The Ascent
Jeff Long
The treacherous "dark side" of Mount Everest is the setting for this high-stakes adventure, the story of ten men and two women who pit themselves against the "ultimate summit". The ascent is the supreme test of physical and emotional discipline. Yet the mountain, in its otherworldly, ice-sheathed beauty, offers two of the climbers a special promise of release from a haunting past.
The expedition takes place in the Forbidden Kingdom of Tibet, where high in the ruins of rock-bound monasteries, the remnants of a shattered culture struggle to survive in the face of Chinese genocide.
Jeff Long, himself a veteran climber, based this story on his own experiences in the
Himalayas. Author of a previous novel, Angels of Light, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.
'The Ascent is an astonishing novel, a darkly brilliant tale haunted by the ominous yet
charged with hope and beauty' – David Roberts, author of Moment of Doubt
'An unbelievably powerful story... I would recommend this to anyone interested in the
Himalayas' – John Acklerly, Director, International Campaign for Tibet
The Ascent
Jeff Long
Copyright © 1992 Jeff Long
To Barbara
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One writes the way one solos upon a mountain, alone and yet not at all alone. I owe
The Ascent to many people, among them Cliff Watts, Charles Clark, Michael
Wiedman, and Kurt Papenfus, all physicians, all climbers. Over the years, David
Breashears, Brian Blessed, Fritz Stammberger, Arnold Larcher, Matija Malezic, and
Geof Childs have shared their ropes and wings with me in the Himalayas. I give
special thanks to John Paul Davidson and all the members of the BBC crew of Galahad
of Everest, and to Jim Whittaker of the 1990 International Peace Climb. Thanks also
to Craig Blockwick, James Landis, Gwen Edelman, Verne and Marion Read, Rodney
Korich, Jerry Cecil, and, as always, my parents for their support, and to Jeff Lowe,
Mary Kay Brewster, Annie Whitehouse, Karen Fellerhoff, and Brot Coburn for their
extraordinary tales. Elizabeth Crook, Steve Harrigan, Doe Coover, Pam Novotny, and
Rex Hauck helped raise me from the abysses of my own making.
I will remember forever Jeanne Bernkopf, who showed me that language is spirit,
and spirit, the rope with which we all inch higher. In the human rights arena, the
following people and organizations provided guidance and inspiration: Michelle
Bohanna, John Ackerly, Tenzin Tethong, Lisa Keary, Marcia Calkowski, Rinchen
Dharlo, Woody Leonhard, Spenser Havlick, Steve Pomerance, Matt Applebaum,
Leslie Durgin, Buzz Burrell, Chela Kunasz, the International Campaign for Tibet, the
Office of Tibet, the U.S.-Tibet Committee, and the Lawyers for Tibet. I am especially
grateful to Cindy Carlisle and Michael Weis for their vision and tenacity. Finally,
without my editor Elisa Petrini's magic these pages would be nothing but stone.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The Kore Wall route is an imaginary monster, drawn in bits from the south and west
faces of Makalu and glued to the north face of Everest. Himalayan veterans will also
note my fiddling with certain geographical features of the region, for example the 'loss'
of the second road exit from the Rongbuk Valley, the blending of Shekar Dzong with
the Rongbuk Monastery, and the movement of Chengri La from some twenty miles to
the east. I hope these liberties won't ruin the mountain's realities.
This story is fictional, but the tragedy of Tibet is not. China's illegal occupation of
Tibet constitutes one of the great crimes against humanity in this century. Having
killed off one sixth of the Tibetan population over the past forty years, the People's
Republic of China continues to systematically plunder and destroy the Tibetan
culture, religion and environment. What was once Shangri La, however imperfect, is
now a graveyard and gulag garrisoned by Chinese troops and overrun by 7.5 million
Chinese colonists. A century ago, Native-Americans of the Wild West were conquered
with similar violence fueled by similar ideals of racial supremacy. However, a century
ago, there was no such sanctuary as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The
twenty-first century may yet see Tibet restored to its sovereign status.
PROLOGUE – 1974
From far North, a breeze rushed and the forest creaked in a wave. The rescue men
waited in the frozen white of their car beams, acid from too much coffee, souring
memory of their midnight breakfast in a truck stop – the fake maple syrup, the bacon,
the men's jokes to a waitress with yellow teeth – but then another breeze came
through.
It had been an all-night drive to reach this dead end in the heart of Wyoming.
Sometime around one the Jimi Hendrix on their airwave had surrendered to
honky-tonk and then near four the cowboy ballads had fallen into dark mountain
static. The road had quit at dawn and the forest had swallowed them whole and now
here they were, kicking about a wild goose chase. If the dead or wounded – the lost –
in fact existed, there was ho evidence, none, no car, certainly no tracks, not with this
fresh dusting of snow.
