Peaking Man

A film currently bringing the soaring spectacle of the Himalayas and the panoramic flatness of the Kiwi vowel sound to the big screen also movingly evokes a tragic event in New Zealand history.

We saw Everest recently, and despite the fact that everyone knows the ending, and perhaps can even recall the very words of Rob Hall's final, heartbreaking message to his wife, it is a gripping and spectacular film. We have never set foot on Everest, but were fortunate enough to spend almost two months in Nepal, a year and a half before these tragic events.

We elected not to visit base camp, which is (as the film suggests) something of a rubbish tip out-of-season, but instead aimed for a prominence on the east side of Pumori (the peak facing Everest which Guy Cotter is shown leading a commercial expedition on) called Kala Patthar (Hindi for 'black rock'). This would take us as high as we can ascend without a climbing permit, and also give a spectacular view of the Great Mother Goddess of the Himalayas.

I kept a diary of our entire time in Nepal and dug out the entry covering the 'summiting' of our trek. My writing is far from stellar but surprises me with it's frankness, particularly the opening which made me believe that I was experiencing a true enactment of Jon Pertwee's famous line about why Earth-bound Doctor Who stories are more frightening - "There's nothing more alarming... than finding a Yeti on your loo in Tooting Bec"

We were far from London, of course, and the other reason for the sleepless nights was the scarcity of high-altitude oxygen: sudden whooping gasps for air often shocking us awake as sleep's shallow breathing starved our depleted lungs even further.

Despite such tribulations, and the fact that my constantly upset digestive system eventually led to kidney failure on our way home, this day remains one of the best experiences of our lives.

8/12/94 - Lobuche (4940m): Day 13 of Himalaya trek

Star trekker - Rose enroute to Lobuche the previous day

It's another bloody sleepless night. The snoring, the cold, and to top it all off, my stomach decides it would be great for a game of soldiers to start playing up again. During one of my undeniable nocturnal visits to the out-house, I push the door open to find it partially blocked by a copious amount of the substance which is usually meant to fall through the hole in the floor.

I'm still trying to recover from the shock of this when I realise that the tiny hut is also occupied, but not by anything human. A huge, shaggy, heavy-breathing figure starts stamping on the wooden floor and shoving the door closed again. What scant control I still had over my bowels almost completely disappeared - and I still don't know how or why there was a Yak in the toilet. Needless to say, I took my custom elsewhere.

Anyway, today is the big day - we reach the final and highest point of our trek - Kala Patthar at 5,644.5 m (18,519 ft). The view of Everest is apparently the best available for non-climbers.

Dawn finally arrives, and with it comes cryogenic temperatures. Mainly because of this, we hit the track as soon as possible, not wanting to risk hypothermia by sitting around inside.

Eventually the sun reaches us and our extremities thaw. It is yet another gorgeous day and we're enormously relieved that we are going to have the best views of the entire trek under a clear blue sky.

After a long and exhausting walk over moraines (the high altitude is really telling and breathing is difficult) we finally arrive at Gorak Shep around 10.00am. (This tiny settlement at the foot of Pumori is at the outer edge of human habitation, perched at 5164m and apparently the original Everest Base Camp)

There is usually a lake here, but in these drier months it now resembles a small desert plain. Not having to worry about getting our feet wet, we walk across it to the base of Kala Patthar, and to our dismay feel completely knackered already.

Walking across a 'lake' at Gorak Shep. Kala Patthar stands at the far shore,
and Pumori looms beyond it.

The final 500m of the climb itself is probably the most prolonged, strenuous effort we have ever made. Muscles and lungs cry out for oxygen which just isn't there, legs feel as if they're wading through thigh-deep mud, and, in Rose's case, a headache (the very first, but not critical in itself, sign of altitude sickness) also joins the party.

We begin by taking a brief stop after every 25 paces or so, but the strain of having to start again leads us to discover that it's actually easier to keep going with deep, rhythmic breathing and very short, mechanical steps.  Any interruption in our breathing cycle sends us straight back to square one.

The final part of the climb is a gigantic pile of rock slabs which lie across each other like enormous collapsed dominoes. This rock climb at least allows us to use our arms as well as our legs and - very out-of-breath, we finally reach the top.

