An edited version of this story was published in Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine, June 2019

 

 

Below is my full account of our summit push, Mt. Everest in May of 2018.

 

 

Redemption on Top of the World

 

 

7.30 p.m.  26,000 feet, South Col, Mt. Everest May 22, 2018

 

Ang Dawa contorts to wiggle his masked head through a shredded nylon skeleton where Neal Kushwaha and I lay in touristic repose. Drunks we were; intoxicated from purloined oxygen guzzled via discarded cylinders of undetermined age. Their contents were gladly offloaded by descending Sherpa. Our afternoon of sightseeing the moonscape of this high campsite was apparently concluded. “Go time” caught me off guard, given the hours it took me to reach the South Col, this should have been expected. Apparently, Dawa has factored my slothful pace into his summit calculus. We were abandoning 26 k Camp 4 as disparate teams brew and pack. I will be the first aspiring Everest summiter to venture onto the ominous triangular face this evening as the sun teeters off the end of the world and falls headlong into Tibet.

It takes about fifteen minutes to reach a slender slot in a vortex line of snow that culminates in a hell known as the Balcony. By culminates, I mean nine hours of suffering. But well before this, while daylight still clung to the western shoulder of Chomolungma, we climb gently into the longest night of my life.

Snow crunches beneath the weight of my boots as we approach the beginning of fixed lines. These ropes were obviously nearing the twilight of their annual use as we snatch what remains of the final two summitable days on Everest. Nine hours earlier, we took notes as our forbearers ended their negotiations with the nylon, sheathed tethers. Their gait was that of soldiers who had survived the second battle of the Somme. A few stumbled, others sat and some just slid down the endless hill. We could but imagine the expenditure of their previous 24 hours.

Presently, my effort is increasing in proportion to the slope. And daylight is but a faded memory as cold settles into my bones as we attach jumar and jockey around anchor points. Six weeks have taken us through the Khumbu Valley, up the infamous icefall, and into the dreaded Western Cwm where temperatures can soar well over 115 degrees. Yet these were just my first steps on Everest proper. Even beyond Camp 2 at the start of the Lhotse Face, we were ascending a neighbor. Lhotse is but a mere subsidiary peak. Camp 3 occupies the upper end of the Lhotse Face.  It was on that face less than two days earlier a great tragedy threatened to derail our entire climb. While Neal Kushwaha, Sange Sherpa, Ang Dawa Sherpa and I rested at the base of fixed lines culminating in Camp 3, an oxygen bottle came soaring down the string of climbers above. It missed us by about fifteen feet. Our small team exited that bullseye and waited for a break in the growing mass of shapes jugging up to the Heavens.

But the next noise was not that of an oxygen tank. It was the stirring of a mountain which sloughed rock from her shoulders. People rushed passed us, casually remarking there had been some sort of accident.  Descending climbers leisurely strolled back down into the cwm. We moved quickly and cautiously to the scene. In the snow at the start of fixed lines was a big red oval. One Sherpa was slouched over in what appeared to be a semi-conscious position, while another Sherpa was recoiling in great fear. Our team was struggling to foment the gravity of this situation. I walked the ambulatory Sherpa to a safe place out of the fall line of rock as Sange and Neal tended to the stricken one. The Sherpa I assisted was in his full down gear which looked to have been slashed by Jack the Ripper. Unzipping his suit, we looked for injury amidst his anguished cries and groans. To my surprise, there was no sign of bruising or blood.

Quickly, we ascertained there was little injury to treat despite his terrified gasps. He frenetically implored me to keep looking so I gingerly removed his feather- belching regalia, Aside from the obvious outward damage; no injury was to be found. With that, Ang Dawa and I turned our attention to the other, less fortunate porter that Neal and Sange had now moved to our spot atop the sunny Cwm.

Neal laid him gently down in the soft snow on a beautiful afternoon low on the ice face. I rummaged through his backpack for some type of bandage to stave the bleeding from the gaping head wound. There was so much blood. Sometimes, small cuts at the hairline can cause disproportionate trauma and I desperately hoped this was the case. It was not. We applied a temporary dressing to his head and it became apparent that his skull was cracked open like an egg. Our patient did not know his name, the name of his company or any of his team, who were nowhere to be found. Neal and Sange worked the radio, imploring our base camp manager, Kami to organize some type of evacuation for Mr. Ccherring Dorje, whose name we only later discovered. Surprisingly, there was reluctance to expend any resource for the fellow, given he had no rescue insurance. Already, we had seen half a dozen climbers pass him, unwilling to forfeit valuable summit push time. All I could think to do was have Ccherring sit upright while applying pressure from several pair of socks to his own skull. It seemed prudent to keep him upright and busy instead of laying down as he was wont to do.

