Seven Summits Part 25

Although he didn't say anything, d.i.c.k grew apprehensive; a slip here could be big trouble. Even if you only sprained an ankle, in these temperatures you could die before anyone could get back to help.

d.i.c.k said to himself, Remember what Marian told you, "Never let your guard down, remember how much you have to come home to, I love you." So place your footsteps carefully, keep in balance, don't make any foolish mistakes.

d.i.c.k was incredible. With only a couple of years of any real climbing experience, here he was scaling unroped a steep slope in the heart of Antarctica. It was almost midnight; we had been climbing with only two brief stops for nearly eight hours. And at fifty-three, d.i.c.k showed no sign of fatigue.

We made it up the steep slope, then across the short ridge connecting the final summit rise. d.i.c.k was about forty feet behind me. Ahead I could see the top of a ski pole sticking above the slope. It was maybe thirty feet away. I knew that the previous party who had climbed the mountain (a German, a Russian, and an American from a scientific party who made the second ascent in 1979) had left a ski pole buried on the top, but I was surprised to see it still there. I made the last few steps to the ridge crest: there was the summit, an easy ten steps away. d.i.c.k was a few feet below me, still unable to see the pole.

"d.i.c.k, you've got maybe thirty feet before you're standing on the highest point on the coldest continent."

"Rick, are you pulling my leg?"

"No, d.i.c.k, we've got it!"

d.i.c.k crested the ridge, and arm-in-arm we marched the last steps to the top. Then we bear-hugged. It was a good, solid, long-lasting hug, and I wasn't sure whether it was for joy or because we were freezing to death. I decided it must be joy because I had tears in my eyes. That presented a new problem when the tears quickly froze and glued my eyelashes together.

"'When our eyes we'd close/then the lashes froze/'til sometimes we couldn't see.'"

"Dan McGrew?" I asked.

"Still Sam McGee."

The sky was faultless, there was no wind, and we commanded a view down the backbone of the Ellsworth Range, across the ice cap that stretched like a great frozen plain uninterrupted for the 700 miles between us and the South Pole.

"Let me take your picture," I said.

d.i.c.k posed on top with a s...o...b..rd banner while I tried to take the shot. My eyelashes were so frozen that I had trouble seeing through the camera, so I had to yank a few out before I could get the shot. Then I ran out of film. I pulled out one of those small black film containers but the plastic was steel-hard and the cap wouldn't come off. I set it on a rock and beat it open with my ice axe.

With the camera reloaded I gave it to d.i.c.k to get a picture of me. He removed his bulky mittens and exposed his bare hands; by mistake he had opted to start out without glove liners and it soon became too cold to try to get them out of his pack. It was another mistake when he grabbed my camera, for instantly his skin stuck to the metal and we had to carefully peel his hand away to keep from leaving some of it behind.

"Where the careless feel/of a bit of steel/burns like a red hot spit."

"Sam McGee?" I asked.

"No, Blasphemous Bill."

Below, the huge Nimitz Glacier inched implacably over an underlying shelf that split the deep ice cover into hundreds of parallel creva.s.ses. We gazed over the expanse, and again we had the impression of the ice cap as frozen ocean, the mountains as otherworldly islands, and we as voyagers in an alien icescape.

"What's that peak down the range there?" d.i.c.k asked. "That big one."

"Must be Tyree," I answered.

"Gosh, it looks higher than this one."

I gazed downrange and could see that while Tyree wasn't necessarily higher than Vinson, it did certainly appear to be at least as high.

"I don't know," I said. "The survey of these peaks was done a while back, and the National Science Foundation does admit it wasn't too accurate."

"Can you imagine," d.i.c.k said, "all the way down here, and we climb the wrong mountain."

"Naw, this has got to be the highest peak," I said.

We stared downrange for a few more minutes, trying to convince ourselves. Then I noticed we were both starting to s.h.i.+ver uncontrollably.

"Time to get the h.e.l.l out of here," I said.

d.i.c.k agreed. So it was, in the best tradition of mountaineering, having worked our a.s.ses off to get there, we were more than happy when it was time, as d.i.c.k put it, "to put this mother behind us."

eanwhile Frank and the others had waited a few hours in camp 1, but with no sign of Bonington they went ahead and packed what food they had and started for camp 2. Frank made very good time, no doubt in part because Miura, despite the extra weight of his downhill skis on his pack, had insisted on taking part of Frank's load, as we had helped with the rest. If we considered d.i.c.k Ba.s.s a physical dynamo, then this self-effacing, handsome j.a.panese ski hero at age fifty was a superman, and Frank said he'd never forget his generosity. In fact, in months ahead Frank would constantly refer to Miura as having the single greatest character of any person he had ever met.

