Killer Storm

by Matt Dickinson

  Step. Breathe. Repeat.

  Demons inhabit these steep slopes. Maximum doubts come at a time of maximum pain. The mind and body seem to become divorced as the brutal climb goes on. The body has questions for the mind and they seem entirely reasonable.

  Why are you doing this to me?

  When is this going to end?

  Of course the mind cannot reply. Often it has doubts of its own and the question of when it will all end is an impossible one to answer beyond the obvious:

  The harder you work, the quicker this pain will stop.

  To which the body replies:

  That’s what you’ve been telling me all day!

  It’s a very strange game.

  Gradually, Kami began to fall behind. I waited from time to time for him to catch up, very much aware that his newly restored body was now being put to the ultimate test.

  ‘I had forgotten the true size of this mountain,’ he gasped.

  ‘Me too,’ I replied. My Everest climb with Tashi seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Zhanna and Anatoly were even further back. It was obvious the young Russian girl had to slow her pace to match her father’s. From time to time we heard the silvery clear tone of her voice, urging him on.

  My mind wandered. I thought of Tashi and Shreeya, hoping that they would both be OK down in Kathmandu amidst the riots and chaos.

  At midday we found a flattish scrap of rocky ground. It wasn’t much bigger than a ping-pong table but it was enough for a break. We stopped to refuel, get some calories inside us. Barely a word passed between the four of us as we munched on muesli bars and dried dates.

  Anatoly took just a tiny bite. He had no appetite at all. Always a brooding presence, his brow was furrowed as he stared out across the vastness of the valley.

  He had a small electronic altimeter in his gloved hand. He turned it over and over, like it was a talisman, a lucky charm.

  I would have liked to know what was churning around in his head. But he wasn’t the kind of guy for idle chit-chat. And we were pretty well brain-dead from the grind of the climb.

  Viking and three men were still coming up the valley. They maintained a steady pace but it was obvious they were suffering just as we were. They stopped frequently, lying prone on the ice to rest, four little dark dots lost in the immensity of the valley.

  Viking was in the front position. Faster than the rest.

  ‘She doesn’t stop,’ Zhanna said. ‘She’s like a machine.’

  A beeping noise announced a radio call coming in. My heart raced as I heard Tashi on the line:

  ‘I might have an escape option for you,’ she said, urgently. ‘I got on the internet and did some research on the expeditions on the other side this year. Our friends the Canadians are there again, Ryan. You remember the leader, Christophe?’

  ‘Sure. A really nice guy.’

  My mind raced. Tashi had opened up an interesting possibility. It made perfect sense to evacuate from the other side of the mountain if we had a friendly team waiting to help us.

  ‘I contacted him,’ Tashi said. ‘He’s agreed to help if you decide to do it. He’s fixing ropes to the summit for his own team anyway and they could leave them in place for you. When you get down to the valley floor they could meet you and help you dodge the checkpoints to get back to Kathmandu.’

  ‘It’s an amazing idea,’ I said. ‘But you’re forgetting something; we’d have to go via the summit!’

  ‘If Viking keeps following, it’s your only real option,’ Tashi insisted. ‘Otherwise you’re trapped.’

  The radio link suddenly faded, then went dead.

  It started to snow. Gentle, wispy flakes brushed against the hood of my wind suit.

  ‘There’s work to be done,’ Kami said.

  Everest decided to set us an extra test that day. The angle of the slope grew more acute as we continued up the Lhotse Face. Frequent slides of spindrift swept down and coated us.

  I was thinking constantly about Tashi’s escape plan, my mind churning over her words.

  Kami and I also talked the strategy through.

  ‘I don’t think Anatoly can make it much higher,’ Kami said. ‘Certainly not to the summit.’

  A boulder thudded down the face only metres in front of us. To my oxygen-starved brain it looked like a meteorite crashing to earth.

  ‘I see Camp 3!’ Kami said.

  I rubbed a frozen smear of ice from my goggles and stared up the slope.

  ‘Still quite far,’ I said glumly. The tents seemed miles away.

  ‘Two more hours and we’ll be there,’ Kami promised.

