Day 16, 7/20: C3 - Summit (24757 ft) - BC
- byronzhang15
- Aug 17, 2019
- 6 min read
And the Big Day finally arrives. We woke up at 12:30 a.m., quickly boiled some cereal, and left C3 at around 1 a.m. Eating on the higher camps was problematic. Since my bowl was made out of metal, it always felt freezing. Even when I have a layer of gloves on, I still could not warm my hands up. On C2, I numbed my fingers so badly that it took about 20 minutes for it to fully recover.
It was snowing when we left, but the weather was quiet gentle. There weren’t too much wind, so that made the first section of the climb much easier. Climbing at night usually means that you could not see anything besides a little circumference of headlight. However, the moon was so bright that night, so I could actually see the hills around us.
By the time we’re three hours into the the climb, I started feeling dizzy. Essentially, I had only slept about three hours in the last 36 hours. It wasn’t a headache, but just my body telling itself that I should go to sleep.
Four hours in, I was getting too sleepy so I stopped and ate a bottle of energy gel (it always tastes disgusting). Since I had to take my hands out of the giant mitten to unzip my bag, my left hand started hurting. When I was trying to shift my hand around in my glove, I found it really hard to twist my thumb around, and it hurted when I tried to move it. That’s when I started to suspect that I might have gotten a frostbite. I quickly pulled my thumb out of the giant glove and put it in the same pocket as the other four fingers (since the gloves only had two compartments: one for the thumb and the other for other fingers). I’ve been clapping my hands constantly, according to the directions of our leader, but apparently that wasn’t enough to get the blood flowing.
Eventually, my trekking poles became useless because I could not press down on it (using the reaction force to push myself forward), since my fingers were all clumped in one pocket of the mitten. I kept picturing the black, swollen fingers in climbing movies and became even more frustrated. Yet I’m in a difficult position: The night was not going to end soon, and it’s not going to get brighter or warmer in a couple of hours. So going up or down, I would have to face the potential danger of a frostbite on my thumb.
I was also fluttering my fingers furiously inside the glove to get it moving in fear of a frostbite, which added to my exhaustion, aside the lack of trekking poles. Then I became extremely thirsty, but I needed conserve the only liter of water I have and make sure I had enough before I got back down to C3. At that point, my mind was just warning me, things were not going too well.
About six hours in, the sky started getting brighter, and the slope of the path started decreasing, as we reached a very wide, exposed platform. The wind finally started showing its violent side. Although it wasn’t snowing, the wind swept up some powders that cut through out faces. It was freezing, about -20 °F (-30 °C) cold. Even my boogers were frozen, my eyelashes covered with frost. I saw a cluster of flags on the horizon and shouted to the person behind me, “we’re finally near the summit!”
Turned out, that “cluster” of flags was just a long row of flags far away from each other. It just looked clumped because of the angle I observed it from. As I walked to what I believed was the end of the “cluster”, another “cluster” waited ahead of me. I was taking four breathes every step at that point, and even a couple of meters could take my breath out.
Everyone was wobbling like a penguin, because we’re all tired and sleepy. Some even told me after they got down that they were “accompanied by a sense of euphoria;” some hallucinated and saw the “most important things in their life.” I really needed some hallucinations about cake and boba to motivate myself, but sadly got none. So don’t do drugs! You can achieve the same effect by going to higher altitudes!
This is what I mean by wobbly:
Eight hours in, the slope finally flattened out, and we were walking on a balcony as big as a football field. The summit point, with all the sticks, flags, and Khatas (a ceremonial scarf), didn’t seem far, but because we were so tired, it took another good 20 minutes to actually get to it.
By 9:30 a.m., every one of the 19 members on the remaining team (four left during or after 2AC), reached the top of Muztagh Ata.
I kept looking out for K2 and Broad Peak, but never found them L I didn’t feel excited at all. All I could worry about was how to deal with my fingers and what I’m going to do if I actually lose a finger for my life. Besides the generic “summiting Muztagh Ata” flag, I brought two more: Princeton and Paly. However, I had to take off a glove to unzip my bag and hold up Princeton. I just couldn’t stay on the summit long enough to take a photo with the Paly flag (the towel we got from graduation). It was getting too cold, and with the wind, the hands’ conditions will get worse.
I quickly retreated, realizing that I took my buff off to take photos on the summit. Now aside from my hands, I’m worried that I might not even have a nose afterward. I tried so hard to pull my buff up, but it was so hard to put it to the point where the little holes fit my nostrils and mouth. For five minutes, I was either being suffocated by the buff, or having my nose ravaged by the wind.
I finally made the decision to ignore the buff, lower my head to reduce the wind on my face, and descend as quickly as possible. But descending was hard, especially after a long night of exhaustion. The way down from the summit to C3 was actually quite steep, as I slipped a couple of times (and luckily caught myself).
My whole reaction on the descent was, how the hell did I get up here? It’s been a long way. We bumped into the other team (that came a day after us and use the same BC) on the way from C3 to C2. They were heading up to C3 for the summit push. Good luck to them.
Our original plan was to go down to C2 and stay there for the night. However, since we woke up a little earlier than usual and were a little faster, we got to C2 at around 3 p.m. Since most team members were still in good physical conditions when we arrived at C2, we decided to keep descending, because the lower, the safer. So we roped up and headed toward C1.
The road down to C1 was HOT. The icefall felt like an oven baking me with sunlight reflected from every direction. Also, the snow had hardened due to the heat, which made a section of traverse particularly difficult. We also saw some skiers along the way down. Some of them aren’t even here for the summit; they just enjoy the fun of skiing on such quality snow (it was very powdery before). Huge respect for skiers/snowboarders as they face a lot more danger than we do. Almost every year at least one skier dies on this mountain by slipping into a crevasse.
When we’ve gotten down to ABC, our basecamp manager brought coke up the mountain! I can finally lose self-control and drink because I won’t be coming back up again. I didn’t need to care about my stomach anymore.
It was already 9:00 p.m. when we got down to BC. After 22 hours on the road, it was seriously time to treat myself to food, rest, and some melons! There weren’t any celebratory events, mostly because everyone was so tired. We continued our usual basecamp routine of sitting toward the mountain, counting how much time we still have with this magnificent mountain.
Comments