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Ethan's temper flared. "I haven't done anything to you or your team! You can believe that or stuff it I don't really care! I didn't tip off the Nepalese, but I'll tell you this, though: They're right. This mountain is mean, and it's no place for a little kid. It's not right for Dominic, who could be in danger, and it's not right for the climbers who might have to put themselves in danger to rescue him." The well-known smiling face that adorned so many ads for climbing equipment was bright red with anger. "I didn't come into my own mess tent to take this kind of heat! All I wanted was a lousy cookie!" He flung open the pantry chest and yanked out a bag of Oreos to find Dominic's distorted face peering up at him through the clear plastic of a bottle of vinegar. CHAPTER SIXTEEN The weather report sent Base Camp info a frenzy of activity. The forecasting services all seemed to agree. There were clear days ahead, and several of them. The moment for a summit bid was now. Sneezy filmed Cicero's pep talk, which turned out to be short. "No panic. Same climb. We're just going to the end this time, that's all." They dug their crampons into the crisp blue ice of the Khumbu Icefall. That night they slept at ABC and spent the following day resting on the Cwn. Cicero had little sympathy for their impatience. "Think of it as a trip to Miami Beach. It's the last heat any of us will feel for a good long time." The next morning they were up well before the sun in an attempt to be free of the Cwm before the day's eighty-degree temperature swing. Miami Beach was fine for shorts and T-shirts, but not wind suits and heavy gear. Soon they were back on the Lhotse Face for another torturous slog up steep sheer ice. It look every ounce of will for Perry to put himself back up there again. Surprisingly, it wasn't quite as terrible as he remembered. How could it be? The acclimatization actually seemed to be working. He could almost breathe, and the effects of altitude felt more like a bad flu than a pile driver to the head. He had promised himself, though, that he was not unhooking his jumar from a fixed line if the entire British royal family wanted to get around him. In fact, he did get passed, not by royalty, but by the first of several This Way Up summit teams. Ethan, Nestor, and Pasang climbed by on their way to the peak of Lhotse, dead ahead, yet impossibly far away. Noticing the pure misery on Perry's face, Nestor hefted his ice ax like a microphone and boomed, "We have nothing to fear but fear if-self!' " "In that case," Perry panted back. "I should be pretty darn scared." The other SummitQuest climbers offered their encouragement to Nestor and Pasang as they labored past. No one said a word to Ethan Zaph. That night at Camp Three, Cicero held classes in Oxygen 101. For the rest of the climb, each SummitQuest team member would wear portable breathing equipment an oxygen mask and regulator hooked up to a sleek, ultralight cylinder of compressed gas. Tomorrow they would be crossing the important threshold of twenty-five thousand feet. There was no camp there, or even any milestone. But twenty-five thousand feet marked the beginning of Everest's infamous Death Zone. "Supplemental oxygen helps you survive in the Death Zone. Remember I said Page 27 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html helps. Because nobody, on any amount of O's, can last up there for long. Make no mistake when you go that high, you're dying. Brain cells are disappearing, your heart beats at triple speed, and your blood gets thick like molasses. We're all on borrowed time above twenty-five K. The O's just let you borrow a little more of it, that's all." Sammi, who included deep-sea diving on her list of extreme hobbies, had no trouble getting used to her oxygen mask. But the boys found them vastly uncomfortable, and even scary. Perry could not get over the feeling that he was suffocating, even though he was getting more oxygen, not less. Dominic found if spooky to hear the sound of his own breathing reverberating in his ears. Tilt felt the same way. "It's like Darth Vader breath!" he complained, tossing his mask aside. "I'll get the hang of it tomorrow." "You'll get the hang of if now," Cicero insisted. "Nobody sleeps till you're totally comfortable in that rig." Nobody slept anyway. The stakes were getting too high. www.summathletic.com/everest/southcol No, they're not astronauts; they're the youngest expedition in the history of Mount Everest in full high-altitude gear, including oxygen. At this point in the climb our heroes might as well be walking on the moon. The atmosphere is virtually unbreathable, and they are far beyond the rescue range of modern technology. The route to Camp Four is the highest left turn on the planet, an ascending traverse across the Yellow Band five hundred feet of steep, crumbling limestone. Next comes a rock climb in the sky over the Geneva Spur, a decaying black club overlooking the Cwm by nearly a vertical mile. It is not far now the south Col, at the edge of Earth's atmosphere at twenty-six thousand feet. This barren wasteland of ice and stone is the site of Camp Four, the last stop before the summit. With nighttime temperatures of eighty below zero in lethal alliance with wind gusts more than one hundred miles per hour, this is not a relaxing place. Yet relax they must. For at midnight, they will walk right into the teeth of the worst conditions the mountain has to offer. CLICK HERE to see the SummitQuest climbers at Camp Four trying to grab a scant few hours of sleep before their final test on top of the world. "I can't sleep," Dominic mumbled into his oxygen mask. "Who asked you to?" roared Tilt. "I just need you to shut up long enough for me to get some rest!" Perry tried to keep the peace in the close quarters. Due to the difficulty of ferrying equipment this high, the eight SummitQuest climbers were crammed into two three-person tents. "Come on, Tilt. We're all nervous." This was not strictly true. The others were nervous. Perry Noonan was scared out of his wits. He was playing a chess game in his head in a vain attempt to divert his mind. But he could get no further than three or four moves before his discomfort and fear brought him back to the Death Zone. "I'm so pumped!" said Sammi, pulling the mask from her face so she could be heard. "I mean, think about it. There's nothing about this moment that isn't extreme. Breathing extreme air in extreme cold and extreme wind, getting ready to take on the ultimate extreme mountain!" Perry fiddled with his mask. "Who can sleep in this getup?" Tilt pushed him back down on his sleeping bag. "That's easy for you to say. You don't need rest. You're going to quit before we hit the ridge. I'm going the distance tonight so everybody shut up!" Dominic crawled to the entrance. "I'm going to check the radio. See if any of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |