K2

by Ed Viesturs

  We’d been anticipating this moment since long before we’d left Seattle. Now Scott and I drew straws to see who would get the “sharp end.” I won and led the pitch. My diary sounds almost nonchalant about the climbing: “It was a narrow, vertical snow & ice-choked crack. Fun climbing up and stemming.” I remember, however, being quite impressed with the lead Bill House had pulled off fifty-four years earlier.

  We’d been on K2 for only two weeks, but already, scattered around the Baltoro, other expeditions were throwing in the towel and going home. From my diary:

  Many failures so far in the Karakoram area. The Swiss tried to climb K2 in just 4 wks. From a very low C II they tried alpine style to go for it. They encountered deep snow on the Black Pyramid. Too early in the season? IE still too much snow yet?

  Germans & Koreans just gave up yesterday on Broad Peak also. [Steve] Swenson & company gave up on GIV [Gasherbrum IV] due to deep snow also. Now they’re on GII we believe.

  It’s only early in the season yet. We’ve still got lots of time.

  By July 8, we were on the verge of establishing Camp III at 24,000 feet. I’d had one bad day at Camp II; I’d felt lightheaded after breakfast, then unusually tired going up the hill. “Not quite acclimatized I can tell,” I wrote in my diary. By the next day, however, I felt as good as new, and I was raring to go. Because of the weather, though, we descended to base camp, at 16,800 feet, to rest for several days. “Climb high, sleep low” has become a formula for success on the 8,000ers, overturning the earlier notion that the longer you stayed high, the better you acclimatized. The truth of the matter is that above 20,000 feet or so, the body slowly deteriorates, no matter what kind of shape you’re in. Those rest days down low are vital to regenerating for the summit push.

  I still felt vexed by the unequal efforts some of our teammates were putting out. On July 11, I complained to my diary, “No real ‘power-carriers’ on this trip. 10# [pound] loads are about max. I’m used to climbing with guys from RMI that carry 50# no sweat & don’t even bat an eye. Scott carries big like me, but that’s the exception.” Despite this disappointment, I was feeling increasingly positive about our chances, and I sketched out possible scenarios for the upcoming days. The most optimistic had us establishing Camp IV on the Shoulder at 26,000 feet only four days hence. From that camp, we hoped eventually to reach the summit in a single day. “If it all works out,” I scribbled, “come down rest 4–5 days, wait for good weather & go for it!”

  Fat chance. K2 wasn’t going to give up that easily. On July 12, we suffered our first real setback. At the time, it felt like a huge one.

  Scott and I had set off from base camp that morning at 5:00 A.M., hoping to climb all the way to Camp II in one day. Just before you reach the base of the Abruzzi Ridge, you have to wend your way through a funky little icefall. It’s technically trivial but potentially dangerous. We always roped up going through the icefall, even though most of the others, including the Russians, didn’t bother.

  That morning, Scott was leading as he wound his way through the maze of cracks and ice towers. He stepped on a chunk of ice that was wedged across the mouth of a small crevasse. The chunk shifted under his weight, and he fell. There was no danger that he’d fall very far into the crevasse, as I held him on a tight rope. Instinctively, Scott stuck out his arms to catch the fall. And as he hit the glacial surface, he screamed in pain. “Shit!” he yelled. “I’ve dislocated my shoulder again!”

  It turned out that Scott had dislocated the same shoulder in a fall about twelve years before. “We got him slung up and left his pack,” I recorded that evening in my diary. “[Scott] walked to the end of the moraine in extreme pain & had to stop a few times. I left him there and ran to get Yuri, our doctor.”

  Once they realized Scott had had an accident, a number of other climbers helped out with the “rescue.” Yuri Stefanski, the Russian doctor, relocated Scott’s shoulder and gave him painkillers and muscle relaxants. But he told Scott, “You must go home. The expedition is over for you.”

  Scott refused to accept that verdict, claiming he’d be back in action in a week. I’m not sure either of us believed his boast. “Scott is way bummed,” I wrote in my diary, back in base camp. And I was just as bummed myself. In a silly little accident, no more dramatic than tripping over a street curb, my partner had been put out of commission indefinitely.

