Despite the loneliness of that wild place, we were within a few hundred miles of Lop Nor, the Chinese test site for nuclear bombs; in a radio call a few days before, Saleem had said he heard on a Radio Pakistan broadcast that the Chinese had just exploded another bomb in an above-ground test. The winds were blowing lightly from that direction. Standing on a snow platform cut in a ridge at twenty-two thousand feet, looking over one of the most vast, remote areas on earth, I wondered if I was being dangerously exposed to radioactive fallout. I laughed—cautiously—at the absurdity of the idea.
John was halfway out on his rope. It would soon be my turn again. I paid out the line, watching the bright red coils contrasting with the snow crystals as they looped off. If I moved my head just right, I could see light refractions in the crystals; I stared fixedly at these miniature rainbows. My mind drifted, hypnotized by sharp colors and thin air and warm sun. A butterfly landed near the rope. It was a beautiful butterfly, about three inches across, piebald orange and black like the painted lady butterfly back home. I remembered how I used to catch butterflies just like that one when I was a kid. With my butterfly net made out of cheesecloth. What a collection I had . . .
A butterfly? At twenty-two thousand feet?
I came out of my trance, blinked, and looked again. It was still there, sitting on the rope, slowly unfolding, then closing, its wings.
“John,” I yelled. “You’ll never believe this. There’s a butterfly here sitting on the rope.”
“Yeah, there’s more over here. They’re flying in all around.”
I spotted two, three, four more. In no time there were a dozen, then twenty, then I counted thirty, a cloud of them flying up from some unknown place in China, rising on air currents up the mountain ridge. I noticed many of them landing in the snow, sticking to the ice crystals, dying. What could have been the reason for this lemming migration? I was still much affected by the spectacle as I jumared up to John and took the next lead.
We continued leapfrogging leads until, at 5:00 p.m., we had stretched out and anchored the last section of rope. Twelve hundred feet of steep ridge was behind us, fixed with rope. We were twelve hundred feet closer to the summit of K2. With the steep ridges and faces of nearby Skyang Kangri orange with alpenglow, we turned and retreated toward the shelter of our tent at Camp III, still silent, absorbed in the magic of a perfect day. We moved with a slower, relaxed tempo, looking over the wilds of China and Pakistan like evening eagles soaring in the rare air of high places. We came to a section where we walked the narrow ridge crest, balancing on the edge of the knife—the exact border between China and Pakistan. The sun was setting behind K2. The low light caused a rare and dramatic phenomenon: our shadows were cast across the Godwin-Austen Glacier below, and as we moved our arms the shadows swept across miles of snow and rock. There was even more witchery, a rainbow halo around the shadow of our heads. Like Gods of Valhalla we ruled—for the few minutes the sun hovered at that acute angle—a land of ice and snow.
We got back to the tent at last twilight. It was an effort to unstrap our crampons, store our harnesses, ice axes, and packs, and crawl into the tent, not to rest but to start melting snow to cook dinner on our little stove. Tomorrow would be another long, long day. Again, we would have to rise at 4:00 a.m., climb back over the ropes we had just fixed, and start stringing more. But we were confident we would reach the camp site.
“We’re most of the way there,” we radioed the others. “Tomorrow we should make it to Camp Four. From where we stopped today, it looked like there’s another section of very steep ice, then a large gendarme to pass one way or another. But we’ll get around it, and that should put us very close to Four.”
“Unbelievable!” Jim radioed back. “You guys are real tigers.”
But not everyone below was as sanguine as we were. Knowing it had taken the Poles ten days to cover the same distance, here were John and I claiming we would fix it in two. Several of the others took a wait-and-see attitude. But there was no denying we had made terrific progress.
We finished our scant meal of an anonymous flavor of freeze-dried food. We had been too tired even to cook it. We had added hot water, waited a minute, and eaten the meal. By the time we finished melting water for breakfast and for the next day’s climbing, it was 11:00 p.m. Before falling asleep I made a few notes, writing by headlamp, in my journal:
When I’m next asked that frequent question, “Why do you climb?” the answer will be easy. All I will have to do is tell them what it was like climbing on K2 on July 30, 1978. That is if, with words, I can possibly come close to conveying a day so full of magic.
