Beyond the Summit (22 page)

Since everyone had retired at 4:30 the night before, they all rose early with the Norwegians eager to set out for Gokyo and climb the peak that would afford an unobstructed view of Everest from the west. Camp broke at 6:30 and they began the four-hour trek by climbing a mountainside to the ridge encompassing a view of Cho Oyu and the mountains surrounding the Ngozumba Glacier, the longest in Nepal. After a gentle descent to its terminus, they hiked along the rough, rocky moraine above the boulder-strewn surface of the glacier. They reached the first small lake and then a second at the junction with the path that crossed over the Cho La.

Finally arriving at a large, emerald-green lake, the party walked along its eastern bank past a
mani
wall to the Gokyo
yersa
at 15,583 feet. Empty and cold, the stone huts with slate roofs stood waiting for young herders to arrive during the summer monsoon. Stone walls divided the barren, rocky landscape into parcels. Dorje explained that in the spring and summer thousands of alpine flowers surrounded the lake in a carpet of delphiniums, gentians, poppies, germaniums, asters, wild roses, bellflower, and colorful dwarf rhododendron shrubs.

Pointing to the peak rising above the northern edge of the lake, he said, “We will rest here today and climb Gokyo Ri tomorrow for the best view of Everest in all the Khumbu.”

Wanting to smack the Norwegian on the side of the head, Beth glanced at Dorje who signaled it was okay with a small, downward motion of his hand. “You can go to bed early and rest for tomorrow,” he told Royd.

“Bed at 4:30 again,” Royd muttered, “because it’s too damn cold to stay out here unless of course you’re sharing someone else’s body heat.”

“Boring,” said Hamar who hadn’t stopped swaying and fidgeting since they arrived. “I’m going up,” he added and took off with his curious shambling gait.

“Me too,” said Royd. “Dorje, if it’s too much elevation gain for you, just wait here and keep Beth company. I’m sure you’ll find some way of entertaining yourselves.” Royd motioned to Kirk. “Coming with us?”

Twirling the toothpick in the corner of his mouth, he answered, “Sure, why not.”

Dorje threw both hands up in frustration as the three headed out on stepping stones in the small stream flowing into the lake. “I have to go with them,” he told Beth, “but you stay here.”

“I’d probably do better than they will since I’ve been here longer and live higher.”

“I don’t want you to get sick too. Stay and tell the porters not to set up tents because we will use the huts tonight. There is some dried dung for fires. Now I will show the Norwegians what a real mountain is like instead of those hills they are so proud of.”

When they disappeared from view, Beth gave a giant shrug and flapped her arms at her sides.
Oh my. What to do?
Standing alone in a cold, rocky wasteland surrounded by snow-capped peaks, she hoped Lhamu and the other porters would arrive soon. After surveying the place, Beth decided that as the sole guardian of five yak herders’ huts she might as well pick the best one for herself. All were dank and reeked of smoke. The first thing to do was air them out. She threw open the shutters on glassless windows and used rocks to prop the doors. “No shortage of stones around here,” she laughed as she rolled a boulder towards the last hut.

Finally done and with arms akimbo, Beth smiled proudly and was wondering what to tackle next when Lhamu strode past the
mani
wall well ahead of her male companions. Finally! Running toward her, Beth waved her on to the huts and signaled to drop the
doko
there. Now the real test was convincing the string of weary porters, cook, and kitchen boy who arrived ten minutes later not to put up the tents. Spotting the
doko
with her duffle, she kept motioning for the porter to follow to her chosen hut and pantomimed his removing it and leaving it there. She repeated her performance for the unloading of the Norwegian gear in the hut furthest away. Beth hoped they’d figure out that the three remaining open doors were invitations to them.

Once the porters understood, Lhamu sauntered over to Beth and showed her a silver pendant bearing a small photo of the Dalai Lama inside. Having seen it among the Tibetan items at Sanasa, Beth smiled and asked, “Hamar?” Giggling, the Sherpani closed the pendant and slipped it inside her long-sleeved blouse worn under a floor-length, wrap-around tunic. She lacked only the striped, multicolored apron worn exclusively by married women. Unlike men who had adopted western attire, none of the Sherpanis appeared to have given up their traditional attire, even those working as porters.

Anxious to finishing preparing the huts, Beth pinched her nose and waved her hand in front of one, hoping to indicate the foul odor. Smoke wasn’t the only offender. One by one, she and Lhamu hauled yak wool rugs outdoors. Each holding onto an end, they shook vigorously in a laughing contest to see who’d lose her grip first. Eyes closed and head turned aside, Beth felt like the Peanuts character, Pigpen, who walked around in a cloud of dust, sprinkling dirt on all he came in contact with. The rock walls separating pastures were soon elegantly draped in wool.

Returning to the huts, Beth studied the hard-packed floors and finally concluded that they were made of the usual mixture of mud and dung. Easy to sweep if one had a broom. She thrummed her cheek, pondering, until Lhamu pointed to a yak tail resting in the corner. Beth picked it up gingerly with only her thumb and forefinger, wary of creatures residing among the thick hairs. A few hefty shakes dislodged only a couple of multi-legged beasts that scurried too quickly to identify. As the women swept the last lodge, it struck Beth that she was getting used to this too! Being immersed in another culture was intriguing and challenging and she had adapted too frightfully well. Now heat. Faced with the reality of spending a night this high in Gokyo, she remembered Dorje’s comment about dried fuel for a fire. With the floors swept, benches wiped, and rafters cleared of cobwebs, the women went in search of the sacred dung.

