A 20k Viewing Platform (Everest - Part 6)

Today I'm a stranger in my own body, as the elevation has now fully caught up to me.

At 16k feet my good old pal the altitude headache will be here to stay until I'm back down below a week from now.

My head is a dull throb and my heart is working overtime. I don't need my watch to know how bad I feel, but Karen is giving me stress alerts, failing sleep scores and “non-restorative" status just the same. My blood oxygen percent is in the high 80s now.

Movement feels strange and sudden movement is impossible. It's better to move your entire body to look left or right rather than just your head.

It's a short "Himalayan flat" 2 hour trek to Island Peak Base Camp, where tonight I'll start my summit bid.

As I'm struggling to move slowly enough to keep my heart rate from spiking, it doesn't feel all that short or light. During the entirety of this walk, Island Peak is looming in front of me. It's looking steeper and larger the closer I get to it. I try not to think about how I'll have 8 hours to go up another 3k in altitude. And I really try to avoid thinking about the problem of coming back down.

My only source of comfort is that next to it's brothers, 20k feet (6000m) downright looks like a hill. I'm so very glad I'm not attempting Lhotse.

Camp is rather comfortable, snuggled in a valley surrounded by the giants. I meet my climbing guide, outfit my crampons, and we spend literally just 5 minutes practicing repelling up and down. I read the last section to summit has a few ropes and ladders.

I sit outside and look at the mountains, but the snow is blinding and the gusts of wind are unpleasant. I'm not allowed to sleep until after dinner, so I move into the dining tent. We sit around drinking tea and alternate between staring at each other and staring at the wall. My two remaining brain cells that haven't been affected by altitude or anxiety don't even want to open a book.

I wake up at 12… am.

Yep, midnight. I slept a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes.

I am thriving.

Up to this point I've been fighting the elevation on my own. Now I finally give in and take one of the Sorochi altitude pills I bought in Peru a few years ago. They are only a couple months past their expiration date, so I hope they still work.

After a breakfast of coffee and porridge, we start walking at 12:30, aiming to get to the crater around 7am for the sunrise. It's going to be a slog.

It's -10C/ 14F on the ground - I'm wearing double socks, double pants, double shirts. double jacket, a beanie, and gloves.

As typical of me, a half mile in I strip off one jacket and roll up the pants to avoid sweating.

The trail goes up to a hillside and begins to move up. It's steep. Very steep. That's the only benefit of sunrise summits - hiking in the pitch black darkness of purgatory doesn't give you any sense of how much worse things will get.

I try my hardest to keep my heart rate down to avoid sweating. I don't succeed, not even one bit.

My base layer becomes a wetsuit. Which is actually fine - while it's warm.

But the air gets colder and colder the higher we go, turning the wetsuit into a frost suit.

Did I bring a spare change of clothes? Negative. The climbing boots, the harness, the crampons, and 2 liters of water already filled my bag to capacity. Not that it would help even if I did have a spare set. I already do everything possible to avoid cold showers - it would be impossible to coax myself into stripping down on the side of a steep rocky ridgeline, in pitch darkness, in freezing windy weather, to replace cold and wet clothes with new cold clothes.

This should be a great total lower body workout, but once again my right hamstring seems to be doing 80% of the work. My calves are on fire and I'm reminded that I should really start doing some ankle mobility work for this grade of steepness.

A couple hours in things start getting dire. And then, a miracle! I feel the left glute pitch in a tiny bit. All my muscles must be out of juice if that's what I've been reduced to.

I can't see a thing except for the step in front of me. Looking up ahead I see some lights from headlamps - but it's near vertical, so it's better not to look up. Looking down I see some headlamps too - but it looks like a plummet with nothing to break the fall, so best to not look down either. Feeling a little woozy, I'm heavily depending on my poles to keep me upright.

The descent into madness begins again. With each step I'm muttering one potato, two potato.

It's brutally frigid. My wetsuit feels like I'm wearing frost. I'm telling myself “I'm not cold, I'm tingly”.

Tingly is a nice euphenism for the thousand needles that are stabbing into my fingers and toes. I wonder if it's possible to get nerve damage if left unattended for too long. How long is too long? How long before frostbite? Damn it, why didn't I ask chatGPT back when I had mobile service?

The madness morphs and counting potatoes turns into “Just one step. One more. One more”. It's been so many hours and it's still pitch dark. I've never been so cold in my life, all my muscle groups are in pain, and my hiking sticks are an extension of my body, both for balance and moral support.

