The Last Step

by Rick Ridgeway

  There was criticism that Jim had been premature in choosing the summit team, that he should have waited until later in the expedition. In retrospect, Jim no doubt agreed with this, since it could have helped prevent the estrangement of nearly half the team, but when he had made the selection—weeks earlier—we had been potentially only a few days away from a summit attempt. No one could have predicted the storms that had so wreaked havoc on that original schedule.

  Jim considered what Terry and Chris said, uncertain what to do about it, until a suggestion from Wick broke the stalemate.

  “If you feel strongly that the summit team was chosen too early, and with the wrong qualifications, why don’t we simply rescind the choice,” he said. “From now on there won’t be a summit team, and we will wait and choose one after Camp Five is stocked and we’re ready for the top. I don’t mind. I still feel strong and have the confidence I can make the team later as well.”

  Everyone looked surprised but nodded their approval of the idea. Terry was the first to ask the obvious question: “Who, then, should choose the summit team?”

  After discussing different possibilities, everyone finally agreed it should be Jim, but that he should consult everyone on the team before making the final choice.

  “That still leaves one problem unresolved,” Terry resumed. “We think we need a plan that allows room for more people to go to the summit. Over the last several days, some of us have worked out such a plan, and that’s what I want to discuss now. I should also add that if this plan hadn’t been developed, and if several of the team hadn’t thought it would be approved, they would have quit the expedition by now. I don’t know if all of you here realize how serious this is.”

  Everyone listened quietly while Terry outlined the plan. Lou sat in a corner, taking notes.

  “Basically, we propose two simultaneous assaults,” Terry said. “One by the direct finish up the northeast ridge—the Polish route—and another by the Abruzzi finish. The Abruzzi assault would most likely consist of the B Team. We think the advantage of this is that it not only gives more people a chance to go to the summit, it also increases support for the direct finish team. We still have doubts it will be possible to complete the direct finish, but if some people do get up it, it would be much easier for them to descend the Abruzzi, especially if another team has marked a route and established a second Camp Six for refuge on the way down.

  “We have figured a detailed list of equipment needed for the simultaneous assault, and we think if we make a coordinated carry to Camp Five as soon as the weather breaks, we can stockpile enough stuff for both assaults.”

  Terry outlined the details of the proposal. Whittaker listened carefully. It would be logistically more complicated: the need for two Camp VI’s meant more supplies would have to be carried to Camp V. Jim’s original fear that the heavier stocking of Camp V for two assaults would delay the summit attempt by at least a day—time that could make all the difference if another storm threatened—was offset by the larger number of people willing to carry to Camp V for a double assault. He realized that was the real value of the plan: it would unite the team, and once again we would work together to a common goal.

  “Also, the plan better guarantees success,” Terry concluded, “because if the direct finish isn’t possible, we’ll have an alternative, backup strategy for getting to the top.”

  “It’s at least consistent with my main goal on this expedition,” Jim concurred, “to get somebody to the top of K2.”

  Everyone nodded agreement. Jim concluded the meeting:

  “We can never forget the thousands of people whose prayers are supporting us in our attempt to climb this mountain,” he said. “We can never forget those thousands of postcards each of us signed.3 In the last mail, there were dozens of letters from all over the country, from people saying they were praying for our success. Saleem just received a radio call from General Butt in Gilgit and he says they are all praying to Allah we will be successful and all come back uninjured.

  “And we can’t forget Al and Dusan and Leif. I know they’re all here, right now, encouraging us on. I think we owe it to them, most of all, to climb K2.”

  There was a quiet inside the cook tent: thoughts were with lost comrades. That evening there was camaraderie the team had not had since arriving at the foot of K2. Complaints about Jim’s lack of leadership had been scattered before the diplomacy he had shown in chairing the meeting.

  “Inshallah [God willing],” Jim had said, “we’ll make the summit together.”

