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Outside Magazine March 2003

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The Hard Way
Beyond Belief (Cont.)

Some days in the mountains are so transcendent that you feel you are the luckiest human alive. That was the kind of day I had. Just the snow, the mountain, and me.

Alone, free from the fearful burden of the faithful, I felt myself slip back into my natural agnostic relationship with the world. A warm emancipatory joy welled up inside me; unbound from ancient strictures, I could once again focus on the adventure ahead.

I trotted along the right lateral moraine for several miles. At the glacier I put on crampons, wielded my ice ax, and pushed straight up the middle. I was below the firn line, and all the crevasses were smiling and easy to jump. In the center of the glacier I entered a maze of slot canyons made of pale blue ice. I navigated through sculpted corridors, leapt silver streams, and sidestepped moulins all the way to the base of Gangkar Punsum, where I shot a roll of film of the ice-armored peak.

From there I hooked west, traveling far up a spur glacier. Hours later, I found the pass at over 18,000 feet, a sharp declivity between two minor summits. I was jubilant. And then, instantly, profoundly fatigued.

I sat down and took GPS readings and put an X on the Russian topo. I ate and drank. I stared dumbly at my watch. It was late afternoon. I stared up toward Gangkar Punsum, once again swallowed by clouds. I understood that the retreat was going to be difficult.

I stayed off the glacier, stumbling down the left moraine, often catching myself with my arms just before slamming into glacial erratics. I tried willing my body to do the right thing, but it was spent. I tried staying ahead of the snowstorm, but it laughingly caught up and pissed all over me.

At some point I realized I had gone too far south and would have to cross the Mangdi Chu River to reach camp. I struggled up and down the boulders along the bank, the water bellowing at me, searching for a place to cross in the snowy twilight. Then I mindlessly plunged in. I thought the water would be thigh-deep. When it churned up to my waist, the cold slicing straight to the bone, I focused on one step at a time. Right before the far bank, I stepped into a hole and the frigid water rushed up to my chest and swept me off my feet.

I remember being abruptly lucid, the fog of fatigue and sickness stripped away by the power and paralyzing cold of the water. I remember thinking how arrogant and presumptuous I was to have insisted on pushing alone into these holy mountains. I remember thinking how stupid it would be to drown. Most of all, I remember the deep stab of fear, the conviction that the river was intentionally trying to kill me.

Then my flailing, outstretched fingers grasped an overhanging clump of willows and I barely hauled myself out of the river.

I knew I was mortally hypothermic. My hands and feet were numb and my clothes hardening. I hiked furiously, but it was pitch-dark and snowing heavily. I was lost, and I kept slipping and falling. I could feel the presence of the mountain. It felt alive and malevolent, out to get me.

Until I saw Sonam's fire.

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