Ascent

by Roland Smith

  “I saved him. He saved Ethan. Karma.”

  The mystery, I thought.

  “We don’t know if Ethan will survive.”

  “I think he will. Negative energy is more easily kindled than positive energy. Best not to throw it in Ethan’s direction.”

  “I’ll try.” And I would try. I’d do anything to save Ethan.

  “Shall we go?”

  I got up and decided that being with Zopa was a pretty good substitute for climbing Hkakabo Razi. I had been with him in two countries on two mountains, but I couldn’t say that I knew him well. And I certainly didn’t understand him. I suspected that nobody really knew him. And that was the way he liked it. He didn’t say a word to me on the way back to camp. We arrived just before dark. Nick and the porters had food cooking, which I had smelled from a quarter mile away. We had neglected to bring anything to eat to the clear-cut, and I was famished.

  “I’m heading out early tomorrow morning,” Nick said, as I wolfed the food down. I’m not even sure what it was. Some kind of stew and rice with globs of savory mystery meat. “My time’s just about up. There are a couple more places I need to look at before I head back to Yangon. They’re a little off the beaten path.”

  “I think everything is off the beaten path out here,” I said.

  “That’s a fair point. What I mean is that it’ll take me at least a couple weeks longer than you to get to Yangon. And I’m sure you’re eager to check on Ethan.”

  I was eager to get back to Yangon. Chin had said there was a possibility that he could pick me up in his helicopter in six or seven days, which would save me a lot of wear and tear, and time.

  “I do need to get back and check on him,” I said.

  “You can check on him with your phone,” Zopa said.

  “True, but that’s not the same thing. And I only have one spare battery. We used three-quarters of the battery talking to Chin.”

  “You are under no obligation to go with me,” Nick said. “I was fine when I ran into you, and I’ll be fine without you, aside from missing your company. The porters will be disappointed, though. They are going to have to start climbing trees again. This has almost been a vacation for them.”

  “We are heading north,” Zopa said.

  “What?” I didn’t think I had heard him correctly.

  “North. Hkakabo Razi.”

  “I can’t climb the mountain alone.”

  “I will go with you.”

  “I need to get back to Yangon.”

  “Ethan and Alessia would want you to climb.”

  “You’re not dressed for an alpine climb.”

  Actually, he was barely dressed for a jungle walk. I looked at his feet. He was wearing sandals.

  “I have the correct gear.”

  “Where?” There was no way he could have the appropriate gear concealed beneath his robe.

  “At the base of the mountain. I left it there. No need to carry it through the jungle.”

  You never know what Zopa’s real motivation is for doing something, Josh had said. He’s cagey.

  “You came here to climb?” I asked.

  “It’s what I do.”

  “I thought it was what you did. You told me you were retiring.”

  Zopa shrugged.

  Early the next morning, Nick headed south with his porters and donkeys. Zopa and I headed north. I wasn’t sure I wanted to climb Hkakabo Razi anymore. I’d given up on it when Ethan got hit. I checked the sat phone as we crossed the clear-cut. There had been no calls, which was good news. Alessia or Chin would have called if Ethan had died. My pack was heavy, overloaded with gear I had borrowed from Ethan and Alessia’s packs before giving them to Nick to haul back to Yangon. I had almost taken Alessia’s copy of Stranger in a Strange Land, but swollen like it was, it would have taken up too much room. The book must have weighed a couple of pounds, or two days’ worth of freeze-dried food. Zopa had helped me with my load by carrying two heavy coils of rope bandolier style, crisscrossed over his saffron robe. He told me before we left that I was to lead the climb to the summit of Hkakabo Razi. It was nice of him to offer this, and I was flattered, but I doubted that it was going to happen. He was fifty yards ahead of me, moving at a good clip, his robe skimming the ground as if he were flying across the uneven trail toward the mountain.

