The Everest Files (12 page)

‘Lock off the line,' Nima told him. Kami slipped the rope over the descender and stabilised himself. He looked up, seeing the row of tiny faces peering down at them. He tried to guess how deep they were; twenty metres, perhaps more?

Deep in the belly of the monster. His breath was freezing on his lips.

‘OK. Send it down,' Nima shouted.

The single length of aluminium ladder was lowered down and Nima explained the plan.

‘We'll wedge the ladder across the gap,' he said. ‘The camera guy can use it as a platform.'

Kami quickly saw the logic of the plan. The length of ladder was just right to form an impromptu bridge across the narrow part of the slot.

They cut some grooves in the ice, smashing with their axes at the rock hard surface, sharp blue chips tumbling down into the depths. Next, they swung the ladder into position, the legs slotting into the holes neatly.

‘You see?' Nima said, tapping the ladder proudly, ‘He can sit on it, stand on it. Do what he wants.'

The bulky silhouette of George soon appeared over the lip, swinging out over the drop. He didn't look too comfortable, his feet kicking clumsily at the wall as he went down into the abyss.

‘Man, it's like the lost world in here!' he shouted up. ‘You guys don't know what you're missing.'

‘You're welcome to it,' Brennan called down.

The ladder creaked as George's weight came onto it, but the ice slots looked solid and safe. He kept his life line on for good measure though as he set up for the shots.

Kami had noticed before that the filming always seemed to take an age, but this time was worse than ever. The two of them were shivering non-stop now the cold had really got to them.

George was better equipped in a down suit and he hardly seemed to be feeling it.

Boom! A huge retort rendered the frigid air of the crevasse. It really sounded like a cannon going off and Kami felt himself jump with the shock of it. He looked at Nima for reassurance but his friend also looked freaked by the noise.

Small stalactites of frozen ice fell off the crevasse walls as the ground shook. Something huge had fallen … somewhere.

At long last George pronounced himself ready.

‘Get Alex to go across on his own,' he yelled up. ‘I'm running.'

‘OK!'

Brennan started to make his way across the ladder. Kami could see that the shot would be special.

‘Epic!' George yelled up. ‘Now get him to go back again and do it again a bit slower.'

Then came the tight shot. Then he changed the lens for a super wide angle. Fifteen minutes after that he was done. The camera was hauled up and a pair of jumars – special clamps that enable climbers to move vertically up a rope – were sent down so they could escape the crevasse.

‘Let him come up first,' Tenzing yelled down to the two Sherpa lads, ‘There's some sunset shots they want to do back at Base Camp and we're running late.'

‘OK,' Nima agreed. Kami's lips were chattering so hard he couldn't have replied.

George began the climb and Kami realised straight away that he wasn't going to be fast. He lunged up in a clumsy style, pushing the jumar clamp up in small, inefficient bursts of energy.

‘He's taking forever,' Nima whispered. Kami felt the tip of his nose going completely numb.

Half an hour went by. Another half an hour for the cold to penetrate a little deeper. Half an hour for fingertips and toes to succumb.

Finally, George got close to the top; two pairs of hands reached over the lip of the crevasse and he was dragged out on his belly.

‘At last!' Nima exclaimed. ‘Now hurry please! Send down the gear, we're freezing down here!'

A further unexplained delay occurred. Kami guessed they were filming something up top. The crevasse gave out a few more ghostly groans as the ice flexed – it really was getting Kami quite spooked. Then, finally, the gear was sent down to the two boys.

‘You want to go first?' Kami asked his friend.

‘Of course I
want
to,' Nima snapped, ‘but you go.'

He handed the kit over. Kami stamped his feet on the ladder, trying to shock his toes back into life. Then he strapped on the chest harness and began to ascend the rope. He felt his hands begin to thaw out, the dull pain of the hot-aches causing him to swear beneath his breath.

‘Come on! We have to get out here!' Nima urged him.

