Freedom Climbers (Legends and Lore)

by Bernadette McDonald

  While the drama with Wanda’s team was unfolding, the rest of the mountain hummed with activity, too. The Polish team led by Janusz Majer was on the Magic Line, a route that many called K2’s “last great problem.” Another team on the Sickle Couloir route on the South Face included Jurek and Tadek Piotrowski. It was a sign of the strength and depth of the Polish climbing community that they had put three separate teams simultaneously on three different routes on what was widely considered to be the hardest high-altitude mountain on Earth.42 Regardless of whether they summited, the Poles dominated K2 that year.

  It was Tadek, one of Poland’s most accomplished climbers, famous for his icy-river training swims, who had secured a couple of spots for himself and Jurek on the international K2 expedition led by Karl Herrligkoffer. This was the first international expedition Jurek had joined, and the contrast in economics was painful. Unplanned expenses popped up frequently: tips, special favours, forgotten tariffs. Although this was not a problem for the Europeans, the Poles were close to panic. They were proven masters at spending inordinate amounts of time in the Himalaya, but one of their secrets was frugality.

  When Karl handed out brand new Adidas shoes and soft woolly socks to the porters, Jurek looked on in envy. The entire atmosphere was mildly irritating, including the attitude that he sensed from some of the team members. There were a number of Swiss guides along. Jurek scoffed about one of them, describing him as “thin as a race-hound, who all his life does nothing but run about in the Alps.” There was nothing basically wrong with Jurek’s body shape, but when one of the guides stared pointedly at his slightly paunchy belly and commented that he didn’t look much like a mountaineer, Jurek was insulted. “We can have a chat at 8000 metres,” he muttered to himself, and walked away.

  The Western European climbers became agitated when Karl threw his support behind the Poles’ wish to try a new route on the South Face of the mountain. “You two will be playing the first violin here ...Whatever you need, you will get,” he declared, much to the horror of the rest of the team. The Swiss and German climbers had no interest in anything but the normal route up either K2 or Broad Peak. A dangerous new route was not on their agenda, for they had their professions and a comfortable life back home. For Jurek and Tadek, there was nothing more important in the world than to climb this mountain by a new and difficult route. Their obvious differences prompted Jurek to observe that Western climbers were much like Western cars: better on good roads, but the old Polish models keep going, even when the road gets rough.

  Karl wasn’t planning to be on the mountain at all, as this, his 24th expedition, was merely a celebration of his 70th birthday. His health was questionable, so before long he called in a helicopter to whisk him away from base camp to lower, more comfortable ground. At that point, the team split up and the less ambitious members headed off to what they thought was easier terrain.

  Jurek and Tadek began working their way up the South Face, some of which was familiar ground to Jurek, since he had been up to 6400 metres on the face in 1982 with Voytek. At the first camp they had four climbers with them. At the next camp, two. Finally, only Tadek and Jurek remained on the route. They fixed lines as high as they could and then retreated to base camp to wait out a snowstorm. They were acclimatized and ready to try for the summit. Everything depended on the weather.

  They waited 10 days. At the end of June the sun reappeared. They waited another two days for the masses of new snow to settle on the icy skin of the South Face, and then they were off. Day one: 6400 metres. Day two: 6950 metres. Day three: 7400 metres. Day four: 7800 metres. Day five: 8200 metres.

  The next morning they left their tent with just two 30-metre lengths of rope, three pitons, one ice screw and their ice axes, planning to reach the summit and return to their camp at 8200 metres. But in front of them rose a hundred-metre barrier of almost vertical rock covered in loose unconsolidated snow. The entire day slipped by before they were able to surmount that difficult stretch of technical ground, on which every move was agonizingly difficult. They gained height one centimetre at a time, fighting for every step. Jurek admitted that it was the hardest climbing he had ever done at this altitude. It was their many years of climbing mixed rock and snow in the cold Tatras winters that undoubtedly got them through this crux on K2. By the time they reached the top of the most difficult section, it was too late to continue. It began to snow.

