Peak (16 page)

He decided the only way he would make it home before he and the yak starved was to take a shortcut through the mountains. He had heard about the shortcut but had never traveled it.

"At first the route was good. It was far enough from the roads so that I could travel during the day without fear of soldiers. Then the path started to rise. The weather worsened the higher we climbed. The snow was deep. I should have turned back..." He grinned and shrugged. "But I was young and foolish and I continued to climb, driving the bull before me."

They reached the shortcut's summit and started down the other side, Gulu confident now that he and the bull were going to make it home safely. But as he was looking for a place to sleep an avalanche roared down the mountain and buried him alive.

"I was so cold," Gulu said with a shudder. "More cold than I had ever been in my life, before or since. I remember thinking how unfair it was that the avalanche hadn't killed me when it struck. I waited for death in that cold dark place, wondering how long it would be. After a while I felt a tugging on my right arm like a fish nibbling on bait. At first I didn't know what it was, then I remembered the bull. When we reached the summit I had put a rope around his neck to keep him close. It wasn't a long rope, two meters, maybe a little shorter. He was close, and he was alive, but was he above me or below? The snow was so tight around me I didn't know if I was facedown or faceup. I could have been standing on my feet for all I knew, or upside down on my head."

We all laughed, but being buried alive isn't funny.

"I am not sure why," Gulu continued, "but it seemed important to reach the bull. To touch him one last time. To apologize for taking him from the safety of his pasture. I started to pull myself along the rope. It was slow and painful work. The farther I got up the rope, the harder the yak pulled—sometimes smashing my face into the ice before I could clear it away. Perhaps the bull is free, I thought, standing on the surface, tethered by the man beneath. I finally broke through, gasping for breath. The bull
was
on the surface, but he was not standing.

"As I examined him he kicked me several times, but I was so numb I barely felt it. My beautiful bull had two broken legs. I felt shards of bone sticking through his flesh. There was only one thing to do. I unsheathed my knife and cut his throat."

The bull took a long time to bleed out. Gulu watched with tears freezing to his cheeks. Three years of hard work and sacrifice lay at his feet bleeding into the snow.

"But there was no time for sorrow," he told us. "I had to get back to my village. If I didn't, my family would have to pay the debt of the two calves. But first I had to survive the night."

He slit the yak open, pulled his guts out onto the snow, then climbed into the body cavity to warm himself.

"Early the next morning my sleep was interrupted by a violent shaking. I thought the yak was slipping down the mountain. I put my head outside the carcass, and I don't know who was more surprised: I or the bear pulling my precious bull down the mountainside.

"It reared up on its hind feet and let out a heart-stopping bellow that shook every bone in my body. I was certain I would be eaten. But I was saved by the Chinese army."

Four soldiers had been tracking the bear and caught up to it just as it bellowed. They fired and missed, but the bullets were enough to frighten the bear away. It lumbered up the slope and disappeared into the trees.

"All I had to do now was contend with the soldiers," Gulu said. "But I didn't think this would be a problem. I had no money. If they wanted the yak for food they were welcome to it.

"As they reached the carcass, I crawled out from my bloody shelter. When they saw me, the soldiers screamed like frightened children and threw down their rifles. Before I could speak they ran away."

After Gulu returned home he heard a rumor about four soldiers coming across a yeti feeding on a yak. A few weeks later there was a story about a cow giving birth to a full-grown man.

"How did you pay for the calves?" JR asked.

Gulu smiled. "I sold the soldiers' rifles. There was enough money to pay for the calves and to buy a new bull. He was not nearly as magnificent as the one that gave birth to me, but he was a good breeder and increased my small herd tenfold."

CAMP FOUR

ZOPA ROUSED HOLLY AND ME
out of our tents at sunrise. Another beautiful day: clear, crisp, twenty-two degrees and rising—which meant we'd have to pack our cold weather gear on our backs instead of wearing it. To make things worse, Zopa gave each of us a pile of Sun-jo's gear to haul up to the first camp.

