Honouring High Places

by Junko Tabei

  “This is Kitamura at Camp 1. I hear you. At dawn, two Sherpas from Camp 2 came down here with a letter reporting that Camp 2 was caught in an avalanche. They tried to continue to Base Camp; however, they couldn’t due to the collapse of the icefall right below Camp 1 at the ladder, which disappeared into the crevasse. Send Sherpas and high porters as soon as possible to fix it, otherwise it’s impossible to get back to Base Camp.”

  Hisano said, “All right. I will arrange Sherpas and high porters to go up there. Let the injured Sherpas and Naka descend to Camp 1 for now, and have them wait there so they can reach Base Camp as soon as the route is fixed.”

  Once that exchange had ended, Emoto spoke again. “There’s more. The most badly injured is Tabei-san. Although she seems to have no broken bones, the contusion appears critical, so she needs to be the first one to be evacuated. A rescue helicopter should be arranged.”

  Me? In the worst shape of everyone? Fly me out from here? I could hardly absorb what Emoto had said. There was no way I would leave the mountain. Why were they fussing over these trivial injuries? Neither broken bones nor internal bleeding. A contusion and some pressure on my chest, and lingering pain from being pulled out from the avalanche debris – that was all. “I’m OK!” I yelled. “NO! I won’t go down. Don’t call a helicopter for me!” Uncontrollably, I continued to shout from inside the tent to put a stop to their nonsense. Our climb would be over if we broke up the team and descended for any duration. There was not enough time to start over and attempt a second expedition. The monsoon season would begin in a few weeks. We had ten days to reach the summit, and we would not deny ourselves the fighting chance to try. If I was the most badly injured, then I knew the other climbers could still make it. They were young and strong. If anything, I was more concerned about their mental wellness after the distress of the avalanche. If they could work through that, the summit was still within the team’s grasp.

  Ang Tsering returned to the tent to check on me. “Daijyobu?” he asked in Japanese. “Are you all right? Would you like some drink?” I told him I was fine and inquired about everyone else. To my relief, there were no other serious reports except for Naka’s condition and the injuries of the few Sherpas, one with a pronounced cut on his forehead and the others not so bad. In light of the situation, Ang Tsering asked if I would fly out. A simple no escaped my lips. I explained my stance, suggesting that since there were no fatalities, then only Naka and the Sherpa with the cut needed to go down. Also, I said it would be riskier to descend the icefall in a panicked state rather than regroup and continue to climb. He understood. “We’ll stay as long as you memsahibs stay,” he said, providing me with great encouragement.

  As we remained in our tent, cocooned in sleeping bags, sipping milk tea and slowly coming to terms with what had happened, I was more at ease in conversation with Nasu, Manita, Mihara, Watanabe and Arayama. We spoke about our disbelief of the avalanche, our survival and our desire to continue up the mountain. When I explained that I would not descend to Base Camp, each one of them replied, “If Tabei-san isn’t going down, neither are we.” Teammates who were uninjured or only mildly hurt would start to dig out our equipment from under the debris right away. Despite my feeble state, I could not have been happier.

  As the morning progressed, it became obvious, even to me, that I was unwell. The other climbers were able to tend to themselves, but I was incapable of positioning myself upright. My stubborn attitude and refusal to abide by Emoto’s suggestion to return to Base Camp drove him to impatience. He pushed for a scheduled call with Hisano once the injured Sherpa and Naka, with oxygen and carried on the back of another Sherpa, were on their way down to Camp 1. By 10 a.m. the radio discussion between Camp 2 and Base Camp began.

  “Tabei-san, Tabei-san, can you hear me?” said Hisano.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks for your concern. I’m all right.”

  Hisano wasted no time in making her point. “In detail, I’ve heard from the reporters about what happened at Camp 2. Please come down to Camp 1 today. I think it’s a good idea for you to come down now, take a good rest and rethink what to do next. Would you agree?”

