Al Hurr

My bedroom window in Lobuche

I think I know my acclimatization habits by now. Once I hit the 4000m mark altitude begins to play its mental tricks on me.

Last night my heartbeat woke me up at 3 am. I had my hand rested under my ear, and my pulse began to creep into my dreams. I saw construction workers and their machine rolling with a persistent sound, DUM… DUM… DUM… until I opened my eyes and discovered that the construction machine was my heart. I was amazed at the amount of work that little muscle was doing, even in my sleep, just to keep enough oxygen pumped to my brain.

I turned inside my sleeping bag and tried to fall back to sleep. I began to see faces of ordinary people I ran into the days before changing into demons. I was wide awake but I had no control over those visions. I remembered the hallucinations I got on Kilimanjaro on my first acclimatization trek above 4000m, and I immediately understood what that was. Still, none of that disturbed me. My body was warm again and that is all that mattered. I actually found those changing faces quite entertaining.

We started our trek in the morning with snow and frost surrounding our path. At this altitude vegetation had already started to change. There were no longer lush green trees on either side of our narrow trails. The blue river that came down from the glaciers was now half frozen. We could still hear it in the distance.

At the beginning of our trek some puppies were rolling on the ground and chasing each other. We stood and cuddled some of them and the mother fell in love with us instantly; she trekked with us all the way to Dughla. We were supposed to gain a further 700m in altitude so we went as slow as possible, breathing systematically to avoid headaches. The dog would run ahead of us, wait, and the minute we reached her she’d start stretching out and yawning: “What a slow bunch… You bore me!”

When it was time for the Dughla Wall she finally left us and went back to her puppies, and we began our steep ascent. By the time we got there I was already beginning to feel weak, and with the rocky path I saw ahead of me I decided to fold my poles, stuff them in my bag, put my hands in my pocket, and rely on my two feet. That created an illusion of being light, it helped me focus on two feet instead of four, and left my hands free in case I needed to pull myself up a rock or use it for support. It was also a good way of avoiding seeing my hands shake on the pole. I didn’t want to be reminded of my weakness, I already knew.

The wind was very strong and the weather was freezing. I was once again faced with the dilemma of needing to take in as deep breaths as possible but worsening my cough with the freezing air I inhaled. Wearing the balaclava under the burning sun rays was no option for me, and each time I breathed through it my breath ended up fogging my sunglasses. So I had to accept the coughing for as long as I could maintain a rhythmic breath.

Chortens built as memorials for climbers who lost their lives in their attempts to summit Mt. Everest were strategically placed at the top of the Dughla Wall. You arrive at a new altitude, struggling for breath, and you are faced with a stark reminder of the smallness of man–a humbling gesture that guards the human ego.

In front of Scott Fischer's memorial. I wished I'd met him in his lifetime.

I walked with careful feet from one chorten to another. The place was silent except for the sound of the fluttering flags. Some were names I was already reading about in my book, some I hadn’t heard of before. Scott Eugene Fischer, who died in the 1996 disaster, Sean Egan, Hristo Prodanov… Known and loved  by their friends and families, each one of them continues to inspire, each of their legacies continues on the mountains, surrounded by prayer flags fluttering in the cold wind.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been too convinced with my smallness, however. I was getting depressed as the walk to Lobuche, our destination for the night, felt like the worst trek I had ever been on. I could barely walk even though the ground was almost even. I got separated from the rest of the group for the first time. Karma stayed with me, carrying everything he needed on the full two weeks on his back, patiently eyeing me in case I needed to stop for rests. And I felt gravity pull me down further with each step. It dawned on me that not only do I make mistakes, I actually repeat them; my backpack was once again needlessly heavy. I had filled it with three liters of water, forgetting again and again that there are often places to stop and buy water along the trek.

There’s no stronger way of saying how freezing it is in Lobuche. I’m running out of words to describe it, and it keeps getting colder as we go higher up. Every bit of my limbs had been becoming almost motionless. The minute we arrived I took off my boots and went to sit by the heater. My feet were so cold I rested them immediately on the heater. They were just beginning to warm up when I began to see smoke coming out of them and I could smell something burning. I jerked my feet and there were two holes in my socks. Amr burst out laughing, and when Omar pulled up a chair and came to join us I told him what had happened. “That’s a very common thing,” he replied. I loved Omar’s cool, relaxed responses to my complaints. They were almost always “That’s normal” or “That’s common.” They made me feel alright. And now that I burned my socks, I felt like I’m officially a member of the mountaineering bunch; as if I got closer to experiencing the little losses of life on the mountains.

I’m sitting now in the dining room with minimum lighting at 4950m. I feel slightly nauseous, and I have a visual patch in my left eye that continues to cover everything I try to focus on. I had bent down earlier and got up fast when suddenly there were stars all over the place. Now the stars have all resided and left me with this fish-shaped patch I see each time I close my eyes. I see far away objects only by closing my left eye. Another little mountain life loss, I guess.