ropes (although we cheated a bit by taking turns belaying while the other climber rappelled), and a rappel from that kind of exposed altitude is always a thrill. J.C. and I had expected an easier climb this day, but neither of us had imagined having so much fun.
Finally, when we come off the fixed ropes of the lower slope—the last 200 feet or so down to the level of Camp III didn’t need fixed ropes, we’d decided that morning, since it’s a relatively gradual snow slope—we find Babu Rita standing there waiting for us in the growing evening shadows, stamping his booted feet to stay warm. He’s removed his crampons (the only remaining problem with them and our new rigid boots is that the crampon straps still tend to cut off circulation, which leads to cold feet despite the extra layers of felt we’d put in the newly designed “stiff” boots), and now J.C. and I do the same.
“Very good day, yes, Sahibs Jake and Jean-Claude?” asks Babu, grinning from ear to ear.
“A very good day it’s been, Babu Rita,” I say. All three of us start down in the sunken footsteps in the snow, but then, on a whim, I say, “Would you like to see how real climbers go down a slope like this, Babu?”
“Oh, yes, Sahib Jake!”
Making sure that my crampons are secured safely outside my rucksack in a spot where they won’t stab me if I fall or have to go to self-arrest, I hop up out of the trough made by the party’s earlier ploddings, keep my long ice axe out, and begin glissading down the long snow slope, my hobnailed boots kicking up a rooster tail behind me, guiding myself with the pick end of the long axe.
“Race you!” cries J.C. and jumps onto the snow surface firming in the shadows. “Stay here, Babu. Look out, Jake!”
Jean-Claude glissades faster than I do and is soon trying to pass me. Damn Chamonix Guides! We slalom our way lower, swerving to miss the few boulders near the base of the slope, and J.C. comes across the imaginary finish line on the flats at least 15 feet ahead of me.
Laughing, stamping our cold feet here at the edge of the moraine, we turn to watch Babu Rita posthole his way down the trough path of deep footsteps.
“I, too, also!” cries the short Sherpa, and he steps out of the footsteps onto the snow crust, sets his ice axe behind him like a tiller, and starts imitating our glissade.
“No, don’t!” cries Jean-Claude, but it’s too late. Babu is glissading quickly down the slope and laughing like a madman.
Then he pushes too hard on the pick or adze of his ice axe, a common beginner’s mistake in glissading—the guiding point must touch the snow ever so lightly—the pick embeds itself deep into the snow, Babu is jerked around violently, and then he’s on his back, arms spread wide, picking up speed as he hurtles down the slope on his back, his rucksack spilling personal items as he slides. If anything, he’s laughing even harder now.
“Self-arrest!” I bellow, cupping my hands to make a megaphone. “Self-arrest, Babu!”
He’s lost his ice axe, but he still has his hands—and when the mittens get pulled off, he should be able to dig his gloved fingers deep enough into the snow to slow his rate of descent. We’ve trained and rehearsed all the Sherpas in self-arrest techniques.
But Babu’s splayed body is spinning around in circles now, first head up, then down, hands and heels merely slapping at the ice-crusted snow. All this time he’s laughing even louder as he hurtles closer to us.
Fifty feet from the bottom of the slope, Babu goes over a hidden snow ramp. “Oopsies!” he cries in English as he flies eight feet into the air, still headfirst.
There’s a strange sound as he strikes what looks to be a large pillow of snow and he quits laughing. His splayed form spins a final three times and slides to a stop not 30 feet from us. J.C. and I are running now, postholing our way over to the suddenly silent Sherpa. I’m praying that he’s just had the wind knocked out of him.
Then we notice the long smear of red on the otherwise white snow. The “pillow” of snow Babu had hit, headfirst, is a snow-covered boulder.
Babu was unconscious when we evacuated him from Camp III last night, Monday night. The others had come out of their tents at the sound of our shouts—reacting first to his laughter, then to our calls for help—and we’d gathered and knelt around the still splayed, supine, and unconscious Babu Rita.
