“Anyway I lied about that, and I also suggested we slip up the Hornbein Couloir and find the body when Arnold started tailing the Brits, and all of that was because I was just hoping we’d get into this situation, where we got the time and the weather to shoot for the top, we were both just hoping for it man and here we are. We got everything planned, Kunga and I have worked it all out—we’ve got all the stuff we need, and if we have to bivvy on the South Summit after we bag the peak, then we can descend by way of the Southeast Ridge and meet the Indian Army team in the South Col, and get escorted back to Base Camp, that’s the yak route and won’t be any problem.”
He took a few deep breaths. “Plus, well, listen. Kunga Lama has got mystic reasons for wanting to go up there, having to do with his longtime guru Dorjee Lama. Remember I told you back in Chimoa how Dorjee Lama had set a task for Kunga Norbu, that Kunga had to accomplish before the monastery at Kum-Bum would be rebuilt, and Kunga set free to be his own lama at last? Well—the task was to climb Chomolungma! That old son of a gun said to Kunga, you just climb Chomolungma and everything’ll be fine! Figuring that would mean that he would have a disciple for just as many reincarnations as he would ever go through this side of nirvana. But he didn’t count on Kunga Norbu teaming up with his old student Freds Fredericks, and his buddy George Fergusson!”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I can see you feel very deeply about this Freds, and I respect that, but I’m not going.”
“We need you along, George! Besides, we’re going to do it, and we can’t really leave you to go back down the West Ridge by yourself—that’d be more dangerous than coming along with us! And we’re going to the peak, so you have to come along, it’s that simple!”
Freds had been talking so fast and hard that he was completely out of breath; he waved a hand at Kunga Norbu. “You talk to him,” he said to Kunga, then switched to Tibetan, no doubt to repeat the message.
Kunga Norbu pulled up his snow goggles, and very serenely he looked at me. He looked just a little sad; it was the sort of expression you might get if you refused to give to the United Way. His black eyes looked right through me just as they always did, and in that high-altitude glare his pupils kind of pulsed in and out, in and out, in and out. And damned if that old bastard didn’t hypnotize me. I think.
But I struggled against it. I found myself putting on my pack, and checking my crampons to make sure they were really, really, really tight, and at the same time I was shouting at Freds. “Freds, be reasonable! No one climbs Everest unsupported like this! It’s too dangerous!”
“Hey, Messner did it. Messner climbed it in two days from North Col by himself, all he had was his girlfriend waiting down at base camp.”
“You can’t use Reinhold Messner as an example,” I cried. “Messner is insane.”
“Nah. He’s just tough and fast. And so are we. It won’t be a problem.”
“Freds, climbing Everest is generally considered a problem.” But Kunga Norbu had put on his pack and was starting up the slope above our campsite, and Freds was following him, and I was following Freds. “For one big problem,” I yelled, “we don’t have any oxygen!”
“People climb it without oxygen all the time now.”
“Yeah, but you pay the price for it. You don’t get enough oxygen up there, and it kills brain cells like you can’t believe! If we go up there we’re certain to lose millions of brain cells.”
“So?” He couldn’t see the basis of the objection.
I groaned. We continued up the slope.
XIV
And that is how I found myself climbing Mount Everest with a Tibetan tulku and the wild man of Arkansas. It was not a position that a reasonable person could defend to himself, and indeed as I trudged after Freds and Kunga I could scarcely believe it was happening. But every labored breath told me it was. And since it was, I decided I had better psych myself into the proper frame of mind for it, or else it would only be that much more dangerous. “Always wanted to do this,” I said, banishing the powerful impression that I had been hypnotized into the whole deal. “We’re climbing Everest, and I really want to.”
“That’s the attitude,” Freds said.
I ignored him and kept thinking the phrase “I want to do this,” once for every two steps. After a few hundred steps, I have to admit that I had myself somewhat convinced. I mean, Everest! Think about it! I suppose that like anyone else, I had the fantasy in there somewhere.
I won’t bother you with the details of our route; if you want them you can consult my anonymous article in the American Alpine Journal , 1987 issue. Actually it was fairly straightforward; we contoured up from the Hornbein Couloir to the upper West Ridge, and continued from there.
I did this in bursts of ten steps at a time; the altitude was finally beginning to hammer me. I acclimatize as well as anyone I know, but nobody acclimatizes over twenty-six thousand feet. It’s just a matter of how fast you wind down.
“Try to go as slow as you need to, and avoid rests,” Freds advised.
“I’m going as slow as I can already.”
“No you’re not. Try to just flow uphill. Really put it into first gear. You fall into a certain rhythm.”
“All right. I’ll try.”
We were seated at this point to take off our crampons, which were unnecessary. Freds had been right about the ease of the climb up here. The ridge was wide, it wasn’t very steep, and it was all broken up, so that irregular rock staircases were everywhere on it. If it were at sea level you could run up it, literally. It was so easy that I could try Freds’s suggestion, and I followed him and Kunga up the ridge in slow-slow motion. At that rate I could go about five or ten minutes between rests—it’s hard to be sure how long, as each interval seemed like an afternoon on its own.
But with each stop we were a little higher. There was no denying the West Ridge had a first-class view: to our right all the mountains of Nepal, to our left all the mountains of Tibet, and you could throw in Sikkim and Bhutan for change. Mountains everywhere: and all of them below us. The only thing still above us was the pyramid of Everest’s final summit, standing brilliant white against a black-blue sky.
At each rest stop I found Kunga Norbu was humming a strange Buddhist chant; he was looking happier and happier in a subtle sort of way, while Freds’s grin got wider and wider. “Can you believe how perfect the day is? Beautiful, huh?”
“Uh huh.” It was nice, all right. But I was too tired to enjoy it. Some of their energy poured into me at each stop, and that was a good thing, because they were really going strong, and I needed the help.
Finally the ridge became snow-covered again, and we had to sit down and put our crampons back on. I found this usually simple process almost more than I could handle. My hands left pink afterimages in the air, and I hissed and grunted at each pull on the straps. When I finished and stood, I almost keeled over. The rocks swam, and even with my goggles on the snow was painfully white.
“Last bit,” Freds said as we looked up the slope. We crunched into it, and our crampons spiked down into firm snow. Kunga took off at an unbelievable pace. Freds and I marched up side by side, sharing a pace to take some of the mental effort out of it.
Freds wanted to talk, even though he had no breath to spare. “Old Dorjee Lama. Going to be. Mighty surprised. When they start rebuilding. Kum-Bum. Ha!”
I nodded as if I believed in the whole story. This was an exaggeration, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but to put one foot in front of the other, in blazing white snow.