Peak

by Roland Smith

  (Which was pretty shaky at the moment, but I didn't tell JR that.)

  "...or Sun-jo and Zopa, or you and your father. The point is that we won't know what the story is about until we know how the story ends. All we can do now is film details. When we get done we'll piece the documentary together like a jigsaw puzzle."

  Which is exactly how Vincent at GSS taught me to put a story together. He wouldn't let me write a word until I'd finished my research. Hold the story inside until you are ready to burst.

  He made me write my research notes on three-by-five cards. On each card was a scene, a character note, or a detail from my research.

  When you do your research write down whatever interests you. Whatever stimulates your imagination. Whatever seems important. A story is built like a stone wall. Not all the stones will fit. Some will have to be discarded. Some broken and reshaped. When you finish the wall it may not look exactly like the wall you envisioned, but it will keep the livestock in and the predators out.

  (I wondered if Vincent would accept a documentary in place of a Moleskine, but I doubted it.)

  "It would be great," JR continued, "if you could write down your shots. It's not easy to do, especially at high altitudes, but it would help us when we edit."

  "If you can't write them down," Jack suggested, "you can record what you're doing on the microphone."

  FROM A DISTANCE the porter camp looked neat and prosperous, but as we got closer it became clear that it was neither. It seemed that everything in it was made out of castoffs—as if the porters hung around after the climbing season and collected the leftovers from our camp and put it in theirs. There were a couple of shacks that had more flattened tin cans nailed to them than wood. The tents were sewn together from bits and pieces of other tents. The yak halters were made from frayed climbing ropes.

  The camp had a different smell to it as well: dung, wood-smoke, and the old palm oil that the porters cooked their food in. But the smell and disarray were soon forgotten in the minor stampede of men that came running when they saw Zopa. Sun-jo and Holly came out of a battered tent and joined us. Sun-jo still looked pretty weak, which I wasn't unhappy to see. I wondered how he was going to do tomorrow when we headed back up to ABC.

  He pulled me to the side. "I appreciate your standing up for me last night," he said. "I am sorry I didn't tell you about Zopa."

  "Forget it," I said, although I hadn't come close to forgetting it myself. "How was it staying here last night?"

  "It's not as comfortable as the climbing camp, but the porters have been kind."

  The porters had lined up in a long row and Zopa was walking down the line greeting each in turn and giving blessings. When he finished we sat down in a large circle on blankets and sleeping bags and talked, with Zopa translating.

  A good way to understand what the porters do for a living is to think of them as Himalayan truckers. The only difference is that their trucks have legs instead of wheels and are fueled by grass instead of diesel.

  The nearest restaurant to our cabin in Wyoming was a truck stop. Mom and I used to go there all the time and we loved it. The truckers were friendly, funny, and full of stories. It was no different with the porters. I got so involved in their stories, I completely forgot about using my camera.

  The porters were from all over Tibet and Nepal and spent nine months out of the year away from home. When they weren't hauling gear up Everest and other mountains they were guiding trekkers or moving supplies at lower altitudes. Most of the younger porters wanted to become climbing Sherpas because the money was better. The older porters seemed satisfied driving their yaks in spite of the hardships. They told us stories about falls and getting lost, but the most grim story was related at the end of the day by an old porter named Gulu, who was from the same village where Sun-jo was born.

  (Gulu knew Sun-jo's mother well and claimed to have taken Sun-jo on his first yak ride when he was a baby. The porters and Sherpas were spread out over thousands of barren miles, but there always seemed to be connections like this between them.)

  On the way back to camp JR said that Gulu's story was compelling but he couldn't use it in the final documentary. No room. Which is why I include it here. (Vincent taught me that what makes a story unique is not necessarily the information in the story but what the writer chooses to put in or leave out.)

  WHEN GULU was a young man he bought a beautiful yak bull from a distant village. It had taken him three years to save the money for the bull, which he planned to use to increase the size of his small herd.

