Kami felt a bit nauseous as he stepped over the dessicated corpse. The filming thing had unsettled him deeply, not least because the boss had been so unmoved by the pile of bones and frozen flesh. Was this what the mountain did to you? Squeeze all the humanity out of your soul?
‘What was Jamling wanting to say back there?’ Sasha asked him gently.
Kami told her.
‘That’s terrible,’ she exclaimed. ‘Alex really should have had more patience with you. Talked it through.’
Later Kami heard her remonstrating with the boss although he didn’t seem to have much to say in response.
Kami pulled out the shrine bell and placed it inside his glove, the metal warming against the flesh of his palm for the rest of that morning as he dutifully followed the others up the Cwm.
He found it gave him strength.
By 2 p.m the little group of Sherpas had pulled ahead of the Westerners. By 3.30 p.m. they trudged in to Camp Two. Kami had a throbbing headache and he rushed to the mess tent and begged a litre of water. He snatched the bottle and glugged it down in one, soaking it up like a sponge as he slaked his raging thirst.
‘When did you last drink?’ Jamling asked him.
‘This morning. Breakfast.’
‘Not enough,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve told you. You won’t go higher if you don’t get fluid inside you.’
It was a rebuke too far. Kami felt tears prick his eyes. The day had been savagely hard and it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t been able to drink.
‘There’s news about Nima by the way,’ Jamling told him.
Kami’s heart leaped to hear this. ‘Is he still in the hospital? Getting better?’
‘No. He quit the hospital and was last seen getting drunk in a bar in Namche.’
The news was the last thing Kami wanted to hear. Nima had a reputation as a drinker and he knew his recovery would be difficult if he went off the rails.
‘Tenzing should send someone down to help him,’ Kami suggested.
Jamling grunted his agreement but both of them knew it wouldn’t happen.
Wanting to escape the stress, Kami snuggled up in his sleeping bag, listening to the wind plucking at the guide lines of the tent. The day had been really tough and he felt a bit gloomy and frightened. What would Shreeya tell him in such circumstances, he wondered? The words she had uttered at their final goodbye were still with him.
Don’t get sad that we are apart, Kami. I will be thinking of you every moment, praying for you to come back safely.
Kami felt a comforting flood of warmth move through his body. The words replayed in his mind were so vivid, so heartfelt that it was almost as if Shreeya was there with him in the tent. Curled up by his side.
Kami didn’t go to the food tent that night. Instead he slept soundly through all of the hours of darkness, waking up at first light as a blustery storm began to engulf the camp.
He came out of the tent and found Jamling and Sasha already out and dressed. Sasha was looking grim, and she plodded over through the driving snow to talk to Kami.
‘Your friend Nima has been busy down in Namche,’ she told him. ‘Alex has been on the satellite unit and the PR situation just got a whole lot worse.’
Alex Brennan unzipped his tent and beckoned to Kami to come over.
‘Have a look at this.’
He handed Kami his iPad, which was showing the front page of an online newspaper.
‘LEFT TO DIE!’ was the headline. Underneath it was a picture of Nima, staring angrily at the camera, his ghoulish black fingers held up close to the lens. It was certainly a striking image and Kami’s heart plummeted as he realised what Nima had done.
‘Go on! Read it!’ Brennan exclaimed.
Kami read the following:
Alex Brennan’s Everest expedition suffered a new setback yesterday as one of his Sherpa team was evacuated from the mountain with severe frostbite. Nima Gyaltzen, 18, had been assisting on the mountain but was almost frozen to death after being abandoned in the notorious icefall.
‘He was more interested in the filming,’ the young Sherpa revealed. ‘They forced me to go down a crevasse and then left me there for hours. He didn’t care if I was dead or alive. Now they’re going to have to amputate my fingers and maybe my hand.’
Kami had to stop reading at that point as he felt physically sick.