  They rappelled back to their bivouac site for the night. No sooner had they begun to cook than they dropped their last spare gas cylinder thousands of metres below them. Now they were in trouble. No gas meant no cooked food and, more worryingly, no fluid. They had just spent a physically and psychologically demanding day at over 8000 metres, and now they were facing a bivouac with no water. Parched with thirst, they survived the night but realized they would have to revise their plan. Instead of climbing to the summit and descending their South Face route, they would have to descend as quickly as possible from the summit down the normal route on the Abruzzi Ridge, where they would hopefully find a fully equipped camp. This was their only option, but it was risky because neither of them knew this other route.

  By 2 p.m. the next day they had surmounted the barrier and were on easier ground along the ridge. As the day wore on, the snowfall intensified and visibility decreased. But there were occasional footsteps discernible in the snow from previous ascents up the normal route; they were confident they were in the right place. They continued, feeling their way up the ridge. At 6 p.m. it began to get dark. Jurek was sure they must be near the summit.

  He reached a sérac and stopped briefly, leaning heavily on his ice axe to catch his breath. As he stared mindlessly down at the snow, he almost fell over from shock: there were two French instant-soup wrappers abandoned from some previous climbers. He guessed that they must have belonged to Wanda’s team, and he knew from her description that they had bivouacked just below a sérac at around 8300 metres. These soup wrappers had to be from that bivouac. He almost threw up in disappointment. If that was the case, they were still a long way from the summit. As he stared down at the wretched wrappers, Tadek arrived.

  “Look at these stupid wrappers. I think we are at Wanda’s bivouac site. It’s lower than I thought—only 8300 metres.”

  “Who knows,” Tadek replied in a weary dejected voice. “It’s so foggy it’s impossible to know where we are. We could just stop here and go on tomorrow.”

  “No no, we can’t do that. If we stop here we won’t have the energy to go up tomorrow.” Jurek was forceful now.

  “Well, what should we do, then?”

  “Go up. Let’s keep going. I’ll just go beyond that sérac and see what there is. Maybe I’ll recognize something.”

  “Okay,” Tadek mumbled.

  They continued on and a short time later Jurek turned and screamed. He could see the summit. It was very near. The soup wrappers were from Wanda’s French companions’ pre-summit lunch stop, not their bivouac spot. Relieved, he took a few more steps to the top then slumped down to the ground, gasping and wheezing. He rummaged in his pack, found his camera and began taking photographs. Shortly after, Tadek appeared, lurching upward through the gloom.

  The two hugged, wheezed and coughed, and thumped each other’s backs, savouring their hard-won victory at the summit of K2, up the hardest route climbed so far on the mountain. After 15 minutes they realized it would all be meaningless if they perished on the top, so they started down. They downclimbed to a spot where they had stashed some equipment and then settled in for another cold, snowy, high-altitude bivouac—this one at 8300 metres.

  It snowed all night. With no wind, the mountain was eerily quiet while the soft, deadly blanket grew steadily thicker. The snow continued the next morning, making it even more difficult to find the way down. Everything looked the same. Although they were descending by an easier route, it was all new ground to them. They searched for signs of the people who had gone before them and found occasional bits of old rope, signalling that
they were on a well-travelled route. But they frequently wandered off-route in an exhausted state of confusion, forcing them to retrace their steps again and again.

  By nightfall they were nowhere near the Austrian camp, where they had hoped to sleep. Instead, it was another bivouac for Tadek and Jurek—another night of physiological decay. It was their fourth night at extreme altitude, and they no longer had the will to dig out a suitable cave. Instead, they made do with just a slight depression that barely sheltered them from the wind. Even the indestructible Jurek suffered that night. “I could feel and see that we were at our physical limits,” he later wrote. “Our bivouac was even worse than the night before. For two days we had not even had a drop of water and our bivouac sacs were worn and full of holes. The night was absolute torture as we shivered in the frigid cold, and snow penetrated every nook and cranny. We got only snatches of sleep.”43

  The snowstorm ended at dawn. They emerged from their sacks slowly, thick with lethargy. Through the murk, it appeared to them that they were on a shoulder just above the Austrian camp; Jurek thought he could see the tents. He went ahead a bit, called back to Tadek that the route was clear and, in a moment of clarity, reminded him to bring the rope on which he had sat throughout the night.