  "It was a long distance to the village where the yak was being sold," Gulu said, shaking his gray head. "The Chinese soldiers were everywhere, and it was dangerous on the road. I traveled at night and hid in the hills during the day so they did not rob or kill me."

  It took him so long to get to the village that he was afraid the bull would be gone when he got there—either sold to another buyer or killed by the soldiers for food.

  "But the bull was there," he said, "and more magnificent than I remembered. His hair was as dark as a moonless night, his back was as straight as a floor timber and as broad as I am tall." He laughed. "The owner regretted the price we had agreed upon and tried to raise it."

  They argued for three days. In the end Gulu gave the owner all the money he had and a promise to bring him the first two calves the bull produced the following year.

  "All of this took too long," Gulu explained. "The weather had turned bad. To complicate things I now had a yak with me that had been pastured for over a year with very little exercise. He was weak in the legs from being penned. I had to stop often for him to rest and eat. The other difficulty was that I had no money and I myself had to scavenge for food."

  He decided the only way he would make it home before he and the yak starved was to take a shortcut through the mountains. He had heard about the shortcut but had never traveled it.

  "At first the route was good. It was far enough from the roads so that I could travel during the day without fear of soldiers. Then the path started to rise. The weather worsened the higher we climbed. The snow was deep. I should have turned back..." He grinned and shrugged. "But I was young and foolish and I continued to climb, driving the bull before me."

  They reached the shortcut's summit and started down the other side, Gulu confident now that he and the bull were going to make it home safely. But as he was looking for a place to sleep an avalanche roared down the mountain and buried him alive.

  "I was so cold," Gulu said with a shudder. "More cold than I had ever been in my life, before or since. I remember thinking how unfair it was that the avalanche hadn't killed me when it struck. I waited for death in that cold dark place, wondering how long it would be. After a while I felt a tugging on my right arm like a fish nibbling on bait. At first I didn't know what it was, then I remembered the bull. When we reached the summit I had put a rope around his neck to keep him close. It wasn't a long rope, two meters, maybe a little shorter. He was close, and he was alive, but was he above me or below? The snow was so tight around me I didn't know if I was facedown or faceup. I could have been standing on my feet for all I knew, or upside down on my head."

  We all laughed, but being buried alive isn't funny.

  "I am not sure why," Gulu continued, "but it seemed important to reach the bull. To touch him one last time. To apologize for taking him from the safety of his pasture. I started to pull myself along the rope. It was slow and painful work. The farther I got up the rope, the harder the yak pulled—sometimes smashing my face into the ice before I could clear it away. Perhaps the bull is free, I thought, standing on the surface, tethered by the man beneath. I finally broke through, gasping for breath. The bull was on the surface, but he was not standing.

  "As I examined him he kicked me several times, but I was so numb I barely felt it. My beautiful bull had two broken legs. I felt shards of bone sticking through his flesh. There was only one thing to do. I unsheathed my knife and cut his throat."

&nb
sp; The bull took a long time to bleed out. Gulu watched with tears freezing to his cheeks. Three years of hard work and sacrifice lay at his feet bleeding into the snow.

  "But there was no time for sorrow," he told us. "I had to get back to my village. If I didn't, my family would have to pay the debt of the two calves. But first I had to survive the night."

  He slit the yak open, pulled his guts out onto the snow, then climbed into the body cavity to warm himself.

  "Early the next morning my sleep was interrupted by a violent shaking. I thought the yak was slipping down the mountain. I put my head outside the carcass, and I don't know who was more surprised: I or the bear pulling my precious bull down the mountainside.

  "It reared up on its hind feet and let out a heart-stopping bellow that shook every bone in my body. I was certain I would be eaten. But I was saved by the Chinese army."

  Four soldiers had been tracking the bear and caught up to it just as it bellowed. They fired and missed, but the bullets were enough to frighten the bear away. It lumbered up the slope and disappeared into the trees.

