Looking around, he notices some gravel hills to the east of Base Camp which rise some 200 or 300 feet above the level of the plain. Our travel notices that the several folds of these hills would definitely hide him from the view of base camp and so would, barring any sort of patrols, allow him to keep on going. Decided, he follows the road back towards tourist base camp for a half mile or so, not wanting to draw attention to his move to the eastward. In a hollow with no one around, he cuts off the road and scrambles up and over the gravel hill. Out of sight and in comparative safety he slows down and heads further up the valley. He is on a sort of sunken shelf between the cliff sides of the larger valley and the small ridge created by this row of hills.
He is presented with a stunning view of both the full magnitude of base camp and the awful power of the mountain. Looking down from this new height base camp has a whole new order, remarking its human origin. The tents are geometrically laid out, their bright colors forming neat rows, circles, and other pattern and this order is offset against the earth shifting disorder of the tumbling hills of dirt pushed before the glacier. In the sun Everest shines with an almost cruel brilliance, and our traveler averts his eyes for lack of sunglasses. Turning away from this awesome sight then, he begins to head up into the ravine. It’s mouth is guarded by two steep cliff walls which force the ice choked remnants of the stream up and into a chaotic bristly mass as it passes through. Our traveler clambers down one side of this cliff face, slipping and sliding the last portion until he is on the rocks sticking up and out of the snow over the stream. From here on it is up, through this canyon valley until…
The only sounds are the gushing wind and the rushing of the stream beneath the snow. Choosing ease over safety, our traveler begins walking his way up the snow covered creek, trusting in his vision to spot those portions of the ice which are rotten and unsafe. At points the stream pops out above the ice and froths about over the snow and between rocks until it vanishes again beneath the half-glacier.
For a while the going gets steeper, but is still not too difficult since there are plenty of layers of snow over the ice giving out traveler traction. The ice even begins to form giant steps which our traveler sometimes resorts to all-fours to climb over. As he pushes his way up, the valley opens some—cliff walls giving way to steep rocky hillsides, topped with snow. The weather also begins to change; the sun fading beneath ominously heavy gray clouds. It being almost 1:30 in the afternoon, our traveler sets a 3:30 turn around time for himself, claiming no matter where he is, he begins his return then.
As small bits of snow drop fitfully from the sky, our traveler meets with the first genuine forms of glacier he has yet touched near Everest. One of the giant snow steps he is climbing, made of more ice than normal, sends him sliding backwards, tumbling down the steep slope. After coming to a stop on some rocks in a more level portion of ground, he slowly works back up to this slippery place and finds blue ice where his footprint drew off the thin layer of snow. He decides to stick to the rocky hillsides for a while, whether it be slower or no.
This sort of hiking is steeper as well as more energy consuming since he must jump from rock to rock or do an endless version of a stairstepper. Our traveler begins to notice that he must often stop for water and breathing. His faithful water bottle, having served him all-day, is beginning to show signs that its supply may not actually be inexhaustible. Our traveler decides to ration himself.
It is on one of these rests that, looking up at the high mountain sides all around him, our traveler remembers that there are still snow leopards occasionally seen in the area. Imagining this would be quite a sight, our traveler ponders the ridgeline for longer than normal.
But the subject of wildlife is not only limited to snow leopards. While the thoughts of such mystical beasts as the Sasquatch and Yeti may be entirely ridiculous to you in the comforting safety from the wild which civilization affords you, when alone in a ravine more than 3 miles high with mountains still towering over too high to see above your head, one’s sense of what is ridiculous and what is not becomes impaired. At least such was the case with our traveler. As he continued on, once more on the semi-rotten ice over the stream, he comes upon large footprints. Logic tells him these are the tracks of some snowshoe shod hiker, doing the same thing our traveler is, but logic is not the kingly personage it once was in the oxygen impaired mind of our traveler.
