by Roland Smith
“I sensed him when I was in the roost. It will be good to see him.”
“It shouldn’t be too long now. Your English is very good.”
“It is my second language, Hindi being my first. I was raised in a convent in Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh, which means ‘Land of Dawn-Lit Mountains.’ My husband and I had to leave Itanagar. He died on a mountain. I continued north by myself because Itanagar was too far behind. I was hopelessly lost when I found the crater.”
Her eyes started to flutter close, and she gave me a weak smile. “I think you were right about my resting. I cannot seem to stay awake.”
“There’s no need to stay awake. I’ll watch over you.”
“You are very kind.” She closed her eyes.
I watched her sleep for a while, then checked the sat phone. The battery was low. I was lucky it had any juice at all. I turned it off and walked over to a nearby stream to refill the water bottle. When I got back, there were two piles of food on pieces of bark next to the resting Chanda. A gift from the green monk? It was some kind of smoked meat, and it might have been the best thing I had ever eaten. I didn’t eat Chanda’s share, but I was tempted to. I did finish off the bottle of water, though, because the meat was pretty salty, which meant a second trip down to the stream. When I got back, I was hoping my bark had been replenished. No such luck. I passed the time worrying about Chanda, Mom, Ethan, and Alessia. Mom and Alessia were more than capable of taking care of themselves, but I didn’t like the idea of them wandering around looking for me in a place that was so difficult to find. I was about ready to nod off again when I saw lights in the forest. I stood and was going to shout out and turn my headlamp on when it occurred to me that I had no idea who the bouncing light belonged to. That’s the trouble with the crater. It lulls you into a complete sense of security. For all I knew, it could be a platoon of PLA soldiers out on night patrol. I grabbed my pack and was about to wake Chanda and tell her I was going to take her someplace safer when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t jump this time. It was the green monk. I pointed at the lights.
“You can turn on your headlamp,” he said.
I did. Reluctantly.
“Thanks for the food,” I said.
He shrugged.
The oncoming lights turned in our direction. Josh and Yash were the first to reach us.
“Wow, you got her down,” Josh said. “Is she okay?”
“She’s pretty sick, but better than she was up in the roost.”
“She is little,” Yash said.
“Yeah, and she speaks English and can probably hear you.”
“How’d you get her down?” Josh asked, completely missing my hint.
I walked about twenty feet away from Chanda and they followed. I gave Josh my pack. He examined it carefully, confused at first, but then he grinned.
“That’s brilliant! Awesome. Did you free climb? How far up is the roost?”
“I borrowed a little bit of rope and a grappling hook.” I would have introduced them to the green monk, but he was long gone.
“Well, it would have been a dirty climb up in the dark, and worse getting her down in her condition, even with our gear. You saved her and us.” Josh shined his headlamp at the wall. “That face looks whacked.”
“It’s not good,” I said. “Sorry you had to come all this way for nothing.”
“Oh, we’re climbing,” Josh said. “But not until it gets light. We have to install the new lama.”
“Who is it?”
“He is in the wagon,” Yash answered.
A yak-driven wagon had just come to a clattering stop. The back was filled with monks. Duga was the first to jump out. He ran over to his mother. I joined him. Chanda’s eyes opened, and she smiled when she saw him. He was crying. They didn’t speak. He picked her up as if she were a child and carried her to the cart. The cart left immediately with a wrangler leading the yaks and four monks in back, including Chanda nestled in a bed of straw. The two remaining monks watched it pull away with their backs to me. I walked up to them. It was Dawa and Zopa. I was surprised to see them. Which one was going up to the roost? But I already knew. Josh and Yash had come to help a monk up into the roost. Zopa would not need help.
I looked at Dawa. He had that joyful smile on his face. He gave me a bow. I returned it and smiled back at him. I couldn’t help it, and I couldn’t believe he was going back up there.
