The next day, after taking Arjun back to the orphanage and while we continued to wait on official adoption paperwork, Rob, Kami, and I flew toward the second half of our Nepali adventure. Six years before, while trekking into the Mount Everest base camp, my team and I had passed by a mammoth ice climb across a deep valley from Namche Bazaar, the capital village of the Khumbu. Pasquale described it as a line of bluish-white ice snaking up three thousand feet through deep clefts in a vertical cliff face. Kami told us its name was Losar. Although I had 99 percent of my brain focused on Mount Everest, 1 percent was left to dream about this incredible line of ice. Someday, I thought, I’d love to come back to climb it.
So now, Rob and I were on our way, flying over the Khumbu Valley in an A-Star 350 helicopter, the cabin vibrating and rattling my teeth. The thwop thwop thwop of the rotors whirred at high speed. Kami pointed my gloved finger out the window and yelled in my ear, describing the huge river drainages below and the massive white-capped mountains rising above. We passed over steep rocky ridges, dramatically contrasted on each side: flinty, brown, and treeless on the southern exposures, and dense green forests sloping steeply downward on the north. We took a swooping right, and Kami and Rob began shouting as Losar came into view out the left window. It was a thin strip of white shooting straight down a gorge and disappearing into the mist. From a distance, Rob said it appeared like a moving, flowing waterfall.
Kami said its name, Losar, was Tibetan, Lo meaning year and Sar meaning new. The Tibetan New Year was one of the most festive celebrations in Sherpa culture, spanning over a couple of weeks, with ceremonial offerings to the gods, dancing, feasting, and drinking a substantial amount of chang. “On the Tibetan New Year,” Kami yelled, “the Sherpani women will wait until the first rays of the sun and then run out to fill their buckets in the streams.”
He said that was the most sacred and pure water of the year, and to drink it signified good luck. The timing was perfect, I thought. Tibetan New Year started in about a month, just as the ice of Losar would begin to melt. So perhaps we’d be touching the same water that would be filling Sherpa buckets in the coming year.
Then our helicopter banked again, and we shot across the gorge to the steep slopes rising up the other side. Rob pointed out a succession of terraced agricultural fields perched along the ridges. Then Kami shouted, “Namche Bazaar!” He described the narrow rooftops of sky blue, sea green, and coral red, all crowded together, ascending up the hillside. I knew from my past trips that Namche Bazaar was a stunning sanctuary, the gateway to climbing in this region, but it was also one of the most unlikely places for civilization—so severe and inhospitable.
Above Namche, we landed on a flat expanse of pasture, carved out of an impossibly steep mountainside. Sir Edmund Hillary had landed in this same spot. His greatest contribution to this area was the school he built in the village of Khumjung with the help of the Sherpa community. There was a statue of Hillary standing proudly in the playground. In the Khumbu, he was revered as much for his outreach in the years after his ascent of Mount Everest as for the climb itself. Tragically, his wife and daughter landed here as well. They were meeting him to help with one of his many development projects, but the pilot got disoriented, and the plane slammed into the mountain, killing everyone on board. So as I stepped out, feeling the brilliant sunshine, and the sky that felt open and clean, I knew these mountains were equal parts joy and heartbreak. I contemplated that dichotomy as we piled our bags in a heap. Then we hiked down to the bottom of the airstrip where the ground plunged away, and Rob used the telephoto lens of his camera to look a mile across the deep valley at Losar.
“It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Only in Nepal can you see a frozen waterfall surrounded by semitropical vegetation like rhododendron and bamboo growing out of the cliff bands.”
Losar had only been climbed a few times, and, unlike most Himalayan classics that ended at the top of a mountain, the frozen waterfall topped out on a rolling grassy terrace. Beyond, the mountain of Kongde Ri continued ascending, muscular and jumbled, like knuckled fists. Human conquests could sometimes feel arbitrary and false, like the case I’d heard recently of a climber being dropped off via helicopter near the top of a peak. The person had only climbed the final ridge and descended back to the helicopter before being whisked back to the city. I had also heard stories of Mount Everest climbers taking breaks from their expedition by flying from basecamp to Kathmandu for a few days of R&R poolside at the five-star Yak & Yeti hotel. Afterward, they were flown back to the mountain to resume their expedition. At best, it was a blurry line between achievement that felt substantive and achievement that felt more about appearance.
Conversely, the trip I’d led in Tibet had felt like a potent discovery. Even though we hadn’t actually reached the high point of Lhakpa Ri, I’d come home with gifts that I’d carried with me that had helped guide the map of my life. So it felt good to sever the ties to external summits. Perhaps this would unburden me in a way to simply climb for its own sake, for the sake of those other kinds of summits that felt less tangible, obscured by mist and buried deep beneath the surface. I was just beginning to comprehend the meaning of these kinds of summits, and I was finding they took patience and devotion, like waiting for the ice to melt in order to taste the sacred water locked inside.
