The Deadliest Bridge

The most dangerous bridge I crossed did not seem like much of a dangerous bridge at all – a little balancing beam walk and you’re done – not really too bad unless you consider the consequences of losing your balance. Say, a 100 foot vertical drop in a waterfall onto boulders in the torrent below… that is if you even made it to the bridge at all.
The hiking trail was cut into a mountain ledge about 100 feet above the top of the ravine. In the ravine itself was a raging river plunging down a riverbed so steep that it was more of a mass of boulders and falls than it was a River. The drop off the side was pretty much vertical and the ledge that we hiked on was somewhere around 3 feet in width. I have walked on trails like this before down in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Although these kind of trails force you to focus pretty much on every step of the hike rather than enjoy the scenery, as far as hazards go 3 feet is plenty of room… as long as you don’t stumble… so you watch your step. But of course that all changed when we got to the broad, deep little stream that cut through the trail and plummeted off the cliff in a rushing waterfall. Whatever bridge or trail had once been there was gone. The stream was way too dangerous to ford. It was 10 or 12 feet wide and nearly waist deep. To try to ford it would have been madness; I have waded in streams half that deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and have been swept off my feet. In this stream being swept off your feet was not an option, the waterfall where the water dropped off the cliff was only 3 feet away.
So we backtracked about 100 feet. The mountains we were in were quite green; as I mentioned before the monsoon season was not quite over and it was raining every day starting around noon. About 100 feet back from the waterfall industrious locals had built a workaround for the dead-end trail. There was a set of handhold/foothold holes that had been dug into the grassy wall next to the trail. They went nearly straight up – I’d say at approximately 80° – straight up enough for me, and they topped out about 20 to 25 feet up the side of the mountain where they disappeared over the ridge. So we were looking at a 20 or 25 foot straight up climb using slippery mud holes up the vertical side of the grassy hill. If your hand or foot slipped, or if the dirt hole gave way, you had a 3 foot ledge to land on, and if you bounced beyond it there was a 100 foot sheer drop into a pile of boulders covered with a raging torrent of water. This wasn’t looking good.
A small group of us had collected at this location and the porters wasted no time glancing at the waterfall, backtracking to the footholds, and then starting to climb up the cliff side. This amazed me, not because they had no hesitation at climbing up the wall, but because they were doing it with 60 pound packs on their backs. Some of them even wore flip-flops in the process! Most of them work their way up and over the ridge and one or two of them stayed behind to encourage us to start climbing up behind the ones that led the way. We didn’t speak the same language, but the urges of encouragement are pretty universal in every culture. Well, I had a day pack on with a couple quarts of water, a water purification pump, an umbrella, a jacket and a few other odds and ends. It was light compared to what the porters were carrying, but starting up the wall I have to say I didn’t really want that weight on my back – I didn’t actually really want to be climbing up the wall! It’s pretty much a different feeling than, say, climbing up a high latter, or climbing up a slope on the hill somewhere near your home. When you’re halfway around the world from where you live and you’re about to do something that may cost you your life… well let’s just say the perspiration starts to flow. Needless to say I climbed a little slow and I made sure with every move of my hands or my feet that they were firmly in the holes and that I tested each grip before I moved up to the next one. Somewhere around 15 feet in the air I looked down at the ledge that began to look incredibly narrow. From that height you could see the drop off beyond it quite easily and the river below that. It was a heart pounding view. It wasn’t the kind of thing you want to focus on because you may freeze up, and of course that’s not very helpful for survival. There was nobody to lower you off the slope if you couldn’t handle it on your own; my God we didn’t even have any ropes.
When I reached the top I saw that below me on the other side of the ridge towards the stream was in a little valley that the stream had cut perpendicular into the mountainside, and again this was about 25 feet down. The stream itself was being fed by another waterfall with a vertical drop of maybe 75 feet and then tumbling water above that. When I say tumbling I mean that the slope was laid-back maybe 70 or 80° rather than vertical. The whole view would’ve been quite spectacular to see if I had not been precariously balanced on a ridge looking at two waterfalls and a vertical drop of over 100 feet on my right side. Down in the narrow little valley, not much wider than the stream, was a bridge that crossed it. There was a narrow little trail probably not quite one foot wide on the steep grassy slope that I had to climb onto in order to descend into the valley. Not an easy transition with a backpack on 25 feet above the 3 foot ledge trail and 100 foot drop off below that, but I managed to straddle the ridge and get onto the ledge. I remember trying to hold onto the grass to pull myself up and over the ridge but that was rather futile because the grass just pulled out in my hands. It was a treacherous little hike getting down to the bridge, the last 10 vertical feet or so being mud handholds again and so requiring another difficult transition, but at least I wasn’t dangling over the drop off on the other side of the ridge. The little valley wasn’t very big, the bridge was located a little closer to the higher waterfall than the lower one, and it was probably about 30 feet away from the lower waterfall that dumped over the edge of the missing trail and into the ravine. On the far side of the bridge across the raging little stream was a trail which ran along the far hillside out to the lower waterfall and joining the main trail again. This was our goal to cross the bridge and get onto the main trail again on the opposite side of the stream.
