Prayers, silent prayers, screaming inside your tiny little head

On 4th October, 2022, I was standing below this, not by accident, but by choice. It certainly was not my first close encounter with an ice-fall. And that is precisely why I was afraid. How many times can one squeeze through an ice-fall and come out unscathed? It is a game of Russian roulette baby! It is only a matter of time before it gets you. 

I was belaying Lakpa and he was climbing fast. We were searching for a passage to the higher ground and this seemed to be the only gateway. I was there below this particluar serac probably for 10 mins or may be it was slightly more. But boy it seemed like eternity. 

Suddenly it seemed the seracs around us were collapsing in real time. They were crashing around us like little thunders. I could feel the vibration of the rumbling avalanches on the tiny belay stance of mine. Gosh the stance was littered with debris too. 

What were we doing there? Our morning's boldness was quickly evaporating. Caught red-handed, we were the trespassers in this forever disintegrating theater.  

These towers of ice were shattering when Shipton and Tilman passed through here in 1934. They scared the death out of Ruttledge's party in 1932. Yet on that morning of 4th October, 2022, their little game of manic perpetual disintegration seemed far from being over. 

I suddenly remembered Ruttledge's warning. Tilman's too. And out of the blue I remembered Ian Clough. Seracs collpase and climbers die. It is a fact. 

And then I prayed for our dear lives. "Not here, not now, not like this!"

That is all I could do. Other than trying to climb faster of course. 

Are we ever ready to accept death? We and our perverted will-to-live even while on a death row. 

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Five days after this, when we reached Bageswar, we learnt about the tragedy on Draupadi Ka Danda II. We were shocked, silenced. Incidentally, that was 4th October too.