  We scraped out a platform to rest on. I found myself drifting off into a glorious power nap, my head snapping forward with a start as Kami nudged me awake.

  I could have slept all day and night right there.

  It wasn’t two hours to the next camp in the end. It was closer to four. Anatoly was managing no more than five steps between every long rest by the time he hit the last climb to the camp.

  ‘We are only as strong as the weakest link,’ Kami said.

  ‘Same goes for Viking,’ I replied.

  Viking’s little four-man convoy had been whittled away by the rigours of the day. One of her team had turned back halfway along the valley.

  I watched as Anatoly puked up on the ice. Even Zhanna’s constant encouragement couldn’t cheer him up.

  Camp 3 was in a bad state. Left without maintenance, the tents had not fared well. Many had been hit by wind, yanking out the ice pegs that anchored them, and a few were totally flattened, the fabric flapping sadly, rips opening up.

  There were only two tents that could be made habitable.

  Kami and I unpacked our belongings, happy to see there were a few spare oxygen cylinders stacked at the back of the tent.

  We jammed into the Russian tent at supper time, sharing the oxygen canisters and cooking up a saucepan of tuna and tomato pasta.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Anatoly said. ‘How about we destroy everything here when we leave – all the tents, throw the cooking stuff down the slope? That will stop Viking.’

  ‘It won’t stop her,’ Kami said, ‘it will kill her.’

  Anatoly shrugged. ‘So be it,’ he said.

  Zhanna’s eyes narrowed. Then she looked away.

  ‘We might need those things ourselves if we have to come back down this way,’ I pointed out.

  We didn’t have the energy to debate it further. Kami and I left for our own tent.

  We slept with the oxygen masks on that night. At more than 7,000 metres up, we were too high to be breathing unaided. The hiss of gas was reassuring and the extra trickle of oxygen kept us warm, even if the masks were uncomfortable where they pressed against the face.

  Calls of nature were distracting or even dangerous. We had no pee bottles so a trip out on to the ice was necessary. The temptation to risk it without crampons was overwhelming.

  I thought about Anatoly’s idea as I wrapped myself up in my sleeping bag. Destroying a safe refuge on Everest went against every shred of mountain sanity. Ethically, it was off the scale of inhuman behaviour. This camp was a haven, a shelter from the storm, a place to escape the elements. What right did we have to wreck it?

  Viking and her men would never survive a night in the open.

  ‘A part of me thinks Anatoly is right,’ Kami said, ‘but doing it would be murder. Terrible karma.’

  ‘They’d die,’ I agreed. ‘As sure as if we shot them.’

  Our conversation petered out as the wind began to rise.

  We fell quiet, both thinking our own thoughts as we drank cup after cup of restoring sweet tea.

  Later we both slipped into a fitful sleep, tormented by thirst in the early hours as our dehydrated bodies begged for fluid.

  At 4.30 a.m. Zhanna unzipped our tent.

  ‘Time to go,’ she said. ‘I can see head torches leaving Camp 2.’

  I poked my head out of the front and saw two pinpricks of light bobbing f
ar below us. Two, not three.

  Viking was pushing hard. Thanks to her weapons she still had the strategic advantage. But another of her men had obviously quit.

  How much longer could she keep going?

  And how long would it be before Anatoly reached his limit?

  The morning passed in a haze of hard work. We cut our resting time down to the absolute minimum, just a ten-minute break every two hours.

  As we gasped our way up the Lhotse Face, Everest pulled one of her surprising mood changes, blitzing the slope with a powerful and unrelenting sun.

  The previous day had felt like the Arctic. Now the vibe was more semi-tropical, our body temperatures gradually rising as the radiation blasted off the snowy slope and straight on to our overdressed bodies.

  ‘My face is frying,’ Zhanna complained. We were short of glacier cream, having to ration just one tube between us.

  I gave her my blob of UV protection, accepting that my face would be sun blistered by the end of the day.

  The intense power of the sun did not relent for a moment. We grabbed a few crackers and a chunk of cheese for lunch, then got going as quickly as we could, desperate to escape the heat. By mid-afternoon, the snow was wet and heavy as liquid cement, slipping down the slope in steeper places in a continuous slow-motion avalanche.