The dark thoughts get darker. I wonder if I'll ever feel warm again. Morbid thoughts about ranking the worst ways to die. Freezing is up there - but I could just catapult off the slope and make it quick?

Though it won't solve my temperature problem, I debate admitting defeat and turning back.

My limited reasoning faculties tell me that sunshine is the quickest path to warmth, which is the same number of hours whether I go up or down. But if I'm higher then I'll be closer to the sun. So one more step. One more step. One more.

Wait! I packed a few hot hands pouches - a relic of sports from a decade ago. Despite vigorous shaking to activate the damned things, I find that the manufacturers were serious about the best by date - which expired about 5 years ago. Am I pack rat? Heartbroken, my hands remain cold and I remain “tingly”.

The scramble remains rough - ropes, ladders, huge rocks to climb over, illuminated only by the meager might of my headlight. I probably should have changed the batteries.

Completing my descent into madness I start crying, muttering something about one more step in between sobs. The hour before sunrise is always the worst for every mountaineer, but I wonder how many of them actually cry, or would admit to doing so.

We reach the snow cap as it's starting to get lighter. A brief celebration before we start phase 2.

My climbing guide says we leave our poles here. He must not realize I only got up here by the grace of those additional metal legs. I feel like I'm parting with my safety blanket as I lay the sticks down gently, telling them I'll be back.

Now we switch our hiking shoes for bricks with blades - the climbing boots and crampons. Harness and helmet come on at this time as well. I am still cold - very cold.

I didn't read much into it when Lonely Planet's Epic Hikes of the World said this mountain isn't technical - its a “starter” mountain for mountaineers. My 5 minute briefing yesterday to work the rappel and the figure 8 suggests just a few ropes and ladders. I've been in a rock climbing gym a handful of times in my life. I'm athletic enough to move my own weight. And though I complain to high heaven, oh boy can I put up with suffering.

We start with waddling on the snow, navigating the crevasses. Should I slip, how is this thin little rope supposed to save me from that icy cavern?

After crossing the glacier field we are met with the ice wall.

It's so tall I can't see the end of it. A vertical 200m. "It's only a few ropes" they said. Lies. True to Himalayan fashion, there will be multiple false summits.

At least it's my right tricep's turn to shine, as my right hamstring has staged a walkout claiming abusive labor practices.

Movement is agonizingly slow and deliberate. The rappel may keep you from plummeting, but not from face planting into ice. The higher up I go, the more necessary to not look down - even without a fear of heights my oxygen deprived brain finds it unnerving. At least the adrenaline has warmed me up. My right tricep and forearm are burning. My left is 20% balance, 80% moral support.

As I claw up at the speed of the last drop of molasses in a glass bottle, my guide is chain smoking cigarettes and capturing my pain on video. Many mutterings and curses about how this was my dumbest idea yet.

Here's a compilation of the comedic gems he captured. Most of these moments I have no recollection of. Note that just a few weeks after this I started thinking about my next climb.

Going through all the stages of trekking grief - cursing, whining, grunting, cajoling, complaining, and new unidentified sounds, somehow I reach the summit.

And it is glorious. How cute it is, this baby peak. It's a viewing platform for all the giants surrounding it. I have a seriously new appreciation for the real mountaineers who attempt the real peaks. And I am humbled, very humbled, even by this baby peak.

Of the 25 who had a bid to summit today, 5 made it. We saw the other 20 as tiny dots below. Once they crossed the ice to face the wall, they said peace and turned around. I thought they were the smart ones until I learned they are a group making a bid up Everest.

After some celebrations, tears, snow angels, and lots of pictures, it's time to come down. Joining the 20k foot club is cool and all, but my brain wants more oxygen.

Now with the full luminance of a perfectly clear sky and the sun beating down, I get to see just how deranged this all was. Now I'm forced to look down, to the crater that seems miles away.

Going down is far simpler - 80% is rappelling on a figure 8, the rest is “walking” with the safety rope. The entire time I spent thinking “I got up this??? I got through this?? How???”. Many sections looked quite new to me. Rappelling is actually quite fun - minus the face plants. A few times I lost balance and slammed into the ice. It was not until the next day that I felt the bruises on my knees, hips, and thighs from the harness and the run-ins.

Once I was reunited with my shoes and my poles, it was still tough work to walk/slide/climb all the way down to base camp.

Seeing the trail in the light I had the same reactions again. “I got up this??? I didn't die?? How?”

For Christmas I think it's time someone gifts me a pair of quality knee sleeves, because I left my knees on that descent. Months later, even while I have my sights set on climbing Elbrus next summer, my knees are not the same.