The Last Step

by Rick Ridgeway

  “There’s enough light to see,” I said. “Wick might be moving by now.”

  “I hope so.”

  “God knows what kind of condition he’s in. We’re going to have trouble getting him down if he’s in bad shape. Especially with no rope.”

  “If he’s bad, I don’t think we could get him down.” We sat still, silent, staring. The dawn filled the shadows in the lee of the great peaks. New mountains rose on the horizon, not visible from lesser altitudes. The glaciers so far below flowed inexorably in their timeless path to the sea. We hoped Wick was also witness to such grandeur.

  SEPTEMBER 7. SUMMIT PYRAMID. A LITTLE LESS THAN 28,000 FEET. FIRST DAWN.

  You have to remember, Wickwire, to keep moving your toes. You forget to do that too often. There’s no feeling left in them. Your fingers are gone, too. Maybe it won’t make any difference whether you move them or not. No, you’ve got to try. You know it will help in the end.

  This night has to end sometime. This would be so much easier if somebody else were here with you. Somebody to talk to. Remember how Ed Boulton helped when just the two of us bivvied on Rainier’s Willis Wall. We sort of buoyed each other—when one was down, the other was up. Then you survived that night alone on the south face of McKinley. This is certainly higher, maybe colder, but you know you can survive this night. You must.

  Wiggle your toes and fingers.

  It will get light outside. No sense looking, though. Keep covered inside this sack. You’ll know when it’s light. You can see it though the nylon.

  Wiggle your toes.

  Shaking uncontrollably.

  The night will end.

  It must.

  You are the highest man in the world right now. Somewhere around twenty-eight thousand feet—there is certainly no one else on earth right now standing anywhere higher than you are. Alone. Surviving this awful night.

  Wiggle your toes.

  Shaking so bad. So cold.

  Wish the shaking would stop. No, that would mean you are freezing.

  How much time has passed? Who knows? It will be over sometime.

  Remember, there is no way you can come this far and then not make it. You have been to the summit. You are on your way home. This whole thing will soon be over. You must survive the night.

  Getting rummy. Not thinking right. So cold.

  It’s finally going to end, isn’t it?

  The walls of the sack are getting lighter. It must be light outside. It must be dawn.

  No sense going anywhere. Wait for that sun. The night is over.

  It is so cold. It is dawn. Maybe you should look out. There. Still clear—another good day. Only those small clouds so far away. Everything looks surreal. Sunshine on Broad Peak. Almost like you could touch it. And the glacier moving down to Concordia. So far below. Remember when you camped there on the way in. It was Fourth of July, and we slept under the stars and played Handel’s Royal Fireworks on Rick’s little cassette machine. So long ago, like another life.

  You have to go down.

  What a place this would be to spend an eternity. Frozen up here forever on the summit of K2. The highest man in the world. That’s kind of funny. . . . But you should go down. Even if it’s harder to do that. It would be so easy just to stay. There is plenty of time. Stay inside the bivvy sack. Plenty of time.

  There is still no warmth. So cold. Remember how warm it was on the approach march. One day it was 126 in the shade.

  Maybe you should think about moving. That means you will have to crawl out of this magnificent bivvy sack. What a way to spend the night, huh. Covered with a piece of half-ounce rip-stop in a full gale at twenty-eight thousand feet. This is going to be one to tell stories about.

  Probably be ice this morning. There was some yesterday; guess that means there will be some today. You should put your crampons on. Let’s see, they are outside the bivvy sack here somewhere. Yeah, here they are. Now get out of the sack and put your crampons on. O.K., ol’ crampon, there you go on the boot. Now lace the strap through the eye here, then it goes over the boot and crosses to this loop, then back again. Now buckle it down and make sure it is fastened. O.K. One crampon on. Sun feels good, but it is still so cold. My fingers are awfully hard. I wonder how the toes are doing inside that boot. Wait a minute, Wickwire. Look at your boot. The crampon is loose. Two steps with that rig and it would pop off and so would you. A long fall. All the way to Base Camp.

  Ha, ha. That’s funny.

  Who needs crampons anyway. Just lie back and relax. You can go down later. Put the crampons on later. You probably don’t need them anyway.