The view is also breath-taking, in fact it's the most incredible thing I've ever seen.

The view across the Khumbu valley to Everest (left-most peak)

Everest is easily identified as it has an aura of wind-blown snow behind its peak - the only mountain high enough to have this 'halo'  We also hear and see various small avalanches, tumbling from the flanks of nearer mountains.

Was the view worth the literally heart-stopping climb? Absolutely, definitely, positively! A fitting climax to our trek.

We share some of my Islay single malt - a miniature kept for just this occasion, gorge ourselves on food, collect various candidates for Dad's rock collection, and then head back down. The rest of the day is spent back-tracking and is quite insignificant in comparison.

(And that's it - obviously I was suffering from complete clueless-ness as to how to sum up or bring the account of such an incredible day to a fitting close. As with almost everything, I'm going to blame the thin oxygen - but will say that I recall we managed to sleep relatively well that night!)

Altitude problem

"Love is like oxygen,

you get too much, you get too high

not enough and you're gonna die..."

(Sweet, 1977)

As I sat alone atop the second highest point on the planet which I'll probably ever reach, finally accustomed to the very thin air and breathing easily, I felt elated and invincible.  Chewing on a carefully rationed slice of yak cheese, I contemplated the valley floor far below and thought: "That doesn't look so far, I'll get back much more quickly if I go straight down..."

The effects of high altitude oxygen deprivation on your decision-making skills are well-documented. One symptom is euphoria, which combined with your reduced powers of reasoning can lead a climber to suffer delusions about their own abilities.
Which is a very good reason why no-one should climb alone.

I was clambering about by myself because we had already crested the highest point we'd ever reach a few days earlier, gasping in the oxygen depleted air as we gazed across at the world's highest mountain from 5545m in the sky. A side trip to a peak in a neighbouring valley offered an alternative view of 'the Great Mother Goddess' from a peak at its end, but having already seen the best; my wife wisely chose a rest morning instead.

While she read and sipped tea in the sun, I was happily lowering myself down from the safe path onto the steep, shingled upper flank of a mountain, my oxygen-starved brain still unable to comprehend that the reason I could see the valley floor so clearly was because it was at the distant foot of an almost sheer drop.

Something about being so high in those mountains makes surrounding geography seem utterly accessible. From your unaccustomed viewpoint looking across and down at peaks you feel a strange kinship - they don't seem so towering, or dangerous anymore. The sky was cloudless, the winter sun warmed my face and the whole world seemed to be easily within my reach. I'd soon be back at the camp, enthusing about how worthwhile, and easy, my little solo excursion was. I'd laugh and add that I didn't even need to stay on the path coming back.

A lone trekker, about to make a very silly mistake.

Then the ground shifted underneath me. The shingle hissed and I fell back against it, throwing my arms out for something stable to catch hold of. I wasn't laughing now. As I sent the first of many boulders cart-wheeling and crashing down towards the valley floor, my delusional inner-peace felt suddenly doused by a bucket load of icy mountain water.  What the bloody hell was I doing?
Lying back on far-too steep angle, my stomach churned as I tried not to move and work out what to do next. If I started rolling like the rocks I'd dislodged I'd never stop. My jump-started brain went straight into sharp self-recrimination mode: how could I let myself get into this situation, what had I been thinking - what an utterly stupid way to die.  The vast blue sky suddenly seemed impassive, immense and uncaring, and I was unimaginably tiny, pinned underneath it. I wanted to cry.

I remembered Cat Stevens recounting how he was swept far from shore by treacherous currents, and made the frantic vow which led to his famous Islamic conversion, if only higher powers would intervene and save him.  I wouldn't have declined some celestial intervention either. I was playing silly buggers in mountains deemed holy since the beginning of recorded history and was now receiving a sharp lesson in respect.

Just as it's difficult to understand how I got into this predicament, it's equally hard to say how I got out again. I remember sending more rocks tumbling every time I shifted but I knew I couldn't stay there.

