02 May 2013, 01:35 PM IST
It is one of the most magnificent natural wonders on the Khumbu glacier. An icefall is a frozen cascade of ice, often on a gigantic scale. The Khumbu Icefall is a monster of the species, wrote John Hunt, leader of the 1953 expedition in his book The Ascent of Everest. The Icefall is a maze of pinnacles, seracs, towers, crevasses and stunning sculptural formations. It is unfathomable, literally and otherwise.
Crevasses, hitherto appear on a smooth surface overnight. They widen or close with startling suddenness. Despite the fact that it had been forced by Shipton's party in 1951 and twice by the Swiss in 1952, here was clearly a most serious obstacle whose character could be expected to have changed beyond recognition by the time we reached in 1953, wrote Hunt.
By the time we arrived in Base Camp, last week of April sixty years later, the Icefall has changed dramatically. The tall seracs and pinnacles have disappeared, said Jagat, our team member, twice Everester and who was here on the Southern side in 2005.
Back in the fifties, the task of crossing the Icefall lay with the climbing party. In the last decade, the dangerous task has been entrusted with a new breed of Sherpas on the mountain called Icefall Doctors reducing mountaineering to a less purist pursuit. One Icefall Doctor fell into a crevasse and lost his life this season.
As a result of their work, the entire Icefall is roped up and crevasses are stitched through aluminum ladders, vertically and horizontally. The best time to cross is early in the morning before the sun comes up on the Icefall. Sherpas going up to stock higher camps leave around 2 in the morning and are back in Base Camp by noon. My first journey up the Icefall was intimidating yet mesmerizing. Raghu was with me offering confidence at every 90 degree climb and crevasse crossing. I met a team of Chinese climbers who felt the Khumbu Icefall was magical and hence climbing from Nepal is a treat than the Tibetan side.
Suddenly, the traffic increased on the Icefall with climbers going up and coming down. If you are lucky, you will have to wait only for half an hour at a bottleneck with tension running high between those who are coming down and those who are going up. But the Sherpas find their way in all this melee, clipping in and out of the safety rope as though they were jumping around their backyard. Indeed, it is their backyard.
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