by Lincoln Hall
While still at Base Camp, I had spoken to Barbara, who told me that she would be coming to Kathmandu with Simon Balderstone, and that on the day I was to cross the border, Mike was hoping to be at the Tibetan border with the Australian ambassador for Nepal.
“Don’t worry,” Barbara had said. “Someone will be there to meet you. The press are likely to be there as well. You’ve got no idea how much interest your story has generated.”
I had almost forgotten about that conversation as my weary mind endeavored to cope with an increasing array of “projects.” Now I could no longer dwell in my head and only have conversations with people like Russell and Andrey who knew exactly what life was like on the mountain. I would have to face the world and in a very big-picture sense, if the press was going to be there. I felt nervous as I walked to the Chinese immigration point at the beginning of the Friendship Bridge. It was here that the final formality from their side was completed with a stamp on my passport and the passing over of a simple form.
Sure enough, when I looked down the wide concrete bridge, I saw crowds of people on the Nepalese half. Among them were some TV journalists, recognizable by their sound technicians who carried poles with boom mikes. I walked toward them, as that was the only direction available. Suddenly I spotted Mike beaming at me, so I locked my eyes on his as I walked and tried to ignore everyone else. When I reached the halfway point, people crowded around me, asking in Australian accents what had happened to me, how I felt, and what I was going to do now. The only question I answered was that I felt good, all things considered. The severe hoarseness of my voice was a good excuse to say nothing more, so I dropped the volume and whispered, “I really can’t talk.”
The press seemed to accept the situation, encouraged no doubt by the impression that I was a dead man walking. They followed me into the Nepalese border post, where the ambience was much more relaxed than at the other end of the bridge. Cameras were poked over my shoulder as I signed forms with my bandaged frostbitten fingers. Travelers heading into Tibet were puzzled by the commotion. As I stepped out onto the road, Mike quickly took me aside and introduced me to the Australian ambassador, Graeme Lade.
Bizarrely, I now had to deal with the protocols of diplomacy. Everything was proper, contrary to my appearance. We walked toward a late-model Land Rover Discovery, the ambassadorial vehicle. The ambassador’s presence kept the press at a discreet distance. As Mike opened the car door, Graeme told me that protocol required that he had to sit directly behind the driver. That was fine by me.
Protocol also put the press vehicles behind the Land Rover bearing the Australian flag. Soon we were driving down a narrow street, chickensand dogs leaping out of the way and children waving from windows and doorsteps. None of us was in a particularly talkative mood. The ambassador did not need to know the details of my misadventure; he would have read the appropriate briefing papers, with Mike having filled in the gaps. Graeme pointed out the eco-resort where he, Mike, and the driver had spent the previous night. Its big selling point was a hundred-foot bungee jump from a cable suspension bridge, the first in Nepal.
There was a long drive ahead of us, but it was a relaxed journey through what was, for me, familiar countryside. I dozed at times, chatted when I felt like it, but mostly I just watched the world go by. Impatience is not a trait that is of any use on a mountaineering expedition. There are countless opportunities to express it, but they only weaken one’s resolve and commitment to safety. But when we crested the rim of the Kathmandu Valley, I began to feel its first twinges. From the crest of the pass, it always felt much farther than it really is to the city of Kathmandu. My first real stirrings of impatience in two months came from the possibility that Barbara had already arrived.
At last we met the ring road surrounding the ancient city. We drove along the section that flanked the airport, and at that very moment the Thai Airways 12:30 P.M. flight from Bangkok flew directly over us, not more than 200 feet above the ground. Barbara and Simon were on board. It was a unique coincidence that made me believe that everything would be okay.
