Freedom Climbers (Legends and Lore)

by Bernadette McDonald

  By the end of the expedition, most of the climbers had turned against her. Some of that dissension came from an incident on summit day. Up until the last moment, Wanda insisted that only she and Alison would make the first summit attempt on GIII, as an independent female rope team. Halina Krüger and Anna Okopińska were to follow a day later, as the second summit team. There was never any mention of the possibility of including men on the summit team. But through the binoculars, the climbers at base camp could clearly see that four people (two of them men) were climbing to the top.

  “Hello Wanda, hello Wanda, over.”

  “Everything is fine up here. We are making a summit attempt, over.”

  “Wait, just tell us, are all four of you going for the top?”

  “At this moment the decision is for us to go up, the four of us.”

  With that announcement, base camp erupted in guffaws and looks of disgust. “So she camouflaged it to the end,” Anna snorted. “If she had said openly that the four of them, including two men [Janusz Onyskiewicz and Krzysztof Zdzitowiecki], were going to the summit, nobody would have breathed a word We got duped.”11 It was then that, instead of following the climbers up GIII, Anna and Halina changed direction and became the first all-female rope team to climb an 8000-metre peak—GII. It all worked out in the end, but not without a bitter aftertaste.

  The men had already climbed GII, provoking Alison to later comment that the much publicized Ladies’ Expedition to Gasherbrum III had succeeded in putting three men on the summit of Gasherbrum II! But Wanda ignored the gender politics and was ecstatic about their collective success as well as her own personal development: “You seem to absorb a greater intensity of experience in the short space of one expedition such as this than you can in years of your ordinary life below....The Gasherbrum expedition hardened me physically and mentally, and prepared me for my future ventures.”12

  Wanda’s insensitivity and shifting priorities on the Gasherbrum III climb eventually became a trademark style that would plague almost all of her climbing expeditions. But despite the accusations that she was selfish and that she didn’t take others into account, it’s hard to imagine her ever having climbed in the Himalaya had she been quiet and subservient. She was certainly not yet as inspiring a leader as Andrzej, but she was a born fighter. She seemed to be stimulated by a combative atmosphere. The weak link in her leadership style was her inability to motivate people to work together. limbing Politics This may have been in part because, unlike Andrzej, Wanda did not lead from below. Even though he climbed well—and sometimes high—Andrzej saw his place at base camp. Not Wanda. Wanda led and climbed. And sometimes her personal ambitions superseded her ambitions for the team. Although she was clearly not a perfect leader, she undoubtedly instilled confidence in the women on her team. She emboldened them to feel that they had the power to create their own future. They could climb. They could lead. They could do whatever they wanted. And they could do it with—or without—men.

  Wanda agreed that she considered herself not only a leader but a summit climber as well. She later admitted that if she were to manage a team again, she would curb her own ambitions in order to better lead the group. But instinctively she knew she was a visionary, not a manager.

  Wanda’s credibility was even more severely tested when she returned from the expedition and insisted the Gasherbrum III climb had been an “all-female” ascent, without the help of high-altitude porters—or men. Yet others pointed out the numerous men on the mountain, many of whom had helped equip the climb with fixed ropes and assisted with setting up the camps. There were even rumours that the two men on her GIII summit team had stopped and waited so that the “ladies” could summit first. The exaggerated all-female claim obviously meant a lot to her and was likely a reaction to the perceived snub from the 1974 Lhotse team, which had invited Anna Okopińska instead of Wanda.

  The Gasherbrum expedition caused a temporary rift in Wanda’s friendship with Alison and Janusz. But time healed the wounds, and when Janusz was imprisoned in 1981 for his work with the Solidarity movement in Poland, Wanda thought back to his leadership on Gasherbrum II in a positive light: “quiet, thinking, democratic ...a solution for many, not for one.” Unfortunately, there was little time to mend her friendship with Alison, who was killed on Annapurna just three years later.

  Wanda’s return journey passed through Rawalpindi, where she met the famously authoritarian German expedition leader Dr. Karl Herrligkoffer. He was planning a German–Austrian–Polish assault on the 8126-metre Nanga Parbat in 1976. Her reputation had caught his attention, so he invited her to join.

