My Old Man and the Mountain by Leif Whittaker

Author:Leif Whittaker [Whittaker, Leif]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680510706
Published: 2016-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

While some of us were trekking, the other half of our team was constructing Base Camp—transporting equipment from its winter storage place in Gorak Shep, arranging provisions, organizing loads to be carried up the mountain, and generally being far more productive than us hikers. Soon after our arrival, Dave introduced me to everyone, but I was preoccupied with my own pathetic existential crisis, and beginning to feel sick, so I probably didn’t make the best impression. Today’s my chance to remedy that.

Lam Babu is the overall leader of our Nepali climbing team. An Everest veteran who’s been working in the Himalaya since he was a young man, he now occupies an organizational role. He will probably not go all the way to the summit, although Dave says he will be along for most of the ride. Second in command is Chhering—drill-bit hair, Hollywood cheeks, and the wiry limbs of a marathoner. Kaji and Pasang round out the climbing team. Kaji’s older—I’d say late thirties if I had to guess—with a stringy black beard and a calm demeanor. Pasang’s the kid of the group. I doubt he’s ever had to shave, but there’s a fire in his chocolate eyes that foretells all kinds of passion and conviction. Kumar, our head chef and also the leader of the support staff, is taller and thicker than the rest of the Nepali men. Kumar has four assistants—Yubaraj, Raju, Cancha, and Jetta—who will fill various support roles during the expedition. Sadly, we said good-bye to Kami and Lhakpa when we arrived at Base Camp. They were employed only for the trek and are, I imagine, already back home, or perhaps in Lukla, where they will join another trekking team and repeat the cycle.

Finally, Mark Tucker, a.k.a. Tuck or Tucky, is our expedition coordinator, which I take to mean that he’s an inimitable cog in the climbing-Everest machine. Nothing works without him. Tuck’s a bulldog in appearance—neck thicker than my thigh, shoulders that’d make a one-hundred-pound backpack look like a purse—but his giddy laugh is a communicable disease and I was infected from the moment we met. He was one of twenty climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest during the 1990 International Peace Climb, which was heralded by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful Everest climb in history. Originally from Huntington Beach, California, Tuck boasts that he was the first Southern Californian to stand on top.

Our teammates’ hardworking ethic is evident in the detailed construction of Base Camp. They’ve transformed what was once an uneven square of ridged and pockmarked moraine into a meticulously landscaped home, complete with flights of stone stairs, perfectly flat tent footings, and a central courtyard. They must’ve carried and repositioned many tons of rock in order to construct camp, and I already feel indebted to them to an extent I will probably never be able to repay.

Base Camp is replete with western luxuries. Besides our personal sleeping tents, there’s a 120-square-foot, eight-foot-tall communications tent with a removable floor, folding tables, and a VHF radio.

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