Freedom Climbers (Legends and Lore)

by Bernadette McDonald

  Then, at 7900 metres on the Abruzzi Ridge, the situation deteriorated into complete chaos as seven climbers converged at Camp IV, some on their way up, others on their way down. There weren’t enough tents or sleeping bags for the climbers, all at the edge of their limits. There, amidst the wreckage of the camp and farther down the Abruzzi Ridge, five more perished: Julie Tullis, Hannes Wieser, Alfred Imitzer, Alan Rouse, and Mrówka. Only two survived: Kurt Diemberger and Willi Bauer. When Balti porter Mohammad Ali was killed by rockfall, the total number of dead on K2 topped out at an astonishing 13.

  What went wrong? Who, if anyone, was responsible for the multiple tragedies on the mountain? The one common theme was that each climber, like Wanda and her little team, had stayed in the “death zone” too long, had not left any room for error. “It seems absolutely clear that, on no account, should you climb with the thought that all that matters is getting to the top, the rest be damned,” Janusz later sadly commented.

  For those few who were left, emotions ran high. Kurt was shattered at having lost Julie, his mountain soulmate. Michel felt responsible for the Barrards. Renato’s widow was heartbroken. Jim Curran had been in base camp the entire time, trying to understand and absorb the unfolding tragedy, all the while filming the wasted survivors who wandered listlessly from tent to tent, quietly sharing their stories. The thin fabric walls could not hide the coughing and sobbing. Wanda turned inward, unwilling to reveal the depth of her sorrow. Grief merged with guilt, which led to remorse. There seemed little reason to celebrate.

  To the astonishment of those left at base camp, despite her frostbite, weariness, and sadness, Wanda began preparing for an immediate ascent of nearby Broad Peak. Considering what was going on and what she had just endured, she seemed completely out of touch with reality. She bordered on irrational and would speak only of 8000-metre peaks. She confessed she felt no pleasure about reaching the summit of K2; she had lost too many friends on the mountain. Yet here she was, preparing for another epic on Broad Peak. Her strength and determination were admirable, but it was sad that she seemed incapable of savouring her success on K2. In fact, she seemed just like many other top-level, complex, and compulsive climbers, unable to remain fulfilled for long, always driven to seek out the next challenge.

  This attempt was more likely a kind of self-medication, however. As she wrote in her journal: “Certain kinds of events only get to me much later...my reaction to aggression, disaster or tragedy is delayed. There are events that I have lived but still can’t fully accept.”

  Battered and broken, Wanda headed to nearby Broad Peak to attempt a solo alpine-style ascent. She didn’t even make it to the first high camp before turning back.

  Prior to 1986, 12 people had died climbing K2. Now, within one season, the number had more than doubled. Wanda had been on enough mountains to recognize the strange atmosphere that had emerged on the Abruzzi Ridge. There were too many teams that were not really teams, just a hodgepodge collection of independent climbers, patched together in a last-ditch effort to get up the mountain. Even though twos and threes eventually formed within that larger group, there was very little loyalty when the situation fell apart. Many were on the Abruzzi Ridge because it was supposedly an easier alternative to their already failed attempts on more difficult lines. This led to a dangerous level of complacency about the route.

  The Abruzzi Ridge climbers were not the only ones involved in this tragic sequence of events. Climbers who were descending the ridge after having climbed routes on other sides of the mountain also contributed to the crowding at Camp IV. Their arrivals were unplanned and likely added to the stress.

  With dozens of climbers on the mountain, there were several series of decisions that were made, seemingly with good judgement yet without knowledge of what would come next. The apparently acceptable levels of danger and risk deteriorated into situations of extreme survival. But were those levels of risk truly acceptable? Acceptable to whom? Jurek had felt sure that things were still under control until the moment Tadek hurtled into him. Janusz lost his taste for risk only upon hearing of his teammate’s death. And even after the carnage, Wanda seemed willing to assume yet more risk on Broad Peak.