At the camp 2 site they erected their tents and crawled in their bags to wait for us. Frank was just waking up when he heard a faint squeak-squeak of approaching crampons.

"We'll know in just a second if they made it," Frank said to Marts.

A few seconds later they heard it: "Aah-eah-eaahhh!"

"They got it," Frank said, his whisker-stubbled, frostbitten face breaking into a wide grin. "G.o.dd.a.m.n, they got it."

Frank was out of his tent to give d.i.c.k a big hug. d.i.c.k and I were by then very tired, having climbed for twelve hours straight, and we wasted no time playing musical sleeping bags, switching places with Marts and Frank as they dressed and then left, with Miura and Maeda, for their attempt. The weather appeared to be holding, and even better it was 5:00 in the morning, which meant they would be climbing in direct sunlight for most of the day.

It took nearly eight hours to reach the steep slope below the final summit rise, and by then Frank was exhausted to the point of losing motivation. He vomited twice, just minutes apart.

He thought, Please, Steve, tell me I'm going too slow, that I'm too sick. Tell me I've got to turn back.

Marts judged it would be a good idea to rope up for this next section. Still in direct sun, the temperature was now only about 20 below zero, warm enough to make it easier to accommodate the delay caused by rope handling. They divided into two rope teams-Marts with Frank, Miura with Maeda. They scaled the steep slope at an agonizingly slow pace, and Marts knew, having memorized the geography of the peak from a distance, that from there they only had a few hundred more feet to reach the top. But Frank was unaware of this. He was sure it would be another one of those mountains where you had to climb one rise after another to get to the true summit. He was also sure, if that were the case, he wouldn't be able to make it.

Marts figured the exposed climbing was now behind them so he had Frank untie from the rope and leave it at the top of the steep slope. What Marts didn't know was that Frank was now pus.h.i.+ng himself to his limit, that he felt like a drunkard in a world divorced from reality. Marts pulled ahead until the distance between the two men was 300 feet; Miura and Maeda were another 300 or so feet behind Frank. Ahead Frank saw Marts reach a ridge crest with nothing behind it but blue sky.

"Where's the top?" Frank called.

"Over there." Then Marts disappeared. Frank was certain that by "over there" he had meant, "Over several more humps."

Frank told himself, I can't make it much further.

Then he threw up again.

He recovered and convinced himself he could make it to the ridge crest, anyway. It was now only thirty steps higher. He started counting them ... four, five, six. He made ten feet, then twenty. He made another step and was just a foot short of the crest when suddenly his foot skidded from under him. He s.h.i.+fted weight and like a shot the other foot popped out.

My G.o.d, I'm starting to fall.

In an instant he began picking up speed. He fumbled for his ice axe, trying to remember how to stop himself. Fifty feet, seventy-five feet ... he was going faster, faster ... one hundred feet down ... the slope steepened below, then it seemed to drop off, down toward the basin to only G.o.d knew where.

Get the ice axe, get the ice axe, where is it? Where's that d.a.m.n thing... ?

It was gone, out of his hands. He had dropped it.

There, below him, some rocks were sticking out.

The slope started to lay back. Frank slowed, then grabbed for a rock. It popped from his hands. He grabbed another. It started to pull through his mittens-then it held. He stopped.

Panting, he looked up. He had gone maybe 200 feet. He could see Marts' face peering down from the ridge crest.

"What happened?" Marts called.

"Never mind what happened, did you get it on film?"

Marts had missed seeing it, much less filming it, and disappointed he again didn't have his high-action footage, Frank steeled himself to the task he knew he had to face, and slowly started climbing back toward Marts, picking up his ice axe on the way.

Once again he wondered how far he could get.

He thought, I dare not slip again because this is the last bit of energy I've got.

He threw up again.

He recovered, and thought, And if the summit is still a distance away-I'll never make it.

He had three more steps to reach Marts and the top of the ridge crest when he looked over and saw the tip of the ski pole sticking up.

"What's that?"

"The top."

"You mean I'm going to make it?"

Suddenly the fatigue left his body and he quickly made the last steps to the ski pole. Then, with one leg forward on the summit he pounded his ice axe into the slope once, twice, three times, venting all the frustration, the anxiety, the physical pain it had taken to get where he was. Then he held his ice axe outward in the snow, like a sword planted at a rakish angle away from him, so he looked like Was.h.i.+ngton crossing the Delaware.

