Ascent

by Roland Smith

  “Her mom wanted her to go too, but Alessia said no way. She wanted to stay because you were coming.”

  “I would have happily gone to France,” I said. “Much shorter flight.”

  “But France is not Burma,” Ethan said.

  I looked out the window at the busy street filled with people, motorcycles, cars, and exhaust fumes. It was worse than New York City.

  “I thought you were going to stay in Afghanistan and help save snow leopards,” I said.

  When we were in the Pamirs, we were stalked, or followed, and maybe even saved by a snow leopard. I’ve thought about this cat every day since I left the Pamirs, and I still can’t wrap my mind around what it was doing on the mountain. All I know is that the ghost cat appeared when we needed it and may have been as responsible as Ethan for saving us.

  “I did three treks in the Pamirs looking for snow leopards and didn’t see a sign of one,” Ethan said. “I talked to locals, hunters, and poachers. They claimed a snow leopard hadn’t been spotted in the Pamirs in decades, insisting that it had been completely hunted out.”

  “But we saw a snow leopard,” I said.

  “I know. But it’s like it showed up just for us. Kind of like Zopa does. Have you heard from him?”

  Zopa had been our climb leader in the Pamirs. He had also been with me on Everest. Ethan was right about him. Zopa always showed up when I needed him the most.

  “Zopa doesn’t write letters, send emails, text, or call. He shows up in odd places face to face. But I have heard from his grandson, Sun-jo. He was in New York a couple of months ago promoting a new line of climbing gear.”

  “That could have been you promoting gear,” Ethan said.

  “Yeah. If I wanted to sell climbing gear, which I don’t. And if I had summited Everest, which I didn’t.”

  “But you could have summited Everest,” Ethan said.

  I let the statement, or maybe it was an accusation, hang for a few moments. Ethan was a good friend. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I didn’t want to diminish Sun-jo’s accomplishment, or his needed fame.

  “Since I didn’t summit,” I said, “I guess I’ll never know.”

  Ethan looked like he wanted to push the issue further, but he gave me a grin and let it go.

  I changed the subject. “Sun-jo told me that Zopa is back at his monastery being a faithful Buddhist monk. He said that after what happened in the Pamirs, Zopa swore off climbing.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows with Zopa. He’s a mystery. You’ve probably heard that my dad is trying to break the record for the seven summits.”

  “Who hasn’t?” Ethan said. “He’s on track for smashing the world record.”

  “He hasn’t climbed Everest yet. But the reason I bring it up is that he asked Zopa to climb with him. Zopa passed and told my dad not to make the attempt.”

  “Which your dad ignored.”

  “Of course.”

  What I didn’t tell him was that Josh’s climbing company, Peak Experience, was nearly bankrupt. The seven summits record was a publicity stunt. If he was successful, he’d become the most famous climber on earth and get some sweet endorsement deals. Maybe enough to get his company back on its feet. In a way the stunt was my fault. Josh hadn’t said anything to me, but he had been counting on me being the youngest person, at age fourteen, to summit Everest. When I passed on the opportunity, Sun-jo got the glory and the gear endorsements. Sun-jo was technically not on Josh’s team. He didn’t even have a climbing permit. The Chinese blamed Josh for Sun-jo’s summit. They were furious with him. It’s not good to have a billion people against you. Josh and his company were banned from climbing the northern, or Tibetan, side of Everest forever. Not only that, the Chinese had an arrest warrant out for him. This had really hampered his ability to travel in Asia. If he stepped into China or any of its territories, he would be arrested immediately and thrown into prison. The Chinese also had a warrant out on Zopa, but I doubted Zopa cared.

  “Your dad is a little past his prime,” Ethan said gently. “He has the skills, the climbing chops, but knowing what to do and being able to physically accomplish what you want to do are two different things.”

  “I agree. I’m worried about him.”

  “Are you going to catch up with him while you’re on this side of the planet?”

