A RECKONING ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU – by Ani Takati

Five of us, including the Chinese driver, were crammed into a Toyota land cruiser that bounced along on the vast Tibetan Plateau. We all wore thick white dust masks and dark sunglasses. A client asked, in a muffled tone, “Where are we?” and I told him the truth, “In the middle of a desert, we are in the middle of a blank spot on the map, moving far away from any known roads.” I noticed a small ring of crusted blood had formed around his nostrils as a result of the cold dry air. He nodded and pulled his facemask back up.

We were on our way to Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world at 26, 800 ft. The Toyota drove us to our base camp at 16,000 ft, which was the starting point of our climb. The plateau was a high-altitude desert, a wrinkled brown thumbprint on the earth’s surface. Cho Oyu rose out of the brown landscape like a white jewel, an opal made of snow.

On my two previous expeditions to the mountain, I had reached the summit with another guide and a few clients. The view of Mt. Everest from the summit plateau always swallowed me up and took me in. The panorama was not just a vista; it felt like the whole earth swayed beneath my feet; rocked by an unfathomable force. The surface of the planet looked like it was made up of rock spires, dipped in black shadow; cathedrals of stone caked with awesome layers of blue ice and diamond-white snow. With each journey to Tibet the goal of reaching the summit became less important to me than experiencing the whole landscape, the mystery of its beauty and harshness and the people who endured there. A famous climber named John Long once asked: “What are we doing? Where are we going? Who do we have to become to get there? And what makes the whole thing worthwhile anyway?” Those questions burned inside me too. After years of climbing big Himalayan peaks, I finally realized that climbing by itself might not be the answer to any of them.

For this expedition, I decided that we should stay at base camp for at least five days so that our entire team, including the sherpas, could acclimatize to the altitude before hiking towards advanced base camp and then camp one, which were much higher camps up the mountain. We only had a certain number of days allotted to us by the Chinese government to climb the mountain, so it was critical to use our time wisely.

In the immediate distance from our base camp were the brown foothills of the snow-covered Himalayas; they looked like the curled in toes of a sleeping Tibetan giant. The wind was as constant as the blue sky, it changed only in speed and direction, but it was always there. Even after two days at base camp our noses ran with snot, our hands were chapped, and our hair was grimy. I spent evenings in the tent picking large grains of sand out of the corners of my eyes and examining them by headlight. I wondered how people and animals had survived on this plateau?

The Tibetans living in the last village appeared dust blown, sun hardened, and wind burned. Their faces were wrinkled, and their black hair stood straight up on end. They looked like scarecrows in the tan colored rockscape; straw people living in fields of gray dust, yak dung, brown dirt and stones. A few lonely rivers crawled out from the great mountains; otherwise, it seemed like nothing else moved, except the wind and maybe a few yak herds.

Disturbed by the vastness and isolation, one spent much of the time huddled in the tent, trying to hide from a sky that threatened to make life too small and obsolete. There were no plants and hardly any green patches of moss or lichen; only different shades of gray, brown, yellow or red rock. The air smells like dust, or sometimes like dried yak dung.

Cho Oyu was such a large mastiff that it was necessary to put in multiple camps up the mountain. While climbing we used three camps in addition to base camp and an advance base camp. Climbers made rotations up and down the mountain, carrying the various pieces of equipment needed in order to establish a camp (tents, stoves, fuel, snow anchors, climbing rope, food, radios for communication, sleeping pads and sleeping bags). First a team of climbers made a “carry” to camp one and placed a cache of gear in a good spot and then came back down to advanced base camp or base camp to rest. On the next rotation they moved into camp one, spent the night and made a carry to camp two the next day. Then again, they came back down to base for a rest. Moving up and down the mountain accomplished two things: first, a climbing route was put into place as climbers move from camp to camp--rope was “fixed” or attached to the steep sections of the mountain so climbers could clip into with their harnesses to minimize the risk of falling and second, the laps up and down the mountain allowed one to adjust to the thin air. Over time our bodies made more red blood cells, the respiratory drive increased, and a series of chemical reactions took place in our bodies that allowed us to survive for a limited time in the rarified air. Once the camps were in and we had acclimatized, we were ready to make an attempt on the summit.