A descending team from Adventure Consultants, fresh off a summit, stopped to rest and told us of a  physician somewhere behind in their group. Neal and Sange feverishly worked the radio. After an hour, our basecamp manager had managed to cajole a chopper but it would require dropping Ccherring several hundred feet down, back into the lower cwm. This meant sacrificing valuable altitude and energy. Neal and Sange hesitated not. Without a thought they descended and instructed me and Dawa to stay in our spot to intercept the descending doctor. Losing hard-fought ground, my team mates didn’t give a second thought to carrying this Nepali to an evacuation spot. Before long familiar whirring portended a mechanized shadow that crested a crevassed and increasingly cloudy Western Cwm. Upon our return to Basecamp we learned that Ccherring Dorje would live another season to haul loads for climbers like me after a week in the hospital and lots of staples.

 

Our attention then reverted to our original and belated objective and the indignity of reclaiming part of the face. Neal, Sange, Dawa and I attached jumars and began jugging up one of earth’s highest walls into the late afternoon of May 21, 2018. We lost all daylight about two hours into a four- hour ascent on static lines that had seen the best of their days. Hard cold permeated the previously warm Lhotse face along with fears of potential frostbite. I had developed a significant case in 2011 on another peak, Muztagh Ata. This malady is well known as a high- altitude disease that can resurface with little provocation in thin air. I neglected to don the down suit since we were originally tackling the face in the heat of a cloudless morning. That was forty degrees ago and my hands were conduits for the ascending device here at 23k.

It was 10 pm when I collapsed into a tent at the upper end of Camp 3. Around us, lights flittered as stars pierced unblemished sky. Neal and I welcomed our first sips of bottled oxygen as Dawa melted snow and fluffed our pillows of steel hard ice. We retired in full cognizance this delay may have scuttled our summit attempt. In a sense, there was some relief. My summit day anxiety abated significantly as I drifted into a somnambulant rhythm of air flowing through valves and hoses into this foreign, rubber death mask. It was good to lay down. Whatever happened in the next few days was out of my hands.

(Neal and I low on the Lhotse Face prior to the accident)

A bluebird morning greeted us in our Himalayan home beneath the shadow of Nuptse and Lhotse as arcs of light refracted through some jagged sky- scape. Rest, ordinarily elusive at these heights, was easy for the both of us as we packed and snacked. Subsequent to the realization that my coffee was two thousand feet below, an omission that ordinarily would send me straight to detox, a calm overtook me this beautiful day. Dawa and Sange were goading us from cocoons of down. It was super late in the season for Everest summits. Now into May 21, the majority of the mountain’s 700 plus summiters were fleeing successfully in notorious and ballyhooed lines.

It was here that the mountain was stilled on a gorgeous spring morning as a prone object crept downward gently in my direction. A lithe climber was patiently lowering his friend through a very steep prominence of the upper face. Wrapped in a red sled with full down gear, no eyes returned my gaze from this set of helmet and goggles. He could well have been a department store mannequin; unfortunately, it was a Russian who had expired not far above. Reverently each of us clipped out of the rope while our fallen colleague was lowered as if into a grave with no bottom.

Continuing through a single rope, we gained the Yellow Band and eventually crossed up the Geneva Spur. A sense of being alone on the flanks of Everest was enveloping me as I peered skyward to nothing but a beautiful snow face that intimated the base of Lhotse’s summit. Far below me was a beast with great uniformed tail swishing left and right between anchors. There looked to be over 60 folks negotiating ropes above Camp 3. Passing the high camp of Lhotse, I was totally in sync with Everest, having encouraged our Sherpa to press on. Soon there was no one ahead or behind. Infamous landmarks beckoned me into the clouds and closer to the Col. It was getting late again and I could not possibly care any less.

In fact, I had all but abandoned the idea of summiting. Clouds were moving in and with that some wind. We were supposed to rest at the South Col and push our bid this very night. Neal and the team were two hours ahead but it still was way late. When I crossed over the Spur and rounded the final half mile into Camp 4, the sun was but a scattering of impressionist, orange slivers whose fingertips were barely clinging to this nether land on the boundary of Tibet and death. Little greeted me in this final camp but twitching headlamps, rock and cold.  It was 7:50 pm, obviously too late to take off for the highest point on earth this particular evening. In darkness, I searched some 30 tents across the hostile landscape filled with flattened domes and metal cylinders. Dawa found and escorted me into a top floor room with a $50,000 view. Neal was lying on his back, sucking O’s and relaxing. “We’re too late for a push tonight” he yelled above the growing din. Our high home was little more than a makeshift teepee with buckshot holes. We had occupied an abandoned dwelling at 26,000 feet from which some Sherpa had excised their expedition logo.

