Scent Marked

"We knew the storm was coming and I got constant updates over the satellite phone in order to try and time our ascent to catch a calm break before the tempest. We made it to the summit with no time to spare. We took a few pictures then quickly started back down the south slope. That's when the wind sped up and brought the full brute force of the blizzard down upon us. Visibility went down to near zero. The winds howled so loudly that it was hard to shout over them and be heard. The temperature dropped to -23 degrees, -47 with the wind-chill. Members of our group got disorientated. It was difficult to stay together and near impossible to stay on path. Our pace slowed to a crawl, and our oxygen was running low. It was like some Hollywood horror movie, as every few minutes a couple members of our group just disappeared, seemingly swallowed up by the mountain. I was in an impossible situation. I knew that if we stopped or turned back to look for the missing that we'd all die. I made the decision to press on and used the satellite phone to call for help and more oxygen.

"There were 12 climbers in my group that morning. When we got back down to camp, only 4 remained. In the end, it was one of the deadliest few days in the history of climbing Everest. Eleven people lost their lives during that climb, including Yasuko. Three were rescuers who climbed up to search for the 8 missing from my group. One of the rescuers was my older cousin, who trained me as a sherpa. I had to break the news to his wife and kids that he was never coming home because of my mistake.

"Two members of my party were never found. The icy slope of the mountain is their tomb. In fact, there are many climbers who have perished on this journey whose bodies have never been recovered. Keep in mind that we are not just climbing a mountain but traversing a sacred burial ground.

"I live every day with the guilt and regret for failing those who had trusted their lives to me. But never have I not listened to my better judgment again. I entreat you to please not question me if I say we cannot climb any further. If we find the leopards, great. If we don't find them, that's ok. The meaning is in the journey. My job is to make sure that you live to climb another day, and that you go home to your families alive."

He gave us a few minutes to let his words sink in. We all looked around at each other, coming to terms with the fact that even with all of our expertise and all of our planning and all of our high-tech equipment, the trip could still be a bust as far as finding leopards went. We had to reset our expectations to understand that true success is really just survival.

"Now for some logistics," Sonam continued. "Our efforts as sherpas and caretakers of these mountains take two forms: environmental stewardship and social outreach. Being environmentally responsible means that we minimize our ecological footprint as much as possible. To do that, everything we take up the mountain we bring back with us, including all of our waste. Many visitors find this to be the most distasteful aspect of their climb but it is an imperative that we don't litter and despoil the mountain with our waste. The beauty you will discover is only there thanks to the fact that the climbers who have come before you have observed this basic rule. We will leave the mountain as beautiful as we found it for future generations."

I think of myself as a pretty tough chick, but when I heard about this aspect, it was enough to make me want to hurl my cookies. The thought of relieving ourselves in bottles and bags for the next four weeks and then carrying all that around with us was simply nauseating. There were designated places at each camp site to dispose of our pee each night, but every time we had to pee while climbing would be in a bottle. In addition, each of us would be hauling our own individual bio-degradable bag full of our own feces. There were no disposal sites along the way. That bag was going to be with us for the better part of a month.

Don't get me wrong. I am no princess and in some of my previous trips to India, I had used some toilets that were little more than holes in the ground. They would make most Westerners gag. But at least with those you could walk away once you were done. We were talking about hauling our shit around with us, strapped to our backs for weeks!

"Isn't that why we've hired extra porters?" asked Eric, one of our camera operators.

"Absolutely not!" I piped up before Sonam could reply, appalled and embarrassed that a member of our team could be so insulting. "We make our own waste and we will carry our own waste," I insisted, my indignation suddenly outweighing my shared disgust.

"I agree wholeheartedly," Taz had my back.

"No, that wouldn't be right," Jannell chimed in. Elias eyed me curiously and smiled. Vanessa, our producer, was in agreement. We women were not going to stand for any such abusive power differential. Sonam continued without making any more ado about it.