‘There’s plenty more where that came from,’ Brennan told Kami bitterly as he flicked through other syndicated headlines and articles on the iPad – all basically carrying the same story and pictures.
‘He’s gone crazy,’ Kami said.
‘He certainly has,’ Brennan agreed, ‘and he’s doing a good job of turning the American people completely against me.’
‘Maybe it’s true. We should have looked after him better,’ Sasha suggested.
‘You can say that now,’ Brennan retorted. ‘In any case we paid for the clinic and gave him a whole bunch of cash … ’
The argument ended abruptly as a huge blast of hurricane force wind swept across the face. Other expeditions were already on the move, heading down.
‘I guess that’s us done for the time being,’ Brennan said forlornly. ‘We’ll have to hang out at Camp One until the storm’s over.’
The team zipped up the tents and hurriedly retreated, lost in their own worlds as they descended all the way back down the Cwm to the sanctuary of Camp One.
Kami found his mind churning over those awful pictures of Nima’s deadened fingers. So much pain. So much damage.
But he found it hard to be truly sympathetic; Nima had betrayed Alex in an even more destructive way than Pemba. He wondered how much the frog man journalist had paid Nima for his story. He hoped Nima felt it was worth it.
As for the boss, well he had gone ominously silent.
‘He’s got a lot on his mind now,’ Sasha commented to Kami, ‘and the real stressful part of all this hasn’t even begun.’
Kami thought about that a lot as he trekked on through the bullying wind of the blizzard.
The storm raged for three days, dumping a spectacular load of snow on the mountain and trapping the team at Camp One. Alex Brennan spent most of his time on the satphone, trying to put the world right on Nima’s story, and firing off faxes and emails to rally his political supporters.
‘The Sherpa in question has had mental issues,’ Kami heard him say, over and over. ‘It’s really quite a sad situation but we’re doing our best to help him out.’
Tension began to build. Kami felt himself irritable and jumpy, longing for the storm to end so they could escape the pressure cooker environment of the claustrophobic camp. The other Sherpas were equally out of sorts, passing their days playing poker and sipping from bottles of cheap Chinese rum.
Kami had noticed that Sasha’s relationship with Alex Brennan was getting increasingly strained. They were snapping at each other at meal times and on the second day of the storm it came to a head as she sat at the mess table writing her daily report.
‘You mind if I take a look at that?’ Brennan asked her casually.
Sasha blinked in surprise.
‘Normally I just send it,’ she said.
‘I know … but would you mind if I just checked it out?’
There was an awkward pause for a few moments.
‘I’m not sure I want you to … ’ Sasha began.
But Brennan twisted her laptop round so he could see the article.
‘That wasn’t our agreement,’ Sasha protested, ‘In the contract it stipulates … ’
‘Yeah. I know what the contract says,’ Brennan said brusquely. ‘But I saw the piece you wrote yesterday, the bit where you said ‘The fault lines are beginning to show.’
‘I’m just trying to paint an accurate picture,’ the journalist insisted.
‘Well things have
changed and I can’t afford any more negative publicity.’
Sasha tried to pull the laptop away from the boss but he just held it tighter as he read.
‘You see. There, for example. You write “With every setback to the expedition, the necessity of reaching the summit gets stronger. The eyes of the world are on Alex Brennan now and the plain fact is that he cannot afford to fail.” ’
Sasha pulled the laptop out of his hands and snapped shut the lid.
‘I thought I could depend on you,’ Brennan said accusingly, ‘but you’ve changed your angle on the whole thing.’
‘It’s you that’s changed,’ Sasha counter-attacked, ‘you’re getting paranoid. Becoming a control freak.’
She stomped out of the mess tent.
‘I’m not sure you handled that very well,’ Kurt told the boss.
Brennan put his head in his hands. Kami had to avert his eyes.
When the storm finally blew itself out on the fourth day, Kami was deeply relieved. Even the prospect of hard physical grind was better than the endless hanging around.