Losar was a climb that ended in a yak pasture, on the flanks of an even higher peak. It was a climb to nowhere, yet what a spectacular climb it was. As Rob looked south across the valley, he described the line of ice narrowing down like an hourglass in the middle. “I’m not even sure if there’s enough ice for us to climb,” he confessed.
He looked through his telephoto lens again and described the crux near the top, giant protruding columns of ice that hung in space like prehistoric mushrooms.
“I’m honestly not sure if there’s a way through them,” he reiterated.
The next day, Rob and I hiked up and down the many stone steps, snaking through the narrow alleyways of Namche Bazaar and exploring the markets. Tibetan traders herded yaks over high mountain passes, the animals burdened with all kinds of trinkets to be sold: intricate gilded yak bells hanging from thick leather collars, sheep wool blankets, sacred singing bowls and prayer wheels, and jewelry inlaid with amethyst, turquoise, and coral.
That afternoon, we relaxed on soft Tibetan rugs in our teahouse, drinking milk tea. Namche Bazaar was over eleven thousand feet in elevation, so Rob and I needed to rest and acclimatize. But it was hard because Rob could never sit idle. In fact, his friends had nicknamed him the Hammerhead because of his hardheaded desire to always be doing some sport or activity. For example, when he had moved from his home in Santa Barbara, California, to Colorado, he had honored his time there with a multi-activity adventure weekend, completing thirty different distinct events from rollerblading the steepest road in the city to rock climbing, kayaking, and scuba diving to the bottom of an old oil rig outside the harbor.
Even though we both lived outside of Denver, it had taken a chance meeting in Antarctica to bring us together. We were on separate expeditions to climb Vinson Massif, the tallest peak in Antarctica. I was continuing my Seven Summits quest, while Rob was part of a production crew filming an episode of the Nova science series. His team, including notables Conrad Anker and Jon Krakauer, were studying the dramatic effects of climate change on Antarctica, as well as trying to complete a new route up Vinson. Our teams were both waiting out bad weather at the communal camp called Patriot Hills, next to the blue ice runway scoured by constant, fierce crosswinds. We were bundled in down suits, sitting around a folding table, when Rob and I realized our houses were ten miles apart from one another. “Howdy, neighbor,” Rob had said, cheerfully patting me on the back. We’d made plans to get together, but once back home again, I’d been busy training for Primal Quest, a nine-day adventure race through the Sierra Nevadas. Rob had also been busy sprinting around the world as an adventure filmmaker, so we failed to connect again.
* * *
Three years later—in the fall of 2003—my team and I were in our fifth day of Primal Quest, about mile 300 out of 537. We’d already kayaked fifteen miles across Lake Tahoe, tandem mountain biked over a sixty-mile mountain pass, ran thirty miles, crawled through caves, ascended a thousand-foot rock dome, and paddled inflatable kayaks down the American River. We’d just gotten out of our boats and were running over loose river stones, my wet feet grinding against the inside of my boots and my ankles twisting and turning at irregular angles, when I heard a chipper voice behind me say, “Howdy, neighbor.”
Turns out, Rob was one of the film crew. He’d followed the winning teams to the finish line and then was assigned to follow the slower teams. For the next few days, he ran behind us filming, joking, and laughing with our team. When I struggled to tie a bowline knot, I heard Rob’s voice over my shoulder say, “You want to trail the rope the other direction, around to the right.” And then, “Sorry. I’m actually not supposed to give advice.” And later when I was trying to find the right-size wrench to raise my bike seat, he said, “It’s the next size up.” And then, “Oh, sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t be helping.”
When he left to follow another team, we were sad to see him go. Rob’s even-keel disposition, his sunny optimism, and even his inexhaustible advice had been motivating.
Near the end of the race, we only had one more hurdle left: another boating leg, this one a midnight paddle across Lake Tahoe to the finish line. I hadn’t slept in thirty hours and was so exhausted I’d begun to hallucinate, seeing students from my former middle school cheering me on from the sidelines. As I pulled my clothes from my backpack and laid them out in front of me, I tried to clear my head and stay focused. Then I heard a familiar voice coming from over my shoulder. Rob was there again, clearly noticing my inadequate layering.
“It’s going to get pretty cold out there,” he said quietly. “Do you have anything else to put on?”
“That’s it,” I admitted. “As they say in adventure racing, ‘Fast and light.’”
“As you well know, mountains can be cold,” he continued, “but when you’re wet, it’s a whole other story.”
