiasm. We dampened it a little bit though, seeing as how those slopes were looking mighty blue, hard, and unforgiving. We suggested that the younger Sherpas not go up at first, until some rope had been fixed for safety.

In fact, we whittled things right down to Conrad, Pa Nuru, and Ang Pasang leading the recon with me and the others sitting patiently on our packs in the sun, watching. The three got over to the base of the headwall, and Conrad started leading out. Having watched him climb a few times before, I occupied myself with looking around the flat ice for things that might be found in such a dry season. I strolled over to Pa Nuru and Ang Pasang as they played out rope, and I'll admit I kind of enjoyed the look of surprise on their faces as the Rad-man just kept going and going. He eventually anchored the rope and had them come up again before he ran it out one more time (about four hundred meters worth of rope). By then he was getting up some steep stuff and ultimately, reached that big darn crevasse. He gave a yell that we heard down on the easy part well enough. There were bridges enough for what we had to do. Conrad anchored things off, and the three came down. Pa Nuru and Ang Pasang got out to us first, and I laughed pretty hard when they both shook their heads, flipped a thumb back toward Conrad, and said, 'He's strong!' I'd come to much the same conclusion during the last few Antarctic summers where we'd met and I'd gotten to climb behind him...way behind him usually. It was almost nice to have some independent confirmation of his strength from Pa Nuru and company, seeing as how they are some of the strongest and fastest climbers I know. We stashed gear for the next day and headed down to ABC.

Advanced Base Camp is not a very hospitable place. For one thing, it is too high for much good living. We all consider that we have only a limited, useful time there on any given push up the mountain. Stay too long and you will just get whittled down by that 21,000 feet. The good thing about ABC on the East Rongbuk is that the yaks can get there with loads of supplies and climbing gear....But they and their herders sure don't hang around long after making the delivery. ABC loses the sun at an early hour, three something, and it gets the wind at most hours. It gets to be a cold place when you aren't climbing to keep warm. In most similar environments, a person would just get in their sleeping bag if they were not exercising and building up heat. But let's face it, in most similar environments, you wouldn't have 8,000 feet of mountain left dangling unfinished above. Mount Everest requires that climbers spend a fair amount of time higher and more uncomfortable than they would on other mountains. That's what we did for about four or five days at ABC.

In the meantime, Eric, Andy, Graham, Jochen, Dawa, and the last few of the Sherpa team were making their way up valley. We spent the days pushing the route up toward the North Col. It took a few tries. There was some help and some confused interaction with the Ukrainian team in the roping effort. In the end, Conrad and Jake had pushed things up some 60° slopes with occasional straight up and down bits to keep folks on their toes. Those two and Thom Pollard sealed the victory one day with a shot all the way to the Col where they put up a tent and anchored the heck out of it. They got there in a cloud though, missing out for now, on one of the great views of the world.

The North Col, at 23,000 feet, is an Everest fanatic's version of Nirvana. One can look at the broad sweep of Chomolungma's North Face from the Col until one is blue in the face. In fact, one probably would get blue in the face at a fast rate standing on the North Col. The pass is normally a great big, air-squeezing wind tunnel. I've felt some of the most memorable winds of my climbing life up there between Everest and Changtse. In 1991, we had a camp of about four tents there without a whole lot of natural protection. In some years, the glacier breaks in such a way as to provide serac wall shelter for some lucky nylon dwellings. It didn't in 1991, and when a big howling wind storm came up, a handful of us figured the only way we could keep that valuable camp at the Col was to personally mind the fort.

Myself and the great Arizona alpinist, Curtis Fawley, held down one tent for three days of that hurricane. There wasn't any sleep during that adventure. The tent walls just flapped continually against our heads, making machine gun noises all the while. Each of us was spread-eagled inside, holding onto the tent poles to strengthen them against the assault. We had our down suits and climbing boots on for those whole three days. We had our ice axes inside the tent just in case the wind picked up about two more miles per hour and dumped us either into the crevasse we were on the verge of, or over the mountainside itself. I vividly remember looking into Curtis' eyes when we'd catch a hint of things worsening. It would go like this...from not so far off really, we'd hear it coming above the roar of the storm...'HEY YOU #!%#%&'S LET'S GET OUT AND REBUILD THESE SNOW WALLS BEFORE WE LOOSE THIS CAMP!!!' And that would be Eric in the tent next door.

