Straddling the pinnacle of the world, Mt. Everest, Chongalungma in Tibetan, wind whipping snow as hard and dry as sand, stinging into my face, I’m filled with a euphoria born of adrenalin, unaware of time as the Earth turns far below.
But I am not standing atop the great mountain itself, but seated in the world’s largest IMAX cinema, absorbed, body and soul, in following a team of climbers, trailing camera team and massive cameras, to the summit of Everest in the Nepal Himalaya.
At the conclusion, filled with awe and exuberance, I excitedly told my girlfriend I was going to climb the Himalaya. “I knew this was going happen” was her desolate, sullen response.
3 months later, after much urgent preparation and training, running up and down hills and along beaches with heavy backpack, I was wandering the narrow, ancient alleys of Kathmandu, seething with locals and tourists alike, air thick blue with car fumes and the stench of rotting garbage, taxis honking incessantly as they push through the crowds. I was in search of the hotel where the rest of my climbing team were meeting. “Hash sir?” “Very good stuff”. A small, dark-skinned local entrepreneur followed me down an alley as he proffered his potent wares. This was a common encounter and nothing to be concerned with – just business.
I soon found my companions in this grand adventure, relaxing in the sunshine with 50 cent bottles of local beer. 3 young Englishmen, a lovely young English lady, a middle-aged Scotsman and the tour leader, a tall, lanky, youngish, weather-beaten Scotsman. Our fearless leader had climbed all the world’s 8,000 meter summits and (as I later learned) was the person featured in a famous climbing non-fiction book as “the man who cut the rope” of his climbing partner. This became the subject of many anxious jokes.
Our departure by light plane to Lukla, in mountains proper, which would mark the start of our trek, was delayed by a week due to clouds. The runway at Lukla was built into the side of a mountain by Sir Edmund Hillary and landing is by line-of sight. If the pilot can’t see the runway, he can’t land. “Up here, the clouds have rocks in them” as the pilots say.
When the cloud finally cleared, mayhem ensued at Kathmandu airport as every climbing team, with their duffles full of equipment and urgency, jostled and pushed to grab the very limited number of small planes leaving for the mountains. Our guide was adept at this game (and a Scotsman to boot) and quickly secured 2 light planes for us.
By the time we landed at Lukla, our yak man had given up waiting for us and got another client. There we were, bags stacked up on the ground, wondering what was going to happen next. Being a seasoned trekker in this part of the world, our guide quickly rounded up another yak team while us happy trekkers had another beer in the Lukla Tavern at 3,000m altitude. The next morning we were off early, following the narrow winding mountain trail into the land of snow-capped giants in the distance, yak team plodding behind with our duffel bag on their backs. Our next stop – Namche Bazaar, the place where traditionally, the mountain folk met the low-landers to trade their wares.
The narrow, winding trail was a path that had been followed for thousands of years to and from Tibet. The river below was a sparkling blue-green thread some 500 meters away, while the snow-capped peaks we passed by towered a kilometer above us.
Terraces cut into the steep hill-sides are farmed with rice and vegetables in rocky, infertile soil. The farmer and his family live in a small house made of stacked rocks and a roof mad of slabs of slate that are inclined to collapse during the next earth tremor. The youngest boy’s job is to climb down to the river far below and bring back a 10 litre plastic bottle of water, sufficient for the daily needs of the entire family. Long ago the hills were covered in Rhododendron trees but they had all since been burned for firewood and now the hill-sides are barren and rocky. The farmers eek out a meager existence that imposes absolute limits on population growth. Education and health care are non-existent in these remote regions.
Every day we slowly walked 6 to 8 hours to the next lodge, where we engulfed large amounts of satisfying Nepalese food – dhal (made from yellow split peas), rice and meat, washed down with copious amounts of excellent Nepalese beer, green tea and some deadly home brew (deadly for my head the next day, that is).
