by Mark Horrell
Eventually Gombu and the other Sherpas decide to leave after dinner this evening to go and pull the tents down at Camp 2. Three Spanish climbers come to our camp to see if they're prepared to bring two tents and three sleeping bags left at Camp 2 down for them as well. Gombu decides to keep them waiting outside our dining tent while we have dinner.
“I hope you're going to charge them for it,” says Phil.
“Oh yes, two tent and three sleeping bag will be about … six hundred dollar,” replies Serap.
“Six hundred dollars – you're joking!”
“Is no joke, is mountain,” says Temba. Everyone roars with laughter.
Eventually Gombu offers to do it for four hundred dollars but, understandably, the Spanish climbers decline. I remember a muleteer on Muztag Ata offering to carry my 30 kilos of kit down from Camp 1 after I'd summited for just 30 dollars. I thought that was a bit steep and ended up staggering down with it myself. Any price to carry two tents and three sleeping bags between four superstar Sherpas is pretty much money for old rope, but our friends obviously don't need the money. The Spanish climbers end up going back up themselves to fetch it.
At 8pm, as I brush my teeth outside my tent, I watch four little black silhouettes belonging to Gombu, Tarke, Temba and Pasang make their way through the icefall at a speed that would floor me after a few hundred metres. They expect to be in Camp 1 at about 10 o'clock.
47. A typical conversation about the weather
Saturday 25 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
This morning we have another typical conversation about the weather forecast. Phil comes to the dining tent clutching a piece of paper containing wind speeds and precipitation for the next few days.
Phil: “I've got the latest weather forecast from Meteotest. If you want a realistic chance of summiting G1 then you should go to Camp 3 tomorrow.”
Camp 3 is 2000 metres above us.
Me: “Did you say ‘realistic chance'? You're saying we should go all the way to Camp 3 in one go?”
Phil: “Well, there's going to be a weather window.”
He reads out the wind speeds and precipitation for the next five days. Wind speeds are in excess of 50 kmh and there's a chance of snow on all days.
Michael: “Which day is the window?”
Phil: “I wouldn't go on any of them. If you want my advice, I'd go after Wednesday. Wind speeds are going to drop off.”
Me: “So why don't we start out on Monday and make Thursday our summit day. What are the speeds on Thursday?”
Phil: “We don't know. The forecast only goes up to Wednesday. You can go up if you want, but I would advise waiting for the weather forecast.”
Michael: “Why don't we wait for the weather forecast on Monday. If it's good we go up on Tuesday, and if it's s—t we wait.”
Me: “If we leave Tuesday then that's Camp 1 on the 28 th , Camp 2 on the 29 th , Camp 3 on 30 th , summit and back to Camp 3 on the 31 st , and back to Base Camp on the 1 st . Our porters are arriving on the 6 th . If we leave it any later then we're into the realms of last gasp effort. We might as well go up anyway, regardless of the weather forecast. If the weather's s—t, we turn back, but we've nothing to lose. It's better than sitting on our arses in Base Camp till the porters show up on the 6 th .”
Phil: “I'm not sending my Sherpas up in a whiteout, and if there's any more snow then I wouldn't recommend going up to Camp 1 any more, either. It was dangerous the other day. I'm staying here, but you can go.”
Me: “So if the weather forecast on Monday says it's going to snow all week, we may as well pack up and leave straight away.”
Arian: “I'm staying.”
Phil: “Gordon, what are your thoughts?”
Gordon: “Well, my visa expired two weeks ago, so I'm just waiting for the Pakistani authorities to show up and throw me in prison.”
And so on. I'm thoroughly confused every time we have one of these conversations, which is most days. Things are usually clearer on the days we don't get a weather forecast.
The funny thing is, every time I mention going up anyway regardless of the weather forecast, Phil seems to think I'm one of those crazy fools who wants to reach the summit at all costs. But I've reached the conclusion I'm almost certainly the most conservative and nervous climber out of all of us. I'm always the first to ask about how much of the route is going to be fixed, and have been quite explicit about turning round above Camp 3 if I think I'm in danger of falling on steep slopes with no fixed ropes to protect me.
