by Fergus White
“Hey Hugo, I thought we were the last group,” I say.
“Well, you are now.”
We explain our plan for climbing this hill and our rest strategy.
“It’s a bit leisurely, gents,” Hugo says, “but we’ll join up.”
Once the watch indicates ten minutes has passed, we hoist ourselves back up.
We press upwards, now above the 3,000 metre mark. Several trekkers bust themselves as they pass us. But today, the incline tortures the porters. Eight cases of Everest beer load down one man. At twenty-four cans per tray, nearly two hundred cans sit on his back. Another porter shoulders several twenty kilogram bags of rice. The next local is lugging half a dozen sheets of plywood that are used as room partitions. Who cares about the weight, if the wind gusts, he’ll take off.
Nadia ascends alongside me. We pull into a shaded site for our fourth stop. We halt at the edge of the hill we’ve been climbing. For the first time, we glimpse what lies beyond this knoll. A gap in the trees has drawn the attention of a dozen trekkers. They hold cameras close to their faces. Green valleys and snowy peaks stretch away from us. At the end stands a brick wall of mountain, the Lhotse ridge. What lies beyond it attracts the focus.
I see the reason why those beside me clutch their cameras. Only the brown upper peak of the pyramid is visible. It looks smaller than the nearer mountains. But its near lack of snow indicates it’s steep and subject to fierce high altitude winds. There she stands in all her glory. Everest.
For most people standing here, this is their first taste. The camera shutters click away, recording and savouring the moment for their owners. And beyond Everest, hidden from view, sits Tibet.
“I forgot we’d see Everest today,” I say.
“Me too.” Nadia peers up the valley. “Where is it? Which mountain is it?”
I suspect several of our team passed this point, not realising what was on offer. Everest waits a good thirty kilometres from where we’ve halted. Nadia lines her eye behind my outstretched arm.
“Ok, follow left from the leaves that are just in front of us,” I say.
I draw my arm to the left and talk her through the white peaks that are some fifteen kilometres away. My arm rises up and down, as my outstretched finger draws an invisible line linking us to the Himalayan summits beyond. I trace out the tall white crest of Lhotse and the Nuptse ridge some thirty kilometres away. And just behind, peeps up the brown lump that is Everest. Little snow clings to its sheer side. Against a panorama of white mountains, its brown facade stands aloof.
This is the mountain we’ve all heard of since we were children. It’s a mythical place of adventure and misadventure. Only a few years ago, it had never occurred to me that I’d see it. And now in this forest, through a gap in the branches on a sunny day, Everest menaces ahead of us. And whatever about viewing it, I never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d be setting out to climb it. Sitting under the trees, enjoying a snack, chatting to a young Canadian with the world’s highest in the background; it’s not a bad acclimatisation day.
My watch nudges us to our feet, and the small window onto Everest disappears behind us. We must gain another two hundred metres before Namche. Greg and Hugo are ascending alongside us. We slip into our unlaboured rhythm. After fifteen minutes we clear the top of the forest and progress under sunshine. I’m tempted to continue into the village but determine to stick to the conservative plan Greg and I devised.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hugo says. “I could hit it with a stone from here.”
“Be my guest.” I slip off my pack.
As far as I’m concerned it’s only 1pm, and we’ve five hours of daylight to complete the last thirty minutes of our hike. The four of us sit on a wall outside a small, brown single story house. It looks like it was built in the times of Genghis Khan. Perhaps it was, but for the family inside, this two room dwelling is home.
“Why are you guys so afraid?” Nadia places her water bottle on the wall. “This is still low. Aren’t you heading for Everest?”
A trickle of porters and trekkers pass by on their way to Namche and beyond. I recount my tales of fearsome headaches and the challenge of taking on food, from when I’d been up higher six months ago.
“But we’re still low,” she says.
This is where trouble starts, Greg reminds her. It can only be managed by ascending slow, staying out of oxygen debt, and keeping hydrated. In addition, unusual foods, poor hygiene in the valley, and suspect water will all combine to attack any chinks in our bodies’ armour.
