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Outside Magazine March 2003

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The Hard Way
Beyond Belief (Cont.)

WE START OUR TREK in the central province of Bumthang, with nine fit, woolly horses; three very old muleskinners in ragged ghos, with the sort of seamed, sun-burnished faces you can find only in the high mountains; three young camp cooks; and our wiry, ever-helpful guide named Karchung.

None of them have ever been where Jon and I want to go.

After our first glimpse of Gangkar Punsum, we hike to the head of the valley, setting up tents in freezing sleet at 15,000 feet. It's a barren place. Giant slopes of gray rock rise into clouds on both sides. The dirty snout of a glacier can be seen up-valley. Only to the south is there the welcoming green of life. At this altitude, our team has become tremulous and agitated. Karchung has blistered feet and insomnia and can't eat. The cooks have altitude headaches and brooding malaise. Jon and I have such impressive cases of dysentery that we've each lost ten pounds. Even the pack horses are mutinous.

I hiked furiously, but it was pitch-dark and snowing. I could feel the presence of the mountain. It felt alive and malevolent, out to get me.

To our companions, these are clear warning signs. Centuries ago, Buddhism in Bhutan became inextricably entwined with prehistoric indigenous animism. Humans have lived here for more than 4,000 years, and the cosmology of Bhutan is populated with more temperamental deities than Italy has long-suffering saints or ancient Greece had mercurial gods. There are specific spirits who inhabit rivers, lakes, and marshes (Lu, Dued, and Tsomen); a deity who inhabits ridges, glaciers, meadows, and forests (Nyen); a deity who dwells on mountain passes (Zhidag); one who lives like a snow leopard in the cliffs (Tsankhang); and the particularly dangerous gods who abide in the white mountains (collectively known as Lha). These divinities are almost all fearsome and vengeful, riding tigers or horses or yaks or snakes, and armed to the teeth with thunderbolts, axes, sickles, and swords.

According to sacred lore, most of Bhutan's gods were subdued by early Buddhist saints. Some of these native divinities, however, remained powerful and untamed enough to menace humans, particularly those gods who dwell in the mountains. According to ethnologist Christian Schicklgruber, editor of Bhutan: Mountain Fortress of the Gods, "for the peasant population the protection of the mountain gods presents the most important spiritual underpinning of daily life. As long as they receive proper veneration and offerings, these deities guarantee fruitfulness and protection against the powers of evil and natural calamities. But should someone disturb their peace or the requisite offerings fail to appear, they may threaten the livelihood, and even the lives, of their believers."

After a long night in our desolate camp, Jon and I have a palaver with Karchung. Most of our group is too miserable or spooked to go on; we decide that Sonam and I will continue, while Jon and the others will turn back.

We say goodbye to our compatriots. I take the 1:200,000 Russian topographical maps and Jon lends me his GPS. I have one week to complete the tramontane reconnaissance of Gangkar Punsum and find my way back to civilization.

"Tashi delek," says Jon—"good luck" in Tibetan—and gives me a hug.

Late that day, Sonam and I cross a 17,300-foot cleft between walls of ice-sheeted rock. There is an ancient cairn, but no prayer flags snap out verses for us. The shrunken carcass of a blue sheep lies in the rocks.

From the pass, I see one black, sawtoothed ridgeline after another. Rows of them, like teeth.

It begins to snow. We laboriously jump talus down into the Mangdi Chu Valley, where Sonam spots, from a thousand feet above, a collapsed stone hut at the end of a spatulate lateral moraine. We arrive just before dark, spread our tent over the windward wall, build a fire inside, and watch it snow from our sleeping bags.

Once again, the sky clears during the night. In the morning it's so bright I can scarcely open my eyes. I fumble for my sunglasses. Four inches of snow have fallen, and the radiance of Gangkar Punsum is glaring down on us. Sonam slits one eye and instantly crimps it shut. We don't see the same thing. The immense white face of Gangkar Punsum is merely a mountain to me, a beautiful, inanimate object composed of stone and snow, created by the Indian tectonic plate slamming into the Eurasian plate and governed by the largely predictable rules of science. Sonam sees a living being with capricious supernatural powers. The snow is a bad omen, he says. Gangkar Punsum is angry. "We must leave at once! Go down!"

A heathen mountaineer, I go up, intent on discovering a pass that would connect our new route with the Snowman Trek. Sonam stays by the fire, praying, and waits to see if I'll return.

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