  "All I had to do now was contend with the soldiers," Gulu said. "But I didn't think this would be a problem. I had no money. If they wanted the yak for food they were welcome to it.

  "As they reached the carcass, I crawled out from my bloody shelter. When they saw me, the soldiers screamed like frightened children and threw down their rifles. Before I could speak they ran away."

  After Gulu returned home he heard a rumor about four soldiers coming across a yeti feeding on a yak. A few weeks later there was a story about a cow giving birth to a full-grown man.

  "How did you pay for the calves?" JR asked.

  Gulu smiled. "I sold the soldiers' rifles. There was enough money to pay for the calves and to buy a new bull. He was not nearly as magnificent as the one that gave birth to me, but he was a good breeder and increased my small herd tenfold."

  CAMP FOUR

  ZOPA ROUSED HOLLY AND ME out of our tents at sunrise. Another beautiful day: clear, crisp, twenty-two degrees and rising—which meant we'd have to pack our cold weather gear on our backs instead of wearing it. To make things worse, Zopa gave each of us a pile of Sun-jo's gear to haul up to the first camp.

  Holly's share was a lot smaller than my share. She finished repacking quickly and left for the mess tent. It took me forty-five minutes to reorganize what I'd packed the night before. I was slowed down by my ill feelings toward Sun-jo and Zopa. I couldn't believe it. Not only had Zopa taken my gear and given it to Sun-jo, but now I had to haul it up the mountain for him. It seemed that he was doing everything in his power to make sure I was too weak to get to the top.

  When I finally finished my pack was fifteen pounds heavier than it was for my first time up to ABC. Not good. One pound can make a huge difference at this altitude. I was trying to decide what to leave behind when Captain Shek walked up.

  "You try for summit?" he demanded.

  He was out of uniform, dressed like a climber, which is probably why I didn't notice him sneaking up on me.

  "Not today," I said.

  "How old you?"

  He must have been watching and had waited to catch me alone like this.

  "How old you?" he repeated aggressively.

  Trick question. He'd seen my passport. He knew exactly how old I was. He wanted me to lie. I told him the truth.

  "Where other boy?"

  Uh-oh.

  "Who?" I'm a terrible liar.

  "Boy you climb mountain with last week. Boy you walk with in camp. You and he good friends."

  Captain Shek's English was a little rough, but the sarcasm was crystal clear. He had watched us walking around camp. He had seen us head up the mountain to ABC.

  "Oh, him," I said stupidly. "I haven't seen him in a couple days."

  "Where he go?"

  I shrugged.

  "You lying to me!"

  (Apparently I couldn't even shrug a lie.)

  "I kick you off mountain if you lie."

  "Go ahead," I said, zipping my pack closed. Probably not the brightest thing to say, but I'd had about enough of Captain Shek and everything else on Everest.

  He looked like he was about to explode. I don't think he was used to having a fourteen-year-old call his bluff. He raised his arm, and for a second I thought he was going to hit me, but then he smiled as if he realized the "This is the People's Republic of China, you have no rights" thing wasn't going to work with me.

  "What is other boy's name?" he asked in a much more reasonable tone.

  "He didn't say." I picked up my pack.

  "I watching you."

  I walked away feeling his eyes drilling into the back of my neck, proud of myself for not even thinking about ratting out Sun-jo.

  As soon as I found Zopa I told him about the conversation. He was a lot calmer about it than I was, saying that Captain Shek was the least of our problems.

  "In a few days you will be at Camp Four," he said. "This is all you need to worry about."

  It turned out that he was right.

  WE JOINED A SMALL GROUP of porters and their yaks heading up the mountain. Sun-jo was not with them. When I asked Zopa about this he said, "He will be along."

  The trip up to Intermediate Camp was a lot easier than the first time. I wasn't able to sing and chant with the porters, but I was able to talk as I walked, which was a big improvement. I even managed to use the tiny video camera and discovered that I was a lot more comfortable behind it than I was in front of it.

