Ascent

by Roland Smith

  I hadn’t noticed anything about Lwin’s gait, natural or unnatural, nor had I paid any attention to Ethan’s acute observational skills. I guess his restlessness disguised the fact that he was paying close attention to those around him.

  “I think Lwin will cut the next bridge before Major Thakin gets here, if he hasn’t cut it already,” Ethan said. “He didn’t appear to be carrying anything, which means he can travel fast. I think that monkey on the fire I found a few days ago was Lwin’s leftover dinner. The jungle is a well-stocked grocery store if you aren’t picky about what you eat. Speaking of which, I think he swiped my spoon, found out it wasn’t good for eating roasted monkey, and left it.”

  I grimaced, thinking of all the horrible things I’d seen Lwin gobble down.

  “I guess we should wear our climbing helmets everyplace we go,” I said.

  “Not a bad idea, but that might tip our hand. You say your shoulder’s good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you haul your pack?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. It’s my turn to have the donkey carry my load.”

  “We’re taking turns?”

  “No, but I can’t shadow you with a pack on my back. The only way to protect you and Alessia from Lwin is to get eyes on him. I’m going to have to go back to Force Recon mode. Lwin is pretty sneaky, but I’m sneakier.”

  Force Reconnaissance are the marines who go behind enemy lines to gather intelligence before the main force arrives.

  “And what will you do if you get eyes on him?”

  “That’s entirely up to Lwin. If you’re asking if I’m going to kill him, the answer is probably not. All he’s done is hurl a couple of rocks at us. But I am going to find out why he’s following us and put a stop to it.”

  Ethan didn’t mention how he was going to find out without speaking Burmese and Lwin not speaking English. He crawled into his tent and came out a few minutes later dressed from head to toe in camo, including green and black smears of greasepaint on his face.

  “I can’t see you,” I joked.

  “That’s the point. Will you pack my gear?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t forget my tree tent. See you at the final bridge.”

  He vanished into the misty forest.

  Fourteen

  “Do you see him?” Alessia asked.

  “No, do you?”

  “No.”

  “We’re not supposed to see him. Ethan is watching Lwin. If Lwin is watching us, Ethan is close by, watching Lwin.”

  I tried to get away with telling Alessia and Nick that Ethan had decided to forge ahead on his own and would meet us at the bridge. I’m not a very good liar. They stared at me in silence for several seconds, which was all it took for me to spill my guts. Nick was of the opinion that Lwin was an apparition and that ghosts could not use slingshots.

  “The forest is filled with spirits and ghosts,” he said. “I’m surprised it took Ethan this long to spot one.”

  This was a little shocking coming from a scientist. When I asked him about this, he smiled and said, “Boo! Mate.”

  Alessia, like Ethan and me, didn’t believe in ghosts either, but she did admit that Lwin had made her uncomfortable. I suggested that she wear her helmet.

  “Only if you wear yours.”

  So, we were both walking ahead of Nick and the porters, sweating in our helmets, which were as hot as pressure cookers.

  Up and down we trudged, with the only upside being that we would be in terrific shape when we finally reached Hkakabo Razi. My legs were not the only things that were getting stronger. Nick didn’t care if Lwin was alive or a ghost. There were trees to climb and specimens to be collected. My shoulder was still a little stiff, but the more I climbed, the better it felt. Alessia and I explored the same trees. She on one side, me on the other, meeting in the middle every few feet to show each other what we had discovered. This is how I thought it was going to be before I came to Burma. Just Alessia and me exploring together, hanging out (literally in this case), getting to know each other.

  We climbed a behemoth tree a hundred yards down from one of the switchbacks. Halfway up, we dispensed with our helmets. Lwin couldn’t possibly hit us at this height through the dense foliage. When we reached the top, we found dozens of beautiful orchids. Purple, yellow, and red. Alessia picked a few and put them in her collection bag. I picked one and put it in her hair, which she had braided that morning and pinned to keep it away from her face.

