by Clint Willis
The team spent their first days in China seeing sights, giving lectures, and attending banquets. They eventually traveled by truck to the Karokol Lakes. The team established Base Camp on May 29; the camp lay near a meadow, a surprisingly lush place set amid millions of acres of glacial debris. The climbers could stand and look across the Koksel glacier—a sea of ice towers surrounded by highlands barren of trees and swept by low clouds. A smaller peak hid Kongur from them.
The party made several training climbs on neighboring mountains that gave views across to Kongur’s slopes. The climbers identified two possible routes to Kongur’s summit. The more direct route led up the mountain’s steep South Ridge and across to a subsidiary peak called Junction Peak; from there, they could continue up another ridge to Kongur’s summit pyramid. The alternative route would take them up the easier Southwest Rib, but would require a longer traverse to Junction Peak.
Chris woke early on June 4. He felt very weak. Charlie Clarke diagnosed lobar pneumonia and dosed him with antibiotics. Chris retired to his sleeping bag. He felt for the moment too miserable to worry much about his prospects for climbing Kongur. The other three climbers established Advance Base Camp the next day in the Koksel Basin, at the start of the technical climbing. They set out on June 6 for the Koksel Col on the South Ridge. They hoped a closer look at the South Ridge would help them choose between it and the Southwest Rib.
Al had developed a bad cough and he was not climbing strongly. He turned back. Pete and Joe continued up the South Ridge. Their crampons gave them purchase on the ice-glazed rock, which eventually gave way to frozen snow. They kicked steps easily along the edge of the ridge, feeling the altitude as they gained height. They aimed to take sixty steps between rests. That figure dwindled to forty, then twenty.
Peter was climbing strongly. Chris and other climbers had come to believe that Peter was the strongest of the pair—perhaps of them all. Joe kept up with him through some seminarian’s version of grit and ambition that included an element of self-hatred or at least a desire to suffer, to know what he could bear. The effort gave him some peace—set him above certain judgments—and so he welcomed these difficulties, these mortifications. The other climbers sometimes worried that Joe would push himself too hard; that he would continue moving up a route until his physical strength was gone.
The day waned as Joe and Peter moved higher on the South Ridge. Pete in particular wanted to know what was coming. They couldn’t see as far as the summit today, but what they saw of the South Ridge looked like something they could climb. The weather grew worse; more clouds rolled in, and the two climbers at last turned back. They tried a short cut that took them across new ground. The snow at their feet merged with the fog so that they had to feel for the ground with each step. They lost their way for a time. Joe made a rappel down into the murk and was surprised to find himself on the glacier. He shouted up to Peter, who quickly followed. Peter’s rappel was oddly like rising through clouds into a world of sunlight—the glacier drenched with it. He reached the glacier and unclipped from his rappel brake. He looked up through brightness, half-expecting to see the mountain, but Kongur was hidden in white.
Al Rouse had come up the glacier to place wands that would help the climbers find their way if they had to retreat down the glacier in a storm. He greeted Joe and Peter and the three climbers descended together and spent the night at Advance Base Camp. They planned to explore the lower reaches of their alternate route, the Southwest Rib, the next morning. It snowed heavily the next day, so instead they packed up some of their personal gear and walked down to Base Camp.
Chris was still recuperating from his illness. The next day the three healthy climbers set out to climb a small mountain near their camp, but the weather turned bad again while they were still low on the peak. They figured they would need four or five consecutive days of reasonably good weather to climb Kongur. They had begun to wonder if they could realistically hope for such a window.
The four climbers convened at Base Camp the next day to hash out their strategy. They decided to have the Chinese porters ferry gear to Advance Base Camp in the Koksel Basin. The climbing team would move up to that camp; they could use it as a launching pad for further forays onto the South Ridge and for a reconnaissance of the Southwest Rib.