As Kami ascended he noticed something curious; he could no longer hear the voices of the others up top. He figured they must be filming.

Nima was now a tiny figure beneath him, little more than a dark shadow really at the bottom of the slot.

‘You OK?' Kami called down.

‘No.' Nima uttered.

Kami summoned some more energy from somewhere and put on a burst of movement. He hauled himself up the small overhang, rolled onto the ice and rested for a few seconds as he looked around in surprise.

There was no-one there at all. The whole team had hurried back down to Base Camp.

It wasn't what he expected. He had thought Tenzing would leave at least a couple of his men to help them. But no. There was no welcoming voice to greet him. No friendly hand to help him up.

The sun had long since crashed below the ridge. He reckoned there was just an hour to dusk. He couldn't even hear the voices of the descending team. The icefall felt desolate and threatening.

‘They've all gone,' he yelled down the crevasse.

‘Whatever. Just send down the gear,' Nima's voice was curiously thin, and Kami thought he could detect a tinge of desperation in it.

‘OK.'

He unclipped the jumar clamps and the chest harness, but his fingers were still partly frozen and he messed up.

‘Look out!'

The two jumars slipped out of his grasp, bounced once, then slipped down the angled ice into the crevasse.

‘Catch them!' he yelled.

But it was already too late. It had all happened too fast. The gear had dropped in a flash, out of Nima's reach, through the narrowest part of the fissure and into the dark interior of the glacier.

‘Was that what I think it was?' Nima called up. There was a hollow ring of despair in his tone.

‘Yes, I … '

Nima bawled him out with a vicious string of swear words. He raged and cursed Kami in a way that he had never been cursed before. Kami listened, aghast. He had never felt so clumsy and hamfisted.

‘I'm so sorry … ' he stammered.

‘Try and pull me up,' Nima cried. He tried to climb hand over hand up the rope, his crampons kicking hopelessly into the steely ice wall. Kami clutched the rope and bent his entire force to the task, but was unable to pull his friend up even a single metre.

Nima called for him to stop.

‘You'll have to catch them up,' he yelled. ‘Get some more jumars. Quickly, Kami. Quickly!'

Kami yelled some words of encouragement to Nima and started to race down the icefall.

He knew he was taking risks but what choice did he have? Every extra minute that Nima was imprisoned in that ice was a minute in hell.

Would Nima get frostbite down there? Hypothermia? Could he even freeze to death? Kami pushed himself to move faster and faster, sliding down the vertical ladders, crashing into the soft snow at the base, rushing across the crevasse bridges without even tying on.

He was pushing his body too hard. A sort of oxygen deficit began to set in; he felt giddy, sick with a toxic concoction of hypoxia and fear. He experienced an urgent need to stop and defecate but that was out of the question.

The awful moment went round and round in his head. How had he ever been so stupid? So ham fisted. Dropping those jumars over the edge revealed what he really was; a hopeless beginner, the worst type of amateur.

He stopped for a beat, let out a cry: ‘Tenzing! Stop!'

A fractured echo bounced back mockingly from the west flank. No response. He began to move again. Following the wands. Jumping the smaller slots. Taking chances that the snow bridges would hold. Feeling the treacherous bounce of the ladders as the depths yawned beneath.

Every time he rounded a serac he expected to see the retreating figures of the expedition. But they had half an hour's head start on him and were moving fast. The maze was empty and time was racing with unreasonable speed.

Then he saw them. Just a few hundred metres from the rocky edge of the glacier.

‘Hey!' Kami screamed. He put so much force into the yell he thought his tonsils might get blasted out of his throat.

Tenzing turned. He waited as Kami caught up. The team gathered round as he gasped out the story.

Then Kami felt his vision narrow in the most disturbing way. Flashing shapes were gathering in at the edges of his world. The glacier was actually turning black. Someone offered him a water bottle but he couldn't co-ordinate his arm to reach up and grab it.

