The guides had warned us that there'd be the occasional frozen body when we hit 2,000 metres but they didn't say they'd be human bodies. They can't have been human bodies - not with that many pointed teeth protruding from their frozen grimaces.
By the looks of it, none of them went quietly. There were still ice axes embedded in a few partially caved-in heads, pink patches in the snow where the blood was nearly completely concealed and congealed and frozen viscera trailing behind the ones who didn't manage to die on the spot.
Whether they'd been crawling after their attackers or trying to escape, we couldn't tell. All we knew was that they were something we'd never seen before and the higher up we went, the more bodies we came across. There were a few humans among them, mostly torn apart but some were half buried in their tents, boots or hands sticking out while the rest of them had been crushed by the snow.
We didn't make it to 8,000 metres. By then we'd seen more than enough death and we were ready to just take a leap off the side of the mountain and pray we never saw the damned thing again but we held fast and just about managed to get back to the ground base.
I still see them in my sleep, all those frozen faces. All so expressive and all stuck in a moment of pain so intense that I doubt I'll ever feel anything remotely close to it. A part of me wants to go back up there and try to figure it all out. The rest of me knows I'd never come back.
By the looks of it, none of them went quietly. There were still ice axes embedded in a few partially caved-in heads, pink patches in the snow where the blood was nearly completely concealed and congealed and frozen viscera trailing behind the ones who didn't manage to die on the spot.
Whether they'd been crawling after their attackers or trying to escape, we couldn't tell. All we knew was that they were something we'd never seen before and the higher up we went, the more bodies we came across. There were a few humans among them, mostly torn apart but some were half buried in their tents, boots or hands sticking out while the rest of them had been crushed by the snow.
We didn't make it to 8,000 metres. By then we'd seen more than enough death and we were ready to just take a leap off the side of the mountain and pray we never saw the damned thing again but we held fast and just about managed to get back to the ground base.
I still see them in my sleep, all those frozen faces. All so expressive and all stuck in a moment of pain so intense that I doubt I'll ever feel anything remotely close to it. A part of me wants to go back up there and try to figure it all out. The rest of me knows I'd never come back.
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