Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

We call out the names of mountains to one another like children exclaiming over Christmas presents: “Moving to the west, that tall one is Cho Oyu, twenty-six thousand nine hundred and six feet…” “Gyachung Kang, twenty-five thousand nine hundred ninety feet…” “That peak throwing its shadow on Everest is Lhotse, twenty-seven thousand and…I forget…” “Twenty-seven thousand eight hundred ninety feet.” “To the east there, Chomo Lonzo, twenty-five thousand six hundred and four feet…”

“And Makalu,” says the Deacon. “Twenty-seven thousand seven hundred sixty-five feet.”

“My God,” I whisper. One could take the highest peaks of America’s Rocky Mountains and they would be lost in the foothills of these white-fanged giants. The cols—the saddles—that were the low points connecting Everest and the other peaks started above 25,000 feet—3,000 feet higher than any mountain in North America.

Usually, according to Reggie and the Deacon, members of previous expeditions had been able to catch glimpses of Everest at other times during the trek west toward Shekar Dzong—especially if one was willing to detour up the Yaru Valley west of Tinki Dzong and do a little climbing—but we’ve spent the last five weeks trekking under thick, low clouds, often against freezing rain and blowing snow, so this sunny day atop Pang La is our first view of the mountain.

Reggie beckons me forward, and I lie prone next to her on the reddish soil and hard rocks—a strangely intimate moment—and she steadies the barrel of the telescope as I peer through it.

“My God.” These seem to be the only syllables I’m capable of this day.

Even at my young age—I’d turned 23 somewhere in Sikkim on April 2—I’ve had enough mountaineering experience to know that a mountain that seems unclimbable from a distance can reveal routes, perhaps even easy routes, once one gets close enough to it or actually on it. But the summit of Everest looks…just too large, too tall, too white, too windy, too infinitely far away.

Jean-Claude has crawled up to use the Deacon’s binoculars.

“You can’t see the North Col or the high point on the East Rongbuk Glacier from here because of the intervening hills,” says the Deacon. “But look along the North East Ridge. Can you see the First Step and Second Step nearing the summit?”

“All I can see is an endless plume of spindrift,” says J.C. “What must those winds be like on that North East Ridge right now?”

Instead of answering that, the Deacon says, “You can clearly see the Great Couloir—or what they’re calling Norton’s Couloir now—stretching down to the left from beneath the Summit Pyramid.”

“Ah, yes…,” breathes J.C.

It’s impossible for me to tell through Reggie’s slightly jiggling telescope whether or not that couloir is deep in snow and a pure avalanche deathtrap or not.

“The strong spring winds are good,” Reggie says, her voice almost lost beneath the Pang La wind hooting and whistling between boulders. “They clear away the monsoon and winter snows. They will give us a better chance of finding Percy.”

Percy. In my growing eagerness to get on the mountain and to start climbing, I’ve almost forgotten about Lord Percy Bromley and our ostensible reason for coming so far. The thought of the young man’s corpse up there somewhere on that unassailable, inhuman mountain with its impossible winds makes me shiver.

Pasang’s powerful voice comes up to us. “The lead porters are approaching the summit of the pass behind us.”

Reluctantly, eyes watering from both the wind and the fatigue of squinting so hard at the distant peak in the unrelenting light, all four of us stand, brush dust and pebbles from our heavy layers of goose down and wool, turn our backs to the wind from the west, and walk—half-staggering in the gusts now at our backs—toward the narrow trail leading across the saddle of this pass.

Sikkim had been all hothouse flowers, jungles of rhododendrons, air almost too thick and humid to breathe, steaming overgrown valleys, camping in clearings that weren’t really clearings, salting leeches off our bodies at the end of long days hiking through wet vegetation and avoiding the daks— tidy little bungalows that the Raj had placed every eleven miles, a long day’s march, on the long main route into Tibet toward the closest Tibetan trade capital, Gyantse. Daks, according to Reggie and Dr. Pasang, came complete with fresh food, beds, books to read, and a permanent servant, called a chowkidar, in each bungalow. But our group camped a mile short of each dak or two miles beyond, never taking advantage of the bungalows set there for precisely the purpose we needed them.

“British expeditions stay in the daks, ” said the Deacon as we sat around one of our early campfires in the Sikkimese jungle.

“So do hundreds of other Englishmen,” said Reggie. “Trade representatives going north to Gyantse. Officials of the Raj. Naturalists. Cartographers. Diplomats.”

“But we’re none of those things,” said the Deacon. “One look at our climbing gear and miles of rope and the servants will send the word about us forward into Tibet.”

“How?” asked Jean-Claude.

The Deacon removed his pipe and smiled thinly. “We’re not quite as far off all maps as we feel, gentlemen. Even here in Sikkim. The Raj has run telephone and telegraph wires all the way north to Gyantse, across even the high passes.”

“It’s true,” said Reggie. “We won’t be off the main north-south trade route until we turn west toward Kampa Dzong, well into Tibet. But in the meantime, I believe the only ones we’re fooling with our rugged camping rather than spending relatively comfortable nights in the daks are some of the leeches we’ve encountered.”

Our starting out had been all downhill from Darjeeling to the Tista Bridge. The Sherpas had left before dawn on March 26 with the ponies and loads, and we brought our rucksacks and extra provisions as far as 6th Mile Stone in two rugged trucks, one driven by Pasang and the other by Reggie. There we joined the trekkers while Edward the chauffeur and another man returned the trucks to the plantation, and we and the thirty Sherpas and our ponies and mules continued steeply downhill to and across the Tista River to the Sikkim village of Kalimpong.

We camped beyond Kalimpong because Reggie did not want to give advance notice to the crotchety governor of Sikkim, Major Frederick Bailey, the official who (according to Reggie) had been sabotaging the Everest Committee’s permissions to enter Tibet just so that he might someday get a chance to climb the mountain himself. There was a border guard as we entered Sikkim—a lone Gurkha—who accepted Reggie’s Tibetan travel permit without protest, and we were all amused at the lone guard shouting orders to himself—“Right hand salute!” “Left turn!” “Quick march!” The Deacon informed us afterward that when a Gurkha lacked an officer or NCO to give him orders, he was quite happy ordering himself around.

Twice during our six days crossing Sikkim did brown men in police uniforms catch up to our line of Sherpas and mules and small white ponies, but in each case Reggie took the official aside, spoke to him privately, and—I can only guess—gave him money. In any event, no one tried to stop us in Sikkim, and in just under a week of breathing the over-sweet scent of rhododendrons while pulling leeches off any unprotected parts of ourselves after wading through waist-high wet grasses, we were approaching the high pass—Jelep La—that would bring us into Tibet. We were not sorry to put Sikkim behind us; it rained constantly, and soon all our clothes were sodden; not a day of pure sunlight in which we could lay our clothes and socks out to dry. I thought I was the only one who’d picked up a light case of dysentery during our Sikkim crossing, but I soon realized that it was bothering J.C. and the Deacon as well. Only Reggie and Pasang seemed immune to the embarrassing disability.