  Until that moment, I don’t think I’d realized how much I was counting on our two-man teamwork. I’d always envisioned Scott and I working our way up the mountain together, then embracing on the summit. Now, as I brooded in the night, I faced the real possibility that if I got to the top of K2, it might be with some other partner. I had begun to connect with a couple of the stronger climbers on my team, Neal Beidleman and Charley Mace, as well as Hall & Ball. Perhaps they would be the ones I could go to the summit with. Yet at this point in the expedition there wasn’t another guy on our team I thought of as a truly close friend, and there sure wasn’t anybody I trusted the way I trusted Scott.

  In the absence of any real leadership from Vlad, the rest of us decided we needed to designate someone as climbing leader. During one of our mealtime meetings, with Vlad absent, off doing his own thing, we took a vote, and to my surprise, I got elected. Right away, I tried to put some semblance of order into the logistics—figuring out who would carry what supplies to which camp, and so on. There was no telling the Russians what to do, however. The only loyalty they had was to one another, and as far as I could tell, there wasn’t even much of that.

  Another thing that disturbed me was that the Russians seemed willing to climb in really dangerous conditions. In turn, they sometimes acted as if the rest of us were wusses. One day when Vlad got back to camp, he turned to me and asked, “Why do you not go today?”

  “Because I thought there was tremendous avalanche danger,” I answered. I didn’t say out loud what I really thought: Dude, we’re not suicidal like you!

  I wondered at the time whether this propensity for really hanging it out there was part of a peculiarly Russian style in the Himalaya. On Everest in 1990, I’d climbed with Soviets on Jim Whittaker’s International Peace Climb. There, the Russians had also seemed willing to climb in worse conditions than the rest of us. They tend to be highly competitive within their own ranks, as they gain status and honor in their home country with every success they achieve. On later expeditions, though I wasn’t partnering with Russians, I noticed that they often acted in a similar way. Right or wrong, they have their own way of winning a prized spot on an expedition, and once on the team they all silently push one another very hard.

  During the ten days after Scott dislocated his shoulder, the weather was consistently bad. My optimism took a solid hit. Even though I was the nominal climbing leader, I couldn’t bully some of the others into pulling their own weight. Instead, I just got frustrated and grouchy—and my diary reflects that mood.

  July 14: Our goal is to establish CIII, finish fixing to CIII & pick up all the shit between CII & CIII. That’s a major problem on these trips. Most people only make half carries & dump shit all over the place!

  July 15: Always anxious only because got lots to do & I have to get people organized. I wanted to work with Rob to finish fixing into CIII cause he knows where it should go so I waited for him. By 7:30 he still wasn’t ready so I took off alone.

  Same day: Got down to CII at 4 P.M. after a lot of raps [rappels]…. Got to CII and Alex, Gnady and Dan arrived. A full-on cluster fuck! They all wanted to sleep @ CIII tomorrow as did we. They don’t even give us room to breathe! I was pissed off!

  We simply didn’t have enough tents for all of us to sleep at Camp III. Our climbing logistics still needed some fine-tuning.

  In my frustration, in the privacy of my diary, I recorded my own nicknames for some of the other climbers. The Swedish team were “sheep.” A pair of brothers whose last name rhymed with my epithet became “the weenies.” But my bitching in the diary was more than sour grapes. I really thought
that our so-called team effort was held together by less than a shoestring.

  July 17: I can’t keep the group organized as climbing leader cause they (most anyway) aren’t strong enough or experienced enough to be out front so they just scoot around dropping loads all over the mountains! They are gonna falter big time up high.”

  Even sometimes when a teammate genuinely tried to help lead or push supplies, it backfired. On July 19, as we were carrying loads from Camp I to Camp II, an American teammate told me to go first, since I was faster. But then, inexplicably, as I wrote in my diary,

  Just as I get going he jumps on the [fixed] ropes right in front of me. What am I supposed to do? Climb up his ass? So I wait & wait & just go slowly right behind him & take my time. He stopped constantly to bend over & breathe, looking back down at me—staring. Drove me nuts!… Finally he stopped @ CII & I blew by to CIII.

