frank’s big adventure

“It is the middle of winter and I am somewhere in the highest mountain range in the world, outside and on my back looking at the stars from over 16,000 feet above sea level.” That’s the moment of realization that I had in Lobouche, when the magnitude of this trek began to set in.

I got sick the day before we left. I had made it all the way through India, eating at a number of places that should have made my stomach liquefy, without the slightest hint of illness, but one plate of Shahi Paneer in Kathmandu did me in. I was miserable, unable to sleep through the night, and barely able to swallow food let alone process it for energy and nutrition. I was in no shape to attempt the toughest climbing of my life, forget the fact that I am in less than peak physical condition and have not exercised regularly since…

Dawa will be our guide and he is a master of this mountain. He has been to the summit twice and is going again in a couple months with a man attempting to be the first open heart surgery patient to make the peak. It will be just the two of them going up the Tibet side and back down into Nepal. He feels no pain. He is immortal on this mountain. I feel good knowing that he will be there to pull me up to the top if I need it.

When the airport in Lukla finally was clear enough for our departure we climbed into a little bus and got shuttled out to a little prop plane on the tarmac. I had never been in a Twin Otter before. Before takeoff the stewardess, a beautiful Nepali woman, crouched down the aisle with a little basket full of candies and cotton balls. I deduced that the cotton was for our ears, as my view through the window was a close-up of the engine and propeller, and the candy must be handed out to sustain us for the first few hours after we crash into the mountains.

As we got closer in to the mountain the engines seemed to gasp a bit and I felt the bottom drop out. I looked out the front window and saw to my dismay a little spit of a runway angling up at about 45 degrees. There couldn’t have been more than 100 yards of it before a rock wall. I concentrated on breathing and began to open my first candy. Somehow we landed and spun around into a stop. The Koreans cheered and clapped.

We had been told that there was 2 feet of snow on the ground in Lukla, and while this turned out to be an overstatement, there was ice everywhere. I slipped and slid through most of the first two days to Namche Bazar where I succumbed to altitude sickness. I have never been higher than about 12,000 feet in my life and between my stomach and my lungs I was toasted. I tried to take my mind to the icicle waterfalls and magnificent suspension bridges from the hike to that point, but I couldn’t think about anything beyond the next 30 miserable seconds of existence. My head pounded and I was dizzy after climbing a flight of stairs. I knew that I wouldn’t make it up any farther and tried to think about how I would tell Jacob to go on without me.

The air was very thin and every time I exhaled, there was a panicked need to gasp in again. It came in waves. Sometimes I could go hours without thinking about breathing while other times I felt like I was constantly suffocating. That night it only got worse as it plummeted to 25 degrees below zero. The little room we were staying in had nothing in the way of insulation and I got little fits of sleep between long hours of shaking and coughing. And then…a miracle. The sun rose, I took an Immodium, and I had acclimated. Base Camp became a realizable goal again and I felt like a champ as I climbed up over the first ridge and Everest came into view.

Most people are lucky to catch a glimpse of the peak through rolling clouds, but we were very, very lucky. There was nary a cloud in sight and the mountain looked crisp against the sky blue sky. The few initial minutes of glory turned into hours of heavy breathing and labored walking. We had revisited our packing decisions in Namche Bazar and decided there were a good many (heavy) things that we could do without. Still, the 500 meter climb from the riverbed to Tengbouche made my legs rubber. We were done for the day.

The little towns that dot the map up to base camp all have the same basic accommodation: tea houses. Each tea house is made from exactly the same materials, those that made their way up the mountain on the back of some poor Sherpa porter, but the mood is set by the decorations, the people, and the fuel for the fire. In Namche Bazar, Jacob and I were the only foreign trekkers and we spent much of our time in the cozy little room with Dawa, the women that owned the place, and the kid that did all of the grunt work. There were windows on all the walls, they played festive Nepali music, and they burned wood.

In Tengbouche the tea house was packed full of people. There were two old French couples in their 60’s chatting a bit and laughing on the outside, crying on the inside, when they had to go outside to use the Sherpa toilet. The inside toilets all freeze up in the winter leaving the cold breezy hole out back as the only option. Their Sherpa guide was nearly as old as they were and I don’t suspect they were planning on reaching base camp with the way they handled the climate. There was an Indian man who had been living in Hong Kong for a few years chatting with an American man who had been living in Taiwan and each of them had a Sherpa there to lead them up the mountain. We saw the Indian man again a few days later trudging his way along the rocks to base camp and we chatted a bit more with the American about where we should travel in China. I cozied up in the corner and began discreetly drawing the faces I saw. Soon a young British couple came in with their guide and everyone tried to get as close as they could to the Franklin stove in the center of the room. In Tengbouche, the fuel for the fire is dried Yak dung.

The next morning we set out to Dingbouche and our bodies had become well-oiled machines, pressing ever onward, ever upward. We began to lose people as they stopped to continue acclimating in Tengbouche or Dingbouche, but we continued unfazed. There was a pair of young Brits that had been trekking together through Dingbouche, but only one, Joe, remained. Paul had apparently turned back due to the heights. Joe and Paul made Jacob and I look like a professional team of climbers. They had bummed in from Thailand a few days earlier and were just winging it up the mountain. Joe had a cheap sleeping bag, some cheap boots and a cheap jacket that he’d bought in Kathmandu. He was practically wearing pajama pants and there had been a rumor amongst the travelers in Tengbouche that he’d gone for a dip in the glacial runoff of a river.

