Jurek watched Voytek wriggle like an eel, talk and explain and, finally, scribble a barely legible, extremely vague, written report. After a few hours of careful posturing, they walked out in triumph; they now had a permit for one of the Gasherbrums.
As soon as they reached base camp, they initiated the second half of their plan: a letter asking for a permit to climb the second Gasherbrum. This had been their strategy all along, but they were playing a game of absent-mindedness in order to avoid paying for both permits up front; they first had to unload their remaining articles for sale. They were banking on their application letter reaching the tourism office at just about the time they actually climbed their second peak. And they were also assuming they would receive a “yes” from the officials. Theirs was a complex juggling act: whisky, customs officials, black market, tourism officials, forgetfulness. It was all about cash flow.
After all the deal-making and near misses with authorities in various countries, the climbing was a welcome relief. They did a couple of acclimatization ascents to stretch their legs and expand their lungs. Then they made a complete traverse of Gasherbrum II, the peak for which they actually had a permit. Now they felt ready for the Southwest Face of Gasherbrum I.
A Swiss team leaving the area gave them their extra food: all 300 kilograms’ worth. Jurek was in heaven. He loved to cook and he loved to eat. As it snowed day after day, he experimented with the new provisions. Sardines with cheese sauce, chocolate fondue, bacon with potatoes. They plowed their way through the mountains of treats, and the increasingly complex and bizarre menus became the focal point of each day.
When they weren’t eating they talked: about future expeditions together, family, politics and, of course, food. Jurek could talk about food endlessly: his favourite kind of herring, the savoury golonka—a special kind of Polish ham—and best of all, pig’s knuckles. As each day passed, their appetite for conversation receded, until it was only food that interested them. After two weeks of bad weather, with only the ravens to entertain them, they retreated into their respective tents, trying to avoid irritating each other. Voytek read. Jurek mostly slept.
It was obvious to both Jurek and Voytek that the accumulation of new snow on the face of Gasherbrum I had laid a deadly trap for them. Jurek woke up in a cold sweat each night, plagued by recurring nightmares about crossing the huge, snow-laden bowl on the face. His thoughts turned to home. After three weeks of this torture he began to lose interest in this place, and this face.
Then the weather cleared. Not just a temporary clearing, but a strong high-pressure system that promised several days of reprieve from the storms. They crawled out of their tents and stood staring at the face, at just one spot—an immense, concave, sinister-looking bowl, dangerously loaded with snow. To cross it would be suicidal. As they stared, they noticed a flicker of movement at the topmost point of the bowl. White moved against white. It billowed. It grew. A muffled roar reached them as they watched in amazement at the massive avalanche ripping down the mountain. Although the bowl wasn’t completely clear of snow, at least there was a lot less of it. They looked at each other and agreed without a word. Tomorrow they would go up.
But their time was running out, and the porters were scheduled to arrive the very next day. What to do? They were perfectly acclimatized and the weather looked good. So did the mountain. Voytek concocted an ingenious plan to hide their passports and money and draw a map of the mountain with an arrow to indicate their whereabouts. This, they hoped, would be found by the porters, along with some food left out for their use. Hopefully it would be enough to keep the porters in base camp for the few days required to attempt the unclimbed face.
At 3 a.m. on July 20 they started off. Almost immediately they had to cross the frightening basin of snow. Voytek described the experience: “We switched off our brains and moved steadily into danger. Ten minutes later we emerged.”25
They climbed for two more days and were poised for the summit when a final complex headwall forced them to rappel back down for one last bivouac. Then the unthinkable happened. One of Voytek’s crampons fell out of sight down the slope. This was a serious situation. They minced their way down to the bivouac to consider their options. The next morning, despite the setback, they decided to continue up rather than retreat. Shortly after starting out, Voytek heard Jurek’s jubilant curse. He had found the crampon! It had fallen just a short distance and was caught on a clump of snow.