  There was one woman on our team, but it was clear to me from early on that she wasn’t strong or experienced enough to get high on the mountain. That summer, the only really talented and ambitious woman on K2 was Chantal Mauduit. Although she was French, she had been a member of the Swiss team. When they gave up and went home, Chantal stayed on—which, strictly speaking, in terms of her permit, was illegal. According to the rules in Pakistan, once the expedition leader leaves the mountain, the rest of the team must do so as well.

  By 1992, only three women had climbed K2—all three during the disastrous summer of 1986. And by now, all three were dead. Liliane Barrard and Julie Tullis had died on the descent that year, after making the summit. The Pole Wanda Rutkiewicz, the finest high-altitude woman climber of her day (and perhaps of all time), had survived K2 only to die just a month before the beginning of our 1992 expedition on Kangchen-junga, when she was caught in a storm near the summit.

  Though it may seem macabre, the fact that no living woman had succeeded on K2 lent a huge cachet to Chantal’s effort. She was already famous in France for other exploits, but it would mean a huge boost in celebrity and sponsorship if she could get up K2.

  Chantal was a very beautiful woman, with long brown hair and sparkling eyes. She had a habit of flirting with virtually everybody. I found it disconcerting—when she gave me a certain look, did it mean something special or was it simply the way she interacted with all the male climbers on the mountain? In any event, everybody seemed to like Chantal.

  One of my American teammates, Thor Kieser, had had a previous relationship with Chantal, but she had broken it off. I got the feeling that Thor was still in love with her. And she still liked him well enough to agree, after the Swiss had gone home, to pair up with him for her own summit effort.

  With Scott out of action, I started to climb a lot with Neal Beidleman. He was an aerospace engineer from Aspen, very successful in his profession. He was also a solid climber, one of the few guys on the mountain who really pulled his own weight. We got along well right from the start. What I especially liked about Neal was his strength, the depth of his climbing experience, and his easygoing personality. Unfortunately, he had work commitments back in the States and planned to leave base camp on August 5 to get back to his job, so it looked as though he’d have at most one shot at the summit.

  Through the last week of July, the weather remained mostly bad. This didn’t stop the more overeager climbers from trying to force their way up the mountain. They included three of the Russians, Vlad, Gennadi Kopeika, and Aleksei Nikiforov (I called the last two Gnady and Alex), as well as Thor and Chantal. Because it had snowed so much, the climbing conditions were pretty sketchy.

  On July 20, Neal and I finally got a tent pitched at Camp III, at 24,000 feet, and spent the night in it. In the morning it was snowing and windy, with a smothering whiteout. It was obvious to me that it was still too soon for a serious summit effort, but the more antsy climbers didn’t see it that way. I wrote in my diary that night, “Vlad took off with personal gear & Thor decided he was also gonna sleep @ CIV & try for the top. Yuk, yuk, yuk!”

  The only sensible thing was to go down. But still trying to be team players, Neal and I carried a tent, a rope, willow wands, and a snow shovel above Camp III toward where the route steepens to gain the Shoulder, in support of Vlad.

  I caught up to Vlad & told him it was no use to continue with zero vis[ibility] and snowing. He insisted on continuing so we gave him the tent and bailed. Thor & Chantal were also more than happy to turn. (Vlad eventually camped right about where we left him! He learns the hard way.)

  Neal and I went back down to Camp III and spent the rest of the day debating what to do. As the weather progressively worsened, we made our decision and started descending with headlamps. By 9:30 that night, Neal and I got all the way down to base camp.

  For weeks now, I’d been almost constantly irritated by the lack of teamwork within our “team.” At base, I had a long, hard think about it, at the end of which I had what I called in my diary a “revelation.” “I’ve done more than my share of teamwork—fixing, hauling, etc.,” I wrote. “From now on I make my own moves/decisions.” I went on to jot down a possible scenario. If the weather settled and the snow conditions improved, on my own summit attempt I’d take a one-man bivy tent and a stove. I hoped Neal or even Scott could go with me, but I was ready to try for the top solo. Energized by this decision, I wrote in my diary, “It’s a good plan and the rest of the team can cluster fuck all they want! Hoka hay!”

