The Dual Mountain We Call Everest

When Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the top of Mt. Everest in 1953, crowds worldwide celebrated their success as a milestone for all time. While he was at the top, Tenzing set into the summit snows some gifts he’d carried up for the goddess who inhabits the peak, known of course to him and his people as Chomolungma. Few people paid notice to this, and far fewer understood the Sherpa and Tibetan identity behind this ancient name for the mountain.

This is the story of the same peak imagined as both Everest and Chomolungma, two identities that inhabit our imagination through two very different civilizations and two different visions for inhabiting the earth. Everest and Chomolungma are concepts living in our minds like estranged step-siblings in the same royal household, each operating in different wings in the palace. One is the exalted son, regal in his mathematically ordained mandate to reign as the rock-star king for all time, even as the kingdom goes awry. The other is his elder step-sister, beautiful and rock-solid wise with deep celestial powers but fairly dismissed, misconstrued and nearly overshadowed and exiled even from memory behind the glare shined on her younger brother, even as she works in obscurity to hold the realm together.

Mt. Everest’s crown was bestowed by the Royal Geographical Society in the 1850s, starting with long-distance telescopic triangulations from the Indian plains. Calculations revealed the peak’s supreme height, and as Britain’s lords of geography quietly took the time to triple-verify their find they saw the symbolic opportunity they could not resist, to stamp it with their claim. The Society had rules to prioritize native names, and of course they owned a premier storehouse of geographic knowledge, including a French-Jesuit atlas bearing the label (based on a Chinese source) Chomo Lancma. Nevertheless, in 1857 they overrode internal controversy and those rules and named the peak in honor of their emeritus Surveyor General George Everest (actually pronounced “Eve-rest” in his native Welsh) expressly to establish title before native names could become known. The long-distance titling was barely a footnote in the Society’s epic, multi-decade Great Trigonometric Survey to order the whole subcontinent of India into a grid for governance and taxation, but the Everest claim created the everlasting symbol to inspire humanity to bring the world, however far and high, into our comprehension and fold. By the time of the 1953 climb the very name had become our synonym for ultimate challenge, and the mountain became our monument to seeing our surroundings as the great, can-do field for the ascent of man.

To understand the identity of Chomolungma, we first need to appreciate that Tibetans and Sherpas revere mountains not by comparative height. Like most of the millions of Buddhists and Hindus from Lhasa to Mysore, they understand the most revered mountain on earth to be Kailas (Kang Rinpoché in Tibetan). Kailas is an unmistakable sight and a breathtaking presence reigning over the highest western highlands of the Tibetan plateau. Though its towering snowcap reaches to not even 7000 feet lower than Everest, a nexus of remarkable characteristics–including its location overseeing the sources of central Asia’s four major rivers–give it its identity as the earthly eminence of the Axis Mundi, the mythic spindle linking earth and the cosmos around which the world turns. For centuries people of many faiths have known Kailas as the world’s loftiest site for deities and mythic human tales, and countless people have made long, hard pilgrimages to circumambulate the peak and embed themselves in its affirmation that, regardless of how bad things seem, at Kailas the world is working wondrously and as it should. At least a couple of modern mountaineers have applied to be the first to climb it, but international outcries of sacrilege prompted China to deny those plans.

Kang Rinpoche, aka Kailas, north face above nomad camp after a summer storm

From their homes near Everest, Sherpas also revere a topographically modest “local mountain” called Khumbiyula. This rocky prominence is much more important to them than Chomolungma because it’s the home of a deity who oversees their privilege to inhabit the territory and the well-being of their fields, houses, forests, wildlife and rivers. As with Kailas no one is allowed to climb on Khumbiyula.

Since 1982, from Khumbu to Skardu, I’ve spent a lot of time with Himalayan natives; trekking and climbing with them, helping harvest their crops, raising money for their kids’ schooling, helping build solar heating, celebrating festivals, sitting in their kitchens listening to their stories…and the accumulated four years of life in their hospitality has opened my eyes as much and probably more than my Himalayan climbs and panoramas. I’ve seen seemingly desperately poor people glow with life in their simple villages and nomadic camps, telling how they love their basic foods and their animals, and how men and women collaborate to hand-spin and weave their clothes. I’ve also heard them chat about herding us foreigners, “like cattle–they give a lot of milk but need a lot of attention.” Instinctively they respect how their lives run both plentiful and dire, depend on the grace of their surroundings, and how peaks like Chomolungma oversee it all.