At one point yesterday Phil approached me and said: “Mark, if you do decide to go up in bad weather, then I'm going to insist you take a Sherpa with you.”
As though I might consider tackling G1 solo while everyone else, including the Sherpas, decide to stay in Base Camp and wait out the weather! The idea's quite ludicrous. I might as well climb it naked as well, for good measure.
At 8.30am, immediately after breakfast, Serap looks up the icefall and shouts down to us: “I see Gombu.”
“What are you talking about? You can't see Camp 2 from here,” says Phil.
Thirty seconds later Gombu, Tarke, Temba and Pasang stroll into Base Camp, having been up to Camp 2 overnight, packed up all our tents and food, carried them down to Camp 1 then returned here, without having slept. They don't even look tired.
In the evening Gorgan and Serap both decide they're going to have one last-ditch attempt at G1 before they go home. They take with them Dirk the German and Tunch the Turk, but we think they've missed the weather window that Veikka and the Bulgarians are climbing in, and decide to wait until the end of next week instead. Arian is tempted to go with them, but Phil talks him out of it.
“By Tuesday you've got 50K winds again on the summit,” he says. “That's not a weather window. If you're desperate and want to risk frostbite, then go for it. But this is your first 8000 metre peak and there will be other chances.”
This time, I agree wholeheartedly.
48. Veikka Gustafsson’s final summit
Sunday 26 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
The Finnish mountaineer Veikka Gustafsson is attempting to reach the summit of Gasherbrum I today, his fourteenth and last 8000 metre peak, and we spend much of the morning watching the clouds on the summit and speculating on whether he's going to make it. The Bulgarian team assisted him by breaking trail through waist deep snow beneath the Japanese Couloir yesterday, and are also trying for the summit today. Veikka was due to set off for the summit at midnight, and it will probably take him at least 8 hours. I get up for breakfast at 8am, and there is a large lenticular cloud over the summit which looks like it will turn him round, but calmer weather follows until 11am, when the clouds return. If he's timed his ascent to arrive at the summit within this short three-hour period then he may well have found the only tiny summit window in a month. I hope he makes it. He seemed a decent chap when we had tea with him earlier in the month, and he's been patient enough. Last year he turned around just 50 metres from the top, so he deserves a break.
But we hear no news of Veikka all day. This is odd, and leads us to conclude that perhaps he didn't make it up – most people have satellite phones, and normally when summits are reached, word gets spread around pretty quickly. Veikka has been contacting his wife by satellite phone, who arranges for any news to go on his website pretty soon. We usually find out about things like this when Phil's wife sends him a text message after browsing the internet. Today there is nothing from this source, although Phil is chuffed when his wife tells him there's a blog on another site saying, “The most sensible team on Gasherbrum at the moment appears to be Altitude Junkies, who are waiting at Base Camp for calmer weather.” This statement appears to be based on the evidence that Phil hasn't posted a dispatch to the Altitude Junkies website for a few days.
Later in the afternoon Phil goes down to Canada West's camp to get hold of their battery. They're all going home today and don't need it any more. While he's away Michael a
nd Arian, bored and looking for something new to occupy themselves with, decide to chip away at the ice around his orange Mountain Hardware dome tent to perch it even more precariously on its mushroom of ice. Phil doesn't notice any difference when he returns, and hopefully he'll see the funny side when he watches the video of them at work on YouTube.
Arian and Michael have plans for Phil's tent
It's certainly true that maturity at Base Camp appears to be inversely proportional to boredom. For a few days now Phil has been threatening to abandon the expedition if anyone puts jelly or blancmange on his crampons again. Apparently it's very difficult to scrape off in the morning after freezing overnight. If this happens then I would be interested to see how he reports it on his expedition dispatches, and how it will square with the assertion that Altitude Junkies are “the most sensible team on Gasherbrum.”
At 8pm Phil gets on the radio to Gorgan and Serap at Camp 2 on G1, and learns that Veikka and his Japanese cameraman are also there, having summited earlier today. The four Bulgarian climbers are up at Camp 3, also having reached the top. It's great news, and let's hope it's the harbinger of a new phase of summits.
49. Focussing on Gasherbrum I; the Iranian team departs
Monday 27 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
It looks like another clear day on the summit of Gasherbrum I, although it's windy down here at Base Camp. Phil has heard reports from Veikka that there is now a technical rock section on the Japanese Couloir, and Gombu says it's going to be too cold for the Sherpas to fix ropes above Camp 3. Phil is now talking about switching back to Gasherbrum II, as he thinks parts of the route on G1 may be too technical for some of us. He's also getting itchy feet now that the weather down at Base Camp has improved very slightly.
“Who's up for going up to Camp 2 tomorrow?” he asks after breakfast.
“Why don't we wait for today's weather forecast first, like we said we would on Friday?” says Michael.
“Dude, we're running out of time,” Phil replies. “And the weather forecasts aren't always accurate. We may as well try using chicken bones.”
“Or tea leaves,” I add, looking into the bottom of my mug.
“What do they tell you?” asks Gordon. “You will meet a tall dark stranger who looks like Sergeant Bilko and keeps changing his mind?”
This is a little unfair – Phil only keeps changing his mind because circumstances keep changing, and this is part and parcel of mountaineering, but we all laugh anyway.
The forecast comes through at 4pm and we have a meeting outside Phil's tent. Stormy weather is predicted for two days, but then the winds die down towards the end of the week. No more snow is forecast after that, and there is a glimmer of hope again, although the summit wind speeds for Friday, 30 kmh, are right on the fringes of do-able. The Sherpas don't want to go back up G2 again, so our minds are now focussed on G1.
We're now one of the few remaining teams at Base Camp. The Iranian team leaves tomorrow, and tonight they have a bit of a sing-song and take down the Iranian flag from the pole on the moraine hill which divides our two camps. There are rather a lot of them , and they're making quite a bit of noise. After the garbage incident last week we joke that they have a little effigy of Arian up there which they're sticking pins into.
50. Gloomy mood at Base Camp; Veikka’s party
Tuesday 28 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
Doom and gloom around the breakfast table again this morning. Serap is back from yet another aborted attempt on Gasherbrum I, and has fallen into a crevasse on his way through the icefall. He says he was in there for 10 minutes, and if he hadn't been roped to the Bulgarians he'd be a dead man.
“I've never felt so scared before,” he says.
This coming from the man who's climbed eleven 8000 metre peaks, including K2 and Kangchenjunga, has an inevitable effect on the other Sherpas, who are all now keen to get back to Nepal.
Gombu is on the radio to the Spanish team at Camp 1 this morning, and passes the handset back to Phil in disgust.
“F---ing Spanish,” he mutters.
Sherpas almost never swear, but Gombu has just learned that another solitary Spaniard has gone up to Camp 3 on G1 on his own after Gorgan and Dirk, whom he'd been climbing with, decided to turn back. The rest of the Spanish team left Base Camp in the early hours of this morning bound for Camp 1. During his radio call to them Gombu thought he could hear someone sobbing in the background, and his worry is that if we all go up to Camp 2 and another lone Spaniard gets into trouble, the rest of the Spanish team will expect our Sherpas to rescue him. We're all still in a state of lingering surprise about what happened last week, when they did nothing to help another of their team struggling for his life on Gasherbrum II, and more or less left him to die.
“Last week we arranged to meet Spanish team in morning to talk about a rescue,” he says. “But they not show up.”
Although weather conditions ultimately prevented a rescue, and the Spanish climber would almost certainly have died anyway, we were all very surprised that the rest of his team did nothing to help, such as sending someone up to Camp 1 to coordinate and assess the situation, and at least give some sort of sign that they cared about him. And if Gombu was annoyed with the Spanish team for not meeting him when they said they would, it's hard to imagine the feelings of the Portuguese couple Paulo and Daniela, who were friends of the climber who died, and who risked their own necks by descending through the South Gasherbrum Icefall at night to bring word of the climber's perilous situation, only to see his team react with indifference.
And now it looks very much like we may be facing a repeat performance.
Arian is late for breakfast, and it emerges that he has pains in his chest which Gordon thinks may be signs of a hernia. He's been on painkillers all night, and is still in pain this morning.
“Perhaps the Iranians did have a voodoo doll, after all,” says Phil. He eventually gets Arian out of bed by suggesting we summon a helicopter to take him back to Skardu.
The next piece of bad news comes when Gorgan arrives back in Base Camp at midday while Gordon, Michael, Arian and I are in the middle of another marathon card game. He tells us he got to about 6800m in the Japanese Couloir, but the fixed rope is actually last year's, and is somewhat weathered after 365 days of freezing and thawing out again. Very few people have been using it this year, and Phil is now wondering whether it can be trusted. Gorgan also confirms that the icefall is in an atrocious state, and it took him 4½ hours to descend through it instead of the usual three. Both he and Serap are now finished and want to go home tomorrow. Phil's friend Tunch has already gone, after looking at K2, G2 and now G1 and deciding none of them can be climbed this year.
Later in the afternoon Veikka Gustafsson holds a party for everyone still remaining in Base Camp – which is not very many of us – to celebrate his successful ascent of G1, his fourteenth and final 8000 metre peak. It's a party unlike any I've ever been to before: no alcohol, and men dancing with men on a patch of bumpy moraine with G1 as a backdrop, a mountain which seems to look more and more awesome every time I glance at it, probably because we're now getting very close to the time when we ourselves will tread its slopes.
Veikka Gustafsson with Gorgan and Michael
The remaining cooks at Base Camp, including Ashad, have put a good spread of food on, and a handful of porters and kitchen crew start banging empty fuel canisters and singing, and doing their very best to turn this patch of moraine recently vacated by the Iranian team, into a dance floor. Veikka is presented with a bouquet and white kata scarves by some of our Sherpas, and gives a short speech. He has the humility to thank the four Bulgarian climbers who summited on the same day, for breaking trail through waist deep snow beneath the Japanese Couloir during atrocious weather. Had it not been for them, he says, then he may not have been in place to take advantage of the narrow summit window.
And what a window. His Japanese cameraman has set up a laptop in Veikka'
s dining tent, and is showing footage of their summit day. The weather is perfect, as the jetstream winds vanish for a day before returning again. The summit ridge and summit itself are broad enough and look comfortable, but there is one piece of footage of Veikka hacking his way up a steep climb with his ice axe, which I would not like to try without fixed ropes.
For us, we are still waiting for our window on either mountain, but Veikka's film has reminded me what it can be like when everything comes together, and why I've been sitting around on a glacier for a month and a half now. Oh, to experience that crow's eye view of the Karakoram that Veikka enjoyed! But I don't think it's going to happen now.
51. Serap Jangbu the Philosopher
Wednesday 29 July, 2009 – Gasherbrum Base Camp, Pakistan
Gorgan and Serap Jangbu leave this morning with a handful of porters. Serap came here to climb Gasherbrum I and Broad Peak, potentially his twelfth and thirteenth 8000 metre peaks, but such has been the weather this year that he's been no further than Camp 3 on G1. Even so, he is very philosophical about the whole thing, and gives a short speech at breakfast which puts things in perspective for all of us.
“There are three things which are important in mountaineering. Number 1 is safety. You must always come back safely and with all your fingers and toes. The mountain will always be here next year. Number 2 is to enjoy the climbing and your time at base camp. If you can't be happy in the mountains, where can you be happy? Number 3 is reaching the summit, and this comes only after the other two. I came here to climb G1 and Broad Peak and didn't succeed, but I am happy, because I am alive and safe and will come back next year.”
