early the next morning. He was loaded down with enough gear to crush a donkey.
“Maybe we should lighten your load,” I suggested. “You don’t have to haul all of the gear in one load.”
He smiled. “Nonsense. It just looks bulky. Most of it is dried plants. I think we should go one at a time. Who’s next?”
“I’ll go,” I said.
“Good. We’ll take the animals last.”
We watched him cross.
“The boards are very slippery,” Alessia said. “The bridge, it wiggles. And the ropes give splinters in your hands. Do you have gloves?”
“Yeah, we all do,” Ethan said. “Peak brought his cold weather gear for when he catches up with his dad.”
“Mittens won’t work on those ropes,” I said. “But ridiculously, I do have a pair of light climbing gloves.” I pulled them out. Mom had stuffed them into my pack just before I left the apartment. Gloves are not something you need in sweltering Yangon, and she didn’t know I was going to try for Hkakabo Razi, or be crossing rope bridges. They were half-finger climbing gloves, which I never use. I prefer to climb with just chalk on my hands, because gloves make your hands sweat. I put them on and started across.
It didn’t just wiggle, as Alessia put it—the bridge swayed wildly and vibrated with every step I took. It was like walking a loose tightrope. But she was right about the boards being slippery. The long span across the ravine was shaped like a U. It was worse going down with my pack pushing me forward than it was going up with the pack dragging me back. But with all that, I still made pretty good time, as did everyone else, getting everything across except for the donkeys.
One porter stayed with the donkeys each trip with our supplies. When we had everything across, a second porter joined the lone porter to help lead the donkeys.
“We have to bring them over together,” Nick explained. “They won’t go alone—herd instinct—but they’ll do fine roped together. Strength in numbers and all that.”
The string started across, single file, tied together, a porter in the lead, a porter in the rear.
All went well until they were about fifty feet away from us. The lead donkey suddenly jumped and kicked the donkey behind, which caused a chain reaction. The donkeys lost their footing and started sliding backward on the slick planks. Their legs tangled. The bridge started swaying wildly. Ethan and I shot forward to help, but Nick stopped us.
“No! Let it settle!”
It was hard to do nothing with the porters clinging to the rope railings for dear life and the donkeys braying in terror.
“The anchors, they look good!” Alessia shouted from behind us.
She’d had the sense to check the only things stopping the bridge from plunging into the raging river. It took several minutes for the bridge to settle down and a couple more minutes for the first porter to stir. He slowly untangled his legs from the lead donkey and got to his feet. He said something to the other porter, who then also stood. The donkeys remained where they were, two of them on their knees, two on their sides. They were either too frightened to stand or knew to wait for the porters to get them up. The porters gently coaxed them, one by one, to a standing position. When they were all up, the string finished the crossing as if nothing terrible had happened, except for the two porters loading quids of betel nut into their mouths with trembling hands to calm their nerves.
Nick talked to them for a few moments about what had happened.
“They say that the lead donkey was stung or bitten,” he translated. “The best thing to get past this is to move.”
An hour later, we were back on the narrow trail. We didn’t stop to climb a tree or collect a single plant. Nick wanted to get over the second bridge before dark.
“There’s a village a few kilometers on the other side,” he said. “Or there was a couple of seasons ago when I was last here. They have a market. I’m getting low on essentials. Rice, tea, sugar, flour. If I don’t replenish soon, I might have to make myself a slingshot.”
We were getting a little low on food too, because we were trying to keep most of it in reserve for Hkakabo Razi, where there wouldn’t be any food. A slingshot wouldn’t help us. There was nothing to shoot above fifteen thousand feet.
The second bridge was shorter, more substantial, and twice as wide as the first bridge. Nick didn’t bother unpacking the donkeys, which saved us a couple hours. They trotted across so fast they nearly trampled the lead porter.
We reached the outskirts of the village at dusk, tired, sweaty, and filthy, but happy to have made such good time. A girl and a boy, maybe eight or nine years old, ran up to us smiling. The girl held her hand out and opened it. Lying on her palm was a tiny monkey foot.
“Good lord,” Nick said.