  We sat on a branch side by side swaying in the midst of orchids, knowing that we should climb back down, but not wanting to leave. Alessia was facing north, and I was facing south.

  “Look!” Alessia said.

  I turned. The sun had burned away the mist to the north, revealing a snow-covered peak.

  “Hkakabo Razi,” she said.

  “It might be. There are more peaks to the west still covered by clouds. But it is beautiful, whatever peak it is.”

  “I want to be cold again,” Alessia said. “I want to shiver.”

  This was the only time I had heard her even hint at being uncomfortable in the heat of the rainforest. Not once had she complained as we sat around the campfire after a long day’s walk picking bloated leeches off each other’s backs. Ethan and I whined like dogs during this disgusting process.

  “I thought you liked the rainforest.”

  She shook her head so vigorously the orchid fell from her head. She caught it deftly, gave it a kiss, then slipped it under a hairclip so it wouldn’t fall so easily.

  “The rainforest, or the tangle, as you name it, is a means to an end.” She pointed at the mountain. It was being overtaken by a fast-moving dark cloudbank, which meant high winds, and possibly snow. “Let’s go down so we can get to that end.”

  Nick admired Alessia’s orchid, saying that he had seen only two of them in his many years of collecting. He pointed at the tree. “And both times, they were found in a tree like this, growing on a steep hillside. It’s an interesting find and very pretty in your beautiful hair.”

  “I can give you this one as well.”

  “Good lord, no! It belongs right where it is.” He pointed. “Did you notice that we are going to have company?”

  Across the valley to the north was a line of thirty or so people, single file, making their way down the switchbacks to the valley floor. They were too far away to see clearly, but judging by their slumped posture, they were carrying heavy loads.

  “Traders and their porters?” Alessia asked.

  “We’ll find out soon enough. And if we don’t get to the bottom before them, we will have a major traffic jam. This trail is a one-way road, especially with pack animals hauling wide panniers.”

  We got to the valley floor long before the others. Running along the valley was a crystal clear creek with a log across it. Lwin would have needed a chainsaw to take it out.

  “This is the last bridge?” Alessia asked.

  Nick shook his head. “The last bridge is on the other side of this hill. This is just a log across a little stream. We’ll camp on the other side. There’s no chance of our getting to the next valley before dark.”

  I was happy to stop for the day. By the time the other group arrived, we had set up camp, built our cooking fires, bathed downstream, and had water boiling for rice and tea.

  Five exhausted Japanese climbers stumbled into camp as we were dishing out the rice. I recognized one of them, but couldn’t remember his name. I had met him briefly on Everest the previous year.

  “Peak Wood,” he said, giving me a small bow.

  At least he had gotten the first name right. I explained that I used my mother’s last name, not my father’s. He apologized profusely. I told him it was a common mistake and no big deal. But it kind of was a big deal because it was the first time anyone had called me Peak Wood. Josh had not raised me. I barely knew him. Nick and Alessia were giving me strange looks, and I’ll admit it was a little strange to bring up the
surname issue to a wiped-out climber in the middle of the jungle. He said his name was Hiro Yamada, then introduced the other four climbers.

  “Your friend came out of the forest and nearly scared us to death,” Hiro said. “He was disguised as a tree.”

  We all laughed, although I don’t think Hiro was trying to be funny.

  “He said to tell you that he was going to the bridge to make sure Lwin did not cut it down.”

  “Where did you see him?” I asked.

  “Traveling downhill toward the bridge.”

  “Did you see anyone else on the other side?” Alessia asked.

  “No one.”

  “Did you climb Hkakabo Razi?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, but we did not summit. Conditions were bad. We made two attempts. It is a very difficult peak. We would have attempted a third time, but our supplies were too low and we were depleted from the first two attempts.”

