Rising

by Sharon Wood

  Rocks whistle by my head, stirring my sluggish thoughts into a frenzy like a startled school of fish. My gut recoils as a rock cracks, explodes and ricochets off the walls. I’m in a shooting gallery. I keep moving because Dwayne is up there, yet I realize with dread that each move upward is another step we will have to take to get back down—and in what state of awareness?

  I bend forward to disconnect the batteries to my electric socks—now that my feet are warm I want to save the batteries for when I will really need them, at the end of the day—and my oxygen regulator dangles into view. The needle hovers over the zero. The near miss with the radio at the tent had distracted me and I neglected to turn my O’s on, which I hope explains my slow progress.

  The Narrows is a vertical chasm maybe six metres high and less than an arm span wide. Back at the tent we thought we might rope up here, but Dwayne has gone ahead. With no sign of him or a rope, I assume it must be all right. In anticipation of the burst of exertion ahead, I check my oxygen flow regulator. It is still at zero. I thought I’d turned it on. How could I have forgotten again? I turn the dial to two litres per minute and start up. I press my back against one wall of the Narrows and my feet against the opposite wall to wedge myself in. I push with my feet, wriggle my back up, lever my body and push again to inch my way up like a caterpillar. My body is jammed so tight into the crack that if I slip I won’t go far. It is the most secure I have felt over these past two days and the need to concentrate has squelched my mind chatter.

  As soon as I reach the top of the Narrows and resume the monotonous steep plod up the final patch of snow, the internal chatter resumes. Then I hear Jim’s voice hiss over the radio, “We just spotted one of them on the snow patch below the Yellow Band.” That must be me! They’re with us! And then a few minutes later I pull in beside Dwayne at the base of a steep rock wall of the Yellow Band.

  “How’s it going?” Dwayne asks.

  “Slow,” I say breathlessly. “Here.” I fish the radio out of my jacket and hand it to him. “Jim’s in there.”

  I tug my watch out and am surprised to see it is noon. If it’s taken us three hours to climb less than a hundred metres of easy ground, how long will it take to climb the harder ground above?

  Dwayne glances at me for confirmation when he tells Jim that we are going to keep going. I nod.

  “Good luck,” Jim rasps. “Remember, ya gotta want it more than it wants you!”

  Dwayne signs off and turns to work on an anchor he’s started. He scratches at a crack with his axe pick to check its depth and chooses a piton from the cluster hanging from his harness. The pitch above is the hardest yet and, by any standards outside of where we are, is unjustifiable without a solid belay. I think, Just a few pitches of mixed rock and snow and we’ll be above the crux—it’ll just be a steep walk from there.

  I study the fractured rock cross-hatched with veins of snow and ice, looking for where best to begin, where we can place pitons and a route through. I am rehearsing the moves I’ll need to make but my mind refuses to believe, morphing the cliff into a maze of dead ends. I can’t do that.

  I recall what Tom said to his teammate Jim Whittaker, who spoke with him by radio from Basecamp on the other side of the mountain: “There’s no rappel points in the Yellow Band, Jim, absolutely no rappel points. There’s nothing to secure a rope to. So it’s up and over for us today.” His words haunt me; it won’t be up and over for Dwayne and me today. In order to get back down, we have to find anchors and rappel points where Tom and Willi did not.

  I can’t visualize rock climbing in sub-zero temperatures, with crampons on my feet and a fourteen-kilo pack on my back, and at an elevation above 8,300 metres. But what I can easily imagine are several good reasons to turn around—reasons that anyone will accept: we are out of time, spent and in unsafe conditions. I turn to deliver my this-isn’t-our-time speech, but Dwayne thrusts the end of the rope at me and says, “Your lead?” He must know what I am thinking. Bless him, I think, we’re in this together and he’s got to get me in the game. I accept his gift of confidence and tie into the rope.

  Dwayne is anchored to the rock and prepared to give me a make-believe belay. We both know the rope will not hold a fall; the setup is only strong enough to descend on. Instead of climbing rope, we are using a static cord. It’s slightly thicker than a bootlace and will snap under an abrupt load, sever over an edge, or it won’t absorb the shock of a fall and will pull the anchors out.

