To the Last Breath
Page 8
Jim has dex tucked away in an inside pocket of his down suit. But there is one significant problem: Nima will refuse it. He has made his decision and is sitting passively, waiting for us to leave. With no climbers behind us on the mountain, it would be Nima’s final goodbye.
All climbers have quirks, odd habits that keep us paced and confidently in the moment. I know a climber who brings a tiny stuffed bear on every expedition. I blast Rage Against the Machine on my music player when I start an ascent. And Jim, unlike any other climber I’ve known, carries hot tea in a small narrow thermos on summit days.
“Nima, let’s share a cup of tea,” Jim suggests.
Nima nods his agreement. No self-respecting Sherpa can refuse a cup of tea.
With his back turned to the wind Jim pours tea into the thermos lid, crushes some dex pills, and then tosses the powder into the cup. Steam from the cup spirals up into the wind as Nima drinks the tea.
What’s done is done. The dose will either improve the situation or accelerate its decline. The outcome will be clear within a half hour as the drugs take effect. Jim decides to stay; either he will provide Nima a few final words of comfort or give Nima a hand and lift him to his feet. I continue on down the mountain expecting that one way or the other, the worst is now behind us. I am wrong.
At sea level, the brain tends to have a strong grip on reality. The world presents us with a situation or an image, and our synapses fire, neurons transmit, and signals race through the internal wiring of our skull creating an understanding. When the system works smoothly, we sense things as they are: hot is hot, cold is cold, and we only see two people on a mountain when there are only two people on a mountain. We don’t hear dead people speak.
Oxygen is the lubricant that keeps the brain operating as it should; blood is the vehicle that transports the oxygen around to the various needy organs. Every organ wants a share of the blood, but the body prioritizes to make sure that the most critical needs are met first. In fact, without our even realizing it, the body operates under its own Golden Rule: keep oxygen flowing to the brain, everything else is bonus. Consequently, as a climber goes up in altitude into thinner and thinner air, the body monitors oxygen needs, reroutes blood flow, and flips system controls like a train switchman.
First, your body automatically ramps up your breathing rate as you go up in altitude. By the time a climber reaches Base Camp on Everest, at eighteen thousand feet, the respiratory rate has roughly tripled. If you were taking a breath every ten seconds at sea level, then you’ll be sucking in a breath every three seconds at Base. The impact on the metabolism is striking. If all you did all day long was sit in your tent at Base Camp doing absolutely nothing but breathe, you would still burn about three thousand calories a day. Forget about the Atkins Diet or spending hours on the elliptical machine—planting your butt at Everest Base Camp is the world’s most effective weight loss program.
Thankfully, our body carefully monitors our breathing rate, even when we don’t. If your body relaxes too much while you’re sleeping and your breathing rate slips too low to satisfy the Golden Rule, then your body will snap you awake with a sharp spasmic gasp. Base Camp echoes with the sound of sudden rasping inhales throughout the night.
As a climber goes higher, the body begins to take more drastic measures to compensate for the thinning air. To preserve as much oxygen as possible for the brain, blood flow to the extremities becomes more limited. Fingers and toes start to go numb, making them dangerously susceptible to frostbite.
As a climber goes up even higher in altitude, into the so-called death zone, the dangerously thin air above 26,000 feet, there is so little oxygen available that the body makes a desperate decision: it cuts off the digestive system. The body can no longer afford to direct oxygen to the stomach to help digest food because that would divert what precious little oxygen is available away from the brain. The body will retch back up anything the climber tries to eat, even if it’s as small as an M&M.
The consequence of shutting down the digestive system is, of course, that the body can no longer take in any calories. Lacking an external fuel source, the body has no choice but to turn on itself. It now fuels itself by burning its own muscle—the very muscle needed to climb the mountain—at a rate of about two pounds per hour.
The climber’s body is now in total collapse. The respiratory system is working way beyond its tolerance at roughly four times above normal; the circulatory system is pumping at only 30 percent capacity; the digestive system has completely shut down; and the muscular system is eating away at itself. In short, the body is dying. Rapidly.
Up to this point the body has done an admirable job of prioritizing, rerouting blood, stealing from other systems to keep blood flowing to the brain. But if a climber chooses to continue to go up in altitude, then there are no more options left; the brain starts to massively erode. To stave off that decay, many climbers carry a tank of supplemental oxygen.
Supplemental oxygen for climbers doesn’t operate like air tanks for SCUBA divers. SCUBA breathing systems are self-contained; climbing systems are not. Instead, a climber’s tank is attached to a thin hose that flows a bit of extra oxygen just below the nose, enriching the ambient air by just a touch. The rule of thumb is that every liter per minute of flow from the tank will enrich each breath with the oxygen level equivalent to the air about one thousand feet lower in altitude.
Every climber who chooses to carry supplemental oxygen now considers two questions. How many tanks should I bring? How high of a flow rate can I set on the tank? The answers require trade-offs. If a climber brings more tanks, then a higher flow rate can be set and less deterioration results. But, and there is always a but, each tank adds weight that will slow the climber down.
