From Dark Ice to Dim Light

This entry is from my journal which I have kept everyday since I left Boston. To give a little background to the entry, I had started my trek less than a week prior and had done little other than slowly make my way up the valley. On the first day of my trek, I met a young woman two years older than myself, originally from Europe but recently having come from the northwest of the United States. She told me in those first few days of her seemingly extensive climbing experience, which reassured me since, when it came to mountains, I really didn’t have much of a clue as to what I was doing. The most I had done with regards to mountains was crossing the Cascades and the Rockies by bike two summers ago. For this entry I will refer to this young woman as ‘N’. The day before this entry I had spent the time hydrating myself and trying to rid my blood of as much CO2 as possible because the night prior I had experienced some mild symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). For the day this entry records, our plan was to trek one of the passes: Kong Ma La, which links the towns of Chuckhung and Laboche, apparently a 10 hour trek.

November 3^rd 2010

Yesterday was the most challenging, terrifying, and affirming day of my life. N and I awoke by 5:30 and luckily I slept very well. I had muesli with hot milk and N had Tibetan bread with cheese. We were on our way before light had touched any of the mountains, though the sky above was growing a dim blue. We had to trek a bit north to cross the small but icy stream to the eastern side of Chuckhung. My hands were very cold but this would prove to be the very least of my worries. After crossing the stream we headed south and started on a diagonal climb up the eastern ridge of the valley. This light climb brought us high above the valley as we traveled south and the valley fell farther below us. By the time we turned east, presumably for a more formidable section of the climb, the whole valley was before us and I could not only see all the way back to Thyangboche (where we had stayed several nights prior), but I could even see (barely) the high altitude hotel on the mountain opposite Namche Bazzar.

N was already having a lot of trouble breathing before the climb started getting steep. This was the first time I offered the possibility of turning back and taking another day at Chuckhung to acclimate.

The day before I had spent the entire day drinking water (6+ liters) and I knew that I would be better prepared for the altitude since I’d given my body the opportunity to rid itself of as much CO2 as possible. N had spend the day attempting Chuckhung Ri (5,500 meters. Chuckhung is situated around 4,700 meters). She came back from the day trip very happy and in good spirits, though she had said that it had been difficult and that her lungs hurt. These details were coming back to me then on the edge of the valley. Two other trekkers were gaining quickly on us due to N’s frequent stops to catch her breath. I certainly wasn’t in a race but the speed by which the trekkers overtook us worried me, because, while one was a young man, the other was a much older man, and its sensible to think that a 23 year old male and a 25 year old female should at least be able to keep up with this pair. This worried me a little but I figured since we would be sleeping at an altitude not much higher than Chuck hung (Laboche is around 4,930 meters, an acceptable 200 meter increment) I wasn’t terribly worried. As long as we got down from the pass we should be ok. Slowly, we made our way over some high hills with still a growing distance from the trekkers who had passed us. I would take pictures while N caught her breath or attempted to get a little ahead. When we found the first major ridge, N was already speculating about which high point was the summit. In lieu of her condition I was hoping for the same possibilities.  My worry was starting to gain a very nervous edge. When the grassy slopes started to turn into a rock strewn lunar landscape, we took a break and another group of four over took us. One of them (a - as N put it - ‘crazy’ French woman) had been with N on Chuckhung Ri and started to talk about how difficult of a time N had had on the Ri. (I learned a few minutes after their departure from N that her jubilant mood had been more from the fact that she’d broken up with her boyfriend on a phone call)

On the first rocky ridge that was something more akin to steep, the histrionics that would mark the rest of the day began to show themselves. N was stopping more frequently and on top on this her complaining was starting to gain a more desperate nature. At a few points she broke down and started crying. The headache she had briefly mentioned earlier was now very painful and she was now dizzy. Asking her if she wanted to turn back had grown to be a common punctuation of our intermittent conversation, and asking her then would be far from the last time. She was adamant that there was no way she would turn back. By this point I was very worried and I tried to take comfort from all the mountain experience she had been raving about.  We had both convinced ourselves that the summit had to be just over the ridge we were on. I beckoned her on (seeing no other alternative), telling her that we were almost there and that she would make it! When finally after more stopping, and goading her on, we made it up over the ridge the summit wasn’t in sight and our path banked to the right. We passed a small lake and N sat down, declaring that she would go no farther and that I should leave her. Before us was a snow covered hill - not a terribly formidable task - and I knew that N could make it up and over. She was petulant and unyielding. My position was beginning to feel more and more constricted and compromised and was making me feel desperate: She would not turn back. Encouraging words slowly got her to the top of the white hill.