Josh brought my pack over and started telling Zopa how I carried Chanda down, which was a little embarrassing, and thrilling. Who doesn’t want to be one of the greatest climbers in the world, who also happens to be your father, talking about how well you climb? At that moment, I was pretty sure I could have sprinted up to the roost with Dawa under my arm.
Zopa, wisely, suggested we all try to get some sleep before the climb. Chanda had forgotten her food, so I ate it. I didn’t think I was going to be able to sleep, but as soon as I closed my eyes I was out. I didn’t wake until a particularly bright shaft of sunlight hit my eyelids. Zopa and Dawa were sitting next to a tree, knee to knee in meditation. Josh and Yash were laying out gear at the base of the wall.
“You’re finally up,” Josh said. I could tell by his bleary eyes that he had been awake only a few minutes. Yash had probably been up before dawn. He and Yogi were used to getting up before everyone else to make breakfast.
“Yash and I will take Dawa up,” Josh said.
That was fine with me. I was hammered from yesterday’s climb.
“How long is Dawa staying in the roost?” I asked.
“He didn’t say. All I know is that he’s eager to get up there ASAP. Something about the circle being broken.”
I told him about the hundred and eight roosts surrounding the monastery, to which he responded, “Whoa.” My sentiments exactly. We backed away from the face and I pointed out my route, as much as I could see, and the problems I’d encountered the day before.
“How high is the roost?”
“Just under two hundred feet.”
“One hundred and seventy-four feet?” Yash asked.
“It could be. Why?”
“The guides pointed out a roost a few days ago. They said it was the fifty-first roost. When I asked them how high it was they said it was one hundred and two feet high.”
“That means that roost one would be two feet high,” I said. I hadn’t seen any roosts that low the day before.
Having the height be twice as much as the roost number was just as likely as having one hundred and eight natural caves with drinkable water completely surrounding the crater. So anything might be true in this strange land.
Josh walked over and hung on the grappling rope to test it.
“Solid,” he said.
“I’ll need the grapple and rope back so I can give it to the monk who loaned it to me.”
“Where is he?” Josh asked.
I glanced back at the forest. “He’s around.”
Zopa and Dawa had finished their meditations and were heading our way.
“Dawa is ready,” Zopa said.
“We’re having a debate,” Josh said. “Yash says the roost number is half the height of roost.”
“Yash would be correct,” Zopa said. “Dawa explained it to me. The lower roosts are deeper. The higher roosts are shallower. All the roosts are safe from prying eyes. The first roost is nearly at ground level, but to get inside you have to go through a one-hundred-foot tunnel.” He looked up at the lightening sky. “We really must get Dawa up to the roost.”
“We’ll have him up there in a jiffy,” Josh said. He started putting Dawa into a harness while Yash explained what they intended to do.
When they had Dawa rigged, Josh started up the wall. I’d seen him climb a hundred walls, but it was still a beautiful thing to watch. He moved as if were climbing a ladder, every grab, swing, and toehold perfectly placed. I wish I looked or felt like that when I was climbing a wall. He reached the grapple in less than five minutes.
“Rock!” he shou
ted. We all knew it was a grapple coming down, not a rock, but this was the standard warning for whatever might be falling from above.
A couple of minutes later, Josh dropped a double rope down. Yash snapped one end of it onto his harness and the other end onto Dawa’s harness. Dawa was grinning excitedly like he was about to board his favorite ride at Disneyland. Josh and Dawa climbed parallel to each other, although Dawa did more dangling than climbing. He was being belayed by Yash to his left and by Josh at the anchor point. Eventually, Dawa gave up his feeble climbing attempts and enjoyed the ride, using his feet to push off the wall to avoid obstacles, letting Josh and Yash do all the heavy lifting.
I asked Zopa who was going to run the monastery while Dawa was up in the roost.
“The monastery runs itself for the most part. The abbot’s primary role is to resolve disputes, which are rare. His or her word is final.”
Dawa and Yash had reached Josh and they were rigging Dawa for the next pitch.
“Do you know how long Dawa plans to stay up there?”