“And he’s a doctor,” I say.
“So you’re saying our team will get sick soon?” she asks.
“Above Namche, above three thousand four hundred metres, I think so,” I say.
She looks at Hugo. He insists we’re too cautious, and the debate continues. I’m glad to have the conversation. In a week’s time, Nadia will go her separate way, but Hugo and I will climb in the same team for the next two months. A mistake by one, most likely me, could affect both. At some stage I’ll need his assistance, in a situation far less pleasant than where we find ourselves today. Back in 1974, six men were swept away in an instant. Five mountaineers fell off Everest to their death in 1984. Five years later, hundreds of tons of snow buried and killed five Polish climbers up higher. We’ll ascend into harm’s way, but I’m confident Hugo is one of the right men to lead us there.
“Ok, that’s the last break. Namche it is.”
We trek on, and Namche Bazaar comes into view. Some two thousand people reside here, in five hundred households. To our immediate west, a mountain rises to nearly 6,200 metres. On our eastern flank, another soars to over 6,600 metres. The settlement sits on a crescent shaped mountain slope and presents a stunning vista. It’s as if we’re staring at stepped paddy fields on the side of a hill, except instead of a sea of rice, we see a barrage of houses and coloured roofs.
In times gone by, locals bartered yak cheese and butter for agricultural goods that were grown further down the valley. But now, serving the needs of climbers and trekkers provides the vitality. The bustling town bursts with Sherpa life. Shops selling climbing and trekking gear press against the narrow lanes.
“Are these the real brands?” Greg thumbs a North Face top.
“I don’t think so, but I heard a lot of the kit comes in from China. They come from the same factories that make the real thing.”
“This one is about twenty-five dollars.”
“It’d be about a hundred and fifty euros back in Dublin. Maybe it’s fake, or maybe Dublin’s a rip off.”
“Watch it, Nadia, step in!” Hugo says.
She squeezes against a wall as two yaks lurch by.
Traders from all around trek here to sell their wares at the weekly market. Tibetan merchants arrive via high Himalayan passes. We’d gone for a look last time on the Pumori trip, presuming we’d be pestered on all sides by vendors shoving their wares in our faces. We may as well have been invisible. As we’d walked past their rows of goods, set out on plastic sheets on the ground, the dealers had cast little more than a glance at us. In all my travels, it was the first time I’d seen such disinterest in a western wallet. It had been relaxing, but I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved, or in an odd way, a touch insulted.
Most travellers spend two nights in Namche to acclimatise, which is what we plan to do. Consequently, it has boomed in the last three decades. It’s the only place between Lukla airport and the summit that exhibits any sort of a town feel. We pass several hostels and well-stocked stores. A few bakeries double as internet cafés, making it one of the few spots in the region where trekkers can access the web. Due to the tourist trade, Namche has become the wealthiest district in Nepal. People from all over the world cram the dining room of each hostel, exchanging their stories. For the next two days, we’ll be a part of that tale.
The four of us wind through tight spaces up towards our lodgings. A final flight of steps delivers us to the entrance at 3,400 me
tres. Mingmar, Charlene’s personal Sherpa, meets us in the shade at the door. He looks untroubled by this morning’s hike.
“Hi guys. How is everyone?” he asks. “They’ve started lunch inside.”
We chat, and Greg mentions that we’ll stroll down to the bakeries in the afternoon to fill up on calories.
“No, no.” Mingmar points to his stomach and shakes his head. “Do not do that. Very risky.”
I’m amazed, given how much the bakeries of Namche feature in any trekking story. But we don’t have to be warned twice. There’ll be no food stops down in the village.
♦ ♦ ♦
We relax in the afternoon. The well-furnished dining room downstairs contains a treasure of old climbing and Sherpa memorabilia. Everything we need is provided: good food, laundry, showers, and a deck of cards. Greg and I settle into a bright room with two comfortable single beds. This’ll be our home while we acclimatise. The living standards will decline once we ascend out of Namche.
