Above All Else

by Dana Alison Levy

  Finally it is our turn, and we start up. The Balcony is grueling, steep and long, with icy bare rock and patches of deep snow alternating underfoot. My throat is dry and my muscles ache as I work to pull myself up along the rope.

  It is nothing special, this piece of climbing, something I might do on a Saturday afternoon at home, but here at 27,500 feet, it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Still, it is climbing, something that I do almost automatically. Push, grab, reach, and again. And again. The sun starts to blaze over the eastern edge of the sky, and the mountains around us—some of the tallest peaks in the world, all dwarfed by Everest—light up in a glorious pinkish-orange glow.

  We continue up the Balcony, now in the blazing morning sunlight. The view is ethereal. I notice it like it is a faded black- and-white photo in a book, like it must be impressive in real life. But I can’t really see it. Paul’s red form is in front of me, moving farther ahead. He is pushing faster now, or I’m slowing down. I’m not sure. But I cannot move any quicker.

  One step. Pause.

  Another. Then another pause.

  When I look at my watch, a flicker of panic breaks through my haze. It is already 9:00 a.m. Our turnaround time is 1:00 p.m., no later. If we are not standing on the summit at that point, no matter if we are only 50 feet below it, we have to turn back.

  I have to be getting close. We have been moving for eight hours already, and when I stand still, my legs tremble with fatigue. Still, I try to go faster.

  The route underfoot gets steeper, then steeper still. I start to see black spots in front of my eyes, but I don’t stop. Paul is far ahead now, a red shape in the distance. Climber after climber passes me, unclipping just long enough to move around me, as quick as they can be without the safety of the fixed rope, but I barely notice. My crampons slide and clack against the rock, barely holding me in place as I work the jumar up, ever up. The rock angles out even more steeply, and I cling as hard as I can, fingers cramping in my mittens.

  Suddenly I’m there. Somewhere, at least, where the steepness ends and there is a respite. I lower my head and breathe hard. It takes several minutes before I can look up. When I do, Paul is right in front of me. He helps me stand straight and keeps an arm around me, holding me up as I try and catch my breath. I look around.

  I gasp. Ahead of me, barely any distance at all, is a narrow knife-edge ridge leading to what remains of the famous Hillary Step after an earthquake shifted most of it and, beyond it, the summit.

  “Two hours. Less, maybe,” Paul says. He has pulled his goggles off for a moment, and he looks transfixed, energized, almost manic. “We can do this. Rose! We ARE going to do this!”

  I nod, too exhausted to speak, but an excitement almost like rage burns in me. I will get there. I will do this.

  After a few minutes, we start to move again. The ridge is narrow, and there is nothing but air on either side of us. Should I slip now and the fixed rope fail, I would fall 8,000 feet down the southwest face or 11,000 feet down the north side, into Tibet. For the first time in hours, my mind flickers to thoughts of Tate. I wonder how he would do. He is stronger than I am, and even though he’s never been this high, altitude has never bothered him. But we move so slowly, so many different things waiting to kill us. I am grateful he is safe, far away from here. I don’t even want him close to comfort me. There is no comfort in other people right now. They cannot save me. They cannot even save themselves.

  We have walked by dead bodies, more than one, lying in the snow. The cold preserves them in ghastly and horrifyingly lifelike poses: people who sat down to rest and died there, people who fell and never got up. The first time I saw one, I screamed. Now I walk by them without pausing. No, Tate couldn’t help me here.

  We are at the Hillary Step soon, so soon I start to wonder if I am blacking out and still climbing. Once again I clip into the fixed rope and start to move. The black spots return. At this altitude the body is in necrosis, dying every minute. I don’t think of this any more than I can help it. I don’t think of the summit. I don’t think of anything but how to reach above me, find a foothold, and move up the rope. Paul and Finjo are somewhere above me, Asha somewhere behind me, and other climbers are around too, but I’ve never felt more alone. This place has nothing to do with humanity. We are all clipped to a rope, but it means nothing, this illusion of safety. It does not keep us safe.

