The Last Step

by Rick Ridgeway

  Wick had spelled out careful coordinates to locate the cache; he had assumed the gear would be covered by snow and had located it under a feature in the rock he thought would signpost the cache. We traced the coordinates and started to dig. Two feet, three feet, four feet. We worked sideways, expanding the hole. When that failed, we probed other directions. Half an hour passed, then an hour. It was five o’clock—it would be dark in a little over an hour—and we were so weary from the day’s climb, and the subsequent digging, I wondered how we would find energy to continue the next day, even if we did locate the gear. We were also very cold, and we were worried about frostbite, especially John, whose feet had lost feeling.

  “I’m going to pitch the tent and set up camp,” he said. “My feet are going—I’ve got to get them warmed.”

  “I’ll keep digging,” I said, despair in my voice.

  We had called Wick and Lou on the radio to ask for any further information that might help locate the cache, but they hadn’t been able to give us any more detail than we already had. Their radio’s batteries were also running down, and their transmission was garbled. It looked like we would soon lose radio contact.

  John had the tent pitched and unpacked our gear.

  “Rick, my feet are bad. I’m afraid they’re going. Could you warm them?”

  I stopped digging and wearily looked over to the tent. John was inside, removing his boots. I had also lost feeling in my feet, and worse, my torso was quivering—my body temperature was dropping. There seemed little chance we could locate the cache.

  “Sure,” I said.

  John put his iced toes against my belly. The ends of some of his toes were already missing, amputated from frostbite suffered on Dhaulagiri, and his feet were therefore more sensitive and susceptible to cold.

  “Wish we had a hot drink—any kind of liquid,” I said. I was already feeling the enervation of dehydration, and I felt like the caricature of the man in rags, dying of thirst, crawling across the desert—a desert of ice.

  “We can’t make it tomorrow if we don’t rehydrate.”

  “I know,” John said.

  I was still shaking, but I managed to partially cover with my parka, and I put my legs in my sleeping bag while still keeping John’s feet on my belly. Wick called again, his voice broken by the failing radio.

  “We still have not located the cache,” we reported.

  “Five feet . . . end of rock point . . . point sticks out . . . go out five feet.”

  “We’re in the right place, I think,” John said to me. “Maybe we just have to go deeper. There was a lot of snow that last storm. It could be buried deep.”

  “Maybe,” I said despondently. I had nearly given up; there seemed so many things conspiring against us—Wick and Lou’s failure to reach the Abruzzi, the soft snow, avalanche danger, and now no cache.

  “I’m going out to look again,” he said. He took his feet off my stomach, pulled on his socks, and worked into his cold boots. It was admirable determination.

  I was just beginning to warm, but I felt too guilty to stay in the tent. It was nearly dark; we had ten or fifteen minutes of light remaining. I got out of my sleeping bag, put on my boots, and was just ready to crawl out of the tent.

  “Got it!” John yelled. “Here’s a cartridge, and another. And a food bag.”

  “Thank God,” I said. John handed me fuel cartridges and food from the deep hole, and I carried them back to the tent. By the time we were back in our bags it was dark, but now we had new hope. And we had hot liquid.

  We took the first hot water and divided it between drinks and a hot bottle to place inside John’s bag, next to his feet. He was still worried about frostbite, but the warm water quickly restored feeling and he thought he hadn’t suffered any tissue damage.

  We continued the hours-long job of melting snow for drinks, and we managed to force down a dehydrated dinner. At eight thousand meters the water was not hot enough to properly rehydrate the meal, and we had neither time nor fuel to cook the food. Somehow John managed to finish his; I could only get halfway through.

  It was so cold, so bitterly cold. The night was brilliant, though, and the weather looked better than it had in weeks. If only the snow were firm above, we might be able to do it.

  The flame from the stove cast a blue light in the tent. There was no moon. Deep shadows outlined our gear—the sleeping bags and parkas, the boots, crampons, mittens, overboots, miscellaneously scattered and heaped.

  “Another brew ready,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Two more liters and we can fill our bottles, then get some sleep.”

  John propped on his arm and drank his cocoa. We continued to melt snow. I was frequently forgetting to breathe fast enough, and I would have to take several rapid, deep breaths to overcome the claustrophobia of hypoxia. We were in such an alien place, such a hostile environment. I thought, We are bedded down at the highest camp, Camp VI, eight thousand meters. The magic number; the no-man’s-land of extreme altitude where you have so short a time to survive. We have entered, I thought, the place known to climbers as the death zone.

  “We’ve got to start early,” I said. “We should get the stove going at one-thirty.”

  “I’ll let you know when it gets that time,” John said.

  “What time is it now?”

  John looked at his watch. “Twelve-thirty,” he said.

  “One-thirty,” John said.

  “O.K.”

  I wasn’t asleep, but more in a mental limbo, a subliminal twilight between conscious and subconscious, and slowly my brain closed whatever synapses were necessary to bring my awareness back to the reality of preparing myself to leave the tent and climb to the top of K2. I didn’t want to. It was too cold. I knew if I went out there, in the predawn, my fingers and my toes would freeze and they would be amputated.

  I lay quiet. I knew John was wondering if I would start the stove. We had slept heads at opposite ends, and the stove, and the snow for melting, were at my end. It was my duty; I had to do it.

  I propped up and fumbled for the lighter, located the stove, and ignited the hissing butane. Even the few seconds needed for that simple procedure had numbed my fingers, and I eagerly warmed them over the flame. I had a headache and felt the nausea, and I did not have to pee. We were dehydrated already.

  With the water heating, I lay back down and thought about what was to come. It seemed such a slim chance we could do it. Perhaps with this extreme cold, perhaps the snow conditions would be more firm above, perhaps in the direct sun yesterday the snow had melted, and now was frozen solid. Who could say? We would soon find out.

  The weary job of heating water, warming boots and mittens, drinking brews, and nibbling food—candy bars and an Instant Breakfast—took until nearly dawn. I knew we were taking too long. Somehow there was not enough spark to drive us faster; somehow I knew, although I tried not to admit it, we were defeated. John felt the same, but also did not admit it. We had to go through the motions.

  We crawled out of the tent at 6:15—much, much too late. It took another thirty minutes to unravel the seven-millimeter rope—a task we should have done the day before. Without words we packed ice screws, pickets, deadmen, pitons. John tied into the climbing rope, and I took the other end and did the same.

  “I’ll lead the first pitch,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  I sat on my pack, braced against a snow bank, and belayed the rope while John climbed around the big serac under which we had pitched our tent. Around the serac we would have our first close look at the steep snow and ice fields leading up the direct finish. John slowly plowed through the deep drift at the base of the serac and disappeared around the corner. I waited, paying out rope. Then he yelled:

  “Take in the slack.”

  He came back around the corner.

  “No good. Extreme avalanche condition, and the snow is too deep at any rate to make headway.”

  The despair I felt all morning
jelled to the realization we would now fail to climb K2. It seemed too overpowering to grasp.

  “Let me look.”

  I climbed out around the corner and continued past John’s swath in the soft snow several yards. The angle of the upper slope was ideal for avalanches; the deep snow seemed ready to break loose. John was right. Still, I couldn’t accept it. Should we try to force our way up? Even though we knew there was no chance of making it and we would be taking extreme risk? It didn’t make much sense. I climbed back to John.

  We untied and went back in the tent, saying nothing. John picked up the radio for the 8:00 a.m. call.

  “Too risky,” he reported. “It’s not worth the risk.”

  We could hear Rob Schaller’s voice from Camp I, nine thousand feet below.

  “We saw an avalanche come down the big snowfield above Camp Six,” he reported, confirming our suspicions of unstable conditions.

  Jim Whittaker, monitoring the call at Camp III where he was still waiting with Dianne, came on the air. In a solemn, weary voice he said, “Well, I guess that’s it. We gave it a hell of a try.”

  | 10 |

  AT THE EDGE

  SEPTEMBER 5. CAMP V. 5:45 A.M.

