adventure lifetime The
adventure lifetime The of a Getting through the Nepal earthquake BY JOYCE WISWELL 22 CHALDEAN NEWS JUNE 2015
Katie Atto snapped these scenes of destruction on her trek down the mountain. Katie Atto likes adventure travel, but she got a lot more action than she bargained for on her latest trip. Atto was on Mount Everest when the 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit on April 25. She was a two-day trek away from the base camp where people gather before and after climbing the mountain. Eighteen people were killed and dozens more injured in avalanches at Base Camp triggered by the earthquake, and more than 8,400 others died throughout Nepal. Atto was uninjured in the quake but spent a hairy couple of days trying to get off the mountain and out of the traumatized Himalayan country. The Farmington Hills resident arrived in the capital city of Kathmandu on April 19. She and a friend hired a Sherpa (local mountain guide) named Kale to guide them to Base Camp – a sort of tent city for those attempting to summit 29,000-foot-high Mount Everest. “I’ve always wanted to go to Base Camp and even thought of climbing to the summit but that takes two months and I can’t get that much time off work,” said the Beaumont pharmacist, who has already conquered Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Peru’s Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Reaching Base Camp – located 18,000 feet off sea level — is in itself a big achievement. Atto and her friend planned a trek of seven or eight days just to get there. It’s an exhausting excursion because most hikers can only travel four to six hours a day as they adjust to the high altitude. A few days in, Atto’s friend experienced severe altitude sickness with vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia and a serious headache. “I didn’t realize before that altitude sickness is a killer,” Atto said. “There were at least three deaths on the mountain from it while I was there, not related to the earthquake.” Kale convinced the friend that there was no choice but to be helicoptered off the mountain and the friend luckily flew back to the U.S. just 14 hours before the earthquake hit. The Earth Shook Meanwhile, Atto and Kale were eating lunch in a stone lodge when the earthquake struck. “There were a bunch of foreigners and guides in there and the owner told us to just sit still, that earthquakes happen,” she said. “But the ground just kept on shaking and he yelled, ‘run!’ It didn’t take very long for me to get out the door. I have never been in an earthquake before and it was what it would feel like to be on an unbalanced washing machine.” Though the village in which they were lunching was not badly damaged, the group could hear avalanches nearby, which Atto described as “a tearing noise as the ice and snow separated from the mountain.” The Sherpa knew it was serious. “Kale said – and I will never forget it — ‘this is really going to be bad for Base Camp,’” Atto recalled. There was nothing to do but stay put. That evening a slew of Sherpas poured into the village to line up and use the one phone at the guest lodge to try to contact their families. “I could just hear the busy signal over and over,” Atto said. Kale was finally able to get through and learned that his family was safe and his house still stood, though his kitchen was damaged. Atto was able to get word to her family via Facebook. Learning that Base Camp was heavily damaged, the pair turned around and began trekking back down the next day. They stopped in Pheriche, a village set up as a temporary hospital. “That’s when I saw the first bad signs of destruction – there were collapsed buildings and injured Sherpas were being brought in by helicopter in bandages,” Atto said. “A friend of Kale’s had no hand. We just passed through – there was nothing for us to do there.” Close Call They stopped in another village looking for a tea house – or even a tent – in which to spend the night, but there was nothing available. “We had just left and then there was a huge aftershock. I could hear people screaming and stones falling,” Atto said. “It was just dumb luck we didn’t get a room there. That was my closest call, my scariest moment.” Finally, on the evening of April 28, the two made it to Lukla and its tiny airport. Atto was able to connect with her worried family in Michigan and assure them she really was okay. But she was still stuck far from home. “I found a place to stay in a wooden structure and I felt safe enough, but in hindsight that was dumb because of the aftershocks,” she admitted. The next day, the first plane made it into the airport to the cheers of the hundreds of people waiting there. “It was just packed, shoulder to shoulder,” Atto said. “My guide said, ‘we won’t get out today but we will tomorrow – I will make it happen.’” Atto spent the next day at the chaotic airport with her baggage from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. All of a sudden, Kale appeared among the throngs. “He came running at me and said, ‘let’s go, and don’t stop running until we get on the airplane.’ I had no ticket and no one had checked or weighed my luggage. We ran out onto the apron and the stewardess waved us onto the [14-passenger] plane. It was a terrible flight, so bumpy, and I wonder if it was because of all the extra weight of luggage that wasn’t checked.” The pair caught a second plane at Biratnagar, Nepal’s second-largest city, which brought them into Kathmandu. There, “the airport looked like a military air force base with all the cargo planes and piles of aid supplies,” Atto said. Kale brought her to a couple he knew, “then hugged me and took off.” Atto stayed with the people in a little shed outside their house, which was rocked all night by aftershocks. “It was terrifying,” she said. The next morning, May 1, she offered to do anything to help but the couple gently told her that they didn’t have enough food and it would be better if she left. “I left them some medications and clothes and got the heck out of there,” Atto said. “I spent the day walking around the city and seeing temples that were piles of rubbles, houses that were gone, bulldozers in the street moving debris. And the area I was in was not as badly hit as other parts of Kathmandu.” She was able to get a flight to the U.S. and arrived in Michigan on May 2 – the same day Kalamazoo had a rare (and minor) earthquake. Atto didn’t realize the Nepal earthquake was such big international news until she returned home to her family. (“We couldn’t sleep,” said her father, Hikmat.) Her story landed her on page one of the May 11 Detroit Free Press, was picked up on USA Today’s website, and was seen by all sorts of acquaintances and former classmates. A stranger even asked her to pose for a picture. She is forever grateful to Kale, who, as it turned out, lost his second residence in a large aftershock on May 12 that killed more than 100. “I really felt for the people trying to get back without a guide,” she said. “I thank God for him and I will never forget him. When we got to Kathmandu I said, ‘you could have just left me and I wouldn’t have blamed you.’ He said, ‘that is not how the Sherpas are.’ Atto said that in retelling the story, she has come to appreciate the harrowing experience. “As unfortunate as it was, it was an experience that I am glad I had,” she said. “But since I never made it there, I still can’t cross Base Camp off my bucket list.” JUNE 2015 CHALDEAN NEWS 23