  My heart sank. “No, I don’t. I’ll be totally recovered in two days. It would be much harder for me to recover and be ready to climb again if I go down today. I’m serious. I’m the one who knows what’s best for my body, and that is I stay at Camp 2.”

  The team doctor spoke next. “Tabei-san, you speak this way likely due to the tension of the situation right now. It’s obvious that your whole body will be in significant pain by tomorrow. We insist. Go down to Camp 1. If you still say no, we’ll have to ask our sirdar to drag you down.”

  “I know these are sensible words of advice from you, Dr. Sakaguchi, but I can’t follow them. This is about our climbing team; it’s not just about me. I’m OK. I’ll be able to walk in two days.”

  Taking a different approach, Hisano asked, “How about you, Watanabe-san?”

  “I’m totally fine,” Watanabe said. “As doctor and team leader at Base Camp, you don’t know the topography of this area. Up here, I would like to follow the advice of our climbing leader, Tabei-san.”

  Hisano pushed again, “One more time, I’m asking, only once more, would you come down to Base Camp?”

  “Sorry for talking back to you,” I said, “but I won’t go down. Though we are mentally distraught right now, physically, we’re all fine. I’d be more concerned about climbing down through the icefall with a distressed mind than taking a few days to recover at Camp 2.”

  She finally conceded. “Understood, Tabei-san. Can I hear from everybody as well?”

  Each climber alongside me in the tent with me replied one by one with the same answer: “I don’t want to go down, but would rather stay here with our climbing leader.” With that, our chance for the summit of Everest was solidified.

  The next discussion that occurred was between our liaison officer Lhakpa Tenzing and the Sherpas, of whom Ang Tsering, as sirdar, was the spokesperson. In the case of our expedition, Lhakpa Tenzing was more like a sirdar than the government watchdog the liaison role usually denoted. Their conversation was a sensitive one. The Sherpas could easily have opted to go home based on their respectful fear of avalanches, which in their culture represents a raging god. Instead, they stood by the original statement Ang Tsering shared with me earlier: if we stayed, they stayed.

  The journalists had a different reaction. In their mind, knowing the damage that Camp 2 had incurred, in particular the burial of oxygen bottles and food, the continuation of the expedition was impossible. In addition, based on previous Himalayan expeditions where Sherpas quit after serious avalanches, they were convinced our situation was a simple matter of calling off the climb and radioing for a helicopter. With that assumption, the journalists announced among their crew that the climb was defunct, and they readied their cameras and film equipment to descend the mountain. They planned to leave immediately.

  I fought their negative attitude in my head. This was our climb. The decision to continue was up to us and our team leader, not the journalists. To me the climb was not over, but I had no way of voicing my opinion to them from where I lay. Wrapped in my sleeping bag as I tried to recover, I was not not prepared to argue. Thankfully, Hisano stepped in. She submitted to our persistent ways and announced that she would no longer force us to descend from Camp 2, but the summit was still in question.

  Once we had permission to stay, our tents were moved to a higher location within the area of Camp 2, as we were fearful of another avalanche. Shioura and Taneya and the three Sherpas who had descended from Camp 3 re-pitched the tents. I was carried to my new resting spot on the back of one of the Sherpas, feeling miles away from my usual ability to climb. Right then I knew I had to remain positive and keep Everest reachable in segments: first we clean up from the avalanche and allow injured party members to recover; then we continue to build the route upwards and acclimatize until we are ready and in a good position for an ass
ault on the summit.

  The true state of Camp 2 was realized by midday. The place was a disaster. The spread of avalanche debris was several hundred metres across the glacier. Food cartons and propane and oxygen bottles were strewn, half-buried, amidst the vastness of ice blocks. It was difficult to know where to begin to salvage equipment.

  Our relationship with the journalists began to sour when our differing opinions on whether to descend or not became obvious. But what intrigued me was that despite their desire to leave camp in a hurry, they began to film the avalanche site with added interest as soon as they had dug their camera equipment from the snow. My regard for their professionalism improved with each piece of footage they shot. They had found their story.

