Chapter 3 — Mist Peak Rescue Team

"How far is it to the top?" Kieu Nhat Nam asked, his voice out of breath, his hands resting on his knees to regain his breath.

"About another hour and a half." Kieu Thanh Son turned around, smiled, and patted his nephew's shoulder. "Come on, through this spine you'll see the most beautiful view of the whole route."

At seven o'clock in the morning, they had just checked in at marker T7 with the local guide they met on the road — Son remembered his name was Tua — before he turned another way to set a trap. The sky at that time was still blue, with only a few thin strips of clouds crossing the distant mountain peaks, so beautiful that Son stopped to take a few photos, not thinking that just a few hours later, those thin strips of clouds would become the thing that swallowed the whole group.

Uong Bao Anh walked last, one hand holding the backpack strap tightly, the other hand unconsciously placed on his chest, where the small cloth bag containing the medicine bottle and pocket heart rate monitor had been lying still since the morning. She felt her heart beat a little faster than usual — not something new, the doctor had told her about it, about so-called "arrhythmias that can get worse with sudden exertion or in hypoxic environments." But she didn't tell Son. He'd been excited about this trip for months, this was their first time trekking together since their engagement, and she didn't want to be the one to ruin it because of a worry that she wasn't sure was serious or not.

"Is Bao Anh okay?" Nam asked, noticing her slowing down a bit.

"It's okay, I'm just a little tired." Bao Anh smiled and sped up his steps to catch up. "Go ahead, don't keep Mr. Son waiting."

The trail leading up the spine of Rong May begins to gradually narrow after the T7 mark, on both sides were jagged low bushes clinging to the rocks, the higher they go, the more sparse they become, revealing smooth gray rock that had been eroded by the wind for thousands of years. Son had gone this route once before, two years ago, with a group of other friends, and he remembered that the road ahead — although narrow — was not dangerous if you walked carefully, keeping close to the cliff on the left.

"Do you see the clouds getting lower?" Bao Anh asked, his voice a bit hesitant, when they stopped to drink water at a rocky outcrop.

Son looked up. It's true that the thin strip of clouds in the morning is now a little thicker, swooping lower and closer to the top than at seven o'clock. But sunlight still penetrated, and from his experience, morning mountain clouds usually dissipated by midday. "It's probably just morning dew. The sun will soon disappear."

He wasn't entirely wrong — for most other mountains, that's true. But he did not know about the name that the villagers gave to the special phenomenon of Sa Mu mountain, which can turn a clear morning into a milky white wall in just a few minutes. He also had no way of knowing, because the warning sign at the Nam Tha village ranger station - which clearly stated the unusual weather characteristics of this area - was knocked down by a storm last year, and has not yet been rebuilt.

They kept going. Nam walked slowly behind, eyes glued to each step on the slippery stone floor, trying not to look down into the cliff on the right - where the depth made him dizzy every time he glanced over. This was his first long-distance trekking trip, and although before leaving he confidently told his mother that he was not afraid of anything, now, standing in the middle of a narrow strip of rocks with cliffs on both sides, he felt his heart beating faster than when he ran the competition at school.

"Dude," Nam called, "can we rest a bit?"

Son turned around to answer, but his sentence was interrupted by a strong wind that suddenly blew across the mountain ridge, bringing with it a cold wave of moisture. All three stopped. Just in that moment, the sky ahead - where the outline of Sa Mu peak was still clearly visible about a kilometer away - suddenly blurred, as if someone had just thrown a bucket of diluted water on the glass.

"What is it?" Nam asked, his voice trembling.

Bao Anh tightly grabbed Son's backpack strap in front of him, clearly feeling his heartbeat suddenly speed up, not because of exertion this time. "Son, let's go back. Right now."

But it's too late to consult each other about which direction to go. The incoming mist was unlike anything Son had ever experienced in all his previous trekking trips — it did not roll in slowly like a normal cloud, but like a milky white wall rushing straight at them, swallowing their vision in just three breaths. One second Son could clearly see the shape of the cliff twenty meters ahead, the next second he could only see the exact outline of his hand held out in front of him.