  Meanwhile, at base camp Scott had been recuperating faster than anyone thought possible. We had helped him rig a special kind of shoulder brace that allowed him to use his injured arm for jumaring up fixed ropes but prevented him from raising that hand above chest level. On July 25—only thirteen days after he had dislocated the shoulder—he gave it a test run on a solo carry up to Camp I. He still felt a fair amount of pain, but, tough guy to the end, he figured he could climb all right with it. I was overjoyed to have my buddy back in action.

  Finally the weather was turning good. I still wasn’t in any hurry to dash up the mountain, because I knew that after all the storms, the snow conditions would be atrocious. But by July 27, a kind of anxious frenzy had taken hold of the climbers who were ambitious to get to the top. I was still entertaining thoughts about going solo on my own summit push, and the last thing I wanted to do was get railroaded into an attempt because others were chomping at the bit.

  Ambivalence is one of the hardest states of mind to handle on an expedition. That night, in a fit of vexation, I wrote in my diary:

  The weather is good. I’ll get ready to go & decide tonight…. So I’ll be ready to go whenever. Everyone keeps hounding me—when am I going up? Fuck, leave me alone! I don’t want to go with a huge pack of idiots. Too many people & they all want to go at once. We have so much time, but all of a sudden it’s got to be a mad dash.

  The Abruzzi Ridge may indeed be the easiest route on K2, but it’s no cakewalk. All through that summer on the mountain, I was acutely aware of a startling historical fact. The last successful ascent of the Abruzzi had come in 1986—and of the many climbers on the route that year, six had died on the descent. In the intervening years, 1987 through 1991, fourteen different expeditions had attacked the Abruzzi Ridge. Not a single climber from any of those fourteen parties had reached the summit.

  By 1992, only five Americans had climbed K2: Jim Wickwire and his three teammates by the northeast ridge in 1978, and Steve Swenson on the north ridge in 1990. No Americans had yet climbed the Abruzzi. Although that was not a major factor in my motivation, I couldn’t help but realize that I might be part of the first American team to get up the classic line by which K2 had first been climbed in 1954.

  On July 29, Thor, Chantal, Neal, and I fought our way back up to CIII. We found it completely buried in snow—there wasn’t even the top of a tent pole sticking out of the drifts. We spent hours digging out the camp. One tent had been completely destroyed; the other was salvageable, but when we repitched it, it was so cramped that it offered room, as I put it in my diary, onl
y “for one and a half people.” I helped Thor and Chantal set up their own tent, then crawled into my coffinlike bivy tent. Neal settled into the tent we had just repitched. Later in the day, Vlad and Gnady arrived from below, climbed through, and eventually camped slightly above us. Alex was also headed up, about a day behind.

  It was a miserable night; I didn’t sleep very well, as I had to keep getting up to shovel new snow and spindrift off my shelter. In the morning, the wind was still howling. “Tough decision as to what to do,” I wrote later. “It’s Neal’s last shot but it’s terrible up here. Decided to bail down. Thor & Chantal stayed. Really bad going down.”

  From the lower camps, our communication with our “teammates” was limited to a prearranged 7:00 P.M. radio call. These calls were cryptic and frustrating at best, as the Russians translated little of their information for us. Sometimes the Russian chatter droned interminably on and we simply gave up listening, since we seemed to be excluded anyway. On July 31, those of us back in base camp waited nervously. Finally we got some news. “Vlad [and Gnady] made it to bottom of summit pyramid,” I recorded in my diary. “Alex is at CIII and Thor is ? Very nice day, but Vlad said snow was chest deep.”

  August 1 was another good day on the mountain. I was still biding my time before making my own surge up the mountain. For Neal, any hopes of the summit had been dashed, but by now Scott was back in good shape and ready to charge. That day, we knew, Vlad and Gnady were going for the top. Forty-one days after I’d arrived at base camp, somebody from our team was finally making a serious assault.