A tribute to the Mountains

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?

    Who may stand in his holy place?

The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,

    who does not trust in an idol

    or swear by a false god.

Psalm 24

When Mallory saw Everest for the first time he described her as a “prodigious white fang, an excrescence from the jaw of the world”.  There’s something in that word “excrescence” which is used to describe the sort of growth that results from disease or abnormality.  It is an entirely appropriate term when you see the mountain up close.  Of course from a distance it is another matter because when you first see Everest from a viewpoint just below Namche Bazaar, it appears to be smaller and more recessive than peaks like Lhotse, a whole 400m lower than itself.  It is all a matter of perspective. 

Everest (Left) and Lhotse

But perspective is a funny thing.  Because when you finally stagger into Base Camp after the 90-minute up-scramble through the rocky turmoil of the Khumbu Glacier – you find that due to the vista’s astronomical scale, perspective is nothing more than an abstraction.  The utter silence is enough to totally recalibrate the senses, almost as though all of creation were waiting to exhale.  You are finally, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the closing lines of The Great Gatsby, “face to face with something commensurate with (your) capacity for wonder”.  Strangely, Everest itself is not a part of this experience because you can’t actually see her from that particular vantage point, the legendary summit pyramid secreted beyond a gigantic amphitheater formed by Pumori, Khumbutse, the Lho La and Nuptse. 

As a result, many describe their visit to Base Camp as anticlimactic.  At this time of the year the place has little to show for itself besides a giant cairn festooned with graffiti and a tangle of frayed Bhuddist prayer flags that crack noisily in the wind.  For all intents and purposes it is just a dot on the map.  There’s also very little to herald its presence other than the telltale twist of the icefall as it heads uphill towards the Western Cwm.  Periodically, avalanches plummet off the surrounding peaks, their menacing hiss only reaching you five or more seconds after the whole affair is over.  Yet it is what Base Camp had borne witness to that intrigued me.  It captured my imagination long before arriving there and will no doubt continue to do so long after my leaving:  record setting ascents, vicious storms, the rise and demise of heroic personalities, dramatic rescues, helicopter crashes and other unspeakable tragedies too numerous to mention here.

I could not imagine a more menacing and inhospitable place.  How, I wondered, could even the most determined climber make a home of the Khumbu’s flinty sprawl?  It is a deadly, mercurial combination of rock, gravel, ice and water that is constantly on the move – so much so in fact that if you listen carefully you can hear the ground groaning and sighing beneath your feet.  How yak trains and donkeys make it through the screes that separate base camp from Gorak Shep is a mystery.  Indeed I found the walk tortuous: one lapse of concentration and you’re likely to twist an ankle or worse still.  I’ve heard stories of people simply being swallowed up in crevasses that weren’t there the day before.  I would not have spent a single night at Base Camp nor would I have found a 2-month stay as part of a summit expedition even remotely conscionable.  How one progresses from that sort of discomfort to then climb Everest boggles the mind! 

All things considered, the 20 or so minutes I spent at base camp (it was too cold to linger any longer) will remain a memory forever.

But what drew me here in the first place?  What could take me back again?  The high drama I’ve found between the covers of the books I’ve read?  A fascination with the nation of Nepal and its people?  Something deeper? 

It may be simpler than that.  When I was younger, I had a double page pull out picture of Everest’s southeast face that I found in an outdoor magazine.  I looked at it often, mesmerized by the violent contrasts of jet-black rock and frosty whiteness, her spidery striations and ghostly couloirs.  I would consider the mountain’s beguiling abnormalities; the menacing seracs that guard the entrance to the Western Cwm, the incongruous “yellow band” that ramps east to west towards the summit ridge – and (on the day the picture was taken) the mountain’s crowning glory – a wisp of lenticular cloud hovering precariously over the summit in the inky wash of the lower stratosphere.  That one image embodied everything that drew me for a second time to Nepal.  I came to stand cheek by jowl with mountains like that - acts of creation conceived of and executed on a scale so stupendous that their purpose could only have been to point to someone bigger than us mere mortals. 