  May 5

  The onslaught of repair began. One stitch at a time we sewed torn tents back together, and item by item, we resurrected everything we could from under the swath of debris that filled the camp.

  All our food had been buried in the avalanche, and we ate only boiled potatoes that were brought to us from Base Camp. We sprinkled them with salt, which seemed gracefully simple on Everest and reminded me of when I was a child, digging up potatoes from the field and enjoying the sensation of being barefoot in the soil. There at Camp 2, amidst disarray, memories suddenly became vivid to me: a little girl pulling thick stalks from the ground with half a dozen or more potatoes falling about; their thin skins slipping off with the touch of rinse water; boiling them in a large pot until they surfaced and broke open, ready for my family to enjoy. All I could picture was my mother’s fields, our stone stove and me sitting on a straw mat eating the freshly boiled, piping-hot potatoes. When I shook myself from the daydream, I was met with the view of a half kilometre filled with giant-sized blocks of ice. I had to remind myself of our luck that no one had died in the avalanche, and that we could attempt the climb again.

  Much like me as a child surprised with each potato nugget I pulled from my mother’s garden, the Sherpas delighted in every item they rescued from the snow. “I found it!” they yelled as though on a treasure hunt. One after the other, reports flooded into the tent where I lay: four oxygen bottles had been found; food remained intact, despite crushed boxes; tents would be durable enough with stitching and duct tape. Their excitement was welcomed, and the renewed hopefulness of the team fuelled my own determination to persevere. I would ask Hisano to join us at Camp 2 to prepare the team for the summit assault. The next day I would begin all efforts to stand on my feet and walk. I was convinced that anything was possible, whatever it took, and that we would reach the top of the mountain.

  May 6

  Another day of restoration took place on all fronts, in terms of health, supplies and resolve. It was notable that the urgency from the avalanche had dissipated and was replaced by clear thought and determination. The team’s willpower was paying off. Although at Camp 2 we already felt certain we could continue, it was tremendous news when Hisano officially announced on the scheduled radio call that the climb would go on. Each of us felt our entire being pulsate when she said, “Let’s try climbing to the top of Everest, for one last chance.”

  May 7

  I was bothered by the delay of me spending two full days in bed and was in need of a sign that my condition would improve. Slowly, the chest pain I felt with each breath settled, but the instability in my hip joints and the pain that radiated from ankles to thighs had me worried. Somehow, on the second night, my teammates helped me from the tent – the first time I had been outside since the avalanche – and I managed to walk. My few steps were enough to re-convince me that a descent to Base Camp was unnecessary, and that the team should focus only on the summit.

  By the third day, I could walk on my own.

  May 8

  Five days after the avalanche, Hisano finally climbed up to Camp 2 accompanied by two Sherpas. By then I was recovered well enough to hike down with Shioura and Ang Tsering and meet her partway. My body was wrapped with cooling pads on my neck, back and hips, emitting a therapeutic mint odour all around me, which I quite liked. I must have very much looked the character of the patient.

  Stunned at the sight of us and at the avalanche debris spread in front of her, Hisano spoke in a quiet voice. “How could you have survived this disaster?”

  As she continued to survey the land, her eyes fell upon the renovated Camp 2 and her heart lifted. There stood a koinobori made by the climbers and journalists: a giant white cloth, like a windsock, with the shapes of two carp painted on it in red and black, joyfully flapping from a log pole high in the Everest breeze. This was the resolute symbol of the team’s unyielding mindset to resume and pursue what mountaineers desired – to climb.

  May 10

  On May 10, Hisano called us all into an overcrowded six-person tent. The only few missing from the meeting were Naka and Naganuma, who were still at Base Camp suffering from altitude sickness, in the care of Dr. Sakaguchi. After we paid our respects to our sick friends, Hisano announced her plan for the summit.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Meaning of Mountains

  When people meet me for the first time, they are surprised by my size. They expect me to be bigger than I am, more strapping, robust, like a wrestler, for example. As I am the first woman to climb Mount Everest and the Seven Summits, they equate a certain body type to my accomplishments. I grin whenever I am first overlooked then greeted at a train station or a speaking engagement. “Are you really Tabei-san?” they ask. At a height of five feet, and weighing 49 kilograms, I throw newcomers for a loop. Questions like how do I carry such a heavy pack, or how large is my lung capacity are the usual conversation openers. I was always puzzled by this, by people’s obsession with the physical appearance of a mountaineer.