  It meant every step was even more of a battle.

  ‘My boots are wet through,’ Kami said. ‘This stuff is getting everywhere.’

  I was suffering the same. The snow up here had the unwelcome knack of working its way into every nook and cranny, penetrating our gaiters and soaking our socks.

  My calf and thigh muscles were locking up into cramps whenever I stopped. We had run out of fluid halfway up the ropes. My mouth was seriously dry, an unmistakable sign of dehydration that even my altitude-dulled brain couldn’t fail to recognise.

  The lining of my throat had taken a pounding from the dry air. A slight sore throat had morphed over the previous couple of days into a painful inflammation that made swallowing a dreaded event.

  We had abandoned our two-hour climbing routine. The need for rest was impossible to ignore. Stops now came every ten minutes, the delicious sensation of resting more intensely enjoyable each time. The view was opening up beneath us, with the entire arena of the western valley laid out in spectacular fashion.

  Viking was halfway up to Camp 3. Her fellow climber was weakening; he slipped further behind every time we looked.

  ‘That guy’s going to give up,’ Kami said with some satisfaction.

  ‘Maybe,’ Anatoly said, ‘but she won’t.’

  I had to agree with his assessment. Viking’s venom for Anatoly was beyond anything.

  Onward. Upward. We hit a series of stony sections. Not quite vertical but steep enough to need some scrambling. The rock was horribly loose, fragmenting and sliding at the slightest touch.

  ‘Don’t trust these ropes,’ Kami advised.

  The steps were fixed with ancient lines of unknown origin. Some of them even looked like hemp, the rope that was used in the 1950s.

  Kami and I went up first. Then Zhanna set about the biggest of the steps, attacking it far too fast and looking unstable with every move.

  ‘Take it slow!’ I called down. ‘I’ll give you a hand over the crest.’

  She got into a mess. The ropes were conspiring against her, tangling dangerously around her boots.

  After ten minutes of slipping and sliding, she reached the top of the step. She gave an exhausted little cry and hugged me.

  ‘That was painful,’ she gasped. ‘How much further to go?’

  She stared towards the col, wiping her goggles to remove a layer of thin ice that had collected.

  ‘Oh. Still some way,’ Kami said.

  Anatoly was the last to come up. He was gasping heavily by the time he got to us, forcing us to rest for twenty minutes or so until his breathing got back under control.

  Reaching the wind-hardened ice below the col was a welcome relief. The pleasure of planting steps on a surface that did not slide perpetually downwards seemed an incredible bonus.

  ‘I remember this place,’ Kami said. ‘The Geneva Spur. It was a nightmare last time.’

  Kami’s memory was spot on. It was a nightmare. Complications of the undulating terrain forced us up a rising slope, obliging us to climb higher than the col in order to get to it.

  I didn’t check my watch but it seemed to take a massive chunk of the day to climb that punishing section alone. Certainly the heat was still extreme and there were no clouds around to tame the searing power of the sun. Every time I bent over my ice axe – wanting to quit, feeling the sweat trickle down the edge of my mask, wanting the pain to stop – Kami was there with a few encouraging words.

  ‘You can keep going, Ryan.’

  I could see the glimmer of a smile in his eyes, deep behind the mirrored lens of his goggles. He was a powerhouse. Even though he was still limping from the slip in the Icefall. His strength gave me strength.

  The sun sank behind the ridge. A cutting wind began to blow, cold enough to slice through my weather gear and chill me to the bone. I saw that Zhanna was shivering too.

  The snow conditions changed with the shift of temperature.

  The higher we climbed on the Lhotse Face, the more I became aware of avalanche threat. The snowpack had been swept by a strong wind in the night, creating a crust on top.

  ‘Windslab,’ Kami said. ‘Very dangerous.’

  He pushed the tip of his ice axe into the crust, causing it to break up into angular pieces that skittered down the slope.

  ‘We need to get on to the col as quickly as we can.’