“Sange says we will go tomorrow; tonight we rest here.” Neal shouts from the side of a rubber mask.  This is music to my ears as the wind increases in proportion to our conversation. Secretly, I ponder the dangers of over-staying our window of time in the “Death Zone”. Himalayan winds increase as neighboring teams disappear for their night into glory. Nylon smacks me in the face but I am protected by a mask and lots of down. It is a rough summit evening and Neal conveys what I am thinking. “I’m glad we didn’t have to go out in that.”

 

11 p.m. 27,500 feet, May 22, 2018

 

My toes are numbing and the dreaded Balcony is a full two hours up. Dozens have clipped around, at my behest. Ang Dawa crouches, fully secured into static line at the upper end of the Triangular Face but well below a small prominence where we soon will exchange oxygen bottles. The night has some wind but nothing like the one before. It is steep here and I break frequently, too much I fear for Dawa’s liking, though his patience is Olympic. At times I nod off on the rope and snap to violently from dreams that are far from the top of Everest. Focus is escaping me at points. Sleep is dangerous. Several of my toes are no longer viable. Like being at the wheel on an overnight drive, I slap my legs and press onward. From this point there will be no more sleeping. I am miserable, freezing and uncertain. The steady wind beats my frozen face as stars protrude from a blanket of cloud. It is twenty below zero; no promise of sun nor summit resides in this place.

Dawa seats me on a vertiginous slope and I rely on crampons, held together with wire and chips of rock, long ago broken ascending between lower camps on the mountain. Fifteen climbers jockey for some small place to drop a knee while fumbling with canisters as mini explosions detonate randomly. Adding to the surreality of this foreboding hell are distant lightning bolts interspersed with oxygen releases that threaten to jolt each of us from our dangerous perches. These sounds have become quite familiar in this alien environment where none of us would long survive without those regulators and their fragile O-rings. I am brought to days before on the other side of this mountain where a team with Alpenglow experienced a large-scale regulator failure. My friend Dennis was in that group. My set was holding firm, my bowels, not so much. A delicate dance ensues over the precarious lip of the Balcony with me, clipped into Dawa and a rainbow zipper frozen stuck. Beyond this indignation I am reminded, “You can’t save your face and ass at the same time.”

We move upward as hints of light penetrate a Van Gough starscape. Somewhere a trace of moon competes with the promised blue warmth morning can proffer. I know my toes are frostbitten. That feeling of years ago is unmistakable. These are unretractable life decision points; niggling moments of discretion or valor. That damned nascent light magnetizes Everest so I return to a rhythmic jug and glide motion as rope disappears between my legs and across frozen toes. The sun has overtaken darkness and my face accepts warmth being the only portion slightly exposed. We are re-energized at hour 12, now 7:30 am May 23, 2018. No one is visible above or below my Sherpa brother and I here at the foot of a feature unrecognizable. This great wall of rocks appears from nowhere, formidable and austere. Portions of frayed lines dangle from varying pitons. Nothing appears new or climbable. I sit in snow as Dawa tests dangling ropes. How can it be that I was not familiar with this hindrance between the Balcony and South summit? Judging by the looks of things, neither did Dawa who was pulling on these artifacts in hopes of finding the right rope upon which to entrust our lives.

I squat to squeeze an energy gel into my mouth from the side of the oxygen mask which has now rubbed my face raw to the point of bleeding. We spend about thirty minutes here trying to decipher a climbing code with no visible clues as to where our team had ascended. As with many decisions on Everest, we pick the newest looking line and cross our mittened fingers. Astonishing is the amount of technical ability required here to gain what would later be identified as the “Castle”. I am undoubtedly fully awake and Everest holds my undivided attention. Gone are the high- altitude dreams and occasional hallucinations that have marked our time heretofore. We are front-pointing crampons I pray will hold as small chunks of Everest dislodge into my hands. This is hard work on top of hard work. Chomolungma is extracting her toll in form of sweat equity. We likely climb three to four pitches until reaching a prominent stepped slope below the South Summit. By now, teams are descending en masse from the top.

Among them is Neal and his Sherpa, Sange. It was 9 a.m. and Sange tells me it is too late. He suggests that I turn around now. I thought he was kidding. As with most things Sange, he is always smiling and joking. Dawa is ahead; by the look on his brow he has been similarly briefed.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. To go through all this and have Sange turn me around is inconceivable. Above, Dawa motions me onward and I defiantly ignore Sange’s admonitions. We soon encountered our expedition leader, Dani Fuller. He donates an extra oxygen bottle as mine is getting low. I’m not above playing the victim now. Soon we touch the flags that signify the South Summit. “You have one hour”, Dawa yells. “One hour.”

