ANNALS OF ADVENTURE THE MANIC MOUNTAIN

Ueli Steck and the clash on Everest. BY NICK PAUMGARTEN TH RIFFI G AN H NAT JO

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TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 46—133SC.—LIVE ART R23602—EXTREMELY CRITICAL PHOTOGRAPH TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PRESS RUN 4C eli Steck’s closest brush with death, many of whom work as porters and guides April 27th was the day that a team of or at least the time he thought it like- for the commercial expeditions on Ever- Sherpas were installing the fixed rope. It Uliest that he was about to die, came not est. This was on the first day that the is an essential and difficult job, involving when he plummeted seven hundred feet weather cleared for a summit push. The heavy gear and extreme working condi- down the south face of Annapurna, or next day, the crowds went up—hundreds tions on an ice cliff riddled with crevasses. spidered up the Eiger’s fearsome North of aspirants, most of them clients of com- The day before, the Sherpas, with help Face alone and without ropes in under mercial companies, and their Sherpas— from three Western guides, had nearly three hours, or slipped on wet granite and, amid the traffic jam approaching the completed the job but came to an untra- while free-climbing the Golden Gate summit, four climbers died, of exposure versable crevasse, which had forced them route of El Capitan with his wife, on their and cerebral edema. to take the whole rope system down and honeymoon, but, rather, while he was This year, Steck arrived in Nepal at the return in frustration the next day to start hugging his knees in a tent on Mt. Ever- beginning of April. He intended to spend over along a different path. est, hiding from a crowd of Sherpas who as long as six weeks prior to his summit Earlier in the month, there had been a were angry that his climbing partner had push acclimatizing to Everest’s high alti- meeting at base camp among the expedi- called one of them a “motherfucker,” in tude, going on forays up the mountain tion leaders at which it was agreed that Nepali. They were threatening to kill him. from base camp, which is 17,600 feet while the Sherpas were fixing the Lhotse He had no escape. He had planned every- above sea level. (The summit is 29,028 Face no one else would climb there. Steck thing so scrupulously. The intended route feet.) He’d kept his plans secret. He has and Moro, a small professional team and up the mountain was sublime, the condi- long disdained revealing the details of ex- not part of the commercial-trip ecosys- tions perfect. He had spent years honing peditions in advance. He doesn’t indulge tem, had not been at the meeting. his body and his mind while tending to in what he calls “tasty talking”—boasting Later that morning, Steck, Moro, and his projects and the opportunities that of feats he has not yet accomplished. Also, Griffith reached the base of the face. A few arose out of them. As a climber, he knew a climber must generally be discreet about Sherpas and an American guide asked that the mountains can foil the best-laid a bold route, to prevent other climbers them not to climb. “The Sherpas asked plans, that in an instant a routine ascent from going there first. He was not dis- nicely,” Dawa Steven Sherpa, an expedi- can turn into a catalogue of horrors. But it pleased when climbing blogs reported, in- tion leader who had two Sherpas on the would be ridiculous to die like this. The correctly, that he was going up the South fixing team, told me. “Sherpas are really expedition had hardly begun. Face. He had something else in mind. afraid of the Lhotse Face. They really get Steck had made his first trip to Ever- His partners were Simone Moro, a nervous.” But the Westerners felt that they est in May, 2011, at the age of thirty-four. forty-five-year-old Italian who’d been could continue without interfering with He’d built a reputation as one of the climbing in the Himalayas for more than the fixing crew. They climbed a hundred world’s premier alpinists—“the Swiss twenty years (he’d summited Everest four and fifty feet to the left of the fixed ropes. Machine,” some called him, to his dis- times), and Jonathan Griffith, an English They themselves had no ropes. They were may—by ascending, in record time, alone climber and photographer who lives in climbing “alpine style”—that is, without and without ropes, Europe’s notorious Chamonix. By the end of the month, they any fixed protection, porters, or supple- north faces and then by taking on bold were established at Camp 2, at 21,300 mental oxygen. Each had crampons over Himalayan routes, with style and speed. feet, beyond the top of the Khumbu Ice- his boots and an ice axe in one hand. Un- Everest hardly fit the pattern. In recent fall, a tumbling portion of the Khumbu encumbered, they moved fast. Two Sher- years, accomplished mountaineers in Glacier mined with crevasses and seracs. pas, annoyed, used their ice axes to knock search of elegant, difficult, and original At 8 A.M. on April 27th, they set out chunks of ice down at them, until a West- climbs had tended to steer clear of its for Camp 3 (24,000 feet), where they ern guide, hearing of this over the radio, crowds, expense, and relative drudgery. planned to spend a night, to acclimatize. told them to stop. After an hour, Steck and Still, Everest is Everest. Steck felt the pull. To get there, they had to scale the Lhotse the others reached the level of Camp 3, That spring, five hundred feet from Face, a towering slope of sheer ice and where they would have to traverse the face the summit, he turned back, concerned wind-battered snow. The Lhotse Face is to get to their tent, which meant they that frostbite might claim his toes. He the main ramp up to a saddle called the needed to cross over the fixed line. They was also uncharacteristically spent, after South Col and then on to the standard chose a spot where four Sherpas were at climbing two other eight-thousand- Southeast Ridge route, the one that Ed- the belay, below the lead fixer, and moved metre peaks in previous weeks. (The goal mund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay as- slowly past them, taking care, Steck says, of three in one trip was new.) But an idea cended sixty years ago and which is now not to touch the ropes with their crampons had taken hold: a route that, if accom- tramped by hundreds of amateur climbers or to kick chunks of ice onto the Sherpas plished from beginning to end, would a year. Every season, the commercial op- working below. After Steck crossed the represent a milestone of modern moun- erators put in fixed ropes along the route line, the leader of the fixing crew, Mingma taineering, a glorious plume. He began up the face and the ridge—a kind of ban- Tenzing Sherpa, who was working fifty scheming and training for it. He returned nister to the top, which any client can clip or so feet up the face, began yelling at a year later, to attain the summit via the on to and pull himself along using a Steck and banging on the ice with his axe. standard route—a step toward the goal. clamping device called a jumar. Last Mingma, a young man from the village of He reached the top in the company of the week, an eighty-year-old Japanese man Phortse, then rappelled down toward lead group of Sherpas, the local people, reached the summit. Steck. Anticipating a collision, Steck raised