When they reached the South Ridge they faced more difficult climbing. Above 8000 metres now and severely stressed, Voytek began hallucinating. An unknown man appeared, heavily burdened with a pack and heading the wrong way. Voytek attempted a conversation with the stranger, but he was non-responsive.
He eventually faded away and Voytek and Jurek pushed on, reaching the summit at 7:30 p.m. Voytek looked out at the vast undulating sea of Karakoram peaks and sensed a vague, yet intensely familiar, affinity to a great and enormously calm universe. He was completely at peace with himself.
Jurek reminded him that their day was not yet over; they had a date with their porters. They raced down the mountain to the waiting men who, with great restraint, had avoided using any of the precious food supply. But, mysteriously, the money that had been carefully stashed was missing. No worries. They were down, they were safe, and they had porters.
Back in Islamabad, they had to report their climbs to the Ministry of Tourism. They hadn’t heard a word about their second permit but assumed that all would be resolved when they offered to pay the fee. They assumed wrongly. The officials were incensed that they had gone ahead and climbed two peaks when they had permission for only one. Jurek and Voytek explained their forgetfulness and begged for forgiveness. After 10 days of haggling, they finally obtained the required documents and the officials let them leave the country.
Upon their return to Poland, the pair expected, and received, recognition and praise for their remarkable achievement: two new routes on two 8000ers, climbed by a two-man team in alpine style. Of course there was one small outstanding issue—payment for that second permit. Jurek and Voytek presented an invoice to the Polish Alpine Association and hoped for the best.
Most, but not all, of the committee agreed that the permit fee was a small price to pay for such a great Polish mountaineering achievement. There was one dissenter within the alpine association who wouldn’t let the Gasherbrum issue die, and Jurek and Voytek feared they might be grounded within Poland.
Andrzej Zawada had also run into occasional problems regarding his previous expedition finances. The officials seemed particularly antsy about equipment, since much of it belonged to the alpine association. If 10 tents left the country, 10 were expected to return. Andrzej and others would explain that this one had fallen into a crevasse or that one had been blown apart by the wind. But those excuses seldom satisfied the bureaucracy. Perhaps they had heard about the smuggling. Perhaps they thought that the tents were less likely to be in a crevasse and more likely to be in a Kathmandu shop, commanding an outrageous price!
Eventually the alpine association paid the permit fee and left Jurek and Voytek alone, albeit with a strong reprimand.
The dream team returned to Pakistan in 1984 for Broad Peak, this time with a permit. Or so they thought. The original plan was to link up with a Swiss team on their way to the mountain, but when they reached Islamabad a problem arose. The officials, perhaps remembering their transgressions of previous years, refused to allow them on the Swiss permit. Scrambling for an alternative, they ran into Janusz Majer. This tough, young, black-haired and heavily bearded climber from Katowice was leading a Polish team to Broad Peak, so they transferred to his team. They had already climbed the mountain, but this time they wanted to try a traverse of all three of its peaks before heading over to take a look at Gasherbrum IV.
Janusz’s Broad Peak team included Krzysztof Wielicki, famous for his winter Everest ascent. In fact, there was no shortage of stars at base camp. The highest film team in the world was there:
Austrian alpinist Kurt Diemberger and British climber Julie Tullis. Climbing legend Reinhold Messner was there, too. And three of Poland’s brightest stars: Jurek, Voytek and Krzysztof.
Jurek and Voytek’s original plan was to ascend Broad Peak’s unclimbed South Ridge followed by a complete traverse of the entire peak. Their first reconnaissance of the South Ridge route revealed its impracticality and difficulty, so they retreated and spent several days debating the alternatives. Although Jurek wasn’t pleased with the decision, they finally settled on Voytek’s choice, which was to head up the North Face to the North Peak, then continue along the ridge to the Central Peak, on to the Main Peak and finally down the West Face route.
But they had a problem: his name was Krzysztof Wielicki. Krzysztof had proven to be a bit of a climbing prodigy. He was talented, fast, ambitious, and smart, a combination that contributed to his justifiably high opinion of himself. He would almost certainly not be satisfied with an ascent of the normal route of Broad Peak, which was the Polish team’s objective. Voytek was convinced that Krzyszto f wanted to join them on their ambitious traverse. Voytek wanted a twosome for that committing climb, not a threesome. It was a tricky situation.
