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Outside Magazine, January 2007

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Exposure Special
The No Fall Zone (cont.)


	Rob's second-closest shave, at Base Camp (Jimmy Chin)

I CAUGHT THEM A FEW HOURS LATER at Camp II, where our cook, Ang Pemba, had just treated them to heaping plates of fried rice. Their turns on the face had all been deadly serious, and they described surface conditions that an ice ax could barely penetrate. Now, at 21,000 feet and relative safety again, they were almost giddy about their accomplishment—and that they'd lived through it. Kit told me of the mantra she'd developed for the day: "Like your life depends upon it." She'd repeated this during each turn on the face. When I heard Jimmy relate that he hadn't gotten all the pictures he'd wanted because he'd been too scared to put both hands on his camera and bring it up to his eyes (try this at home on a pitched roof after an ice storm and you'll realize the difficulty), I was a bit startled. Jimmy doesn't scare easily, and he doesn't miss many photos. Rob told me that at one point halfway down the face, he'd skied up to Kit, who'd related matter-of-factly that she was scared and didn't want to die. Rob said that he'd replied, "That's good," and then they both skied on down. Rob took Kit's revelation to have been just right: A sane and functional human on skis in the middle of the Lhotse Face should be both scared and not willing to die. And a husband, upon hearing that his wife is thinking correctly, should then concentrate on his own turns and his own unwillingness to die. That was, of course, the mindset required to survive.



	Kit and Hahn at Base Camp post-acclimatization hike (left); Veterans Arita Sherpa and Pemba Dorje Sherpa, who between them have been on 37 Everest expeditions, and famous "Icefall Doctor" Ang Nima Sherpa, who every year fixes the ropes on the most dangerous part of the mountain (right) (Jimmy Chin)

Skiing from Camp II, they dropped 1,000 feet through the Western Cwm. They had planned to ski through and alongside the dangerous Khumbu Icefall to Base Camp. I worried again, not because I didn't think they could do it but because worrying is what I do best. But a snowstorm was making it impossible to see, so they took off their skis and hoofed it to Base Camp. There we all eventually met up and toasted with glasses of very cold champagne to unlikely success, safety, and the good things that can happen when you have the right mix of fear and confidence. They'd skied more than 6,000 technically challenging feet (about half the vertical from the summit to Base Camp).

Skiing Mount Everest

Rob climbs toward Camp III in a shower of spindrift on the central part of the Lhotse Face on October 6, 2006 (Jimmy Chin)

Some will say that this wasn't a "complete" ski descent, but I'd advise those people to try it themselves, after climbing the mountain in the snowy post-monsoon season, when summits are rare. Others may ask why anyone would want to ski the mountain in the first place. Jimmy put it best when he said, "You're hanging it out there, but that's what we do. We're ski mountaineers. Sounds completely insane, I'm sure, but we're very calculated about it."

With her goal accomplished, when she returns to Jackson Hole Kit has set her sights on starting a nonprofit called the Balance Institute, providing support to people "who follow their hearts to crazy places like skiing off the summit of Mount Everest."

"But I won't ever hang up my skis," she said. "I plan to ski till I'm 100."

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