13

In Times of Chaos

There was no time to wait out. With Biplab so close to death, we descended from the summit ridge as quickly as we could. Every now and then our casualty groaned faintly. This was good news: at least Biplab was still alive. The bad: we’d been forced into hefting him through the peak’s rocky field where the work was roughest, and our casualty was taking a number of bruising hits. But there was no other way to transport him effectively.

During my military career, I’d performed a series of CASEVAC drills where I’d learned that speed was of the utmost importance. When transporting a seriously injured soldier to lifesaving medical treatment, a few extra cuts and bruises in transit were considered collateral damage, because the alternative was to take extra time and care, during which the injured operator might bleed out. Biplab was in much the same situation and there was no time for subtlety or tender bedside manners. There were also the elements to worry about and as the temperature dropped with the sun, the mountain would slowly take our soul.FN13

Weird things stick with a person during chaotic events. I remember the perfect visibility on Kanchenjunga that day and there was a bright blue sky around us. Whenever I took a second to check my surroundings, or the line below, the views resembled a picture postcard, or one of those aerial photos from National Geographic magazine. An hour had passed already, our route home was clearly laid out below, with Camp 4 visible in the distance, but taking into account our current speed I estimated we were approximately six hours away. I prayed Biplab could hold on for that long, but he was only one component in a rapidly deteriorating situation.

How was Gesman holding up? At what point would Mingma feel the effects of altitude sickness? Where was the help?

At around 8,400 metres, as I game-planned our descent, looking out hopefully for our reinforcements and those promised oxygen cylinders, I noticed another climber had slumped in the snow ahead of us. From a distance he seemed OK, his eyes were fixed on the mountains ahead. Maybe he was taking in the scene? But as I got closer, I recognised the same awful expression of fixed terror I’d seen in Biplab an hour or so earlier.

I shook the man’s shoulder. ‘Hey, are you OK?’

‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ he said, introducing himself as Kuntal, as if it was simply another afternoon on the mountain. But Kuntal’s eyes wouldn’t meet mine; he seemed hypnotised by the landscape. Then I registered the awful reality. Fucking hell, I think he’s snow blind.

‘Why are you staying here?’ I said, checking over his situation. When I looked at Kuntal’s oxygen cylinder, it was empty.

‘I can’t get down. My guide has left me. My team have left me, too.’ He seemed resigned to the end. His voice was eerily calm. ‘I think I’m gonna die.’

I looked at Mingma and Gesman sadly. Was this really happening again? Whatever expedition team was responsible for Kuntal had seemingly decided his climbing days were over and that he couldn’t be saved. They must have gone down without him and now we were forced into making a heavy, morally loaded decision.

Should we leave Kuntal to die, too? Or do we risk the lives of our casualties further by adding another person to the risky-as-fuck rescue operation?

As far as I was concerned, there was very little room for debate: on missions I’d been encouraged to leave no operator behind. The rules were certainly very different during high- altitude expeditions, but my attitude had been hardwired, plus it was the reason I used oxygen in the first place.

‘Let’s get this dude down as well,’ I said.

I unclipped my mask and placed it around Kuntal’s face, thankful for the promise I’d made to myself after the rescue of Seema on Everest in 2016. Though I’d been working with bottled air throughout our ascent’s final stages, my vital organs weren’t jolted by the sudden lack of oxygen. It didn’t whoosh from my lungs; my heart rate hardly soared with the physiological reality of Death Zone climbing. Instead I knew my deterioration at high altitude would be slow, but I trusted my body to weather the storm for the next few hours, by which point the rescue team from below might have arrived.

I steadied myself further by remembering I’d previously survived on Everest for several hours with HAPE, so I knew it was in me to survive. The fact I’d then recovered quickly enough to climb again a week or so later gave me hope, but my ever-decreasing chances of survival on Kanchenjunga felt unsettling. When I’d saved Seema on Everest, it had only taken me around an hour to get from her original position to Camp 4, but that was because I’d had oxygen.

Six people were attempting to escape Kanchenjunga; three were incapacitated, and the others, while being physically mobile, had given their oxygen to the casualties within the group. Our descent to Camp 4 was now going to take us a hell of a lot longer. I reckoned that if help didn’t arrive soon, there was every chance that at least one of us would die.

And where were those climbers that were supposed to be helping?

I called down for assistance again. A voice told me not to worry, reassuring me that help was on its way and everything was still cool. Was it the same person? Through the scratch of radio interference, I couldn’t be sure. But when I looked down to Camp 4 in the fading light, there was still no sign of activity. Perhaps our rescue team was gathering together in a tent to plan their mission. If so, they’d have to move fast, because our resources were dwindling away at an alarming rate and we were taking hit after hit after hit.

