A LETTER FROM DIANNE ROBERTS TO SUSANNE AND JAKE PAGE
August 9
Camp II, 20,000 feet
Dear Susanne and Jake,
Can’t begin to tell you all that’s happened—that will have to wait for some wine-drenched evening when all this is over. Basically things are going very well. We have had some foul weather—typical K2 six- to eight-day storms—but have managed to carry loads on the mountain most days in spite of it. Most of the team is still healthy—Rob has had some problem with an old knee injury, and he is stuck in Camp I, and there have been minor sore throats and diarrhea—but nothing really incapacitating. There have been a few crabby times, but Jim is doing a masterful job of pulling people together and I think everyone is working pretty well considering the stresses involved. Jim and I are both feeling fine and strong. With any luck, by the time you read this, maybe August 20 or so, we will have reached the summit.
There have been so many times when, in my mind, I have wished I could sit down and write you a long letter. But we have really been working very hard, with very few rest days, and even during the storms there are tents to be dug out, snow to be melted for drinking, socks to be dried—all kinds of little mundane tasks that guarantee your survival in this incredibly alien environment.
Actually, when you think about it, it’s amazing we can live up here at all. I can hardly think of any environment more alien to the human organism—the moon maybe? But even on the moon the astronauts had machines to help them gather the stuff they needed. All they had to do was walk around a bit, and with all those computers and people back in Houston to help them, how could they mess up?
Boy, there are plenty of ways to mess up around here. It is so very easy to lose motivation. This mountain is so big. It takes (depending on the conditions and the person and the weight of the pack) three to six hours to “walk” from here—Camp II, 20,000 feet, to Camp III, 22,275 feet. There were about fifty-five loads to be carried over that section of the route alone. Some of the climbers are up above pushing the route higher, so there are anywhere from five to ten people carrying those loads. Some have carried six or more times over that same route, every day if the weather is workable. It is a beautiful route winding up along a corniced ridge separating China and Pakistan. Parts of it are steep, parts are nearly flat, but the snow is always deep, the packs always heavy, and there is never quite enough oxygen in the air. With each step you pause, take three or four breaths, then take another step: You get to Camp III and want desperately to stay there—it is so hard to go down again. But down you go—maybe one and a half hours down if the tracks haven’t drifted in, more if you have to break trail. The next day you do it again. And the next . . .
That’s the big difference between K2 and Everest. On Everest, twelve climbers might hire fifty Sherpas to help carry loads all the way to the top camps. But on this mountain—steeper and nearly as high as Everest—we have four “high-altitude porters”—Hunza guys who are friendly and strong, but who pooped out on their first carry to Camp III. We now have them back down working between Advance Base and Camp I, on the glacier. Up here we’re on our own.
Today there are nine at Camp III making the carry across an extremely steep traverse to Camp IV. Two will stay at Camp IV and if the weather holds begin putting in the route to Camp V. It will not be as steep as the traverse, but it will be very long—nearly a 2500-foot gain in altitude, and all above 23,000 feet. We are going to carry loads all the way to Camp VI, about 26,500 feet, without oxygen, because with so few of us it would be nearly impossible to carry enough oxygen bottles (which weigh fourteen pounds each and last for perhaps eight hours climbing) up there to use on anything but the final push above Camp VI to the summit. But we don’t know how many of us will be able to carry loads that high without Os. If we have to carry oxygen bottles up there to use below Camp VI, we will never have enough time and strength to go for the summit—we’ll burn ourselves out on the lower carries.
Jim and I were talking the other day while we were holding down Camp II during a storm that the team has about enough collective strength to keep going until the end of August. If we get the weather and are lucky enough to stay healthy we should get to the summit before then. If we don’t have it by then, it is doubtful we would have enough strength and determination left to continue. We reached Base Camp July 5. We have been on the mountain more than a month now, and by the end of August, two months. That is a long time.
