Left for Dead

by Beck Weathers

  Meg:

  Luckily, our parents did not include my brother or me in this. I only remember one mountain-climbing discussion. There was a lot of tension. My mother said something like “If you climb another mountain I’ll divorce you.” Then they both noticed that I’d come into the room and they didn’t say anything else.

  Bub:

  It wasn’t a family topic. They talked about it on their own time. Obviously, there was some tension, but I didn’t choose sides. Nor did either one of them try to make us choose sides.

  Linda Gravelle:

  Peach and Beck kept their differences to themselves. She came to us, her friends, when she needed to talk, but you never felt any conflict in the Weathers house. Peach is very good at making people feel at home. She set the emotional tone of the household, and Beck followed.

  Peach:

  We went to dinner one time with Beck’s parents, and afterward I played with his head a little bit. I asked, “Why do you never disagree with your parents on any issue?”

  He answered, “I can’t disagree with them out of love and respect. You just don’t do that.”

  I kept digging at him. “Well, Beck,” I said, “how are they ever going to know what you really think?”

  He didn’t respond. Not long afterward, Beck and his mother got into a humongous political argument. I think it was over President Clinton. I left the room, but our son stayed to listen. Later he told me, “Mama, I felt so sorry for Mimi”—my children call their grandmother Weathers Mimi—”because Daddy just pounded her.”

  I said, “Don’t feel sorry. He’s doing this because he can’t tell her that he doesn’t want a red sweater. He’s her product.”

  I didn’t understand why we couldn’t manage to be more happy together, given that we had no external problems. We had great kids. My work was going fine. We didn’t have any grand debts. There were none of the obvious kinds of triggers that get people at each other.

  Peach:

  The second counselor we went to was as useless as the first.

  After we’d talked at length, over several weeks, about Beck withdrawing from the family, physically and emotionally, he said, “Well, there are people who don’t need people, who just like to be by themselves. I think Beck’s one of those.”

  That did us absolutely no good. The truth of the matter is that there’s something wrong with people who stay by themselves. That’s why we call them loners. I didn’t understand why this guy couldn’t see that Beck was depressed.

  As I’m sitting there with my hair falling out, he went on. “You need to share. You need to share and unload on each other.” Looking across the desk at him, I was thinking, “I believe you are not even in the same universe with us.”

  If anything, this guy reinforced me. He certainly said it was okay for me to take off. “Follow your own heart! Go for the dream.” Great!

  Peach:

  That week of fearing and not knowing if Beck was alive or dead was a watershed in a couple of ways. The mountaineering went from something I disliked to something that I hated. A part of me felt, If he cared about the kids and me at all, how could he possibly do this? Beck contended that he loved us, and it never occurred to me that he couldn’t love the kids. Maybe me, but not them.

  The other part of this was that he would neither release us nor embrace us. From Antarctica forward, it would have been real easy for him to get a divorce. Real easy.

  I made some changes. I stopped blaming myself for our problems and started putting the blame where it belonged. I now saw that what Beck was doing was simply unfair. Oddly, I had always been the trusting one. Never had any reason not to be. Beck, of course, never trusted anyone. But after Antarctica that changed. I better take care of myself, I thought, because no one else is going to.

  I became self-contained. It really wasn’t that difficult. I just planned my own schedule.

  One of my pet delusions at this time was that no matter how bad it got with Peach, it would be okay once I’d gone to Everest, whether or not I got to the top. I’d be okay, and everything could return to normal. In all honesty, if I’d summited Everest, I would have zipped right back and bombed up and down McKinley. I would not have been able to leave the Seven undone. That would have been too close. But at that point, I would not have climbed again. I sincerely believed that. I also believed we still could make the marriage work. I’d never divorce Peach. If we were split up, she’d have to do it. I still loved her, and there was no way I’d give up my children.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Peach:

  Part of the reason Beck climbed mountains was that he craved attention. There are some people who do things very quietly. You really have to extract information from them. With Beck, it was about the only thing he’d talk about.

  There was working out, the next climb, what you were going to do, where you were going to go. At cocktail parties, whatever the subject, he’d bring the conversation around to what his next little project might be. You could almost see peoples’ eyes roll back into their heads as they tried to get away from him.

  It is boring to hear people talk about themselves. Beck didn’t catch that. Beck did not read other people. He wasn’t aware of their feelings.

  Terry White:

  I think some people were truly interested when he started talking about it. I’m not sure they still were after an hour. Of course, if you get Beck started on anything you can get at least half an hour. Pap smears, for example, are a subject he can go on about at length—and does.

  Pat White:

  It’s not like Beck to brag. I think he was really engrossed in it. I remember one time at a party, I was mad at him for being so stupid. Then he started talking about climbing. I got caught up in it. He was describing something that most of us don’t have the chance to experience. It was spellbinding, because he is a good storyteller. I got sucked in despite myself. I could see the allure for him. I could see how the mountains could pull him. I guess I forgave him a little bit.

