NOTE #5 AN EMPTY BASE CAMP

My Facebook page features a photo of me standing next to Reinhold Messner in front of the infamous Khumbu Glacier at the foot of Mount Everest. Everyone asks me what the hell I was doing there next to Reinhold Messner. And I always laugh: I don't know myself. It all started with a phone call from my Spanish friend Nahia, asking me to accompany her to Nepal. She needed to extend the Mount Everest permit for Basque extreme mountaineer Alex Txikon, whose manager she was, with the authorities in Kathmandu. Her plan was to visit Alex Txikon at Mount Everest base camp and film his departure for the first winter ascent. The sensation was that Reinhold Messner had announced his visit to be part of this potentially historic moment. Alex Txikon and his team had made it up to Camp 3 on the South Col of Mount Everest twice before, but hellish winter storms and temperatures below -60 degrees had forced them to retreat each time.

A week after the surprise phone call, I was already sitting next to Nahia in a tiny aeroplane approaching an even tinier runway that began at a precipice and ended at a rock face. Apparently, the Himalayas didn't offer any more space to land. From Lukla, the most dangerous airport in the world, we marched for two days to the village of Namzeh Basar, located at an altitude of 3700 metres. We were completely untrained and unacclimatised. We hadn't had time for either. The two nights were the worst of my life because the altitude and the icy cold of the Himalayan winter were getting to me. But during the day, I enjoyed hiking through the deep gorges, crossing the suspension bridges and the infinitely beautiful view of the nearby eight-thousanders. My only concern was how my body would cope with staying at the Mount Everest base camp at an altitude of 5600 metres without acclimatisation.

When we arrived in Namzeh Bazaar, a military helicopter picked us up and tried in vain to land at the foot of the Khumbu Glacier in a heavy storm. It was like a flight straight to hell, where a deserted base camp awaited us. Alex Txikon's tent camp glowed tiny in the infinite vastness of this mighty natural spectacle. Three yellow dots in the middle of nowhere.

Eventually, the landing was successful and, dazed by the beauty of this place, I climbed out of the helicopter and gasped for air, which contained far too little oxygen for me. And there he stood before me like a daring hallucination: Reinhold Messner, the man who, together with Peter Habeler, was the first person on earth to climb this mountain without oxygen. Meeting him here in a deserted base camp was a godsend.

Reinhold Messner allayed my fears: the danger of acute altitude sickness would only come at night. As long as I got out of here before dark, everything would be fine. Gasping for air, I filmed and filmed as the sky slowly darkened. Reinhold Messner was worried. He knew the signs of nature and knew that the weather window would close dramatically. But Alex Txikon was ready to go. He planned a quick attack. One last attempt with light luggage, without a tent or sleeping bag. He did not intend to sleep, because death usually came at night. Up to the summit and down again as quickly as possible, out of the death zone, before the approaching snowstorms swallowed up everything that was still alive up there. That was his plan. We said goodbye to him with a heavy heart and I filmed him as he set off. A small yellow dot in front of the huge ice walls of the Khumbu Glacier.

The end of the story? Alex Txikon survived his last attempt at a first ascent, but never reached the summit. And on the flight home, I was allowed to sit next to Messner and watch him silently say goodbye to his mountain. The mountain that had made him immortal.