  “That’s the plan, but it’ll be difficult. He doesn’t really have any time between summit attempts. He’s on a good track right now, but bad weather, climbing conditions, and a dozen other things could ruin his time in an instant. You know that JR, Will, and Jack are filming him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They can’t do all the climbs themselves, so they have crews stationed on different mountains in various camps. I was kind of surprised that you didn’t join them.” Ethan’s a good climber and had been asked to join the Pamir trip as the film crew’s climbing advisor and to help out with the videography.

  “What happened to us in the Pamirs was rough. I suspect they didn’t want to be reminded about it by having me with them. If they had asked, I think I would have turned them down. I like this gig.”

  I glanced out the window again at the polluted, crowded, noisy street. “I find that hard to believe. This doesn’t seem like your kind of place. There are no alpine mountains here.”

  “That’s what most people think.” Ethan opened the bedroom door. Alessia was standing there holding a large manila envelope. She stepped into the room and set it on the table beneath the window. There were two words scrawled on the outside: Hkakabo Razi.

  “What’s this H . . . I can’t even pronounce it.”

  “Maybe that’s why people don’t know about it,” Ethan said.

  “It is pronounced Kah-kah-boo Rah-zee,” Alessia said.

  “What is it?”

  “A mountain.”

  “In Burma?”

  “Northern Burma on the border with China,” Alessia answered.

  “How tall is it?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. No one really knows,” Ethan said. “Only a couple of people have reached the summit, and they didn’t have the right GPS equipment to measure the exact height. It’s thought to be the highest peak in Southeast Asia. Nineteen thousand plus.”

  I looked at him with suspicion. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Alessia and I think we should climb Hkakabo Razi and find out if it’s the tallest peak in Southeast Asia,” Ethan answered.

  I looked at Alessia.

  “It was actually my idea,” she admitted. “The Pamirs were a nightmare for us. I want to replace those terrible memories with good memories. Does this make sense? We have the whole summer to do what we like. I would like to spend it climbing a mountain with you.”

  The Pamir climb had been a nightmare, the memory of which had almost made me want to never climb again.

  After a couple days of debate, we agreed to give it a try, or at least to get close enough to take a look. I had some conditions, which Alessia and Ethan readily agreed to. No cameras, cell phones, computers, tablets, or drones. I wanted to do a clean climb, an old-fashioned climb, without the chance of glory. I was sick of documentation. The only electronics we would take were GPS watches and a satellite phone, which Ethan insisted upon. As Alessia’s bodyguard, he had to be able to reach the embassy in case of emergency.

  Three

  Alessia was sitting up on her sleeping pad inside her tent.

  “Pic,” she said, which is French for Peak.

  I kneeled down next to her. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  She didn’t look okay. Her normally olive complexion was gray. Her beautiful pale blue eyes were swollen and bloodshot. Her long black hair was tangled and greasy-looking. She was sweating, but that was usual. We were all sweating in this steam bath, except for Lwin, who never seemed to sweat.

  “You must not look at me,” Alessia said. “I appear too horrible.”
/>   “Tu es belle,” I lied.

  “I am not beautiful.”

  “Drink some water.” I handed her a bottle.

  “Is it purified?”

  “Oui.”

  She drank the bottle almost dry.

  “I’ll get you another bottle.”

  “No. Stay with me.” She squinted. “What is on your shirt front?”

  I looked down. “Nagathan threw some rotted rainforest at me.” At least I hoped it was rotted rainforest, and not my snake bite and energy bar.

  “The elephant, he does not like you.”

  “No kidding. But he doesn’t like Ethan either.”

  “He does like Lwin.”

  “He tolerates Lwin like we do.”

  “Lwin is, how do you say? Creepy?”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “I cannot believe that I have the malaria. I took my pills with religion. You and Ethan do not have the fever?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Where is Ethan?”

  “He went to the village we passed through yesterday to see if they have a doctor.”

  Alessia laughed, which was good to see. “There will be no doctor in that village.”

  “I know, but it gave him something to do.”

  “He will not be able to even speak to them,” she said. “The language. They will not even come out of their homes.”

  “I don’t think that was because of us. I think the sound of the iron bell spooked them.”

  “Spooked?”