  The Carstensz Pyramid, named for a Dutch navigator who first spied the peak, is a thirty-pitch rock climb, not a high-grade technical challenge.

  There are areas of exposure, sort of like the step you do on Longs Peak, from the east face to the north face. You have to let go of something, and just sort of step out straight into the void to make a long and very committing step to another wall. Otherwise, the only problem is rain, which can considerably heighten any climb’s degree of difficulty.

  Irian Jaya, an Indonesian province since the 1960s, is among the least explored corners of the Earth. There are large portions of the New Guinea highlands that are described on maps only as “obscured by clouds.” It wasn’t until fairly recently that everyone finally agreed the Carstenz Pyramid is 16,500 feet (more or less) tall.

  Our November 1994 expedition was led by Skip Horner. We flew to the little island of Biak, near Irian Jaya, and then over to New Guinea itself, where we spent one night in the town of Nabire. Since we were near sea level and only a couple of degrees off the equator, it was very hot, but not as humid as Katmandu.

  Accommodations in Nabire were not modern. We had running water only in the sense that our bathrooms were outfitted with vats that you filled from a cold water tap. You showered by dipping a bucket in your vat, which drained through a hole in the floor and out into an open sewer. The same hole in the floor served as your toilet.

  A trip to secure some cash turned out to be a novel experience. Apparently, counterfeiting is a major industry in that part of the world, so that money handlers are keenly vigilant to avoid accepting bogus bills.

  The local bank we tried to patronize would accept only crisp, new notes. If the paper money you handed them to exchange appeared ever to have been put to its intended use, they wouldn’t accept it. Breaking a U.S. $50 bill required an hour of patient waiting as various people walked in and out of the room to stare at the note, turn it over, ponder its authenticity.

  From Nabire we flew in a chartered pla
ne back in time to Ilaga, a little airfield on a jungle plateau adjacent to the village of Dani. One of several New Guinean Stone Age tribes, the Dani go barefoot, wear penis gourds and grass skirts and bones in their noses—reputedly, they once were ritual cannibals—and appear to have descended down a very straight family tree.

  Every kid had some sort of upper-respiratory infection, and as far as I could tell the national bird was the fly.

  Not a lot seemed to go on in the village, so we were a welcome diversion. They were fascinated by anything electronic. A chance to look over a wristwatch with an LCD readout was like a ticket to the Super Bowl for them. The kids would walk up one at a time and stare at my arm and then wander off. It was the neatest thing they’d ever seen.

  About forty of the Dani had gone ahead with our gear, which they carried on their heads. It would take them a week to get to the mountain through some very rough jungle terrain; we would cover the same distance, three at a time, in a helicopter we shared with a group led by Rob Hall. I recognized the lanky New Zealander from the picture of him I’d seen in Antarctica, and was immediately impressed with his considerable organizational and logistical skills. Under his overall management, this trip flowed together seamlessly. It should have required three to four weeks; we’d easily complete our objective—door-to-door—in two.

  I was even more impressed later on, however, when I observed Hall’s constant concern for safety. He took great precautions in establishing our route. I quickly grew confident in Rob’s leadership abilities.

  Yasuko Namba was along as well. Although the language barrier prevented us from exchanging much more than basic pleasantries, she seemed a fit and well-experienced mountaineer.

  It was a two-day walk from Base Camp to where we actually began the climb, at about ten thousand feet. The first night we camped in a pretty little meadow. The Dani porters found them selves a cave and cut down a bunch of trees, which they lit on fire at its entrance, turning the cave into a sort of meat smoker. I can’t imagine what they were doing in there, or how they handled the thick smoke.

  Two interesting things happened the next day. A wolf ran out on the trail. One of the Dani whipped out his bow and arrow and dropped the wolf in midstride, a hell of a shot. Then he and the rest of them fell on the animal and ate it raw. They didn’t grab chunks of wolf in their teeth, snarl at each other and run in different directions, but they did consume the animal right there and then. They wolfed him down.

  I was beginning to get a sense of how tough these guys are, masters of their environment, dressed in little more than their smiles. I, by contrast, felt like an effete, privileged weenie. Despite all our high-tech gear, we could not have been more completely out of place there. Also, now that I’d seen how the Dani behave when they’re hungry, I was effusively polite for the rest of the trip. I figured if nothing else, they’d eat me last.

  The one thing you don’t want to be around the Dani is Indonesian. Whether the government in Jakarta is trying to populate Irian Jaya with its own pioneers—in which case the native tribes get shoved aside—or is dealing harshly with civil insurrection, Dani villages have been strafed and Indonesians are not well liked there. One of our guides on this trip was an Indonesian who on a prior outing made the mistake of being caught alone with the locals. They chased him for about five miles. Since the Dani all were carrying knives, there was no doubt in his mind what they intended to do if they captured him.

  The second singularity of the day came as we climbed above the tree line. Displayed along the trail at the top of the pass was a human skull. The previous owner was unknown. Perhaps a Dani, or a slow-footed Indonesian. For us, it was a stark reminder that not everyone who takes this trail returns.

