The Island

by Daya Daniels

  It’s the color of the close to fifty tents that litter this base camp on the moraine of the Godwin-Austen Glacier just behind me where I stand in northern Pakistan on the western edge of the Himalayas. It’s the hue of the insulated pants I’m wearing. It’s the color of the Korean rope stacked high near the mess tent where a few climbers are huddled together tasting the selection of breakfast on offer.

  I absorb the spectacular beauty of the Baltoro Glacier—one of the longest glaciers outside of the polar region—which is ahead, snow-capped and white, edged by the mass of gray and black rock. Then to my distant right, just behind the massive Concordia Glacier, in all their haughty glory, stand Gasherbrum, Broad Peak, and Hidden Peak.

  I’ve scaled them all but none without mishaps to other team members along with a few deaths. Luckily, each time, I managed to walk away unharmed and with all my fingers, my toes, and my sanity.

  In fact, in my forty years of life, I’ve made it to the top of all Seven Summits: Mount Everest four times, Aconcagua, Denali three times, Kilimanjaro, Mount Elbrus twice, Mount Vinson twice, Puncak Jaya and Mount Kosciuszko twice.

  There’s only one left, which I regard as a true challenge...

  A smile dances across my lips. No, it’s more like an annoyed smirk.

  I kick a rock with my boot, examining the sharp edges of it, and inhale.

  The mean temperature around here during the day has been a comfortable thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Bearable. But still frigid with a slight windchill factor. So technically, right now, in the middle of July, I’m standing in the coldest place in Pakistan.

  I’ve been in this godforsaken country for three weeks now.

  After spending a week in the very hot and dusty capital of Islamabad, I hopped the first flight from there and to Skardu.

  I’ve done all this shit before, many times...

  The trip here is always the same.

  The people you meet along the way are super friendly. They offer you way too much green tea and porridge. Often a few of them pray for you—for good reason. They decorate you with blue ribbons and necklaces made of pistachios and mutter things like, “May God be with you on your journey.”

  Blah, blah, blah.

  After leaving Skardu, there was a four-plus-hour rocky ride in a yellow bus that was driven by a funny-looking man named Inskar who talked entirely too much and who tried to convince me to meet one of his sisters the whole trip. I could barely sit upright in that cramped vehicle that was full of cackling chickens, let alone really pay attention to Inskar’s attempts to play matchmaker. And the last thing I need anyhow is another woman.

  I’m not built for the creatures.

  “Not domesticated enough,” Catherine had once said about me.

  And she was right then, just as she is now.

  It’s why I’m still single and technically of no fixed abode.

  Everything I own either resides in a safety-deposit box in a Barclay’s Bank back in London, or it fits in the fifty-five-pound rucksack in the tent just behind me.

  Women want you to settle down, buy a house, and have children. Often, they become obsessed and utter the word “love” to no end.

  No woman should love a man like me.

  It’s dangerous, risky, fucking hazardous.

  I think I’d rather accept a life sentence in one of the world’s toughest prisons than to subject myself to that type of life. It isn’t me. I need to be wild. Free. No promises. No demands. My life has always been this way. The only person I need to worry about is me and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

  Anyways, while I was thwarting all Inskar’s attempts to set me up with his non-English-speaking, virgin sister, the miniscule bus he was driving traveled through the Shigar Valley and the Braldu Gorge to stop in a tiny and very dusty town called Askole, which is located in one of the most remote regions around here.

  Askole is where most travelers stop first to rest and eat and enjoy the last comforts of the civilized world before they make their way here, where I am now, in the wilderness, at danger’s doorstep, like many times before...

  Once I’d stepped outside of the mini truck, I stretched and inhaled the fresh mountainous air. I absorbed the sight of the world’s largest concentration of peaks in the distance and it all made me keenly aware I’d made it to the Karakoram Range.

  My heart did a little leap in my chest when I slung my rucksack over my shoulder and set off for a small teahouse just across the street.

  Once inside and comfortable, it didn’t take long, never does honestly, for me to find a warm woman to bury myself in.

