Sacred Mountain

by Robert Ferguson

  “It’s time to go,” the Gurkha said. “There will be fried potatoes in a few minutes and then we go straight off when we get the first light.”

  Philip groaned, rubbing his face and wincing as his dried lips cracked when he mumbled a reply. He pulled a battered tube of thick zinc cream from his bag and started rubbing it into his face in an effort to protect it from the sun and wind of the day ahead. A mug of tea arrived, making him feel guilty that despite the shared hardships, the men were still trying to look after him. As he sipped he sighed with pleasure, letting the hot liquid flow into him, its heat radiating warmth through his body. Reluctantly he crawled from his bag and shoved it into his rucksack, which had been serving both as a pillow and a barrier from the other occupants. There was no need to dress as he was already wearing everything he had with him except his goggles and boots. The snow goggles he took from the rucksack and shoved into a pocket. His boots he retrieved from where he’d left them after his night time excursion. As he pushed his feet into them he grimaced, the leather had frozen solid in the dawn dip of early morning, so he shuffled out of the tent and towards the fire.

  He emerged just in time. No sooner had he reached the fire than the tent was down and the various poles, ropes, groundsheets and canvas distributed amongst the men. Philip was handed a few guy ropes which seemed a bit light to him but after the night he’d had he didn’t feel like querying it.

  He sat down on a boulder and took off his boots, holding them over the rekindled fire, working at the leather to get some flexibility back into them. The laces, wet from the snow the night before, were like twigs, so he crushed and squeezed them between the thick material of his gloves. After a minute or so, he pushed his feet back into them, feeling their coolness against his warm woollen socks. He wiggled his toes. At least there was a little flex in them now.

  Breakfast was called by the cook, sticking his head out from what served as the kitchen, a small canvas sheet draped over a rock overhang, and held down by rocks. He pulled his plate and mug from his bag and walked over, insisting that the men in front were served first when they tried to usher him through. A pile of crispy, fried potatoes, coated in dried chilli and with a fried egg on top was put on his plate, together with a refill of tea. Returning to his place he tried to force it down despite a complete lack of appetite, knowing he’d need the energy later. The kitchen roof was folded and the frying pan washed in the river using ashes from the fire to scour it clean. By the time Philip had finished and rinsed his plate the party was ready to move out.

  They all stood around the fire, bathed in its flickering light as the first glimmer of dawn silhouetted the mountains around them. The moon was still in the sky, but only as a faint glow hidden behind fast moving cloud. Everybody looked at Philip expectantly, several stamping their feet and banging their arms to keep warm.

  “We must move fast today,” Philip said with as much conviction as he could muster. “We want to be well over the pass by the time we camp tonight, hopefully somewhere with a nice hotel and decent restaurant.”

  The men laughed grimly.

  “It will be safest if we stick together. It’ll be steep and slippery as we get higher so we may need to rope up in places. Everybody needs to look out for everybody else. Remember,” he stared around the group, “it’s cold and treacherous up there. This is our chance to catch up on the soldiers. Yesterday they were struggling and we reckon they’ll have spent a freezing night high up on the pass. They’ll be cold and exhausted. If we can catch them soon, they’ll be weak and no match for us. Then,” he pointed back down the valley, “we can all get home. Right, let’s get going before we all freeze.”

  He nodded to Mingma, who turned and set off up a rough trail to the side of the valley, the rest falling in behind. Philip joined about half way back and noticed Tashi walking close behind. “Sleep well?” he asked with raised eyebrows.

  The Indian grunted. “Thanks to the winning combination of snoring and the howling wolves, I’m beat.” He rubbed his eyes. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to go on? That tent seemed a bit dicey to me. If it gets damaged up on the pass we’ll freeze to death.”

  Philip looked over his shoulder as he walked. He’d noticed that Tashi had been the last to be ready that morning, and wondered whether he would slow them down. “It’s not too late to go back you know?” he said. “You could be back in Namche this evening in a nice warm lodge.”