I heard him reach into his backpack and rustle around. “I’m really not supposed to lend any help during the race,” he said, “but I think you’re going to need this,” and he slipped me a fleece top. I put it on and, for the next four hours, paddled furiously across the lake. I was in the front of our four-person kayak and took the brunt of whitecaps constantly slapping me in the face. When we dragged our boat onto the beach at 4:00 in the morning and trotted up to the finish line, I was soaking wet and shivering uncontrollably. For the next hour, I had to sit in front of a big heater before I could stop my body from shaking. Without Rob’s extra layer, I would have definitely gone hypothermic, and from that moment on, I loved the guy.
* * *
For dinner back in Namche Bazaar, Nepal, Rob and I started with a big plate of momos—boiled dumplings filled with potatoes and spices. When it came to Nepali food, I was a little leery. I’d had episodes that had laid me out for days, one time in particular after a meal of poorly cooked yak steak. At the Mount Everest base camp, we’d often referred to breakfast as “salmonella and eggs” and “E. coli and toast.”
Rob, however, was just the opposite. He had no inhibitions when it came to food, and he seemed to have an ironclad constitution. The only one who could come close to competing with him was Arjun, and I’d witnessed meal after meal with the two of them going elbow-to-elbow as the plates piled up on the table. Together, they were spectacular to behold. Once I’d invited Rob to Taiwan, where I was speaking to a Chinese company. Afterward, our host had treated us to the local cuisine with an endless stream of delicacies. It was as though they had gathered up the most exotic, and in my opinion, most disgusting collection of animal parts in the world. The first offering was what the waiter called a “century egg,” and after inquiring, I’d learned it was a pigeon egg, aged for several months. Hearing that, I pretty much gave up and spent the rest of the night shaking my head and politely declining, while Rob treated it like the chance of a lifetime.
“Jellyfish salad?” the waiter asked.
“Sure. Why not?” Rob replied.
“Braised duck tongue?”
“Sounds delicious!”
“Raw sea urchin?”
“Most definitely!”
“Stinky tofu?”
“Wouldn’t miss it!” Rob exclaimed.
When the waiter approached with the stinky tofu, I could smell it from five feet away.
Wincing, I said, “Rob, it smells like dirty socks.”
“It’s the national dish of Taiwan,” Rob retorted. “And it has to be fermented a really long time to obtain that special bouquet.”
When a lump of coagulated pig’s blood was placed in front of us, I almost gagged. “Big E,” he said, “you’re such a lightweight,” and he happily chewed away. “A texture like Jell-O, and surprisingly delicate!” he declared, waving a piece under my nose as I quietly dry-heaved and hoped the other patrons didn’t notice.
So sitting with Rob in our teahouse in Namche, I smelled the next course arriving, a very pungent nak cheese pizza. I slowly let out a breath and willed my stomach to stop grumbling. At the best of times, nak cheese had a gamy scent; at the worst, it resembled stinky tofu, and it was now bringing up nauseating memories of my dinner with Rob in Taiwan. After a few bites, I said, “You want the rest?”
“Big E,” he replied eagerly, “when it comes to food, you never have to ask.”
I smiled as I recalled Rob’s other nicknames, “You Gonna Eat That” and “the Food Raker,” earned through his reputation of hovering over everyone’s leftovers at the end of a meal. My plate scraped across the table, and the sound was immediately followed by vigorous chomping. He attacked the rest of my pizza with the same ardor as he attacked an ice face. I pictured him leaning over the plate, elbows spread, eyes half-closed, lips smacking, savoring each bite like he was gazing upon the Sistine Chapel.
As we whiled away the hours, Rob’s palate was a point of curiosity to me. When a moment of boredom set in, I could always reinvigorate the conversation by firing questions at him, trying to find a weak spot in his defenses.
“I know you love food,” I said, “but what’s your favorite thing to eat?”
“I like everything,” he replied.
“But if you could just choose one thing,” I pushed. “Your absolute favorite.”
“I have no preference,” he pushed back. “I like it all.”
“But nobody likes everything,” I insisted. “You must have something you don’t like, or maybe something you like, say just a little bit more than you like something else.”
“Nope,” Rob proclaimed. “I love it all.”
“So you’d eat cardboard?”
“Of course not, Big E. It has to be something edible.”
“It’s edible to termites,” I argued.
“Edible to a human being’s digestive system,” he clarified.
“So would you eat chicken feet? Or snake?”
“Of course. Actually, I’ve eaten both of them. With the right seasoning, snake can be quite tasty.”
“Aha!” I said. “So without the right spices you would find them less tasty?”