  I crank my oxygen regulator up to a four-litre-per-minute flow—the highest yet—as Kevin’s voice echoes in my mind. “What’s the worst thing that can happen to us by trying?” Dwayne’s confidence, the oxygen, Kevin’s prod and a doable plan to make three moves upward are enough to get me started. The alternative, to fail without trying, will leave me wondering until the end of time if we could have done this. If the climbing is too difficult, I tell myself, I can still back down.

  Dwayne hands me the carabiners loaded with pitons and says, “On belay.” Just three moves. Then I’ll know. My focus narrows to a single action at a time. I reach up to probe the depth of an edge and pull down to test it. I tease my crampon points into a horizontal fissure. Not deep enough. I try a little farther over to get a better purchase. I ease my weight onto the new foothold and step up. “One,” I say aloud. My mind chatter hushes as a benevolent voice begins to coach me with patient precision: Okay, now bring your axe up, reach high and wedge it in that crack. That’s it. Now pull down. Ah, it seats nicely. Move up on it. Now bring your other foot up and try putting it just there, on that shattered block. The hollow sound that my crampon points make on the rock tells me it is loose. I try putting my foot on another rock and it shears off. A loud crack rings out as the block hits the sidewall below. That’s all right, you’re okay; that’s what the other three good holds are for. Keep going. I stop counting. You’re doing it! You are climbing perfectly. Something beyond me is propelling me upward.

  I glance down at Dwayne. His eyes are on me. His hands are on the rope, ready to feed as I move up and down testing holds. The impossibility of this rope saving us intensifies my focus. I find a soft iron piton driven into the rock. I smile at the thought of it belonging to Tom and Willi, and I clip a carabiner to it to run my rope through. I am relieved to find a few more, as well as places to drive in my own. With each placement I pray for the high-pitched ping of a tight and sound fit as I deliver the final blows with my hammer. I reach a ledge perhaps thirty metres higher that’s big enough to stand on and where I can build an anchor. Once I fix the rope to the anchor, I give Dwayne a wave to signal he can weight it. I watch the rope cinch tight and the pitons hold firm. It is when I slump back against the rock wall to rest that I realize the key to getting through this day isn’t more strength—more than anything, it is removing self-imposed obstacles.

  While I wait for Dwayne to reach me, I draw my camera out of my jacket. As I look through the viewfinder, my awareness opens. Sometime in the last hour, the wind has died to an occasional nudge. Its absence accentuates the taste of the cashews I graze on, the sound of Dwayne’s crampons scraping over rock and the sensation of the ice water sluicing down my throat when I take a sip from my bottle. With no spindrift to obscure my view, over three thousand vertical metres of space drop away beneath me.

  We leapfrog one another’s leads for a few more pitches, fixing 120 metres of rope that will be our way home at the end of the day. We have moved steadily and without any exchange of words. And so we are surprised when we finally step out of the couloir and hear Laurie’s voice: “The summit team is through the hard section and is in the upper snow gully! I repeat, Dwayne and Sharon are through the hard section and in the upper snow gully!” We realize we have cracked the crux. We hear it is 3 p.m. I didn’t expect to get this far, and if there is any talk of a turnaround time, I don’t hear it.

  Dwayne and I stop and pull out the radio. I say, “Are we really in the upper section?�
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  Laurie says, “That’s a confirmation. Yes.”

  “We’re still a long way from the top, eh?”

  He doesn’t hear me. “Laurie to Sharon, click twice if you can hear me.” I click the transmit button. “Okay, Sharon, I’m going to assume you can hear me. Jim wants me to relay that you should keep heading up the snow that you’re on until you hit a broken section of rock. Start to trend right along that snow band, which will lead you to the West Ridge.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I click twice again.

  Without further thought, Dwayne and I climb on. We reach the broken section that Jim has guided us to and the exit of the couloir. Dwayne motions for to me to pull the radio out.

