Rising

by Sharon Wood

  Chapter 4

  Rescue

  During our first six weeks on Everest, we plan to fix over eight kilometres of rope and carry nearly two tonnes of supplies and equipment to establish and stock the six camps between Basecamp and the summit. Each camp will be a day’s climb apart and several hundred metres higher than the last. With fewer climbers and no Sherpa support, the work normally done by much bigger teams will mean a greater number of repeat trips for us. We estimate that each of us will climb the height of Everest an equivalent of seven or eight times by the time we complete our set-up to position ourselves for the summit bid.

  In the past days, the yaks have been helping us ferry equipment up to Camp One. We’ve passed them often on trips there and back. Jane and I have steered clear to avoid the yak herders making a sport of us. But the boys have laughed and joked with them and traded gear and mementos.

  Now as we prepare to move higher, Jim divides us into three sub-teams to work in a rotation of multi-day shifts. While one team is leading and fixing ropes, another team will carry equipment and supplies in support and the third team will be resting and recovering. If someone falls out due to illness or fatigue, a member from another group will fill their place.

  Albi, Dwayne, Dave and Chris make up Team A and have started out in the lead to find a route up the next six kilometres to the base of the mountain and establish Camp Two. Jim, Kevin, Barry and James on Team B will carry loads in support. And Dan, Laurie, Dr. Bob and I are on Team C on rest in the rotation. Dr. Bob and Jane remain in Basecamp with Laurie and Dan, who are recovering from colds, stalling our Team C on the rest rotation before we’ve even stepped out of the gates.

  I am eager to start acclimatizing to the higher altitudes, so I move up to Camp One. Already, in this short time, a tentative spring has us shedding layers like armour as we settle into a peaceful treaty with our new world. We are down to shirtsleeves through the warmth of the day, snow patches have withered in the high desert air and more ground has appeared. Our tents are pitched on the edge of a raised carpet of dense, cropped, dead grass, which we call our putting green because it defies the lifeless surroundings of rubble and rock. Only later, when we see the yaks pawing and mowing this grass one day, do we realize their dung must provide the fertilizer for it to grow. Teams A and B are here, and we all gather for meals, which we cobble together in a six-person tent just big enough for nine of us to cram into if we keep our backs tight against the walls.

  While the others work toward establishing Camp Two, I make daily trips to Basecamp to retrieve loads, and Dan, Dr. Bob and Jane often join me in carrying them up to Camp One. While I wait for my team’s turn to start work, my mind, like my feet, grows restless as I shuffle between the lower camps. I can’t understand why I have to wait to start working higher. So I corner Jim one morning to ask him why I am being held back.

  “You’re sticking with Laurie because you’re his closest friend,” he says and looks around to make sure no one else is listening. He leans in. “Laurie hasn’t made a single trip up to Camp One yet. I don’t know what’s wrong but something more than a cold is keeping him down. We need him. We need every back we can get to carry loads. The sooner you get him on his feet, the sooner you’ll be climbing with him. And if anyone can do it, you can.” He tells me to be patient and that my turn will come soon enough.

  Jim’s rationale has me trotting down the trail that morning with a mission. Laurie is a large part of how I came to be on this expedition and it is my turn to rescue him. Nearly twelve years ago, I was a disenchanted seventeen-year-old student on a standard twenty-four-day Outward Bound course. I was not getting the climbing and adventure the program had promised. After walking in circles, lost, with my group for several days in British Columbia’s North Cascades, I mutinied and hitchhiked back to camp headquarters. The director had threatened to expel me, but for reasons unknown he gave me another chance. A few days later, I met Laurie.

  It was a warm day in June, and Laurie stood out among the other instructors assigned to the three-day rock-climbing segment of the course. While his co-workers chatted idly as they waited for the students to assemble, he stood quietly to one side of the group with his hands clasped and his legs like tree trunks, rooting him to the ground. He tossed his head to flick a generous sweep of sun-bleached hair out of his eyes. It wasn’t physical attraction that made me watch him; it was the way he watched us, as if he was looking for someone he recognized. His gaze stopped when it reached me—and he flashed me a conspiratorial grin. When the instructors started sorting students into groups, he shouted, “Who’s rock climbed before?” My hand shot up and he said, “You! You’re coming with me.”

