Day 11 (Namche Bazaar)
How different things are this far into the Solu Khumbu. Lukla, which we bypassed several days ago, has an airport to fly in tourists, trekkers, mountaineers and supplies. I find myself now in the famed Namche Bazaar, and although it is a major trading center for the Sherpas, it has everything a Westerner could need: batteries, showers, chocolate, and more.
At 11,300 feet, this village is higher than most North American mountains, and we've been resting now in the Khumbu Lodge for two days to acclimatize and relax before setting off for the higher reaches near Everest. After ten days of hiking, I find myself among pictures of Jimmy and Roselyn Carter, and Robert Redford. Our guest house has Rob Hall posters promoting his guiding company and guaranteeing a 100 percent chance of summiting Everest. I think back to 1996 and the storm that killed Hall and his group of inexperienced climbers on their way back down. At this point the mountains tower on all sides like parents around mischievous children.
Rumors are flying around the lodge, where the boarders are a mix of western trekkers, Nepali guides, and mountaineers on their way to or from various high peaks. The gossip is about hikers with severe altitude sickness, reports from Base Camp's about impending storms, and disappointing fact that not a single climber has summited yet this season. There are three American teams at Base Camp this year: a Science Team from Harvard and MIT, measuring weather patterns and the growth of Everest; the Environmental Team, cleaning up 70 years of littering by Westerners; and the Challenge Team, which hopes to put a disabled climber on the summit. We learn that a 50-year-old Japanese tourist died yesterday on his way to Kala Pattar. To get the body to the nearest airport, the man's back was broken and the corpse folded into a porter's wicker basket.
Talk turns to Maurice Wilson, the wealthy adventurer who attempted to climb Everest alone in 1935. Despite having no previous climbing experience, he made it as high as the North Col, before getting sick. The whole discussion has me wondering again, what it is that draws people to the end of the earth?
Day 14 (Tengboche)
After a tea stop at Sanasa, we trudge for three hours up the steep trail to Tengboche. The weather goes from sunshine to storm clouds in 15 minutes. I'm both cold and hot—frigid at my extremities, sweaty on the back and chest. Every step becomes a chore under the 30-pound pack. Just put one foot in front of the other, I tell myself, and the snow begins to fall, first as hail, then as sheets of ice. Jill and I stop to put on rain gear. We snack on yak cheese and bread, then trudge on up the mountain, hoping that every corner will reveal the famous monastery on the hilltop.
Reaching the plateau, we slog through four inches of snow. The blizzard obscures our view of mountain and trail. Finally we reach the monastery and head for the only guest house with smoke spilling from the chimney.
At sundown, the skies clear and we go outside for pristine views of the great plateau. The white blanket of snow gives way at times to black rock. Night sets on, and we realize how high we are. The moon has not risen above the nearest ridge, and in the illuminated night the mountains seem superimposed behind the monastery. Their presence is imminent, surreal in their blue glow against the pin-pricked backdrop of the universe.
Under this same sky, 25 years after Mallory died, and not long after the Chinese invasion of Tibet, Eric Shipton discovered a feasible route from the Nepali side of Everest. He would have walked past this monastery on his way to the Khumbu ice fall—which we would reach in a few days. On that expedition was a young New Zealander named Edmund Hillary.
Day 17 (Gorak Shep)
We've left all vegetation behind and are navigating a rocky trail between boulders, jagged granite and underground rivers that flow forth from the rocks. Every step could mean a twisted ankle, and we're exhausted upon arriving at this three-house town that was once the original base-camp.
In the surrounding scene, peaks rise up, dominating the circumference of the horizon. Pumori breaks through a cloud; but I can barely distinguish what is rock and snow and what is sky. Nuptse rises nearby, blocking out all but a sliver of Everest. The scene holds the stories of the 300 people who have made it to the top, and the 140 who have died trying. There is also the story of its conquest, in 1953.
At 6:30 a.m. on the morning of May 29, Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay set out from camp XI equipped with oxygen tanks and necessities for their final ascent. They reached the south summit by 9, after a dangerous maneuver to chimney a gap between a cornice and a rock wall. By 11:30, everything on the planet was below them. Hillary later said:
I looked at Tenzing and in spite of the Balaclava, goggles and oxygen mask all encrusted with long icicles that concealed his face, there was no disguising his infectious grin of pure delight as he looked all around him. We shook hands and then Tenzig threw his arms around my shoulders and we thumped each other on the back until we were almost breathless.
Did they conquer nature? Themselves? Limitations? Or is there more to a quest? After three and a half plates of Dal Bhat, I hunker off to the dorm bed, completely fatigued. Tomorrow we will climb Kala Pattar and watch the sun set on Everest. Maybe then I'll have an answer.
Day 18 (Kala Pattar)
"That's Kala Pattar?" Jill says with disappointment upon seeing our goal is not one of the snow-topped monsters, but a smallish hill in the middle of this great spectacle. "That mound of dirt?!" With water and walking stick we begin our ascent up the steep, rocky slope. Halfway up, snow is surfing the wind up the mountain, blocking out our view of the Kala Pattar's peak. At 17,000 feet, I follow every step with two recovery breaths, nearly hyperventilating. We shoulder against the wind and press on, slowly.
Leaving our walking sticks at trail's end, we hand-over-hand climb the last 100 yards to the cliff-promontory. I'm frightened, looking straight down a thousand feet to the rocks and avalanche scrag. Pumori is towering straight up beside us, and over Nuptse, a small patch of Blue grows until the entire eastern wall is awash in a damp orange light: sunset on Everest.
I can just make out the tent village of Base Camp below, at the end of the Khumbu Glacier. The famed icefall off the side of Everest looks like a great river pouring out of the mountain, and from all directions I can hear the earth creak and move. The rocks are alive, shifting and changing, with Jill and I merely observers of a growth and maturing that would otherwise escape notice.
Sagamartha is orange and our backs are warmed in the evening rays. The hand of the creator sweeps across the sky, and we feel close to that force, being perhaps the highest people on the planet.
Yes, there are answers—but you need to come here yourself to find them.
Until the next time, safe travels.
Where are you going?
What do you want to do?
