Then, finally, I could see the top and my crew sitting, waiting for me. Triumph streaked their faces and I had to join them as they waved us on. Only steps ahead of Mom, I struggled until we reached the summit. It had taken an hour and a half of intense, upward climbing in the freezing temperatures to get to the top of the narrow, pivotal rock called Kala Patthar.
Not a soul was up there except for my friends and family at the tip of the rock. They were anticipating our arrival, all excited and red-nosed and sniffling icicles. Ammon, Dendee, Dalai Lama, Stephanie, and Bree greeted Mom and me warmly as we all squished up onto the rock’s edge to celebrate our achievement. As we teetered together at the top, frozen prayer flags that had been strung up and were now tangled around the rocks, flapped stiffly in the breeze: a mark of glory.
“Who got here first, or need I ask?” I said.
“I did,” Ammon said. “About twenty minutes ago.”
“But I was second!” Bree said, then she patted Dendee on the back and added, “Did you guys know this is Dendee’s tenth time hiking to Kala Patthar?”
“Wow! That’s amazing, Dendee,” I said, and he smiled sweetly.
Diverting attention away from himself, Dendee pointed toward the mountains in front of us that were only barely lit by the faint, predawn light and said with pride, “That is Sagarmatha. Everest. Highest mountain in entire world. Here it is. For you. For you.”
“Wow, it’s so beautiful,” Steph said. “It’s just humongous!”
“No, that is Nuptse West. So beautiful is that one.” After so many times, even he seemed mesmerized by the stone giants. “And behind is Lhotse, the fourth highest in world.”
“So wait, the darker one in the back there? That is Everest?” I asked, surprised. “So it’s not that one that looks like the tallest?”
“Nope, Everest is little bit behind,” Dendee explained.
“And my camera won’t work up here,” Steph said.
“You gotta warm the batteries,” said our resident genius. “They’re too cold. Mine did that last night.” Ammon had started warming his between his hands before we got there. Busy with the new GPS that Stephanie had brought with her from home, Ammon crawled up to the very peak behind us and held it out.
“Oh, Ammon, be careful!” Mom said, always the mother.
“Okay, so we are,” he took big breaths between every few words, “five thousand, six hundred and forty metres above sea level (18,505 ft).”
“What really gets to me is thinking that we’re standing on top of this little ‘hill’ that’s higher than almost every mountain in North America, and yet we’re still looking up at all these mountains.” White clouds formed around Ammon’s words. We were up on this peak, completely engulfed by towering mountains covered with snow, with glaciers easing down into the valley below where the official Everest Base Camp was situated.
“Okay guys, we made it further than base camp and we just… Oh, it’s so bloody cold…” Stephanie said.
“No kidding.” Despite my two layers of socks and my hefty boots, I had ice cubes where my toes used to be. I was afraid I might actually suffer from frostbite.
“I have a poem for you,” Bree said.
“Do you?” Steph asked, breathing heavily as she moved the camera to capture the view.
“Roses are red…”
“Say hi everybody,” Steph interrupted and pointed the camera at our group huddled together at the top.
“Listen to my poem,” Bree said.
“Okay, okay.”
“Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m never climbing this dang mountain again, how ‘bout you?” Bree giggled childishly before deciding, “Yeah, kinda lame, wasn’t it?!”
“Oh, man. Scootch over before I fall off this thing,” I said.
“Here, just come in closer.” Bree drew me into her and put an arm around me. Our knees were pulled up to our chests for warmth and to conserve space. As we waited in the eerie, predawn light, we heard nothing but the sound of our own raspy, laboured breathing. We were up so high that the mountains and clouds were parallel to us and, like the gods sitting atop Mount Olympus, we could see where the tall mountains poked their noses out from the clouds. The colours hugging the mountains turned from subtle pink and blue to orange, and we were silenced as we felt the sun drawing near.
As the sun glimpsed a beautiful new day in the Himalayas, it sparkled between Mount Everest and Nuptse West. We watched unblinkingly and witnessed the first sunbeam shimmering between the mountain peaks. Mere seconds later the sun’s rays triumphantly burst through like a portal between heaven and earth for the angels. The shadows of the night slipped down the jagged mountains to the ground as if negative spirits were being chased off by the light and a fresh morning arose.
We’d missed out on several amazing views because of fog and other poor weather conditions during earlier parts of our trip, but Mother Nature hand-delivered this spectacular gift and repaid any debt she might have owed us. A perfect three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the Himalayan mountain range was laid out before us.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” Ammon said, shamelessly showing his soft side.
“It’s breathtaking,” I said, still huffing and puffing to get enough oxygen. “Pun intended.”
After nearly an hour, a new-found energy drove Bree, Steph, and I back down the hill, leaping with joy at our accomplishment. On our way down, we saw a few people panting on their way up, desperately hoping to catch the last of the morning view. We waved as we passed, giving them a thumbs up to assure them that it was worth every strained breath and body ache. I sincerely hoped that the perfect, brilliant blue sky would hold out long enough for them to reach the top before the coveted moment slipped through their fingers.