Oh Susanne and Jake, I can’t begin to tell you how hard this is. I can write and write and write and never convey what’s going on here. Doing what we’re doing makes less sense to me now than it did back in Seattle. Not that I ever claimed to understand then, but now nothing I say makes much sense at all. Yet I guess I am glad I am here. There are so many things I miss: the beach and the hot tubs and the red wine and the fresh fruit. But most of all my friends. Although the people on this trip will be friends, I suppose, in one way or another—we’ll have reunions and get together and drink beer and tell lies to each other about what it was like—they’re not the same sort of friends. It’s funny how when you spend too much time with them even the nicest climbers start to drive you crazy. I guess being the “wife of the leader” doesn’t help much.
I wish you two were here so I could talk to you. Can you read between the lines? When I’m plugging on up to Camp III, I think of you—this may sound corny, but that’s what happens to you up here. You get very, very corny and sentimental—and it does make the going a lot easier. I’m not sure how, but somehow I’m ending up not doing this for myself at all. I came over here, I think, to take great photographs and do something dangerous and exciting and courageous so I could be famous, and somehow I’m ending up putting one foot in front of the other—sometimes it’s so hard to put one foot in front of the other—just because I know you are back there at home, and a few other special people, hoping and praying that we make it. Sometimes, except for that, I think I would turn around right now. But I simply cannot abandon all that faith in us. I don’t know why all of you want us to climb it, but somewhere there, there’s a power and strength beyond comprehension. Sometimes I think it is diverted toward a useless goal. But I keep going; and so do the others. And I know I will keep going until I get as high as I can on this mountain, until some one of us, or two or three or more, gets to the top. Or until I can honestly look up and say, “Mountain, you got me.” In either case, I could go home feeling O.K. As much as I want to turn around now, I could never go home and look you in the eye and tell you I quit, knowing I still had strength left to continue.
I miss you both so much.
—Dianne
FROM THE DIARY OF RICK RIDGEWAY
AUGUST 9. We were up early again and made our second carry to Camp IV. Left at 6:30 and arrived in Camp IV at 8:30—two hours flat! We made good speed because much of the route was stamped in from yesterday’s carry, and we were all more familiar with the ropes. It is really the most fun part of the climb so far. On the very steep knife-edge sections the rope loops like bunting from anchor to anchor. When you reach an anchor point you clip around, then let go and fly down the rope until you reach the bottom, then pull yourself up to the next anchor and do the same thing. Hanging over China, about seven thousand feet below, is quite exhilarating too.
John, Lou, Wick, Jim, Cherie, and I all carried loads across; Chris and Skip carried personal gear and will stay in Camp IV and tomorrow begin pushing up toward Camp V.
Craig was supposed to go but he is back in Camp III recovering from a bout of diarrhea. It’s good to see Chris in the lead, and I have my fingers crossed he does a good job getting up to Camp V. That would do a lot to change the low esteem in which he’s held by some of the team—especially Lou and John, and to a lesser extent Wick and Jim, who think he hasn’t been doing his share of the work.
Cherie got across the traverse O.K., but she was the last one. She also left Camp III late—I don’t know why she and Chris keep doing that. Anyway, after
caching gear in Camp IV, cutting new tent platforms, and then inventorying the equipment and food (while Lou, as usual, feeling some inner drive to be out in front, fixed several hundred more feet of rope above Camp IV), we left to return to Camp III about ten. We passed Chris just coming into Camp IV, and he said the traverse was a piece of cake. That made John a little wild. He told Chris sure it was a piece of cake now that the ropes were in and the snow stomped to track like a sidewalk. Then we passed Cherie. I felt guilty. She would be coming back by herself, and it was her first time to cross the traverse. So I told the other guys to go ahead and waited for Cherie to come back. It took quite awhile, but we came back together. I’m glad I did it—little things like that can make us feel more like a team.
