A Lofty Anniversary

A Look Back At Our Base Camp Expedition

This week - yesterday in fact - marks the 73rd anniversary of Norgay and Hillary’s summit of Mount Everest, becoming the first humans to set foot in that holy air. Also, it’s been nearly 16 years since we honeymooned in the shadow of that glorious mountain. I can still, to this day, feel that sacred air in my bones and in my lungs.

So today, I thought I’d reprint an excerpt from my book The Nepal Chronicles. This passage comes late in the book, as we begin our final push to Everest Base Camp. I day dream often about that trip and those days so I’m pleased to take you with me. Enjoy, and at the bottom I’ll include links to the book at our bookstore.

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From the summit of Kala Patthar, 18,500 feet, with Mount Everest behind us!

Chapter 12: Base Camp / Thursday, Oct. 21, Afternoon

A long, aching groan fills the air. It sounds like something is coming up from the earth to swallow us. The groan is followed by a sharp crack — a thousand iron hammers hitting a thousand anvils.

The glacier moves like a living thing, a constantly writhing eight-mile snake made of ice and rocks. It makes thunder.

The Khumbu is alive, and we are tiny, walking on its narrow spine, a good half mile up slope from the ice. It’s like walking on a sleeping monster. A minuscule shift in the ice someplace out of sight creates massive shifts above and that energy explodes with the force of an earthquake. Here on this ridge, we can feel the glacier move and hear it crack, and it makes us want to move faster, to avoid angering it. But we can’t. In fact, we can barely move at all. We are at 17,000 feet and ascending and it’s like walking in glue.

The three-mile hike from Gorak Shep to Base Camp is not technical. It should not be difficult under normal circumstances. But this place is far from anything that we would ever call normal. We are so far beyond our comfort zone. We are specks floating on the top of the world. We are nothing here, we are all we have.

I am beyond words. Meenakshi and I share little because we can’t afford the energy, but we can feel it, the power of this place.

Looking back the way we came along the Everest Glacier

The glacier speaks again and we stop to listen. Someplace from high on Nuptse (or on the other side, or in Tibet for all we know) a miles-wide crevasse opens and an avalanche comes tumbling down and we can feel the rumble in our bones and under our feet. We scan the ridges for the plumes of white but can see none.

I am trying to understand my place here. In between the upset stomach, the shifting weather, the porters coming and going, I work hard to be in the moment, to attain some level of mindfulness, as Buddhists would say. The trail and the rocks and the ice and the air are the physical that is here. My amazing wife and our past and future, and the history of all who have come and all who will come swirl in my mind.

Irvine. Mallory. Norgay. Tabei. Messner. Krakauer. Arnot. Viesturs. We walk in their footsteps now. Tomorrow it will be our footsteps that those who come will follow. We follow history, we make history.

There is no yesterday, there is no today. There is now. And right now, we move silently through the swirling snowflakes, watching our time, watching our steps and trying to watch the giant mountains all around us.

If you’d like to learn more about The Nepal Chronicles: Marriage, Mountains and Momos in the Highest Place on Earth or pick up a signed copy, please click below!