  Over those few short days we spent together, Laurie ushered me into a world of possibilities on vertical rock: edges the thickness of silver dollars on sheer walls that I could stand on, raised pimples on blank slabs my feet could stick on and fingertip-deep fissures I could grip just enough to rise a few more inches. Every new thirty- to fifty-metre section of a climb—every pitch—presented a new puzzle to solve. I channelled any fear I had of the expanding space beneath my feet into the focus and strength I needed to keep climbing higher. When I reached the top of a pitch, Laurie would hoist me onto a ledge the depth of a bookshelf. The anchors that secured him there—the complex web of ropes and knots connecting metal hardware like pitons and nuts that he’d driven and slotted into cracks—were, to me, an art form. Laurie embodied the Outward Bound instructors’ credo of showing students they could be and do more than they knew. He gave me a glimpse of my potential and a likeable self. I wanted more of that.

  By the end of the course, buoyed with confidence and a vision of myself as a future Outward Bound instructor, I had the audacity to ask the school director for a job. He let me down gently, telling me all the instructors had expedition experience abroad, and once I had gained that, I should apply. I was hired as an assistant cook later that summer and climbed with the instructors on their days off. I recognized my kind in those wild, free spirits who altered students’ lives. And I would return a few years later as an instructor.

  Since then, Laurie had become a lifelong friend and mentor. He’d coached me up frozen waterfalls and rock climbs, and instilled in me a discipline to focus and save my emotions for safer times—when I wasn’t climbing. As my skill and confidence grew over the next few years, he recommended me for a spot on an all-women’s expedition to Canada’s highest mountain, Mount Logan, where I celebrated my twentieth birthday.

  * * *

  I stand at the door of Laurie’s tent an hour and a half later. Steam billows from beneath the quaking lid of a pot on the stove in his vestibule. I say, “Laurie, open up! You’ve got a boil, and a friend at your door.”

  “Is that you, Sharon?” he asks in a gravelly, sleep-laden voice. I watch the zipper rip around the half-moon flap door; it falls open to reveal Laurie propped up on one elbow, half out of his sleeping bag. He rolls his eyes rather than his head and squints up at me. “Sharon, what are you doing here”—he glances at his watch—“so early?” His unshaven face and listless tone are shockingly uncharacteristic for my compulsively fastidious friend.

  I say, “I’ve come to get you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m not going anywhere today.”

  Laurie had been in good form ten days before on our first morning in Lhasa. Late for breakfast and late for everything, he strode across the empty hall, which had once been a ballroom, toward our table like a man with a purpose. Fresh from the shower, his hair was slicked back and the rest of him neatly packaged in a clean white t-shirt tucked into high-waisted bell-bottom jeans with a press line down the front and red suspenders to hold them up.

  Beside me, Jane uttered under her breath, “What’s with that swagger and the suspenders?”

  “Jesus, Skreslet!” Kevin said. “How’d you get that perfect crease in your jeans? Got your own personal drycleaner?”

 
Dan mumbled, “On Skreslet time again, eh, Laurie?”

  I sat mute in my chair as the others teased my friend in a way that felt dangerously close to insult. Did they resent his cachet as the first Canadian to climb Everest? Ironically, Laurie’s renown had given us the credibility we needed to gain our sponsors’ confidence, which had got us all here.

  Laurie proffered a cursory nod to everyone, then pulled up a chair beside me and whispered, “What do you say to a hike after breakfast to round the edges off our headaches?” We had flown from sea level to Lhasa at 3,650 metres the day before, which made our condition predictable.