  “Frightened them,” I clarified, then changed the subject. “You were shouting out ‘Hkakabo Razi.’ That’s why I came in here.”

  “Really? I do not remember shouting anything. I have had many strange dreams. Have I shouted anything else?”

  “No.” Another lie, but I didn’t want to upset her. “You know, we could turn back. We don’t have to climb Hkakabo Razi. I didn’t come to Burma to climb a mountain. I came here to see you.”

  Alessia smiled. “Ethan suggested the same thing last night. I will tell you the same thing I told him. I am climbing Hkakabo Razi.”

  Wanting to climb a mountain and actually climbing it were two different things. At this point climbing out of the tent would have been difficult for her.

  Nagathan’s iron bell started clanging, and he let out a trumpet as loud as a locomotive engine. I looked through the tent opening.

  Ethan had returned, and he wasn’t alone. He could not possibly have gotten to the village and back in this short amount of time.

  “What is it?” Alessia asked, crawling up behind me.

  Ethan had five people with him and several donkeys loaded with supplies. He had Lwin pinned to the ground and was holding his panga.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I hurried over to Ethan and asked what was going on.

  “One of the donkeys got startled when we came into camp and kicked Lwin. He pulled his panga and was going to kill it. Couldn’t let that happen to our guests.”

  He let Lwin up, but kept the knife. Lwin jumped to his feet and started shouting.

  Ethan grinned and ignored him. “I told you I would bring help,” he said.

  It looked like he had brought an army. The porters were busily unloading the donkeys. Nagathan was stretching out on his rope, trying to reach the porters and donkeys, presumably trying to murder them like Lwin had tried to do.

  “You found a doctor?”

  “I said I would. Come on. I’ll introduce you to Dr. Freestone.”

  I followed him over to the fire, where Lwin and Dr. Freestone were having a shouting match—​well, Lwin was shouting. Dr. Freestone was squatting near the smoking fire, poking the half-eaten snake with a stick, talking calmly in what sounded like Lwin’s dialect. He was an older man, mid to upper sixties, with long gray hair and a carefully trimmed beard. He was wearing mud-spattered nylon pants, a matching shirt, and snake-proof boots that went up almost to his knees.

  He poked through the ashes with his walking stick as if he were looking for something, then looked up at me.

  “You must be Peak,” he said with an Australian accent. “Unusual name.”

  “Unusual parents.” This is my standard answer when someone questions my unusual name as if I don’t know it is unusual.

  “Tell me, Peak, did this snake have a head when it came into camp?”

  I told him that Lwin had brought the snake into camp draped over his shoulder minus its head.

  “You were there when he decapitated the snake?”

  I shook my head.

  “Pity. I don’t believe that I have ever seen this species of python before, but I would need the head to confirm this.”

  “Are you a herpetologist?”

  Instead of answering, Dr. Freestone picked up a feather out of the ashes and held it to the light.

  “Lwin ate an owl before he ate the snake,” I explained.

  “Lwin ate an owl?” Ethan asked.

  I nodded.

  “Protein is protein,” Dr. Freestone said. “And to answer your question, I’m an amateur herpetologist and ornithologist.”

  Lwin started shouting at Dr. Freestone again. Dr. Freestone stood.

  “What’s he saying?” Ethan asked.

  “He thinks I’m trying to take over his porter business, and he’s threatening to let the iron bell loose to kill us all.”

  Ethan stepped toward Lwin. “I’m sick of this guy.”

  “No need for violence,” Dr. Freestone said. “At least not yet. I take it you haven’t paid him.”

  “Half,” Ethan said.

  “Good. Pay him the other half and tell him to leave. I’ll take you and your gear to Hkakabo Razi for free. I’m headed that direction, anyway. I think your guide might be crackers. I would not trust him. I doubt he knows the way to the mountain.”

  I looked at Ethan. “What do you think?”

  “I say we pay him off. And thanks, Dr. Freestone, for helping us out.”

  “No worries,” Dr. Freestone said. “And please call me Nick. After I explain the new deal to Lwin, he will leap for joy. The worst part of your trek is yet to come. Lwin will get paid, but he doesn’t have to go.”

