Day 24 – Escape from Base Camp

Saturday, 26 April 2014 – Kathmandu, Nepal

The end is near. It’s our earliest breakfast since we arrived at Base Camp, apart from that fateful day when we intended to climb into the Icefall. Our helicopters are booked to leave Pheriche at 2.30, and Phil says it will take three hours to walk there. Using the simple formula that any journey on foot takes twice as long as Phil says it will, I calculate that it will take us six hours to get there. We therefore need to leave early.

We take breakfast at seven o’clock. Afterwards I pack away my sleeping bag and all the other things I won’t be needing for a while. Our kit bags have to be carried down by porters, and they won’t arrive in Kathmandu until Wednesday. I’m the last to finish packing. I miss a group photo with our Sherpas, and my teammates have all left camp by the time I carry my kit bag to the storage tent. But Tarke, who is coming to Lukla with us to make sure everything is OK, is still waiting for me.

I soon catch up with the stragglers in the boulder fields on the fringes of camp. By the time I reach the moraine ridge I have overtaken them, and find myself walking alone for the next hour. It’s an opportunity to contemplate our expedition and consider all the things that have happened in the last week and a day. Nothing seems to make sense.

I catch up with the remainder of the team – Robert, Jay, Kevin, Ian, Ricardo and Mel – a short distance beyond Gorak Shep. They are waiting for herds of yaks and trekkers coming the other way. Most of the trekkers look tired, but at least they won’t be weighed down by the sense of dejection that we are. I wonder how many are even aware of the momentous events that have just taken place at their destination.

As for us, we move quickly, as though fleeing, which isn’t far from the truth. I take consolation from the landscape. Whatever happens to humans here over the next few years, the scenery will remain peerless and majestic.

I stop for a rest and a drink at Lobuche, where our group divides. The speedsters – Kevin, Ian and Jay – disappear off in a puff of whatever it is that powers them. Ricardo and I leapfrog one another for the rest of the way. We stop for more photographs at the memorials above the Thok La. Ama Dablam forms a pinnacled backdrop, and I wonder how long it will be before there are sixteen more cairns here.

Memorial cairns at the Thok La, with Kangtega rising up behind

We need to check Ricardo’s map to find the trail down to Pheriche, as we took a different route on the way up. An obvious trail leads down a gully to a broad valley. We are now some distance beneath the high plateau we crossed after leaving Dingboche seventeen days ago. I see Pheriche in the distance ahead, but Ricardo is even more anxious than me to reach it. He overtakes me at a run; I don’t bother trying to keep up.

I cross streams and yak pastures, and reach the village some way behind him. I walk into a likely looking teahouse that advertises free Wi-Fi. There’s nobody there that I know, but a little further along Jay emerges from another one wearing his cowboy hat. They have chosen this particular teahouse because it is right next to the helipad. Ian, Kevin, Ricardo and Mel are sitting inside drinking San Miguel beer.

It’s barely 11.30, and for once Phil was right about the time. We have raced down here, keen to get away from this dream world of high mountains that offered so much, but left us disappointed, sad and bewildered.

It toys with us one last time. By 2.30 a grey mist has enveloped the valley and there is little chance of a helicopter landing. It seems that there is nothing we can do but drink more beer and accept that we must spend the night in Pheriche. But at four o’clock, when the mist seems as thick as ever and there is still no hope of getting out of here tonight, we hear the sound of helicopter blades somewhere overhead.

We couldn’t have reacted more quickly had a yak charged into the teahouse, aimed its horns at our table, and started pawing the ground. We leave our beers unfinished and rush outside with our packs.

Two helicopters have landed on the scrubby field behind the teahouse. How many of us will be able to pile in? I’d heard that at this altitude they will only fly with a maximum of four passengers. More in hope than expectation, I try to squeeze in as a fifth passenger, resting my pack on my knees. The pilot doesn’t try to stop me. I’m even more surprised when Tarke gestures for me to move up, and he jumps in beside.

The doors are closed and we feel the chopper rising off the ground. Everything seems to happen so fast. The cloud has evaporated, and within an instant we are flying down a forested valley, with Tengboche Monastery on a ridge below us.

There is a repeat performance after we land at the helipad in Lukla a few minutes later. It’s only 4.30, and here in the Dudh Khosi Valley, 2,000m lower down, it’s a beautiful afternoon. The rest of our team managed to squeeze on to the second chopper, and we are all here. It seems like there’s a good chance we’ll be back in Kathmandu tonight after all.

But there are only two choppers, and another team is already boarding one of them. A representative of the helicopter company approaches me.

‘Only six on first helicopter,’ he says.

‘But it will fly to Kathmandu and come back for the others tonight?’ I ask him.

‘Maybe,’ he says, but he doesn’t look hopeful.

‘Women and children first,’ I hear someone say.

That means Margaret, Edita and Caroline. We give Mel a seat because his wife is arriving in Kathmandu tonight. I’m a little surprised, and more than a little pleased, when Ian and I are given the other two seats. I can only assume this is because they regard us as children.

I can hardly believe my luck. I don’t think any of us can. Within seconds we are inside again. The chopper rises from the ground and we are flying over forested ridges and miles of rice terraces. We are all grinning like children now. Edita sits in the passenger seat in front of me. She turns her head, and her smile is as wide as the South Col.

What an expedition. Was it a holiday or an ordeal? A dream or a nightmare? I think it will be a long time before we know.