Rising Page 3

  Loomis Express has donated four deliveries of mail from Canada, which will arrive by way of an employee who bags the letters and packages from a central depot in Vancouver and hops a jet to Nepal. After three days of travel overland to Tibet, he will stagger into Basecamp with a splitting headache from gaining altitude too rapidly. We will pounce on the poor guy for the care packages, letters and news he bears—our lifeline. Our team will count on the shared support from the American and Spanish teams, as Jane and I will on the charms of those Spaniards.

  Chapter 3

  Friends, Nomads and Spirits

  Feathery columns of frost sparkle in the morning light and crunch underfoot as I make my way to the cook tent. I push back the door flaps to find Jane with her toque on, a white apron tied over top of her expedition-issue blue-and-yellow one-piece suit, cracking eggs into a pot.

  She holds a thin, oblong brown egg between her forefinger and thumb in triumph and says, “See, they made it. So far not a single broken one!” She cracks it against the edge of the pot. “Check out the colours of these yolks.” A dozen orbs, ranging in size from large marbles to ping-pong balls, and ascending from pale yellow to burgundy red, bob in the pot. She cups a small white egg with brown specks in her hand and strokes it with her finger. “What do you think this came from—a sparrow?”

  I imagine those eggs have been plucked from every nest within walking distance of Lhasa.

  Jane had haggled for the eggs at a market stall on a noisy street the week before. The vendor’s eyes had flared wide when Mr. Yu translated her request to order a thousand eggs from him. Then the egg man shouted something in Tibetan, shook his head and waved his arms in dismissal.

  Mr. Yu turned to Jane, and said, “No, not possible! He doesn’t have that many, and no way to pack them.”

  Jane put her hands on her hips. “We must have protein,” she declared in her Irish lilt. “Let’s just start with the first egg, shall we?” Jane snatched up a handful of straw. “This,” she said, picking up the egg, “is how I want them wrapped, one by one.” She deftly enveloped an egg in the straw and placed it gently down on the table, all the while smiling at the vendor. “There now, just 999 more, please. And we’ll pack them in”—she scanned the other stalls and pointed at an empty washing machine box—“in that!” She turned to Mr. Yu. “Please ask him whether he can fill the order if we give him a day. We’ll pay him for a thousand, whether he counts them or not, as long as the box is full—of eggs.”

  I liked this woman more by the day. The next morning that washing machine box full of eggs was delivered to our hotel.

  * * *

  The yaks, hired to ferry our supplies up to Camp One, arrive at Basecamp that afternoon. We watch the procession of Tibetan nomads and their long-horned beasts amble past our camp. The yaks’ hair, dense and nearly dragging on the ground, is braided with brightly coloured cord, tassels and dingle balls. Bells dangle from embroidered and beaded collars, each one clanking a distinctive pitch. The shaggy, sloe-eyed bovines look to weigh over a tonne each, and some exceed the height of their owners. They are known to work at elevations of up to seven thousand metres, travelling easily over mountainous terrain, which makes them the best high-altitude pack animal in the world.

  The four yak drivers, dressed in crude yak-hide jackets and chaps with discarded down-filled expedition parkas overtop, urge their charges on with airy whistles and guttural growls. A coin the size of a silver dollar with a hole through it glints in the lead man’s hair, which is trussed on top of his head with crimson twine. A pungent scent of oils and yak dung smoke wafts as they pass. The herdsmen take little notice of us as they parade by. They set up a yurt just beyond our camp to live in over the next ten days.

  After dinner that same day, Jane tugs at my arm. “Come on, let’s go for a stroll to check out the yaks.”

  One of the yak drivers is standing outside smoking a cigarette when he spots us on our way and shouts to the others. The other three come out of the yurt and line up to watch us as we approach. Jane gives them a tentative wave and they motion us on.

