Keeper Of The Mountains (25 page)

In her usual style Elizabeth prodded for more details: What had he seen from the summit? What landmarks and terrain features could he describe? Was there any evidence of other climbing teams? His answers were convincing. She had been impressed with him when he told her of his solo ascent of Jannu by a new and difficult route, and that added to his credibility on Lhotse. It wasn't just Elizabeth who was convinced.

Messner was stunned with the speed and the vision of this climb: “That he did it so fast above 8000 metres! I cannot imagine how fast he could climb.” Everyone agreed this was something truly futuristic. Later that autumn, a 20-member Soviet team climbed the South Face, taking weeks to surmount the route and using oxygen as well. They expressed wonder, and finally doubt, that Česen had done what he claimed.

Greg Child was in Kathmandu and remembered the Soviet team's press conference and their skepticism about Česen's climb. They were guarded in their statements. “If he did the route he claims,” they suggested, “he must be some kind of superman.” After the press conference, Child questioned Elizabeth about her interview with Česen and was surprised that she didn't seem to have any detailed notes on the climb. He wasn't sure if she understood the scale of the potential controversy. Had she simply written down what Česen told her rather than subjecting him to her usual interrogation? When she heard about Child's surprise much later, she too was surprised, because her Česen file was complete with photos, statements, descriptions and notes. Either she hadn't understood what Child wanted, or she wasn't willing to show it to him, or one of them remembered it wrongly.

After Česen returned home, inconsistencies began to appear in his story. When asked by the French magazine
Vertical
for a summit photo, he produced one. Some time later it became known that it was not his own but that of fellow Slovenian Viktor Grošelj (who was not amused). One thing led to another, and Elizabeth, along with most
in the mountaineering community, including Messner, finally came to believe that Tomo Česen did not climb the South Face of Lhotse.

In retrospect, Elizabeth doubted that Česen was “confused” about his claim. He had been explicit. He had told her he was just a few metres below the summit and that it would not have been safe for him to stand on the summit because of the wind and lack of space. He thought he could “touch” it by raising his arm to its full length, thereby confirming his summit claim. She recalled the interview: “I believed him. He'd been to Jannu and he came into my office and told me about the climb metre by metre. He came prepared. I remember that he had very detailed, minute descriptions of where he had gone, including a diagram. I asked how it compared with Jannu and he said, ‘Well it's not technically as difficult, but it's much bigger and much wider and you feel very, very small.' And then he blew it. I'm sorry not to believe him, but now I don't.”

And then people started doubting Česen's solo ascent of Jannu. “It's a pity,” she said, speculating that perhaps he came to believe in his stories himself. After Lhotse, she never saw him again.

Elizabeth received considerable criticism for her reporting of Česen's successes on Jannu and Lhotse because she didn't catch the errors. Some said that with her reputation for detail and scrutiny on the 8000-metre peaks, she should have picked up on the fabrications. They felt she was the first line of defence for the truth – and she had been too easily breached. Others were more generous, pointing out that virtually every mountain magazine editor in the world believed Česen, too, at least until he began making obvious mistakes.

Other Slovenian climbers were having a better time of it. Marija and Andrej Štremfelj became the first married couple to summit Everest together. Marija remembered the rigour of their post-expedition interview; in addition to all of the normal questions about camps, times and distances, Elizabeth asked what clothes they wore on summit day and who was first – Andrej or herself. Marija thought the obsession with seemingly meaningless details was strange, but it made sense when Elizabeth explained her reasons. There were actually two couples on the mountain that day, each trying to be the first to the summit. The other couple, an American woman and her Russian husband, was close behind, so Elizabeth had to determine exactly who was first. She was cross-referencing the times and details told her by
the Å tremfeljs against those reported by other climbers. Marija had been completely unaware of the tight time frame.