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TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 47—133SC. BW Steck surmised that he was in trouble. As the Sherpas converged on the tent, a New Zealander named Marty Schmidt ran up and tried to knock a rock out of a Sherpa’s hand. He was pushed and kicked, hit on the head with a rock, and punched in the eye. He, too, threw a punch. (The other climbers, outnumbered, chose to act submissively.) A Sherpa who had been on the fixing crew, and who was now at the head of the throng, rushed up and punched Steck in the face. Someone hit him with a rock; another threw an ice axe and crampons. Arnot got between the Sherpas and Steck, who scurried into an- other, smaller tent, his face bleeding. A rock bigger than a brick came through the top of the tent, and Steck crawled out. By now, Griffith and Moro had retreated a ways, and Steck went to join them. “I think this expedition is over,” he said. A group of Sherpas broke away from the pack and attacked Griffith, the pho- “I wonder if we might benefit from socializing more with tographer, kicking and punching him on those who don’t harbor anti-government views.” the ground. A moment later, a Western guide ran up and scattered them, and Moro and Griffith ran away, but Steck tt went back into the tent with Schmidt. They were both bleeding. The crowd of his arms to cushion the blow and prevent sonably argue over what happened on the Sherpas was outside. Melissa Arnot and himself from being knocked off the face. Lhotse Face, and who deserves a greater the Western guide, along with a couple of According to Steck, Mingma rappelled share of the blame, even within a context Sherpas, their hands linked, blocked the into him, then began yelling at him for of cultural, historical, and economic griev- way to the tent and tried to settle them having touched him. He accused Steck ance. Many of the facts at hand—falling down, while Steck and Schmidt cowered and his team of kicking ice chunks loose ice, who touched whom and in what order, inside. After a while, the Sherpas de- and injuring a member of his crew. Steck the nature or validity of the prohibition manded that Moro, who had grievously argued then, as he would later, that they against climbing that day—are in dispute, insulted their leader, appear before them, hadn’t dislodged any ice, and that they’d and yet may be of middling significance in so someone fetched Moro and hustled been climbing well out of the way. He light of what happened next. him into the tent. Arnot told him to kneel offered to help the crew finish fixing the and apologize to the Sherpas for his ropes. This seemed to anger Ming ma hen the European climbers got offensive words on the Lhotse Face, and even more. It was then that Simone Moro back to their tents, at the upper got the Sherpas to promise that if he did came along and, seeing Mingma swinging Wedge of Camp 2, they were greeted by an so they would not attack him. Moro came his ice axe, began yelling at him, calling American named Melissa Arnot, who’d out of the tent, and while he was on his him machikne, which translates as “moth- been sharing their camp and who was at- knees a few Sherpas began punching and erfucker.” The insult is graver in Nepali. tempting a fifth conquest of the summit, kicking him. Moro says that one swung at Mingma instructed his crew to stop work- more than any other woman. She warned him with a penknife, but the blade caught ing. The Sherpas descended the face, leav- them that the Sherpas were very angry the waist belt of a backpack. Moro’s pro- ing behind their equipment and an about the incident on the Lhotse Face and tectors dragged him back into the tent. unfinished job. Steck and Moro, in a pos- that the mood in camp was volatile. She Amid the chaos, the Sherpas declared sibly misguided attempt at good will, left, but after a few moments she ran back that Moro and Steck did not have a per- stayed behind and finished fixing the lines to their tent to say that a large group of mit for the Lhotse Face. Eventually, word themselves. The three Europeans then de- Sherpas had set out from the main part of came from base camp that they did, and cided not to spend the night at Camp 3, camp. She said, “I think you should run.” the Sherpas began to retreat. Someone but to head back down to Camp 2 and try Instead, they emerged from the tent in the told Steck and Moro, through the walls of to resolve the dispute. hope of talking to the Sherpas. They then the tent, that if they weren’t gone in an It isn’t unheard of for climbers to get saw a mass of dozens of Sherpas appear on hour they’d all be killed. into testy exchanges at high altitudes, an overlooking ridge, many of them with The three Europeans packed a few where big egos meet thin air. One can rea- their faces covered, some holding rocks. things, disassembled their tent, stashed

