Hundreds are will be summiting Everest now and in the few weeks to follow.
Most will have been surrounded by other climbers, in a year that has suddenly opened up and has climbers rushing for the top.
Yet cocooned in down suits, both smothered and saved by their oxygen masks, a climbers vision is tunneled into a single headlamp beam of existence until the sun comes up, and they will feel very much alone.
They may be making a marathon effort, but it is not one they can suddenly drop out of, or decide to not finish. There is no follow car, no rope to duck under and quit the race on Everest, no real rescue from climbing in the death zone.
Climbers must climb up as high as the world will let them.
And far more importantly, they must get down again.
Somewhere up there, in the darkness above, there is the summit, though at times it may not seem so.
And despite the darkness and what feels like an eternal night, the sun will rise and with any luck, the Everest dawn experienced from higher up than anybody else in the world is, will be glorious.
Ever so slowly the sunlit line of dawn will go from black grey, to grey to a tinge of warming orange. There is no real heat though, only the first register of colour that signals the night won’t really go on forever. Then the sun finally breaks through, illuminating the earth and all the land below, very far below.
At the South Summit climbers perch atop a pinnacle of ice and the final ridge reveals itself. It is a sky-cutting line of jagged ice and rock cliffs, towering cornices leaning out right over Tibet, black rocks dropping off left and then disappearing into space into the darkness of a still waking Nepal.
At the South Summit, climbers drop down into the notch, and scrape across the cliffs, that rise and then fall in a traverse to the base of the Hillary Step.
Or, after part of it fell off in the earthquake, the Hillary Slope – though it certainly sounds better as the former.
Bridging between the rock and the ice, climbers move up, then step left onto sloping ledges. These lead up and around the corner, with a few kilometres of the Southwest Face dropping straight off under their heels to the tents of Camp 2, set far below on the edge of the Western CWM.
Fluttering above, finally, the prayer flags, the five colored wind-horses waving in the snow, letting climbers know they are finally, almost, nearly there.
The summit is a meter wide and three long, covered in prayer flags.
To the North, Tibet extends out over white, ice-encrusted mountains, then brown mountains, and hills, and into the purple plains.
East lays Kanchenjunga, very much in the far, far distance.
Makalu looms a perfect pink granite pyramid just in front, then the long jagged ridge leads down and then up to Lhotse in the South.
There is no mistaking the dominance of Everest from its summit.
It is not only geographically, but psychologically, and emotionally, a hugely dominant presence.
Standing atop it, ones life is now divided into ‘before Everest’ and ‘after Everest,’ when the possibilities of what life offers, having looked down from the top of the world, seem much more expansive and hold much more potential.
It is easy to sense the absolute of the world at your feet.
Lhotse serves as a marker on the descent: starting so far above it, then being at the same height, then, finally, descending lower than Lhotse.
But the yellow of the South Col tents will still be minute, wavering dots through the wind and often building clouds.
Then it is down and down the ropes, the anchors drooping in the snow, old ropes tangled with new. Every crampon point needs its home, every step needs to be perfect, every step and then another step, so simple and requiring so much concentration, again and again.
Then the slope levels, climbers skitter across the South Col scree. The tent is close, finally the tent is right there, crampons off, sliding out of the pack.
Securing the ice ax will never feel quite so good.
