MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION : Adventure, the Specter of Death Will Dog Physician’s Attempt to Conquer Everest

Jean Ellis was imprisoned in a dome-shape tent on the edge of the world, helpless to do anything but listen as screaming gales sent snow down in opaque sheets and shook the shelter so hard he expected to be wafted aloft like a hang-glider.

He and nine compatriots were stalled on their six-week climb up the glacial walls of Annapurna IV in the eastern Himalayas of Nepal, trapped in a makeshift campsite, only two days away from the summit.

Now, after the long haul that started six months earlier with the organizing of the expedition in the United States, they had a life-or-death decision to make. Should they wait for the storm to subside as food supplies run perilously low or should they turn back after being tent-bound on this 21,000-foot-high ledge for four days?

They headed down.

“It hurt to do that, but you knew it was the right decision,” said Ellis, an emergency room physician at the Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo. Heavy snows arrived the next day and “had we stayed . . . the return route would have been obliterated.”

The climb up Annapurna IV in 1986 was Ellis’ second trip to Nepal and his first full-scale attempt at climbing a Himalayan peak. But it was only a tuneup for late this summer and fall when he takes on the fabled peak that has totally absorbed him since he first stood before its wonder seven years ago--Mt. Everest.

That first sighting took place in 1981 while Ellis was involved in a medical expedition to study high-altitude effects on the human body. While in superb physical condition (he had been a competitive runner since his early school days), he was to become an involuntary subject of his own study.

“I felt invincible at that time,” he says. “I didn’t think anything could be as strenuous as running, but I came down with mountain sickness. I had headaches. I had nausea. I had poor appetite and I couldn’t sleep.”

The experience was obviously a shock to him psychologically as well as physically. It was as if this awesome giant of rock and ice had thrown down the gauntlet.

“I had never been on a mountain before,” he says. As a matter of fact, “I had very little outdoor exposure (except for) camping out a few times or going on hikes.”

But it was the beginning of an obsession that first led him to South America and instruction from famed hiking guide Sergio Fitch, and then on successful climbs up Alaska’s Mt. McKinley, Ecuador’s Cotopaxi and Chimborazo and Peru’s Chopikalki. And, of course, the aborted Annapurna attempt.

It has affected his life in every way. His house is filled with books and pictures of mountains, particularly Everest. His career is dictated by his training program, working nights in an emergency room so the days are free. Even the license plates on his car give you a pretty good idea of what he’s all about. TENZING, they read, in honor of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa guide who 35 years ago this week accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on man’s first conquest of Everest.

Since then, 219 people have reached the summit, including six women. Of those who have been to the top, about 15 were American.

“More Americans have been in space (about 150) than have climbed Everest,” said Jim Frush, a Seattle attorney who is leading Ellis and nine other climbers in the Northwest American Everest Expedition.

And Ellis adds: “They play the Super Bowl every year. Just because they play one doesn’t make No. 2, 3 or 4 any less significant. To climb Everest is no less significant just because somebody else or a number of other people have done it.”

The Northwest expedition, which will attempt to place the first American woman on the summit, has been four years in the making. Frush, 37, lived in Katmandu for a while in an effort to secure the necessary climbing permits from the Nepalese government. Such an enterprise is estimated to cost $250,000 and the climbers are trying to raise money by appealing to corporate America.

The expedition will embark from Seattle July 20 and return Nov. 20. The climbers will spend the first 10 days in Katmandu at 4,000 feet, then start walking about 13,000 feet up to Base Camp at the foot of Everest. The assault will take place in the post-monsoon months of September and October.

Before they set foot on the far reaches of the Himalayas, however, they will spend a month between elevations of 4,000 to 17,000 feet to become acclimatized. This gives them a chance to test equipment, work on climbing technique and gain an insight into Nepalese culture.

Ellis, 41, says that month is as important as any part of the trek, an observation gleaned not only from medical research but from first-hand experience.

Once they reach Base Camp, the climbers will follow what is known as the South Col route, the passage used by the Hillary-Tenzing expedition. The route, which follows the spine of the mountain, is regarded as the easiest to the summit, but that does not lessen its formidability.

This is evident on the Khumbu Glacier. For here, lying in wait, is the infamous Khumbu Icefall. A jumbled mass of solid ice with splinters as sharp as shark teeth, the Icefall looks as if it were cut up by a machete. The crevasses are so deep and so big that climbers cross them with aluminum ladders instead of simply jumping them. Ice blocks and avalanches are often measured in acres along the Icefall. Magnificent seracs, or ice pinnacles, can tumble down on a whim and send a climber to his or her instant frozen grave--”They are boxcar size and can crumble without any warning,” Ellis said.

