Like many other climbers, she joined the Solidarity movement. She rekindled her interest in listening to the hard, clean sounds of contemporary music. These were interesting activities, but not exciting. A keen and aggressive driver, the next year she took up car racing with some money she had earned from a film. There were only three sports that American writer Ernest Hemingway judged worthy: car racing, mountain climbing, and bullfighting. Now, all Wanda lacked was bullfighting.
One afternoon, while visiting some friends, she remembered she needed a set of special tires for her car, an almost impossible acquisition at that time. But Wanda was accustomed to getting what she wanted, so she asked for a phone book and dialled up Poland’s leading tire manufacturer. It took just the mention of her name to get through to the director, who was thrilled to not only talk with Wanda but also send her a full set of new tires. She knew how to use her name when she needed to, and he had a cocktail party story for weeks to come. Her friends laughed in amazement at the influence she still wielded.
Before long, car racing had lost its shine and—predictably—Wanda began climbing again. This passion that had consumed her since her teenage years was far too difficult to remove from her life. Her first forays were just to the Tatras. Then, in 1981, she began organizing an extremely ambitious women’s expedition to Pakistan’s highest peak and the second-highest mountain in the world, K2. For this project, she received some intriguing and mysterious support.
On February 4, 1981, a few friends gathered at Wanda’s apartment to celebrate her birthday. After a couple of hours of eating and drinking, they heard the doorbell ring. A young man, a stranger to all, stood there politely, asking for Wanda. When she appeared at the door he handed her a sealed envelope. She cautiously took it and slipped her thumb along the seal. In it was a large sum of money—from an anonymous donor! Wanda and her friends spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out who the donor might be, finally settling on a certain wealthy Zakopane woman who had shown great interest in Wanda’s climbing career. This envelope of cash provided the seed money for her first K2 expedition.
That spring she joined a group of international climbers for a training climb of Mt. Elbrus in the Caucasus. Organized by the Soviet Alpine Federation, the group consisted of alpinists from all the social democracies of the Soviet bloc: Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, East Germany, Russia, and Poland. Absurd regulations and a distinct Soviet style permeated the camp, which resembled a military installation more than a climber’s campground. Each morning the climbers would receive their “climbing orders” for the day. Each evening they would carefully report their progress in the training logbook.
Since the Solidarity movement had exploded in Poland, it had become fashionable to wear a small Solidarity pin in one’s lapel. All the Polish climbers sported one. The Russians adored wearing little emblems and suggested a pin trade. The Poles were somewhat amused by the request and asked if the Russians knew what the Solidarity pins represented. Yes, they whispered, they knew.
After the official welcome reception, at which some very fine Hungarian cognac was consumed, the Poles came up with a naughty plan: the Russians could have the pins but only after climbing on top of a Hungarian equipment barrel and loudly announcing three times: “Brezhnev be gone!” Most of the Russians—especially the Georgians—were happy to oblige. After each performance, Wanda, the most famous climber of the bunch, would pin the Solidarity pin on their lapel.
But one climber refused to cooperate. It turned out he was a director of the sports commission—an official representative of the government. But the poor fellow secretly coveted one of the troublesome pins. What should he do? He and Wanda huddled for a few minutes and appeared to come up with a solution. Wanda escorted him to another room. Everyone waited in silence. When they reappeared, Wanda pronounced that everything had been done according to protocol, and she had awarded him the pin. Nobody knew for sure what had happened in there, but the Russian was smiling and there was a Solidarity pin in his lapel.
A few days later the laughter and games came to an abrupt end. As they were climbing, a team member fell and hit Wanda from above, catapulting her down the slope an astonishing 200 metres. She knew immediately that it was serious; her femur was shattered.
A rescue team lowered her off the mountain, placed her into an ambulance and raced off to a nearby hospital. Doctors opened up her leg, inserted a metal clamp, and set the fractured bone. As soon as she emerged from the anaesthetic, Wanda sensed a problem with the manner in which the bone had been set. She begged the doctors to take another look, possibly even reset it. They disagreed with her assessment and refused. But Wanda was correct, and it wasn’t long before she learned that she would need to have it rebroken and then set properly. Desperate to leave the hospital, she finally achieved her goal by going on a hunger strike.
