Читать книгу No Magic Helicopter - Carol PhD Masheter - Страница 8

My mountaineering skills and experience at altitude seemed adequate for a reasonable chance on Everest. However, the shortness of breath I had experienced high on Cho Oyu and Aconcagua was still a concern. I emailed Adventure Consultants and expressed my interest in their Everest expedition. I asked whether I could pay for additional supplemental oxygen and begin using it at 23,000 feet elevation. The answer was no. They explained that people who cannot climb to and sleep at Camp 3 at 23,500 feet elevation without supplemental oxygen do not do well higher on the mountain.

Disappointment, doubt, and indecision swirled through my head like a noxious fog. Given my history with shortness of breath and my slow pace, I could be a liability to others above 20,000 feet elevation. Do I dare risk it, I wondered. Several thoughts kept returning. This could be my last chance to do something outstanding. I don’t want to die not knowing whether I could summit Everest, because I didn’t try. I could always turn back, if I were putting others at unnecessary risk. Wavering between confidence and doubt, I sent my application and mountaineering resume to Adventure Consultants for their Everest 2008 expedition. Then I waited nervously for their reply.

About three weeks later, Guy Cotter, the Director of Adventure Consultants, telephoned me at home one evening. I expected he was calling to let me down gently, to tell me that Adventure Consultants was not willing to take a chance on a woman in her 60’s who gets very short of breath above 20,000 feet elevation. I braced myself. Accept it with dignity, I chanted to myself, as Guy and I exchanged greetings.

Guy shifted gears and seemed to be reading from a file. “I see you started supplemental oxygen at 23,000 feet on Cho Oyu, and you fell several times during your descent.” This did not sound promising. Still, I could not resist chuckling, “Jeez, no secrets from you, Guy. Yeah, I was not happy with my performance on Cho Oyu. Part of the problem was I couldn’t eat or sleep very well up there.”

I figured Guy was about to deliver the death blow to my Everest hopes. I expected him to say if you had trouble on Cho Oyu, you should not try Everest. Instead, he said, “I have those troubles too,” with a disarming chuckle. Guy described how he sets specific goals for himself, “Right, in the next hour I will eat these three sweets and drink this bottle of water.” I was touched that he would share his own vulnerabilities and secrets for managing them with me, a nobody in the mountaineering world.

Guy also suggested I hire Eric Billoud as a personal trainer. Based in New Zealand, Eric was an extreme athlete who trained others, including Everest climbers. I had never worked with a trainer before. However, in “Left for Dead,” Beck Weathers wrote that his trainer got him into better shape in fewer hours of training per week than Beck could on his own. My own training program had not produced the results I wanted. I was willing to give training with Eric a try.

As Guy and I talked, I realized he had not said whether I had been accepted as a member of the Everest expedition. Timidly, I asked, “Guy, does this mean I am part of the expedition?” Guy replied, “Oh, didn’t I say? Welcome aboard!” I was not sure whether to howl with joy or faint from surprise. Head spinning, I sat down on the kitchen floor. I was going to Everest!

We live in curious times. A guy in New Zealand can train an American woman he has never met via email to climb the world’s highest mountain in Nepal. First, Eric asked me to describe my current training program. After reviewing it, he said it needed more speed workouts. I was surprised. I viewed climbing Everest as a test of endurance. However, if Eric said I needed speed workouts, I would do them.

I am an endurance athlete. I am slow, steady, and can go forever. I had not done anything very speedy, since I was a child. Not surprisingly, I hated Eric’s speed workouts. However, I was paying him lots of money to train me, so I obediently sweated, huffed, and puffed through speed intervals on a stationary bike, increasing the intensity over the weeks. Though the dread before each speed workout never went away, I felt a grim sense of accomplishment afterwards, as I mopped up pools of sweat around the stationary bike, stripped off my drenched clothes, and showered.

Another Eric-approved training activity was a weekly hike or snowshoe carrying a 50-pound pack for several hours in the nearby mountains. On the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, I loaded my pack and took a short steep hike in the Wasatch foothills with some friends from work. After about an hour they turned back, while I carried on. “Be careful,” were their parting words. Hey, it’s me, I thought confidently. What could happen?

