by Sue Williams
She enjoys having so much time to think as she treks, too, and ponders that this would be the kind of thing she’d love to do professionally as an adult. She thinks again about one day helping her dad run Adventure Professionals and, when the time came, taking a business course and developing it further. It’d be great to become a better rock climber as well, and incorporate some climbing expeditions into the agenda. Then maybe some public speaking about adventure travel, and motivational talks, particularly to young people. And perhaps her own brand of adventure clothing, gear, maybe even a few books . . .
Occasionally she wonders what’s happening back home and in the world at large, but it all seems so remote from her, among the mountains in this other place she’s come to know as her second home. She imagines what her dad must be doing, and asks herself how she can ever repay him for everything he’s done for her. But coming back with a summit would be the most welcome down payment, she knows.
The group heads off straight after breakfast, with the trail climbing abruptly through a forest, then on to an exposed escarpment north of the Manaslu glacier. The scenery is spectacular: the glacier, a turquoise glacial lake below and mountains ranged all around. It’s almost enough to take a trekker’s mind off the steepness of the five-hour climb up the slippery trail of icy soil and rock to Base Camp at around 4400 metres. Almost.
The hill never seems to end, with false crest after false crest, until Alyssa starts thinking, There’s really nothing here. Where are we going? Are we really in the right place? And then, just as she’s wondering if she should talk to the guides and ask them if they really know the way, Base Camp suddenly appears. Alyssa is thrilled. But she is also so tired, and happy to have factored in a few rest days before she’s set to start climbing to the peak.
Taylor spends the next days chatting to many of the other climbers staying at Base Camp over breakfast, lunch and dinner. Alyssa is quiet, and reads, listens to her iPod, organises her gear, takes some photos and scribbles in her journal. She carefully writes out the legendary three rules of mountaineering: ‘It’s always further than it looks, it’s always taller than it looks, and it’s always harder than it looks.’ Then she copies out the words of famed Polish mountaineer Voytek Kurtyka: ‘I like to describe Himalayan climbing as a kind of art of suffering,’ he once said. ‘Just pushing, pushing yourself to your limits.’ She wants to prepare herself mentally for the torture that undoubtedly lies ahead.
Also safely in her pack is a copy of the Victorian poem ‘Invictus’, with its immortal lines: ‘It matters not how strait the gate/ How charged with punishments the scroll/ I am the master of my fate/ I am the captain of my soul.’ That was the poem Nelson Mandela recited to other prisoners when he was locked away on Robben Island and which he said empowered him with its message of selfmastery. Similarly, Burmese Opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi also says it has been a constant inspiration for her, her father and his fellow fighters for independence. Invictus – Latin for ‘unconquerable soul’. For Alyssa, the meaning of the lines hit home and she felt they’d be a real motivator when times got tough. If she needed them, they’d make her feel strong.
On the third day, Alyssa’s Asian Trekking expedition group assembles together with their Sherpas. There they carry out a puja, a little ceremony asking for a blessing from the gods for luck on their climb. They throw rice in the air three times, and the climbers put their ice axes in the middle to be blessed. Then they’re finally off. Taylor treks with Alyssa across the rocky route to Crampon Point, the area named a touch unimaginatively after the spot where the ground turns almost immediately to ice and climbers need to put their crampons on their boots to get a grip, as well as their harnesses to connect to ropes. From there, Taylor waves her farewell, struggling to hide how troubled she feels. A lot of climbers she’d been talking to at Base Camp have been climbing for years, but Alyssa is still very new to the sport. Of course, she is very fit and knowledgeable and is an experienced trekker, but she hasn’t done a lot of climbing. Taylor notices how awkward the young girl looks as she stomps off in her big mountain boots, with her backpack slung across her shoulders, and secretly worries, as she herself turns back to return to camp to wait for her own, much more leisurely, trek around the mountain’s base to begin.