  However, any romantic view of the nomadic Tibetans, and sympathies for their plight as a people whose country is occupied by the Chinese, is shattered when we get close enough to see their gapped-tooth smiles. One of them cups and jiggles imaginary breasts, and thrusts and undulates his pelvis, then the rest laugh and join in. Jane and I both swing an arm out like a gate to stop one another.

  “Oh dear,” I say. “I think they have something else in mind.”

  “Gross!” Jane says. “I guess we’re not going near those boys alone.”

  We cut short our visit to the yak herders and return to the mess tent where our teammates are lounging in collapsed boxes as if they are recliners. They sit around a table fashioned from a four-by-eight sheet of plywood balanced atop upended plastic barrels. A picture of the Dalai Lama duct-taped to a centre pole presides over the tent’s inner chambers. A Canadian flag hangs from a rafter; from another, a teddy bear in a miniature white t-shirt imprinted with our red Everest Light dragon logo dangles in a hangman’s noose. A sponsor has given each of us a bear with the confounding request to hold a teddy bear picnic on the summit. The teddies won’t get higher than Camp Two, where one will meet an ignominious end skewered through its bottom on a broken ski pole stuck into the snow.

  Dan’s long body spills out of his box and his feet rest on the end of the table. At the other end of the table, Jim is writing a letter. Kevin and Barry parry with Albi over the effectiveness of the Canadian political system. Although Dan’s eyes remain fixed on the magazine in his lap, he thrusts a jab into the debate: “The Opposition is just a bunch of left-wing idiots who get in the way of getting the job done.”

  Albi pounds his fist on the table. “That’s what a parliamentary system is for—to make sure the job gets done right!”

  The table springs up, and Jim startles and shouts, “Jesus, man. Settle down!”

  From a corner of the tent, James glances up from strumming Jane’s guitar to grin and shake his head at the ruckus. Dave, Chris, and Dr. Bob, most likely engaged in a conversation about Tibetan Buddhism, don’t even bother to look up. Chris is responsible for the picture of the Dalai Lama. He has brought hundreds of these portraits into the country to give Tibetans a forbidden comfort and hope for their leader in exile.

  We stand at the door for several minutes before Jane says, “You guys won’t believe what just happened.”

  Dan lolls his head upward from his magazine. “Do tell.”

  When Jane finishes telling the story, Barry smiles, sucks a breath in through his teeth and says, “What do you expect any red-blooded male to do when he sees two flaxen-haired wenches walking toward his camp?”

  Albi adds, “Say, I believe that alpha male with the coin in his hair dags has a shine for Woody.” He chortles like a maniac.

  Kevin says, “How about the cowboy with the yak-hide chaps for Jane? You can bet he’s into some kinky bondage.”

  The boys laugh and spiral into yak and sheep jokes, and Jane and I leave them to it. We have established a bedtime routine of heating water to fill bottles that will warm the cold spots in our sleeping bags throughout our restless nights.

  As we dip through the flaps of the cook tent, Jane pulls her hood up against the chill and says, “Such nice boys one on one.”

  I laugh. “Such dogs in a pack.”

  As we wait for the pot of water to boil, we hold our palms in front of the burner as if it were a campfire. The soft glow of the flame lights Jane’s face in the dimming light of the tent. Minutes pass before she asks if it is always like this. “I feel like a completely different species from those guys over there,” she says. “I thought I was used to working with men over the years up at the heli-ski lodges, and I liked it. But it’s different here. They all seem to be reduced to some kind of primal existence in terms of the way they relate to one
another—some of them, anyway.” She asks if I get lonely as the only woman on these trips.

  “I do get incredibly lonely, but I don’t know any different. Some of these guys feel like brothers and strangers to me at the same time.” I tell her I try not to over-analyze. “Doing is my salve,” I add. “I aspire to become free of existential angst.” I sigh. “I’m not there yet.”

  “Do women just think about this kind of stuff more?” she asks as steam escapes from under the lid of the pot. “It’s like we interrupted some kind of male bonding thing. You know? They’re like dogs sniffing one another’s bums and blustering to see who will cower, who will stand their ground and who doesn’t care.”