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TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 48—133SC.48—133SC..—LIVE ART A17380—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF BW some belongings under piles of rocks, flats of the five boroughs a go. Like so sand vertical feet, in three hours and forty donned down parkas and helmets as many participants, he arrived in New York minutes. (“I enjoy it,” he said. “I feel my armor against thrown stones, and fled. soon after Hurricane Sandy but before the legs, I see the nature.”) Then, to cool They avoided the established route, down race was cancelled, at the last minute, by down, he went to the gym and lifted through the heart of Camp 2, for fear of Mayor Bloomberg. Once it was called off, weights for two hours. He explained, being attacked again. They could see he had no reason to stay. “I would never go when I met him for coffee the next morn- Sherpas lining the trail. Instead, they to a city just to go to a city,” he told me. ing, that this was taking it easy: he was crawled out onto the glacier, to stay out of Anyway, he wanted to get back to Inter- conserving energy for Nepal. sight, and began picking their way laken to spend time with his wife. In the When you first see Steck, it is hard to through the crevasses—an improvised previous two months, he’d been home believe that he can run any distance at all: route, undertaken without ropes, through only a few days, amid a whirlwind of travel he is almost comically bowlegged. He tee- a maze of trapdoors. No one would dare around Europe and North America to ters on the outsides of his feet. He is lean follow. After a while, they rejoined the give talks and to shoot promotions and ad- and compact, with long muscular arms main roped trail through the icefall, keep- vertisements for his various sponsors. Half and fingers. He keeps his hair short and ing an eye on the path behind them, ready the life of a professional climber is retell- his face clean-shaven, and has intense blue to pull up ladders and cut fixed lines if ing old stories to finance the creation of eyes that seem to bulge and brighten there were Sherpas in pursuit. They new ones. Steck gives as many as a hun- when he discusses a project. He speaks reached base camp just before dark. None dred slide shows a year, often to corpora- with a reedy, heliated voice that suits his of them slept that night. tions, who pay him well. Swiss-German twang. By the next day, news of a brawl had He was as secretive about his winter It was a day for business. Steck was gone around the world. Conflicting ac- plans as he was about his intentions on wearing Levi’s and a lightweight blue counts gave rise to a crossfire of recrimi- Everest, but in March he agreed to see down jacket with his sponsors’ names on nation. One opinion, widely held, espe- me in Switzerland, a few days before he it: Leki, Scarpa, Mountain Hardwear, cially among people far away, was that left for Nepal. He lives in the village of Power Bar. He had a meeting in Bern, an Sherpas, revered throughout the climbing Ringgenberg, next to Interlaken, which is hour away, with executives from another world for their skill and forbearance, the gateway to the valleys leading up to sponsor, Richner, a Swiss bathroom- would not have resorted to such violence the Jungfrau massif, the cluster of glaci- fixtures merchant. We drove there in his unless they’d been provoked. ated high peaks that includes the infa- white Audi A4 wagon, with “www.ueli- mous Eiger. The day I arrived, he’d been steck.ch” emblazoned on both sides. n Switzerland, and in much of Europe, planning to spend the night in a hut on (Audi, a sponsor, gives him a car every where alpine exploits equate roughly to the Jungfrau’s flank, to acclimatize to a year.) He was careful to obey speed limits Iplayoff heroics here, Ueli Steck is a super- higher altitude, prior to his flight to Kath- and to stop at crosswalks. “If I do one lit- star. The news of the “Krieg am Everest” mandu. But the weather was lousy, so in- tle thing wrong, people will make a big had the tabloid wattage (adjusting for stead he went for a jog. He ran up and deal,” he said. “This is Switzerland.” His Swissness) of A-Rod’s affair with Ma- down a mountain near Interlaken three great fear was running over a toddler. He donna. Steck is a professional climber. times—eighteen miles, and eight thou- was anxious about his reputation—it was “I’m still really impressed how this system works, to be able to make a living from climbing and not be a dirtbag for your life,” he told me, before leaving for Ever- est. For decades, climbing was a pastime for gentlemen and vagabonds. But in re- cent years people have found a way to sub- sist at it, by guiding, or working for ap- parel companies, or, as in Steck’s case, thriving on sponsorships and speeches and slide shows—what Steck calls “busi- ness.” “To make business, you need sto- ries,” he said, by which he means amazing feats. To create stories, you need to come up with projects—bigger and bigger ones with each passing year—and then you need to succeed at them. I first met Steck last November. He’d come to New York to run the marathon. His training regimen for each expedition is extremely meticulous, but it allows for larks, and since he runs for hours a day in the mountains, he thought he’d give the “It’s part of our process.”

TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 49—133SC—LIVE CARTOON—A 17444—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF BW tt the distillate of all those faces and sum- He began to maneuver around on it. A few rare feat in itself. Most years, the Horn- mits, his true currency—and this wasn’t a patrons whispered and glanced in his di- bein holds either too much snow or too country that tolerated ostentation or enti- rection—this was the equivalent of Tiger little. After ascending via the Hornbein, tlement in its mountain athletes, he said. Woods showing up at the municipal driv- he planned to go down the Southeast Though he gave liberally of himself as a ing range—but for the most part everyone Ridge, across the South Col, and up Lho- pitchman, he never let reporters meet his left him alone. He followed a progression tse, the fourth-highest mountain in the wife or talk to his parents or see his house. of blue handholds, then orange, then pink, world—the Lhotse Traverse. If all went He wouldn’t even let me attend the hopping down to the mat each time, brush- well, it would require that he and Moro bathroom-fixtures meeting. But afterward ing the talc from his hands on his shorts spend more than three days above eight he showed me around old Bern. His wife, and peering up at the wall, his head tilted thousand metres, in the so-called death who works for Bern’s electric company, as though the wall were a language he was zone. No one had ever done anything like had an apartment nearby. He’d met her at trying to remember. “I can climb vertical this. He had sold the exclusive Swiss an ice-climbing competition. A year later, ice—I don’t even need to train for it,” he rights to the story to a magazine published they climbed the Eiger together and spent said. “This is more for fun. This isn’t train- by Migros, the Swiss supermarket chain, a night sleeping on a ledge