This brought us around to a discussion of food. As Sonam explained, we would burn between eight and ten thousand calories every day of climbing, yet we would only be consuming about 1500 calories each day. "This means that each of you can expect to lose 10-15 pounds during this trip."

"Woo hoo!" shouted Taz, high-fiving both me and Jannell. We all got a good laugh.

That meant packing food that was high in energy and fiber, but low on weight. "We need to consume a lot of fiber because we need to stay regular, and we need to condition our bowels to void our waste regularly and on schedule - in the late evenings and early mornings while we are at camp in the privacy and warmth of a tent. Believe me, you don't want to have to relieve yourself in the middle of the day while we're climbing." I shuddered just thinking about it.

"Once we reach our staging camp at 21,000 feet, it will be difficult for us to do much cooking. You can't really cook anything in that environment. The higher you get, the lower the temperature of the flame gets, due to the low amount of oxygen in the air. Our little kerosene stoves will be rendered nearly useless for cooking by that point. Water won't boil so it takes 20 minutes to cook an egg, for instance. It's near impossible to brew a truly hot cup of coffee."

At the lodge, local staff members had the sole responsibility of chipping clean ice from the glacier to melt for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing water. At camp each evening, we'd all take turns working with our sherpas and porters melting clean snow for water. It takes 2-3 hours for a team of four people to collect and melt the water our entire team would need each day.

"First rule of thumb," Sonam reminded us, "don't confuse your water bottle with your pee bottle! If they are the same colour, I recommend marking one with a sharpie." We all laughed. I was glad he had a sense of humor, despite the somber beginning of his talk with us. As our lead sherpa, his manner would set the tone for the trip.

We would sleep in three tents of four each. The difference in weight between a two person tent and one that sleeps four is only 2 lbs, and one person carrying the tent allows for a more efficient and economical distribution of extra food and water between the three other people in one's pod. Plus, with the extra body heat a four-person tent slept much warmer than a two or three-person tent, especially for the two sleeping in the middle.

We thought about doing a girls tent and two guy tents, but Jannell suggested that we organize our tents according to specialties, which we all agreed would work better. Joining me in the nerd pod were Taz, Greg, and Elias. In the tech geek pod were our two camera dudes, Vihaan and Eric, our sound specialist Jannell, and our producer Vanessa. Our two sherpas, Sonam and Ganesh, and our two porters, Kabir and Zayan would make up the third pod.

We were also carrying two larger tents, one that would double as a kind of mess hall and another that would be our little on-site production studio to assess the footage we were getting. In all, there would be about 50 lbs. of dead weight strapped to my back. Guys were carrying 60. We were carrying the normal gear that all climbers require: 10 pairs of knickers, 4 pairs of high density wool trekking socks, two sets of a base layer shirt and trousers made out of wicking material that draws moisture away from the body, a mid-layer mountain fleece light jacket, mid-weight hiking trousers, waterproof jacket and trousers, a few toiletries including sunblock and lip salve, a Nalgene wide neck water bottle, hand warmers, a sleeping pad, flashlight with spare batteries, small first aid kit, an ice axe, rope, waste bag, and about 15 lbs. of baby wipes.

Well, perhaps that many baby wipes wasn't quite "normal." Most of the people in our group carried only half that many and thought I was crazy, but for the next four weeks those baby wipes were going to be the only things available to provide some miniscule semblance of a bath or shower. It was bad enough that with only 10 changes of knickers, each pair would have to be worn for three or four days. They could laugh and tease me all they wanted, but this girl was not going to go four weeks with a dirty itchy arse. Screw them. The only one who didn't laugh at me was Elias, who sat back in the corner appraising me as the others teased me for being so prissy.

In addition to those standard items, we were also carrying some major HD photography gear, including 20 infra-red motion sensor mounting cameras, distributed evenly among five of us. We needed the motion sensor cameras because they were really our best hope of capturing any footage of a snow leopard. They avoid humans completely, and would never allow themselves to be seen by one of us, better yet pose for a photograph. Our only hope was to come up with good "guestimates" for where they were likely to be, mount our cameras there and retreat back to camp, and then pray. That's where we came in - the small group of big cat experts who could make the best determinations of where the cats are likely to pass.