 

From the South Summit I can see all the features that before only resided in my dreams. We drop down a small bit and cross the infamous Cornice Traverse. Our trail is comfortably defined and sheltered. Nevertheless, a strange scene unfolds as we are stalled in an encounter with a couple presumably returning from the summit. The woman has fallen and is dangling from fixed lines in the midst of the Traverse. Her Nepali friend is yelling at her and doing nothing to assist. With little thought, Dawa reaches down and picks the woman up by her pack straps with Superman strength and places her back on the slender snow trail as we clip around them. I am fully awake, cognizant of what is going to happen very soon. Not even this freakish event derails the flow of this point in time. We could have just passed Greta Garbo and Moses but nothing was going to get between me and the summit of Everest right now. We are floating on a carpet of cream. I barely notice what remains of the Hillary Step. After the Castle, it hardly rates a mention.  Dawa is blazing onward and I switch on my GoPro. The resulting footage is classic high- altitude stock. Wind is blowing our rope and Dawa is making the final steps. Everest is whipping that classic plume so familiar to us all from around the world. Our weather is perfect with adequate wind and sun.

I follow Dawa for what seems like an hour before committing those last few steps myself and collapse below a small brass statue. Prayer flags snap crisply in winds that remind us we are higher than anyone else on the planet. My leg is crossed beneath me as I crane in all directions to take in this expensive earthscape. Makalu, Cho Oyu and Lhotse are clearly visible as is our path, totally empty. We are the only two humans on top of Mt. Everest and it is 10 am, May 23, 2018. There isn’t another climber anywhere on this mountain to be seen. Our panorama is uncompromised. All of which I am aware is the wind, view and tinkling of bells. This, I know, must be Heaven. There were bells in Heaven and I just got my wings.

It’s easy to lose track of time in deep hypoxia. This high beat any chemical one. There was much to photograph with sponsor flags, mementos and a special message I was tasked with placing. A young friend of mine had lost his mother many years ago. When he heard I was tackling Everest he penned a very special note to her. As I explained to my teenaged buddy, “That was probably the only reason God allowed me to get up there.”  Fumbling around gloveless in -20 temps, I wasn’t sure how to best respect the “Goddess Mother of the Earth”, as Everest is known, yet still preserve the note from my young friend. Dawa shot footage of me fumbling with the note and eventually snatches it from my drunken fingers and brilliantly ties it up in a Buddhist prayer flag. My camera had frozen solid after one photograph.  Forty five minutes pass like the unique morning lightning storm that welcomed us to the Balcony. Dawa is soon goading me off the Earth’s ceiling.

A long descent loomed, how long I could only presently imagine. We were alone and would be the last to come stumbling in the South Col at 7.30 pm, exactly 24 hours after departure. I fall down several times on fixed lines and make short breaks of it. For the first time I can see Dawa tiring. He had so patiently attended to me on our summit push. Now he was slowing. As the Balcony comes into view, my bowels once again remind me of the lack of atmospheric pressure here.  That Triangular Face takes on a steep feeling and the South Col is but a blemish on a distant galaxy. Gone are most of the tents from a day before. Night is enfolding the Himalaya again. I remember thinking that I could just lay contentedly right here on the snow, attached to these lines.  Just a few winks here and all would be fine. Then I slap myself and keep moving, wondering how many climbers had permanently succumbed to that very temptation.

Exactly one day after leaving the South Col, I collapse into what little remains of our stolen tent. Neal had apparently given me up for a Beck Weathers sort of fate. My friend is near tears at our beaten caricatures as I fall head first through the vestibule. With great care, Neal begins removing my pack and crampons. Then he asks, “Uh, shall I try to zip up your rainbow”. Apparently I had neglected to properly secure that portion of down suit following last use at the Balcony. We had a few laughs afterward when all were safe in Base Camp.

Broken nylon shreds strike at me through the night as we attempt recovery in the Death Zone. It was to be the last night of summits seen on Everest. Only six other humans depart that evening before the mountain closed her doors for good. I remove boots and examine my waxy toes. No mistake, they were frostbitten again. It was a night of fits and dreamful sleep. More than once I awaken from this position thinking the entire event had been another nocturnal imagining from Knoxville.