  We dipped down into what Zopa said was the last of the tangle. It was primeval. We started down at noon. Thirty feet in, I had to put my headlamp on in order to see. The only light came from tiny pinpricks of sun filtering through the canopy like dim stars. I offered my spare headlamp to Zopa. He said he didn’t need it, but I noticed that he stopped ranging so far ahead. Swatting at the swarming insects was futile. We moved as fast as we could down to the dark valley floor, then up a long, steep trail with no switchbacks to ease the climb. I was mouth breathing by the time we reached the top. I had no idea how many insects I had inhaled when we finally broke out into sunshine. I squinted at the bright unfiltered light, swigged water, and spit the bugs out of my mouth. I shivered as cool air dried my sweat. It was like I had stepped from the inside of an active volcano into a refrigerator.

  “Hkakabo Razi,” Zopa said.

  Before us was a broad alpine plateau of boulders, shrubs, small clusters of short trees, and snowfields. I took a deep breath of cool air, but I didn’t have time to savor it because the sat phone rang. I answered with dread.

  “Peak?”

  It was Alessia.

  “How’s Ethan?”

  “He is conscious.”

  My knees nearly buckled with relief.

  “We are at the hospital in Yangon. Dr. Deshmukh has run a CT scan on him, and he says that the injury is serious, but he is hopeful. They are doing more tests right now.”

  “How was Ethan when he came to . . . when he regained consciousness?”

  “Agitated. It was difficult to keep him still in the back of the helicopter.”

  I could imagine.

  “He did not know where he was. He did not know what had happened to him. It took him some time to recognize who I was. When we arrived at the hospital, they gave him something to settle him down.”

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Very tired. I am going to get some sleep in the waiting room, but I wanted to call you first. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too.”

  “Chin says that he will be able to pick you up in a week, or perhaps ten days’ time, depending on where you are.”

  I looked at the snowfields up ahead. “Do you need me back there right away?”

  “I would of course like to see you, but no. And how would you get here right away? I think Ethan is in good hands. I feel optimistic. But Dr. Deshmukh thinks that Ethan will be here for a minimum of two weeks.”

  I could be at the summit and back in a week to ten days. Chin could pick me up right where I was. Plenty of places to land.

  “I’m at the base of Hkakabo Razi,” I said.

  There was a long silence. I looked at the phone’s screen, thinking that I had lost the connection, then Alessia said, “You traveled north instead of south?”

  “With Zopa.”

  “Are you going to climb to the summit?”

  “We’re going to try.”

  I remember what Zopa told me on Everest. You can never tell who the mountain will allow and who it will not.

  “It won’t be the same without you and Ethan.”

  “No. But I am glad that you are going to try. At least one of us might reach the summit. If not, what have all of the hardships been for?”

  “True.”

  “Do you think this is why Zopa came to Burma?”

  “He told me that’s why he came. My mom told him we were trying for the mountain. This doesn’t explain how he found us in the middle of nowhere, because she didn’t know where we were. When you get a chance, tell my mom that I’m with him.”

  “You will stay in touch with me?”

  “Of course. And can you tell C
hin that he might be picking me up at the base of the mountain when we’re finished?”

  “He has already left Yangon on business. But I will tell him. He was very excited to see Zopa.”

  Don’t ask me how, but I think Zopa knew he was going to run into Chin. I didn’t mention this to Alessia because I didn’t want to burn up what battery I had left.

  “I’m going to keep this phone turned off to preserve the battery. I think it has voicemail. If I don’t answer, leave me a message.”

  Alessia laughed. “Yes, if you even remember that you have a phone in your pack.”

  She knew me well.

  Twenty-One

  Zopa kept walking. His gear was not hidden away in the first or second stand of trees, or behind one of the many boulders scattered up the slope. When I asked him where his gear was stowed he’d say, “Up ahead. Not far.”

  Not far led us across a three-mile-long ice field blanketed with crackly snow six inches deep. I scooped some into my water bottle. It was so cold it made my teeth ache.

  Not far took us along the base of a glacial cliff. I stopped and put on a fleece that in the jungle I’d thought I would never come to use. I asked Zopa how his feet were. He was still wearing sandals.

