Chapter Thirty-One
It was snowing as we started toward the icefall in the thick blackness of a cloud-covered, starless morning. Today we were going all the way from Base Camp to Camp Two. The storm Dad had warned about was still on its way. We’d gone over this in detail at our guides’ meeting last night, but Jim was certain it wouldn’t hit until the afternoon, and we were planning to kill two days at Camp Two anyway for acclimatization before our overnight at Camp Three.
As always, Phurba and I were in the rear with the slowest clients, and we had to wait for the others to start before we could get going. The gaggle of us was nothing but faint black profiles of people with headlamps floating through the air, but even so, I knew exactly which silhouette was Luke.
“Ready?” Phurba asked in Sherpa when it was our turn. Today, he was wearing his NASCAR bandana as a buff around his nose and mouth to protect from the cold. I nodded, and we stepped off after our clients. It was unbearably cold with the low pressure system in front of the storm, and it was even colder inside the icefall.
From the start, everything seemed off. My crampons didn’t seem like they were on tight enough, my harness was twisted uncomfortably, and my pack was heavy with all the extra gear I was carrying for the clients, since I was too proud to pass any of it along to the Sherpas. Even the drone wasn’t feeling it this morning. April had it flying up ahead with the Cubans when we started, but the winds had picked up too much, and she’d had to fly it back to Base Camp.
I’d had a terrible night of sleep, since I had not been able to put the brakes on thinking about Luke. Also, I dreaded crossing through the section of the icefall where the serac had fallen last time. Just being in the icefall again had my pulse at an anxious clip. I kept my eyes straight ahead so that my headlamp beam didn’t light up any of the terrifying ice blocks surrounding us. If I couldn’t see them, they weren’t there.
I was with Phil again today. He was coughing a lot, but at least he was keeping pace.
“You’re doing great,” I told him.
“Sometimes you need a reminder of what it’s like to be alive,” he replied. “That’s the whole reason I came here in the first place.”
I think he was referring to what happened in the icefall. Chills ran through my body because today the icefall’s normal creaks and groans sounded more like ominous cracks and gasps.
We continued on in the morning’s gripping cold. I was wiggling my toes and fingers constantly and breathing through my balaclava in an attempt to warm the air before it hit my lungs. Oddly, it was getting colder instead of warmer as sunrise neared, but there was nothing to do other than to keep moving forward.
“Cold,” Phurba said as we waited for the clients to cross the ladder over one of the precipices. He seemed antsy at the clients’ slow progress, and this unsettled me further.
“No kidding,” I replied, trying to keep my tone light.
It was six thirty, and we should have been able to turn off headlamps by now, but it was still too dark because of the cloud cover.
By the time all of A-Team was through the last ladder bridge of the icefall, it was snowing heavily and winds were picking up. Sensing the degrading conditions, the clients naturally went faster. When there was finally enough daylight to turn off the headlamps, the visibility was so low I couldn’t even see the side of Nuptse.
Dad would be pissed if he knew Jim had us heading up in this. He would never have left Base Camp with a storm sure to hit, even if it wasn’t forecasted until later in the day. That was one of the big differences between a small outfit like Winslowe Expeditions and a huge company like Global. The cost of a long weather delay when multiplied by the number of staff and clients on our expedition would have a catastrophic impact on the profit-loss margin, and with Jim reporting directly to a corporate oversight panel, these things mattered a lot.
Though the clients were moving faster than normal, it wasn’t fast enough.
“These guys need to pick it up,” Phurba said.
I nodded in agreement.
The full force of the wind hit us once we exited the icefall. Here, I should have been able to see up the Western Cwm to Camp Two, but all that was visible was Camp One and the slope of the cwm that seamlessly blended into the clouds ahead and to the sides. Hulk and Tyler and the others at the front of the group were already hidden by those clouds.
Camp One was vacant when we arrived. Having pushed our clients through the last half of the icefall, I wasn’t sure they had enough power left to make fast enough progress up the cwm before we were trapped in the storm. I halted Phurba and Dorje to discuss it. “Think we should hold off here?” I asked.
Phurba glanced around and nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”
I swallowed. It was such an easy slope, but the storm… You don’t risk getting caught in any storm outside of camp on Mount Everest. Or anywhere in the Himalayas, period.