I KNEW FROM BARBARA that she and Simon would be staying at the Radisson Hotel, so that was our first stop. The traffic had been thick as we came through the town, a welcome contrast to the deserted streets during the civil unrest at the time we left for Tibet. Graeme dropped us off, and we thanked him profusely for the long journey he had undertaken to shepherd me home. He may not have realized that I regarded Kathmandu as my second home, although I had talked about some of my trekking and climbing experiences during the long drive. Mike and I were able to grab a quick lunch from the famous Radisson buffet. This was my first opportunity to drink as much as I liked, as Andrey had gone directly to the Vaishali Hotel when we were dropped at the Radisson. He had arranged with my insurance company for me to visit the International Clinic, and an appointment had been booked. My insurance company was Danish—you have to look far and wide to get insurance for climbing Mount Everest.
We caught a cab to the clinic, expecting that we would catch up with Simon and Barbara back at the Radisson. To my surprise, the press were already there in the courtyard. A much better surprise, when we went inside, was to find Barbara and Simon there ahead of us. A quick exit from the airport, where they were picked up by Ang Karma, had given them a head start. Barbara was seriously overdressed for the pre-monsoon heat, having based her wardrobe choices on our winter visit eighteen months earlier. We hugged and kissed, but only briefly because open displays of that kind of affection are not the way of things in Nepal.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her expression revealing that she felt I was not.
“I catch dinosaurs,” I said.
This may have startled Simon and Ang Karma, but Barbara would have understood. A common response of mine when people asked how I was, at a time when things could have been better, was for me to say that “I catch dinosaurs.” These words were from a Bob Dylan song, “I Shall Be Free”: “I see better days and I do better things. (I catch dinosaurs, I make love to Elizabeth Taylor . . . Catch hell from Richard Burton!)”
I turned to Ang Karma and shook his hand.
“Welcome, Lincoln Daai,” he said with a gentle smile.
Simon and I hugged.
“Onya, mate! So good to see you.”
I turned to Barbara again, but the doctor was impatiently beckoning me to his consulting room. He gave me a fairly thorough going-over with various instruments, while Andrey made brief comments. From the outside it appeared that nothing particularly remarkable had happened to me. At this time of year, no doubt, a procession of damaged mountaineers would have come through his rooms. It was an unusual consultation, nevertheless, because it had been planned for me to go to another clinic directly afterward—one that Simon had determined had the best reputation for the treatment of frostbite.
We had some spare time up our sleeves before our next appointment, so rather than joining the press and their cameras outside, we sat in the waiting room and talked. Or, at least, the others talked and I conversed in my hoarse whisper.
Barbara kept asking me, “Are you okay?”
I assured her that I was, but I had forgotten what I had looked like in the mirror of the hotel at Zhangmu.
The time came for us to go to the CIWEC Clinic Travel Medicine Center, which meant we had to brave the press. There was only one way out, as far as we could see, and that was directly through the mob. I was amazed at the size of the crowd. A dozen flashes went off; questions came from all directions. It was easier that way because I wasn’t refusing to answer any particular questions, just all of them at once.
Ang Karma’s driver was waiting to take us to the CIWEC Clinic. The press must have assumed we were heading for the Radisson, which was just around the corner from the clinic, because only one journalist followed us. Once inside the clinic, I was given the once-over again, with a tetanus shot for good measure. Dr. Pandey examined my frostbite, and again Andrey explained how he had handled my injuries. She so
aked my hands and my foot in an antiseptic solution, then she called in Shanti, a nurse, to dress my fingers. This process took an hour, and once it was done, I looked like I was wearing boxing gloves. They certainly provided good protection.
Our stay at the CIWEC Clinic had been long enough for the press at the Radisson to get bored and disperse. My next priority was to get away from everyone and to have a bath and a sleep. Barbara was also deeply tired after restless nights of worry. She had seen in my eyes that I had been deeply traumatized, but when we were able to spend time together, her fears that I might have been irreparably damaged were laid to rest. I had frostbite, yes, but I had decided to regard it as a rite of passage.
THEY WERE STRANGE but busy days in Kathmandu. After Ang Karma had dropped us back at the Radisson that first afternoon, he told us that he and Kunga would bring us a dinner of mo-mos.