at what is ing—just moving a little bit. I don’t waste for more than the trip would cost him. called the Death Bivouac, because of energy on climbing training. But I’m too fat climbers who died there. now for hard rock climbing. I used to be teck, a coppersmith’s son, was reared After lunch, Steck drove to the city’s eight kilos lighter. The weight gives me in Emmental, hilly cow country, outskirts, to a warehouse that contained a more stamina. It’s less cold.” After a while, whichS by Swiss mountain-man standards vast climbing gym called Magnet: a Costco he removed his T-shirt. With a woman makes him something of a flatlander. He of climbing, with undulating pitches of named Julie, the wife of a friend, on belay, and his two older brothers were hockey varying steepness, each section a different he began climbing a big wall. He moved nuts; one went on to play professionally. hue, with hundreds of handholds affixed, Spider-Man fast, clipping in every three When Ueli was twelve, a friend’s father stuck there like gobs of bubble gum, in feet or so, until he was hanging from the took him rock climbing, and that was it dozens of bright colors, each denoting a ceiling. There were strange muscles in his for hockey. He began scaling walls in particular line. Schoolkids, teens, seniors, back. Each contortion set off a different ar- climbing gyms. Before long, he’d made and pros turtled in muscle: they scrambled rangement of them. the Swiss junior national sport-climbing up the walls and hung from the ceiling, be- Over lunch, he revealed his Everest team, but he grew restless and wanted to layed by companions on the ground. Steck plan. “The Hornbein Couloir,” he whis- try his moves on the real mountains near changed into a Mountain Hardwear T-shirt pered, eyes shining. This was a steep cleft home, chief among them the North Face and shorts and went over to a turret off to in the rock of the North Face, on the Ti- of the Eiger, known as the Nordwand, the the side, a kind of pyramid stuck upside betan side. It was first climbed by an great test piece of the Alps—Europe’s down into the ground, for bouldering— American pair fifty years ago, but Steck Everest. I drove up from Interlaken one that is, scrambling without being roped. wanted to do it alpine style, an extremely afternoon to have a look, and seeing it for

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TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 50—133SC.—LIVE CARTOON—A 17432—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF BW the first time, from the road leading up to roped up classic routes in record time. the flawless ones. In May, 2007, he at- Grindelwald, I found myself growling Speed became Steck’s shtick. The next tempted to put a new route up the south back at it. It was the bigger bear: a nasty winter, he followed up with record ascents face of Annapurna, a perilous ice and rock shaded rampart of limestone and ice, of the north faces of the Grandes Jorasses face on the world’s most lethal peak. On nearly six thousand vertical feet from bot- (he broke the speed record by four and a his first try, he got seven hundred feet up, tom to top, bedevilled by avalanches, fall- half hours) and the Matterhorn (the and a falling rock hit him on the head, ing rocks, sketchy verglas (thin ice), and whole thing in less then two hours). knocked him out, and off the face. He fell sudden storms that can pin a climber for To some, all this seemed a little gim- all the way to the bottom and regained days. The obsessive and often deadly at- micky or robotic. The combination of consciousness. He was barely hurt. tempts in the nineteen-thirties to be the speed, which seemed an affront to the Two weeks later, he met with Simon first up, observed from a nearby hotel, still mountains’ majesty, and the methodical Anthamatten, an élite alpinist from Zer- make for some of mountaineering’s best- training regimen leached alpinism of matt, and they agreed to give Annapurna known tales. The first successful climb, in some of its romance and poetry, its shaggy a try. “I grew up in the guide tradition,” 1938, took four days. rebel charm. “For this I got a lot of, how Anthamatten told me. “You don’t go Steck was eighteen when he made his you say, flak,” Steck said. “People said, alone in the mountains.” The following first ascent of the Nordwand. It took him ‘Climbing is not a sport. A climber’s not spring, they went to Nepal. For an accli- and a friend two days. When he was an athlete. It’s about adventure, being in matization climb, they achieved a first as- twenty-eight, he soloed the 1938 route in the mountains, going out with friends.’ ” cent of the north face of Tengkampoche, ten hours. Two years later, he did it in The question of purity is an old one in via a very technical route, which earned three hours and fifty-four minutes, break- climbing. In the nineteen-thirties, the them a Piolet d’Or, the world’s top climb- ing the record by forty-six minutes. Still, stodgy members of the British Alpine ing prize. Then they went back to Anna- he felt he could go faster. He dedicated Club, accustomed to tramping around purna. They tried twice to get up the the next year to the task, adopting a pre- on Swiss glaciers with local peasants as south face but were turned back each time cise (and top-secret) daily regimen to fine- guides, used to dismiss the young itiner- by weather. There were two other expedi- tune his stamina and strength. It was a ant Nordwand aspirants as daredevils and tions on the mountain: a group of Rus- novel idea, to bring the advanced science glory hounds. (And lest we idealize these sians, who had butchered a yak to eat, and of sport training to the imprecise art of rebels, keep in mind that many of them whom the Swiss thought it best to avoid, climbing. No climber had ever done this. were climbing for the glory, and with the and a mixed group consisting of a Rus- It hadn’t seemed necessary—until Steck backing, of the Reich, perhaps with a sian, a Romanian, and a Basque named introduced the question of speed. different idea of purity in mind.) Over Iñaki Ochoa de Olza, who were attempt- In 2008, he climbed the Nordwand in time, honor and admiration has migrated ing the east ridge. One day, as Anthamat- two hours and forty-seven minutes—less toward those who ascend using fewer ten and Steck returned to their base camp, time than it takes to watch “Cloud Atlas.” ropes, carrying less on their backs, stop- exhausted after a third abortive attempt, The style was pure, too: he