I worked my way down the slope and made it over to the bridge. Like many of the other bridges that we had crossed there was a rock and mud abutment built on both sides of the stream and in this case they stuck up approximately 4 feet. Across these had been laying two fairly narrow wooden branches with mud plastered across and between them. They created a walkway that was a little wider than a balancing beam possibly 6 or 8 inches in width, and as I mentioned before the stream was 10 to 12 feet across so with the abutments this was about a 16 foot narrow, mud covered bridge. There were no ropes or beams to hold on to, you just had to balance your way across it. I’d like to say that the worst result of falling off the bridge was landing in waist deep water and getting pretty wet, but that wasn’t close the worst that could happen. It was a fast-moving stream and if you fell in it at that depth it would be hard to get a footing or get to the edge and pull yourself out quickly. And you would have to pull yourself out quickly because you had 30 feet before you plummeted over the edge of the cliff. Needless to say I didn’t really want to lose my balance and fall in.
On the other side of the bridge a porter waited to help and encourage us as we crossed the bridge. I was the only one there; somebody else was working their way down the side of the hill behind me. The person in front of me had already crossed and gone to the main trail. I Climbed up on the abutment, tested my weight on the wood, and immediately noticed that it would have been much nicer if piles of slippery wet mud had not been lathered across the beams. The wood was pretty slick. There was a spray and a roar coming from the waterfall on my left side as I started across the bridge. As I started out I recall I could feel the mist in my face and knew it was coating the mud at my feet as well. I stepped out tentatively and began making my way across. I tried to make each step count and not be distracted by the roar of the waterfall or the porter on the other side of the bridge waving me on. I had both my arms out for balance and step after step I kept focused on the bridge at my feet. About halfway across the wooden bridge became quite bouncy, and it was really slick. I had to slow down testing my weight on every step to make sure that my foot didn’t start to slide. The porter kept calling to me in a language that I couldn’t understand and gesticulating for me to keep coming forward. A few careful steps more and I finally had the worst of it behind me. It didn’t take long to cross the bridge but it felt like a very long time; finally I was climbing down the abutment on the other side. I remember feeling a great deal of relief and realizing how tense I had been during the whole ordeal. Then I walked along the edge of the stream out to the main trail again. For me the dangerous part was now over, but when I looked back at the stream and the waterfall and the trail on the other side I realize that for others who had chosen a different means of crossing the stream, a far worse dangerous act had just begun.
A local traveler, Indian or Nepalese, with his family had come upon the waterfall the same way we had. He was traveling with another man, two kids, and a woman who was apparently his wife. For them backtracking 100 feet and climbing over the ridge wasn’t an option. The two little kids wouldn’t have made it, and it probably would’ve been a bit of a risk for the woman as well. I watched from across the stream and the waterfall in horror as the man began to climb down in the raging stream. He was literally up to his hips in the water, and the waterfall dropped off the edge of the ledge merely 3 feet away from him. He had no ropes, no rails, not a log or sticks to hold onto; he just worked his way slowly out into the middle of the stream and wedged his feet into the rocks. Then the man that was with him took the little boy, probably five years old, in his hands and handed him to the man standing in the middle of the stream. One of our porters on our side of the stream went out to the edge of the trail and the man standing in the water only 3 feet away from the waterfall handed the child to the porter. Then he leaned back to get the next one, a girl probably six or seven, handed to him by his companion. The little girl just let herself be handed across the river like a sack of potatoes; there was no concern on her face – she didn’t stare fixed at the waterfall, or scream, or cry. This seemed to be just all part and parcel of the trip for her. The man in the river handed her across to the porter who grabbed her and put her on the trail with the boy. Then the man’s compadre handed the bundles that they had all been carrying slung and strapped as backpacks onto their backs with sashes. These he handed across the stream as well. Then I watched his wife start to step down in the water. I was pretty much horrified thinking that I was about to see a tragedy unfold. He held onto the woman by the hands and she very slowly crossed right in front of him – his back was to the waterfall. When she was close enough to the other side one of the porters took her hand and helped pull her out of the water onto the trail. At that point I started breathing again. Then the man in the water began working his way across the stream and the porter helped him out as well. Finally his companion on the opposite side chose to cross the stream in the same manner, and he forded the stream safely as well.
Amazingly the entire family had crossed safely. I watched the entire drama from the trail just a little bit ahead of where they were crossing. It was one of the most daring acts I’ve ever watched although I’m not sure they felt that way about it. I tend to think that traveling the trails through the Himalayas from India to Nepal was just a way of life for them. They probably made a couple of trips a month rain or shine, monsoon or dry season, and they had done this all their lives even as children. Indeed, if they had been raised like the children they just passed over the stream and waterfall, risky and daring acts like that would’ve been part and parcel of their daily lifestyle. It made me wonder just how many lives were lost on these trails on a yearly basis. Perhaps there were deaths every year, or perhaps these people were so surefooted that accidents and tragedies rarely happens to them. Perhaps it was only Western trekkies trying to imitate or follow the surefooted porters that wound up losing their lives. I know one thing for sure, if I had to choose between fording the stream 3 feet away from the waterfall drop off or climbing up and over the 25 foot cliff with only a 3 foot ledge to fall on using nothing but mud holes dug in the grassy hillside, I wouldn’t choose either one. Both were equally risky to the point of extreme life-threatening. They say traveling really allows you the opportunity to see how other people live, and I had come to realize that in the United States we lived in a fairly risk-free environment. Slowly it occurred to me that somewhere along the line as I traveled through India and the Himalayas my priorities had shifted, and it had become my primary goal just to stay alive long enough to get back to the airport in New Delhi!