Some of the guide/friends I made during my trek to Mt. Everest Base Camp have already begun their acclimatization for the 2024 climbing season. Recent FB posts, along with the some stunning photography, awakened the raw emotions and trials of, what was for me, a life-changing experience.
We were free to move at our own pace between camps. My solitary trek was a saunter through Himalayan climbing history, a chance to meet some of my heroes, and an awesome campsite.
Below are a few paragraphs from My Father’s Keep. The book I learned to write when I returned from perhaps my greatest adventure after parenthood.
“Every mountaineer who has climbed or has even attempted Mount Everest from the south would have passed this way. I had always wondered what it would feel like to cover the same ground. The answer was a surprise. I thought it would be like a museum, a stroll through the past. But I realized this timeless scene had never changed. I was looking through their wind-burned eyes, and my legs were just as tired, my lips just as chapped, and my breathing just as difficult. In that moment, I shared the same real-time elation born from immersion in this geologic wonder.”
“I had seen Nuptse the entire day, but now the infamous Khumbu Icefall and west shoulder of Mount Everest loomed over me. Even at that distance, it was not their size as much as the incredible inconsequence I felt. This was not subjugation. I was welcome among these giants. Rather, it was the realization of something greater than oneself.
Then, slowly rising from behind the west shoulder was the prize, Mount Everest, Chomolungma, the Goddess Mother of the Earth.
The Himalayan Mountains are so large that what seemed just within reach was actually two or three miles away, perhaps more. I prodded along in a kind of laboring celebration. I was living a dream come true, but I hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of how wonderful this fulfillment would feel. I was fatigued yes, but the realization that I would attain my goals offered excitement, confidence,and pride all mixed together. I felt weightless.
These images before me had been ink, paper, and imagination from my father’s library, and now I stood before them in humbled reverence. In what seemed like only a few more steps, I saw hundreds of multicolored tents—all symbols of the temporary humanity collected three miles above the sea and two vertical miles below the summit, at long last, Mount Everest Base Camp.
After seven hours of effort, wonderment, and doubt, Phurba Tashi and Russell Brice stood sentry at the turn off the main trail. Russell greeted me with a hearty “Well done, Ed.” To hear that from Russell was another life highlight. He never let on, but he knew I was having a rough day. He knew everything: what meds I’d taken, when I left Lobuche, and reports from the trail. I’ll wager he even knew what I carried in my pack too. I knew Russell and the team had my back even though the effort was mine alone.
I turned to Phurba Tashi, expecting to simply shake his hand. This famous Sherpa I’d met in Khumjung, the man with the twin boys, the man with over twenty summits of Mount Everest, the man with the heart of a lion. But to my astonishment, Phurba said, “Welcome to Base Camp, Ed. May I take your pack and show you to your tent?”
Usually, I can find something to say. During my creative design career, I’d presented concepts to billionaires. But on this day, in this place, I stood flabbergasted and muzzled by high-altitude duct tape. This is an environment where thoughts don’t race, they crawl, and a one-word sentence is a passing grade. My response waggled to the surface like an air bubble. Out popped “Sure,” and I relinquished the pack without the slightest hesitation.
Phurba took my pack and turned toward the tents. I scurried behind his Olympian strides, a nearly impossible privilege for a mortal flatlander. Turning my head skyward, the sun detonated from the mysterious indigo blue. Underfoot, the churned mounds of ice and gravel reminded me of the jumble of plowed snow at the end of my winter driveway.
In the last fifty yards, I was indestructible. I was finally at the foot of Mount Everest. It was not lost to me that my trusted red pack with the special cargo took its final steps into Base Camp on the shoulder of an honest-to-God Himalayan hero. My father would have completely busted his buttons.
Tears welled once again as I whispered, “We made it, Dad.”
Where his ashes were ultimately placed, is the rest of the story.
The Adventures of Spaghetti Eddie 