From atop the hill surmounted by the beautiful Tyangboche Buddhist monastery, we could see Everest itself in the far distance. In a few days we would be passing it by on route to our destination – Island Peak.
On the 4th day, after we passed all the lodges and now were to be camping out at night rather than staying at lodges, we met up with our kitchen ladies – 2 very pretty 16-year-old girls who carried the entire kitchen on their heads, including the tent that housed the kitchen. They spoke no English, but that didn’t impact our ability to ravenously consume whatever they cooked up for us (mostly dhal and rice with green tea).
Altitude sickness had set in at 4,000 meters and consuming 10 to 20 pain-killers a day did nothing to deaden it. It wasn’t until I later returned to Kathmandu that I learned I had been on the verge of a brain aneurism and death and should have gone back down until the pain subsided. I plodded on, unaware of the potentially fatal nature of my condition, measuring the pain in terms of how many sledge hammers were pounding away at my skull. At least I was spared the violent, explosive diarrhoea that wracked the rest of the team, except for the leader.
Everywhere was soaring snow-capped peaks and plunging caverns of unimaginable splendour. Off to the right was the beautiful peak of Ama Dablam at 6,700m.
We made camp and spent the next day hiking to the top of a small peak for practice in using our equipment, and in exersion at altitude.
Ama Dablam. Taken from atop our "training" hill climb.
It took a week to reach our base camp. Each evening we would come across the kitchen ladies who had rushed ahead of us, as we panted breathlessly in the thin, dry air, and set up the kitchen, ready for our arrival with a very welcoming pot of sweet green tea.
Our Yak Train
Our Yak Train, with Ama Dablam behind.
We were woken at midnight for a quick breakfast and headed off for our 12-hour climb to reach the goal – the 6,128 meter summit of Island Peak.
The thin air (only 50% of that at sea-level) meant that every step required a deep breath and frequent rests. Yaks are so well adapted to this thin air that they cannot survive at low altitudes, and a cross-breed of yak and cow, know as a nak, is used to ferry goods between low altitudes and the 5,000 meter mark.
We were roped together, snow-glasses on, crampons on boots and ice-axes in hand, climbing ice walls as demonstrated by our leader, and traversing snow-hidden caverns. The summit was just ahead, the culmination of 3 months of anxious planning. The sky above was clear indigo. Very little air separated us from the vacuum of space. The sledge-hammers continued to beat louder at my head as we trudged onward. It was midday and the sun beat down upon us mercilessly. The only sound the crunching of boots on crisp snow. All was surreal.
I neared the summit. Footfall after footfall. Deep breath, plant ice-axe, step, repeat. Don’t try to think about anything, just focus on the feet.
We soon reached a ledge some 10 meters below the peak. I lay down and closed my eyes, panting, head beating. The view stretching below me was as magnificent as I had seen at the cinema all that time before, but I hadn’t the energy to enjoy it. I hadn’t the energy to take out the heavy Nikon camera I had lugged around the world to record the scene. A few of the group climbed the last few meters to stand on the mount, but the rest lay there on the ledge of glistening powder snow, soaking up the sun as if we could absorb energy directly from its rays.
Soon we started the descent. By 3:00pm we were close to base camp and were greeted midway by the lovely kitchen ladies with their warm smiles and very welcome hot, sweet, green tea.
An exhausted dinner, long sleep, then back down the trail toward Lukla. The yak man had to climb the hills in search of one of his precious yaks that had wandered off in the night. We hoisted our day-packs and headed off down, leaving the yak man and kitchen girls to pack up the camp.
After 3 days we passed large numbers of elderly Japanese women going on their own trek. Not to climb mountains, but to simply walk the trail up into the magnificent peaks and valleys of the Everest region, soak in the unimaginable beauty and tranquillity and see sights that so few in the world ever have the opportunity to see.