Kami fainted there and then, flat out on the ice.

He awoke the next morning at Base Camp, lying on top of a sleeping bag, still dressed in his mountain gear. It took his mind a few moments to focus, then images came to him; blacking out in the icefall, the stumbling descent to Base Camp, Sasha and the boss supporting him. His arms around their shoulders.

Nima. He sat up abruptly. Had they managed to extract him from the crevasse? Where was he now?

Kami unzipped the tent and found Jamling outside.

‘Is he OK?' he asked.

Jamling spat out a gobbet of tobacco juice.

‘More or less,' he said laconically.

Kami slipped on his boots and headed for the mess tent.

Lopsang was frying up Spam fritters in a pan, the smell of the sizzling meat reminding Kami that he hadn't eaten since the previous morning. He bolted down three plates while Tenzing filled him in on the rescue.

‘We got back up there as fast as we could,' Tenzing said, ‘but he was frozen half to death. He couldn't use his hands at all so we had to strap him to the ladder and haul him up like that.'

Kami tried to imagine the scene, a wave of shame and guilt engulfing him. Then he tried to figure how long Nima had been there alone. It must have been two hours. Maybe three. He shuddered at the thought of it.

‘He was talking with the fairies by that point,' Tenzing continued, ‘Hypothermia had got him. We sledged him down the icefall, then warmed him up here for a couple of hours. Then I had a couple of guys walk him through the night down to Pheriche.'

‘Where is he now?'

‘At the clinic. One of his hands is frostbitten.'

‘I want to see him,' Kami told Tenzing, ‘Can you give me a couple of days off?'

Tenzing considered the request for a few seconds.

‘It's going to be tricky … ' He replied. ‘Nima's obviously off the expedition now so we're down a man. The boss is getting more and more stressed and we've got more than fifty loads to shift through the icefall in the next few days. I can't really let you go.'

‘I'll do double carries when I get back,' Kami promised, ‘Give me twenty-four hours off. Please.'

‘OK. I guess … but if you take longer I'll have to find someone else to take your place.'

Kami felt a bit sick as he heard that. He knew there were plenty of strong lads just like him, waiting – jobless – down at Gorak Shep and Lobuche, ready to step into his shoes. But the need to see Nima was more than he could resist.

‘I'll be back very fast,' he promised. Then he ran to his tent to prepare a small pack with some gear.

‘Hey,' Tenzing called out, ‘I'm sorry we left you like that. That was my mistake. I should have told a couple of guys to wait, made sure you got out OK.'

‘OK,' Kami replied. ‘I appreciate that.'

Tenzing's apology was a consolation of sorts. It gave Kami a way to rationalise what had happened. Yes, it had been his fault entirely that the gear had been dropped. But the whole reason it happened was that his own hands were frozen from waiting while George got his shots.

But such mind games were futile. He still blamed himself and he found the incident churned over and over in his head for the entire twenty-kilometre trek down the Khumbu glacier to Pheriche.

He did the march in six hours. When he arrived he asked around for the clinic, introduced himself to one of the nurses and waited nervously to be shown into Nima's room.

Then she came back and told him, ‘I'm afraid he doesn't want to see you.'

Kami was crushed by this.

His instinct was to rush into the room anyway but he figured that might only make things worse. Instead he sat in the reception area of the clinic and wrote a note for Nima. He pleaded for forgiveness and begged for a chance to make amends.

The nurse agreed to take it but she came back three minutes later and it was ripped to pieces.

‘I think you should go,' she told him, ‘It's only making him stressed to know you are here.'

Kami waited for a couple more hours but, finally, he gave it up. He had to get back to the expedition and he knew he couldn't force Nima to see him if he didn't want to.

He wrote Nima a final note and told the nurse he was leaving. But, just as he was passing the side of the clinic he saw movement.

A pale face stared out at him. Dark, accusing eyes framed in the splintering wooden frame of the window.