  Feel the sun. Things seem so strange.

  Relax.

  What a magnificent view, huh. There are the four Gasherbrums, then Broad Peak, and farther to the right Chogolisa and Masherbrum. And the summit, just up above, an easy walk.

  Look how ridiculously close I bivouacked to the cornice. Might have fallen through. So far down the south face.

  Go down later.

  Mary Lou?

  Mary Lou and our five wonderful children. I can see all of you so clearly. Going to the airport and the rest of the team is getting off the plane, but where is Wick? Where is Dad? Mom, isn’t Dad going to come home?

  Sit up, Wickwire. Focus. You’re in bad shape, now straighten up. Snap out of it. Concentrate, Wickwire, concentrate. Strap the crampon tight. Put the other one on. Tighten it. Keep warming your fingers. Keep moving them. Double-check the crampons. They look better, now. That will work.

  I’m coming home. I love you.

  Stand up. Careful. Awfully stiff. Get your ax. Put the bivvy sack in your pack—keep it around as a souvenir. O.K. Ready? Maybe you should go down facing in. No. You’re not that bad, and it is not that steep. Not right here, but be careful at the traverse. Now start moving. Keep thinking. Concentrate. You’ll loosen up in a minute. Remember, most accidents happen on descent. Be careful.

  You’ll be down soon.

  I’m coming home, Mary Lou.

  I love you.

  SEPTEMBER 7. SUMMIT PYRAMID. THE NARROW COULOIR AT ABOUT 27,000 FEET. 7:30 A.M.

  I thought, Check that it is a solid hold, frozen in the blue ice. O.K., looks good. Lift your leg, high—it’s difficult to lift your leg with the first layer of angora wool underwear, the two layers of pile wool over that, followed by the nylon jumpsuit. Kind of binds. There. Now place your crampons carefully on the rock. Put your ax through the shoulder strap on your pack, get it out of the way. You need both hands for these next moves. Dust snow from the handholds, look for edges on the rock. Keep your balance, move slowly, make each move count. Do not waste energy because you have none to spare. Altitude about twenty-seven thousand feet. You can go on oxygen once above this steep section.

  John was only a few feet above me when we started through the narrows of the couloir, and I looked directly into the teeth of his crampons. Only his front points were on the ice and rock so that the remaining sharpened steel points—ten on the bottom of each boot—poised above me like an executioner’s ax. I did not want John to slip.

  I waited for him to make the several moves necessary to pass the steep bottleneck; then he was above the difficulties and it was my turn. I found two good handholds, and using my arms to balance, I leg-pressed my body up, moved my hands to higher holds, and lifted the next foot. Between my legs I could see the couloir fall away steeply to the Abruzzi Shoulder, to Camp VI, and ten thousand feet below that, to the Godwin-Austen Glacier.

  Remember, I told myself, you cannot make a mistake. You have no rope.

  Wind continued in gusts, lifting spindrift in swirls—small snow devils—backlighted by morning sun. The wind seemed to be lessening, however, and the sky, cloudless and clear to crystal visibility, boded a magnificent summit day—if Wickwire were in good shape.

  It was about seven-thirty. I wondered, Where will we find Wickwire? Did he make it down this far before bivouacking, or was he still higher? What if he tried last night to climb down? It
was black. This is very steep climbing, he would have been solo, very tired; he could have fallen. We would never learn what became of him.

  Dark thoughts, fuzzy scenarios, disjointed images, dreams from a high-altitude opium den. I thought, I feel no emotion. Wick may be dead, he may be above me frozen, he may be ten thousand feet below me, crumbled on the glacier, yet I feel nothing. Last night there was alarm, there was that feeling of possible tragedy, of possible loss, that feeling of emptiness. Now I feel nothing. I recognize that Wick may be in trouble. Beyond that, no other feelings, no other thoughts except how to make the next move up this steep couloir.

  I must breathe evenly, coordinate my breathing to my footwork. That will save energy. I must move with precision. There is a beauty in what I do, isn’t there. Despite the extreme altitude, the weight of this oxygen bottle, I can still be coordinated, I can still move with grace and economy. I can still dance.