JULY 31. By 7:30 on the second day of our efforts to complete the traverse, John and I had reached the end of the ropes that marked the high point of the previous day’s climb. Aided by the Polish ropes that were still usable in a few places, we were moving very fast. John took the first lead, then we alternated until 3:30, when we decided to return to Camp III. But we had not reached Camp IV. We realized our previous day’s optimistic appraisal had been premature when we came to the large gendarme that, from our vantage point the day before, we had only partially been able to see. It turned out to be more difficult than we had expected, but we climbed it. John led the steepest section; we felt we were only a short distance from Camp IV, and that we could have made it that day had we only had a little more rope and a little more time. Again, our optimism would be short-lived.
We arrived back at Camp III earlier than we had the previous day, extremely tired. This time, at least, we did not have to cook dinner. Bill Sumner and Jim Wickwire had arrived. They greeted us, as we climbed into camp, with steaming mugs of hot chocolate. I wrapped my cold fingers around the warm cup and slowly let the hot liquid run down my throat and spread its warmth through my body. One of the lessons one learns from hard climbing is how satisfying something simple can be. It is a valuable lesson; for the rest of your life, hot chocolate will have a special quality you will never forget. When I drink hot chocolate now, even if I am otherwise warm, I wrap my fingers tightly around the mug.
That evening, there were low clouds down toward Concordia. Worse were the lenticulars over both Broad Peak and K2. We refused to believe that, after such a long storm, we could have only two days of clear skies before more bad weather; we hoped the lenticulars were only false warnings. Our hopes were unfulfilled. By morning it was snowing lightly, just as it had been the first day of the last storm.
It was not so bad, however, that we could not climb, so we were up before first light at 4:45 a.m. As usual, John was the first to stir. He lit the stove and began the hour-long job of melting snow. I knew I would soon have to unzip my bag and let in the cold air, then begin to pack my gear in my rucksack—my fingers would go numb—then work into my insulated boots, still frost-covered—my toes would also go numb for at least half an hour, until feeling came back in razor jabs of pain. I did not want to open my eyes; I did not want to move. My leg muscles ached from the hard climbing the day before. I felt enervated.
Maybe I could tell the others I needed a rest day. According to the original plan, Wick and Bill were to take over the lead. But John and I had volunteered to carry ropes and equipment behind them to speed things up, and I knew our assistance would be useful.
I heard Wick stir in his bag and say something about “time to get ready.” Bill, perhaps feeling as I did, was not moving.
I lay still, seeking the motivation to get up. I tried not to lose sight of the overall picture: Think about the summit and how important it is; maybe it hurts to get up this one morning, and you have to fight with yourself to do it, but months and even years from now it will all seem worth it. Think of the overall picture.
John was busy with breakfast; Wick was starting to get dressed. Then the feeling that was my single best motivator on such mornings began to creep over me: guilt.
I thought, So you’re going to let your mates do all the work while you laze away the morning in the sack. Let John do all the
cooking. Let Wick organize all the gear.
That was enough. I could not stand myself any longer. I rose up on one arm, sighed good morning to everyone, and prepared to get under way.
