Day Thirteen | 14,600 ft Above Sea Level
Embedded in seven layers, I experience the coldest night of my life. In these icy heights, a restful night’s sleep cannot even be imagined. The wooden bed creaks with every movement and the moonlight shines right on my face. I am worried and tense, but look excitedly towards the end of the effort. Body and mind are in conflict. Reason wants to end this torture by crossing the pass.
It’s now three o’clock in the morning, and we are on our way. The night is clear and the moon brings light into the dark. On the serpentine path uphill headlights flicker in line. The first two hours are icy, but I keep going. With the arrival of the first rays of sunlight, it finally gets warmer, but my endurance is sinking rapidly. As the peaks slowly peel out of the dark, the air is getting thinner, the steps are getting shorter, my speed is slowing down, breathing becomes heavier. A Korean trekker throws up right before me.
“Don’t stop,” I say to myself. If I do, the freezing will begin. Continue. Slow but steady. My organs are cramping, my lungs pierce every breath, my head threatens to explode. I feel a tingling sensation in my legs as if a herd of ice-cold ants were marching through my veins. The toes have long been numb. Despite my lack of appetite, I force myself to eat a cereal bar. Around me sprawl the snow-capped peaks of the Annapurna chain. In between violet patches flash.
“Do you see those too?” I ask Tatjana and Francesco.
I am somewhere between heaven and earth, but it ain’t paradise at all. I am only a hundred meters away from the pass, though it still feels so very far away.
Just before ten o’clock, I finally reach the pass. Tibetan prayer flags flutter in the whistling wind. Nepalese porters and guides sip their hot milk tea. Two Israelis are smoking weed, and a group of Japanese trekkers take selfies in front of the Thorong La plaque. Simon crossed the pass a long time ago. Yves and Thibault are still somewhere on the trail behind me. And Tatjana and Francesco take a few pictures as a memory.
“CONGRATULATIONS!” is written on the plaque. “You did it: 5,416 meters.”
You cannot get much closer to God—at most at the top of Mount Everest—but that’s another story.
I look at a white nothing—and yet everything. Tears of joy overwhelm me, before everything collapses inside of me. I reached my limit and now I must pay for it. As fast as possible, I try to descend. I jammed all my strength and energy into this short moment, but all the dams now break. I put one foot in front of the other, sliding down the knee-deep snowy slope, crashing several times to the side. The sun burns down untiringly. Every few minutes I have to sit without strength.
“You have to go down,” says Reason.
“Piss off!” I reply annoyed. “I can’t.”
For five long hours, I torment myself, tumbling meter by meter, until salvation appears in the form of the first settlement on the horizon. From one step to the next, the snow ends and I enter the dry terrain of the former Kingdom of Mustang.
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