  “Cold, but they are fine. Do you have a spare headlamp?”

  I looked up at the sky. It was late afternoon. We had hours of light left. “We’re going to need headlamps?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s your gear?” I asked again.

  “Not far.”

  I gave him my spare headlamp. We walked on. I wondered if Zopa was lost. I wondered if he had gotten senile. I didn’t know how old he was, but he was getting up there. Perhaps his mind had slipped. Perhaps he thought he was on Everest, or back on one of the other countless mountains he had climbed. It began to snow. Tiny ice pellets at first, then larger flakes big enough to catch with the tip of my tongue. I stopped to put on a sock cap and a down vest. When I caught back up with Zopa, I offered him my spare cap and vest. He took them without a word.

  “I’m getting a little nervous,” I said.

  “No need.” He snugged the cap over his ears and re-bandoliered the ropes over the vest.

  “I’m worried about your feet.”

  “No need.” He lifted the hem of his robe. He was wearing heavy hiking boots with thick socks.

  “Where did you get those?”

  “I had them strung around my neck beneath my robe. It is a relief to have them on my feet. The laces were chafing my neck. Did you think I would climb a mountain in sandals?”

  “I didn’t see you put the boots on.”

  Zopa shrugged, then forged ahead.

  The sun went down. The temperature dropped. The snowfall got heavier. I couldn’t see twenty feet in front of me. Our headlamps glittered against the snowflakes. I turned on my GPS watch. I had kept it off to conserve the battery. It took a while to acquire a satellite signal, and I was shocked when the elevation popped up. We were at a little over 9,000 feet. How had that happened so quickly? I turned on the sat phone to see if Alessia had left a message about Ethan. She hadn’t.

  Zopa stopped at 9,500 feet and waited for me to catch up. “How is your head?” he asked.

  “I have a headache. We’ve gained a lot of altitude.”

  Zopa took in a deep breath. “Ten thousand feet?”

  “Are you wearing an altimeter watch?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I am an altimeter. Three thousand feet to go. But we can stop here and camp if you like.”

  I was tired and out of breath from the sudden altitude gain, but I wanted to get where we were going, or where Zopa was going.

  “Let’s push on.”

  And we did. I glanced at my watch every few minutes to check the altitude, wishing I had turned in on when we left the jungle so I knew how far we had climbed. At 10,000 feet, my head started to really pound. I didn’t think I was getting high altitude sickness, but the headache was a clear sign that I had climbed too high too fast. I tried to keep myself hydrated because I knew that would help. At 11,000 feet, we started up a steep slope. Climb high, sleep low, was the mantra on Everest. If my headache got worse, I might have to follow this advice.

  We trudged upward. The snowfall lessened, but the wind picked up—​a steady twenty miles an hour with gusts to fifty that nearly blew me over backward. I leaned forward, trying to keep a low profile, which did not help my headache. Every hundred steps, I had to stop and put my hands on my knees to catch my breath. When I was two hundred feet behind him, Zopa finally glanced back and stopped long enough for me to catch up.

  “You okay?” Unlike me, Zopa was not mouth breathing. He looked like he could climb right to the summit.

  “Out of breath,” I gasped.

  “It will be better in the morning. Not far.”

  I had stopped believing in not far.

  When we reached 12,000 feet, I was pretty much done. I wanted to slide back down to the place Zopa had suggested we camp. I was depleted. I hadn’t eaten enough, and even though I had forced myself to drink, I was dehydrated. In my defense, I hadn’t known that we were actually going to start the climb as soon as we popped out of the blistering tangle.

  At 12,500 feet, I was on the verge of collapse. I needed to turn back, spend a day at a lower elevation and try again. The problem was that I couldn’t turn back without telling Zopa, who was fifty or sixty feet in front of me, steadily moving up a steep rise. I shouted, but his name was blown off the mountainside by the howling wind. If I turned back in this weather without him knowing, we might not ever find each other. I stared ahead at his bouncing headlight, willing myself to catch it like the fireflies I had chased when I was a kid. The game started to work. His beam became bigger and brighter as I gained on him. I was going to catch the firefly! And I did . . . Because Zopa was standing perfectly still at the top of the rise, and no doubt had been doing so since I started the game. I put my hands on my knees and tried to suck in enough O’s to speak.

