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THE EVEREST CHRONICLES #8

THE SURVIVOR'S CONSCIENCE

How long does it take for you to get over something you should have done but didn't? Someone you could have helped, but failed to? A person you might have rescued, but you were looking after your own needs? What's the proper length of time to be sorry about a thing like that?

When bestselling author Jon Krakauer got back to Seattle from Everest last May, and finally forced himself to write the contracted article for Outside magazine, there were many who attacked him both for his frankness and for his own failures up on the mountain peak. One lawyer from Florida wrote this in a letter to the editor:

"All I can say is that I agree with Mr. Krakauer when he said, ‘My actions — or failure to act — played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris.' I also agree with him when he says, ‘[I was] a mere 350 yards [away], lying inside a tent, doing absolutely nothing. . . .' I don't know how he can live with himself."

We told just a bit of this story a few weeks ago in a radio script entitled "Burdens Are Lifted at Calvary." And here's a man carrying a huge load of guilt. As he was coming down from Everest on the afternoon of May 10, he ran into Andy Harris, one of the guides. And it should have been clear to him that Harris was suffering from severe hypoxia. Down on the South Summit, below the mountain peak, the team had stashed full oxygen bottles for the trip down. But Harris was insisting they were all empty. In his irrational, oxygen-starved state, he couldn't grasp that there were indeed spares available. Krakauer, pretty much in hypoxia himself, didn't realize that Andy Harris might be in serious trouble. Instead he just headed down the mountain to Camp Four, saving himself from the approaching storm. Writing later, he confesses:

"[It was] a lapse that's likely to haunt me for the rest of my life."

A bit later that afternoon, as head guide Rob Hall and Doug Hansen were stuck on the top without oxygen, it was Andy Harris who began heading up into the teeth of the storm to try to take them more gas. It was an act of incredible bravery and sacrifice; tragically, it cost Harris his life. He died up there at the top.

To make matters worse, as Krakauer got close to the bottom, now oxygen-starved himself, he ran into someone that he thought was Harris again. He watched as the guide made it down the last hill and safely into the tents of Camp Four. Only . . . it wasn't Harris at all. Jon Krakauer had been confused, which could be forgiven in the storm. However — and this really hurts — radio news went out to Harris' family in New Zealand that he was safely down to Camp Four. The next day, when they realized that Jon's identification of Harris was mistaken and that Andy had sacrificed his life on the mountain, a second radio call had to go to Fiona McPherson, telling her Andy was dead. Can you imagine the heartache . . . and Jon Krakauer bears some of the blame.

In the other expedition, Mountain Madness, the lead Sherpa or sirdar, was Lopsang Jangbu, a powerful native. But his own boss, Scott Fischer, was in very serious jeopardy, the last one coming down the mountain, and completely irrational. Lopsang, himself cold and very tired, stayed on the mountain with Fischer through much of the storm, but the American guide finally sent him down to Camp Four around nine that evening, with instructions to send up one of the other assistant guides. However, a rescue attempt by two other Sherpas the next morning found Scott Fischer so near death that he couldn't be brought down. He died there on the mountain.

Later, as the remnants of the two expeditions staggered slowly down to the relative safety of Camp Two, Jon Krakauer met Lopsang. And the strong Sherpa was beside himself with grief, pounding his chest and crying.

"I am very bad luck, very bad luck. Scott is dead; it is my fault. I am very bad luck. It is my fault. I am very bad luck."

Well, what do we do when guilt like that washes over us? We can cry, but the tears don't always wash away the sense of responsibility. Three days after the tragedy, Jon Krakauer finally managed to get down to Base Camp, where the doctor and other staffers had been waiting by the radio through the ordeal. They embraced him and tried to give him some comfort, but all at once this tough mountaineer just sat down on the ice and began to cry.

"My face [was] in my hands and tears streaking my cheeks, weeping like I hadn't wept since I was a small boy. Safe now, the crushing strain of the preceding days lifted from my shoulders, I cried for my lost companions, I cried because I was grateful to be alive, I cried because I felt terrible for having survived while others had died."

