The Everest Files by Matt Dickinson Page A

the shower turned to sheeting rain.
    They crossed the river several times as the track meandered up the valley, the river seemingly more swollen from the downpour each time. A sharp, stinging wind came down from the ice-laden peaks to the north. Sleet began to slant down, followed by a brief blitz of hailstones.
    Then came the notorious climb up to Namche Bazaar, a two and a half hour slog which had a justifiably ugly reputation amongst Everest trekkers. Kami was cold but he could deal with that, in fact, from his point of view everything would have been fine on this ever-rising track if only the yaks would have kept moving.
    â€˜Haaaaargh! Haaarrgh!’
    Kami became quite hoarse with the constant yelling. He aimed bigger and bigger stones at the beasts’ rumps but they grew surly, stubbornly refusing to budge, staring at him balefully and seeming oblivious to the stinging pain.
    Then came the final push up a series of steps. Twenty minutes of stop start progress. Finally, came the smell of wood smoke filtering through the trees and the expedition saw the spectacular natural amphitheatre around which the remarkable town of Namche Bazaar was built.
    â€˜That wasn’t so bad.’ Kurt said.
    Kami disagreed. The constant goading of the yaks had left him exhausted and he was totally drenched. He was grateful that the acclimatisation programme insisted on a forty-eight hour stop here to let those who had recently flown into Lukla adjust to the thin air.
    â€˜Three thousand five hundred metres,’ Alex Brennan exclaimed at the mess table that night, ‘only five thousand four hundred to go.’
    The comment got some laughs from those at the table but it was followed by an awkward silence. Kami could see that they were all feeling the altitude here at Namche, George the cameraman had complained of a pounding headache and Sasha was looking pale and washed out.
    â€˜We have a photo call tomorrow morning,’ Kurt told them, ‘so we need everyone looking their best. I want the whole team up at the military post at 6 a.m.’
    The press pack arrived that night: a dozen photographers, all men, representing various press agencies and newspapers in the USA, Europe and Asia.
    The Sherpas were amused by the new arrivals. These characters didn’t look like trekkers and they certainly didn’t behave like them. Laden down with camera bags, they wheezed and spluttered into town, dragging themselves to their lodge with cries of relief and calls for whisky and lager.
    â€˜Snappers like this spend their lives following politicians and sportsmen around,’ Sasha told Kami and Nima, ‘most of their photocalls are on private jets. This might be a little out of their comfort zone.’
    The lodge was overwhelmed by this marauding horde, the kitchens deluged with requests for pizzas, cheeseburgers and yak steaks, most of which went uneaten when the guests discovered just how little they resembled the familiar comfort food of home.
    But the beer evidently did taste sufficiently familiar, and so did the Scotch. Kami, Pemba and Nima were loaned to the lodge owner by Tenzing and spent the entire evening acting as waiters, trying to keep up with the orders from this hard-drinking crew.
    Most of the photographers paid them little notice, with one exception: a huge guy with the reddest nose Kami had ever seen who called them over to the corner where he was drinking with a buddy.
    â€˜Hey! You guys are going up there with Brennan, right?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Kami thought he resembled one of the frogs that infested the fields back home. The frog man swigged deeply from his bottle of Everest beer.
    â€˜Take a seat. Let’s have a little talk about stuff.’
    His drinking partner gave him a dirty look. ‘Leave them alone,’ he said accusingly, ‘They don’t want to get involved in your grubby world.’
    Then he left, weaving an uncertain path across the dining