It is 10 am before the winds subside enough for us to finally abandon the South Col. Sange pokes his head in our tent and smiles at me above the wind as if to pretend he wasn’t serious about turning me around the day before. I accuse him of employing some form of psychology to get me going faster and he laughs saying, “It worked”. We faced a marathon day dropping into Camp 2 and a final dodge through the icefall. One of our Lhotse team, Tom Taylor, had broken his ankle in a crevasse. Our only female member had succumbed to snow blindness at the South Col and I was frostbitten. None of the route through the Khumbu Icefall is recognizable. An avalanche had swept our previous path clean and we were picking through unfamiliar penitents and towering seracs. The day is warming as thunderous mini avalanches nip at our heels. Tom is being assisted by our Sherpa through the towering, man-eating sculptures as we follow carefully behind their assemblage. Super sketch sections sprout that were heretofore absent in this “Ballroom of Death”. Our group is starting to feel like sitting ducks but none of us want to pass Tom out of respect. It is finally decided that I shall be the one to tell Tom we needed to go around, not that he would have minded. By the time I have steeled sufficient courage to make this proposition, a huge slide explodes behind us. “Go around me, John!” Tom proclaims. And with that we he was solely entrusted to the hands of our more than capable Sherpa.

Basecamp manager, Kami Sherpa greets us at the base of the Khumbu with hot drinks and crackers. We remove crampons and someone graciously liberates my backpack. I am 25 pounds lighter and it shows as we await the arrival of Tom and his entourage. Our first contact with earthlings in basecamp is a Sherpa duo. Neal inquiries about Ccherring Dorje since we have heard nothing since his evacuation. The men stand to shake our hands when they realize that we are the guys who helped one of their own. In Basecamp we examine Tom’s injury; there was little doubt his ankle was broken. It resembled a purple lab pig fully embalmed. Neither he nor I were walking anywhere far. Two days later we negotiate for a helicopter, largely subsidized by Neal that takes us as far as Namche. Everest was releasing us from her gently folding arms.

We were but five of almost 700 successful Everest climbers in 2018. Turns out we picked the right year to take our shot. Unrivaled good weather accounted for the success we enjoyed. But nothing short of Divinity allowed me the privilege of sitting atop Mt. Everest for 45 minutes alone, save for my Sherpa brother Ang Dawa. Some called it karma, I call it God’s will. We could climb that mountain fifteen more times and never experience that kind of solitude and redemption on top of the world. My toes healed but my heart was permanently swollen. This frozen giant dispatched me with blessings untold. I relish each morning with the rising sun and steam from a hot cup of gratitude. When lightning streaks a clear, black sky and storms rumble in from on high, I reach into a back pocket filled with dream dust and scatter some for the coming 24, remindful, reverent and humble.

 

Contact John if you need help with your Everest project or would like to schedule a speaker for your next event.

 

 

When Highlanders and Hell Guys get together, some serious laundry is getting done. Myers torches one in this iconic shot.

(We had hoped to be joined by Frank W, but he accepted a new position and had to move to Northern Virginia. But congrats, Frank, you were missed)

This is how we roll into the Smokies nowadays.  Two people and full gear. It was like Jed Clampett owned a motorcycle.

You may be wondering where this is.  But I’m not going to tell you. Our secret trail to see our private viewing of the synchronous lightning bugs (because only Yankees call them fireflies) has been kept close to the vest for years. If you have any backcountry acumen, you can likely sleuth out the answer. But we headed into the backcountry and it was several miles and elevation gain. Not where the park tells you to go.

 We met Myers, Nick and Houston. Brian joined us as well.

 

The display starts about thirty minutes after dusk. And it did not disappoint. None of us know how to photograph this spectacle of brilliance. It defies documentation. You just have to be in the midst of it to experience the splendor of synchronicity. It is as if a wave of light passes through your soul in a cacaphonous wave that rolls through the trails that parallel water. For water is the fuel that feeds this magnificence. The show was as splendid as any I have seen.

No one was disappointed.  No one.

A bit of swimming was in order.  It was 93 degrees when we hit the trail.

We missed Mark and Stephanie. They rolled out Saturday; we got into camp later in the afternoon.  But it was good fellowship in the backcountry, something I have missed lately.  Thanks to Myers for organizing this outing.  I was reminded of this time last year when he invited us to join. I was suffering from frostbite and had to pass.

Which leads me to this season on Everest. I predicted it would be a rough year and, unfortunately was right. Ten died on earth’s highest peak and traffic jams made national headlines. One of the last guys to die was a client of Summit Climb, the group I used last year. It was Dani Fuller who led this team and I feel sorry for all involved. What happened this year was an abbreviated weather window that forced everyone into the precious few sunny days. It isn’t that Everest was any different this year. There were a few more people climbing, which often is the case after a successfull year like 2018 that we enjoyed.

But there is just a slender trail from the South summit to the true summit. 10,000 feet dropoffs are on either side so there is no passing. When you are in line at 29,000 feet, frostbite is highly likely. Understand, I developed frostbite without any lines. So many of the deaths are a result of exposure at altitude, oxygen use and exhaustion. Your body can only handle so much time in the death zone. I spent 24 hours there last year, but it wasn’t due to crowds. In fact. I was on the summit alone, with my Sherpa. Yes, 10 people died this year and that is a few more than average on the peak.