While we girls waited in the lodge for Mom and Ammon to get back, I said, “Hey Bree, I wrote a poem too.” Taking the small handwritten note wrapped in a prayer flag, she opened it and read:
**Prayer Flags
With a monk’s graceful pace,
Prayers are delivered
Through earth and sky.
Body and soul
Send them soaring –
Let the prayer flags fly!
Each scripture floats
To the heavens above –
Red, green, or blue,
Orange, pink or white.
High over the mountains,
Glory from the top.**
“You always have to one-up me don’t you,” she said approvingly when she’d finished reading it.
When Mom and Ammon finally arrived back in the lodge, they were fairly bursting with pride.
“I am so very proud of all of us!” Mom said. “I think everyone has to do that at least once in their life. It was amazing. I don’t know how you girls could run down so fast. Ammon and I couldn’t bear to leave that enchanting place so soon. We had to stay a bit longer to feel the magnitude of what we were seeing. On my way up the past week, I’ve been asking myself as we hiked higher and higher, ‘What could possibly possess a human being to willingly do this to themselves?’ Well, I certainly found my answer.”
“I could have stayed up there all day,” Ammon said, pulling off his gloves and placing them on the wooden trestle table. “Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I’ve only been to a few places that radiated such power and beauty. This is definitely at the top of that list. It brought tears to my eyes.”
“Me too,” Mom said. “We stayed and found our own private spot on the mountain for an unbelievably energizing and spiritual awakening, shall I say. I had to listen to “You Raise me Up” sung by Josh Groban, the music I had planned for this event. I couldn’t help but weep at the beauty before me. It was a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime experience. I don’t know exactly what happened up there, but I know it changed my life.”
Ch. 36-40 photos here
Winding Down
41
“I knew I shouldn’t have worn my boots, but it was so cold.” I sat down for a break on a big
boulder beside the trail and peeled my soggy, cold foot from the boot to investigate my sore big toe. I felt as though the entire trek had suddenly caught up with me. My throat was dry and my head ached.
“I’m going to write on the blog that Savannah hiked to Everest in her flip-flops,” Steph said, already excitedly making plans for when we got back to the capital.
“Well, that’s not entirely true. I put my boots on for the final stretch to Kala Patthar, and look what happened. If I’d done it in flip-flops, I’d probably still have a toenail.” Despite the pain, I considered it a battle wound, and felt like my feet symbolized the obstacles I’d faced to achieve my goal.
“What, what?” Bree said as she came over to inspect the toe I was fussing over. “I don’t see anything.”
“Not yet, but this toenail is definitely going to fall off. Look. It’s coming up in the corner here and hurts like – OUCH! What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted as Bree unexpectedly tugged at the yellow nail. “What the heck is wrong with you? Why would you do that? Just leave it. It’s not ready to come off yet.”
“You can’t talk to me that way. I saved your life,” Bree reminded me.
“So now you want to ruin your reputation by ripping my toenail off?”
“Oh, and hey, Steph, what about that?” Bree said, ignoring me entirely. “Are you going to write on the blog that I saved her life? You have to write about that.”
“I think I’ll write two whole blogs about it,” Steph agreed. “I still can’t believe how fast you moved!” I was sitting across from Ammon at the time, and he smirked at me through the screen of his camera.
“You look great when you make that face,” he smiled, amused by my ‘the things I have to put up with’ look. “You know what’s crazy? Your eyes are the exact same colour as that lake,” he said, pointing down behind me.
“Really?” I was unable to resist looking over my shoulder to admire the greyish emerald pool far below, cupped in Mother Earth’s rocky hands. Beside me was a tall rock stack, one side grey, the other half painted white where the blowing snow had stuck to it. The atmosphere was captivatingly silent and seemed to drip with ancient mystery. The mountains felt abandoned yet I felt that, whenever my back was turned, they opened their stone eyes to watch furtively as we passed through their beloved terrain.
Despite long hours and a half dangling toenail, the final four days of the journey passed in a relatively easy whirl. We hardly saw Bree and Steph during the day because they would run off ahead at top speed. Bree claimed to feel like a super hero. The air was so thick we could practically chew on the oxygen as we inhaled. We all felt rejuvenated – strong and light of foot.
Though it went much quicker, the downward hike was actually a lot harder on my leg muscles than the walk up had been. Whenever I stopped my legs quivered from over-working muscles I rarely used. I was ultimately pretty pleased, though, by how well I’d held out physically on the trek up and that my only struggle had been breathing at such high altitudes.
“The only problem with the whole E.B.C. trek compared to a lot of the other ones in Nepal is that the route down is the same as the route up. So you’ve seen it all before, and you end up going as fast as you can to get it over with,” Ammon said. It didn’t happen very often, but I had to disagree with him on that one. Even though we were on the same path, we were seeing it from a different perspective, and I thought the views were just as beautiful coming down as they had been going up. There were always more friendly faces to see and people to meet, too, and the spectacular Himalayan views could never bore me.