He cannot help but think of the Yeti; afterall the tracks are larger than any human foot should be. Although our traveler can reason out many objections as to how the tracks are of human origin, the overriding feeling within his mind is the illusion-like sense that the tracks are more paw-like than shoe-like. Now, given these already insane thoughts on the part of our traveler, you will no doubt forgive him the added lunacy of following these tracks up the valley.
From this point on, his course is determined by the footprints. He follows them sometimes at a distance when they seem to cross impossibly dangerous sections of ice, he searches almost frantically for them when they vanish into the rocks. But eventually, in a wider more snow-filled section of the valley, they vanish. Spending quite some time, our traveler comes to the conclusion that the tracks could not have made it to any rock surface—they are all too far away, and that they must remain a mystery.
Nearing the turn-around time, our traveler decides he will continue until the next bend in the valley to see what there is to see, and begin the long haul back. His steps are slower now, and he stops to breath almost every 20 yards. Also he begins to feel a headache building up in his skull.
Our traveler notices a tendency of his person from afar as it were, of his focusing entirely now on each step, each single movement up. From rock to rock, across the snow and ice, through the occasional sand banks, he steps slowly up. Finally he comes around this last bend. Before him the valley opens up into a giant bowl, filled with snow. Straight ahead are two ponderous rounded peaks, with lower rolling hills at their base. These hills are tiger-striped with snow as if the sun has been working a wave-like motion in melting them.
All thoughts of Yeti’s and snow leopards are gone form our traveler’s mind; only the consciousness of his now splitting headache and the sense that he should return soon. Perhaps he did not spend adequate time admiring the beauty of this scenery he worked so hard to reach, but his lack of water contributes in such a way to his state of mind that he simply stumbles back down the ravine. He does stop briefly to look out from the ravine at the ridgeline on the opposite side of the massive Rongbuk valley to see how high he is. By the marks on the side of the other ridge, he judges that he has climbed at least 1,000 vertical feet if not a bit more from the valley’s plain. It is my guess that he reached something close to 18,500 feet or higher at this point.
Dizzy now, with a head that aches at every jarring step from rock to rock, our traveler resembles some drunken reveler, weaving carelessly through the rocks. He remembers that he planned to bring back stones from Everest for his friends and family, so he begins to at random stoop over and grab some colorful pebbles to shove in his pockets. Upon his return he does not find these stones to be near as colorful as they seemed at the time.
His chest begins to feel constricted too, a strange tightness in the very center of his chest which feels like someone has bound up his lungs with a heavy rope. It is as if there is a horribly wracking cough coiled up inside of him, but which he cannot cough. His eyes also are in a sad state, seeing as he forgot his sunglasses and has been beneath the high-altitude rays of the sun reflected off the glaringly white snow all day. He wonders if part of his headache is not due to this glare.
But our traveler continues bravely on despite all of this, staggering often misplacing his feet and only avoiding bone-crunching falls by divine intervention. Almost to the cliffs he scaled down to enter the ravine, our traveler spots another human-like form. Instantly the yeti tracks pop back into his mind, and our traveler thinks of flinging all his colorful rocks at this monster to fend it off. However clarity wins out and our traveler realizes the figure is actually a fellow hiker, but only after he has screamed wildly to frighten the not-yeti away.
With a silent wave they pass each other in the icy canyon and our traveler stumbles back into the fake base camp. At the supposed site of residence in this tourist’s base camp, our traveler finds his companions looking dour. They claim they are very uncomfortable and feeling the effects of the altitude. This apparently because they sat on the rocks in the sun all day, like so many cold-blooded reptiles. They announce that they have decided to return all the way to Shigar that night, and be in
Our traveler, weary from his over-ambitious hiking, concedes to their foolishness and climbs into the car after only a small cup of tea to refresh himself. To say that the return trip was morbid would not be accurate, for in a way our traveler also was finished with the mountain. But it is with a heavy heart that he leaves, watching the massive peak fade slowly into the masses of clouds which once more wrap it up. As he leaves the valley, he catches one last glimpse of Everest and the whole range.