The first part of the ascent of Manaslu is one of the most dangerous. Climbers work their way up a glacier, an almost vertical slope fretted with constant crevasses, down which a number of people have plunged to their deaths. Alyssa clips herself into the fixed lines for safety and carefully picks her way forward.
Some of the crevasses are very hard to see, but Alyssa is pumped about where she is, and full of fire. Base Camp is finally gone, and she’s in a world of white, surrounded by mountains. At last, she feels like she’s at home again.
She climbs for a slow, steady five hours and then inches her way up the last steep stretch into Camp I at 5700 metres. When she arrives, she’s met by another climber who’s also slowly acclimatising, and her Sherpa boils snow down into water and makes some pasta for their dinner. There she rests and acclimatises, and heads back down to Base Camp the next morning.
She gets down much more easily than she went up, and her waiting tent at Base Camp by now looks pretty cosy. She goes in to take off her heavy climbing gear and put on her camp clothes: track pants, a T-shirt, ugg boots and down jacket. She looks calm, but inside she’s ecstatic. All she can think is that she’s just had her first experience above Base Camp on an 8000-metre peak. And that feels wonderful.
When Taylor catches up with her over dinner, she can see the teenager is glowing. She looks great, and says she feels great.
‘Well done, Alyssa!’ she tells the girl. ‘I’m so happy and excited for you.’
Alyssa’s Sherpa is reassured, too. ‘She is very strong,’ he tells Taylor. ‘I am happy.’
Alyssa spends two more days at Base Camp, resting, waiting for her body to acclimatise, drinking as much fluid as she can, reading and listening to music. Many mountaineers find the enforced rest periods boring and frustrating as they’re so keen to get out and up, but she tries to use the time productively. She welcomes the space to sit and think, work out her goals for the future and ponder what she needs to do to get there, and to try to train her mind, keeping determined and focused.
Taylor notices Alyssa isn’t as withdrawn as she was the first time, though. She spends a lot more time in the mess tent, and she talks to some of the other climbers over meals. She plays cards and jokes around with the Sherpas, who say how strange it is to see a sixteen-year-old girl there. But they are terribly attentive and protective, and one tells her he has a daughter Alyssa’s age. She’s also smiling a lot more. Taylor is reassured. She now feels confident about leaving Alyssa at Base Camp and going off to start her own trek.
Three days later, Alyssa climbs back up to Camp I for the night, from where she plans to head up to Camp II the next day. The weather’s not good, but they all hope for better in the morning.
When they wake, however, it’s to a complete white-out. It’s snowing and foggy, and impossible to see even half a metre away. In some ways, Alyssa finds it a magical sight; in others, it’s bitterly disappointing. The Sherpa tells them it’ll be impossible to climb higher just now. The higher they are in that kind of weather, the more dangerous. They wait for a couple of hours to see if it might clear, but when it’s obvious it’s set in, they head back down to Base Camp to rest a few days and give the weather a chance to pick up before the next rotation.
Alyssa comes down and finds her tent at Base Camp covered in snow. She shakes it off and resigns herself to one more rotation to try for Camp II again. If she makes it this time, she’ll come back down and then return back up for the last time to try to make the summit.
Eventually it’s time, and Alyssa trudges off back to Camp I again. The climb feels easier this time; she knows the route a bit better now, and knows what to expect. She sleeps overnight at Camp I, but the next mor
ning wakes up with a real feeling of dread. The path ahead is over a massive icefall from which blocks are almost constantly tearing away and crashing down below. This is going to be one of the toughest days of climbing, and she already feels drained. She tries to pull herself together; this is the kind of challenge she’s spent her whole life preparing for. It makes her realise that a climber can be as physically fit as possible, but ultimately it comes down to their mind.
