|
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING IN BOLIVIA
|
|||||||||
|
Below is a story I wrote that was published in the OC Weekly magazine on September 17, 1998. By Dave Lowe 2 a.m. 16,500 feet. Bolivia. We awake on the side of a mountain called Huayna Potosi. It's 10 degrees but clear and calm. I've been feeling a little sick from the altitude, but now I'm good. Two days earlier a young British couple, a German and I paid $100 each to take a two-day, high-altitude trek. Ronaldo, our Spanish speaking guide, was slightly concerned. None of us had any experience at high-altitude climbing. While we struggle to put on our clothes, gloves and snow boots, Ronaldo boils a pot of coca-leaf tea. It's widely known that coca leaves help a person adjust to high altitude. And they are perfectly legal. I polish off two cups of the brew while gathering my things. My mouth becomes slightly numb, and my heart rate picks up a little. For an hour, we struggle over steep rocks. The others have climbing headlamps; I've got a cheap flashlight that froze during the night. Now I'm down to my 25-cent penlight. At 3:30 a.m., we stop. We have come up a peninsula of rocks, but it has ended in ice. We put on crampons. Claire, the British girl, has "to go to the toilet," but Ronaldo says it's to dangerous to step on the ice without crampons, so she walks a few feet away and pulls down her pants. I take my gloves off and strap the sharp, freezing-cold crampons to my boots and tighten the straps as hard as I can. Ronaldo ropes us together; if one of us slips, we're all going down. It doesn't seem possible to cross some parts of the slick ice, but when I stomp my cleats into it, they stick almost magically. All we hear in the calm night is the sound of our axes and crampons slamming into the ice. I don't know if it's the coca-leaf tea or nervousness, but I'm not cold, hungry or even tired. I'm just a little spooked, if anything. It's dark, and if somebody slips, I won't be able to see them. I'll just be pulled down for the ride. At 4:30, my flashlight dies. Only the British guy's headlamp is still on. The moon glows weakly. Ronaldo must know the way by heart because it's impossible to discern any trail in the dark ice. Ronaldo leads the way, followed closely by me, Claire, the German and Claire's boyfriend. About an hour before sunrise, Claire starts having trouble. It takes a lot of leg strength to kick the crampons into the ice and even more to pull them out. Ronaldo starts walking faster, pulling me with the rope and forcing me to pull Claire. This climb is an all-or-nothing deal; if one of us stops, Ronaldo has said, we all go back down. The last thing I want is for Claire to say she can't go on. So I shout to Ronaldo to slow down. "No Puedo"--I can't, he says. Then Claire says she doesn't mind being pulled on so we move on. An hour later, at 6 a.m., we see the first sun at a wall of icy snow. Ronaldo says some groups turn back rather than face "the wall." It's about 50 feet straight up; clearly, there's no way around it. And it's impossible to tell what's on the other side. Ronaldo climbs, an ice ax in each hand. He secures a rope at the top and shouts down, "Vamos!" I kick in both crampons and give my ice ax an overhand swing. It slices in, and I'm able to pull myself up about a foot at a time. It's not as difficult as it looks. But I'm still very careful. Claire is just 15 feet below me. If I slip, there's a chance I'll land on her--sharp crampons first. When I get to the top, the sun is blazing; it's warm enough to strip to a single sweater. I notice the only thing securing the rope is Ronaldo's ice axes. it hardly seems strong enough to support the four of us had we fallen. Ronaldo now reveals why we had to wake upat 2 a.m.: when the sun hits the ice, there's a chance it can cave in. Until now, Ronaldo seemed unconcerned about the climb, but now he is serious about getting up and back down before late afternoon, when it's most dangerous. We stop for the German, who is starting to have problems with the altitude. He looks disoriented and a little green. The delay gives me a chance to check out the scenery. At 12,000 feet, La Paz is the highest capital city on Earth, and we are looking down on it from a full mile. I glance over at Claire and the others. In the daylight, we look like a Discovery Channel Mount Everest expedition. If we had peaks this high in California, we'd probably have to go through days of training before even being allowed on the mountain--not to mention the liablility waivers. But not in Bolivia, and that's why I'm here. I feel a tug from the behind. The British guy stops without a word. He is hunched over and ready to sit down when Ronaldo shouts that it's too dangerous to stop here. He staggers to his feet. At 19,000 feet, we can see the summit directly above us. "I've had enough of this shit," the British guy says. He takes off his pack. "I'm going to stay behind, too," the German says. "I'm going on with them," Claire says to her boyfriend. She is suffering as much, if not more, than the others. Ronaldo says it's safe to leave them behind on this meadow of solid snow. The three of us, still tied together, head for the peak. We leave our packs with the quitters, so we're only carrying axes and water. The trail doesn't look good from here: it's all snow and rock, with steep cliffs on both sides. We walk very slowly--and even crawl--along the path. "What the hell are we doing here?" Claire asked. "I don't know," I say honestly. The trail gets narrower. We step over small rock chutes that run 500 feet straight down. It's here that I consider stopping. We pass some climbers on their way down. They look relaxed and have expensive but well-used North Face packs. One guys tells Claire to kick her crampons into the icy snow harder. "But I'm tired," she says. He laughs and points down at the steep cliff we're skirting along. "It doensn't matter if you are tired," he says in Argentine Spanish. "Look where you're at!" We're about 40 feet from the summit, but the last part is straight up. "Wait here," Ronaldo says, as he pulls some ice scews out of his pack. If somone slips, there are only a few 1-foot-tall rocks to keep him from plunging 500 feet to an unpleasent death below. So I wait with my ice ax stuck in the mountain while Ronaldo secures the ice screws and rope. We climb up something like the side of a frozen skyscraper. After 11 hours, we have reached the summit. At 19,870 feet, it's higher than any mountain in Africa, Europe, Austalia, or Antarctica. The view barely seems real. The clouds are so far below it's like looking out of an airplane. "I'm not going to celebrate until we make it back to the others," Claire says. After 10 gripping minutes at the summit, it's time to head back. The narrow ridge we risked getting up here looks worse from aboe. As we some down, I finally feel the relief and accomplishment I had expected to to find at the summit. Our $100 fee doesn't include porters, so we lug our gear two seemingly endless hours to the minibus that will take us back to La Paz. In my hotel bed that night, the altitude finally catches up with me. Hours earlier, I was standing at nearly 20,000 feet. Now at 12,000, I'm being punished with a blazing headache and dizziness. I don't want to eat or sleep; I just want to suffer alone in my comfortable $5-per-night hotel room. But I've still got a smile; the climb was worth every sacrificed brain cell. Dave Lowe lives in Huntington Beach but thinks the police ruin all the fun there.
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|