waited until a ping less often, using less in the way of they received a call on their satellite phone storm had left fresh ice and covered old human support—lighter, faster, cleaner, from Ochoa de Olza’s girlfriend at base tracks, and he used no ropes or protection more self-reliant. In that respect, not camp, who was in touch with the Roma- of any kind—just crampons and ice axes, many can top Steck. Still, the professional nian climber via radio. There was a med- in a technique called dry-tooling. Later, climbing game can be a mercenary one, ical problem. Ochoa de Olza, stranded at he repeated the climb for a film crew, requiring fealty to sponsors and some self- twenty-four thousand feet, was suffering, doing pitches over and over, waiting for glorification, which can undercut the ele- and the Russian had gone missing. They’d the setup of each shot, and the footage of gance of the feats themselves. lost their medicine. him dry-tooling verglas, and running up “The purist thing doesn’t exist,” Steck It was 9 P.M. Steck and Anthamatten near-vertical snowfields, where one mis- said. “You have to find a way to live. had been climbing all day, and had left take could mean a mile-long plunge, You’re not living from eating the dirt. But their high-altitude gear at the base of brought him international renown. Just you have to keep it as climbing.” Steck their route up the south face. They didn’t watching on a computer screen induces pays for his trips himself. He is sponsored, even know the way on the east ridge. vertigo, yet he says it doesn’t scare him. but the expeditions are not. He doesn’t Base camp sent two Sherpas up to help “I’m never afraid,” he said. “I wouldn’t do want to have to factor the sponsors’ inter- them, but one was drunk and the other it if I was afraid of it. I’m not an adrena- ests into the calculus of risk assessment. exhausted after a twenty-mile hike up line junkie. I’m really Swiss, calculating.” “If someone else pays, they decide what from his village. So Steck and Anthamat- On the premier mountains of the you have to do.” By the time he’s on the ten turned on their headlamps and set out world, there is little new left to do. To mountain, Steck is climbing for himself into the night alone, in their light climb- achieve a notable first ascent, you’d have and himself alone. ing gear. They reached Camp 2, almost to climb the mountains of the moon. So twenty thousand feet above sea level, at it can be hard these days for a climber to climber’s reputation rests not just on 8 A.M. By now it was snowing hard, and distinguish himself. One can do stylish first ascents or flashy routes but on they couldn’t make out the other climb- routes up obscure or remote peaks, or do howA he conducts himself when things ers’ tracks. They came upon an ava- several peaks in one sequence (a so-called go to pieces. Steck may be renowned as lanche-prone slope, and decided to wait enchainment), or else go alone and un- much for his abandoned expeditions as for until morning to cross it. The Romanian

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TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 51—133SC. BW called frequently, through Ochoa de Ol- za’s girlfriend, reporting that Ochoa de Olza’s condition was getting worse. ALMOST FEBRUARY When they reached Camp 3, at noon the next day, the weather was deteriorating. Timbuktu is no longer a faraway place from childhood. The Russian had returned. He’d been Nor is Mongolia, where people steal dinosaur bones from the ground. on the summit and spent the night just It’s not possible to stay intact forever. below it. Steck and Anthamatten sent the It is possible to carry exotic species in your luggage, Russian down, after Steck had swapped to hide a skull under your cap, to imagine sweaty high-school boots with him, and Steck proceeded up football players in Kansas when looking down from an airplane. alone. In between Camp 3 and Camp 4, It’s possible to place a copper weather vane of a rooster on the roof, Steck and the Romanian met up. Steck to wait a long time for it to turn green. gave him medicine and the last of his food and sent him to meet Anthamatten, On eBay, they are auctioning the old coats of Cher. who helped him down. Steck proceeded Authenticity guaranteed. I almost bought a coat without sleeves for $50. to Camp 4, at twenty-four thousand feet, The ad said Cher probably had intentions to alter it. and came upon Ochoa de Olza, uncon- We have more choices than we think is something I read. scious in a tent. Another night passed. A neurology student named Claire told me There are many Claires. Steck remained with Ochoa de Olza, One replaces oneself, cellularly. How many Claires? who by the next morning was in the The older they got in the documentary, throes of death—unconscious, vomiting, the more lies they told, because they had more people to protect. coughing up blood. Pulmonary edema. At noon, he stopped breathing. After a while, Steck determined that he was Englishman named Edward Whymper, the wealthy owners of luxury hotels. dead. He spent the rest of the afternoon led to the death, on the descent, of four Now Steck has a controversy of his in the tent with the corpse and then de- of his companions. Their rope snapped, own. Five days after he and his compan- cided, as night fell and the storm raged, and they fell four thousand feet. After- ions fled Camp 2 on Everest, he was back to put the body outside. A weather re- ward, Whymper and his guide, a local in Switzerland. For three days, he didn’t port came from base camp that the next Zermatter named Peter Taugwalder, go out. He saw no friends and stayed away morning would be his best chance of get- were accused of having cut the rope that from town. On Tuesday, May 7th, he ting off the mountain alive. Steck lay connected them to the others in order to picked me up in Interlaken in his Audi, awake through the night. He was sure save themselves. An inquiry exonerated the name on the side now like a scarlet let- he heard something outside, like a man them—the case prompted Queen Victo- ter. It was his first time out in the car since moaning. He began to wonder if Ochoa ria to consider a ban on mountain climb- he’d been back. He felt people looking at de Olza was alive. He stepped outside to ing—but a whiff of dishonor, along with him. The Swiss media had mounted a see. Still dead. In the morning, Steck left the timeless problem of there being no siege, albeit a polite one. Blick, Switzer- the body behind, headed down, and at