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ANNALS OF ADVENTURE THE MANIC MOUNTAIN Ueli Steck and the clash on Everest. BY NICK PAUMGARTEN TH RIFFI G AN H NAT JO 46 THE NEW YO R K E R , J U N E 3 , 2 0 1 3 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 liestU 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 THE NEW YO R K E R , J U N E 3 , 2 0 1 3 47 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.