  A LETTER FROM DIANNE ROBERTS TO SUSANNE AND JAKE PAGE

  August 23, 1978

  Dear Susanne and Jake,

  Well, the weather has stopped us—really stopped us. I fear that summer has turned to winter, and our supplies might run out before we get the four to five days of clear weather that we need to complete the climb. The team is still in good shape in most respects, but there is no question we are getting gradually weaker from such a long time at high altitude. I know I can go back to Camp III, carry loads to Camp IV and V, and maybe even to Camp VI, but if you ask me to do it twice, I’m not sure. Can we last into September if we have to? There is an old rule of thumb on Himalayan climbs: if you don’t get the mountain in forty-five days, you don’t get it at all. We arrived in Base Camp July 5: fifty days ago today. Psychologically I think we have some problems. A few people are homesick—not enough to keep them off the mountain, but it shows in their motivation. I think most everyone still wants the summit, and will work to get someone there, but there are a few who would be just as happy to go home now without it. We have also split, perhaps inevitably, into two groups. I’m not sure how or why this happened, but it has to do with styles, personalities, and moralities. Jim is doing his best to keep the group together—doing a good job, I think—but he is taking a lot of flak from a lot of people. Perhaps that’s the lot of a leader.

  Right now we’re trying to work out logistics for two simultaneous summit attempts with slightly different routes from Camp VI to the summit. Personally, I lean towards throwing all our eggs in one basket and heavily backing one summit team with a support party in position to move up the following day. But we have so many prima-donnas who think they can walk to the top of this thing. No one could agree on a summit team and when Jim tried to name one the others called “foul” and more or less refused to carry loads for the first team. Mo Antoine, a British climber (one of the best) whom we met on the approach march, commented (rather prophetically, as it turned out), “The reason not many of you Americans get to the top of your mountains is that you’re too damn democratic.”

  We had a good meeting this evening. A lot of mudslinging, but feelings had to come out. Jim (bless his heart) took a lot of mud in the face, and tried to pull people together. Maybe it worked—we’ll have to wait and see. All we really need is the weather. With a few clear days we would have had the summit long ago, I know it. When a bunch of independent s.o.b.’s (i.e., mountain climbers) get stuck in their tents for days on end, something weird happens to their rationality. Rather than blaming situations on fate, or the luck of the draw, or simply accepting them, people start feeling victimized. All the fine qualities that emerge when people are working hard towards a single goal somehow disappear, replaced by suspicion and vindictiveness. Sigh. I think we still have the strength and desire to climb the mountain (God knows, those of us who have worked on this thing for five years surely don’t want to go home without it, unless we’re truly beaten—which we’re not yet), but it is going to be a delicate operation for Jim to keep people together. We are all still talking to each other, which is a good sign.

  No one has openly threatened to leave, though I heard rumors a couple of people wanted to a few days ago. If only we could have five clear days, five days of clear, or even mostly clear, weather, five days to make a mad rush from Camp I to the summit, in whatever combinations of people, by whatever route, I would be delighted, even if someone I hated (which is, fortunately, no
one on the team—yet) got to the top. In the long run we would all share in the achievement, and eventually everyone would forget the petty squabbles anyway.

  I hope by the time you get this letter you have read in the newspaper we made the top and we are on our way home. I guess we will settle, though, for whatever the fates dish out. And whatever happens, I have learned a lot about myself (probably even more before it’s over), and I had some good times. But, by God, I need a bath and a manicure and a pedicure and a haircut, and I’m dying to put on a beautiful, expensive dress and leaf through Vogue magazine. I need to listen to a real symphony instead of the eighty-ninth rerun of Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, not to mention the soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever—AARGH!—on our tape machine here in camp. I need to drink some good wine, eat a salad, I want to lie in the grass someplace where it’s warm enough to stay out in the rain with no clothes on. I need to have ten bouquets of fresh flowers in the house at the same time. I want to sleep for twenty-four hours in a bed with a mattress and cool cotton sheets. I’ll be home soon, but not soon enough.