Before modern times Chomolungma was not well known across Tibet, and not always by that name. When Brits first applied to the office of the Dalai Lama to try to climb the peak in the 1920s, the officials in Lhasa issued travel documents labeling the peak with a complex name referencing its height as so great that no birds could fly over it. This was also how Tenzing said his mother referred to it. Folks living in sight of the peak also called it Cho Kola. Had the Brits applied to climb a more deeply sacred peak like Kailas they never would have received permission, and as it was they violated the rules of their permit by mapping Everest’s surroundings and killing birds and wildlife for biological study.
Today we know that the original, Tibetan name for the peak is actually Chomolangma. The British vanguard in Tibet learned the name Chomolungma from Sherpas hired in Darjeeling. They asked into the meaning, but people from different areas told them different things, the Brits interpreted those things differently, they projected assumptions of cosmic grandiosity into what they heard, and they came up with interpretations feverishly wrong. George Mallory and others published the fantasy that Chomolungma means “Mother Goddess of the World,” and eventually the world attached to that fable and never really looked into it. I’m guessing the Brits never got it right because they rarely sought out the local lamas. In Tibetan and Sherpa societies lamas carry the core religious and cultural traditions, and as a rule they don’t usually interact casually with general society.
Researchers, authors and lamas today do explain the true definition of Chomolungma, and it starts with this: the peak itself is not a goddess, it’s the abode of a “local goddess.” Her name is Chomo Miyo Langsangma. This translates as “immutable elephant fair lady goddess.” Chomo is the term for goddess or revered female. The elephant (lang) reference is said to be an emphasis on Miyo Langsangma’s unshakeable (Mi-yo) resolve (in her role of giving generously), and the arched, grey back of her mountain. The abode, “Chomolangma” and the Sherpas’ derivation “Chomolungma,” are typical Tibetan contractions of her name.
Chomo Miyo Langsangma is one of five “local sister-deities” who can command certain local forces. Collectively they are known as the “long-life sisters,” each inhabiting different peaks. One sister leads the clan, and her name is Tseringma, Tibetan for “long-life.” Her abode is a magnificent, twin-peaked mountain west of Chomolungma also called Tseringma. (Hindus of the plains know this peak more famously as Gauri Shankar.) Each of the sisters has specific powers to help people live longer lives. Legend has it that it that centuries ago the sisters were visualized as capricious demons lurching people around with assistance and disasters rained from on high.

Tseringma peak, aka Gauri Shankar, abode of Tseringma, the local goddess of “long life.” Photo courtesy Smoke Blanchard collection

As told in The Lawudo Lama, Jamyang Wangmo’s highly regarded book portraying esoteric Buddhist traditions in Khumbu, Miyo Langsangma’s particular “long-life” power is to bestow beauty and wealth, especially successful crops and herds. She is depicted as a beautiful woman-figure boldly riding a lactating tigress, bearing in her left hand a bowl of delicious food, and in her right another symbol of proffered bounty, either a mongoose or a flower. Thus for centuries Chomolungma has stood as the home of a goddess supporting people’s prosperity. What’s fascinating to realize is that today Chomolungma brings prosperity in spades. Any Sherpa will tell you that they go to Everest for work; it’s risky but it’s the premier opportunity for glory and by far the best money in town. Thanks to Chomolungma, Khumbu Sherpas are the wealthiest natives in the Himalaya. This is a practical understanding that still respects the transcendent power and status of Miyo Langsangma. Tenzing, before he went to climb to the top of her abode, visited a lama to learn about the proper ways to respect the goddess, and he acquired a sacred thangka image of her for his home in Darjeeling.

Thangka portraying Chomo Miyo Langsangma. Taken from Jamyang Tenzing Norgay’s book Touching My Father’s Soul

As Buddhists, Tibetans and Sherpas appreciate that however virtuously we strive, even a prosperous, long and beautiful life finds suffering and troubles, and is temporary in any case. These are the Buddha’s teachings. It is said that Buddhism came to Tibet with a masterful tantric yogi, a “second Buddha” known as Guru Rinpoche, in the 8th century AD. Like a new sheriff soaring across the realm he confronted mountain deities like the Tseringma sisters and leveraged them into vows to help people by giving them earthly security sufficient to follow the Buddhist path and transcend material life. As Sherpas told scholar Jan Sacherer, “The mountain gods are for growing crops…but to purify our minds we need to pray to the Buddhist gods.” Tibetan cultures understand better than we that our definitions of mountains are projections of our imagination. Whether people believe in their gods literally or metaphorically, from a Buddhist standpoint it’s the quality and state of mind that the beliefs foster that makes the difference.
Guru Rinpoché also issued prophecies, and Sherpas believe they have lived out his foretelling that in hard times people would find hidden refuge lands called beyul. In the 16th century they fled from conflicts in eastern Tibet, and out west (Sherpa means “Easterner”) they explored south across high passes between the Tseringma peaks. In territory now in Nepal they found uninhabited and verdant mountain valleys with tumbling rivers and majestic forests, clearly beyul. On the precious and picturesque mountain slopes they made new homes and vowed not to harm wildlife or cut down whole trees, and to honor deities inhabiting the peaks. The Sherpas’ legacy is a typical if grand example of the cultural structures that inspire indigenous peoples to live with gratitude and respect for their terrain; they know their lives depend on it.