View down to Namche from our Lodgings
In the bedroom next to us, we hear the two Canadians, Des and Blake. Good friends in their mid-twenties, they plan to summit Island Peak alongside Nadia. They seem like nice lads. Streams of laughter penetrate the thin wall.
“It sounds like we got the Chuckle Brothers next door,” I say.
They hear me, and it sets off another torrent of titters.
Day two and we’ve ascended six hundred metres closer to the summit of Everest. Wherever the eventual point of breakdown will be, it will not be today. But the law of averages dictates that at least half of us will break down somewhere along the way.
April 3
Acclimatisation Hike in Namche (3,400m)
“Climb high, sleep low today, lads?” Roger pulls up a chair at the breakfast table.
From Scotland, I’m just getting to know him.
“Yeah, it should be straight forward,” I say. “I think we’ll go up about four hundred metres. Then back to the same beds tonight.”
“Easy.” A grin spreads across his face. “I’ll be all set at nine and back before you know it.”
We’re planning several of these climb high-sleep low days before our summit bid. This mountaineer’s tactic will stress our bodies to create more of the red blood cells that are needed to provide oxygen to muscles. But by sleeping back down here, we’ll not be pushed beyond our limits and can recover. We must manage getting our bodies ready for the stress of high altitude, without destroying them in the process.
We’ll have to tease this delicate balancing game. Go too fast; altitude sickness will result. Not aggressive enough; we’ll expose our bodies to the slow, crippling effects of thin air for more days than are necessary. At this altitude, a cautious approach will not be a problem. But next month, we’ll live at a height where our bodies are dying, even when acclimatised.
“Heat won’t be a problem today.” I peer out the window into a cool looking, overcast morning.
“Shame, it’ll kill the views,” Greg says.
Breakfast goes down well for me. 3,400 metres is not the top of the world, but it tests appetite nonetheless. I swallow a multivitamin and iron tablet with the meal. I won’t receive the full range of vitamins with the food available up here; so, I must take this pill to give my body a chance to repair. Iron enables the blood to hold more oxygen. Given what’s ahead of me, I ignore the one-a-day warning on the container. I’ll pop one every morning and evening for the next two months.
♦ ♦ ♦
We’re ascending a zigzag trail that climbs out the back of Namche. Conversations dry up as breathing rates rise. I cut my pace by half. A near hour of ascent asks questions of me. The slope then eases, and we walk through fields of short, scrubby grass, interspersed with large rocky outcrops. Somehow a few of us at the rear have gotten separated from the team. We can no longer see the rest of the group.
“Some climbers we are,” a deep English accent says.
I look around and see Ade, many inches taller than me and sporting a huge set of shoulders.
“I thought you were supposed to be the outdoor expert,” I say. “What was all that talk about the jungle last night?”
“I must have lost my touch. Old age might be setting in.” He emits a deep chuckle.
“Oh yeah, early forties, I forgot.”
But I’m certain this ex-paratrooper from the British army has lost none of his edge. He saw active service in several locations and did a spell in Northern Ireland. As he moved through the ranks, he trained UK soldiers in jungle warfare and outdoor survival in the depths of Belize.
“A bit cooler here than what you’re used to?” I ask.
“Yeah, it’s a long way from oil drilling in Africa. But it’s certainly not my first time getting lost. It won’t be the last time either.” Ade chuckles again and sets me off.
Beside him walks his English friend, Martin. He’s about forty, the same height as me, and just a touch heavier. We’ve not spoken much. He trained on Pumori with Ade and Ted eighteen months ago. In his youth, he served in the Royal Marines with the British Navy. He didn’t make a career of it. Nowadays he runs a construction and scaffolding company in the UK. He looks fit and has as good a chance of success as the rest of us.
“What do you reckon, Ade, which way?” I ask.
“Lost on a grassy slope, Everest mountaineers indeed.” He pauses. “It has to be this way.” He points to the right. “It’s the only route up.”
