I like the ladder. There must be some confusion among non-high-altitude climbers over that little assemblage of metal at 28,500'. There is even confusion within our own camp. At least once a day, Eric says the thing is green and Andy shouts back that it is gold. (Please don't weigh in here with some color facts, we like the present form of the argument.) But the idea that there is a ladder on the upper part of the Second Step can be kind of mind wobbling.

					"If, on the way up, the Step is the drawbridge to the summit, on the way down, it is the executioner who will take a big swipe at you with a battle axe to keep you from the good life and the fields of green..."

By now, perhaps you know the history of that odd little place that acts like the drawbridge to the summit pyramid. The "known" history starts with the Chinese in 1960 since we don't know YET what George Mallory and Andrew Irvine did in that vertically challenging spot on June 8, 1924. Hard for me to believe that they tackled it the same way we all have in the years since 1960, since that route is somewhat contrived and not really the one a climber's eye would be drawn to naturally. But the route that the Chinese pioneered in 1960 at the expense of frozen flesh and digits is the one we're now familiar with.

Had nobody ever thought to put a ladder up there, we'd all have tackled it in similar fashion to the way we climb right now up the small vertical walls on the way to the North Col. Hang a rope, climb the rope, using whatever cracks and holds and nubbins the cliff offers for added upward mobility. The trouble with that method when applied to the Second Step of the Northeast Ridge is that part about hanging a rope. How does the rope get up there and what keeps it there? Good question. If you aren't a climber, you may well have to look in a book to get this part straight... but rip three quarters of the pages out first and burn them, since most of the normal rules don't apply up in the wild blue yonder where airliners cruise.

Let's skip ahead to a rope already in place over the crux to the step. Say, the expedition from some other year put the thing there and you get to the base of that dark little corner, with 8,000' of space and one big Rongbuk Glacier below your heels. Perhaps you consider yourself lucky and you hop right on that rope. Your last will and testament better be in order. That rock making up the Second Step doesn't seem to like pitons for any predictable length of time. It squeezes them right out and the heck with whatever was sorry enough to be tied to them. Likewise, a rope anchored by virtue of being tied around some rock horn atop the step is a rope waiting for its big break. Such a line would have been blowing in the wind, rubbing the rock, abrading through and melting in general from the high altitude sun.

So, to be fair to the folks back home, you probably wouldn't just go jumping on some mystery rope up the crux in question. You'd climb the crack like some Yosemite stud-bolt. That implies that you'd have a trustworthy partner in tow who'd patiently belay you while his feet and fingers turned blue. Then you'd whip off your shirt, let your muscles ripple for the cameraman (who's teeth might well also be chattering) and place a piece of protection, some sexy camming device or metal wedge to clip the rope through so that a fall could be held at a reasonable minor bone-cracking distance. Climb higher, flex for the camera, place another piece and clip it. Alternatively, place the piece and hang like a dog from it, telling the cameraman to get stuffed while you take advantage of this hold you've added to the mountain. Anyway, this technique does work well in California and Colorado and even in Antarctica and New Jersey. It should work like a dream up within spitting distance of Everest's top. We don't really know though, because ever since the colored ladder got tossed into the equation, not a soul has been tempted to wedge a body part in the crack over to the left.

I do like the ladder, as I said. Now if there were no ladder, and somebody proposed putting one there, I'd argue vehemently against such a plan. If there were no trams and trains up the beautiful Alps and somebody wanted to build some, I'd lay my body in front of the construction equipment and say "over my dead body"... but on the other hand, since these trams and trains are already in place and happen to go the places I like going... OK, where can I get a ticket?

Back to the ladder, it isn't exactly a ski lift. The Chinese left plenty of sport in the game. Say you were going to paint the house or clean the rain gutters (merely hypothesis on my part, since my PO Boxes and Storage units need no such care.) Would you place the foot of the ladder within six inches of the base of the wall, so that it was oriented straight up and down? How about getting up on the top rung of that vertical ladder, and reaching up another five feet or so for a handful of leaves from the gutter. Now decide that you really oughtta fix the TV antennae while you got the ladder out, so launch yourself up from that top rung and pull over the gutter without ripping your down suit. You get the point. The second step is a bear.

In 1994, when I started off the mountain-top, alone and in a snow storm at an hour that has become quite unfashionable in these days of cut-off times — I didn't have a Rolex — I had Second Step on the brain. At least I did until I ran out of oxygen and stopped thinking of anything besides osmosis, gas transfer and foot placement. I was wondering how in the heck I was going to get back down that cliff face. If, on the way up, the Step is the drawbridge to the summit, on the way down, it is the executioner who will take a big swipe at you with a battle axe to keep you from the good life and the fields of green. I thought that relatively clearly as I reached the top of the cliff in '94.

					"Checked it all one more time since I was curious what the rest of my life might bring, and then I eased over the final edge..."

I had to ease myself over the "rain gutter," as it were, three times before my feet found the top rung of the red ladder and my guts said it would be OK to trust it. I lowered myself a rung or two, but then and there had to fish out my headlight and get it situated. In the swirling and quiet snow, I padded down the ladder, and then continued in the dark to the edge of the lower precipice that completes the step. I found a rope I recognized (that was better than complete mystery but not entirely good since I recognized that the rope was old and had to be suspect). I used my trusty ice hammer, the one I'd been so proud to buy when I started to be a pro mountain guide, to whack a couple of old pitons back into submission and position. I rigged my rappel. Checked it all again, since my oxygen had been gone for a while. Checked it all one more time since I was curious what the rest of my life might bring, and then I eased over the final edge.

I'd picked a perfectly vertical face of the darkest rock. Slithering slowly down the rope, I directed my little beam of light out into the void. A little like being in one of those glass, water and snowflake filled paper weights when a good shake has been applied. I'm not terribly brave, but I didn't have much time or inclination to be scared at my predicament then, so I thought instead that it was a beautiful scene. Just then, I bumped gently against the rock wall and the hammer I'd placed in a holster at my waist was neatly lifted by the mountain from my possession. I heard it bounce and clatter down the North Face into the snowstorm and I smiled at the thought that I no longer needed my beloved hammer and that in fact, I was now better off without it's useless weight. The mountain gained a relic. Hard to imagine that some human will ever come across that fine hammer again... another needle in this biggest of haystacks. Me, I lived through an endless night of little puzzles and dead-ends and snow slides and saw a beautiful morning at 28,000' where with a little help from my friends I got back to the planet I'd started from.

I don't mind the ladder a bit. I intend to stand right on that sucker once again when it comes time to film our rope gun, Conrad. [Editor's Note: Conrad Anker will attempt to free climb the Second Step on his summit bid. An elite climber who's never been on Everest or at this altitude, Anker will approach the crux of the route the way Mallory and Irvine would have. Click for expedition leader Eric Simonson's thoughts on climbing the Second Step.] I'm going to give the BBC/PBS NOVA film of our climb a bird's-eye view of Conrad coming to terms with that crack while Jake belays him and Tap heckles him. We, and those who see our film, will then know what league this "drawbridge" is in. Perhaps it will help us all to organize our thoughts as to what Mallory and Irvine did or didn't do in 1924.

—Dave Hahn, Climber

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