Making the moves across the traverse was hard enough, but it was even more difficult because Lou was having trouble with his oxygen apparatus. It didn’t seem to be delivering any gas; his bladder was limp and only partially inflated. Balancing with one hand on his ax and his feet carefully placed on the ice-covered rock, he removed the mask with the other hand, took several breaths of ambient air, replaced the mask, and made several more steps, only to be forced to do the same thing. He fiddled with the flow rate, opening it to a maximum eight liters a minute. Even then the bladder remained deflated. Something wasn’t working; it had been easier climbing without the mask.
He finished his pitch and belayed the rope as Wick crossed. He enviously noted Wick’s bladder puffed like a tight balloon, and knew without doubt he either had an obstruction or a leak. Wick climbed past and Lou followed, continuing to fiddle with the apparatus. He mentally rummaged through his pack for something to jury-rig a leak.
Adhesive tape, he thought, but I don’t have any.
Then he realized it was hopeless. He looked up and saw a rock above, the next “goal,” and knew he couldn’t possibly reach that, much less the summit, carrying a seventeen-pound security blanket that wasn’t even working. He stopped, removed the mask, and examined the rubber tube leading to the bladder. There were several holes, possibly caused by a crampon puncture while being transported in the pack lower on the mountain. He removed his pack and set everything—mask, cylinder, even the pack—in the snow and continued to catch up with Wick.
Wick had been slowly punching steps up a long snow slope beyond the end of the ice cliff, realizing the most technically difficult sections were now behind him. From there it would be a long, slow trudge to the top. It was already past noon and they had some twelve hundred vertical feet to go. Much time had been lost while Lou worked with his faulty regulator. It would be all-important to keep a steady pace, and there would be no time for rests.
The snow had once again softened in bright noon sun, and Wick struggled to maintain his pace. He looked behind to check on Lou and was amazed to see him take off his oxygen mask, set his pack in the snow, unrope, and continue, leaving everything behind. Without the weight of his pack, Lou was much faster, and Wick waited for him to catch up.
Wick thought, Is Lou going back down? What’s up?
Before Lou arrived, Wick made up his mind to continue, even if Lou was planning to descend, alone to the summit.
“What are you doing?” Wick asked when Lou arrived.
“I’m going without oxygen. My oxygen set wouldn’t work. There was a leak or something. It’s a gamble, but there’s no choice.”
Lou was concerned; he didn’t know what his body’s reaction would be at twenty-eight thousand feet without oxygen, and he feared it might dangerously impair his judgment. Recalling stories of previous climbs to the earth’s highest summits where climbers had gotten in trouble when their oxygen ran out, Lou’s subconscious notified him it was time to be careful and not to expect his judgment to be sound.
“Watch me, and tell me if I exhibit any bizarre behavior,” he said to Wick.
“O.K. I’ll talk to you every so often, and that way tell if you start to act weird,” Wick said, then added, “You realize, though, I’m going to the top regardless?”
“Yes,” Lou replied.
Wick continued slowly. His hopes for better snow conditions dissolved as his feet, calves, and then thighs disappeared in the mushy snow. Another hour passed. He traded leads with Lou, then switched back. One foot, then another, then breathe several times. Wick looked behind to see that Lou had started an angled traverse toward the ridge to their left, and Wick realized he was searching for better snow. Both men forged separate paths for another hour until finally Lou reached the ridge and appeared to have better footing. Wick began to traverse to merge with Lou’s tracks. By the time he was in them, Lou was some distance above.
Wick tried to catch up, but it was all he could do to match Lou’s pace.
Maybe something’s wrong with my oxygen, he thought. He checked the flow rate, looked at the bladder. It was puffed full, still pressurized, still delivering gas. But he couldn’t understand why Lou was maintaining distance. Wasn’t he, the one with oxygen, supposed to be faster than Lou—the one without?
As they climbed to even more extreme altitudes, Wick slowly closed the distance, then passed Lou. It was like a crossing of the performance curves, if you could have graphed the trade-off of going with or without oxygen. Lower on the slope, Lou had been able to maintain his lead on Wick who, while breathing oxygen, was nevertheless handicapped by the seventeen-pound bottle and other equipment in his pack. As they approached twenty-eight thousand feet, though, the benefit of the oxygen exceeded the difficulty of the added weight, and Wick slowly worked ahead.
Other than a few sips from Lou’s bottle, they had climbed all day without water. The small matter of the water bottle lost from Wick’s parka was having its effect. Lou, in leaving his pack behind, had also left his parka, and he was starting to shiver in the increasing cold. The sun dropped behind the summit ridge, and the cold intensified. It was 4:30 p.m. Above, they could see the silhouetted, nearly horizontal ridge. Would the summit be there, or some distance beyond? They would make it, there was no going back, but it would be late.
It seemed deceptively close, yet it receded with each footstep. Wick continued in the slow, steady pace. Neither of them had rested for more than a minute or two since Lou had set down his pack. With each step Wick thought of his family, his wife, his children, his mother and father—all who had given such support to his quest for this summit. He thought of several of the earlier climbers who, except for the vagaries of bad weather and bad luck, might have been the first Americans to walk those last steps. He thought of Dusan and Al and Leif.
There were only a few more steps to the ridge crest. Excited, Wick picked up his pace and made the final moves up the steepening snow face. Suddenly he stepped onto the ridge crest tinted gold in late afternoon alpenglow. He was gasping for air; he thought he had somehow pinched off the supply of oxygen, then realized it was because he had made several rapid steps. He fell on one knee, exhausted.
His head down, he slowly looked to his right, hoping he would see the summit only a few feet away. Instead, the ridge continued level, then seemed to drop away into China. He could see the burnt Sinkiang hills before the setting sun. He looked the other direction. To his surprise, Lou was only inches away, making the final steps up the ridge crest. For Lou, increasingly cold without parka, the psychological warmth of the direct sun rays—then so low on the horizon—seemed to raise the temperature thirty degrees.
Wick looked past Lou, and now the ridge gently arched up, wider than he expected. The snow was gold. Seventy-five feet away he could see the ridge round off, then descend toward the west. It was a little larger than he expected, but still no bigger than a large dining table. He was in no way disappointed. He stood up and said to Lou:
“We’ve come this far. Let’s make the last step together.”
Arm in arm, they walked to the summit of K2.
The second highest point on the surface of the planet. The summit of his dreams. Wick stared across the mountains stretching endlessly below him, summit after summit painted gold. They were all below him. The world curved away, in all directions, falling away, below his feet.
For Lou it was an even more remarkable victory. He was the first man to climb K2 without oxygen. The magnitude of his feat was measured in his blue lips, in the ice frozen thick in his beard. Although the moment seemed dreamlike, he was still thinking coherently, and unlike Wick, one thought predominated: Get Down. It was 5:15 p.m. Ninety minutes until total darkness. There would be no moon. Lou had no parka. He was fiercely cold. He knew he could not survive a bivouac.
When the pair had crested the summit ridge a few minutes before, Lou had said, “I’m going to walk to the top, then turn around and come right down.”
“You’ve got to
at least stay there long enough for me to take a picture of you,” Wick had replied.
There was a tacit agreement that Wick intended to stay longer and Lou would descend. But first there were several things to do, and Lou waited impatiently while Wick rummaged in his pack for the American and Pakistani flags, for an eagle feather we had promised the United Tribes of All Indians Foundation, who had helped the expedition raise funds, we would carry to the summit. There was also the microfilmed list of all who had contributed twenty dollars or more. Wick handed Lou the flags and the feather and took several photos. Wick then handed Lou his camera, since Lou had forgotten his own when he abandoned his pack, and Lou took a duty shot of Wick.
“Let’s go.”