  “Yes, yes, go on!” Tadek yelled.

  Jurek continued down. He looked up and saw that Tadek was barely moving; his coordination seemed shaky. Jurek stopped to wait and immediately dozed off, leaning on his ice axe. When he awoke, Tadek was just above him. Below them was a short steep slope, and then the way was clear to the tents.

  “Let’s use the rope for this steep section,” Jurek said.

  “No, we don’t need it. Besides, I left it up there.”

  Jurek rose from his slumped position, repositioned himself on the slope and continued kicking steps. His thoughts wandered to the warmth and safety of the camp; it was so near he could almost feel it. The slope steepened and the snow hardened to ice. He had to be careful now. Place each axe firmly. Kick each foot confidently. The rope would have been good to have here. No problem. It’s a short distance. Concentrate.

  He glanced up to see that Tadek was following well now, using the same placements as his. Just then Jurek saw a flash: Tadek’s crampon flying off his foot. Jurek shouted a warning. Then the impossible happened: the other crampon flew off. Jurek yelled again. “Hold on!”

  Tadek tried. His axe was firmly embedded in the ice, but with his entire weight suddenly on his arms, his boots scraping uselessly on the icy slope, he couldn’t hold on. He flew off with lightning speed, screaming.

  Jurek was directly below Tadek. Instinctively, he gripped his axes as hard as he could and pressed his body against the slope. One moment before impact was the last he could recall before all reality changed for Jurek. He felt a massive blow to his back as Tadek slammed into him. After a couple of seconds he realized that, by some miracle, he was still attached to the mountain. He lifted his head and looked around. All that was left on the icy face were a few nondescript skid marks and small, pathetic pieces of ice skittering down the slope. After that there was nothing.

  In a daze, Jurek downclimbed the slope, which ended in a cliff, searching for any sign of Tadek. “Tadek. Tadek. Answer me. Where are you?” Of course he wasn’t there. Jurek leaned over his axes once again and promptly fell asleep. Thousands of metres yawned below him. He awoke with a start and realized he had to move away from this dangerous position. For five and a half hours he inched across the remaining 200-metre traverse to the Austrian tents.

  He crawled into one of them and rummaged around in a shocked state, looking for anything to eat or drink. He found a can of fruit and slurped it down. Next he found a stove and some fuel and began melting snow. He drank and slept intermittently and then noticed a radio, which he used to call base camp to inform them of the accident. It didn’t seem to be working well, but he thought he heard a garbled response, so he slumped sideways and fell asleep again with the radio pressed to his ear. In a delusional state of denial, he crawled into a sleeping bag on one side of the tent, leaving room for Tadek, who would soon be arriving. He had to be. He had a wife and daughter waiting at home.

  Over and over, he saw Tadek flying. Did he know that he was about to die? Jurek would have given anything to go back in time, slow things down, press the reset button.

  Twenty hours later Jurek woke with a start. It was now 2 p.m. of the following day. He tried to radio base camp again, but he couldn’t reach them. In fact, he had never spoken to them, for there were no batteries in the radio. Jurek had only imagined the voices of response.

  Meanwhile, Janusz Majer was on the Magic Line route with his team of seven, which included Wanda’s previous climbing partners Anna Czerwińska, Krystyna Palmowska, and Mrówka Miodowicz-Wolf. Aside from Janusz’s team, there were three other expeditions with permission to try the route: an American team, the Italian Quota 8000 Expedition, and famous Italian solo climber Renato Casarotto. The American and Italian expeditions reached only 6800 metres before John Smolich and Alan Pennington were killed in an avalanche on June 21 at the foot of the slope below the Negrotto Col. The Americans gave up their attempt, and the Italians soon abandoned the pillar, too, turning instead to the Abruzzi Ridge, where Wanda and her team were climbing. Renato twice reached 8200 metres on the pillar, but after his third attempt he, too, retreated.

