Living in the clouds: the highs and lows of Everest
Blog part six:
Everest was kind to us. In providing warmth, sunshine and fair winds. Our small group journeyed through dense juniper forests and vertiginous rocky ravines. Crossing the Dudh Koshi River’s gurgling maelstrom of emerald waters to ultimately reach boulder strewn glacial escarpments of the Khumbu. We played football with the Buddhist monks of Tengboche and gained enlightenment from our collective dreams and sense of joint venture.
There is no more mercurial place on earth than the kingdom of Nepal.
Yet in the beginning there was a palpable tension. It may be true of all visitors to Sagarmatha (Everest). A sense of foreboding and anticipation, shared by the ascenders. Heightened by the bottleneck flight from Lukla that veers dangerously through the mountains like a rollercoaster on wings. No one visits Everest to linger, summiteers and trekkers alike have deeply vested interests, a quest of one sort or another, sometimes the culmination of years of preparation and investment, hoping for a fair weather window and good health.
Us – we were an open group of charity fundraisers, supporting a range of good causes like Great Ormond Street, the Children’s Trust and Sarcoma UK amongst others. As we waited to get started we were excitedly anxious, focused on our shared goal of Everest base camp, and perhaps also the summit of Kala Patthar before wishing a safe return.
In contrast, tensions vanished as soon as teams made their goals. In the descenders we could see a spring in their steps as they passed us by on their way back down. Instantly relaxed by laughter and raucous camaraderie once their particular mission was accomplished. The local market owners en-route sensed it too, and adjusted their prices accordingly, charging more for their wares on the way down than on the way up, benefitting from the levity of spirit and free-flowing good will.
Not everyone returns from Everest of course, there are over 200 open graves in the ‘Death zone’. Its formidable reputation wrought with meaning casts a long shadow down the mountain valley and beyond. We pass through the memorials of lost climbers at Lobuche. Fine, fit, fearless nationals from around the globe remembered in stone cairns from the terminal moraine of the Khumbu Glacier. It is a sombre moment, the sun has gone and there is a chill in the air. Familiar names, from history, people who have pushed their limits to the extreme.
Our lead Sherpa, Mingma who has summited Everest seven times has an uncle commemorated here. The sand is fine and white, tonnes of crushed rock reduced over thousands of years along its 12km length like a giant salt grinder. Transferred imperceptibly in huge volume until it reaches this powdery beach at Chukpa Lare just above 4,200 metres.
Collectively our small party have raised over one hundred thousand pounds for good causes in Everest’s name. We are a strong group, amongst us are seven times marathon runners, Kilimanjaro summiteers, and a conqueror of the mind bogglingly difficult marathon desert de sable. I am in the minority with no experience of altitude. But we are all acutely aware that finer people than us have surcomed to Sagarmatha. Her vengeant storms writ deep scars in the valleys and ice-covered buttresses.
Epic tales eminate from this mountainous cauldron, spawning countless blockbusters and best sellers. As we walk in their footsteps we too can feel the winds of the Himalayas on our cheeks and chance a glimpse of her majestic peaks with our own eyes.
It is fair to say that we have all been pushed beyond our comfort zone, and needed to face our fears. Our first world problems feel a distant memory as survival mode rapidly kicks in.
Suffocating breathlessness; stupefying chasms and dizzying heights; the stench of kerosene and sewage lingering over languid lunches. Bleeding noses, freezing hands, chapped burnt lips and aching blistered feet. D&V. The fine pictures tell only half the story.
We’ve been put through the mill these last few days and weeks. Any underlying medical weakness exposed, our group has started coughing in unison. And once darkness falls and the temperatures plummet, our coffin-esque beds revealed a host of foreign accented sounds and grunts, snores that make you envy their rest whilst you lie awake in your mildly deranged altitude induced insomnia. We have been tested. And yet we did it.
We made it to Everest and fulfilled our dreams. But we gained much more than that. In hugs and tears, in laughter and jibes we worked together through many adversities.
Sherpas, leader, doctor, trekkers we were mostly strangers to begin with, all just passing through like clouds. Yet over the weeks we became knitted together by adversity, by our common quest and in our empathy for each other. We have become familiar with each other’s footprints and foibles. Our unique steps engrained in each other’s minds as we trudge up to ten hours a day in line. This trip has confirmed to me a quote I believe to be true:
‘If you want to walk fast walk alone, but if you want to walk far walk together’.
Our window on the rooftop of the world was albeit brief, of course only too quickly we would return to eager families and our home comforts. Whereas the reality of everyday life in the mountains endures.
Our humility and admiration therefore is reserved in appreciation of the hardship of the local people living on the edge in the world’s highest villages.
The cost of living in this most remote and hostile landscape is etched in the faces of the Nepalese mothers and children alike. In the stooped endless lines of porters carrying building materials to reconstruct damage from the devastating April 2015 earthquake. There is laughter and there is graft.
They welcomed us and gave us shelter and in return we promised to share our story with others to bring more visitors and greater prosperity to this magical land.
In the next part of this story we return from the mountain.