These then are the stories of Everest and Chomolungma. As the world’s most famous landmark, Mt. Everest is the alpha monument to our ascent-of-man vision for inhabiting the earth, and by that measure we’re doing well. We now ascend the once-unattainable peak regularly, and by the path of distilling the world into what we can define and succeed in we’ve advanced to the moon and so many ever-higher unimaginable heights. We’ve done well except that we look around and see the world we stand upon and depend on facing climatic, economic, political and biological crises wrought by the very hands we raise in triumph. No longer can we credibly believe that the ascent of man as we’re working it can achieve the mastery our forefathers expected. Rather, it’s more like we hope and pray that we are keeping ahead of colossal folly. Our situation feels like the lesson of uh-oh that every mountaineer learns–that summiting a great mountain is fantastic but our grand sense of completion faces the start of a vital and often perilous return to where we really live.

Chomolungma, the same mountain, is a huge emanation bearing the powers of the terrain around it. It’s a great peak that offers support to people who respect it, and it infuses people with a vision of our inherent vulnerability and dependence on our surroundings. I speak merely as an amateur observer of indigenous life, but I’ve seen in Ladakhis, Sherpas, Baltis and others a deep happiness and a respectful and active love for belonging to terrain that we with ever-mobile modern powers can barely imagine. Chomolungma focuses and enhances that vision of belonging and dependence on earth. We should not, however, confuse well-being and secure in belonging with ease and comfort, or even security in general. Indigenous living is full, difficult, and rich in hardship. Out of hopeful opportunity, dire need and heartbreaking fate Himalayan people are shifting away from their subsistence patterns. They are seeking better lives with at least one leg in the modern world while retaining their indigenous identities as best they can. In this year’s Sherpa celebrations in Khumbu for the anniversary of the 1953 ascent, I’m told that respect and rites for Chomo Miyo Langsangma were more prominent than ever. This is a sign of hope, it follows an instinct to bring the estranged step-siblings of Everest and Chomolungma together in the palace chambers of our mind. Whatever our current means, we would do well to blend in our minds both the will for Everest-inspired powers of proficiency and the indigenous respect for Chomolungma-inspired vulnerability. What other choice do we have?

Information on Chomolungma and Chomo Miyo Langsangma in this article has come from many sources. I’d particularly like to thank Edwin Bernbaum, author of Sacred Mountains of the World, and Jan Sacherer and Barbara Brower, authorities on Sherpa and Tibetan culture. The latter two recruited helpful corrections and encouragement from Ani Jamyang Wangmo and Tashi Tsering. I’d also like to thank Losang Rabgey and her amala.

About Allen Steck

Allen Steck passed away on February 23, he was 96. I was lucky to be his friend for some 25 years. We did a lot of climbing together, with me leading, back when he was 70+ years old and still ably following 5.9’s and 10a’s. He knew better than anyone I’ve known how to find quality and attainable challenge. Despite having a fine autobiography, published through Patagonia, I think relatively few people appreciate the depth and breadth of his career, for he stands as one of the greatest American climbers in history. Off the top of my head here is a summary, with added anecdotes and unchecked “facts” as I remember them.

Allen’s father was an active member of the Sierra Club, and passed on to Allen and brother George values for adventure and conservation, as well as an original copy of John Muir’s The Mountains of California, gifted and signed by Muir.

In the wake of WWII Allen went to college on the GI Bill in Switzerland, when Europe was in shambles. While there he answered a letter via the Club from a leading Austrian climber named Karl Lugmayer. The two spent the summer of 1949 climbing in Austria and the Dolomites, traveling from peak to peak on bicycles. Allen had brought from America one of the very first nylon climbing ropes (maybe the first?) to be deployed in Europe, and luckily so because on the Cima Grande an aid piton pulled and Karl took a 65-foot mostly airborne fall. The fall dinged Karl’s head pretty badly, but they were able struggle down to get it bandaged and go back and, with Allen’s lead, complete the climb the next day. He and Karl stayed in touch their whole lives, and a group of us met Karl when he flew over for Allen’s 80^th birthday celebration in Berkeley.

Karl Lugmayer and Allen Steck in Berkeley, May 2006 © Andy Selters

Soon after Allen returned to California he pulled off some big climbs in 1950, difficult and demanding adventures that history seems to have lost in the bright lights that shined in Yosemite a few years later. His year included the first ascent of Castle Rock Spire, and then the oft-tried first ascent of the north face of Sentinel Rock, with John Salathé. After that he and a team of Sierra Club guys went deep into the BC Coast Mountains, where he readily led a new route up daunting Mt. Waddington, the rock-snow-ice king peak of the range. Then they toured around that area, arguably the most profoundly alpine territory south of the Yukon, and made a bunch of additional first peak ascents.

