Freedom Climbers (Legends and Lore)

by Bernadette McDonald

  After six days of appallingly difficult and dangerous climbing and cold, uncomfortable bivouacs on narrow, exposed ledges, they reached the final slabs and snowfields that led to the summit.

  That night, the weather changed. It began to snow. All night long, the snow built up around their bivouac sack, threatening to push them off their airy perch. They waited all the next day for the storm to break, but it continued. Now they were out of food and fuel.

  They were at 7800 metres. Retreat was not an option, for they would have needed many more than their 10 remaining pitons to rappel down the massive face they had climbed. They could only wait for the storm to end.

  The second day passed. The snow continued to fall. They drifted in and out of a semi-delirious state, as hypoxia and dehydration sucked the life from their spent bodies. Both climbers sensed an ominous, unfriendly spirit from the mountain that seemed to oppose them more each day. Robert became convinced there was a third member in their party, and he blamed that imaginary partner for having slowed them down. As avalanches passed over them, Robert felt the third man trying to push him off the ledge into oblivion.

  They were sleep-deprived, hungry, thirsty, and extremely stressed. Scores of climbers have felt the presence of a third person in similar situations, but Robert’s hallucination was unusual, for his third man was malevolent. In most cases like this the third man appears helpful, functioning as a kind of coping mechanism to evoke a caring companion. The character of Robert’s strangely threatening companion probably indicated the severity of his fear.

  Voytek reacted to their situation by conducting odd experiments: he would pinch his thigh to see if he could still feel pain. In his semi-coherent state he was thinking that, within a couple of days, that thigh—that piece of human flesh—could easily become a piece of ice. With his little experiment he was mentally preparing himself for the possibility of turning into a lifeless block of ice on that very spot. As Johnny Cash sang, “I hurt myself today ...to see if I still feel.”30

  But Voytek wasn’t giving up. A breakdown wouldn’t have solved anything; it would have been a decision to die. Like the protagonist in Jesus Christ Superstar, Voytek was prepared to die, but he had not yet decided to die. Big difference.

  As they shivered on their ledge, they considered their options. When Voytek brought up the possibility of retreating down the face, Robert’s spirits plummeted and his confidence in his partner began to waver. Up until then, Robert had drawn strength from Voytek, who had been so prudent and practical. After leading through all that terrifying terrain, could he be losing touch with reality? Robert had lost all interest in the summit, yes, but he knew that retreating down the face was also out of the question. They needed to reach the ridge.

  Voytek’s thoughts began drifting into dangerous territory. He had often contemplated the act of dying and had concluded that the most important thing was to be fully aware of the process. That his life would end was now so self-evident it hardly warranted concern. It was more important to understand the wonder of this fleeting gift—life.

  As he mused about the very real possibility of imminent death, he worried about Robert. This moment—this almost sacred experience of being so close to death—was important in a terrible kind of way. Being unaware of it would be a desecration for Robert. Voytek silently debated whether to approach the subject with him, and finally the urge to speak was too strong. He began tentatively, haltingly, his voice raspy with fatigue and cold: “Robert, I...I...I’d like to...”

  Robert interrupted quietly but firmly, “I know what you’re thinking. I’m ready. I’m prepared for this. Don’t worry.”

  That night the temperature dropped. The sky cleared.

  The next morning, as the sun began to warm their frozen bodies, they examined and tested their body parts. They flexed their fingers, stretched their aching shoulders, extended their stiffened legs and tried to wiggle their toes inside their rock-hard boots. They crawled out of their snowy coffin and began labouring up through the thigh-deep snow. They had brought food and fuel for a maximum of five bivouacs. They were now on day eight. But as British hard man Doug Scott once said, “You’ll never find enlightenment on a full stomach.”31

  When they reached the ridge late that afternoon, the decision was obvious. There was no need for discussion. Even though they were weakened and hallucinating, their judgement was exceptional. They looked across at the apparently easy traverse to the summit, just 25 metres higher, and instead started rappelling down the unclimbed Northwest Ridge. As soon as they started down, the foreboding feeling that had plagued them both for days drifted away, to be replaced by phantom creatures and brilliant mirages.

  Each step forward in the deep snow took enormous effort. An awkward thrust originating from their throbbing hips, lift the entire leg, push against the wall of white, try to advance a few centimetres, force the leg down. Try and gain some advantage from gravity pulling, pulling inexorably down. Robert stopped, gasping, leaning on his ice axe. He looked up, saw a raven hovering above him and stared spellbound as he imagined himself the raven soaring without effort, gazing down at this barely living wreck of a man clinging to the mountain.

  Then partway down the ridge, Voytek sensed that a third person was back.

  Slumped down in the snow, shielding his eyes from the glare, Voytek called, “Robert, I would like to tell you something, but it’s very strange.”

  Robert stopped moving and collapsed over his axe. “I know what you mean,” he gasped.

  “You sense him, the third person?”

  “Yes.”