We'd groan, collect ourselves, and get out in the 80 mile an hour draft and bump into each other for an hour or two with snow saws; shovels; and big, heavy ice blocks that the wind would proceed to start eating up once again. At the end of that fun, I recall we came out on a sunny morning with some seriously distorted sense of reality. The wind on the tents had dropped to about 40. We figured it was all over, and we'd be some kind of big heroes if we could snatch some victory from the storm. We agreed to go tackle the North Ridge and string some rope up that long, exposed snow slope. Suiting up and brewing up took the normal couple of hours it always does, but then we were good to go. To get over to the North Ridge proper though, we still had to get through the lowest point of the Col, which we weren't quite camped in. We set out into the crosswind, by this point down to four storm survivors. Within just a few hundred feet of camp, in that darn low point of the Col, the air was moving at an unbelievable rate.

I won't even try to estimate the speed for you (because of course then you would simply divide my estimate by two in your search for a truthful windspeed). Suffice it to say that I had my legs straddled as far out to the sides as I could get them. I was on flat, hard snow with every crampon point gripping hard, but I kept letting my eyes wander out to the east to the edge I'd go over if I lost my battle with the wind and started tumbling across the ice to the big fall. I remember that I could hardly breathe. The sensation was that the air was being torn from my mouth.

In full down suits, goggles, and face masks, with ice axes gripped for dear life, the four of us did this little, weird dance. Keeping the feet about a mile apart, we took three-inch steps, pivoting slowly so that we could turn around safely, without a word or gesture to one another, and return to our camp. We dragged back to the little 40 mile an hour breeze around our Camp IV and found ourselves sitting in the ice block quarry we'd mined for days. I can't really remember ever being so tired (we say that a lot in Everest stories...it is often true...short memories).

But there was still this terrible weight hanging over us. George Dunn finally articulated it: 'Well Simo, I guess we could spend the day here building the walls up some more...' To which Eric replied, 'the hell with that, I'm going down!' I was never more relieved in my life (I know, we say that a lot in Everest stories too). We all found the energy after another hour or so to stand up again, pack our stuff, and stumble and slide down the ropes to ABC. But that was back in the old days of nasty weather. Things are much better now, and the guys got our camp at the Col in a pretty darn good, protected spot (unless the wind comes from the East...but it wouldn't do that).

We finished out the initial ABC tour when Graham, Simonson, and Andy tagged us at ABC for relief. Only all was not so good. Graham, who'd summited Everest in '93 and been plenty high plenty of times without any trouble was experiencing some numbness in the extremities of one side. With a chill, we realized that he was experiencing the dangerous effects of disrupted blood flow in his brain. Taken to not too far an extreme, the effects of such disruption can be stroke and death. We were at 20,000 feet (Camp II, we like it better than IC now) when we fully realized the problem and began to take aggressive action. We loaded up our packs with Graham's gear so that he could carry only an oxygen bottle and walk fast. That he did, with Lee Myers (our good doctor) and four of us alongside just in case. Thankfully our help was not needed. Graham got himself safely down to Base Camp.

During our restful time down here, the Sherpas have got the round trip from ABC to the Col and back down to three hours. That is outrageous! With full packs! Andy has been hitting it hard up there on his personal acclimatization plan, three times to the Col in three days. We've been kicking back and eating well. It all begins again now, the process of going higher, feeling better where you felt worse last time, then going up to where you feel worse again. Conrad, Thom, Tap, and Jake headed up today. Me and the Boss, Jochen and everyone else will head up tomorrow. Our Trek compatriots get in the game fairly soon. They'll start working their way toward ABC under the capable leadership of Heather MacDonald, Heidi Eichner, and Tomting Sherpa.

Things are going well at Everest Base Camp when people are spending the day in T-shirts fanning themselves, saying, 'it sure is hot!' We don't believe for a minute that it will stay this way.

—Dave Hahn, Climber

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