  I say, “Hello, Jim, can you hear us now?”

  “Loud and clear. We can see you too!”

  Dwayne looks at his watch and holds up five fingers.

  I say, “Good to know. This is the ramp you spotted for us, eh?”

  “Yes, correct. Trend right and up it.”

  “Got it. We can see the upper snowfield now. It looks lower angled than we thought it would be. I think we’re going to make it after all.” The wind has died or maybe we’re on the lee side of the ridge. I didn’t expect that.

  “You guys are going to make it! You’ve got less than 150 metres to go, Sharon. Hang in there!”

  “That’s what we like to hear. It sure is beautiful up here.”

  Jim whispers, “Take lots of pictures.”

  With the exception of a few words, the only conversation that Dwayne and I share that day is with the team. Spurred by their optimism and the improving weather, we climb upward. All we have to do now is traverse an easy slope to reach the summit ridge.

  At 8,650 metres we begin a traverse toward a break through the final grey rock band of the West Ridge. But what appeared to be a snowfield from a distance is a wind-crust overtop sugary snow on friable down-sloping rock slabs. Every few steps one of my feet will break through the crust and skate down the rock before I find my balance again. My gaze gravitates to the dropoff just below me and I wonder, If I fall, could I stop myself before launching into the abyss? How much longer can we keep this up and remain alert at this altitude? Have we been above eight thousand metres for over twenty-four hours now? The steady tick-tock of an old-fashioned clock fills my ears, its rhythm quickening and getting louder, but with each step my focus resumes, blocking out all other sounds—including the radio.

  Later, I’ll read the transcripts: “What are they thinking? —Four hours of light left. —Bivouac. —Benighted.” But at the moment we are in different worlds. I hear bits of conversation through my jacket, but I am not registering the gravity of their words. Dan says he is back at Camp Four after attempting to cross the ridge to Camp Five. “You wouldn’t believe it, Jim. The fucking wind picked me up off my feet and I wasn’t sure I was going to get down again.” I take another step and his words are gone from my mind.

  It is only when Jim says, “Dan! You and Laurie have got to get to Camp Five. Dwayne and Sharon are going to need help getting down,” that I jolt to attention. I think, We’re in trouble. We’ve gone too far. But the next step cancels out those thoughts again.

  Sometime later, we find a break through the rock band above us and stop to check in with the team. We huddle in the lee of the cliff. The wind rumbles in warning overhead and plumes of snow roil off the summit ridge, spreading into tendrils as if reaching for us. We’ll be lucky if we can remain on our feet, let alone talk on the radio up there. I yank on the aerial of the radio to pull it out. Dwayne holds up seven fingers and mouths, “Seven o’clock.” I think, How can it be? Where and when did we agree to keep going?

  “Hello, Jim?”

  “Go ahead, Sharon,” he says.

  “Yeah. It’s so cold up here it’s hard to get the radio out. We’re ten metres from the top!” I’m surprised by how much it sounds as if we’re talking about a walk in the park. I think, You’re not! Then, We will beat the darkness; we will be okay. The team must think that we’ll be okay, so we continue to believe the same.

  “You guys,” Jim whispers. Dwayne and I lean our heads together with our ears to the radio to hear him. “We’re all really proud down here. We’re all in tears.”

  “Hi guys, it’s Colleen here at Camp One. We’re beaming you up lots of energy!”

  I hand Dwayne the radio. “I wish I had more time up here,” he says. “It’s outrageous.”

  I look down from this impossibly high perch. Thousands of metres below and kilometres away, a faint grey outline of the glacier curls like a serpent’s tail and tapers to a tip; Basecamp lies amidst the murky shadows.

  Barry says, “Do you want us to keep supper on for you?”

  “Can you see us?” I ask.

  “Not really, but Kevin says he can make out a guy with buckteeth and a girl in a bikini.”

  Kevin shouts in the background, “Get some clothes on, girl!”

  Why can’t they see us? I reason that we must be blending into the rock, which makes us much harder to see than when we are on the snow.