In 1953 he and Willi Unsoeld, Bill Long and Will Siri completed the first ascent of El Capitan’s east buttress, after a couple of attempts including one where they had to lower Bill Dunmire who took a bad aid fall and was fairly unconscious with a concussion.

Around 1952 Allen quit grad school and started working at The Ski Hut gear shop in Berkeley. As he became the store manager the shop became northern California’s hub for climbing gear and info. He then got into designing gear, making efficient, top-notch “Slimline” sleeping bags and I think tents too. During this decade he married, and raised daughter Sara and son Lee into outdoor adventure values.

In 1952 he went with other Sierrans to the big Cordillera Blanca to try some notable climbs. Unfortunately Oscar Cook got high altitude illness and died. After taking his body down to Lima the team returned, and Allen and Will Siri made a couple of big climbs, most notably an alpine-style first ascent of Huandoy East.

Over time he did quite a few other first ascents in the Sierra, including the wall of Angel Wings, the SE Face of Clyde Minaret, and the “Doors of Perception” route on N. Palisade.

Allen climbing a 5.9 in the E. Sierra © Andy Selters

Allen was also an avid skier, he often toured backcountry south of Tahoe. Sometime in the late ’40s (?) he and Dick Long and others skied from Mammoth Lakes, pushed through storms, and made the first winter ascent of Clyde Minaret. In the early ’60s while backcountry skiing near Echo Summit Allen was buried pretty deep in an avalanche. Friends heroically somehow located and dug him out in time. A few years later he teamed up with Lito Tejada-Flores to write Wilderness Skiing, which became America’s backcountry ski manual for awhile. During this period he went back up to BC with another Sierra Club group and led the first winter ascent of Mt. Waddington.

In 1954 Allen joined Will Siri and partners for America’s first Himalayan expedition after the war, hoping to climb Makalu by the futuristically huge southeast ridge. Teton guide Willi Unsoeld was on the team. The approach up the Arun Valley then was virtually unexplored and an ordeal in itself. Gradually they all realized they were overmatched on their first trip to super high altitude, on a route that would not be (and not quite) completed until 30 years later.

As Sara and Lee grew out of childhood dependency Allen restarted serious climbing. In 1963 he went with Dick Long and John Evans to the Tetons, and Long prompted them to try what a few had jokingly mused, traversing all the main Teton peaks, in a day. It took them their second try, but even as thunderstorms chased them they climbed Nez Perce, Cloudveil, South T, Middle T, Grand T, Owen and Teewinot, and returned to the car before dark.

In 1965 Allen and Dick Long were the lead force among six guys in making the incredible ascent of what hopefully is understood as the biggest route in the Western Hemisphere, the south “Hummingbird” ridge of Mt. Logan. Fred Beckey in 1994 told me how incredulous he was that “those California guys” would even try the thing. “We didn’t think they had a chance,” Fred said. This became one of the great success tales of mountaineering, and I heard Allen tell it around campfires a couple of times–how they persevered over a few thousand feet of steep walls with mediocre and bad rock and sloppy snow just to get to the wildly narrow crest of the ridge. Weeks in but still a long, long way to go, they got discouraged and voted whether to go on or to retreat. The deciding vote came to Jim Wilson, who asked Long, “Dick, can you get me off of this mountain?” Dick said “yes,” so they carried on. Soon after that they realized they were on “a forward retreat,” for to reverse their way back down would be such a convoluted epic that the best way to get home safely was to carry on over the top. Allen then told how the “Shovel Traverse” actually was not the nightmare it appeared. After a couple of ropelengths they realized the snow of July was fairly firm and sculptable, and the wild cornices and meringues and walls held their tightwire of cut steps and fixed ropes for repeated load carries pretty well. It was Dick who first went on lead with their drilled-out steel shovel and found that the crust was such that he could scoop out steps more readily than with an ice axe.

Allen was a very literate man. The shelves of his house in Berkeley were dense with all sorts of books, many, including the works of Goethe, in German. In 1967 he and Steve Roper talked David Brower and the Sierra Club into publishing a literary climbing annual, Ascent. Their determination to prod good writing out of not necessarily eloquent climbing writers made it the gold standard for climbing literature and the voice for thinking more deeply about climbing as art, style and challenge. I’m pretty sure Christian Beckwith would agree Ascent was an inspiration for starting Alpinist. Later, in the late ’70s Allen and Steve over no doubt a few sessions with wine decided that the classic way to show the under-appreciated grandeur of N. American climbing was to decide for themselves the most classic routes on the continent, and do a book featuring them. Part of the project was to climb as many of their recommendations as they could. Fifty Classic Climbs became the marquee book they imagined, and except in a couple of cases where climate change has transformed the peaks all the routes still stand up as characteristic testpieces.

