Traveling through the Himalayas near Annapurna, very high up in the mountains, I was lost and sick.

I didnt know what to do, so I sat down. Very soon I heard footsteps, people stomping all around me in the snow. I didnt know what to think as I could not see anyone, ut clearly I felt several eings near me. They egan shouting at me to !move, and !get going, and they did not let up until I had started to follow their instructions. I made it ack safely and I thank them. This is what I elieve." Mohabir Pun, educator, Nangi, Nepal In the Himalayas, altitude sickness does not play favorites, and it is not just foreigners who have succumbed to mountain sickness pulmonary edema that can strike the brain or lungs or both and is quite deadly. eing caught out in bad weather or becoming lost are common reasons for fatalities. !t altitude, to sit down is to die. It is this action that seems to trigger the appearance of spirit guides. !ltitude sickness mimics mental illness in that the poor souls often can"t eat or sleep and are performing the physically demanding job of hauling themselves and their gear up the mountain for both climbers and trekkers. !fter several days of this, the higher climb, the worse it gets. Hallucinating is e#tremely common, as is slurred speech, and some pretty wild delusions. $he medical community would call a constructive hallucination but a hallucination all the same. %y argument is while that may be true, the idea that spirits, or helper beings e#ist in remote areas where humans rarely trod, is acceptable to many indigenous people throughout !sia, and is part of the &ative !merican pantheon of animism. $hey believe because of the following e#amples, more bi'arre than %r. (un"s.

)obert *teenmeijer I received an email from a +utch ,I!-% guide and mountain climber, )obert *teenmeijer, who in .une, /001, on 2ho 3yu, overcome by e#haustion and altitude sickness, was left by a client stumbling down the hill at 1454 meters 678,444 feet9. He wrote: I just knew I wasnt going to survive. There was no doubt in m mind that this was the end. I was sick. The altitude was a!!ecting me to the point that I was staggering down the hill. M client, who was !it, continued without me, leaving me to the elements. "es, I am a guide, but we can get sick, too# and I could not believe

he would leave me under these conditions. $e had passed the bod o! a %erman climber who had !allen three weeks be!ore and landed in a gull !ull o! debris. I was so out o! it ph sicall and mentall , I actuall tried to get him to help me. I was shaking his !ro&en bod , elling, !'elp me, ou asshole() !irst in *ustrian and then in %erman. +! course he did not answer. I sat down. ,amn it( I wanted tea. -omebod bring me some tea() .ut then I started hearing people elling at me, or voices o! some kind. I thought I recogni&ed some o! them, girl!riends ma be, but I couldnt be sure. $hen I eventuall made it to /amp III, onl m sleeping bag and stove remained. I had arranged with the -herpas to break up camp, but b the time I got there all the others in m e0pedition had gone down. There was no one le!t on the mountain.) *teenmeijer said it was his worst e#perience in almost ;4 years of professional mountaineering, including more than 74 e#peditions on the highest peaks since /010. He survived 2ho 3yu by inverting his backpack, sitting on it, and sliding down as best he could. *ince that time, he has also survived a broken neck< not from climbing but from falling off a stage at a wedding dance. He was back climbing in 8 months. *haking a dead body and demanding it help you makes perfect sense at 78,444 feet and you are alone. %ountaineers are a very specific breed of male, supremely confident because they e#cel at demanding physical and mental work. 2limbing is constant problem solving, and intelligent men really get off on the freedom and challenge of it. =our life dissolves into the big all, and you are in the moment /44 percent. (utting yourself at risk for a living is an e#ercise in the wonders of and addictive nature of deliberate and absolute mental focus. =our mind is a laser beam, and you struggle to control it. $he kick of climbing is the purity of thinking of only one thing, where to put your foot or your hand. =ou have no other thought. 2limbing can be a very deadly game, there are fatalities every year. 3nly the smart and lucky survive, and luck is precisely my point. How do you put luck under a microscope for analysis> =ou can"t. =et we all agree that luck e#ists. If you like adventure writing, I have long recommended mountaineering literature for their griping narratives, and all true. ?ric *hipton was one of ?ngland"s best, if not always remembered, climber, who wrote as well as he climbed. In his story +own @rom *ummit of atian from #pon That $ountain, in /08;, recalls the following e#perience of what mountaineers call $hird %an stories.

It was ver cold, and the prospect was not welcome. 1ater, breaks began to appear in the mist, the moon came out and there was enough light to enable us to climb down slowl . I was ver tired and the phantom moonlight, the shadow !orm o! ridge and pinnacle, the wisps o! silvered mist, the radiant e0panse o! the 1ewis %lacier plunging into soundless depths below, induced a sense o! e02uisite !antas . I e0perienced that curious !eeling not uncommon in such circumstances, that there was an additional member o! the part , three instead o! two. *msterdam, 3444