Miracle in the Andes Page 20

  “Do you see any green, Nando?” he cried. “Do you see any green?”

  “Everything will be fine,” I called down to him. “Tell Roberto to come up and see for himself.” While I waited for Roberto to climb, I pulled a plastic bag and the lipstick from my backpack. Using the lipstick as a crayon, I wrote the words MT. SELER on the bag and stuffed it under a rock. This mountain was my enemy, I thought, and now I give it to my father. Whatever happens, at least I have this as my revenge.

  It took three hours for Roberto to climb the steps. He looked around for a few moments, shaking his head. “Well, we are finished,” he said flatly.

  “There must be a way through the mountains,” I said. “Do you see there, in the distance, two smaller peaks with no snow on them? Maybe the mountains end there. I think we should head that way.”

  Roberto shook his head. “It must be fifty miles,” he said. “And who knows how much farther after we reach them? In our condition, how can we make such a trek?”

  “Look down,” I said. “There is a valley at the base of this mountain. Do you see it?”

  Roberto nodded. The valley wound through the mountains for miles, in the general direction of the two smaller peaks. As it neared the small mountains, it split into two forks. We lost sight of the forks as they wound behind larger mountains, but I was confident the valley would take us where we needed to go.

  “One of those forks must lead toward the small mountains,” I said. “Chile is there, it’s just farther than we thought.”

  Roberto frowned. “It’s too far,” he said. “We’ll never make it. We don’t have enough food.”

  “We could send Tintin back,” I said. “With his food and what’s left of ours, we could easily last twenty days.”

  Roberto turned away and looked off to the east. I knew he was thinking about the road. I looked west again, and my heart sank at the thought of trekking through that wilderness alone.

  We were back at camp by late that afternoon. As we ate together, Roberto spoke to Tintin. “Tomorrow morning we are going to send you back,” he said. “The trip will be longer than we thought, and we’re going to need your food. Anyway, two can move faster than three.” Tintin nodded in acceptance.

  In the morning Roberto told me he had decided to stay with me. We embraced Tintin and sent him down the mountain.

  “Remember,” I said as he left us, “we will always be heading west. If rescuers come, send them to find us!”

  We rested all that day in preparation for the trek that lay ahead. In the late afternoon we ate some meat and crawled into the sleeping bag. That evening, as the sun slipped behind the ridge above us, the Andes blazed with the most spectacular sunset I had ever seen. The sun turned the mountains to gleaming gold, and the sky above them was lit with swirls of scarlet and lavender. It occurred to me that Roberto and I were probably the first human beings to have such a vantage point on this majestic display. I felt an involuntary sense of privilege and gratitude, as humans often do when treated to one of nature’s wonders, but it lasted only a moment. After my education on the mountain, I understood that all this beauty was not for me. The Andes had staged this spectacle for millions of years, long before humans even walked the earth, and it would continue to do so after all of us were gone. My life or death would not make a bit of difference. The sun would set, the snow would fall …

  “Roberto,” I said, “can you imagine how beautiful this would be if we were not dead men?” I felt his hand wrap around mine. He was the only person who understood the magnitude of what we had done and of what we still had to do. I knew he was as frightened as I was, but I drew strength from our closeness. We were bonded now like brothers. We made each other better men.

  In the morning we climbed the steps to the summit. Roberto stood beside me. I saw the fear in his eyes, but I also saw the courage, and I instantly forgave him all the weeks of arrogance and bullheadedness. “We may be walking to our deaths,” I said, “but I would rather walk to meet my death than wait for it to come to me.”

  Roberto nodded. “You and I are friends, Nando,” he said. “We have been through so much. Now let’s go die together.”

  We walked to the western lip of the summit, eased ourselves over the edge, and began to make our way down.

  Chapter Nine

  “I See a Man …”

  THE HIGHEST REACHES of the mountain’s western face were snow covered and extremely steep, and the view down the mountain, a view no other human had ever seen, was a bone-chilling sight. The steepness of the slopes and the sheer dizzying altitude—we’d be climbing down toward the clouds—stole my courage, and I had to force myself to move. As we slipped off the summit, I realized immediately that descending the mountain would be even more terrifying than the ascent. Climbing a mountain is a struggle, an attack, and every step up is a small victory over the force of gravity. But descending is more like surrender. You are no longer fighting gravity, but trying to strike a bargain with it, and as you lower yourself carefully from one treacherous foothold to another, you know that, given the slightest chance, it will pull you off the mountain and into the blue void of the sky.

  “Carajo! I am a dead man,” I muttered to myself. “What are we doing in this place?” It took great effort to find my courage, but I did, and I began to work my way carefully down the sheer inclines at the very top of the mountain. The slopes here were too steep to hold snow, and the wind had scoured the mountain down to bare rock, so we lowered ourselves inch by inch, grasping the edges of boulders jutting from the soil, and jamming our boots into spaces between small rocks. Sometimes we crab-walked down the slope, with our backs to the mountain, and other times we descended with our backs to the sky. Each step was treacherous—rocks that looked firmly fixed to the mountain would break away under our feet, and we would have to scramble for something solid to hold on to. With no expertise to guide our descent, we lacked the ability to look ahead and plan the safest route down the mountain. We thought only about surviving the next step, and at times our haphazard path would lead us to an impassable wall, or to the lip of an outcrop jutting out from the slope like a balcony, with a heart-stopping view to the base of the mountain, thousands of feet below. Neither of us knew the first thing about technical rock-climbing, but we managed to work our way over or around these obstacles, or we would climb down through narrow clefts between them. Sometimes we had no choice but to hop from one rock to another, with nothing but a few thousand feet of thin air below us.