“I want to get a panorama first,” Wick said. “But I’ve got to change film. Go ahead. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Lou was cold. It was nearly 5:30, and the sun was dropping below the horizon. The first stars emerged in the blackening sky. Without hesitation, he turned and began to descend rapidly. Wick fumbled to change film. He had to remove his mittens, then work quickly to open the camera and thread the film. It was too cold to work for more than a few seconds before replacing his mittens. He waited for his fingers to warm. The wind was blowing harder, and he had to be careful not to let spindrift in the camera. He concentrated on the task; he hadn’t been using oxygen since reaching the summit, and everything seemed so weird, so hard to do. He took his hands from the mittens, worked, put them back in. Finally the camera was loaded, but then he noticed the lens had iced, and he gave up.
He studied the terrain around him. He could see down the west side, to where he had tried to climb in 1975. He noted the Savoia peaks to the west. All the peaks of the Karakoram and especially the Baltoro dotted the horizon. He followed the horizon 360 degrees, trying to identify each peak. He was impressed by the brownness of China. All the peaks basked in gold light; the sky was nearly cloudless. Finally he thought to look at his watch. It was 6:10. He had stayed too long; he had to move fast.
Shouldering his pack he descended the summit ridge, then glanced down the route. A thousand feet below he could see Lou nearing his pack. It was then Wick first knew he could not make it down; he knew he would have to bivouac, alone, without sleeping bag, without tent, just below the summit. The wind began to pick up, and already it was fiercely cold.
SEPTEMBER 6. CAMP I. 18,400 FEET. 5:25 P.M.
It had been an exciting day. After Rob shouted, “They’re on their way to the summit,” that morning, everyone awoke immediately, looking bleary-eyed out their tents toward the summit and, without exception, jubilant. It was a very cold morning—the thermometer in Camp I read ten below zero Fahrenheit, but it was windless. They could see there was no wind on top, either, and it looked like a perfect summit day. Clear and crisp.
It was easy to watch the progress through the telescope. They could distinguish Lou from Wick. They studied their slow progress, watching them make four or five steps, then lean on their axes exhausted. They knew the snow was deep; they could even see the trail as they postholed up the soft snow in the gully leading to the summit slopes. It was painfully slow, but they followed the two each step.
Spirits were very high. There was relief that all the work and toil was paying off. Each person had played a crucial role in the drama they were witnessing; every person on the team was in no small way a player integrally part of that final scene. Whatever rancor had existed, whatever disappointments and disillusionments had divided the team, dissolved with each step that placed Lou and Wick that much closer to the summit.
Concern mounted as shadows fell across the face at 3:30, and the two were still some distance below the top. Finally, about 5:15, they watched Lou and Wick crest the summit ridge. The mountain was backlit as the wind picked up, and a plume of snow blew off the ridge. The dots moved antlike the last yards to the summit. Then, at twenty feet from the top, they disappeared behind the crest. Everyone realized the true summit was out of their view, but there was no doubt. Jim Wickwire and Lou Reichardt had reached the top.
People cheered, bear-hugged, slapped backs. The moment of victory was theirs. There was still concern, however, about the late hour. Rob continued glued to the telescope. Five minutes after they had disappeared, he saw a figure bound off the summit ridge. He could tell it was Lou; he had studied each of them so carefully all day, he could distinguish their idiosyncracies. He waited. Where was Wick? Lou continued with much haste down the slope, as if panicked. Had something happened to Wick? Why was Lou almost at a run? The cheering stopped, and quiet came over them. They waited. One minute, two minutes, three minutes. Each had the same thought: He should have appeared by now. Something has gone wrong.
They quietly discussed the possibilities. Five minutes, six, seven. It was getting dark. Wick would not stay on top this late because he wouldn’t be able to get back to high camp before total darkness. They watched Lou continue his rapid descent. He was several hundred feet down the snow slope below the summit. Ten minutes, eleven, twelve.
Diana Jagersky was forced to sit down. Emotions swept through her, spinning dizzily, spiraling to a vortex and precipitating to a crystal realization: Something had happened to Wick, on the summit, at the culmination of the climb of his dreams. Wick had been one of Dusan’s closest friends. Dusan had died on the summit; Wick was now on the summit of Dusan’s dreams as well. The irony overcame her.