Ideally.

In reality, nature roars, storms blow, winds rip, snow slopes slide, people get sick, or worse, they die and our tidy ordering of things collapses.

Times of crisis are usually when we truly encounter ourselves, when we hit the wall of self-realization and smash into our deepest bedrock. The layers of protective skin are peeled back and we are exposed. Raw, bare, and aching we become naked and real. It was no different on Cho Oyu my third time around.

Climbing big peaks is a laborious process and what one does on day one of the expedition can have a dramatic effect on day thirty-five of the expedition. Let’s say you let yourself get dehydrated during the day and now you need to make extra water to compensate. So, you use up an extra bottle of fuel at camp two to melt the snow in order to make water. Somewhere down the line someone will be looking for that missing fuel bottle and more importantly, the next day when you try to make a heavy carry to camp three you can’t because you just feel too tired and have not recovered from the day before. Every little detail counts. Every ounce of expended energy matters.

On our last night in base camp, before we moved up the mountain, a Spanish team moved in right next to us. I thought, “Well, for crying out loud, they had the entire plateau to camp out on, with other streams as sources of water and they choose to be on top of us!” I watched them unload their truck full of gear, but it did not seem like much for a team of twelve men. The expedition looked low budget and disorganized. The combination of those two things usually means that members of the expedition are lacking in climbing experience. Their tents were faded from years of sun exposure and they had trouble finding which tent poles matched which tent. Their sherpas were complaining that their stoves did not work and what was most scary: the ropes looked frayed and worn out. The ropes could snap if someone took a serious fall. One good storm could have swept their camp away like a traveling circus that had become unhinged and derailed.

Once their jeeps and truck had left I went over to introduce myself to the leader. I knew some Spanish, and he knew some English, so we could communicate. The leader was named Alfonso, after a Spanish king, but I did not think he looked very king-like, or royal, wearing his neon green down coat and hot pink Lycra climbing pants. “Yes, of course we will be here for only two days. We make a very fast climb to summit. My team is very strong. We slept in the village below for two nights. Mountains are good eh??” He stood there with his legs spread, hands on his hips, eyeing me skeptically as I told him of our gradual acclimatization schedule. All he said was, “You are the leader? You are a guide?” He seemed incredulous that a female could lead an expedition to Cho Oyu, but this was in 1996 when there were few female Himalayan guides. As we parted he said, “Well, Good Luck!” I watched him walk back to his dining tent; the faded orange walls sank into the middle pole like a collapsed lung and a loose kitchen towel blew away. I smelled trouble.

That night I took a little longer picking the dirt out of my eyes and spent time trying to tape my torn finger cuticles back together. The wind blew dust into my tent every time I opened the door to toss out dead skin. The tent door zipper kept on getting jammed with rock particles so I could no longer close the entrance completely. This made me welcome the move onto the snow higher up. Even though it was colder, it was also cleaner. I had brown circles of dirt permanently around my ankles and when I blew my nose my mucus was black.

I finally had fallen asleep when I heard King Alfonso outside my broken door mispronouncing my name, “Heather? Heather? Yes, Alfonso here. Um. I think we have a problem.” I wondered what he meant by “we”?  Sure enough, he asked me to come look at one of his team members who had been lying in the tent all day and now could no longer stand up. I went to find Ron, the co-leader of our expedition, who happened to be my ex-boyfriend, to tell him what was going on. Ron and I had just gotten off of a Mt. Everest expedition, where we broke up, four months prior to Cho Oyu. Everest was where our relationship began years ago and it seemed poetic that it ended there too. I followed Alfonso with our medical kit to the tent of the sick man, whose name was Carlos, while Ron, after hearing about Carlos, went to get a bottle of oxygen from our gear tent.

Altitude sickness comes in many forms but two of the more severe types were cerebral or pulmonary edema, where the lungs or the brain begins to fill with fluid. The drugs that help in these situations do not cure the sickness. They only buy time in order to get the patient to a lower altitude. One must descend at least 3,000 ft in order to heal. There is also a portable chamber called the Gamow bag that can be pumped up while a person is inside to temporarily simulate a lower altitude.

I crawled inside Carlos’s tent and I could see he was lying on his right side, looking extremely pale. I was hoping that maybe this was just some sort of bad flu. His dark hair was matted to his forehead. I swept it away to see if he was hot. His green eyes flickered and rolled up to look at me. He was cool and his lips were a dark purple with a strand of drool escaping from one side of his mouth. He had not been outside to urinate in hours. He had lost his appetite and said he did not feel very thirsty. His pulse was weak and his breathing shallow. The more we tried to communicate, the more I realized his speech was not making much sense. He had no other obvious symptoms. I asked him to touch his thumb to each of his fingers, as in a drunk driving test, for indeed he seemed a bit drunk. By the light of my headlamp beam, I watched as his thumb failed to connect with any of the fingers and I knew this was bad. Carlos had already lost his fine motor skills and was dying of cerebral edema. Panic began to rise in my throat like a bat trying to escape from a dark cave. My temples pounded.

Emerging from the tent and speaking slowly, I explained in Spanish to the team that I thought Carlos was very, very sick with edema in his brain and that they needed to convert their dining tent into a medical tent. I could bring the oxygen and Gamow bag if they could get Carlos situated in the big tent. Our peaceful camp on the plateau had turned into a M.A.S.H. unit.

Ron and I met halfway between the two camps. We discussed the situation and then fell silent for a time. I watched him scratch his thick beard and adjust his wire rim glasses. The stars in the sky were so numerous I only had to turn my head to the side to see them. They were above us as much as they were around us. The wind blew wisps of my hair coming out of my hat and I looked desperately out into the emptiness. I was about to utter a prayer of some sort when Ron said,

“Well let’s see if we can turn this guy around. We will alternate lots of oxygen and the Gamow bag and give him plenty of altitude drugs.”

I replied, “You know we need a truck or a jeep if Carlos is going to make it, and our emergency jeep that we have paid to have here, will not arrive for at least five days. We have got to get him down lower immediately. We might have to make a litter and carry him to the village.”

“Heather he could die on the way down because of how long that may take. Plus, the village is only about 1,500 to 2,000 ft lower. That is not enough of an altitude drop to make a difference. Anyway, the Spanish team is going to use up a lot of our own emergency supplies because they were too lame to bring any of their own. If Carlos dies, it’s because they were a bunch of fucking idiots. It’s not our problem. We have an expedition to lead and only a certain number of days to do it. You know the mountain laws, Heather.”

“And what might the mountain laws be, Ron?”

“Some people come here to die.”

“Oh for Christ sake what kind of answer is that?” I spat.

“You always want answers don’t you?” He hissed.

“Well all you want are summits.”

“Fuck. Here we-go-again.”

“Yeah,” I said, “For at least one more expedition.”

After that comment Ron’s mouth twisted into a snarl and he marched off to get more oxygen. I stood there and twisted the threads deep in my coat pockets and began to realize for the first time in over a decade that something was really out of balance. My house was on fire, but I was still sitting on the couch wondering what the smoke was all about.

It was much easier to save other people than worry about my own and in our case, I felt we had to do everything possible to save this man’s life, including having clients carry him down to the village if need be. The weight of the responsibility had unleashed my adrenaline. Ron and I had both seen a lot of injury and death in the mountains. But he seemed to become more callous with every new incident, while I felt more open, like a plateau. Emotions could blow right through me. What I knew I did not want to feel was regret. If Carlos died, I could see myself waking up in the middle of the night wondering if I could have done more to save him. It was not necessarily an altruistic love of humankind that drove me to save this man — I did not want one more death on my conscience.

The sherpas were now up and out of their tents and more than willing to help. Our head cook, Pemba, began to brew tea and make food to get us through the night. In the medical tent with Carlos, everyone rotated jobs. One person was always at his head monitoring his pulse and breathing or adjusting the oxygen. Every few hours we put in him in the Gamow bag and take turns pumping air through it. I administered the drugs I felt comfortable with and Carlos started to get better. He started to drink more and could even eat a little. Everyone seemed to relax and climbers being climbers, we began to trade stories. One Spaniard pulled out a secret stash of espresso and we all cheered in excitement. I knelt down next to Carlos and put my hand on his chest and say, “I think you will be okay, don’t worry” in Spanish. He nodded his head and constantly said, “Gracias, Gracias.”

