Peak Experience: Man Shares Everest Tale

Not long after daybreak on May 24, Mark Luscher found himself at the foot of the Hillary Step.

Back home in the Oregon Cascades, it would have been a piece of cake. Just a little 60-foot rock climb. Nothing too technical. No big deal.

But everything’s a big deal at 28,500 feet.

“It’s probably the highest rock climb in the world,” Luscher said.

It’s also one of the most famous. The Hillary Step is the last real obstacle for climbers on the Southeast Ridge of Mount Everest, the route pioneered 45 years ago by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first humans to scale the world’s highest peak.

A little over a week ago, Luscher stood at the base of the snow-crusted cliff that would take him to the pinnacle of his own mountaineering career.

The North Albany resident was making his second attempt to climb Mount Everest in a bid to scale the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent. Now that he’s back home, he took time this week to talk about what it felt like to fulfill his dream.

He and his companions had begun their push for Everest’s summit the night before from Camp 4, a cluster of nylon tents at 26,300 feet on a ridge that marks the border between Tibet and Nepal.

They had climbed all night with a team of sherpas and professional guides, breathing bottled oxygen and following the beams of their headlamps up the long, steep sweep of the Triangular Face and over the daunting hump of The Balcony, reaching the snowy crest of the South Summit at first light. As dawn spread over the Himalayan peaks, they negotiated a knife-edged ridge known as the Death Traverse for the dizzying dropoffs on either side.

At last they came to the base of the Hillary Step — and there they waited.

“There was about 15 people ahead of us,” Luscher said, “(and) I had to wait for several people coming back to go through.”

Temperatures overnight had plunged to about 13 degrees below zero, with a wind chill factor in the neighborhood of minus 40. Even in the depths of his high-tech down suit, Luscher was chilled to the bone. His water bottles and food were frozen. Exhaustion and oxygen deprivation made the smallest task difficult.

“I was fatigued,” Luscher said. “The wind is cold, your hands are cold, your feet are cold.”

But with the end of his quest in sight, Luscher was also filled with anticipation. When his turn came to climb, adrenaline got him to the top of the Hillary Step and up the last sloping ridge to Everest’s 29,028-foot summit.

It was a moment of triumph for Luscher, a 60-year-old building contractor who deferred his mountaineering dreams until his six children were all grown. He began climbing in 2002, at the age of 54, and has now joined the exclusive circle of adventurers who have scaled all of the Seven Summits.

Luscher tried to climb Everest last year with a small, independent group, but breathing and stomach problems forced him to abandon the effort after climbing to around 25,000 feet. This year he returned as part of a guided expedition.

Looking back at that moment from the comfort of his North Albany home this week, Luscher recalled being bombarded by conflicting emotions.

“The feel of it was exhilarating,” he said. “I was cold, I was excited, I was scared. You had all the ingredients of extreme conditions.”

As cold as it was on the summit, the weather was clear and relatively calm. Luscher had about 15 minutes to take in the view, pick up a souvenir chunk of rock and pose for pictures with members of his team before beginning the descent — often considered the riskiest part of an Everest climb.

“When you get to the top, you know you’ve still got to get down,” he said. “You’re functioning probably at about 50 percent capacity.”

By the afternoon of May 24 he was sleeping in his tent at Camp 4. A week later he was in Kathmandu, and Monday morning he stepped off a plane at Portland International Airport and into the waiting arms of his family and friends.

After two months away from home, it was another peak experience for Luscher.

“I almost think that could be more emotional, more exciting to me than the summit itself,” he said.

It’s been a busy year on Everest, with an estimated 290 climbers reaching the top of the world this spring. But the season was nearly canceled because of China’s ambition to carry the Olympic flame to the summit to promote the upcoming Summer Games in Beijing.

Hoping to quash any potential demonstrations calling for a free Tibet, the Chinese closed the Tibetan side of the mountain to all but their own expedition and pressured neighboring Nepal to impose severe restrictions on its side of Everest. The upper slopes were declared off-limits for more than a week in early May while the Chinese team made its summit push, and many climbers feared the annual monsoon storms would make the route impassable before they got their shot.

“The big worry ... was that if they didn’t summit by the time they anticipated, we would be pushed back even further,” Luscher said.

Restricted to Base Camp, climbers had their satellite phones and videocameras confiscated. Nepalese troops monitored all radio traffic on the mountain, assigned liaison officers to each expedition and stationed snipers to deter anyone thinking of defying the climbing ban.

“The Chinese ambassador came in three times by helicopter,” Luscher said. “They made sure the Nepalese were living up to their side of the deal.”

To the Western climbers cooling their heels in Base Camp, the whole production seemed overblown — and counterproductive.

“We couldn’t understand why they made such a big deal out of the ‘Free Tibet’ stuff,” Luscher said. “If they hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t have gotten so much bad press.”

Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.

Click the logo below to hear Hall's interview with Luscher