  This time, the third man seemed compassionate, and they felt a tremendous boost to their chances for survival. Robert’s hallucinations took a pleasant turn as he found himself in a heaving mass of people, all of whom radiated warmth. He meandered down a busy street and into a supermarket, where he sampled the most delicious sausages he had ever tasted. Almost immediately he was transported to an elegant restaurant in his hometown of Graz, dining on a succulent pork roast and exquisite crusty dinner rolls smothered in softened butter. Eating until his stomach ached with pleasure, his eyelids became heavy with drowsiness. The images enhanced his eerie sense of well-being, and he felt he had nothing to fear.

  Voytek tilted his head sideways, straining to hear what he thought were the distinct sounds of Barbra Streisand singing a familiar tune. He stopped and shook his head in astonishment. The music disappeared. He straightened up, lifted his ice axe and continued his downward march. The music returned. He could hear a clear melody and a definite beat. He stopped again. The music disappeared once more. He repeated the experiment, fascinated and curious about the melody’s source. He reasoned that it couldn’t be a hallucination, because he would have heard it the entire time. This was different. When he moved he could hear it, and when he stopped he couldn’t. He wondered if it could be the sound of the rope moving across the snow that was producing the music, and of his own footsteps providing the beat.

  Lower down the mountain the apparitions ceased, and when the climbers reached their camp they collapsed. Voytek couldn’t stop thinking about his Streisand experience and he struggled to fathom what had been happening to him. Although he deduced that it was “the sounds of the human machine breaking down,”32 he was convinced that there were corners of the brain that could only be released in extremity. Himalayan climbing was an activity that gave him access to those secret, inaccessible places. This was yet another gift from his chosen passion.

  For years Voytek was devastated that they hadn’t reached the summit of Gasherbrum IV. But as time passed, his assessment changed to a feeling of acceptance, even gratitude. “There are times when these undertakings miss the final point and this signals human weakness, which makes them more beautiful,” he said. He grew to understand that failure can produce long-term benefits. The shape of life has many curves, and some trend downward. Weakness, sickness, loss, growing old. Failure and humility can help prepare one for those inevitable disappointmen
ts.

  Voytek later claimed that his greatest reward from the Gasherbrum IV climb was the understanding he gained about death. During those enforced hours of reflection at the bivouac, he maintained a sense of calm and dignity in the face of his mortality that, he felt, prepared him for the rest of his life. But those days of terror almost certainly affected his future style of climbing and his tolerance for risk, because time after time, he would show caution when his climbing partners did not.

  The international climbing community called their climb the “Climb of the Century.” Voytek was skeptical and used other descriptors: “a great joy of creation; a perfect trap; illusory; a thorn.” He scoffed about the designation, saying, “Does it make sense to declare a poem of the century? Can you choose a woman of the century?” “Did anybody repeat GIV to confirm our illusion of it?”33 he queried. No one did until 1995, when a Korean team sieged the face but by a completely different route. Even today many believe that although the 1985 climb may have been equalled, it has probably not been bettered.

  But the climbing community’s overwhelming admiration of this climb wasn’t just meaningless gushing. It signalled a new and more discerning set of performance indicators: summits were not as important as unique objectives and style. Messner weighed in with his opinion and called the Gasherbrum IV climb superb. Doug Scott maintained that the ascent had been made in impeccable alpine style up the most technically difficult rock and ice ever climbed at that altitude. Voytek interpreted this universal acceptance of their climb as having created a “finished work,” a sign that alpinism was more an art than a sport. “Only in art does a missing link contribute to the meaning of a piece,” he said.

  Despite their spectacular performance, Robert and Voytek never climbed together again. Differing memories of their climb even caused a rift for a time. Sadly, the bond they had formed while preparing for the possibility of dying together, high up on the Shining Wall, was not strong enough to withstand the pressures of the lower elevations.

  Voytek had attained the heights of spirituality and pushed his vision to the limit, but, as it is for so many alpinists, his obsession proved to be too much competition for his personal life. Shortly after he returned from Gasherbrum IV, his wife, Ewa, asked for a divorce. Although they had lived together in Krakow for almost 14 years, she had grown tired of his many absences. She was lonely. She was bored with his obsession. “If you are waking up with climbing dreams in the middle of the night, it is not acceptable to your partner,” Voytek admitted with a sad smile.

  His problem was not limited to nighttime dreams. There were daylight hours when, in the midst of fantasizing about a particular climb or a route, tiny drops of perspiration would appear on his hands. He called the effect “Magic Pump”—an internal pump that would push drops of liquid out of his body. “I hate Magic Pump because it broke my first marriage,” he stormed.

  His breakup with Ewa would not be the only one in Voytek’s life, and theirs was certainly not the only marriage to suffer from the strain of having one partner devoted to alpinism. It was difficult to maintain a stable home life in such circumstances. Voytek believed that a real mountaineer required a full heart, a lot of suffering, a high degree of motivation, and deep commitment. He likened mountaineering to other creative disciplines, stressing that to be a serious poet or musician would likewise be hard on a marriage. But he was minimizing the reality that, with mountaineering, the constant trips away only aggravated the tension, as did the very real danger of death.

