Cho Oyu, Sixth Highest Mountain in the World
April Fool’s Day 1997 marked my first major high elevation trekking adventure. Five months earlier, in November of ’96, shortly after I returned from a trek in Borneo, a mountaineering friend who intended to climb Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world, asked me if I wanted to apply as a trekker on the upcoming climbing expedition. Knowing what I know now, almost five years later, it’s literally impossible for me to envision anything more rigorous, dangerous, otherworldly and outrageous than a mountain climb, much less one on the sister peak of Mt. Everest in the Himalayas of Tibet. With all the naiveté of a true “greenhorn” neophyte, I responded with three little words, “Sure, I’ll go!”
Mountaineering itineraries allow for flexibility; unforeseen events, accidents, weather and political unrest influence how and if things happen. The trekker’s schedule ran from April 1st to April 25th when the trekkers would descend from Advance Base Camp at 18,500 feet altitude, return to Kathmandu and fly home. The climbers would continue on the mountain for another month hoping to accomplish their summit goals. Eventually, it became clear that I was going to be the only trekker on the expedition. Consequently, my staying on the mountain for the entire two months with the team became a convenience for them (rather than make arrangements for one person to depart back to Kathmandu alone) and a rare treat for me. I vividly remember faxing the expedition coordinator, Eric Simonson, offering to help dig latrines if he would allow me to stay the entire two months. He never took me up on my offer. Cho Oyu, in fact, evolved into the adventure of a lifetime!
Looking back at a copy of my fax
to Eric 2/27/97 it may have been misleading to him. 
With
the exception of the frame pack and daypack, I, still today, have no experience
with any of the equipment I asked him about bringing with me on the trip.
Crampons, ice axe, harness and slings were simply items on his huge packing
list, for the climbers, which I thought sounded handy. In fact, I now know,
each item requires formal training to use properly. I remember, for example,
the morning I started up the mountain from Base Camp to Intermediate Camp.
Shaun Norman, whom I nicknamed, The Wizard, for his amazing ability to successfully
guide me over any terrain, patiently sat me down on a giant glacial boulder
and gave an on-site tutorial-- how to put on gaiters over hiking boots. All
those little clips actually have a purpose. Fascinating.
The mountain called Cho Oyu marked not only the fifty-year old dividing line of my life, but also marked the difference between my life as an active-duty-mother with dependent children and a retired-from-active-duty mother with an adult son and daughter. Considering that there were 13 years between the births of my two children, it seemed appropriate that Cho Oyu was one of the world’s highest mountains.
I immediately recognized that I had no idea at all about what I was signing up to undertake. Going to Tibet, I would have to rely, (almost as though I, myself, were a child), on the help and guidance of others. As a woman who had run her own ship for many years, handing over the tiller required serious consideration. The flood of legal and medical forms, which spewed from my fax machine, quickly, broke down my resistance to putting myself into the hands of capable and experienced guides who knew, exactly, what they were doing.
One form, in particular, the Body Disposal Form, which I have copied below, caught and held my attention for more than a few minutes. As I stood at the kitchen counter of my cozy home in Reno, signing, dating and preparing to fax it back to the Expedition Coordinator, there was a sense of understanding what it said, but not really comprehending the gravity of what it meant. The Body Disposal Form is one of those pieces of paper, which require a person to experience the wild dynamics of a mountain first hand, in order to truly appreciate the need for this legal form. The answer I put, “I prefer to be left on the mountain if I die,” remains the correct answer. What has changed, however, between 3/3/97 and today is that I now understand, people die on mountains routinely. Fate does not discriminate between experience and inexperience. Your chances of having your form remain in the manila folder are higher with experience, but certainly experience is not a guarantee. It is not an optional form, but one required as a source of information to carry out your last wish.
BODY DISPOSAL FORM (Easy to read version!)
Please read the enclosed article, "Death at Extreme Altitude" and then consider the following:
If you die on the mountain, your body will be put in a crevasse and/or marked with a rock cairn in a respectful manner by your team members, unless you specify otherwise and it is feasible to do so based on the decision of the Experdition Leader.
If you die down low, it might be possible to get your body to Base Camp by yak (though most yaks don't carry over 120 pounds) where it could be cremated. This would require getting a truck (our trucks come from Lhasa) to come to Base Camp with a load of wood (the only forests are near the Nepal border) which will probably take several days and cost several thousand dollars by the time woood is brought to Base Camp.
If repatriation (shipped homel) of the body is elected, it would probably be via Kathmandu, and would be quite expensive and take several weeks. I am not familiar of any instances of repatriation from the Himalayas, but I have heard the story of an American family that spent $17,000 to bring a body back from Aconcagua to the USA two years ago.
I prefer: Left on Mountain_____________
Cremation_____________________
Repatriation____________________
Each
of the team members was, in his own way, an incredible person. Among the team
were two doctors, an engineer, a scientist, a farmer from New Zealand, the Wizard
from New Zealand, (who holds the record for ascents of Mt. Cook), and three
great mountain guides from the United States. Dave Hahn was the expedition
leader; “Dawa” Danuru held the position of lead climbing Sherpa; Pemba Tshiri,
cook extraordinaire, and Pasang Nuru his assistant. Interestingly enough the
last four team members, just two years later, were also on the Everest expedition,
which found the body of George Mallory on, May 1, l999 solving a 75-year old
mystery. No one can tell me that on Cho Oyu, I was not with one of the finest
mountaineering teams ever assembled! Or, vice versa, that they were saddled
with probably the most inexperienced person to ever set foot on a major Himalayan
mountain peak. Dave Hahn’s words still ring in my ears, as we passed one afternoon
on the moraine, “Elizabeth”, he shouted over the sound of rock fall on the glacier,
“Trekkers are not allowed to get hurt on expeditions!” Thanks to his ever-watchful
eye and caring, I didn’t even get a paper cut.
On the 10th of May a storm raged over Cho Oyu. My friend made the decision to abandon her summit attempt in light of the huge winds. We left the mountain returning to Kathmandu. On the afternoon of the 13th of May the phone range in our room at the Vajra Hotel. The voice on the other end of the line was Elizabeth Hornsby, a British writer, who keeps track of climbers in the area. After a conversation with my friend, she congratulated her on using the good judgment to get off the mountain when she did and then informed us that five climbers on Everest had been killed in the same storm.
It amazed me, over the course of my stay on Cho Oyu, that some of these very intelligent and physically fit people would push themselves beyond the point of no return, which was the case with the five on Everest. If, in fact, the bodies of those five climbers were recovered, it became all too easy to visualize their Body Disposal Forms being pulled out of the folder…
Cho Oyu was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life, a mountain landscape of unspeakable beauty. Its silence afforded me the opportunity to reach inside myself and listen to things that would have surely remained obscured in the busy environment of my normal daily life. I was an ordinary woman in an extraordinary place among extraordinary people.
“Sure, I’ll go” were three of the best words I ever strung together!
- Elizabeth Rassiga, © 2001