A Crowd Gathers at Top of World : International Peace Climb Gets 20 People to Summit of Mt. Everest Over Four Days

Well, that did it, Jim Whittaker figured, he ruined Everest for everybody. Turned the world’s highest mountain into a molehill, he did, putting so many people from his International Peace Climb expedition on top that the next ones will come looking for the escalator.

“It’s almost embarrassing,” were Whittaker’s first words radioed from Base Camp. “People will think it was easy.”

No previous expedition had ever put 20 climbers on top. A Norwegian team had 17 reach the summit in 1985.

Visiting Los Angeles afterward, Whittaker said: “What’s going to happen, people will go up there and say, ‘Let’s do this route. They got 20 up, (so) it must be a walk.’

“It’s still a very difficult mountain. More than 200 people have been to the summit now, and more than a hundred (others) have been killed, so it’s almost 2 to 1 (odds). We were lucky to break that percentage. It was a difficult route . . . a difficult climb.”

According to Walt Unsworth’s “Everest,” a history of expeditions to the mountain, 244 people had made 274 successful ascents through last year. A total of 103 had died trying. About 40 more climbers made it to the top this year, all during a remarkable 10-day window of good weather during the first two weeks in May. One was Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand adventurer who 37 years earlier, with guide Tenzing Norgay, was the first to climb Everest.

At times, it was reported, rope teams had to wait for others to leave the summit before they could ascend. Gridlock at 29,028 feet.

Whittaker, 61, didn’t try for the top. He was there in 1963, as the first American. This time, he stayed at Base Camp, at 17,100 feet, and devoted his efforts to organizing a series of triple ascents that really were summits--three-person teams, with one member each from the United States, the Soviet Union and China.

The political/public relations aspects might have outweighed the achievement, but these were no pedestrians, Whittaker emphasized:

“We had the best (climbers) we could find. I picked all the Americans--guides who had led people up (mountains) before. The condition was that they couldn’t stand on the summit unless they had two people with them--a Soviet and a Chinese. So I picked some people that were used to looking after others, as compared to an elitist climber who is just looking after himself. We needed teamwork.

“The Soviets went through 400 climbers. They had speed trials and whittled it down to their best. All those the Chinese picked had been over 8,000 meters (26,000 feet). But I told them no one should have gone to the summit (previously), because I didn’t want it to look like one nation was leading the other nations up. Of the whole team, I was the only one who had been to the summit. So they wanted it badly, (and) the teamwork was great.”

From May 6-9, five Americans, eight Soviets and seven Chinese from Whittaker’s group reached the top. One, Ekaterina Ivanova, was the first Soviet woman to do it. Another Chinese, Jia Tsuo, came close but had to turn back with frostbitten feet.

Afterward, Whittaker said: “The Soviet turned to the Chinese and said, ‘Isn’t it interesting that our American friends were the first to pull this together?’ I felt good about that.”

The successful Americans were Robert Link of Ashford, Wash., and Steve Gall of Woody Creek, Colo., on the first day; Ed Viesturs of Ashford on the second; Ian Wade of Easton, Conn., on the third, and Mark Tucker of Ashford on the fourth.

Against Whittaker’s better judgment, Viesturs did it without oxygen, as did four of the Soviet climbers.

“It’s hard enough with oxygen, because you’re breathing two to four breaths to a step,” Whittaker said. “A lot of people have died by being trapped up high without oxygen when they ran out. (Later, Viesturs) said he kept falling asleep . . . losing his concentration.”

Whittaker also disapproves of the stunts becoming more prevalent on Everest. This year, while the Peace Climbers were on the north side, having approached through China, some Japanese tried to float over the top in a hot-air balloon and crashed, one man breaking an ankle. Hang gliders have tried it.

“I don’t like it,” Whittaker said. “Some Japanese claims he skied down Everest. Hell, he only got to the South Col, but that stunt cost eight Sherpas’ lives in the icefall. I didn’t think it was good mountaineering.

“Everybody wants to push the margins farther. Someday somebody will try it in the nude.”

Whittaker had hoped to get climbers on top on Earth Day, April 22, but severe cold and winds up to 100 m.p.h. kept them huddled in their tents, some of which blew away.

American climber LaVerne Woods became ill at Camp IV, at 23,150 feet, and was helped down on ropes by two Soviets, and eventually taken to hospitals in Katmandu, Nepal, and Bangkok, Thailand. Initially, her problem was diagnosed as pulmonary edema, caused by oxygen deficiency. Later it was determined that she had suffered thrombophlebitis, with a blood clot moving to her lungs.

“The (doctor) said she’d have died within a day if we hadn’t gotten her down,” Whittaker said. “One of the Soviet climbers suffered cerebral edema--swelling of the brain at altitude--and we had to get him off the mountain.”

Also, Wade went snowblind while descending. All recovered.

Earlier, the leader himself was a casualty when his left calf started hurting. He feared it was a blood clot, which could have killed him if it moved to his heart.

On April 7, with equipment manager Ray Nichols driving, he left Base Camp on a two-day, bone-jarring Jeep ride to Katmandu. There they found the streets deserted except for soldiers, after a pro-democracy demonstration.

“We come to the border and it says, ‘Welcome to Nepal,’ and four hours later we were at gunpoint--young Nepalese soldiers, pointing them at us,” Whittaker said. “We heard 200 people had been killed the day before.

“We went through 10 barricades to get to the hospital. I kept saying, ‘I’m going to die if I don’t get my leg fixed.’ At the last one, a command car came up with an officer and said, ‘What’s the problem?’

“I said, ‘I just came off Sagamartha’--the Nepalese name for Everest--’and I have to get to the hospital.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Follow me.’ We got to the hospital, and the doctor said, ‘How the hell did you get here? We can’t even leave the hospital.’ ”

Four days later, restrictions were eased, and Whittaker went to Bangkok for tests unavailable in Katmandu. There, an American doctor told him he had only a torn muscle.

“So I said, ‘Take this (tube) out of my arm.’ ”

Returning to Base Camp, he climbed to Camp IV at 23,500 feet.

“It pulled on my calf a little bit, but at least I wasn’t going to bleed to death,” he said.

The Peace Climb had two thrusts: political and environmental. The 30 expedition members, aided by 34 trekkers, cleared the mountain of about two tons of trash left by decades of expeditions.

“In ’63 we just left the stuff on the mountain,” Whittaker said, “but the ethic has changed. We’re more conscious that we have to clean up after ourselves. One climber counted 2,500 food cans that he picked up right out of Camp III. (There were) some champagne bottles from Camp IV, some old stoves from Camp III, some oxygen bottles.

“We dumped a lot of stuff into a crevasse over a hundred feet deep. I think the glacier will grind things up as it comes down. At the Base Camp we dug holes and made landfills . . . threw the garbage in and covered it over with rocks.

“I think I found telegraph wire from the 1924 expedition of Mallory and Irvine, just lying on a rock.”

George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine were the British climbers who disappeared into the clouds near the summit, never to be seen again.

Despite his expedition’s success, Whittaker knows that Everest remains a dangerous place--although perhaps not as dangerous as other places.

“The natural world is a safer place for people,” Whittaker said, “a better place for people. A lot of people are living in a man-made environment--four walls. No wonder there are aberrations.”