  The sun is far above us now, bright and hot, and the thinness of the air means it burns with an intensity I never could have imagined before this. I suppose it is beautiful.

  It is hard to care.

  We are above the Step, moving through rolling rocks and bumps in the landscape that keep my eyes focused down and my muscles screaming in pain. I cannot look up, I can only move forward.

  Except suddenly there is nowhere to go. The ground levels off, and in front of me are prayer flags, thousands of them, flying out hard and fast in the wind, and behind them are climbers posing for photos. Flags. Mementos, photos stuck into the snow.

  The summit.

  I am here.

  Chapter Thirty-One:

  Tate

  May 17

  Everest Base Camp

  17,600 feet above sea level

  The sun’s up, ending the longest night of my life. We never left the kitchen tent, staying by the fire and dozing in shifts, checking in with Luc throughout the night. At around four in the morning, Cam tried and got no answer. None of us slept after that. The storm was full strength, wind screaming and howling and blowing smoke back down the chimney into the stove that Ang Pasang kept burning all night long.

  Nobody spoke, until finally Devi said, “Too cold for them to keep taking out the radio. Better they keep it put away and concentrate on staying warm.”

  Cameron nodded and didn’t answer. And we all sat in silence until sunrise.

  * * *

  —

  Now the sun has barely risen, and the wind’s died down to normal icy gusts. Cameron hasn’t been able to get Finjo on the radio, but he says that’s common when the wind’s bad. Even though I’m freaking out, he assures me that no news isn’t bad news…. It just means they’re holed up waiting out the storm.

  No, Rose and Paul aren’t the problem.

  Luc, Yoon Su, Dawa, and Bishal haven’t made contact. That’s the problem.

  All morning I’ve been running around camp with Cam, trying to find people to jump on a rescue effort. But everywhere we go, there’s chaos, exhaustion, weakness, and, way more than I can believe, indifference.

  “No can do, mate, sorry,” says one South African guy, barely pretending to look concerned. “We’re hoping to start our summit push tomorrow, and I can’t be gassed before I even start.”

  Cameron starts walking away, but I stand there. “You’re shitting me, right? You realize they’re in real trouble?”

  The guy doesn’t look up. “The price of doing business on this mountain isn’t just your money,” he says finally. “They knew the risks.”

  “That’s bullshit!” I yell. “You’re telling me you don’t want someone to come looking for you if you’re stuck at twenty-two thousand feet? You don’t check your soul at the door, you asshat!”

  He shakes his head. “You want to be a hero, kid, knock yourself out. But I’m not risking my summit on a recovery mission. If they spent the night in that storm, you’re looking for bodies, not climbers.”

  He zips up his tent and disappears.

  I have to run to catch up with Cameron, who moved on without comment to ask at the next tent. But I’m so mad I’m shaking.

  “Did you hear him? Did you fucking hear him? He’s wrong, right? There’s no reason to assume the worst at this point. Right?”

  Cam doesn’t slow down. “What did he say?”

  I swallow. We’ve stopped outside a tent of Danish climbers. “He said, ‘If you want to be a hero, knock you
rself out, but you’re looking for bodies, not climbers.’ ”

  Cameron coughs and spits a wad of phlegm into the snow. He doesn’t look at me.

  “Well?” I ask. “He’s a soulless dick, right?” But before he can answer, another thought hits me.

  “Wait a minute. WAIT A MINUTE! I can knock myself out. I can go up!” I’m pumped, all the wonderful ADHD adrenaline that shoots through my veins crashing in hard. “I can go up and search!”

  Cameron stares, his sunglasses throwing my own face back at me. “You can’t go, bud. First of all, you’d need to acclimatize, and then—”

  “I AM acclimatized! And I’m on the permit! That’s the point! Don’t you get it? I was training to climb. I can head up!”

  He looks at me, considering, and I want to shake him. The adrenaline is singing now, begging me to climb, dammit, move out and try to find them. This is not a recovery mission, I tell myself. They might be okay. They will be okay.