  The climb was a short-lived effort. Soon after they began ascending Nanga Parbat’s mammoth Rupal Face, one of the Austrian climbers, Sebastian Arnold, fell to his death. Karl ordered the entire team to recover his body and then called the expedition off. Wanda felt it was an inappropriate response to the tragedy, that no dead colleague would want the rest of the team robbed of their chance to summit. She wasn’t the only team member who felt that way, but her reaction was perceived as somewhat harsh, and her reputation as a “hard woman” grew.

  3

  CLIMBERS WITHOUT BORDERS

  People gravitate towards environments that reward their hereditary inclinations.

  —E.O. WILSON, CONSILIENCE

  THE POSSIBILITY OF DEATH is always present while climbing in the high mountains, as real for experienced climbers as it is for novices. When they first begin to climb, climbers rely on luck more than experience. Over time, the balance shifts to experience, which—in theory—should eliminate the need for as much luck. It’s true that some objective hazards can be avoided by strategy, tactics and experience, but others claim lives, seemingly at random. Every alpinist knows this, and all are forced to deal with this knowledge in their own way. Jurek believed so strongly in his God that he felt sure He would protect him. Wanda’s initial confidence came from her own inner strength, a source that could not, in the end, sustain her. For Voytek, it was Christ’s example—not as a religious figure, but as the ultimate martyr—that instructed him in an attitude of calmness and grace when faced with his own mortality.

  As a child, Voytek and his father argued about many topics, including religion, a subject that was fundamental to his father’s being. Voytek refused to accept the Christian doctrine. He was so horrified with the idea of heaven and hell that he perceived it as a kind of religious terrorism. His father reproached him, insisting that, even if he refused to believe in Jesus Christ, he should at least acknowledge Christ as a great human being. Voytek’s blunt reply shocked him. “How can you call a great human being someone who claims he is a God? Either you are a God, or you are a human being!”

  Many years passed before Voytek experienced any inkling of compassion for the figure of Jesus Christ. It was during a musical performance of Jesus Christ Superstar that he began to appreciate Christ’s character—a being who suffered, and who understood that his death was near. The intriguing part for Voytek was that, even though Christ didn’t understand why he had to die, he seemed to accept its inevitability with an elegant serenity. Voytek was moved by the Christ figure. Even inspired.

  One of Christ’s lines from the musical, “Now I’m sad and tired,” particularly resonated for him. “At some moment in everybody’s climbing experience, you grow weaker,” Voytek explained. “You were inspired, but now you’re sad and tired. Sad and afraid. There is a point when the inspiration leaves and the tiredness and sadness arrive.” Climbing a big mountain inevitably produces unpleasant sensations that have to be managed. To be a climber, one has to deal with difficult situations and feelings of despair—even abject terror. Overwhelmed by a sudden change of weather, a moment of hallucination, the onset of fatigue or the loss of a friend, an alpinist has to dig even deeper for motivation at these times of sadness. To be a climber, one has to accept that gratification is rarely immediate.

  For Voytek—a man who would eventually become one of Poland’s greatest alpi
nists, and one of the very few who would live long enough to reflect on his brilliant career—that gratification was slow in coming.

  While still young, Voytek and his family moved from the countryside to the war-ravaged city of Wrocław. Like Wanda and Andrzej, he was disheartened by the drab, crowded streets. The move was initiated by his father, Tadeusz Kurtyka, a well-known author who wrote under the pseudonym Henryk Worcell. Tadeusz had achieved critical and popular success with his very first effort, a volume of stories about his days as a waiter in a well-heeled restaurant in the historical and scholarly city of Krakow. Bewitched Circles reflected his observations of the prominent patrons who frequented the restaurant, and its publication caused quite a stir in Poland. A somewhat withdrawn man but a keen observer, he next turned his attention to the Germans who lived in the Wrocław region, just prior to their repatriation to Germany. For Tadeusz, the city of Wrocław represented access to publishers and to a literary cultured life. To Voytek, it was hell.