  The landscape had changed dramatically from the previous week. The warm weather had created several new streams of glacial runoff. It was difficult to find places to cross without drenching ourselves. The other problem was the rocks. The thaw was causing them to pop loose from the ice. It was like the glacier was a bowling lane and we were the pins. One of the porters and his yak got hit by a large rock and had to return to Base Camp.

  "Did you get the strike on tape?" Jack asked.

  "Uh, no."

  He swore.

  I spent most of the trip with Holly, who wasn't doing that well (I think because she was carrying her own pack). I offered to lug it for a while, but she insisted on carrying it herself (for which I was relieved).

  She said she was thinking about heading home after we got down from Camp Four and wanted to know if I would give her an exclusive interview after I got down from the summit.

  "You're going to quit?"

  "Reaching the summit of Everest was not on my to-do list this year. If it had been, I might have done some practice climbs and visited the gym a little more leading up to this. Or maybe even climbed a skyscraper or two." She grinned and pointed at the peak. The clouds had cleared enough for us to see the very top. "I don't know if you've noticed, but that's one of the most daunting sights on earth."

  "You don't strike me as easily daunted."

  "Yeah, well..." She took a deep breath. "I've learned a couple things about myself up here. One, I'm getting older. And two..." She took another deep breath. "This mountain is a lot bigger than I am. It's humbling. The truth is I've had time to do some thinking. I can't tell you how long it's been since I've been alone. That's been humbling, too. Pierre and Ralph taking off was probably the best thing that ever happened to me."

  Being in a camp with over three hundred people is not exactly being alone. But I knew what she meant. You don't have to be alone to feel alone.

  "What about that interview?" she asked again.

  I'd been doing some thinking, too. "We'll see," I said.

  I could tell that Holly wanted to argue, but she was too out of breath to pursue it.

  She and I straggled into camp after everyone else and we were both surprised to see Sun-jo sitting on a rock with a cup of hot tea in his hands, looking a little rumpled in his porter clothes.

  "When did you get here?"

  "A half hour ago."

  "You left ahead of us?"

  "No," he said, "I left the same time that you left
."

  I thought he was pulling my leg. There had been a dozen or so porters and maybe half that number of yaks. I couldn't have missed him.

  "I rode on Gulu's yak."

  "Yeah, right," I said. "When you were a baby." I had walked with Gulu some on the way up. The only thing I'd seen on his yak's back was a pile of hay.

  "No," Sun-jo insisted. "I was concealed beneath the hay."

  "You're kidding?"

  He shook his head. "It was hot and uncomfortable."

  I told him about Captain Shek.

  A worried look crossed his face. "That means I'll have to go up the mountain again on the yak. I'm not looking forward to that. Thank you for carrying my things up here."

  I wished he wasn't always so polite. It would be easier to be mad at him. "No problem," I said, and realized that the extra weight hadn't been a problem. That was encouraging.

  I looked around camp. It had not improved in the past week. The boulder-belching slope looked even more unstable than the last time we had been here. Zopa was looking at the slope, too, shaking his head.

  "We cannot camp here tonight," he said. "We will go farther up."

  I didn't recall anywhere to camp farther up, and I was right. He stopped us about a thousand feet above the collapsing wall and had us carve sleeping platforms into the ice. It took hours, and it was exhausting work at that altitude, but I was happy to do it. Anything was better than sleeping under the wall.

  The next morning the cold was back, which was good because it lessened the chances of avalanches. On the way to Camp Two we heard over the radio that there were three climbing parties moving up to Camp Five. They were going to make a summit attempt the following day.

  Gulu was concerned because they had taken only one load of oxygen tanks to Camp Five. Zopa radioed Josh.

  "I heard," Josh said. "Idiots. None of them are fully acclimated. This is only their second time above Camp Four. As far as the tanks go, some of them are going to try to get to the top without supplemental Os. So there should be enough for those who need it."