“This way you will not have to face restaurant crowds,” he said. “We will come to your room.”
“Can you do that?” I asked. “What will the hotel think?”
He raised his hand, palm upward and outward. He needed to say nothing. He knew the people here; these were special circumstances. His gesture and patient smile said it all.
The mo-mos—fried vegetable dumplings—were delicious. He knew they were my favorite Sherpa and Tibetan dish.
The next morning Karma and Kunga came with breakfast, a rich delicious porridge. They brought tea in a thermos and toast insulated by tea towels. It was simple food but just what I needed. Each morning they did this for us, making us feel welcome, making us feel at home, eager to rebuild me, with their lovingly prepared food, into the man I had once been.
Another caring routine was the daily changes of the dressing covering my frostbite at the CIWEC Clinic. Dr. Pandey would check my progress, then Shanti would slowly and carefully replace the dressings. It felt almost like a ceremony to me. Regardless of what was happening in the room—Mike filming the treatment or the NBC crew doing the same— Shanti remained unflustered.
The damage was quite distinct now. The outermost joint of every finger was black, signifying dead tissue, and the delineation became clearer every day until it was as distinct as the squares on a chessboard. My thumbs were damaged as well, but I was confident they would recover fully. But the entire big toe of my right foot appeared to have had its final marching orders.
ANOTHER DAILY ROUTINE was me trying to piece together my story. My hallucinations were remarkably clear, as were many of my memories of the climbing—the different camps, the funny incidents, the tragedies staring me in the face. I talked to Barbara about all these things, not as an extended monologue—although there were a few of those—but when incidents came into my head. One anecdote would prompt another that I had forgotten, and in this way I gradually filled out the picture.
Russell Brice had worried me with the stories his Sherpas had passed on to him about my behavior on the mountain when overcome with cerebral edema. We left each other messages at our hotels that we should get together for a beer and a chat. I was not so keen on the beer, but I like my water, so long as it is not cold.
Dan Mazur proved to be a hard man to find. I learned that he was out of Kathmandu and that he would be arriving on a particular afternoon. Details changed and messages went astray, but finally we made contact. We agreed to get together that afternoon at a delightful place known as Mike’s Breakfast. I first went there in the early 1980s, not long after the old elephant-keepers’ quarters had been converted to a lodge and restaurant. The elephants had long since moved on.
I could barely remember my previous conversations with Dan, but I knew that I hadn’t yet thanked him for giving up his chance for the summit in order to save my life. He was a guide and very experienced climber, and he had summited Everest some years earlier, so for him it was not the end of the world. Dan brought with him Jangbu Sherpa, who was keen to see how well I had recovered. It was early days yet, but I was a different man from the one they had resuscitated on the summit ridge. We joked, took photos, and I asked Dan to point me toward Myles Osborne and Andrew Brash. I learned that Andrew was staying at the Kathmandu Guest House, so well known and long established that it is now an institution.
I rang the Kathmandu Guest House and left a message that we should meet. A message came back suggesting that we meet for dinner at a restaurant I had never been to—“just show up if you can,” the message said. I was unable to show up because I could not find the place.
I then got distracted by the arrival of an NBC television film crew, which flew in from a project in London. I spent half a day with them, then needed to sleep the entire afternoon afterward. Sleep was one of my biggest needs.
Some people I did not have to chase. Mostly we ate our lunches at the Radisson. There was the convenience factor, as my doctor’s instructions were to walk as little as possible, but there was also the fantastic lunchtime buffets. I knew the hotel well because I had spent many nights here over the years as a trekking guide for World Expeditions. Here I could put my foot up on a chair. A procession of the 7Summits-Club climbers came through. It seemed that just before they left Kathmandu they came to see me. Among them were Slate, Ronnie, Henrik, and Kirk—when they had left Base Camp I was dead, high on the mountain.
“I thought it was impossible you could die,” Slate told me over lunch. “With the attitude you had and all your experience, I thought it was not possible for you to die.”
