![]() ![]() Georges audibly swore that he was going to die. Al and I, who were ferrying gear, surrendered to the inevitable and moved away. Georges squirmed, directly in the firing line he would surely be crushed beneath hundreds of tons of ice, and Doug would be hurled to the ground like a helpless doll. With great skill he ascended, but near the top gave a terrified shout. Doug set off using our two remaining ice stakes and three ice screws while Georges sat below, holding his rope. Trapped in the guts of the Icefall, by a huge ice pit, we had no way out other than to climb its overhanging, three storey-high walls as they crumbled. Doug’s features were normally a mask of calm, but here he looked visibly worried. On one occasion we had to climb back up and over large ice serac cliffs, formed in waves like a frozen rollercoaster. Doug Scott on a crumbling serac escaping the Khumbu Icefall during the descent from Nuptse. Worse still, the ground moved and shook underfoot. What struck me most was the noise: haunting groans, creaks and crashes of ice, whooshes of small avalanches emanating from unknown directions, spraying my bearded face with powder snow. #Trailrunner at fullA deep, blue tomb, it was beautiful but full of menace. Tentatively, I abseiled into a crevasse with no apparent way out. Had we annoyed the giant matriarch when we climbed her daughter, Nuptse? ![]() Perhaps we had angered the mountain deities and this was their retribution? Tibetans call Everest Chomolungma, meaning Goddess Mother of Mountains. Nature has its own way and, for some reason, the glacier had become more active, faster flowing, or had changed direction. Occasional remnants of twisted ladders and frayed ends of fixed ropes protruded, almost apologetically, out of the ice. We set off under decks of seracs arranged like crazily angled playing cards. Tasker is one of the friends memorialized in Brian Hall’s upcoming memoir. Joe Tasker, one of the subject, battles a storm high on Everest. The bombing of Guernica as an ice sculpture. We’ll have to go under them, but it’s a death trap.” A chaotic scene lay below us, as if a cataclysmic explosion had scattered house-sized ice blocks in every direction, leaving them perched over bottomless, black pits. Georges and Al stood at the edge of the Khumbu Icefall. The story below is an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, High Risk: Climbing to Extinction, forthcoming in November from Sandstone Press, on his adventures during the Golden Age of Himalayan mountaineering and the companions he lost. Hall was one of the top British alpinists in the 1970s and ’80s and a survivor of a brilliant era that saw enormous tragedy and loss. Descending, the four reached the notorious Khumbu Icefall just as it shifted. Get full access to Outside Learn, our online education hub featuring in-depth fitness, nutrition, and adventure courses and more than 2,000 instructional videos when you sign up for Outside+īelow Brian Hall describes a terrifying nine hours spent with Doug Scott, Georges Bettembourg, and Al Rouse following the first ascent of the North Ridge of Nuptse in 1979. ![]()
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