A six-hour climb lies ahead and she sets off up the brutally steep terrain, knowing that because it’s such a technical climb she has to be careful and controlled, but also move as quickly as possible. The Sherpa explains how no one should spend any more time on the icefall than they need to, as it’s just very, very dangerous. The crevasses, in the case of any false move or slip, can prove deadly, and there’s the constant threat from above of falling ice blocks. Also, if it snows, the danger of avalanche increases significantly. Alyssa is soon lost in concentration as she picks her way warily across the rungs of aluminium ladders strung over deep crevasses. Occasionally she sneaks a look down and shudders. All she can see below are dark voids, and certain death.
An hour on comes the ‘hourglass’, a slope angled at about 40 degrees, deep in snow, from which tonnes of snow regularly fall down in a perfect avalanche. There, she also jumars for the first time, ascending with a device that slides along the rope in the path she’s moving, but grips it when pulled in the opposite direction. It’s the kind of technical climb she loves.
She’s only another hour away from Camp II when it happens. She reaches the top of a steep snow hill and moves a little to the left. Then she stops and rests for thirty seconds while she clips her harness onto the next rope, ready to head off. A few minutes later, as she’s travelling, she can hear a loud crackling sound, then the roar of what sounds like thunder close by. She can feel wind on her face and every hair on her head stands on end. The noise is deafening. With her heart in her mouth, she looks up – just in time to see a serac the size of an apartment building sheer off the mountainside and come hurtling down to her right. She clings to the rope, waiting. There’s nothing else she can do. There’s nowhere to go. She utters just three words: ‘Oh my God!’
The pressure of the air displaced by the massive bulk of solid ice hits her full in the body as it plunges past, taking her breath away. There’s a split second of the most profound silence Alyssa has ever heard and then an almighty crash, like the sound of a freight train travelling at 150 km per hour smashing into a concrete wall. The serac has fallen straight down a crevasse just 20 metres to her right. She shudders.
If she’d just decided to go that way, and moved right instead of left . . . She tries not to think about it. She doesn’t want to allow her focus to slide. All climbers hear about things like that happening, but it’s hard to imagine how you’ll handle it until you’ve actually seen it for yourself. But Alyssa is fine. She mentally takes stock and, while shaken, she realises she is now pumped with adrenalin. That was an incredible sight, but it was a timely reminder that, on a mountain, anything can happen, at any time. She repeats to herself that she has to respect the mountains. They call the shots. They always will.
She continues climbing and is soon at Camp II, set in a sheltered hollow under an ice cliff, where she’ll sleep in a tent at an altitude of 6400 metres – the highest she’s ever spent a night. She feels good, with no headaches or dizziness, and decides, with real satisfaction, that this is the best she’s ever felt at altitude. She doesn’t have much of an appetite, however, but forces down fluids and some food to keep up her energy levels. She’s a little lethargic too, and can’t be bothered to write in her diary or read her book. At altitudes like this, that’s pretty normal. One of the other climbers, however, isn’t doing too well. He says he can see a black spot on one of his eyes, which seems to be growing bigger: a symptom of the start of snow blindness. His Sherpa leads him down straight away.
Alyssa feels grateful she’s feeling good, but she doesn’t sleep too well, tossing and turning most of the night in her sleeping bag. She’s due to return to Base Camp the next day but the next time she’s up here, she’ll be hoping to try for the summit. From here, it’s only three to four hours to Camp III at 6700 metres, and another four to five hours to the final stop, Camp IV, at 7300 metres. After a night there, it’ll be straight on to the summit six to seven hours away and just 856 metres higher, at 8156 metres above sea level.
But this rotation is over for now and the next morning it’s back down to Base Camp, a much quicker climb down than it was up, particularly as she gets to abseil part of the way over the icefall. Holding the rope tightly enough in her big snow gloves is tricky, so she always makes sure she is clipped on too. When she finally arrives back at base, it’s busy with exhausted climbers from higher up who’ve been forced to turn back from their summit attempts because of the worsening weather. There are hopes, though, that it might brighten. She tells herself to be patient.