  Wanda didn’t venture onto the slippery slope of laying blame for the deaths on K2, but there was one element that nagged her: Kurt’s slow climbing pace. She felt that, through a complicated series of events, his and Julie’s slowness had ultimately created a domino effect on a number of the other climbers. And because Kurt had been unable or unwilling to save her close friend Mrówka on the descent, she couldn’t let go of her feelings of resentment. Yet it’s possible her anger with Kurt was fuelled more by a private admission that she might have acted in the same way. Or was due to misplaced blame because it was she who had suggested the change of route for Mrówka in the first place.

  When Jurek returned to Poland after K2, Artur came to Warsaw to meet him. They greeted each other with restraint. Artur didn’t ask Jurek about Tadek, and Jurek didn’t say a word about the climb. As Artur manoeuvred the car onto the highway heading south toward Katowice, he mentioned that preparations were proceeding for their trip to Manaslu. Jurek nodded, staring straight ahead. “Are the barrels packed?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Artur replied. “We are leaving in three weeks.” He waited for Jurek to respond.

  Jurek was quiet for a bit and then nodded. “Good. I’ll be ready.”

  11

  FORGED IN STEEL

  There are two ways of fighting—you must be a fox and a lion.

  —ADAM MICKIEWICZ, KONRAD WALLENROD

  IT WAS NOW VERY CLEAR that Polish climbers were special. They were tough, tenacious, and supremely focused on their goals. As Reinhold Messner coined it, they were “hungry, and very, very strong.”

  Mexican climber Carlos Carsolio, who had first-hand experience climbing with the Poles, was sure that their success was a result of their tough childhoods. “When you are too pampered, you lose the power of patience and suffering,” he said. “The Austrians and Germans were very strong too, but only that generation just after the war.” Carlos had also climbed with the Slovenians, including the famous Stane BelakŠrauf, who, while leading a difficult pitch in the Julian Alps, came to the end of his rope without having reached a suitable spot to belay. The story has his partner calling up, “Šrauf, the rope is finished,” and Šrauf yelling back, “I am the one who says when the rope is finished.” He continued on, forcing his partner to simulclimb until a suitable belay could be set up. Carlos laughed at the famous story, adding, “This attitude exemplified Šrauf, the Slovenians, the Poles, and particularly Jurek.” No mention of the more pampered Western Europeans, the Americans, or the English.

  American climbing editor Christian Beckwith believed that Polish climbing was synonymous with “exquisite” suffering, that their ability to push through that punishing state toward the accomplishment of their goals defined an “alpine transcendence.” Messner agreed that high-altitude climbing was all about suffering, but he was more pragmatic in his description: “I don’t believe anyone who says there is a lot of pleasure in climbing the big peaks.”

  European expeditions arrived in the Himalaya with better equipment and superb training, but it was the Poles who stayed on and on, often outperforming their European counterparts. Not without cost. There were the abandoned families back home, the frostbite, the injuries, and the ever-increasing death toll.

  One theory, held mostly by foreigners, was that Polish climbers suffered from a deep feeling of inferiority and had something to prove. They had fought and lost countless wars over the centuries. They were poor. They were largely invisible outside their borders. To foreigners, Poland was somewhere “over there”—in Eastern Europe. Their equipment and clothing were inferior, and they had little cash to hire porters and trucks or to buy foreign food. They had to try harder just to keep up with their foreign peers, and in doing so, they surpassed them.

  It was an interesting theory, but most Polish clim
bers rejected it outright. They believed their fortitude and sense of pride came not from inferiority but from the opposite—their aristocratic Polish tradition of nobility and bravery; centuries of castles and swords; soldiers marching through the forests, defending Poland from marauding plunderers—and from generations of oppression by Germans and Russians. “Living between the hammer and the anvil,” Voytek Kurtyka called it. Fighting for independence. A continuous state of awareness. Readiness. Courage. Strength. But now the castles and marauders were gone, replaced by the mountains. Swords had become ice axes. It is hard to discount the similarity between the Poles’ performance in the mountains and their conduct in war.

