大象传媒

The Ice Fall

• Graham
• 21 Apr 07, 06:57 AM

In the 21 years I’ve been coming to Mount Everest I’ve never seen the mountain looking so..interesting. The reason is the notorious Icefall. In the 1950 reconnaissance expedition Bill Tilman pronounced this obstacle unjustifiably dangerous, but since then thousands of ascents have been made through it, and this year we continue. It’s the only way up the mountain from the Nepali side. Two days ago the climbing team climbed through the Icefall to spend a night at Camp 1 and so we were able to reacquaint ourselves with this great natural feature.

The fact is that it has changed. The Icefall is a great frozen river pouring over a cliff. In the past it seemed to break off in great slices which were relatively easy to climb. Now, perhaps due to less precipitation, it seems to have collapsed in on itself so that the breakpoint occurs further up the valley and the great slices of ice seem to have fragmented.

As a climb it is full of interest. You start from your tent at Base Camp and put your crampons on as soon as the bare ice starts. Crampons are sharp steel points on a frame which clamp to your boots. Then, puffing hard in the thin air, you start climbing up and down the frozen waves of ice. You skirt round little ponds and haul yourself up icy crests. Soon you are hopping over crevasses in the ice, then you will encounter your first ladders. Balancing over three ladders tied together across a bottomless crevasse is a nerve-wracking experience. Then the fixed ropes start. These are woven up the Icefall by a group of brave Sherpas called the Ice Doctors. They are thin white ropes attached to the ice by stakes and ice screws, and the idea is to clip yourself in as a sort of extreme stair-rail. If you fall off the ladder they might just hold you. After the three ladders there is a collapsed section of ice called Popcorn Alley, because the metre-wide blocks do look like a vast popcorn spillage down some giant staircase. It is very hard to find something solid to stand on in here. After this is The Hammer, a 50-tonne beam of cracked ice bridged across the route. As you try to rush under this you try not to think that one day soon it is going to fall. Unfortunately some joker has put a knot in the fixed rope right under the Hammer so you come to a twanging halt and have to unclip.

After this comes Happy Valley, a collapsed section of such terrifying insecurity you only dare whisper to your companion for fear of dislodging the tottering blocks around you. Some are extraordinarily like a block of ice cream, except that they are the size of a detached house. Other parts of the ice are exactly like a Glacier Mint: clear, hard and transparent.

Climbing as hard as we could in air that contained only half the normal amount of oxygen we eventually came up to the Great Slices: the top of the Icefall. Here we relaxed a bit, but Camp 1 was still hours away. Base Camp radioed a warning of bad weather so we pulled extra clothes on and climbed up into a snowstorm.

As we got out of the Icefall the terrain flattened out and we entered the Western Cwm, the huge valley under the peak of Everest. As we trudged along in the whirling snow I thought about the history of this place. It was named by George Mallory, the great pioneer climber of this mountain, whose body my expedition found high on the North face in 1999. Not for the first time I wondered whether he had summitted before he died: a mystery I have been trying to solve for a lifetime. Then I thought about my brother Denys who is sailing around the Isle of Skye this week. I wished I was with him.
Eventually ten tents loomed through the mist and we threw our gear into one of them. We dragged food out of the store tent and started melting ice to drink. One by one the rest of the climbing team came in to camp after us.

After the worst night for years (the mats were hard and my sleeping bag soaked), we descended back to Base Camp. Running as fast as we could we got down in two and a half hours- half the time it took to come up. The Icefall is not a place to linger.

Graham Hoyland was the 15th Briton to climb Mount Everest and is the high altitude director on the 大象传媒 2 Horizon production.