  The small butane stove hissed and its blue flame—a lonely island of heat in a sea of cold—warmed the water that, once brought to steam, was then mixed with cocoa powder. Lou Reichardt drank the hot potion quickly, then mixed another cup of the steaming water with a package of Instant Breakfast. With a candy bar, a few sticks of beef jerky, and a small portion of granola with freeze-dried blueberries, Lou finished breakfast. It was the most food he would eat at any one time for the next two days: the major sustenance that would fuel the most difficult physical effort of his life.

  At that moment, though, Lou still had no idea he would get a chance to make that effort, and certainly neither did his two tent companions, Jim Wickwire and Terry Bech. The previous night at Camp V—following their failure to cross to the Abruzzi—had for all three of them been extremely depressing. The chances of reaching the summit, they realized, were more distant than ever; still, they couldn’t give up; they would make one more try. They had two options: either try once more to cross to the Abruzzi, despite the waist-deep snow, or climb up and join John and me on the direct finish. Both options, however, seemed grim.

  After we had parted ways the previous morning—John and I continuing up toward the direct finish, the other three splitting direction to the Abruzzi—Lou had started in the lead and encountered the same deep snow John and I had battled all that day. It was slow, very slow. Finally Wick took over, and waded up to his waist. They rested, and Lou again took over, but floundered in the bottomless, wet snow. It was nearly four o’clock—too late to possibly reach Camp VI Abruzzi, at their slow rate still hours away.

  “If we could just reach the end of that ice cliff it might be better from there,” Lou said, indicating a long wall of ice under which they had been traversing.

  They wondered, soft snow notwithstanding, if there was even a passage around the ice cliff, beyond where they could see. It seemed likely, but they couldn’t be certain. Once they reached the shoulder above the Abruzzi Ridge, they would be on territory previously explored by other climbers, and from having read their accounts, Lou and Wick would have a reasonably accurate idea where the final route would go. But on the traverse Lou, Wick, and Terry were crossing the only true virgin ground we would explore on our expedition, and the connection of the northeast and the Abruzzi shoulder of K2 would be our claim to routefinding.

  “Yeah, I think we’ll join the Abruzzi just around that corner,” Wick agreed, “assuming we can find a passage through. But I don’t see how we can get there before dark at this rate. And if the snow isn’t any better around the corner . . . ”

  “Maybe we should go back and join John and Rick.”

  “Maybe.”

  There was no choice but to turn back. In silence the three returned to the fork where our two tracks parted, and from there they could see John and me still struggling to reach Camp VI Direct. That was when Wick yelled to us, telling us of their defeat.

  “Let’s leave the tent, oxygen, and food here,” Lou said. “We can pick them up in the morning.”

  They returned to Camp V, and there was some talk of going up and joining John and me at Camp VI that afternoon, but they realized they were too tired from the day’s effort to make another carry, even if we had a good trail stomped in the snow. It was a depressing evening; everything seemed grim. There was only one more day’s food remaining at Camp V. The weather had clouded again that afternoon, and it seemed possible it might worsen. John and I had radioed we could not find the cache, and without it we would have to abandon our attempt. Cherie was still in Camp V suffering from a cough and was in constant violent paroxysms. That evening Wick noted in his journal:

  We are so close, yet so far. Deep snow, cold, lack of support from below. Tonight depressed about our chances. We are way out on a limb.

  The following morning, after a brief breakfast on slim rations, the three prepared to leave Camp V still undecided whether to join John and me or to once again attempt to break through to the Abruzzi. Looking up to the summit pyramid to see if they could spot John and me working above our Camp VI (we were only then leaving our camp for our halfhearted attempt on the upper snowfields), they saw a big avalanche sweep part of our route. They knew then there was no choice; they had to try to cross to the Abruzzi. Lou led off, telling Wick and Terry to follow in an hour or so.

  He arrived at the cache of food and gear, but instead of loading his pack decided to go empty. Without the heavy weight on his back, he could more easily forge the trail the remaining distance. Even though it meant returning for the gear, he felt in the long run it might be faster.

