Climbers barely avert Mount Everest disaster
June 22, 2011
By Laura Geggel
Brian Dickinson, of Snoqualmie, climbed Mount Everest as part of his goal of climbing the seven summits, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. By Dennis Broadwell
His Facebook status read, “Heading to the summit of Mount Everest … brb!”
After spending two months climbing up and down Mount Everest, acclimatizing his body to the world’s highest mountain, Brian Dickinson reached the top during a solo ascent.
Then, he went blind.
The intense ultraviolet light at 29,035 feet scorched his corneas, giving him snow blindness in both eyes.
“I came to the realization that I’m on top of Mount Everest, there’s no one else there, there’s no rescue party coming and I have to get down by myself,” Dickinson, of Snoqualmie, said. “That’s my only option. I promised my family I’d be back, and I intended to come back.”
Dickinson’s harrowing journey has touched many. He told it three times with his climbing partner, Dennis Broadwell, on Father’s Day at the Church on the Ridge.
“To hear now the story of what actually took place — he should be dead,” said Charlie Salmon, pastor of Church on the Ridge. “Through this unbelievable circumstance, a miracle takes place and he made it down.”
Climbing the mountain
In 2008, Dickinson decided he would climb the world’s seven summits: the tallest mountains on each of the seven continents. He got off to a great start, climbing Alaska’s Denali in 2009, and Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro and Russia’s Elbrus in 2010.
Broadwell, another Snoqualmie climber and owner of Mountain Gurus, read about Dickinson in the newspaper. When the two realized they both attended Church on the Ridge and shared a passion for mountain climbing, they connected and agreed to climb Mount Everest together.
They trained by hiking Mount Si, with Dickinson carrying an extra 50 pounds of water up to the haystack to condition his muscles.
As April approached, Dickinson hid notes and presents for his wife and two children around his house. A friend of his texted her every morning, giving her clues about where to look.
Dickinson left her love notes and dollar toys for his son and daughter.
“Almost every day there was something planned, like coloring books,” JoAnna Dickinson said.
While they were finding them, Dickinson and Broadwell were scaling Mount Everest. They hiked 35 miles to base camp at about 17,500 feet, an elevation 3,000 feet higher than Mount Rainier.
The two men each had a Sherpa guide and Sherpa they had hired as porters and cooks. Once they reached base camp, they spent the next two months conditioning their bodies to the high altitude. The top of Mount Everest — the height some commercial airplanes reach — has one-third less air than land at sea level.
The decision to summit solo
The weather on Mount Everest is dicey, but the duo found a window of good weather allowing them to try to summit in May. From base camp, they climbed to Camp 2. Then, Broadwell took a turn for the worse. He got food poisoning and decided to stay at the camp an extra day.
Dickinson powered on with his Sherpa, Pasang Temba. The two climbed to Camp 3, at 25,900 feet. At that point, the mountain is nearly vertical, requiring climbers to go straight up the rock face. When they reached Camp 3, they slept for a few hours, then rose to climb to the South Col.
“That day, there was 79 mph winds,” Dickinson said. “Gusts would knock you off your feet.”
That day changed his entire expedition.
Dickinson climbed 1,000 feet and stopped for a water break. He removed his goggles, hung them on his arm, and removed his oxygen mask from his mouth. Then, his foot slipped and he instinctively grabbed the rope.
His goggles were not as lucky. They plummeted 500 feet downward, where a Sherpa caught and tied them to a rope. Dickinson rappelled down to retrieve them, and found the inner layer had cracked. Ice immediately formed between the layers, making it difficult for him to see with his goggles on.
Still, he and Pasang Temba persevered. They decided to try for the summit that night, under the full moon.
Dickinson forged ahead, getting so far ahead of Pasang Temba that he had to wait an hour on the 27,500-foot high Balcony for his friend. Soon, it became apparent why Pasang Temba had fallen behind.
He was sick, and even vomited.
It would have been Pasang Temba’s fourth summit, but he decided to turn around. He gave Dickinson the radio and an extra canister of oxygen. Dickinson left the canister at 28,000 feet and continued upward.
“I wasn’t feeling the effects of the altitude,” Dickinson said. “I was feeling strong. The weather was good. It was just like climbing any other mountain.”
Terror at the top
Slowly but surely, Dickinson continued three more hours until he reached the summit. He passed the Hillary Step and trekked across a narrow ice sheet that had a two-mile drop to Nepal on one side and an equal drop to Tibet on the other.
Finally, he got to the summit. At that moment, he was on top of the world, surrounded by prayer flags other climbers had posted.
“It was surreal,” he said. “It was hard to comprehend. All the emotions were just overwhelming.”
He radioed down to camp, announcing his success. A roar of congratulations sounded on the other end.
He stayed at the summit for an hour, taking pictures and then thawing his camera in his coat. As the sun rose into the sky, his vision blurred. He had removed his broken goggles to better see the vista. As Dickinson turned to descend the mountain, “everything went white,” he said.
He was snow blind and on his own.
