Dead Lucky (37 page)

I turned to Ang Karma and shook his hand.

“Welcome, Lincoln Daai,” he said with a gentle smile.

Simon and I hugged.

“Onya, mate! So good to see you.”

I turned to Barbara again, but the doctor was impatiently beckoning me to his consulting room. He gave me a fairly thorough going-over with various instruments, while Andrey made brief comments. From the outside it appeared that nothing particularly remarkable had happened to me. At this time of year, no doubt, a procession of damaged mountaineers would have come through his rooms. It was an unusual consultation, nevertheless, because it had been planned for me to go to another clinic directly afterward—one that Simon had determined had the best reputation for the treatment of frostbite.

We had some spare time up our sleeves before our next appointment, so rather than joining the press and their cameras outside, we sat in the waiting room and talked. Or, at least, the others talked and I conversed in my hoarse whisper.

Barbara kept asking me, “Are you okay?”

I assured her that I was, but I had forgotten what I had looked like in the mirror of the hotel at Zhangmu.

The time came for us to go to the CIWEC Clinic Travel Medicine Center, which meant we had to brave the press. There was only one way out, as far as we could see, and that was directly through the mob. I was amazed at the size of the crowd. A dozen flashes went off; questions came from all directions. It was easier that way because I wasn't refusing to answer any particular questions, just all of them at once.

Ang Karma's driver was waiting to take us to the CIWEC Clinic. The press must have assumed we were heading for the Radisson, which was just around the corner from the clinic, because only one journalist followed us. Once inside the clinic, I was given the once-over again, with a tetanus shot for good measure. Dr. Pandey examined my frostbite, and again Andrey explained how he had handled my injuries. She soaked my hands and my foot in an antiseptic solution, then she called in Shanti, a nurse, to dress my fingers. This process took an hour, and once it was done, I looked like I was wearing boxing gloves. They certainly provided good protection.

Our stay at the CIWEC Clinic had been long enough for the press at the Radisson to get bored and disperse. My next priority was to get away from everyone and to have a bath and a sleep. Barbara was also deeply tired after restless nights of worry. She had seen in my eyes that I had been deeply traumatized, but when we were able to spend time together, her fears that I might have been irreparably damaged were laid to rest. I had frostbite, yes, but I had decided to regard it as a rite of passage.

THEY WERE STRANGE but busy days in Kathmandu. After Ang Karma had dropped us back at the Radisson that first afternoon, he told us that he and Kunga would bring us a dinner of
mo-mos.

“This way you will not have to face restaurant crowds,” he said. “We will come to your room.”

“Can you do that?” I asked. “What will the hotel think?”

He raised his hand, palm upward and outward. He needed to say nothing. He knew the people here; these were special circumstances. His gesture and patient smile said it all.

The
mo-mos
—fried vegetable dumplings—were delicious. He knew they were my favorite Sherpa and Tibetan dish.

The next morning Karma and Kunga came with breakfast, a rich delicious porridge. They brought tea in a thermos and toast insulated by tea towels. It was simple food but just what I needed. Each morning they did this for us, making us feel welcome, making us feel at home, eager to rebuild me, with their lovingly prepared food, into the man I had once been.

Another caring routine was the daily changes of the dressing covering my frostbite at the CIWEC Clinic. Dr. Pandey would check my progress, then Shanti would slowly and carefully replace the dressings. It felt almost like a ceremony to me. Regardless of what was happening in the room—Mike filming the treatment or the NBC crew doing the same— Shanti remained unflustered.

The damage was quite distinct now. The outermost joint of every finger was black, signifying dead tissue, and the delineation became clearer every day until it was as distinct as the squares on a chessboard. My thumbs were damaged as well, but I was confident they would recover fully. But the entire big toe of my right foot appeared to have had its final marching orders.

ANOTHER DAILY ROUTINE was me trying to piece together my story. My hallucinations were remarkably clear, as were many of my memories of the climbing—the different camps, the funny incidents, the tragedies staring me in the face. I talked to Barbara about all these things, not as an extended monologue—although there were a few of those—but when incidents came into my head. One anecdote would prompt another that I had forgotten, and in this way I gradually filled out the picture.

Russell Brice had worried me with the stories his Sherpas had passed on to him about my behavior on the mountain when overcome with cerebral edema. We left each other messages at our hotels that we should get together for a beer and a chat. I was not so keen on the beer, but I like my water, so long as it is not cold.

Dan Mazur proved to be a hard man to find. I learned that he was out of Kathmandu and that he would be arriving on a particular afternoon. Details changed and messages went astray, but finally we made contact. We agreed to get together that afternoon at a delightful place known as Mike's Breakfast. I first went there in the early 1980s, not long after the old elephant-keepers' quarters had been converted to a lodge and restaurant. The elephants had long since moved on.

I could barely remember my previous conversations with Dan, but I knew that I hadn't yet thanked him for giving up his chance for the summit in order to save my life. He was a guide and very experienced climber, and he had summited Everest some years earlier, so for him it was not the end of the world. Dan brought with him Jangbu Sherpa, who was keen to see how well I had recovered. It was early days yet, but I was a different man from the one they had resuscitated on the summit ridge. We joked, took photos, and I asked Dan to point me toward Myles Osborne and Andrew Brash. I learned that Andrew was staying at the Kathmandu Guest House, so well known and long established that it is now an institution.

I rang the Kathmandu Guest House and left a message that we should meet. A message came back suggesting that we meet for dinner at a restaurant I had never been to—“just show up if you can,” the message said. I was unable to show up because I could not find the place.

I then got distracted by the arrival of an NBC television film crew, which flew in from a project in London. I spent half a day with them, then needed to sleep the entire afternoon afterward. Sleep was one of my biggest needs.

Some people I did not have to chase. Mostly we ate our lunches at the Radisson. There was the convenience factor, as my doctor's instructions were to walk as little as possible, but there was also the fantastic lunchtime buffets. I knew the hotel well because I had spent many nights here over the years as a trekking guide for World Expeditions. Here I could put my foot up on a chair. A procession of the 7Summits-Club climbers came through. It seemed that just before they left Kathmandu they came to see me. Among them were Slate, Ronnie, Henrik, and Kirk—when they had left Base Camp I was dead, high on the mountain.

“I thought it was impossible you could die,” Slate told me over lunch. “With the attitude you had and all your experience, I thought it was not possible for you to die.”

He speared another potato with his fork. “And I was right—it was not possible.”

AS THE DAYS PASSED, I felt stronger, thanks to proper rest, good food, and plenty of love and water. The frostbite was glaringly obvious, but the damage inside was impossible to judge. The trauma I had suffered was still apparent in the wildness of my eyes. Barbara, Simon, and Mike withheld some bad news from me until they felt I was able to cope. Then Barbara told me one morning that Sue Fear had died on Manaslu. The accident had happened while I was riding the yak to Base Camp, three days ago now.

“We didn't tell you because it wasn't confirmed at first.”

To say that “I could not believe it” was not true, but I did not want to believe it. When I learned of the circumstances, I thought that the only realistic hope could be that she had died without pain.

Sue and her climbing partner, Bishnu Gurung, had reached Manaslu's 26,781-foot summit on the morning of May 28. They had descended to a snow plateau at 25,000 feet, where Sue broke through the crust of the surface snow and plunged headfirst into a deep crevasse. Bishnu held her weight tightly on the rope for over an hour, shouting to Sue but hearing not one single reply. He endeavored to set up a pulley system that might have made it possible for him to pull her free, but suddenly the snow around the crevasse collapsed, dragging the rope and the anchor in. Bishnu leaped to the side and escaped with his life. He was alone, high on the mountain, and was very lucky to make it down alive.

Barbara told me that everyone had been holding out hope because I seemed to have come back from the dead, so why not Sue? Crazy logic. It is one thing to be a body left on a mountaintop, but altogether another to disappear down a crevasse high on a deserted, 26,000-foot peak, without a trace, without a cry for help.