“Jim, this is Emily,” I said into the radio. “We’re in Camp One. I’ve got Phil, Glen, Johnsmith, Phurba, and Dorje. We might need to call it here.”
“Okay, Emily, hold on.” The wind howled so loudly I could barely hear him. Even though my back was to the wind, ice flakes lashed the exposed slivers of skin between my glacier glasses and balaclava.
“Emily, this is Jim. We have some supplies at Camp One, but the sleeping bags are up at Camp Two. It’s just a straight shot from where you’re at. How long do you think your clients will take?”
If it was just me, I could do it in forty-five minutes. I looked over to Phil, our weakest link. He was coughing but otherwise holding up okay.
“If your guys can manage it, I’d rather not have the group separated when this storm hits,” Jim said.
It could take two hours for Phil to cover the distance.
“Yeah, yeah, Mr. Jim.” It took me a second to realize that this was Dorje responding to him in the radio. “We keep going.”
Before I could question Dorje, he was signaling for our clients to get moving. My body bristled. This was not the right decision.
But, then, what did I know? Look what happened in the icefall last time. And in the mountains, it wasn’t a question of risk or safety, it was choosing your risk. Getting stranded at an unequipped camp wasn’t a good option, either.
We kept going, and it seemed visibility was worsening by the minute. After a half hour of walking, I insisted everyone rope up so no one could accidentally wander out of sight.
After an hour—the point that Jim would have likely expected we would arrive at Camp Two—he called me on the radio.
“Total whiteout here,” I yelled over the wind. “Can’t see the camp.”
“You lost line of sight?”
“Never had it.”
He spouted off a list of instructions straight from Mountaineering 101, including roping up, planting pickets as we progressed, and turning on headlamps. Already done, done, and done.
“Just keep going. Be sure to stay on the boot-packed trail so no one ends up nose diving into a crevasse.”
Great.
Phurba was at the head of the rope. I was at the back with Dorje. Johnsmith was slowing down. Why hadn’t I noticed how bad his limp was getting? I clapped his shoulder. “Keep moving,” I told him. “We’re almost there, and we’ll bring you to Doc Teresa so she can look at your leg.”
We kept on in faith. Yes, it was a low angle and there was no skyscraper-tall cliff to walk off, but it was damned scary to be in a whiteout with three grown men all depending on me and the Sherpas. The lack of visibility made me claustrophobic, and I yearned to pick up the pace and get the heck to Camp Two. Instead, I did the only thing I could: wiggled my fingers and toes and rubbed my arms and thighs in an attempt to stay warm.
Up ahead, at the max point of my visibility, Phurba waved his arms in excitement. “I see the tents,” he told me over the radio.
I couldn’t see anything but whiteness beyond him, but by the time my trailing end of the rope arrived at where he had been standing, I saw the tents through the shifting snow. Phurba was helping Glissading Glen off the rope and into his tent.
Thank god.
Phurba and Dorje took care of Phil and the rest of our group while I walked Johnsmith into the cook tent, where Tyler volunteered to get Doc.
I tried to conceal my chattering teeth from Thom and the Sherpas while I looked anxiously at Johnsmith, praying it was just his leg that had slowed him down. What if I’d missed signs of altitude sickness? It was hard to tell, not knowing him very well and being delirious with cold myself.
Doc entered noiselessly and checked Johnsmith’s vitals.
“He’s just chilled, and his knee is swollen. We’ll give him some heat packs and ibuprofen.”
Doc made sure he took the right amount of medicine, then stood back with me. “Get to your tent and warm up, Em.”
My tent, where Luke would surely be. Doc broke open two packets of hand warmers for me and nudged me toward the door.
When I reached our tent, I struggled to unzip it with my stiff fingers, then practically fell inside as a gust of wind trucked by and pushed me down. Luke was lying in his sleeping bag, listening to music on his phone. It wasn’t as big of a deal to see him as I’d thought. That’s the blessing of being hypothermic. You don’t care about anything.
As soon as I managed to get my boots off, I slipped deep inside my sleeping bag, cinching the cord around the top of my head. I pulled the hand warmers out of my pockets, rubbing them across my body—feet, knees, sides, hands.
Dorje had made the right call today about continuing to Camp Two. We’d have been in grave trouble if we’d been stuck in Camp One without sleeping bags. At the moment, I was thankful to be right where I was, even if the other person in the tent hated me.