The Everest Files (13 page)

‘The Sherpa in question has had mental issues,' Kami heard him say, over and over. ‘It's really quite a sad situation but we're doing our best to help him out.'

Tension began to build. Kami felt himself irritable and jumpy, longing for the storm to end so they could escape the pressure cooker environment of the claustrophobic camp. The other Sherpas were equally out of sorts, passing their days playing poker and sipping from bottles of cheap Chinese rum.

Kami had noticed that Sasha's relationship with Alex Brennan was getting increasingly strained. They were snapping at each other at meal times and on the second day of the storm it came to a head as she sat at the mess table writing her daily report.

‘You mind if I take a look at that?' Brennan asked her casually.

Sasha blinked in surprise.

‘Normally I just send it,' she said.

‘I know … but would you mind if I just checked it out?'

There was an awkward pause for a few moments.

‘I'm not sure I want you to … ' Sasha began.

But Brennan twisted her laptop round so he could see the article.

‘That wasn't our agreement,' Sasha protested, ‘In the contract it stipulates … '

‘Yeah. I know what the contract says,' Brennan said brusquely. ‘But I saw the piece you wrote yesterday, the bit where you said ‘The fault lines are beginning to show.'

‘I'm just trying to paint an accurate picture,' the journalist insisted.

‘Well things have changed and I can't afford any more negative publicity.'

Sasha tried to pull the laptop away from the boss but he just held it tighter as he read.

‘You see. There, for example. You write “With every setback to the expedition, the necessity of reaching the summit gets stronger. The eyes of the world are on Alex Brennan now and the plain fact is that he cannot afford to fail.” '

Sasha pulled the laptop out of his hands and snapped shut the lid.

‘I thought I could depend on you,' Brennan said accusingly, ‘but you've changed your angle on the whole thing.'

‘It's you that's changed,' Sasha counter-attacked, ‘you're getting paranoid. Becoming a control freak.'

She stomped out of the mess tent.

‘I'm not sure you handled that very well,' Kurt told the boss.

Brennan put his head in his hands. Kami had to avert his eyes.

When the storm finally blew itself out on the fourth day, Kami was deeply relieved. Even the prospect of hard physical grind was better than the endless hanging around.

‘You come with me today,' Jamling barked at breakfast. ‘Norgay can stay with the film crew.'

Kami was given a two-hundred-metre drum of climbing rope to porter up to Camp Three. Jamling had the same twenty-five-kilo load and they left the camp together for the long haul up the Cwm followed by the steep climb up the Lhotse face for Camp Three.

Many teams were on the move that day and the front runners had kicked a path through the deep snow. Kami was thankful he wasn't breaking trail but the passage through the Cwm was still pretty tough and it took them five hours to get past Camp Two.

Four rope pitches followed on the Lhotse Face, the angle of the slope constant at about seventy degrees. Kami played the numbers game, counting out twenty steps before taking a rest. Every time he stopped to wait for Jamling he swigged on his water bottle, determined to keep himself hydrated at all costs.

A bunch of Sherpas passed them in the opposite direction, moving down swiftly after an equipment run up to the col. Jamling greeted many of them as they passed, accepting the gift of a cigarette and swapping news while Kami listened in.

‘The summit ridge still isn't roped up,' he heard, ‘too much deep snow on the ridge.'

Jamling grunted at that.

‘Same every year,' he said. ‘It'll get done in the end.'

As soon as the cigarettes were finished the porters departed with haste, seeming to fly down the fixed ropes as they headed for Camp Two.

Jamling was slow to get moving again. The contact with the other group seemed to have demotivated him and he moved sluggishly up the trail, listlessly pulling himself up the ropes and hawking up phlegm in alarming quantities.

Kami recalled a comment by Brennan; ‘Imagine seventy per cent of your lungs have been amputated … '

That really was how it felt.

He was curious to start using the oxygen but Tenzing had told them to hold off trying it until they reached the col.

‘You go on ahead,' Jamling instructed. ‘Make a platform for the tent.'

