1.Masquerade2010: Mount Everest, Nepal“You are in the death zone. You are dying.” I wiggled around, trying to create enough space to take a breath. My knit hat felt too tight on my head and I adjusted it, hoping to relieve the squeeze. Nothing changed. It was not my hat that was too tight; it was my skull. The pressure created a dull pain and discomfort that was a warning to my body.
The narrow walls of the two-person tent felt cramped and suffocating. My temporary shelter of yellow nylon was perched five miles above sea level on the exposed rocks of the South Col, the highest camp on the Nepal side of Mount Everest. The punishing wind whipped against the fabric, pushing the sides of the tent against my tired body. It was a warning of what might be ahead. It was a reminder of the immensity of my desire to reach the top of the highest place on earth for the third time, without using supplemental oxygen for this attempt. Doing it this way tests the human capacity to endure pain and challenges the rules of physiology, and so would, I hoped, answer the question of whether or not I was good enough. If I could answer that, maybe I could put down the weight of all the other questions I was carrying.
My headlamp beam illuminated my breath as I exhaled, and the wispy vapors saturated the small space, freezing and turning into a sparkling coat of ice on the inside of the tent walls. The sun had already descended below Nuptse, the mountain to the west of Everest, casting a dark shadow over the camp. The smell of musty nylon mixed with the sweet scent of black tea steeping in an open thermos in my hands. I looked straight into the darkness, my torso slouched forward with my elbows resting on my thighs.
Everything felt too crowded. I had shoved my legs inside my down suit, and the suit inside my sleeping bag, and my sleeping bag into the tiny space next to Dave Morton, my climbing partner. He was in his sleeping bag surrounded by everything we needed for the summit bid that night. Tshering Dorje Sherpa was in a tent next to us with another Tshering Sherpa whom he had hired to work with him that season. They were both high-altitude workers and were the only other members of our team on the mountain.
Tshering Dorje and Dave had been with me two years before, on my first summit of Everest. Tshering Dorje had a raspy voice from the drying effects of the high-altitude air, and it made everything he said sound like a wise whisper. He was gentle and focused, a former monk who had left the monastery to make a living as a climbing guide. He married a strong-willed Sherpa woman and had two beautiful and equally strong-willed daughters. I liked to think that we got along so well because he was used to being surrounded by women who were like me, even though he always reminded me that, like most women, I talked too much. His words, in contrast, were few, and always well considered.
After our first year climbing together, he cast a few of his well-chosen words my way. “You have good luck, Didi. Very lucky.” He called me Didi, which means “big sister” in the Nepali language. His words made me feel like a valued member of a family I didn’t know I had. I adored his perspective and ached to make it my own. But my luck had never been particularly noteworthy. And now, as I considered the task in front of me from the cold tent, I knew even the luck I did have wouldn’t be enough.
We had been climbing that day for almost eleven hours before we reached the tent. I had watched the sun rise and now it was setting. The torturously slow pace ensured that I felt every moment, footstep, and uphill movement through my entire body, and my mind was weighted down with the unknown of the climb to come. Discomfort’s persistent voice told me not to stay here for long. Otherwise, I might end up staying forever, just like the body left on the slope above us, frozen in place for fifteen years. He was a climber doing the same thing I came here to do, to climb without oxygen. A climber who fell victim to Mother Nature’s power and the finality she promises us all.
Climbing to the highest point on earth without supplemental oxygen was thought to be physiologically impossible until Reinhold Messner and Peter Habler did it in 1978. It took another ten years for a woman to do the same, and in the twenty-two years that followed, only three more women succeeded at the challenge, with one of them, an American woman named Francys Arsentiev, making it to the top but dying on the descent. Hundreds of climbers tried but failed for various reasons. Some failures were as mundane as losing motivation, others as gruesome as blackened fingers and toes falling off with frostbitten tissue. Some people died.
Nature conquers the desires of man in this way. At these altitudes, the lack of oxygen and the increase in pressure cause brain tissue to swell until the tiny blood vessels no longer have enough space to carry vital oxygen-rich blood to the body. The pressure increase will cause fluid to leak into the lungs, drowning them in death. High altitude is no place to live for long.
The successful climbs without oxygen proved that it was possible, but not for just anyone. Was it possible for me? I had wondered. Could I rise above being average, a place where I had resided most of my life? Average had allowed me to get here, but the intoxicating possibility that I could be more was pushing me forward and begging me to risk it all. If I could do this, I could do anything.
When I asked Dave to join me on the this expediton he said yes, simply and calmly. His lack of pause made me believe that he thought it was possible as well, so I began planning and dreaming about how we would make it happen as a tiny team of two. Dave had begun his career in the Himalayas twenty years earlier and it showed in both the way he moved confidently and the community that knew him well. He was my mentor on my first trip to Everest a few years earlier, and I had forced him into a friendship with the persistence of a little sister. Quiet and patient, Dave was a good listener but quick to laugh. He would argue for days about the merit of a given Scrabble word and then just as easily concede that he was wrong. He had seen me grow over the years as I gained more experience in the big mountains. I was still learning the intricate ways of Everest, but his continued willingness to be my partner gave me a certain comfort. It was just us against nature.
“I’m glad the wind calmed down after the Yellow Band.” Dave looked at me as he spoke from his sleeping bag. No matter where you are, people talk about the weather when they don’t know what else to say.
I took the deepest breath I could and choked my words out. “This is as high as I have ever been without oxygen. I can’t believe I made it.” Insecurities flooded my mind. Dave was already tucked in, drinking tea, and organizing his camera gear for the final climb in a few hours, but I was so nervous that I couldn’t hold still or do anything productive. My throat was so tight and full of emotion that I could barely breathe. I wanted to cry but I thought it would reveal my weakness. In my sleeping bag, I wrestled my way out of my underlayers, wet with sweat, and replaced them with the dry ones I had selected for the summit push. Under my down suit I wore a pair of insulated pants. Under those I wore my favorite pair of soft wool long underwear. And under all the other layers, I wore a pair of blue satin underwear I had stolen from my sister in high school. They were silky and feminine, and as a teenager I had hidden them away for when I had the confidence to wear them myself. I had worn them on each of my previous Everest summits. There was something rebellious about bringing something so delicate to such a harsh environment. On my first climb, I thought that if I died, at least I would die in pretty undies.
Each day of this expedition had been a seesaw of feeling that I was capable, strong, and able or that I was incompetent, weak, and a complete fraud. Both feelings only intensified as we got closer to the possibility of the summit, and now, after sixty days, they were my persistent partners, joining my every step.
“What do you think, Melis?” Dave asked gently, as was his way. I sucked in a deep breath and forced it out with a little whistle. Could I go any farther without oxygen? My head throbbed and my throat tightened. Lactic acid pulsed through my muscles, making them feel heavy and useless with fatigue. My heart pumped forcefully, and I imagined it pleading with my brain to just let me try.
I rubbed my hands together to warm them and then placed my palms over my eyes, darkening my world while scanning the backs of my eyelids for the answer. Why wasn’t there someone I could call who could tell me what to do next? I heard my first climbing mentor and boss, Peter Whittaker, in my head: Tag the top, everyone will celebrate and love you. I heard voices from my childhood: You’re worthless. No one can love you.
Copyright © 2025 by Melissa Arnot Reid. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
