Crossing the Khumbu Icefall
“A harrowing tale of the perils of high-altitude climbing, a story of bad luck and worse judgment and of heartbreaking heroism.” This is how PEOPLE describes Jon Krakauer’s Mt. Everest experience in his thrilling and terrifying book Into Thin Air. While I found the entire adventure fascinating, I was especially drawn into his description of crossing the Khumbu Icefall.
Krakauer positions the Khumbu Icefall as a formidable gateway to the upper reaches of Mount Everest, with shifting and groaning crevasses and ice towers offering a stark reminder of the ever-present danger. With hearts pounding with each deliberate step across aluminum ladders that are lashed together and spanning across gaping chasms, crossing the Khumbu Icefall is more than just a physical journey, it is a rite of passage, a test of willpower and courage. A reminder of the raw power of nature and the indomitable spirit of those who dare to challenge it.
Our route to the summit would follow the Kumbu Glacier…this great river of ice flowed two and a half miles down a relatively gentle valley called the Western Cym. As the glacier inched over humps and dips in the Cym’s underlying strata, it fractured into countless vertical fissues – crevasses. Some of these crevasses were narrow enough to step across; others were eighty feet wide, several hundred feet deep, and ran half a mile from end to end…
At around 20,000 feet, where the glacier emerged from the lower end of the Cym, it pitched abruptly over a precipitous drop. This was the infamous Khumbu Icefall, the most technically demanding section on the entire route.
The movement of the glacier in the Icefall has been measured at between three and four feet a day. As it skids down the steep irregular terrain in fits and starts, the mass of ice splinters into a jumble of huge, tottering blocks called seracs, some as large as office buildings. Because the climbing route wove under, around, and between hundreds of these unstable towers, each trip through the Icefall was a little like playing a round of Russian roulette; sooner or later any given serac was going to fall over without warning, and you could only hope you weren’t beneath it when it toppled….
So it came to pass that at 4:45AM on Saturday, April 13, I found myself at the foot of the fabled Icefall, strapping on my crampons in the frigid predawn gloom… the ice underfoot emitted a series of loud cracking noises, like small trees being snapped in two, and I winced with each pop and rumble from the glacier’s shifting depths…
At one point I was balanced on an unsteady ladder in the predawn gloaming, stepping tenuously from one bent rung to the next, when the ice supporting the ladder on either end began to quiver as if an earthquake had struck. A moment later came an explosive roar as a large serac somewhere close above came crashing down. I froze, but the avalanching ice passed fifty yards to the left, out of sight without doing any damage… As the glacier moved, crevasses would sometimes compress, buckling ladders like toothpicks; other times a crevasse might expand, leaving a ladder dangling in the air, only tenuously supported, with neither end mounted on solid ice.
Wow! Crossing crevasses eighty feet wide and several hundred feet deep on rickety extension ladders and playing Russian roulette through a maze of office building sized ice splinters. I wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it. Could you?
The Khumbu Icefall imagery captures my feelings when I try to “escape” a point of deep melancholy – my state of Ennui. Ennui, per Oxford, “is a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.” Webster adds, “…a type of chronic boredom that involves weariness, dissatisfaction, and apathy, as well as the tendency to feel that everything is uninteresting and unfulfilling.” Bolding is mine.
I am currently in such a state, where I am finding it extremely difficult to ACT, even to start. Heck, even to consider starting. Writing this is an attempt to break free, to step out. I am drawing on the wisdom of Stutz in Netflix’s Stutz, “if you’re lost, depressed or feeling stuck, it’s important to work on your Life Force first – take care of your body, take care of your people, take care of yourself. Once you do, figuring out how to move forward becomes much, much easier.” I’m recommitting to take care of your body with regular exercise, better diet, more water, and getting restorative rest as Stutz claims that will take care of 85% of the problem.
My question for you: What is your current state? Do you think Stutz’s Life Force first advice might help?