He gazed across the white panorama, feeling different than he had on the tops of the other peaks he had achieved. This one was really special, truly unique. He thought how his team was only the third that had ever stood in this rarefied place, and the first to have done so completely with private financing and organization, without military equipment and support personnel.

That last point made Frank feel better than anything. He knew the main reason they had achieved success was because of his effort. If there was a flesh and blood example of how his modus operandi of tenacity and unrelenting hard work could pay off, then standing there on the highest real estate in Antarctica was it.

Frank knew that if you considered the whole project, climbing Vinson was in many ways every bit the achievement of getting to the top of Everest. They had missed the Big E, all right, but by G.o.d they had pulled off Antarctica. It might have taken fifteen days-over twice as long as they had antic.i.p.ated-but they had hung in there and got it. And with Kosciusko in Australia a sure bet, what the h.e.l.l, six out of seven wasn't too bad in anybody's book.

Especially for somebody who two years before hadn't even been able to hike to the top of Mauna Loa in Hawaii without falling and b.l.o.o.d.ying his nose.

d.i.c.k Ba.s.s had often called Yuichiro Miura a modern-day samurai. "Those old samurai used to train themselves to the highest proficiency with weapons, and develop their courage to the ultimate degree. Miura's doing the same thing on skis, facing extreme danger, even death, unflinchingly."

We had all seen Miura's movie The Man Who Skied Down Everest, The Man Who Skied Down Everest, where he showed that skill and bravery skiing down the Lhotse Face with a parachute to brake his descent. Even with the chute, he had hit speeds close to one hundred miles an hour, and when he finally lost control he rolled, tumbled, and slid for several hundred yards before coming to a stop just above the bergshrund at the bottom of the face. Going into that creva.s.se definitely would have killed him. where he showed that skill and bravery skiing down the Lhotse Face with a parachute to brake his descent. Even with the chute, he had hit speeds close to one hundred miles an hour, and when he finally lost control he rolled, tumbled, and slid for several hundred yards before coming to a stop just above the bergshrund at the bottom of the face. Going into that creva.s.se definitely would have killed him.

That was in 1970, and since then Miura had been working on skiing down the flanks of the other highest peaks on each continent, and now that he was positioned to knock off Vinson, he would have only Elbrus and Aconcagua left on his list. (He still wouldn't be the first to climb climb the Seven Summits, however, as he had never actually gone to the summit of Everest.) the Seven Summits, however, as he had never actually gone to the summit of Everest.) The slope immediately below the summit of Vinson was mostly rock, so Miura downclimbed it before putting on his skis. With both Marts and Maeda filming, he then skied the several miles back to camp 2 over the ice-hard snow.

d.i.c.k and I were out to greet Miura as he skied into camp 2. It took a couple more hours for Frank and the others to get down. Frank was slowed because his glacier gla.s.ses had fogged so badly he had to take them off. Worried about snow blindness, he had then descended the rest of the way to camp by opening his eyes, memorizing the terrain right in front of him, closing them again and making six steps, then doing the same thing over.

With everyone in camp we again played musical sleeping bags because Frank wanted to rest a few hours before continuing nonstop down to the plane. d.i.c.k and I told them we would see them below, and left. After a short sleep, they got up, prepared a meal, and then again Miura stepped into his skis.

Frank, accustomed as he was to the movie business, figured Miura's plan was to ski only part of the terrain between them and camp 1. After all, this section contained the creva.s.sed icefall with its towering seracs. Frank guessed Miura, like a trueblood filmmaker, would find a few photogenic positions and ski them several times to get all his angles. But he was wrong.

"Miura skied from the tents at camp two to the doorstep at camp one," Frank later told us. "Jumping creva.s.ses, weaving around the seracs, leaping off blocks. It was the most incredible skiing I've ever seen."

Just as important for Miura, the good weather held and Maeda and Marts got the entire performance on film. Now we were a complete success. All the climbing team had reached the summit, and we had the film in the can.

Bonington was up at camp 1 to help us freight everything down, and the plane's crew was out to help us pull the sleds the final distance from our base camp to the aircraft.