witnesses in mountain accidents except, land’s version of the Post, ran an interview Camp 3 stumbled upon three rescuers, usually, the survivors, has forever shad- with an old Swiss mountaineer. The with whom he descended to base. owed the accomplishment. Whymper headline: “STECKS EGOTRIP WAR EINE He and Anthamatten were hailed as PROVOKATION.” heroes for abandoning their climb and Many accounts were sympathetic, risking their lives to save others. They but in others, and on many adventure were awarded a Prix Courage. Steck blogs, Steck, Moro, and Griffith were downplayed the rescue, because Ochoa de being depicted as Gore-Tex imperial- Olza had died in the end. And they’d ists, rich, arrogant European invaders of failed to achieve what they’d come to do. a sacred Sherpa ritual and violators of “I’m done with Annapurna,” he said after- cross-cultural decorum. “For Simone, in ward. “It gives me a funny feeling.” later suggested that Taugwalder might Italy, this has not been such a problem,” Eventually, he changed his mind. He have intentionally chosen a flimsy rope, a Steck said. “But here in Switzerland, if had been planning to go back this fall, to slander that stuck to the family for de- they can find something like this about have another go at the south face. But cades. The Wallisers, the local Swiss val- you, they kick your ass.” Many eminent then came the Krieg am Everest. ley dwellers, were the Sherpas of the so- climbers had spoken up in his defense, called golden age of alpinism, when including Reinhold Messner and Chris candal is a mainstay of climbing lore, wellborn Englishmen competed to Bonington. Still, he found himself in the as fundamental as courage and death. knock off the high peaks of Europe. The unfamiliar position of being, in some ControversiesS swirl around every moun- Swiss did the work and rarely got the quarters, the bad guy. tain, and almost every mountaineer, like credit. These days, of course, the Swiss “I’m not really home yet,” he said. so many ravens. The first great first as- are the ones going abroad in search of “It’s just too much for me. I’m totally cent, of the Matterhorn, in 1865, by an glory, and Taugwalder’s descendants are messed up. People wanted to kill me.

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TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 52—133SC.—LIVE ART R23600D—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF BW dard?” Garrett Madison, a guide with the commercial outfitter Alpine Ascents In- ternational, referred to an “unwritten rule” that climbers should stay off the face A guy I don’t like at work brought his baby in and the baby was perfect, during the fixing day (whether this with spiky hair, I wanted to hold him but the guy didn’t like me either. should apply to professional climbers, There should be a center in town where people can hold infants. and not just commercial clients, for The hospital stayed open in Timbuktu, but the doctors whom the ropes are intended, is argu- had to minister to so much horror—they had to reattach people to their hands. able) and depicted the brawl as a regret- table shoving match rather than an attack You cannot be anyone else, though you buy a new jacket, or Cher’s old one. by a mob. He, too, placed the blame for My grandmother wanted to be buried with everything she owned, the incident on Moro and Steck. He just in case. Just in case, I save old coffees in the refrigerator. asserted that after the confrontation on I love strangers, whom I recognize as people I knew in grade school— the Lhotse Face, Moro called down to with all their winter accoutrements and little objects for living. Camp 2 on the radio, saying that he was My pencil case was always full of cracker crumbs. ready for a “f---ing fight.” Simone Moro Nobody recognized me as the Buddha. responded, when Madison posted his ac- count, “It makes me crying to read that —Anna McDonald false, false, false and pure invented fact. I NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, did that radio call and provocation. (I have a lot of witness who can confirm.) Madison INVENTED those words to try to change For me, life was over. I was sitting in the gear companies and media outlets that the facts and give me responsibilities for tent and I didn’t see any escape. They treat the Everest climbing season as their the tension.” said, ‘Get that guy out here. First, we kill Super Bowl. Hamill and Madison also repeated the him and then we look for the other two.’ At any rate, the argument with the crew chief’s charge that Steck had kicked Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I can’t get fixing team was one that Steck was will- ice down onto the fixing team. Steck told over this.” ing to take some blame for. “What hap- me, “This I know: there was not a single “People have this understanding of the pened on the Lhotse Face—we can dis- piece of ice falling on a Sherpa.” Accord- nice, good Sherpas, blah blah blah,” he cuss this, what was wrong, what was right. ing to Moro and Griffith, a Sherpa who said. “They say, ‘It was just Westerners in No problem. But what happened at had been bleeding said later that he had the wrong place. They were arrogant to be Camp 2, this was unacceptable. Even if not been hurt by falling ice; he had slipped there. The Sherpas are there to do their we made a big mistake, it’s no reason to and hit his face. Madison’s account was work.’ Well, I respect their work, but they try to kill three people.” called “the Sherpas’ viewpoint” —he had should respect my work.” Steck and his Steck seemed changed from when I’d talked to many of the Sherpas involved— team had paid tens of thousands of dollars seen him in March. He was subdued, but to some it read more like the view- for the requisite permits, and believed that speaking almost in a whisper, with an air point of someone with an interest both in they had a right to climb on the Lhotse of bafflement. Since the Camp 2 incident, placating restive employees and in reas- Face, and that the requirements of the he’d had a persistent headache. He was suring future clients. “He just protects his commercial climbing operations shouldn’t hardly sleeping, and when he did he had business,” Steck said. take precedence over those of the profes- nightmares, which he’d never had in the Eric Simonson, the co-owner of sional ones. If anything, their expedition, past. “I’m fucked, eh?” he said. “Now I I.M.G., said last week that he shared one of two professional bids that season, have to fix myself. I will seek