We drove down the road for another mile or so, then came to another stop. At this rate it would take us a year to get to Kathmandu. Yogi and Yash hopped out of the truck and started unloading gear.
"What's going on?"
"Team C," Zopa answered.
"What are you talking about?"
Instead of answering Zopa pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me.
Sorry about the dramatics, but we had to make it look good so Captain Shek would think you and Sun-jo were gone and stop looking for him. I also had to appease my bonehead clients. It was the only way I could get you to the summit before your birthday. Zopa's idea. (I told you he was cagey.) He'll take you up to ABC along a different route. He's under strict orders to keep you alive. If he doesn't, your mom will kill me. I hope you make it to the top, but if you don't, no worries.
Josh
I read the note over twice, then looked up at Zopa. He was smiling.
"We will take a shortcut to ABC," he said. "But we will have to move quickly before Captain Shek discovers our deceit."
I wasn't sure if I was angry or happy with him and Josh. It had been a cruel trick. I understood why they had done it, but they should have trusted me to play a role. I could have pulled it off, and I was about to tell Zopa this when Sun-jo came over the top of a small hill and waved.
Aside from the rumbled porter clothes and the grass in his hair from Gulu's yak, he looked ready to climb.
SHORTCUT
GULU HAD HAULED a lot more than Sun-jo out of the porter camp. On the other side of the hill was a small mountain of climbing gear. Coils of rope, oxygen bottles, masks, tents, food ... I wondered how we were going to get it to the upper camps.
On our backs, as it turned out, because Zopa went right to work dividing the gear into five separate piles. As he sorted through the stuff I asked Sun-jo what was going on. He didn't know much more than I did. He said that Gulu had woken him in the middle of the night and told him that they had to leave the porter camp right away.
"At first I thought Captain Shek had discovered I was there," he said. "But when we were safely out of camp, Gulu told me that Zopa was leading you and me to the summit in a separate expedition from your father's, but still on his permit."
I didn't tell him about how I found out because I was still mad about it, and a little embarrassed.
Yogi and Yash's loads were bigger than ours, but Sun-jo and I still had plenty to carry. We had most of the food divided between us. Zopa laughed as we grunted under the extra weight. "It will become lighter as you eat your way through the contents," he said.
***
THERE IS A REASON WHY Base Camp and all the other camps above it are situated where they are. The traditional route may not be the shortest way up the mountain, but it is the safest and easiest. (Not that anything is safe or easy on Everest.) Zopa's "shortcut" might have been shorter, but it was ten times more difficult than the regular route. Our first obstacle was a vast field of jagged ice sticking out of the ground like great white shark teeth. Sun-jo and I used our walking poles so we didn't slip and impale ourselves. The Sherpa brothers didn't bother with the poles, forging ahead like they were ice-skating until they were two tiny dots on the horizon. I think Zopa could have easily kept up with them, but he slowed his pace, staying about a hundred yards ahead of us so he could glance back once in a while and make sure we hadn't stumbled and were bleeding out on the frozen fangs.
By the time we caught up to them late that afternoon, Yogi and Yash had the camp set up, food on the stove, and were amusing themselves by throwing their ice axes at a wall of ice that appeared to brush the sky.
My legs were shaking uncontrollably from fatigue. My neck and shoulders felt like they had been worked over by a sledgehammer. My only consolation was that Sun-jo looked more done-in than me. He didn't even have the strength to get the pack off his back. It took us two hot mugs of tea before we could talk.
By the third mug of tea I was able to focus enough to take a good look at the wall. It seemed to run for miles in both directions. I figured the next morning we would follow it until we came to a pass then make our way to the top.
When I mentioned this to Zopa he laughed and pointed directly above us. "This is the pass," he said.
"You're kidding."
He shook his head.
There wasn't a single handhold or foothold for as far as I could see. It made the ice wall I'd been practicing on look like an indoor rock climbing wall.
