"The Incident at Mera Peak" - Chilling Tales for Dark Nights
episode
Chilling Tales for Dark Nights — A Horror Fiction Anthology and Scary Stories Series Podcast
1h 14m
1 speaker
5 chapters
transcribed 9 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hotel Mats in Espoo is more than a hotel. Here you are like at home. From a compact studio to a room with your own kitchen, barbeque and even sauna. So you were on your way to work, a longer stay or a mini holiday. Here you are like at home, with the hotel services. Hotel Mats in Espoo's Matinkylä. Always stylish. Always modern. Circus Finlandian juhlavuodenliput nyt myynnissä! Voimamiehiä, klovneja, ilma-akropatia, huolemanpyörää, mahtava sirkusorkesteri! Suomen suurin sirkuselämys tuo huippuartisti tähtikupolin alle! Circus Finlandia viisikymmentä vuotta! Osta liput sirkusfinlandia.fi!
I admit, we were warned about setting off in the off-season. The Himalayas are fickle on the best of days. You've got clear skies one moment and a howling blizzard the next. Everyone told us so. Careful planning, especially for the more inexperienced set, was sold to us as a must. Well, they were right. the friends and colleagues who sought to dissuade us, the posters on Mountaineering forums who advised us to wait just a few more months. They were right. and the three of us wound up rushing headlong into a profoundly dangerous expedition. We were just experienced enough as climbers to consider these warnings, and just young and arrogant enough to shrug them off when the facts didn't suit us. We should have waited.
Honestly though, if I could go back and do it all over again, I never would have gone. I know David feels the same way. Tom, I imagine, has his share of regrets too. The reason we charged Don despite all the advice to the contrary is a silly one in retrospect. You see, it was only during the off-season that the three of us could get weeks off of work to take a trip to the Himalayas at all. We had to skimp and save. We had to build up vacation time and then reason with our stiff-necked bosses to catch a break. I managed a three-week vacation and the other two guys secured just over two weeks of leave, some of it unpaid. We flew out to Nepal on a shoestring at the first opportunity, but I wish we had never gone.
It isn't just the cold, the weeks of suffering we endured. Sure, we had a rough go of it. Most of my right pinky finger is still chilling somewhere on the slopes of Merah Peak, having sloughed off after about a frostbite. We took our lumps, but if that had been all, it wouldn't have been so bad. We'd have come home banged up, but with a good story to tell. Ironically, for someone who set off in the hopes of having a good story to share, I don't like talking about the incident at Mira Peak. We were abroad four weeks all told, five actually if you include the time we spent in the hospital, and I wish I could forget every second. What really makes me wish we hadn't gone, the thing that really keeps me up at night, isn't the pain, the ice, the life or death struggle we faced while trying to climb that peak.
It's the thing we encountered in the snowstorm. The thing that followed us. In brief, Merah Peak is a great trekking destination. Its highest highs will bring you up more than 20,000 feet and offer a view of some of the world's largest mountains. You don't need a lot of fancy gear to climb it, Some trekking poles, good boots and warm clothes will do. Compared to a lot of other more famous and difficult climbing destinations, Merah Peak is a walk in the park. If you are reasonably fit and take care to acclimatize, you should have no real problems completing the expedition. Beginners often take between 18 and 24 days to do it. but having years of experience between the three of us, we were determined to do it at the breakneck speed of 10 days.
We slept off the jet lag in a cheap hotel and hopped on the bus which brought us to the base of the Himalayas. We had packed fairly light, not wishing to be weighed down by unnecessary supplies. Food and means of water purification had been brought in abundance, but we had trimmed all the fat, leaving behind the ropes and other goodies you can't do without on a more difficult climb. None of us had ever been to the Himalayas before.
Why did the three friends decide to climb Mera Peak in the off‑season?
David, a friend of mine since high school, had been climbing all his life, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:12
2
Why did the three friends decide to climb Mera Peak in the off‑season?
5:12–16:05
3
How did the early days on the mountain go before the storm hit?
16:05–43:53
4
What changed when the heavy snowfall began on the third day?
43:53–57:44
5
What was the mysterious grave marker that Tom stepped on?
57:44–1:14:40