Stok-La--The Peak

When I woke up on the third day of the trek, my headache had dissipated and I was ready to hit the peak. After a hearty breakfast of milk tea, eggs and porridge and some sort of greasy fried bread, I had enough carbohydrates in me to take Everest itself.



The going was difficult at first with the brittle rocky surface constantly giving way under the pressure of our feet. Our ankles were bent at the angle of the mountain path, which was now little different in texture from the surrounding terrain. The tan color of the mountains below us turned to an alternating gray and magenta, and the angle at which our feet arched increased dramatically. Flat (or nearly flat) surfaces disappeared entirely and I often found myself on my hands and knees in order not to slip down the mountain side. Gusts of wind caught one off balance and led to brief moments panic. The air chilled even further even though there was not a cloud in the sky. Our party and the Israeli party spaced out until I couldn't even see Paul down below. It was late morning and I dared not look up for each time I had earlier, my exaggerated breathing and heightened pulse were exasperated by frustration of how far there still was to go to reach Stok-La.

I cannot emphasize enough how difficult it was to breath. Like a meditating monk, I had to scrutinize my body to make sure I didn't attempt to breath in too deeply or too shallowly or I would fall into a coughing fit reminiscent of an asthma attack. To regulate my bodily exhaustion, I imitated the gait of the pack horses walking just in front of us. Placing their entire weight on the foot they proceeded with, they took a deep breath. For a human, the mode of imitation required NOT walking uphill on the balls of one's feet (as we are naturally inclined to do), but to placed one's foot down putting equal pressure on all parts, from heal to toes. After placing one's foot down and taking only one moderate breath, shifting all weight to that foot before placing the other in front, shifting weight evenly and breathing out.

I utilized this method as much as possible. 300 meters from the top, I stopped for a break and glanced out over the valleys below and the ice-covered glacier peaks that now sat at eye-level. There was some green in the distance but not much.

We had left the tree line far below. As I sat, one troubled looking Israeli inched her way past me, in pain because of altitude sickness. She was determined to make it. By this time, I had been imitating the pacing of the pack horses for 2 hours and had a strong rhythm going. I thought it was pretty impressive for kid from the city who had had asthma as a child to be at 15000 ft. With these thoughts I pressed on step by step, my body aching, my breathing labored but with a smile on my face, the faint expression not fully representing the excitement of the prospect of making it to the top.

The final 200 meters, on my stomach, I crawled up the trailless moutain surface by filling my fists with clumps of rocks that themselves just barely clung to the largers boulders in which they were lodged. Sometimes working only with pebbles, I used my center of gravity to anchor myself to the slope and gain traction to leverage myself toward more firmly implanted rocks.

In this way I sloshed through the rocks and pebbles before me, sending many off the cliff som 50 meters beneath. The very last bit was comprised of large craggy elements that functioned almost like posts signaling that the moutain was giving way to its ascending conquerers. "You have made it!", they bellowed in the deep fatherly voice of Himavat (the name of a god who is the father of Shiva's wife, Parvati, from which the Himalayas is an eponym).

Pulling myself up on these rock posts, I gazed breathless out at the Karakorum mountains to my northwest, marveling at their snow-capped peaks lined up one after another and thinking about both the ancient caravans that moved through them and Osama and his crowd still hold up there. The Karakorum range runs from China southwest through Pakistan and into northeast Afghanistan. That history and modern politics immediately ran through my mind during this final stretch of the trek is, I suppose, a testament to the cosmopolitan tendencies I have been bred with. But they didn't in any way take away from the experience. I felt free and overwhelmed at the same time. But not small.