The ice axe or Climbing in the Dhauladhar

This story has to begin on the sidewalk on 17th street outside the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in Manhattan. Since there had been an earthquake in Nepal two days earlier, our plans to walk to Tengbouche monastery and for me to climb Ama Dablam were extremely uncertain. So I decided to leave a large bag of gear in New York. I asked Clark to help me carry the bag up to Washington Heights, and for some reason I cannot explain, we decided to open the bag on the sidewalk, only to discover it was the wrong bag.  There was no way we were going to return to the Holiday Inn at JFK to get the right back, so we interpreted this mistake as the hand of Fate, either laughing at us or pointing us in another direction.  We interpreted it as being a sign that we needed to take mountaineering gear with us. We had an extra duffel, so we decided to take a few things uptown…granola bars, some clothing, I forget what else, and then there was the ice axe and the Petal Charlet ice tool,. I decided, that if we were able to get to Nepal, it was the ice tool that i would need, so we left the  Grivel ice axe in the black bag, which we took to Steve Moore’s apartment in Washington Heights, where we spent a lovely Sunday afternoon talking about art and fate. 

Later, having moved our entire expedition to McLeod Ganj in India, we decided to return to the Triund mountain trek to  climb Mt. Mon, via Indrahara pass.  The pass is 14,307 feet, and the mountain over 15,000 feet. The last time we were here we spent the night in a deluge lightning storm.  The Dhauladhar mountains are the beginning of the great Himalaya. The hike begins at the top of a perilous one lane dirt and rock road above the village. In the morning I made Tibetan peanut butter and honey on bread from Lhamos Tibetan bakery.  They were gargantuan thick. We decided to visit the church service at St. John’s of the wilderness church in Forsyth, just down the road from McLeod Ganj. The plaque on the side of the church mentioned that the former paster was eaten by a bear. It was a quiet cool church, mostly conducted in Hindi. After a while someone with a guitar started to sing a contemporary Christian song, It was like a song from a Disney musical designed to fabricate emotion.  I dislike musicals and this song was interminable, visiting several different languages, including English, repeating verses, choruses. We had an appointment to meet the Tibetan monk Pema at 1:00, so I was anxious.  The the paster gave his talk translated from Hindi to English by a young Indian woman.  I wondered what kind of sermon she would give, before I dozed off, suddenly awoken by Tara who said, “we have to go!”

Mahi was waiting in his white taxi, not at all unusual, all the taxis are white.  He somehow negotiated the one lane road, where we ended up in the large taxi parking area on the edge of the town square. In McLeod walking is always a hazard because of the narrow roads and the taxis and little buses, so I was carefully hugging a nearby car, when I noticed Clark getting out of his taxi, gracefully like a  slow ballet.  Clark, with his always present Nikon 750 with the 24 to 70 2.8 lens,  on the strap around his neck, which someone became tangled in his legs as he began to fall of the cab.  In slow motion I saw the camera hit the ground, I thought to leap under the car and save it, like the time in Amsterdam  when  the automated luggage conveyor belt door closed on Nicole’s bag, with her  passport on tope, but I was too late in my leap, I crashed into the ground, Clark tumbled into the road, and the camera hit the concrete. This was impossible, it could not have happened.  Clark and the camera are inseparable. The camera body was in pieces, impossible to repair in India.  It reminded me of Kundun, in the movie, when the 14th Dalai Llama was escaping from Tibet, looking across the water, saying, my friends and my enemies will all be forgotten, the things that have happened will never be visited again. It was so sad. We had no way to remember those things that were past. 

But, he hid his true emotions, and spoke of the the event as a way to lose attachment, and we continued our drive to the end of the road, this time going the “adventure way, no problem” as Mahi described it.  At 2:30 we were at the beginning of the trail to Triund, the beginning of what the guidebook calls a 4 day trek.  Five of us went this time, Pearl, Clark, Priscilla, Susannah and me. We were carrying heavy  packs, huge loads, including my La Sportiva Spantik double mountaineering boots designed for climbing in the severe cold, crampons, but no ice axe, food, water, tents, and clothes for storms.  We also carried the Petzl Momic ice tool.  We tried all week to find  ice axes for the glacier, but it was a hopeless task. The Regional Mountaineering Center had a piece of paper that listed ice axe, along with crampons, but they did not really have one at all. But they would rent us sleeping pads, which looked exactly like asbestos insulation sheets, and probably were. 

 So, we walked without an ice axe. We walked in the humid Indian Rhododenron forests in the cloudy afternoon, past trekking groups, through small herds of goats, beautiful spotted goats, grey goats, black goats, goats with curly horns, solemnly and carefully moving aside for us.   We gradually entered into the clouds that shrouded the mountains.   How do we know what is real?  What is memory? How do we save them, why do we try to save them?  We were in a cool grey foggy cloud, the trail disappearing behind us.  Small blue and grey birds appeared, then were gone. A man carrying a trombone came down the trail, carrying only a trombone, then a man with a trumpet…what next, talking animals?, we wondered.   Would we see the Swedish sprite who walks barefoot on the glacier, carrying her red converse?  Clark was in agony, a man with a trombone coming through the fog, and no camera. Ghostlike forms of trees faded into the fog and we walked up the stony path. 

