The Great Wedge Defense Force Everest Expedition of 1995

The Great WDF Everest Expedition of 1995 was, just as its name suggests, an expedition mounted in 1995 by members of the Wedge Defense Force with the aim of climbing Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth. It went down in the institutional history of the WDF as simply "E95", and is widely considered one of the most daring (if pointless) adventures the WDF's core founders undertook in the early, pre-Contact days of the force.

Expedition Members

The members of the 1995 Great Expedition were:

- Captain MegaZone, Commander in Chief, Wedge Defense Force
- Commander Benjamin D. "Gryphon" Hutchins, Executive Officer, SDF-17 Wayward Son
- Lieutenant Commander Robert E. "ReRob" Mandeville, Chief Engineering Officer, SDF-17 Wayward Son
- Senior Lieutenant David "Daver" Ritchie, Executive Officer, VVF-261 "Eight-Ball Squadron"
- Lieutenant Asrial Arconian, WDF
- Major Perrin Aldzinjal, Royal Salusian Marine Corps
- Trouble Consultant Kei Morgan, WWWA
- Trouble Consultant Yuri Daniels, WWWA
- Doctor Jenna Steen, WDF Medical Corps

Dr. Steen and LCDR Mandeville acted as expedition doctor and Base Camp manager, respectively, and did not ascend above Base Camp on the 1995 expedition.

Foreseen Complications

As the planet Earth's governments did not officially recognize extraterrestrial life forms in 1995 - indeed, the Earth-born members of the WDF were wanted on suspicion of international terrorism on their homeworld at the time - the Great Expedition could not proceed as a normal Everest expedition of the time. In the 20th century, it was customary for expeditions to spend several weeks on the mountain, making a series of sorties from a camp at the mountain's base to a succession of higher waypoint or "siege" camps to acclimatize to the high elevation. The WDF members could not risk spending so much time in the relatively crowded, busy environs of the traditional Base Camp, especially since two members of the expedition were aliens. In any event, none could spend so much time away from their actual duties as WDF or 3WA members.

For the same reason, official permission to climb the mountain could not legitimately be obtained from the Nepalese or Chinese governments. Climbing permits had to be secured using elaborately fabricated false identities. In the end, the relative ease of hoodwinking the Nepalese government determined, in large part, the route the expedition would ultimately use.

Of the seven members of the expedition who planned to actually climb the mountain, only Major Aldzinjal had any real, practical high-altitude mountaineering experience, though all members had undergone some hostile-environment training and basic military instruction in climbing techniques.

Planned Climbing Route

The 1995 Great Expedition was planned almost from its outset to employ the so-called "southern" route, by way of the Khumbu Icefall, Western Cwm, South Col, and Southeast Ridge, to reach the summit of Everest. This, the first recognized route to the summit, was the one used in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, the first people to summit Everest and survive the descent.

Preparation and Training

The Great Expedition members began training for their excursion in the summer of 1994. Instead of an actual mountain, they constructed an elaborate training facility in one of the SDF-17's vacant cargo holds, including reproductions of all the major challenges and difficulties the climbers expected to face on Everest's southern route. These included a passable replica of part of the Khumbu Icefall and some copies (from photographs in mountaineering magazines) of some other technical features of the route, such as the infamous Hillary Step.

In order to make the experience closer to reality and also perform much of the altitude acclimatization their abbreviated schedule on the actual mountain would prevent them from doing there, the team progressively altered the life support settings for the training hold, which they nicknamed "the Everest Club", to mimic the altitude and weather conditions common to higher elevations on Everest. By the middle spring of 1995, they were regularly training at a simulated altitude of 24,500 feet, the customary altitude for a southern-route Everest expedition's third siege camp. In the last month of training, the team members even wore environment suits configured to replicate the environment of a traditional Base Camp (17,600 feet) at all times to preserve their acclimatization.

Climbing Technology

The members of the 1995 expedition agreed early in the planning stages not to use any technology not available to normal Earthbound climbers of the day. As it turned out, they even eschewed some technologies, such as bottled supplementary breathing gas, that were commonly used by normal high-altitude mountaineers in 1995. Their unconventional but effective acclimatization regimen, coupled with the physiological advantages of Detianism (or simply being Salusian, in the cases of Lt. Arconian and Maj. Aldzinjal), made this feasible even for such relatively inexperienced climbers.

All the equipment used by the expedition, therefore, was purchased by special insertion agents from outfitters on Earth in the fall and winter of 1994-1995. This included ropes, clothing, supplies, provisions, tents, and the various mechanical paraphernalia used in technical climbing. Some emergency equipment based on WDF overtechnology did go to the mountain with them, but all members of the expedition made a pact to abandon the climb if the situation reached a point where the use of this equipment became necessary.