She knows climbing involves a lot of stop and go; sometimes climbing for hours on end and then stopping for days. She uses that forced downtime to think, read, write, rest and rehydrate, and eat as much as she can to build up her energy levels. Glenn stays in touch with her by satellite phone, checking she’s okay. He always worries, but realises that little is controllable on a mountain such as Manaslu. He just has to have faith in Alyssa’s ability to cope.
A new weather forecast comes through on the third day, indicating that there might be a few clearer days later that week. Alyssa and her Sherpa decide to try again, planning to time their ascent for that window. They prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. She climbs back up to Camp I in steady snowfall, unable to see more than a metre or two in front of her. On arrival, she’s grateful to be greeted with a hot drink. But with a sinking heart she hears that other climbers are now giving up their summit attempts, as the window of clear weather just hasn’t happened, and doesn’t seem at all likely to happen now. The odds of being able to get to the summit are shrinking every hour. She decides to stay the night, just in case . . .
The next morning, the weather’s even worse. It’s almost a complete white-out, with snow and strong winds whipping at the tents. As she peers out of the opening, still in her down Gore-Tex suit from the previous day – it had been too cold to take it off before climbing into her sleeping bag – she can see the situation is deteriorating rapidly. She has to almost dig her way out to go and talk to the others at the camp. More climbers are arriving all the time from the higher slopes. A number of Sherpas haven’t been able to get past Camp III because snowdrifts have buried the fixed lines and they are no longer able to work out where the crevasses are. Besides, every time they try to move forward, they sink up to their chests in snow.
One group has reached Camp IV but were unable to advance any higher. Another man has become stuck in soft snow after an avalanche and survived, but is having to call off his second attempt at the summit. Alyssa’s Sherpa is adamant: it’s not going to be possible. The bad weather has arrived early, and it will only worsen from this point on.
Alyssa weighs up the odds carefully. Most of the time, she knows you have to listen to your Sherpa, since they’re the experienced ones who really know the mountains. If your gut instinct, though, tells you something different, then you think about it. But if everything’s telling you it can’t be done, then however much you want to get to a summit, you have to realise you’d be endangering not only your own life, but others’ as well.
One British team insist they’re going to continue up, and try to summit in two days. The others watch them disappear into the blizzard. Alyssa looks after them longingly before turning back down towards Base Camp.
When she arrives, she has another hot drink, then stays for another few days, resting, packing up her tent, gazing by day at the 360-degree view of the world’s tallest mountains and, after the sun goes down, staring at the stars in the night sky, revelling in being in the middle of nowhere. Despite her disapp
ointment, she still feels blessed to be a sixteen-year-old travelling the world. The news reaches her on the second day that the British team reached halfway between Camp II and III before they were forced to turn back round and descend. The climbing season on Manaslu, it is announced, is closing early.
Her dream of reaching the very top of Manaslu is now over. She’s sad, but philosophical. Manaslu is so dangerous, she knew she really couldn’t take the chance of pushing ahead when everyone else had warned her not to. On Everest, she knows she might consider pushing on in weather like that, but not on Manaslu. Yet at the same time, it served its purpose: it was a great training peak for Everest, it tested her, it allowed her to try out some technical climbing, it showed her that she was coping well with the altitude, and it allowed her to prove to herself that she was up to the challenge.
With her gear finally packed up, she takes one more glance back up the mountain towards the summit. She can see nothing at all.
CHAPTER 22
Everest’s Best of the Best:
Andrew Lock
Climbing Manaslu is excellent training for Everest, according to the man who’s often referred to as the mountaineer’s ultimate mountaineer, Andrew Lock. The first Australian to reach the summits of all fourteen of the world’s highest mountains – and only the eighteenth person on earth ever to do so – believes that Alyssa Azar is well on track to achieve her dearest Everest dream.
Still, to make the top, she will face huge challenges. ‘It’s good that she’s done Manaslu, but she still doesn’t have a lot of experience,’ he says. ‘So she will feel a bit intimidated by Everest physically.