Keeper Of The Mountains (31 page)

She'd interviewed people about style and controversies and issues concerning Himalayan climbing at a level that would leave most people, and even some climbers, reeling from the complexity. But her long career in Nepal and strict focus on Himalayan climbs worked against her, according to some. She hadn't lived outside Nepal in such a long time that some thought she failed to grasp where climbing was at in the global context; she only understood it from the perspective of the climbers who came to Nepal. These critics were sure she could not perceive what rock climbing in Yosemite was all about, or how Alaskan climbers transferred their knowledge to the big walls in the Himalaya. Elizabeth agreed. Not only did she admit to making no attempt to educate herself about climbing in other parts of the world, she added that she had no interest in doing so.

The most persistent criticism was that she would never possess a comprehensive understanding of climbing because she hadn't done it. She didn't know what it felt like to go outside in frozen boots to chop ice to make water. Every bit of information she had was second-hand. Elizabeth's critics insisted that first-hand experience was essential for a true, deep understanding of climbing. Even though she had access to all of the climbers, it was in an urban setting. People were different when they were showered and dressed and in Kathmandu, even after a long trip. When they sat down with the official chronicler of Himalayan climbing, they were on their best behaviour. There was a lot at stake in those moments of the interview, and it would be hard for her to understand all the nuances of truths and untruths, since the climbers' egos were so much on the line. Some believed she needed
to see the climbers in their element – the mountain – to reach a true understanding of what they were saying and why they said it.

But most within the mountaineering community agreed that she was a powerful individual. The facts and statistics she gathered might be of little importance to most people in the world, but they were important to mountaineers. Some climbers worried that her word was considered gospel; they thought it was dangerous to put so much power in one person's hands and they were wary of accepting her opinions as blanket truths. They were equally wary of saying these things in public. Why? Because they loved her, they respected her and they were afraid of her. “She is making a mosaic of all the climbs,” Messner says. He believed Elizabeth's power lay precisely in her ability to synthesize so many facts. Though she made the odd mistake, she was only human, he said. When she made a mistake, she would correct it. “She's a first-class journalist!”

She was also a tough journalist. American filmmaker Michael Brown recalled an interview she did with Jim Nowak, climbing leader of the 1998 Pumori expedition, where she appeared to be passing judgment. Nowak was making some observations about the receding ice, the changing climate and the fact that the route, as well as climbing in the Himalaya in general, was getting harder. Elizabeth responded that perhaps it was the standard of climbing that was getting lower. “I'll never forget the stunned look on his face,” Michael said.

Austrian climber Kurt Diemberger was more magnanimous in his praise. He had been coming to the Himalaya for decades and had a long-standing friendship with Elizabeth. His image was of a woman who was at the very epicentre of some of the most exciting climbing – and discussions about climbing – on the planet. He called her simply “the living archive.”

Then the inconceivable happened.

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s an increasing number of commercial expeditions came to climb peaks that had “commercial” interest, Elizabeth spent more and more time reporting and recording Everest climbs, many of which held little interest for her due to the repetitive nature of the routes, the use of oxygen at low altitudes and the general sameness of it all. But there were still a few climbers coming to the Himalaya to do things that interested her.

The Frenchman Jean-Christophe Lafaille was one of these who, in the spring of 2000, soloed a direct line up the Northeast Face of Manaslu, summiting on May 5. Another was the talented and persistent Russian Valeri Babanov, who established a new line on the 6783-metre Kangtega, a peak southeast of Everest.

But on Everest the crowds were huge and climbers sometimes got on each other's nerves. One such incident occurred between an American Discovery Channel correspondent, Finn-Olaf Jones, and Briton Henry Todd. Jones was filing Internet reports from base camp that so irritated Todd that he threatened to kill Jones. Elizabeth heard several versions of the goings-on; one was that Todd beat Jones up. Todd denied he even touched Jones, claiming he only shook his fist at him. Whatever the truth, Jones fled, and in doing so, he fell and injured himself on a boulder. Threats of legal action flew back and forth and Jones was finally whisked away by helicopter. Elizabeth was disgusted.