After dinner Zopa turned on the radio and we listened to the mountain chatter. Three more people had made it to the summit that morning. Eight had turned back within a few hundred feet of the top. A climber had broken her leg up at ABC. The virus seemed to have run its course, and everyone who had stuck it out at Base Camp was rapidly getting better.
I was about ready to call it a day and crawl into my tent when Josh came on the radio making small talk with one of the other expedition leaders up at Camp Four. This was very unusual. Josh was a firm believer that the radio should only be used to transmit important information. He hated it when people used it like a cell phone.
They talked about the weather, the woman with the broken leg, and scheduling summit attempts.
"Heard you had a falling-out with your son," the leader said.
There were no secrets on the mountain.
"Yeah, he left," Josh said. "But we'll patch it up when I get down. He's a good kid. I think Captain Shek was going to try to yank his climbing permit, anyway. Not that I would have let him."
"Is Shek still hunting for that other kid?"
"Yep. Still on the warpath. He detained a porter this afternoon named Gulu. He let him go after a pretty tough grilling, but Gulu didn't know anything. That kid left here weeks ago. Not sure what he's trying to prove. I heard he was having some more soldiers trucked in. Some of them are climbers. He's going to send them up the mountain to check the higher camps. It's insane. I sent an e-mail to the Chinese government and I have my lawyers checking into other official actions. The Chinese make a lot of money on these permits. Be a shame if one overzealous soldier dried up that revenue source, but what are you going to do? Anyway, good luck at Camp Five. I'll check in with you tomorrow. Out."
Zopa switched off the radio. The entire conversation had been set up for us—at least on Josh's end. We couldn't participate, but we could learn a great deal by listening. None of us liked the idea of the Chinese climbers coming in.
"They won't be able to get past ABC," I said. "They haven't had time to acclimate."
"Perhaps," Zopa said.
"How do we get by them on the way back down?" Sun-jo asked.
Zopa shrugged. But this time I think he really meant it. He didn't know.
BY THE TIME ZOPA kicked Sun-jo and me out of our sleeping bags, Yogi and Yash were already fifty feet up the wall setting ice screws so we'd have something to hook on to. The sun was barely up. They had to have started when it was still dark. We ate quickly, packed, then strapped on our crampons and harnesses. Zopa said he was staying below to tie the packs and would climb last.
A bitter wind blasted the wall head-on, which was good because it pushed us into it. If the wind had been coming from an angle it would have blown us right off the wall. Ice ax in each hand ... Dig crampon in. Bury ax. Ice splinters in your face. Pull. Dig other crampon in. Bury ax ... About sixty-five feet up I clipped onto an ice anchor and took a breather. Yogi and Yash had already reached the top, dropped ropes, and hauled up all the gear.
Zopa had just started up the wall. Sun-jo was clawing his way up twenty feet below me. He seemed to be struggling, which wasn't too surprising considering he had been sick and for the last few days, cooped up in a porter's tent. I waited until he looked up and gave him a wave. He returned it with a grim nod.
I started again, and had gotten up about three steps when I heard the yell. It took me a second to get myself anchored so I could look down. What I saw wasn't pretty. Sun-jo had sl
ipped down about ten feet and was hanging on the edge of a protrusion by one ax. I'd seen the protrusion on the way up and knew it was too far from the wall for him to get his crampons planted in the ice.
"I'm coming!" Zopa shouted up at him, but it would take him at least forty-five minutes to reach him.
Sun-jo wouldn't be able to hold on for more than a few minutes. I was a lot closer, but the only thing harder and slower than climbing up an ice wall is climbing down an ice wall. I looked up, hoping to see Yogi or Yash, but there was no sign of them. They must have already forged ahead to set up the next camp.
I didn't even have time to think about what I was going to do next, which was just as well. I started scrambling sideways across the wall toward the gear rope, thirty feet away. Zopa continued to shout encouragement to Sun-jo. He was climbing the wall as fast as he could, but he had to know that no matter how fast he went, it wouldn't be fast enough to save his grandson.