"Nam! Bao Anh!" he shouted, trying to keep his voice calm even though his heart was pounding. "Don't move! Stay where you are, hold hands!"

"I'm here, I'm here, boy!" Nam's voice rang out from behind, close but sounded muffled by the thick layer of steam.

Bao Anh's hand found Son's arm in the white curtain, squeezing tightly. "Where is Nam? Is Nam near?"

"I'm here!" A cold hand touched Son's shoulder from behind - it was indeed Nam, but the boy was shaking, not sure whether from cold or fear, perhaps both.

The three people huddled together in a small cluster in the middle of a narrow strip of rock, the sound of the wind whistling through their ears getting louder and louder, bringing with it a biting cold air. Son tried to recall the route map in his head—they were somewhere between T7 and the narrowest part of the spine, at least four or five hundred meters from both nearest shelters, an impossible distance to travel in zero visibility without risking slipping over the edge.

"I can't go on like this," he said, trying to keep his voice firmer than he actually felt. "I'll sit down here, close to the cliff, and wait for the fog to subside."

"What if it doesn't melt?" Nam asked, his voice choked.

Son did not answer immediately. He looked around — or rather, he tried to look around, but only saw a uniform opaque white mass covering everything, unable to distinguish between the sky, the abyss, and the path. The phone in his pocket lost signal at some unknown time. The personal walkie-talkie they brought with them — a cheap one bought hastily before the trip — only made a continuous crackling sound when he tried pressing the call button.

"It will go away," he said, but it sounded more like he was trying to reassure himself than the other two. "I just need to wait."

Bao Anh sat down next to him, his back leaning against the cold stone, one hand still placed on his chest where the small cloth bag was, the other hand holding Nam's hand. She felt her heartbeat still refusing to slow down, and for the first time during the journey, another fear — not the fear of getting lost, not the fear of the abyss — began to creep into her mind: fear that her body would betray her right when the three of them needed her the most.

Fifteen minutes passed like that, the three sat close together, silently listening to the sound of the wind whistling through the rocks. The mist did not dissipate as Son had hoped — if anything, it became thicker, and the cold air began to seep through the thin windbreakers of all three people, reaching their skin. Nam shrank back, his teeth chattering even though he tried not to show them.

"I can't sit here forever," Son said finally, his voice losing its initial false certainty. "Sitting still in the wind like this, you will get cold faster than moving. I remember about fifty meters from here there is a rock protruding, creating a small cavity, which can block the wind somewhat."

"What if I get lost?" Bao Anh asked.

"I walked close to the cliff on the left, one hand always touching the rock, not letting go." Son stood up, pulling the other two people up with him, each holding tightly to the backpack strap of the person in front, forming an inseparable chain of three people. "Step by step, no rush."

They groped their way through the opaque whiteness, each step examining the rock face before placing their weight on it, their ears straining to hear any sound other than the wind — the sound of running water signaling the nearness of an abyss, the rolling of stones signaling an unstable foundation. Nam remembers a time when the survival skills teacher at school once said that in thick fog, people can easily follow a detour without even realizing it, because there are no landmarks to orient themselves. He didn't dare say it right now, just tightened his grip on Bao Anh's backpack strap.

Finally, after about ten minutes of groping, which to the three of them seemed as long as an hour, Son's hand touched a protruding block of rock, large enough to form a small hole to shelter from the wind, though not deep enough to be called a cave. The three of them crawled in, huddled close together, their backs against the rock, their faces facing out to look at the white wall that was still flowing continuously.

"I'm here, waiting for someone to find me," Son said, trying to keep his voice steady for the group, even though in his heart, for the first time since the start of the trip, a real fear had begun to form: fear that the decision to bring the two people most important to him up this mountain, on this very day, might be a decision he had to pay more expensively than anything he had ever imagined.

None of them knew that, less than three kilometers away as the crow flies, at Heaven's Gate station, a woman named Do Khanh Van was standing in front of a map with a red mark in the exact area they had just passed, her hand clutching a pen, her eyes glued to the darkening sky above Sa Mu peak.