  The Indian shook his head. “Or inside a wolf,” he muttered grumpily. “I’m here now so I may as well carry on, but I still reckon you lot are nuts to be trying this.”

  Considering how remote they were the trail they were following was surprisingly good, trodden flat by centuries of traders and their caravans of yaks. It zigzagged its way up the side of the small valley, climbing steeply and keeping to the edge of the vast grey glacier. In some places the path disappeared, swept away by avalanches of monsoon snows or the floods of the thaw. Where these had happened, the path had been diverted or re-established depending on what had happened to the original terrain. Sometimes it climbed high to pass round an earth slip, other times down to the glacier’s edge to skirt round rock falls.

  Philip was breathing hard, the thin air and heavy load making him feel sluggish and listless. He was grateful for the steady pace, with Mingma setting a speed that would get them over the pass in good time and keep them together. It was a race that would be won by being sensible, not spectacular. After only half an hour Philip was hot, his body sweating under the thick layers he was wearing to keep out the gusting wind blowing down the valley. His face however was numb, his ears aching with cold and he kept flexing his fingers within his mittens to keep some circulation going.

  The morning was getting brighter as dawn grew and they climbed to meet the sunrise. After an hour Mingma stopped, allowing the men to pack away the heavy woollen blankets they’d been swathed in since camp and Philip took the opportunity to strip off a couple of tops, which he tied to the outside of his rucksack in the hope that they might dry out before evening.

  Soon they were off again and Philip understood why they’d stopped when they had. The sides of the valley closed in, two sheer walls of rock rising on either side of the glacier, climbing to become the snowy upper slopes of the surrounding peaks. He glanced nervously upwards, hoping that the snow held back this year as if an avalanche came down while they were in Tibet it could block the valley for days.

  The trail picked its way along the southern flank of the glacier, using the tonnes of debris that had fallen onto the ice. The going got slower as they picked their way through, following a series of small cairns and tattered prayer flags that has been crudely built to mark the route. Philip was relieved to see that these still stood undisturbed, indicating that the soldiers didn’t suspect that they were being followed.

  As they climbed Philip studied the huge glacier, a vast frozen waterfall cascading down the valley. In places tall pillars of ice, many over fifty feet tall, looked as if they needed only the slightest touch to bring them crashing down. Huge boulders the size of cars sat perched on thin columns of ice, sheltered by their bulk from the heat of the scorching high altitude sun. The occasional boom reverberating around the valley told when one had finally shattered under the weight.

  He could feel his feet chilling, the cold from the ice beneath them slowly creeping through his boots and into the soles of his feet. He tried to wriggle his toes but found them restricted by the two pairs of thick socks he had on, so stamped his feet whenever they reached a tricky portion of trail and had to wait until the man in front had cleared it.

  They’d been going a couple of hours when glancing up he saw Lhamu holding up her hand, bringing them to a halt. He watched for a few moments, swinging his arms in an attempt to get some circulation going, before slowly working his way forward up the column. As he went he checked on the men, patting them on the back as he passed and receiving grins in return. No one else seemed to be breathing heavily he noticed, trying h
is best to look relaxed. Glancing up ahead he saw Mingma looking back towards him and beckoning him forward. It was only twenty or so yards but the effort of getting there quickly made him so breathless he was unable to talk.

  No words were needed. Mingma pointed in the direction of a large rocky overhang that jutted out from the valley wall. Underneath it, a rough wall had been built with uneven stones, a barrier on which to lie saddles and rugs to create a basic wind break. The rock roof was blackened with soot from centuries of campfires as traders had used it as an overnight camp on their journeys. Inside, leaning with his back against the rock sat a soldier; cap pulled low over his face and huddled in a thin blanket. Philip started and instinctively reached down to where his pistol hung.

  Momentarily he was confused as to why Mingma and Lhamu had brought him forward rather than getting everybody under cover but it quickly dawned on him why. He walked forward, cautiously glancing around the open shelter and entered through an opening in the low wall. There was a pungent smell of yak dung and the dried remnants of it covered the floor. Animals were obviously allowed to shelter here too in bad weather, probably just the young, and in the fireplace he could see the remains of the last fire that had used this dung as its fuel.

