I’d never really enjoyed hiking because of the pain involved. As a young scout I was dragged up mountains as a matter of course. Sweating, aching, tired and generally miserable I couldn’t wait to get back down to civilization where there were hamburgers and milkshakes and comic books and television. The only way to really enjoy the mountains was to get in a truck, drive up the canyon to your campsite, set up your tent, build a fire and sit by its warmth in a comfortable lawn chair roasting wieners and marshmallows. That was an outdoor experience for me. That’s what you went to the mountains for. You went to relax and eat good food and smell the woods and hear the river and look up at the bright stars in the crisp night air while being warmed by glowing embers. Pain wasn’t supposed to be part of the experience.
But perspectives change. I was at a friend’s house and picked up a picture lying on the kitchen table. My friend told me it was a picture of Mount Everest his uncle took from an airplane window. I stared at it for some time. It took hold of me, as if by the collars, pulling me in up to its face and glaring at me, it an alien beast, me a frail boy, feet dangling, eyes staring into dripping fangs. But it was strangely alluring at the same time. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was both terrifying and wonderful. I wanted to go to it.
A couple years later I got the opportunity to go to Nepal with my wife’s family who lived in India at the time. We were planning on getting a good view of the Himalaya, which I really didn’t know anything about then – I had only just learnt that Everest was included in the gigantic and sprawling range. This little fact made them all the more attractive. I couldn’t wait to see them.
We left Katmandu early one morning and drove up a mountain road to a viewing point. But we couldn’t see anything for fog. On the ride back to Katmandu I felt dejected. The wobbling and jerking of the van didn’t help. I asked the driver to pull over and I got out and vomited off the side of the dirt road into the bushes. Walking through the narrow streets of Thamel market later that day I felt anxious and robbed. I walked into a small poster shop and stared at a panoramic picture of the Everest range. I again felt the allure of the great pyramidal peak standing above all the others. It had a hypnotic, euphoric effect on me.
The evening before we left Katmandu for New Delhi my father-in-law surprised a few of us with news that he’d purchased tickets for us to go up in a small airplane the next morning to see Mount Everest. I went to bed elated and got up elated. But we couldn’t take off for fog. I was to leave Nepal having only seen the Himalaya in a poster I could’ve got back in the States. The trip hadn’t been a waste, of course. We’d rafted the white waters of the Trisuli, seen the Hindus burn the bodies of their dead at their monkey-infested temples on the ghats, explored the narrow and colorful shop-lined streets of Thamel market, and eaten like kings on pillows in dimly-lit restaurants filled with the smell of incense and the music of The Doors and Pink Floyd. But I felt robbed all the same.
On the plane back to New Delhi I was staring at the seat in front of me when we came bursting out of the clouds at around 15,000 feet. The cabin brightened and I casually turned and looked out the window and then leaned toward it, my forehead bumping against the plastic. Out in the distance were the Himalaya towering above the clouds and lit up pinkly in the sunset. The sight was astonishing. Everest was not among them but that didn’t matter. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. They were frightening as well, jutting up out of the earth, peaks like sharp teeth, many of them standing higher than the cruising altitude of most airplanes. The thought that there were people who climbed in these mountains didn’t occur to me at the time. Looking at them you wouldn’t think it was possible. As gorgeous as they were, there was horror there too.
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| WITH CLIMBING GREAT ED VIESTURS |
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About a year later I was standing in an airport bookstore and a book called Into Thin Air caught my eye. On the cover was a picture of the peak of Everest shrouded in mist. I picked it up and thumbed through it and looked at the picture pages inserted in the middle. I bought the book and finished it the next day and wanted to climb Everest. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I wanted it badly. I text messaged an adventure-loving friend of mine and asked would he want to climb Everest with me. He said I was nuts, that he valued his life, not to mention his fingers and toes, but that I should call his doctor brother who was something of a mountaineer and an ice climber. I didn’t call him, but about a week later I got a voicemail from him saying he heard I wanted to climb Everest and he was in town and would I like to learn how to ice climb. I called him back and we arranged a time to go.
We met at the mouth of Provo Canyon in northern Utah and talked about Everest as we walked down a path toward some icy cliffs. I did most of the talking and he looked at me sidelong with amused suspicion. I got the feeling he thought I was a moron. He told me I ought probably to think about trying some smaller mountains first, ones that were difficult but doable. He told me about Mount Rainier in Washington and how it could give me a real taste of what mountaineering was like. He said if you weren’t properly trained you were liable to die climbing big, snowy peaks, despite the idea I’d picked up that you could be dragged up Everest by a team of Sherpas regardless of your training and experience. All I needed, I thought, was money, and one could always get his hands on money if he saved long enough. Everest was all that existed. I was captivated by it as an idea. The thought of preparing for it by climbing lesser mountains held no interest for me. But in the end, after discussing it at some length with my doctor friend, and after a very trying experience struggling to pull my trembling body up a wall of ice, I became convinced of my naivety.