But on the positive side, my friend Rasmus, on his third consecutive attempt, topped out without bottled oxygen. This makes him the first Danish Dude to do so.  I climbed Cho Oyu with Rasmus in 2016. He is a great team member and I congratulate him on his success. https://www.thelocal.dk/20190523/dane-summits-everest-without-supplemental-oxygen

I have some more good news that I will share via my new personal webpage.  It has to do with the next climb in my quest and will happen in July.  You may find details here.   https://johnquille0.wixsite.com/mountaineering

Just click on the sponsorship opportunity page.

So I wish everyone a great summer and hope you are able to catch the lightning bugs. The are poppin’ early.

 

It was time to finish this project started a couple months back. Saturday found us in perfect weather in great stead to tackle this beast.

Fire is sometimes cleansing and it certainly scoured the soil. We climbed 3700 feet on Saturday. The wildflowers were in full-bloom.

Beautiful specimens abound. As we ascended the scenery became more apocalyptic.

The fire was years ago. Laurel , Myers and I witnessed the chimneys portion which would later consume this area. Who would have ever known it would have grown to this.

Our afternoon found us gaining serious ground but twas late.

 

We descended via Rainbow. Man, has it changed.

They’ve redone the whole trail, backed it off the falls, added crossings and re routed sections. It’s not bad.

As you can see, we made good time. Had an interesting bear encounter. This healthy bruin was up at the side of a waterfall going up Bullhead.

Big guy. When he saw us he just sat down on his rear end like he had popcorn and a movie ticket. We were definitely Highlander television for him.

it was a fantastic outing and I encourage everyone to check out Bullhead before nature reclaims it.

In keeping with my spring tradition, I would like to share a bit of music with you from one of my favorite groups, Radiohead.

” ]

 

When I heard there may be several inches of snow up high on Easter Eve, I reminisced about the epic “Easter Freeze” trip from 12 years ago.  So I am re-posting that trip since I  obviously am not out this weekend.  It was one for the books.  I wish everyone a very happy Easter!

 

http://southernhighlanders.com/Hazel.htm

It was  one year ago when Laurel and I packed up and headed to Nepal for the grand Everest adventure. As we speak, teams are snaking their way up the Khumbu valley for their own shot at earth’s highest peak.  My friend, Howard, is preparing to make the trek into basecamp next week and I have enjoyed helping him prepare for the journey. He is in great shape, has been doing monster dayhikes to Leconte and has the mental attitude for success.

 

If you have followed me for any amount of time, you will notice a definite lack of content recently. That is due to several reasons.  First, work, work,work.  I am still catching up from one year ago and find myself putting in 12 hour days quite regularly. Similarly, Laurel, who lives in Athens, GA, travels for the University of Ga. As a result, when we are able to see each other, exhaustion makes packing up for the mountains almost unthinkable.

Friday I was determined, however, to meet some folks up at Gregory’s bald.  But…………

 

Yes, a plumbing nightmare at home. When a drain pipe breaks in the ceiling, you know there will be no backpacking that weekend.

Alas, such is life.  I have spent so much of mine chasing mountains, wildflowers, waterfalls and rock that dues must be paid on the ranch occasionally.  My only consolation is that I am able to sneak out into the Urban Wilderness and grab a mountain bike ride, run or stroll. Yesterday, I made time for a road bike run late in the afternoon.

On April 30 I will be interviewed by John Becker on behalf of Legacy Parks in their monthly podcast. We will talk about Everest, but more centrally, the importance of our Urban Wilderness areas here in Knoxville. After all, I did most of my training right across the street at Baker Creek.  http://www.legacyparks.org/category/news/

It should be a lot of fun.  I have also spent time with a couple of really sharp graduate students at the University of Tennessee who are completing their master’s work in journalism and media. They are putting together a piece  that I am really excited to share when I am allowed to do so. For now it is a “secret” but I know these girls are really going to produce something spectacular.

In the meantime, I wish all teams headed to Everest great success. I hope the mountain is as kind to them as it was to me. I have also been putting the finishing touches on my Everest summit day narrative and have been shopping it to potential good homes.  If you like following the Everest season like me, my friend, Alan Arnette, is the Everest whisperer.  He writes for Outside magazine and posts dispatches from all teams on the mountain.

Finally, Patrick McKnight is someone we got to know in Nepal. He climbed Everest via the North, Tibetan side while we were on the South, Nepal route.  His climbing mate, Brendan Madden, has just completed one of the best Everest documentaries I have ever seen.  You should check out their climb via his youtube channel HERE.