Elizabeth knew Andrej well and was genuinely happy for them. Over the years, they had often talked about expeditions, his and others' too. She liked Andrej and trusted his honesty and motivations. In her opinion, he demonstrated a true mountaineering spirit, as opposed to the 8000-metre wrangling she saw so often. She told Andrej he would probably be surprised at the number of well-known climbers who said they'd reached summits she was sure they had not. He remembered talking with her about the Tomo Česen debacle and why she initially believed Česen had summited the South Face of Lhotse. She said Česen had described some oxygen bottles where she was sure they had been left by an American team. It was a detail that helped cinch the story for her.

Because Andrej was so often in Nepal, he was also the recipient of Elizabeth's massive repository of information – something he used to good advantage. She was a valuable resource for many Slovenian climbers, assisting them in finding inexpensive accommodation in Kathmandu and helping them with logistics and permits. She recognized their needs and did what she could to help them. But he also sensed there was a lot she didn't share: stories about politics, the royal family and individual climbers. He was curious, but didn't ask.

The fall of 1990 was a big season, with 78 expeditions and 553 foreign climbers in the Himalayan peaks. With a 30 per cent increase of climbers from the previous year, Elizabeth was busy running back and forth between her house and the climbers' hotels. But despite the numbers, not much new was happening. As she put it, “Pioneering new routes or exploring seldom-attempted peaks was apparently not of paramount interest to the majority.” Many of the expeditions were on Everest, where 31 people summited in a four-day period of beautiful weather.

The Nepalese Ministry of Tourism, regulators of mountaineering in Nepal, began to receive negative feedback about the number of permits they were granting for a single season, particularly on Everest and other “commercial” peaks. Foreign climbers – and Elizabeth – warned the authorities about the dangers and conflicts, not to mention the environmental pollution, of such crowding. They replied that they had several reasons to continue in this way: more revenue for the
government, more revenue for the private sector (guides, trekking companies, porters, suppliers) and more opportunity for alpinists to climb their chosen peaks. For the most part, things worked smoothly, but there were incidents. A Spaniard on Dhaulagiri scoffed at the Swiss who “sold” their route to other expeditions. And at times, teams that were fixing routes resented later teams ascending their ropes.

Some teams arrived with meagre supplies, apparently assuming that better-supplied expeditions would be there for them if needed. Well-stocked teams found themselves functioning as restaurants and supply depots. This didn't make them happy, but what really rankled was how the less-equipped climbers boasted of how they were freeloading and getting up the mountain “alpine style,” and yet were utilizing other teams' fixed ropes, tents and food.

Amazing stories filtered back to Elizabeth: Russian climbers were helping themselves to other people's food and tents; an ailing, ill-equipped French climber asked a British climber to supply him with oxygen, a stretcher and manpower to carry him down through the icefall; and so on. An Italian visitor to Everest base camp described it as a fairground and said it was difficult to move among the tents.

At the end of the season, a ministry official admitted there had been some problems and perhaps they should limit the number of permits. But Elizabeth doubted his superiors would see things in the same light, despite the warnings.

As commercial and guided climbing increased in frequency, Elizabeth maintained an open mind, though she was not terribly interested in these new climbing objectives. She clearly delineated the two: “All guided climbs are commercial climbs, but not all commercial climbs are guided.” With some commercial climbs, she explained, the organizers' responsibility was to get the team to base camp or advance camp and provide them with everything to that point, and then leave them on their own to climb the mountain. In contrast, a guide's responsibility was to take the client to the top of the mountain – and back down. She pointed out that guided expeditions tend to have “frightfully inexperienced” climbers, whereas climbers on non-guided commercial expeditions might have more experience, although not necessarily at high altitude: “They tend to hire the commercial organizer because they don't have time. They don't know how to get permits or organize expeditions. They only know how to climb.”

