Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

There was something almost disturbing in seeing the Deacon in brown and khaki and high puttees like that. If it brought back harsh memories of the War to him, he certainly didn’t show it as he got out of the big car, stretched, craned his head back to look at the surrounding peaks and icefalls, and then got his pipe out of his tatty old wool-jacket pocket and proceeded to light it up. I remember that the smell of his tobacco in the cold air was like a powerful drug.

I was worried that it would be another two-hour hike to our climbing spot—as with Mallory’s damned pipe-ledge rock—but Jean-Claude had parked the gigantic Vauxhall only a hundred yards or so from his true destination.

He’d been after vertical summer waterfalls that had turned to icefalls; he’d been after 200-foot walls of ice over rock that ended in daunting ice-over-rock-slab overhangs. He’d found them. Frozen waterfalls and spectacular icefalls filled the entire valley at this far end of the mostly frozen Llyn Idwal and under the cliffs of Cwm Idwal. We lugged the heavy bags to the base of one of the largest, steepest, and most overhanging-at-the-top vertical icefalls, where he dumped his load in the snow and waved for us to do the same. And then he began to explain something that would change alpine and Himalayan climbing forever.

“First you must change into the new boots Messrs. Fagg created for us,” said Jean-Claude. He pulled two pairs of the stiff boots from one of the heavy canvas bags. J.C. was already wearing his.

The Deacon and I grumbled but found separate boulders to sit on while we took off our comfortable and broken-in new alpine boots and tugged on the ridiculous stiff ones. We’d tried walking in these new things in London, and they were hideously uncomfortable. (The Laplander high-and-fuzzy felt-and-leather boots were best—like walking in knee-high, extra-warm Indian moccasins. Unfortunately, the rocks and boulders we’d be walking on in Tibet, usually while carrying heavy packs, on the 350-mile hike in to Everest would bruise the soles of our feet too much if we wore the fuzzy boots all the time. But they’d be perfect as in-camp boots.)

The Deacon and I took a few clumsy steps in the full-shank “stiff boots,” frowned at each other, and scowled at Jean-Claude. Those stupid boots had almost no flex at all. They’d never break in to become comfortable hiking or climbing shoes.

J.C. did not seem daunted by our glares. Also, he was too busy removing a host of metal and metal-and-wood items from his three heavy bags of tricks. “What are these?” J.C. asked us, holding up two old crampons I’d seen him use many times.

“Crampons?” I said, hating the schoolboy rise in my voice at the end. “Crampons,” I repeated more firmly.

“And what are they used for?” he continued in his schoolmarmish, only slightly French accent.

“Crossing glaciers,” I said even more firmly. “Sometimes going up snow slopes—if they’re not too steep.”

“How many points does each have?”

“Points?” I said stupidly.

“Spikes on the bottom,” said the Deacon. He was fumbling with his damned pipe again. I wanted to hit him with one of the four-foot-long icicles dangling from the lower part of the icefall ahead of us.

“Ten points,” I said. I’d had to envision my crampons at home and mentally count the spikes. Stupid. I’d used them since I was a teenager. “Ten.”

“Why don’t we use them more while climbing?” asked Jean-Claude. “Why won’t we use them high on Mount Everest?” His soft, innocent voice sounded treacherous to me. There was some trap here. I looked at the Deacon, but he was suddenly very busy getting his pipe relit.

“Because the damned things are no good on rock,” I said at last. I was losing patience with this dunce-schoolboy role.

“Is everything underfoot high on Everest rock?”

I actually sighed. “No, Jean-Claude, not everything underfoot high on Everest is rock, but enough is. We can use crampons for the occasional snowfield, if it’s not too steep. But hobnailed boots are better. More grip. More traction. The North Face of Everest, and most of the North East and East ridges, according to the Alpine Club’s reports and what the nineteen twenty-four expedition high-climbers say, consists mostly of downward-tilting rock slabs—like slate shingles on a steep roof. A very steep roof.”

“So crampons would be inadvisable there?”

I had a geometry teacher in prep school who used to lead class instruction and discussions in that tone. I hated him as well.

“Very inadvisable,” I said. “It’d be like walking on steel stilts.” That hadn’t been easy to say clearly.

Jean-Claude nodded slowly as if finally coming to a basic understanding of Himalayan and high-alpine climbing. “And what about Norton’s Couloir?”

“Norton’s Couloir” was what climbers were now calling the great slab-and-snow-filled gully that runs straight up the central North Face of Everest to the Summit Pyramid. A year earlier, Edward Norton and Howard Somervell—Norton in the unroped lead—had blazed a route off the East Ridge onto the North Face above the so-called Yellow Band of rock above 28,000 feet. Norton, with Somervell not feeling well and trailing far behind, had reached the great snowy gully and tried to fight his way almost vertically up the couloir. But the snow was almost waist deep. And where it wasn’t, the downward-tilting slabs were covered with ice. Norton finally began to realize how precarious his position was—one glance under his sliding feet showed a direct drop to the Rongbuk Glacier some 8,000 feet below—and he was forced to end his summit attempt, descending very slowly to Somervell and asking in a shaky voice if they could rope up. (This sudden loss of nerve after daring attempts, in climbs with terrible exposure, wasn’t uncommon, even in the Alps. It was as if the brain, suddenly clicking on a survival instinct, finally overrode the adrenaline and ambition of even the most courageous climber. Those who didn’t heed this “loss of nerve” in truly dangerous situations—such as George Mallory—often didn’t return from climbs.)

Norton’s couloir effort had been an astounding attempt. A new altitude record of 28,126 feet—surpassed, if it all, only by Mallory and Irvine on their fatal final attempt along the windy North East Ridge.

But most would-be Everest climbers had written off Norton’s Couloir as impossible. Too steep. Too much loose snow. Too much vertical climb. Too serious a penalty for a single slip after too many hours at too high and cold a place under the most extreme exertion possible.

“Why not use crampons to climb Norton’s Couloir?” asked Jean-Claude. “Or even along the steep snow ramps above twenty-seven thousand feet on the East Ridge or North East Ridge, where only Mallory and Irvine have gone?”

The end of that sentence chilled me. But then, I’d taken off the Finch balloon coat and a cold breeze was coming down Cwm Idwal and across Llyn Idwal.

“Crampons don’t work on a snowfield as steep as Norton’s Couloir,” I said irritably. “Or even on the high-ridge snowfields below where they established high camp at around twenty-seven thousand feet.”

“Why not?” asked Jean-Claude with that maddening Gallic smugness.

“Because human feet and ankles don’t bend that way, God damn it!” I said loudly. “And because crampons can’t keep a grip on steep snow slopes when the climber’s weight isn’t above them, bearing down on them. You know that, J.C.!”

“Yes, I know that, Jake,” he said, dropping his old crampons onto the snow.

“I think our friend has something to show us,” said the Deacon. His pipe was puffing along well now, and he spoke through gritted teeth.