Soon I was back home in my cotton wool-enshrouded existence, the adrenalin and memories of my journey still coursing fresh through my veins. I will be back, but next time I will go slower, avoiding altitude sickness and thoroughly enjoying it.
But I am not standing atop the great mountain itself, but seated in the world’s largest IMAX cinema, absorbed, body and soul, in following a team of climbers, trailing camera team and massive cameras, to the summit of Everest in the Nepal Himalaya.
At the conclusion, filled with awe and exuberance, I excitedly told my girlfriend I was going to climb the Himalaya. “I knew this was going happen” was her desolate, sullen response.
3 months later, after much urgent preparation and training, running up and down hills and along beaches with heavy backpack, I was wandering the narrow, ancient alleys of Kathmandu, seething with locals and tourists alike, air thick blue with car fumes and the stench of rotting garbage, taxis honking incessantly as they push through the crowds. I was in search of the hotel where the rest of my climbing team were meeting. “Hash sir?” “Very good stuff”. A small, dark-skinned local entrepreneur followed me down an alley as he proffered his potent wares. This was a common encounter and nothing to be concerned with – just business.
I soon found my companions in this grand adventure, relaxing in the sunshine with 50 cent bottles of local beer. 3 young Englishmen, a lovely young English lady, a middle-aged Scotsman and the tour leader, a tall, lanky, youngish, weather-beaten Scotsman. Our fearless leader had climbed all the world’s 8,000 meter summits and (as I later learned) was the person featured in a famous climbing non-fiction book as “the man who cut the rope” of his climbing partner. This became the subject of many anxious jokes.
Our departure by light plane to Lukla, in mountains proper, which would mark the start of our trek, was delayed by a week due to clouds. The runway at Lukla was built into the side of a mountain by Sir Edmund Hillary and landing is by line-of sight. If the pilot can’t see the runway, he can’t land. “Up here, the clouds have rocks in them” as the pilots say.
When the cloud finally cleared, mayhem ensued at Kathmandu airport as every climbing team, with their duffles full of equipment and urgency, jostled and pushed to grab the very limited number of small planes leaving for the mountains. Our guide was adept at this game (and a Scotsman to boot) and quickly secured 2 light planes for us.
By the time we landed at Lukla, our yak man had given up waiting for us and got another client. There we were, bags stacked up on the ground, wondering what was going to happen next. Being a seasoned trekker in this part of the world, our guide quickly rounded up another yak team while us happy trekkers had another beer in the Lukla Tavern at 3,000m altitude. The next morning we were off early, following the narrow winding mountain trail into the land of snow-capped giants in the distance, yak team plodding behind with our duffel bag on their backs. Our next stop – Namche Bazaar, the place where traditionally, the mountain folk met the low-landers to trade their wares.
The narrow, winding trail was a path that had been followed for thousands of years to and from Tibet. The river below was a sparkling blue-green thread some 500 meters away, while the snow-capped peaks we passed by towered a kilometer above us.
Terraces cut into the steep hill-sides are farmed with rice and vegetables in rocky, infertile soil. The farmer and his family live in a small house made of stacked rocks and a roof mad of slabs of slate that are inclined to collapse during the next earth tremor. The youngest boy’s job is to climb down to the river far below and bring back a 10 litre plastic bottle of water, sufficient for the daily needs of the entire family. Long ago the hills were covered in Rhododendron trees but they had all since been burned for firewood and now the hill-sides are barren and rocky. The farmers eek out a meager existence that imposes absolute limits on population growth. Education and health care are non-existent in these remote regions.
Every day we slowly walked 6 to 8 hours to the next lodge, where we engulfed large amounts of satisfying Nepalese food – dhal (made from yellow split peas), rice and meat, washed down with copious amounts of excellent Nepalese beer, green tea and some deadly home brew (deadly for my head the next day, that is).
From atop the hill surmounted by the beautiful Tyangboche Buddhist monastery, we could see Everest itself in the far distance. In a few days we would be passing it by on route to our destination – Island Peak.