On our way down, the lodges were nearly full with new arrivals, and we passed trekkers on their way up much more often. The busy season was just starting, and I was even more appreciative of how perfectly Ammon had timed our trip. Throughout our entire hike, there were hardly any other trekkers, no crowds, and only blissfully silent, open trails awaiting us. We’d also had the ultimate privilege of having Everest all to ourselves as we watched the sunrise.
We were surprised by what we found when we walked into a lodge one night. A large group of trekkers and Sherpas divided the lodge, like girls and boys at a school dance, standing awkwardly on opposite sides of the gymnasium. In contrast to our wild nights of playing, dancing, and singing with the Sherpas, these European foreigners didn’t seem to have any interest in interacting with the locals. We found this a bit odd, considering how much we’d learned from the locals, not to mention that the nights we’d spent with the Sherpas were some of the best times we’d had during our trek.
A Maoist revolution had been underway in Nepal for the last decade and had been causing lots of problems recently. Though the rebels weren’t targeting tourists, their new tactics had been hard on the industry. Other trekkers warned us that Maoist rebels had set up camp and were extorting money from people trekking between Lukla and Jiri. We’d intended to do the week-long hike along that same trail and then catch a bus from Jiri to Kathmandu during the Maoists’ traditional three-month ceasefire. Now that they were apparently raising their fee and the ceasefire was no longer holding, we were discussing changing our plans yet again.
“I don’t feel threatened by all the military checkpoints, soldiers, and security all over the place,” Mom said, but on the same page as Ammon, continued, “but money is going to be an issue if we run into them.”
“Running into them seems to be pretty much guaranteed now. The question is, how much are they going to ask for?” Ammon said. “I’ve heard all kinds of different prices. Where they might charge you six hundred rupees (US$10) at some places, they apparently were demanding as much as five thousand rupees (US$80) at others or, even worse, just turning people back. Normally this blockade is not a big deal and they are supposedly pretty nice about it. They even give you a receipt so you don’t have to pay them twice, but we didn’t bring enough money to risk it. And if we’re turned back after a few days of hiking, we wouldn’t have enough for the extra food and lodging we’d need to backtrack, not to mention paying for flights instead of hiking and bussing back.”
Before we’d left Kathmandu, we’d taken out just a bit more than enough money to cover our expected costs, since there were no ATMs, banks, or money exchangers up in the small mountain towns and villages. Unwilling to take the risk, we had no choice but to fly directly back to Kathmandu from Lukla.
“So does that mean we get to go in the helicopter? Now you really have no excuse not to let me have that helicopter ride,” I told Ammon. I’d been nagging him ever since I’d heard about this flying option instead of walking or taking an airplane from Lukla to Kathmandu. “Ammon you just have to let me go up in one of those birds. It’s the only thing I want.”
“Yeah, I’m going to try,” he said. “But I have no idea when they fly or how much it costs.” Mom warned me, too, that we might not have brought enough money with us to pay for it, but I somehow knew it would all work out. As if seeing Everest were not enough, I was going to fulfill another dream on this trek. I couldn’t believe my good fortune!
Up, Up and Away
42
We stood before the big sign with white lettering that said ‘Lukla is only 80 minutes away. Your trek is nearly over.’ We were so close to returning to where we had landed by plane fourteen days earlier and started out on our Everest Base Camp trek.
“I’m so happy we did this trek, but at the same time, I’m glad it’s almost over,” Mom said.
“Me too. And I really didn’t have as much of a problem with the breathing as I thought I would.” Having had serious asthma problems as a child, Ammon had been wary about how his lungs would hold up on the journey. “I haven’t felt sore at all until now, but I’ve started to feel the effects of so many days of heavy breathing.”
“All I can say is, watching the sun rise over Mount Everest is something you can only feel. I’d never be able to fully describe it to anyone,” Mom said, still feeling awed by our triumph. Even though Everest was an experience that would stay w
ith me for the rest of my life, I knew that it didn’t affect me the way it did so many others; it couldn’t possibly. Most of the trekkers we’d passed and met were much older – some were already retired – and they were finally fulfilling a lifelong dream to conquer the mountain. The Everest trek was incredibly special, and I was truly grateful to have experienced those moments, but I knew that it meant a lot more to those who experienced it from an older, wiser perspective and to those who’d waited a lifetime to experience something I’d given little thought to before doing it. Mom’s and even Ammon’s appreciation for it trumped my relatively new comprehension of the mountain’s magnificence. The best I could do was be grateful for the opportunity I’d been given, and for the fact that I didn’t have to wait my whole life to discover the immense beauty of the world I live in.
Looking back to the day we’d landed on the tiny airstrip, not knowing what lay ahead, I felt so proud of what we’d accomplished. The whole journey had made me feel as though I was living in a simulation of a Final Fantasy video game. Each day was a new quest: regaining health –eating Snickers bars in our case – and asking for information from people in each new town or village where we’d stayed at different “inns.” We’d also gained and replaced new characters along the way, like Steph and Dendee. I didn’t know yet what my mission in the game was, who I was trying to save, or what the grand finale would be. I knew there was no princess to rescue, but I could certainly hope my Prince Charming would be waiting for me in the end.
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