  There are many vivid examples of celebrated national heroes in Polish art and literature that give life to the tragedy and joy of their noble history. The burning hatred and heroic deeds that feature in the epic poems of 18th-century writer Adam Mickiewicz made a tremendous impression upon his countrymen. He and other writers created larger-than-life figures whose pride and suffering influenced subsequent generations and the Polish philosophy of life. Centuries of battles featured images of winged Hussars, noble steeds storming through icy rivers and across dusty plains, flags billowing, swords poised, blood flowing freely in the bleak birch forests. The images suggested bravery. Enough to fight wars, generation after generation. Enough to break free from the iron grip of Communism—before the Czechs and before the East Germans. Enough to climb the highest mountains on Earth.

  Voytek likened this special brand of Polish toughness to the Japanese samurai tradition, which dictated that if a man was overpowered, a force stronger than him existed. And that proved he was weak, which in turn led to a tragic loss of dignity and honour. The risk of this mindset was that it could lead to Bushido, or the “Path of the Sword.” Bushido grew out of the ancient feudal bond that insisted upon unwavering loyalty on the part of the vassal. It borrowed heavily from Zen Buddhism and Confucianism. In its fullest expression, the code emphasized loyalty to one’s superior, personal honour, and the virtues of austerity, self-sacrifice, and indifference to pain, if necessary to the point of death. It’s doubtful that many individual climbers were aware of Bushido, but they nevertheless provided living proof of this tradition throughout their climbing history, sometimes all the way to martyrdom.

  Another role model who influenced the fortitude of some Polish climbers was Jesus Christ: his was a life of bravery, certainly, but also one of self-sacrifice. The Polish tendency to emulate Christ goes back to the 18th century, when Poland was overrun and partitioned by its neighbours. The deeply Catholic and poverty-stricken Poles collectively identified themselves with messianic suffering. They believed that, although Poland was being crucified by its neighbours, they were destined to return to glory, just as Christ had. When the Allies failed to support them during World War II, they carried the analogy further to include the Judas story of betrayal. But their faith was strong, and they maintained that just as Christ had brought redemption to mankind, Poland would bring redemption to Europe.

  Adam Mickiewicz depicted Poland as the “Christ of all Nations” in his most famous play, Dziady. He wrote, “Verily I say unto you, it is not for you to learn civilization from foreigners, but it is you who are to teach them civilization ....You are among the foreigners like the Apostle among the idolaters.” Although the influence of the Catholic Church eventually waned, many continued to see themselves as a “martyr nation,” and Christ was, after all, the ultimate martyr.

  But there were also more practical reasons for Polish toughness. The Poles had started late in the Himalayan arena and had a lot of catching up to do in order to assure themselves a place in mountaineering history. They undertook ventures with no margin for error. The growing death toll proved this to be a risky strategy.

  The pressure on Polish climbers was enormous. It was hard to find money, to free up a passport, and obtain the proper visas. The paperwork was endless. And what, a cloud in the sky? They were supposed to turn back? Five hundred metres from the summit? Not likely. When they finally overcame all the bureaucratic obstacles, the financial gyrations and the travel, decisions about turning back without success were not made lightly. By contrast, members of Western expeditions could more easily return any time they wished.

  When a group of French climbers failed on a summit, they would gather in base camp, joke a little, drink some wine, and laugh. Polish climbers would drink too, but their beverages would be of a stronger variety, and in their hearts would be bitterness—the anguish of collective failure. Like the Japanese, their heads would droop in shame. Artur Hajzer stated it bluntly: “Unfortunately we Poles prefer to be a dead hero than a live loser.”

  There was a flip side to this toughness, this “art of suffering,” as Voytek coined it. To survive in intense cold, with little food or water and barely contained fear, all the while giving one’s physical all, requires a ferocious stolidness. In Himalayan climbing, this is seen as an attribute. It’s referred to with admiration as being “hard-core.” Inner strength is admirable, but what does it look like from the outside? Often, selfish callousness. It is easier to concentrate on one’s own battle with exhaustion and terror than empathize with a less able partner. A kind of inner deafness, a loss of sight, and even a hardening of the heart are sad but frequent by-products of survival in the mountains.