So I hope that you are able to get out and enjoy spring for me. At this rate, it may be summer before I see our beloved hills again. They taunt me from my car window every morning as I commute in and out of Maryville.

Spring break. And I desperately needed some snow time. Work was killing me, I’ve been pulling 12 hour days.  So, off I went.

Tahoe has had 40 feet of snow this year. It’s a record snowpack in all my many vacations to the region. I went solo. Laurel had to work. But my buddy, Howard expressed an interest in seeing this region, so he joined me. Howard is embarking upon a trek to Everest Base camp in a few weeks. So Tahoe would be good training. Soon, Howard was donning snowshoes and climbing all around the lake

This is the infamous Gunbarrel double black diamond. In the old days Toad Shrader and I would shred this mogul run up. Nowadays it shreds of my knees up so I made only one descent.

This week I spent a majority of my time over on the backside of heavenly resort.

One day I did make the one  hour excursion over to Kirkwood resort. As you can see Kirkwood is full of imagery. There were no crowds whatsoever and it was a very pleasant ski day.

in the evenings Howard and I would reunite to spend time at the casino where I was able to win back almost enough money to cover my entire

trip.

This is Howard relaxing aboard the riverboat on the Sacramento River the night before we had to depart. We drove back into town and explored the old part of Sacramento which was quite entertaining.

Howard had many good experiences on his snowshoes and his learning curve was apparently rapid.

For me it was a much-needed vacation, a mental break and plenty of time on the snow. Howard is a great travel companion in the absence of Laurel.

We had a grand time.

Now let’s resurrect an old tradition of springtime music and this one is a doozy. There’s nothing like some rocking bluegrass to set off the backpacking  season.

 

 It was a another in a string of quick hit backcountry trips and Friday afternoon saw me hitting the trail from top of the world down into Cane Creek.

 I went at the invitation of Curt and Brian who were doing two days out in their quest to join the 900 miler club.

 That’s Brian.

The temperature had dropped significantly from the day before and dipped into the lower 30s by bedtime.  We enjoyed a relaxing and solo night at yet another campsite showing all  but two spaces full.  This is a familiar pattern for those of us who had suspicions the NPS was cooking the books on backcountry visitation after implementing the backcountry tax.  In fact, Mark Cooke of the Southern Forest Watch exposed this chicanery in a well researched article that I am linking here for your enjoyment.  https://www.smokymountainnews.com/outdoors/item/17708-a-strained-relationship-suspicion-of-nps-lingers-among-some-backcountry-users-parkside-communities

It was a quick hit Saturday morning run up a newly-opened trail. The results of the fire are still visible. But the weather was ideal for this kind of exercise.

There’s been a lot in the news lately about the wildfire and the national Park service negligence in face of it.

But I wasn’t focused on that Saturday morning; it was just good to be out breathing clean air and walking uphill. 

 

JD had been organizing this big event for a while. But the pending weather sort of changed our plan to go to Bob’s bald with a large group. Instead we decided to do a quick hit Backcountry trip to Davenport Gap and it didn’t disappoint.

This whole thing didn’t even come together until Thursday evening. I texted Myers in the morning and he and Nick were totally up for it so at 8 p.m. we hit the trail Friday night.

When we arrived, Richard, JD, the girls and Brian had this wonderful buffet of culinary senses involving venison and other exotic game.

They had all been there since well before the sun went down and had a beautiful fire raging but we had to add another one outside.

The weather has moderated considerably, so we were able to go in and out of the shelter at our leisure.

Yes that’s a legendary Bert Emerson AKA wildcat a triple crowner. He was the official chaplain on the Appalachian trail a couple of years ago on his second lap. Many of JDs crew are multiple map completers in the Smokies; JD having done at least six of them.

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• We stayed up until the wee hours of the morning spinning tales around the fire and getting to know everyone. Quite the congenial group we all agreed.
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• Early the next morning Richard and Lauren cooked breakfast for us and it was equally phenomenal as the feast the night before.
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• These folks know how to live.
• My only problem I had the whole night aside from working late and getting in late was not properly closing the valve on my sleeping pad. So I wakened with some sore hippage.
• We beat the weather and had a fantastic experience with JD and his crew thank you to Richard and all of their hard efforts to host us feed us and entertain us.
• These quick-hit Friday night trips are excellent in that it gives us the rest of the weekend to have normal weekend activities and to beat the impending weather.

So I started getting that chest crud my last few days in Val Thorens. It was so bad I didn’t even ski that last day and waited on Laurel while she did. (Yesterday three chest x-rays confirmed my first official diagnosis of pneumonia, apparently skiing with a chest cold was bad practice)I will say that Laurel has taken to skiing pretty well. It was bluebird weather and I sat inside watching people rush down these beautifully groomed slopes.

