The Teahouse on Khan Tengri

"The big mountains are high. Understand, they don’t bury the dead, they climb past them,” said the old man. He spit in a white china cup. “There’s a code, and it’s hard to explain to a flatlander.”

The young reporter’s back flexed in condemnation and judgement. He was taking notes and didn’t look up. "How do you justify ignoring a frozen body, someone’s loved one?”

The old man lifted his gold tipped cane off the arm of his leather office chair. He limped to the window with the cane tapping and stared out with a voice so low the reporter set down his pencil. "You see my photos of Hillary and Abalakov on the wall behind my desk and you question my motives, my morality. Yes, I wanted to be one of them, and I think I understood them. But to answer your question, I'll tell you a story of when I was young, just after the fighting in Germany ended, a story I've never told. Bear with me, as my memory is not what it was, but this is true.”

****

We flew into Bishkek and trekked in. After waiting for the weather to clear, we climbed three days, each camp higher than the last. Tashi, our guide, was the lead on a three-man team, including myself and my partner, Max. On the trek, Tashi made me promise. “You must turn around if the spirit god Himavat tells you,” he said, gripping my shoulders, shaking hard. “You will know in your heart when you can smell the summit and think you can touch it with your glove. Promise me if the spirit tells you to turn around, you will, Johnathan. Promise.”

“I promise, Tashi,” I said, but wasn't sure I meant it. I listened to my own voice, which said you can’t waiver, you must summit the Khan Tengri .

On the third day of the climb, the three of us roped up on the south face with high mountains standing from rim to horizon, like, we joked, ‘denizens of doom’. But for us it was an alpine paradise, the kind a climber lives for. My jacket was unbuckled from the sun, and there was no wind. We looked down on a blanket of white clouds far below us, the base camp beneath. All I could hear was Tashi’s ice axe striking the steep ice on the couloir above me, a rhythmic THUNK into the hard crusted slope. He kicked with his crampon boot into the next step, took three breaths, and reached high again with his axe. Snow and ice tinkled down on my helmet. 

Beneath me on the rope, Max’s voice chased me from below. “Catch up, Rookie!”

He called me Rookie because I was the new man. He had climbed Aconcagua and Everest. The big mountains were like medals hanging from jackets with epaulets, each a machismo ribbon, and I didn’t have any medals. 

Max had called me in Seattle. “We have a dropout,” he said. “Michael’s sick. You can fill the slot if you want.” 

“All I’ve ever climbed is Ranier. I’m not sure I’m ready.”

He was persuasive. “We’ll give you a discount because there’s no time to find someone else. If I don’t find someone, I can’t go. You can handle it, I’m sure.”

I thought about my wife… and what about daycare? The phone was silent for a long time. “Max, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“I think I have to turn you down,” I said, but there was no stopping Max.

Late in the bright afternoon, we reached the top of a steep couloir. The climbing leveled off, and the glacier widened. Cracks up to ten feet wide formed where the glacier pulled apart like the maw of a living and hoar-bound beast, frozen, each crack a blue walled drop into a black abyss, many covered with snow, some with snow bridges. We kept twenty feet of rope tight between each of us. Tashi led, myself in the middle, and Max in the rear.

Tashi twisted back. “Hold your ice axe ready. Some crevasses are covered with—"

The snow sucked me into thin air and I plunged into the void and bounced off the ice and my right shoulder screamed in pain. I jerked to a stop as if on a leash tied to my crotch. Dangling between two ice glistening walls, helpless, I was dizzy with my head lower than my feet, the blood rushing. My heart crawled up my chest as I stared below into the emptiness. The rope slipped a foot, and my breath choked. Was I dragging in Max? Would all three of us fall together in a tangle of rope? Beneath me, the ice on either side narrowed. Ice chunks fell in silence to disappear down a shaft with no reasonable bottom. I hung there for a long time, and though I’d never been so cold, I was sweating.

Tashi yelled from the top of the crevasse. “We need you to use your prusik knot!”

Climb up the rope? He wanted me to use a foot sling. How would I tie the thin line? I couldn’t remember, and I could feel warm urine on my thigh. “I don’t think I can. I’m upside down!”

Tashi disappeared, but in a minute returned above me. “No worries. We’ll pull you up.”

Soon I was clawing over the edge of the crevasse. After rolling away, I sprawled on the ice. I looked at Max and saw him take in the blood on the rope, Tashi’s bleeding palm—and land on me. A tiny smile passed over his face. “Lucky for you, Rookie,” he said. “Next time we’ll cut the rope.”

“Max!”, Tashi yelled. “It could happen to any of us, even you.”

But once we were underway again, I didn’t feel like it could happen to any of us. I knew how to make a prusik knot and climb a rope. I’d done it many times, but today, I had to admit, I panicked. Was I a coward? We trudged along as the glacier flattened in the col, and we soon reached the flat seat of the saddle between the peaks. Tashi found an area large enough for our two tents. There we camped.

“Try to sleep,” Tashi said. “We’ll make an alpine start at 2 a.m..”

Max and I lay in our tent, his head at my feet, my head at his. I turned off the headlamp that hung on a strut of the tent. Now there was only the sound of our breathing. Through the plastic window, the size of my fist, I could see Tashi’s light in his tent, his shadows moving. After a time, his light went out.

“It looks good to summit tomorrow,” Max said in the dark.

“I agree,” I answered.

Max coughed. “Are you excited?” 

“Apprehensive.”

“That’s a funny word. Apprehensive. You can’t be… apprehensive. Be confident, like me.”

“I can’t help thinking about my wife and son. He’s only two.”

Max blew out some air. “You can’t think about them.”

“I suppose you’re right. Get some sleep.” The tent was silent for a long time.

“Rookie?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry about what I said today. I was frustrated, and it just came out.”

“It’s ok. I should have been able to climb on my own.”

“Rookie?”

“Call me Johnathan, will you?”

“Sure… Johnathan?”

“Yes.”

“If you quit on us and want to stop, just stop, ok? We’ll get you on the way down. You might be in the way for the summit, and you don’t want to be in the way, do you? I might not summit.”

Max started snoring, but I couldn’t sleep. The mountain cracked, the ice expanding in fissures, causing a break in the silence with cries in the night—cries like the dead prying out rocks with their axes. From time to time there was more than a crack, but a tumbling of rocks and ice falling from the mountain, the rumble of avalanche like distant artillery.  

In my mind, I tried to inventory the list of everything that could go wrong, the reasons I would not summit. Would my legs give out? Or my breath in the thin air? Would a strap on a crampon break, or would I lose a glove and watch my fingers turn black? Or maybe a random rock would break loose and swipe me off the mountain. What I tried not to think about was the fear, but it was there, and in the dark from just outside the vestibule I could envision fear crouching like an albino coyote, its breath fogging in the dark.

After sleeping an hour, I woke restless, unzipped the tent, and stood on the edge of the flat saddle, the pale white slope falling off beneath me into the night. I lifted my palm to the sky and stroked the stars; they were that close. The Milky Way, like a feline animal, purred back.

“How do they make you feel, the stars?” Tashi said I jumped. He was crouching in the packed snow, cross-legged with his arms to his thighs, his chin tucked oddly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you. You scared me.”

“Everything in the universe is connected, Johnathan. Especially to the stars… I know you were scared today. Don’t be. Painful things happen, this is natural. Acceptance is what is difficult.”

This time I wasn’t puzzled by his eyes. They reflected the stars, but more than just a reflection, the stars within swirled and moved on their own. I could feel myself reduced to a piece of dust falling into the depth, moving through galaxies. This scared me more than the crevasse and I WILLED myself to come back to myself. What was the point, exactly? To climb a mountain, a stupendous achievement, but was this no more than meaningless whispers of the value of life? Worse yet, I still didn’t know then what Tashi was talking about. Were my values empty, my logic misleading?

“What is it?” he asked.

“I’m lost. All I know is I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“There will be no disappointing. I am proud to climb with you, and I don’t say this lightly, as I’ve climbed with many.”

There was silence for a long time. 

“Good night, Johnathan. Early start.”

The weather held, and by noon the next day we were on what climbers called, ‘The Knife Edge of Khan’. This was the last ridgeline ascending to the summit, a mere hundred yards away. Flags of reds and blues and yellows, of every country’s color, were staked out at the highest point. They flapped ahead in the summit wind and marked a frozen sky, taunting us to cross the ridge, to stand atop the world.

We climbed, still roped together, a five-thousand foot plummet on both sides. But as we stepped out on the ridge, the north face was exposed below us. A cloud bank rose to meet us, dark clouds towering in layers, lightning flashing in the clouded folds. As if on cue, the wind struck as it swept up the north slope and roared over the ridge where we stood. And with it, snow, which slashed the granite edge streaking off to the south. I leaned hard into the wind and fell to my knees.

Now we were all on our belles, clinging to the ridge. Tashi crawled back to me from five feet away, his legs straddling the ridge. We grouped together, huddled against the wind, the cold.

“We go back!” Tashi yelled in my ear. I could barely hear him against the howl. 

Something within my chest stirred, an awareness. I raised my gloved thumb to turn back and motioned for Tashi to crawl around me. To do this, I had to untie from the rope. Tashi reached out to grab me as he'd seen I'd broken a cardinal rule: never untie to let another climber pass without first placing a carabiner. I had made a mistake, and you can't make a mistake on the Khan Tengri.

