Free The Abominable by Dan Simmons

slack, I don’t believe, when push comes to shove, that I have the nerve to go try Everest, even if the Alpine Club should suddenly decide to invite an underskilled and anxious impoverished Yank to accompany their next Everest expedition. (And I know there will be another expedition. Once the Brits get their teeth into some huge heroic expedition challenge, they simply don’t give up, even when their heroes—Robert Falcon Scott, George Mallory—die in the attempt. Stubborn people, those Englishmen.)
    But suddenly Jean-Claude and I are at the precise point where four members of Whymper’s first successful summit party fell to their terrible deaths.
      
    I have to interrupt my own narrative here to say that I know it seems strange that I am suddenly going to describe an accident that happened in July of 1865, 60 years previous to the adventure I hope to tell you of that took place in 1925. But as you’ll see, at least one of the seemingly irrelevant details of that tragedy of the Whymper party’s first successful ascent of the Matterhorn became the improbable element which allowed the very unofficial and almost totally unreported Deacon-Clairoux-Perry Himalayan Expedition of 1925.
    The Whymper party had climbed the mountain roped together—all seven of them—but for some reason, they began the descent in two roped groups. Perhaps Edward Whymper’s group and the excellent guide Michel Croz’s were impeded by their giddiness and fatigue. On the first rope of four men, Croz—the best climber of them all—went first, followed by the true amateur, Douglas’s friend Hadow, then the fairly experienced mountaineer Hudson, and finally the 18-year-old gifted amateur climber, Lord Francis Douglas.
    The three remaining men—still standing at the extreme Swiss edge of the summit as their fellows began to descend—then roped up together: first “Old Peter” Taugwalder, then “Young Peter” Taugwalder, and finally Edward Whymper. Two mediocre guides and one excellent climber. Thus the descending victorious summit party consisted of four British climbers—one a professional, one a gifted amateur, and two pure amateurs—two only moderately competent Valaisans (the Taugwalders), and one truly gifted Savoyard, Michel Croz. By all logic, the supremely experienced guide Croz should have led the expedition—making decisions as well as leading the way—but although he was in the lead of the descent through the “treacherous bit” above the sheer overhang, it was still Whymper who commanded the expedition. And Croz had his hands full; although Hudson was a great help, occasionally steadying or even physically setting the following Lord Francis Douglas’s feet on the proper niches and holds, Croz was doing the same to the more anxious and infinitely less physically capable Hadow for every step of this difficult descent. And Croz had to do this while finding the best and safest route down and then right to the easier summit ridge.
    And so the seven descended the “treacherous bit” between the summit and the curving overhang which Jean-Claude, Deacon, and I had just come down.
    But just above the spot where we now stood—the fatal spot, as it were—Lord Francis Douglas, the youngest among them, had the courage and brains to suggest that they all rope up and descend together, one team, just as they’d successfully ascended the mountain. I don’t know why Whymper or Croz had not suggested it earlier.
    In point of fact, it offered almost no additional safety. This “treacherous bit” of the Matterhorn descent below the summit and above the wave-cresting overhang is difficult now in 1924 with fixed ropes, clear routes established, and a majority of the loose rock long since kicked free of the mountain by climbers. In Whymper’s day, the “treacherous bit” was even more treacherous, especially in terms of “objective danger” such as rockfall, but the greatest danger here—then and now—is that while the niches,