Kami was surprised. He had figured they would dig out the slope and put up the tent together. But Jamling said no more, just unwrapped another little plug of chewing tobacco and sat down for a further rest.

Kami kicked up the slope for another hundred vertical metres until he arrived at the Camp Three location.

He tied his pack carefully to a fixed line, assembled his snow shovel and chose a spot to start. A couple of friendly Sherpas resting in a nearby tent heard the sound of the spade and came out to help.

Just as the flysheet was pinned down in place, Jamling came into view fifty metres down the slope. Kami had never really thought of him as an old man but now he did look wasted.

‘They'll flog him to death in the end,' one of the other Sherpa's observed. ‘We're like mules to these people.'

Kami thought about that as he watched Jamling climb slowly towards him.

Jamling was subdued that evening, and he showed no enthusiasm to help out with the chores.

There was little warning of the crisis to come.

In the middle of the night Kami woke with a start. He'd fallen asleep without knowing it. He turned on his headtorch to check out Jamling's condition. His heart sank as the truth was so starkly revealed.

Jamling's lips were blue and his skin was a clammy shade of grey. Worse still, his breathing didn't sound right. His lungs were wheezing like an old bellows. Some kind of Asthma maybe? Or something more serious?

Was it water on the lung?

Kami knew that a climber with altitude sickness could drown as liquid seeped into their lungs. No drugs could rectify the situation. The only hope was to get that climber down as fast as possible. Kami checked his watch. It was 3 .a.m. Still four hours to dawn.

Could he risk waiting until first light?

He picked up the walkie talkie;

‘Camp Three calling Base Camp. Camp Three calling Base Camp.'

There was a silence which felt a hundred years long, then a voice blurted out loud and clear.

‘Base Camp here. Is that you Kami?'

It was Tenzing. Dependable Tenzing manning the radios even at this unsociable hour. Kami rapidly explained the situation, describing Jamling's symptoms as best he could.

‘You've got to get him down,' Tenzing told him. ‘If he stays there he could be dead by morning.'

‘I'm going to need some help.'

‘OK. We'll alert Brennan and George. They're at Camp Two. We'll radio them now, get them to come up and help you down the Lhotse Face.'

‘Right. Tell them to be fast.'

He unzipped the tent and was shocked to see how hostile the conditions were outside. In his preoccupation with Jamling he had hardly noticed that the blustery wind had strengthened into a storm.

‘Wake up!' he shouted to Jamling. ‘We've got to leave the tent.'

Jamling buried his head in the soft fabric of his sleeping bag, trying to escape the swirling vortex of snow that was circulating inside the tent.

Kami took direct action; he knew there was no time to lose.

He quit the tent, grabbed Jamling's boots and hauled him out on his back. It was a brutal way to treat him but he could think of no other way to do it. Then he took the sick man by the shoulders and hauled him up onto his feet.

The cutting blast of wind seemed to rouse Jamling out of his trance.

‘Can't breathe properly,' he gasped. ‘Need air.'

‘You're sick. Put your arm around me,' Kami told him.

Jamling did as he was asked, resting his weight on Kami's shoulders as they moved slowly away from the tents and out onto the wind-scoured slopes of the Lhotse Face.

Supporting Jamling's weight was crushingly painful for Kami and he wondered how long he could bear it.

They navigated the route down to the rock steps, which were covered by a good metre of fresh powder. The deep snow here did them a favour; on the steeper sections Kami could get Jamling to sit down, sliding on his backside as Kami steadied him on a short rope. It was dodgy but it worked.

They made it to the big traverse, Jamling getting slower and slower, his head hunched deep into his Gore-Tex hood as he tried to escape the force of the wind and the biting sting of the snow granules.

‘Keep moving,' Kami yelled.

Jamling eased his right leg forward a few inches. Then the left. He was moving like a zombie in a low-budget horror film, peering wide-eyed into the tempest with the mystified look of a man who has absolutely no idea where he is.

‘Jamling! It's me! You have to wake up for me!'

Gradually, Jamling's eyes rolled back down; slowly, oh so slowly, they focused, that precious spark of recognition coming back again for a moment or two.

