Killer Storm

by Matt Dickinson

  ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ he said.

  Our minds were working in perfect synchronicity.

  Dawn became day. The sun quickly gained in power, forcing us to rummage in our packs for our goggles.

  Half an hour without eye protection up here would be enough to give us snow blindness.

  High above our position, streaky clouds were starting to form. A sign of changing weather.

  The Hillary Step loomed into view. I stared at it apprehensively, this much-feared obstacle, arguably the most famous cliff in the world.

  From where I was looking it seemed pretty hardcore. Jagged, fractured rock, six or seven metres high. A natural flaw in the ridge, a last gateway on the seemingly endless journey to Everest’s summit.

  A sting in the tail. A postscript. A final test.

  ‘I heard it had collapsed in the earthquake,’ I said. ‘Got easier.’

  ‘Wishful thinking,’ Kami replied. ‘If anything, it looks harder than the last time I was here.’

  A ragtag bunch of ropes had been fixed up the rocky face. Even from a distance of fifty metres I could see it was a mess. Old ropes are dangerous, they can snap without warning.

  We would have to treat it with utmost respect. We couldn’t afford to make the slightest mistake.

  The route took us along the knife-edge of the mighty ridge, vertigo-inducing drops to our left. Our ice axes were essential here, especially on the frequent sections where no fixed ropes were in place. The crunching sound of axes thrust into ice became a reassuring background noise.

  We were resting every five or six steps, legs deadened with fatigue, minds numbed with the repetitive nature of the challenge.

  Kami was showing signs of exhaustion. Once or twice I saw him swaying uncertainly, as if he were half asleep on his feet.

  My mind slipped into a hazy kind of dream state for a while, snapping back to attention when I realised that the awkward-looking chimney in front of me was the Hillary Step we had seen from afar.

  ‘Choose the red rope,’ Kami said. His expert eye had picked the best of a very bad bunch. The scrappy protection, on which we were relying, had been there for a full year and was questionable to say the least.

  ‘Someone’s got to go first,’ Kami said.

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  I slid my jumar clamp up the line, feeling it bite with satisfying precision. Trusting it with my weight, I pulled hard with both arms, at the same time kicking higher into the compacted ice at the side of the Hillary Step.

  I tried not to think what would happen if the snow anchor failed. A fall down the 2,000-plus-metre South-West Face of Everest was not an attractive prospect.

  Half a body length of height gained. Two lungfuls of air expelled and replaced at high speed. I paused there, sucking in precious oxygen from the mask as a glittering parade of white stars raced around my view of the world.

  ‘Slowly,’ Kami warned.

  I took another lunge up the rope. My foothold crumbled as the ice fractured, sending one leg skittering down. I shifted my weight to the other leg, praying the crampons would remain in position. I pushed the jumar up higher. The rope became taut.

  Almost there. The bulging snow hump at the top of the step was an arm’s length higher.

  I had another pause. Sucking on the gas mask, wishing I had thought to crank up the gauge to a higher rate of flow for this section.

  Down on the ridge I could see something buried, something breaking the smooth outline of the snow. Behind Kami. Blue fabric. It looked like an arm, a shoulder. The rounded shape of a head.

  I shivered. Another Everest victim.

  A body in the ice.

  ‘I’m freezing!’ Kami yelled. ‘Get a move on, Ryan.’

  My right arm went up, pushing the jumar up the final metre of rope. I kicked into the ice, tested the strength of the foothold and pushed upwards.

  I belly-flopped on to the top of the cliff, squirming on my front for a few seconds before crawling to the flat ice that lay just beyond. I rested for a couple of minutes then went back to the lip and saw Kami preparing to climb.

  Lying prone, I rested for five minutes while Kami fought his way up the fixed rope. I could hear the grunts and explosions of breath that it involved. I should have helped to pull him up the last exhausting section but I was still trying to recapture my breath.

  Kami crawled over to my side, flopping down with a dramatic sigh.

