Climbing Everest: interview with Fergus White, who ascended in 2010
Recently I’ve had the pleasure to read a great book about climbing Everest–Ascent Into Hell by Fergus White, from Ireland. I found the book very fascinating because is written in a pleasurable diary form, in which the reader is accompanied every step from the trekking to Base Camp to the final summit push. In the pages you can read the conversations the members of the team had, the thoughts Fergus had in the most hardest moments of the climb, and follow him just like you were there too.
Fergus arrived in the Himalayas with a commercial expedition, that took him several weeks of hard work, sacrifices and risks to put his foots literally on the top of the world. In this interview we talk about his adventure, the difficulties of a such expedition, the works done by Sherpas, the dangers of the death zone and much more. Topics that he also shared in his book.
I thank very much Fergus White for the opportunity to talk with me about this, and to better explain to the readers what it takes to climb Mount Everest.
Question: Tell us a little bit about you: where are you from and how was born the passion for climbing, and especially the idea to climb Everest?
Fergus White: I’m from Dublin, Ireland. I’d always enjoyed the outdoors and exercise, and particularly sporting events. I raced bicycles when I was younger. But into my 30’s, I was well beyond the age of being competitive. I’d enjoyed multiday hiking with a light pack. But Everest simply hung in front of me as a challenge — a giant challenge. I was almost more curious to find out if I could even put all the pieces together — training, equipment, skills, experience, and teamwork — to arrive in the Himalayas with a reasonable shot at Everest.
Q: In your book you report the quote of Mallory: “Because it is there.” But for you, what was the Everest charm to push you to go to the Himalayas?
FW: It really was as Mallory put it, although I believe he said the now famous quote out of frustration just to get a prying journalist off his back. It was a challenge of me against me. I’d sort of posed the question to myself in my head several years earlier, and over time wanted to find out if I could do it. From as young as I can remember, there was a mystery, exoticism, and marvel associated with the highest peak in the world, but never the remotest possibility that I might ever see it — let alone go past Base Camp.
Q: When you said to family and friends: “I’m going to climb Everest,” what was their reaction?
FW: My friends loved the boldness of the idea, coupled with a slight suspicion of madness. I think my family leant more towards the madness prognosis!
Q: What kind of preparation is necessary for Everest? Do you have any particular suggestions to give?
FW: I put an answer up on Quora to that question a while back. Here it is, which should help.
Q: When you took the airplane from Ireland and started your journey, what were your thoughts at that moment?
FW: It was just logistics, and making sure that I followed the plan every step of the way. An attempt at Everest is as much a planning and logistics operation as anything else. First off at the airport, the check-in agents were refusing boarding as the flight was over-booked. Then more hassle as my carry-on luggage was too heavy; my 2 checked-in duffle bags were already packed to bursting. I was just relieved to get a seat on the plane knowing that all my necessary equipment was going in the right direction.
Q: During the weeks before the expedition, you never had some kind of reconsideration? Like: wait, I may be losing my mind?
FW: There were a few moments. Not so much a fall or avalanche worry. But trepidation about getting caught out in the open in biting, frigid temperatures with no possibility of finding cover. The possibility of death seemed a bit remote, but the real fear of perhaps losing a limb to frostbite was a very sobering horror.
Q: From my youth I’ve been fascinated by Everest Base Camp — observing all those tents, like a small mountain town, where everyone is about to push themselves to the limit. You explain this well in your book: you spend a lot of time there acclimatizing and preparing for the climb. From your personal experience, how is life at Base Camp? How did you spend your days there?
FW: It was pretty relaxing. Late mornings could be surprisingly warm under a clear, blue sky. After a cold night, my sleeping tent would go from -6C to +25C within an hour of the sun hitting it. The main aim of the day was to try to take on calories between rotations; the human body struggles to digest food at altitude and appetite goes to the dogs.
I’d pass the morning reading a book in my tent, then chatting to the lads on the team in the mess tent later, preparing equipment for the next rotation, and trying to nibble a few biscuits the whole time. We’d come together for lunch and dinner in the mess tent, which was often a planning session. Interpreting changing weather forecasts became all important. Some evenings we’d crowd around a DVD on a small laptop — we had solar panels to charge batteries during the day. Then by 9pm it was time to fill a drinking bottle with hot water, head back to my tent, and shove the bottle into my sleeping bag.
We had little interaction with the other teams, as there was always a fear of someone bringing an illness back to the team.
Base Camp felt like luxury compared to the Spartan environment up higher, but you only had to take a few steps too quickly to be reminded just how little oxygen was in the air.
If I‘d just been there as, say, Base Camp support I would have enjoyed it a lot more: kick back, enjoy a few beers, meet others, and act the fool. But I couldn’t shake away that niggling feeling that there was some serious and dangerous business up ahead that was going to need all my strength and reserves.
Q: Nirmal Purja said that, even with all the work done by Sherpas, climbing Everest is a huge challenge, even just overcoming the Khumbu Icefall. Is it really that hard and challenging, even though you’ve just started the climb?