He nodded. Then sat down as he succumbed to a massive coughing fit. Kami waited a minute then cajoled the sick man back to his feet and they carried on down into the raging snowstorm.

What had happened to Brennan and George?

Kami was longing to see the flicker of headtorches coming up.

What was taking them so long? Surely they should have reached them by now?

Jamling's breathing seemed to be getting worse, his cough ever more violent. When he spat onto the snow it was a frothy red/brown colour. Every twenty or so steps his legs would give way with frightening suddenness.

Had Brennan and the cameraman passed them somehow in the storm?

But he knew that was impossible; they would be coming up the same fixed ropes that he was descending on. There was no way to miss them.

Two more hours passed and a lacklustre dawn sky finally glowed through the storm as Kami continued to coax Jamling down.

Finally, when the two of them were almost in sight of Camp Two, he saw the powerful figure of Brennan coming out of the white-out towards them. George was not far behind.

‘You made it!' Brennan called out, ‘must have been a nightmare coming down the face!'

The sheer relief of reaching help was enough to fill Kami's eyes with tears and he lowered Jamling gently to the ice before collapsing by his side.

Moments later George was with them, already pulling the lens cap off his camera and flicking on the power. George framed up his shot and Brennan started his piece to camera.

‘OK. We're out here on this horrific day. Blowing hard and plenty of snow. We made the decision to evacuate Jamling down to Base Camp but it's going to be touch and go now. Been a struggle to get him to this camp but we have to keep going now and make it to Camp One as fast as we can.'

Kami listened to Brennan's video piece with a growing feeling of confusion.

Brennan was making it sound like he had been in on the rescue from the beginning. In reality the two Westerners had played no part in getting Jamling down the Lhotse Face. He hadn't even mentioned Kami's name, let alone given him credit for getting Jamling this far.

Kami didn't understand it at all but there was no time to dwell on it. They had to keep Jamling moving down or the day would end in disaster.

‘He needs something to drink,' he reminded Brennan.

‘Of course. We've got a flask here.'

George got a close up shot of Jamling as Brennan held a plastic cup of warm orange juice to his blistered lips. Then they re-filled the cup and handed it to Kami. The citric burst of sugar was a heavenly treat after the long hours of descent and he gulped down the liquid in seconds.

Brennan started to get Jamling upright and Kami scrambled up to help him. George didn't offer to help, but moved around them, forwards and back, taking a variety of shots of the rescue in progress as they moved slowly down the Cwm towards Camp One. Finally, Kami found the courage to speak up.

‘What about George?' he asked, ‘can't he help us?'

‘We really need him to keep filming,' Brennan replied testily, ‘this is exactly the type of stuff the documentary needs.'

After that rebuke, Kami kept his mouth shut, and it wasn't long before they saw a dark line of five climbers coming towards them. They were members of a Scandinavian expedition, a bunch of guys that Brennan had spent an evening partying with back at Base Camp.

As soon as they understood the situation they offered to help. Kami was finally able to take a break from the punishing physical labour as they completed the final two hours to Camp One. They got there at 2 p.m.

Word of Jamling's condition had spread amongst the teams at Base Camp and a dozen Sherpas had raced up through the icefall with a stretcher. Kami was told that a helicopter would be flying in to Base Camp later that afternoon to evacuate Jamling to Kathmandu.

Kami took his place at one corner of the stretcher, ready to do his part, but then he felt a firm hand on his shoulder.

‘You're staying with us,' Brennan told him.

‘But, sir … ' Kami was taken completely by surprise. He hadn't thought for a moment that he would not be allowed to accompany Jamling down to Base Camp.

‘We're going to need all the help we can get up here now,' Brennan continued.

‘I will come back up tomorrow,' Kami promised.

‘I can't risk it. You might not have the strength.'

‘I will, sir,' Kami insisted, ‘I can't leave Jamling alone.'

‘He's not alone. He's got loads of people with him now. He'll be fine. You stay with us and that's the end of the story.'