Reggie took one look at the knot and spreading bruise on the Sherpa’s temple, tossed the first-aid kit to the Deacon, pointed to two other Sherpas while giving orders in their Nepalese language, and then ran with them back to the tents to put together a stretcher out of spare tent canvas and poles. The Deacon crouched next to Babu, carefully lifting his heavily bleeding head. He quickly set two gauze pads against the freely bleeding areas on Babu’s scalp, then lashed them into place with quick loops of a gauze bandage. He cut the bandage with his pocketknife and knotted it with swift, sure movements.
“Will he be all right?” I asked. Everything about me, down to the lifeless tone of my voice, was signaling guilt and responsibility for my porter’s accident. Jean-Claude looked equally guilty.
“Head wounds are weird things,” said the Deacon. He’d been lifting Babu gently by the shoulders, gingerly touching the short man’s neck and back, down to his tailbone. “I don’t think there’s any spinal damage. We can move him. The best thing we can do is to get him down to Base Camp and to Dr. Pasang as quickly as we can.”
“Is it really safe to move him?” asked J.C., who’d long ago told me that Chamonix Guides were trained not to move a fall victim if there was any chance at all of spinal or serious neck injuries.
The Deacon nodded. “His neck isn’t broken, as far as I can tell by touch. His back feels all right. I think there will be less danger in moving him than in leaving him up here all night.”
Reggie and Nyima Tsering returned with the jury-rigged stretcher, its canvas doubled over and lashed tight to the two six-foot poles.
“We’ll need someone to carry him down,” said the Deacon. “Six men, I think. Four to carry and two more along to spell the others.”
“We’ll carry him,” Jean-Claude and I said in pathetic, guilty unison.
The Deacon nodded. “Pemba, Dorjay, Tenzing, Nyima, you four go down with the sahibs.”
Reggie quickly translated to the three Sherpas who spoke no English. I saw that she had also brought back from the tents two lanterns and two sets of the headlamps. She waited until we crouched next to the unconscious Babu and—on the count of three and with infinite gentleness—transferred him from the snow to the unfurled stretcher.
The snow remained caked with Babu’s blood, and his bandages were already bleeding through.
Silently, Reggie handed lanterns to Pemba and Dorjay and the headlamp rigs to J.C. and me. “Tejbir!” she called to the tallest of the watching Sherpas. I remembered that Tejbir Norgay spoke English. “You go ahead as runner as quickly as you can. Tell those in Camp Two and Camp One that we may need new volunteers to carry as we get to each camp. But don’t waste time at those camps—hurry straight on down to Base Camp and see if Dr. Pasang can come up and meet the stretcher bearers along the way. Tell Dr. Pasang exactly what Babu Rita’s head wounds are like and what caused them. There’s a third lantern outside the big tent here—pick it up as you go.”
Tejbir nodded once and jogged off the snow slope, snatched the lantern as he ran past on the rough, snow-covered moraine at the campsite, and within seconds had disappeared behind the ice pinnacles and was up and onto the glacier path.
Jean-Claude took the left front end of a pole and I grasped the right rear. Nyima Tsering grabbed the right front and Tenzing Bothia was at the rear with me. On the count of three again, we lifted the stretcher waist-high. Babu Rita seemed to weigh nothing at all.
“We’ll follow you down as soon as we get things sorted out here at Camp Three for tomorrow’s carries,” said the Deacon. “Tell Dr. Pasang that I’m bringing everyone down to Camp One or Base Camp.”
The trip back down the glacier was grueling, especially since it came at the end of our long climbing day. Before we’d climbed onto the glacier for our descent, Reggie had handed Pemba a full oxygen rig with three full tanks on the frame. The idea was that as we grew tired, we’d fall out and take some English air from two of the tanks, while Pemba or Dorjay filled in for us. Babu Rita would breathe from the third tank all the way down. It just