Back in Camp III we had a big discussion about whether or not to use oxygen all the way to the summit. Now that Messner and Habeler have climbed Everest without oxygen, there’s no doubt it is humanly possible. But we’ve got harder climbing above Camp VI than they did on Everest. Also, my doubts and fears whether I can do it come back. I remember so well the trouble I had breathing—with oxygen—at twenty-six thousand feet on Everest. It’s still a big concern of mine, but I haven’t told anybody. I’m afraid if I show any doubts it might affect my chance of being chosen for the summit team. Still, I wonder if my body can handle that altitude. And without oxygen—I seriously doubt it.
John is strongly in favor of doing it without Os, and Lou is also. Wick is less certain, having never been to high altitude, but he too likes the idea. No final decisions have been made—we’ll have to wait and see.
Someone said at the end of the discussion it’s time to devise a strategy for supplying Camps IV, V, and VI, and someone else said you can’t figure logistics for the upper mountain until you have a summit plan—and that includes choosing a summit team. We all know Whittaker is thinking about it. It’s on everybody’s mind. It’s getting to be that time.
AUGUST 10. Jim Wickwire rolled over and grabbed the Optimus kerosene stove, rolled toilet paper around the brass burner, and lit it. Once it was primed, he started the stove and balanced on top of it a billy loaded with snow. It was dawn; that day, Wick would make his sixth consecutive trip to Camp IV.
Wick did not have to worry about crawling out of his sleeping bag in the cold morning air: he did not have a sleeping bag. There were extra ones, to be sure, in our equipment reserve at Camp I, but Wick preferred to sleep in an “elephant’s foot”—a half-size, waist-high bag. To protect his torso, he wore a regular parka.
“It’s not as warm,” he had once explained, “but it’s very light. That will be important higher. By sleeping in it now, I won’t get spoiled by a warmer bag.”
With the stove purring, Jim Whittaker—the only other person sharing the tent with Wick that morning at Camp III—rolled over in his sleeping bag, looked at Wick, and spoke the first words:
“Without oxygen?”
“Huh?”
“You guys think you can do it without oxygen? I remember in ’63 making those last difficult steps to the summit of Everest with oxygen, and it was hell.”
“Might be able to,” Wick replied. “Messner and Habeler did. It would sure be nice not to have the weight of those bottles. I don’t know—it might be worth a try.”
Wick finished preparing breakfast. John and I were in a neighboring tent, Craig and Cherie in another. All of us were getting ready for another carry to Camp IV; Craig and Cherie would remain there to help Chris and Skip push up to Camp V.
Whittaker yelled from his tent, “Before you guys leave this morning, why don’t you come over here and we’ll have a meeting.”
Once we had assembled Jim said, “I think we’re getting to the point in the expedition where we can start thinking about the summit attempt. As soon as the route is in to Camp Five, and a few loads carried up, we’ll be ready to go for it. I have given a lot of thought to who should be on the first team. As I’ve said all along, I want to choose the people who have worked the hardest, shown the most strength, and who I think will have the most drive to make it all the way. Unfortunately, there isn’t room for everyone who’s capable—at least not on the first try. After talking with a few of you about our strategy for climbing the steep sections above Camp Six—about the probable need to fix some rope—it looks as if four should be picked for the first attempt.”
We all sat quiet. I looked at my feet, then glanced up and caught John’s eye. This was it: the moment we all had been waiting for.
“I think the first summit team should include Lou Reichardt, Jim Wickwire, Rick Ridgeway, and John Roskelley,” Jim went on.
We all casually nodded approval. John and I glanced at each other again and exchanged barely perceptible winks. None of us were surprised, but it was thrilling to hear what we had been hoping for, officially sanctioned. Still, we wondered how the rest of the team would take it. Craig did not seem disappointed. None of us realized it, but he had been questioning whether he was capable of climbing to the top anyway. He had felt that, in many ways, he had reached the limit of his technical climbing ability just crossing to Camp IV, and had harbored considerable secret doubts about being able to push above Camp VI. Cherie, also—at least outwardly—seemed unmoved; later, we would find out she had been disappointed, not so much because her own chances were diminished, but because she felt Chris had been shortchanged and deserved a place on the summit team.