  We reached another section of fixed ropes, possibly from the previous season as they were mostly windblown, eroded against the rocks in places to a fuzzy thread, offering extremely dubious protection.

  Then we reached the high point. At long last we could look over the col.

  I felt an intense desire to shout or scream or mark the moment with something other than this mute sensation of utter exhaustion.

  Kami came to my side.

  ‘Plenty of tents,’ he said with satisfaction.

  We could take our pick of the forty or so that had been erected there.

  Naturally we chose the closest tent to our position, tumbling into the cramped, sagging little dome like it was the most luxurious mansion on earth. There were a few personal belongings in there, some spare thermal clothing and a stash of food.

  Zhanna and Anatoly chose a similar dome nearby.

  The cooker snapped into life with a reassuring rush of combusted gas. We played paper, scissors, stone to decide who would go out to collect the ice for melting down.

  I lost. Kami patted my back. Massive willpower was needed to get me back out of that tent on the hunt for clean snow and ice. A piercing wind had started to blow, forcing high-pitched whistling tunes from the larger rocks. The business end of my ice axe chipped away for ages before I had the bag filled.

  I shared the ice with our Russian friends. They didn’t have the energy to come out of their tent.

  Kami and I started the melting process. My thirst demanded results far faster than the cooker could deliver. Kami was the same. Our throats were parched.

  Kami shook me awake when the pot was boiling. Still sitting up, I had fallen into a deep sleep.

  I threw in a couple of mint teabags as soon as the water was boiled, and the tent filled with the delicious aroma.

  My sore throat was still troubling me. At the same time a ‘Khumbu cough’ had flared up. I was coughing incessantly, a dry hack, which I really could have done without.

  We had canned fish and beans in our food supply, but a sachet of mushroom soup was the only thing we felt like eating. That and cheese crackers. Kami took on cooking duties, stirring out the powdery lumps and trying not to fall asleep on the job.

  The gas was getting low. It took Kami over an hour to make a single tepid cupful for each of us. I forced th
e soup down; eyes watering as each mouthful cut a path down my inflamed throat.

  Then came sleep, but it didn’t last long. I had a heart-ripping nightmare; a body lay buried in the snow. As I stumbled towards it, some gruesome instinct made me brush away the cover of ice.

  The face I uncovered was my own, eyes frozen open.

  I woke with a cry of terror, which seemed loud enough to set off avalanches all over the Western Cwm.

  Kami didn’t even stir.

  Shocked awake, all hope of sleep was lost. I kept my head torch on for comfort, staring at the ice crystals spreading on the inside of the tent.

  Dawn came slowly, a creeping grey-blue light brushing against the exterior wall of the tent. I was fuzzy in the head after a night of no sleep. We forced down a mug of coffee each, the caffeine giving my brain a welcome jolt.

  When we emerged we found Zhanna tinkering with her crampons outside her tent. Anatoly was standing some distance away, by the lip of the col, staring down the Lhotse Face.

  ‘Come and look at this,’ he called.

  We all walked over.

  ‘Viking,’ he said. ‘Halfway up already.’

  ‘And alone,’ Zhanna added.

  The four of us stared down at the lonesome figure climbing about 500 metres from our position. What had happened to her last remaining team member?

  Then we saw some tiny figures down in the valley, hurrying at top speed to Camp 1.

  ‘All her men are pulling out,’ I observed. ‘They’ve obviously decided to cut their losses.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she stop?’ Zhanna said. ‘Isn’t she exhausted as well?’

  ‘In your dreams!’ Anatoly replied. ‘That woman doesn’t know exhaustion. Hatred will keep her moving. And she will be armed to the teeth.’

  Kami brought out some biscuits and passed them round. Next time we looked back we saw that Viking was moving even faster, hauling herself up the fixed lines with powerful, rhythmic thrusts of her arms.

  It seemed inevitable that she would catch us. And equally inevitable that bloodshed would be the result.

  Anatoly’s head slumped down. He looked like a beaten man. Then he began to speak.

  ‘There’s only one way to handle this,’ Anatoly said slowly. ‘I’m going back to talk to her.’