But though the ostensible purpose of the trek was to reach Everest Base Camp (or, more colloquially “EBC”), the mountain occupied only a very minor part of the experience.  My last real sight of it came on the morning of our departure from Gorak Shep.  Waking early, we staggered upwards through the frigid dawn to a rocky viewpoint on the summit of Kalappattar (5550m), a gently sloping mountain that sits at the feet of Mt Pumori (7161m).  Here you can enjoy the best views of Everest and its sister peaks.  It was another awe inspiring moment – the icy serrations of the Hillary Step gently glowing in the early dawn and a dainty “doek” of cloud perched deftly on the summit.  While Everest looked almost comical, I couldn’t help feeling that even amidst all this grandeur, the mountain relies on sheer thuggery to make its mark.  For good and bad reasons, Everest is the strongman of mountains – pure grit and muscle.

The amphitheatre of Everest Base Camp 

Which brings me to Ama Dablam, a mountain that dominates the eastern sky for much of the trek. Unlike Everest, the peak neither muscles nor manhandles though her impression is no less indelible.  At 6856m she is not an especially high mountain though she is regarded my many as the Himalaya’s most beautiful.  Her southern face is so sickeningly vertical that Edmund Hillary once declared her “unclimbable” – though since that pronouncement over 1800 people have stood atop the summit (often as a practice run for big brother Everest).

The Beautiful Ama Dablam - Dudh Khosi (Milk River) in the foreground

While Everest bullies you with bluster, Ama Dablam romances you with spellbinding elegance.  And as though her beauty isn’t enough, she is winsomely generous too, offering such a feast of breathtaking photo opportunities that pictures of her lavish form made up the vast majority of my photostream.  It’s almost impossible to leave Nepal without a great keepsake of her.  She goes out on a limb to be remembered and adored.   

Ama Dablam in Nepali means “Woman and necklace” and as you draw near to the village of Dingboche you begin to appreciate the aptness of the name.  The mountain, which when you first see her outside Namche Bazaar seems so lonely and monolithic, actually boasts two shapely summits.

Declared "unclimbable" by Hillary, Ama Dablam is now one of the most popular Himalayan peaks for climbing

On the afternoon of our rest day in Dingboche, I looked down the valley towards the wooded ridge upon which was perched the Monastery of Tengboche.  A mass of cloud had boiled up from the valley below and was now barreling up towards our lodge.  By 2 o’clock the place was shrouded in a thick, oily fog.  So unnervingly funereal was the gloom that my spirits, already dampened by the effects of altitude, plummeted.  Moods, for some reason, are strangely erratic when trekking in the high Himalaya and it’s important to have some sort of distraction lined up when conditions deteriorate – a good book, a pack of cards, music, whatever. 

In this instance, I chose to retreat into the comfort of my sleeping bag for the afternoon.  I began to read but soon dozed off.  When I awoke an hour or so later the cloud had vanished and the valley was bathed in wash of golden sunlight.  On the western side of our valley, a now glowing Ama Dablam was the towering centerpiece of what would turn out to be a memorable afternoon.  I considered a stroll over the ridge to the village of Pheriche but instead scrambled up to a nearby chorten and sat for a while, drinking in the beauty.  A young British couple with similar intentions sat nearby smoking a massive joint.  Down in the valley, cows mooed.  Above, ravens squawked and darted playfully through the chorten’s prayer flags. 

Presently, the fragile peace was shattered by the whup whup whup of a bright red helicopter which labored up the valley, banked steeply over the flood plain and landed on the outskirts of the village.  Two stretchers bearing stricken trekkers were hastily loaded and just as quickly as it had come, the helicopter lifted into the thin air, banked to the left and disappeared down the valley.  As evening slowly fell, the chimneys of lodges and homes simultaneously coughed into life as ovens and fireplaces were kindled for heat and cooking.  I wandered back to the lodge and sat for a while on a large rock, overwhelmed by the peace and enchanted by the beauty.  Though the valley was now almost completely dark, the surrounding peaks pulsated in a cheerful rosy glow that defied the onset of night. 

Nightfall at Dingboche

There was indeed more to the EBC trek than Mt Everest.