“There is still the big question of whether you guys use oxygen,” Jim said. “And your decision on that makes a difference to how we stock the next two camps.”
John said, “I know I can do it without oxygen. Messner did it. I don’t want to have to lead that steep section at twenty-seven thousand feet with a fourteen-pound bottle on my back. I’ll try it without.”
“I’ll try it without,” Lou agreed.
“I’ve thought about it too,” Wick said, “and I’ll be willing to try without.”
Everyone looked at me. The doubts raced through my mind.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess if I had to put a number on it, I would say there’s a forty percent chance I could do it without, and a sixty percent chance I couldn’t.”
As soon as I said it I wished I could take it back. I realized it immediately put me in a weak position. Would they drop me from the first summit team? But I had to be honest. And I knew what it was like up there as well as Lou and John did. I was not sure they could do it, either.
My mind raced through the past. I was back on Everest, Camp II, October 4, 1976. We were having a meeting just like this one, and everything got shuffled around. I got put on the second summit team, and we never made it. Winds picked up, Sherpas refused to carry again. In truth, I knew that—even had I been on the first attempt—I never would have made Everest. At twenty-six thousand feet, in spite of using oxygen, my lungs had filled with mucus. Had I been on the first team, I would not have been able to go any higher. I never had known whether it was a bronchial infection or a psychological limitation that had prevented my respiratory system from functioning at those altitudes. Yet here I was, trying to decide whether I could climb that high without oxygen, when I was not even certain I could do it with oxygen. You have to be honest, I had just told myself. Still, if you reveal all your doubts, you will be excluded for sure. Maybe it had just been a bronchial infection . . .
“I want to stay on the first team,” I said firmly. “I’ll go without oxygen.”
Everyone nodded approval. I was relieved that, at least, a decision had been made. Then, almost as an afterthought, Lou added a point that gave me another option.
“We’re overlooking the fact,” he said, “that we’ll need one, preferably two, bottles of Os at Six for emergency medical use. It might not be too hard to haul two more up, and then if we decide to use it above Camp Six, we can. We’ll at least have the choice.”
The wisdom of Lou’s words was obvious. The ultimate decision on oxygen would be made at Camp VI. We would see how we felt at that point.
And if possible, we would climb K2 without it.
The trip to Camp IV became easier each time. With a six-inch- to onefoot-wide ledge stamped in the snow beneath the ropes, it was easy to lean back on the taut lines for balance, then simply walk across the narrow pathway. The whole section was now familiar, and it was possible to make the crossing in just under two hours. For John and me, it was the eighth trip across the traverse; before the end of the expedition I would make eleven round trips—twenty-two crossings in all—and there would be several others with the same record.
John, Wick, Lou, Jim, and I got to Camp IV about the same time as the day before: ten-thirty. Occasionally, we had been able to see Chris and Skip en route to Camp V. But they had not left IV until late—about seven-thirty—and it had been after eight when they reached the top of the rope Lou had fixed a few days earlier. Now they moved slowly across a widened section of ridge broken by ice blocks and crevasses.
We found a note Chris had attached to the one tent in camp:
Cherie and Craig: There is no space here to pitch another tent. Those guys should have put the camp in higher up where there is a better platform. We have two choices: we can crowd into this one tent, or later move the camp up. Later—Chris.
“That’s ridiculous,” Wick countered. “All we have to do is dig another tent platform out of the ridge.”
John was furious. The note was an obvious barb, criticizing our choice of campsite. The rest of us were both perplexed and offended. That Chris was making such slow progress above only added to the insult. Venting our anger, the five of us set to the task of digging another tent platform.
Camp IV was located on what was still very much a narrow ridge; it was necessary to move considerable amounts of snow to widen it enough for a tent platform. Even then, both sides of the tent were exposed to the steep dropoff—one side falling away to China, the other to Pakistan.
The Last Step Page 20
