Hemant Soreng's Blog

21st May 2024, Evening (around 6:30 pm), South Col, Everest (7,950 m/26,082 ft.)

As I started walking away from Camp 4 into the death zone, ironically, it was death I was trying to walk away from. 

But I was unable to. My legs couldn’t move. My climbing Sherpa guide, Pemba Dorchee adjusted the regulator of my oxygen cylinder. And I breathed in more easily.

The count had begun. 

1-2-3-4-5

The no. of steps at a time I was taking while jumaring up the rope.

That many had perished, missing or were fatally injured so far, all from our camp. Mates, friends.

Including the two Mongolian climbers and Banshi Lal, a strong climber, my dining tent mate and someone who had become close in just a few days.

Little did I know then that there would be more I would encounter later that day.

“Wind in my hair
Shifting and drifting
Mechanical music
Adrenaline surge”

Red Barchetta from the rock band Rush continued to play in head, the song I was listening to in loop at Camp 4 before stepping into the death zone.

They say that one’s entire life flashes before one’s eyes in the last moments.

For me this was happening to me in super slow motion with various memories of my life slowing flashing across as the hours elapsed. The most prominent one was that of memories of my mother. 

Her passing. 

The main reason I was there.

I hadn’t even reached the half-way point and I was so tired. Pemba Dorchee from the front and the climbers at the back kept pushing. Couple of time I felt my very recently injured knee acting up (thanks to an old injury turned new again after an awkward landing in Khumbu Icefall during rotation).

The super slo-mo life flashes continued. The failures. The mistakes. The wrongs.

Thankfully, so did the turnarounds for all those. 

I thanked my younger self for taking all those risks that moulded me into a tougher older self. 

In that deep thin air darkness, I felt an indescribable yet powerful energy.

Something supernatural.

I started to feel the presence of my mother and Sagarmatha herself. As if the mountain had come alive, protecting me and giving me strength.

Thanks to the new found strength, I reached up slowly to the halfway point, the balcony. I took a breather, but it was so cold and windy that even though I was tired I started walking up again, a steeper climb on the South Summit. 

The night was dark and yet beautiful with a string of headlamps shining their light ahead of me moving very slowly upwards.

I had lost track of the time. Hours had passed.

I continued walking. The muscle memory had taken charge from the experience of multiple summit nights in the past.

Rush continued to play Red Barchetta in my head.

The life flashes in slo-mo continued.

The count had now plummeted down to 1. 

One step. Long Pause. One step.

One step at a time.

I justified to myself, as the strong climbers and Sherpas overtook me at various points. 

Silently, I welcomed that as it gave me extra time to rest while they unclipped and clipped their carabiners around me.

Sometime during the night, my team mate, Rune Hana also crossed me and we greeted each other recognising through the oxygen masks and layers of baclava and down suit. He was coming down after summitting.

I was like. Whaaat!!! That was superfast, considering that we started around the same time from Camp 4.

And soon it was dawn and I realised how steep South Summit was as we reached near the top. 

I panicked. Not because of vertigo. The views were amazing.

I also realised that it would be the same steep route we will be descending from with my injured and injury prone knees.

And then there was long pause as the sherpas up ahead looked clueless where to go.

They couldn’t find the ropes.

I silently thanked the situation at hand.

It gave me an extra time to rest.

However, it didn’t last long as the @*$#$ ropes were found again and we were on the South East Ridge, the thin razor edged route, where there is space for only one person to walk. 

On the same ridge, just 24 hours ago two of our team members – Daniel Peterson and his climbing guide Pastenji Sherpa fell down the Tibetan side on the Kangshung face due to a cornice collapse. Never to be found. 

Pas Tenji Sherpa & Daniel Peterson

I was extra cautious and I walked slowly. 

Fortunately, we had less traffic and no crowding at these bottlenecks as compared to a day ago. A gambit that I had taken, sleeping overnight at camp 4 and thus postponing the summit push by a day to avoid the traffic.

Whatever few climbers there, were moving very slowly and that gave me ample time to take some breathtaking shots, in between breaths, from there perched precariously between Nepal and Tibet.

My feet were literally in Tibet. 

I panicked.

I didn’t have the Tibetan visa.

“There’s the Hillary Step”, Pemba Dorchee pointed up ahead a prominent structure of rocky patch on ice and snow, which was once taller than it was now.

This was the most highest technical feature of any mountain in the world. Something I had read so many times. Looked it out in YouTube videos and documentaries to understand it.

It gave me the shivers.

However, I have no idea how I crossed it. It was definitely less challenging than I had expected.

Phew!!!

I ran into my expedition mates Markus, a school teacher from Germany followed by  Dwarka Dokhe, a Police Inspector from Maharashtra both of them coming down after summiting. We hugged and they wished me luck asking me to be very careful and be safe.

I continued walking. 

And in no moment (read one hour), as I walked past a struggling climber and his sherpa, I saw around 10-12 climbers 20 metres away with loud coloured down suits looking ecstatic and behaving very strangely as if they had summited.

In fact, they had.

However, I didn’t join them in their revelry, instead just sat on the summit relieved. 

Relieved, not because I was on the top, but I didn’t have to go up any further. So I could just sit and relax.

And that’s what I did. 

That was relaxing. For the first time in 12 hours I was not standing, walking or climbing.

But from my climbing experience, from the many long summit nights I’ve been on, I knew that this was not it. This was just half-way through. I knew that we had to quickly take pictures, soak it in the views and atmosphere (however thin it may be) and descend as fast as we could.

I took out all my fancy cameras – GoPro, Insta360, iPhone.

And lo none of them had any charge. The extreme cold had ensured that.

And lo Pemba Dorchee was there to the rescue.

His simple camera phone started clicking away as if it was on an auto burst mode. 

I was so reassured that I just took off my mittens and gloves and dug deep into my summit bag to take out a bunch of banners and flags.

I could see Pemba Dorchee say something silently. When transmitted through the thin air it sounded like  #*%@&

Unfazed, I continued changing banners as he continued clicking.

After almost 15 min of the highest-altitude photoshoot, I took out the last item from the bag. It was a Tibetan prayer flag that I had been placing on top of all the summits I had climbed to in the recent years.

We were so engrossed in the photo shoot that we were totally unaware of the bright sunny weather that was changing very rapidly behind me.

Worsening.

And while I was trying to tie the prayer flag to another one on the summit, a gush of wind blew towards me from behind.

And my hands froze instantly. 

They became as hard as rock.

I had lost all sensation there.

Red Barchetta by Rush, the song playing in my head had now reached its crescendo. 

————————

Thank you reading and reaching this far.

If you liked the story and narration and would like me to continue, then please drop me a comment or DM.

Follow

Share