  Once, I presented a lecture at a private university in a coliseum-style classroom full of mostly young male students. During the question period, one of the students from the middle of the room vigorously stood up and said, “All women mountaineers are not good looking. Is that true?” He had based his question on a quote from a popular Japanese novelist.

  “If you look at me,” I said, “then you know that isn’t the case.” That shut him up. So many questions and assumptions about body, looks, appearance – I was baffled at people’s inability to dig deeper in their inquiries about mountaineering, and especially about the female mountaineer. There is more to us; we all come from somewhere.

  Country Girl

  I was born in 1939, in a small town called Miharu, in the Fukushima area. Miharu means “three spring,” as in the season, for the three flowers – plum, peach and cherry – that bloom together come springtime. It was a pretty place surrounded by green mountains laden with cherry blossoms and terraced fields of vegetables. In the middle of the townsite was a hill with the remaining old stone walls from a historic castle. As children, we called the hill Castle Mountain since it was high enough to see the vista of the entire town from its top.

  Miharu had a population of nearly 10,000 people, and was adorned with eleven temples, all of which grew cherry and plum trees in their gardens. In mid-April the entire town was full of pink flowers, creating a hue of colour that evoked nature’s exquisite beauty.

  In the front of my house lay the Sakura-gawa (sakura for cherry blossom; gawa for river), and a trip across its bridge and up a hill led to the trailhead of Fudo-yama (mountain).

  Fudo-yama was a playground for children. I remember its hillside being covered with trees – crepe myrtles and maples – and we played Tarzan on rope swings and hung hammocks from their branches. The south slope of the mountain was covered with azaleas, adding more shades of pink to the surrounding area in spring. I ate those flower petals from time to time to quench my thirst. From the high point of Fudo-yama, we could see a palace-like building in the distance, an image I had only seen in picture books, and I used to believe it was the home of the Emperor of Japan. In reality, it was one of the many temples that dotted the countryside. Nonetheless, standing on that small summit was enough
to show me what lay beyond my hometown, a moment when the flicker of aspiration ignited.

  My family ran a printing company. My father, Morinobu Ishibashi, and my mother, Kiyo, were the parents of seven children, five of whom were girls, including me, the youngest. I can only assume my father was hoping for a boy when I was born because I later learned that he had said, “A girl again…” and failed to name me for many days after my birth.

  The printing factory was on the street side of our property and the house was at its back, so I grew up listening the noise of machinery. Four factory workers lived in our home, along with two housekeepers. At mealtime, we pulled out a long table and everyone ate together. We were a fairly close-knit family, but there was such an age difference between me and my oldest brother and sister that I rarely saw them.

  I grew up during the Second World War yet have little memory of the war itself. I remember having to wear a boku-zukin, a cotton-padded air-raid hood, designed especially for wartime, and running to the air-raid shelter, sirens blaring in the background. As only a child would imagine, the gatherings in the shelter seemed festive since everyone from the neighbourhood was there. More clearly than any war stories though, I recall the fire at the elementary school two years post-war. The entire town shone abnormally bright as my dreams of schooling went up in flames and my father and brothers sprinted to it to help. The destruction of the school, in combination with societal confusion after the war, had me miss kindergarten. Eventually, classes were set up in a gym, with dividers as walls, for morning and afternoon school groups. I quickly fell into the routine of being greeted with “Jun-chan!” each morning by a neighbouring friend, Hideo-chan. We walked hand in hand along the Sakura-gawa, later joined by another friend, Kazuo-chan. The three of us entered the classroom every day together. As an adult reflecting on that time, I realized how lucky I was to be protected by two boys en route to school, and the importance of long-term friendships.