Like everyone else that day, Lia Layton stripped to her long underwear to cross the icy river.
Whining is not an option when you’re the youngest member of a climbing expedition; when you’re the only female, even less so. And definitely not when you’re a young, blonde Westerner traveling with a group of Pakistani men in the remote Himalayas.
Team leaders had decided to cross the river rather than circle around it, trying to shave a few hours off the three-day trek back to Islamabad. Missing their U.S.-bound flight would be an expensive, international ordeal.
She tensed as she entered the glacier-fed water, knowing only “that it was going to hurt.”
She held back the scream, expletive, refusal to go one step further into the thigh-deep stinging river. Then she turned and saw one of the Pakistani men who had accompanied them on the month-long expedition, his face weathered from a life lived in the elements. She caught a glint of tears brimming in this rugged man’s eyes. It was that cold.
Sharing something as primal as that – the racing heartbeat, muscle spasms, tears – spoke volumes about what they shared in common despite being, literally, world’s apart.
“I have never met a more wonderful group of people in my life,” said Layton, who at 23 has already traveled to four continents. “Everyone would say ‘Aslamualaiykum,’ (Hello, how are you?). You can walk around this country for days and never be threatened. Unlike Africa or South America where the men are very forward, I was never approached or touched by a man. That is the true Islamic culture.”
An education
Traveling – and the experiences she’s had – have provided life lessons she might not have found in a classroom.
“When I graduated from Bainbridge High School, relatives and mentors – the most influential people in my life – all told me stories of what they had done when they were my age.”
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, how am I ever going to get experiences like that? When I go to somebody’s graduation in 30 years, am I going to have something worth telling them?” she wondered.
In the five years since, she has been all over the U.S., to South America, Africa, and most recently, Asia, while also graduating magna cum laude from Western Washington University, with a degree in biological chemistry and anthropology.
In her “spare” time, she volunteers as an EMT on Bainbridge.
“Lia isn’t just trekking. Her trips have been for study or to benefit others in some way,” said her father, David Layton, who teaches English at Bainbridge High School and who, along with wife Adele Berg-Layton, are avid travelers themselves.
On top of the world
In late summer, she struck up a conversation with a man at the Aquatic Center and the topic led to a mutual interest – climbing. The man, David Breashears, was planning an expedition to the mountains of Pakistan to document glacial recession. He was looking for a climber with medical experience.
Fitting the bill on both counts, less than a month later she was on a plane headed to Boston, to the headquarters of the Glacial Research Imaging Project. Breashears was finalizing plans for a trek into the Baltistan region to take photographs of the Baltoro Glacier, one of the largest sub-arctic glaciers in the world. At roughly 39 miles long, it is almost four times the length of Bainbridge Island.
For a glacier that size, even a 10-to 20-foot drop in depth, while difficult to detect, represents a huge loss of mass. For comparison, Layton’s party would take photographs from the exact location of those taken by explorers and map makers in the late 19th century.
She arrived in Islamabad, blasted by a sweltering 125-degree heat. They spent two days in Skardu organizing the massive amount of gear before leaving for Askole.
From there, they embarked on the long arduous climb into the mountains with what amounted to a mobile village: a climbing party of five, two people to document parts of the trip, an entourage of 140 porters and four goats. Pakistan, Layton said, is about 30 years behind Nepal in technology, using steel poles instead of aluminum and heavy, old-school canvas tents.
The team included two Nepali Sherpas, but, contrary to American stereotype, not to haul equipment.
“Sherpas are part of a Nepali ethnic group. Not all porters are Sherpas and not all Sherpas are porters,” she explained.
Layton flips a page in her photo album.
“Oh, that’s K2,” she said matter-of-factly, of the world’s second tallest mountain.
The party did not climb any peaks however; Weather permitting, they sought out specific photo points, climbing the loose razor-sharp rocks. One step up, then a half-step slide back down.
“In normal life, no one would ever climb where we went. It’s not a desirable climb. It’s not to the top of something and it’s really dangerous,” she said.
That’s in good weather. When a snowstorm loomed on the horizon, they began a descent as a shroud of clouds overtook the mountain.
Layton stepped on a large, flat rock “about the size of this table,” she said, pointing to the 36-inch-diameter table.
The slab shifted, and before she could respond, it started to slide.
“Basically, I was surfing down the mountain,” she said. “Didn’t work.”
She “surfed” about 550 feet, then rolled “ass-over-tea kettle” 15 more before landing on sharp rocks and scraping her hip.
“I got up and took an assessment. ‘Not too bad. I think we’re OK.’”
But when Breashears finally found her, he asked, “Where’s the blood coming from?”
From a five-inch gash on her wrist, it turns out, which she immediately put pressure on to stop the bleeding. Removing the gauze a few minutes later, she saw exposed tendons, and then, her ulna bone.
“This is not what I wanted to be seeing halfway up a 17,000-foot mountain, 60 miles from the nearest town,” she said.
Meanwhile, the sun was sinking fast and snow had started to fall. It was still five hours back to basecamp with several rivers to cross and ice climbing to do, and now with only one usable hand.
At camp, they made a call to a doctor back in the states who walked Layton through the steps of closing up her own wound, but being both patient and medic precluded the use of anesthesia.
“You learn to cope with difficult situations. You have to on these kinds of trips,” she said. “You never get to where you say, ‘I don’t think I can do this’ – because you have to. There’s not an option. I might say, ‘Oh crap. Oh crap. This is going to hurt a lot.’ I can moan or whine, but that’s just a waste of time.”
Safe and sound
Back in the Puget Sound, Layton is wasting no time applying for medical school and working at Bainbridge Bakery to pay for her education, both in and out of the classroom. She continues to volunteer as an ambulance driver on Bainbridge.
One thing is for certain – years from now when someone in her family graduates, Layton will have her share of stories worth telling.