The Sherpas, who work as high-mountain porters, will negotiate the Icefall with 60-pound packs time and again until four advanced camps are fully supplied. After passing the Icefall, climbers must contend with a more active part of the glacier, and avalanches always are a fear, Ellis said. But after passing Camp II, projected to be about 21,500 feet, the expedition members will reach the Western Cwm, a Welsh word for mountains pronounced “coomb.”

The Cwm leads hikers up the face of Lhotse, Everest’s 27,923-foot sister peak. From there, they will reach the South Col; a col is a dip in the mountain between two peaks. There, at about 26,000 feet, the final camp will be raised, and for the first time climbers will be traversing on Everest, where temperatures can dip to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ellis is one of three doctors on the expedition.

“You’ve got to have doctors who are able to climb and be up there in case of an emergency,” Frush said. They also come in handy in the disease- and leech-infested valleys of Nepal.

As a precaution, climbers receive shots for cholera, hepatitis, rabies, tuberculosis and typhoid. Ellis said the climbers will take malaria pills before, during and after the expedition.

All climbers who tackle Everest must face up to the precarious nature of their endeavor. Somewhere along the way, they each come to terms with that intangible thought of “what if.”

“There’s that element of, yeah, you could be killing yourself,” Ellis said. “You could fall into a crevasse or the rope could break. I like to think that I’ve prepared myself mentally and physically to handle the stress of a climb. You would not believe the level of concentration you have when you realize that the next foothold you make or the next handhold you take, your life depends upon it.”

“We have talked about what people want to do with their remains,” Frush said. “Body recovery is difficult; it’s almost impossible to get a body out.”

The dangers also cause stress for those who don’t accompany their loved ones on a climb. Shirley Heep, who lives with Ellis and her 6-year-old daughter in Dana Point, said she has reflected on Ellis’ mountaineering.

“It’s not easy being at home,” said Heep, a nurse at the Mission Viejo hospital. “The only thing I can do is I have to believe that he’ll be OK. It’s hardest for his mom. She doesn’t understand. This is something he has to do. He wouldn’t be happy with his life if he didn’t do this; I have to keep that thought.

“If he doesn’t come back, I will at least know he is happy up there.”

To condition himself for the climb, Ellis sheds the down jacket and snow boots in favor of skin-tight shorts, gloves and a helmet.

His preparation begins on the bicycle trails of Orange County, where he pedals about 250 miles a week, including road races on the weekend. It ends in his back yard where he meticulously checks the climbing equipment he will use. Ellis does not hone his skills on the local ranges--not even to practice rappelling. He has yet to climb in the continental United States because none of the peaks interest him.

Ellis, whose hospital shift is from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m., has worked in half a dozen Orange County emergency rooms. He says emergency room medicine allows him the freedom to continue his quixotic life. After all, once he finishes a shift, he is not chained to a beeper or ongoing cases.

“I really admire him for keeping his other interests alive as well as a high level of medicine,” said Dr. Mike Heart, once Ellis’ emergency room colleague.

Ellis, who was born in Esch, Luxembourg, but raised in Cincinnati, has always been industrious, said his father, Ralph, who was a military interpreter in Europe. “He’s always been self-reliant. He did everything on his own.”

Ellis was an outstanding student and one of Ohio’s best schoolboy half-milers. He continued to succeed at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a degree in chemistry and a track-and-field scholarship.

He returned to Cincinnati after military service to attend medical school, and then completed his residency at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. Whereas most of his peers started family practices, Ellis continued working the night shifts as an emergency room physician and running during the day.

When running came into vogue in the late 1970s, Ellis parlayed his talent into a national reputation as one of the country’s fastest road racers.

He qualified for the 1980 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, and finished 51st at the race. His running career culminated in 1981 when he ran a personal record at the Boston Marathon with a time of 2 hours, 17 minutes, 49 seconds.

“I felt that was the perfect race,” he said. “I started to think, ‘Why run anymore if I ran the perfect race?’ ”

He kept a running diary and on the day he decided to stop, Nov. 5, 1981, the entry simply said, “The end.” He has not run a training mile since.

But neither could he simply stop training; he segued to bicycle racing, though he did not consider it a substitute for running and did not attempt to seek national-class status in the sport. Because he became so involved in Orange County’s close-knit running community, Ellis said he felt a need to get away once he quit. But even today, he said, some patients recognize him from his halcyon running days.

And his thoughts are consumed with the circuitous route that has led him to this plateau. He recalls sitting in that tent on Annapurna IV recounting his active and adventurous life, recording the milieu of emotions on tape.

“There are several places where I have to stop taping because I’ve started to cry just thinking about things back home,” he said. “Just simple stuff: A bed, a shower, a phone, using the car. Friends, going to the movies, going out for Cajun food or whatever. All those things are gone. You are left with basic survival.”