“You’re confused, Big E. I never said I didn’t prefer food that is well prepared to food that is poorly prepared. What I’m saying is that I like every variety of well-prepared food: fried grubs, roasted porcupine, squid sautéed in its own ink, cane rat. Shall I continue?”
“No,” I said, feeling defeated.
Even though I teased Rob for being a glutton, I knew his love for food really reflected a broader approach to life. Some climbers were known for mastering incredibly difficult rock climbs. To ascend a face rated 5.13, the very best climbers in the world might prepare and rehearse for an entire year or more, working out each painstaking movement until they’d connected the dots to the top. But Rob never had the patience to spend the time required to work a route over and over again. Rob yearned to know what was around the next corner. He wanted to breathe in, feel, experience, and taste everything new, and that included food. I guess you could say he was the ultimate adventure glutton.
Thirty sports in one weekend? “Sure. Why not?”
Another helping of coagulated pig’s blood? “Most definitely.”
Lead a blind guy up a three thousand–foot ice climb? “Wouldn’t miss it.”
The next day, we weaved down the trail switchbacking out of Namche, which grew progressively steeper and narrower. Some places we had to down-climb boulders and exposed roots. The trail was primarily used by woodcutters searching for firewood. At the bottom, the Sun Kosi River churned down the valley. I crabbed across the two wet, icy logs that comprised the bridge, with cold spray surging up and enveloping me. Rob and Kami spotted me from front and back, and I knew a slip would most likely result in death.
On the far side of the river, there was a small, flat clearing where we set up camp, and afterward, we slogged up the thick, forested hillside to scout the climb. After two hours of thrashing through vegetation, we arrived at the base of Losar. Rob looked up the steep, freestanding pillar of ice that made up the first part of the climb, and conditions were far from ideal. We decided to climb a couple of rope lengths to get a better sense, and the ice felt rotten and mushy by sun exposure. In some sections, the ice was melting into slush that gave no purchase to our ice tools. Icicles and stones were raining from somewhere above. Standing on a little ledge at the top of the first rope pitch, a big chunk of ice screamed right by me and exploded below. A hit from a piece of ice that size would break your shoulder, or, even worse, your spine.
At 3:00 A.M., the rooster alarm on my watch began crowing, and we lay in silence for a few minutes. Rob checked the thermometer he’d hung on the tent. “Not good,” he said, shaking his head. “Twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, and this is the coldest part of the day. That means the high may reach fifty degrees. Ice and sun—they’re not really a good mix.”
“Do you think there’s a way to do this relatively safely,” I asked, “like are there some ice caves where we could hide to escape from the falling ice and debris? Are there ways we can traverse off to the side if the day heats up too much?”
“Remember the chunk of ice that flew by you yesterday? That was the size of a suitcase, but hovering near the top of this thing are truck-size daggers of ice. We’d be climbing straight up a gun barrel, and if one of them cut loose, we’d be in the direct line of fire. There’d be no way to escape.”
As we debated, I remembered the story of Rob climbing the Cassin Ridge on Alaska’s Denali. The Cassin consisted of steep, technical alpine ice rising straight to the summit at 20,300 feet. He and his partner had struggled upward through a battery of storms that scoured the mountain. It had ultimately taken them thirteen days, with only an eight-day supply of food. The team in front of them had tried to traverse off the ridge to get to a safer spot; their broken bodies were found a week later. Rob and his partner had hunkered down inside an open crevasse with avalanches hammering over the lip above them.
So sitting in our tent at the base of Losar, I knew Rob wasn’t overplaying or underplaying the situation. He was presenting the facts and allowing me to make the right call.
“Let’s say we climb this thing,” I proposed. “There’s a 90 percent chance we reach the top, and there’s a 10 percent chance we get taken out by ice. That about right?”
“That’s about the size of it,” he said. “How are those odds for you?”
“Not so good,” I said glumly.
“Before we left,” Rob continued, “Ellie put in a direct request for me to bring you back alive. If I brought back a dead blind guy, I don’t think she’d ever forgive me.”
I smiled and said, “I’d never forgive you either.”
“You wouldn’t be much of a factor,” Rob replied, “because you’d be the dead blind guy.”
“You’ve got a point there,” I replied.
“Losar will always be here,” he finally said, “but I have a prerogative to bring you home for the sake of your family, for Arjun. He’s gonna need his dad.”
After that, it was an easy call. We packed up our camp and began trudging back up toward Namche. Following the bell jingling from Rob’s trekking pole, I posed, “So say I did die, and you’re trapped next to me. There’s no escape. Would you eat me?”
“Big E!” Rob said exasperatedly.
“Human beings are edible,” I added, “if you’re a cannibal.”
“You’re definitely fattening up in your old age,” he quipped, “so yeah. I’d probably try a couple of bites.”