- Mar 2, 2005
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An attorney I work with recently sent around an email to staff containing a short story of a harrowing mountaineering experience with his friend Lincoln Hill, due to the release of Lincoln's Book. I thought I'd share it as it's an amazing read, I'm sure Mr. Hill's book will be one to pick up as well.
It follows verbatim:
I met the tall, bespectacled, baby-faced guy in 1980 in a small mountain village in Peru, where we were both enjoying the local thermal springs. His name was Lincoln Hall. Our meeting was a happy coincidence; we were each looking for a climbing partner to try something ambitious in the Cordillera Blanca, the greatest of Peru?s majestic mountain ranges. We agreed to meet in Huaras four days later, and throw in our lot together.
I knew that he was younger than I, so I assumed he had less experience. I did not notice in our first meeting in the thermal springs that he had already lost a fair number of his toes, or at least parts of them, from frostbite he?d endured in the Himalayas. Nor was I aware of the tough initiation to mountaineering he had already undergone in the New Zealand Alps.
Ten days later I was standing with Lincoln on the summit of Kitaraju, a remote 19,800 foot peak. At his suggestion we had boldly climbed directly up its face, rather than taking the more pedestrian and indirect ?ruta normal?. As we ascended onto the glaciers the day before, we had met a large Basque party descending. They said Alpamayo, the steep, aesthetic looking neighboring peak that was our real goal, was imposible, as they put it in Spanish, but that they had climbed the normal route on Kitaraju. Lincoln decided that we should warm up for Alpamayo by doing Kitaraju ?direct??the steep way. And in the morning we did so, straight up the steep face, swinging leads and using pickets for anchors, breathing hard in the thin air at the top of each pitch, collapsing against the snow.
Our jubilance on the summit was short-lived. We could not find the route down, which we assumed would be obvious. Had not the Basques recently been here? It would be too slow to try to downclimb our route of ascent. We followed the summit ridge as it descended, but the going was exhausting. The snow was waist deep unless one dared to walk on the huge ice overhangs (called ?cornices?) sitting above the precipitous face, overhangs that could snap off at any second. So we took turns tripping along the cornice, as the other paid out the rope from a more secure position, then hopping back into the security of the deeper snow.
This exhausting process ended abruptly at a long ?knife-edge??a very thin, steep ridge of snow and ice that dropped off at near to vertical angles on both sides, with a long drop of more than two thousand vertical feet to the upper glacier. The knife edge was a barrier to our progress. I said nothing, but it is hard to describe how I felt. We were tired, it was getting late, and the climbing days in Peru are short. Our time and energy were expiring. We were in the middle of nowhere. There would be no rescue. Our tent was far away. Those damn Basques had lied about the summit! Now how would we return to the safety of our little tent, thousands of feet below us on the glacier?
Without a word Lincoln moved onto the knife-edge, beckoning for me to back up and belay. He front- pointed with his crampons, moving sideways with his ice tools, foot by foot, out across the side of the airy precipice. I was anchored by a picket and could hold his fall, I figured. But what then? The rope paid out as he moved; I could see the concentration in his face as he climbed in slow, crab-like motions with his head just below the top of the ridge. We exchanged no words until the full length of the rope was paid out, and was tight between us. You must come on, he said, sensing my lack of enthusiasm for leaving my safe perch. And so I joined him above the abyss, moving in the same crab-like fashion on my front points just below the top of the knife-edge. The snow pickets we had used for protection dangled uselessly from my harness, clanking together with an eerie metallic sound as I moved. At that moment I knew exactly how it was that so many small parties simply vanish without a trace in those remote mountains. If either of us fell now, we would both likely be falling on steep terrain for more than a thousand vertical feet. No one would ever know what happened, or where to find the bits of us left after such a fall. I tried not to think, to keep moving with deliberation, to ignore the huge drop below.
It did not take long, if one was looking at a watch. But it was an eternity at the time, before Lincoln gained solid ground at the end of the knife-edge and started bringing in the rope. And then we were there, on the lower summit, with the Basque flag and other debris in the snow?the turn- around point for those who did not want to continue from the normal route along the perilous ice edge to the true summit.
So we made it down that night to glacier and the safety of our tent, just as darkness fell. As Lincoln told endless jokes over our modest meal, I marveled at both the prowess and companionship of my partner, and climbed into my bag exhausted but happy. The climb of Alpamayo would begin the next morn, and would offer more challenges, more fears, more moments of self-doubt in our grand adventure . But for that moment it did not matter. It was enough to be happy and alive in our little tent in those great mountains.
[Lincoln Hall was already on a trajectory to greater adventures. He became part of a small legendary group of Australian climbers who pioneered a difficult new route?without bottled oxygen?on the north side of Everest. His book on this dramatic feat launched a successful career in journalism, which coupled well with his continuing mountaineering exploits. Having never gained the summit of Everest on his famous previous expedition, he would try again, in 2006, where after summiting he collapsed with cerebral edema at 28,000 feet, and was left for dead without equipment or oxygen. His survival of this ordeal is the subject of his new book, Dead Lucky, which he will be promoting in Sacramento (at the downtown public library) next week.]