We were confident we could reach Camp IV that day. Bill and Wick left first, as planned, to climb to our previous high point and then start onto new ground. John and I followed, pausing every now and then to retie anchors or adjust rope tensions, improving the route. We caught up with Bill and Wick around nine. They were moving slowly, especially Bill. John and I sat on our packs, watching snowflakes gently settle and stick to our clothing, patiently waiting while Bill very slowly led out on the ridge. Realizing there was little we could do, John and I decided to return to Camp III. We also realized we would not that day reach our new campsite. But when Bill and Wick returned later that afternoon, they said they had got to within a couple hundred yards, and unless the snow increased, there was no doubt we would make it the next day.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team had been busy ferrying loads to Camps II and III. Lou Reichardt, for two days straight, had carried heavy loads from Camp I direct to Camp III, descending to Camp I in a single day. That was twice the distance the others were carrying. The lower camps were consolidating rapidly. If the weather held, and we could get a few loads across the traverse to Camp IV, we would be in position to strike at the upper part of the mountain. Three days earlier (before the clouds again moved in) Jim Whittaker had dictated to his tape-recorded “journal”:
We only have a few more carries to go to Camp II, and most of the carrying is now to Camp III. We’ve got a full complement of people staying at Camp II to carry up to III. With the route going so well to IV, we could start up to Camp V within a few days. The weather today and yesterday has been beautiful. Maybe we’ll have a spell of ten days of good weather. That would put us close—well, with fifteen days of good weather, we would be on the summit.
The following day we again awoke early. Conditions were the same: snowing, but light enough to allow movement on the mountain. We were just ready to leave camp when Bill announced he was tired and preferred to stay behind to rest.
“I’m feeling weak,” he explained. “I know I would slow you guys down. Maybe if I had a rest day I could recoup my strength.”
Bill had been having trouble adjusting to the altitude; he also had seemed to lack enthusiasm, which perhaps was a result of his poor acclimatization. The previous day he had climbed very slowly. When John and I had caught up with Wick and him, Bill had quietly asked John if he would take over his job so he could go back down.
“I was tired, too,” John told me later. “And besides that just isn’t how I like to do things.”
John, Wick, and I left camp at 7:00. We were so confident we would reach Camp IV that we loaded our packs with extra supplies so we could cache equipment there and properly establish the camp. We took with us two tents, an oxygen bottle, 750 feet of rope, assorted climbing hardware, stoves, fuel, pots and pans, and fourteen man-days of food. The packs were heavy but not unreasonable.
By 9:30, we had reached the high point. Visibility was poor. It was still snowing lightly, but tackling the first lead, I made reasonable speed to the base of a fifty-foot-high pinnacle rising on the ridge crest. Remembering the Polish accounts, we knew the campsite would be on the other side of this pinnacle, perhaps only two hundred feet away. John started up. But his pack was too heavy for the steep lead, so he cached his load and continued on. Soon, he had the rope fixed and Wick and I followed.
It was difficult to see any distance through the snowfall, but we followed the ridge, dropping fifty feet below its crest on the Chinese side, hoping we might find a flat spot large enough for a campsite.
“I thought the Poles had their campsite here,” I said to Wick.
“They did,” he replied. “There’s no doubt. We’re at the end of the traverse—it’s the same spot. But there’s no place for the camp.”
“Maybe there’s a place on the crest—a flat spot.”
John moved up, disappearing into the fog.
“I’m at the top,” he yelled back. “It’s still a knife edge. No place for any tents.”
It was 3:30. We knew we would soon have to turn back if we were to make it to Camp III before dark.
“I wish John and I hadn’t been so optimistic after that first day when we told everyone we were nearly at Camp Four,” I said.
We waited a few minutes. The clouds thinned, slightly improving the visibility.
“I can see a little more,” John shouted down. “There might be something on the crest in back of us. I’ll check it out.”
We waited a few more minutes.
“It looks O.K.,” he yelled. “We can level a spot big enough for three tents, anyway.”
“We got it after all,” Wick said. “Camp Four is ours.”
Wearily, we shook hands and smiled broadly, as big snowflakes began to fall around us.
We awoke the next morning at Camp III to the barely perceptible sound of snowflakes falling on the nylon tent fly and gently sliding, with a slight scratching sound, to the growing rim of fresh snow around the tent. None of us moved in our sleeping bags. Without speaking a word, we knew it was to be a rest day. For six days we had climbed hard without stop. Now it was time to give our bodies a chance to recover. With great pleasure, I burrowed into the down comfort of my warm bag and lazily passed the morning drifting in and out of sleep.