During my descent, I slipped on gravel and fell hard on my right elbow. It felt like a minor scrape, annoying but no big deal. I got back on my feet and continued more carefully down to the trailhead. Then I noticed large splats of fresh blood on my hiking pants. Ick! I must have done more damage than I realized. I could not see the tip of my elbow, which seemed to be the source of the bleeding. Back at my car, I cleaned up as best as I could, using tap water and paper towels at a trail head restroom. I made an X bandage over my elbow with two large Band-Aids and drove over the Wasatch Mountains to meet another set of friends in Park City to snowshoe higher in the mountains.

As I approached Park City 40 minutes later, I noticed blood on my car’s armrest. “Damn!” I snarled, as I pulled over. My X bandage was saturated with blood and falling off. Half laughing and half swearing at the absurd situation, I made a cowboy bandage with a ratty old bandana, pulling it tight with one end between my teeth. I wiped the blood from my car’s armrest and hoped it would not stain the pale honey-tan fabric.

My friend, Cheryl Soshnik, who was leading the snowshoe hike, was a trauma nurse. I drove to her house, hoping she could do a better job of bandaging my elbow. After greetings and hugs, Cheryl sat me down at her kitchen table and appraised my injury with cool professionalism. “You need stitches,” she said evenly. My heart sank. “Does that mean I can’t snowshoe with you guys?” I whimpered. Cheryl paused. I was not sure whether she was questioning my sanity, assessing my grit, or just puzzled. Then she replied, “You can come with us, if you promise to get stitches no later than tonight.” I sighed with happy relief. I was keen to spend time with my friends and finish my pack-carrying workout.

After several hours of snowshoeing, we soaked in Cheryl’s hot tub. Cheryl, good trauma nurse that she is, repeatedly reminded me to keep my injured elbow out of the water. By evening my elbow, forearm, and fingers were painfully swollen. I could not put off getting my elbow examined and stitched any longer.

At InstaCare a nice young woman physician said I had lacerated my elbow to the bone and torn a bursa. I stared at her bright, red nail polish and braced myself, as she numbed my elbow with several injections of local anesthetic. She closed the laceration with 20 neat stitches. X-rays showed no obvious fractures. She put my arm in a sling, gave me a prescription for antibiotics, and instructed me to see an orthopedic surgeon within the next few days. My elbow felt like it has been stung by a nest of hornets.

When my friends at work saw my sling, they gasped and asked whether I still planned to climb Everest. I was concerned too. If I needed surgery, I would not be able to train for awhile. I did not want to try Everest without being in top shape. However, a few days later the orthopedic surgeon said my elbow should heal without surgery as long as I did not re-injure it. Dodged another bullet, I grinned to myself.

To test whether Eric’s program was preparing me adequately for high altitude, I made arrangements to climb Mount Kilimanjaro over Christmas in 2007. In Tanzania our guide, Ben Marshall, insisted we climb together as a team, no faster than the slowest person in our group. We followed the Marangu Route, which took us through several weirdly wonderful vegetation zones. The cloud forest at the start was inhabited by colobus monkeys in elegant black and white fur tuxedos. Above tree line, dense stands of giant heather towered over us. Higher still, iridescent bee eaters flitted among giant groundsel and giant lobelia. Above these Doctor Seuss plants, carpet-like arctic gardens segued into stark sculptures of barren rock, snow, and ice near the summit.

Our climb was very slow, wet, and cold. It rained every day except summit day. On summit day, it snowed. Even wearing a Gore-Tex rain suit and poncho did not keep me dry. Staying warm was impossible. Usually when I am cold, I can warm up by increasing my pace. However, our team’s pace was so slow my hands became numb and useless. I shivered constantly and wanted to scream with impatience. Good practice for climbing Everest, I reminded myself. There, I may be slowest. If so, I hope others will be patient with me.

Ben’s strategy paid off. All seven team members summited together, including a 68-year-old diabetic man. We all were delighted with our accomplishment. In contrast to the crushing fatigue and nausea I had experienced 35 years previously on Mt. Kenya and Kilimanjaro, this time was a breeze. Eric’s training program seemed to be working. Encouraged, I returned home and resumed training with a vengeance.