  “I think . . .” Gasp . . . “I need to . . .” Gasp . . . “Go back . . .” Gasp . . . “Down . . .” Gasp . . . “Climb high . . .” Gasp . . . “Sleep . . .” Gasp . . . “Low.”

  “Good idea,” Zopa said. “But I think it would be wiser to go forward.” He pointed. At the bottom of the rise, thirty feet away, were six tents. Two yellow, two red, one blue, one green, lit up like Christmas decorations in the snow. The green tent was four times bigger than the other tents.

  “Who—”

  “Let’s walk down and see,” Zopa said.

  I stumbled down behind Zopa in a daze, thinking the lit tents were some kind of mountain mirage. The camp was sheltered from the harsh wind. I could hear our footsteps breaking through the crisp snow. Zopa opened the flap of the green tent. I stared in disbelief. Yogi and Yash were sitting across from each other playing cards at a portable camp table. The Nepalese brothers, good friends of Zopa’s, had led Sun-jo and me on our final ascent to the summit of Everest. They jumped up from the table and greeted us with bows and broad grins. I was still out of breath, but the warmer air inside the tent was easing the distress. They clapped me on the shoulder and began chattering in Nepalese. I dropped my pack and began to feel as if I might survive. Yogi brought me a mug of steaming hot soup, which I felt all the way down to my toenails.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, grateful to have my voice back without gasping.

  “Climbing Hkakabo Razi with you,”  Yash answered with a crooked-tooth smile.

  Yogi refilled my mug.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Five days,”  Yash said.

  “No,”  Yogi said, holding up six fingers.

  “Did you see the Japanese climbers?”

  The brothers didn’t understand the question and looked at Zopa. He translated and they shook their heads.

  “Big mountain,”  Yash said. “Easy to not see them.”

  I looked at Zopa. “So you planned
this all out.”

  “A surprise. A gift for what you did for Sun-jo on Everest. And for what Ethan did for us in the Pamirs.”

  This sounded to me like Zopa was being cagey again. I think what happened is that he thought Hkakabo Razi was too big for us, too tough. And he was probably right.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Thank you.” I smiled at Yogi and Yash. “Thank you all.”

  I pulled the sat phone out of my pack. I turned it on. There was a voice message from Alessia.

  “Peak . . . There is little change in Ethan’s condition. They are keeping him sedated in the intensive care unit so that he does not move. There is some swelling in his brain that they are worried about. They may have to operate, but have not yet decided. They have put a drain into his skull to lessen the swelling. I am at the hospital still, but I am returning to the embassy to change my clothes, and perhaps sleep. I spoke to my mother. She is returning to Yangon tomorrow because she is concerned about Ethan. You have probably not heard, but your father completed his climb in record time six days ago. There was an interview with him on the television. He looked tired, but happy. He said he was going to return to his home and sleep for two weeks. I do hope to meet him one day soon and that Ethan recovers so he can meet him too. I left a message for your mother saying that you are with Zopa and safe. I will call you again tomorrow after I check on Ethan. Please be safe on the mountain when you begin your climb. I miss you.”

  Alessia didn’t know I had already started the climb and that I was at 13,000 feet, sipping soup, trying to breathe. I put the phone on speaker and replayed the message for Zopa. Yash and Yogi listened as well. They understood English better than they spoke it.

  “Can I stay in here tonight?” I asked. I didn’t have the energy to prepare a campsite and set up my tent.

  “This is your climb,” Zopa said. “Your camp. You may sleep wherever you wish.”

  This had ceased to be my climb the moment Zopa showed up, but at that moment I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was sleep. I pulled out my sleeping bag and pad. As I was rolling them out, the tent flap opened, letting in freezing cold air and my dad, Joshua Wood.