  A fellow climber...

  I think it’s my reputation on the peaks that immediately earns their interest. Never mind my surname, which sounds like uber cash in itself. When they hear the moniker spoken it always has them batting their lashes and begging for more after they part their sweet thighs.

  But nothing ever comes of it.

  Ever.

  Let’s get back to the woman I mentioned...

  She was in her twenties. Perky tits. Firm ass.

  And I know that because I fucked her from behind. I always fuck them from behind and no kissing ever. I offer not one iota of a connection. You’d think that would be a turn-off, but still, they never shoot me down. And I always use a condom before I take a dive. Especially since the incident...I like my cock, have no plans to lose it for a pretty face.

  I can’t recall the exact hue of them, but she had big eyes that made me feel worshipped each time she looked up at me through her long, fluttery lashes, while she had my cock deep down her throat. I savored that encounter. Especially since I knew it would be the only one of the sort I’d be getting for a while.

  I think her name was Haley.

  A tangle of voices in the distance yanks me back to the present.

  Slipping my fingers beneath the seam of my beanie, I pull it down over my forehead even more, blocking the chill from touching my ears.

  While sitting in a teahouse in Askole that was filled with every nationality, from the Serbs, to the Russians, the French, the Japanese, the Nords, along with the South Africans—the list goes on—the Americans had been the most outspoken.

  While most of the patrons inside the teahouse were sipping tea, winding down from traveling and preparing for what is to come over these next few weeks, one or two assholes were drinking beer. Bragging. Laughing. Talking about how summiting these peaks was going to be easy since they’d spent the last six months doing CrossFit, Pilates, and pumping lots of iron.

  Oh, and also because one, who we can call Shit for Brains, had spent some time in the last two months climbing Kilimanjaro.

  Well, first off, you don’t climb Kilimanjaro. It’s more like a fucking hike.

  And nothing prepares you for a mountain like this one. Not even Everest.

  The other, we’ll call him Madman for now, had spent the last thirty-six months free soloing peaks and scaling the north face—a.k.a “Murder Wall” —of the Eiger in the Alps, attempting to break the speed record currently owned by the “Swiss Machine,” Ueli Steck.

  He earned a little more credit from me along with the lift of a brow. And just a little bit, I questioned his sanity.

  It takes a certain number of loose marbles to tackle the face of a mountain, with only your gloved hands, two ice axes, and your crampons secured to your boots. Knowing that anything, a gust of wind, a brief lapse in judgment in the form of a careless slip could send you plummeting to your death.

  It’s the nature of the beast, I suppose.

  Now, I’ll share with you my carefully compiled list of adversaries at these altitudes.

  Enemy number ten up here: egos.

  Even when I think about that, still, I can only chuckle at the bravado of Madman and Shit for Brains.

  Boys.

  Fools.

  Men with no fear.

  Idiots who lack respect for these peaks.

  Souls who will likely die on them if they aren’t careful
.

  But nonetheless, I found their drunken banter entertaining.

  “Respect the mountain,” Alfred had always told me since I was a boy. He repeated the words so often on the long hikes we took through the Pirin and Rila ranges of the Balkans in Bulgaria. It was way back then, hiking through the dense pine forests and over the blue glacial lakes, that I’d found my love for climbing.

  Alfred looked up to men like Edmund Hillary—one of the men credited with getting to the top of Mount Everest first. Hillary was a man who made his living as a beekeeper and who originally only kept climbing as a hobby. A few years before he summited Everest, Hillary had joined two different reconnaissance expeditions before he decided a few years later to go straight to the top of it.

  Hillary, who is still a legend, back then had made us Brits proud.

  And soon, I only wanted to go higher.

  No one could stop me.

  Nothing could quench my thirst to ascend.

  And after conquering summits like Annapurna, the Matterhorn and Nanga Parbat, I only wanted more.

  Climbing became like a drug and no matter what I did I-just-couldn’t-stop using.