  After breakfast, we set out up the mountain behind our hotel. The hillside was bald but for patches of scruffy, low-lying shrubs. I fell into a steady measured step behind Laurie as his feet padded like cat paws up the hardpan slope. The two of us had walked up the approach slopes back home on Mount Yamnuska many times like this and always beneath circling ravens. And now we walked together as equals and close friends, while a flock of similar black birds spiralled lazily above us.

  Laurie stopped for breath and pointed up at the birds riding the thermals. “Look at those guys. You can tell the intelligence of an animal by the amount it plays. Ever wonder why they like to hang around humans and mountains?”

  “Nope, but tell me instead why the hell Carlos has chosen to hang around us in these mountains at this particular time.” Laurie and Carlos are friends, and seeing them greet each other so warmly the few times our teams have met so far rankled me. How could he forgive Carlos for doing this to me?

  He laughed. “Oh, Sharon, you’re an old soul with karmic work to fulfill in this cycle. Carlos is still clumsy and unconscious in his methods. I bet he doesn’t even know why he’s here. But he’s meant to be. And it’s up to you to see how you can serve one another now.”

  I sighed. “Old soul and work, you say. I say, tortured soul and problems.”

  “Look at that guy!” he said, pointing at a bird that had landed on a string of prayer flags strung between two rocks at the edge of an overlook. The string bowed under the weight and the bird spun upside down. It dangled there for a few seconds before it released its grip and plummeted like a rock, then opened its wings and caught an updraft, shooting straight upward. Laurie laughed and said, “What a clown! They’re here to teach us to not take ourselves so seriously, and some mastery too. Did you see how he pulled out of that drop? Do you think he doubted he could? That’s what you need to learn: don’t dally in the fall and never doubt your ability to spread your wings and rise out of it.”

  As much as Laurie annoys me with his esoteric slants on life, I love him for it. He draws from a deeper well, altering my prosaic view of problems like an oyster takes grains of sand and turns them into pearls. His view has rescued me many times over by instilling in me a faith that this life is a mystery to unfold rather than a problem to solve.

  * * *

  But now Laurie lies in his tent at Basecamp, his eyes fixed in a dull stare. Not used to being the one to buoy his spirits, I say, “How about we take an easy stroll up to Camp One, no weight, nice and slow, and see how we go? You can always turn around.”

  He draws a breath through clenched teeth and turns his head away. “I’d like that—but not today. Trust me, I know what I need to do right now. We’ve gained altitude too fast and I need more time to acclimatize. I’ll be up there with you soon.” I bend down and give him a hug, realizing there’s no more I can say.

  I walk over to where Dr. Bob and Dan are sorting loads for the yaks to carry to Camp One today. “What time are you planning on heading up?” I ask.

  “We’re not,” Dr. Bob says. “It’s our rest day. You should try it sometime—resting, I mean.”

  I go in search of Jane and find her in the mess tent kneading dough. She wipes her hands on her apron, then whips it off, lays it over the loaves, and sprinkles it with water. We never found the ovens we had packed, so Jane shows me her experiment in progress. She has laid forks inside the bottom of a stewing pot and will set a smaller pot with the loaves inside on top. Then she’ll place a lid over the works. “And voilà: freshly baked bread, I hope!” she says.

  * * *

  I arrive at Camp One by mid-afternoon and find it deserted. The sky has turned pewter. The wind teases at tent flaps, nudges half-empty boxes and barrels and pins errant bits of litter against the rocks. As I go to fetch a pot lid that clatters and rolls toward the edge of the moraine, I catch sight of the boys returning. In their yellow suits, they bob in and out of sight like beacons in the sea of broken ice below. I’m struck just now, near the end of this bleak day, by my view of us as insignificant specks amidst this Himalayan tableau. Yet here we are, I think, believing ourselves large with self-proclaimed purpose to climb this mountain. Our importance seems fragile in this moment.

  The thought has me recalling what a Sherpa once said: his people were confounded over the hunger of Westerners who came clanking with ironmongery to conquer these mountains. His forefathers had never felt the need to climb them, as they felt the power of the Himalayas already within them. The Sherpa said his people felt full while those climbers seemed empty. We are those climbers.