In 1969 Allen and Leo LeBon started Mountain Travel, and Allen wrapped the Palisades School of Mountaineering under that umbrella. MT was America’s first real adventure travel company, and it played a large role enabling customers and guides, and partners and porters (especially in Nepal) to advance their lives through the delights and business of mountain adventuring.

In 1974 Allen was part of a large group of Americans invited by the USSR to climb peaks in the Pamirs. He, Chris Wren and Jock Glidden waited out a storm on Peak Lenin, and when they made their way to the top they came across the bodies of eight Russian women who had perished in the storm.

In 1976 Allen somehow was invited by climbers and the military in Pakistan to help them make the first ascent of Payu Peak. When I was in college I had a poster of Payu on my dorm wall–it was obviously not a peak but a fantasy, a surreal dream castle. But with Allen’s guidance the team climbed it, with Allen holding himself back not far from the top to leave the success to them. Young mountaineer Nazir Sabir went on from this, his “breakthrough” trip, to become Pakistan’s leading climber.

In 1983 Allen rejoined his brother George for another ultra-adventure, a walk, scramble, climb and occasional swim through the entire Grand Canyon, from Lee’s Ferry to Lake Mead. George was the Grand Canyon veteran and it sounds like Allen loved that expedition, 82 days long.

Allen finishing the 5.10 face pitch on “The SS,” 2000 © Andy Selters

In 2000 Allen invited me to join him for what proved to be his last big climb, his fourth repeat of the Steck-Salathé route (he called it “The SS”) on Sentinel. It was appropriately too hot, on approximately the 50^th anniversary of his FA. I’d never done the route before but with Allen aged 74 I was to lead it all. From the first pitch, even though I was competent at 5.11- I got worked. The rumors were right, that climb is way harder than the guidebook rating suggests. At various points he shared memories of where he and John huddled for the nights, and how at various impasses they’d searched left and right. It was astounding how tenacious they must have been—the route is justifiably infamous for long chimneys and wide cracks, and I thrutched and strained and struggled up those cracks, rationing a couple of big cams to keep the runouts just fairly scary–and those guys in 1950 had climbed with a simple bowline around their waists, lugged shoes, and no pitons wider than ¾ inch! It took them 4 ½ days. When Allen said they carried I think 4 quarts of water, I said, “Per day, per person, or?” “No, 4 quarts total!” He went on, “When we got to the top we were absolutely insane for water. John wandered off uphill looking for some delusional spring, and I headed down the gully. Eventually he crawled down and met me at the stream…” After our climb Allen took me out to dinner at the Lodge, and handed me one of those big cams. “Here, this is yours, I’ll never use it again…”

I visited Allen for the last time just a few weeks ago. He was spending his days comfortable in his chair at a side-building at his daughter Sara’s house, here in Bishop. He filled in some of the stories I knew. First, he told how his old friend Karl Lugmayer had told him his WWII story, right as Allen was boarding a ship at Genoa to come home. Karl relayed how he had been a reluctant member of the Werhmacht, recruited for his expertise with aeronautics and gliders. As the Germans’ war effort in early ’45 became desperate Karl was sent to the front lines near Flanders, to dig a foxhole. The weather was bad with poor visibility, and when Karl saw a British troop carrier come by he hopped into the back of it. The Brits drew their rifles but he delayed their fire by explaining in his excellent English he was surrendering. He finished the war as a POW.

Then Allen told me his own war story of that same year, how he was a deck hand on the USS George, a Destroyer escort. His main tale was of their mysterious non-deployment and the disaster of the USS Indianapolis. In 1945, unbeknownst to the crew, the Indianapolis delivered vital parts for assembling the A-Bombs to the island of Tinian. Right after that delivery the Navy sent the Indianapolis mysteriously unescorted to the Philippines, through lanes they knew were heavily patrolled by Japanese submarines. The Japanese sank the Indianapolis with torpedoes, and the Navy didn’t even have communications to know of it. Most of the 1200-man crew survived the sinking but no rescue came until after most of them had perished adrift, when they were found by a passing US aircraft. The Navy didn’t disclose the story until the day of the Japanese surrender. The ship’s Captain McVay survived but was scapegoated and court-martialed, but later reinstated and re-honored–years after he committed suicide.