When I finally reached the rope I gave it a tug. It seemed solid enough, but I didn't know if it would hold my weight. The brothers might not have anchored it properly because they were just hauling gear with it.
"I'm slipping," Sun-jo said desperately.
"I'll be there in a minute!" I shouted.
"Hang on, Sun-jo!" Zopa shouted, catching on to what I was trying to do. "Don't give up!"
I wanted to test the rope more but there wasn't time. I hooked on to it and gave it all my weight. It stretched a little, but held. I swallowed my heart and crabbed my way back toward Sun-jo. When I got directly above him I quickly hooked the rope to an ice screw I knew was secure and rappelled to him, getting the rope hooked on his harness just as his ax slipped from the ice.
"Got him!" I shouted down to Zopa, then looked at Sun-jo. "You okay?"
He nodded.
He was crying.
So was I. Apparently I had forgiven him.
IT TOOK US another hour to get to the top. Zopa got there about ten minutes after us, looking concerned and relieved.
"Nothing broken?" he asked.
Sun-jo shook his head.
"What happened?"
"My ax broke."
Zopa nodded, then looked at me. "Thank you."
"You can thank Yogi and Yash for securing that rope," I said. The first thing I did when we got to the top was check it. The rope was tied to a carabiner attached to a three-inch ice bolt that wasn't going anywhere. Sun-jo and I could have played Tarzan on that rope all day long.
"But you didn't know that," Zopa said.
"Yeah ... well," I said, a little embarrassed, "Yogi and Yash know what they're doing."
"Not always," Zopa said. "One of the axes Sun-jo was using today was the same one they were throwing at the wall yesterday afternoon."
Uh-oh. I suspected they were going to hear about that when we caught up to them—and I was right. When we got to camp, Zopa took Yogi and Yash to the side and spoke to them for a good ten minutes. He never raised his voice, but when they came back they looked like he had whipped them.
"TWO TRUCKLOADS of Chinese soldiers got here today..." Josh was talking to a different expedition leader who had just arrived at ABC. "...along with six military climbers. The place looks like an army encampment."
"Glad I'm up here," the leader said.
"Well, you're not off the hook. From what I hear they're heading up the mountain tomorrow morning to check everybody's papers. If you don't have your passport, visa, and permit they're going to boot you off the mountain."
"We have them. What's his problem?"
"When the truck that Zopa and my son left on yesterday got to the second checkpoint, Zopa and my son weren't on it. The driver claimed they got on a second truck and went another way."
"I hope your son's okay."
"No worries. Zopa wouldn't let anything happen to him. I'm sure they're well on their way to Nepal by now. I thought I'd just give you a heads-up about what's going on down here."
"Thanks," the other leader said. "What about the Chinese climbers? Are they any good?"
"They're gung ho and well equipped. They pulled them off a high-altitude climb, but I'm not sure where they were. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried for the summit while they're up there. I know I would."
"I hear you. It's going to get crowded at the top."
Zopa and the brothers spread a map out and started talking in Nepalese.
"What's going on?"
"Zopa says we can't stay in any of the camps until we reach Camp Five," Sun-jo explained. "They're picking alternative sites."
I looked at the map. We were just about parallel to Camp Two, but seven or eight miles to the north. It would take us at least another day to pull up even with ABC.
We could be up on the summit in less than a week.
CAMP 3½
ZOPA PUSHED US HARD the next two days. We were out of camp before dawn climbing with headlamps. Yogi and Yash were always long gone before we started out, and we didn't see them until we stopped at the end of the day.
I had no idea where we were, but according to my altimeter watch, we were gaining altitude. (Not that I needed the watch: Every breath was painful now.) At the end of the day it was all Sun-jo and I could do to eat a little food, drink, and then crawl into our bags.