  —Dianne

  For two days after the big meeting the storm continued. From the twenty-one-thousand-foot level up, K2 remained shrouded in clouds. Away from the peak, occasional holes opened to blue sky, but toward Concordia the clouds, if anything, thickened. The spirit in camp, at least for the first day after the meeting, remained affable, and there was laughing and joking in the cook tent at meal times. “For the first time in weeks everyone is talking to everyone else in the most amiable terms,” Wick wrote in his journal.

  Still, the truce was shaky at best. With nothing else to do while the storm raged on, each faction, the A Team and the B Team, scurried around lobbying support, as if at a political convention, for their summit effort. It appeared Bill Sumner was finally entrenched with the B Team, but Lou managed to persuade Craig Anderson to carry for the A Team. Skip Edmonds, who did not envision himself in any frontline summit effort, leaned more toward the B Team.

  Two nights after the big meeting, there was another gathering in the cook tent to discuss further logistic details; it ended with both Lou and Chris stomping out in protest. Chris left first because Lou had persisted in objecting to the concept of a dual summit assault, arguing that the upper mountain would be so difficult, and the anticipated window of good weather so short, that everyone’s efforts would be needed to get just one party to the top. Lou pushed for a decision there and then on one route only: either the Abruzzi or the direct finish. Terry held out for his dual-assault plan; both he and Chris had begun to refer to part of the provisions in Camp IV, and the equipment cached halfway to Camp V that Terry, Cherie, and Bill had carried before the storm, as “our” food and “our” oxygen. Wick took exception to this language, saying the supplies did not belong to anybody or any group. He felt the major weakness in Terry’s plan was that it assumed ten people, whether summit climbers or support climbers, would go all the way to Camp VI.

  “It’s just preposterous to believe that ten of us can go to twenty-six thousand, three hundred feet,” Wick said. “It’s sheer fantasy.”

  “But if we don’t try,” Terry replied, “if we opt for only one push now, several people will be severely demoralized. We’ve got to keep the dual assault idea open.”

  “Well,” Wick concluded, “the mountain is going to sort out how many can get to Camp Six. And I don’t think we’ll see anywhere close to ten make it.”

  Lou saw no compromise in sight and left the tent. Lou was pressured by more than just his own conviction that limited weather and limited team strength allowed for only a single assault: he also felt pressure from John and me to head back up the mountain as quickly as possible to organize one last push for the summit. He was still offended by the manner in which we had flatly dismissed his own summit plan, and he felt there were schisms in the A Team as deep and as serious as splits in the expedition as a whole. He particularly felt a growing distance between John and himself. With so many previous common experiences, they had started the K2 expedition as close pals, anticipating yet another shared adventure. More importantly, their friendship had been based on a mutual respect: Lou looked to John as America’s foremost mountaineer, and John saw Lou as a man who—in combining a distinguished climbing record with a brilliant career in neurobiology—had impressed him as the most versatile, brilliant, and accomplished person he had ever known. Now, the potential damage to this mutual respect bothered Lou more than any of the other strifes.

  After giving up our impractical plan to climb K2 by ourselves, John and I had, in the frequent radio calls, repeatedly emphasized the necessity of moving people back into position as quickly as possible at the first sign of good weather. We had reluctantly descended to Camp III so we could break trail down to Camp II as soon as the weather permitted; with the trail opened for the others, our plan was to go back up that same day, moving straight through to Camp IV. Everything to save time. That way, we believed we could break to Camp V the following day, with the others moving in behind us a day later. But Lou had something else in mind. If he and a few others who—in his opinion—would have the strength to push in one day from Camp I to Camp IV would rendezvous there with John and me, we could all go together the next day to Camp V. That would save one whole day, which could make the critical difference if, as in the past, the next period of good weather was short.