Going through Allen’s long life of adventures, it’s obviously impressive how he was always “going for it,” his whole life. One night I glimpsed the youthful fire he must have had when he said, out of the blue, “My God, how could you look at the Hummingbird Ridge and not want to climb it?” Well, uh, some people might balk at it…He also told how he used to pull off this party trick, doing a pistol squat standing one-legged on a milk bottle. Yet I want to point out how, for all his “going-for-it,” year after year, in places and situations few or no one had ever been, he always kept sane and safe. When things got tough, and they did on essentially every one of his big climbs, he knew how to dig in and find more will and more effort, and more common-sense smarts to stay alive and safe. Right through all of his last climbing years he was pushing himself with sound judgement.

In the same half hour that his son Lee sent me the message about his passing, I saw a post that a big rockfall had peeled off of El Capitan, just left of the East Buttress route he did with Willi Unsoeld back in 1953. These two stories seem like connected, parallel news.

© 2023 by Andy Selters

A Climber’s Lessons in Isolation, Deprivation, and Survival

A spreading virus, compounding breakdowns; it’s a wise part of life now to withdraw, fortify and assess. I find extra value now when I tend some vegetables, hike and climb, help my son practice baseball, and practice and teach T’ai-chi. And for a sense of just-in-case readiness I ask into an experience when things got really dire.

Three decades ago I went to climb a Himalayan peak with a woman named Kitty. She and I were only acquainted when I invited her, but I knew her charming Carolina accent hid a woman tough as nails, and she said yes right away. The peak was a giant tower at the Ganges headwaters named Thalay Sagar (“monument heading a valley”) and our goal was its unclimbed north face.

Porters and our Liaison Officer arriving at Kedar Tal and our first view of Thalay Sagar

Thalay Sagar’s North Face

Thousands of feet of thin ice over steep rock called us into extended tip-toeing and riskier, deep poise than we’d ever found before. In four days we reached over half way up, high enough to look across ridges and feel ourselves in the rarefied realms. If you saw the film Meru Thalay is fairly like that, not quite as steep but icier and higher, in fact just a few miles west. At every move we calmed ourselves with the climber’s axiom; this is stressful, relax.

Kitty Calhoun starts the first pitch on Thalay Sagar’s north face

During our fifth morning a storm rolled in and started sending down waves of powder potent enough to knock us off. Out to the side of the chute we were in I found fortuitous cracks where I set a nest of four anchors I can remember to this day. From that hardware we hung our porta-ledge and crawled inside to wait. That evening we ate a half-dinner and agreed to save our remaining day and a half of food until the weather allowed us to go for the top.

Kitty Calhoun leads one of many thin-ice pitches on Thalay Sagar

Kitty assembling our porta-ledge for our second night on Thalay Sagar

Five days later we were still waiting there, getting really hungry as the storm kept on. It helped that the thin oxygen at over 21,000 feet makes lethargy the default, letting us sleep a good 16 hours a day. Each day we rationed ourselves a maintenance minimum, two mugs of warm water and a couple of spoonfuls of granola. For my larger size and higher metabolism, with Kitty’s encouragement I also took a daily spoonful of almond butter. Of course we kept tethered to those anchors. Daily highlights included reaching outside our blue-tinted micro-room to gather ice for water and to pee. These acts required coordinated counterbalancing to manage the ledge swinging. Each peek out from the capsule shocked us with the reminder that beyond the fabric waited nothing but ice-pasted buttresses disappearing into clouds. We transferred our ache to eat into discipline; yes we suffer, save reserves patiently.

Kitty in the long wait for the storm to end

On the fifth afternoon of waiting I woke from a nap noticing it had become warmer and brighter. I bolted up in excitement for clearing skies, but my wakeup timing seems paranormal because I stuck my head out at the exact moment to see a huge avalanche sailing our way. I yelled to Kitty and as it hit us we braced our arms out against the force of it. Violence pounded us, turning it dark, thrashing, shaking and battering us harder and fiercer as if ravaging us down the maw of a vicious monster. Webbing and frame bounced and strained and I expected the anchors to snap and send us off to oblivion. Finally the horror slowed, and stopped. We shoved like crazy to rid the canopy of remaining snow, then sat screaming in silent terror.

I broke the roar to say, “We gotta get the fuck outta here,” and Kitty did not disagree. Warmer snow had stuck onto slabs above, and instead of pouring down like sand it had released in tonnage all at once. We went suddenly from patient soldiers to hunted prey.

Death’s glower sent me asking why I was there, and before long I saw clearly what I had only notioned before—that I could no longer care a whit for whatever rewards a climbing success might win, and motivations for recognition back home were a dangerous trap. However brightly the glow of admiration might light the way, terrain and weather do not recognize social currency. Our task was to engage the awe and risks of Thalay as impeccably as we could, and everything else we might live for depended on it. I understood that I climbed to find that purity of excursion, a motivation rooted in closets and dreams I was barely starting to open. At this point it was obvious we had to retreat, at dawn.  Let go of habitual vision, see the challenges you really face.

