THE streets of Namche were thronged with climbers, porters and tourists, and Vicky Jack was in her element, relishing the excitement of being here – on her way to Everest at last, 50 years after the first ascent by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, and in the year of her 50th birthday.

Vicky – who had previously climbed all 277 of Scotland’s Munros and was now aiming to become the first Scottish woman to climb the Seven Summits (the highest mountain in each of the world’s continents) – was embarking on her final ascent. Mount Elbrus, Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Vinson Massif, Mount McKinley and the Carstenz Pyramid were all behind her. Now, on March 26, 2003, she climbed up through the streets of Namche in the Khumbu region of Nepal: the gateway to the high Himalayas. She moved from one level to the next, puffing and panting in the thin air, standing aside to let yaks through and stepping over the scrawny-necked chickens which were skittering about. Women in long scruffy skirts and old, torn down jackets were sitting out on doorsteps, knitting and crocheting the Nepalese hats with the distinctive dangling ear flaps which were on sale in the little gift shops. Up above the village, before the clouds came down, Vicky caught her first distant sight of the topmost tip of Everest, one tiny white crest amongst a heaving sea of colossal mountains which stretched endlessly to the horizon.

Everest is a massive three-sided pyramid which straddles Nepal and Tibet. Its south-west face is in Nepal and the north and east sides in Tibet. Over the decades since 1953 the mountain has been successfully climbed by several different routes from both sides of the border. Hillary’s route from the Nepal side was the one Vicky would take – by the South Col/South-East Ridge, an extremely long climb over four main sections: through the perilous Khumbu Icefall, up the vast, seemingly unending valley called the Western Cwm, to the steep and icy Lhotse Face, and then the punishing summit route from the South Col to the South-East Ridge, via the Hillary Step and finally on to the summit. This route is sometimes disparagingly called “the yak route”; it may be the most popular route, but it is dangerous and punishing and many climbers have died while attempting it. Vicky had no illusions about the magnitude of the climb ahead of her, and each time she caught sight of Everest in the distance she felt a surge of excitement and nervousness.

The 26-mile walk to Base Camp took about 10 days. It was a time for the team to get to know each other, and to become acclimatised as they climbed steadily up through the villages – Pangboche at 12,900 feet, Dingboche at 14,250 feet, Dughla at 15,160 feet – taking their time and staying in tea houses and lodges along the route. On the way they turned off into the Chukhung valley and climbed an 18,000-foot hill called Chukhung Ri. From there they walked to the Base Camp of Island Peak, or Imja Tse, a 20,000-footer. They planned to climb the next morning, but the weather was very poor – thunder, lightning and snow – and they decided to give it a miss. Early on in the trip, the weather was proving unstable and variable, a foretaste of what was to come later on Everest.

The team were a mixed bunch, but all were like Vicky: amateur climbers who had invested a great deal of time and money in their quest to climb Everest. Vicky also met climbing friends on the trek to Base Camp, including a couple whose colourful, traditional Himalayan wedding she attended in Namche Bazaar. This was the beginning of the season and the trail was busy with tourists on trekking holidays and climbers on their way to Everest, or her neighbour, Lhotse, or the beautiful Ama Dablam – often translated as “Mother and Pearl Necklace” – which stretches out glacier-encrusted arms like some remote and mighty goddess. Vicky was mesmerised by Ama Dablam and as part of their acclimatisation the team walked to its Base Camp; it is a technical climb, a difficult challenge, but Vicky vowed that she would come back one day and climb it.

The final day’s trek from the village of Dughla was a hard one. They climbed up about 1,500 feet from the village and passed through a long valley, gently rising all the way, past two other villages and then eventually arrived at Base Camp after seven or eight hours. For the final two or three hours the track was narrow, littered with boulders, rocks and stones and steeply precarious on some sections, so that when yaks came lumbering in the opposite direction, having delivered their massive loads to Base Camp, it was a tight and rather perilous squeeze to get past them. The track lurched up and down, and they were forced to scramble over and around the rocks and house-sized boulders which are the detritus – the moraine – gouged out by the massive glacier which formed the Everest valley. Base Camp itself was at the foot of a steep path of scree which wound its way down a huge mound of rocks and boulders and edged into the wide, grey glacial valley which would be Vicky’s ‘home’ for the next two months.

Everest Base Camp sits 17,500 feet above sea level in a bleak and barren landscape. It’s not an attractive campsite. “It’s a huge area, covered in rocks, boulders and scree,” recalls Vicky Jack. “All the rock and scree and gravel is actually on ice – we are on a glacier which is still moving – and when the sun warms it up, ice melts from around huge boulders and leaves them exposed and liable to tumble over. You set up your tent on an uneven surface of rocks and stones, and then the sun comes out, melts the ice underneath, gaps appear, rocks are dislodged, everything shifts, and you have to move your tent again. You could hear the ice shifting and creaking all the time, and then there were avalanches further up the valley; we watched them during the day, and could hear them roaring down in the middle of the night. It felt as if we were camping on a living thing.” But it was exciting and thrilling, too. It may have been uncomfortable and bleak, but Vicky felt happy and contented there. Henry, the expedition leader, had sited their camp quite far back from the main throng, so it was quieter and less busy. Vicky could sit outside her tent, and look over to the Khumbu Icefall, about 20 minutes’ walk away, and revel in the knowledge that she was really here at last, and ready to fulfil her dream of climbing Everest.

The moment had come. On May 12, at three o’clock in the morning Vicky Jack pulled on her boots, zipped up her tent for the last time and emerged into the darkness. Under a vast glittering sky Base Camp was alive with the noise of boots crumping over rocks, stones and ice, Sherpas calling, the occasional laugh and shouted remark from teams of climbers already plodding towards the Icefall – a war-zone of ice, a battlefield of glacial destructiveness. High above Base Camp is a vast valley called the Western Cwm, and over the millennia an ancient glacier has ground its way down through the surrounding mountains until, squeezed at the mouth of the valley, it collapses and tumbles like a waterfall in a mass of broken and ruptured ice into the next valley where Base Camp sits. Anyone climbing Everest by the South Col/South-East Ridge must first get through the Icefall. As she joined the others, tense with excitement and aching to get going, Vicky Jack told herself: “You can do this, because you did it last year. You nearly got to the top. You will get there this time.”

Extracted from The Sky’s The Limit: The Story Of Vicky Jack And Her Quest To Climb The Seven Summits by Anna Magnusson, published by Luath Press, £11.99