SASS EL P2 Narrative Package Texts

NARRATIVE PACKAGE 2022 2 TEXT 1 The text below describes the experience of a man who is on an expedition to climb Mount Everest. 1 On April 10, 1996, after ten days of hiking through the steep, walled canyons and flowery forests of northern Nepal, I walked into Everest Base Camp. My altimeter read 17,600 feet. Our mess tent, a huge canvas structure, was wired with a stereo system and solar-powered electric lights. A communications tent housed a satellite phone and fax. Despite the many trappings of civilisation at Base Camp, there was no forgetting that we were more than three miles above sea level. It seemed like there was no air to gasp in from that bluest of mountain skies. Walking to the mess tent at mealtime left me wheezing to catch my breath. If I sat up too quickly, my head reeled and dizziness set in. I developed a dry, hacking cough that would steadily worsen over the next six weeks. My arms and legs gradually began to wither to toothpicks. 5 10 2 From the beginning, Rob Hall, our experienced guide had planned that May 10 would be our summit day. On May 8, our team started climbing the Lhotse Face. The night had a cold beauty that intensified as we ascended. More stars than I had ever seen filled th e frozen sky. Far to the southeast, enormous thunder clouds drifted over Nepal, illuminating the heavens with bursts of orange and blue streaks. A huge moon rose over the shoulder of 27,000 foot peaks, washing the slope beneath my boots in ghostly light, e liminating the need for a headlamp. I led the way throughout the night with Ang Dorje, our head Sherpa, and at 5.30pm, just as the sun was edging over the horizon, I reached the crest of the Southeast Ridge. Three of the world's five highest peaks stood out in jagged relief against the pastel dawn. My altimeter read 27,500 feet. 15 20 3 Ascending above the South Summit with my regulator delivering two quarts of oxygen per minute, I had to stop and draw three or four heaving lungfuls of air after each painful step. Climbing along the edge of the summit ridge, sucking gas into my ragged lungs, I enjoyed a strange, unwarranted sense of calm. The world beyond the rubber mask was incredibly bright and clear, but it seemed not quite real. I had to remind myself over and over that there was 7,000 feet of cliff on either side, that everything was at stake here, and that I would pay for a single wrong step with my life. Plodding slowly up the last few steps to the summit, I had the sensation of being underwater, of moving at quarter -speed. And then I found myself atop a slender wedge of ice decorated with a discarded oxygen cylinder and a battered aluminium survey pole, with nowhere higher to climb. A string of flags snapped furiously in the wind. To the north, down a side of the mountain I had never seen, the brown, dry Tibetan plateau stretched to the horizon. This tiny platform, the size of a l