Everest Dispatch: Climbers Prepare for Summit Attempt

Liesl Clark
Head of the National Geographic Film Crew on Mount Everest

May 10, 2002

The National Geographic 50th Anniversary Everest Expedition commemorates the first ascent of the world's highest mountain, by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in May 1953. It also honors the first Americans to stand on the top of the world, including Barry Bishop, in 1963.

The sons of Everest pioneers Hillary, Norgay, and Bishop—Peter Hillary, Jamling Norgay, and Brent Bishop—are helping make a documentary that will air on the National Geographic Channel in the United States and internationally in 2003.

The National Geographic 50th Anniversary Everest Expedition is made possible in part by the generous support of American International Group, Inc.

This dispatch was sent by Liesl Clark, head of the National Geographic Television & Film unit from the Everest Base Camp at the weekend. It was written on May 4, 2002.

"Like the Buddhist Wheel of Life, my own life had made its great turning. I was back with Everest—with Chomolungma—where I started; with the dreams of a boy who looked up from the herds of yaks. Only now the dream had come true."—Tenzing Norgay Sherpa

None of us thought we would return to Everest so soon. It is a mountain that reduces you to your bare essence, forces you to face yourself, your weaknesses, and yourlongings.

Yet here we all are:

• Peter Hillary, son of Edmund Hillary, whose life has been shaped by the presence of this mountain. Peter's been here six times and has successfully climbed Everest once.

• Jamling Tenzing Norgay, son of Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, who climbed Everest with the IMAX team in 1996. Jamling essentially grew up in the lap of Everest in Darjeeling, India, in the shadow of the mountain and his famous father.

• Pete Athans is our expedition leader. He has climbed Everest more than any other non-Sherpa, a daunting six times, but he's been on Everest's slopes on 16 different expeditions.

• Brent Bishop, son of Barry Bishop, one of the first Americans to reach Everest's summit in 1963. Brent has climbed Everest once but has been here four times.

• Dawa Sherpa, who is climbing Everest with us for what will be his first time, but has worked on the mountain carrying loads and as a cook for 12 years.

We all keep returning to Everest, or Chomolungma, as the Sherpas call it, for our own reasons, but this year we're here to make a film and look at what 50 years of climbing on this mountain has brought to the environment, those who have struggled on her slopes, and to the culture that lives at her base.

Chomolungma is believed by the Sherpas who live here to be a mountain deity.

"Fifty-seven Sherpas carried loads up to the South Col today," we heard the buzz around Base Camp at noon. Pete Athans and I looked at each other incredulously. This could be a record. "This is definitely the 'season opener' on the South Col," said Pete.

The route to our high camp, Camp IV, has now been fixed and the camp can finally be stocked and established. The race is now on for the 12 expeditions here at Base Camp to make their final push to the summit before the climbing season ends on June 1. We've been here for a month, taking strides toward acclimatizing for the upper mountain.

We've passed through the Khumbu Icefall four times, not including two forays just for filming, and the teetering glacial ice blocks have paused long enough in their inevitable downward tumble to let us silently slip past them.

Camp III sits at 23,500 feet, perched precariously on the mottled ice of the near-vertical Lhotse Face. We climbed there in the company of a few other climbers who planned to spend the night there. As we descended, a storm hit and the wind paralyzed the right sides of our faces.

Two days later the storm persisted and a climber trapped at Camp III decided to descend, anxious to get to a lower elevation. The ropes were iced to the Lhotse Face, and unable to clip into lines, the climber, a young man from Great Britain whom I had met days before in the Icefall, slipped to his death, a 2,000-foot fall that has left us all numb with the pain of memories of Everest deaths in the recent past.

We leave at 4:30 tomorrow morning to climb back up through the Icefall and on to Camp II. Our goal is twofold: Peter Hillary, Dawa, and the film crew will climb up to Camp III to spend the night, for acclimatization, before returning to Base Camp. Pete Athans and Brent Bishop will fix ropes above Camp II to the West Shoulder of Everest, where I hope to join them to film them as they forge the rarely attempted West Ridge route on the mountain.

The light of my headlamp flickers, a reminder that in less than five hours we'll all be wrestling with our double boots and harnesses, trying to keep our fingers and toes warm before stepping into the ice-blue pre-dawn light outside our tents.

We'll be gone for four days, returning for the last time to Base Camp before our final push to the summit.

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