‘You come with me today,’ Jamling barked at breakfast. ‘Norgay can stay with the film crew.’
Kami was given a two-hundred-metre drum of climbing rope to porter up to Camp Three. Jamling had the same twenty-five-kilo load and they left the camp together for the long haul up the Cwm followed by the steep climb up the Lhotse face for Camp Three.
Many teams were on the move that day and the front runners had kicked a path through the deep snow. Kami was thankful he wasn’t breaking trail but the passage through the Cwm was still pretty tough and it took them five hours to get past Camp Two.
Four rope pitches followed on the Lhotse Face, the angle of the slope constant at about seventy degrees. Kami played the numbers game, counting out twenty steps before taking a rest. Every time he stopped to wait for Jamling he swigged on his water bottle, determined to keep himself hydrated at all costs.
A bunch of Sherpas passed them in the opposite direction, moving down swiftly after an equipment run up to the col. Jamling greeted many of them as they passed, accepting the gift of a cigarette and swapping news while Kami listened in.
‘The summit ridge still isn’t roped up,’ he heard, ‘too much deep snow on the ridge.’
Jamling grunted at that.
‘Same every year,’ he said. ‘It’ll get done in the end.’
As soon as the cigarettes were finished the porters departed with haste, seeming to fly down the fixed ropes as they headed for Camp Two.
Jamling was slow to get moving again. The contact with the other group seemed to have demotivated him and he moved sluggishly up the trail, listlessly pulling himself up the ropes and hawking up phlegm in alarming quantities.
Kami recalled a comment by Brennan; ‘Imagine seventy per cent of your lungs have been amputated … ’
That really was how it felt.
He was curious to start using the oxygen but Tenzing had told them to hold off trying it until they reached the col.
‘You go on ahead,’ Jamling instructed. ‘Make a platform for the tent.’
Kami was surprised. He had figured they would dig out the slope and put up the tent together. But Jamling said no more, just unwrapped another little plug of chewing tobacco and sat down for a further rest.
Kami kicked up the slope for another hundred vertical metres until he arrived at the Camp Three location.
He tied his pack carefully to a fixed line, assembled his snow shovel and chose a spot to start. A couple of friendly Sherpas resting in a nearby tent heard the sound of the spade and came out to help.
Just as the flysheet was pinned down in place, Jamling came into view fifty metres down the slope. Kami had never really thought of him as an old man but now he did look wasted.
‘They’ll flog him to death in the end,’ one of the other Sherpa’s observed. ‘We’re like mules to these people.’
Kami thought about that as he watched Jamling climb slowly towards him.
Jamling was subdued that evening, and he showed no enthusiasm to help out with the chores.
There was little warning of the crisis to come.
In the middle of the night Kami woke with a start. He’d fallen asleep without knowing it. He turned on his headtorch to check out Jamling’s condition. His heart sank as the truth was so starkly revealed.
Jamling’s lips were blue and his skin was a clammy shade of grey. Worse still, his breathing didn’t sound right. His lungs were wheezing like an old bellows. Some kind of Asthma maybe? Or something more serious?
Was it water on the lung?
Kami knew that a climber with altitude sickness could drown as liquid seeped into their lungs. No drugs could rectify the situation. The only hope was to get that climber down as fast as possible. Kami checked his watch. It was 3 .a.m. Still four hours to dawn.
Could he risk waiting until first light?
He picked up the walkie talkie;
‘Camp Three calling Base Camp. Camp Three calling Base Camp.’
There was a silence which felt a hundred years long, then a voice blurted out loud and clear.
‘Base Camp here. Is that you Kami?’
It was Tenzing. Dependable Tenzing manning the radios even at this unsociable hour. Kami rapidly explained the situation, describing Jamling’s symptoms as best he could.
‘You’ve got to get him down,’ Tenzing told him. ‘If he stays there he could be dead by morning.’
‘I’m going to need some help.’
