For the first time that I could remember, I wasn't woken up by my normal alarm. It had seemed that the antibiotics had started working. Alternatively, I just had nothing left inside me. Nothing at all. Both options were equally feasible.
I said goodbye to Zoobs and then goodbye to Joe who were both staying back to ward off Altitude Sickness. I then said goodbye to Joe again, this time for the benefit of Wes' camera. Wes decided that he had liked our brief goodbye conversation, so asked us to do it again. Repeating an off-the-cuff conversation is nigh on impossible and I ended up staring at the floor and mumbling. The 'can you do that again' request became Wes' catchcry on the mountain, and by the end of the trek, usually elicited a roll of the eyes from everybody involved. It was hard not to agree to any requests though, as Wes was living a lifelong dream in filming a documentary and his boyish enthusiasm usually outweighed any resistance you felt. And we all want to see ourselves on film.
After our 180th boiled egg and undercooked pancake, we set off on the 4-hour mission away from the cesspit of Laboje towards the match venue. Setting off down the dry riverbed, carved out the mountain by an old raging glacier, we were instructed to take a very slow pace to ensure we got to Gorak Shep. The last song I heard before I left was 'Don't Stop Now' by Crowded House. The metaphor used in the song is of a couple in a petty argument over directions home after a long day. And this was fairly apt for our situation. Irritable, tired, starved of oxygen, and possibly even bored, the morale in the group was pretty low. Personally I was in a fairly decent mood, all things considered, and was fairly successfully compartmentalising my health problems and not letting them interfere with the way I dealt with other issues or my general enjoyment of the trip or the company I was in. Another factor that had crept in was the amount of people who quite liked the idea of being in charge. Every instruction was seconded, added too, slightly altered, and then sometimes contradicted by about 4 or 5 people. Making this more frustrating was, apart form Kirt and the guides, nobody had been through any of this before, essentially reducing everybody's advice to, at best, hearsay or at worst, guessing. With everybody possessing a pretty strong stubbornness gene, once something was said, it was very rarely retracted.
All this combined made for a pretty unhappy day's walking. Some people wanted to press on, others were sure we had to stop. Some people who wanted to stop thought we were stopping too much, others not enough. Mix in the confusion caused by mild hypoxia and it was a pretty lethal mix. It wasn't as if there were any major arguments or problems, but there was a definite toxic vibe in the air. An example of this was a team photo we organised on top of a large rock with a sheer-face with a drop of about 75 foot. I was one of the last to scale the rock and made my way to the front. I was still a safe distance from the edge when i lowered myself down to sit at the front. Unfortunately I put my hands between James Markby's legs. Markby, petrified of heights, got spooked by this and started to panic, something along the lines 'Toovey, Toovey, TOOVEY!'. Assuming something was wrong, this prompted Wes to shout 'What the fuck are you doing?' - A couple of more people than joined in before I shouted at everybody to stop fucking shouting at me. Whilst this was a complete non-event and nothing was thought of it afterwards, it illustrated the sort of mental strain that low-oxygen puts you under and how simple things can get out of control. Later on, after a comical mix-up with Haydn's trekking pole that delayed us 20 minutes, I tried to lighten the mood by making a joke about tying the Dick of the Day bell to his poll as both a punishment and so he knew whenever he dropped it. This fairly innocuous joke was snapped down in an instant and I thought it best that I just didn't talk for a while.
With the last hill finally cleared, we took the chance to catch a breather before the final push. Mark Jordan asked Butler and I to practice some shots in front of a mountain for the camera. We used this opportunity to brush up on our puerile humour, pretending to be talking about cricket when really we were describing exactly what we would like to do with the cricket bat. Turns out the audio on that section of the report wasn't completely muted.
Just prior to rounding the final bend and descending to Gorak Shep, we were struck with a pretty disturbing sight. An elderly Japanese man, whom I estimated at being between 65-70 years of age, looked in big trouble. He was stumbling like he was drunk beyond belief, and the telltale purple around his extremities spelt trouble. His friends strapped an oxygen mask to him and were about to start medical treatment, but we feared that it was probably too late. If he is still alive today, I'll be pleasantly surprised. Whilst the Japanese have a genetic susceptibility to Altitude related illness (particularly of that age), this was another wake-up call. Studying Japanese very briefly as a school student gave me an insight into the massive amounts of personal pride and silent suffering that makes up allot of the Japanese psyche. I have no doubt that these two factors contributed to this fellow's state of health, and perhaps it's easier said then done, but I vowed to myself that I wouldn't let it get anywhere near that state before I called for help. My mother would've loved to have witness this epiphany, as I caused her a few stressful evenings as a youngster with my habit of waiting until the last possible minute before telling her I was feeling a bit off, generally just before the onset of a massive attack.
Around another corner and we could spot some tents dotted against a glacier. It was our first view of Base Camp. We could almost smell it now. Over a couple of more mounds, around a few rocks and out of the blue, just how Kirt had explained it in several media interviews, the flat Plateau of Gorak Shep was right below us. Arms were raised in triumph, backs were slapped, and I shouted out 'Wally World!' in reference to National Lampoon's Vacation.
We dropped our bags off, and like kids on a beach holiday instantly went down onto the pitch. In total, the plateau was about the size of North Sydney Oval. Underfoot it resembled a sand dune on a headland at any beach in Australia. Fine dry sand, big mounds of dirt, and loads of rocks. Loads and loads of rocks. Big ones, small ones, and immovable ones.
Post-Lunch we embarked upon a huge rock-clearing effort, much to the chagrin of Breck, who would've much preferred us to take it easy. Helen even went as far as strapping a pack to her head to carry a whole bunch of rocks off. Breck was not amused. The porters and locals were amazing in their help. They attacked any mounds with pick-axes and were buzzing around moving rocks off the field of play. All this commotion attracted a horde of interested onlookers, including a guy in a Newcastle Knights jersey, who was actually from Newcastle in the UK, which confused me no-end.
Looking around I couldn't believe the setting we were in. To one side was the charcoal coloured mound of Kala Pattar, a 500 metre ascent that I planned to climb for the promised awesome views of Everest. Towering up behind that was Pumori, which then lead around to another massive mountain range that acted as the border to Tibet. Directly to the other side was the sheer face of Nuptse. The intense glare of the snow and ice demanding you wear sunglasses at all times. Slightly behind Nuptse, just a small indiscreet peak, was the familiar triangular peak of Everest. In full view was the Khumbu Glacier, curling around off Everest’s South West Face. This connected to the infamous Khumbu Icefall, the most treacherous section of an Everest ascent. Whilst we were preparing the field, we were stopped in our tracks by 2 massive rumblings. Noises like any thunderstorm in Queensland could produce sounded out as 2 big avalanches crashed down the mountain at alarming speed. Yaks were constantly walking past with their docile swagger. 'Holy Freakin Jesus' I thought just as the afternoon mist closed in, 'we're about to play cricket here'. In the middle, Butler, Kiwi, and myself all admitted to feeling a bit nervous about the game. Dave Kirtley shook his head when posed with the same question.
Tempering the enthusiasm somewhat was the collapse of a Norwegian trekker in our teahouse. He had strolled in, fresh from 2 massive walks that day, one up Kala Pattar followed immediately by walking to Base Camp (4 hour round trip), and the massively overweight Scandinavian’s body caved in. He would want to buy himself a lottery ticket, as he collapsed right in front of 2 of our medics. Within seconds they had him breathing again, administered some steroids to reduce the swelling on his brain, inserted a drip to combat the dehydration and put him on oxygen for the rest of the afternoon. In light of this, Breck and Nick highly advised against anybody who was planning to be fit for the game against climbing Kala Pattar or walking to Base Camp (a further 200 metres up). Haydn then made a point of asking me whether I planned to ascend. Was this a hint that I was in the team? I had no idea.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment