Save Yourself

Maybe your name is Heidi, or Peter and you want a story to tell. You’ve read books by Lawrence Hertzog and Jon Krakauer, and now you’re inspired to climb in the Himalayas (where else?). You’ve seen the likes of Ed Viesturs and Annabelle Bond on the Discovery Channel and you want some of that. Maybe you’ve already been there, and like Annabelle, you’re starting to dream of climbing the 7 Summits in a single year, or worse, doing 14 of the world’s highest peaks within 2 years. By now even your skin is something like a goats, and despite the placations of others, you’re off to be a mountaineer. Before you swap your Laz E Boy for Tibet, Nick van der Leek offers a few words of advice.

Into The Wild

Yes, I too had dreams of reaching the top of the world. One lonely man, on a frozen fang of ice, climbing into the jetstream without oxygen. With all the hopes of mankind on my shoulders, could I go where no man had gone before?
My bid for Everest started when I was a pikkie. I’d gotten high in Golden Gate, and not long after that, when I was supposed to be training for an Interstate Biathlon Championship, I was off on the Otter Trail. The Otter Trail made an everlasting impression. Day after day in the fairy tale Tsitsikamma wilderness between the Storms River, beyond Bloukrantz and spilling finally over the mountains onto the long beach at Nature’s Valley. The experience did something intoxicating, on the scale of Obelix falling into a cauldron full of magic potion. I’m not just using pretty words. When I came back from my week in the wild, I was unbeatable at the Biathlon Championships, tying first place with a guy called Almero Strauss, who ought to have been out of my league, especially on the track.

The Good, and the Sleeping Bag

As a lightie we often went climbing in the Drakensberg. There is something hypnotic about Mount Aux Sources, especially the huge brown and black ‘tombstone’ that soars vertically out of an already high mountain. I called it, ‘Death Rock’, and I glanced both longingly and timidly at it from the luxury of the garden paths snaking along the flanks of Mount Aux Sources.
As a light-foot lad I liked the way the air on mountains made my nose burn. It made me think it was clean, and I’d breathe it into my big swimmer’s lungs, and feel restored by the majesty always unfolding around me.
Twice we went up Mount Aux Sources to sleep up there. The first time jaundiced my idea of climbing somewhat. I slept in my sister’s sleeping bag, and so, when I could only pull it a little beyond my navel, I figured it was just small. What had actually happened was the bottom flap had tucked in very tightly under my feet and the sleeper beside me, so when I tried to dislodge it, and nothing happened, I figured, “This is a damn small sleeping bag.”
Only when the sleeper beside me emerged into the brand new morning did I get my first bit of warmth and comfort after a long and blerrie cold night. After 5 minutes of luxurious comfort I had to worm out of it again because we had to pack up the tent and get going!
On the second overnight on the Mount Aux Sources plateau, we found some white twigs, small like gnarled chicken bones, and these were warm and bright, but burnt up very quickly. I recall, when we’d used up our fuel of twigs, we threw dollops of paraffin into the cold soil, and ignited these, making it appear as though the soil was spurting blue flame. We drank rich coffee laced with sweet condense milk. When it is icy cold, these comforts are absolute bliss. Now I was eager to climb even higher.

Playing Chicken under Kili

After exploring some of South Africa’s highest peaks (like Ben Macdhui above the Tiffendale Ski Resort), we were all eager to find another challenge. Then, a few months after Scott Fischer (of the famous Mountain Madness Everest Expedition) had taken a group up Kilimanjaro, we arrived, attached to a big bunch of some 40 climbers from a South African Mountain Climbing Club.
Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania. It’s a very different place, but it’s Africa alright. The icon on our airplane was a giraffe. The landing strip below Kilimanjaro was littered with gray wrecks (much as the roads in the Transkei are littered with rusting busses and cars). The roads are like muddy smears going through very tall and lush tropical forests. Maize plants twice as tall as you’d expect sometimes leapt against the edge of the road.
The road itself has one very narrow lane of flat dirt and cars, and trucks kept moving on this single track in both directions, tirelessly playing chicken. Our driver was very good at it. When another vehicle approached, he’d start hooting, then so would the other driver, and when I could bear it no longer, the other vehicle, most times, made a wild dash off the road, allowing our rickety old bus to swoop through a cloud of unoccupied dust. On either side of these tracks, were muddy dongas and places where the rain liked to form new streams and rivers. It took a while to figure out that our bus driver was not:
a) trying to kill us
b) going to overturn the bus
c) mad
Now we began to look out of the windows for our objective. Kilimanjaro had cleverly surrounded its massive bulk (it’s the highest freestanding mountain on the planet) in thick cloud. At one point, the yellow and pink smoke parted and I caught a fragment of black. Is that it? I expected to see something high, but this fragment was impossibly high. I basically had to turn my head until my shoulders prevented me from looking any higher. “Jeez, that’s high.”

Khubu

Long story short, at 1am on the day of our final push to the summit, we set off from Khubu hut.
Still locked in my psyche was a healthy sense of romance for high altitude climbing. A cold had made a comfortable nest in my throat on the second day up Kilimanjaro, now my alveoli felt like they were filled with nests. That burning feeling I used to like in my nose as a lightie was now more like a furnace in my lungs.
Walking in the dark and cold of this old old mountain, I had to remind myself why we here when no other life forms were. The adventure, the sense of tough, masculine identity, the sheer thrill of the outdoors.
Right, now I remember, on we go.
Again, doubt lingered whether man was such an intelligent life form after all. Chances were good, I felt, that intelligent life hovered here once and went, ‘Hmm. The inhabitants are plain and simple. Let’s move on.’
At 3am and 4am I started to just feel so tired of the repetitive boredom. A few steps up, rest, nothing to look at but rocks in the dark, and the same old pair of boots in front of me and behind me.
What I didn’t expect was the level of misery. Neither did an oom who was intending to be the oldest climber ever to climb Kili (at 72). After only a few steps outside Khubu hut, he stumbled around like a drunk sailor and offered the mountain a letter of resignation. So did quite a few much younger people. The higher you go, the more miserable it gets.
Beyond 5100m all liquid turns to ice, so that my supplies froze and became useless.
If you’re going to climb high, either have your waterbottle close to your body, or put it in a thermos, something that retains its energy.