If I tried to fight gravity and pull myself straight back up with nothing secure to hang onto, I knew I'd be joining those distant bouncing rocks which I could still glimpse on a rapid one-way journey in the opposite direction. With no other option available apart from becoming a permanent monument to stupidity, I tried inching sideways instead, like some weird alpine starfish. The scree underneath me miraculously held and I started to breathe again, dislodging less and less debris as I crept across the slope with horrible slowness. Crawling back towards a lower stretch of the path I'd abandoned seemingly hours ago, I gradually felt the angle beneath me begin to level out and the clawing downward pull recede.

I finally clambered back onto the path and dared to straighten up again, blood pumping in my ears and my breath shuddering. We had passed the tree-line many, many days ago, and the slight breeze had nothing to rustle through - the utter silence seemed to shout all around me.
The descent I then made was not quite as quick as my original, temporarily-insane plan would have been, but still extremely rapid.  I wanted to be away from there as fast as possible, where my over-familiarity with the mountains had bred their contempt, and my own negligible grasp of reason had let me down so badly.

Despite the resulting near-calamity, that solitary exultant and transcendent feeling of looking down on creation, and being at nodding terms with the gargantuan, unimaginably-ancient peaks all about me is hard to forget. It may have been oxygen starvation doing the thinking, but I really was on top of the world.

Part of the panoramic view from five and a half thousand metres - the highest peak at the extreme left is Chomolungma to the Tibetans, Sagarmatha to the Nepalese, and (a little underwhelmingly) Everest to us.

Looking down on creation

A Christmas tree might have proved an unsafe height recently, but we once climbed to an oxygen-starved 5545m.  

"Not too much further."

 The film Beyond the Edge http://fasmatodea.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/yearly-projections.html has made me think that it’s time to recount our own humble Himalayan adventure.  Ever since a Kiwi beekeeper climbed to the highest point on Earth in 1953, Mt Everest has felt to many almost like a distant annex of New Zealand. It isn’t, of course. It’s a sacred mountain puzzlingly named after a 19th-century British surveyor, but known more authentically and evocatively to local people as Chomolungma or Sagarmatha – the great Mother Goddess. Either way, many New Zealanders are drawn to trek the Himalayan foothills, enjoying even more goodwill from the Nepalese than usual thanks to the humanitarian legacy of Sir Edmund Hillary. At the end of 1994, we were among them.

Travelling to the roof of the world had been a long-held ambition and returning to a New Zealand summer after several years away presented the opportunity to fulfil this dream. But actually reaching Nepal turned into a nightmare when we became stranded in Moscow and were forced to take an unplanned, expensive flight to Delhi to get out of Russia.

India couldn’t have been more welcoming, but we had our hearts set firmly on Nepal and we were soon part of a surge of humanity filling a night train to the northern border. Sleeping fitfully in our berths, we rattled through one of the world’s most venerable and spiritual lands, while a constellation of well-meaning eyes and smiling teeth glowed in the darkness of the carriage around us.

Finally arriving in Nepal felt like reaching the Promised Land, and we began with a truncated trek through the Annapurna circuit as a warm-up for the higher Himalayan trails. We were introduced to the rhythms of early rising and retiring, with the hours in between punishing us with endless climbing and rewarding with breathtaking views. We reached altitudes above 3000 metres, very modest compared with what we would face later, but high enough to matter when I had to literally crawl out of a steep but admittedly beautiful valley, weakened by the first of many stomach upsets. Trekkers are always warned that altitude sickness is the greatest enemy, but unfamiliar bacteria in your digestive tract can floor you more effectively. The ensuing 11-hour night bus to Kathmandu was an exhausting experience, almost every minute of the journey spent with my body clenched against cramps.

Dawn in a new city, even one as crowded and noisy as Nepal’s capital, can have a restorative effect and, after a frenzy of permit applications and transport bookings, we were heading into the Sagarmatha National Park to begin our weeks-long ascent to the Mt Everest base camp. We soon met up with a shifting roster of new friends and together had experiences that will remain with me forever as a personal cinematic montage. Roll sequence: Gazing contentedly at distant peaks from a recently conquered ridge, crossing outrageously high and unsafe wooden bridges, watching langur monkeys playing in the trees, turning a Buddhist prayer wheel as we pass one of many monasteries and exchanging ‘‘namaste’’s with smiling Nepalese sherpas as they jog past us with twice their own body weight strapped across their shoulders.