Sue's death was a missile from left field. There had been so much death on Everest, and I had grieved as best I could for those people—and to ease my own spirit. I tried to rationalize, to find reasons, but there had been only cold comfort, so that in the end I walked gently and could only wash my hands of the tragedies.

But I did not want to wash my hands of Sue. Her intense make-it-happen approach to life had defined her. Whether her spirits were up or down, she had always looked for the next chance or was creating it. There were no more next chances now, and I felt deeply saddened by the fact that she would no longer be bringing goodness to the world.

THE NEWS ABOUT SUE made me only more desperate to track down Myles Osborne and Andrew Brash. Dan had disappeared off the radar, so I could not confer with him, and the message system at the Kathmandu Guest House did not seem to be ideal.

There were other engagements that took up time. I liked to spend my evenings relaxing and my nights sleeping, but it would have been rude to say no to the 7Summits-Club farewell dinner at the Rum Doodle. I arrived late and left early because I knew I would not be able to raise my voice above the noise of the crowd, and that if I tried, my throat would ache. It was a night of vodka and toasts of all kinds, including one to me for surviving and another to the Sherpas for bringing me down. If there were mentions made of the dead, I did not hear them. I wanted to talk with the Sherpas, but it was too festive an occasion, and instead I asked Alex to arrange a time for me to meet with them in more controlled circumstances.

Mike, Barbara, and I had dinner with Russell Brice and a few other Everest luminaries at the Red Onion Bar, Russell's favorite watering hole, which just happened to be next door to the Radisson.

Simon turned up much later, having undertaken to bring back to Australia all Sue Fear's belongings. Since we had arrived, he had been kept busy dealing with the press. I was not all that surprised at the initial flurry of interest. The press could always draw a few column inches from a death or survival story on Everest, and my story had both. There was also Sue's tragic death to add to the mix. However, I was surprised the media interest did not die down. Channel 7 sent a four-person crew to Kathmandu to shoot a twelve-minute interview with Barbara and me, which took place in the garden at the Radisson and inside at the CIWEC Clinic. When Kunga heard this was about to happen, she whisked Barbara away to a beauty salon so that her hair could be styled, her nails done, and more makeup applied than I had ever seen on Barbara. Kunga was more excited about the process than Barbara. Simon commented that she looked like a Nepalese princess.

Simon was also taking care of our travel arrangements, so he walked down to the Thai Airways office on Durbar Marg, the main street running south from the Royal Palace. He wanted to confirm seats for himself, Barbara, Mike, and me and to make sure that Barbara and I had been allocated vegetarian meals. The arrangements were fine for everyone except me. My ticket had been canceled. Simon was stunned, but it was quickly determined that my ticket had been canceled within twenty-four hours of my death. Proving that I was alive was the initial stumbling block. There was a bit of a tussle because the plane was now fully booked, but Simon is good at tussles, and so we all ended up flying business class, which was much better for my frostbitten foot.

MY MEETING WITH the Sherpas took place at the bar overlooking the rooftop swimming pool on the fifth floor of the Radisson. Fifteen Sherpas showed up. Luda and Sergey Kofanov were there with Alex, looking to continue their drinking after the meeting, I guessed. By chance, Michael Kodas, a climber and journalist who had been in the next camp to us at Advance Base Camp, was there as well. It was a good bar, with a great view. Mike was there with his camera to record the meeting so that I could put all the pieces together at another time. Mingma Gelu translated questions and answers, but not every answer was clear and some were contradictory. The two Sherpas who had persecuted me, who had been so relieved when I told them I did not remember their names as we rested on our way down to ABC for the last time, looked like they did not want to be there. I asked them to describe my hostility high on the mountain, and what they gave was a mirror image of events—one of them repeated the motion of swinging with the ice axe but attributed it to me. I raised my arm to show the bruises, but they did not appreciate the implications. There had been only one ice axe.

Alex was sitting next to me, and I asked him, “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”