  As I hold out a water bottle for Jane to fill, I say, “You know, though, I’d rather be with these men than a gaggle of women who dance around to bolster or avoid hurting one another’s feelings. Terrible thing to say, I know, but I feel even more like a stranger then. Men just come straight out and say what they want to say. At least you know where you stand with these guys. I think some of them aren’t sure what to make of us at some kind of unconscious level and I guess I’m not either, for that matter. I can tell you now that before we met I was more worried about what to make of you than of any of them.”

  “Ditto on that, sister!” she says, and we laugh. As we retire to our tent, Jane lowers her voice. “Can you imagine what they’d say if they could hear us now?”

  * * *

  In this short time, I have felt strangely more substantial when Jane is around. It’s not as if I ever saw myself as inferior, but her presence validates something in myself that I can’t quite identify and hadn’t known I was missing. I start thinking about this one night after dinner while we are lounging around watching Jane give Chris a haircut. She moves from side to side, turning Chris’s head this way and that. As she snips away, I realize it isn’t that I am uncomfortable with these men, but I am more animated and interested when she is around. I wouldn’t have thought of it this way until she retires early that night to our tent. Without her, the rest of us revert to our normal: the boys start telling stories, which seems like a contest, and I often grow quiet and tune out. It is my cue to exit.

  It isn’t as if the boys don’t draw me in. I am working my way toward the door when they start talking about Makalu. I was on that mountain with Albi, Dwayne and Carlos two years earlier. Dan asks me how high we had gotten and I nod at Dwayne to give the answer. He too is standing by the door, as lean and still as a mannequin with his team jacket hanging off his shoulders, weighing the best time for his exit.

  Dwayne shrugs. “Oh, maybe 8,400 metres or so and about a hundred metres from the top.” But he doesn’t venture into the story like others might. You have to bleed him for every word.

  “Pretty close then, eh?” Dan says. “Why didn’t you go for the summit?”

  “Too late in the day,” Dwayne answers. There is something about Dwayne that causes others not to press him. I admire that.

  I leave the tent in Dwayne’s wake. A brilliant golden thread traces Everest’s summit skyline. Now that I am alone with a half hour of daylight left, it is time to pay homage to this mountain and the climbers who have come before us.

  Marty Hoey—the only woman on an ill-fated sixteen-member American team—fell to her death from high on the North Face of Everest in 1982. She was a mountain guide and strong climber and the first American woman to attempt Everest. I didn’t know Marty, but I’ve learned enough of her story to recognize that she, like me, was a woman in the male bastion of mountain guiding and Himalayan climbing. Her memorial cairn rests atop the moraine just beyond Basecamp, among those of others who haven’t come home from this place. As I head toward the cairns, following rock markers and weaving my way up through the boulders, I glimpse the Chinese officers sitting around a table playing cards. The wind swallows the sound from the tents and meets me as I crest the hill. As if it is taking my hand, I lean into this force.

  I first felt the alpine take my hand when I was eleven years old, hiking in the Coast Range of British Columbia with my dad. More a companion and mentor than a father, he was a pilot, amateur philosopher, avid hiker and skier, as well as a student of yoga and other Eastern disciplines long before it was de rigueur. Best defined as a seeker, Dad measured the value of a person by his or her quality of character rather than their status or education. His views shaped the way I would be in the world.

  At the time I was a tomboy who climbed trees and loved playing soccer with the boys during school breaks. Yet the girl in me came out at parties in boys’ rec rooms where we would turn out the lights and kiss our faces off with the Beatles crooning “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” But then for the longest time I teetered on the brink of adolescence with a single bud of a nipple, which had me worried I might only grow one breast. Worse was that all my previous friends had blossomed into bras, which excluded me from the coquetry and trolling for boys and made me a target for teasing. And just like that, I fell hard from champion kisser to outcast.