Infiltration

The expedition party arrived on Earth on Sunday, April 30, 1995, when they were inserted by Shadow Legios on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. The following day, they obtained their spurious climbing credentials (prearranged by the same insertion agents who had acquired their equipment) under assumed identities from the Nepalese Ministry of Tourism. They then set out for the traditional southern-route Base Camp on the Khumbu Glacier, by way of a day flight to Lukla and a foot trek from there to the glacier via Namche Bazaar. Infiltration went without a hitch; as they had hoped and expected, the pre-Contact Nepalese government was not particularly alert to the possibility of illegal visitors from outer space.

The Climb

The team arrived at the Khumbu Glacier on Thursday, May 4. After spending two days setting up their small Base Camp and finalizing supplies, the climbing members of the expedition set out early on the morning of Sunday, May 6, to climb the dangerous Khumbu Icefall and reach the planned location of their first siege camp. They attracted some attention for climbing without Sherpa support, as is customary for Everest expeditions using the Nepalese route, but eccentrics trying various daft permutations of the standard climb were, then as now, commonplace on Everest, so the matter was apparently shrugged off by the other expeditions whose Base Camps occupied the same area.

In his 2092 memoir Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies (And Save the Entire Planet), Cmdr. Hutchins described the climb up the Khumbu Icefall as "the hairiest, most nerve-racking part of the entire expedition," saying that the replica icefall in the Everest Club was "woefully unrepresentative" of the hazards embodied by the real thing. On the way up the Icefall, MegaZone fell into a crevasse and fractured his arm, and three other members of the team were nearly crushed when a sérac collapsed while they were traversing an ice face beneath its base.

Forced to spend a day laying by at Camp 1 to allow MegaZone's arm to heal, the team briefly debated turning back - not because the captain's injury would make it impossible for him to continue, as would have been the case with any team of normal human climbers, but because, in Hutchins's words, "If our model of the Khumbu Icefall was so far off-base, God knows what the hell the real Yellow Band is going to be like, or the Hillary Step, or what have you." In the end, though, they decided that they might as well keep going up, since either way they would have to negotiate the Icefall again on the way down.

As it happened, the rest of the team's training had served them far better, in terms of preparation, than their admittedly deficient model of the icefall had. The evening of May 8 saw them reach Camp 2 (21,300 ft., at the base of the Lhotse Face), having survived what Hutchins termed, with wry understatement, a "surprisingly warm day" in the Western Cwm (where temperatures on windless days routinely reach 100° F). The next day took them up the Geneva Spur, one of the southeast route's major technical challenges, and the real Yellow Band, both of which they negotiated without significant difficulty. From Camp 3 at 24,500 feet - their standard training altitude for the final phase of their shipbound acclimatization regimen - they spent May 10 climbing to Camp 4 on the mountain's South Col.

The Death Zone

The South Col, at 26,000 feet, is located in what high-altitude mountaineers call "the Death Zone" - the region above about 25,000 feet where full acclimatization is impossible for normal humans and deterioration from oxygen deficit becomes inexorable, eventually leading to death. Though the WDF team had not trained extensively in a simulated Death Zone environment, they had made a few dry runs and determined that, while very uncomfortable, they would be in no particular danger if they limited their time in that environment to no more than a few days. Accordingly, after spending May 11 resting, they planned to make their summit push on Friday, May 12.

By now, the strange, supposedly-American team's exploits had started making a considerable stir down at Base Camp. It was effectively unheard-of for any team to just walk into the Himalaya, as this group apparently had, and just barge up the mountain as they had done, without making the usual lengthy acclimatization sorties and spending several weeks preparing for summit day. Opinion among the other climbers on the Khumbu Glacier was divided into three camps: Those who were sure the "Americans" were clueless idiots who were going to die; those who assumed they were up to something shady, possibly involving amphetamines and bottled gas; and those who had no idea what to make of them, but were impressed as hell, whatever they were doing.

The Summit

Shortly after midnight on May 12, the seven members of the WDF expedition's climbing team left Camp 4, bound for the summit. They were fortunate in that the weather was cooperating, something it did not always do at that altitude in the pre-monsoon season. They reached the Hillary Step without incident, arriving shortly after dawn. Since they had no Sherpa support team, which would normally have gone ahead and fixed ropes up the Step, the WDF climbers had to tackle the feature in much the same way that Hillary and Tenzing had, by employing traditional rock- and ice-climbing techniques.

"The Step was tough," Trouble Consultant Morgan remarked in The Weekly Wedge following the expedition's return to the SDF-17, "but compared to the Khumbu Icefall, it was a piece of cake, even with no breathable air to speak of."

In her comments to The Weekly Wedge, Morgan diplomatically omitted the fact that she and Trouble Consultant Daniels had some equipment difficulties on the Step that nearly resulted in the entire climb team falling 10,000 feet into Tibet via the Kangshung Face - an outcome even MegaZone would probably have described, in a hypothetical interview from Valhalla, as "inconvenient". Only a spectacular belaying action by Dave Ritchie prevented disaster.