  The worst is yet to come. I didn’t like the sound of that. It had already been horrible. When we got off the last train stop, we rented motorcycles to continue our northern journey. Alessia had never driven a motorcycle, and I’d only driven one once. To complicate things, we each had to carry nearly one hundred pounds of gear. One by one, the motorcycles broke down. Within eighty miles, we were on foot with three hundred pounds of gear to haul. We tried to hire porters, but no matter how much we offered, no one wanted the job. We were sorting through our gear on the side of a muddy road, deciding what we could abandon, when Lwin lumbered up on Nagathan.

  Nick quietly laid out the deal for Lwin. When he finished, Lwin did not leap for joy. Instead, he started shouting again.

  “What now?” Ethan asked.

  “He wants more money,” Nick explained. “He says it’s due to him because you have embarrassed him by giving him the boot in front of his countrymen.”

  “I’ll give him the boot,” Ethan said, stepping toward Lwin with clinched fists.

  This time Nick didn’t stop him. Lwin could see that Ethan was dead serious. He took a step back, held his hands up, gave us an orange-toothed grin, and said something.

  “He says he was just joking with you,” Nick said. “Now’s the time for us to smile and laugh like we believe our dear friend Lwin, so he can save face.”

  We smiled and laughed and patted him on the back and paid him the agreed amount of money. Ethan reluctantly gave the panga back to him. Within minutes, Lwin gathered his belongings, untethered Nagathan, and was gone. We could hear the clang of the iron bell long after they disappeared into the tangle.

  Four

  It turned out that Nick was not a medical doctor. He was a plant doctor. A professional botanist. I doubted a plant
doctor would be able to help Alessia, but I was quickly proven wrong. His expertise was in the medicinal properties of plants. He brewed a special concoction of plants into a tea, which immediately made her feel better.

  “This won’t cure you,” he warned Alessia. “But it will speed your recovery and relieve some of the malarial symptoms. In fact, by tomorrow you’ll tell me that you’re all better and ready to move on, but that won’t be true. I’ve had malaria a dozen times. It’s complete camp rest for you for a minimum of three days.”

  “I took my antimalaria pills,” Alessia said.

  “Of course you did,” Nick said. “And they work about eighty-five percent of the time. You could have been bitten by a mosquito with a mutated strain of malaria that your pills are ineffective against. Your immune system is different than my immune system, or Peak’s, or Ethan’s. We will reevaluate you in three days.”

  “I am holding everyone back,” Alessia said.

  “Hkakabo Razi has been there for millions of years. It’s not going anywhere. And there is plenty for us to do right here.” He looked at Ethan and me. “I told you I would lead you to the mountain for free. That wasn’t exactly true. I need a couple of climbers to collect plants for me. Have you ever climbed trees?”

  We both nodded, but I hadn’t climbed a tree in years.

  “Good!” Nick said. “My tree climbing days are long over. It’s a young man’s sport. You two will be my monkeys. And I suspect that you’ll wish you had just paid me to take you to the mountain.”

  We did wish we had just paid Nick to take us to the mountain. Being his monkeys turned out to be taxing, but interesting. I knew virtually nothing about plants, nor did Ethan. Nick tried to take care of our plant ignorance by lecturing us for several hours every evening about plant biology, rainforest ecology, and the interaction between birds, reptiles, insects, and mammals. Understanding how everything was connected did not make the forest less harsh, but it did lessen my hostility toward the sweaty environment.

  Tree climbing was brutal. You would think that climbing a giant tree with branches and vines would be easy for someone who climbed mountains. It isn’t. Everything in the jungle stabs, slices, pokes, bites, or stings. It’s nearly impossible to get a handhold without drawing blood. Ethan got bit by two snakes. Luckily, neither was venomous. I managed to put my hand into a hornet’s nest. I was wearing gloves, but some of them crawled inside the gloves, attacking both hands with what felt like blowtorches. It was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. Nick crushed up a bunch of plants into a salve that took the pain away within minutes. He seemed to have a natural cure for almost every emergency.