  I was both happy and upset to hear this. We still had a shot at being the first climbers to measure the height with a GPS. But if Hiro hadn’t been able to summit, what were our chances? He and his team were elite, world-class climbers. We were pretty good climbers, but not in their league.

  “Are you climbing Hkakabo Razi?” Hiro asked.

  “We are going to try,” Alessia said.

  Hiro nodded. I appreciated that he didn’t break out in a belly laugh. He turned and said something in Japanese to his team members. Each of them responded with a slight nod. He turned back to us.

  “We will camp on the other side of the stream. If you are interested, we will be happy to share what we have learned about Hkakabo Razi. Our maps and satellite photos were very different from the terrain we encountered on the climb. If I were to try again, I would approach the summit very differently.”

  “That is very generous of you,” Alessia said.

  Hiro bowed. “I was the climb master on Kilimanjaro for the Peace Climb. Sebastian Plank told me what happened to you in the Pamirs.”

  The billionaire, Sebastian Plank, had put young climbers on mountains all over the world for his Peace Climb documentary, paying for all the expenses. My stepfather, Rolf, who is one of Plank’s attorneys, thinks the climbs had cost Plank eighty million dollars. I wasn’t surprised that Hiro had been one of the climb masters, but I was surprised that Plank had told him what happened to us in the Pamirs. I was going to change the subject, but Hiro stopped me with a single word.

  “Aki,” he said.

  Aki was the Japanese climber on our Pamir team. The A in peace, the summit of our failure along with Phillip, Elham, Choma, and Ebadullah.

  AKI

  ELHAM CHOMA

  PHILLIP EBADULLAH

  All of them murdered.

  “Aki was my nephew,” Hiro said.

  This explained why Plank had told him about the Pamirs. Plank had personally accompanied the dead climbers back to their homes in his private jet and apologized to the families, even though none of their deaths were his fault. Their deaths were the fault of the men who had murdered them. I hadn’t gotten to know Aki very well. He had paired off with Choma from the Ukraine the first day we were there, just as I had paired off, or tried to pair off, with Alessia. That’s how it works in climbing. You pick someone, and if you get along, you stick with them for the entire climb.

  “I am very sorry for your loss,” Alessia said. “I wish I’d had the chance to know him better.”

  Hiro nodded. “No need to feel bad. The only reason I brought it to your attention was to explain how I knew about what happened to you in the Pamirs. When you climb a mountain, you need to be looking forward not backward.”

  I had to smile. His last sentence was so Zopa-like, I wondered if they had met up on Everest.

  Hiro asked, “Would you like to meet at our camp, or shall we meet over here?”

  “Why don’t you join us for dinner here?” Nick offered.

  “With my team?”

  “Yes, of course. We have plenty of food.”

  Hiro gave another bow. “We will return as soon as we have set up our camp.”

  They returned with hand-drawn maps, videos, digital photos detailing different routes to the summit of Hkakabo Razi. After a summit failure, every climber I know does a do-over of the climb in their minds for the next time, even if there isn’t going to be a next time. I still think back to climbs that I failed when I was eight years old, wishing I could try them again, knowing, at least in my head, where I screwed up. What climbers do not do is share this information to help other climbers succeed where they failed.

  Hiro and his team handed us the summit on a platter with firsthand information less than a week old. Within minutes, it was clear that our crude summit plan would not have worked. The maps we had were terribly inaccurate. It was as if they depicted a completely different mountain.

  “There are several spires below Hkakabo Razi,” Hiro said. “You must top all of them to reach the ridge to the summit.”

  One of the other climbers said something to Hiro, and pretty soon the conversation got a little heated as they flipped through notes, maps, photos, and videos on their five tablets. We, of course, didn’t have a tablet between us, having left all of our gadgets back at the embassy. The team debate, or argument, came to an end, and Hiro turned to us.

  “I am sorry for that,” he said. “My team has brought forward an alternative route, which may have the potential of saving you a day, or two. I must caution you, though, that it is an untested route. It may even be a dead end, but if we were to make another attempt, we would seriously consider it. It could save time, or it might lose time. Fifty-fifty.”