It was not long after the morning sun had come up and we thought the worst was over, when Carlos’ health began to rapidly decline. His speech was deteriorating fast and when I held his hand, the grip was losing strength. The breath coming out of him smelled like rotting eggs and onions. I could not think of what to do next. Panic choked the top of my throat again and I had to leave the big tent.

Ron and I called a meeting with the sherpas and Alfonso. We gathered a short distance from the camp, away from our clients. It felt good to let the sun beat down on my back, since the morning was relatively windless.

“We could send a team of sherpas by foot to the village with a wad of money to get a jeep or a truck,” I suggested.

Ron looked at me with a narrowed mouth and shook his head “I think we need to try to carry him out of here. He has got to get lower in altitude,” Ron countered. The sherpas offered to go by foot but Ron did not like the idea. The sherpas were fast but not fast enough. We all stood in our circle, starring at our feet, trying to figure out what to do. My stomach was in a ball when Pemba came running over to us.

“Look! Everyone look! Out there!”

In the distance I could see what appeared to be a dust devil moving towards us. I thought it was a sandstorm, a cloud of dust moving swiftly across the plateau. As it moved closer, I could see it was a horse and rider emerging from the brown background. “Thank you, thank you.” I whispered. The mysterious rider was flying with the wind. The sherpas ran out to meet him waving their arms and yelling. I tried to keep up with them, but it was useless. Most sherpas were born at 14,000ft and were physically, mentally and spiritually made to live at altitude. There are only a few westerners that I can think of who can climb like some of the sherpas; I was not one of them. I settled into a fast walk and eventually caught up with the group.

The horse was one of those small Mongolian breeds with red headstall tassels. The skin of the Tibetan rider was as dark as the espresso coffee we had made earlier. The sherpas spoke fast in a harsh staccato dialect and moved their hands wildly in the air. The Tibetan sat upright on his horse and listened, while I watched the nostrils of his horse flare in and out as he breathed. Pemba was there to translate for me. The Tibetan was to ride at great speed to the village and then send a truck back up here. He was to tell the paid truck driver that that a man was dying, so he needed to hurry.

Everything happened so fast that  I agreed to wait for the truck and was too frantic to think about how a horse and rider had appeared out of nowhere. Those hours of waiting were awful. When I looked around the hospital tent I saw that people had deep purple bags under their eyes and that the creases in their foreheads looked twice a wrinkled as before. We all kept working to keep Carlos alive. He was still conscious but could barely talk and his eyes rolled back into his head. The vigil continued but not for much longer.

I have never in my life heard a sweeter sound than that truck engine grinding away in the distance. Tears rolled down my face and my whole body shook from relief. All the hours of service paid off. Carlos was immediately loaded into the truck with one of our oxygen bottles and one sherpa from the Spanish team. He would live. The truck driver was instructed to drive as fast as he could to get Carlos down to a lower altitude. Once at a lower altitude Carlos’s body could reabsorb the fluid it had produced in his brain. That was the only known cure for altitude sickness: to get down to lower elevations — from there a person’s body knew what to do.

That night after I had crawled into my sleeping bag I struggled once more to close the door to my tent. The zipper was completely jammed on both sides of the teeth. I was so tired and frustrated that I just pulled the fabric apart with my hands and broke the zipper. “Screw it,” I said as I threw my headlight out the door and lay down to sleep. “Let the plateau bring what it may.”

As I drifted towards sleep the image of the horse and rider appeared in my mind. I imagined those small hooves beating against the ground, against time, and wondered, “From where had they come?” Perhaps they came from some deep fold or ancient valley of the Himalayas. It felt like a secret to me but a secret with great power. My head was propped up on a pile of clothing so that all I could see was a strip of plateau out the ripped door of my tent as well as the edge of the glaciers that had slid down the slopes like flat cracked pearls. I took one last look at the stars and had a final sad thought before I slipped off into my own blackness, there was an inchoate sensation that my life was about to change and that this would be the last peak in the Himalaya that I would ever climb.