"I told him we had to descend, that the storm might increase and that we had to go down...."

Because we had no sleeping bags with us, and our tents were exploded, or stolen by other teams, we had to leave Camp 2 quickly. Durga began to dismantle and shovel out the tent that had somehow survived the storm with its door fully open.

Jangbu worked to empty out David LePagne's tent. It was, amazingly, fully intact, but looked as if 20 people from eight different nations had slept inside, as there was an international milieu of trash, and small items like stuff sacks, mats, and half-burned canisters of gas.

I assessed an abandoned tent I found at the edge of Camp 2. Looking inside, I saw only mattresses, a few stoves, and bits of rubbish. None of it was ours, and it looked very heavy and hard to dig out, so I left it. I certainly was not going to haul off found-booty from other expeditions, after our own tents had been stolen by other teams and ravaged by wind. I believe that fate has a way of catching up with mountain climbers who steal.

Just then, the lone figure descending the slope from to Camp 2 got close enough, and I could see by the yellow and blue pants that it was indeed Yang. Moving slowly, but steadily, and resting, bent over, leaning across his ice axe every four or five steps, he shuffled into camp, carrying a heavy-looking rucksack.

"Yang!" I exclaimed with joy, "It's good to see you."

"Hello Dan," Yang replied, in his quiet way.

"How do you feel?" I inquired.

"Oh, very tired," Yang replied, "I didn't eat anything for two days, too windy."

"Oh, that's bad," I said, concerned. I rummaged in my rucksack, and produced an energy bar and a bottle of water. "Here, eat some food and drink some water because we have to go down soon and you need energy."

"No," Yang replied, "I have in my rucksack." He pointed to his large and jumbled bag, "Plenty of."

I felt a bit confused. Yang didn't eat or drink for two days, but he doesn't want to eat or drink here in Camp 2 either. I looked at his rucksack, and saw a tiny red 500ml bottle tied to the outside of the bag. Knowing this was his only water bottle, and seeing it there tied to the outside of his rucksack, I calculated that the ambient air temperature was -20 centigrade, and the wind-chill temperature was -40 centigrade, so the water inside that little bottle could not be too drinkable. Perhaps he was engaging in some kind of religious abstention from water? Anyway, he was not saying much, so it was up to me to guess.

Yang and I exchanged laconic conversation for a few minutes. He said he was surprised I did not come up to Camp 3, and that he wanted to stay in Camp 2 tonight. I told him we had to descend, that the storm might increase and that we had to go down. He said he was too tired to move, but I assured him that we would help him. He said that one tent in Camp 3 had blown away, and the other tent had been ripped in the late-night storm. Only one tent in Camp 3 survived the terrible moonlit maelstrom.

Yang sat on the ground and stared out into the plateau. I asked him to help us dig out these tents, so he stood up and watched the others work. Eventually, he began pulling guy lines out of the snowpack, and the four us removed the remains of two wrecked tents and their contents.

One entire tent had vaporized from its platform, but torn guy lines and broken bamboo told a story of what happened. With nothing inside the tent, it had been whipped up into the wind, and achieving critical mass, had gone airborne into the seracs and glaciers below. An entire three-person tent, pulled away from its site and vaporized. A tremendous and tragic loss from our equipment inventory.

I began to calculate the devastation of our camps during the expedition.

Camp 1: two tents totally destroyed, one tent partially destroyed, no intact tents.

Camp 2: one stolen, one lost, one partially wrecked, one totally wrecked, no intact tents.

Camp 3: one stolen, one lost, one totally wrecked, one intact tent.

Out of 11 high-altitude tents, only one was left intact, and only two were worth repairing at all. Seven of the tents were lost during a raging battle with the wind last night, a battle which lasted perhaps six hours. Six hours of hell, and all the camps were destroyed.

These were heavy losses, indeed. I tried not to think about the situation, lest I slide into a foul mood. And with my level of exhaustion, the only emotion I could easily access was shock. Grief and anger would have to come later. They seem to consume more energy. Besides, there was work to do up here. We had to pack up our rubbish and get Yang down...