The Abominable: A Novel

With the possible exception of my solo night climb of the Mount Erebus volcano in Antarctica some years later, in the 1930s, I’ve never had a more beautiful and enjoyable climb than that night’s climb in May of 1925 up Everest’s North Ridge from Camp IV at 23,000 feet to our Camp VI at 27,000 feet. It was perhaps the most perfect mixture I’ve ever

Pasang says, “Machig Labdrön once wrote, Unless all reality is made worse, one cannot attain liberation.…So wander in grisly places and mountain retreats…do not get distracted by doctrines and books…just get real experiences…in the horrid and desolate.”

“Nepal’s forbidden to foreigners,” said Reggie. “You’ll be imprisoned, Richard.” The Deacon shook his head a final time. “Owings has friends there. His farm in the Khumbu Valley employs about a hundred locals, and he’s respected. He converted to Buddhism in nineteen nineteen—really converted, not like my meditate-in-the-morning, shoot-Germans-in-th

I didn’t know a damned thing about Zen meditation, if that’s what the Deacon really had been doing when he sat cross-legged and apparently lost in thought every morning before breakfast as Reggie recently suggested, and I certainly hadn’t had the time or interest on this insane climb to ask him about it. But I suspected then and I know now that mou

The Deacon nodded and then nodded some more but then shook his head. Then he looked up, over the top of my head to the west, and said, “I want to climb the mountain. But I’ve never abandoned a fellow climber in need and I won’t start now, Jake.” I was stunned at this. “If you want to keep climbing, I’m fit to come with you,” I lied. It felt like th

There were no solid footholds or handholds anywhere near that crack, of course—God wasn’t going to make it that easy—but friction and speed are God in such a free climb, and I prayed to, and used, both to get a few feet higher.

Dr. Pasang turned around and took three quick strides to my side. He went to one knee, and I was distantly—irrelevantly, with real death this close—aware of the other three also surrounding me now, the men looking down at me in confusion, Reggie kneeling next to me but obviously not knowing what to do. It’s true, I thought and learned forever in th

“Perfect place for a camp,” said the Deacon. “You have to be kidding,” I said between gasping coughs, removing my oxygen mask at every paroxysm. “We’re above twenty-eight thousand feet here.” It was true that our hearts were swollen, our muscles were failing, our kidneys, stomachs, and other internal organs were not doing their jobs properly, our b

I said, “Yeah, it’ll be a veritable Alamo up there.” “What is this ‘Alamo’?” asked J.C. He seemed far too cheery for the circumstances. I was coughing again, so Reggie explained the history of the Alamo to him in three or four succinct sentences. “It sounds like a glorious battle,” said J.C. after Reggie had just sketched the outline of the fight w