“Indefinitely,” Zopa answered, and I guess that was all I was going to get, because he changed the subject by saying that he needed bamboo to repair Dawa’s basket.
That was one thing the forest had an abundance of. I walked over to a clump and cut down a couple of stalks. It turns out that Zopa was an expert basket weaver. He had the basket repaired by the time Dawa reached the next pitch. I tied the basket onto the flimsy rope that Yash was trailing behind him. That’s when we heard the helicopter.
“The circle is broken,” Zopa said.
“What does that mean exactly?”
“It means that the monastery is vulnerable until Dawa gets into his roost.”
The helicopter was getting closer. There was plenty of cover where Zopa and I were standing, but not on the wall. Halfway up, it was bare rock. Dawa was wearing an orange robe. The climbing rope was bright yellow. The helicopter would be able to spot them a mile away. I looked up at the sky—it was clear. No clouds, no mist.
“What should we do?” I asked, still looking up at the sky.
Zopa didn’t answer. I turned to look at him, or where he had been a second earlier. He wasn’t there. I did a three-sixty. Zopa wasn’t anywhere.
Poof?
No way.
I called out for him. No answer. The helicopter was getting closer. It sounded like it was flying straight toward me. Zopa’s evaporation wasn’t important right then. I tried to spot the climbers and saw the yellow rope. It was being pulled up as fast as they could reel it in. It disappeared into a clump of brush like the tail of a yellow snake just as the helicopter appeared, flying slowly, directly across from the roost entrance. I was certain the copilot was looking at it through binoculars. Had I left anything up there? I didn’t think I had, but I’d been in a hurry, concentrating on the descent, not thinking about the helicopter returning. I crouched down next to a tree. The sound was deafening. I hadn’t heard anything louder than yak bells in weeks. The helicopter hovered outside the entrance. They had to be looking at something. The entrance looked like nothing more than a crack above a narrow ledge. The rotor wash was pounding the brush they were hiding in. How were they hanging on?
Suddenly, the helicopter veered away from the wall in the direction of the monastery and the farms, which they couldn’t miss. The fields were in the open, usually shrouded by clouds and mist, but not today. The PLA had gotten past the one hundred and eight.
Josh shot out of the brush, fast climbing, with the yellow rope trailing behind him, covering the last eighty feet to the ledge in less than five minutes. I’d made that climb and knew how unstable the rock was up there. He anchored the rope without pausing for breath. Yash emerged from the brush, followed by Dawa, who was climbing remarkably well until I realized that it wasn’t Dawa. I couldn’t see him clearly, but the climbing technique was unmistakable. I’d seen it on three different mountains in three countries. It was Zopa. To confirm this, the orange clad monk climbed back into the brush with the end of the rope Josh had thrown down, and out popped a second monk. Zopa free climbed next to Dawa as Josh and Yash pulled him up the face as if he were in an elevator. Josh reached over the ledge, took a handful of Dawa’s robe, and almost tossed the little monk onto the shelf. Zopa stayed where he was. Yash stayed where he was. A couple of minutes later, Josh stuck his head over the ledge and gave them a thumbs-up. Zopa rappelled down to Yash. Josh hooked on and joined them. They still appeared to be in a hurry. I guess they were afraid the helicopter would return and catch them or their equipment out in the open, but I was wrong.
Dark, evil-looking clouds were rushing in. The wind began whipping the trees. I heard the boom of thunder in the distance. Branches crashed to the ground, some of them within feet of me. Then it began to rain. The Pemako mist was back, the wall vanished.
Yash was the first one down. He gave a hard tug on the rope, then sat down and wrapped it around his waist to stabilize it. I ran over to help. Even with two of us, it was hard to steady the whipping line. Zopa came down next. He offered to help, but we shook him off. He sat down a few feet away and started tearing strips of cloth off his robe to bind his hands. Rope burns. I felt Josh hook onto the rope. Rappelling blind in a high wind was suicide, but miraculously Yash and Zopa had made it to the ground.