The death of Babu Chhiri at the end of April 2001 stunned the climbing world and all of Nepal. Elizabeth heard he had left Camp
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to take some photos, and when he had not returned five hours later, his brother Dawa went out to search for him. At midnight they found footsteps in the snow that ended at a crevasse, in which they found his body. A media frenzy ensued with reports around the world. His body was brought to Kathmandu and displayed at the Sherpa Center,
where it was covered with flowers and ceremonial scarves. Many dignitaries, including the prime minister, came to pay their respects. Tributes poured in – even King Birendra sent a condolence message to his family: “Babu's demise has caused irreparable loss to the nation and to the mountaineering fraternity.”

Elizabeth was saddened by the death of this charming man. He had wanted to build a school for the children of his home village, Taksindu, which was still without a school. And he had finally told her that his next great project was going to be a traverse of Everest from the northern slopes to the top, down the southern side to base camp, and then an immediate reversal from south to north – an itinerary that Elizabeth described as “a plan that only Babu Chhiri could even contemplate.”

Elizabeth had seen many climbers die over the years. Most often she was not emotionally involved with their lives, but every now and then she grieved, such as when German climber Robert Rackl died in October 2003 while leading an expedition on Ama Dablam. He had gone ahead of the rest of his team to inspect some old fixed ropes and must have lost his balance and reached for a rope that either came out or was rotten. He fell the entire distance of the route and was found dead at the bottom of the mountain. She remembered him as a man full of energy, someone who was patient and kind. A year later she could not speak about him without her voice breaking.

Another death that distressed her was of the French snowboarder Marco Siffredi. She first met him in 2001 when he climbed and snowboarded Everest. In 2002 he returned to attempt a snowboard descent of the much more direct Hornbein and Japanese couloirs on the North Face. She chatted with him at his hotel before he went and recalled that he was “very nice, interesting and so very, very young – twenty-three years old. He was doing remarkable things and he was excited about his opportunities – his life was in front of him. He just disappeared!” His parents came to Nepal a few months later and explained that they had had two sons; one died in a climbing accident in the Alps and the second in Nepal. “That one really did sadden me,” she said. “He was so full of life and had tremendous enthusiasm. It was a wonderful world for him and it just went up in smoke!”

On the subject of climbers with disabilities, Elizabeth was impatient at best, seeing them as stunt climbers. Her reaction to the blind
American climber Erik Weihenmayer's plans to climb Everest after his Ama Dablam attempt in 2000 was classic: “I hope for his sake that he doesn't come back.” Despite her comment, he did come back, in the spring of 2001, and succeeded in his quest. He told her he had spent two and a half months from his arrival at base camp, had worked incredibly hard along with a devoted team and had taken it day by day. He explained to her that one of the biggest challenges was negotiating the complex ladder system in the Khumbu Icefall. Jumping crevasses was difficult because he couldn't see how far to jump. She asked him why he would want to go to Everest when he couldn't even see the view. Erik responded that he experienced great pleasure from the wind and sun on his face and the feeling of rock and snow under his feet. An enormous amount of vicious cynicism and black humour had accompanied Erik up the mountain, with one climber commenting that he hoped to “get the first picture of the dead blind guy.” But it didn't faze Erik. Guided by a bell on his teammate's rucksack and his own determination, he stood on the summit on May 25. Although she may have been cynical initially, Elizabeth was professional with Weihenmayer. American filmmaker Michael Brown, who created an award-winning film about the climb, remembered her interview with Weihenmayer as respectful: “She didn't pass judgment – she was classy.”

