Climbing Trail

The Andes Part 9

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The three of them took two hours to descend the slope and cross the ice river, and during that time we were clamoring to arouse their spirits and also celebrating like they had returned from the realm of death.

But the celebration ended unexpectedly when they were close enough that we could see their plight. They were bent and disheveled, too weak to lift their feet from the snow so they dragged their feet towards the plane, leaning against each other for

mutually sustain. Gustavo's eyes squinted and searched around like he had gone blind, the three of them looking so tense and unstable that I thought a very strong freezing wind had blown them away. But the saddest thing was the look on their faces. Their lifespan was like twenty years older overnight, it seemed like the mountain had destroyed the youth and the strength of their bodies, in their eyes I saw something that had never been there before, an uncertain blend of fear and resignation that is sometimes seen on the faces of people who are very old. We hurried to greet them, then helped them get into the plane and gave them a cushion to lie down. Roberto immediately checked their condition.he saw their legs were almost frozen. Then he saw tears dripping from Gustavo's grim eyes.

"The sunlight makes me blind" said Gustavo."It was like there was sharp sand in my eyes."

Roberto wrapped the shirt around Gustavo's eyes to protect him from the light.

"The mountain is too steep. It's like climbing a wall. And the air is very thin. I walked five steps but it felt like running five kilometers." Gustavo said softly.

"Why don't you guys come back before night?" I asked.

Gustavo replied, "We climbed all day and only halfway up the slope. The mountain is too high. We don't want to go back and tell you that we failed. So we decided to find shelter to pass the night, then climb again after morning."

The climbers told us they found a flat spot near the rock outcrop. They made a short wall of boulders around them, and huddled behind it, hoping that they would protect it from the night wind.

After several nights of freezing in the plane, the climbers thought that maybe their bodies would get used to it.

"The cold on those slopes is really indescribable" Gustavo said.

"la took your lives. It hurts like fire. I never thought we'd live until morning." They told us how they suffered so badly from thin clothes, hitting each other's arms and legs to keep blood flowing in veins, and lying close to each other to share the warmth of the body.

As time continued to crawl, they believed their decision to spend the night on the mountain would cost them their lives, but somehow they survived until dawn, and finally they felt the first beam of light from the sun that warmed the slope. Amazed at being alive, they let the sunlight melt their frozen bodies, then they headed for the slope and continued climbing.

"Did you find the tail of the plane?" Fito asked.

Then they explained how they found the bodies of people who fell from the plane, some of them still tied to their seats.

"We took some things from the bodies. " Said while showing the watch, purse, pendulum of the cross and all the valuable objects taken from the corpse.

"The bodies are far above the slope, but you are still far from the top. We don't have the strength to keep climbing and worry about being stuck again until night" Gustavo said.

Later that night, I approached Gustavo and asked, "What do you see up there? What's behind that peak?"

He shook his head tiredly. "The peak is too high. We can't see long distances."

"But you saw something?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I saw between the two peaks, in the distance.... "

"What do you see?"

"I don't know, Nando, something yellowish, brownish, I'm not sure. But there's one thing you need to know: when we're at the height of that mountain, I look up at the plane. Fairchild is just a tiny speck in the snow. You can't know it's new or shadowy. There was no hope that a pilot could see Fairchild from his plane. There's no chance we'll be saved."

Meanwhile, Liliana who continues to be persuaded finally wants to eat the flesh of the corpse. One after another, the people who initially refused ended up doing the same.

I was moved by the understanding that my friends, though dead, gave me what I needed to live. I feel no spiritual connection to the dead. Now the bodies are just things. We are fools not to use them.

As the days passed, we became more frugal in managing meat. Fito and his two brothers were responsible for slicing the meat and distributing it.

With full sympathy for me, the others have promised not to touch the bodies of my mother and sister.

To make the food more durable, we sometimes eat the kidneys, liver, even the heart. The internal organs are highly nutritious even though they look terrible.

My greatest fear, we will grow weaker until escaping becomes impossible. What if all the bodies were eaten? Maybe we'll just languish in this wasted place, looking at each other, waiting for our friends to die to be eaten.

(Connected)