  After that night in the teahouse, news had spread that two climbers who had summited Broad Peak disappeared during their descent. Even though they’d made it to the top, the ascent wouldn’t count, since most believe a true summit is to make it to the top and back down with your life. Otherwise, it’s as if it never happened...

  The two men were presumed dead.

  An avalanche had swept their camp off the side of the mountain during the night. Their bodies still have not been recovered and probably never will be.

  Avalanche risk around here is prevalent. While there are small ones, the most dangerous ones are “slab” avalanches. Think of it like a big white dinner plate sliding off the table. You can’t outrun it. You can’t hide from it. There is no escaping a slab of snow hurdling its way toward you at eighty miles per hour. You’d be entombed in ice and snow, buried alive and likely never to be seen again.

  After another loud breath leaves me, I regard the bitch ahead.

  Tall.

  Ominous.

  Surrounded by thick white cumulonimbus clouds that float around her peak, concealing the danger and work ahead that’ll probably kill a few of us, maim a bunch, and leave the rest of us at the end of this journey to bask in our glory when we reach the top.

  I don’t underestimate her though.

  Only a fool would do that.

  K2.

  The second highest peak in the world, which stands at 8,611 meters—28,251 feet. Also known as “Mount Godwin-Austen,” “Choguri,” which has been derived from two Balti words “big” and “mountain,” or the “Savage Mountain.”

  Such a simple name for a deadly beast.

  A peak that was first conquered in one giant controversial ascent marred by sabotage and maniacal ambition gone haywire, by the Italians, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli, in 1954.

  The “K” in the name for this monster comes from “Karakoram” and the “2” because it was the second-highest peak out of the two most prominent ones in the mountainous range discovered at the time when they were surveyed by Thomas Montgomerie, who was employed by the GTS of British India, and the name just stuck.

  A mountain that holds the second-highest fatality rate among all the eight-thousanders, since one climber dies for every four who reach the summit.

  She’s deadly, cruel, and sadistic.

  A perfect pyramid.

  But a true beauty. That I can’t deny. With her pristine, jagged edges and her curves covered in white. She’s like a wanton whore. So tempting and teasing, enticing you to touch her, to taste what you know you’ll grow addicted to if you ever mount her. And that’s only if she gives you the fucking chance...

  She’s already shot me down five times.

  She will not be refusing me for a sixth!

  Shaking my head, a shiver runs up my spine and lands in my balls.

  More blue assails my eyes when two Balti porters carry a crate of blueberries past me, seeming completely unaware of what lies ahead of me, side by side, unmoving, and completely still. The blue tarpaulin on the ground that is bundled up tightly holds the dead bodies of two porters who were killed only twelve hours ago by a falling slab of ice while they were fixing ropes.

  This means our team is already down a man and a woman.

  We need the Balti porters who are always a mix of low-altitude and high-altitude companions. And we need their prayers.

  They carry loads. They cook. And they often guide us too.

  Most of them hail from the highly mountainous area of Gilgit-Balistan, and they have trekked to the Karakoram Range for work. They are skilled mountaineers who work harder than probably anyone else on these expeditions.

  One of the guides for this expedition was injured by the falling ice in the accident, but luckily, he’s still alive.

  I’ll have to admit I’m not a huge fan of the guy.

  He’s some Swede who never looks you in the eye and spends more time adjusting his clothes like he’s waiting for the paparazzi to take a picture of him than he does checking on the rest of the climbers in his group.

  I didn’t pick him.

  After securing the respective permit from the Pakistani government for the group of us and laying down more than one hundred thousand dollars for guides, porters, food, gear, oxygen, and flights, the Russian, Igor, and the Swede, Hugo, happened to be all who was left, since all the bodies who worked for Excelsior—the guide company—had been assigned to lead other expeditions.

  We booked this trip at the last minute, which may already be obvious.

  Only Sebastian could be blamed for that.

  He woke up one Saturday morning after partying Friday night on the London circuit and called me. He spoke into the phone in his sleepy, hungover, and absolutely grumpy voice and asked if I was ready to do this just one more time.