  As Cameron ponders whatever the hell he’s pondering, a sound erupts from his jacket that makes us both jump.

  “Hello? Is anyone there? Please, answer!”

  The voice is thin and crackly, but it’s alive. And it’s Yoon Su.

  Chapter Thirty-Two:

  Rose

  May 17

  Summit of Mount Everest

  29,035 feet above sea level

  The curve of the earth swoops away in front of me, clearly visible from this height, and the ring of peaks offers gold and orange and amber and deep-pink layers of color. The air is painfully, eerily clear. It’s like looking through a telescope at objects endlessly distant from us. Far below, in the valley, clouds fill the bowl with thick, puffy whiteness. I look down, into Tibet, and China beyond, and wonder what I am seeing, how far my gaze can travel. Paul has his mittens off and is trying to snap photos. Finjo gestures to me to stand next to him and takes a selfie with his phone. I almost laugh. Finjo’s cell phone has been with us since Kathmandu; somehow it is strange to see it here.

  The exhaustion leaves in a rush, and for a minute I’m so energized, so beyond excited that I feel altered, high on some kind of drug I can only imagine. I feel like I could fly, leap off into the clouds and soar and dance on the winds like a god. It’s powerful, overwhelming, perfect.

  And then it’s over.

  We spend only a few minutes on top of the world, taking photos. Paul takes a photo with a few tee shirts and flags that his patients gave him, then leaves a tiny vial of ashes that belong to his father. I hesitate a moment, suddenly so tired that even pulling off my mitten is almost too much. But this is why I’m here. I pull out the photo of me and Mami, along with a handful of tiny seashells from the beach where Tate surfs. I clutch the photo carefully so it doesn’t blow away, and Paul takes photo after photo of me holding it. I look at the photo, imagining Mami’s pride and excitement when I tell her about this, imagining us together, imagining that she is well and strong and so delighted with my stories of the climb, and I can’t help it, tears slide down my cheeks and freeze immediately.

  Then I open my hand and let the shells fall, and they tumble and dance away immediately in the wind. I smile. It is a piece of home, a piece of my real life, far from this place. I kind of like the idea of them blowing down into Tibet and startling some villagers there.

  I stare out at the view again. Glorious, ethereal, unimaginable beauty.

  I did it.

  I climbed the tallest mountain in the world. I don’t have Mami or Tate or even Jordan with me. All our plans and work toward this goal, and I’m the only one of our original group of four who made it. The earth unfolds below me, and I revel in it, trying to love it enough for all of us.

  Chapter Thirty-Three:

  Tate

  May 17

  Everest Base Camp to Camp Two

  21,000 feet above sea level

  Cam grabs his radio. “Yoon Su? Boy am I glad to hear you. What’s going on?”

  The radio’s silent. I’m ready to grab it from Cameron’s hand and shake it, when it comes back to life.

  “Help! Someone must help us! We were out all night; we tried to keep moving so we would not freeze, but it was dark, and I could not move. And Luc…Luc dug in the snow and made a small shelter, then put me in and lay on me to protect me, but now…” Her voice is slow and blurred, and I can feel the fear in a cold sweat down my own back.

  “Where are you?” I shout, but Cameron waves at me to shut up. Yoon Su is talking again.

  “Dawa was not good, but he gave us the radio and left. He was trying for Camp Two….” Her voice trails off again.

  “Yoon Su, tell us where you are,” Cam says, his voice strong and loud. “We’re heading up.” His voice softens for a second. “And, love, I’m sorry to ask you, but we need to know what we’re dealing with. Is Luc…okay?”

  The wind’s still racing through camp, and a huge group of climbers are outside meeting in a big huddle, and someone has music playing faintly, but I swear every sound stops as we listen to the radio. For long, hideous moments, there is nothing.

  Then it crackles again. “I…I don’t know.” Her voice slurs and falls silent.

  Cameron swears softly. “Okay. Okay, we’re heading up. Hang in there. Yoon Su, do you hear me? Try to keep moving. We’re coming!”

  There’s no answer.

