Relics from the Void
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On March 10, 1953, an army of nearly 400 men left Kathmandu, Nepal, and set out RELICS to conquer the highest peak on Earth. There were 13 mountaineers from Britain and New Zealand, 362 porters and 20 Sherpas from Nepal, together carrying over 10,000 pounds of gear. By then, the summit of Mount Everest had eluded 11 previous expedi- tions. Dozens of men had been killed. But this time would be different. Eleven weeks after leaving Kathmandu, two unlikely companions — a beekeeper from New Zealand named Edmund Hillary and a Sherpa from Nepal named Tenzing Norgay — stepped onto a small, wind-blasted, heavenly lit altar made of snow and rock and became the fi rst men in history to summit Everest. It was a triumph of the human spirit. Hillary and Norgay became overnight legends, FROM and mountaineering was changed forever. But what of the things they carried with them? The men wore 44-pound backpacks, bodysuits made of cotton and down, windproof smocks, nylon trousers, waterproof boots, silk gloves, heavy oxygen tanks and wool base layers and carried ice axes made of wood and steel. At the summit, Norgay placed chocolates as an offering to his gods; Hillary buried a small crucifi x as an offering to his. They may have reached the highest point on Earth by their own sheer will, but without gear — the items that kept them alive, and the items that gave them purpose — the summit would have been impossible. The legacy of legends like Hillary and Norgay continues today in the greatest living THE mountaineers. They still embark on epic pilgrimages to the world’s highest, holiest, most challenging peaks; they still rely on gear to reach the summit, and to return intact. And all mountaineers know of a profound mystery: When a simple thing, be it a pair of glacier goggles, a watch or a bag of blessed rice, ascends a mountain, it transcends the material realm; it becomes a piece of history, an outward manifestation of the moun- taineer’s spirit, a holy relic. And every relic tells a story. BY MICHAEL FINN ILLUSTRATION BY STEPHANE MANEL VOID PHOTO BY HENRY PHILLIPS 243 CONRAD ANKER BROKEN PORTALEDGE POLE Numerous fi rst ascents of the world’s most diffi cult climbs: the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru, a Himalayan peak long thought to be impossible; Vinson Massif’s East Face and Rakekniven Peak’s Snow Petrel Wall in Antarctica; El Capitan’s Continental Drift in Yosemite; Latok II’s West Face and Spansar in Pakistan; three summits of Everest (one without supplemental oxygen); captain of The North Face Athlete Team. It was our third night on Meru. We were probably two or three pitches below the big head wall, halfway up the 14,977-foot-high mountain — right below the Shark’s Fin itself. We had crossed the Rubicon. That night, we pitched our portaledge, a single-point suspen- sion clif dwelling with an aluminium frame. In the morning, my climbing partner Renan Ozturk was sitting right on the edge of the tube when it bent, then snapped. Our stuf went fl ying out — my down pants, luckily, got hung up on a spike of rock about forty feet below. I would’ve been fucked if didn’t have those. Before the 'ledge snapped, I would sleep with just a piece of rope tied around my belly. After the 'ledge snapped, I started sleeping in my harness. Renan and Jimmy [Chin] got onto the clif with their senders, and I went down and got my insulated pants, came back up, put the portaledge back into its haul bag, and then we pressed on. That night, we did some MacGyver repairs on it: a piton for an internal splice, two ice screws on the outside and some athletic tape. When I got back to Montana, I engraved “Meru 2007” on it and crimped some wire and an old piton onto it. Now it hangs in my garden. I quite savor the exposure out there. Looking out of the 'ledge, knowing that you’re impris- oned by gravity, but freed from gravity too. You’re sailing on a sea of granite. FEATURE 245 ED VIESTURS ROLEX EXPLORER One of 33 people in history (and the only American) to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks (the fi fth to do so without supplemental oxygen); seven ascents of Everest, one summit of Kanchenjunga in Nepal (third highest peak in the world), one summit of K2, one summit of Annapurna and one summit of Vinson Massif (highest peak in Antarctica); 208 summits of Mount Rainier in