Josh started down. I felt every push he took off the rock and every pause where he planted his feet, then the rope went slack.
“Rock!” he shouted.
The warning came through the wind and the mist and the rain. But it wasn’t a rock.
So Far So Good
There was a loud peal of thunder and a bright flash of lightning as if Thor had spit Josh out of the sky. He hit the ground a few feet from the rope. Both of his legs were twisted in sickeningly, unnatural angles, shattered. His eyes were open.
“Wow,” he said. “That was horrible.”
“Your legs,” Yash said.
“They haven’t started hurting yet,” Josh said, then grinned. “But that’ll come.”
“I will get help.” Yash jogged off into the forest in the direction of the monastery.
Zopa was pulling the last of the yellow climbing rope off the face with his injured hands. When he finished, he came over, squatted down next to Josh, and surveyed the damage.
“Thirty feet, give or take,” Josh said.
Zopa looked up at me. “Get some bamboo. We will splint his legs.”
When I got back, Zopa had Josh’s boots off and his pants torn into strips. His legs were a mess. The only good news was that none of the leg bones were sticking through the skin. The rain continued to pour down and the thunder boomed. I heard the helicopter, but I couldn’t see it through the mist and clouds.
“The circle is closed,” Zopa said. “But I am not certain the monastery is safe.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I will tell you later. We need to work on your father’s legs.” He took my knife and cut the bamboo into proper lengths. When he finished he looked down at Josh. “I am going to straighten your legs. You can shout out if you need to.”
Josh needed to. His agonizing scream nearly broke my heart. He passed out before Zopa had finished straightening the first leg.
“We need to get him out of here,” I said.
“Yash will bring a cart.”
“No, I mean out of here, to a hospital with orthopedic surgeons.”
“The monastery doctors are very good. Josh cannot travel to Nepal in his condition. If we managed to get him to a Tibetan hospital, they would fix his leg, then arrest him.”
“It might be worth it. Josh is a climber. He needs his legs.”
“He will have his legs, but perhaps not for climbing mountains, which as you know is only a temporary use for legs. Eventually, a climber can no longer climb.”
I did know this and had thought about it often, but Josh had several more years of climbing ahead of him despite his aches and pains from previous injuries. Loo
king at his bamboo-trussed legs, I wondered if he was going to be able to walk again, let alone climb.
“I guess we should ask Josh what he wants to do,” I said.
“Of course. When he is able to answer.”
Right then, it looked like that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. The wind calmed down, the thunder lessened, the rain had turned to drizzle, and the green monk stepped out of the forest. Zopa rose and gave him a formal bow, which the green monk returned without even a glance at the ruined climber on the ground. He’d probably seen the whole thing from wherever he had been watching us, which could not have been up in a tree. The forest floor was littered with fallen branches. Zopa and the green monk started talking. I walked over and retrieved the grappling rope and brought it to him. He slung it over his back, gave me a bow, and returned to the forest.
Josh was still unconscious but looked okay considering his injuries. If I hadn’t seen him pass out, I’d say he was taking a nap. I was certain that would change when he came to. Zopa walked back over and sat down next to me.
“What did the green monk say?” I asked.
“The helicopter was blown off-course before it reached the farms, but Shek and his men are headed this way. Perhaps five or six kilometers from us. They are being watched.”
Zopa didn’t seem disturbed by this, but I’d never seen him disturbed by anything. It could take Shek several days to travel five or six kilometers in this terrain. “I guess there’s plenty of time to figure out what to do,” I said. “By the way, how did you get up on the wall to help conceal them from the helicopter?”
Zopa smiled. “That is a non sequitur.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “You were talking about the helicopter. You vanished when it arrived here. How did you get up that wall so quickly?”
Zopa shrugged.
“You are being abstruse again.”
Zopa gave me another smile. “I suppose that is my nature. I am resigned to it.”
“Do you remember when you beat Sun-jo and me back to the hotel in Kathmandu?”
“You must have taken a longer route.”
“We were on a motorcycle. You were on foot.”