He speared another potato with his fork. “And I was right—it was not possible.”
AS THE DAYS PASSED, I felt stronger, thanks to proper rest, good food, and plenty of love and water. The frostbite was glaringly obvious, but the damage inside was impossible to judge. The trauma I had suffered was still apparent in the wildness of my eyes. Barbara, Simon, and Mike withheld some bad news from me until they felt I was able to cope. Then Barbara told me one morning that Sue Fear had died on Manaslu. The accident had happened while I was riding the yak to Base Camp, three days ago now.
“We didn’t tell you because it wasn’t confirmed at first.”
To say that “I could not believe it” was not true, but I did not want to believe it. When I learned of the circumstances, I thought that the only realistic hope could be that she had died without pain.
Sue and her climbing partner, Bishnu Gurung, had reached Manaslu’s 26,781-foot summit on the morning of May 28. They had descended to a snow plateau at 25,000 feet, where Sue broke through the crust of the surface snow and plunged headfirst into a deep crevasse. Bishnu held her weight tightly on the rope for over an hour, shouting to Sue but hearing not one single reply. He endeavored to set up a pulley system that might have made it possible for him to pull her free, but suddenly the snow around the crevasse collapsed, dragging the rope and the anchor in. Bishnu leaped to the side and escaped with his life. He was alone, high on the mountain, and was very lucky to make it down alive.
Barbara told me that everyone had been holding out hope because I seemed to have come back from the dead, so why not Sue? Crazy logic. It is one thing to be a body left on a mountaintop, but altogether another to disappear down a crevasse high on a deserted, 26,000-foot peak, without a trace, without a cry for help.
Sue’s death was a missile from left field. There had been so much death on Everest, and I had grieved as best I could for those people—and to ease my own spirit. I tried to rationalize, to find reasons, but there had been only cold comfort, so that in the end I walked gently and could only wash my hands of the tragedies.
But I did not want to wash my hands of Sue. Her intense make-it-happen approach to life had defined her. Whether her spirits were up or down, she had always looked for the next chance or was creating it. There were no more next chances now, and I felt deeply saddened by the fact that she would no longer be bringing goodness to the world.
THE NEWS ABOUT SUE made me only more desperate to track down Myles Osborne and Andrew Brash. Dan had disappeared off the radar, so I could not confer with him, and t
he message system at the Kathmandu Guest House did not seem to be ideal.
There were other engagements that took up time. I liked to spend my evenings relaxing and my nights sleeping, but it would have been rude to say no to the 7Summits-Club farewell dinner at the Rum Doodle. I arrived late and left early because I knew I would not be able to raise my voice above the noise of the crowd, and that if I tried, my throat would ache. It was a night of vodka and toasts of all kinds, including one to me for surviving and another to the Sherpas for bringing me down. If there were mentions made of the dead, I did not hear them. I wanted to talk with the Sherpas, but it was too festive an occasion, and instead I asked Alex to arrange a time for me to meet with them in more controlled circumstances.
Mike, Barbara, and I had dinner with Russell Brice and a few other Everest luminaries at the Red Onion Bar, Russell’s favorite watering hole, which just happened to be next door to the Radisson.
Simon turned up much later, having undertaken to bring back to Australia all Sue Fear’s belongings. Since we had arrived, he had been kept busy dealing with the press. I was not all that surprised at the initial flurry of interest. The press could always draw a few column inches from a death or survival story on Everest, and my story had both. There was also Sue’s tragic death to add to the mix. However, I was surprised the media interest did not die down. Channel 7 sent a four-person crew to Kathmandu to shoot a twelve-minute interview with Barbara and me, which took place in the garden at the Radisson and inside at the CIWEC Clinic. When Kunga heard this was about to happen, she whisked Barbara away to a beauty salon so that her hair could be styled, her nails done, and more makeup applied than I had ever seen on Barbara. Kunga was more excited about the process than Barbara. Simon commented that she looked like a Nepalese princess.