The sight that awaited us broke N down into tears. Before us was another gorgeous blue mountain lake, and to the north of it our path banked before slamming into an almost vertical ascend of about 100 meters. At the top of that distant rocky ridge, multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags stretched from one high rock to another as if mockingly signaling the end of a race. N was down on her knees crying. She said that she couldn’t go on any farther and that I should leave her. I knew by this point that she was also hallucinating - seeing black dots, which meant (based on my reading of the last few days) that she was experiencing symptoms of pulmonary edema and cerebral edema - both extremely critical life threatening afflictions. I also knew that the altitude we were at (approx. 5,400 meters) had not taken its full affect on her and that if she were to stay at the altitude for somewhere between 6 and 12 hours her condition would worsen as the CO2/Oxygen levels became more unbalanced. Considering the symptoms she was telling me, it seemed reasonable based on my reading that if she stayed she had a good chance of lapsing into a coma and possibly dying. At this point panic was boiling inside of me and I worked through my options at a machine gun rate.  My only choice was to get her up over the summit and down as fast as possible. I told N that I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave her. She asked me:

‘Why?’

“I just couldn’t“, I said. She asked me why I cared? The question seemed irrelevant to me. I told her that we needed to get to the summit and get down, or she risked falling into a coma and possibly dying. She looked around at the gorgeous display of mountains behind us.

“Its a good place to die“, she said. You’ve got to be joking, I thought. She seemed serious.

“Why do you care?” She asked again, “No one else would care if I died.” Panic had more reason, but terrified as I was, I told myself I was finished with this nonsense.  I started walking forward a few steps and looked back with the parental expectation that she would follow. Underneath I was terrified that I might be pushing her too hard.  She got up slowly, and slowly we ascended the last rocky wall. N made if first, and when she got to the small space that felt as though it teetered between the two incredibly steep inclines, she was ebullient. Memory of the last several hours seemed to have been washed from her. For good reason too, the view was unlike anything I had ever seen:

The entire landscape before me and in back of me truly looked as though the world was mid explosion, yet the action was so still! White jagged peaks, peppered brown and black where true hard color shown through. The motion of millions of years condensed and pressed into a single moment of observation. All the sound that trickled out from that vast expanse of movement was a light whirl of wind on the rocks.
I could have sat on that pass for days - weeks - months in awe, with still more to find. But the sun was not going to wait and N had to get down. The other side of the pass was the steepest terrain I had seen yet on the trip. Nearly 600 meters of downward rock pile. And at the base of it - flat ground that led up to the Khumbu Glacier moraine wall. In-between the two glacier moraines was a convoluted maze of rock piles, valleys and pools. And just beyond the second moraine was a clutter of buildings which I pegged for Laboche. I was entirely aware that crossing the glacier would be difficult, and the last push to Laboche.
We started down from the pass, and I immediately had trouble. My right knee was painful from Petella-femeral syndrome which had been developing over that last week. Luckily I was familiar with the syndrome from training for cycling across North America. Basically one side of my leg had gotten stronger than the other side much faster (or just tightened up) and was pulling my knee cap out of the groove created by the joining of the femur and the tibia. Time and more exercise is really the only cure. (other than a good PT). N gave me one of her trekking poles to help, but after much pain and slow going, I was nearing the bottom and felt not only that the syndrome was getting worse but it was now starting to develop in my other knee. I had been using a wooden staff in my right hand for a few days, about the same time the syndrome started developing in my right knee. In my frustration and pain, I determined that the use of the staff and now the pole was creating some kind of imbalance in the way my legs were holding up my body. I became upset, gave N back her trekking pole and then destroyed the wooden staff against a bolder. (I was right about the imbalance, as the problem has slowly resolved itself ever since, and not once has it gotten at all worse.) I stormed down the rest of the rock-hoping decline and quickly made my way across the flat ground towards the moraine.
The moraine rose seemingly unnaturally from the earth and the gathering dark mist made me feel that I was truly on another planet. In all honesty the monolithic quality of the wall of rock and dirt looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Great horns and shaking strings sounded in my head as every epic soundtrack began to conglomerate and announce the arrival of a final obstacle.
When I had caught my breath I ascended some of the moraine, perhaps 50 of the 100 meters, running up the path. I looked back to see N hunched over her trekking poles, gasping for breath, not a quarter of the way I had amounted. She looked up after a minute and said it was impossible. Very slowly, she ascended to my level on the verge of tears, and told me that she felt as though her lungs were filled with something like mucus and that she could only really take half a breath. The sun was going down and I knew that Laboche was just on the other side of the glacier. N didn’t want to go on, but what was I supposed to do? She was back at a safe altitude, but I couldn’t leave her, and if her condition somehow worsened, it would be best if we were in Laboche. At the same time, however, I was afraid that if I pushed her too hard, it might also make her condition worse. The top of the moraine was just above and I managed to quell N’s tears and convince her to just go to the top of the moraine to see what the path looked like.
When she glimpsed what lie beyond the moraine, she collapsed once again into tears, sobbing uncontrollably saying that it was impossible. Somehow, I convinced her to continue, and as the sunset it was a constant series of emotional breakdowns. She would sit on the ground, cry and say once again that it was impossible. Every time we got to the top of a ridge and our pathetic headlamps illuminated yet another ridge she would become an emotional mess. She told me to leave her, to go on. Ridiculous. The only choice was to continue, as terrified as I was… and this is something I want to make clear: I have never been more terrified in my life as I was that day, and that night when I was making my way with N through that glacier. The whole time I had a SPOT device which is primarily a GPS unit for notifying family and friends of one’s whereabouts and letting them know that everything is alright. It is, however, equipped with a Panic button which backs $100,000 of search & rescue. My trembling finger hovered above that red Panic button all day, and never before had I so strongly considered pushing it than during some of N’s breakdowns that night in the Glacier. Fear was a constant layer of clothing that ran up and down and all around my body, telling me of the danger that was beneath my feet, the cold at my throat and the degrading systems in N’s body. The stress of that fear was so intense that at several points in the glacier, I attempted to make myself cry, just to relieve some of the feeling, but something irresolute had grown solid inside of me. I could not cry, however much I wanted to. Something, whatever it was, felt solid - monolithic in my chest, and its voice in my mind told me to go on, and that I would succeed, to keep going, keep going…
N would accuse me of saying that it would be our last ridge when we surmounted it, only to see more ridges. I had done nothing of the sort. The moraine, which would be our final climb (based on what I had seen from above at the pass) was visible in the distance as a gargantuan black wall - this I had said would be the last. But through her tears and anger she accused me of trying to trick her. I did my best to remain hopeful and optimistic, but I was terrified to the core, and constantly questioned whether or not I was doing the right thing. I am thousands and thousands of miles away from home, in a country I don’t know, I am in the midst of a cold rocky glacier, navigating in the dark, the young woman I am with is breaking down emotionally and physically, and I have no way of contacting anybody save for the Panic button. But I knew we were close! I saw Laboche from the pass! I knew my eyes had not deceived me.
Luckily the last 3^rd of the trail was generally downhill and looked as though it was heading for a depression in the moraine. I egged her on with positive words and finally we reached the top of the moraine, but I could see nothing. The trail through the glacier had bent slightly southeast by my feeling of it, so I knew (and hoped) that Laboche would be just north along the moraine. After a few more breakdowns, I felt something in the back of my mind flicker… I thought….maybe…oh please let it be so… I told N to turn off her headlamp, and through babbling teary complaints she did. I did the same. Barely, through the dark cloud and the fog, there was a dim luminescence.
I yelled to N, “There is light!, there is Laboche! We are almost there!”, she responded:
“…but its so far away!” and started crying. Continually she had resigned her fate to her present spot, but now, finally, she conceded and said:
“I trust whatever you do…”, and followed me. I kept walking in the direction of the nebulous light, all the while tracing the steps in the snow, of the trekkers from the morning. When I thought I heard voices, I yelled “Help!” but no one would answer. We crossed a shallow stream and shortly I was on a well-beaten path that I knew had to be the main trail to Laboche. The lights were brighter and I could make out windows, and I could see people in the buildings! I kept yelling to N, “We are here! We are here! I can see people! We are in Laboche!”
Finally, I stumbled into a lodge and asked for a room over and over: “Room? Room? Room?” - No room. I went to the next lodge and walked in and collapsed on a bench. The dinning hall was full and predictably no one noticed I had come through the door. I asked someone who I should talk to and directed myself to the young boy who seemed to be orchestrating the operation.
“room?” - Yes.
I looked back to find N on the bench that I had left and motioned for her to come. Through a flag-covered doorway, stone steps, a left turn, more stone steps. The end of a dark hallway - room 30. N went in first and dropped her bag, I did the same and the moment I sat down I broke down in sobs. I said through my convulsions that I had been so worried about her, that I hadn’t been sure what to do, that I had never been so scared in all my life. She apologized and told me that I’d saved her life.