As Kami watched, mesmerised, Nima slowly brought his hand up to the glass. The fingers were absolutely black, horribly swollen.

He looked at Kami in a venomous way for a few seconds then drew the curtain back across the window.

Kami suddenly got the most terrible premonition that he would never see his friend again.

Two days later Kami was back into the icefall. Once again it was a dawn departure. Once again he was with Jamling, and this time the danger zone seemed like familiar ground. The problem was the load; a huge great bundle of spindly aluminium struts and poles which would form a mess tent higher in the Cwm. No matter how he tied them up together, the individual poles kept slipping out of the bunch in the most irritating and dangerous way.

On the longer crevasse crossings he had a new fear to contend with; if one of the poles tumbled into the depths he would be in deep trouble with Tenzing.

‘Better you than me,' Jamling said as he watched Kami's struggle. His own load was a lot friendlier – a generator to power Alex Brennan's satphone at Camp Two – and was ‘light' by Sherpa standards, at a mere twenty-two kilogrammes.

There was more traffic in the icefall this time. They had to queue to get onto some of the ladder crossings, waiting for nervous Western climbers to cross the wobbling bridges.

‘This is dangerous,' Jamling observed as they joined yet another line, ‘every moment we hang around in this place is another moment to get hurt.'

Gradually they found ways to overtake the slower-moving climbers, pushing to the front of the pack and making it through the last of the crevasses by midday.

Kami felt his mood lighten as he saw the tents of Camp One. This time he would be staying there, and going higher the next day.

But as they approached the Camp, a serac peeled away from the cliff above with an impressive WHUMPH. The debris gathered pace with terrifying speed as it cascaded down the face and to Kami's inexperienced eyes it seemed they would surely be engulfed.

‘That's OK,' Jamling reassured him, ‘No need to run. Just powder.'

The two of them stood their ground as the leading edge of the avalanche billowed across the glacier towards them. There was a moment when Kami felt that Jamling must surely be mistaken, that the cloud would contain pulverising blocks of snow and ice.

But his judgement had been spot on and the true force of the avalanche had been dissipated at the foot of the face. Now it was ice crystals and nothing more. The world went white for a few minutes as the pulverised ice swirled around them. Then it gradually settled, leaving just a milky haze in the air.

Kami dozed in his tent through the afternoon and at supper time he put his boots back on and hurried through sleeting snow to join the others.

‘How about some Sherpa music?' Sasha requested.

‘A pleasure!' Jamling exclaimed. A silver mouth organ slipped into his hand and he began to play.

Kami listened in surprise as Jamling did his stuff. He had never thought of his mentor as an artistic man but he really played with skill, coaxing haunting Tibetan folk songs out of the little instrument.

Kami found himself thinking about Shreeya and feeling mightily homesick. If only she could see him now, he thought, how proud would she be?

Sitting at Camp One with the real Everest climbers. One of the team.

Kami had to share a tent with Lopsang that night. The cook snored like a pig, exhaling sour alcohol fumes that filled the little tent. Kami drowsed in a kind of stupor, but he couldn't really have called it sleep.

Tenzing shook the tent at dawn and it was full tilt into the new day, any fatigue forgotten with the busy rounds of breakfast, packing and departure.

Kami was carrying the heaviest load yet; a full pack of filming batteries, food rations, and a tripod head in a flight case that had to weigh ten kilos on its own.

‘You're OK with all that gear, right?' Alex asked him as the Sherpas filed past the Westerners' mess tent.

‘Very good, sir,' Kami replied, flashing him a radiant smile that gave no hint of the pain his body was experiencing.

Two hours of hard drill followed. They weaved a route through the sentinel crevasses that guarded the Cwm, then crossed over towards the southern side of the valley where the route was less prone to avalanche. Kami felt his muscles gradually warm to the task, the spectacular weight of the pack causing a slick patch of sweat in the centre of his back.

