Asian Tsunami | Outside Online

Outside Magazine, March 2005

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There Can't Be a Word for This (cont.)

IT WAS SURPRISINGLY EASY to hop a ride across Nang Bay on one of the few wooden longtail boats—the standard shallow-draft transportation of the Thai coast—that had survived the waves. Twenty minutes later, I was standing on Railae Beach; the place was desolate. Splintered longtails were scattered on the sand, separated by smoldering pits of debris. A 30-foot sailboat, which I recognized as belonging to my Thai friend Luang Vitsanu, was rammed into the rocks that separate Railae from the main climber hangout, Tonsai Beach. The debris appeared to have gone no more than a few hundred feet inland; thankfully, it hadn't penetrated the dense vegetation at the beach's northern end. I walked the 450 feet to my house, and there it was, intact and untouched. Now I knew I had a dry place to sleep, but my biggest concern was my friends. I set off down the beach.

Luang was one of the first climbers in Thailand, and one of the first local guides. He and his wife, Sara, originally from Sweden, have a five-year-old girl, Tuva, as well as an

Norwegian Lars Gilberg was just getting started on a climb called Tidal Wave when he heard a terrifying noise— "like a jet engine," as one climber described it, "as it tore across the reef."

eight-year-old son, Liam, from a previous relationship. The sailboat had been their home, and if they were in it when the wave hit, I knew, the result would be a huge loss to this community of Thais and seasonal expat climbers. I headed toward Luang's beachfront climbing school, Hot Rock, fearing the worst. But to my relief, there were Luang, Sara, and the kids, taking stock of what had not been washed away. A three-inch layer of sand had been laid down on the tile, and most of the equipment was ruined, but the shop was still standing. Considering the situation, Luang seemed upbeat. "I was on the east side of Bamboo Island with clients," he said over a cup of coffee. He and Sara had recently pulled together everything they had and taken out a loan for a speedboat to run snorkeling tours of the nearby islands.

Luang's clients had been up on the beach. "I noticed the water beginning to swirl with sand," he said, "and then pull away from the beach. I got the boat running just before the water was completely sucked away."

As the foaming wall approached, the clients fled up the beach, while Luang sped out toward deeper water. "When it hit the boat, I almost rolled over, but I tried to turn more to the north and ride on the front of the wave," he continued. "Suddenly, another wave hit from the right." As on Koh Phi Phi, the water had split around the island and met roughly at the main snorkeling reef on the eastern side. "A second later and I probably would have been rolled under the wave," Luang said, "but the northern swell pushed me back upright." After what felt like an eternity, the cresting wave died down to a huge, steep, rolling swell. It slipped underneath the speedboat, leaving Luang in relatively calm water. Nearby, two Japanese snorkelers were clinging to an overturned longtail, muttering, "Tsunami, tsunami!" He loaded them in the boat and turned back toward Bamboo Island to pick up his stranded, shaken clients and speed back to Railae.

"I knew the wave was headed toward Phra Nang," Luang said. "It would probably kill my family, but I could do nothing about it." What Luang didn't know at the time was that Railae was about to dodge a bullet. Between 10:15 and 10:30 that morning, my friend Michel Gaultier, the French manager of the Railae Beach Club—the collection of homes, including mine, on the north end—had a panicked conversation with Aree Pabpet, one of his Thai staff: Aree's brother Dusit had called from Phi Phi, screaming about a giant wave.

"I walked onto the beach," Michel said, "and I saw the wave—a big black line rolling toward us on the horizon very fast." He and another homeowner, Darrell Sheldon, ran south on the beach, screaming, "A tsunami is coming!"

"Most of the people on the beach, probably 200, stood and looked at us as if we were silly," Michel told me. "It was a perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky, and the sea was completely flat. It was hard to imagine anything that could ruin it. But then they glanced out to the sea. Everyone panicked and began running back through the beach club to higher ground."

Only a few observers got a good look at the height and speed of the water. On Tonsai Beach, Kathryn Stedham, a climber and artist from West Virginia, had just set up her easel when she saw the wave break over the yachts moored out beyond the reef. "Looking at the mast height," she said, "that wave was at least 30 feet tall." Austrian Christian Neumeyer was watching from a route on the Tyrolean Wall, which rises from the jungle just off Tonsai Beach. Judging from the distances it covered between the islands, he calculated that it was moving close to 40 miles per hour.

It was largely the reef that saved Railae. Already dissipated by Koh Phi Phi, Koh Poda, and Chicken Island, the wave now hit Phra Nang's wide band of limestone and coral. Once the leading depression had sucked the reef dry, the area had to be filled in again before the water hit the beaches. By the time the surge hit Railae and Tonsai, the wave had spread out, shrinking to perhaps 10 to 20 feet in height.

Still, all along the beach, climbers were left clipped to single bolts as their belayers dropped their ropes and scrambled up the hills behind the beach. Norwegian journalist Lars Gilberg and his girlfriend, Ana Espin, were getting started on one of Thailand's most famous climbs, an overhanging 5.12c named Tidal Wave, when they heard a terrifying noise—"like a jet engine as it tore across the reef," as a nearby climber described it. Another group of climbers was caught on Ao Nang Tower, a spire that rises a few hundred feet straight out of the water just outside Railae Bay. They had to be rescued off the summit by a Thai military helicopter.

To my relief, my longtime friend Elaine Catlin, from San Diego, had also survived. She had been belaying her French boyfriend, Guillaume Huntzinger, on a 5.11b called Jumping for Jugs. The start of the route is nestled behind a wall of vines and small trees completely obscuring any view of the sea. The wave crashed through the jungle and slammed Elaine against the wall, but the vegetation created a natural filter that protected her from larger debris. "The water was filthy," she said. "It was almost black and had a terrible smell."

After the first wave receded, Elaine managed to lower Guillaume down. They were both OK. Then, Guillaume said, "a girl with gashes in her legs and head, and all of her teeth knocked out, stepped back through the shrubs." She and her husband had been kayaking, and she was wandering in shock, crying out for him. Guillaume led her up a hill, where climbers had scrambled to safety atop several large boulders. They tossed down a rope and aided her up.

As of mid-January, her husband still had not been found.

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