  Crossing over to where the soldier sat, on a flat rock beside the fire pit, he crouched down. The man’s eyes were open, staring down at where the last flickers of light they’d ever have seen would have burnt. His face was white, like a diluted whitewash covering a deep blue. Philip pulled off his mitten and glove and reached forward, feeling that he should at least feel for a pulse. When his fingers made contact with the soldiers skin they recoiled back and he shuddered, quickly standing and putting his hand back inside his glove.

  “Christ,” he said, looking down at the corpse. “He’s frozen solid.”

  Mingma nodded, glancing across to Prem who’d moved up from the rear and was entering the shelter.

  The Gurkha moved forward and using a fair amount of force managed to prise the frozen blanket away from the body, it retaining the shape of the soldier as he tossed it aside. Prem studied the corpse and then turned to face them. “He was injured,” he said. “Looks like a stab wound in the stomach. One of the monks must have wounded him with a knife during the ambush.” He turned back and looked at the soldier again. “Perhaps he was slowing them down too much so they left him here.” He bent down and felt the ashes in the fire. “This has been out for some time. He must have burnt all he could find and then…” He shrugged.

  “Poor sod,” said Philip quietly, slowly shaking his head. “I bet the last place he wanted to be was here, traipsing through the Himalayas. What a terrible way to die,” he said, studying the soldiers face. “He looks so young, hardly out of school. I wonder if his family will ever find out what happened to him?”

  There was a silence as they all imagined the horrific death he must have suffered; injured, alone, cold and scared. Prem picked up the man’s rifle which stood leaning against the rock wall and pulled some ammunition from a bag that lay by its side. He checked its mechanism, and satisfied that it was in working order, handed it to one of the Gurkhas.

  It was Philip who pulled them all back to the present. “Let’s get going,” he said abruptly, turning and leaving the rough shelter. “We don’t want to get stuck up here as well or we’ll end up suffering the similar fate.”

  The walked on, the valley gradually widening again and the trail climbing away from the glacier. A series of switchback corners meant they were ascending rapidly, zigzagging up the steep slope and the pace slowed, not helped by the fact they were now walking on old, icy snow that made their footing more treacherous. The sun was now high enough to clear the ridge but remained hidden behind thick cloud that blew down the valley. He tried treading in the steps that Mingma and Lhamu were kicking into the hard surface, but on several occasions he felt himself slip, only just managing to catch his balance in time.

  Occasionally they came across abandoned equipment that had been jettisoned by the exhausted Chinese soldiers. Ammunition lay beside the trail and Philip wondered whether it had been quietly abandoned by exhausted men or dumped as the result of a direct order. Whichever way, he didn’t care. It meant fewer bullets to be shot at them when they did catch up. He picked some of it up, others following suit without breaking stride. Within a short stretch, they’d accumulated over 200 rounds of ammo and a hand grenade, while many other items like mess tins were left lying frozen into the snow.

  The higher they climbed, the stronger the wind became, blasting into their faces. Philip had his hood tied tight around his face and thick scarf pulled up over his mouth and nose. When they’d started walking on the snow he’d pulled out the snow goggles from his pocket and slid them on, although he had to stop frequently to clear their lens from mist. Despite this he could feel his cheeks going numb and every few minutes rubbed at them vigorously with his hands. His fingers and toes were dead and yet he could feel sweat running down between his shoulder blades, his silk vest plastered to his back.

  A flurry of snow blew past, flakes caking themselves onto his face and goggles. As he wiped them off he looked ahead, trying to work out whether it was a fresh snow fall or simply spindrift being picked up and driven by the wind. Another flurry hit him, the flakes bigger and more persistent.

  “Bugger it,” he muttered under his breath. He glanced around and saw that visibility had dropped considerably. Unless they were careful it would be all too easy to lose someone in these conditions. Mingma and Lhamu had stopped and he caught them up.