But by dawn the storm re-intensified and in the two minutes it took me to descend just 50 feet multiple snow-waves swamped over us, driving icy powder into our layers. It was like doing skyscraper work in frigid surf and I realized we were profoundly screwed. With at least 25 rappels to get down some 3,700 feet we’d either freeze to death or make a fatal mistake. I jugged the rope back up to Kitty, and as waves crashed over us we had a hard time just re-hanging our shelter and diving back in. At that point reality hit harder than I could handle. We were trapped, and the determination we’d both learned to succeed by had to shake hands in the ring with despair. Thankfully cold had returned to keep the snow powder and pouring down the wall, at least for the time being. But we’d had almost no food for nearly a week and my body was dwindling. When I clenched my teeth I noticed them wiggling loose in their gums, and my mouth had an acetone taste that my biology degree recognized as a sign I was metabolizing muscles. Kitty offered that with a woman’s extra body fat she might be able to survive longer. Whatever, all we could do was lie watching snow hiss over the fly like sand through an hourglass. A path can really lead to having no options.

As we lived like corpses for two more days my will could abide no more. Every cell demanded action, anything, anyhow to escape. My mind started conjuring explanations, contriving fantasies, confronting shapeless demons and formless ghosts, rifling through its toolkit to no avail. We absolutely had to find the leverage to change the weather. Maybe we’d done something to offend the deities. How could things be so unfair? The recent monsoon had failed, bringing weeks of sun to thin the ice, and now in the supposed fair-weather season we faced the biggest storm ever? Weren’t starvation, renouncing fame, abandoning goals, and then a body pounding from death penance enough? I was ready to bargain, but with what? I never voiced my harangues to Kitty, I just kept flailing against sanity. Finally I landed at the person beside me. I insanely came to believe that the best hope to end the storm was to tell Kitty some important things. Respect your hope and ask with all your honesty if it points to true.

I told her how I had previously planned for Thalay with another friend, but he’d then betrayed what to me had been a romantic trust, making it impossible to have paired with him on an expedition. Kitty listened but offered little comment. But that evening the snow stopped, then some stars shone. Surely at last this was the storm’s end. I privately laughed to imagine how my opening up could have brought the clearing.

Alas, we woke to snowfall heavier than ever. There was no point to anything, the foolishness I’d imagined showed clear. I went back to thrashing for hope somewhere else because there was none worth the word.

When I woke again I came to admit there was more I should say. Early in the trip our excitement had included forays into our own romantic attraction, but now Kitty and I lie together sharing little besides small talk and valuable body heat. Fact was I’d privately pulled away because I’d seen roots of conflict. With Thalay looming so intimi-dating, I’d pictured a lover’s quarrel up on it as an existential nightmare. I was a searching soul, she was the most determined climber I’d ever met, and there we lie, unskilled in relating except when feeding each other rope to run with. I came to imagine that better weather and our lives depended on my gumption to clear the air between us.

I propped up and told her that I admired her and that I was glad she was my climbing partner in this tough situation, but that I was probably destined to pair with someone else. She listened but remained mysterious. We continued hanging in purgatory until I dug from my deeper history. I told her how I’d taken to mountains as a path apart from foul parenting and society gone toxic with pollution, wars and mindless jobs, how I sought to live instead by nature. Then she opened up too, telling how she also had taken to climbing out of rebellion, against expectations to be a Southern belle. Our talk unfolded further and felt cathartic, we became more like buddies. And that evening the snowfall stopped. Reach into your soul to reach out to your partners.

Dawn broke bright and clear! Salvation! But it came with brutal, sub-zero cold. We struggled just suiting up. I dropped our pot grips, and their tumble into gone reminded what falling would really mean. When we finally shouldered our packs my body had little energy even to shiver or move well, so Kitty led down. Each rappel was an ordeal, she searching to craft each new anchor, both of us struggling to slide down the ropes frozen stiff like cables, then gasping to team-heave them down. Each clip of a tether and each bite of an ice screw was life-crucial, and each wait for the other was temptation to give in to a blessed rest into forever. By early afternoon she said she was spent, but I’d revived enough to take over the lead. Come evening I re-faded but she’d revived, and I realized that without designing it our deepest reserves were coordinating.