She gripped the rock on which she sat. Scenes whirled before her: She was sitting on the patio of a restaurant in Glacier Bay, Alaska, only a little more than a year before (my God, was it that long ago?) with Wick. She was eating breakfast, slowly, and Wick was not saying anything. She was thinking that there was no way it could be true. There was no way Dusan could be dead. He was too much alive; he was too strong. Nothing could have killed him. It was simply not possible, and she refused to believe it. Dusan was going to come back.
Wick wanted to say something; he wanted to comfort Diana. He too felt Dusan’s presence, even at the breakfast table, but he had been there only a few days before when he heard the slip, the rattle of pitons on the shoulder rack, and he turned to see the fall, then only empty sky and blank snow, and the still, eternal silence. He knew Dusan was not coming back.
He said, “I’m thankful I can be here and talk to you.” He paused. “I know if it had been the reverse, Dusan would be here, at this moment, talking to Mary Lou.”
No, Diana thought, it can’t be happening. A feeling of panic, then helplessness, swept over her. Rob was still glued to the telescope, but there was no sign of Wick. The others talked in low voices. They sensed the great tide of emotions sweeping over Diana, but there was nothing they could say or do to help.
There must be something, she thought, there must be something that can be done. How can we stop this? How can the mountain do this? How can something so beautiful and powerful take still another life? The life of the man who loved the mountain the most?
She steadied on the rock. The scenes flashed before her, so real, so palpable. She was with Dusan, on a climb only a few weeks before he left for Alaska. The weather had been so perfect, everything so beautiful. The rock and snow, the early summer sun and the first alpine flowers, the heather crunching under climbing boots . . .
Fifteen minutes, sixteen, seventeen. Lou was over five hundred feet below the summit.
“It could have been a summit cornice,” Bill speculated.
“Is there a cornice on this summit?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember reading about one.”
“It’s not uncommon. Remember Bruce Carson on Trisul. He was on the summit, peeking over the edge, and didn’t realize he was on a cornice. It broke off.”
“There could even be a crevasse. Like the Japanese who just died on the summit over on Gasherbrum.”
It was unusual to have a crevasse on a summit, but it was not unusual to have a cornice. Bill’s speculation and fear were based on several case histories.
; Diana listened. A cornice could have broken. The scene crystalized before her: the breaking snow, the falling body, plummeting, hitting rock, bouncing, smashing, limbs limp like a rag doll. Every detail, every foot of the fall reeled before her in vivid detail. The climber . . . it wasn’t Wick falling, it was Dusan. He was falling, falling . . . he was dead.
Not again, Diana thought; there has got to be some way to change it. We can’t sit here and watch and wait.
A void came over her, like an ether that permeated everything, and left her floating in space. She looked up at the great mountain. The high snows were hued the red colors of day’s end, the alpenglow. It was so beautiful. She had the urge to leave camp and to walk out on the glacier and begin climbing the mountain, alone, forever, keep climbing and going and somehow nestling into its bosom. It was not a wish of death. It was, instead, a desire to join the mountain and share its secret, and know why it chose to deal men’s lives such a game of irony. The thought of joining the mountain gave her comfort.
Twenty minutes, twenty-five. There seemed little doubt something had happened to Wick.
Diana’s thoughts jumped from extreme to extreme. One moment she felt the desire to join the mountain, to be one with the white eternity, then she flashed again to that late spring climb, just before Dusan left, then to the patio of the restaurant in Glacier Bay with the icebergs floating, reflecting white in the azure water, then to the cornice breaking and to the fall, and now she could see it was not Dusan falling, but Wick, and she again felt so helpless.
Thirty-five minutes. Lou was now a thousand feet down, nearing the place where that morning they had watched him inexplicably leave his pack. Forty minutes . . .
“There he is!”
Everyone bolted up, staring hard at the darkened face and the still backlighted ridge crest.
“I can see him,” Rob said, fixed to the telescope. “He seems to be O.K.”
The Last Step Page 34