That Sinking Feeling

The other thing, was that I felt quite sick. I had mild AMS*. Diamox alleviated the symptoms (especially headaches) somewhat. I also felt like my guts had given up. Noxious vapors were merging at both ends, with a disgusting eggy aroma. It’s possible that this was not the mountain’s fault, and also not my body’s fault. Perhaps we were all physically okay, handling the altitude reasonably well, but we’d been fed some pretty old eggs (I wasn’t the only one belching and farting up the cold volcanic slopes).
After 7 hours we reached Gillman’s Peak, and the scenery around us was simply stupendous. If you fail to make enough money to pay for a ticket into space, go to Kili. The view is wicked. Unless you get yourself up a high mountain you’ll never see the immaculate swirlings of space, the immense diamond filled heavens. Unfortunately, and this is the lesson I had the good fortune to learn on Kili, high altitude climbing is not only about stars and scenery, it’s also about misery. It’s not so much uncomfortable or hard, although it can be both, as sheer unadulterated misery. The view, it has to be said, is awesome. Unfortunately, sightseeing feels like the last thing you want to do when you have diarrhea, and your mind keeps coming back to the original question: there’s nothing here, so why are you here?
I yearned for a Steer Burger, and Dolores kept singing in my head, Zoh hombie, Zoh hombie, Zoh hombi,e Zoh hom bie hie hie. . .On the rim of the volcano, it was better. The moon, who had kept a close watch on the all the zombies, had scuttled, like a pearly ship, down the horizon, and on the opposite side of the world, a bright star began to rise. I began to see my world in a whole new way. I saw it for its elementary beauty. Here we were almost 6km high, and our world was just rock, and sun, and air, and ice. And us.
It also felt like we were all underwater. My brain just wasn’t operating very well. The altitude had the same effect on our processing power as spyware on an old PC.
I was thirsty and hungry and fluey and sleepy. Someone offered me some orange juice. It might as well have been champagne. My body got a bit of fire into it again. I started to notice the glaciers and the fumaroles down in the crater.
I stood on the top with our guide, who was also called Nicholas. I handed Mr Steyn my camera and as soon as we struck a pose, the battery caught a chill and died. Finally, after a little massaging, the battery unfroze enough to fizzle back to life. Click.

Going Down

Below Kili’s rim is a giant volcanic dune. It’s just thick gravel. It’s killer to walk up, it takes 7-8 hours. Some of us ran and jumped down it in just one hour. We made it back to camp (below Khubu) at about 15:00. That’s about 14 hours of almost continuous climbing and walking. I’ve done an Ironman in less time than that. The point is, it’s a very long day, when you climb these bigger peaks.
The cold I had going up really dug in its heels by summit day, but it vanished as soon as I was off the mountain.
Kili is an awesome experience, but going higher seems like pure masochism.

Going Up?

So herein lies the lesson. If you climb Kili and you still want to go higher, as in Himalayas high, to 8 000m and more, then fine. But remember Kili is still 3km lower than Mount Everest. Base Camp at Mount Everest is already 5 300m, and you’ll spend more than a month there, and higher.
Many people suffer from the Khumbu cough. The air is very dry, and the body becomes weak in these perpetually cold and rarefied conditions. It’s not easy to maintain a good diet, and the digestive system is apt to break down. That’s not fun at altitude, where keeping many layers of clothes on at all times tends to be a priority.
When climbing mountains, your greatest resource is willpower, and an ironwill will get you very high indeed. But it can also get you killed. That same determination (or is it ambition) is what climbers have to guard against when they climb against their better judgement.
Even on Kili, you only have so much daylight to get back down the mountain. You leave your hut at 1am, and you’re finished by 3pm if you’re quick. Some in our group only got back at 6pm.
On Everest, you leave Camp IV at midnight, and if you’re lucky, and if you’re quick, you’ll be back in your tent 18 hours later. And then you’re still at 7900m with a lot of work left to do. At Camp IV, on Mount Everest, if you want a drink of water, you may have to wait about an hour to melt blocks of snow or ice. How long depends on how strong the stove is that has been lugged all the way up the mountain. Are you tough enough to sleep in a tent filled with frost for days and days and days? Would you mind if it took you 10 minutes to tie your shoelaces, and an hour to get dressed?
The hardest thing on a high mountain is to turn back before you reach the top. It’s usually not a question of can I reach the top, but will I have it in me to survive the long climb down? It’s not only a question of will, at these altitudes; it’s a question of making good time, always having reserves of energy and good weather. Few climbers, within sight of their goal, realize that the summit is at best, a halfway point. It’s not the finish line. Giving up is never easy, and many climbers on Everest have walked over dead bodies towards the summit, unable to quit, unable to lay waste all the thousands of dollars and hours of camping and suffering and misery already invested in search of the summit.

Next

So is the Himalayas for maniacs? Not quite. I reckon a lot of egos are up there that ought to know better. But it is also an ultimate testing ground, and some souls seem to need that.
As for me, I haven’t given up after Kili. I’d like to climb one or two summits on other continents. Maybe I’ll start with Aconcagua. It’s a step up from Kili at about 7 000m. And it’s right next door, in South America? Who’s coming with me?

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