  “How far to the top?” he yelled into the wind, peering up the pass.

  “Soon,” Lhamu replied, her voice emerging from within a heavy hood that completely covered her face. “It is hard to be sure, but at this pace we should be over in less than an hour.”

  Philip nodded. “We must keep moving.” He turned and faced the rest of the men. “Quickly, gather in close.” The men huddled in, leaving Mingma, Lhamu and him with their backs acting as a barrier to the worst of the weather. “We’ve made good time,” he yelled, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the wind. “Less than an hour and we’ll be over and on our way down. It’s important we stick close and don’t get lost in this snow. Whoever else is carrying guy ropes get them out and pass them around.”

  He slipped off his pack and pulled out the ones he’d been given, replacing them with the tops he’d hung on the outside to dry and which were now flapping around annoyingly. Two of the men untied the neat bundles of cord that hung from their packs and passed them around. “Tie them to the man in front, off his bag, and get the other tied to your belt. That way we won’t lose anybody if the snow gets thicker and becomes a white out.”

  There was a burst of activity as goggles were pushed up and gloves removed. With a silent efficiency the cords were tied in place and an order worked out. Philip found himself behind Lhamu and when she saw him fumbling to tie a knot with his cold hands she came over and tied it to his belt for him.

  “You must work your hands,” she said, feeling how cold his fingers were. “Rub them together and keep them tight together inside your glove. Otherwise you will have a problem with them later. What is it you say?” She looked up at his face. “They will have frostbitten.”

  Philip grimaced and nodded, pulling on his gloves and mitts and silently cursing that they’d lost any semblance of heat they’d contained before.

  “Let’s go,” yelled Mingma, trudging forward and the column slowly moved off.

  If Philip had thought it had been tough going before, now it felt impossible. The wind blasted the snow directly into his face, plastering his skin and freezing in his stubble. His goggles constantly steamed up making it all but impossible to see. Being tied in a long line meant that when one person stumbled he would pull against the person in front or behind. Often the whole column ground to a halt, only to start forward again when the tautness went from the cord. It was hard enough keeping your own balance without this
constant pulling and tugging. It felt as if their progress had pretty much stopped.

  To Philip, everything was white except the blurred outline of Lhamu in front. He concentrated on her footsteps, trying to step in the exact same spot and keep them open for those behind. It was impossible. The whiteout was complete, meaning there was no shadow to show where her feet had gone and through misted goggles everything was a uniform white.

  For what felt like hours they trudged forward. His head was pounding, a point of throbbing pain sitting behind his eyes that pulsed in time with his racing heart. His breathing was ragged and breathless, trying to gasp oxygen into his lungs that just wasn’t there. His legs felt like jelly, his feet and hands had no feeling and he felt on the point of collapse.

  Something in the featureless white caught his eye, initially a dark blur until he got closer. It was a body, dressed in green with its legs drawn up close to its chest. Snow had drifted behind it, mercifully covering the man’s features. His back and buttocks were taking the full brunt of the gale, the material of his clothes frozen by the bitter wind. Beside him lay a large bag, a solid lump of canvas and ice. He watched Prem stoop to clumsily rip it’s flap open and peer inside, before retrieving a rifle that lay frozen to the icy ground. As he wrenched it free Philip saw that beneath it was black rock. A few more steps and they were walking on bare stone, blasted so smooth that no snow could cling to its surface.

  Squinting ahead Philip noticed the blurry outline of colourful prayer flags flapping wildly off a small, bent pole wedged into a pile of rocks and realised that they weren’t climbing any more. He looked around. The snow was easing and he glimpsed jagged white peaks towering over them as the cloud momentarily lifted. They pressed on, their speed picking up considerably now they were off the snow. After a few minutes Mingma came to a large boulder left from an old rock fall and halted. Without being told they untied the ropes and stowed them away. Already the strength of the wind had decreased and it was possible to talk again.