We continued to the small shack cafe at Triund, our last hope for an ice axe.  Last time I was there, only a week ago, I asked the man, who was very friendly, if he had brought up the ice axe, as he promised he would.  But like a shopkeeper in a fairy tale, he offered to cook us an omelet instead and a cup of chai.  No ice axe, but he did give us five omelettes on what he called toast, served on metal plates.  The cook in the dark kitchen with spots of blue light showing through the blue tarp remembered me..  We were shrouded in fog, with a few tents and jugglers in the distance. Jugglers and dogs.  As if she were Saint Francis of Assisi all dogs want to be friends with Pearl.  They cannot help themselves. We did not need dogs following us the rest of the night, so I drew them away from her by poking them with my trekking poles, which they interpreted as a game.  They followed me solemnly, and when I gave them a piece of egg sandwich they ate with such indifference, as if to say, we are spirit dogs.

We hoisted our packs and continued the walk, over the steep rocky trail.  A small brown snake crossed the trail. Slowly we climbed above the clouds and saw the mountains, huge and covered with snow. We walked past snow line, a small shack at the bottom of the glacier, and then through huge stone boulders, Stonehenge, weaving our way in the setting sun, across the ridge to small grass clearings surrounded by boulders next to the glacier.  Our goal was a pastoral camping experience, not a deluge lightning storm perched on tiny rock outcroppings like the last time we were here. We put up the three tents, melted snow, boiled water, and made the three freeze dried dinners, cheese potato soup, Texas barbecue something, and Mexican black beans and rice. It was a beautiful calm evening as Venus appeared in the western sky, so very bright.   

I awoke a few hours later to a small patter of rain, a little lightening in the distance, nothing to worry about. Then the wind started. and did not stop.  When the alarm went off at 4:00 AM for our alpine start, the tent was completely sideways, it was a Himalayan tornado wind tunnel.  I was sure the tent was going to be ripped to bits and everything in it would be floating  through the air.  There was no way we could get up now, or even go outside. After another hour there was a slight lull, enough to light the stove, I quickly boiled water and made oatmeal and hot chocolate, the other tents were  still standing but looking a little slant. I slept in my inner boots, since I had no sleeping bag, to save weight, I put on the hard shell pants, the hard shell jacket, the boots, then the gaitors, then the crampons, then the balaclava then the helmet, and strapped the ice axe to the pack.   I didn't know what to expect. 

We started the hike up the glacier, toward the caves and the pass.  For hours, up the snow, Priscilla and Clark had poles and hiking spikes, but no crampons, and of course no ice axe.  Pearl and Susannah stayed at camp to recover from the hurricane. Clark and Priscilla are strong hikers, tireless and fearless.  On the way we stopped under some boulders for a brief hail storm and ate almonds and cashews, thrilled that we were waterproof. We made it high above the first ridge, they went through the rocks and grass and mud, I went up far the right on the snow.  We met at the top of the ridge below a steep snow couloir. It was too dangerous for them to continue, even though they wanted to. The snow was soft and perilously steep. 

They promised to wait, while I carefully climbed the steep snow, It was soft from the warm weather and rain, with several inches of fresh hail on top.  Treacherous because it was so soft, once a fall began, it would be very hard to stop.  The end of the steep slope was far below, out of sight. I used the ice tool now, at every step, climbing climbing.  As I came to a large rock outcropping, below the ridge, the clouds moved in, like in a dream, the tracks behind me disappeared and low rumbling of thunder surrounded me.  The ridge i was heading for was above the pass, but looked like an auspicious goal. Mount Mon loomed gigantic, immense, huge beyond comprehension, very close, yet I knew it was at the end of a long rocky  ridge. After some time in the fog, I became worried about the other two, how they would get down, and I was far past the time for turning back.  So I carefully backed down the slope, it was too steep to walk, too dangerous to risk a slip and the endless fall, so I reversed my steps, planting the ice tool at every step. 

 We gladly reunited, and made our way to the other side of the glacier and glissaded wildly all the way to the tents, doing somersaults, diving off cornices from the last avalanche, and perfected other snow sliding tricks as mountain birds flew around us. It was very warm now, sunny, and we broke up the camp.  I was exhausted from the climb, from the mental fatigue of being solo on a treacherous snow glacier couloir for hours at almost 14,000 feet. In fact, I could hardly walk back down to Triund, and looked back frequently to map out the best approach to the peak.  At Triund we took complete inventory of available food, but nothing new had been added since the evening before. My poor mind, how could I walk back down that trail? But, somehow, like in a dream,  we made the long hike back to the temple at the top of the trail, past and Israeli juggler, tossing his square pointed flat hat, like the star of David, high in the air, past goats who greeted us with solemn indifference, begging for us to sit down and stroke their hair, past sheep and baby lamps, bleating and stepping lightly up the slope, into the dense rhododendron forests with gnarled brown trunks at impossible angles, past casual tourists fresh out of the shower, carrying only their sunglasses, followed by their porters, walking and walking down the smooth stone steps along the soft path and past the tree trunks blasted black by lightening, past the bright Hindu shrines.

 At the very end of the trail we talked to a man from Utah, named Dave, whose father had died, who had become a Buddhist, traveling over the world. He was the first person we have met who had any idea what a Mormon was, and he had a good idea, since he once was one.  He said, “Don’t worry,  will keep your secret”.  We hired a large van and went to Llamos Croissant Bakery and ordered hot vegetables over rice, mashed potatoes and ginger tea.  D.K. sat down with us, he could feel we had been in the dream world, and wanted to stay and talk, but alas, he had to carry dishes up and down the stairs.  I said, let me help you carry these down, and he said,  “ I like to see your empty dishes, to carry them, it makes me happy”  and I agreed.