He couldn’t radio back because he had fumbled the switch when he turned it off. Without clear vision, he knew he wouldn’t be able to find the right station.
If he squinted, he could see blurs, so, very carefully, he began his descent.
“It was really slow,” Dickinson said. “I was feeling just one step at a time.”
By then, he had been climbing for more than 30 hours. On his way down, one of his crampons popped off his boot.
“I just see a blur falling down the mountain,” he said.
As he went to retrieve it, his noncramponed foot slipped, and he tumbled down a portion of the mountain. His safety rope saved his life, and his training from the U.S. Navy kept him from panicking.
Breathing heavily, he steadied himself, reattached his crampon, but was hit by a mini avalanche. He rode it out, barely.
“I grabbed the rope and it burned through my leather gloves,” he said.
He continued, his body fatigued, his eyes stinging and useless.
“I was so tired and exhausted that if I closed my eyes — and I did a couple of times — I almost fell asleep,” he said. “And if I fell asleep, I’d be gone.”
By then, his oxygen tank was running low at 5 percent. Remembering the canister his Sherpa had left him, Dickinson made a beeline for it. When he tried to swap it out, it didn’t work.
Disheartened, he still took it with him.
“I started getting frustrated and angry,” Dickinson said. “I yelled, ‘I am not going to die on this mountain!’”
Meanwhile, Broadwell was worried. He was trying to reach the summit himself, and wondered where in the world Dickinson had gone. It should have taken Dickinson about three hours to return from the summit, and it was approaching hour seven.
“You start playing through your head all this bad stuff that could happen on Everest,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘He’s got to be gone. He’s probably dying up there, and what am I going to tell his wife?’”
Never give up
Just below the Balcony, Dickinson started to suffocate. He had run out of oxygen.
“I just anchor off and I just prayed, ‘God I cannot do this alone,’” he said. “I’ve never witnessed a miracle before, it was like, right then. I tried to swap out my oxygen again.”
It worked.
“I have life,” he said. “It was crazy. I stood up. I had energy. I could see a little better.”
From there, he rappelled and hiked further, straight to the South Col camp.
“I was hallucinating by this point. Rocks, they were coming to life like they were people,” he said. “At one point I’m like, ‘Did I die? Did I actually die up here?’”
After 35 hours of climbing, Dickinson was close to base. The first person he encountered, Pasang Temba, gave him a giant bear hug. Once back at his tent, Broadwell hugged him tightly, as well.
Broadwell tried to reach the summit, but ran into the same problem as Dickinson. On the way to the top, Broadwell’s Sherpa said he felt ill and decided to turn around. Unwilling to summit by himself, Broadwell turned back, although he hopes to return someday. Salmon praised Broadwell for his decision.
“To be 1,500 feet away and to say, ‘You know what, I’m not going to leave my wingman,’” Salmon said. “He’s blind and he needs help down this mountain and I have a wife and kids. My dream is not as important as the people who are depending on me.’”
A Snoqualmie connection
Back in Snoqualmie, JoAnna Dickinson said she felt anxious. She knew her husband was trying to reach the summit, but she hadn’t heard from him.
Along with his daily gifts, Dickinson had arranged to send her on a scrapbook retreat. During the two months she had felt at peace, but she felt ill at ease at the retreat, she said.
“I ended up going to my room because I couldn’t concentrate on scrap booking,” she said. “I was praying and crying.”
She called Broadwell’s wife, who in turn placed a number of calls until she learned Dickinson had reached the top of Everest.
“That was a relief,” JoAnna said.
Soon, she felt at peace again. Later that night, Dickinson called her. He had reached Camp 2, and borrowed a satellite phone to call his wife. In the space of three minutes, he told her he had soloed the mountain, gone blind and had almost died.
“There was definitely a point where she was like, ‘Are you breaking up?’ and I was like, ‘No, I can’t stop crying,’” Dickinson said.
Going home
Dickinson, Broadwell and their Sherpa group made their way down the mountain, back to base camp. Once there, the Sherpa made Broadwell a 40th birthday cake and baked Dickinson a summit cake.
“We had a bite and then we were gone,” Dickinson said.
The two hiked the next three days to various villages until they made it to the airport.
Now, back in Snoqualmie, Dickinson has flashbacks from his terrible journey down Mount Everest. His vision is slowly returning as his eyes heal themselves.
Though he feared for his life on the mountain, he won’t let his descent crimp his active lifestyle. Since returning in May, Dickinson has already run a half-marathon and climbed Mount Rainier.
It’s easy for him. After all, he’s still conditioned to breath at 29,035 feet.
“It’s almost like you can bite the air it’s so thick,” he said.
On the web
Brian Dickinson’s blog: www.climbing.com/exclusive/readerblogs/brian_dickinson.Dennis Broadwell’s journal: http://mountaingurus.blogspot.com.
Watch their online talk at www.churchontheridge.org. Click “Service Recordings” under “Media” and then select “Father’s Day 2011 — Climbing Mt Everest.”
See a slideshow of photos at www.snovalleystar.com
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