Beyond the summit: An Everest adventure and Romance

by Linda LeBlanc

  Having spotted boots in a shop that sold used expedition and hiking gear, Dorje raced in and jumped up on the counter. “I want those,” he said, pointing to a brown pair with red laces.

  The man lifted them from the shelf and handed them to him. Running his finger over the hard, black sole, Dorje wondered how his feet would find their way on the path at night or grip a swaying bridge. “How much?” he asked, thinking he could buy a pair for Nima too.

  “One hundred and fifty rupees. They’re good quality, all leather.”

  “That’s impossible. Nobody has that much!” Dorje shouted, his jaw so tight that it hurt.

  “Tourists do. And when they need boots, I have the only ones in Namche.”

  “But what about Sherpas?”

  “Sorry,” said the shopkeeper. “That’s how it is.”

  That’s how it is, Dorje still repeated to himself even now, four years later as he lay in the yak herder’s hut at Gorak Shep. Beside him, Ang Lahkpa suddenly woke with a snort, shivered all the way down his spine to his bare feet, grumbled about the cold, and fell back asleep. Soon the snoring resumed and droned on as it had every night. Dorje tucked his blanket tighter and chanted his personal mantra—the only thing that made returning to this horrible, frigid place bearable. The mikarus pay many rupees so I will simply smile and endure and take them up the mountain.

  CHAPTER 3

  As soon as the first rays of light stole through the shutters and crawled over the mound of shivering Sherpas, Dorje wrapped his blanket across Ang Lahkpa and ducked to exit the hut through a short doorway designed to keep out evil spirits too tall and stiff to bend low. Highest in the Everest region, the solitary building at Gorak Shep sat on a sandy flat at the base of Kala Pattar, an 18,200-foot mountain that looked like a rocky, black mound compared to the peaks surrounding it. Since that first trip with the Japanese four years ago, Dorje had earned the title of sirdar, the highest-ranking Sherpa position in charge of the trek and responsible for decisions regarding Sherpas and mikarus. With all but one of the foreigners wanting to climb Kala Pattar for the incredible view of Everest it afforded, Dorje assigned three porters to accompany them on the 90-minute hike. An American named Marty chose to go to the Everest Base Camp instead despite repeated warnings that he wouldn’t be able to see the mountain from there and that it was only a dirty glacier covered with rocks and trash from past expeditions. However, Marty was determined to tell his friends he’d stood at the base of Everest and Dorje’s job was to keep the mikarus happy. Besides, he liked this American. Marty made him laugh.

  Dorje grabbed the icy tent flap and shook it vigorously, watching the crystals splinter. “Time to go,” he said in English.

  “Buck buck?” Marty’s favorite expression that rumbled from deep in his throat made Dorje chuckle.

  He shook the tent even harder. “You lazy mikaru. Get up.”

  When the door zipped down a few inches, a finger poked through the hole, wiggling to test the temperature. “Brrrr, serious cold-ness,” Marty muttered and quickly zipped back up, but Dorje could hear him rustling about inside and knew he’d soon crawl out. Meanwhile, he packed last night’s chapatis and nak cheese for the trek and instructed the cook and kitchen boys to get the fire going for morning tea and a pan of wash water for each mikaru. Marty finally emerged in his usual attire: whatever flew out of the duffle first, regardless of color or condition. He claimed life was much too short to worry about whether one’s socks matched. His never did. His hair sticking out on all sides and growing down his neck like a mongrel’s, Marty held the brim of a bright green hat with writing on the front, clamped it down on his head, and grinned. “Time for some serious fun-ness. Which way?” His voice rose and fell as if playing with each syllable, and Dorje liked this peculiar habit of adding ness to words.

  With exaggerated marching steps and arms swinging, Marty headed for the right bank of the Khumbu Glacier. “Who lives in that place?” he asked, flipping his hand over his shoulder at the stone hut.

  “Nobody. Yak herders use it when they come for summer pasture. There are more huts in the next valley at Gokyo.”

  A shudder ran all down his body as Marty shot him a stricken look. “You’re not a yak herder.”

  Pretending to swat Marty’s rear with a switch, Dorje said, “No. Mikaru herder,” and erupted in a burst of laughter. “But when you foreigners don’t come in the summer monsoon, I take care of yaks to please my father.”

  Marty hopped onto a rock and stood on one foot, the other leg swinging precariously over a small crevasse, arms waving wildly to keep his balance.

  “You cause more trouble than a yak or female nak,” Dorje scolded and tugged him down. “You are a crazy man.”

  “No. But a little wacky maybe.”

  “What is wacky?” Dorje asked, wanting to add this word to his burgeoning English vocabulary. Four years ago, he’d figured out that speaking the language of the mikarus guaranteed larger tips and more promotions. He’d been badgering foreigners to teach him ever since. Marty pulled his hair out at the sides and wiggled his tufted eyebrows to demonstrate. Curious word, this wacky thought Dorje.

  “Life is like a stubborn old mule,” Marty said. “So you have to smack it across the head every once in a while just to keep it in line.”