Joe had been a Royal Marine for a few years and served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He joined the service at 18 to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and personal hero, but found life in the service to be too much for him after a few years. He never saw any action and described his time in Afghanistan as a 6 month mountain hiking tour with guns. They were looking for Al Qaeda in little towns long after they had fled across the border, so they spent their tour of duty wandering the beautiful countryside in 2 week spurts. In Iraq he again was spared of action, but the wear and tear of a life in the war zone brought about a change in his outlook and he came back to Britain to go to school to become a teacher. When that couldn’t keep his interest he set out to the mountains of Nepal for a while. Now he was freewheeling up to Lobouche with meager supplies and dwindling funds. Paul had most of the money with him when he turned back down the mountain, so Joe had to move quickly if he wanted to get to the top. As we climbed up along a glacier we could see his little backpack bounding quickly onward up ahead.

Lobouche is an extreme little outpost. It sits at over 16,200 feet above sea level and the air has little oxygen to feed the blood. Everything is frozen, crisp and clear and the peaks look too close for comfort. Once we arrived I wandered out onto a ridge and had a beautiful moment with the sun. My shadow was cast out across the valley of rocks and ice and I felt significant in time and space. I thought about the glaciers that ran thickly past Lobouche within the last couple decades before retreating back up the mountain. Along the path that day we came upon a beautiful memorial site for the climbers that have lost their lives attempting to top Everest. The rock stupas were perched at the top of a steep slope in full view of a multitude of amazing looking mountains.

I thought much of the rest of the day about my aunt, Anne Kearl, who had hiked this very trail a number of years back before she died of cancer. I was too young to really know her before she passed away, but I suspect that we would have gotten along famously. My shadow sat down with me for a while and we watched the light changing across the snow and ice which was clinging to a 20,000 foot peak.  Then the sun set and I returned alone to the tea house.

Joe was in bad shape and retired early. He pushed too hard and was now living with the consequences. Jacob and I decided to take advantage of the clear night and we put on as many layers of clothes as we had and went out to see the stars. I cannot begin to do justice to the mirror ball that was the sky. We had to lie down to let it all soak in. The Milky Way was a dirty splash of light, the Seven Sisters were joined by several new sisters I had never seen before and Orion wore a glimmering coat of starry armor. We talked about the world that was stuck to our backs as satellites and shooting stars came closer than they ever had before. We were out there for about an hour, our extremities slowly losing feeling and succumbing to the winter’s chill, before going to our frosty room and shivering in our sleeping bags for a few hours.

When I woke up the next morning it dawned on me that I had been abroad for exactly one month. It was clear outside and we were going to be mounting Kala Patthar to take advantage of the perfect Everest viewing conditions. On my first day in India I had seen the Taj Mahal and now, bookending my first month would be an Everest view from over 18,200 feet above sea level. We hiked through Gorak Shep, home of the last permanent structures on the trail, and left our bags behind to make the little hop up the little mountain. We had over 1600 vertical feet to climb and the higher we got the windier it became. By the end I was gasping for air as I let the wind carry my wilted body from rocky point to rocky point. I was carried up the last 40 feet or so just moving my legs and holding out my arms for balance. At the top Jacob, Dawa, and I sat behind the shelter of a big rock, taking turns to explore the little outcrop at the top.

And there was Everest, right there… I felt like a god.

The views are too amazing for words, so here are a couple images and links to videos Jacob took from what is probably the highest place I will ever be:

Some links to videos from our epic climb:

We were at the airport this morning and sat around for about 6 hours before they canceled the flight due to ice on the runway in Lukla. So….tomorrow morning at 6:30 a.m. Jacob and I will try again to begin our journey to Mt. Everest Base Camp. It will take 12 days and we will be climbing up to about 17,500 feet above sea level. It’s the top of the world up there.

Looking back at India, I recall many wonderful sights and sounds that will no doubt take years (and return journeys) to process fully, but one morning stands out in my mind.

I was up early after our terror ride into Shimla and as I took in the mountain view, I saw a little bustle of movement coming up the hill.  It was a family of monkeys working their way to the top of the hill before the crush of people descended into the marketplace.  Leading the way was the dominant male, preened and primed for a day of lording over his little team, following him was a gaggle of chatty females and the smaller, meeker males inspecting the steps leading up to the buildings with a sense of purpose, and bringing up the rear were 3 little tiny buggers. 

The first two were taking advantage of all the varied rooflines and obstacles that an Indian marketplace provides to play their floppy, sloppy game of tag.  One would roll down corrigated steel to the telephone lines and then proceed to climb, upside down, toward the next stall, his counterpart close behind.  They jumped up onto countertops and yapped and yelled and laughed at each other.  The third little monkey lagged the farthest behind, getting lost in the wonders of overturned cardboard boxes and mirrors and jets of steam and windows into bedrooms and then, realizing that he was too far back, he would sprint in a mad panic to catch up. The whole procession took their time to goof around and I got to watch them for about 5 minutes.  They rounded the corner out of sight, and my gaze returned to the moutains along the horizon before we set out for a leisurely day of ambling and exploring the city for ourselves.

At the moment I am in Kathmandu, Nepal, after a three day journey and about 22 hours of bus rides.  We got held up at the border because of a strike that was blocking the road northward, but on the whole the political climate here is stable.  We are within 100 miles of Mt. Everest and the top of the world.