Holly's share was a lot smaller than my share. She finished repacking quickly and left for the mess tent. It took me forty-five minutes to reorganize what I'd packed the night before. I was slowed down by my ill feelings toward Sun-jo and Zopa. I couldn't believe it. Not only had Zopa taken my gear and given it to Sun-jo, but now I had to haul it up the mountain for him. It seemed that he was doing everything in his power to make sure I was too weak to get to the top.

When I finally finished my pack was fifteen pounds heavier than it was for my first time up to ABC. Not good. One pound can make a huge difference at this altitude. I was trying to decide what to leave behind when Captain Shek walked up.

"You try for summit?" he demanded.

He was out of uniform, dressed like a climber, which is probably why I didn't notice him sneaking up on me.

"Not today," I said.

"How old you?"

He must have been watching and had waited to catch me alone like this.

"How old you?" he repeated aggressively.

Trick question. He'd seen my passport. He knew exactly how old I was. He wanted me to lie. I told him the truth.

"Where other boy?"

Uh-oh.

"Who?" I'm a terrible liar.

"Boy you climb mountain with last week. Boy you walk with in camp. You and he good friends."

Captain Shek's English was a little rough, but the sarcasm was crystal clear. He had watched us walking around camp. He had seen us head up the mountain to ABC.

"Oh, him," I said stupidly. "I haven't seen him in a couple days."

"Where he go?"

I shrugged.

"You lying to me!"

(Apparently I couldn't even shrug a lie.)

"I kick you off mountain if you lie."

"Go ahead," I said, zipping my pack closed. Probably not the brightest thing to say, but I'd had about enough of Captain Shek and everything else on Everest.

He looked like he was about to explode. I don't think he was used to having a fourteen-year-old call his bluff. He raised his arm, and for a second I thought he was going to hit me, but then he smiled as if he realized the "This is the People's Republic of China, you have no rights" thing wasn't going to work with me.

"What is other boy's name?" he asked in a much more reasonable tone.

"He didn't say." I picked up my pack.

"I watching you."

I walked away feeling his eyes drilling into the back of my neck, proud of myself for not even thinking about ratting out Sun-jo.

As soon as I found Zopa I told him about the conversation. He was a lot calmer about it than I was, saying that Captain Shek was the least of our problems.

"In a few days you will be at Camp Four," he said. "This is all you need to worry about."

It turned out that he was right.

WE JOINED A SMALL GROUP
of porters and their yaks heading up the mountain. Sun-jo was not with them. When I asked Zopa about this he said, "He will be along."

The trip up to Intermediate Camp was a lot easier than the first time. I wasn't able to sing and chant with the porters, but I was able to talk as I walked, which was a big improvement. I even managed to use the tiny video camera and discovered that I was a lot more comfortable behind it than I was in front of it.

The landscape had changed dramatically from the previous week. The warm weather had created several new streams of glacial runoff. It was difficult to find places to cross without drenching ourselves. The other problem was the rocks. The thaw was causing them to pop loose from the ice. It was like the glacier was a bowling lane and we were the pins. One of the porters and his yak got hit by a large rock and had to return to Base Camp.

"Did you get the strike on tape?" Jack asked.

"Uh, no."

He swore.

I spent most of the trip with Holly, who wasn't doing that well (I think because she was carrying her own pack). I offered to lug it for a while, but she insisted on carrying it herself (for which I was relieved).

She said she was thinking about heading home after we got down from Camp Four and wanted to know if I would give her an exclusive interview after I got down from the summit.

"You're going to quit?"

"Reaching the summit of Everest was not on my to-do list this year. If it had been, I might have done some practice climbs and visited the gym a little more leading up to this. Or maybe even climbed a skyscraper or two." She grinned and pointed at the peak. The clouds had cleared enough for us to see the very top. "I don't know if you've noticed, but that's one of the most daunting sights on earth."

"You don't strike me as easily daunted."