  ‘That’s the biggest challenge over,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t assume anything,’ Kami replied, coughing as he laughed. ‘You know what happened to me last time.’

  I looked along the ridge.

  The summit was in sight. We were on the final section of the climb. My heart, already working overtime to pump super-oxygenated blood, tripped with the raw excitement of the moment.

  ‘The summit pole!’ I yelled at Kami. He stumbled up the snow step and, breathing incredibly hard, put his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Can you see it?’

  He nodded back, too exhausted – too emotional – to speak.

  I bit my frozen lip.

  We were going to do it. What could stop us now?

  I felt Kami coming closer. He pulled down his oxygen mask. I heard the cracking sound of ripping ice. Small chunks of frozen condensation fell off his mask as he spoke.

  ‘This is where it happened,’ he told me. ‘Where Alex turned me around.’

  I stared at the ridge, mentally measuring the time it would take to reach the summit. Half an hour? Perhaps a bit more? I was astounded at how close Kami had got on his previous expedition.

  ‘Heartbreaking,’ I said.

  ‘Totally,’ he agreed.

  It was crazily close to the summit to turn around and yet I could understand it. There is a limit to what the human body can take. A strict and unbreakable ceiling to what it can ultimately endure.

  The mind can take you beyond. Desire can help you to push further than you ever dreamed. But, as Alex Brennan found that time, the human body is a machine; you can take it so far but finally it must stop.

  At that moment I was close to the limit myself.

  But I still had something left.

  We crouched down in a small hollow, pouring hot tea from the flask. The fluid was life itself, the warmth spreading deliciously, restoring vital heat to our frozen body cores.

  We were now in an incredibly exposed place, the highest mountain ridge on the planet, so it was hardly surprising that the wind came back to taunt us. It began with a few tentative gusts, then steadily increased over the next twenty minutes to become something more threatening.

  ‘We could do with some fixed ropes here,’ Kami yelled at me.

  There were none. We dropped a few steps down the windward side of the ridge as we continued, hyperaware of the overhanging cornices that could so easily lure us too close to the Kangshung Face.

  Many climbers had been killed by that small but fatal error. I could see all too clearly how easy it would be.

  I was worried about Kami but he showed no signs that the wind was troubling him. He just kept going with that slow but determined step.

  To our right, the clouds were gathering. Thick masses of them. Dark and brooding.

  Everest was a magnet for bad weather, particularly late in the day. If there was a storm front around, it would inevitably hone in on the mountain sooner or later.

  That was why so many Everest climbers had been caught out on their return. Afternoon storms striking when the body and mind were at their weakest point.

  Now the summit was tantalisingly close. Close enough I could make out the individual colours of the prayer flags that were flapping there. Close enough that I could finally believe nothing could stop us.

  Three more steps. Breathe hard. Three more steps. Breathe again.

  My mind was foggy from the lack of oxygen. My body racked with the pain of the climb. Yet, somehow, I was still able to enter the zone, keeping that crucial one-step-at-
a-time mentality alive inside me.

  Kami came up alongside me during one of my rests.

  ‘Be cool if the two of us reached the top at the same moment,’ he said.

  ‘It sure would,’ I replied.

  – CHAPTER 13 –

  The ridge was wide enough for us to walk side by side. The steep ground fell away, becoming a series of gentle undulations in the final fifty metres.

  I was still trying to shake my brain out of its altitude-induced haze. Like many mountaineers before me, I found I was talking to myself in a way that felt completely normal.

  You are about to step on to the summit of Mount Everest, I told myself sternly, the ‘voice’ in my head as clear to me as if it had come from another person. This moment will happen once in your lifetime. You have to appreciate it to the max. Open your eyes and drink it all in.

  I stepped up and placed my hand on the summit pole. Kami held back a bit, I guessed he was searching for the shrine bell in his pack.

  I forced myself to concentrate. I couldn’t let the emotions take over completely. I wanted to be able to tell Tashi everything about this moment. I couldn’t share it with her for real but I could bring it alive for her through my words and memories later on.

  I fixed it all in my mind. Every crease in the clouds. Every gust of wind. The fluted snow folds of the sinuous ridge we had just climbed. The tatty prayer flags draped in such glorious confusion about the summit pole.

  Then came Kami.

  The ice collecting on his mask. His piercing dark eyes shining through the lens, the tiny crystals of frozen tears on his wind-scorched cheeks.

  I reached out and gripped his shoulder. He bent his head and I sensed he was praying.

  What a roller-coaster ride it had been for him. Paralysed in an avalanche, resurrected by medical science. There were no words for what he must be feeling at this moment.

  It was too deep.

  Kami. His eyes glowing with the incredible light of pure joy.

  He brought out the shrine bell. It looked tiny cradled in his climbing mitts, light glinting off its polished surface.

  ‘Third time lucky,’ he said.

  ‘The Dalai Lama will be pleased.’

  ‘Join me for a prayer,’ Kami said.

  Kami said his prayer in English for my benefit. We bowed our heads into the wind.

  ‘Whoever so much as sees this sacred place,’ Kami said, ‘will feel a spontaneous surge of vivid faith.

  ‘Here is where groups of countless devas throng,

  ‘And Buddhas proclaim their dragons’ roar of perfect wisdom. A sublime space in which disciples see the truth. A scene of wonders, and a scene of marvels.

  ‘A blessed site to which the bodhisattvas flock,

  So that they might hear the perfect teachings.

  ‘Through the virtue of praising this outstanding place, may we travel without obstruction to the Buddha’s realm.’

  He rang the bell to tell the gods the ceremony was over. The tone was clear and sweet, even above the blustering rumble of the wind.

  ‘I will leave the bell here,’ Kami said. ‘It will make my prayer more powerful.’

  ‘This is where it belongs,’ I agreed.

  We chose a spot about a metre from the summit pole. Taking our ice axes, we chipped away at the ice until we had dug a hole deep enough.

  ‘This bell was a gift from the gods,’ Kami said. ‘Now it is time for it to be returned.’

  As Kami placed the shrine bell into its resting place a powerful clap of thunder rang out to the south. We turned, looking into a wall of solid cloud spiked with flashes of lightning.

  I was fearful, but to my surprise, Kami laughed.

  ‘You know what that is, don’t you?’ he said. His mouth widened into a smile, his face filled with serene joy.

  ‘A storm?’

  ‘It’s the monsoon, Ryan! The monsoon!’ he cried.

  ‘What?’ My hypoxic mind took a while to catch up with what he was saying.

  ‘Those clouds have come from the Indian Ocean. That’s the front of the weather system Nepal has been waiting for.’

  I stared at the approaching mass, realising he could be right. It didn’t seem to be an ordinary weather system; the clouds were darker than any Himalayan storm I had ever seen.

  ‘Clouds filled with rain,’ Kami said. He was laughing now. ‘This year the rice will grow. This year the people will not starve. The shrine bell has worked its magic.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  I found myself laughing with Kami. It seemed crazy to me that he believed his prayer could bring about the monsoon, but the fact that he believed it was undeniable.

  To Kami there were no limits to what faith could achieve.

  I put my arm round his shoulder and hugged him tight.

  ‘Your prayer seemed to work pretty quickly,’ I told him.

  Kami beamed in delight.

  We buried the shrine bell in the hole, scooping in chips of ice and packing them down tight with our gloved hands.

  Soon it was lost to sight.

  ‘We need to take some photos,’ I said.

  I pulled out my camera and we took it in turns to take shots of each other. Kami raised his ice axe above his head, copying the summit pose Tenzing Norgay had struck in his first ascent of the mountain. Then we took a selfie of the two of us with the summit pole in the background.

  ‘Take a last look,’ Kami said. ‘I don’t think we will ever see anything so beautiful again.’