Washington; numerous alpine rescue missions; published author and motivational speaker. Throughout my whole career I’ve been fi xated on being punctual. I lived by one APA SHERPA rule: If I wasn’t on or near a summit at two J U L B O G L A C I E R o’clock, I had to turn around. That gave me this margin of safety to make sure that I GOGGLES could get back down. I never broke that rule. I was always on the summit at two o’clock, or well before. I remember looking at my watch as I was climbing Annapurna. We were still going up, and the clock was ticking, getting closer and closer to two o’clock. I remem- ber we reached the summit at exactly two. Tied for most Everest ascents of In 2007, six of my family members, two friends and I climbed Everest. We called it the . I keep questioning myself on that partic- any person in history (21 summits); DELEU Super Sherpa expedition — between the eight of us, we had fi fty-fi ve Everest summits. I wore ular climb and on that particular day: had led the expedition of the 1,050-mile KYLE these Julbo glacier goggles on the expedition. They protected me from snow blindness, which / it taken us longer, would I have broken my long Great Himalaya Trail (widely BAUER I’ve had before. The Super Sherpa expedition was the fi rst time an all-Sherpa team climbed rule? That’s what a lot of people do on the considered one of the world’s most EDDIE Everest without working for Westerners. Normally, Sherpas just help Westerners get to the mountain; they have rules that they have BY diffi cult treks); founder of the Apa summit; this time, we didn’t have to suf er for anybody. We didn’t have to carry their oxygen lived by for a long time, and then there’s PHOTO Sherpa Foundation. tanks. We didn’t have to carry their water, fi x their ropes or set their tents. It felt like more of an that one day they break their rule. And that ORIGINAL adventure. When we’re working as Sherpas, we don’t really get to think about adventure. We’re ; kills people. You live by rules. You have pro- just doing our job, helping Westerners realize their own adventure. But the Super Sherpa expe- tocols. It’s the one day you decide to take ILLUSTRATION dition was our adventure. It was a very proud moment in my life. On the summit, we all hugged, a shortcut or break or stretch a rule when took a photo together and shouted with joy. It was my seventeenth ascent of Everest. PHOTO accidents happen. 246 THE AMERICA ISSUE FEATURE 247 JEFF LOWE TRICAM PROTOYPE Credited as the father of North American ice climbing and mixed climbing; highest point reached on the North Ridge of Latok 1, the Himalayan peak widely considered the world’s most diffi cult unfi nished climb; over 1,000 fi rst ascents, including the Grand Central Couloir on Mount Kitchener in the Canadian Rockies, solo fi rst ascent of Ama Dablam in the Himalayas, and Metanoia, a solo direct route on the North Face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps; featured in the award-winning biographical fi lm Jeff Lowe’s Metanoia; recipient of the Piolet d’Or Lifetime Achievement, the highest award in alpinism. Time after time in my life, when things were going wrong, I found that doing a long, hard climb would set me straight. I’d come to the Eiger in the Swiss Alps in February 1991 be- cause climbing is my joy, and I really needed some joy in my life then. I needed a way out of the chaos I’d made, and to make a new direction for myself. But at the same time, I was there to make art, if I could — to create something that had never been seen before. I had read Heinrich Harrer’s book The White Spider when I was twelve. The epic of the fi rst ascent of the North Face of the Eiger never left my mind. In February 1991, I wanted to climb the North Face in a style that honored its pioneers. Anderl Heckmair and company didn’t have bolts in 1938 — just simple pitons of a limited range. They risked not being able to start their crude stoves to melt water; if their cotton and wool clothing got soaked, they COLLECTION might freeze to death. To even approach that level of commitment, I had to stack the deck LOWE against myself: go alone, in winter, without bolts, and try the hardest unclimbed route JEFF I could fi nd on the highest part of the wall. My intention was to make the purest climb I THE could manage. FROM These Tricams were a staple on my climbing rack for two decades and were with me on the , BEAVERS Eiger.