  We descended this way for more than three hours, covering no more than fifty yards, but finally the rocks gave way to open slopes under a heavy snow cover. Slogging through the hip-deep snow was not as frightening as the more technical climb above, but it was exhausting, and we were constantly fooled by the rolling, softly sculpted slopes. Again and again, what began as a gentle slope would lead to an ice wall or a hidden cliff or an impossibly steep drop. Each dead end forced us to retrace our steps and find another route. When we had made our way a few hundred yards down the mountain, the footing changed dramatically. Because this portion of the western-facing mountain was exposed each day to afternoon sun, much of the snow had melted off, and more of the mountain’s rocky surface was exposed. The dry ground gave us easier passage than the knee-deep snow above, but in places it was covered by a layer of loose stones and shale several inches deep. This rubble made for dangerously unstable footing, and more than once I lost my grip and had to clutch desperately at rocks and clumps of ice to keep myself from sliding down the mountain. When we could, we slid down on our backsides, or we lowered ourselves down in huge, rubble-strewn couloirs and followed them down the mountain. At midday, after some five hours on the mountain, we reached a point where the slopes lay in the shadow of a mountain to the west. The snow cover here was deep again, and as I gazed down the smooth, white surface, an idea came to me. Without thinking things through, I tossed one of the seat cushions onto the snow and sat on it. Grasping my aluminum walking stick in both hands, I drew
up my legs, nudged myself forward, and began to ride the cushion down the slope. In seconds I knew I had done something very stupid. The surface of the snow was hard and slick, and in just a few yards I had reached an alarming velocity. Riding my motorcycle on the open roads in Uruguay had given me a feel for speed, and I’m sure I must have been flying down that slope as fast as sixty miles an hour. In an effort to slow my fall, I drove my aluminum walking stick into the snow, and dug in my heels, but this had no effect at all, except to throw my body weight forward. I knew that if I tumbled off the cushion and cartwheeled down the mountain, I could break every bone in my body, so I stopped trying to slow myself and simply held on, flying past rocks and hurtling over bumps, with no way of stopping or steering. Finally a wall of snow appeared before me, and I realized I was sailing toward it on a collision course. If there’s rock beneath that snow, I thought, I’m a dead man. Seconds later I slammed into the snowbank at full speed, and though the impact stunned me, the deep snow softened the blow and I survived. As I dug myself out of the berm and brushed myself off, I heard Roberto’s shrill falsetto shouting from above. I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew he was beside himself at my recklessness.

  I waved my arms to show him I was okay, and rested while he picked his way carefully down to meet me. We continued down the slope together, and by late afternoon we had made it about two-thirds of the way down the mountain. At the crash site, the shadow cast by the mountains to the west cut the days short. But here on the western side daylight lasted into the evening, and I wanted to use every moment of our time.

  “Let’s keep going until the sun sets,” I said.

  Roberto shook his head. “I need to rest.”

  I saw that he was exhausted. I was, too, but the anxiety and desperation that drove me was stronger than my fatigue. For long months, my compulsive urge to escape had been bottled up inside me. It was free now, and raging out of control. We had conquered the mountain that kept us trapped at the crash site, and now an open valley lay ahead, pointing the way toward home. How could we stop to rest?

  “Another hour,” I said.

  “We need to stop,” Roberto snapped. “We must be smart about this, or we will burn ourselves out.” Roberto’s eyes were bleary with weariness, but there was determination in them, too, and I knew there was no use arguing. We spread the sleeping bag on a flat, dry rock, climbed in, and rested for the night.

  Because of the lower altitude, and perhaps because of the solar energy stored in the rock we slept on, the night was not uncomfortably cold. The next morning was December 15, the fourth day of our journey. I roused Roberto as the sun rose and we set off down the slope. When we reached the bottom of the mountain, sometime near noon, we found ourselves standing at the entrance to the valley that we hoped would be our pathway to civilization. Glacial ice streamed along the gently sloping valley floor, winding like a river through the great mountains that rose on either side. From a distance, the snow-covered glacier looked as smooth as glass, but this was an illusion. Up close, we saw that the snow on the surface of the glacier had fractured into millions of small, icy boulders and jagged plates. It was difficult ground, and we stumbled with each step as if we were trekking on piles of concrete rubble. The big chunks of snow rolled and shifted beneath our feet. Our ankles wobbled, and our feet slipped and jammed into the narrow spaces between the chunks. It was difficult and painful progress, and we had to be careful about every single step—we both knew that in this wilderness a broken ankle would be a death sentence. I wondered what I’d do if one of us was injured. Would I leave Roberto? Would he leave me?

