Taking an alternate route to a mind-altering view
50 years later, getting near Everest
By Tim Neville, Globe Correspondent, 7/13/2003
|
||
 More on adventure travel
|
||
|
||
|
Printable version
How to get there |
||
The south face of Everest, the unclimbed 8,000-meter ridge between Lhotse, Lhotse Middle, and Lhotse Shar. The nipple of snow-capped rock marking the summit of Nuptse. Ama Dablam, Baruntse, Chamlang. All had been there a moment ago, their brooding masses tricking the eye into believing one could flick the wispy flutes, chutes, and strata of ice and rock with a good stretch of the arm.
Prayer flags, tattered and faded from the sun and wind, flapped from their teetering poles with a sharp crack. The eight climbers in our group sat on the ridge, the 19,000-foot Amphu Laptse La, a razor-thin pass 10 miles south of Everest. We were hunkered down into the jumbled blocks of boulders patiently waiting for word to move.
The radio clipped to the bib of my Gore-Tex pants suddenly crackled to life.
"You there, mate?" I removed my gloves and fumbled for the mic. "Reading you loud and clear."It was our leader, Gary Hayes, 38, an Australian who has been leading groups into Nepal's forgotten corners for 18 years. A senior guide for San Francisco-based World Expeditions, the commercial outfitter that had marketed this journey, Hayes had dropped off the backside of the pass with a team of Sherpas to try to rig a series of ropes to get us off the ridge quickly. "Get ready to move," the radio squawked. "Come around the far set of boulders and be careful. It's loose."
It had taken us 25 days of hiking and climbing to reach this ridge, our final objective in a 31-day trek of more than 150 miles through areas a Westerner may never have visited.
By that point we had crossed three other passes, spent two cold nights at more than 20,000 feet, trekked through steamy valleys, danced until the early morning hours with Sherpas, and watched a pair of helicopters whisk away two of our pals who had suffered debilitating injuries along the way.
The goal was to complete an exploratory trek -- one that no commercial group, possibly no one, has ever finished -- and reach the Everest region and Base Camp via the back way from Tumlingtar, a tiny village in the Arun Valley. Thousands of hikers each year come into Everest's Khumbu region from the normal weeklong approach via Lukla, a small hamlet with an airstrip south of Everest at about 9,200 feet.
Our route would skirt those masses by taking us bushwhacking well off the main trail through Makalu Barun National Park to the east, along the landslides spilling into the Barun River, and eventually into the high Himalayas. A plane would take us from Lukla back to Katmandu.
If time ran out, we would skip Base Camp proper and head to Thyangboche, a monastery at the confluence of two valleys in the Khumbu to catch a celebration planned to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's first ascent of Everest on May 29, 1953. Thyangboche was that original expedition's base camp.
But with finicky weather, even getting to Thyangboche in time for the party would require stacking the deck with a bit of extra karma.
A few nights earlier during a puja ceremony -- a Buddhist ritual of chanting, rice tossing, and drinking performed to curry favor with the mountain spirits -- Hayes leaned over to me. "Chance of success: 80 percent."
As is common with most expeditions, our trip began over cold San Miguel beers in Katmandu, where I met the others who had signed up for the trip. I learned we were 10 clients in all, mostly Australian. Two Canadians, a New Zealand emigre from Germany, and I completed the team. Their stations in life ran from a 25-year-old gear shop manager to a 60-year-old former human resources manager. None had extensive climbing resumes.
The air was as thick and sticky as yak wool the next day when we boarded a rickety Chinese-made Twin Otter for the hour flight east of the capital to Tumlingtar, a one-dirt-road community of some 1,000 people.
Nepal, a country of 21 million people in an area the size of New York State, is largely a wheel-less land. It has only 2,500 miles or so of actual paved roads, the equivalent of about three Bostons. From the air it is easy to see why: The terrain is much too rugged. But Nepal is a trekker's paradise, with many thousands of miles of ancient trails that link small villages.
After about an hour, the pilot banked hard to the left. A small grass airstrip appeared ahead on a section of mountain that had been scalped for flat ground. It seemed far from a safe place to park a plane. The landing, which turned out not to be so terrible, was the first of our technical challenges.
Unlike traditional mountaineering expeditions that establish base camps, our circuitous route meant we would have no base at all. Instead we would have to keep our team together at all times, packing and repacking each day.
All told we had more than 2,600 pounds of equipment. Everything from chicken soup mixes and fresh vegetables to aluminum plates, a dozen tents, more than 100 gallons of kerosene, four stoves, first aid kits, satellite phones, solar panels, batteries, and climbing gear -- and all of it would follow us.
We employed 43 porters to carry the bulk of that weight, their number gradually shrinking to just over 20 as we consumed food and fuel. Using only brittle nylon rope and a thick swath of woven plastic from a feed bag, the porters routinely carried 80-pound loads strapped to their foreheads. I felt guilty for carrying only a daypack.
