DISPATCHES

Mazur

The lower mountain was really loaded with folks. By the time we reached Base Camp, we had seen perhaps 100 people and had been fully apprised of a sad tragedy on the mountain.

Apparently, a Slovenian climber, who had occupied our normal route Base Camp the day we left, had tried four times, with his Slovenian climbing partner, to reach the summit and finally reached it. The two climbers had been staying in that little gray tent the three of us had piled into the night of the 16th.

The leader of their expedition was a very strong and tall and somewhat crusty older Slovenian man. He told us this story in Base Camp. Apparently, the climber in question, who was now missing, had frozen his leg on the way to (or down from) the summit and had not been able to walk anymore.

His climbing partner had left; a big snowstorm had come, and he had perhaps sat in the tent for a few days. Then, apparently, he had gone out of the tent and headed (perhaps tried to crawl) down the mountain. We wondered why no one had gone to help him, but the leader said the team was not very interested in him and had left him up there and gone to Kashgar.

The leader said that he personally had felt sick and couldn't help him. It all sounded faintly like excuses, but I, of course, hadn't been there so I couldn't know the situation. I had just benefited from the very kind help from my own teammates so it was easy enough for me to talk.

In any case, we tried to figure out what happened to this missing climber, because we hadn't seen any sign of him anywhere, and the tent had been fairly orderly, like someone had packed up and left there and not just gone out for a pee. Well, there was really no rhyme nor reason to it, except that he may have tried to walk alone to the next camp down the mountain.

Apparently, he was not an accomplished skier because we had seen his skis, just 20 meters above the tent, stuck into the snow. And these Europeans did not believe in snowshoes (it was skis or nothing, you wimps). So he must have been walking or limping, and the snow was very deep and crusty, and he must have stopped to rest, and/or collapsed and fallen into the snow, and laid there.

The wind must have blown snow across him where he laid, and he became wrapped in a blanket of snow, shivering, and his mouth was dry, and maybe he cried a bit. Then his breathing became ever more slow, then his heart slowed, then eventually, he probably dreamed of his loved ones in Slovenia, smiled and winced, and then his heart and breathing stopped, and he became one with the snow, part of the mountain, and frozen solid.

It could happen to anyone, especially someone who tried for the summit four times, finally summitted, couldn't ski, didn't have snowshoes, had a frozen leg, was all alone, and had to post-hole down the mountain after a big, crusty snowstorm.

I feel very sad when I think of the Slovenian's fate. It's a bit unfair, really. The last I heard about this man was days later when we finally made it down to Kashgar. Jon happened to be in the office of the mountaineering association, and there came a telephone call. They put Jon on, and it turned out to be a person from the agency in Europe that arranged the climb for the Slovenians. They sounded very worried about the man's whereabouts, and what happened to him and how did it happen?

It turned out the climber had been a judge and his colleagues and perhaps his family were apparently asking some very hard questions.

Alas, our adventure was not over yet, as we sat in Base Camp and dined on an excellent repast of eggs, vegetables, noodles and Coke. Our stomachs had shrunken to the size walnuts, so we dined as much with our eyes as we did with our mouths. It was evening, near dark, and we were worried about the whereabouts of our support team.

We heard news that Lakpa Tamang, our Nepalese member, had visited Base Camp looking for us one or two days before. We felt that our support team, consisting of Yang Li Cun, Anne Ramzy, and Lakpa Tamang, (and maybe the driver Lao Ma), would be getting anxious for our return. They might even be worried enough that they would be wondering whether we were finished, and they were waiting for those who might never return.

Perhaps, we thought, they were contemplating whether they should leave. So, we figured it was imperative that we set out immediately and try to go and find them.

It was evening, and there were no donkeys around, but the donkey drivers were there, and they were looking for work. We hired them, at the donkey price, to carry our things down to Cheltamak village, a 30-minute walk, where we thought we could hire a car to bump down the old, unimproved road to Subashi and Karakuli Lake.

However, on arrival we heard the story of how the car was being used to transport a sick villager to the hospital, so we hired donkeys anyway. It was late at night, and the clouds were rolling in thick, but there was no precipitation. We stumbled down the tracks and trails, through the grass by the river's edge, under the looming silhouette of Mustagh Ata that chased us out of the country toward the road. We crossed a final irrigation ditch and wound up on the Subashi Plateau, with its knobby, green pastures and windy ditches.

A village boy who had been sent ahead came running back to say that the car which we had expected to pick us up had been commandeered to take another group of villagers to Tashkergan. So there we were, just short of our goal, unable to proceed.

But, we noticed a motorbike and driver lolling by the ditch, looking rather under occupied. We asked him if he would take us, and he said, yes, he would, one at a time, with backpacks.

It seemed a sweet deal, and after some last-minute repairs and tightening-up of his gear box, Walter, being the most anxious to be out of Mustagh Ata country, climbed aboard with his massive backpack.

We did not see the driver again for more than three hours, and when we did, he was not on his bike, but rather, in Lao Ma's Land Cruiser.

By that time, three hours later, Jon and I had all but given up and assumed that the bike had died and that we would not see them until dawn. We had climbed into our sodden sleeping bags and basically went unconscious. I was startled to here a car drive up, a door slam, and Walter's voice call out, "Well, the worst possible thing happened: we wrecked."

I awoke, sat bolt upright, and looked to see the driver in front of the headlights, with both hands on his head, wrapped in white gauze, spinning and twirling. Apparently, the bike had no headlight, and Walter's headlamp on the driver's head had not been all that adequate.

They had come into a loose-gravelled construction site, and the driver lost control and laid the bike down. They had both gone over the handlebars, and Walter, with his back pack, had landed on top of the driver, who really soaked up the fall for both of them.

They climbed back aboard, with the driver bleeding everywhere, and finished the trip to Karakuli Lake, where they had found Anne, Yang, Lakpa and Lao Ma. They brought the driver back here in the car to find us. Now, we taped the driver up a bit more and gave him some money, and Walter walked him home, very sorry this had happened.

Finally, we were all in the car and Lao Ma took us back to Karakuli Lake. We were all reunited, although in the bittersweet circumstances of the motorcycle wreck and the death of the Slovenian climber, but we were together. There was a certain peace and a feeling of wholeness, if only for one day, while we went down to Kashgar and had a few banquets and got a decent night's sleep.

Getting out of China was an entirely different and harrowing story. It wasn't clear whether we would be able to leave the country or not, and it was very touch and go up to the last second.

— Dan Mazur, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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