Halfway through that day's climb they came across the first of the many dead bodies that are littered about Everest's slopes.

It was a shock to Kami. A gaping skull. A skeletal claw of a hand. A wind suit bleached by ultra violet assault. Clinging fragments of flesh bearing the beak marks of scavenging birds.

‘Do you know who he was?' Kami asked.

Jamling nodded sadly, ‘he was a friend.'

Jamling placed a small pile of dried flower petals on the corpse.

‘Why doesn't somebody take the body back to Base Camp?' Kami asked.

‘Superstition,' Jamling replied, ‘would you want to touch it?'

Kami shivered at the thought. He understood perfectly what Jamling meant. The idea of touching a dead body was taboo to most Sherpa people and, besides, to extract the body from the ice would be a gruesome task, a question of chipping out bones, ripping out flesh.

At that moment the Western climbing team caught them up.

‘Oh my goodness.' Sasha put her hand to her mouth in shock as she saw the mutilated remains. ‘That is a terrible sight.'

‘We need this for the film,' the boss said dispassionately. George nodded his agreement and they began to prep the film gear.

Jamling and Kami exchanged a glance.

‘They should not be filming him,' Jamling muttered.

Kami nodded his agreement.

‘Maybe you should tell them he was your friend?' Kami whispered.

‘I don't know … ' Jamling was reluctant to interrupt the filming.

Kami watched as Alex kneeled next to the corpse and began a piece to camera.

‘This is just one of the many dozens of dead bodies we are likely to encounter here on the slopes of Everest … There's no telling who this man was, or how he died, but … '

Kami felt terrible for Jamling. It was totally insensitive to film the remains of his friend in this way. Finally, he plucked up his courage.

‘Erm, sir. I think Jamling would like to say something,' he blurted out.

‘Cut!' The sound recordist glared at Kami.

‘Don't interrupt while we're doing a shot,' Brennan snapped.

‘We'll have to do it again,' George said angrily.

‘Don't you think we should listen to what they have to say?' Sasha asked Brennan.

‘Alright,' he conceded reluctantly, ‘Tell me the problem Jamling.'

But Jamling just froze. He couldn't think of the words to say. And Kami didn't want to further antagonise the boss.

‘Let's go again,' George said, ‘I'm getting cold here.'

They shot the rest of the sequence, packed up the gear and moved on.

Kami felt a bit nauseous as he stepped over the dessicated corpse. The filming thing had unsettled him deeply, not least because the boss had been so unmoved by the pile of bones and frozen flesh. Was this what the mountain did to you? Squeeze all the humanity out of your soul?

‘What was Jamling wanting to say back there?' Sasha asked him gently.

Kami told her.

‘That's terrible,' she exclaimed. ‘Alex really should have had more patience with you. Talked it through.'

Later Kami heard her remonstrating with the boss although he didn't seem to have much to say in response.

Kami pulled out the shrine bell and placed it inside his glove, the metal warming against the flesh of his palm for the rest of that morning as he dutifully followed the others up the Cwm.

He found it gave him strength.

By 2 p.m the little group of Sherpas had pulled ahead of the Westerners. By 3.30 p.m. they trudged in to Camp Two. Kami had a throbbing headache and he rushed to the mess tent and begged a litre of water. He snatched the bottle and glugged it down in one, soaking it up like a sponge as he slaked his raging thirst.

‘When did you last drink?' Jamling asked him.

‘This morning. Breakfast.'

‘Not enough,' he snapped. ‘I've told you. You won't go higher if you don't get fluid inside you.'

It was a rebuke too far. Kami felt tears prick his eyes. The day had been savagely hard and it wasn't his fault he hadn't been able to drink.

‘There's news about Nima by the way,' Jamling told him.

Kami's heart leaped to hear this. ‘Is he still in the hospital? Getting better?'

‘No. He quit the hospital and was last seen getting drunk in a bar in Namche.'