None of them were big men really. And yet they mustered like unshaven giants – at
least to Abe's eye – stomping the snow with lug-soled boots and snorting great
streams of white frost through their nostrils. They scared him, though for the most
part that was because he had finally, at the age of almost eighteen, succeeded in
scaring himself. For as long as he could remember, Abe had wanted to climb
mountains. The trouble was he was no mountain man, just an east Texas oil patch
brat, a college freshman who'd never climbed in his life except through the pages of
National Geographic and adventure books.
A ghost of white powder cast loose from the boughs to ride the air in ripples. Snow
splashed Abe in the face, then went on. Once more he was left facing the forest in a
cupful of men, a watchful boy with a long blade of a face and brass wire-rims and a
squared-off homecut. He was wearing immaculate white-on-white winter camouflage
purchased with hurried guesswork yesterday afternoon at Boulder's army surplus
store. The rest of the men were dressed in real clothes: wool and down mostly, most
of it patched up and greasy from use.
Abe could tell they weren't yet finished hanging their jokes on him. It was hard
saying what stung more, the justice of their mockery or the mockery itself. He didn't
blame them. He looked ridiculous. He didn't belong here, that was sure. But then
again, they were all outsiders. Dawn had broken an hour ago with a bright but steely
winter sun. And so their engines were kept running and their headlights were on and
they were pretending to get illumination and heat from the man-made beams. To
some extent, they were all making believe.
At long last their wait ended. 'Got him,' a voice among them shouted, and the pack of
men thronged the short-waves set. It was a Fish and Game pilot calling in. He'd been
scouring
the peaks since first light and had, he announced, just sighted one of the
accident victims.
The rescue leader spoke up, a gruff, meticulous sort with a stained moustache and a
white helmet stenciled with ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE. 'Ask him can he sweep for the
other victim,' he said to the radio man. 'Tell him there's got to be two. Nobody climbs
alone. Not in this kind of backcountry. Not in winter.'
But the leader was fishing. In fact, they had no facts. No names, no locations, no
missing person reports. Nothing but a drunk elk poacher's phone call about a climbing
accident on a mountain in Wyoming.
The pilot answered from far off. He refused. The weather had turned and he
couldn't stay. There was only the one victim. He'd looked. He approximated his
coordinates for their map finding.
'Ask him the man's condition,' said the leader.
'Oh, he's down there,' came the thinning voice. 'He's alive all right. Flopping around
on the high glacier.'
'Damn it,' snapped the leader. 'Is the man hanging on a face? Is he wandering? Is he
tore up? What's his condition?'
'Wait till you see this one,' the pilot said. 'In all my days...' Their reception tore to
rags.
'Repeat, over.'
The voice resurfaced, small and halt. '...like a gutshot angle,' they heard. That was it,
'Screw that,' someone said.
'Well, whoever he is, let's go save him,' said the leader, and they broke the huddle to
go saddle on their gear.
In all the mass of hardware and meds they off-loaded from the trucks and jeeps,
there was not one single item Abe knew how to use or even handle. Abe recalculated
his foolishness. He was a liability, not a savior, and his bluff was getting called. But he
couldn't bring himself to confess.
He had joined up, gambling the rescue team would teach him the ropes, literally, as
time passed. Afraid they would judge him too young, or his unchipped fingernails or
bayou accent would expose him as a flatlander, he had entered the rescue office shyly
and with his hands in his pockets. When they asked if he had experience, Abe had said
yes, though carefully, keeping the sir off his yes, and dropping the names of some
mountains in Patagonia which he figured to be safely obscure. Only two days later –
yesterday afternoon – they'd phoned him in urgent need of dumb backs and strong
legs. And now he could not share that this was the first snow he'd ever seen and the
coldest sun he'd ever woken to. This was his first mountain.
They set out through the trees, shortcutting along a frozen river. The water was
animal beneath its sturdy shell. Abe could hear it surging under the ice. Its serpentine
motion came up through his boots. Here and there the river ice had exploded from the
cold and its wounds showed turquoise and green.
Christmas was near and so they were undermanned, meaning everyone was
overloaded. Some carried hundred-meter coils of goldline rope and homemade brake
plates, others hauled the medicines and splints and the team's sole, precious Stokes
litter, a crude thing made of welded airplane tubing and chicken wire.
Abe stayed alive to the other men's cues, to how they breathed and how they set
their feet and leaned into their pack straps and to how they just plain managed. With
every step he was reminded all over again of his hubris, for he'd loaded his pack
himself, hastily and without any order, and now something was stabbing his kidneys
and the bags of saline solution kept rocking him off-balance. Each boot step chastised
him. He didn't belong, he didn't belong.
The sun died at noon in a gangrene sky. Shortly after, they broke the treeline, but
their first clear view of the coppery mountains was undermined by dark storm clouds
looming north and west. Even Abe could tell the advancing storm was going to be a
killer, the fabled sort that freezes range cattle to glass and detonates tree sap, leveling
whole forests.