Al didn’t want to use the porters. He argued that relying on them to make carries would spoil any chance of making a purely alpine-style ascent. The others thought his qualms were ridiculous. The climbers would in fact be making an alpine-style push from the Koksel Basin, at the start of the real climbing. Joe pointed out with some heat that climbers used trains to get to the base of climbs in the Alps; surely it was all right to use porters to hump a few loads to Advance Base Camp. Al withdrew his objections, but the others were left with a sense that he looked down upon their enterprise—that he had somehow seized the high ground. There was a growing feeling that Al’s scruples and his constant chatter made him a pest.
Chris moved on to a discussion of partners—whether they should draw straws or rely on logic to decide which climbers should rope up together on the peak. The younger climbers hesitated. Chris—given his age and his recent illness—was likely to be a liability to his partner, but no one was eager to acknowledge that fact.
Al spoke up at last. He suggested that perhaps Joe and Peter should not pair up since they knew each other so well. They might tend to operate as a unit; their joint views might dominate the group’s decision-making. Pete volunteered to climb with Al. The two of them knew each other the least. Al had been with Chris on Kongur the previous year, and with Joe on Everest a few months ago. That settled that.
The four climbers left Base Camp the next day, June 13. Chris let the porters carry much of his personal gear, but he still moved slowly. Charlie had pronounced the infection gone, and the notion of a relapse high on the route was too appalling to contemplate. Chris concentrated on trying to keep pace with the others.
The little party reached Advance Base Camp in the late afternoon. They stood upon a snowfield that crossed a short stretch of ground to a gap between two opposing ridgelines. Chris had the sense that he and his companions stood on a cloud.
Joe and Chris went up to the South Ridge in the morning. Chris was relieved to feel his strength returning. Joe had a headache. The climbers took turns breaking trail through knee-deep snow to the base of the ridge, and climbed to a campsite below the expedition’s high point. Pete and Al came up behind them. Pete wanted to continue climbing. Chris thought they had gone far enough for one day. Joe said his head still hurt. The climbers made camp.
Al chattered away in the tent he shared with Pete. He hadn’t brought a book; his lightweight ethic precluded such luxuries. Joe and Chris were quiet in their tent; they were happy to read in peace.
The climbers woke to wind and snow the next morning, but the sky cleared later. They roused themselves and climbed two hours to the previous high point. Pete pushed on a bit further but after a time the others shouted to him to come down.
Chris and Joe were settling into a partnership on the mountain. Joe had resisted the older man’s authority on K2 two years earlier, and Chris had resented him for it. They got along now. Chris admired Joe’s toughness and intelligence and ambition. He recognized Joe’s essential kindness, and he saw that Joe liked him in turn. Joe these days found Chris a surprisingly sympathetic character, more open and relaxed than the reserved and somewhat touchy Bonington he remembered from their early meetings. And the older man’s achievements impressed him; Joe recognized Chris as someone who knew what it was to build a new life, to elbow past old fears in pursuit of new experience. Joe knew that Chris knew something of what it was like to layer the present over the past, to invent a life large enough to overshadow the slights and failures of one’s history.
Pete cast a skeptical eye on the growing affinity between Joe and Chris. He believed that they were both dragging their feet on the mountain—that they left it to him to supply the momentum that wou
ld give them a chance to climb the peak.
The climbers talked about what to do next. Chris and Joe and Peter wanted to stay with the South Ridge. The ridge seemed to give some protection against avalanche and it offered reasonable but interesting climbing. Al wanted to have a look at the Southwest Rib before deciding. The others sometimes wished that he would take direction, defer to their collective experience. They agreed to return to the Koksel Basin and go up for a closer look at the alternate route. They descended toward Advance Base Camp, and lost their way for a time in a whiteout—the afternoon fog blending into snow—before arriving at the camp in the early afternoon.