More than a year has gone by since that anguished eruption of tears. Has the passage of time helped? Not much. The book royalties are rolling in. Have they helped? Not much. One of the major networks is going to do a big TV movie based on this book, Into Thin Air; will the fame and notoriety and residual checks help Jon Krakauer feel less guilty? Probably not much. So what then can a person do?

There's a Christian song title that sounds trite, maybe, to a grieving survivor of Everest. What to do with the painful memories, with the stabs of guilt, the "what might have been"s? Eleven went up the mountain; six came down. And you know your personal failures were a part of that terrible loss. Where do you go to get some relief?

Here's that song title: Give Them All to Jesus. And to anyone except a Christian, that may sound like the most trivial and useless counsel in the world. But hear me out.

It's a tenet of the Christian faith that the cross of Jesus Christ takes away guilt. When we're struggling with a load of guilt, a conscience that won't let us sleep because we let someone down, if you choose to believe the Word of God, we have a Savior who's capable of taking away our guilt.

There are a couple of absolutely perfect lines shared in a compilation of letters from C. S. Lewis to an American friend he'd never met. This woman suffered often from both resentment and guilt, and in a letter to her dated December 19, 1955, he wrote:

"‘Beneath are the everlasting arms' even when it doesn't feel at all like it."

There have been times when I was struggling with guilt and shame. And I'd pray and ask forgiveness, ask Christ to take away those guilty feelings, the flush of shame. And the feelings didn't go away immediately. But do you know something? The Bible doesn't say the feelings will go away; it just says the guilt itself is gone.

"There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains."

That old song by William Cowper says nothing about feelings, although those who stay in the Christian walk soon learn to trust Christ enough that the feelings finally do change as well. But if we choose to believe God's promises, and not our feelings which blow this way and that like an Everest blizzard, we can know that our guilt is gone. About three years later, as C. S. Lewis continued in his correspondence with this guilt-ridden woman, he gave her additional encouragement from I John 3:20:

"If our heart condemns us, God is stronger than our heart."

Let me add one closing thought that has to do with our guilt. Sometimes it's made even more intense by the fact that our mistakes seem so irreversible. It was cold and windy out, and we stayed in our tent, and now our climbing partner is dead. We can be as sorry as sorry can be; we can weep and pound our chests, but we can't bring back our friend. He's dead.

There in that horrible storm of May 10, 11 climbers were stranded on the South Col, which was a broad, slippery expanse of snow and ice east of Camp Four. It was dark by now, and the blizzard had cut visibility to zero. They staggered around, couldn't find the tents, and almost pitched right over a 7,000-foot drop called the Kangshung Face. Finally the weather cleared for just a few moments, but two clients were too far gone to walk or even be carried under the circumstances.

A guide named Neal got to safety and helped five others get there too. But a 47-year-old woman named Yasuko Namba was virtually comatose and could barely move.

"It was now or never," he remembered later. "I tried to get Yasuko on her feet. She grabbed my arm, but she was too weak to get up past her knees. I started walking, and dragged her for a step or two, then her grip loosened and she fell away. I had to keep going. Somebody had to make it to the tents and get help or everybody was going to die." And then he adds: "But I can't help thinking about Yasuko. She was so little. I can still feel her fingers sliding across my biceps, and then letting go. I never even turned to look back."

Today, more than 3 years later, the body of Yasuko Namba is still lying there in the snow of Everest. And Neal is haunted by the death he couldn't prevent. What an irreversible tragedy, he probably thinks.

Except for this, friend. The same God who comforts and takes away guilt . . . can conquer death as well. Rob Hall is dead. Andy Harris. Yasuko. Doug Hansen. And the survivors' sorrow and guilt seems so permanent, so beyond fixing — but it doesn't need to be. Because the same God who forgives is also the Resurrection and the Life.

More about that tomorrow.