54 Candles Expedition
Pushing
the Limits
by Allen Sherpa
Ten men – most from the White
Mountains of Arizona – will launch an assault on the summit of Mount Hood,
Oregon’s highest mountain, in the early morning hours of Friday the 13th
of April, 2001. Allen Sherpa was
invited to participate, but declined.
With this letter, he’s staying in close contact with the climbing party.
You’re
a persistent bunch aren’t you? I keep
waiting to see signs of sanity, but all you and your band of glacier runners
seem to be doing is digging yourselves in deeper and deeper. Remember, the trick to climbing a mountain
isn’t getting to the summit. It’s
getting to the summit and getting back home.
Sir Edmund Hillary wasn’t necessarily the first to climb Mount
Everest. He was the first to
return. Safety and preparation are
everything.
I was
comforted to hear the story recently about one of your climbers. It seems he acquired his brand new,
expedition level, down-filled, ultra-light, Everest quality sleeping bag. Word on the street is that he had to sell
his car just to pay for this thi
ng. Of
course, nothing’s too good when your life is on the line.
He
also knew you can’t be too careful.
Rather than run the risk of an unpleasant discovery while high on the
face of one of Mother Nature’s big mountains, he thought it would be prudent to
put the new mummy bag to a legitimate test in the wild.
He set
camp in a surprisingly short time period considering that temperatures were
hovering near zero on the mountain. His
eyes scanned his high-camp as he ran down his mental checklist. A mistake, a critical item left unsecured,
food improperly stowed, could lead to a complete failure of the
expedition. Admittedly, this wasn’t the
“big climb”, but if the equipment testing was to succeed, everything had to
emulate the real thing as closely as possible.
With
everything apparently in place, the alpinist struggled to become one with his
new sleeping bag that was to become the key to his survival. Doubts ran through his mind. Was the investment the right one? Would it be adequate to protect him from the
ravages of nature? His heart quickened
as he pulled himself into the bag. He
began to feel a bit claustrophobic as he tightened the draw-string that would
close the bag in over his face. He
tried to lay quietly in his coffin-like enclosure and prepared to survive the
night.
He was tired after
setting camp and tried to sleep. But,
the roar of the freezing wind made it difficult to clear his worried mind. Snow was beginning to accumulate and the
temperatures were still falling.
Perhaps it was foolish to do this alone. Ice was now forming on the outside of the bag where the moisture
from his labored breathing was condensing.
He
thought, “This is the position that many climbers must be found in when they
don’t return from Everest or Hood”. But
he knew that the weak and timid would never be found on the summit of any great
mountain, let alone Mount Hood. He was
committed and was going to tough it out.
The
uneasy minutes turned into hours. He
would pass into an uneasy sleep only to be awaken every few minutes by the
unforgiving scream of the wind. Finally
at around 4 AM, he fell, exhausted, into a sound sleep.
As
dawn readied itself on the horizon, he was resting warmly and snuggly in his
artic quality sleeping bag. He heard a noise.
He wondered, “Could I be dreaming?
Maybe I’m delirious? Is this
what it is like to die high on Lohtse Face?
It‘s the voice of my wife.”
“Honey. It’s time to get up. Come on in before the neighbors see you
sleeping out in the yard. There going
to think you’re some kind of a nut-case.”
How
had she gotten all the way to high-camp at such an hour. Well, I guess that’s another story.