They started up the Southwest Rib the next morning. The angle was easy but deep snow made the going difficult. They slogged to 6,300 meters, catching glimpses through fog of peaks and valleys and some of the ground that stood between them and Kongur’s summit. They made camp and discussed their plans for the next day. They could stick to the Southwest Rib, but they were increasingly concerned about avalanche risk. They could detour across open slopes to the ridge that led up to Junction Peak—but those slopes had the look of the one that had killed Nick Estcourt. They put off the decision.
It snowed that evening as they lay in their tents. The snow and their situation recalled to Joe and Pete their horrendous night on K2 the previous year. Joe told Chris the story: eleven days on the mountain, food running short, the avalanches that buried the tent. Pete meanwhile told Al the same story.
Chris and Joe after a time heard the others moving out in the night; they were digging a snow hole that might protect them from a slide. Chris and Joe resisted the urge to join them, but eventually put on their boots and went out to dig their own shelter. All four climbers got wet digging in the fresh snow and they spent an uncomfortable night in their new caves. The sun came out briefly the next morning, but more snow began to fall as they prepared to climb higher on the rib. The snowfall triggered another debate. Peter wanted to stay and wait for the snow to stop, then try to gain more height. Chris and Joe wanted to go down. Al left it to the others. The climbers went down.
They spent three days at Base Camp, resting and preparing for a summit attempt. Their experience on the Southwest Rib had convinced them to return to the South Ridge. They left Base Camp on June 23. They took a day and a half to reach Advance Base Camp at the bottom of the ridge, and carried on to get a head start on the climbing. They pitched their tents on the ridge late on the second day, and in the morning they climbed unroped to their high point.
The South Ridge grew steeper here. The climbers aimed for a tower of rock that seemed to pose their next serious challenge. The weather for once was good. They had no confidence that it would last, but meanwhile the views were spectacular—a jumble of jagged white summits, most untouched by men; the mountains seemed fantasies of mountains.
Pete led up the ridge, moving quickly up easy rock, stepping off the crest to avoid patches of deteriorating snow. He came to the rock tower, the bottom sections smeared with ice. He placed an ice screw and a knife-blade piton for protection and climbed on the front points of his crampons. The sky behind him vanished; the world shrunk to his body and this gray wall. The angle eased and he chopped steps in the ice with his axe. This brought him to a small rock buttress, where he knocked in another piton.
Al had begun the morning tired, but he was feeling better. He swarmed up behind Peter, and the others followed. Al led past rock to a ridge of snow, where Peter resumed the lead. It was difficult to find protection in the snow, and the occasional patches of ice were too soft to hold screws. The climbers were aware that any sort of avalanche here would peel all of them off the mountain.
Pete was tired. His mind drifted as he continued to break trail through the snow. The others had no notion of this; they let him lead on. It was as if they were climbing the mountain because Peter insisted they climb it—as if they believed that he remembered something they had forgotten in their weariness. He climbed on snow that collapsed underfoot. He dug and kicked to make firmer steps for the others. He came at last to better snow and then to the top of the South Ridge; from there the main ridgeline stretched like a spine up over Junction Peak and on toward the summit of Kongur.
They had climbed 900 meters that day, to a height of 7,300 meters. The altitude was increasingly debilitating. The climbers pitched their tent and set about preparing their freeze-dried supper. Chris and Joe barely touched their food. The four climbers collapsed into their sleeping bags and slept deeply. Chris and Joe awoke hungry, but the party had brought almost no breakfast food. They were saving the freeze-dried meals for their remaining nights on the ridge.
The party made a late start. Chris and Joe broke trail. They moved across snow slopes below the ridge crest. The sun disappeared behind other mountains and plunged the climbers into shadow. Their unease seemed to swim up from vast depths to reach this place. Nothing made sense to their bodies; short of dying they could not adapt to this place. The weather closed in. They couldn’t see to navigate. They pitched their tents again and settled in to wait for better conditions.