FW: Yes. The real kicker’s the lack of oxygen. All seems fine and dandy at Base Camp, but strap a loaded and heavy pack on your back and start walking uphill into the Icefall, and all of a sudden you’re gasping. To make a comparison, I could walk up and down the street where I live with ease, all day long — just give me some water. But put an adult man on my back and force me to give him a piggy-back, my legs would buckle within 100 metres. Not a technical challenge — just gruelling. Trying to get muscles to fire up with limited oxygen is like trying to run a car with dirty fuel.
The first rotation through the Icefall packs a wallop, as you’re still acclimatising and there’re not enough red blood cells in your veins to get enough oxygen to your muscles and vital organs.
Without the Sherpas carrying supplies and tents up to Camp 2, and hauling oxygen tanks up to Camp 4, most people would blow their reserves before Camp 3.
There’s a romanticism that Hillary and Tenzing climbed Everest on their own or on a very small team. But the reality is far from that. Their 1953 expedition employed 360 local porters, 20 climbing Sherpas, and 13 British and New Zealand climbers for over 2 months. Two days before the summit was reached, two top class climbers — breaking trail — got to within 100m of the summit. But totally exhausted they had to retreat or risk probable death. The following day, in preparation for the next 2-man attempt, an advance team of three climbers carried 20kg each of supplies up to Camp 9. Hillary and Tenzing followed them and collected the equipment and oxygen tanks left at supply dumps along the way. And the following day they made history.
Excluding for the likes of Reinhold Messner, the Sherpas make an otherwise impossible task just about doable.
Q: In your book you talk a lot about the Sherpas’ work, also when you’re between Camp 4 and the summit. I always think they get less credit than what they really deserve…
FW: I think, to an extent, that’s a media-fed invention, where a good story needs heroes and villains. The heroes are the unsung Sherpas and the villains are the nasty, rich, privileged, white folk.
Anyone who’s ever climbed at extreme altitude knows that every kilogram feels like ten up there. Anyone who’s pulled themselves up through the Icefall, watches and gasps in amazement as a Sherpa passes them with a pack twice as big.
Anyone who’s ever arrived at a pre-pitched tent in the death-zone, with a flask of water inside, knows that it didn’t just appear by magic. And that water could be the difference between life and death.
A full oxygen tank weighs almost 4kg and climbers need about five each to survive in the death-zone. When teammates see 100 tanks in a neat stack at Camp Two, 1,000m above Base Camp, they know who got them there. It doesn’t matter which God you worship, God doesn’t deliver oxygen tanks!
Extreme altitude climbers know the Herculean task the Sherpas have undertaken; but it doesn’t mean we’ll indulge in casual racism and patronise them with platitudes, or next thing we’d be banging tin pots for nurses rather than inquiring if better pay and more holidays might be the preferred option.
For those who’ve been up high in thin air, though, it’s often not a case of “aren’t the Sherpas great” as if they were some sort of one-size-fits-all generic. It’s more a case of “Wow, Jangbu made that carry look easy today” or “I heard Tashi has been on the summit 3 times before, I’d love to climb near him on summit night” or “The Base Camp manager set these tents up real well after the thaw.”
But there’s also the recognition that we’re all human: “X Sherpa never made it to Camp 4, that surprised me,” or “Y Sherpa was shot a few hundred metres above Camp 4, maybe he shouldn’t have gone,” or “Z Sherpa didn’t want to carry the gear.”
Some of the Sherpas are very social with great language skills. Some are introverted. The confidence of the experienced Sherpas shows through. Sometimes you can sense a little tension within the Sherpa team itself.
Those who’ve shared perilous nights in the death-zone recognise and respect the toil and experience of specific named Sherpas (and a few unnamed Sherpa teammates they never got to know personally). And, of course, there might be one or two Sherpas they never quite warmed to! But there’s no generic, racial entity upon which I heap clichéd banalities.
But to get back to your question: if someone who’s never been above Base Camp or met a Nepali Sherpa has an enduring belief that Sherpas don’t get the credit they deserve, what are they basing this on? What form should the credit take? Which Sherpa has been neglected? I suspect internet chatrooms would provide an answer.
Respect earned in hardship is never forgotten. A climber knows who helped them on Everest — and who didn’t. Every climber who has ever gasped in thin air understands the punishment of a heavy pack at altitude; they remember who helped them with gear — regardless of race or nationality.
Q: Yours was a commercial expedition. I’m not against them; actually, I’ve a good opinion of them. But in the last few years it’s been talked a lot about the “circus” around Everest. I think too many people try to climb it without enough preparation or even understanding the risks. Do you think there should be more limits by the Nepali government (the side from where you climbed)?
FW: Your concerns are justified, but it’s hard to police such matters, and where exactly does one draw the red line for acceptance?
If a person says they’ve been over 8,000m on K2 (Pakistan), how is a Nepali official supposed to verify that claim? Or if a climbing operator (keen on revenue) vouches that one of their climbers has made it close to 8,000m on Gasherbrum (Pakistan), then how is that disproved in Kathmandu? While on the other side of the argument, an Irish climber, with a solid climbing resumé and a successful summit of Everest in 2018, died of exhaustion on his return to Everest in 2019. If officials were to build rules based on his death, no one would make the grade.
