We were all sitting round in the mess tent in the shadow of Mount Wendy in the early evening on the fourth afternoon when the usual hubbub from the kitchen tent took an unusual tone. Voices were raised and the usual banter turned angry and confrontational. We all looked at each other and wondered if we should go outside and take a look. Two minutes later we were all out of the tent as things really did take a turn for the worse.
Davis, one of our assistant guides, emerged form the kitchen tent moaning and wailing, clutching his face and sank to his knees. All the porters were pushing and shoving each other while, the chef Spider was being dragged away by the rest. He managed to break free and pick up a massive rock with two hands and hurl it at the stricken Davis, narrowly missing his head.
Apparently, Davis has gotten drunk while we were on our acclimatization walk and he confronted Spider in the kitchen, which was a further incident in a long running feud. One thing led to another and a pan of boiling water had been thrown into his face hence the wailing and the melting skin. Fortunately, Rob, our leader, was a trained emergency nurse and was able to patch him up and deal with the immediate pain. He was cleaned up and marched down for 6 hours into the valley in order to get treatment at the local hospital. "Get control of you camp," shouted Rob to the head guide.
We were all asked to go and sit in mess tent while things were calmed down. No one really spoke and it was all very disconcerting. After about 15 minutes Davis came in to speak to us. What was in effect a pep talk to make sure we all carried on and got to the top was delivered in a slurred and barely comprehensible way due to the obvious pain he was in and the whisky he'd been drinking. This was all hard for us because we didn't know who was in the right or the wrong. Frankly we still don't.
Anyway, once he left camp sort of returned to normal. A number of the group were clearly shocked by witnessing a vicious assault and we were all pleased that things hadn't escalated beyond what we saw. Somehow we still got fed an hour or so later and went to bed all feeling a bit wierded out. Spider returned to his duties and everyone in the camp appeared to then spend the next 3 days pretending nothing happened.
It didn't seem the authorities had though, on our arrival at the exit from the national park on day 7, we were met by armed guards. They took away Spider for questioning and wanted to speak to Rob and Tosha the Head Guide. That was the last we saw or heard. I know we all have a workplace disagreements but this was something else.
