Horror And Fear As Mount Everest Shook

At base camp, it was lunchtime. Climbers and their guides ate bowls of thuppa noodle soup and garbanzo beans, plates of buffalo meat, green beans, sponge cake for dessert. The cooks didn’t skimp on food, even three miles above the sea in remote Nepal. It was still early in the two-month window for summiting the world’s tallest peak, Mount Everest. People played cards, checked e-mail, talked. No one was in a rush.


Migma Tashi Sherpa sat in a dining tent, one of the hundreds of yellow, red and green tents that stretched across the gray, frozen valley floor. At night, tents glowed like lit beach balls. Base camp was a temporary home to more than 1,000 people from across the world. Throughout, small prayer flags were strung from stone altars, where Sherpas and climbers prayed to the mountain gods for permission to climb and for safety on the journey.

The veteran Nepali guide knew the risks. He’d seen guides die on this trek. He believed man often was powerless in the face of nature’s fury.

Then the great mountain came alive in a way Migma Sherpa never knew. Sagarmatha shook. The earth rocked, stone moraine trembling underfoot. Migma Sherpa felt fear in his heart.

“Earthquake?” a climber in the dining tent asked.

“You are still having altitude sickness,” teased another climber, before realizing the truth.

Everyone darted outside. The quake subsided. And all eyes turned to the towering face of Mount Everest, its soaring southern face disappearing into the low clouds. Somewhere up there, 170 climbers and Sherpas were on training climbs, some at more than 21,000 feet. What would become of them?

Some Sherpas started praying for Mother Everest to save them. Up on the mountain, some climbers began praying, too.

And then a fantastic explosion shot across the frozen valley. A crack in the sky. Something had broken. But the sound didn’t come from Mount Everest.

It came from behind base camp.

Migma Sherpa turned.