I've had to swim for my life in the white wave of icefall debris. I've watched helplessly as 11 climbers vanished in a cloud of white, buried alive, in the collapse of ice. And I've experienced the futility of the fruitless rescue attempts that follow. Often the crevasses are hidden under a veneer of snow, ready to claim an unsuspecting climber. Or, the snow bridges spanning the deep cracks may give way without warning, particularly in the heat of the afternoon sun.
Climbers have to keep a close eye above their heads as well.
Giant ice blocks and towering seracs which are constantly breaking off the moving glacier could shift or tumble at any time, endangering climbers' lives and playing havoc with the carefully maintained route through the maze. Byron, his teammate Tim Rippel and their Sherpa sirdar Lhakpa Tshering were about an hour beneath this area but a group of nine Sherpas from Byron's team was already above the fallen serac, having passed by without trouble just a little while before hand. No one was injured in the collapse but it delayed any passage through the icefall by a day. The route looks kind of like a three-dimensional game of Snakes and Ladders with fixed ropes snaking down from ice slopes and extra long aluminum ladders leaning precariously against ice blocks. Expeditions climbing via the South Col route depend on a professional team of guides and Sherpas to scout and fix the route through the labyrinth.