Chris mistook some lemonade mix for curry powder. The resulting concoction was horrible; once again, he and Joe weren’t able to eat much. The wind blew hard in the night. Peter woke in the predawn hours and heard it and quickly sat up to gather his boots and gear. He finished packing and sat listening. He wanted to be ready if the wind collapsed the tent.
Morning came, and now the climbers could make out the summit pyramid of their mountain. It looked surprisingly difficult—steep and long, a mix of rock and snow; it amounted to another mountain for them to climb. They packed their tents in the rising wind.
They waded through snow for hours and at last came to the top of Junction Peak. They stopped here in the late afternoon to study their objective further. The next barrier was the long ridge of snow that led onto the summit pyramid. The snow would give tricky and dangerous climbing.
They dropped down off the ridge and dug a snow cave big enough to hold them all. The cave was cold but utterly quiet. They could have been anywhere. The blank hours passed. A storm might arise in the night and trap them here. They might run out of food and grow too weak to leave; it happened at these altitudes. No one came to this mountain; the climbers’ bodies might never be found. They drifted in and out of such fantasies, a little aghast at themselves for making up such stories, for finding them interesting.
Chris was the first to climb out of the cave in the morning. He ducked back inside to report that the sky was clear but the wind was terrible. Peter argued for pressing on. Chris and Joe were worried about food. They were already hungry. There wasn’t enough food to see them through a long storm. They also worried that there might not be enough snow higher up to dig a cave close to the summit. The climbers would certainly die if they were forced to spend a night in the open with the wind like this.
Peter won the argument. The party set out late in the morning to make a run for the summit and then back again. They had perhaps ten hours to climb the rest, some 600 meters on difficult and unfamiliar ground. Joe and Chris left camp ahead of the others. They climbed in crampons, up hard snow and across the slopes that ran down from the crest of the ridge, growing steeper as the climbers gained height. They could look down upon a drop of 6,000 meters. It was like looking down from the window of a commercial airliner. They were unbelievably high. The distance to the glacier receded into abstraction; it seemed to them about as real as the possibility of their own deaths.
Chris led a steep gully. Joe followed and led past him on shallow snow. They continued to swap leads as they picked their way past rock and ice towers that interrupted the ridge. They tried to identify and skirt cornices that might collapse under their weight. Chris led up a short rock tower that made him think of a huge fang. The rock offered big holds at first, but then forced him out onto difficult slabs with little protection. He gazed down past his feet to rock and then vast snow slopes. He stood there in his heavy boots and crampons
, drawing the moment out. He felt somehow protected—absurdly, exhilaratingly safe in his red wind suit and his various down garments. Joe, also swathed in red, directed a silent gaze upward from the tower’s base. Chris glancing down could see the blue patches of material at Joe’s legs and wrists. He thought of the consequences a fall would bring upon them both.
Chris found a place to build an anchor. Joe followed him up and led past to peer over the top of the fang. He called down in a curiously flat voice; there was no way forward. Al and Pete had come up behind them. Those two traversed on steep snow around the base of the fang to a col on the ridge. Chris and Joe followed them and arrived at the col as Pete climbed up loose, brittle rock and out of sight.
The rope came tight to Al. He shouted and got no reply and set off, cursing; there was no way of knowing what sort of ground Pete was on or whether he had found a place to make an anchor. Chris and Joe gave Al a minute and then followed, moving roped together. The ground was easy but there was no hope of stopping if either man slipped. There were no good handholds and there was too little snow to perform a self-arrest with an axe. They caught up with the other two. The four climbers stood in a kind of loose huddle, suddenly aware of their surroundings and of their dangerously committed position.
They shook off this awareness and gazed across at the summit. Peter pointed to a snow gully at the base of the pyramid. They could dig a snow cave there and go for the top tomorrow—but they hadn’t brought sleeping bags. The others didn’t speak. After a time, the four climbers turned and set off down. It was easier now that they knew the ground. They reached their snow cave in good order. They piled in and settled into the quiet and lay with their questions, too weary to speak.