"Yeah, well..." She took a deep breath. "I've learned a couple things about myself up here. One, I'm getting older. And two..." She took another deep breath. "This mountain is a lot bigger than I am. It's humbling. The truth is I've had time to do some thinking. I can't tell you how long it's been since I've been alone. That's been humbling, too. Pierre and Ralph taking off was probably the best thing that ever happened to me."

Being in a camp with over three hundred people is not exactly being alone. But I knew what she meant. You don't have to be alone to feel alone.

"What about that interview?" she asked again.

I'd been doing some thinking, too. "We'll see," I said.

I could tell that Holly wanted to argue, but she was too out of breath to pursue it.

She and I straggled into camp after everyone else and we were both surprised to see Sun-jo sitting on a rock with a cup of hot tea in his hands, looking a little rumpled in his porter clothes.

"When did you get here?"

"A half hour ago."

"You left ahead of us?"

"No," he said, "I left the same time that you left."

I thought he was pulling my leg. There had been a dozen or so porters and maybe half that number of yaks. I couldn't have missed him.

"I rode on Gulu's yak."

"Yeah, right," I said. "When you were a baby." I had walked with Gulu some on the way up. The only thing I'd seen on his yak's back was a pile of hay.

"No," Sun-jo insisted. "I was concealed beneath the hay."

"You're kidding?"

He shook his head. "It was hot and uncomfortable."

I told him about Captain Shek.

A worried look crossed his face. "That means I'll have to go up the mountain again on the yak. I'm not looking forward to that. Thank you for carrying my things up here."

I wished he wasn't always so polite. It would be easier to be mad at him. "No problem," I said, and realized that the extra weight hadn't been a problem. That was encouraging.

I looked around camp. It had not improved in the past week. The boulder-belching slope looked even more unstable than the last time we had been here. Zopa was looking at the slope, too, shaking his head.

"We cannot camp here tonight," he said. "We will go farther up."

I didn't recall anywhere to camp farther up, and I was right. He stopped us about a thousand feet above the collapsing wall and had us carve sleeping platforms into the ice. It took hours, and it was exhausting work at that altitude, but I was happy to do it. Anything was better than sleeping under the wall.

The next morning the cold was back, which was good because it lessened the chances of avalanches. On the way to Camp Two we heard over the radio that there were three climbing parties moving up to Camp Five. They were going to make a summit attempt the following day.

Gulu was concerned because they had taken only one load of oxygen tanks to Camp Five. Zopa radioed Josh.

"I heard," Josh said. "Idiots. None of them are fully acclimated. This is only their second time above Camp Four. As far as the tanks go, some of them are going to try to get to the top without supplemental Os. So there should be enough for those who need it."

"If the weather holds," Zopa said.

"I talked to them about that, but their concern is that there won't be another good weather window. Nothing we can do about it. After they get to Camp Five they're on their own."

What he meant by this is that above Camp Five there is little chance for rescue. The air is too thin for a helicopter and at that altitude everyone is too out of it to help anyone but themselves. If you die above Camp Five your corpse stays there forever.

"Oh," Josh said, "one more thing. Captain Shek has been asking around about a Sherpa boy. Says he thinks he came up on the truck with you."

"Sun-jo," Zopa said. "He left a few days ago to go back to school. He just came up for the ride."

"I'll pass that on to the captain."

This part of the conversation was obviously completely planned for Captain Shek's benefit. The only problem now was that if the captain caught sight of Sun-jo again, Zopa was going to be in trouble, too.

"Everything else okay?" Josh asked.

"Yes. We are all fine."

"I'll check in later."

Zopa signed off and JR pointed his video camera at Zopa. "Do you think those climbers will make it to the summit?"

"Perhaps," Zopa said. "But it is too early in the season. If they make it, others will try and some of them will die. There are no shortcuts to the top of Sagarmatha."

By the time we reached ABC the following afternoon we were all exhausted, especially Sun-jo, who was still feeling the effects of his recent illness. In a role reversal from our last time at ABC, I made dinner for us while he lay in his sleeping bag. I'd like to say that I felt sorry for him, but the truth is that I didn't. I was still resentful about his horning in on my climb.