‘OK. We’ll alert Brennan and George. They’re at Camp Two. We’ll radio them now, get them to come up and help you down the Lhotse Face.’
‘Right. Tell them to be fast.’
He unzipped the tent and was shocked to see how hostile the conditions were outside. In his preoccupation with Jamling he had hardly noticed that the blustery wind had strengthened into a storm.
‘Wake up!’ he shouted to Jamling. ‘We’ve got to leave the tent.’
Jamling buried his head in the soft fabric of his sleeping bag, trying to escape the swirling vortex of snow that was circulating inside the tent.
Kami took direct action; he knew there was no time to lose.
He quit the tent, grabbed Jamling’s boots and hauled him out on his back. It was a brutal way to treat him but he could think of no other way to do it. Then he took the sick man by the shoulders and hauled him up onto his feet.
The cutting blast of wind seemed to rouse Jamling out of his trance.
‘Can’t breathe properly,’ he gasped. ‘Need air.’
‘You’re sick. Put your arm around me,’ Kami told him.
Jamling did as he was asked, resting his weight on Kami’s shoulders as they moved slowly away from the tents and out onto the wind-scoured slopes of the Lhotse Face.
Supporting Jamling’s weight was crushingly painful for Kami and he wondered how long he could bear it.
They navigated the route down to the rock steps, which were covered by a good metre of fresh powder. The deep snow here did them a favour; on the steeper sections Kami could get Jamling to sit down, sliding on his backside as Kami steadied him on a short rope. It was dodgy but it worked.
They made it to the big traverse, Jamling getting slower and slower, his head hunched deep into his Gore-Tex hood as he tried to escape the force of the wind and the biting sting of the snow granules.
‘Keep moving,’ Kami yelled.
Jamling eased his right leg forward a few inches. Then the left. He was moving like a zombie in a low-budget horror film, peering wide-eyed into the tempest with the mystified look of a man who has absolutely no idea where he is.
‘Jamling! It’s me! You have to wake up for me!’
Gradually, Jamling’s eyes rolled back down; slowly, oh so slowly, they focused, that precious spark of rec
ognition coming back again for a moment or two.
He nodded. Then sat down as he succumbed to a massive coughing fit. Kami waited a minute then cajoled the sick man back to his feet and they carried on down into the raging snowstorm.
What had happened to Brennan and George?
Kami was longing to see the flicker of headtorches coming up.
What was taking them so long? Surely they should have reached them by now?
Jamling’s breathing seemed to be getting worse, his cough ever more violent. When he spat onto the snow it was a frothy red/brown colour. Every twenty or so steps his legs would give way with frightening suddenness.
Had Brennan and the cameraman passed them somehow in the storm?
But he knew that was impossible; they would be coming up the same fixed ropes that he was descending on. There was no way to miss them.
Two more hours passed and a lacklustre dawn sky finally glowed through the storm as Kami continued to coax Jamling down.
Finally, when the two of them were almost in sight of Camp Two, he saw the powerful figure of Brennan coming out of the white-out towards them. George was not far behind.
‘You made it!’ Brennan called out, ‘must have been a nightmare coming down the face!’
The sheer relief of reaching help was enough to fill Kami’s eyes with tears and he lowered Jamling gently to the ice before collapsing by his side.
Moments later George was with them, already pulling the lens cap off his camera and flicking on the power. George framed up his shot and Brennan started his piece to camera.
‘OK. We’re out here on this horrific day. Blowing hard and plenty of snow. We made the decision to evacuate Jamling down to Base Camp but it’s going to be touch and go now. Been a struggle to get him to this camp but we have to keep going now and make it to Camp One as fast as we can.’
Kami listened to Brennan’s video piece with a growing feeling of confusion.
Brennan was making it sound like he had been in on the rescue from the beginning. In reality the two Westerners had played no part in getting Jamling down the Lhotse Face. He hadn’t even mentioned Kami’s name, let alone given him credit for getting Jamling this far.
The Everest Files Page 13