THE CLIMBERS WERE ITCHING to give back, too. But there seemed to be little need for high-performance workhorses from out of town. More than a thousand Nepalis had shown up for screening in Jiri, and so had hordes of local volunteers, including a dozen young nursing students from a local technical school who ran around in lavender uniforms, having a pretty good time elbowing the climbers out of the way.

The athletes did the best they could: Abby and Pete helped load syringes in the anesthesia room. Kevin escorted patients to and from surgery and post-op. Conrad was initially squeamish in the OR—a surprise, given all the dangers he'd faced on big mountains—but he helped Kevin ferry patients while the film crew angled for position.

At dinner the last night, the climbers were feeling a little underappreciated, and they sat around the table poking glumly at plates of rice and lentils. Pete said he expected things to improve in Phaplu, but everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing: Sure, the next camp might go better, but the trip there could get a whole lot worse.

We were about to begin a four-day trek east, through the Maoist stronghold of Kenja and over 11,581-foot Lamjura Pass, and it was almost certain we would encounter soldiers of the so-called People's War, the nine-year-old conflagration between Maoist rebels and the Royal Nepalese Army. The already bad situation in Nepal had deteriorated since the summer of 2001, when eight members of the royal family were massacred by Crown Prince Dipendra. By 2005, close to 10,000 Nepalis had been killed on both sides, and in February the new king, Gyanendra, dismissed his parliamentary government and declared a state of emergency. Cell-phone service was shut off. Journalists were jailed. News was censored, and Nepali TV and radio were restricted to broadcasting little more than Hindu folk dancing and light sitar music.

While Westerners weren't targets, tourism had gone off a cliff. Trekkers were routinely stopped by Maoist guerrillas and politely required to cough up a 1,000-rupee donation (roughly $23), but a few had been caught in the crossfire. A few days before we arrived, two Russian climbers on their way to Everest had been ambushed outside Kathmandu by Maoist soldiers, who lobbed three pipe bombs toward their taxi. One detonated on the floor of the backseat, tearing off the left heel of climber Sergey Kaymachnikov. His teammate, Alex Abrimov, was a seasoned Himalayan vet who'd been on Everest with Dave D'Angelo two years earlier.

"Seeing them really shook me up," Dave told me after visiting the Russians in the hospital. "Sergey's foot was hamburger. I don't do well with stuff like that at all. I'm nervous as hell here—probably the most scared I've ever been in my life."

Before the climbers departed on the trek, they had assumed everyone would be traveling together, but when we got up we learned that Geoff and Ruit had shipped out at 5:30 a.m. while we were still asleep. Since Ruit's crew was traveling with a different trek organizer and porters, they operated on a different schedule. Also, as Geoff put it simply, "Dr. Ruit can be moody"—especially when he felt anxious about a huge crew of climbers traveling in Maoist territory. Considering that we were a dozen tall Caucasians decked out in matching North Face backpacks and toting more than $100,000 worth of camera equipment, it was unlikely we'd blend in with the locals.

Still, it felt good to be moving. The climbers, thoroughbred specimens all, had been cooped up for a week, and their mood improved with each step as we ascended the well-beaten dirt track out of the hazy valley. The town's gritty bustle soon gave way to bucolic pastures and conifer forests. Periodically, the snow-glazed ramparts of Katang and Numbur broached the foothills, their faint, pearly dorsal fins etched against the tourmaline sky.

The next morning, we began the two-day, 6,000-foot climb up Lamjura Pass. We weaved through wagon trains of porters—men, women, and children—some flip-flopped, some barefoot, all tawny and coated in fine dust, humping hundred-pound loads of kerosene, rice, beer, ramen, and other staples along the steep, rocky trail.

One man carried a dhoko—one of the ubiquitous wicker baskets secured at the forehead with a tumpline—that had been modified into a crude chair and lined with fraying wool blankets. It contained an old woman with opaque white eyes, her head wrapped in a purple scarf, gazing blankly back down the trail. She was on her way to Phaplu.

In Sete, we drank hot Tang on the stone patio of our ramshackle teahouse while the sun sank toward the hills, as red as a rhododendron bloom. At dinner, the innkeeper brought us a note from Geoff, sent by a runner. He and Ruit were two hours up the trail in Goyem. Pete read the note aloud.

Jordan, Peter, Michael, et al.,
We have 2 patients with us. You really should come here. The one old lady has NO family and no money. Her village took up a collection to hire a porter to bring her. She went totally blind from cataracts a year ago... She would be perfect for the film, N face, etc. Plus she really does NEED the help. Please think about coming up at 5:00 AM and helping the rest of the way to Phaplu and during the camp! I will see you soon.—Geoff

Pete pocketed the note, shaking his head slightly. It was hard to argue with Geoff, but the urgency seemed excessive, especially since we'd been left behind. No one spoke for a few minutes, then Conrad piped up.

"If there isn't 220 volts going into a situation," he said, "Geoff will make sure there is."

"Well," Pete said with a sigh. "I guess we're getting up early."

We would indeed rise early to go and escort the old woman, Buddha Maya, whose porter turned out to be one of her nephews, to Phaplu. But it wasn't until after the trek that I'd learn what else had gone on ahead of us. At the top of the pass, Geoff's group, still ahead of ours, had been stopped by the Maoist regional commander. He was in his forties, with a dozen soldiers, some no older than 13, armed with antique flintlock rifles.

It was a cordial affair. Ruit was well known, even legendary, in Nepal. He had provided eye care both to the king and to Maoist leaders, and the commander appealed to him to bring the Maoist message back to Kathmandu. "We want to help the people here, not hurt them," the commander said. But Ruit, who had once sympathized with the communist cause, had become stridently apolitical. The revolt had grown too violent, too damaging, too dangerous, he believed. He had no interest in being an emissary for either side.

Instead, he gave the commander a supply of first-aid materials and told him that some friends were coming up the trail, and that they should be allowed through. When we arrived in Lamjura, there was no sign of the Maoists, except for a crude hammer and sickle painted on a stone wall. We stopped at the same teahouse where Geoff and Ruit had sat with the soldiers a few hours earlier, drinking milk tea with Buddha Maya, then we pressed on, undisturbed and unaware, to Phaplu.