Paul

“We need to look at the most likely places first,” said Paul.

He has already been a member of the mountain rescue team for several years. But for me, this was my first experience. Two days ago, we – twelve rock climbers from Krasnogorsk – arrived at the alpine camp, some to confirm their qualifications, and others, including me, to get the first one – “Mountaineer of the USSR”, or “Badge”, as this first mountaineering qualification was popularly called.

Krasnogorsk “badges” usually had solid rock-climbing skills, but lacked the experience of high-altitude and snow-ice routes. That was why we came here, and now, it seemed, we would have to change our plans due to rescue operations. The girl fell into a mountain river near the alpine camp. Most likely, she died immediately, but we had to find her as quickly as possible.

According to the written and unwritten rules of mountaineering, when rescue operations are announced, all climbing plans are canceled and everyone is obliged to take part as much as one can. This time, it turned out that experienced climbers were on far away routes, and there were only a few rescue team members in the camp and many beginners, like me. Paul happened to stay in the camp too because he was just beginning to get out of some terribly rare and deadly heart disease.

Three years earlier, doctors categorically banned him from any strenuous activity, declaring him disabled in fact. But he continued to climb, albeit on not very difficult routes, and gradually began to gain strength again. A year ago, I was scared to see his pale, bloodless face, when sometimes during training his heart could not cope. In such cases, Paul gave himself a little respite and again climbed the rock, although his face remained white as a whitewashed wall.

This year, however, he has recovered already so much that the medical commission of the alpine camp requested to see his passport. They could not believe that this was the same person who had such a hopeless medical history. Paul even got annoyed when they asked him to prove it was him one more time.

“Yes, I’m the same camel, but I have no idea where the humps have gone,” he said, once again showing his passport.

Due to the missing three seasons, he was forced to start from the lower difficulty level again, so he stayed in the camp with the newcomers. And then rescue work got announced.

We have gathered at the clearing in front of the camp office. The head of the camp’s rescue team related the circumstances of the accident. The girl was sunbathing on a flat rock by the river and accidentally fell into the water. The strong current picked her up immediately, and she disappeared from sight, probably dead in the first few minutes.

There were about twenty people in total. We were quickly divided into groups and shown on a map the sections of the river that needed to be checked. Paul and I got the section farthest from the camp. We quickly grabbed backpacks, first-aid kit, a rope, some other equipment, a change of clothes, and ran down the valley along the river.

That was when – fifteen minutes later – we approached the bridge and Paul said about “the most likely places”. We were still far from the section assigned to us, but he decided to take a look at the edges of the bridge. He was an experienced rescuer! We had just looked closer into the water at one end of the bridge and noticed something white swaying in the deep.

Paul quickly grabbed the rope, put on his safety belts, made a loop on the end of the rope, and clicked it into a carabiner on his chest, then drew the rope around the nearest tree.

“Here,” he held out the rope end to me and bent over the water.

I picked up the slack. Paul went down to the water, but that white thing was no longer there.

“Gone,” Paul said with chagrin and tried to move lower, but I did not have time to let go of the rope.

“Give the slack,” Paul said, and I lowered him all the way to the water surface.

He peered for half a minute, then silently climbed back onto the bridge. We collected the rope into rings and ran again along the river downstream, looking at the water. A hundred meters later, I again noticed something white under the rock that dropped into the river. We looked closely.

“That’s it,” Paul said.

From the point where we stood, it was about five meters to the water along the vertical wall of the rock.

“Let’s pull her,” Paul said.

He measured ten meters of rope and secured it around the tree trunk, dropping the end into the water. Then he walked around the same tree and gave me the middle of the rope.

“Give it a little,” he said, and walked to the edge of the cliff, his back to the river. Then, grasping the fixed end of the rope with both hands and resting his feet on the wall, he began to descend. I gave out the rope slowly.

“Fix it,” Paul said when he reached the water.

I pulled on the rope, and he hung on the belay, still resting his feet on the rock. At the other end of the rope, he quickly made a loop.

“Give it a little,” he said.

I realized that he wanted to put the loop on the body. We would likely not be able to pull the body out all the way, but the rope would keep it in place until others arrive.

Gradually, Paul entered the water to the middle of his chest and did something for a long time.

“Fix it!” he called out finally, and I felt additional tension on the rope. Paul probably tightened the loop on the body.

“Grab her there!” he shouted to me.