Max jostled me from behind and I lost my grip and rose with my right arm pinwheeling for balance. The wind caught me like a sail, a single beat of my heart exploding in my chest. Falling now, I flailed with my free hand and my fingers grasped a bare edge and I pulled myself down, hugging the ridge, breathing hard with iced granite against my face.

Max climbed by me and he and Tashi were yelling into each other’s ear. Max finally untied the rope to his own harness. I thought he had made the same mistake I had, but he turned and began crawling to the summit alone, his legs dangling on either side of the ridge. One thrust at a time, he moved slowly towards the summit. The snow streaked across his red-jacketed body, and he was soon lost from sight.

Once off the ridge, the wind slowed, and Tashi and I began our descent. “He’ll catch up,” Tashi explained. Though we were out of the wind, the snow still fell, and the temperature dropped. We carried no oxygen, and we needed to go down, and we needed to go down now. The cold ws already binding my fingers, my nose, and my cheeks with the sting of frostbite.

“Look there,” Tashi said, and like a mirage, a rough-hewn logged house was in front of us. The structure was not built, but fused into the granite. How could a log house be near the summit of Khan Tengri, the tree-line itself thousands of feet below us? It was impossible, a dream, a hallucination.

"I've heard of this," Tashi said. "I thought it was no more than visions in the dreams of guides, bragging drunk in the taverns."

We stomped onto the wood slats of the porch and I felt the logs of the house with my hand, expecting thin air, but my fist knocked solid on wood. Tashi swung a gray metal latch to open the planked door, and we entered.

Inside were grouped less than ten men. The room glowed from oil lamps, and there was a small bar. A fire crackled in a fireplace, the logs popping and snapping, the wood smoke pungent. Four bearded men gathered around a rough table playing cards, others stood at the bar with hobnailed boots on a brass rail. One man was dressed in grey wool underclothes, his suspenders hanging by his side. The room smelled of smoke, tobacco, and men’s sweat. Cluttering the floors and hanging on walls were a melange of clothing and climbing equipment: ice axes, crampons, jackets of moth-eaten wool, tiny stoves, and vinyl fabrics of orange and blue.

The group turned as one, curious about our entry, and then went back to their cards or drinks at the bar. On closer look, I could see the men were drinking tea. The brew, with a fragrance of floral, met my nose. I realized, with suspicion of my insanity, or hypoxia, if not my death itself, that Tashi and I were in a tearoom. 

A stout man with a white beard, wearing knickers and wool socks, came from behind the bar. “What will it be ‘gents,” he asked. “Welcome to the Tea Bar of Khan Tengri.” I assumed him an apparition, yet the warmth of the room, the smell of the tea, and even the pungent smell of unwashed men, swept through me like a warm bath. My fear was gone, and the albino wolf had run off. We found ourself directed to two stools and were presently sipping our steaming Earl Gray. 

The man in the hanging suspenders approached with another who wore glacier glasses hanging from his neck under a broad gummed smile, his teeth crystal white. “We’re having a discussion you two might help with,” said the man in suspenders. “How much risk, we’re asking, is there to take in the climb? When does the adventure end and the responsibility begin?”

“You’re putting it wrong,” the man with the glacier glasses said. “It's far more simple. A man has a right to die as he wishes, to die with his boots on, loved ones be damned.” 

“Die with your boots on; that’s the ticket,” said the voice at the door. Tashi had left the door ajar, and another man had slipped in. We turned with raised eyebrows to the firm chin and the frozen blackened nose, of Max. Despite the harsh red of his wind seared face, he was all smiles. He had summited the Khan Tengri.

And so the argument continued with the men in the teahouse, and I’m not sure it was ever resolved. Why do men climb and is the risk worth death? Is it our ego on full display, or is the risking spirit in the hearts of men the marrow of a life well lived? The group sputtered and humphed, but we couldn’t decide. 

By now, the afternoon grew dim, and we needed to go. We bundled up and shook a few hands. Max put on his jacket as well, and Tashi opened the door. The snow had stopped, the air quiet. As we went out, the man in suspenders, and others, grouped around Max. “Sorry, my son,” they said, with nothing but kindness. “You’ll have to stay.”

****

“You can believe the story or not, and like I said, I’m an old man and my memory is not what it used to be. I don’t think there’s an answer to your question, in this life anyway. But if you ever climb the Khan Tengri, I believe the teahouse will be on the shoulder just beneath the summit, just where you brace for the Knife Edge of Khan. As for me, I was done with the big mountains and kept my sights on the lower hills, the sanguine knolls, the ones I shared in my young proud years with my wife and son.”