  Barry says, “Congratulations, Sharon and Dwayne, on your first Himalayan summit—it’s the right one.”

  Dwayne says, “We’ll try talking to you once we’re on top. We better get going.”

  “Don’t forget that photo!” Jim says. We hear cheers, whoops and hollers.

  I start out first. Thinking it will be easier to climb up the rock without my axe, and certain that we are close enough to the summit that I won’t need it, I leave it leaning against the rock to pick up on my way back down.

  When I crest the top of the rock step, the wind greets me and drives me to my hands and knees. My stomach drops at the sight of the summit ridge stretching upward and out of sight—not ten metres, but hours away. When Dwayne comes over the edge, he lunges into the force, stabbing the pick of his axe into the hard snow to pull himself upright. He starts up the ridge. I follow him but without my axe I am staggering. I must be really out of it to leave my axe behind! What was I thinking? I reel like a drunkard.

  Over the next ninety minutes, the wind ebbs as the sky fades to twilight. Dwayne and I plod, unfeeling, unthinking, like automatons. He finally stops and I follow his finger toward the summit a few paces away. We take the final steps side by side. Jim will tell us later he saw us through the telescope—two tiny yellow specks on the highest point on earth at 9 p.m.

  When I visualized reaching the summit—in what now seems like a lifetime ago—I imagined we’d hug and cry, raise our arms above our heads in triumph. But right now all I care about is that there is no more up. I glance down at Makalu, in shadow to the east, but I feel nothing. If we had allowed for any emotion over the last days, we would not be standing on the summit now.

  One of us says plainly, “Let’s tag the top and get the hell out of here.”

  The radio is dead and we take no time to find out why—there is none to waste. Dwayne crouches while I hold up one flag after another: Canada’s, China’s and the Bank’s. The wind plucks the last flag from my grasp and I watch it jerk upward then sideways until it takes a sudden plunge into the shadows and disappears. My thoughts follow it down there to our teammates who are safe and warm and getting ready for bed. All I know is we are here, alone—and the day is about to leave us behind. Dwayne and I switch places and it is through the camera lens that I see him illuminated in this thin slice of sunlight on top of Everest. We are spotlighted in this moment, suspended between heaven and earth. We are in limbo. We have gone too far.

  Part 2

  And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about. —Haruki Murakami

&nbs
p; Chapter 18

  Into the Dark

  We cobble ourselves together and strap our headlamps on. We will need them—soon. It is far too late to be here. I know we are in trouble. Although it feels like we’ve been on top for only five minutes, our teammates will tell us later it was half an hour.

  Dwayne stands waiting for me. I roll onto all fours and struggle to stand as the ground shifts and rocks like an unsteady boat beneath me. I know I have broken a cardinal rule of mountaineering by abandoning my axe and the oversight rattles me. Without it to provide balance, I’m not sure I can walk anymore. Dwayne seems more confident than I am and I don’t want to know otherwise. I’m counting on his strength as much as he is on mine to get us down.

  I take a long look at him to measure the cost of what I’m about to ask. “I feel a little wobbly without my axe. Would you mind short-roping me to the top of the first rock band?” I am admitting I’m weak in a place I can’t afford to be. I wonder if this admission will kill us or save us.

  Dwayne tethers me with a short line of rope and falls in behind as if it is business as usual guiding a client in the Rockies. The slight tug of the rope is all I need to find my feet and head again. Dwayne keeps telling me to slow down. He seems calm and deliberate, and I force myself to mirror him.

  We arrive at the top of first rock band in less time and with less effort than I thought it would take, which buoys my confidence. While Dwayne prepares the rope for our rappel, I hammer in the last of our pitons and connect the last of our rope to them. The fact that I can build a solid anchor is evidence that I can still think and function. I feel a rush of relief when I surrender my weight to the rope and it holds. At the bottom of the rappel I see my axe leaning against the rock wall waiting for me, and I push the vexing mistake out of my mind as if it has never happened. I watch Dwayne slide down the rope slowly and in control. It is just the way I want to see him—solid.