professional Hamill’s and Madison’s point of view. may have merited some deference. Their help.” “The commercial companies will put mission, from a certain vantage, was an He was surprised that several Western themselves solidly behind the Sherpas,” exalted one. climbers who were friendly to him at base he said. For the Sherpas, and for many West- camp after the incident later wrote sec- Two days after the incident, Sherpa erners who have worked alongside them ondhand accounts on the Internet that leaders arranged a kind of peace meeting over the years, getting hundreds of paying were not only critical of him but full of at base camp. The Western climbers and clients up to the summit, Steck, Moro, what he and Moro have called false alle- a handful of Sherpas signed a handwrit- and Griffith had no business being on the gations and fabricated quotes. ten treaty stating that they’d forgiven each Lhotse Face. The Yak Route, as it’s some- Mike Hamill, of International Moun- other and agreeing to work together in times called, wasn’t part of their climb, tain Guides, the company that the fixing- the future and abstain from violence. Its and the Sherpas’ work there is vital to crew chief worked for, wrote afterward, vagueness implies an equivalence be- most of the mountain’s constituents: cli- “The instigators were Simone and Ueli. tween the Europeans’ imprudence on the ents, guides, porters, and the ecosystem Will these two be held accountable for Lhotse Face and the attack in Camp 2— that has sprouted up around them, from inciting violence and for their cultural ar- between name-calling, on one side, and the villages on the way to base camp to the rogance, or will there be a double-stan- sticks and stones, on the other. More

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TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 53—133SC. BW than anything, it reflected a mutual de- treated a Sherpa bad in my life.” After the man’s house and disrespect them, and, sire, among the Sherpas and the com- Camp 2 incident, Denis Urobko, a Rus- well—this is their house.” mercial guide companies, to make the sian professional climber attempting a Steck and Moro, by climbing alpine whole mess go away. Steck, Moro, and new route up the Southwest Face, posted style, may appear to be self-sufficient, but Griffith signed it, and though they did his thoughts, in which he referred to they use the fixed ropes and ladders in the not necessarily want their attackers jailed some of the Sherpas as “cattle” and “pigs.” icefall, and they rely on porters to help es- (no one has been charged), they were “Inexperienced and self-assured, Sherpa tablish their comfortable, well-appointed pleased that several of them had been sus- think it’s in their right to dictate the rules camps on the lower parts of the mountain. pended from working on the mountain and God have mercy if someone decides While they make videos for their sponsors this season. At the base-camp meeting, you sent him a ‘bad glance.’ ” Steck, of themselves hiking up to base camp in Steck told me, “I saw that guy who whose team had been working with trail shoes and carrying only day packs, punched me in the face, the chief from Urobko and his partner, Alexey Bolotov, somewhere outside the frame Sherpas are the fixing crew. I looked him in the eye told me that it was a great relief that lugging their batteries and cheese. This and said, ‘You have stolen my dream. Urobko hadn’t been at Camp 2 the day occasionally irks the Sherpas, whose in- Please don’t do that to another person.’ ” of the attack. “It would have been a disas- dispensability is integral to their economic Not long afterward, when Steck was ter,” he said. “Denis was in the Kazakh well-being. back in Switzerland, Moro, who is a heli- Army. He’s not a guy who would say, Steck, like many others, has tried to copter pilot, flew his helicopter up to the ‘Thank you, hit me again.’ ” view the incident in the light of the wider Lhotse Face, to recover the body of a Steck and Moro have blamed Mingma predicament of Everest: overcrowding, Sherpa who’d fallen to his death. The Tenzing’s initial pique on his exhaustion money, and, as a result, uneasy relations Sherpa who loaded the body onto the he- and frustration after working for two days between Sherpas and Westerners, as well licopter was Mingma Tenzing, the rope- in such extreme weather and his embar- as between professionals and commercial fixing chief. “When he saw me, he looked rassment over the fact that they were operators. He considers himself to have at me, then looked down,” Moro said. climbing so quickly, without Sherpa help. been an accidental catalyst. Steck had thought his relationship “He’s a leader, he’s losing face,” Steck said. This year, on the Nepal side, there with the Sherpas was a good one. Many “It’s the worst thing that can happen in were almost four hundred foreigners with with whom he’d summited the previous Asian culture.” climbing permits, and more than four year had approached him at base camp, “The fixing team is the best of the best, hundred Sherpas. An infamous photo- earlier in the expedition, to say how the Sherpa A-team,” Simonson said. graph last year of a seemingly endless much they’d enjoyed climbing with him. “These are proud men. They see them- conga line of climbers trudging up the “Some people treat the Sherpas really selves as every bit as good as anyone out Lhotse Face via the fixed line conveyed bad, like slaves,” Steck said. “I don’t there. Clearly, they felt disrespected and the extent to which the mountain had be- want to be the face for this. I never got really worked up over it. You go to a come a circus. Last week, the wait to climb the Hillary Step, the last difficult pitch before the final summit ridge, was more than two hours. Everest has evolved into a seasonal society dominated by the interests of the commercial guiding companies, which for the most part are owned and operated by foreigners. Clients pay as much as a hundred and ten thousand dollars apiece to be led up Everest. The companies in turn contract with the Sherpas, as porters, cooks, and moun- tain guides. A large portion of the cli- ents’ fees goes to bureaucrats in Kath- mandu rather than to the Sherpas. They observe the foreigners with their luxury accommodations at base camp, their satellite phones and computers, and they know enough to wonder whether they’re being gulled. If it’s their house, how come they’re not the ones who get to run it? The younger generation, in particular, may be less inured than their forbears to the paternalism inherent in the relationship with the mikarus, or “The first time is always a little awkward.” “white eyes.” Walter Bonatti, the great