  Slumped up against his bedroom window, he would stare glumly at the rain-streaked streets below, yearning for the colours and smells of the forest. He slipped into a form of childhood depression and became plagued by nightmares in which he encountered a strange ghostlike being with a horrifyingly evil soul. Voytek would stand in front of it and try to make contact. Defiantly, he would take one or two steps toward the creature and then awaken—screaming. Each night he would take one more step. The closer he went, the more vivid the dream, and the greater the fear. The nightmare seemed a harbinger of his later feelings of deep primal fear: fear of falling, fear of dying. Each time he faced that fear in the mountains, the memory of his childhood dreams resurfaced.

  Voytek graduated from high school and, like Wanda, enrolled at Wrocław University in the electrical engineering department. Just like Wanda and Jurek, from his very first moments at the base of a rocky crag, Voytek knew he was onto something special. “When I came to the rock, I put my hands on it and they contracted automatically. I just started moving up.”

  He finished university and left Wrocław in 1971. For a time he tried to work as a television repairman, but he was unable to muster any interest in the trade. It so disgusted him that, when he needed to fix his own television set only a few months later, he called a repairman rather than do it himself. He tried again to overcome his hatred for manual labour with a stint as an engineer in the Polish steelworks. That didn’t work, either. Traditional jobs bored him silly. As with his approach to climbing, Voytek brought an intellectualism to all aspects of his life. He needed complexity, problem solving, route finding and other challenges to retain his interest.

  It was at this time that Voytek discovered a more interesting way to make a living. Like most Polish climbers travelling to and from Asia on expeditions, he began dealing in “trade.” Food, outdoor equipment and cheap goods from Poland could be sold for hard currency in Asia, and that hard currency had enormous purchasing power back in Poland, which was still under a completely artificial Soviet economic system. Voytek later broadened his business model by importing sheepskin coats and other quality products from Afghanistan. These he sold in France, in partnership with his French climbing friends.

  The sheepskin coats, very much in fashion at the time, were well-made garments with elaborately embroidered details and a flattering shape. He would buy them for around $30 and sell them for a whopping $150. It was easy to live in Poland on a mere $25 a month, so the profits more than sustained his lifestyle. He thrived within the myriad systems he abhorred, scheming and strategizing about permits, money and passports, and staying ahead of the laws that prohibited black-market trade. He took considerable pride in his business, both in terms of the lifestyle it allowed him and the ease of the work. He soon abandoned any thoughts of working in the electronics field and focused his sights on the mountains.

  The last half of the 1970s saw Voytek travelling the globe, his lifestyle facilitated by his unofficial import-export business. In order to access his passport for these international jaunts, he would have to prove he had enough foreign currency to live outside the country. This he did quite handily, with his hard-currency bank accounts topped up regularly by those cozy—and lucrative—sheepskin coats. In addition to climbing hard new winter routes in the Polish Tatras, Voytek blasted up difficult lines in the Alps and in Norway.

  Most Polish climbers, even those who engaged in smuggling, were perennially short on cash. Particularly when abroad, they were forced to scrounge for food and accommodation. The climbing mecca of Chamonix, France, was hideously expensive for the Poles, who earned a reputation for “getting by” that superseded even that of the English, who were fighting their own battles with unemployment and poverty.

  On one trip to Chamonix, a group of penniless Polish climbers found a lovely campsite that appeared strangely empty. It had just one sign overhead: Camping Interdit. They congratulated themselves on their good eye for campsites, set up their tents, and wandered into town. An officious gendarme, who had been keeping a close eye on them, came over to make their acquaintance.

  “Bonjour, mes amis. Where are you camping? You are not in the campground.”

  “Oh yes, we are in the campground,” they answered.

  “Which one?”

  “Why, it’s just over there. It’s the one called Camping Interdit.”

  Although economic and political upheaval created barrier after barrier for the young climbers, it seemed to whet their appetite for even more adventure. Shoplifting in Chamonix wasn’t unheard of, but, although most itinerant climbers visiting the French climbing town participated in this unofficial sport, it was a serious offence for the Poles; they were official representatives of the Polish Alpine Association. Still, compared with the monotony of life in Poland, starving in the Alps felt like a higher form of existence.