In Tumlingtar we met our Nepali staff. A tall lanky man named Dhana Rai would be our sirdar. Four climbing Sherpas would help find routes up passes and set ropes for everyone to use. A dozen kitchen staff were charged with making three hot meals a day (porridges, curries, coleslaw, beans, and cakes). A large blue mess tent shielded us from the elements, while a small navy blue tent pitched over catholes served as our portable restroom.
Days on the trail ranged from extremely short to hellishly long and difficult. The first week was tortuously hot as we fought our way through humid forests of ferns and turpentine trees that provided little relief from the glaring sun. Often we would scramble for hours up muddy ribbons of slippery "trail," only to lose what little altitude we had gained and drop back down the backside of a ravine.
We hiked slowly, popping into villages for a brief rest. After a few days we felt we were entering remote places, swaddled in mountains and tangled forests.
The heat finally started to recede as we climbed steadily up toward 13,530-foot Shipton Pass, the gateway into the remote heart of Makalu Barun National Park. It was a hazy but mild morning on day eight at about 7,000 feet near a small town called Norbugaon when we had our first accident.
Jenny Promnitz, 56, a psychologist from Australia, took a wrong step down a steep section of trail and went tumbling. The rest of the day she hiked painfully, wincing each time she moved. Hayes approached her that evening and explained the options: Either her ankle gets better with a rest day or we call in a helicopter. There were still 100 miles left to hike.
When her ankle continued to balloon, Hayes dug into his pack and pulled out a satellite phone.
"I need one helicopter," he said. And, being a guide who is always attentive to his clients' needs, he pounced upon the opportunity. "And can you send some beer?" he shouted into the phone. "Yeah, beer!"
We all laughed at his joke, but the next day when a French Squirrel helicopter touched down in a plowed field to take away Promnitz, it left us a carton of San Miguel, a couple dozen packets of cheese balls, and frozen chicken.
Just two days later John Carnwith, 42, a very fit Toyota employee from Canada, suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest while hiking up to Shipton Pass on an acclimatization hike.
"He's gotta go," Hayes later told us. "A hurt arm or leg, we can deal with that, but a heart, that's serious."
And so the next morning when the French Squirrel returned, this time to a clearing among rhododendrons at 12,500 feet -- the pilot keeping the rotors thrashing at nearly full force to keep the small craft afloat in the thin 12,000-foot air -- we lost a friend and gained fresh mangos and more beer.
We crossed the snowy slopes of Shipton Pass early the next day, then dropped down toward the Barun River. We were now well inside the park and would see only a handful of herders for another two weeks. By the time we would leave the park, we would not have seen another foreigner for 26 days.
The air grew increasingly thin as the land turned from green fields to brown moraine and brilliant meadows of snow and ice. At 18,430 feet, the base of the first major pass, the 20,163-foot East Col, I pitched my tent with extreme sluggishness. We had moved very slowly up to that elevation, being careful not to provoke the lungs to fill with fluid or make our brains swell -- common illnesses among climbers who move too high too fast. Even moving slowly, altitude still takes its toll.
It was a strange feeling working at that height: my legs and body felt strong and capable, but if I moved too quickly -- say, took three big steps in a row -- I would bend over double, gasping.
It only got worse. After crossing the East Col, we spent a fitful night at the top of the 20,245-foot West Col, a notch about two miles west of its partner. I woke with my heart pounding in my chest -- 100 beats per minute, more than twice the rate at home. I clearly needed to rest or go down. We had essentially spent the night on top of Mount McKinley.
But we would not go down that day. The Sherpas spent all day lowering the porters and much of our gear off the backside of the pass, a scary slope of 60-degree bullet-hard blue ice that stretched for more than 300 feet. Then word came that it was too late in the day for the rest of us to go down.
I was terribly weak the next morning. The temperature dropped to about zero degrees Fahrenheit that night, but there was little wind and fortunately dawn broke as clear and crisp as etched glass.
Makalu, at 27,928 feet, the fifth-highest peak in the world, loomed directly overhead. I took my hat off and shook the ice from it. My heart rate had dropped to a respectable 72 beats per minute -- I was acclimatizing. Still, everything left me on the brink of exhaustion. On the way back from the loo I collapsed outside the tent, gasping again.
It would be only a couple of more days before we reached the base of the Amphu Laptse La. We would make it to Thyangboche in time for the party, but Everest Base Camp would have to wait for another day. We had already climbed and down-climbed more than 55,000 feet. No one felt we were cutting the trip short.
We reached the top of the Amphu Laptse La on day 25, after a steep three-hour climb. Cresting the ridge offered one of the most spectacular views in all the Himalayas: peaks, the ones with faces so big and glaciers so foreboding that they become larger than myth. Nothing but a massive sea of frozen waves for as far as the eye could see.
It was here on top of the Amphu Laptse La that the hardships encountered en route melted into reward. It was the kind of place where you want to find a boulder and just sit for a while in the sun. A place where you hope the mist that clouds your views will stay away for a few moments more.
Tim Neville, a contributing editor at Rock & Ice magazine, writes frequently for Outside and Backpacker. He lives in Santa Fe.