  We stumbled over the glacier all that day, until the hours bled together. Both of us were struggling on the rough terrain, but I kept up my lunatic pace and was always drawing farther and farther ahead of Roberto. “Slow down, Nando!” he would shout. “You are going to kill us!” I would badger him, in return, to move faster, and I resented the time we wasted every time I waited for him to catch up. Still, I knew he was right. Roberto was nearing the end of his strength. My strength was fading, too. Painful cramps had seized my legs, making every step an agony, and my breathing was too rapid and shallow. I knew we were walking ourselves to death, but I couldn’t make myself stop. Time was running out for us, and the weaker I grew, the more frantic I became to keep moving. My pain, my body, didn’t matter anymore; it was just a vehicle now. I would burn myself to ashes if that was what it took to get home.

  Temperatures were mild enough that we could walk after sunset, and sometimes I was able to persuade Roberto to trek late into the night. Even in our battered state, we were awed by the wild beauty of the Andes after dark. The skies were the deepest indigo blue, and clustered with blazing stars. Moonlight softened the rugged peaks surrounding us, and gave the snowfields an eerie glow. Once, as we descended a slope in the valley, I saw dozens of shadowy figures ahead, like hooded monks gathered to pray in the moonlight. When we reached these figures, we found that they were tall pillars of snow—penitentes, as geologists call them—carved at the bases of snowy slopes by swirling wind. There were dozens of them, standing silently side by side, and we had to find a path through them as if we were weaving our way through a forest of frozen trees. Sometimes I watched my shadow gliding beside me on the snow, and used it as proof that I was real, I was here. But often I felt like a ghost on those moonlit snowfields, a spirit trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead, guided by nothing more than will and memory, and an indestructible longing for home.

  ON THE MORNING of December 18, the seventh day of our trek, the punishing snow cover began to give way to scattered patches of gray ice and fields of sharp loose rubble. I was weakening rapidly. Each step now required supreme effort, and a total concentration of my will. My mind had narrowed until there was no room in my consciousness for anything but my next stride, the careful placement of a foot, the critical issue of moving forward. Nothing else mattered—my weariness, my pain, the plight of my friends on the mountain, not even the hopelessness of our efforts. All that was forgotten. I’d forget Roberto, too, until I’d hear him calling and turn to see that once again he had fallen far behind. It was a kind of self-hypnosis, probably, brought on by the mesmerizing effects of my rhythmic breathing, the repetitive crunch of my boots on the rocks and snow, and the litany of Hail Marys I constantly chanted. In this trancelike state, distances vanished and hours flowed. Few conscious thoughts broke this spell, and when they did, they were simple ones.

  Watch that loose rock …

  Did we bring enough food?

  What are we doing here? Look at these mountains! We are fucked!

  At one point during this phase of the trek, I noticed that the sole of my right rugby boot was tearing loose from the upper. I realized that if my shoe failed in this rugged terrain, I was done for, but my reaction to this problem was oddly detached. My mind showed me a picture of myself hobbling shoeless on ridges of rock and ice until my bare foot was too bloody to continue. Then I saw myself crawling, until my hands and knees were shredded. Finally, I fell to my belly and dragged myself with my elbows until my strength was gone. At that point, I assumed, I would die. In my altered state of mind, these images did not distress me. In fact, I found them reassuring. If the shoe fell apart, I had a plan. There were things I could do. There would still be space between my death and me.

  I hiked for miles in this dreamlike state. Distant. Removed. There were times, however, when the power and beauty of the mountains yanked me out of my dull self-absorption. It would happen suddenly: I would feel an apprehension of the age and experience of the mountains, and realize that they had stood here silent and oblivious, as civilizations rose and fell. Against the backdrop of the Andes, it was impossible to ignore the fact that a human life was just a tiny blip in time, and I knew that if the mountains had minds, our lives would pass too quickly for them to notice. It struck me, though, that even the mountains were not eternal. If the earth lasts long enough, all these peaks will someday crumbl
e to dust. So what is the significance of a single human life? Why do we struggle? Why do we endure such suffering and pain? What keeps us battling so desperately to live, when we could simply surrender, sink into the silence and the shadows, and know peace?

  I had no answer to these questions, but when they troubled me too much, or in those moments when I thought I had finally found the limits of my strength, I would remind myself of my promise to my father. I would decide, as he did on that river in Argentina, to suffer a little longer. I would take one more step, then take another, and tell myself each brought me closer to my father, that each step I took was a step stolen back from death.

  AT SOME POINT on the afternoon of December 18, I heard a sound in the distance ahead—a muffled wash of white noise that grew louder as I approached it, and I soon recognized it as the roar of rushing water. We were still stumbling over the rugged fields of rubble-strewn snow, but I quickened my pace, terrified that the sound was from some impassable torrent that would cut us off and seal our fate. I made my way down a gentle slope, then slid down a small, icy cliff. A gigantic mountain loomed in front of me. The valley we had been following led directly to the mountain’s base and ended, but two smaller valleys split from it and disappeared as they wound around either side of the mountain.

  This is the Y we saw from the summit, I thought. We are on our way home, if we only have the strength to make it.