  Even the Tatras presented bureaucratic hurdles. The mountain range straddles the border between Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia; only 30 per cent lies within Poland. Crossing that mountain frontier was illegal, but there were so many tempting new routes to be climbed on the other side that Polish climbers found it hard to resist. Besides, there was a distinct pleasure in ignoring the so-called “Friendship Border,” and most active climbers boasted at least half a dozen illegal climbs on the forbidden side each season.

  It was a blazing hot summer morning when young Katowice climber Grzegorz Chwoła slipped across the frontier to try one such route. He normally wore a construction helmet when he climbed, but his brother had recently sent him a proper climbing helmet from Italy. It was bright orange. On this occasion, Grzegorz offered it to his girlfriend, who was accompanying him on the climb. She carefully packed it at the top of her rucksack. Into his pack he stuffed his old, scuffed, sun-bleached, black construction helmet.

  They rose early, drove to the trailhead on the Polish side and hiked up and across the undefended border without incident. They dropped down to the base of the 150-metre cliff. She opened her pack to take out the precious helmet. It was a hot day and her hands were slippery with sweat. She fumbled. The helmet fell out and tumbled two hundred metres to the valley below—into Czechoslovakia! Grzegorz swore. They was no other option but to pack up and hike down—four hours of scrambling over detestable talus slopes and through scratchy scrub brush in hot, humid summer temperatures. Finally the ground levelled off and there it was, teetering between two boulders. Undamaged, and still very orange. Next to the helmet was a cool mountain stream. Dripping with sweat, they stripped off and dove in.

  Two minutes later, a border patrolman arrived. It was the notorious Captain Baniak, famous for his strict adherence to the rules.

  “Good morning. Your passports, please.” The captain stood close to the two, respectfully averting his gaze.

  “Ah, good morning, Captain Baniak,” said Grzegorz. (This was not his first border incident.) “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Please, I would like to see your passports.”

  They had passp
orts but from the wrong country, and they were sadly lacking permits. Of course, there was also the problem of their clothes, which were scattered over the nearby bushes. They begged to be let off, spinning a tale about an orange helmet falling out of the pack on Polish soil and escaping into Czech territory.

  The captain wasn’t buying it; he was overheated from the summer sun, just as they had been before their refreshing dip, and was in no mood for discussion. He ordered them to dress and then hauled them off to a series of police stations where they were interrogated, thoroughly chastised, and finally dumped at the Polish border. They returned as minor heroes—with the orange helmet—but without their new route.

  Despite all the obstacles, Polish climbers persevered, even thrived, both in Poland and abroad. Voytek had emerged as a particularly talented climber and, back in 1972, had made his first trip to Afghanistan, Poland’s favourite high-altitude training ground. The objectives of the Krakow Club trip led by Ryszard Kozioł were two giant peaks over 7000 metres: Acher Chioch and Koh-e-Tez. Despite his impressive climbing skills, Voytek knew very little about climbing at this altitude; his experience was in the much lower Tatras and Alps. He had read a few accounts of high-altitude climbing and had a vague recollection about Camp I, Camp II, and moving up a mountain in stages. But there he was, a young man in his twenties in the Hindu Kush, a couple of 7000-metre peaks nearby. With naïve enthusiasm, he approached them just as he climbed back home in Poland. Alpine style: no pre-stocked camps, no bottled oxygen, no fixed lines.

  Still, the climbers knew enough to first acclimatize their bodies to the rarefied air. That accomplished, they climbed Acher Chioch by a new route on its Northwest Face, followed by a three-day ascent of the North Face. The Acher Chioch climb was one of the very first technical alpine style ascents in the high mountains—a relatively unheralded climb compared to Tyrolean climber Reinhold Messner and Austrian Peter Habeler’s history-making alpine style ascent of Gasherbrum I, also known as Hidden Peak, three years later in 1975. Although the Hidden Peak route was not as technically difficult as the one on Acher Chioch, it topped out at just over the magical 8000-metre mark, capturing the imagination of the entire mountaineering community.