We restart, and I find myself walking alongside Doug. He’s a year older than me. A firefighter from southern California, he’s climbed before but nothing in the category of Everest. He provided great entertainment at the dinner table last night. He now amuses us with a few of the better tales from his job. His medical, rescue, and rope skills will come in useful over the next two months.
In an attempt to get back on track, one of the lads ahead climbs over a loose stone wall.
“Watch it!” Martin says.
A large rock tumbles down and bounces towards a trekker. She’s standing near me, seconds from a broken leg. I’m not able to move. I can’t make any intelligible noise to warn her. Doug picks her clean up in both arms. He twirls her around, runs a few metres to safety, and plonks her down again. I guess that’s the difference between a firefighter and someone who sits in front of a computer screen all day.
After crossing a few fields, we spot the rest of the group and rejoin them at an old grass airstrip. A ramshackle garden shed has the word “Airport” painted on it. I’m sure the guys who work at Heathrow would have something to say about that. We cut across the runway and follow a track for an hour to the small village of Kunde, at 3,800 metres.
Walled-in fields of sparse looking grass surround stone buildings. Tilling has taken place, but I’d say any crops grown here require sweat. Yak dung in pizza-sized shapes dry out on every available rock. These will be used as fuel. A scree covered slope stretches for hundreds of metres above the back of the village. Tumbling rock avalanches have destroyed the higher pastures.
We aim for the small clinic at the top of the settlement, our highest altitude for the day. Several trekking groups mill around it. Short tours of the facility can be arranged, but we don’t wish to over-burden the staff. It was built with the help of Edmund Hillary. He remained close to the locals, after being the first person to reach the summit of Everest in 1953. Our team pales in size to that expedition. That one totalled over four hundred people, with more than three hundred and fifty porters and some twenty climbing Sherpas.
The early morning chill gives way to a weak sun. We kick back as the thinner air, four hundred metres above Namche, nudges our bodies to squeeze out a few more red blood cells.
“Ok, lunchtime,” Ted says. “It’s just down the trail, that house on the left. It’s Ang Nama’s place. His wife will fix up a meal for us.”
I presume Ang Nama must run a lodging house, as we file into a large room that accommodates the thirty or so of us.
I don’t have the appetite I’d expect after a morning’s walk in the hills. But I eat as much rice, coloured with chopped up vegetables, as I can. For an hour I recharge my mug with lemon tea. The banter flows in the room. Ade and I exchange memories of our differing jobs in Africa: him in the bush recently, me in a Cape Town bank a decade ago.
“Do we need more tea?” Ted asks.
“Ted, yeah, I could do with some more.”
Ang Nama’s wife carries in another heavy flask and places it on one of the crammed tables. Last time I was here I wasn’t ill. But I feel sharper now: more energetic, a keener sense of what’s going on around me. The plan to go slow and flood myself with liquid may be working.
“Has anyone got Aspirin?” one of the trekkers asks.
The hidden enemy stalks us.
“I think I do.” I root out a small medical kit from my backpack. “Yeah, here we go. Headache?”
“Yeah.”
“That should do the job.” I pass over two tablets.
Ang Nama’s wife walks back into the room carrying a jug.
“Hey, hey, here’s trouble,” Ted says. “That looks like Chang to me.”
He’s offered the local hooch first. I think it’s fermented from rice but looks thicker and cloudier than Japanese sake. I’ve not had a drink for a month, and I don’t intend to start now. I’ll down my next tipple as I descend the valley, either in celebration or drowning my sorrows. Macho culture suggests we should knock back the beverage. Most of the team swallows a small cup. Ang Nama’s wife accepts my polite refusal at face value and passes on. But in what appears to be a well-practiced ritual, she challenges Ted’s repeated rejections. She does not respect his manhood until he downs three cups.
After lunch, Ang Nama gives us a quick tour of the house. The large kitchen sits above the stable, where yaks sleep during the cold nights. Over generations in this harsh environment, the Sherpas have determined how best to conserve energy: the heat of the animals drifts upwards and heats the room above. I think the family sleeps in the kitchen; although, Ang Nama might now enjoy a more modern bedroom and the assistance of a hot water bottle.