  Krzysztof Wielicki, the quintessential warrior, acknowledged that the level of egocentricity in alpinists was high, and he was well aware of the repercussions. “If you want to climb, there is a cost,” he said. “Usually the cost is the family. I have to say sorry, sorry, sorry. They suffer at home and we suffer on the mountain.” But for him and others, this life of suffering seemed to elicit a perverse satisfaction. “To experience pleasure when you have everything against you, you must have some kind of warrior philosophy,” Krzysztof explained. “It is more appealing. It is more exciting.”

  As so many of the most entrepreneurial Polish climbers proved, another practical factor in the astonishing level of Polish toughness in the mountains was simple economics. Polish climbers proved to be a creative lot, and they devised a system within the system—a strategy that liberated them. They discovered a way to travel outside their borders, to experience new cultures and languages, to follow their passion for climbing and make a living at it. They discovered how to be free!

  Krzysztof was a good example. He started working as soon as he finished polytechnic in his early twenties, then he married and immediately started a family. But he soon realized the futility of working. “Communist time was so nice for us because we didn’t have to work...Two months with the painting jobs and it was enough; then we can go for six months to the Himalaya.” Together with university professors, doctors, and engineers, Krzysztof painted towers and smokestacks—and climbed. “I painted almost the whole of Silesia ...the Katowice steelworks, mines, buildings, conveyor belts, chimneys of heat-generating plants, water towers ...from Trzebnia to Zabrze,” he claimed. “Time had no value back then. We did what we wanted: we met at the mountaineers’ club, we dreamt, we made plans, and then set out to the mountains! As grown-ups, we were at a permanent party, having quit our professions, not knowing that in a few years’ time capitalism would also come to us.” Leszek Cichy agreed that their strategy was spectacularly successful: “We sold equipment; we smuggled equipment; it was perfect!” This, from a university professor.

  This exuberance of creative expression wasn’t limited to climbers. There was an abundance of artists and writers who thrived creatively during those severely repressed years in Poland. The censorship industry, rather than stifle, seemed to actually stimulate the artistic community. Like the climbers, artists became stronger through oppression; their most creative work came out of the darkest days. When repression collapsed, they collapsed too. They had no idea how to communicate without being rebels. When their world opened, they dried up.

  Leszek attributed Poland’s great record in the mountains to a much more banal reason: sh
eer numbers. “There was a veritable army of climbers,” he said. “It was inevitable that some would rise to the top.” He pointed out that, for more than a decade, there were 10 to 15 Polish expeditions mounted each year to the Himalaya. Those climbers who rose to the top became famous, but there were hundreds more who didn’t, despite their phenomenal climbs. A former climbing partner of Voytek, Ludwik Wilczyński, described the situation: “While Zawada was working in the lounges of Polish and international alpinism, and Kurtyka, the community’s metaphysical think-tank, walked alone on the roof, the cellars were occupied by filthily dressed outsiders who, singing the no-passport-and-no-job blues and drinking low-quality spirits, gave us all the satisfaction of self-fulfillment and feeling of independence.”46 Down in those cellars were climbers like the Vogel Brothers, Jerzy Rudnicki, Janusz Hierzyk, Ryszard Malczyk, Andrzej Michnowski, Zbigniew Czyzewski, and others, virtually unknown outside their country.

  However, Poland’s performance in the mountains was much more than just a matter of volume. The distinctive Polish combination of ambition, economics, politics, history and tradition—it all added up. The results were unbeatable.

  Almost immediately after Jurek returned from K2 in 1986, and with little time to recover, he and Artur were immersed in preparing for their Manaslu expedition later that fall. Artur joked, “Logically, I shouldn’t be going with you; all around you people seem to die.” He said it half in jest, but there was some truth to his remark. Artur discounted any lingering concerns as he plunged into the final days of packing for the expedition, which included himself, Jurek, Voytek, and Ryszard Warecki, who was planning to film the climb. Carlos Carsolio was also invited, in part for the foreign currency that he would bring to the expedition. Having a foreigner along was like “winning the lottery” for Polish climbers, Artur explained. He and Carlos were the students on this climb, under the tutelage of the masters, Voytek and Jurek.