Whatever rules may be applied in the future by the Nepali government, they’ll need to be regularly tweaked, and re-tweaked; people will disparage them; loopholes will be found; discrete envelopes of cash will no doubt oil the acceptance process; and people will still die.
Climbing Everest on the two most common routes is not hard core rock-climbing. It’s fashionable to say and write that climbing Everest is a circus, it’s easy, and that no climbing skills are necessary. According to many pundits, the only requirements are time off work and a truckload of cash. And therein lays the irony: a person reads such opinion online from several commentators and believes it. Which brings us back to your question: many people don’t understand the risks of Everest because they’ve read so many times that it’s easy. The circle then completes itself as yet another person joins that circus. Thus someone finds out the hard way that the death-zone is not in fact easy — it’s merciless.
Q: Also about commercial expeditions: what are your thoughts about that infamous photo on the Ridge just below the Everest summit where there was a line of maybe hundreds of people waiting a few years ago?
FW: It was Nims Purja who took that photo in 2019, and it was a great shot. As you know, an Everest attempt consumes about six weeks from Base Camp to the summit. Within the short May weather window, there’ll be two or three near perfect days when there’s a windless, clear blue sky; that’s the time to strike for the top. Of course, every climber on the mountain aims for those same, safe few hours.
As a result, over the last two decades on the 2 or 3 best days, there’ll be a queue at the chokepoints just before the summit. The queue will last for a few hours mid-morning, and then disappear. The bottleneck is located exactly where Purja took his photo, along the last 100 vertical metres to the top. The narrow ridge is less than a metre wide. To the left is a drop of 2,500m into Nepal. On the right looms a 3,000m plunge into Tibet. Climbers have, and do, fall the entire distance — the full 2.5km down. Thus, overtaking on the ridge is fraught with danger. It only takes a single slow, incapable or incapacitated climber to block everyone behind. And of course, those returning from the top have to squeeze past those still ascending that ridge.
As it happens, more people summited Everest from the Nepali side on the day of Purja’s photo than on any other day in history, with 219 summits (of whom 135 were Sherpas, professional alpine guides or climbers who’d previously summited Everest).
Q: Talking about the Ridge, it’s literally a thin strip of rock where you can put your feet, and you even climbed it at night. Thoughts about it?
FW: The reality is that I was focused on where to put my feet, not where not to — obvious as that sounds! The trail had been broken to firm snow — so even though less than 50cm wide — that was more than enough. I was fixated on what was within the narrow triangle of light from my head torch. Quite simply, nothing outside of that beam existed for me.
Q: There was a moment in your book that literally took my breath away; it was when you were between the Balcony and the summit, alone, at night. I think that in such a condition I would have shited my pants. And that’s not an overstatement…
FW: We have something in common. If I’d any food in my belly at that stage … I would have shited my pants too!
Q: Many talk about that “thin air” and death-zone. But what is it like? What kind of physical effects do you feel, even if you have an oxygen tank with you?
FW: The lack of oxygen is the main challenge on Everest. It saps your strength and endurance. Almost worse, it hampers your digestive system, so you lose muscle at an alarming rate while also having limited supplies of energy.
Climbers with oxygen tanks benefit from a supplemental oxygen flow of about 2 litres per minutes into their mask. As they breathe in, they inhale both the thin air from the atmosphere (through an inlet valve in the mask) which is enriched with a tiny stream of oxygen. This supplemental oxygen has the effect of making it seem like the climber is 1,000 metres lower. As an example, when a climber is standing on the summit of Everest (8,848m) using a tank, this is the same as being at 7,850m without a tank. But note that even 7,850m is effectively in the death-zone; the climber is slowly dying. A climber cannot survive indefinitely above Camp 4, even on supplemental oxygen.
The supplemental oxygen flow is just about enough to keep a healthy, acclimatised person alive while they exert them self — no more than that. In thin air, sitting still is fine, but as soon as you push a few steps uphill, you’re gasping.
Q: Another thing I enjoyed about your book, Ascent Into Hell, is that it’s written in a pleasurable diary form. When you’re on the final phases of the summit push, your expedition team splits away: every person choses different times, makes different decisions. Literally, when you are in the death-zone you can only count on yourself, and you must consider very carefully every decision you make. You explained that very well in the book. How does that feel psychologically?
FW: By the time we got near the summit I was right at my limit; I think that was pretty obvious in the book! Our team set out from Camp 4 at the same time, but there was a gap of about 6 hours from first to last at the top. I doubt many of us had any idea what the others were doing. With lesser and lesser amounts of oxygen reaching my brain with every step up, I was getting tunnel-vision, as in, only aware of what was right in my immediate orbit. You’re quite right, at a certain height on Everest if something goes wrong — no one can save you.
Q: Finally, if you have one, who is your favourite Everest climber?
FW: An easy question — that would be the Argentinian guide who saved my bacon once or twice on Everest: Angel Ezequiel Armesto.