Sleepless Mountain (6)

If there are categories of 'good death' and 'bad death' even on a mountain, I'd classify dying from a fall or freezing to death from hypothermia as the 'good' kind. But being buried alive by an avalanche is definitely one of my top three 'bad death' scenarios. Especially being buried in my sleep, along with my tent and sleeping bag. That's the stuff of nightmares that haunts mountaineers in the quiet of the night. Sure enough, within ten seconds, I saw Chen Ming and Wang Yi also burst out of their tents, disheveled. And in this pitch-black night, the four of us could only kneel down together, and pray to the heavens in the language our mothers taught us, not to let us die here tonight. But on the other hand, we also knew in our hearts, that the ultimate fate of those who love mountains is to sleep forever in them. To live out one's days peacefully like Sir Edmund Hillary, is considered extremely rare among mountain enthusiasts. At the annual mountaineer gatherings, there are always some new friends, and some familiar faces are fewer. Every so often, we hear that someone has been seriously injured and can no longer climb, or that someone went on a trip and never returned. No matter how skilled you are, or how much stamina you have, if you keep challenging the mountains, one day the mountain will keep you. Fortunately, perhaps our time hadn't come yet. After another thirty to forty seconds, the tremendous noise finally stopped. Chen Ming went back to the tent and got a large flashlight. After surveying the surroundings, we discovered that about three hundred meters from our BC, a medium-sized avalanche had occurred. Although the scale wasn't large, we were thankful to heaven that it didn't come towards our tent. Otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting here telling this story today.