Why We Climb
Oringally posted at Ten Fingers 6 Strings. Slight edits included.
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It was about two or three A.M. and I was violently shivering at Interim Camp in what was supposed to be a 20-below North Face sleeping bag, but instead was a synthetic cover stuffed with feathers. It seems that the gear shop in Kathmandu rented us the equivalent of the “Rolax” watches you can pick up in Hong Kong on the street. The “Rolax” might make you late for a meeting, but the feather sleeping bag at 19,000 feet will literally turn you into a popsicle. I mumbled audible obscenities while trying to find ways to stay warm wearing top and bottom thermals, a down jacket, down pants and two pairs of wool socks. I looked ridiculous and it was the first time in my life I really felt claustrophobic.
No matter what I tried, I could not keep my feet warm and eventually had to take off the second pair of socks because they were cutting off my circulation. So, every 1/2 hour or so, I’d have to rub my feet for ten-minutes, stomp up and down and then practice my tap-dancing skills to keep the blood flowing. My bones were cold and as I was doing my tap dancing, I wrote a song called Eff You Sleeping Bag Man:
Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man (repeat)
The sincerity in my heart and the sweet harmonies produced by this song kept my heart, but not my body warm during this tribulation. But it wasn’t until the sun broke through the night sky that I knew I would be able to keep all my toes (although the milky, white-color they reflected didn’t make me feel all that comfortable either). A very inauspicious start to the most important day of the entire trip to Mount Everest: the push to Advanced Base Camp (6,400 meters).
After a few bites to eat, Chandra (our Sherpa) and I set off with our spirits high and our Camelbaks (and bodies) frozen solid. Walking through the seracs in the vein between Interim Camp and the moraine leading to ABC was a welcomed change in scenery. The route from Base Camp to Interim Camp puts you behind Changtse and a host of other lesser peaks, which ultimately block your view of Mount Everest, so, by this point, we hadn’t seen Her for three days. In fact, about the only thing we saw during this period were rocks, dirt, about 40 yak men a day looking for free food and tea, the yaks themselves and the respective pies they would bake and deliver with regularity. I saw so much yak shit, that when I did sleep, I would dream of yak shit zombies chasing me all around the Himalayas causing me to wake up gasping for air (the zombies were gone, but the smell wasn’t).
We switched-back up to the top of the moraine while trying to find a rhythm. Typically, in the high altitude, the worst part of climbing is the beginning when you haven’t found your rhythm; you are out of breath within minutes and questioning how you could possibly sustain another ten hours this movement. For me to get my rhythm, I look down, start singing a song in my head and watch my feet taking deliberate and conscious steps forward. It only takes me about five-to-ten minutes to find my rhythm: each body part moving in perfect harmony with all the others, while regulating my breathing at a rate just slightly above resting.
I had just hit this stride when I looked up and immediately lost my breath again when I saw:
Then I looked left and saw this:
Have you ever been in an old church or basilica that was just so impressive you knew that you were in the presence of something Greater? Well, I haven’t. As incredible and amazing as the Sistine Chapel is, in the end it is always something that was built by men (albeit extremely talented men) as an expression of their devotion to something or someone bigger than themselves. But, the natural world and the universe provide the expression of something not man-made (which I cannot exactly relate to); something that was created outside of man’s mind (which I can relate to). Through observation, man can collectively learn and understand “how” this world works, but the “why” is the Big Mystery. Looking up at the most massive and brooding mountain in the world made my place in it feel beyond insignificant in the grand scheme of things…and it was absolutely terrifying.
The shark-fin pinnacle you see above is fairly unique to Mount Everest. Due to the warm, day-time temperatures caused by the air in the high Tibetan desert, the apartment-sized seracs melt during the day before the sun drops. Amazingly, even though these seracs are traveling downhill and would normally point that way, these seracs are all pointed uphill, towards Mount Everest. The mountain’s mass is so large that it actually pulls some of the objects around it towards itself. Walking up the moraine, you are passing through tens of thousands of seracs that are all bowing towards Her in reverence.
Almost-frozen toes, yak pies and Tibetan food were all small prices to pay to stand where I was standing at that moment. After regaining our composure, Chandra and I began the long slog up to Advanced Base Camp.