When her brother Michael first saw her after the accident, he was shocked by a tired, grey-faced woman clad in a bloodied track suit and obviously frightened, convinced she would never return to the mountains. Worse, she could end up crippled by her injuries. Michael, and all who knew Wanda, understood that this would surely destroy her.
In sharp contrast to Wanda’s devastating situation, Voytek was half a world away, in Nepal at the base of Makalu’s West Face. Solidarity hadn’t disrupted his import-export business, and he was carrying on as usual with his life as an international climber. But at the moment, he needed a partner. He had long ago abandoned the large-scale expedition model, preferring small, lightweight teams. This made things very flexible: he could try Makalu, or he could go somewhere else. It really didn’t matter. The important thing was to climb.
Jurek was poking around in the garden at his country home, admiring the spring growth, when a letter arrived from Nepal. “Jurek! Come over. I’ve been below the West Face of Makalu with Alex MacIntyre and some others. It did not work out; we only got to 6700 metres. But I’m certain that it can be done. Or maybe the South Face of Lhotse?...I’m counting on you! — Voytek.”
Jurek grinned. He was so easy to convince. He borrowed some money from the Katowice club and lined up for the coupons he would need to buy supplies, which were well beyond the normal monthly quota of two kilograms of meat and one kilogram of sugar. Next he went shopping, but the shops were empty. He next tried the warehouses, which were crammed full. He asked in amazement what all the stuff was for. “These are government reserves,” the warehouse manager explained. What he really meant was that they were reserved for important government officials. But with his magic coupons, Jurek was in business, too.
As he left the Supersam warehouse, his trolley laden with canned meats, an aggressive passerby accosted him. “You selling that? Where did you get it? Give it to me, I’ll pay you well.” Jurek finally managed to muscle through the crowd and transfer his treasures into the back of his car. But then he had to repeat the process back at his flat, carting box after box of scarce delicacies from his car into his cellar as unobtrusively as possible. Rumours floated around about “that Kukuczka on the ninth floor” who was some sort of black marketeer. The rumour was not without merit since climbers were known to sell some of their meat provisions, even before heading off to their climbs. That was one of the perks, as was eating all that good food while climbing. It was a well-known fact that climbers ate much better while on expedition than at home.
Jurek hunkered down in his cellar, packing the cans of mouth-watering sausages and sweet, fatty ham into dozens of barrels, each meticulously labelled so that he wouldn’t lose track of the ones containing his favourite delicacy: pig’s knuckles. The precious barrels made their way to Makalu base camp, where Jurek and Alex MacIntyre—and even vegetarian Voytek—devoured them with relish. Teased by his teammates, Voytek clarified that he was a vegetarian the way most Poles are Catholic—when it’s convenient. It was on this trip that Jurek earned a new nickname, “The Knuckle,” due to his voracious appetite for pig’s feet.
They decided to stay on Makalu rathe
r than move to another mountain, so they went to work. They fought their way up the technically demanding face until around 7800 metres, at which point they came to a particularly difficult 500-metre rock barrier, some of it overhanging. It was a critical moment. “There comes a specific moment on a climb when no one talks to anybody else, but we all observe one another, watching the will to win gradually die,” Jurek recalled. “The pace drops; everything goes slower, with greater resistance.”20 Voytek broke the tension, admitting, “I see no chance. We won’t do this.” Jurek urged them to continue, perhaps on a slightly different route. But Voytek had had enough, and, as he was the most experienced member of the team, his opinion prevailed.
They went down. At base camp Jurek persisted. He agreed with Voytek that the wall was beyond them, but felt that the mountain wasn’t. There was still a chance for the summit. The mood had changed, however; neither Alex nor Voytek was interested in anything other than their original objective, a new route on the West Face. Jurek was particularly disappointed with his old partner, Voytek. He seemed increasingly inflexible, and now that the original goal had disappeared, he had lost all his drive. But surely this mountain was worth climbing, regardless of the route. Jurek pushed again. Voytek pushed back. Finally, Jurek said, “In which case, I shall try on my own.” Voytek was taken aback, but he knew his friend’s mind was made up. He said nothing.