  I question this delusional grand plan of ours: all this stuff, our fancy suits and armour. I wish I didn’t feel the need to question, but I can’t stop looking for more meaning when I’m caught in these moments of stillness and doubt.

  Chapter 5

  Weight

  The zing of a zipper opening a tent door nearby jolts me awake. Soft light filters through the frost-lined walls of my tent. The bottle I filled with hot water last night lies cold in the bottom of my sleeping bag. Frozen turf crunches underfoot as someone passes by, and a few minutes later I hear Jim’s faint murmurs and the crackle of radio static in the distance. Pots and dishes clatter in the mess tent, signalling the start of the day.

  James and Jim are planning to spend their first night at Camp Two and I hope to join them for part of the walk. I fish the water bottle out of my bag and have forced down the full litre by the time I am dressed and out the door.

  “Morning, Woody,” James says as I push back the flaps and enter the wall tent. He and Dan sit across from one another with the stove between them in the centre of the tent.

  “Morning, boys,” I say. “You sound chipper, James. How was your night?”

  “Better,” James says as he scoops snow into the pot to melt for our drinking water. “I found another sleeping pad for my nest and slept warmer for it.”

  Dan shoots me a weak smile, then drops his head back onto his knees. I know that look. On Makalu, I was devastated by a cold that scoured my throat raw in the first stage of our expedition. When the others moved up to Camp One, I had to stay behind, alone. The illness crushed my fragile psyche and mired me in those few angst-ridden days that felt like an eternity. All I could think about was, Would I ever climb out of it? Would I ever catch up?

  Dan has always struck me as the antithesis of fragile. I moved to his town of Field, BC, a waterfall ice climbing mecca, for the winter of ’77. He was already a mountain guide by then, and I was climbing by day and sewing custom alpine clothing by night to support myself. A few years later he served as a generous mentor, preparing me and some other aspiring guides for our ski and alpine exams. Where most people use both hands and feet over scrambling terrain, Dan looks like he’s walking on a sidewalk, and he floats through wind-crusted snow as if he has a tray of drinks balanced atop his head. So, of course, despite the chest cold he can’t seem to shake, Dan keeps plodding.

  The lid of the pot begins to tremble and a ring of steam streams out from under the lid. James rocks onto his knees to turn the stove down and snatches up the bag of hot chocolate crystals. As he’s mixing our drinks, the door flaps fly open and Jim bursts into the tent holding the walkie-talkie.

  “The lads are starting up the headwall today!” he tells us, tossin
g the radio to James before blowing into his hands to warm them. “They’re all up and eating breakfast,” he says. “Dwayne’s pretty sure Barry and Kevin will stick to their plan of digging out Camp Two a little more then come back down to Camp One today.”

  Jim looks for a place to sit among the bags and food, and I pat the place beside me. He nestles in close. “See,” he says, “I knew there was an advantage to having some women on this trip. You can sit closer to them than a guy.” I roll my eyes and give him a shove. “Just joking, Woody—we know you’re our secret weapon.” It takes so little for the big man to pull me in.

  I’m lost in my own thoughts, not hearing another word until James says, “Hey, Woody, you still up for coming with us today, in let’s say half an hour?”

  “I’m in. That should give me enough time to get my face on.” Dan tips his face up to catch my eye for a second. I love being with these boys—so much gets said without being spoken.

  “Good thing, Woody,” Jim tells me. “I want you looking your best for the photos.”

  * * *

  Camp One is still in shadow when we start out at 9 a.m., and our breath comes out as white puffs. Until now I’ve been wearing lightweight high-top trekking shoes, but today I switch them out for my plastic double boots. I’ve bought mine a size too large to provide more room for insulation and they feel like I have shoeboxes on my feet. The extra heft to lift my foot makes me think of the adage I often say to my students: “One pound on your foot equals five pounds on your back.” But the heavier rigid boots are justified as soon as we step off the top of the moraine and dig our edges into the rubble and silt that has set up like cement on the sidehill leading down to the glacier.