“How you doing?” John asked Chris when he caught up with us.
“O.K.,” Chris replied laconically. “My load is heavy.”
“Yeah, so’s ours,” John said, with the clear suggestion we were not only carrying loads, but breaking trail as well.
“Have some lunch,” Lou offered.
Chris sat down. We glanced at each other, not speaking. I felt the distance between us was now a gap too wide to span: I was on the A Team, Chris was on the B Team, and our courses were inexorably destined to part.
We finished lunch in silence.
“Care to take a lead?” John asked Chris.
“My pack is too heavy. I’ve got a big load,” Chris answered. “It’s all I can do to keep up.”
“O.K.,” John said. He prepared to lead the next section. We fell into a mindless routine. John, Lou, and I switched leads, with Lou pushing farther than John or me each time. We were soon more than halfway up the dome and knew we would reach our goal in time to return to camp before dark. Behind we could see the other three: Bill had turned back, apparently caching his load partway; Terry and Cherie were also a long distance behind, moving very slowly, and it seemed unlikely they would reach Camp V in time to get back down. We were discouraged—it minimized further the value of our efforts stomping the trail all the way to the top of the dome. It looked as though the only major benefit from our effort would be, as Lou had said, the psychological boost to the expedition’s morale.
For most of the way up the dome we climbed simultaneously, the four of us tied together on one rope. At a crevassed section, however, we would stop to belay the first man across before the others followed. Lou was leading and called for a belay before exploring a bridge over a crevasse partially buried by snow. Chris braced himself and fed the rope from around his waist to Lou. John and I stood by, resting. Lou probed the crevasse with his ice ax, searching for a secure crossing. For a minute no one said anything; we just stared at the clouds sweeping up the east side of K2. Then John suddenly piped up:
“I’ve got nothing against you personally, Chris, and even though I don’t imagine we could ever be good friends, I think we can clear this up enough so we can get along for the rest of the trip.”
I glanced at John. In his usual style he was saying exactly what was on his mind, and for a moment I admired his ability to bring things into the open. I thought perhaps we could air our grievances and mend them. Chris nodded his agreement. My sanguinity vaporized with John’s next comment:
“But there’s one thing I’ve got to get clear. I don’t like you and Cherie blaming Rick and me for what has been going on between you and her. It’s clear to everyone what’s been going on.”
Oh, no, I thought. Here we go again.
Lou, fifty feet above us and oblivious to the conversation, went on exploring the crevasse. Chris shot back in defense:
“That’s not the way I understand it. According to a lot of people on this expedition, you and Rick are responsible for the rumors and most of the mess.”
“Who said we were responsible?” John shot back, his voice rising.
“Whittaker for one. And most of the others.”
“That’s bull. It’s been obvious to everyone what’s been going on—all you need is two eyes. Rick and I were no more responsible for it than anyone.”
My mind quickly thumbed through the scenario. Things had been going on of which John and I were not aware. It sounded as if others, not just Chris and Cherie, had blamed us for raising the issue. We both felt wronged, taking all the blame.
Chris belayed the rope out to Lou while arguing with John. I stood watching as they bitterly accused and counter-accused one another of being responsible for the divisions in the team; occasionally, I glanced up to see how Lou was doing. Lou still seemed unaware of the argument; he was engrossed in the job of reaching the other side of the crevasse.
Suddenly the rope went taut and I looked up. Lou was gone, disappeared down the crevasse. The sharp pull momentarily threw Chris off balance, but he quickly recovered and held the rope. Both he and John saw Lou had broken through the bridge and was in the crevasse. But they turned back, face to reddened face, and resumed their argument.
“Hold the belay and I’ll climb up to see if he’s O.K.,” I hollered.
Chris did not so much as nod, but held the rope tight as if by instinct. He was so absorbed in the argument it was as if he were not aware of the problem.
“I don’t see what my personal life or my personal business has to do with the expedition anyway,” Chris yelled at John. “It has nothing to do with whether we get up this mountain or not.”
“That’s just more bull,” John yelled back, eyes flaring. “We’re in this thing together, and it affects us all.”
I climbed as quickly as I could toward Lou, but at twenty-five thousand feet I was necessarily moving slowly. I shouted to Lou, but there was no response and no sign of him. I stopped for a few seconds to catch my breath, looked up to see the rope disappearing bar-taut down a hole in the snow, then looked the other way to Chris and John wildly yelling at each other. Chris still had the rope tightly belayed around his waist. Both of them ignored Lou’s predicament.
“And what about you and Diana?” Chris yelled. “You’ve been sleeping in the same tent most of the trip. Tell me about that.”
John and Diana had developed a close friendship and had often bunked in the same tent. But everyone knew their camaraderie went no further. Quite apart from John’s fidelity and conservatism, we all knew how much Diana still loved Dusan, and how strongly she felt Dusan’s presence on the expedition. That she would be with anyone else was simply unimaginable.
“At least I can deny that,” John shot back. “Go ahead and deny that there’s been something between you and Cherie.”