The three climbers eyed each other. Krzysztof with his sad, heavily lidded eyes, his deceptively soft voice, his keen sense of ironic humour, his world-weary face partially hidden by an unruly mustache, agitated, always busy, too much energy, flitting from one tent to another. Even Krzysztof recognized his nervous mood: “I was restless at base camp and could not find anywhere to put myself.” Voytek, in contrast, focused on his plan, and, when he wasn’t attending to chores that contributed directly to its execution, quietly retired to the privacy of his tent, reading, listening to music, and writing. Jurek cooked.
They strutted around base camp for some time, talking about this and that, without actually confronting the issue: would it be a twosome or a threesome on the traverse? Finally, Voytek asked
Krzysztof, “What are your plans?”
“Oh, I have a plan, don’t worry.”
But what was it? Voytek’s discomfort increased. The tension grew. At this point Voytek had a moment of brilliance and approached Krzysztof with an idea. “Why don’t you go up the mountain very quickly,” he suggested. “I’m sorry not to invite you with us; we are a team of two, but you can do something equally daring. You can fix the camps in advance and then go up in just one day to the top.”
At first, Krzysztof rejected the plan as impossible. But he didn’t dismiss it completely. Privately, he thought he could probably do it, but one thing worried him: fainting. What if he ascended too quickly? Even though he was built like a bird—80 per cent muscle, bone, and sinew—he worried that the huge physical output, combined with extremely thin air, might cause him to pass out.
Two weeks passed. Voytek approached him again. “I have my own plan,” Krzysztof insisted. The next day he went over to Voytek’s tent and announced that he was going to climb the peak in a day. It appeared that Krzysztof had come up with the idea himself. Voytek swallowed his first response and mumbled, “Okay, that’s a very good idea.”
Voytek and Jurek headed off on their grand traverse and forgot all about the gamesmanship at base camp. Their hands were full. They had launched a real adventure and had placed themselves in an unknown position with an uncertain outcome. The level of commitment was colossal. Once they were past the difficult climbing up to the North Peak and had dropped into the saddle before the Central Peak, retreat would no longer be an option. If a storm moved in, they would be trapped.
There, high on the ridge between the two summits, Voytek had one of the most ethereal experiences in his entire mountain career. They were bivouacked at around 7600 metres, and it was still early in the day, about 3 p.m. Jurek had wanted to go a few hundred metres lower, but Voytek felt sure they would have problems putting up the tent, so he insisted on the early stop. “The view was so amazing, so fantastic, you could see absolutely all over the world,” he said. “I remember it just like a delirium—walking and walking around—I was simply unable to go into the tent. It was a fantastic experience with a rare quality. It was deeply spiritual. Of course mountains are always beautiful, but this was different.”
Although he was with Jurek, the luminosity of this experience was not shared. They were so accustomed to each other that they felt no need to talk. So the more practical Jurek remained in the tent, preparing water and food, while Voytek wandered around in an aesthetic euphoria. With each shift in light, the mountain features became almost prismatic, revealing deeper, more hidden shades of beauty. Voytek struggled to explain the intensity: “Beauty is some kind of laser connection to higher worlds. That is what I learned, just in the middle of our traverse, between the lower and middle summits.”
The next day the wind grew stronger as they climbed the interminable, undulating ridge to the Central Peak. As they clung to its summit, they now faced the problem of descending safely to the col on the other side. By now, the wind velocity had increased to a horrifying scream, and as they descended on five, long, shaky rappels, it felt as if they were rappelling into a cold, cruel hell.