  Lou’s next decision was what he would later call a “terrible mistake.” He had queried Wick to see if Wick considered himself strong enough for such a demanding one-day push; Wick thought he could do it, and agreed with the value of saving precious time. Lou had then asked Craig, whom Lou considered the strongest climber outside the A Team. It would be a climb from eighteen thousand feet to twenty-three thousand feet carrying a load—an extremely demanding goal. Craig agreed; he also saw the advantage of the extra day gained. Wick mentioned the plan to Jim, who supported the idea. But Lou decided, and the others agreed, not to let the rest of the team know of their plan.

  Lou’s main reason for keeping the plan quiet was to postpone the furor he suspected would be sparked by any departure from the agreed-upon dual assault strategy; he had the notion that once everyone arrived in Camp V, criticisms—and ambitions—would be mollified by the realities of climbing at extreme altitude. He was also influenced by the more or less prevalent attitude that each group was making its own decisions, soliciting its own support, recruiting its own load carriers; if his group wanted to speed its own design by one day, he thought, that was their business and no one else’s. Lou arranged to radio John and me that evening at a time when no one else would be monitoring: we agreed it was a good plan, if it could be pulled off. Lou mentioned it would be done without lengthy debates and discussions with the rest of the team. After turning off the radio, I turned to John: “I’ve got my doubts they can make it all the way in one day, though.”

  “Talk’s cheap,” John agreed. “I’ll believe it when I see them in Four.”

  Lou organized loads and listed the gear that would have to be packed up from Camps II and III and ferried to Camp IV. One crucial item, in the possession of Chris Chandler, was the wrench to tighten oxygen regulators. Lou went to Chris and asked for it.

  “Don’t worry,” Chris said. “I’ve got it packed and I’ll make sure it comes up with me.”

  Lou gave Chris some explanation about testing regulators for leaks, and Chris handed it over. Later, Chris related the incident to Cherie, who began to suspect something was up. She knew there had been a clandestine radio call, and also, Lou had flatly declined their offer to break trail to Camp III. In the past Lou frequently had assumed that job; he told them he would be leaving at 4:30 a.m. and he would break the trail himself. Cherie’s suspicions increased when she learned Wick and Craig were also planning to leave at 4:30, but she did not go so far as to suspect any new design on the part of the A Team. Regrettably, Lou and the others involved failed to realize just how serious were to be the repercussions—the fe
elings of betrayal and of being duped—when the B Team learned Lou and the others had climbed through Camp III and were on their way to Camp IV.

  No one, however, was going anywhere until the storm ended or at least lessened in severity. Not surprisingly, our continued imprisonment in small tents was affecting morale. Even Jim Wickwire’s optimism flagged. Early on the morning of August 25 he wrote:

  We are at the mercy of the weather. The continuation of the storm has forced a realization that I may walk out of here in three weeks without having climbed the mountain. We have only about that much food left, and several of the team members are so homesick that three more weeks is about all they can withstand. Tonight at dinner it was agreed to order the return porters to arrive by September 10.

  I remember the gradual realization in 1975 that we would not climb the mountain. It was painful after all the dreaming, hoping, and planning. That time is again approaching. In the past thirty-three days we have had seven days of clear weather. If September 10 is the cutoff, we have seventeen days to climb the mountain. Of that seventeen, we need seven good days. The odds are heavily against us. We are not defeated yet, but our backs are to the wall.

  Later that evening the storm clouds rapidly—miraculously—cleared. Stars glistened, brilliant in a sky as clear as space. Wick made another entry in his journal just before turning in:

  A sudden 180-degree turn in the weather. We are going for it in the a.m. Lou and I, along with Craig, are leaving at first light—4:30. Jim and Dianne will follow. The rest will come later. Our plan is to go from here to Camp IV tomorrow in one long day. The HAPS believe the good weather will be short. We’ve got to make maximum use of it. Jim gave me the microfilm list of names to leave on the summit. God give me the strength to meet the rigorous demands of the next few days.

  Wick had no idea just how rigorous those demands were going to be. With the sudden clearing of the weather his depression also cleared. That evening, he concluded his long journal entry with his customary words to his wife, the woman from whom—in the weeks ahead—he would derive the strength to survive: