Chapter 387 The Wind in the Howling Valley
Three Sherpas, a guide, three team members, plus Jarrett the photographer, a total of eight people, the standard configuration for climbing Mount Everest.
It is worth mentioning that the photographer had to stay at the base camp due to health reasons.
"Fuck, it's cold."
Yao Jun tightened his collar. The cold wind blew in and his body felt like it was frozen.
Bifang exhaled a breath of hot air, and white steam could still be seen in the headlight beam, but it was pitifully little, as if it was about to disappear. The temperature was already close to minus twenty degrees Celsius, and if it was any lower, even white steam would not appear.
Rob took out the altimeter and said, "It's 1:47am now, 5,432 meters above sea level. Come on, there are still 300 meters to go, once we pass the glacier, we'll be fine."
Yao Jun asked: "Will it be easy after crossing the glacier?"
Rob nodded, and the team's morale instantly rose.
"The chances of dying after crossing the glacier are less."
Everyone: “…”
Yao Jun tightened his hat and felt the weather was getting colder.
[Is this a cold joke? ]
Even the audience felt a cold wind blowing across their bodies, looking at the dark mountains in front of them, as if they were watching a group of people heading towards hell.
The double torture of cold and lack of oxygen made everyone feel dizzy. Bifang followed at the end of the team. As the last guarantee of the team, in front of him was Attenborough. Since he had invited him personally, Bifang could not rest assured that anyone else would cover the rear, so he had to come himself.
"Five thousand four hundred meters. At our current speed, we can climb about one hundred meters every forty minutes. If there is no traffic jam, we should be able to reach Camp C1 around five o'clock." Bifang said slowly, breathing in and out. At this altitude and state, even with his physical fitness, speaking too fast can easily disrupt his breathing rhythm and lead to a significant consumption of physical strength.
【Traffic jam?】
【What the hell is a traffic jam? 】
The audience was confused. How could there be a traffic jam on Mount Everest?
Bifang swallowed and nodded. "Because many places on Mount Everest are extremely difficult to climb, and the route options are very limited, once the right opportunity appears, many teams will climb together, blocking the route. In 2019, there was a traffic jam at 8,000 meters. I have said before that above the South Col, above 7,600 meters, the human body begins to slowly die. What we have to do is to reach the summit and return before the body dies. The result of the 8,000-meter traffic jam was that three people died at once."
As if to verify what Bifang said, an extremely familiar voice appeared.
"Hey, look, isn't this our big anchor? I thought you would just pay a hundred gold coins to let the Sherpa carry you up the mountain!"
Bifang scratched his ears, and the moment he heard the voice he knew who was coming. Without saying anything, he followed the lord in front of him.
The lord also heard the movement behind him. He signaled Bifang with his eyes and made a gesture to indicate whether it was OK.
Bifang shook his head: "Don't worry about him, if he feels he has more strength, just let him shout."
If you talk nonsense while climbing a mountain at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters, your brain must have been frozen.
A person can be strong and violent or weak and gentle, but not both weak and violent. This is why many people hate Chihuahuas.
Bifang's reaction made the audience laugh like crazy. They were originally a little angry at the sarcastic Withers, but Bifang's words made him look like a clown all of a sudden.
"Hey, hey! Can't you hear me? " Looking at Bifang who ignored him, Withers shouted twice in a row, but got no response.
Saito, who was standing aside, passed Withers and caught up with the main force. He glanced at Withers with contempt in his eyes, which made Withers so angry that he wanted to bite him.
Saito shook his head and went upstairs without looking back.
Although Saito was somewhat surprised by the two teams' meeting again, it was understandable. Everyone had arrived relatively late and were in a hurry, so it was normal for them to meet on the third day after reaching the base camp.
"Shit! Cough cough."
Withers cursed inwardly, then was filled with a mouthful of cold air, which made him cough.
The snow was getting thicker and thicker. Not only was it very tiring to pull it out, but it was also difficult to know what you were stepping on once you stepped on it. It could be a stone, or it could be a bottomless glacier the next second. The feeling of opening a blind box was very uncomfortable.
Yao Jun shook off the snow on his boots. "Damn it, is there no other way to go?"
Bifang affirmed: "Yes, the glacier on the north slope is more stable, with fewer cracks, and the road is repaired all the way, so the risk of sliding is low, and the risk of rockfall and ice and snow avalanches is also relatively small. The route between camps is short, so the risk of physical exhaustion is small; there are also fewer climbing teams, so the risk of traffic jams is low."
In comparison, the south slope is a little chilly. There is a huge risk of ice and snow avalanches on the Khumbu Glacier; there is serious rock and ice falling on the Lhotse Wall; there are many cracks in the glacier; the distance between camps is long and easy to overdraw; there are many climbing teams on the south side, which is prone to traffic jams.
"Then why don't you go to the north slope?"
Bifang rolled his eyes.
Yao Jun suddenly realized: "Damn, I remember now, Beipo needs a certificate, cough cough, damn, it's so uncomfortable."
Yao Jun, who had been talking continuously, started coughing violently. Rob in front of him quickly handed him an oxygen tank and helped Yao Jun sit aside. He breathed for several minutes before he recovered. Yao Jun was still reluctant to put away the oxygen tank.
"Wait, let me take one more puff, just one puff, huh, ha, it feels good, comfortable."
Bifang touched his chin and said hesitantly: "You have a kelp cough? Last night, you were coughing all night. Didn't you sleep well?"
"Ah?" Yao Jun was startled. Just as he was about to put the oxygen cylinder back into his bag, he hugged it tightly in his arms again.
Since the air near the Khumbu Glacier is dry and cold, the lungs are prone to inflammation, so many people show a persistent cough, which is called "Khumbu cough". Once this symptom occurs, it is impossible to continue climbing and you can only go down the mountain and wait for rescue.
Rob at the side waved his hands and said, "Mr. Yao, this is a normal reaction. Although the frequency is very high, it is related to our tight schedule. The kelp cough has already damaged the trachea. It is impossible to recover by just taking a few breaths of oxygen."
Rob is very experienced and has led many teams, so he has sufficient experience in judging the symptoms of team members. Although Yao Jun's coughing frequency and symptoms have reached the level of kelp cough, it still depends on the specific situation. Going up the mountain directly without adapting is already in a relatively good condition for Yao Jun. It is abnormal for Bifang to look fine.
No matter how experienced a climber is, he or she will experience discomfort in the first few days at high altitudes, to varying degrees, but no one is immune.
When Yao Jun and others first arrived at the base camp, they sometimes felt dizzy even if they did nothing, let alone Bifang after exercise.
After yesterday's training, Rob looked at Bifang's back and felt like he was screwed. He was full of doubts: "Can this guy survive without oxygen?"
Fortunately, Bifang's breathing was also a little rapid at this time, which made Rob dispel the idea that the other party was a robot that relied on electricity instead of oxygen.
In fact, Rob guessed wrong. Bifang was not unresponsive. Even though its maximum oxygen uptake might have exceeded 80, it was not at the level of a monster after all. The only problem was that Bifang's strength lay in its adaptability and its emphasis on breathing methods.
Bifang's breathing is not simply one step at a time, inhaling and exhaling. The amplitude and rhythm, abdominal breathing, reverse abdominal breathing, etc. are adjusted almost all the time.
Wilderness travelers have almost engraved many things into Bifang's DNA. No matter how harsh the environment is, Bifang can always use various subtle ways to adjust its body to the best.
Orange-level skills allow Bifang to clearly know when to run, when to walk, when to drink water, and when to replenish energy... Although these things seem simple, they are actually very scary.
A beginner marathon runner who has been running for three or four years may only be able to estimate when he should replenish his supplies in order to avoid a sudden power outage in a simple environment such as road running. However, Bifang's understanding of his own body and the environment is far beyond the imagination of ordinary people. This is why he can travel light and casually cross the forest for hundreds of kilometers.
Being strong means being free.
Bifang nodded and said no more: "Pay attention to keeping your mouth and neck warm, and drink more water, drink a lot of water."
After a few simple instructions, everyone moved forward again. Around three o'clock in the morning, they finally arrived at the edge of the Khumbu Glacier.
"There are tens of thousands of glaciers flowing day and night. Some of the seracs are even taller than buildings. There are also bottomless crevasses that you definitely don't want to fall into. The ladders and routes that were set up the day before may be completely unusable the next day, so we have to climb over them as quickly as possible."
Rob was breathing heavily, grabbing the ascender nearby that they would use to climb up the glacier.
"Wait, flow? Glaciers flow?" Yao Jun was a little confused, feeling as if he had heard something that subverted his worldview. "Is it something like an avalanche?"
"Not really." Bifang shook his head, "Glaciers do move."
On the tops of some of the world's tallest mountains, as long as there is perennial snow accumulation, there is a possibility of glaciers forming.
There are glaciers in my country's Tianshan Mountains, Kunlun Mountains, Qilian Mountains, the Himalayas on the southwestern border, the Alps in Europe, and Alaska and Greenland in the Antarctic continent and the Arctic.
The glaciers in places like Antarctica and Greenland are called continental glaciers, and the glaciers flowing in high mountain valleys are called mountain glaciers.
“There’s another story about this.”
Bifang also came to the ascender, looking at the bottomless abyss under his feet, spitting out thin and pitiful white mist and said: "More than a hundred years ago, Europeans living in the Alps did not know that the ice in the valley around them was slowly moving. And there is a very beautiful wild rose growing in the Alps. The locals have a custom that a young man who wants to woo his beloved girl must risk his life to cross mountains and ridges to pick roses and present them to the girl to show his bravery and loyalty. In the early 19th century, several young men went to the mountains to pick flowers, but never came back. Because they were hit by an avalanche. The unfortunate news brought great pain to the villagers at the foot of the mountain. As a result, a glacier researcher comforted them by saying that in about 40 years, the bodies of these young people would appear at the front of the glacier. The villagers at that time did not know that glaciers would move. After hearing the scholar's words, they felt angry and funny. Unexpectedly, 43 years later, people really found these unfortunate young people at the front of the glacier. Not only did the glacier bring these bodies to the villagers, but because they were refrigerated under the ice, the bodies did not rot or deteriorate. It is said that one of the young men was holding a rose tightly in his hand.
[Strange knowledge has increased...]
[How come Lao Fang knows everything? Is this something you can know? ]
You know too much
"Glacier movement is not easy to be discovered because it flows very slowly. The speed of glacier movement is determined by the thickness of the ice layer and the slope of the terrain. The speed of each glacier is different, but they are all very slow, only a few centimeters a day, at most a few meters. There is a Rongbuk Glacier about 20 kilometers long on the north slope of Mount Everest in my country. Chinese scientists conducted observations between 1966 and 1968 and found that the Rongbuk Glacier moves 117 meters per year, and only flows 0.3 meters a day."
Bifang fastened the safety rope tightly around his body, looked at the abyss below his feet, and kept breathing in to increase the oxygen content in his blood.
So why does it move?
"It's very simple. The cols located on the top of the mountains are often the source of glaciers, which are called 'grain snow basins'. Snow particles falling from the sky will first gather in the grain snow basins. After being heated, the surface layer melts, and the meltwater penetrates downward, freezing the snow particles. The snow accumulates thicker and thicker, and the snow on the lower layer will recrystallize under pressure. Over time, it becomes glacier ice. However, glacier ice is formed under pressure, which is different from natural ice. The most important thing is that there are many gaps inside the glacier ice, which are filled with air, and each ice crystal is wrapped in a thin layer of liquid water. This is It is like the ball bearings in a machine are coated with lubricating oil. Therefore, glacier ice is easier to deform than natural ice, that is, it has better plasticity. This plasticity is the real reason why glaciers move. Under the action of gravity at a certain slope, plastic ice will change the shape of the glacier and slowly move down the valley. The flow of glaciers in the valley is also like that of rivers, flowing faster in the middle and slower on the sides. If you insert a row of wooden stakes across a glacier, after a long time, you can see that the middle of the row of wooden stakes protrudes downstream and becomes curved. "
Bifang stepped forward and held the ascender, which was similar to the handlebars of a bus. This simple tool had an eccentric device inside, which could produce one-way movement with the rope and tighten it in time.
After putting on the safety hook and shining the headlamp downwards, there was no end in sight. This might be a glacier tens of meters deep. Once you fall into it, you will most likely die on the spot. Even if you don't die, you will likely freeze to death on the spot.
Bifang gripped the handle tightly, shifted his body's center of gravity forward, and pushed his legs hard, causing the ascender and the rope to slide rapidly by friction.
The wind whistling in the valley, the person holding the rope, the bottomless abyss, everything flew away with the cold wind in my ears.
“Wuhu!”