  I told him “Hell yeah,” and now we’re here, ready to go down in history.

  Placing my thermos between the rocks near my boots, I snatch up my binoculars. I fix them on the sight of the new group of climbers, along with the donkeys carrying supplies, which trek alongside them as they make their way here to base camp.

  I lower the binoculars and growl when men in the distance arguing perks up my ears. Hugo flies out of the mess tent, stumbles over a few rocks, and lands on his ass. Dizzily, he scrambles to his feet.

  “Fuck.” I toss the binoculars back in the tent and head over to the raucousness.

  Hampered by all the bad weather that has been moving through this area, as a result, we’ve been here at base camp for far too long. Tempers are heating up from people living in close proximity with each other. And the lack of progress of making it up this bitch in the allotted time frame each climber here has given themselves is frustrating all who must remain here.

  But this is the one thing I despise...

  Enemy number nine up here: assholes.

  On a mountain, no people at all are better than bad people.

  We cannot afford discord within the group.

  Do you really want to put your life in the hands of some asshole? A person who’d rather watch you fall off the face of a mountain instead of saving your life?

  Can’t we all just fucking get along!

  The banging of pots and pans makes me flinch.

  Marching over to the mess, I run a hand over my left cheek, hoping to wipe away the burning cold as a cool wind licks across my skin. The two combatants have already been pulled apart. Hugo heaves for breath. With a hoarse yell, Sebastian does the same and walks off somewhere. I know that look from him. I’ve seen it a million times before.

  Sebastian is like a little kid. If something doesn’t go his way, he’s more than likely to throw and break things, rather than to use his words to express how he’s really feeling deep inside.

  Everyone stands just outside the mess tent, forming two
lines like soldiers.

  My boots crunch in the scree underfoot as I get closer and pass all six main members of my summit party.

  Gilda—German. World traveler and career climber. Rough around the edges. Always mistaken for being a lesbian. Summited Everest twice, without oxygen, and a handful of other peaks in the same fashion. Swears a lot. Shaved her head because she said it just makes everything easier. Would probably eat you alive if you ever froze to death and she was hungry. And she’s always hungry.

  Racine—American. Pre-school teacher. Mother of three pain in the ass little girls. Recently divorced from some cunt who calls himself the King of Prussia. Not sure why she’s here really since she’s only ascended a handful of smaller peaks. Think Sebastian has plans to make her his fourth wife.

  Winston—an almost eighty-year-old Brit. Retired, of course. Lifelong mountaineer. Used to solo climb a lot when he was much younger. Had one fall, never been the same in the brain since, but still climbs. Father’s best friend. Hates wearing clothes, even when it’s cold. Talks too much about the “good ol’ days.” Calls me “old boy” all the time.

  Musa—adrenaline junkie. Full-time Instagram star, whatever the fuck that is. Saudi Arabian rich kid. Once jumped out of a helicopter over Palm Island in Dubai with no parachute because he said his six million Instagram followers told him to do it. Climbed all Seven Summits, never K2.

  Tyrone—American. Writes the sports column for ESPN The Magazine. Talks too much. Brags that he’s the second black man to ever summit Everest. Father of a little girl who adores him. I practically had to beg him to join us on this expedition because he didn’t want to miss Bubba Waltrip race at Chicagoland Speedway. Usually has his priorities screwed up, as you can see.

  And...

  Sebastian—best friend. Financier. Hothead. Brit. Lots to prove. Cares a lot about his red Ferrari GT back home and his five-year-old miniature Doberman Pinscher named Fannie. Lost a finger on his right hand in a rock climbing accident on El Capitan two years ago. He said the missing finger makes him “authentic,” but he’s still the same smug bastard if you ask me.

  I focus back on the disastrous sight in front of me...

  Hugo fixes his now perfectly coiffed tresses. He’s always touching his hair. With a grimace, his next words are tossed at Sebastian like barbs. “Get the fuck off me, you brute.”