Everest Journal (I)

Richard W. Frank

Everest Journal (I)

I had had dreams of disappearing into a Rousseau-esque world of untouched pre-industrial bliss with natives celebrating my arrival and fixing savory feasts (without a hint of a grain of rice), but as Walt Unsworth once wrote: "Though Sherpas are undoubtedly the world's best porters, they are also probably the world's worst cooks." They try, they really do. Instead I was stuck with a Teutonic computer programmer from Frankfurt and a vocal deli owner from Edinburgh. Thomas, Graham, and I left Jiri with high hopes and heavy packs. Each one had a mix of gear-the essential and the superfluous-which reflected our individual characters. The ever-practical Thomas brought space age Leki walking sticks, a jaunty red scarf, and a list of platitudes. Graham the shorn and cheery Scot brought a frequently used video camera ("Can you try smiling while you climb up that mud track, Rich?") and a tattered stuffed Tigger. I lugged an apparently bottomless bag of powdered milk, several kilos of "emergency" chocolate (that disappeared in the first 20 miles), and far too many books written by real men who had climbed mountains and shit in the woods. My favorite was W.H Tilman-able to effortlessly blend understatement, drama, and humor into his tales of the hills...He's also great for a quote.

"Height, like money, is slowly won and quickly lost; no miser could have viewed with more anguish his dwindling hoard of gold than did we our rapidly diminishing height." -ibid., p.61.

I was a little leery at being forced to walk with others, but we quickly fell into a pace that seemed to suit us all. Thomas clacking loudly in the rear like a deaf and extremely uncoordinated drunk (but with a jaunty scarf), Graham seizing every opportunity to lie on a chautara (porter's rest stop) healed over like a poached terrapin groaning loudly about the altitude, and myself dashing (and crashing) down the trail spending most of my time reserving rooms for the night, sipping tea, and reading my stack of heroics in order to toss them into the fire. We made a motley crew, trying to penetrate the labyrinthine rules of German card games (often settling for War or Cheat instead) surrounded by a veritable forest of damp laundry until the light faded around 6:30pm, and we crawled into our cocoons feeling three hundred years old and slipping quickly into unconsciousness.

One day quickly ran into the next, rising and sleeping with the sun. Clothes and limbs started to look and smell like the countryside (and the cows) through which we tramped, previously undiscovered muscles made themselves known in protest, standards of hygiene are thrown to the wind. One has long conversations in the failing light of day extolling or cursing one's boots and yak cheese, the dilemma of Mars bars vs. Snickers, and carefully marking one's progress on the map while dreaming of Jacuzzis, boat drinks, rib eye steaks, and wondering at the impressive nature of bodily movements caused by one's massive daily intake of dal bhat ("That came ouda me, daaamn!").

"The traveler to remote parts wishes, indeed expects, to find the natives unsophisticated enough to regard him with the respect which he seldom gets at home." -ibid., p.140.

And mostly we had the trail and the lodges to ourselves; except in Nuntala when Misha da Germaaan entered our lives like a malicious Bilbo Baggans in extremely short denim cutoffs and a torn t-shirt last cleaned during the Spanish-American War. He proceeded with a tale that chilled our cowardly bones and sent us to bed banished from our rhododendron-plumed Eden. Little Misha had been robbed on the empty stretch of trail we were due to face tomorrow. As he rambled on with expansive gestures and an impenetrable accent about being stripped of money and jewelry from a hostile mob of Nepali cutthroats (whom to him must have seemed Gargantuan), I watched Graham slowly blanch. Our imaginations had us facing fierce brigands brandishing razor-sharp kukuri knives, leering with evil gapped grins, and dragging us into the forest to be slowly garroted with a dull and rusty hook and grilled on a yak-dung fire to add a little variety to their daily plates of dal bhat. Drama, see...we got drama.

"Trust in Allah, but tie your camel." -Bedouin proverb

The next day dawned clear and sunny, but we did not give it much attention as we rather ignominiously dashed down the trail to the safety of Kharikhola, our impossibly diminutive Swiss army knives at the ready to poke at brigands' ankles, jumping every time a friendly local called out "Namaste." Fearless explorers indeed! Thank God there were no distressed damsels to witness such a scene.

"There is a pleasure sure

In being mad, which none but madmen know."

-John Dryden, The Spanish Friar, II.ii.

On the roof of a rattletrap bus to Jiri my mind was filled with the heady elation of imaginary conquests. The history of Mt. Everest is filled with excitement, danger, and most of all adventure-the stuff of countless books, movies, and breathless documentaries. The spotlight of Everest 2000 would be mine; I would be invited on the Alabama Hillybilly South-West Ridge Expedition, and my courageous exploits would be extolled in the same breath as other immortal souls: Mallory and Irvine, Shipton & Tilman, Messner and Habler, Frank and Cleatus.

But, alas, there was a dearth of damsels in distress, daring crevasse rescues, stormy nights high on the mountain fighting with a monosyllabic reject from "Deliverance" for the last frozen Snickers. The last month while amazing was distinctly plebian and a good indicator on how much things have changed in Nepal in the fifty years since Tilman and Houston first explored the Kumbu, climbing the pile of rubble a little ambitiously called Kala Pattar, and gazing at the snow plume stretching out from the unclimbed summit of Chomulungma, Goddess Mother of the Earth. Everest has hit the big time.

Early one day in March I loaded my dirty Dana with sleeping bag, dirtier clothes, and the written exploits of men with chipped granite eyes and missing toes and followed in the footsteps of greatness (I'm still waiting for the AHSWRE 2000 expedition to call). A month rolled by of unwashed and unshorn unconcern for the rest of the world as we climbed from rice patties to the sterile and severe land of the Mountain Gods. I braved bed bugs, arthritic knees, and a lack of deep-dish pizza. I am Mountain Man.

This year I will be joined by 20,000 other folk making the pilgrimage to Sagarmatha Nat'l Park. The vast majority of these cupcakes fly to the gravel airstrip perched on a cliff at Lukla eight days from the nearest road and a further seven days from the 5,600m (18,368ft) rubble of Kala Pattar. Those with pretensions to purism and the "traveler" moniker walk from the Jiri road end ten bumpy hours from Katmandu. This walk in attracts relatively few tourists who have the time and energy to struggle against the North-South grain of the land climbing and descending from peak to valley and back again with heartbreaking frequency to the Dudh Khola leading north to Namche Bazaar. Yeah, I've always been a sucker for a good time.

"At the beginning of such a journey one should, of course, be on fire to start, the feet tingling to tread the trail, the back itching for its unaccustomed load, a fierce contempt for motor-cars uppermost in one's mind." -HW Tillman, The Nepal Himalaya, p. 109.

This feeling, of course, only last the first few minutes of flat walking quickly bowing to complaining knees, the pack weight assumes Sisyphean magnitude, and one frequently gets caught in the never-ending stream of porters ("like the Egyptians, their strength is to sit still"-Tilman) transporting essential supplies of Tuborg beer and Rara noodles barefoot or in flip flops through the snow to the legions of humorless Germanic auto-matons and Yankee loudmouths "Hey Wilma lookaadat- the toilet empties in da river."

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