This is part II of a three part interview with mountain climber Garry Porter. Part I is here.
S&TT: DESCRIBE THE SUMMIT DAY: We wanted to be moving by midnight and so it was a 10:00 pm wake up call after 4 hours of trying to sleep. Inside our tent, with 3 of us, it was a minus 20 degrees and you know it’s colder outside. You can hear the sherpas moving about and the adrenaline rush is on. I have laid awake for the last four hours going over details in my head of what to bring and what to leave behind, even though I have gone thru the same mental discussions many nights before. I remember distinctly that my climbing partner, David Burger, is sleeping soundly while I am lying awake worrying. Sort of pissed me off, because he had taken a light sleeping pill and I had not. Go figure, he’s sleeping and resting and I’m thinking. I’m also asking myself whether I believe that I have the energy left to make this summit attempt and return safely and with all my digits intact. Questions, questions and questions to mentally answer and then it’s time to start getting ready to go. Since I slept in my down suit and on a low flow of oxygen, getting ready inside the tent doesn’t seem to take long but actually it took nearly an hour to finish packing and putting my boots on. Total food consumption on the climb from camp 3 to camp 4 and leaving at midnight was probably a granola bar and a cup of hot water. Not much for a summit attempt, but it’s what I could get down.
Outside the tent, it’s bitter cold but fortunately not much wind and already the sherpas are moving up the mountain thru the triangular face of Everest. Since I was the oldest in the group, my strategy was that I didn’t need to lead or be first or second or third, but that mentally I had to stay up with the group and that was very important to me. Don’t lag behind or fall back but stay with the group. And so I did and actually felt pretty good. The sherpas in front of me would take about 10 steps in succession and then stop and breathe heavily over their ice axes. Since we are not roped together, I used my old fashion rest step technique and would take a step, take 5 or six breathes, take another step and so on. I usually reached the sherpas while they were still trying to catch their breath, so I could stop and wait for them to move again. Above me, the sherpas were fixing rope on portions of the steeper slopes and so you clip into them or when you can, you look for older fixed rope from previous climbs. Because of the fixed ropes, there is a natural separation in time between the climbers and I was content to be in the rear as long as I stayed close to the group. And so we climbed. No one to talk to, and pretty focused on the next step and the next step and so on. Our guide had said we had a minimum ascent rate that we had to achieve or we were moving too slowly and the first benchmark was being at the balcony by 7:00 am which is roughly 2000 feet above camp 4. I arrived there at 5:30 am and I know others had been there already a half hour or longer. Time to change oxygen bottles, drink a little water, eat a granola bar and keep moving. At this point, I remember telling myself that we are really going to make it. We are way earlier than our guide’s time line, I’m feeling OK and maintaining the pace I want. Yippee, but then I cautioned myself not to get too cocky. But it sure seemed like we had a good shot at the summit. It is still incredibly dark and cold, but my feet and hands seem OK and we’re headed to the summit of Everest which is only another 1,000 feet above us. By $100 new high tech. gloves are frozen and makes it difficult to grip my ice axe and so I switch to some old O.R. mittens and wore them the rest of the time. So much for the high tech solution. But conditions are changing and the wind starts picking up. The sun finally arrives and you feel a little warmer because of it, but the wind is gusting stronger all the time. It’s now 7:30 am, we are standing on the South Summit at 28,600 feet and it’s blowing so hard you can’t hear anyone speak, even when you remove your oxygen mask. But we are on the second highest summit in the world with 400 feet of elevation to go to the highest summit in the world. One of our climbers and the sherpas are in a notch below the South Summit trying to clear a blue climbing rope that is frozen in the snow and which we need to cross over the final summit ridge. It’s not far across the ridge, but it’s a knife edge with a 8,000 foot drop on one side and a 5,000 foot drop on the other. The Hillary step is plainly visible as is the final summit approach to Everest but without a fixed line; it will be very risky to proceed. Our guide is on the radio talking to base camp about the weather conditions and around 8:00 am, he makes the call to turn around. And so the decision is made and we turn around. Hindsight being what it is, it was the right decision at the time, because the 40 mph winds at the South Summit were 100 mph winds at the South Col. When we returned to the camp 4 in the early afternoon, our tents were destroyed and there was no place to recover other than keep heading down the mountain. That’s another story for another time.
