Monsoon Movie 1999 Watch Online Free

[Chris]

Oneclimber broke his back. One wandered in a daze. One tried, and failed, to save a friend. They all left behind a moment and a place that would haunt a dead mountaineer's daughter for decades. A pilgrimage in search of a lost father.

We finished lunch and continued. Soon our options narrowed to a steep section of chest-deep snow. I led and Kim followed. To secure my footing I had to pack the snow first by pressing my whole body into the slope, then my knee, and finally my boot. No matter how careful I was, I still knocked snow down on Kim.

I smiled to myself and kept going. In another hundred feet the snow firmed. In a clearing between clouds we could see just ahead an area of large seracs where the shifting glacier had cleaved into blocks. I stopped and studied our options.

While Kim took the lead, Jonathan stepped aside and took several photographs. I paid out rope, then followed Kim as he angled up the side of a serac that then turned into a long, steep slope. The heavy packs and thin air made the effort debilitating, but we maintained a steady pace. I tried not to look up but instead to focus on the steps in front of me, hoping I might achieve a kind of self-hypnosis.

SO MANY TIMES on this trip with Asia, I have had this sensation of the past melting into the present. The sight of Asia hiking in front of me can carry me back in time just as a certain smell can carry you to a memory long forgotten. And there he is, hiking in front of me on a day long ago.

When we began this trip together, I worried about Asia: about her asthma, her vulnerability to cold, even her bug phobia. And at first there was a kind of cautious formality between us. But I still knew that all the pieces of this journey would, when fitted together, create for her a clear picture of the life and times of her father. And I knew that our adventures would be the ones that Jonathan would be having with her if he were here.

I blow out the candle, and in the darkness I hear the rush of the river in the valley below. I take off my parka, shift into the sanctum of my sleeping bag, and fold the jacket under my head. Before I go to sleep, I have one final thought: If I were caught in the avalanche now, at age 50, would I have the wisdom to ride the cascading snow not in fear but in wonder? Like Alice falling down the hole, would I look to the sides, watching the world that I know speed by, wondering not in panic but in awe about the other world into which I am about to enter?

IN 1980, MINYA KONKA had been climbed only twice, first by an American team, in 1932, and later by the Chinese, in 1957. For us, however, the climb was only half the attraction; the other half was simply getting to the mountain. Each day in China was an encapsulated adventure: three days in Beijing, or Peking, as it was still called in those days, then a two-day ride south on a train pulled by a coal-burning locomotive. When we arrived in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan, the only hotel in town was a nine-story concrete block of proletarian functionalism called the Jin Jiang.

After she had been with us a couple of weeks, I took her to a small caf for lunch. I told her about the avalanche. I told her how her father had died, and how we had buried him high on Minya Konka, in a cairn of rock that overlooked Tibet.

OUR JOURNEY from Nepal, across the open alpine steppe of the Chang Tang Plateau and the monsoon-swept mountains of eastern Tibet, took two months. But thanks to a road extended since my visit in 1980, it took Asia and me only one long day to walk to Konka Gompa. Twenty years before it had taken three.

Before descending we sat on our packs and had a second lunch. Through brief windows in the clouds we could see the ridge dropping to a col and rising again to two higher summits. The yellow-green plateau of Tibet emerged below us.

Then suddenly my face surfaced. I sucked air as fast as I could, then backstroked until my chest, then my knees, pulled out. Around me the snow was still heaving and pulsing, as if it were taking huge, deep breaths. To the side an outcrop sped by in a blur. Then below, beyond my feet, I saw the slope steepen, then disappear. It was the cliff, the rock face below Camp One, and it went several hundred feet down. I looked ahead and to the side as the whole slope of snow we were riding, the tons and tons of it, pitched into space, and I recall very clearly my next thought.

WHEN I WAKE IT IS STILL DARK in the room, but the parchment on the monastery windows carries a faint glow. I hear no rain, only the rush of the river, but even at this distance it is an undertone that leaves a disquieting sense of its power. I unzip my bag, swing my legs and feet to the floor, and dress. I pick up my binoculars and the photographs of Minya Konka. I take care opening the thick plank door of our room and descend the steep stairs to the courtyard. It is just before daybreak, June 25, 1999.