  Wick and Terry arrived at the fork and waited for Lou’s report. Looking up toward the direct route, they saw two more avalanches scour the gullies. It was unfortunate their radio was malfunctioning; otherwise they would have been able to report the avalanches, and John and I would have abandoned our attempt then and there. Fortunately, the snow was so deep just out of Camp VI Direct that John and I were floundering; otherwise, we might have made enough progress to climb into the path of the big avalanches.

  Without his heavy pack, Lou made rapid progress across his previous tracks, even though they were partially filled with new spindrift, and in a few hours he was back at the junction where Wick and Terry waited.

  “I got a little farther than yesterday,” he reported, “and I think if the guy leading breaks trail without a pack, we can get around that key corner. With any luck, from there it will be easy.”

  The three shouldered their loads and climbed back to the end of their tracks. Terry was in the middle—never doing any trail kicking—for the important reason that he was carrying the heaviest load. Whereas Lou and Wick carried mostly personal gear, plus a few camp odds and ends, Terry had a very heavy load of two oxygen bottles, a nine-pound food bag, eleven gas cartridges and stove: a payload weighing nearly fifty pounds, considerable weight at nearly twenty-six thousand feet. His effort carrying the pack was even more impressive considering it was not for himself, but rather in support of two companions. Terry, as well as anyone, knew that if Lou and Wick were successful, all the ballyhoo after the expedition would be for them. On big climbs the spotlight shines on those who reach the summit; the often comparable efforts of those who work so hard to put them there usually goes unnoticed. If there was any one of us on the 1978 American K2 Expedition who lived up to the pledge months before we left the United States “to work as hard as possible to get somebody—anybody—to the top of K2,” it was Terry making that heavy carry to support Lou and Wick.

  Wick continued the lead, first working up untrodden snow still carrying his pack, but then leaving it behind. Like Lou he would break trail unladen and come back for his pack later. Wick looked up and thought they were perhaps only a hundred yards from the key corner. As he continued punc
hing steps, slow in the thin air, he realized the distance was closer to two hundred yards. It took until late afternoon, but finally he arrived at the corner. Not knowing whether the view a few feet farther would show only a cul-de-sac under the ice wall or, as he hoped, a passage to the broad snow and ice field of the Abruzzi shoulder under the summit pyramid, Wick made the last steps and with anticipation looked around the corner. Above was a wide-open slope, about forty-five degrees in angle, leading to the Abruzzi. Moving quickly, he climbed a few more feet to test the snow conditions. He swung his ax and the pick stuck in the hard snow, the kind of snow ideal for climbing.

  “Looks good,” Wick called back. “Hard snow, even some ice. It should go.”

  Lou and Terry climbed around the corner, and while they continued up, making slow but steady progress, Wick traversed back across for his pack. Returning quickly, he caught Lou and Terry as they climbed over the shoulder to easier slopes above.

  Lou and Wick had originally hoped to place their Camp VI as high on the Abruzzi shoulder as possible; they knew, for example, that the Italians in 1954 and the Japanese in 1977 (the only other two teams to ever climb K2) had established their camp at the highest possible place below the summit pyramid. That minimized the distance required to reach the summit the next day, and consequently increased the chance of returning to the high camp before dark and avoiding bivouac. But the hour was late; it would soon be dark. There seemed little chance of making the ideal site, so instead, they would have to settle for a location much lower. About five-thirty, as the shadows of Broad Peak and the Gasherbrums cast long across the Godwin-Austen Glacier ten thousand feet below, they found a narrow but reasonably flat spot, at the base of an offset crevasse that split the middle of the Abruzzi shoulder. With only a small amount of chopping and shaping, it would just accommodate their tiny two-person tent. The site had the additional advantage, since the crevasse was offset and therefore had a “back wall,” of offering some protection from potential avalanche. A thousand feet above, on the summit pyramid, several seracs loomed giant in the twilight; they knew that realistically the small ice wall behind their tent would provide little armor to shield them if one of those big blocks broke off. The site was also seven hundred feet below the location used by the Italians and the Japanese, seven hundred additional feet they would have to climb when they began the long, long assault on the summit in the blackness of the predawn, then only hours away.