All the climbers on our team brought two tanks and set their flow rate to two liters per minute. At that rate, climbers at the 29,029-foot-high summit of Everest will be breathing air as if they were at 27,029 feet. That doesn’t sound like much of a difference, and for some climbers it’s not enough.
Many climbers can’t function at a low flow rate. Others set a higher flow rate in order to keep them more nimble, but they miscalculate the length of time it will take them to summit and their tanks run out. In either case, the inevitable consequence is that the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen; the grip on reality goes slack, the mind drifts. However, the mind doesn’t stop sending signals; instead it starts inventing its own tales. Making this even worse is that the climber doesn’t even know that the deterioration is occurring.
I know all this, because I saw it unfold in front of me.
As I made my way down the southeast ridge of Everest, with Ang Nima and Jim Williams now a few hundred feet above me, I saw a climber from our team, Bob Clemey, on his knees, gloves at his side, with his bare hands delicately gliding over the surface of the snow.
Depleted and needing warmth, Clemey saw with absolute clarity that a rock protruding from the snow was glowing red hot. He realized that lava from the very core of the earth was lifted up to the surface of Everest and was heating that rock. So he stripped off his gloves and began warming his hands over the rock like it was a campfire.
In reality, there was no glowing red rock, no lava. There was just a climber with bare hands frozen as solid as clubs, fingers gripping snow in a twenty-below-zero blizzard.
Clemey’s oxygen tanks were drained. There was no way of knowing how long he had been there or when he had run out of oxygen.
Sometimes, desperate moments are punctuated with relief. As I stood staring in shock at Clemey’s condition, Ang Nima passed us by.
Jim later told me that the tea delivered a quick effect. Within minutes, Nima was back up on his feet, supported by Jim’s steadying hand. A half hour later, with the drugs revitalizing his depleted body, Nima was supercharged: “Jim, why are we moving so slow? If we keep going slow we will get cold.” Jim let go of the reins: “If you can go faster, do it. Get to camp as fast as you can.” Nima surged ahead.
Within a few minutes Jim approached and for the second time that day we found ourselves standing beside a climber in a desperate situation. This time, the dex cocktail wouldn’t solve the problem. Clemey needed a different drug; he needed oxygen. He could move, slowly, and it seemed possible that if he had someone watching his steps he could make his way back to camp. But for that to happen, he needed to get oxygen to his brain and get a grip on reality so he could navigate his circumstances.
The solution to this dilemma was obvious. Two of us had oxygen in our tanks, one of us didn’t, and the one who didn’t needed it. Something had to give.
High altitude has a way of stripping away all pleasantries. No one is on their best behavior. Up here, it’s hard enough to survive, let alone sacrifice. We are all emotionally raw and the result is that when we are faced with moments like this, we discover whether we are a good person or a bad person. There is no better mirror to a climber’s soul than his reflection in the goggles of a stricken climber.
“Clemey, take my oxygen tank,” Jim said.
Those are the five most powerful words that I have ever heard. That offer is still the most pure, selfless act I have ever witnessed.
Clemey didn’t hesitate; neither did Jim. We lifted the tank off Jim’s back and attached it to Clemey. Jim then radioed down to high camp to see if there was someone who could get a spare oxygen tank up to where we were.
Within minutes, Clemey was back on his feet and Jim dropped down into the snow where Clemey had been. Jim was fully aware of the risks of sitting, but good news got radioed back from camp. There was one climber who didn’t go for the summit that day who had the energy to climb up and deliver a bottle. Jim would stay put until the oxygen arrived.
Clemey needed to descend immediately; his fingers were already severely frostbitten and any more time at this altitude would inflict even more irreversible damage. I would help Clemey descend by making a foot trail in the snow for him. It would be slowgoing. We would be in the death zone for several more hours, for longer than was safe.
“See you soon, Jim,” I said to my teammate, blizzard still raging.
“You will. I’ll get back to camp, no problems.” His words were assured. The underlying message was clear: stop thinking about me and get back to punching through this storm.
Clemey and I turned back into the blizzard and started descending. Two of us were now walking away from a sitting climber. Just a few hours earlier I had witnessed precisely this situation in disbelief when two Sherpas walked away from Ang Nima. Now I was walking away. My only comfort was my confidence that Jim would get through this; I was certain I would see him again back at camp.
Clemey followed close behind me as we worked our way down the mountain and through the pounding snow. The pace was slow, with Clemey placing his boot in each step I left behind. We looked no more than a few feet ahead of us; that was our world. I couldn’t tell you how much time passed; I can’t recall the terrain, my thoughts, the mood, nothing. Time simply passed, and with one slow step at a time we moved forward.
We made it down to the Balcony, just a thousand vertical feet above Camp IV, our highest camp on the mountain. We managed to get to this point without stress or calamity. And as we stopped to take a breather, for the first time in hours I became aware of my surroundings. The world began taking shape again.
Stars were emerging from behind the last wisps of the passing storm. The blizzard had probably been easing for the last hour, but I had no recollection of that either.