Up valley, a gray blanket of cloud obscures all but the lowest flanks of Minya Konka. I remove the photographs from their envelope and study them. Then I look back at the mountain, but the clouds have descended and the buttresses have disappeared.

JUST BEFORE I WAS ABOUT to be carried over the next cliff, the avalanche stopped. I crawled to a rock at the edge of the jumbled ice and sat panting until I caught my breath and the dizziness went away. I felt my legs, moving them carefully. Then my arms, my ribs, my back. Bruises, bad ones, but apparently no broken bones.

Yvon had come to rest at an angle below me, 30 feet away. He was buried to the waist, but his arms were free and he was working slowly to free himself. There was blood running down his face. I looked up the narrow slope where we had stopped and saw Kim. He was staring back at me. Our eyes held, and his were like blue diamonds. There was blood on his face and trickling out of his mouth, staining his teeth. He screamed. It was an animal scream, and I looked away.

The last time I walked this path, my arm was in a sling. Yvon was behind me, his breath shortened by the pain in his ribs, and Kim was farther back. He had two cracked vertebrae and two broken ribs, and we had trussed his torso with two foam pads and given him two ski poles to hike with. He moved in halting steps, his lips were tight, and his blue eyes, clouded with morphine, seemed to focus on the middle distance, even when you talked to him.

THE CREST OF moraine sharpens, and I have to walk with my arms out for balance. Straight ahead is the meadow that I recognize as our old campsite. Looking up, I can see the route we took to the bottom of the buttress. The best way seems to be to follow talus up to a series of cliffs.

I set a steady pace, one slow foot after the other, and Asia maintains a 20-yard distance behind. The layer of clouds that fills the lower valley continues to rise toward us. In an hour I reach the top of the scree and take out my water bottle. Asia is quiet and somber. Soon I recognize another feature: the boulder field where I stumbled and fell when I was running to get help. Another 500 vertical feet ahead is the slope where the avalanche came to a stop. I think, We must have buried Jonathan somewhere to the left of that.

She places her boot on the first foothold, and reaches for the handholds. I can only guess how strong her emotions must be, and that makes it even more impressive to watch her move with athletic grace. I make the same moves behind her, mindful to have my hands and feet locked on the holds, because if she slips I will need all my strength to block her fall.

The crest of the rib is now only ten feet away. I make five more steps and stop, then slowly look up. Above and to the right I recognize the slope immediately as the place where the avalanche came to a halt. On the left side is the place where Jonathan died.

Rick Ridgeway is the author of four previous books, including Seven Summits and Shadow of Kilimanjaro. This article is excerpted from Below Another Sky, which will be published in January by Henry Holt and Co.

Monsoon watching is part hobby and part science in India, and lots of people and organizations get in on the act. It starts in March, with pre-monsoon tracking and predictions. The southwest monsoon hits the tip of India in Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu and the the coast of Kerala first, and travels in a north and north-easterly direction, sweeping across the subcontinent. In the last 10 years, the earliest arrival was on May 23, 2009 and the most delayed was June 8, 2016.

The President. Please be seated. Thank you, General Rutherford. Good afternoon, everyone. We gather today to present the Medal of Honor for valor above and beyond the call of duty. In so doing we celebrate the soldier, the life that produced such gallantry, Specialist Leslie H. Sabo, Jr.

Today is also a solemn reminder that when an American does not come home from war, it is our military families and veterans who bear that sacrifice for a lifetime. They are spouses, like Rose Mary, who all these years since Vietnam still displays in her home her husband's medals and decorations. They are siblings, like Leslie's big brother George, who carries the childhood memories of his little brother tagging along at his side. And they are our veterans, like the members of Bravo Company, who still speak of their brother Les with reverence and with love.

Rose, George, Bravo Company, more than a hundred family and friends, Michelle and I are honored to welcome you to the White House. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration that America can bestow. It reflects the gratitude of the entire Nation. So we're joined by Members of Congress and leaders from across our Armed Forces, including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta; Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Sandy Winnefeld; from the Army, Secretary John McHugh and Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno; and from the Marine Corps, the Commandant, General Jim Amos.

We're honored to be joined by Vietnam veterans, including recipients of the Medal of Honor. And we're joined by those who have carried on Les's legacy in our time, in Iraq and Afghanistan, members of the 101st Airborne Division, the legendary Screaming Eagles.

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