Another event that many considered a stunt – a ski descent of Everest – captured Elizabeth's imagination and admiration. Slovenian skier Davo Karničar made what she considered to be the first honest-to-goodness, top-to-bottom ski descent of the mountain. He used oxygen for his climb but not on the descent. As Elizabeth observed, “What for? He was going too fast.” For the steepest sections of the descent, he sidestepped with his skis down the slopes. When she inquired about his method of avoiding avalanches, he replied, “I go very fast.” At less than five hours, his descent was actually faster than he expected. Elizabeth thought this was “quite an accomplishment.”

Elizabeth seemed hard to pigeonhole. She didn't consider the ski descent to be a stunt, yet a blind climber's Everest attempt or a speed climber was. Who created these rules of engagement on the mountain? Did she come to these conclusions individually, based on her like or dislike of someone's personality? Did she have some kind of guideline for what she considered admirable? Who influenced her opinions?

S
ometimes her opinions were influenced by reports she heard from the climbers she trusted, including the Italian Simone Moro. Such was the case on Lhotse in 2001. Nineteen-year-old British climber Thomas Moores was on a U.S.-led commercial expedition and fell at about 8300 metres. Moro was in his tent at 7950 metres at the time, preparing for his summit bid the next day. As soon as he heard shouts about the fall, he left his tent to try to rescue Moores. He was the only one who did. Everyone else at the same camp apparently refused to help. Elizabeth was sure it was because they didn't want to jeopardize their chances of reaching the summit the next day. Moro found Moores at 7:00 p.m., picked him up and carried him to his tent, where he gave him water and administered first aid. Moro arranged for some Sherpas to carry him down the next day and then realized he was too tired to try for his own summit bid. Other climbers on the mountain said Moores was inadequately prepared with backup support, and when things went badly it meant that another team (in this case, another individual) had to cover for him.

She heard of more antics on the French Annapurna
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expedition commemorating the original 1950 climb, on which Lionel Terray had played an important role. Nicolas Terray, son of the famous climber, was the leader of the 2001 climb. The team, which included Christophe Profit, didn't get far on the mountain. Profit came back earlier than the rest of the team and contacted Elizabeth because he wanted to talk. He told her he was upset because when the leader decided to retreat, he (Profit) asked to continue, believing he had found a safe alternative. He wanted to try it alone with two Sherpas. They made a stab at it and Profit actually got quite high, but one of the Sherpas was worried about frostbite and had to descend. Profit was sure it was worth another try, but when he got down to base camp the decision had been made to abandon the mountain. The expedition was declared over. Profit was forbidden to stay back and try again. He was infuriated and wanted Elizabeth to know.

When Elizabeth met the leader, Nicolas Terray, a few days later, she asked him why he hadn't allowed Profit to stay on longer to try to finish the route. Startled by her question, Terray was irritated and abrupt with her. About two weeks later she received a fax from him: “I think you are not allowed to judge it. It's not your problem even if you think it … I have been a little bit disappointed by your attitude.” She
wrote and rewrote her response letter, communicating in what she considered to be her most diplomatic style: “I don't know about my being allowed to judge that decision, but you must be aware that I try to learn and understand as much as possible about any climb and the reasons for putting an end to them before a summit has been reached. Furthermore, I also understood that in the case of your expedition the decision to stop was not unanimous, and I wanted to learn your point of view.… Please accept my apology if my questioning was too sharp.”

But despite her attempts to understand the nuances of the members of this particular expedition, she sometimes questioned the motivations of climbers and their obsessions with peaks, routes and records. She tried to put it into a bigger context: just how important were these climbs?

In the larger arena of Nepal the political situation was beginning to affect climbers and trekkers, and Elizabeth heard more frightening stories all the time. In the fall of 2000, six young Spanish students intent on climbing Manaslu were camped at a village named Seti when about 200 terrorists, later identified as Maoists, surrounded them. They were forced to give up every rupee they had. The Maoists injured one of the porters and confined the climbers to their tents all night. After this incident, the climbers flew by helicopter to Kathmandu to flee the area, as well as to get more money from home to continue the expedition. They expected the Nepalese government to cover the cost of the helicopter, but the government said no. To add insult to injury, they returned to the area, having been promised police protection, but found none.