We departed that afternoon on  a bus down to a little town called Moutiers, where we overnighted in a hotel there and caught the tgv back to Paris early the next morning. 

Moutiers is your typical French mountain village. One of the many things I love about France in French culture is just the accessibility and congeniality of the French people. In the small villages folks are very receptive. We make it a point to eat local food and search out traditional fare.  In this particular  region it is called Savoyade.  French take great pride in their cuisine and source local vegetables fruits and meats. There was an unforgettable experience in a restaurant which involved some pate mistaken for meatloaf. The owner of this restaurant had to remove the pan from us before we killed it off in a sandwich.

Early the next morning we embarked upon another High-Speed Rail excursion back into Paris gare du Nord.  I was coughing and wheezing the whole way, as a matter of fact, my bronchial illness seemed to increase by the minute. My malady was offset by our first class accomodation on the tgv since Laurel purchased our tickets and the price difference was only $10. There’s something about going at 200 miles an hour along railway track.  It’s quite thrilling.

Ah, to stroll the Seine again, although bronchially challenged in typical Paris weather. I believe this was our fourth trip together to Paris. I’ve long since lost count of how many times I’ve been to this remarkable City of lights. Like Sithenge and Hangover and our southern Appalachians, something about France draws me continuously.

Maximizing a bad situation, Laurel stayed healthy and picked out some very nice restaurants for us which is one of the greatest reasons to visit France. I’ve been to every museum,  climbed the Eiffel tower a dozen times, hit the Louvre plenty. But every time I return there’s another place I have found it yet to be explored. Laurel is pictured above at Montmartre. She was sick last time we visited that area so we returned to refresh her memory. And a nice shot of her in front of the beatiful Sacre Couer.  Neither of us had been to the museum of modern art. It is one of the few free ones in Paris and we thoroughly enjoyed that.

Many of you may have been aware from new stories that there is some political unrest in Paris with the yellow shirts. They’re protesting great tax cuts for the rich, sound familiar? We ran into a couple of those yellow shirt folks and they were quite congenial. If only Americans would take to the streets whenever some politician decides to give wealthy people another tax cut but we are far too lazy. Too many folks would rather let Foxnews make decisions for them than actually research issues and believe what the president of the United States is lying to you about that particular moment.

One year after these infamous tax cuts for the wealthy and look at what our economy has done. I’ve been saying ever since his appointment that Trump is unfit for the office of president. I’ve also been a lone, local voice in saying that he did collude with Russia. When you go out publicly and ask Russia to hack into the emails of your political opponent that is the definition of collusion. But far worse than that he is the most ammoral person to ever hold the office.

He has denigrated the United States across the world and made us a laughing stock.  There is not an educated, living human being that can make a concise argument that the United States is any better off since the election of our moron in chief. This was obviously done,by the way,with the assistance of a hostile foreign power AKA Russia, through corrupt politicians who took Russian money through the NRA.

What he has done to the environment, the national parks and public lands alone is justification for impeachment in my mind. But still people turn a blind eye and think and believe his bull crap. Our public lands have gone up for sale to the highest bidder, oil and gas timber or whatever under Trump.  The damage he has done to our environment will take decades to repair if ever. And just look at what he’s done by releasing EPA requirements on coal fired steam plants. That is air you and I are breathing every day. (speaking of breathing, I have been writing a good portion of this blog post in the Dr. office. Looks like this chest crud has morphed into potential bronchitis)

Sadly most people don’t care. Like the French I look forward to the day that we take to the streets and let these corrupt Trump types know that we will not tolerate their corporate rape of America. We can regain our position as the greatest country in the world. But, I understand, and this comes from someone who’s traveled the world, that we have to get rid of Trump in order re-establish our pre eminence and send a message to our vital allies (hint, they are not North Korea, Russia and Saudi Arabia, btw) that Trump was a fluke. Everyone gets a divot.

For the new year 2019 I wish everyone a socially conscious,environmentally aware presence. May you take actions that are in the best interest of this Earth that God has given us, your family which is the greatest gift of all, and endorse the truth above all else. 2018 was one of the greatest years of my life. I enjoyed the support of everyone in my great quest and eventual success on Mt. Everest. Remarkably, at this time last year, Everest was still just a rogue idea. If you learn anything from my experiences, know that you can do and pursue your dreams if you follow God’s plan and listen to what the mountain is telling you.  For everyone here who supported me this past year I extend a sincere THANK YOU from the top of the world.  I wish you and your families a happy, prosperous and healthy 2019. I leave you with a quote from John Muir, forwarded to me in form of a Christmas card by Chuck Adams of Muir Faction fame,

I only went out for a walk, 

and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,

for going out, I found, was really going in.    John Muir 1913

 

John