An hour on from resuming our snail’s pace evacuation, Gesman’s strength had faded. He’d already developed frostbite in his toes during the rescue of Dr Chin on Annapurna three weeks previously and his feet were prickling and tingling again – a sure sign the cold was taking another gnaw at his flesh. For one moment I became worried by his behaviour, too. When I turned around to check on the group, I noticed that Gesman had yanked away Kuntal’s goggles and was jabbing a finger towards his eyes.

Had Kuntal died? Or did Gesman have HACE?

‘Brother! What the fuck?’

‘He’s lying,’ shouted Gesman, furiously. ‘The guy can see. Look!’

He pulled a hand back, as if preparing to smack the casualty across the face. Kuntal flinched. Then he flinched again. Apparently Gesman had noticed Kuntal reacting to one or two moments of danger – but how could a blind man hesitate before making a risky step he couldn’t see? When I then leant over Kuntal and repeated the same test, he cowered with every poke and prod.

Gesman was right!

I groaned. Had Kuntal admitted the truth about his snow blindness, we could have moved at a much faster pace and covered more ground. Instead, fear had caused him to lie. Kuntal wanted us to do the hard work for him, because he’d been too scared to do it for himself. Now he was helpless; he certainly wasn’t thinking straight and my temper broke. I grabbed Kuntal by the hood of his summit suit and pulled him close.

‘What the fuck, man?’ I shouted. ‘Listen, we three are risking our lives for you, carrying you like a dead body. And you’re pretending to be snow blind. Why?’

But Kuntal was too weak to answer. Despondently, Gesman grabbed at his shoulders, lifting him up and we continued walking into the dark, heavy shadows now falling across the mountain. I didn’t have the energy to waste on rage, not with the lives of so many people on the line. My anger passed quickly.

* * *

It was as if we’d been abandoned. Nobody seemed to be coming.

I must have radioed down to Camp 4, or Base Camp, over one hundred times and with each communication I became increasingly disheartened. But despite my rising frustration, I still worked hard to maintain a sense of calm, convincing myself that assistance was on the way. Oxygen was coming.

I knew at least fifty people were sleeping in the tents below. Nearly all of them had summited Kanchenjunga that same day and it would only take a rescue party around two hours to reach our position. Among their numbers were experienced alpinists and solo climbers. There were people I knew to talk to, or to party with at Base Camp, and there were other dudes whose reputations at extreme altitude were beyond question.

Surely out of all those climbers, a small group will feel inclined to help?

With every radio call, the unease increased. Hours passed, our situation became increasingly desperate, and yet the same response was delivered over the radio every time.

‘Someone is on their way to help, Nims.’

‘They’re coming, bro.’

‘Not long now . . .’

But from what I could tell, that someone hadn’t even left Camp 4, unless they were stupid enough to climb without a head torch. No tell-tale lights were approaching from below.

It was around 8 p.m. Judging by my watch, we’d been working through the rescue mission for several hours. The weather was fairly calm, thank God, and there was very little wind, but it was still bitterly cold. Between Gesman, Mingma and myself, we had the skills to survive, but the worrying news was that the oxygen we’d given to our casualties had run low and due to the lack of support from below, morale was fading.

Kuntal, withering under the stress of altitude sickness, seemed unable to communicate; Biplab was deteriorating, too. Then, not fifteen minutes later, as we resumed our slow trudge to safety, I noticed something different about his body as we lowered him down, foot by foot, over the rock and ice. His pained groans had stopped; the instinctive, muscular spasms that braced against our every movement were gone.

Biplab was dead.

Desperately I checked his vitals. ‘Please don’t let all this work have been for nothing,’ I sighed.

But there was no pulse, Biplab wasn’t breathing. I even poked him in the eyes, the one action that usually triggered a response in a seriously injured person, but there was no reaction. When I glanced down at his oxygen cylinder, I realised the awful truth. Biplab’s air had finally run out and his body had failed immediately. Because of the rapid physical decline, my guess was that he hadn’t been acclimatised properly as he’d moved up and down Kanchenjunga’s lower camps in the weeks leading up to his summit push.

‘I’m sorry, brother, we did everything we could,’ I said sadly, pulling his hood down around his eyes.

I looked angrily at the lights of Camp 4. The suggestion that help was on the way had been bullshit and every request for assistance had been ignored – but why? I felt betrayed.

‘People are nasty, man,’ I thought.