“I don’t have to deny anything to you,” Chris yelled.
I was nearly at the hole into which Lou’s rope disappeared, with John and Chris still arguing heatedly. Just before I peeked over the lip, out popped Lou’s head, like a seal surfacing, disoriented, through a hole in pack ice. His goggles were pushed down over his nose, his glasses under the goggles packed with snow. He could not see. Snow clung to his hair and beard. I stared at Lou, then down at Chris and John still yelling at each other, not even noticing that Lou had surfaced. It was like a Jerry Lewis comedy act. I started to laugh at the absurdity, which seemed to confuse Lou all the more.
“You O.K.?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t expect the bridge to break. Guess I better move over to the right.” Still half hanging in the crevasse, he removed his glasses and cleaned them. Then he said, “What’s going on down there, anyway?”
“A little argument,” I said, and turned to climb back to Chris and John, still blustering at each other. Lou crawled out of his hole, dusted the snow off his hair, and headed on up, crossing the bridge at a more secure spot farther right. The rope went tight, forcing Chris to start climbing. He yelled at John as he climbed, turning back now and then to make his points.
“I’m just sick of your applying your redneck values to everyone on the expedition,” Chris shouted back.
“At least I have values,” John screamed.
Losing patience, I yelled, “God, I’m getting sick of this. I wonder if we’re ever going to learn to act our ages on this climb.”
Chris turned back to climbing; the exertion of climbing and arguing simultaneously at nearly twenty-five thousand feet was too much, and he continued in silence. There were still fifteen more feet of slack rope before John would have to start up.
“You know,” I said to John, “sometimes you ought to watch your temper and think a little before you start saying stuff.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got to say what’s on my mind.”
“I noticed the habit.”
The rope paid out and John started climbing. In a few minutes our minds were again lost in the drudgery of placing one boot in front of the other and slowly, slowly
climbing. At the end of another hour we made the last steps to the top of the snow dome. It was Camp V.
We were fortunate to have on the expedition a person with the unwavering drive of Lou Reichardt. Without him we probably would have turned back low on the snow dome. As Lou had predicted, another delay from the new storm brewing, coupled with another failure to reach camp, would have so disillusioned us that it is conceivable we might not have mustered the spirit to go on. Reaching Camp V that day was a small success that nourished the stamina we would need to weather the extremely difficult trials that still lay ahead.
As we descended from the top of the snow dome, where we had located the cache that would eventually become Camp V, it looked more and more like another storm was on its way in. Clouds moved swiftly up the east side of K2, sweeping over our ridge and off into China. Flurries of snow danced on the wind. The arrival of this latest round of bad weather seemed to fit the pattern: there had been four days of good weather, and if the usual cycle we had observed since our arrival on K2 was repeated, there would follow five to seven days of bad weather. I began to prepare myself mentally to spend more days inside the tent, perhaps even to go all the way down to Camp I.
Through breaks in the clouds we could catch the occasional glimpse of Terry and Cherie still climbing up the lower part of the dome. There was no way they could make the top. They had been moving too slowly; they would have to cache their loads, come back, and finish carrying them up another time. We were descending rapidly and in a few minutes crossed paths.
Cherie was defensive about not getting the loads up.
“We didn’t get started until nine,” she said, “because we were watching you guys lead to the pinnacle, and it didn’t seem like you were going to make it. Then Bill turned around and I wasn’t tied to anyone so I had to wait two hours at the base of the dome for Terry to come so I could have somebody to rope with. And, you know, we had very heavy loads and we had to leave some of it back there.”
She pointed down the route to a cache some distance away. I was losing my temper. John was also upset. Lou had not even stopped to talk—he was already a hundred yards farther down the trail. I was angry that not only would the loads not be delivered to Camp V, but equipment was strewn all over the mountain; if this next storm was a big one, the gear might be lost under new snow.
“Why didn’t you just carry light—thirty pounds or so—to begin with?” I asked. “It would have been much better to get a smaller amount to Camp Five than to have stuff littered all over the hill where it will probably get lost.”
“Well, if there had been more time I could have made it,” Cherie protested. “I feel good right now, and it’s only another hour up there, huh?”
“Try three and a half,” I said caustically.
“Well, with more time we could have done it,” she said in a voice so confident it betrayed an underlying uncertainty. “We’ll just have to come back tomorrow and carry up there.”
In my anger I failed to understand their point of view. We had all agreed that they should not leave Camp IV until we had made some progress, to avoid a logjam—so it was understandable they had a late start. But I was not thinking rationally.
“Better mark your cache with careful coordinates,” I said. “And I wouldn’t count on getting it to Camp Five in the near future.”
By then it was snowing steadily. John had already put on his pack and left. I grabbed my empty sack and took off, soon losing sight of everyone in the diminishing visibility and finding my way by following our tracks, which were slowly filling with new snow. The wind ceased. Descending alone with only the silence of big snowflakes floating down put me in a better mood.
