TRAVEL
My Climb Up A Really Large Hill
Breaking the 6000m barrier while holding an ice axe for the first time.
The soft, delicate crackle of a pinch of burning leaves. The grey, clouded sky. A round ember, glowing. The snow landed softly across his stature as he exhaled hot smoke into thin air. The fluidity and confidence of a man on top of a mountain — because he was, on top of a mountain. We were sitting on the peak of Kang Yatse II, around 20,400 feet, and Jit was taking a smoke break.
The morning of the trek I had woken up with a thought: “fuck it.” It, meaning, money. I didn’t want to remember walking past a mountain I could have climbed. I wanted to come back with a strange and triumphant memory of having done something. So on the way down to the road where I planned to hitchhike to the start, I wandered into a motorbike rental shop and asked if they could arrange the guide and gear necessary to add on a peak climb to my Markha Valley trek.
The thick Hawaiian-looking man laughed uproariously in my face many times, reminding me how stupid and careless I am: I know nothing, I am not prepared, I am careless. I thought, yeah, that’s why you have a job, buddy. He urged me to go in a few days so he could organize it. I said nah, I am leaving today, can you swing it? So he made calls, threw some dusty gear together, and punched the mysterious numbers in a crappy calculator showing me a total of about $450. I said whatever. I’ll pay it. Just a few months ago in Cambodia, I passed on an air-conditioned room and suffered through a sweat-soaked night in the name of saving one dollar. I figured all the penny-pinching in the last six months justified throwing this kind of money.
I was dropped off on the side of a dusty road and started towards the first mountain pass. Over the next five days, I clambered up and down valleys of rocks blue, red, and grey. I waded through rushing streams of snowmelt and passed by ancient monasteries carved into rock. Barely anyone else out there but a few locals in stone huts. Desolate. Bones of mountain sheep blended into the lifeless dust. Uninterrupted by internet signals. Constant attention on this right now: the boring, the spectacular, the painful. In and out of experience like air in my nose.
I met my guide in a little tent town and we hiked to base camp, a flat patch of earth four thousand feet beneath the peak. Another group arrived later, from France, with a dozen horses, guides, cooks, and a handful of spacious tents. Men loosened leather straps drawn tight around horseflesh and let their burdens drop to the earth.
Beasts who slogged dead-eyed slowly now galloped into unbound fields with jumps and kicks like little boys chasing a ball. Freedom soaring. I no longer play like that. Uncontained glee. That genetic urge of game. That kind of play makes sense: It’s fun, it’s social, it’s instinctive, quick, reflexive. I’m not sure what all this endurance nonsense is about. Going off alone to do something painful for a long period of time. But I seem to have been bitten.
Jit and I slept together in a very small tent. I didn’t have a sleeping mat, so I put on every piece of clothing I had and zipped it all up to mummy. Jit slept with the covers pulled over his head like a silkworm. I am not sure how he could breathe. At midnight, we crawled out, grabbed the gear, and started hoofing. A full moon poured milk on the rocky slope. It was freezing but I was sweating. At 16,500 feet, walking on flat ground is a workout, but walking up steep mountain shoulders with rocks slipping out underfoot feels like sprinting.
One step at a time, I went as relaxed and at ease as I could. Three hours of this. Huffing and puffing, hard, for three hours. The time estimate to summit was 6 hours. I assumed that was for the average middle-aged Indian man and we would get there quicker. But reaching the crampon point after three hours I realized that, shit, for once, the time estimate applied to me.
The crampon point, where the snowline demands snow gear. We sat down on the steep rubble. I crammed my feet into clunky boots, pulled the diaper-like harness on, and strapped the leg covers and metal spikes onto the shoes. It was immediately freezing. My bones were cold. My fingers: icicles. This was hostile. Not a place to be with my half-assed coats and untested equipment. The cold felt like creepy spiders crawling on my skin. I really struggled strapping everything in. Jit knelt down to help tie the straps and I felt like a toddler watching his daddy tie his shoes. I welcomed the humiliation; cold fingers are when I give up trying to be tough. We turned to face the snow, glowing darkly.
I thought the snow meant we could walk on a more shallow line, but no, straight up. Like walking up stairs. Not used to the boots. Clown shoes. Didn’t trust the spikes. Stamping them down and grinding them in. No rhythm. Just scrambling, frantic, nearly gasping, bent over so I could walk on the toes because the boots were so stiff I couldn’t keep them flat. Or I waddled like a duck. We paused to catch our breath. I looked back and could see distant lights in base camp. Tiny, wavering, silent, I breathed and no one heard it.
I finally settled into a rhythm and the temperature evened out. Windless, dark and silent but for the snow-crunch. We took a few short breaks. It never leveled off. Steep all the way. The midnight sky began to break to a warming grey. The sun rose and spilled orange juice through broken clouds into mountain valleys so vast and endless it looked like a rippling, rocky ocean as far as I could see.
Eventually, we got to a section where the footprints stopped. Everyone in recent mountain history had turned back from here. Jit told me no one had reached the summit yet this season except for a small team of local guides. We continued, but it was much harder. Each step on the crusty surface broke through down to mid-shin. The randomness to the degree of breakthrough was a maddening experience. It felt like we slowed to a fourth of our speed. Three steps then a gasping rest.
Sometimes just one step and a gasping rest, leaning over my ice axe like an old geezer inspecting an ant colony. I looked up and the mountain curved out of view. I wanted to give up. Our progress was so slow it seemed like we were still hours away. But I imagined going back down, back to the tent and the flat ground, where I would lay back and rest, curl into comfort like a pillbug, this discomfort quickly becoming a memory that would appear to be a dream, and I would be down there wishing I had been to the top. It was misery either way, so I just kept leaning forward.
Three hours after the crampon point we reached the peak. It came suddenly and I didn’t believe it until I climbed over the last, precarious and rocky section. There was no rush of emotion, no triumphant yippee. Just a simple relief there was no more upward motion. The west was snowing delicate pellets. The east was glowing blue and orange and grey. I took a picture of Jit lighting a cigarette because I found it downright hilarious. We snapped off bits of frozen Snickers and chewed the hard candy.
After a few pictures and sometimes just staring into the air, we headed back down. Constant flexion of the quads. We passed the French team on the way down. They still had a few hours to the summit. I told them “Good job!” “almost there!” And gave them thumbs-ups and smiles. Miserable sons of bitches. I looked back up the mountain and had trouble believing I was up there. So steep and endless. I couldn’t be paid to take one more step up in that direction. We stumbled down to base camp and into a few hearty naps.
Very glad to have gone through it, more for the mental mountains than the physical one, but it didn’t feel like mountaineering was my thing. I think it’s all the walking. That excruciatingly slow contraction of the glute. I’d much rather run and bounce on the toes, or park my ass in a bicycle seat and feel like I’m flying. But now I know. And the regret of doing nothing is far more painful than the regret of doing something awful. You are a new reality in every moment and your past does not define you, but there is an unmistakeable glow from having done something. A challenge and response, resistance and persistence. It makes me feel alive. Life abloom.
Check out Anne Bonfert’s beautiful description of feeling the rush of gratitude for the natural beauty the mountains can offer:
I also really liked reading about this mountain trek by Scott-Ryan Abt:
