King Richard, who’d built our sleds for Denali, came to Tibet with us. He didn’t plan on summiting. He offered to be our support system and build whatever we needed at Chinese Base Camp and Advanced Base Camp. I was glad to have him along because he loved to joke around.
We arrived at Nepal’s Tribhuvan International Airport about thirty hours after leaving home.
“This is it,” Dad said. “Kathmandu, where every expedition begins and ends. Hillary passed through here.”
Kathmandu lies in a valley surrounded by snow-capped peaks. I wanted to experience every sight, sound, and smell. I hung my head out the van window and watched vehicles and pedestrians move around in complete chaos. Horns honked; dogs barked; children cried. The smell of diesel, incense, and curry filled my nostrils. Vegetable, fruit, and spice carts appeared everywhere as we drove down narrow, cobbled streets.
A man on a wobbly bicycle hurtled toward us, a squawking chicken under one arm. In the split second before the bike swerved, the bird and I stared into each other’s eyes, and I wasn’t sure who was more startled—it or me.
The story of my being in Kathmandu had slowly spread throughout the city. One by one the local and international press arrived, wanting to talk to me. Finally Karen told the next reporter who knocked on our door, “I’m sorry, but we don’t have time for any more interviews now. We need to focus on the climb. We’ll be happy to talk to you on our return.”
The next day we got together with our climbing Sherpas: Ang Pasang, Dawa, and Karma, plus Kumar the cook. The Sherpas had straight black hair, dark eyes, and high round cheekbones. Having read so much about their ability to carry heavy loads at high altitude, I was surprised by how wiry and small they were—probably no more than five feet four to five feet five. I’d had growth spurt and was now five feet ten and a hundred sixty pounds.
Ang Pasang came from a mountain village near Everest and was in charge of all the logistics. Over the next three days he took care of the last details for our climb and tested all our gear.
King Richard bought a bunch of DVDs for a dollar each to bring along.
When all the other details had been taken care of, Ang Pasang had one last task for us. “Now it’s time to test out and learn how to use the oxygen masks.”
We hadn’t needed oxygen for any of our other climbs, but most mountaineers use it for summits in the so-called death zone above twenty-six thousand feet. Only a few of the most rugged (some say crazy) climbers attempt to climb Everest without oxygen. On the summit one breath only gets you about 33 percent of the oxygen that you would get at sea level. That can be deadly.
• • •
Even with all the prep work, we took time to explore Kathmandu. Nepal is mostly Hindu and filled with shrines to the religion’s many gods and goddesses. We passed women in colorful saris making offerings of marigolds and rice to a god with the body of a man, four arms, a potbelly, and an elephant head.
Karen looked him up in her guidebook. “That’s Ganesha, the most popular god in Nepal. He’s the lord of success and remover of obstacles. People pray to him to clear the path before starting anything new.”
“Can we offer something?”
She rummaged through her pack and handed me an energy bar. I offered it to Ganesha and made a request: “Please remove obstacles to bring all of us back in one piece.”
Next we hired bicycle rickshaws beautifully decorated with flowers and brightly painted images of Hindu gods and spirits on their sides, backs, and roofs. Kids no older than me pedaled us around. They reminded me of the porters on Kilimanjaro, working so hard at such a young age to help support their families, and I made sure to tip them well.
We rode down narrow side streets past crumbling brick buildings. Each rooftop terrace had brightly colored saris hanging out to dry like flags fluttering in a gentle breeze. Then we came to a shrine that looked like something out of a horror movie. A statue of a goddess with fiery red eyes and an angry expression stuck her tongue out at us. She wore a necklace of human skulls and a belt of dismembered arms. In one of her own ten arms she held a severed head and in another a skull used as a cup to catch the head’s blood. Her foot rested on a man, who appeared to be dead too.
“Oh man,” Karen said as she thumbed through the pages in her guidebook. “That’s Kali—the goddess of destruction. She sucks the blood of her enemies and then dances on their corpses. That’s her dead husband, Lord Shiva, under her foot.”
I shivered and hoped the goddess of destruction would stay far away from me and the mountain.
I enjoyed seeing Kathmandu, but I was ready to climb. On our last night we packed and weighed all our gear and headed out to dinner.
• • •
The next morning the Sherpas loaded all our gear and food onto a truck, and we climbed into a rented van to begin our journey. From Kathmandu we’d drive to the border and then cross into Tibet.
Communist China took over the country of Tibet in 1950. Human rights organizations around the world have argued for Tibet’s independence ever since, but the Chinese government continues to rule what used to be an self-governing country.
Ang Pasang warned us that the Chinese charged ridiculous permit fees of twenty thousand dollars per satellite phone and ten thousand dollars per professional video camera. They absolutely did not want outsiders communicating or filming anything about their country.
We were worried that some of our gear was going to be a problem. Lots of different media companies wanted to follow our progress on the mountain, and we had agreed to do interviews from the mountain.
“We’ve scheduled times to do live feeds with CNN and CBS through Skype,” Karen told him. We didn’t have a professional video camera, but we did have a satellite phone, a computer, and the BGAN unit for a satellite Internet connection.
“Let’s not take a chance with having anything confiscated,” he said. He carefully wrapped our camera, computer, phone, and the BGAN and packed them carefully deep within the barrels of food and supplies.
I was a little worried about what would happen if we got caught. The Chinese could kick us out or force us to pay a big fine. I was relieved when Ang Pasang assured us we wouldn’t get thrown into a Chinese jail.
We headed north out of Kathmandu on a five-hour drive to the Friendship Bridge between Nepal and Tibet. Leaving the city, we drove through a lush canyon. There were white-water rafters on the river, and we passed a lot of small villages.
No vehicles of any kind were allowed to cross the border. Everything had to be unloaded and carried by hand about two hundred yards across the bridge. It was an amazing sight. Before we’d even come to a complete stop, a mob stormed the truck and began unpacking our bags and barrels of gear. Men, women, and children were yelling at one another in a crazy tug-of-war over the bags we’d taken such great care to pack. Our stuff disappeared in the mass confusion, and ours wasn’t the only truck being unloaded.
“How will we ever get our things back?” I asked Dad.
“They know what they’re doing,” he said calmly.
I watched a kid about eight years old hoist a duffel on his back. It had to weigh more than he did. Wearing flip-flops, he trudged across the bridge and added it to our pile of gear, hoping to be paid.
The Chinese guards inspected our bags, but luckily didn’t find our phones or camera equipment. They were young, only about twenty, but they looked glum and stoic in their starched uniforms. There was a coldness about them that reminded me of the Russian soldiers at checkpoints near Elbrus. Not one of them smiled or even greeted us.
“Ha! Friendship Bridge,” King Richard roared. “These guys are anything but friendly.”
“Richard,” Karen whispered. “Don’t attract attention.”
Amazingly, all of our gear and food arrived at the same spot instead of being lost in a jumble of other duffels. A driver waited for us on the Chinese side of the bridge. He knew the accepted price to pay and handled that for us. I watched the eight-year-old I had noticed earlier dart back across the bridge hoping to grab another bag. The cost of our trip would probably be enough to feed his village for many years.
The Sherpas had already arranged for our climbing permits, and we picked them up at the border. We and every other climber who climbed from the north side in Tibet were forced to hire a liaison officer whose job it was to make sure we followed all the rules. We had to pay his salary, his room and board, and for his gasoline all the way to base camp. Every time I looked at him he gave me the stink eye—I had the distinct impression he really did not want this job.
We climbed into a Toyota Land Cruiser, and our gear, which had been loaded into a truck on the Chinese side of the border, followed behind. The area was humid and almost subtropical, with forests covering the steep hills on either side of the bumpy gravel road to the village of Zhangmu, where we planned to spend the night. Its single narrow, winding street was jammed with trucks and cars, and pedestrians squeezing between the vehicles. Every driver with a working horn seemed to be honking it. Square concrete houses were stacked one after another up the steep hill, clinging to the mountainside.
“We’re definitely in Chinese territory now,” Dad said. “Every road marker states the number of kilometers from Beijing.”
I was checking out the strings of colorful prayer flags draped from roof to roof above the streets. “Why so many of those?”
“They’re part of Tibetan Buddhist beliefs,” Karen said. “The Chinese government destroyed many of the Buddhist monasteries when they first came into Tibet, but Buddhism is still practiced here.”
We left Zhangmu early the next morning and climbed more than five thousand feet on a wicked narrow gravel road barely wide enough for one car until we arrived in the next settlement, at 12,300 feet. Nyalam was another one-street town with faceless concrete buildings.
We stayed in Nyalam for two nights to acclimatize, like everyone else. Everest was a two-month commitment no matter how fit you were. Since I was going to school via independent study, we didn’t have to rush back for anything.
On our first full day King Richard wanted to hang out at the hotel, but Dad, Karen, and I decided to try to get our communication up and running. Doing that in town would draw some unwanted attention from the Chinese, so Dad told our driver that we wanted to go for a hike. Our liaison officer was happy to stay behind when he heard we would be hiking. The driver took Dad, Karen, and me about ten miles out of town until we spotted what looked like a good place to position our equipment. He dropped us off and left with a promise to return in a couple of hours.
Dad and Karen tried to find reception while I checked under rocks for lizards, snakes, or any kind of beetle or spider. We had a live interview scheduled with CNN and were trying to connect with them to test out our camera with the BGAN unit.
“Jordan,” Karen called. “Quick, we’ve got a signal. Come say something on the camera.”
“Cool.” As I shoved a rock back into place, I saw a police car stop right where our driver had left us. My heart shot to the roof of my mouth as I saw myself locked in a Chinese jail before I was even old enough to shave. “Hide. Cops.”
“Get up here to the rocks,” Dad said.
All three of us crouched behind a boulder and eyed one another nervously.
“Why here?” Karen whispered. “There’s no reason to stop in the middle of nowhere in the exact spot we were dropped off.”
We had been warned about how the Chinese felt about people transmitting information. “Are they going to arrest us?” I asked.
Dad held a finger to my mouth. “Shhh. I don’t know.”
My heart was thumping so hard I thought for sure the cops could hear it. But then they walked down the hill instead of coming up toward us.
The whole thing was totally mysterious. We didn’t budge until after the police left. The whole thing was going to be one sick story to tell when I got home.
We headed out again the next day and reached the fourteen-thousand-foot Tibetan plateau. It was amazing how dramatically the landscape changed at that elevation. It was no longer the humid green landscape. There was no sign of vegetation anywhere, just gray desert that spread out in every direction.
I was just starting to doze off when we turned a corner and there it was—Everest. It shimmered in the heat waves rising from the desert.
I took my sunglasses off to get a better view of the mountain. It was right there, that white plume blowing on the summit where it pierced the jet stream. The mountain I had seen in so many pictures. After four years of thinking about this moment and working so hard to get here, I couldn’t find the right words to describe my feelings. I was face-to-face with the mountain of my dreams.
We asked the driver to stop, and Dad, Karen, and I got out of the car.
“Just two more days, J Man, and we’ll be standing at its base,” Dad said.
Being that close changed everything. It was no longer a far-off goal. We were here and this was Everest.
Just standing in the sight of this enormous mountain was a dream come true.
We drove on to Tingri, the last village before base camp. Almost everyone stopped there one or two nights to acclimatize at fourteen thousand feet. There were no trees to supply wood. Buildings were made of mud bricks several feet thick and then whitewashed. The doors were only about five feet tall. I kept forgetting to duck and bumped my head many, many times.
“The doors were built low,” Ang Pasang explained, “to keep tall evil spirits from entering.”
And here I’d thought it was because Tibetans were short. At six feet two, Dad was particularly challenged and had a welt on his forehead to match mine.
Tingri felt like an old Wild West town. Tibetans rode down the dirt streets not on horses but on strange-looking creatures that I learned were called dzos, a male crossbreed between a yak and cow.
We checked into one of the guesthouses. The mud walls and ceilings of our rooms were draped with pink cloth—to keep down the dust and the odors from yak-dung fires. I also suspected they had a major flea population, judging from the hundreds of wild dogs roaming the streets. I gave Tingri a nickname: Dogtown.
In the evening we went out on the porch to look at Everest and chat with teams from South Africa and Europe.
Dad whispered to me as we approached them, “It’s important to remain humble in front of other climbers.”
He didn’t have to tell me that. I knew I was really lucky having the chance to even be there. As always, the conversation turned to me with the same question.
A German asked, “How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
That took everyone back.
“Mon dieu,” said a Frenchman. “So young.”
“I’ve got great parents helping me,” I told him.
King Richard jumped in. “He’s doing the Seven Summits and only has Everest and Vinson left.”
I shot a sideward glance. Apparently he hadn’t gotten the humility message.
The Frenchman gave me a serious nod of approval. “Then you’re a very good, experienced climber. I hope we’ll meet many times on the mountain.”
A big grin spread across my face. “Me too.”
It was cool hanging out with the climbers. Everyone was surprised by my age, but nobody had anything negative to say. I went to bed feeling like I’d been accepted in the international mountaineering community.
Next stop, Chinese Base Camp: seventeen thousand feet.
Beginning tomorrow I’d be tackling the biggest challenge of my life—climbing the tallest mountain in the world.