But first Beth needed to pee and in private, away from curious porters who had assumed she meant no tents were to be erected including the
charpi.
Feeling pretty cocky about having accomplished so much this morning, she swaggered over to a three-foot wall, planted her hands, and threw her legs over with the grace of a gymnast. When her feet hit the ground sliding, Beth grabbed the top stones and held on desperately trying to remain upright because a quick glance revealed she wasn’t the first to choose this location. A summer’s worth of excrement softened by yesterday’s snow had created a viscous mire of unbelievable length and breadth. Clinging to the wall, she managed to pull herself back over by sheer arm strength alone. To heck with it, she was dropping her pants behind the nearest rock.

Resurfacing, she discovered Lhamu had unpacked Beth’s duffle and was holding her sleeping bag around her shoulders, wiggling and kissing and saying, “Dorje, Dorje.”

It cracked Beth up and she couldn’t let it pass without pretending to pull a pendant from her blouse and swooning, “Hamar, Hamar.”

Taking the bag inside, Lhamu pantomimed Beth and Dorje making love. Not to be outdone, Beth ran to the Norwegians’ hut, found Hamar’s duffle, and dragged it to a separate hut. “Lhamu and Hamar.” Both women agreed that they would seduce men into their huts tonight.

However, the elusive question of dung remained and Beth wasn’t about to act that one out. Not in any of the huts, it had to be somewhere sheltered from the elements. Searching all the rock structures, Beth discovered a kind of root cellar housing hundreds of dried patties. After her recent incursion over the wall, she wasn’t thrilled about handling them. But weighing
Do I want to be cold or do I want to touch shit,
she chose the latter. Her eyes to the ground and carrying a load stacked to her chin, she trod across the rocky terrain to her hut and ran straight into Royd and Kirk who looked like walking cadavers. “What happened to you?” she exclaimed.

Kirk mumbled something incoherently and Royd said they just weren’t feeling too well and needed to lie down. Where were the tents?

“We’re using the huts tonight. Your gear’s in that one over there.” Royd’s skin was sallow and his eyes had sunk in deep hollows. “You look dehydrated,” said Beth. “You should drink more water.”

He smirked, his body unsteady. “A woman standing with an armload of shit is telling me what to do.”

“It’s going to keep me warm tonight,” she answered with a crisp edge to her voice.

Kirk mumbled something else and tugged on Royd’s sleeve. Watching them stagger toward their hut as if drunk, Beth wished Dorje would return. After stacking the dung by her hearth, she found the Norwegians stretched out on their window bench and wrapped in their bags. “Where’s Dorje?” she asked.

“Hamar insisted on going to the top and he went with him,” Kirk groaned. “We turned around half way.”

“Wasn’t Hamar sick too?”

“Worse than us.” Kirk was holding his forehead and breathing rapidly. “He threw up and had diarrhea the first quarter mile. Dorje said it was from the water yesterday.”

“Then why—?”

“Don’t ask,” said Royd. His arm dropped to the side of the bench and he pointed. “Just get us some water. Our bottles are over there.”

She started to snap back with,
Get your own damn water,
but figured she wouldn’t add to their misery. More concerned about Dorje and Hamar, she and Lhamu watched for them while the cook filled bottles with boiled water that had cooled rapidly. To keep from worrying about the men, she and Lhamu finished the household chores: replacing the rugs, closing the shutters, moving the rock doorstops, and lastly hauling dung to Hamar’s hut and then Royd and Kirk’s. The snide remark about her being a shit bearer was no longer forthcoming; nor was a thank you. With a shallow pan of warm wash water, she closed the door to her hut, stripped down and took a very small shivering sponge bath. Rifling through her duffle, she pulled out clean clothes and quickly felt rejuvenated.

Almost three hours after the arrival of the two Norwegians, Beth spotted what appeared to be a single large form at the base of the mountain, lurching and falling, and then slowly and awkwardly getting to its feet again like a wounded bear. Panicked, Beth yelled at the porters, waving her arms excitedly and motioning for them to come. As they neared the specter, she could see that it was not one but two beings, the smaller struggling to keep the ponderous, ungainly one afoot. Lhamu ran to Hamar and supported him through two rounds of dry heaves.

“He’s already thrown up everything else,” Dorje explained. His eyes blurred as if he were about to faint. Beth grabbed his arm and steadied him. “Why did you let him go to the top?”

“Could you have stopped him?”

“No, I guess not.”

With Lhamu’s help, Hamar lumbered and staggered across the stepping-stones in the stream while another porter carried the daypacks.

The cook prepared
thukpa
with extra broth to re-hydrate the Norwegians. At dinner Dorje announced they would not be crossing the Cho La in the morning. None of them was well enough. To go higher could mean death. After a day of rest, liquids, and aspirin, he would determine whether they were fit to continue or to return to Namche. This time, no one complained about the prospect of spending a day with nothing to do but sleep or read.

Beth helped Dorje settle Royd and Kirk in their hut and build a dung fire to take off the chill. As they walked back to Beth’s hut, Dorje asked, “And Hamar? Where is he sleeping?”

“With Lhamu in another hut. She’ll take good care of him tonight.”
As I will of you
, she thought as they arrived at her door. Leaning against the cold stone wall, Beth reached under his jacket to massage his back. “You must be tired and sore after today.”