  Climbing a new route is always fifty-fifty. Even if you are climbing a well-known route, there is a huge chance of failure because mountains are constantly changing.

  Hiro flipped through several photos, stopping on a steep snowfield dotted by their bright alpine tents.

  “This is our Camp One,” he began, and for the next hour, we were given what amounted to a step-by-step narration of their attempt to summit Hkakabo Razi.

  Fifteen

  I’ve been up for hours. Alessia and Nick are asleep in their tents. Hiro has kindly lent me his tablet for the night so I can study it.

  One thing we haven’t discussed during this impulsive expedition is who is going to actually lead the climb. We don’t need a leader here in the rainforest, but on the mountain, someone is going to have to call the shots. I’m not volunteering for the position, but I am thinking about who should fill this role as I slap insects writing this.

  I’m probably the most experienced climber among the three of us, but Alessia isn’t far behind. She has drive. This climb was her idea. And she is way more adaptable than Ethan and me. She always goes with the flow, no matter how torrential it is. What she lacks is an edge. Hiro appears to have it. Josh definitely has it. Every climb leader I have ever met has an edginess to them. I don’t have an edge, not yet anyway, and neither does Ethan. He’s a lot older than Alessia and me, but he’s more of a blunt instrument than a sharp razor. He’s a good climber, but he came to climbing later in life, using it as a means of doing something wacky like snowboarding down McKinley with wolves at his heels.

  I’m beginning to think that none of us has the skills to lead our little team, and looking down at the photos, I’m beginning to think that we shouldn’t climb Hkakabo Razi at all.

  As we struggled through the tangle, I thought the reason people didn’t try to summit the mountain was because it was so difficult to get to. Now that I’ve seen the photos and videos, I’ve realized that this isn’t true.

  My best climbing skill is not climbing. It’s figuring out how to climb something. A weird way to look at the world, but I’ve been doing it since I was five years old. When we lived in Wyoming, Mom would be driving us somewhere, then suddenly leave the highway in our four-wheel-drive truck to bump over a washboard track for miles. She would stop in the middle of nowhere, grab her binoculars, and scan a nasty-looking cli
ff or a towering rock formation.

  “Climb it,” she’d say.

  She didn’t mean for me to actually climb, although I would have if she’d let me. She wanted me to plan a route to the top and explain it to her. If I made a mistake in the imagined climb, she wouldn’t tell me where I had gone wrong. She would tell me to try again. Sometimes over and over, until I got it right. If it got dark before I figured it out, we would leave and come back the next day, or several days in a row, until I had done it. She didn’t allow me to take a photo of the problem, insisting that my eyes were better than a camera lens and my brain was a better recording device. When we got back to our cabin, I would sketch what I remembered and stare at the drawing for hours. At night I would lie in bed with my eyes closed, visualizing the route and imagining myself climbing it. We argued about routes constantly. Eventually she let me try my routes out, which gave me a better idea of how to plan a climb from a distance.

  When Mom married Rolf, we moved to New York, where I shifted from rocks to skyscrapers. I’d pick a building and look at it for weeks from every angle, at different times of day and night, until I figured out the best way to top it. People walking by me on the busy streets thought I was homeless. If I left my baseball cap on the ground in front of me, some of them would drop money into it. I should have explained that I wasn’t panhandling (Rolf had plenty of money, and he was generous with it), but I said nothing and redistributed the wealth to those who needed it on my way back to our loft.

  I had no intention of actually climbing the skyscrapers I studied. It was an exercise for a country kid who had nothing else to do in the big city. But the imagined climbs turned into an obsession, which led me to climbing the buildings, which led me to jail, which led me to Everest, which led me to the Pamirs, which led me to Alessia, which led me to the campfire I’m sitting at in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out a route to the summit of Hkakabo Razi and . . .