Page 9 - AMA Winter 2023/24

Manaslu was an interesting The plan for Manaslu that year was to though we were in a mad rush to tick off
make sure that everyone reached the ‘true summit’ instead of the ‘fore summit’ which had been recognised as the top for many years. The difference between the two summits in height is marginal but it requires a descent, traverse, and ascent to get between the two which is quite technical and difficult to fix. Gelje and I decided to wait at camp 4 for a few extra hours before leaving for our summit push because we knew we would move fast and catch up to everyone including the fixing team who would go to the true summit. We waited 4 hours in the tent, constantly fidgeting to keep ourselves warm and eager to get going. Eventually we moved upwards but still managed to pass every single climber, reaching the summit in just 2 hours. Because we were using supplemental oxygen, we had a limited time to wait at the summit before having to descend before it ran out, however the fixing team was way behind us, at least 2 or 3 hours away and so we couldn’t wait for the true summit to be fixed. We had no choice but to come back down. Once in Kathmandu, the news broke out about some climbers reaching the true summit and some the fore summit, leading to many saying that our ascent did not count which was incredibly upsetting and made what felt like a big achievement seem like nothing special. I knew one day I would have to go back and try again, not for the social media opinion but for my own sake.
After processing the Manaslu expedition we headed on to the next basecamp, which was Dhaulagiri, a mountain known for having a lot of snow on its shallow slopes and not as technical as other 8000m peaks but a very long, winding way. I was excited for this one as I thought maybe it would feel easier than Everest, but I was totally wrong. As soon as we arrived, we packed our summit bags ready to go up that very night straight for a summit bid with a plan to sleep at camp 2, camp 3, and summit from there. I knew deep down this wasn’t going to be easy anymore and it felt as
expedition, for the first time,
things didn’t quite go to plan. Once we arrived at Manaslu base camp my first goal was to take a shower. Showers aren’t quite the luxury they seem; it’s done in a regular tent with warm-ish water and a chilly breeze sweeping in through the gaps. I thought nothing of it, just that I was now clean after a few days trekking into basecamp.
That very night I went to sleep as normal feeling slightly cold and with a headache, normal conditions when sleeping at a new altitude, however at around 2am I woke up choking on the water that had filled my lungs whilst I was sleeping. I moved up and felt the liquid move across the chest, something was seriously wrong! I shouted to Nims, our leader, who came running to the tent and told me I had to go down straight away. That morning as early as possible I set off towards the nearest village with Gelje and another friend. I couldn’t walk, all the energy in my body had disintegrated overnight and so, the only option was for Gelje to piggy-back me all the way down – 3 hours worth of ground to cover. He was my saviour that day. I went straight to the ‘hospital’ in the village where there sat a ‘doctor’ who listened to my chest and gave me some antibiotics, magic antibiotics. I took them for 5 days in the village which was still at almost 4000m altitude and was miraculously cured, feeling like nothing had happened. It was the strangest thing. I went from reading on the internet that my only cure was to puncture my lung to drain the fluid to recovering in 5 days with some obscure $2 antibiotics. We made our way back to basecamp where I pushed on for the summit in one go without acclimatis- ing as the rest of our team had done theirs whilst I was down in the village. Because of this I had to use oxygen. It was the worst feeling in the world knowing that I had put all the hard work into training to make it without the supplemental oxygen and now all of that was out the window because of one shower.
this peak and get back home, it was really the beginning of when I realised maybe this record wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. I didn’t have time to appreciate the basecamp life, the excitement leading up in an expedition and the general feeling of climbing and working hard. Instead, it was game on from the get-go, heads down and focused on the prize, which in the end led to a string of problems and near misses. All chaos began when we decided we would leave from camp 2 in the night and push on as far as possible, maybe even the summit. Already it sounded like a disaster.
Two men had just left camp 2 to go down to basecamp and warned us of the incoming bad weather and that it would last a few days at least and of course that we were crazy to be on the mountain right now. It turned out that we were the only team there, just the 7 of us. These two men also posted on social media that we were unlikely to survive in the storm coming in, which my parents saw and were completely freaked out by. It turns out these two men weren’t wrong.
We set off from camp 2 at around 4am in the dark, the stars were out, and it seemed like a calm morning but on the mountains the weather can change in a split second. Around 2 hours after leaving camp 2, suddenly the wind picked up to over 70kph with intense snow blizzards and a wind chill of around -30°C. We were completely out of our comfort zones and a disaster was waiting to explode. I went to change my hands in my jumar and realised my hand was frozen solid and wouldn’t move out of the device. Instant panic set in when I realised, I was about to get frostbite or potentially already had. I shouted to the team to stop but I couldn’t quite articulate what was wrong, it was as though my brain had frozen also. Nims took my hands and removed my gloves and placed them in his armpit, the only warm place, to stop the process of frostbite. At this moment I thought I would lose my fingers for sure.
Morning panoramic of Dhaulagiri (Daniel Prudek, Adobe Stock)
ARMY MOUNTAINEER / 9