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"Would Yang be lucid, would he be splayed out on his back, would he be dead of pulmonary or cerebral edema?" |
Well, the three of us [Dan Mazur, Jangbu and Durga] made it out of the tent — or what was left of it — into the freezing air at about 9:45am on the 13th. We met Ian on his way down the hill, about 75 meters above Camp 1. Ian was sitting hunched on the slope, resting, his backpack looking heavy. His eyes were bugged out, when he said with a stammer of frozen lips and a tinge of fear, "He wouldn't come, he wouldn't come."
I said to Ian: "What do you mean? I don't understand."
The wind was howling, and the four climbers huddled, Ian still sitting. A particularly icy blast came up, and they all leaned into it. "Yang wouldn't come," Ian murmured, with a tremble, and amazement in his voice. "I pounded on his legs and shouted at him, but he wouldn't budge. Have you ever had that happen before, where someone won't come down?"
It was all a bit garbled, but I put my face near Ian's well muffled ear and shouted against the wind, "We will go up there and try to bring him down. Are you alright to get back on your own?"
Ian said he was, although his hands were frozen nearly into blocks of ice, so we three carried on up into the gale, and he continued his sprint for the lowlands. I looked down after he left and saw the tiny climber descending in the distance into wisps and horsetails of battering spindrift and wondered if his tent in Camp 1 would still be standing when he arrived.
The wind would shake and rattle us steadily as we stumbled up. It was a sunny day with clouds scudding and, from time to time, the wind would knock one or all of us down onto our knees. Thank God it began to abate, although the final headwall into Camp 2 was a tortuous affair of wind-borne snow, with full gale conditions blowing off the Camp 2 plateau.
While we were making the five-hour push into Camp 2, I imagined the difficulty of climbing the final slope to Camp 3, and what we would discover there. Would Yang be lucid, would he be splayed out on his back, would he be dead of pulmonary or cerebral edema?
I recalled participating in a horrible rescue of an ill climber on K2, where they dragged the victim down a snow/ice face in a makeshift stretcher made of a sleeping bag and mattress. I thought of Yang, and wondered if we three mountain cleaners (now perhaps rescuers) would have the same determination and strength needed to bring Yang down from Camp 3.
At the one o'clock radio call, Base Camp was made aware of the possible predicament of Yang being stuck in Camp 3 in this tent-ripping wind storm. They moved into action, sending Jon Otto and John Arnold up the glacier with extra tents, stoves, fuel and food.
Jon Otto would coordinate the low-altitude support team from the cache camp at the base of the scree field. John Arnold would be the point support person, setting a tent up in Camp 1 and being on call to run up to Camps 2 and 3, to assist with any rescue, or body-hauling effort, as the case might be.
When we rounded the corner and finally dragged our tired limbs and frosted, aching faces in sight of Camp 2, we were greeted with a rude awakening; all the tents but one had disappeared, having been flattened or maimed. The only standing tent, though barely attached to the ground, was David's. One of the big green Biblers, which was sitting with its big door fully down, had filled with hard packed snow, and a broken pole shot through the side.
We looked up to find a tiny climber staggering in the wind down the massive slope to Camp 3. Could it be Yang? It must be Yang!