  Even though he understood the individual words, Dorje had no idea what the American was talking about and changed the conversation by explaining that young people take herds up high to graze at summer camps called yersas when summer rains sprout new grasses. Three months of unchaperoned work and play.

  Marty abandoned leaping over fragile crevasses and sidled up to Dorje. “You have a girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” Dorje answered with a grin and swagger. “A most beautiful Sherpani.”

  “Huh. Well, American women would go crazy for you too. When you want to attract one, just slowly comb your fingers through your thick black hair and flash that big grin of yours.”

  “You have a woman?”

  “Oh, no, that’ll never happen. I’d have to grow up!” Pushing his arms out to make himself look larger, Marty drew his eyebrows together in a fierce look and growled. “But I have this really big dog.”

  After growling too, Dorje started laughing so hard he almost tripped over an ice block, still not accustomed to these boots. Even though his feet were warm now, he missed the connection with the earth he used to have. Chuckling to himself, he remembered his first few days in them. He had earned 300 rupees carrying a French woman for twelve days when she sprained her ankle. After buying boots for himself and his brother, he ran outside and jumped in the mud to verify the footprint matched those of the trekkers. His entire being singing, he swaggered up and down every path in the village, kicked the dirt, crossed over sharp rocks, and stomped in puddles. Running up the stairs to show Nima, he discovered his feet had acquired new dimensions. His toes kept hitting the risers, making him stumble all the way and catching himself on his hands.

  He glanced at Marty’s feet and wondered at what age he had first worn shoes. Noticing the American was now breathing harder, he warned, “You must go slowly, bistarai, bistarai, or you will get sick this high.”

  As they followed cairns up the center, the glacier twisted and undulated in its unrelenting downward progress. Recalling Marty’s comments about women, Dorje amused himself with memories of the first time he and Shanti made love last summer at Gokyo. The breeding of yaks and cows all that week had imbued the air with a heightened sensuality. Conversations between the sexes were full of innuendoes and boy/girl roughhousing occurred frequently. With all that excitement surrounding him, Dorje couldn’t contain himself any longer. One afternoon when the sun sneaked out between downpours, he ran to the hut where Shanti was churning nak butter and asked her to come outside.

  The entire pasture had blossomed into a field of alpine flowers glistening from the rain: deep-blue poppies, pink geraniums and wild roses, dark purple bellflower and primrose, pink lilies and dwarf rhododendr
on. Leading her over a low ridge away from the huts and grazing animals, he intended to gently ease her onto a blanket of yellow buttercups, thread a deep-pink orchid through her long black hair, and whisper sweet things, but she never gave him a chance. Shanti stuffed grass down the back of his pants and took off running with her long skirt sweeping over the meadow. He could suddenly sympathize with yaks trying to mate recalcitrant cows.

  When he caught her and pulled her to the ground, they laughed and wrestled until Shanti finally rolled onto her back, threw her dress over her head, and wiggled her bare hips in anticipation. Dorje took her immediately and had the most beautiful girl in the Khumbu the rest of the summer—always robust and playful, ever ready. When summer ended and they returned to their villages, he often sneaked into her parent’s house at night to make love. In the fall trekking season, it was hard being away so many nights. He missed her brown, almond eyes and feeling her legs locked around him. Smiling to himself, Dorje decided yak herding provided some benefits but it had nothing to do with those shaggy, unruly beasts.

  Three hours after leaving Gorak Shep, Dorje and Marty reached Base Camp, a wasteland of rock and ice strewn with rubbish: used oxygen canisters, empty food tins, frail guy wires, and tent canvas shredded by icy winds. A 2,000-foot icefall at the head of the glacier loomed before them like a torrent of violent rapids frozen in time, silent, its force restrained. However, walking to the base of the frozen river, Dorje discovered it was very much alive, constantly twisting and collapsing on itself in a bizarre and chaotic landscape.

  “Now that’s serious ice-ness,” Marty announced in a flat voice.

  “It is the most dangerous place on the mountain,” said Dorje. “Many Sherpas have died here.”

  “Then I must go up.”

  “Why?”

  “To prove that I am not afraid.”

  “Prove to who?”

  “My father,” Marty answered with a nervous sweat seeping down his brow. “If you’re afraid, wait here, but it’s time for me to do some head smacking.”

  Still confused about head smacking, Dorje couldn’t let him go alone into this eerie maze of shifting, unstable ice with turquoise pinnacles towering a hundred feet above them.

  His voice measured, no longer playing with each syllable, Marty asked, “Have you ever been in a cave?”

  “I do not know this word.”

  “It’s cold and so black you can’t see a thing. Bats fly into your face. Unseen things slither around your legs and feet. And you never know when you’ll step off a cliff and fall into a deep, dark hole.”

  “I would not like such a place.”

  Stopping, Marty stared at immense blocks that had tumbled and landed precariously poised to topple again. “When I was seven, my father made me go in the cave first.”

  “But you were afraid.”

  “Terrified, same as I am now. I started crying and urine ran down my leg. That only made him madder. He hit me and said no son of his would grow up a coward.”

  “Did you go?”

  “I had no choice. He would have beat me like the day I refused to clean the deer he’d shot when I was only seven.”