Epilogue:
The next day, I found that I was rather angry with the position that N had put me, unwilling to turn back when its exactly what should have happened. I told her that she needed to see a doctor, that she needed to go down to Perische. She would have nothing of it and planned to go up to Gorak Shep. I thought it was an unwise decision. It was amazing to see how quickly she forgot how difficult the previous day had been for her. And on top of it all N told me that prior she had had a very serious case of pneumonia and thought it was what she had now in Laboche. Not ten minutes up the lightly inclined trail she was once again down on her knees gasping for breath. I convinced her to stay in Laboche another night to rest. The next morning, against my protestations we started again up towards Gorak Shep, and again the same result, though it was obvious she was trying to hide her symptoms and pace herself more efficiently, moving very slowly. I argued with her, urging her to see a doctor, telling her that I would go with her to Perische, but she was unyielding. A Godsend, two Swedish guys, who were obviously having a lot of trouble breathing stopped to talk to N while I was up on the moraine. (I could easily run up to moraine, and walked along it as the path to Gorak Shep was along it. I had separated myself from N to try and figure out what to do.) When I came back down I learned that the Swedish guys had told N that two days ago a woman had died after returning to Laboche from Gorak Shep. Her stubborn wall seemed to be teetering on an unreliable base. The Swedish guys came up to the two of us and I introduced a conversation I could not loose.
“So guys, if you thought you had pneumonia, would you still be on your way to Gorak Shep?” There expressions instantly changed, as though they’d suddenly walked into a situation way over their heads.
“No way.”, they responded. I looked at N and replied
“Yea, niether would I, pretty dumb idea if you ask me.” I was pissed.
It convinced her to descend and turning my back on Base Camp, Kalla Pattar, and Everest herself, I led N down to Perische. 900 meter descend over 10 kilometers. When we got to Tukla (an intermediate town close to Perische) I agreed to stop for some tea, and N made it physically apparent that she was intending to stay. After the Tea I got up and walked a few paces out of Tukla, turning around to confront her petulant expression. I had a flashback to my childhood and realized I was standing in my Father’s shoes. I took my cue from his actions and N got up, grudgingly and followed me. I stayed ahead of N so that she protestations, if there were any, could not reach me, and once when I agreed to her arm waving and waited for her to catch up, she started yelling at me:
“I COULD BE IN GORAK SHEP RIGHT NOW!-”
“YEA, AND YOU COULD BE FUCKING DEAD!” I yelled right back at her before turning back and briskly gaining distance from her slow pace.
I was determined, though I still questioned whether I was doing the right thing or not. I wondered what my family would think or do, my friends? I endeavored to make Perische long before N and did so. I found the medical post as quickly as I could and when I found the doctor - a young woman from Ontario, I told her all of N’s symptoms and the events of the last few days. I also told her that N was very upset with me, and before N got there I paid the $50 for the medical consultation so that when N arrived she could not protest.
Sure enough, she had a chest infection, of which the doctor said had no chance of healing up at Laboche or Gorak Shep.
Though I wanted to head back immediately, N begged me to stay and leave in the morning, I agreed. That night at The White Yak, there was a nice group of people and we had a generally fun time. N and I noticed that the older gentleman of a german couple was looking at N and I. We commented on it, and after a few minutes I forgot about it. Perhaps an hour later, N said:
“Caught it.”
“What?” I said, having no idea what she was talking about. She rolled her eyes and said:
“Ugh, you have no imagination!” I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about and then I remembered the greman man and realized that she’d meant that she’d ‘caught’ his glance. After a moment I decided that her reaction to my puzzlement had been a bit mean.
“You know, you can be a little mean sometimes.” I said. Without changing her expression or missing a beat, she looked at me and said:
“You deserve it.”
The next morning I left. Good riddance. I climbed the 900 meters ascent over the 10 kilometers and I did it in under 6 hours. When I told a Sherpa what I had done he furrowed his eyebrows and sucked air through pursed lips. “You verdy stron man! Verdy stron man!” That day, I was a Sherpa.