When we got back to Camp IV we radioed the day’s success to the others at various positions lower on the mountain. As expected, the news was enthusiastically received and seemed, at least temporarily, to buoy spirits despite the building snowstorm. Rob Schaller, still in Camp I with his knee injury, radioed back his impression of this latest storm:
“We haven’t had one like this before. It’s warmer than ever—sort of mixed rain and snow—and it’s coming down very hard. But the sky is bright and the air temp is up twenty degrees. It’s remarkably warm down here.”
Perhaps that meant the storm would be shorter. There was no real evidence on which to base such a hope except that this storm seemed different. Which could also mean it would be longer. All we could do was cross our fingers.
Our discussion about how best to deal with the worsening weather started that evening and continued into the next morning. It snowed through the night, and since there were all the signs the storm would last at least a couple of days, the next morning we decided everyone should go down and wait in Camp III, or lower, except for two who should stay in Camp IV to open the trail back up the snow dome the minute the weather broke. An argument ensued—partly over the radio—over who should stay high and who should descend.
“I don’t mean anything personal,” Jim offered, speaking over the walkie-talkie, “but if people can’t earn their keep up here and deliver loads to Camp Five, they should go down. That’s my completely objective opinion of how we can best get to the top of this mountain.”
Jim knew, however, it would not be taken that way. He was now particularly sensitive to hurting the feelings of Bill Sumner, who had made less distance than anyone the day before. Jim had earlier chewed him out over the radio and ordered him to descend, in language that allowed little doubt of its meaning and left everyone feeling glum. Jim later apologized for his outburst, but the damage was done.
Bill told us he had turned around so soon because he thought the weather was rapidly deteriorating and we would not make it to Camp V; since he wanted to cache his load where it could be easily found, even after heavy snowfall, he had left it at the top of the last fixed rope. He also candidly admitted, however, that he was exhausted and not certain he could have made it to the top of the snow dome at any rate. It was sad to see Bill running out of gas, and it seemed his spirit and enthusiasm were also flagging. For some reason I felt the cause was not merely the difficulty he had climbing at high altitude, but also the distaste he felt for what he considered petty squabbling and bickering. Most of the time Bill stayed apart from the arguments, the philosophical observer watching and taking notes, but not participating.
Until the push to Camp V, I suspected Bill had harbored hopes of getting a chance to try for the summit. He had voiced as much the week before in Camp I when he told Bob Schaller he felt he had not been fairly considered for the first summit team, or even the second. Now, however, he seemed to be realizing his own limitations, which no doubt added to his disillusionment.
A few days earlier, Wick had written:
Bill seems extremely lethargic lately. He was a fine companion on McKinley, and there have been many good moments with him on this expedition. Yet he now seems preoccupied much of the time—he doesn’t seem happy here. Maybe, like most of us, he is better in smaller groups—on smaller expeditions. All the personality clashes, the stresses, the intrigues, may have gotten him down. He seems to be merely going through the motions, exerting a minimum effort to get someone to the top so it will be over and he can go home.
Bill Sumner refused to go home, however, taking no valuable experiences with him. Early in the expedition he told Wick that, even more important to him than reaching the summit, was his friendship with the HAPS and Saleem, the knowledge he had gained of their culture and religion, the personal closeness with these affable people from the remote valleys of Hunza. Bill had achieved that friendship more than any of us. For Bill, though, active participation in the front lines of the climb was over.
Chris did not agree with my opinion that those not able to carry to Camp V should immediately go down:
“You’re judging people on their performance for one day only,” he said. “You might want to consider giving people more of a break than that.”
“Yeah,” Cherie added. “I’m getting s
ick of hearing about this muscle business all the time. Anybody can make it to Camp Five when they’re only carrying twenty-five pounds.”
“Twenty-five pounds?” I roared back, incredulous.
John sat up in his sleeping bag with a scowl on his face, and I saw Lou also turn his head. We were talking through tent walls: Lou, John, and I in one tent; Cherie, Chris, Terry, and Bill in the other. Cherie had hit an exposed nerve, and she knew it. She did it on purpose just to tease; she knew we had carried more than twenty-five pounds the previous day to Camp V. She knew it was an even more sensitive subject because when we arrived at Camp V Chris unloaded his pack, and we saw only five food bags—about forty pounds. That was little more than the weight of our own loads, and we had done all the exhausting step-kicking, exempting Chris because we thought he had much more weight. Although no complaints had been spoken, Cherie was well aware of our disparaging opinion of Chris’s performance.
“Listen, Cherie,” I went on. “John had two bottles of oxygen and a sleeping bag [about thirty-five pounds], Lou had a tent and a bunch of sleeping bags [certainly over thirty-five pounds], and I had a rope and a bunch of hardware [about thirty-five pounds].”
“You know that’s a bunch of bull,” John swore through the tent wall. “Twenty-five pounds!”
Lou was piqued as well. He was ready to fire his own salvo through the nylon barrier. Then we heard Cherie laughing—at our expense.
“I thought that would get a rise out of you,” she said.
The Last Step Page 24