Slight problems with ice axes notwithstanding, the team reached the top of the Step intact, and by 10:30 AM they had reached the summit at 29,035 feet, the highest point above mean sea level on the face of the planet. At this point Lt. Arconian became the first extraterrestrial to reach the summit of Everest, an achievement for which she would eventually be awarded the Royal Salusian Explorer's Medal.

There are unconfirmed reports that several members of the team got celebratorily, if only momentarily, hammered on smuggled Romulan ale at this point, delaying their descent by a half-hour or so. One deeply entrenched WDF institutional legend even maintains that two members of the team took the opportunity to join the Five Point Five Miles High Club, though the mean temperature, to say nothing of the low oxygen content, at the summit of Everest makes this assertion highly doubtful.

Confrontation

Following whatever summit celebrations they did perform, the team descended back to Camp 4 without incident, arriving shortly before dark. The following day, they set out for Camp 1, where they planned to spend a day psyching themselves up to make their return trip down the Khumbu Icefall.

When they arrived at Camp 2, however, they found themselves met by a group of climbers who had banded together from several of the other expeditions in Base Camp, all of whom were convinced that something squirrelly was going on with the "American" climbers who had pursued such a weirdly aggressive timetable. The leaders of this impromptu posse demanded to know who the WDF team really were and how they could possibly have survived such a fast-track climb in such good condition, especially when there were still indications in the icefall that some kind of accident had befallen at least one team member there.

After attempting unsuccessfully to talk their way out of the situation, the WDF team decided to simply leg it, resulting in what may have been the only foot chase in the history of Everest's Western Cwm. The chase was interrupted at midday when a major storm system walloped the southern faces of Everest and Lhotse. The WDF team could have made it to Camp 1, but their erstwhile pursuers were caught in the middle of the Cwm, and would probably have perished had the Wedge Defenders not turned around and re-ascended to help them.

Following the abortive chase and storm rescue, WDFers and their former pursuers alike spent the next two days stuck in Camp 2. On the morning of May 15, with suspicions running high and the distinct possibility of another fracas looming, MegaZone decided to come clean and tell the other climbers who the WDF team members really were. Most didn't initially believe it, but on the third day, with the storm still not letting up and the provisions running low, MegaZone called in the team's Shadow Legios to pick them all up and get them out of there. That experience made believers of the other climbers.

All personnel picked up in the rescue were dropped off at the base of the Khumbu Icefall (the still-raging storm handily masking the Legios from the view of those still at Base Camp), from which point the WDF team and other climbers could make their way in relative safety back to Base Camp. Once there, the WDF expedition quickly packed up, expecting to have to make another run for it, or possibly even fight their way out, once the other climbers informed the rest of the people at Base Camp of who was in their midst. No such difficulties arose, however, as the WDFers' former pursuers had been so impressed by their rescue that they chose not to press the issue.

On May 17, after a return trip to Kathmandu to report in at the Ministry of Tourism and return their credentials, the members of the 1995 WDF expedition left Earth and returned to the SDF-17.

Internal Controversy

The 1995 expedition to Everest aroused some controversy within the WDF at the time. Some members of the force thought it was frivolous and irresponsible of the senior officers to undertake such a potentially dangerous expedition essentially just for the hell of it. Others believed that, even without the use of advanced technologies on the peak itself, the advantages conveyed by shipboard training and Detian/alien physiology made the entire accomplishment moot, or at least cheapened it severely. Still others pointed to the fact that, thanks to their Legios pickup at Camp 2, the climbers hadn't actually completed a full ascent and descent of the mountain, having skipped the return trip through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall entirely.

Most WDF members, however, were very proud that members of the force had made a successful covert assault on the highest peak of a planet where they were all wanted outlaws. Lord Wolfgang Amadeus von Fahrvergnügen took this view, hailing the Great Everest Expedition of 1995 as an audacious triumph fully in the risk-taking, hell-for-leather spirit he desired for the Wedge Defense Force.

Further Adventures

Several members of the Great Expedition of 1995 returned to the Himalaya and others of Earth's heights in later years. The core climbing team made one more covert run - a successful run on Antarctica's Vinson Massif in 1998 - before Earth's official First Contact in late 1999 officially re-opened the planet to them. Subsequent expeditions scattered throughout the WDF's "Golden Age" were usually conducted legally and aboveboard, which some team members claimed made them less exciting and interesting.

During his time as a galactic fugitive (roughly 2288-2380), Benjamin Hutchins spent several years hiding out on Earth under an assumed name. It is believed that he, and possibly MegaZone, accompanied an ill-fated expedition to the Eiger Nordwand in 2349, but he has never confirmed this.

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