TNY—2013_06_03—PAGE 54—133SC.—LIVE ART A17317—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF BW Italian alpinist, suggested that the early “Simone was out of order,” Dawa and his wife moved in in January. It is spa- conquest of the Himalayas was a kind said. “He’s a friend of mine, but he’s a cious, by Swiss standards, with three sto- of colonialism; if so, this may be the era very fiery character. This had been build- ries and an underground garage, but it’s of postcolonial blowback. ing between Simone and the Sherpas for simple and spare, a modern interpretation a while.” of a chalet, with lots of light woodwork elissa Arnot, whom Steck credits He went on, “It’s embarrassing to all and, on the walls, large-format photo- with saving his life, called in from sides. Now my clients are getting mes- graphs of famous peaks. baseM camp last week. A few days before, sages from their friends back home, say- In his office, on the ground floor, next she and Tshering Dorje Sherpa, with ing, ‘I hope you’re not fighting with your to a giant map of Everest, a calendar whom she is climbing this season, had Sherpa.’ It’s very sad. For fifty years, the sketched out his year. The summer was made it to twenty-seven thousand feet be- Sherpas have done so much for people. empty; he’d expected to be recovering fore high winds turned them back. (No One small thing between a few egomani- from Nepal. On a day in early September, one summited that day.) Arnot’s goal this he’d written, in tiny print, “Annapurna,” spring had been to summit twice; she was with a line going down through the rest of planning to head back up after a few days the month. of recuperating at base camp. (Three days In March, he’d talked a lot about later, she made it.) Bonatti, whom he admired perhaps above Arnot had been staying with Steck, all others. Bonatti, on a winter morning in Moro, and Griffith at Camp 2. The day 1965, walked up to the base of the Mat- they went up the Lhotse Face, she went terhorn’s North Face and climbed it by down to the I.M.G. camp and listened in himself, a harrowing direct route that as tempers flared over the radio. She is took him five days. Steck repeated the certain that Simone never challenged any- acs, and now all the Sherpa are hurt. We route seven years ago in twenty-five hours one to “fucking fight.” “Nothing Jon, Ueli, feel betrayed and abandoned. The idea and spoke with wonder about the experi- or Simone has said has been inaccurate,” that Sherpas don’t like Westerners? That’s ence of placing his hands and feet where she said. “It’s all really sad. They were all bullshit.” Bonatti had. A pitcher playing today can treated like criminals for doing nothing. In the background, he occasionally never know what it was like to strike out The apology that’s owed is one for the vi- joined a radio conversation in Nepali with Ted Williams, but Steck could imagine olence. They were forced to leave, ostra- some Sherpas who were breaking camp himself in Bonatti’s boots—the opponent cized, and their reputations were battered. higher on the mountain. Every now and was the same. After the climb, Bonatti, The commercial expeditions owe them then, a helicopter landed nearby. He thirty-five at the time, abruptly retired an apology.” didn’t much want to talk about the details from professional climbing, and became a She went on, “These other accounts of the incident at Camp 2. “That was un- journalist. He lived to the age of eighty- are embarrassing, claiming that Simone acceptable. I can’t comment any further,” one. In some respects, Steck admires this and Ueli and Jon are racist and classist. It’s he said. But, he added, “I can completely more than anything. a bold and arrogant statement to make understand how traumatized Ueli must’ve Steck knows that to live a long time about people you don’t even know.” felt.” About Mingma Tenzing, the head you need to quit. Before Everest, he’d She said that one Sherpa who had been of the fixing crew, he said, “He’s the most figured he had two more years in him of a friend now refused to look at her. Still, quiet guy. A shy guy, doesn’t ever ask for pushing the limits. Now he wondered she added, “I don’t think this is a rift be- the credit. I was in shock to hear he was whether he had less. He would always tween Westerner and Sherpa, or part of an the forefront of this. I wasn’t so surprised climb mountains; it was a part of his per- underlying racial and cultural divide. This that Simone was involved. There’s always sonality, and his marriage. But the pro- is a fight between boys on the slope.” something happening with him. Mingma fessional part of it, the Swiss Machine, is deeply embarrassed. He’s very sorry. He had gone a little sour. A week after Steck few days later, I spoke on the phone knows he let down his family. But it’s got home, Alexey Bolotov, the partner with Dawa Steven Sherpa, the expe- too late.” of Denis Urobko, was killed in a fall. A ditionA leader for Asian Trekking, which is Mingma wasn’t speaking to the press. rope broke. They found his body on the owned by his family and is one of just a “The Sherpas are not very good at talk- Khumbu Glacier. He was fifty and had few Nepali guiding companies. He is ing,” Dawa said. “We’re workers. We quit his job to devote himself to climbing. twenty-nine. His father is Sherpa, his don’t want to talk. The best way to repair There’s a part of Steck that wonders if the mother is Belgian. He had helped arrange our reputation is to work.” incident at Camp 2 wasn’t in some re- the base-camp meeting after the incident spects a blessing. “Maybe there might at Camp 2. teck’s house is at the end of a narrow have been a big accident,” he said. “There Dawa was in base camp on the day of street lined with quaint Swiss homes are a lot of things in climbing that you the melee, but was in constant contact andS flower gardens, up on a slope, over- can’t control.”  that day via radio with his two Sherpas on looking the village, the lake, and a broad the fixing team. They, too, say they heard set of cliffs that block the view of the newyorker.com/go/outloud Moro say “fucking fight,” but Dawa Eiger. He built the house himself, with a allows that their English isn’t perfect. crew (he is a carpenter, by trade), and he A conversation with Nick Paumgarten.

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