On the third morning I was surprised to open my eyes and see sunlight coming through the blue tent fabric. I looked over at Sun-jo and saw that he was staring at the light, too.
We had barely talked the past few days. No time, no breath.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"Not well," Sun-jo said.
"You've done okay the last couple of days."
He shook his head. "It has been very hard."
That was an understatement. We had done several technical climbs the past forty-eight hours. It had been some of the most difficult climbing I had ever done.
"Any idea where we are?"
Sun-jo sat up with a groan. "Feels like we're on the summit."
I laughed, which turned into a short but painful coughing fit. When I recovered I said, "Maybe Zopa is going to give us a day off."
"Not likely."
We went through the contortions of getting dressed in our small tent, then crawled out. Light snow and freezing fog. We hadn't seen the sky in three days. Yogi and Yash were crouching next to the camp stove.
Yogi said something that made Sun-jo blanch.
"What?" I asked.
"Zopa is sick."
I understood why he was upset. Zopa didn't get sick. Zopa was the iron man. He had seemed fine the night before when we got to camp. We hurried over to his tent. He looked terrible—bloodshot eyes, runny nose, pale—but he managed to sit up in his sleeping bag when he saw us.
"We will go up to Camp Four this afternoon," he said.
He wasn't going anywhere in his condition.
"The virus?" I asked.
"I think so," he answered with a slight smile. "Or maybe it's just age."
"Regardless," Sun-jo said, "we should go back down. We need to get you help."
"We cannot go down," Zopa said. "The Chinese are waiting for us. Our only escape is up."
"We have to come down eventually," I said.
"But not on this side."
"What are you talking about?"
"Nepal is a little more than a mile away from here."
I thought he was delirious or something. It would take us days to reach the Friendship Bridge into Nepal.
He took out the map and pointed to the south side of the summit. "This is Nepal," he said. He pointed to the north side. "This is Tibet." He walked his fingers up the north side of Everest, then down the south side.
"You mean we're not coming back down the north side into Tibet?" I asked.
"When you reach the summit," he said, "you will head south into Nepal."
"But we're not set up for the south side," I protested. "We don't have tents or gear or—"
"Sherpas will help you," Zopa said. "Friends of mine. We have
already gotten word to them. They will be waiting on the other side. Yogi and Yash will take you to the summit."
"What about you?" Sun-jo asked.
"As you can see I am in no condition to climb. Camp Four is as far as I will be going."
"Then we'll wait until you get better," Sun-jo insisted.
"That's right," I said. "I don't care if I get up to the summit by my birthday. It's not important—to me, anyway. We'll set up a camp somewhere, or stay right here until you get better."
Zopa shook his head. "We don't have enough food or supplies."
"Yogi and Yash can get more supplies from the other Sherpas."
"That is not the only obstacle," Zopa said. "The weather. In three days it will be good for a summit attempt. You will have to be in position."
I glanced back outside. It was snowing harder and the fog had thickened. "How can you know that?"
Zopa shrugged.
He was impossible! "Okay," I said, "so the weather breaks and we make it to the summit and somehow make it down the south side. How are you going to get past the Chinese soldiers on the north side?"
"I'm a Nepalese citizen in Tibet with legal papers. Captain Shek has no grounds to arrest me. You saw what happened the last time he tried. I don't think I will be caught, but if I am, the very worst he can do is deport me, which is what I want, anyway. I'll see both of you on the other side."
"I don't think I can make it to the summit," Sun-jo said. "I had a lot of trouble yesterday."
"I'm afraid I've put you in a terrible situation, Sun-jo," Zopa said. "You will have to make it to the summit now."
I thought about offering to stay with Zopa at Camp Four and help him down the mountain after he got better. But this was clearly not in keeping with my mother's instructions to stay selfish. And I did want to get to the summit. The debate was resolved by Zopa.
He gave me a monkish smile. "I don't need your help, Peak. But Sun-jo will."