  By then we had moved from a backyard of wilderness in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, to the paved suburbs of Burnaby, BC. My older brothers, Randy and Larry, and sister, Barbara, had lost interest in outdoor pursuits. So whenever Dad could get away, he and I would escape together to the mountains, hiking in summer and skiing in winter. He kept a constant eye on the forecast for the perfect powder day at our local hill, Grouse Mountain, especially on weekdays when he knew there would be fewer skiers. But before we went anywhere, he’d always ask if I had anything important going on at school. Doing anything with him was more important to me than sitting in a classroom for most of the day, and soon we’d be charging down chutes steep enough to see the bottom of the run through the tips of our skis. On those days, he urged me to follow my instincts. “Be an individual,” he’d say. “Don’t be afraid to stand out.” Dad showed me freedom and passion, which promised infinite possibility. School confined me, threatened to domesticate me, and promised nothing more than a banal future, especially for a girl. It left me wanting something more.

  I felt like something more in the alpine from my first day and I particularly feel that now, at the sight of Everest’s silhouette against a deepening sapphire sky. Before me are a half-dozen or so carefully stacked piles of rocks, each the size of a person and faced with a flat stone with words etched on it. “In memory of Marty Hoey, 1951–1982” reads one, and “In memory of Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker, lost on the Northeast Ridge, 1982” another.

  The sense of these lost climbers’ spirits in these stones sets me back on my haunches. Marty’s climbing partner, Jim Wickwire, was with her the day she died. In his memoir, he writes that he and Marty were waiting at an anchor, watching their teammates climbing above them. Like me, Marty had modified her gear to make it easier to pee. But unlike me, she had cut the leg loops off her climbing harness. When tied into a rope, these two bits of webbing not only distribute the climber’s weight, they also prevent her from slipping out of the waist belt in the event of a fall. It isn’t hard to imagine the scenario that unfolded: Jim hearing crampons scrape and a cry from Marty, and then seeing her empty harness dangling from the rope as she tumbles like a rag doll down the North Face of the mountain until she disappears from sight.

  Less is known about how Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker, two of the best climbers in the world, perished on the unclimbed North Ridge, but again, I can imagine them above 7,900 metres where exhaustion and hypoxia dull vigilance, and the human body can no longer acclimatize. The window of opportunity to get to the top and back is limited to how long one can keep upright and think straight. If they could die up there, it could happen to anyone. I hug my knees and turtle my head deeper into my parka.

  Ever since that first meeting with the alpine, I have looked for a benign essence every time I arrive at a new mountain. The ancient Romans called it genius loci, the distinctive atmosphere or pervading spirit of place. And my dozen years
climbing in some of the great ranges of the world have taught me that it is not geographical significance or the beauty of a mountain that dictates that essence. There have been times when I’ve sensed a malign presence and used this reason to turn tail on climbs. Not feeling right can easily be misread as fear, especially by ambitious partners, and I loathe using this seemingly flimsy excuse. But I believe in deferring to the most conservative person, and I trust any climber on our Everest Light team to have experienced this uneasy state and to know and respect this unspoken rule. On Everest, will we be able to discern such an insubstantial sense? How will we fare?

  The light is fading. Everest melds into the sky and the wind eases to a gentle breath as if putting itself to rest. Down valley, clusters of dimly lit tents push up out of the darkened earth like phosphorescent mushrooms. I give a passing glance to the American camp on my way back and wonder which tent Carlos and Annie are sharing, and then let it go for a newfound comfort I find with Jane in unpacking our day’s thoughts and events.

  Jane is bundled in her insulated parka and sleeping bag, still reading, when I get back to our tent. The beam of her headlamp blinds me when she tilts her head up to greet me. “I was just about to give up on you and turn out my light,” she says. “I filled our bottles. Yours is in your sleeping bag.” But she hasn’t given up on me, and by now I know she won’t. I know I have a friend in Jane.