The line of men struck north across a big plateau scoured bare to the dirt. The wind
sliced low, attacking them with a fury that Abe tried not to take personally. In a
matter of minutes his glasses were pitted by the highspeed sand. If not for the ballast
on his back, the wind would have sent him tumbling down the mountainside.
Midway across the plateau they startled a herd of skeletal deer grazing among the
stones. 'They oughtn't be up here,' one rescuer observed. 'It's strange.' The deer
clattered off with the wind.
The cold day drew on. The air thinned and people quit talking altogether. They
hunched like orphans beneath the overcast. Wind bleated against the rocks, a
maddened sound.
As it turned out, none of the team had ever visited this region. For budgetary
reasons, Wyoming was far beyond their normal range of operations. Abe was secretly
gratified that the group seemed as lost as he felt. When the leader unfolded their
USGS topo to match its lines with the geological chaos around them, the wind ripped
his map in two and then ripped the halves from his hands. After that the group
tightened ranks. The mountains took on a new sharpness against the ugly sky.
Nearing the coordinates given them by the pilot, the team reached a natural
doorway that suddenly opened onto a hidden cirque of higher peaks. Despite the
poisoned sunlight, it was a spectacular sight in there. To Abe it looked like a vast
granite chalice inlaid with ice and snow. On every side glacial panels swept up to
enormous stone towers girdling the heights. All around, men muttered their awe, and
Abe thought this must be how it was to discover a new land.
And then they saw the climber.
'He's alive,' someone said, glassing the distance with a pair of pocket binoculars.
'There's one alive.'
Abe couldn't see what they were talking about until a neighbor handed him a
camera with a telephoto lens and pointed.
Perhaps a half-mile distant and a thousand feet higher, a lone figure was kneeling
upon the glacial apron, unaware that rescue had arrived. His head was bare, black hair
whipping in the wind. He swept one arm up and out to the storm and Abe could see
him shouting soundlessly.
'That poor bastard,' the man with the binoculars declared to the group, 'he's talking
to the mountain.'
'Say again.'
'I swear it. Look yourself.'
Abe breathed out and steadied the telephoto lens. The mountain dwarfed the tiny
figure and Abe tried not to blink, afraid of losing this solitary human to all that alien
expanse.
The climber repeated his motion, the arm raised high, palm out, Abe realized that
he was seeing desperation or surrender or maybe outright madness.
After a minute, the climber bent forward and Abe noticed the hole in front of his
knees. It was a dark circle in the snow and the climber was speaking to it as if sharing
secrets with an open tomb.
'He's praying,' Abe murmured, though not so anyone could hear. But that's what he
was seeing, Abe knew it instinctively. Abe was shaken, and quickly handed the
camera and telephoto lens back to its owner.
'Well if he's got a buddy, I don't see him,' the man with the binoculars pronounce
d.
'One's better than none, folks. Let's go snatch him before this front hammers us in.'
They hurried. Another twenty minutes of hard march over loose stone brought
them to the base of the glacier. Abe edged over and stood on the ice, feeling through
his boot soles for the glacier's antiquity. He'd never seen a glacier before, but knew
from his readings that this plate of snow and ice had been squatting in the shadows
ever since the last ice age.
The rescuers opened the big coils of rope and strapped on their scratched
red-and-white helmets and their cold steel crampons. Abe watched them closely and
covertly. Between bursts of wind, they heard a distant howling. It didn't sound
human, but neither did it sound animal. A gutshot angel, Abe remembered.
With a hunger that startled him, Abe wanted to get up close to the blood. It was
imperative that nothing keep him from that fallen climber. Something profound was
awaiting them up there. He could tell by the way these hardened men had turned
somber and frightened. Whatever it was, Abe wanted to see the sight raw, not after
they had packaged it and brought it down in a litter. It was an old hunger, a simple
one. Abe wanted to lose his innocence.
They set off up the glacier, three to a rope, alert for crevasses. Abe was alive to the
new sensation. They stepped across a two-foot-wide crack in the field. It cut left and
right across the glacier. As he straddled the crevasse, Abe filled his lungs, trying to
taste the mountain's deep, ancient breath.
One of the rescuers pointed at skid tracks leading up the glacier. It reminded Abe of
an animal's blood trail. 'There's his fall line,' the man said. 'How'd he live through that?'
Abe stared at the rearing stone and ice, but it was a cipher to him. Standing here in
the pit of this basin, it struck him that ascent was less an escape from the abyss than
the creation of it. He peered at the heights. A girdle of hanging snow ringed the upper
rim. It was an avalanche about to happen. The thought gave new urgency to his step.
As they drew near, Abe heard more distinctly the climber yelling and calling to
himself. Closer still, and the climber heard them and he turned his shaggy head. Abe