  Now it was just the Poles, working in two teams; one consisted of four men, the other of three women. They fixed ropes and established camps up the pillar, and, after two bivouacs above 8000 metres, three of the four men—Wojciech Wróż, Przemek Piasecki, and Petr Bozik, a Slovak—reached the summit on August 3. Because their route was so difficult, like Jurek and Tadek they decided to descend the Abruzzi Ridge.

  It was 1:30 a.m. when Wojciech Wróż fell to his death. Przemek had rappelled the last 50 metres of fixed lines and Petr had followed him. They had waited for Wojciech in order to descend the rest of the way to Camp IV, for this section was without fixed ropes. Suddenly they heard a horrible metallic noise. They feared the worst, but they waited. An hour and a half later, a descending Korean climber appeared and reported that Wojciech was nowhere to be seen. Certain that their partner had fallen to his death, they felt their only option was to carry on to the sad huddle of tents at Camp IV, where they collapsed into British climber Alan Rouse’s small tent, which he and Mrówka shared with them. They weren’t sure what had happened but thought it likely that Wojciech had fallen while downclimbing a small gap between two sections of fixed ropes. They later learned that the gap had inadvertently been caused by one of the Korean climbers, who had cut the rope in order to bridge another missing section of fixed line.

  Janusz, Krystyna, and Anna had also started up their route, but their nerves were rattled. “It felt like an unhealthy atmosphere,” Anna remembered. “You come back and you learn that somebody has died. A bit later, you learn that somebody else is dead. We were beginning to lose our minds.”44 Although they were fighting a losing battle of emotional trench warfare, they weren’t yet ready to give in.

  The three had moved up steadily in good weather; each day, one camp higher. “The mountain was luring us—into a trap,” Anna recalled. They were bivouacked at 8200 metres, ready to go for the summit the next day. Early on the morning of August 4, they received the shocking news of Wojciech’s fall. Janusz sat down on the snow, put his head in his hands and wailed, “I’ve had it, this is too fucking much.”

  Their decision was unanimous. They packed up and started down. Almost immediately the mist moved in. Snow began to fall. This sudden change in weather occurred on the very same day that a large group of Abruzzi Ridge climbers started their summit attempts. The following day the weather deteriorated in earnest, with hurricane winds so strong they forced the old fixed ropes to stand out horizontally, covered with two-centimetre-long icicles. Janusz and the women fled the mountain, fighting for their lives in the storm and evacuating all their camps on the way down to base camp.
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  The mountain took no notice of them, preoccupied with those on the Abruzzi Ridge, where the struggle was just beginning. “The mountain released us,” Anna said. “I remember the click of my [headlamp] light....So many people had died. And still the stupid battery worked. I was really shaken by that realization.”45 For the first 24 hours at base camp they rehydrated, ate, and dried out. Then it dawned on them—where was the team on the Abruzzi Ridge? Why hadn’t they heard anything? Their partner, Mrówka, was there, having abandoned the pillar after declaring it too dangerous. She had instead moved over to the Abruzzi Ridge, to climb with Alan Rouse on a route she thought would be safer.

  Jurek crawled out of the Austrian tent and, over the next two days, dropped down the fixed lines to base camp. Tadek had become the fifth victim on K2 that year. Wanda had always said Jurek could live for days on a diet of Himalayan rocks and come out fit at the other end. But not Tadek. This was Jurek’s fourth consecutive expedition on which he had lost a partner.

  Their new route on K2 was exceptional, climbed in a style that brought an entirely new dimension to Himalayan climbing. But Jurek felt no joy at having climbed the magnificent face. His experiences on the mountain were too tragic and the price of success too high. Janusz’s Magic Line was another landmark for the mountain, yet he too felt that their loss of life had nullified the joy of their success. Both climbs were overlooked for years, overshadowed by all the tragedies on K2 that year.

  Everyone on the mountain was vulnerable to the weather, and the storm on K2 had intensified. The situation became desperate as one fatality followed another. Renato Casarotto fell into a crevasse on his way down alone from the Magic Line. He was rescued, but he died shortly after. Now it was impossible to ignore another harsh reality: the Barrards were not coming back. Shortly after, Liliane’s body emerged on the lower glacier, brought down by the continuous barrage of avalanches.