As soon as we arrived Kershaw said, "I'm in touch with Rothera (where we had to go to refuel), and they report building clouds. I've also talked to Siple, and we have an invite to stop there. Now I'd like to get the h.e.l.l out here if there's a storm brewing because I'm still apprehensive about gusting winds coming off these slopes. So I suggest flying to Siple, getting an update from Rothera, then continuing if things look right."

Siple was that American station a little less than 200 miles from us, and Frank and d.i.c.k were also anxious to get messages out that we were down and safe. We were a week overdue, and Frank knew Luanne-who by original plan was in Australia waiting to meet them for the Kosciusko climb-would no doubt be pacing the floor.

"So let's get out of here right now," Kershaw said, "while the weather's right."

We loaded our gear, closed the fuselage door, then crossed our fingers. Would the turboprops kick over? Kershaw flicked switches, and the low rpm whine started. Number one kicked in, then two and three. Now, as long as we didn't catch the ski tips on the sastrugi...

With the engines warmed, Kershaw throttled the turbos to near full power to break the skis out of their settled positions. Then he spun the plane, and we started to gain speed. We bounced once, then delicately lifted off. Out the window we watched the shadow of the plane grow smaller on the sculpted snow.

Kershaw made a wide bank left and then we gathered on the starboard windows as he dipped the wing in a farewell salute to Vinson. With the radio headset over his ears, he turned aft and yelled, "I've got Siple on now. They say they've got the beer iced down."

14.

KOSCIUSKO: A WALK IN THE PARK.

Luanne Wells sat in her room on the twenty-sixth floor of Sydney's exclusive Regency Hotel. It was one of the best rooms, overlooking the scenic harbor, on what was called the "butler's floor," meaning there was a butler stationed at the door of every room; all she had to do was push a b.u.t.ton and a well-groomed strapping Australian appeared and said, "Ma'am, what can I do for you?"

But she wasn't enjoying it. This was her eighth day in Australia waiting for Frank and d.i.c.k. They were a week overdue. She had no idea where they were-on the mountain, back at base camp, en route home. Or somewhere between, crashed in that airplane? She tried to push the thought from her mind.

She stared at the phone. When would the call come? She had been afraid to leave her room for more than an hour at any one time in fear of missing it. She had a friend with her, Betty Borman (Marian Ba.s.s had been unable to come), and they had done a couple of things the last week-an afternoon at the horse races, a cricket match- but each time Luanne had left word at the desk how to reach her, and each time she had called back for messages.

The phone rang.

She stepped toward it, reached for it, hesitated, then picked it up.

"h.e.l.lo, Mom?"

"Kevin, is that you?"

It was her eldest son. Why would he be calling? Had he heard something? Was anything wrong...

"Have you heard from Dad?"

"Yeah. I just got a call from some ham radio operator in the Midwest. He said he had made contact with an American base in Antarctica called Siple Station, and that Dad, d.i.c.k, and the others are caught there in a storm and can't fly out. They're all okay, but they don't know when they'll be able to leave."

The news was good and bad. At least they were off the peak safely, but now they still had to fly in that G.o.d-awful airplane over a thousand miles to get out of Antarctica. For Luanne, that held as many potential hazards as the climb. She had been on board the plane once, at Van Nuys airport a few hours before Kershaw and the crew had left. She remembered climbing up the rickety aluminum ladder through the side fuselage door, past the gear strapped in piles, to the "stateroom" with its thrift-store couch, to the c.o.c.kpit with its exposed wires and lines. For Luanne, with nothing to compare but commercial carriers, the DC-3 had to her looked held together with tape and baling wire, and left her quite literally sick to her stomach.

Now she spent the next few days thinking about that plane flying over some white wasteland she could hardly imagine. She received another message from Frank (again pa.s.sed on by a ham radio patch) that the storm was not letting up. Four days pa.s.sed, five, then six. There was nothing to do but wait, and stare at the telephone.

It had taken an hour and a half to fly from Vinson to Siple. Once we left the Ellsworth Mountains all we could see ahead was the flat and trackless ice cap. Siple appeared suddenly: an emergency James-way hut, three tall antennas, and a flag pole with the stars and stripes coloring the otherwise featureless landscape. Everything else, the living quarters and the research stations, was under ice, housed in a long single story building inside an under-ice cavern thirty feet high. The twenty-nine men and women who manned the base were out to greet us, and that evening we were treated to "Independence c.o.c.ktails" made with ice from the strata of a core sampling that the scientists on base said was laid down in the snowfall of 1776. Drinks were followed by a memorable steak and baked potato dinner with fresh salad and watermelon flown from New Zealand.