They trudged up to the Main Summit the following day, and then, while descending via the normal route after days at extreme elevations and constant exposure to danger, Voytek momentarily lost his focus. Traversing above Janusz’s Camp II at 6400 metres, he came across an old fixed line, which he grasped just for a moment for balance. It broke. He began skidding down the icy slope faster and faster. His crampons and ice axe barely scratched the marble-like surface; it took a terrific effort to gain a purchase and slow down before he was catapulted off a cliff. Strangely, the significance of his recovery brought no particular sense of relief. It just was.
Despite the exposure, the weather, and the near miss, both Voytek and Jurek attained a level of calmness on that high, airy traverse that made them willing to accept whatever the elements and the mountain required of them, including the ultimate sacrifice. They understood and treasured the precious quality of those five and a half days of climbing the 10-kilometre ridge. They knew that their greatest motivation came from routes just like this: routes that demanded the ultimate commitment.
When they returned to base camp, everyone congratulated them and expected them to collapse into their tents to rest. But Jurek was hungry. He marched over to the cook tent and whipped up a massive pot of spaghetti, enough for the entire camp. Later that night, instead of retreating to the comfort of his tent, Jurek joined a post-dinner card game that went on into the early hours of the morning. Krzysztof shook his head in admiration: “Physically he was unbreakable.”
While they had been on the traverse, Krzysztof had climbed Broad Peak in 22 hours and 10 minutes, the fastest climb in the history of 8000-metre peaks and the first one-day ascent. Nobody had even attempted anything like that on a Himalayan giant. Over 3000 metres up and over 3000 metres down, in one day.
He started just after midnight on July 14, 1984. Into his small pack he placed some extra woollen clothing and a windproof suit, a plastic sheet, two pitons, one ice piton, three tapes, a camera and film, one headlamp, a spare battery, a bit of food, and two litres of orange juice. He stepped out of his tent, adjusted his headlamp and knelt down on one knee, attaching his razor-sharp crampon firmly to his boot. Then the other. He pulled the outer mitts over his liner gloves, grabbed his two axes and started off. He was transformed into a climbing machine, a finely tuned instrument intent on delivery.
The full moon illuminated the ghostly white slopes. The air was bitingly cold. Despite a brisk pace, Krzysztof couldn’t stay warm. He began to lose feeling in his feet, so he stopped at Janusz’s team’s Camp II to drink some juice and wait for the sun.
Frustrated and impatient at the loss of two hours, he burst off at sunrise, racing up the slopes. He was guided by the tracks of his teammates, who were farther up the mountain. At 4 p.m. he reached the top, where, alone, he took some time to assess what he had done. “Whe
n you are alone in the solitude your thoughts are different,” he said. “More than at any other time in my life I start to miss the companionship of another human being .... One has to learn how to cope with loneliness.” This was not an aesthetic, cerebral experience but a sprint—a sporting effort. His only option was solitude, for nobody could keep up with him. He took some pictures, collected some stones, and started down, passing his friends as he raced down the mountain. He reached base camp at 10:30 p.m.
Inside his tent he finally stopped moving. His entire body vibrated. His eyes darted about, looking for—what? Everything was precisely as it had been when he left it in the morning, 22 hours and 10 minutes earlier. Strangely so. Nothing had changed except that a new record had been set. Krzysztof had proven to himself that he could cheat his body for a while, ascending so quickly that it didn’t have time to “catch on” and react to the lack of oxygen. But he hadn’t done it blindly. He knew that if there had been any interruption or delay during his sprint—some small injury or problem with altitude—the effect on his body could have killed him. He knew his body well, however, and he had listened to it carefully.
For the next two years, Voytek and Krzysztof never discussed their experiences on Broad Peak. Voytek felt uncomfortable about Krzysztof’s decision to climb the mountain in a day, so he didn’t bring it up. But he wished there could have been some personal connection between what he felt had been his idea to solve the obvious problem at base camp and Krzysztof’s subsequent success. At the simplest level, Voytek wanted some appreciation for the idea. A few years later he was astonished to overhear an interview with Krzysztof. “I must say, Voytek had the idea of my going up Broad Peak in one day,” Krzysztof stated on national radio. gether or Alone
Freedom Climbers (Legends and Lore) Page 13