  I let my eyes drink in the view, the rumbling clouds to the south, so elemental and filled with power. The hazy brown plateau of Tibet to the north, mysterious and seemingly infinite in scale. I took a close-up photo of my hand on the summit pole and packed the camera away safely.

  ‘Our mission is complete,’ Kami said with satisfaction.

  ‘Not quite,’ I told him. ‘There’s still the descent.’

  Kami smiled.

  ‘I think it will be fine,’ he said.

  We turned, heading for the fixed ropes that would lead us down.

  – CHAPTER 14 –

  Kathmandu was quiet. The rains had changed the mood in a positive way. The riots and protests had died away for the moment. An uneasy calm had taken over from violence and demonstration.

  There was still no government in place. Basic needs like a water supply and electricity were sporadic and liable to fail every day.

  On the positive side, there were fewer people living in the streets. Many thousands of Nepalis had returned to their villages and farms on the arrival of the rains. They were now planting to take advantage of the monsoon. Hoping for a bumper rice crop to fill hungry bellies and start earning cash once more.

  The aid agencies had closed their food kitchens.

  My reunion with Tashi was extra sweet. And Shreeya was delighted to be back with Kami. We shared a hundred stories, swapping tales from the mountain for their adventures escaping down the glacier.

  Anatoly and Zhanna were also recovering in the city and we spent an emotional evening with them, learning about their journey back. As we had suspected, Viking’s men had cut their losses when Operation Killer Storm fell apart, and headed off into the hills with their loot. Nevertheless, the terrorist attack had shaken Anatoly to the core and armed guards now permanently surrounded him and Zhanna.

  Dawa, who was as cool as ever, had been reunited with Anisa and they had both been given their jobs back. We could never forget how he had saved us back in the Icefall.

  We said our farewells to the Russians. Anatoly was sincere as he thanked us for our help on the mountain.

  ‘Come and stay on the yacht sometime,’ he offered. We made some vague comments about how great that would be, but everyone knew it would never happen.

  Tashi and I took it in turns to give Zhanna a huge hug.

  ‘I will never forget Everest,’ Zhanna said. ‘I’m sure I will think of it every day for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever g
o back?’ Tashi asked.

  Zhanna’s smile faded, the memory of her mother’s confession clearly on her mind.

  ‘I think not,’ she said. ‘Too many ghosts …’

  Zhanna and her father flew out of Kathmandu for Moscow in the biggest private jet I had ever seen.

  Alex’s death haunted us.

  We felt like we had abandoned him up there in the Icefall.

  Finally, we got some money together and paid a Sherpa team to retrieve Alex’s body from the ice. His remains were portaged down to Lukla and flown to Kathmandu where we held a special ceremony to celebrate his life.

  One thousand butter lamps were lit in the temple of Annapurna, right in the heart of Kathmandu’s old town. Hundreds of mourners were present, including members of Alex’s family and many of his friends from the States.

  Following the ceremony, Alex was cremated on the banks of the Bagmati River. There, amidst the dust, and beneath the outstretched wings of red kites using the heat of the funeral pyre as a thermal high in the air, Alex Brennan’s journey ended.

  In accordance with local customs, his ashes were swept into the river.

  The siege at Base Camp had ignited a new wave of global media interest in Everest. Journalists had flown into Nepal in search of survivors; a television crew was talking about doing a reconstruction for a documentary.

  Five of Viking’s men were eventually apprehended, living wild in the mountains in a valley about thirty miles from Everest. They were placed in custody awaiting trial, but since Nepal’s justice system was inactive, there was no telling how long their detention would be.

  They had looted vast amounts from Base Camp, stealing cash and valuables from the tents and more than 200 passports. The possessions were gradually being returned to the mountaineers who had lost them, but the process was slow and inefficient.

  No one was weeping any tears on their behalf. They were a mercenary force of the worst kind, renegade soldiers who had defected from the armies of other nations and been seduced by Viking’s promise of big money.

  They were killers and crooks.

  They could rot in jail forever as far as we were concerned.