Page 24 - 2002 AMA Winter

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was convinced he was going to die (and I wasn't too sure he was going to make it either). During the night I woke him every hour to check on him and assess his conscious­ ness. I felt completely helpless.
Amazingly, Tenzing did make it until morning, and even more amazingly he seemed to have recovered. This made me wonder whether he had just suffered from AMS rather than full blown cerebral oedema, and that due to his inexperience this had freaked him out, fearing that he did indeed have oedema. Having suffered quite a fraught night with him I wasn’t too impressed. Smiler’s last client decided to throw the towel in at this point so Smiler had to accompany him down. After a night like Tenzing had just had, he should have descended as well, but he refused my advice for him to do so. If he had, my expe­ dition would have been over so I was kind of selfishly relieved that he refused. However, once we got higher, would the same thing occur again, I wondered?
Both of us were extremely nervous during the following day. We continued along the ridge, retrieving old fixed rope and using our climbing rope to fix through to Camp 3. It was clear we wouldn’t have got there the previous day. Camp 3 felt quite airy and we could now look directly up to the Dablam - the hanging seracs half way up the face. The summit was only another 500m of ascent away. What we now should have done was collect our tents and return to Camp 3 - now we had fixed rope these were about an hour lower down the ridge. This would have given us a better chance at the summit. However, we were both tired and our nerves were frayed after the last 24 hours so we returned to the tent and made our tea.
The next day was to be our summit attempt. Seeing as we had no fixed rope I decided that we would climb alpine-style using our climbing ropes. We left the tent by 6am and it was bitterly cold. Within 10 minutes of leaving the tent I could no longer feel my hands. My feet were quickly following the same way. We've all had cold numb hands when ice climbing before, but this was the next stage. There wasn't a feeling of numbness, it was just nothing. This scared me. I wasn't about to lose body parts over this, so I stopped and warmed them until I could feel them again. Tenzing was going well and reached Camp 3 before me. When got there I could see he had only brought one axe with him. His other was back at the tent. The slope above is was about 55 degrees and definitely not one-axe territory. He started trying to bluff me, telling me he'd be all right, but I knew he wasn't going to be leading today. Some Sherpa guide he turned out to be!
To gain the face we had to cross a bergschrund. Tenzing tried this with one axe and all his ice screws all over the shop - hanging like tin cups and frying pans off the back of his sack. I lost the plot. I shouted at him to come back and pulled all the rope in. He returned like a sulking child and sat down. I took all the gear off of him and organised it on a sling around my neck like a bandalier. I then set up a belay with a couple of snow stakes and set off on the lead,
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AHMY MOUNTAINEER )