The audacity of Jurek’s statement was extreme. His altitude performance had been indifferent, in both Alaska and the Hindu Kush; he had not summited on the Nanga Parbat expedition; he had suffered on Lhotse and had used supplemental oxygen on Everest. Now he was proposing to climb an 8000-metre peak alone, without oxygen, on a route he knew nothing about.
He started up around noon with the intention of getting to the base of the face. There, he would take a look at what lay ahead, bivouac for the night and then decide what to do. He arrived at the foot of the wall at 3 p.m. There seemed to be no particular reason to stop, so he started up the wall with his little bivouac tent. Conditions were excellent and, as the evening turned to night, a full moon lit his way. At 11 p.m. he found a partially buried, abandoned tent from a previous expedition. Delighted with the find, he dug it out of the drifted snow and crawled in.
He slept until 11 a.m. the next morning, a prudent time to go back down, he reasoned. He made some tea at a leisurely pace and then packed up to descend. Yet when he crawled out of the tent he was amazed to discover that, although the wind still howled, he was face to face with a blazingly clear, cobalt-blue sky. He put on his crampons, lifted the pack onto his back and paced. Back and forth. Up or down?
Jurek headed up. He climbed toward the Makalu La at 7410 metres, where he found the tent he had stashed on their previous climb. After a good night’s sleep and in lessening wind, he left the next morning and started up the unclimbed Northwest Ridge. Jurek had no idea what he would find on the ridge, or if it was even passable. At 8000 metres he dug a platform in the snow and pitched his tent. He crawled in and had just begun brewing tea when he had the strange sensation that he was not on his own, that he was cooking for two people. He even felt compelled to talk to his strange, ethereal visitor. The altitude and effort had begun to take their toll.
The next morning, his phantom companion gone, he continued up the ridge with only his camera, 10 metres of rope, three pitons, two ice screws, and his protective clothing. He fully understood the level of commitment he was making. There could be absolutely no mistakes. There would be no second chances. He was completely on his own.
When he reached a technically difficult section, he resorted to rope-soloing. He would pound a piton into the rock, attach the rope to it, then climb the 10-metre length of rope, pound in a second piton, attach the top end of the rope to that piton, then climb down to the first piton and reclimb the section, now secured to that upper piton. It meant he could never fall more than 20 metres at a time, assuming the piton would hold. But the process was time-consuming and strenuous; he was well above 8000 metres now, and the lack of oxygen was debilitating.
At 4:30 p.m. he was on the summit. He left a plastic ladybird toy belonging to his son, snapped a couple of pictures and knew he had to get down—fast. Night was moving in, and the moon wouldn’t be up for a few more hours. Although the sky was awash with twinkling stars, they didn’t shed much light. He made it to his tent late that night and to base camp the following afternoon. As he walked in, tired, grey and hollow-cheeked, Voytek walked up to him and asked, “So, how was it?”
“I got to the summit,” Jurek replied. Enough said.
While he rested and drank and stuffed himself with pork knuckles over the next few days, a thought occurred to him: this was his third 8000er, and he was the only Pole to make that claim. He couldn’t help but daydream about the possibility of more 8000ers.
The Makalu climb gave Jurek and Voytek an inkling that, despite their apparent synchronicity on the highest mountains on Earth, their values and their approach to those mountains were not perfectly matched. Jurek appeared to have a greater capacity for risk than Voytek, who seemed more focused on a specific objective rather than on reaching a summit by any route and at any cost. Their actions and decisions on Makalu had demonstrated some fundamental differences. And these differences created potential for conflict.