As on the two previous days, the snow was light. We learned that Lou and Jim were carrying loads from Camp II to Camp III. Lou was first to arrive with, as usual, a heavy load. He was in a very bad mood.
“I would have thought if you guys weren’t carrying to Camp Four you could at least break trail down to Two for those of us still working,” he grumbled.
Expecting to be congratulated for our quick push to Camp IV, we were taken aback.
“We’ve been breaking our backs for six days, and if anybody has earned a day off it’s us,” I told Lou.
Lou calmed down. It seemed his grousing was mainly disappointment over being excluded from the push to Camp IV; he was impatient with the lackluster task of ferrying loads from Camp I to Camp III. He was also simply exhausted after breaking trail for five and a half hours.
Jim soon arrived and, also in a sensitive frame of mind, launched into Bill for taking two rest days in a row.
“Some of us around here have to work for our keep,” he said. “How do you expect to climb this mountain unless we get some loads up?”
Bill was surprised at Jim’s outburst. He thought both Lou and Jim were suffering from what he called “storm panic” at the thought of another delay from bad weather, and that, even when we were pinned down, they expected people to “run in place.”
With half the team present (the others were resting in Camp II, except for Chris, who had descended to Camp I with a sore throat) we gathered in one of the tents for a strategy meeting. Jim opened the discussion with a reaffirmation of his intention to give everyone a chance to do some lead climbing.
“I don’t want to repeat the mistake we made on the ’75 trip,” he said, “by excluding part of the team from the lead climbing, to the point where they said, ‘Why should I carry so somebody else can get to the top?’ So I want everyone to have a chance to carry to Camp Four, and I want to give at least Terry, Craig, and possibly Skip a stab at leading to Camp Five. If any of them can’t make it, I’ll put them back on the lower carries, but at least they’ll have had a chance.”
Each of us heard the special meaning in Jim’s emphasis. Earlier that morning, those of us in Camp III had discussed the topic. John had felt most strongly, and Wick and I had more or less agreed, that Dianne would jeopardize her own safety and everyone else’s if she was allowed to attempt the steep traverse.
“I don’t want to have to go out and rescue anybody and risk my own neck just because they shouldn’t have been allowed to cross in the first place,” John said to Jim. “Dianne, for example, should no
t be allowed to go to Camp Four.”
“Look, dammit,” Jim said, “Dianne came on this trip to climb as high as she can. She has worked as hard as anyone, deserves the chance to go, and I’m taking her across regardless of your opinion. You don’t have to risk your neck in any way.”
“I was under the impression Dianne was supposed to be the photographer on this trip, not a climber,” John fired back. “Everybody here knows the only reason she’s along is because she’s your wife.”
He paused, then added, “Look, I’m not trying to hit below the belt. It’s only that I’ve been on too many of these things where people don’t come back alive, and I’m just not the kind of person who can sit back and not say anything when I can see the writing on the wall.”
The last comment was a sideswipe at Wick and me who, in private, had agreed with John. But both of us realized there was no way to change Jim’s mind. On all other points regarding strategy on the climb Jim had been flexible, listening to everyone’s opinions, but when it came to Dianne he was intractable. Dianne herself knew she was the least experienced of us, but she felt she had worked as hard as anyone—if not harder—to make the dream of a K2 summit a reality; she had carried many loads to Camps I, II, and III and she felt she had earned the right to go as high as she could.
The subject was dropped. The discussion continued for ten minutes, with Jim mentioning that, after Camp V was established, it would be time to start thinking about summit teams. Jim said he would pick those who had worked the hardest and who retained the most drive. He looked at Lou when he said it, clearly dangling a carrot to help Lou through the boredom of carrying loads lower on the mountain, letting him know his efforts carrying heavy packs and double-staging from Camp I to Camp III were being noticed. The question of Dianne’s going to Camp IV was not brought up again. It was apparent John’s opinion would be overshadowed by Jim’s desire to see her get as high as she could.
The Last Step Page 18