  It wasn’t just the absences and his obsession with climbing that created the chasm between Voytek and his life partners. Whenever he returned from the mountains he was a different person, a completely relaxed man. But the change was more fundamental. His inner calm was so distilled by the alpine context that it was not attainable in everyday life, a fact that created distance between Voytek and others. “When you are in very calm state, when you are really at peace with yourself, your surroundings are very different,” he explained. “You are serene. You can accept that you will die some day.” Slovenian climber Tomaž Humar also believed that each climb changed him at the deepest level. He described it as a growth in his consciousness. Again, a very private matter. Austrian climber and filmmaker Kurt Diemberger described it as “a feeling of contentment that you could never explain in words . . . it shows in the eyes.” And when Voytek’s partners saw that look in his eyes, they knew he was lost to them, at least temporarily.

  Voytek didn’t need success to achieve this heightened level of calm. He cited many instances—including four attempts on K2—during which, although he was totally defeated, he learned to appreciate the small, exquisite beauty around him, a feeling that could reach an almost painful magnitude of intensity.

  Sometimes that beauty emanated from nature, other times from ideas. Greg Child recalled an evening at K2 base camp in 1987 after weeks of high winds and frustration on the mountain. He had wandered over to Voytek’s tent, which was glowing warmly from the light of a single candle. Rather than fuming about the bad luck, Voytek was calmly reading a French text, improving his command of the language and savouring the solitude. Continued success was dangerous, in his opinion. It left no time to enjoy the beauty to be found in a quiet evening alone.

  Too many climbers, Polish and otherwise, believed that they were only as successful as their last climb and that their value as human beings was based on that continued success. They were convinced—or pressured into believing—that success was worth any risk, including injury and death. As a result, too many children and partners, parents and siblings were left with the pain of having loved a climbing martyr. Measuring his objectives through different criteria undoubtedly saved Voytek’s family from that fate.

  9

  THE ART OF SUFFERING

  ...there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men . . .

  —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, THE JOYFUL WISDOM

  WHEN JUREK AND VOYTEK met up again, Jurek suggested another climb together. He knew of a couple of Polish winter expeditions planned for Dhaulagiri and Cho Oyu, both 8000ers. Was Voytek interested? Voytek said that no, he wasn’t interested in winter climbs. But Jurek definitely was, particularly two in one season. They would add to his collection.

  Jurek’s plan was unorthodox in the extreme: two 8000ers in winter, a considerable distance from each other. For that reason, he wasn’t totally forthcoming with the leaders of either expedition; he knew that neither team would be terribly happy about sharing his attention and effort. Andrzej Zawada, leader of the Cho Oyu expedition, harboured some suspicions about Jurek’s intentions, but he kept quiet because of his deep respect for Jurek. Adam Bilczewski, leader of the Dhaulagiri expedition, was not so accommodating. There were awkward discussions about who would pay for Jurek’s trip, since he hadn’t put in his allotted time on the Katowice smokestacks like the other members of the team. He finally discounted Jurek as a serious contender, and when the number of expedition barrels exceeded the available truck space, two barrels were left off—Jurek’s barrels.

  Jurek didn’t create a fuss about the slight, and it did nothing to alter his plans. He was a man of few words, private and self-contained. He wasn’t known to be argumentative, but he was definitely not a pushover. Once he decided on a course of action there was no turning him back. If others didn’t agree, he pushed on, alone.

  Celina seeing Jerzy Kukuczka off on his Alaskan expedition

  Zyga Heinrich, Jerzy Kukuczka, and Sławomir Łobodziński in an ice cave at 7900 metres during the ascent of the South Face of Nanga Parbat, 1985

  Jerzy Kukuczka, Zyga Heinrich, and Sławomir Łobodziński approaching the summit of Nanga Parbat, 1985

  Jerzy Kukuczka

  Wanda Rutkiewicz summits Everest, the first European woman and first Polish climb
er to do so.

  Polish climbers making a living on the Katowice smokestacks

  Wanda Rutkiewicz meets the Pope following her Everest climb and on his first visit to Poland after becoming Pope

  Bogdan Jankowski and his communications centre at Everest winter base camp

  Krzysztof Wielicki in the Tatras Mountains, 1973

  Portrait of Wanda Rutkiewicz

  Krzysztof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy in Everest base camp, two days after having made the first winter ascent, February 17, 1980

  Voytek Kurtyka and Alex MacIntyre on Makalu, 1981

  A frazzled Wanda Rutkiewicz, trying to keep the media at bay following her Everest climb

  Voytek Kurtyka, Jerzy Kukuczka, and Alex MacIntyre at Makalu, 1981

  Ewa Waldeck-Kurtyka (first wife of Voytek Kurtyka), Voytek Kurtyka, and Zbigniew Czyzewski in the eighties. Voytek titled the photo “Malolat” (not enough years) for Zbigniew, who was one of the most inspired and talented of the Tatras climbers of that time but who stopped climbing prematurely.

  Jerzy Kukuczka, Makalu, 1981

  Expedition truck in Warsaw, prepared to leave for K2 in 1982