As it grew dark she yelled up that she couldn’t find an anchor. I came down to join the search, then she slipped and broke our remaining headlamp. By feel I scanned the granite and found a slit to pound in a couple of small pitons to tether ourselves to for the night. We chopped a pitifully small ice seat, then broke out the stove to cook our long-saved final dinner packet, just as lightning flash-lit our gaunt faces looking to each other in shock, and it began to snow again. This was beyond appalling but we were too desperate to fret. Kitty pulled the fly over us while I operated the stove between my knees, and as we huddled like derelicts on a Himalayan sill I knew that if we didn’t get that food into us we would die. When we leaned against each other and dipped our spoons to bring the precious stew to our mouths the chewing and swallowing felt so unfamiliar and magnificent that the snow pouring over us merely registered. By midnight it cleared again and hope hung on.

Kitty Calhoun packing gear across the rocky glacier below Thalay Sagar

The next day we finished our last rappel, we’d made it! We sat on our packs as if hallucinating; after two weeks on the wall the freedom to walk was a miraculous reunion. But next we had to wallow through new snow a dozen feet deep for a couple of miles. By dark we reached a boulder to spend the night under, then we dragged for another day to basecamp. There we collapsed, disoriented and stunned for how far we’d traveled since departing that grassy haven. It felt as if we’d been apart from humanity for a long time, and as we toured to the Taj Majal and to a guiding assignment in Nepal we took in all our encounters with child-like wonder. Kitty and I went our different ways and remained friends, climbing many more seasons and both rearing sons.

Kitty and I cooking up our first food back in basecamp

I can’t recommend extreme climbing to anyone who doesn’t hear its outrageous call, but it is reassuring to know you’ve got extra reserves, and a journey to life’s edge informs all other experiences. No one risks their life without reasons that may be hidden, and this ordeal wrenched me into a lot of asking. With today’s breakdowns circling like vultures, we are called to venture out of our comfort zones; but into what?

It’s humbling to recall how when hope disappeared my sanity went chasing after it. I became like a ravenous don Quixote hailing and snarling at windmills, concocting self-serving delusions. I recognize this pattern in today’s news; at first we’re ready to endure, then as losses and confusion eat into us we retreat into despondence, act out in anger, and contrive wishful solutions.

What came like the cavalry to my rescue were three essentials. First was a hardening resolve at the inner belly/front of my spine. It was something like the force of life from the four directions collecting there to declare that I had willpower deeper than food nourishment and I’d better use it. It was a body-core determination to dismiss hunger and delusions and work through the location and situation we faced no matter what it took—and if we didn’t make it so be it.

That deep-belly tenacity wrestled me through nets of despair into the second essential, clarity. I recall wondrous moments of ultra-aliveness, moments when I could see all the things around us and their roles in our living on. I knew who I was and why I was there, and I could look at the details in our gear and the seams of the mountain and see it all fitting together. Just as the dropoff constantly reminded us to stay tethered to anchors, our utter isolation kept telling us to take our cues for action and patience not from fantasy but from our connection to Thalay and its weather. Living on is a matter of resonating with the things around us.

Third, I doubt we would have made it down alive without looking out for each other as well as for ourselves. When things got dire we opened up enough to fortify our little blue lifeboat with respect for our mutual vulnerability and will to live. We paddled our little dinghy of fabric and care for each other down the stormy abyss, operating beyond pride, entitlement and fear, partnering with each other’s strengths, foibles and mistakes like the nothings and everything they were. Dire challenge drew us beyond habits into what seems in retrospect like a state of instinctive grace.

We alpine climbers chase into absurd situations that force us out of our comfort zones into all kinds of letting go. Mountains teach us the hard way that it’s a dangerous mistake to project our ambitions and concepts onto them. It can take a lot of experiences to let mountains be mountains and take simple joy in tactile, technical and personal resonance with their edges and contours. That’s when we climb our best.

Today what I fear is our cultural inertia—that’s been so powerful for us—telling us we can forcefully design solutions independent from our surroundings and observable truth. We succeed only to a point, seeing through acculturated lenses and pulling social levers, but if we’re untethered and dissonant to the mountains and skies, oceans and cities, rivers and farms, and grizzlies and viruses we live with and live from, we risk all sorts of mayhem. Perhaps the corona virus can show us that despite our sophisticated civilization we are still both hunter and hunted, all mutually vulnerable and part of the whole. What civilization’s powers do for us is shift the predation on us to blowback from our own actions. We certainly suffer isolation these days, but what’s truly isolating is living as if our remarkable powers are untethered from the ferocious wonder around us.

Kitty resting on our hike out from basecamp

As things get tough and likely tougher I’m confident that any of us can find amazing tenacity, if we can find the clarity.

Kitty Calhoun on a bus in northern India

A clear image that speaks true is the “earthrise” photo taken by astronaut Bill Anders, looking back at home while orbiting the moon. That’s all of us in our blue-marbled lifeboat, rich with with many remarkable colors shared with all known living things, spinning through a fascinating and fathomless void.

Earthrise from lunar orbit, 1968. Photo by Bill Anders courtesy NASA