  Cam looks at me. “You don’t have to do this,” he says, but I shake my head. That’s bullshit. Of course I have to do this. I don’t want any part of this mountain’s horror show, and I knew that, I fucking knew that, which is why I finally told Rose and Dad that I wasn’t climbing. And yet here I am, and in some sick way, I’m grateful that I have the training, that I can try to help when no one else can. The Icefall’s ahead of me, blinding in the rising sun. It’s more beautiful than I could have imagined, but I hate it anyway, fucking hate every single thing about it. But that doesn’t matter. Now it’s my turn to play.

  * * *

  —

  It takes another thirty minutes to pull together the rescue party. Ang Pasang found two Sherpas with other expeditions who were willing to come with me, so we’re a team of three. Not enough to move four people if we’re lucky enough to find them, but it’s all we have. We head up toward the Icefall, radio securely buckled into my belt, with Kami and Ang Dorji, a Peak Experience head guide who only got down yesterday and is completely exhausted but willing to try. Yoon Su provided some garbled instructions on how she knew they were close to Camp Two, but they had veered left, then stopped, panicked that they’d go over the edge in the darkness and wildness of the storm.

  I move fast through the Icefall. A drumbeat of terror started up as we walked away from camp, and with every step I take, it slams through me. The Sherpas are quiet, one ahead of me and one behind, keeping pace. The sun’s climbing too high now, and we shouldn’t be here, but there’s nothing to do but go through. Yoon Su’s words replay again and again in my head.

  “Sometime in the night, he removed his gloves and started to claw at his face. Now he cannot move, but I can hear his breath. We are dying!”

  The fear in her voice was a virus, infecting me. I don’t want to find them dead. I sure as fuck don’t want to find them dying. But I have to try, because I can. Because Rose is somewhere on this mountain, and Jesus Christ if someone were able to help her and didn’t…I need to stop my brain from churning.

  Ironically, the fear and panic over what I might find has made the actual climbing easier. I move through the ice without thinking.

  Kami stops in front of me.

  “You drink something,” he says, handing me a canteen.

  I wave him off. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going,” I say. But my words come out slow and thick, and he shakes his head and holds out the water.

  “Fine.” I grab it, almost dropping it with my massive mitten. I glug in huge gulpin
g gasps, surprised by how thirsty I am.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Let’s keep going now.”

  He nods and starts forward again.

  Crunch, step. Crunch, step. Another ladder. I don’t look down. I imagine Rose crossing these ladders again and again, imagine walking behind her, watching the ladder dip and sway as she steps on it. Sweat’s pouring down my face, fogging up my sunglasses and running into the scruffy mess of my beard. It’s steeper here, and I have to concentrate, which is a relief. We’re gaining, moving, stretching to get somewhere.

  Finally we’re up and over. I crouch in the snow, breath coming in gasps, while the Sherpas check their phones and mutter to each other. Ang Dorji is on his radio, talking quickly in Nepali.

  “Anything?” I say. It’s all I can get out.

  But he shakes his head. “No news. Just hearing that others in the Peak Experience group are on their way down to Base Camp. We will likely pass them soon.”

  Anger like a wave breaks over me. “If they’re hanging around Camp Two or Three, why the hell didn’t they try and help? Where the fuck were they last night?”

  He shrugs, his smile faint. “Climbers work very hard to come to this place. Once they get here, some can only see the mountain summit. Nothing else. They say they cannot help, and many cannot. Most are too tired. Their bodies are exhausted and empty after the summit. If they try and rescue others, it would mean more people for us to rescue. They cannot help anyone but themselves.”

  “And the others?” I say.

  He shrugs. “All say they cannot help. Perhaps some mean they will not, but in the end it is the same thing.”

  I nod. I know this, I guess. For the people who already climbed, their bodies are trashed. But I can’t buy it. Not really. People can do amazing things when they need to—the news is always full of stories about people who lift up trucks to save babies or whatever. These people, like the climbers at Base Camp, aren’t willing to help someone else, even if it’s life-and-death.