On the 4th day, after we passed all the lodges and now were to be camping out at night rather than staying at lodges, we met up with our kitchen ladies – 2 very pretty 16-year-old girls who carried the entire kitchen on their heads, including the tent that housed the kitchen. They spoke no English, but that didn’t impact our ability to ravenously consume whatever they cooked up for us (mostly dhal and rice with green tea).
Altitude sickness had set in at 4,000 meters and consuming 10 to 20 pain-killers a day did nothing to deaden it. It wasn’t until I later returned to Kathmandu that I learned I had been on the verge of a brain aneurism and death and should have gone back down until the pain subsided. I plodded on, unaware of the potentially fatal nature of my condition, measuring the pain in terms of how many sledge hammers were pounding away at my skull. At least I was spared the violent, explosive diarrhoea that wracked the rest of the team, except for the leader.
Everywhere was soaring snow-capped peaks and plunging caverns of unimaginable splendour. Off to the right was the beautiful peak of Ama Dablam at 6,700m.
We made camp and spent the next day hiking to the top of a small peak for practice in using our equipment, and in exersion at altitude.
Ama Dablam. Taken from atop our "training" hill climb.
It took a week to reach our base camp. Each evening we would come across the kitchen ladies who had rushed ahead of us, as we panted breathlessly in the thin, dry air, and set up the kitchen, ready for our arrival with a very welcoming pot of sweet green tea.
Our Yak Train
Our Yak Train, with Ama Dablam behind.
We were woken at midnight for a quick breakfast and headed off for our 12-hour climb to reach the goal – the 6,128 meter summit of Island Peak.
The thin air (only 50% of that at sea-level) meant that every step required a deep breath and frequent rests. Yaks are so well adapted to this thin air that they cannot survive at low altitudes, and a cross-breed of yak and cow, know as a nak, is used to ferry goods between low altitudes and the 5,000 meter mark.
We were roped together, snow-glasses on, crampons on boots and ice-axes in hand, climbing ice walls as demonstrated by our leader, and traversing snow-hidden caverns. The summit was just ahead, the culmination of 3 months of anxious planning. The sky above was clear indigo. Very little air separated us from the vacuum of space. The sledge-hammers continued to beat louder at my head as we trudged onward. It was midday and the sun beat down upon us mercilessly. The only sound the crunching of boots on crisp snow. All was surreal.
I neared the summit. Footfall after footfall. Deep breath, plant ice-axe, step, repeat. Don’t try to think about anything, just focus on the feet.
We soon reached a ledge some 10 meters below the peak. I lay down and closed my eyes, panting, head beating. The view stretching below me was as magnificent as I had seen at the cinema all that time before, but I hadn’t the energy to enjoy it. I hadn’t the energy to take out the heavy Nikon camera I had lugged around the world to record the scene. A few of the group climbed the last few meters to stand on the mount, but the rest lay there on the ledge of glistening powder snow, soaking up the sun as if we could absorb energy directly from its rays.
Soon we started the descent. By 3:00pm we were close to base camp and were greeted midway by the lovely kitchen ladies with their warm smiles and very welcome hot, sweet, green tea.
An exhausted dinner, long sleep, then back down the trail toward Lukla. The yak man had to climb the hills in search of one of his precious yaks that had wandered off in the night. We hoisted our day-packs and headed off down, leaving the yak man and kitchen girls to pack up the camp.
After 3 days we passed large numbers of elderly Japanese women going on their own trek. Not to climb mountains, but to simply walk the trail up into the magnificent peaks and valleys of the Everest region, soak in the unimaginable beauty and tranquillity and see sights that so few in the world ever have the opportunity to see.
Soon I was back home in my cotton wool-enshrouded existence, the adrenalin and memories of my journey still coursing fresh through my veins. I will be back, but next time I will go slower, avoiding altitude sickness and thoroughly enjoying it.
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