S
he was convinced that even though guided expeditions insisted on a minimum level of client experience, there was a lot of conning going on in that regard and the results could be disastrous. She had met many climbers on guided expeditions who made their decision to climb in Nepal based on what exotic vacation they should take in any particular year: “I'll go on a Mediterranean cruise or an East African safari or climb a Himalayan peak.” And yet Elizabeth's impatience was not so much with the commercial climbing industry as it was with the experts and professional climbers who looked down on commercial expeditions as getting in the way and cluttering up the mountains. She objected to this condescension, adding “Well, they don't own the mountain, do they?”

The Nepalese government took advantage of this growing commercial phenomenon by steadily increasing peak fees. Authorities said the increases were for environmental conservation, but Elizabeth wasn't convinced. Their professed strategy was to reduce the number of climbers on Everest and other popular 8000-metre peaks and spread them around to the lesser peaks, where the fees were lower. She didn't buy this argument either. The increases were substantial and shocking to climbers who had been coming to Nepal for years. In one year, Dhaulagiri 1 leapt from a $2,000 fee to $8,000, plus $800 for each additional member over a total of nine. When Italian climber Sergio Martini returned from his attempt on Kangchenjunga and went to the ministry to obtain the same permit for the following year, he learned that it would cost him four times as much.

Elizabeth doubted the government's strategy would actually reduce the number of expeditions. Instead, she thought it would change the nature and makeup of the expeditions from small self-financed teams to large commercial expeditions organized by adventure-travel agencies and mountaineering clubs. Yet to Elizabeth's way of thinking, the smaller teams that tended to try difficult and unclimbed routes – routes that weren't interesting to commercial operators – were essential for the ongoing development of Himalayan climbing. Some climbers told her they were changing their objectives to peaks in Pakistan, where the fees were lower. Others admitted they would climb without official permission, a practice she disapproved of.

That August, Elizabeth went to Lhasa, but it wasn't the city itself
that impressed her. Her flight skirted the edge of Everest and she vividly remembered her first view of the East Face: she almost fell out of her seat. She had always thought that the Southwest Face was big and that the North Face was big, but this face was huge! The immense whiteness of the snow-covered face overwhelmed her. Although she enjoyed exploring Lhasa, that experience was completely overshadowed by her first glimpse of the East Face of Everest. Despite her obvious glee at seeing this spectacular mountain face up close, the mystery remained as to why Elizabeth had never gone to Everest base camp herself. She had many chances to go and it would have been logical for her to be curious about this place so familiar to her through her work. She insisted her heavy workload had never provided her the time. And so she never went.

Stephen Venables was back in Kathmandu, this time for a new route on the 6369-metre Kusum Kanguru, a stunning peak near Everest. He and Elizabeth ran into each other through their mutual friend Lisa Choegyal. Venables described the new, quite difficult route they had just done, and apparently she responded by referring to it as just a “trekking peak,” asking whether he'd done any real climbing lately. Venables was stunned. He had thought she had a good understanding of what constituted a “real climb,” but her comment changed his opinion.

Elizabeth remembered it differently and was dismayed that he felt insulted, reluctantly admitting she wasn't known for her diplomatic skills. She explained that she didn't interview him because Kusum Kanguru really
is
a trekking peak, a designation created by the Ministry of Tourism for climbing peaks of lower elevation. She knew there were difficult routes on some of the trekking peaks, but for her it was impossible to keep track of them all. The Nepal Mountaineering Association gives out a multitude of permits for trekking peaks, many of which are not used because the costs are so low. For Elizabeth the volume was too much, so she had no way of knowing what routes were being done on those peaks. Looking back, she suspected she was probably brusque with Venables because she was busy.

Though he was disappointed by her lack of interest in his climb, Venables still valued Elizabeth as a chronicler, at least as far as what she actually chronicled. As an author himself, he had often contacted
her for information and was always impressed at the care she took with details. He thought she was a valuable resource for climbing writers like himself, as well as the mainstream media, because it would be all too easy for the media to get misinformation and never know the difference. With Elizabeth, they were sure to get the facts.