  Feeling a rush of compassion, Dorje said, “You can choose now. Your father is not here.”

  Marty rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes, he is. He goes everywhere with me.”

  Walking in the icefall was almost impossible as they stumbled over recent avalanche debris and shattered ice. When they encountered a maze of enormous crevasses threatened on all sides by crumbling séracs, Marty’s body started shaking like an autumn leaf barely clinging to a branch jostled in the wind. “I can do this,” he murmured. “I can do it.”

  Dorje didn’t understand Marty's invisible demon. “We must turn around. It is too dangerous without the crampons and ice axe climbers use.”

  “Not yet. I must go another 100 yards.”

  For what? Dorje started to shout but the words froze on his lips as a sérac suddenly split in half and swept past them in a merciless jumble of ice that rocked the ground before shooting into a gaping crevasse. Silence filled the air as they stared at the ice-strewn slope under the tilting remains of the pinnacle—the only route back to Base Camp.

  “I’ll show you I’m not afraid,” Marty yelled but Dorje waved his arms and pointed to the unstable mass, certain that any noise or movement would bring it tumbling down. “What’s the matter? Are you scared?” Marty asked, his voice bounding on the words.

  “Yes. If you do not respect Miyolangsangma, the goddess of the mountain, you will make her angry and bad things will happen.”

  “Nonsense. I don’t believe in goddesses except for those in the flesh. Geronimo,” he yelled and strutted defiantly beneath the overhanging ice.

  “That was a stupid thing to do.”

  “But we made it past, Buck buck. And now I’ll teach you how we ski in Colorado.”

  Dorje was afraid to unleash his errant voice again. Out of anger, he had called a mikaru stupid and that was offensive to his own ears. Never had he spoken his true feelings to them, but Marty was different with an odd fascination and hold over Dorje that made him uneasy. Managing to restrain his tongue, he simply asked, “What is skiing?”

  “You wear these long pieces of wood on your feet and go like this.” Legs together, Marty bent his knees, held his arms out in front, and leaned forward slightly. Swinging his rear from side to side, he made Dorje laugh and forgo his misgivings momentarily. Suddenly Marty yelled, “Geronimo,” again and took off sliding down an ice chute.

  Since this reckless and frustrating American had defied the gods of the mountain, Dorje now had to prove himself equally fearless or lose face. With his heart banging in his throat, he took a deep breath and flew down the chute after him, whirling out of control. He crashed into Marty waiting at the bottom and tumbled head over heel. Instead of the expected terror, he felt a wild exhilaration. So that’s what head smacking is all about.

  When they reached the glacier again and easier footing, Marty asked if Dorje had climbed Everest. “No. But I must someday because Hillary carried me on his shoulders and they called me the Tenzing of the future.”

  Eyeing him suspiciously, Marty crimped the corner of his mouth. “You met them, Hillary and Tenzing, the first two to reach the top?”

  “When I was five.” He hoped that would be enough because telling more would stir up memories of how things used to be with his father, but Marty insisted and Dorje’s responsibility to keep mikarus happy overshadowed all else. So he would relate only the facts of the meeting and not reveal of the emotions of a young boy. Those would remain hidden in his heart.

  He began by talking about the day he met Hillary. Dorje’s father had been gone many months taking 100 crossbreed zopkios and zhums over the Nangpa La into Tibet to trade for horses, which he would then drive south to India to barter for goods and grain. As Dorje had done every morning, he ran to the head of the trail and positioned himself to wait for his father. Porters continually arrived carrying loads of grain, handmade paper, and incense from southern Nepal to be bartered for Tibetan goods with the Sherpas of Namche acting as middlemen. Rushing to meet them, he searched for his father’s sweeping dark robe and braided hair tied in a red ribbon, but as each group passed, his heart sank and the lonely place inside grew larger.

  Late one afternoon, he heard shouting coming from the upper end of the village as men and women poured from their houses onto the narrow dirt paths. Dorje joined them lining the trail as strange men passed, taller than Sherpas with light skin and hair, speaking an unknown language, their heavy shoes leaving peculiar imprints in the dirt.

  Tugging on the skirt of an old grandmother, he asked, “Bajai, what is it? What?”

  “Men returning from Chomolunga, the mountain they call Everest.”

  When porters arrived carrying a Sherpa on their shoulders, everyone shouted, “Long live Tenzing!”

  “Bajai, who is Tenzing?”

  “Tenzing Norgay. He and a white
eyes named Hillary are the first to reach the top of the Mother Goddess of the World.”

  Intoxicated by the fervor and excitement of the crowd, Dorje jumped up and down waving his arms and yelling, “Tenzing, Tenzing.”

  He froze and stared at a man they called Sahib Hillary arriving amid cheers and clapping: a giant among the Sherpas with a narrow face and long, thin nose unlike the broad Mongoloid features of the villagers. A shock of brown hair hung over his forehead; his skin and eyes were fair. Determined to touch him, Dorje followed the white eyes to a tent camp in the south end of the village and hung by his elbows on a stone wall, toes climbing the rocks. Soon other children gathered to watch too, their arms entangled in a mass for security, faces peeking out from behind each other.