It follows verbatim:
I met the tall, bespectacled, baby-faced guy in 1980 in a small mountain village in Peru, where we were both enjoying the local thermal springs. His name was Lincoln Hall. Our meeting was a happy coincidence; we were each looking for a climbing partner to try something ambitious in the Cordillera Blanca, the greatest of Peru?s majestic mountain ranges. We agreed to meet in Huaras four days later, and throw in our lot together.
I knew that he was younger than I, so I assumed he had less experience. I did not notice in our first meeting in the thermal springs that he had already lost a fair number of his toes, or at least parts of them, from frostbite he?d endured in the Himalayas. Nor was I aware of the tough initiation to mountaineering he had already undergone in the New Zealand Alps.
Ten days later I was standing with Lincoln on the summit of Kitaraju, a remote 19,800 foot peak. At his suggestion we had boldly climbed directly up its face, rather than taking the more pedestrian and indirect ?ruta normal?. As we ascended onto the glaciers the day before, we had met a large Basque party descending. They said Alpamayo, the steep, aesthetic looking neighboring peak that was our real goal, was imposible, as they put it in Spanish, but that they had climbed the normal route on Kitaraju. Lincoln decided that we should warm up for Alpamayo by doing Kitaraju ?direct??the steep way. And in the morning we did so, straight up the steep face, swinging leads and using pickets for anchors, breathing hard in the thin air at the top of each pitch, collapsing against the snow.
Our jubilance on the summit was short-lived. We could not find the route down, which we assumed would be obvious. Had not the Basques recently been here? It would be too slow to try to downclimb our route of ascent. We followed the summit ridge as it descended, but the going was exhausting. The snow was waist deep unless one dared to walk on the huge ice overhangs (called ?cornices?) sitting above the precipitous face, overhangs that could snap off at any second. So we took turns tripping along the cornice, as the other paid out the rope from a more secure position, then hopping back into the security of the deeper snow.
This exhausting process ended abruptly at a long ?knife-edge??a very thin, steep ridge of snow and ice that dropped off at near to vertical angles on both sides, with a long drop of more than two thousand vertical feet to the upper glacier. The knife edge was a barrier to our progress. I said nothing, but it is hard to describe how I felt. We were tired, it was getting late, and the climbing days in Peru are short. Our time and energy were expiring. We were in the middle of nowhere. There would be no rescue. Our tent was far away. Those damn Basques had lied about the summit! Now how would we return to the safety of our little tent, thousands of feet below us on the glacier?
Without a word Lincoln moved onto the knife-edge, beckoning for me to back up and belay. He front- pointed with his crampons, moving sideways with his ice tools, foot by foot, out across the side of the airy precipice. I was anchored by a picket and could hold his fall, I figured. But what then? The rope paid out as he moved; I could see the concentration in his face as he climbed in slow, crab-like motions with his head just below the top of the ridge. We exchanged no words until the full length of the rope was paid out, and was tight between us. You must come on, he said, sensing my lack of enthusiasm for leaving my safe perch. And so I joined him above the abyss, moving in the same crab-like fashion on my front points just below the top of the knife-edge. The snow pickets we had used for protection dangled uselessly from my harness, clanking together with an eerie metallic sound as I moved. At that moment I knew exactly how it was that so many small parties simply vanish without a trace in those remote mountains. If either of us fell now, we would both likely be falling on steep terrain for more than a thousand vertical feet. No one would ever know what happened, or where to find the bits of us left after such a fall. I tried not to think, to keep moving with deliberation, to ignore the huge drop below.
It did not take long, if one was looking at a watch. But it was an eternity at the time, before Lincoln gained solid ground at the end of the knife-edge and started bringing in the rope. And then we were there, on the lower summit, with the Basque flag and other debris in the snow?the turn- around point for those who did not want to continue from the normal route along the perilous ice edge to the true summit.
So we made it down that night to glacier and the safety of our tent, just as darkness fell. As Lincoln told endless jokes over our modest meal, I marveled at both the prowess and companionship of my partner, and climbed into my bag exhausted but happy. The climb of Alpamayo would begin the next morn, and would offer more challenges, more fears, more moments of self-doubt in our grand adventure . But for that moment it did not matter. It was enough to be happy and alive in our little tent in those great mountains.
[Lincoln Hall was already on a trajectory to greater adventures. He became part of a small legendary group of Australian climbers who pioneered a difficult new route?without bottled oxygen?on the north side of Everest. His book on this dramatic feat launched a successful career in journalism, which coupled well with his continuing mountaineering exploits. Having never gained the summit of Everest on his famous previous expedition, he would try again, in 2006, where after summiting he collapsed with cerebral edema at 28,000 feet, and was left for dead without equipment or oxygen. His survival of this ordeal is the subject of his new book, Dead Lucky, which he will be promoting in Sacramento (at the downtown public library) next week.]
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