Himlung Himal Expedition — Summit Day

(CARE! WORD HEAVY!)

Nothing was working well; not a single part of my body was. Maybe because of my lady condition, maybe it’s just because I am at higher altitude longer than my body wanted; I was too slow, breathing too hard. I wasn’t tired, but I wasn’t catching up with the main moving group neither. The last move up to camp 2 was a very slow affair for me. I only started to pick up speed when I got to the snowy section. By then, I was already half an hour behind.

It was about somewhere around 3pm that I reached camp 2. Productive sleep time is precious but limited during summit pushes. I crawled straight into my sleeping bag as soon as I hit camp 2. I wasn’t worried about briefing or anything really, despite the fact that I had very little idea what will unfold in the next 24 hours.

Dinner at 6pm, wake up at 7:30pm, depart for summit at 8:30pm. Our individualized briefing was short. Dinner was even shorter. We were departing lower than what was briefed at the base camp 2 days ago which meant I would need more energy. None of us had a precise idea of what the summit route precisely entailed. All we knew was that it would be steep and long. How long? How steep? Well, that depends on what you can do and how much you can take for a 1100m ascend above 6000m. I wasn’t anxious though. I didn’t even have the luxury to have time to be anxious. I had no idea I was physically ready for it or not. As my climbing instructor said, as an amateur climber, I don’t even know how little skill and how lucky I get when I am not killed during climbs. Whatever it is, it was too late to engage in self-pity of my climbing skills. Try hard, keep going, and make wise decisions were all I could do.

“Ping ping, ping ping” the unruffled sound of my little alarm alerted me to the start of a would-be sixteen and half hours of the summit push. Dressed in the warmest I have ever been, I started my slow charge towards the final prize. The course started with a two and half hour approach before the steep sections started. Half an hour in, things are already going sideways for some of the other groups. Some clients were climbing without guides alone in the dark as the others were suffering in the freezing temperature. We didn’t know Himlung so well, but we did know that it is an exceptionally cold mountain. So cold that it is famous for freezing off peoples’ fingers and toes. Any sort of coldness that we felt could mean the end of the toes or the climb in 20 seconds. Simply put, if one was unable to warm up one’s cold limbs on Himlung, one was losing that limb.

We quickly passed the disorganized looking team and moved to our first steep approach. A section of fixed-line brought us from 6200m to 6400 meters. For some reason, the 30 degree of incline on the statistics sheet was actually around 65 degrees. I was climbing a seemingly unending ladder 6000 meters up with my feet constantly sinking below me. One step at a time, I trudged along. Going was so slow. It felt like an eternity before we reached 6400m. There, we saw the supposed camp 3 on top of the ridge. With my Sherpa guide’s help, I took a few sips of water and tried to regain some warmth for my fingers. The wind on the ridge just didn’t seem to want to let me have it easier. The best I could do with my fingers was to regain some sensibilities. Warmth, well, I guess that had to wait until I get back to base camp.

A quick sip of water and half an hour of plowing, we encountered our final section of the steep climb. Or to be more precise, the entire latter half that lasts at least 6 hours which consists of a mainly steep climb in what is now a 50 kph wind. My armor like a down suit (bought in Kathmandu, might I say) was bravely shielding my body from the wind. My core was warm, even sweating. However, my extremities, they were slowly and mercilessly been picked away by the wind. Stopping every fifteen or twenty minutes, I smacked my almost numbed toes and fingers HARD against the icy slopes. Did I say hard? I would have bruised toenails and fingernails had I been at lower altitudes with less wind and more blood circulation; there wasn’t even enough blood there to start a bruise in the 50 kph wind. The process from having cold fingers to completely frostbitten is a sneaky slippery slope that was actually relatively free of any extreme pain. Completely numb and frostbitten actually frees one from the pain one initially feels, peacefully. It is strange to think that anything kills(or damages) the body can do so painlessly and swiftly. I suppose the same thing could be said for many things: an uncalled-for bliss after the pain is the omen of death. If it is anytime to be extremely sensing of one’s body, it is now. Yet, this sensing was something that most shut off first when it comes to big challenges like mountain climbing. I would be lying if I say climbers are not goal-oriented people. When everything hurts and your body is feeling extremely malaise, processes can be hard to enjoy. Goals help mountaineers maintain their focuses in the time of stress. Yet, this goal-orientedness is a double-edged sword in the mountains. Climbers are so zoned out to the goals that they forgot to zone back in, back into the machine that drives them towards that goal. The swift and coldblooded killer takes this opportunity and grabs the climbers when they zone out too much; it smothers them with its all-surrounding power. Thus, during this long-long “sprint” towards the summit and back, carelessness is the last thing that a climber wants to do, even at her most fatigued stage.

And then, the cold mountain claimed its first victim. One of our teammates turns back at 6600m due to his finger completely losing sensation to the wind. The mountain hasn’t been kind to his lungs. Now with the wind and the cold, the mountain left him nothing. No one wants to turn around, no one wants to descend after spending hours in the cold and weeks feeling malaise in the high altitude. Such is the mountain though, it is merciless. Watching him descend forced me to think about the possibility of needing to turn around if the weather turns for the worse. I have been lucky to have had mostly okay weather on my summit days. If the cold forces me to turn around, then it would be my first time. Am I mentally ready? Am I a failure? Did I push hard? Or would I push too hard as to seriously harming myself?

Despite the fatigue, I could not shut off my racing thoughts when my upward movements were getting slower. Losing the sight of the headlamp of my teammate was certainly a morale blow for me. My other teammates started to pull away far enough that I could not accurately tell or establish them as a goal for myself anymore. My morale was low that even sunrise could not raise it up.

Things just got worse as we progressed more. The relentless wind from the same direction is causing some frostbites on my Sherpa guide’s face. An entire strip of his face was turning color. He needed to descend fast if he wants to stay away from plastic surgeries. We were at 6900m now, if we pushed another 200 plus meters we would be at the top. But that would entail another 2 hours up, and another 3 to 4 hours down. By the end of the 5^th hour, I am not sure what his face would turn into. I would have summited, but I would also mar a big mark on his face which would impact the rest of his life. Suddenly all the documentary and books about Sherpa guides and clients circled back into my head. I don’t want to be that client who sacrificed her guide for her ego. But we were so close. So close that I could see the summit very well. Radioing back to the base camp was a vain effort; the wind was too strong to hear anything clearly. My Sherpa guide decided that we should push on, but I am not sure I wanted to do so at the cost of his face.

Suddenly I heard some noises. It was the leading group coming back! What a relief! I decided, with permission of one of the Sherpa guide from the leading group, that I will swap to continue with him to allow my Sherpa guide to descend.

The thought of relief only lasted very briefly. As the leading two client climbers approached, I realized something was wrong. One, walking backward, had blood and icicles everywhere and was getting belayed down by his Sherpa guide. The other client warned me of the danger ahead and said “don’t go, Ruby, it’s too windy, too dangerous ahead! We turned back with only 50 meters to go. But what was the danger? What happened? As I contemplated his words and what I just saw, I realized my right eye was getting very blurry. I forgot to put my snow goggles on. I forgot to zone in and take care of my body. I tried so hard keeping my nose, my fingers, and my toes warm, yet, I forgot about my eyes!

Then the wind picked up. It picked up as it always had for the last two weeks, increasing speed as the day develops. Powdered snow and icicles were picked up by the wind and carelessly smashed against my already burnt face. I questioned myself more and more as the temperature dropped even lower with the wind and altitude. My new Sherpa guide said, as if reading my mind, the wind is very strong up at the final summit edge where they turned around.

So Is this the point where it all ends? How much more will I get hurt? Would I lose my toes or finger? How much more could I do before the worst outcome? What if I continue?

“Would you mind take a few pictures of me?” I called out to my Sherpa guide. He turned around and captured these photos.

“Let’s go back,” I said. “Let’s turn around.” My Sherpa guide didn’t disagree. I didn’t know it was the best decision or the worst. Based on all the information I had and my body condition, further progress could highly likely mean severe frostbite. This is especially considering that I got cold fingers and toes even at camp 1 and 2 way before any of my teammates did.

And my pictures? They clocked me in at 6989 meters, 137 meters below the summit.

Turning around, I finally saw what we had been climbing in the dark. A very steep slope straight up, none stop. Not technical, but just tiring. How did I even last through this relentlessness of the climb?

At approximately 1pm, I finally got back to camp 2, thankfully, standing. A tally of injury report on the Satori team: 5 frostbitten toes, 2 windbitten faces, 1 pair of infection ridden lungs with an almost hypothermic body, a frostbitten nose, and a sunburned eye. No summit. Yet this was not the biggest problem we had. It dawned on us that we may not be able to walk out of the mountains due to our injuries. But for the helicopter rescue to effectively happen, we needed to at least reach the base camp. Not an ideal situation for me as my severe eye irritations and photophobia are finally becoming major disturbances. However, camp 2 of Himlung is located too close to Tibet and too remote for rescue to happen quickly. I needed to move down and on my own feet. Semi-blindly stumbling back down to the base camp, I added a bruised toe to the injury report due to constant tripping over big pebbles.

Though the pain and irritation of my injuries could not stop me from thinking about the summit bid. Did I make the right choice to turn around? Was I sure I was going to be more severely injured? Running through the scenarios again and again in my head, I ended up with the same outcome: at my skill level, a relatively more conservative choice is better in the mountains. I was close to the summit, but that was still an hour away. Anything can happen in an hour in the mountains. Thus this extra hour meant exponentially more risks to my body. My personal philosophy for myself is to take calculated risks. It may not be the best way, but it is the way to enable me to go home and see my family, friends again and again. For better or worse I managed to rationally convince myself to stop second-guessing. I made my decision out of the best of my abilities at the time, and that was that.

Our second rescue chopper finally came to pick me and my teammate up, ending our tumultuous bid for the Himlung summit. Honestly, I felt guilty to get this chopper assist. I wanted to walk back, on my own two feet. I have a personal philosophy that I did not succeed if I didn’t get to the end on my own power. Our medical conditions dictated that we needed to take the chopper back if we want to make it back to Kathmandu on time. Still, taking this chopper ride gutted me more than not being able to summit. Not getting to the proper end left some bitterness in me.

I suppose this is part of the learning process of mountain climbing: you don’t get to have things the way you wanted. Hard-working and persistence don’t satisfy all your desires. However, I don’t blame my failure to the summit on the sheer problem of luck; there were many aspects that contributed to the outcome. But in some ways, we did have good luck. All of us got back to Kathmandu in one piece. If we have good health, we can always continue to fight another day. I suppose it is not fair to judge one’s luck based on relative success. Furthermore, we cannot quantify the precious lessons we have learned throughout the way neither.

I am content. Climbing to 6989m is a story of success, and a story full of lessons as well as mistakes. I am not the type of person to say that results don’t matter. They do. But I have also learned that the ephemeral sensation of success or failure is incredibly short-lasting. The young actor Andrew Garfield, achieving several big successes in his career, said: “I have realized that at the top of the mountain, there’s another mountain.” Indeed, the first question that many ask after learning one’s success is usually: “What’s next?” If our pursuit of goals is endless as they usually appear one after another, then, perhaps it is really the process that I ought to appreciate.

Last but not least, our team Satori.

Side note: I climbed while I was on certain medications which drastically increases blood thickness on altitude above 4500m. This in turn drastically increases the chances of blood clotting above 4500m. You might be interested in what it was if you have ovaries.