April
5, 2002
Climber
Marjorie M. Cross '65 Sets Her Sights on Everest
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If Marjorie M. Cross '65 (second from
right) and her teammates make it to Mount Everest's
summit, they will be the first American all-female team
to do so. The group should arrive at Everest base camp this
Friday. They are shown here training in the Rockies.
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"It
is the mountain that decides whether you will climb it or not."
— Araceli Segarra, Everest
IMAX Expedition, spring 1996
Having hiked 130 miles
across the corrugated back country of Nepal, five women will arrive
this Friday at Everest Base Camp. The group's aim: to become
the first American all-female team of climbers to reach the summit
of the world's highest peak. Among the five alpinists is
Marjorie M. Cross '65, known as Midge, of Mazama, Washington.
If she succeeds, Cross, at fifty-eight, will be the oldest woman
ever to reach the summit. The alumna claims she isn't out
to break any records. Says Cross, "If I reach the top, which
I have absolutely no guarantee of doing, it would just be a wonderful
accomplishment—for me."
Straddling Nepal's
border with Tibet, Everest towers 29,035 feet above sea level.
To put that in perspective, imagine a mountain thirty times higher
than Mount Holyoke College's namesake. Along with hurricane
force winds and vertical drops of 7,000 feet, acute mountain sickness,
caused by the oxygen-depleted air, can make Everest a climber's
Waterloo. Beyond 25,000 feet above sea level most climbers must
breathe supplemental oxygen, which they carry on their backs in
tanks. This area, called the Death Zone, supports human life for
only a very narrow window of time during which climbers haul themselves
up the glacial slopes, "tag" the summit and—in
essence—run for their lives.
Cross's teammates are Lynn Prebble of Canon City, Colorado;
Alison Levine of San Francisco, California; Jody Thompson of Breckinridge,
Colorado; and Kimberly Clark of Denver, Colorado. The team will
be taking the traditional route along Everest's southeast
ridge, pioneered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953
during the first ascent. It's "the standard route,"
says Cross, "although ‘standard' on Everest is
still a huge accomplishment."
After touching down
in Kathmandu, the women transferred to Lukla, where they began
the eight-to-nine day trek to Everest Base Camp, elevation 17,300
feet. They will hunker down at the camp for a stay of undetermined
length, positioning themselves for the final push and acclimatizing
with short sorties to higher elevations. Like the 1,318 other
climbers who plan to attempt Everest this year, Cross and her
teammates will wait for the seasonal break in the monsoon that
usually occurs sometime in May. If that break materializes, the
team—along with three professional guides and a contingent
of Sherpas—will begin its charge to the summit.
It may be tempting
to label high-altitude climbers as adrenaline junkies risking
their lives in pursuit of glory. But for Cross, it's not
about risk taking. "What I want," says Cross, "is
to not live a predictable life. My mom used to buy American cheese
with every slice wrapped, and that to me epitomized the kind of
life that I don't want to have."
Nor is this climb about glory. Cross, a diabetic and breast cancer
survivor who counsels newly diagnosed women, says, "If I
can inspire and motivate women, to me, that would be success.
I'm not asking them to climb Mount Everest, but just to think
about doing something outside their comfort zone."
Cross joined the team
only two months before its March 29 departure for Nepal, so training
has been "pretty much last minute." But she hit the
ground running. "I do a lot of climbing in my daily life,"
says Cross, "so it's not so different from what I do
day to day. I've been going to the gym more, lifting heavier
weights, and I've been spending the night in an altitude
tent. It has a generator that pumps in reduced-content oxygen
while I sleep, so that I'm, in effect, sleeping at higher
altitudes." When Cross began training for the climb, she
and husband, Scott Johnston, moved their futon mattress into the
tent, starting out at 9,000 feet and "cranking it up a little
bit each night. The last time that I was at home, we were sleeping
at almost 16,000 feet."
Cross's alpine
résumé embraces dozens of mountains, including the
highest peak in North America, Denali (Mount McKinley) at 20,320
feet. Yet the summit of Everest is nearly two dizzying miles higher
than Denali. That doesn't deter Cross, who teammate Jody
Thompson describes as "a ball of energy. She's an amazing
woman."
A wife, mother of
two, and grandmother, Cross enjoys unqualified support from her
family. They are, says Cross, "absolutely thrilled. My kids
have always supported my adventuring. My husband is my biggest
champion. It's through his encouragement that I applied for the
trip in the first place. My dad, who I expected would be quite
horrified, said, ‘Well, gosh, if they're letting you go,
it can't be all that tough, can it?' So, I'm leaving him with
that idea. He won't worry now."
In fact, Everest is
all that tough. Just beyond the confines of base camp, the Khumbu
icefalls present one of the trek's most severe challenges, a moving
valley of ice shot through with bottomless crevasses that climbers
traverse via aluminum ladders—sometimes several ladders lashed
together with rope. Here climbers must also negotiate precariously
perched, house-sized chunks of ice called seracs, known for their
predilection to topple without warning. During their acclimatization
routine, Cross and her teammates will likely go up and down the
icefalls at least ten times. Says Cross, "The first time
will be the scariest. I've been practicing at home—crossing
the ladders with my crampons on and using ropes to hold myself.
I pretended there was a crevasse below me, but I'm sure it's not
at all like the real thing."
Since Hillary and
Tenzing's first ascent, untold numbers of climbers have attempted
Everest. Of these, 1,314 have reached the summit and 167 have
died trying. The worst year on record is 1996, when fifteen people
perished on Everest—among them guides Rob Hall and Scott
Fischer, two of the most respected and accomplished Everesters.
David Breashears, who was on the mountain in 1996 shooting the
IMAX film, Everest, warns against anthropomorphizing. "Everest
doesn't give mercy or deny it. The mountain has its own rhythms
and life, and we decide how we fit into that," he says. Yet
it is hard to resist assigning a persona to the mountain. Whether
it is Sagarmatha, goddess of the sky, as the Nepalese call it,
or a cold pyramid of rock and ice, Everest often seems an arbiter,
offering benevolence to some and denying it to others.
Many will turn their
eyes on Everest this spring to see which way the coin will fall
as five women set off for the top of the world. They will need
luck, muscle, and courage, but perhaps most of all, wisdom. Getting
to the summit is one thing; returning is another—most accidents
on Everest happen on the way back down. There is wisdom, then,
in knowing when it is time to turn back. As climber Ed Viesturs,
who has scaled Everest eleven times, says: "The summit is
optional; getting back down is mandatory.'"
The College and the Alumnae Association are working cooperatively
to offer coverage of the Everest expedition. This summer, Vista
will run a story on the expedition-in-progress, and the Alumnae
Quarterly will print a post-trip profile of Cross. In the meantime,
there will be near-daily progress reports and images from the
expedition at www.discovery.com/everest.
You can email Cross and her teammates at everest@online.discovery.com.
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