Now intercut with gut-busting climbs of hundreds of metres straight up, suddenly gasping awake from sleep apnoea because of the thinning oxygen as we ascended towards base camp, almost falling down a mountain when I foolishly climbed a peak by myself and, yes, my recurring stomach upsets. But even this had its amusing side. The night before our final climb to 5545m and an unsurpassed view of the great Mother Goddess, I was awoken by an all-too familiar urgent need and quickly found a latrine hut. Pulling open the door, I was confronted by a huge, shaggy, heavy-breathing figure stamping its displeasure on the wooden floor, and almost lost all control in shock. It was not the fabled yeti, but a yak which had somehow found its way inside and shut the door.

The encounter might have inspired me to visit Khumjung Monastery on our way back down, where I had heard a famous yeti scalp was kept. I spent a serene afternoon sipping tea and eating bread and jam with a novice monk whose command of English was only slightly better than my Nepalese. Despite momentarily startling him with my enthusiastic mime of a yeti, I was honoured with a viewing of many other religious relics, but left with the mystery of the Abominable Snowman very much intact.   Our trek eventually ended when we bumped and rattled our way off the edge of a cliff and safely into the air, at the infamous Lukla airstrip. Although our pilot appeared to be reading a newspaper throughout our flight back to Kathmandu, we arrived safely for a few days of relaxing après trek. We dined at restaurants and drank beer, neither of which was easy to do in the mountains. Perhaps it was letting my guard down and not eating as cautiously as I should have, which caused me to become seriously ill this time.

Coming out of a mild delirium in which I imagined the folds in my bed sheets were distant mountain ranges, I found our new trekking friends had come to say goodbye. ‘‘You’re not seeing me at my best,’’ I said, a little bizarrely. ‘‘We already have,’’ they replied with smiles equal parts worried and reassuring. It was to be many weeks before I was anywhere near my best again.

Rose literally carried me back to New Zealand, a lifesaving feat made easier by my plummeting body weight. Arriving back at Christmas was the worst possible time for diagnosis and treatment, but being unable to move by this point meant that I had plenty of opportunity to recover from renal failure by myself. It seems that recurring illness had dehydrated me once too often, as far as my kidneys were concerned. It wasn’t the merriest of Christmases, but I was home and safe. My mother arranged a special repeat Christmas dinner several weeks later, as I slept through December 25. It had been a summer of unsurpassed heights and life ebbing lows and, when my health returned, I had been changed in many ways. I had glimpsed the roof of the world, but also learnt to never take feeling well for granted again

Yearly projections

The medium of film seems an appropriate way for this blog to look back on the year that was.

2013 is almost over, and in terms of cinema entertainment it’s been a memorable year.

Marvel films continue their, until now, unchallenged domination of the big screen, but wait, up in the sky, is it a bird, is it a plane..?

Alas, this list is dominated by large, noisy 3-D blockbusters, but spectacle is best appreciated on a big screen, after all.

A couple of smaller films brought plenty of film magic of an altogether different kind and I only just managed to get tickets to duck Matt Smith’s chin in 3-D. 

It seems that I may have missed ‘the film of the year’ however, as Gravity continues to attract praise from pretty-much everyone.

Here are some of my highlights (and a notable low-point).

Skyfall
Although released in late 2012, we saw Skyfall at the beginning of this year, making Bond the first of three long-running fictional heroes celebrating an anniversary on-screen in 2013. And if this film put a foot wrong I certainly didn’t see it. I particularly loved the more personal, scaled-down resolution, with no large-scale assault on a super villain’s lair to stop a satellite-borne laser beam starting World War Three, this time.  Instead, Bond is desperately trying to get two elderly British thesps to safety through the besieged, fast disintegrating remnants of his family estate, and it’s riveting. 
Another highlight was young Ben Wilshaw as the new Q.  Making an instant impact with screen-presence well-beyond his age, some suggest him as a natural choice for the new Doctor when Matt Smith announces his departure.  By the year’s end Wilshaw has been cast as another icon instead: Freddie Mercury.

Iron Man 3

Two sequels and a last-chance reboot dominated the middle of the year, and I made it my business to organise group viewings of all of them with friends of varying enthusiasm.

First out of the gate was Tony Stark’s latest outing (which apparently could have been the original Iron Man 2 if the unexpected success of the first film hadn’t produced that ill-advisedly premature and hurried sequel a few years back.)

Downey delivers, as usual, and the idea of having Stark suffering from post-Avengers combat syndrome was a fascinating one.  Pairing him with the antithesis of a cute kid (Downey jnr, jnr?) lead to the film’s most charming scenes, Ben Kingsley is exceptional and Gwyneth Paltrow wears a vest top very well. But somehow this sequel fades from memory quite quickly after the climactic explosions die away.

Star Trek – Into Darkness

The biggest and perhaps only criticism I’ve heard of this film is that “It wasn’t as good as the first one”.  I suspect chances were it was never going to manage that particular feat, and I personally loved Abram’s second Trek.  An intriguing refracted image of the original Star Trek 2, on steroids, it also managed to tell an exciting, original story and the large cast were well-served.  Benedict Cumberbatch shows why he is everywhere at the moment.

Man of Steel

I’ve wrote plenty about this film here http://fasmatodea.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/steel-works.html
and it just might be my favourite cinema experience of 2013 due to the intense feeling of relief that this man can still make us believe he can fly.  Perhaps a little cold and nihilistic at times, this is none-the-less the best possible start for the ‘other’ comic superheroes’ advance on the big screen. Led - as is only right - by Superman. Watch out Marvel!

 Pacific Rim

Aargh. How could this come from the mind of the same man who made Pan’s Labyrinth? As clanking and colossally monstrous as its ‘stars’, but not in a good way.  Please redeem yourself with your Lovecraft film, Mr Del Toro.

Song for Marion

Not seen on the big screen, we enjoyed this, appropriately, in more intimate surroundings at home.  A lonely man struggles with the loss of his wife only to finally realise that good can come from any situation and it’s never to late to change.  This is the epitome of a well-made, modestly budgeted British film with several hundred times more heart than anything on offer at the multiplexes, as brilliant performances and plenty of humour take you through a spectrum of emotions before thankfully coming to rest on ‘life-affirming’.  It probably helped that the original General Zod: Terence Stamp, the ninth Doctor: Christopher Eccleston, and the gorgeous Gemma Arterton were in the lead roles, too.

The Magic of Belle Isle

Perhaps a state-side answer to Song for Marion, another loveable curmudgeon finds redemption and a second chance due to the irrepressible natures of those around him, and a dog called Spot.  Morgan Freeman brings even more charisma than usual to the role of disabled former-author Monte Wildhorn and the every-day eccentricity of Belle Isle, combined with priceless, and sometimes elaborate, dialogue helps make this lovely little film irresistible.

The Day of the Doctor

I saw the Doctor Who 50^th anniversary special with my wife and father, in a cinema packed with fans of all ages, in 3-D.  The audience was roughly 50% female, some wore Matt Smith costumes, some took their parents, even their Grandparents (or is that the other way-around?).  This alone would have been enough to burst my sad little fan-heart with joy, but impossibly, The Day of the Doctor actually lived up to its hype.  After a very patchy series earlier in the year, the programme-makers somehow got back in touch with the essence of ‘Who’ just in time, and literally gave us a celebration which had something for everyone.  Twelve (“No sir; thirteen!”) spinning little blue boxes felt like every Christmas present ever, arriving all at once.

Beyond the Edge

A late arrival (saw it yesterday!) and well-worth inclusion. I researched Hillary and Tenzing’s climb fairly exhaustively earlier this year (see infographic below), but this documentary finally conveyed what the climb was actually like, from the treacherous Khumbu icefall to the terrifying vertical Hillary’s Step. Superb research gives new insights to a story already familiar to many, while beautifully filmed recreations of key events convey the emotion and spectacle.  The achievement is humbling, yet stirs National pride at the same time, and our cat carries the name Ed with justified honour.