I realized that he wanted me to pull on another rope. Without letting go of the belay, I went over to the fixed half of the rope and pulled it to the side. The safety rope went around the tree trunk, and the friction was good, so I hardly felt Paul’s weight.

He, meanwhile, climbed up the safety rope, and soon his head appeared over the edge of the rock.

“Keep it here,” he confirmed, got to his feet, and helped me to fasten on the rope with the body at the end. “We shouldn’t mess with her anymore. Otherwise, we will spend a month explaining to forensics what’s happened.”

A few minutes later other folks appeared – the group that was supposed to search this section of the river. We quickly lowered two of them with a stretcher, they brought the stretcher under the body, and all of us together easily pulled the stretcher up.

The body looked like a white marble. Several deep cuts were completely bloodless. It was hard to think that just short time ago this girl sunbathed carefree. What a grief to the parents!

Paul and I returned to the camp, leaving the camp rescue team to wrap up all the business. They were alerted by radio. There were more than enough people to help them even without us.

That evening there were no songs or even loud conversation. But I knew that in a day or two everything would be back on track. This has always been the case with us on the Krasnogorsk rocks, where inexperienced tourists were often getting in dangerous – sometimes tragic – situations.

You watch such a group, see how the guys show off in front of the girls, and imagine how they will behave when one of them gets in trouble. I like calm and businesslike ones more, but sometimes they are also get carried away. And we, local climbers and rescuers, are not immune from our own stupidity either. Anything can happen.

Our friends returned from the ascent the next day in the evening. The route was not very difficult, the weather was good, so they had no adventures.

“How are you?” – Sashka Onufriev asked me when we all had assembled in our house in the evening. “Yesterday you have made your mark, haven’t you?

They have already been brought up to speed on local news. It always amazed me how these “taciturn and rough” climbers managed to spread a word so quickly.

I did not feel any special merits. But several other guys had already patted me on the back that day. There has always been a healthy competition between rescue teams from different regions. It was all about who gets to the scene faster and who completes the rescue quicker. The annual rescue teams competition only fueled this attitude. We have always been among the winners, often won. The losers sometimes remarked, as if in passing, that “this is just sports, but nobody knows who will perform better in real rescue mission.” Therefore, every demonstration of related skills in real life was appreciated not only because it helped the victim.

“It was all Paul’s doing,” I countered. “I only belayed him.”

“You did well,” Paul said.

Sashka put the hand on my shoulder. He was my partner and was now clearly proud of me. The climbers were unforgiving crowd. They did not give anyone a slack – neither to each other, nor to themselves. But in a jam, they provided full support like no one else. They never compromised.

When discussing an upcoming ascent or other joint business, or when deciding whether to accept a new guy in the group, they often expressed very different opinions. But after the decision had been made, everyone carried it out as their own, even if fifteen minutes ago they were holding completely opposite opinions.

One day, I asked Sashka how he did it.

“Very simple,” he replied. “You just consider whether you can live with this decision or not. If not, then you continue to insist on your decision. If you can, then you accept the other’s decision as yours. Either one hundred percent yes, or one hundred percent no. Otherwise, there will be just more hot air and no action.

After all the intrigues in our scientific community where I made my living when not in the mountains, such simple and straightforward approach was a peaceful oasis for me – clear and unambiguous. Life and death decisions do not allow much flexibility.

The guy called Red came up to me. Some time ago, it was his idea to accept me into the group.

“You watch closer what and how Paul does things,” he said. “He has a lot of experience.”

“I’m trying,” I assured him.

“Just for fun, ask him about Cathedral.”

“Which Cathedral?”

“Here it is,” he pointed at the window.

I looked out and saw the high – two hundred meters at least – rock towering over the camp. Overgrown with grass and small twisted trees, it really looked like an old cathedral, partially destroyed and overgrown with moss.

“What about it?”

“When Paul was just starting, he could not come to terms with the need to go first on simple routes, so he climbed this rock, either because of nothing to do, or to show his climbing skills. He was then almost disqualified. Thanks to Edik, who was at the time the head of the camp and decided against the disqualification.”

Edik now was Eduard Vasilyevich – one of the national leaders of mountain sports. Once again, I noted how small the community of serious climbers was. Everyone not just knew each other, but all mountaineers were intimately familiar with each other’s strengths and weaknesses – the way you learn about a person only by doing hard and complex work together.

That was the world that opened my eyes to life realities and made me a man and a human.