The mountain had shown me the truth about who, and what, I really was – on both the climb up, and on the way down, as I’d worked to keep our small unit alive. I could hold my head up high. But a painful reality regarding some of the individuals I’d once respected within the community had also been revealed – the mountaineers sleeping in their tents, as a man had died on the line above them. The people who had claimed, over and over, that help was on its way.

Their truth would be impossible to escape.

* * *

Gesman looked at me fearfully. His frostbite had become increasingly painful and now it seemed as if he could barely walk. He had to go down. At first he protested, arguing that he wanted to fight with the rest of us, but unless he descended to the lower camps there was every chance Mingma and myself would have another casualty to work with. We couldn’t take the risk. Gesman walked off into the darkness as the group said our farewells and apologies to Biplab, leaving him to the mountain. Carrying him for longer would have only slowed down our escape.

Assessing our situation, I reckoned our current position was ordinarily around half an hour from safety, but only if all of us were in a condition to walk fairly quickly. With only two incapacitated individuals to care for now, the journey was likely to take a painful couple of hours, maybe more, but there was no choice, other than to put in the effort. Having descended away from the Death Zone, nearly a thousand metres in altitude, Biplab’s Sherpa was now able to move more freely. Together, Mingma and I pulled and dragged Kuntal; I cajoled the guide during breaks from our heavy lifting, but Mingma was beginning to struggle, too. He was showing the first signs of altitude sickness and when we next stopped to catch our breath, I could tell something was up.

‘Brother, I can’t feel anything in my legs, my face, my jaw,’ he said. ‘I think I need to go down. It’s probably HACE. You’ll have another body to worry about if I stay here for too much longer.’

Mingma was the strongest Sherpa guide I’d ever known. He wasn’t the type to make excuses, or to look for an easy way out. But he was also experienced enough to realise when his limits had been met, and to push past them at that point would have meant certain death. Though I’d be alone on the mountain with a seriously injured climber and a Sherpa, I couldn’t stand the thought of losing a team member to the mission.

To make matters worse, word then came through on the radio that another climber had been reported missing on the mountain. ‘If you see him, make sure to bring him down,’ crackled the voice from Base. I stared angrily at the lights flickering in the distance at Camp 4. Still nobody was moving towards us. Hugging Mingma, I sent him on his way.

‘And tell the others down there what’s happening,’ I shouted after him.

What was I doing? Was I really in the best position to conduct this rescue? For starters, I was without oxygen. Having been on the mountain for over twenty-four hours, I was also physically destroyed, especially after those five gruelling days on Dhaulagiri, with barely any rest – I estimated I’d had a total of nine hours sleep in that time. Every muscle begged me to stop. I dragged at Kuntal’s weight for another two hours, the Sherpa stepping in to help from time to time, until eventually I arrived at the physical crossroads that sometimes takes place during a rescue operation.

Option one was for me to stay with the rescue party, all the while hoping that help and oxygen might arrive soon, though seeing as nobody had stirred from the tents below, the likeliest endgame was that we’d all die from the cold and a lack of air. The second option was to leave Kuntal where he was, moving quickly down to Camp 4, in a journey that would take me fifteen minutes, where I could beg for a rescue party to save him. I knew that enough people would have been well rested by the time I made it down; several climbers were certainly powerful enough to execute the mission, even despite topping Kanchenjunga during the morning. If I could rouse them into action, there was every chance Kuntal and the guide might be saved. I was taking option two.

‘Listen, this oxygen is about to run low,’ I said. ‘If Kuntal’s anything like Biplab, we’ll lose him soon after. But there are people in Camp 4 that I think will listen to me – they’ll come to his rescue. Either you can stay here with him, or you can come with me. It’s your call.’

Once I’d started my descent, the Sherpa tailed me all the way down, the pair of us confident of saving Kuntal’s life, when a weird scene emerged in front of me. Not fifty yards ahead was an old dude, wandering aimlessly around in the snow. He looked ragged, manic; his beard was matted with ice and he was dressed in a reflective summit suit that pinged away the light from our torches like laser beams.

At first, I wondered if the altitude had finally warped my thinking. Was HACE kicking in? No, I quickly realised that what I was seeing was the other missing climber, who I later discovered was called Ramesh Ray, and behind him was a reassuring sight. Finally, after hours of waiting, headlamps were flickering below us in the distance. A rescue party had been mobilised. We rushed down to the lost mountaineer, holding him up until the glowing blobs became people, and the people turned into shouting voices.

‘This guy needs to go down,’ I said as we gathered together. ‘You’re in a better place to take him than me. And the other guy, Kuntal is over there.’

I pointed to where we’d left our casualty with a small oxygen supply. ‘He’s not too far away. Take him some air and go and rescue him.’

The mission was done. Biplab might have been lost to the mountain, but at least his guide, and Kuntal, would soon be safe. Hopefully the other climber was OK as well. Climbing down into camp around one a.m., I found Mingma and Gesman’s tent and crawled inside, pulling the sleeping bag around me for warmth, but resting felt impossible. I was so angry at how our calls for help had been ignored. Why were we lied to, over and over, on the radio comms?

The thought of hanging around for too long with those people felt demoralising and I knew I’d find it impossible to look any of them in the eye when they woke. I brewed a tea and sat silently until it was time to leave the mountain.

* * *

I rummaged through my bag for a pair of fresh socks and packed my kit. I was going to wake Gesman and Mingma, and then I was going to descend to Base Camp, ignoring the waves from passing climbers, avoiding the gaze of anyone who approached me. But first I was going to call Suchi.

Biplab’s death had broken me.

I patched a call through to our home in England. Straightaway, she knew something was wrong, because I rarely called her from the mountains. ‘Nims, what’s up?’ she said. I could hear the fear in her voice.

‘I’ve failed,’ I said, fighting back tears. ‘I’ve failed.’

I retold the story, my sadness twisting into anger. ‘The climbers up here were thinking only of themselves. They say they’re badasses, they boast about how they can climb this mountain and that mountain . . . but where are they now? If one of them had just brought up some air, we would have been fine. This dude would have lived.’

Suchi tried to soothe my distress, but I was too fired up to listen and my mood was to darken even more once I’d woken Mingma and Gesman. Apparently, Rodrigo was dead, too.

During the rescue, stuck between the summit and Camp 4, I was unable to see Kanchenjunga’s peak, but word had reached Mingma that, from a little lower down, the Chilean’s head torch had been visible. It had flickered at the top all night, unmoving, until eventually the battery burned out. His body was now a frozen reminder of a bleak twenty-four hours on the mountain.

At least Kuntal had been rescued and was on his way to a hospital in Kathmandu – or so I believed. While climbing down through Kanchenjunga’s camps, a helicopter had passed overhead. It was flying towards a suitable pick-up point higher up the mountain, and I figured Kuntal would be on board.

I felt relieved, happy that our work hadn’t been for nothing; I’d been so determined to keep everybody alive. But when I arrived at the bottom of the mountain, I was told that the chopper had only collected Ramesh Ray. From what we could tell from the people around us, Kuntal had been left where we’d positioned him, even though the rescue party had been so close and they could have reached him quite easily.

I felt sick, realising the poor bloke was probably still on the mountain and there was no way he would have survived, not without oxygen. I raged at Mingma and Gesman.

‘These people! They take the glory on social media, but they wouldn’t do the job on the ground. They disgust me. When the shit hit the fan, where were they? I’ll tell you: hiding in their tents!’

War had taught me two things about handling mortality. I understood that soldiers died in battles because they were fighting for a cause. (In much the same way, mountaineers died at high altitude because they were testing their levels of endurance in an unforgiving environment.) But sometimes death happened in stupid or preventable incidents, and men and women working in a warzone were killed by friendly fire.

In the mountains, distressed climbers died because they, or the people around them, were ill-equipped to work effectively in deteriorating circumstances. Those situations, to a degree, were painful but understandable – they were usually caused by human error or accidents. But the deaths of Biplab and Kuntal felt totally unacceptable, because their endings had been settled by choice. Somebody could have made an effort to help us. They could have been saved.

And I still have no idea of why the rescue never came.

As far as I was concerned, there were no excuses. In the cases of both Indian climbers, some of the guys sleeping below our position could have moved into action if they really wanted to. After summiting, those expeditions had managed to grab some rest for a few hours. They’d also moved slowly up the mountain, camp by camp, over a few days, so they were better rested, whereas I’d barely slept for five straight nights and had then climbed Kanchenjunga in one push. Yet, I’d been the one doing the rescuing.

I also knew from my experience of running guided expeditions that it was imperative to put the lives of paying clients first, no matter how determined they might have been to reach the summit. In those situations, it was my job to bring them back to reality, or haul them to safety. But it wasn’t like that for others, and the high-altitude mountaineering world, as I was learning the hard way, was cruel and crazy.

As we flew to Everest Base Camp for what would be the last three peaks in Phase One – Everest, Lhotse and Makalu – refocusing on the job at hand became my priority. Yes, three men were dead, but my primary mission was still in place.

I had to leave the ghosts of Kanchenjunga far behind.