  Rob Hall’s group summited first, then we went up and down. At about thirteen thousand or fourteen thousand feet I experienced a little surprise—my vision shifted. It wasn’t anything dramatic. Although my reading glasses suddenly were useless, my eyesight didn’t blur. It just was a little different. Since there was no mention of this problem anywhere in the literature about radial keratotomy, I assumed it was a minor and inconsequential side effect of my recent operation. I had no inkling of the crisis I’d encounter at the really high altitude and low light on Mount Everest.

  The precipitating cause for undergoing the procedure had occurred in New Hampshire on an ice climb with Steve Young. By then I had tried everything; prescription goggles, hard contacts, goggles with little fans in them, soft contacts, semisoft contacts. Nothing worked.

  In New Hampshire, I was trying to scale about thirty feet of totally vertical ice, working hard and starting to sweat. My glasses iced over from the steam off my face until I couldn’t see where I was going. Finally, I fell, and was suspended from the ice by a single wrist loop. My face was smack up against this vertical wall of ice, and I couldn’t see where to put my feet.

  Young, who had me belayed, laughed at me as I took my ax in the opposite hand and flailed away at the wall until I actually penetrated the ice surface with the tool, then dug in my front point crampon knives. I screamed with each step, until I finally got to the top. At that point I decided, Okay, I’m going to have my eyes operated on.

  Peach:

  Beck was not a candidate for RK surgery. He couldn’t find anybody in Medical City to do it. If you’re really nearsighted, as he is, a deeper cut is needed, which means you’ll get more fluctuation when you go up in altitude. He had it done anyway.

  People knew that laser surgery was on the horizon. I talked to Beck about that. I asked, “Why don’t you wait six months? This new stuff that’s coming up is much better. It doesn’t weaken your eyes.” He said, “No.”

  I think he’d tell you he wouldn’t do it again.

  A drenching rain broke over the Carstensz Pyramid just as we got back to High Camp. Skip Horner, who had hung back to take down some of our gear, was caught in the deluge, which turned the mountain’s upper slopes into a waterfall. Luckily, Horner made it back to camp intact.

  We all then retraced the path to Base Camp, where the helicopter flew us back to the Dani village. We spent the night in their grass huts. Wondering what sort of health hazard such overnight accommodations might present, some guys decided to sleep out in their tents.

  Before the charter came for us the next day, I watched a bunch of Dani children playing soccer, or their version of the sport. There were no goals, and instead of a proper soccer ball they used a ratty old tennis ball. Like the adults, the kids were more or less naked.

  One of them had only one leg and a stick—no crutch. But he was hell-bent for leather, and none of the others cut him any slack. The whole group was just having the time of their lives, laughing and running around in the dirt. They were sweet kids. It occurred to me how impossible a sight such as this would be in North Dallas.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  In 1994 I again inflamed Peach by purchasing a big, fast motorcycle, a Honda ST 1100 touring bike. I called her Scarlett O’Honda. Peach just loathed Scarlett. I doubt there is anything I could have done to make my wife any angrier. The motorcycle was such a divisive issue between us that the mere mention of Scarlett provokes Peach to this day.

  We cannot even agree on the exact circumstances surrounding Scarlett’s acquisition, except that I bugged and bugged her about it, over time, and took the occasion of Peach and the kids’ absence from town to pick up my shiny new beast. I remember that she finally gave in to my intense lobbying. That’s not Peach’s recollection.

  Peach:

  Had it been just the mountain climbing, including Everest, matters might have been different. But if he thought I hated something, he did it. There were the guns, and then the motor cycle. Apparently it is typical for depressed people to lash out against those to whom they are closest. He was rubbing my face in it pretty good.

  Motorcycles were just another one of those things in my life that I enjoyed, lost interest in, then came back to later. I had the Vespa in high school, then a Suzuki when I was
a resident. I got rid of the Suzuki when I realized I was getting a little reckless with it. I always enjoyed driving them fast. But this was unconnected to the depression.

  Peach:

  It absolutely was connected to the depression. I had just about decided that I’d put up with the mountain climbing after all when he brought this thing into the house. I hated it.

  I said, “If you get a motorcycle, I’m going to get a new car.” I’m not a big car person. I’m happy to drive whatever I have for six or seven years. So he did, and I did. He didn’t care, and I didn’t feel any better. I liked my new car, but I didn’t feel any better.

  Scarlett wasn’t just a motorcycle. It was real fast and powerful, one more way for him to get away from us. For instance, when we went to the beach, instead of driving with the kids and me he rode his motorcycle. He ended up spending a day with us, then rode his motorcycle back.

  That motorcycle also had too many bells and whistles. The battery would go dead. There was always something wrong with it. Finally, he said he would sell it, but he didn’t. He had a million reasons why he couldn’t. So I knew it was going to be mine to get rid of. There was nothing that I hated worse, but I knew with amazing clarity that it would be mine to deal with.