The plan was to hike up to 21,000 feet and set up a staging camp, and from there launch little day treks to scout and place our cameras. If all went well, we would reach our staging camp area within five days. If all went well...

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Chapter 3

'Priya, what the bloody hell have you gotten yourself into?' I cursed under my breath as I assessed the steep climb up the rocky slope in front of me. Our little practice hikes were one thing, but this was the real deal. Freezing temperatures and dangerous altitudes were all we could look forward to for the next month as we ascended toward the summit where "earth meets sky."

"Don't get cold feet on me now, Priyanka" came the deep voice from behind me, still scratchy from being up so early. I turned around to see Elias striding toward me emerging from our lodge, the last semblance of modern civilization we'd experience for the next five weeks. His face had taken on a rugged look now that he hadn't shaved for the past two days. The hair atop his head was also starting to look less sculpted.

He'd be quite grizzly by the time we made it back down the mountain. In fact, we'd all be much more hairy by that time, in ways I really didn't want to think about. I was warned about this very issue, and in fact advised to stop shaving or waxing two weeks before the trip so as not to have to go through the "itchies" during the initial regrowth of hair. Hiking with an itchy crotch under four layers of clothing sounded like a recipe for torture to me. I gladly stopped waxing my punani. My professors used to tell me that I was too girly to make a good naturalist - with this trek I was finally going to prove them wrong.

"She hates it when you call her that," cried Taz, coming up behind him.

"Why? It's her name..."

"Yeah, but you say it like a scolding parent," she admonished, punching him playfully on the arm. The two of them had been acting very chummy on this trip thus far. As far as I knew they had never slept together, but I knew Taz also found him attractive and like the leopards she studied, she could be super stealthy. I can't count the number of times we've gone out with a group of friends and I've gone home thinking that she had also gone home alone only to be surprised the next morning when she'd call me to fill me in on the details of her latest tryst. If it wasn't for the fact that we'd have virtually no privacy during our climb over these next few of weeks, I'd suspect that status with Elias might soon change.

"You know that I prefer to just go by Priya," I asserted. That preference had developed when I was a little girl in London. I hated how most native English speakers on both sides of the pond mispronounced my name. 'Priya' was just easier all the way around. Elias knew what I preferred, he just was always looking for ways to try and get under my skin.

What I truly feared was him seeing little tingles of doubt creep across my face as I faced the mountain before us. I did my best to present my most determined and self-assured demeanor. "I'll beat your arse to the top," I said jokingly, hoping my levity would mask my anxiety.

Despite my fears that first day went off without much of a hitch. To keep our energy up, we snacked regularly throughout the day on nuts, dried fruits, crackers, granola, and energy bars. Still, we were bloody exhausted by the end of the day. There is nothing quite like the joy and relief that came over me when we finally saw that string of colourful flags letting us know that we'd reached camping grounds for the night.

We cooked together for our meals in the evenings, which mostly consisted of instant soups, rice, and pasta dishes where all we needed to do was add some water and heat. Tea, coffee, and hot cocoa were our best friends.

The hardest part was actually going to pee. It was imperative that we stay hydrated, and staying hydrated meant peeing regularly. For the guys this was easy, they could whip out their cocks and stick the tip in a bottle and let loose. For us girls, peeing into a bottle is a lot more complicated. We have to pull our trousers down and expose much more of our bits to the freezing cold. Then we have to squat and try to balance ourselves and do all this without peeing on our hand. It incentivized us to try to hold out as long as we could. When it was time to go, us girls would stand shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the one peeing to block the wind so she wouldn't get too cold.

"Fuck this!" Taz joked at one point. "I should have got myself a catheter for this trip."

"A nice warm bag of pee strapped to my thigh does sound pretty good right about now," I quipped.

"No shit," Jannell agreed. "I'm totally not even grossed out by that at the moment."

The other issue was privacy. Sometimes there were rocks or cliffs for us to stoop behind away from the curious eyes of the guys. At other times we were just kind of out in the open and we had to depend on the guys' honour to just look the other way. When we did stop for pee breaks Sonam suggested that we all go at the same time, whether we all felt it or not, as this would insure that we were most efficient with our time.

The second day I woke up so exhausted that I was again doubting my sanity for agreeing to do this. I suspected we were all feeling that way, but no one was admitting anything. Greg had warned us that he was a heavy snorer but I slept so hard I never heard it. The guys were chivalrous and let Taz and I go first sleeping in the middle. I turned toward her when our alarm went off and she started giggling, wiping sleep out of her eyes.

"Girl, you've got a trail of dried drool going all the way down your cheek," she teased. I elbowed her and tried to scrub off the evidence before one of the guys saw me.

We had breakfast together in our large group tent and took turns handling any "private business" back in our sleeping tents. Afterward we packed up and set off again. Outwardly, I exuded confidence that our trip would be successful and our strenuous life-risking trek would be well worth it in the end. Secretly, however, I was scared to death for I knew our chances of actually getting any footage of a snow leopard were about as likely as finding an all-you-can-eat steak night at a Hindu buffet.

It was on the third day that we picked up the trail of the bharal - Himalayan blue sheep. We recognized them right away from their bluish-grey dense fur. Their tummies and the backs of their legs are white, while their chest and fronts of their legs are black. Separating their blue-grey coat and white belly is a black stripe that runs along their side. From the back they look all white except for a short furry tail.

The evolutionary purpose of their color scheme is for camouflage at higher elevations: the white on their lower half and underside blends with snow while the bluish-grey coat on their upper half blends with the sky. They are the main food source of snow leopards and our plan was to find one of their herds and stick close to them, figuring that where they go, snow leopards will follow. To keep up with them, we wanted to put satellite tags on a couple of members of the first few herds we came across.

Sounds easy, right? The challenge was that we had decided from the outset that we weren't going to use tranquilizers. Many Buddhists in the area see them as a sacred animal and protect them. We needed to be mindful of that and use methods that were the least traumatizing to the animals. That meant we were going to try our luck at goat herding. The bharal are so agile and sure footed, with hooves designed specifically to grip wet and slippery rocks, that they can scamper up a rocky cliff and out of reach at a moment's notice. To successfully herd them, we devised a strategy to separate a couple from the group, then us girls would try to block their path up the cliff while the guys closed in from behind. The satellite tag was merely a microchip, and they were loaded into an insertion device that looked and worked like an Epi-pen. When the guys got ahold of one, my job was to rush in and insert the microchip, right in the upper thigh.

Ready with our strategy, we took up positions and were about to close in when two rams broke out into a fight and began rutting! What luck. Vanessa was on it right away, instructing Vihaan and Eric to pull out their cameras and start filming.

The rutting seemed to go on for an eternity, so we used the opportunity to pull out some snacks and watch all the raw power on display. Mature males have large, thick horns. They grow upwards, then turn sideways and curve backwards, looking somewhat like an upside-down moustache. A thunderous clap reverberated throughout the valley every time the two large males smashed heads.

Finally, after what seemed like over an hour, one of them threw in the towel and decided he'd had enough. The victor chased him a ways up the cliff to make certain of his departure, then returned back down to where the ewes were gathered. He went sniffing about their behinds, and we figured he was trying to assess which ewes were coming into estrus. What happened next completely shocked us and left us speechless.

As the victorious ram went up to smell the hind quarters of the first ewe, she let off a brief gush of what we initially thought was urine to flow over his nose and outstretched tongue. He lapped up the short deluge hungrily.

"Whoa," I whispered at the first instance. The ram then went up to another ewe and the same was repeated. Then again with another.

"Is he tasting their pee?" Vanessa whispered, trying to understand.

"I think the other ram must've lost on purpose," chuckled Eric. "Looks to me like this guy drew the short end of the stick."