The news was the last thing Kami wanted to hear. Nima had a reputation as a drinker and he knew his recovery would be difficult if he went off the rails.

‘Tenzing should send someone down to help him,' Kami suggested.

Jamling grunted his agreement but both of them knew it wouldn't happen.

Wanting to escape the stress, Kami snuggled up in his sleeping bag, listening to the wind plucking at the guide lines of the tent. The day had been really tough and he felt a bit gloomy and frightened. What would Shreeya tell him in such circumstances, he wondered? The words she had uttered at their final goodbye were still with him.

Don't get sad that we are apart, Kami. I will be thinking of you every moment, praying for you to come back safely.

Kami felt a comforting flood of warmth move through his body. The words replayed in his mind were so vivid, so heartfelt that it was almost as if Shreeya was there with him in the tent. Curled up by his side.

Kami didn't go to the food tent that night. Instead he slept soundly through all of the hours of darkness, waking up at first light as a blustery storm began to engulf the camp.

He came out of the tent and found Jamling and Sasha already out and dressed. Sasha was looking grim, and she plodded over through the driving snow to talk to Kami.

‘Your friend Nima has been busy down in Namche,' she told him. ‘Alex has been on the satellite unit and the PR situation just got a whole lot worse.'

Alex Brennan unzipped his tent and beckoned to Kami to come over.

‘Have a look at this.'

He handed Kami his iPad, which was showing the front page of an online newspaper.

‘LEFT TO DIE!' was the headline. Underneath it was a picture of Nima, staring angrily at the camera, his ghoulish black fingers held up close to the lens. It was certainly a striking image and Kami's heart plummeted as he realised what Nima had done.

‘Go on! Read it!' Brennan exclaimed.

Kami read the following:

Alex Brennan's Everest expedition suffered a new setback yesterday as one of his Sherpa team was evacuated from the mountain with severe frostbite. Nima Gyaltzen, 18, had been assisting on the mountain but was almost frozen to death after being abandoned in the notorious icefall.

‘He was more interested in the filming,' the young Sherpa revealed. ‘They forced me to go down a crevasse and then left me there for hours. He didn't care if I was dead or alive. Now they're going to have to amputate my fingers and maybe my hand.'

Kami had to stop reading at that point as he felt physically sick.

‘There's plenty more where that came from,' Brennan told Kami bitterly as he flicked through other syndicated headlines and articles on the iPad – all basically carrying the same story and pictures.

‘He's gone crazy,' Kami said.

‘He certainly has,' Brennan agreed, ‘and he's doing a good job of turning the American people completely against me.'

‘Maybe it's true. We should have looked after him better,' Sasha suggested.

‘You can say that now,' Brennan retorted. ‘In any case we paid for the clinic and gave him a whole bunch of cash … '

The argument ended abruptly as a huge blast of hurricane force wind swept across the face. Other expeditions were already on the move, heading down.

‘I guess that's us done for the time being,' Brennan said forlornly. ‘We'll have to hang out at Camp One until the storm's over.'

The team zipped up the tents and hurriedly retreated, lost in their own worlds as they descended all the way back down the Cwm to the sanctuary of Camp One.

Kami found his mind churning over those awful pictures of Nima's deadened fingers. So much pain. So much damage.

But he found it hard to be truly sympathetic; Nima had betrayed Alex in an even more destructive way than Pemba. He wondered how much the frog man journalist had paid Nima for his story. He hoped Nima felt it was worth it.

As for the boss, well he had gone ominously silent.

‘He's got a lot on his mind now,' Sasha commented to Kami, ‘and the real stressful part of all this hasn't even begun.'

Kami thought about that a lot as he trekked on through the bullying wind of the blizzard.

The storm raged for three days, dumping a spectacular load of snow on the mountain and trapping the team at Camp One. Alex Brennan spent most of his time on the satphone, trying to put the world right on Nima's story, and firing off faxes and emails to rally his political supporters.