With stars coming up it was getting late. Nearly twenty-four hours must have passed since we had left from Camp IV for the summit. That meant it was at least ten hours later than when we had planned to get back and hours longer than anyone should be up in the death zone.
A climber was clearly visible below me, approaching the Balcony where we were resting. Who would be coming up to the ridge at this hour? Then it clicked. As the Sherpa nodded and went by me, I saw in his backpack the spare tanks of oxygen, Jim’s lifeline. With the skies clearing, Jim would get oxygen within an hour or two. He would make it back and so would we.
Clemey’s hands were like blocks of ice. In the end, he would lose every fingertip, down to the top knuckle, but he would make it home.
There was a fixed line below us, a series of ropes pinned into the ice. We clipped in and descended to camp.
Base Camp is an oasis, a place to rest knowing that survival is assured. And it is here, after a summit bid, that climbers first start reflecting on the climb. They bask in summits, reconstruct the terrors, or assign blame and disperse amid regrets.
It was at Base Camp that Clemey revealed that he had another hallucination as we were coming off the summit ridge. He saw, again with absolute clarity, that there was an ice cream stand just below the Balcony where we had paused to rest. He could also see that there was a vendor offering the ice cream. If we weren’t in a hurry, Clemey told us, he would have stopped to buy a double-scoop cone.
It turns out there was someone precisely where Clemey had seen the ice cream vendor. It was a body, frozen into the ice. Clemey’s hypoxic mind had built a hallucination around the body of Scott Fischer, a climber who died in a storm in 1996 that was detailed in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air.
And how clear was my mind? At that altitude, it’s impossible to have total recall. But burned deep into my memory was that moment when I looked down at Ang Nima sitting passively in the snow. The lesson I drew when I was reliving it all in Base Camp was this: if your religion lets you sit down in the snow and die, you need a new religion.
I operated under a straightforward principle.
Climb, to the last breath. Never yield. No sitting down to die. Always, to the last breath.
Of course, the Sherpas drew a different lesson. Our survival had nothing to do with the keen decisions of Jim Williams or the eventual easing of the storm. No, they attributed our survival to that amulet. According to them, the amulet the Rinpoche gave me on our way up to Base Camp was etched with the meaning of life. It had juice; it provided protection.
My twenty years of experience as a physicist made me confident that events had concrete explanations. It wasn’t the bit of wood hanging around my neck that lifted a sitting climber out of the snow or cleared the hypoxic mind of another. When I returned to the United States I tossed the amulet into a drawer and forgot about it.
It would take surviving another entanglement, deep in the jungles of Indonesia, before I would begin to relax my scientific need for explanation and regard that amulet as something more than a few letters etched onto a piece of wood. It would be nearly a decade and a journey spanning six more continents, four oceans, tens of thousands more miles, and a half dozen improbable events before I would decode the meaning of the amulet.
There were scores of messages on my answering machine when I got back home. I jumped ahead and played the last one.
“Congratulations on your summit. You might remember me, I’m Gina Eppolito, one of the trekkers on your expedition. If you want to celebrate over a dinner, give me a call. I live in Washington, D.C., in Tenleytown.”
I traveled halfway around the world and met someone who lived just three Metro stops away from me? How unlikely was that? I called her back; I wanted to go out, at least once, just to verify the odds.
I’m sitting at the bar in Cactus Cantina, waiting for her to show up, reading a magazine I’d picked up on my way here. A friend recommended I read an article about how altitude has the same effect on the brain as drinking beer. It’s telling me that high camp on Everest would be like drinking a six-pack.
“What are you reading?”
I turn away from the magazine and see Gina Eppolito for the first time at sea level, in street clothes instead of a parka. “It’s an article about beer and climbing.” I shut the magazine and notice her staring at the cover.
“You read Maxim?” Gina asks.
“I did today,” and I push the magazine aside.
“Hmmm.” She changes the subject and points down at my sandals while we walk to our table. “Why are some of your toenails black?”
“Frostbite. It took me a bit longer to get down the mountain than I expected.” Over the next few months I would get so tired of answering that I would paint all my toenails a deep blue. No one asked the question after that.
It became clear as we talked that her life was so different from mine that we would never have met in D.C. We didn’t go to the same shows, or bars, or restaurants. We didn’t belong to the same gym. We didn’t have any friends in common. We would never have met in any of the ways people typically meet in a city. Our paths would never have crossed if she hadn’t been on my trek on Everest.
I thought through just how unlikely that was.
Roughly ten thousand people went on treks in the Everest region that year, and we took fifty-three of them on our expedition. Gina could have gone on any one of those other organized treks. The odds of her being on mine were about 1 in 200.
What were the odds of her living in Washington, D.C.? She worked for American Airlines so she had a portable career and could live anywhere. She wanted to live in a city, but not one that was too small, at least 100,000 people. That meant that the odds of her picking D.C. were about 1 in 300. She had decided before she left on the Everest trek that when she returned, she would pack up and move to another city, her curiosity about D.C. fully satisfied.