Facing the Fall Line (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine March 2004

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Facing the Fall Line (Cont.)


	Keeping the flame burning; clockwise from above, Koch lighting incense at the Team's base camp shrine: Koch, Henderson, and Chin at camp; Lakpa and Kami staying warm; Koch begins the North Face descent. (Jimmy Chin)

TEN DAYS LATER, with weather conditions looking promising, they tried again—this time from a newly established camp at 20,000 feet. The four climbed solo and unroped, with axes and crampons. "It was beautiful climbing at first," Koch says. "About 20 feet of vertical, then it backed off to 70 degrees, then 60, then 50. At midnight the moon came up over the ridge, and there was this great silvery path."

By morning, the picture had changed. The snow was knee-deep and unconsolidated, and it seemed increasingly unlikely that the team would reach a protected bivouac spot at the foot of the Hornbein by their 1 p.m. target time—much less the summit. They discussed trying to get above the 8,000-meter mark. Kami, the younger Sherpa, "was ready to punch it," Chin recalls, "but Lakpa has a family, and even though he would never say anything, I could tell he was not as comfortable."

Koch, for his part, needed to weigh not only his own decade-long commitment but his obligation to his sponsors, including the beverage company SoBe and fabric manufacturer Toray/Entrant. On the other hand, he felt "something I'd never really felt before: responsibility not just for one person, but four."

At 9 a.m., when the group finally reached a consensus to turn around, Koch's altimeter read 22,454 feet—a hefty 6,581 feet below the summit. On the descent, Koch went ahead and snowboarded what he could of the North Face's "steep and deep powder." But back at camp, the thrill had worn off. "I felt incredible disappointment, incredible relief, sadness," he says. "It was just kind of every emotion in my body going off at that moment."

Three months later, Koch seems at peace with his decision, even pleased at having undergone a "healthy ego check." His Seven Summits quest, he claims, is over. Yet it's clear the Hornbein still has a strong pull. "It is huge, truly the ideal line on the world's highest mountain," Koch says. "Someone's going to succeed on this route. I just hope it's someone who has vision and does it in good style."

Will that someone be Stephen Koch? "If the fire inside burns again for the Hornbein, I believe I could succeed," he says. "It might take more than one expedition, but eventually..."

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