.jpg)
S&TT: DESCRIBE WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE NEAR THE TOP OF EVEREST. So much has been written by people much more articulate than me, that it’s hard to add many more words, but I will give you my impression. In a single word, it was unbelievably AWESOME. I think the sunrise started somewhere around 6:00 am and the sheer darkness gave way to shapes and figures and more important the horizon. As we continued to slowly climb higher, I could see the surrounding mountains come out of the dawn and could only think that “damn, we are a long way up” as everything was below us. I thought I could see the slight curvature of the earth but that may not be an accurate statement. Even though I had a camera tucked into an inside pocket of my down suit, I never took it out to capture the moment. Max burn rate on our oxygen bottle was 4 liters per minute and I had deliberately set mine for below 3 liters per minute so as to conserve oxygen and still be able to crank it up if I felt I needed it. By the way, oxygen does not “enhance” your performance on the mountain. It’s not the Viagra of mountain climbing. It merely helps your toes and hands stay warm and hopefully your brain to think clearer. But what the heck, you’re here on Everest, so you’ve already demonstrated that you don’t normally think too clear, but it is nice that maybe you won’t freeze any digits. So it was plant the ice axe, take one step, take 4-5 breathes, look for the next step, plant the ice axe and so on. This is a long way of saying that I had plenty of time to reach into my down suit and snap a picture during those 5 breathes, but I didn’t. Could not have captured the grandeur of the mountains anyway. I remember watching the climbers and sherpas in front of me and knowing that there was only one way to go and that was up. And then everyone was stopped at a relatively flat area and I knew we were at the South Summit and only 400 feet in elevation gain to the summit. Never been more alive than in that moment. Oops, did I forget to mention that the wind was screaming like a banshee?
.JPG)
S&TT: ANY REGRETS FOR TURNING BACK? I say that I have no regrets, but that’s a lie. I think about the decision frequently and although I know that at the time is was absolutely the right one and I’m alive to prove it, there is part of me that wishes we could have continued. But we had no more rope to fix lines to cross the summit ridge, the wind was at least 40-45 mph and it would have been very very risky. That and the fact that our camp 4 had been destroyed due to the same high winds while we were heading to the summit could have spelled disaster for us had we not turned back at the South Summit at 28,600. But everything else was so right for the summit attempt. We were there early in the morning, everyone felt pretty good, including me and I had no doubt that I had sufficient energy left to summit and get safely back to camp 4 to recover. I can still see the summit and Hilary Step ahead of us in my mind and know we could have made it except for the wind. Such is climbing.
S&TT: ARE YOU GOING TO TRY AGAIN? Hopefully, yes. There are 4 of us, all who have been on Everest before, that are seriously considering an Everest attempt in the spring of 2007 from the Tibet side. We’re still working out the details like the cost and logistics but I think two of us are pretty well committed and the other two are as well. We just need to firm it up and put some money on the line. For me, cost is a major issue and that is partially why we are choosing the North ridge of Everest. That plus it will be a different side of Everest for the whole group.
S&TT: BESIDES EVEREST, WHAT WAS YOUR HARDEST CLIMB? It was probably Agoncagua in Argentina. It’s a tad less than 23,000 feet and not a terribly difficult or technical climb but it’s one of the Seven Summits. The last 1000 feet is in a rock/ scree field that is horrible. One step up and two steps sliding down. It was miserable climbing and at an elevation than I had not experienced before. I just plain ran out of gas on the ascent and only thru sheer will or stubbornness and a patient guide did I make the summit. But then I had nothing left to go down. Physically, my left leg just gave out. There was nothing that I could do other than pick myself up and keep going down. I obviously made it, but it was a long long day. On a positive note, it really helped me focus my training if I wanted to continue climbing big mountains.
S&TT: MOST DANGEROUS CLIMB? Other than Everest, it was Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska. We chose to do what is called the traverse route where you go up the standard West Buttress route but rather than summit and return the way you came, we carried everything up and over and came down the Muldrow glacier. It was absolutely thrilling. It took our group two attempts to finally summit, but then we headed down the other side of the mountain via Karstens ridge. Karstens ridge is a steep narrow ridge with sheer drop offs on both sides. We then had to descend miles of the Muldrow glacier which had hidden crevasses everywhere and then trek across 25 miles of tundra with grizzle bear signs everywhere. And to finish the climb we had to cross 4 rivers, the biggest being the mighty McKinley river. It was one exciting challenge after the other, and the summit of Denali was just part of it. We had a world class guide, a great group and of course, the spectacular Alaska Mountain range. Would I do it again, you bet.
S&TT: EASIEST CLIMB? From my bedroom to the bathroom
Tomorrow more climbing stories, including a summit of Mt. Rainer, the costs of climbing and some thoughts on David Sharp.