Success in the mountains and the resulting optimism amongst Polish climbers reflected the growing popularity and influence of the Solidarity movement. Nothing seemed impossible as individual citizens rediscovered their potential; Polish climbers were ample proof of that. But this fundamental shift in mood alarmed the authorities, who had grown weary of trying to contain Solidarity activities. They finally decided on a military solution to take back control of Poland. The troops moved in on the night of December 12, 1981, and by the early morning of the 13th, Polish citizens awoke to streets filled with tanks.
Their spirits collapsed. No one knew what would happen next. All the shops and offices closed. Nothing worked: phones and buses were a thing of the past. It appeared that they would have to start all over again, just like after the war. Jurek recalled the mood. “We felt trapped...I felt as if I was in a cage.”
Tens of thousands were arrested on trumped-up charges and thrown in jail. Krzysztof, an active Solidarity supporter, spent that first night of the backlash driving around the city, checking on the safety of fellow Solidarity members. He then raced back to his apartment, destroying and hiding documents until the morning dawned. Many of his friends were arrested. Internment camps were the order of the day, with frequent beatings and deaths. With martial law in effect, freedom of movement and speech became a dim and distant memory. The army had effectively declared war on Polish society. Like so many of his countrymen, Jurek lost heart.
Martial law drove the country’s standard of living even lower. Poland’s GNP suffered a 15-per-cent drop. The national debt reached USD30 billion and the gap between what people earned and what they could buy widened. Not that it mattered much, for there was very little to buy. Despite the fact that Poland was full of natural resources, the country plunged into a period of unproductive chaos and serious food shortages. The USA then introduced economic sanctions against Poland and the USSR, demanding that the situation be addressed.
Wanda was on a lecture tour in East Germany when the military took over the country. She had been scheduled for another operation on her leg upon her return to Poland, but, due to the unrest, the surgery was cancelled. At a loss, she called up Dr. Scharfetter in Innsbruck, hoping that since he had helped her in the past he would agree to do so now.
The doctor had divorced his wife a few years before and was living with his two sons in the mountains of Tyrol. A large, gentle, and now lonely man, he was charmed by Wanda’s visit and encouraged her to stay in the West. His sons devoured her wild, adventurous stories, and she badly wanted to leave Poland. Why not? she thought. Better this marvellous man than the tanks on the streets at home. Within a few months they married. She was now an Austrian citiz
en and could travel freely on her brand new Austrian passport. Dr. Scharfetter arranged for her surgery and nurtured her throughout her long convalescence. Impatient to get back to the mountains, she used her time to plan a K2 expedition for the summer of 1982.
With martial law paralyzing Poland and the disappearance of the usual expedition funding sources, Wanda instead tried her hand at soliciting sponsors. She soon found a powerful advocate for her idea in Reinhold Messner. She accompanied him on his lecture tours, reaping the benefit of his strong endorsement as he introduced her to his sponsors. Even with crutches, her charming enthusiasm was infectious and corporations responded with generous cheques. The sponsorship support, together with her anonymous donor’s contribution, left her as well funded and well supplied as she had ever been.
Wanda was not the only one bent on climbing K2. Despite martial law in Poland, the climbing community was determined to show the government that they weren’t intimidated. They knew that climbing had kept them going throughout all those difficult postwar years. Now they were resolved to continue climbing regardless of the costs. Yielding to the authorities would have killed their spirits. By challenging martial law, the climbers undermined confidence in the authorities and, more important, protected their own values. They were Polish climbers: if they wanted to go abroad to climb, they would do whatever was required to make that happen.
Wanda and her team of women climbers had come to K2 for the Abruzzi Ridge. Because Wanda’s leg had been slow to heal, it was clear she would not be climbing—a difficult reality for someone so motivated. But she was also a leader. If she could get a women’s team to the top, that would have to do for now. Although Voytek and Jurek were listed on Wanda’s permit, they had agreed to climb independently and were hoping for a new route on either the East or South Face. Janusz Kurczab had also assembled a sizable team of some of Poland’s strongest to tackle a new route on the Northwest Ridge. Amongst them were Krzysztof Wielicki, and Leszek Cichy.
Freedom Climbers (Legends and Lore) Page 11