  I have two more moves, and then I will be out of the couloir. Lift the leg, carefully place the crampon, test the handholds, pressure the leg muscles, move up. Always up, one more step higher, one more step toward the top. I am above the gully. Where to from here? There will still be some kind of traverse to turn the ice cliff above me that will lead to the snow gully and eventually to the summit snowfield. How far is John? Look up, I should see him now, he should be just around the corner. There he is, but wait. I stare at the scene before me mesmerized; I am not prepared for what I see: Twisting swirls of ground spindrift. Rainbow red, blue, and violet flashes—refractions of a million crystal eyes and the fathomless indigo of rarefied sky. Brilliant white. Ice cliffs, shining with wet, sensuous smoothness. Extreme altitude and vertigo. A feeling of no time; no beginning, no end. Frozen in the scene two figures. One, below the other, blue-suited and moving slowly—John. The second, standing above, no apparent movement, legs slightly spread, arms down, a scarecrow figure yet also godlike, still not moving—frozen solid? Jim Wickwire.

  I watched John climb the last few feet to Wick, who stood, not moving, in his scarecrow stance. Was Wick alive? Motionless, he stood staring down at us. Then he raised his arm—a greeting. He was alive; he had survived. I could see they were talking to each other.

  I looked down to the snow and ice in front of me to concentrate on the climbing until I reached the more level stance where Wick and John were resting. As I neared, I could hear their conversation:

  “I was on a small flat spot a little below the summit. Pretty cold.”

  “Frostbite?”

  “I think so. It’s hard to tell.”

  “Can you make it down the rest of the way by yourself?”

  “Yeah. I’m doing O.K. I’ve got the hard part behind—that traverse over here to the gully.”

  Wick indicated with his ice ax. I climbed up and joined the conversation. Wick looked haggard, of course, ice in his beard, eyes sunken and tired but still with a sparkle, a determination. It looked to us as if he had suffered no serious damage, but it was impossible for us, or for Wick, for that matter, to then realize the extent of his injuries. We continued to talk, joking, making light of an ordeal John and I—emotions obscured in the anesthesia of twenty-seven thousand feet—could in no way share.

  “Good luck, you guys. I’ll see you back in Camp Six.”

  “Be careful, Wick. You still have the couloir to get down. Move slow.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be O.K.”

  Wick climbed past us, and John patted him affectionately on his cap. A simple gesture, and neither John nor I had any way of knowing it brought Wick close to tears. It was the first human contact in fourteen hours—fourteen hours of which he had counted each minute. It was a small gesture of affection of one human for another that Wick, for the rest of his life, would not forget. Wick climbed slowly to the top of the gully, turned inward, and began his descent.

  Watching him, I thought, Not now Wick, not after what you’ve been through. Not after victory. Be careful, go slow, make no mistakes.

  Wick’s movements were mechanical and stiff, like the Tin Man of Oz with no oil. There was no way, without rope, we could assist him. We only crossed our fingers.

  John called to him, “Wick, when we get back remind me to enroll you in my climbing school. You could use a few lessons.”

  Wick looked up and smiled that open but closed-teeth smile that meant he felt confident. I knew he could make it, and John and I turned to our next task—the summit.

  “Let’s go on oxygen from here up,” I said.

  We looked at our next climbing obstacle—a steep rock and ice traverse—and it seemed like a good idea to cross it with the benefit of oxygen. We unshouldered our packs, carefully balancing them on the steep slope. John removed his bottle and pushed it into the snow, then set his regulator and mask alongside. He then strapped on his pack.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving the oxygen. I’m going without it.”

  I paused, looked at my own twenty-pound apparatus, and considered the option.

  “There’s no way I’m hauling that thing to the top,” he said, pointing to the bottle. “I know I can get up without it.”

  I suspected John was right; he could get to the top, but I was less certain about myself. True, Lou had made it without oxygen, but I considered both him and John physically stronger than me. I did not want to risk getting this close and not being able to make it because of a last-minute decision to leave my oxygen—especially since I had carried it all that way. To leave the bottle, jammed into the snow at twenty-seven thousand feet, with an untapped 3900 psi supply of pure oxygen, seemed absurd.

  “I’m going to use mine.”

  “O.K.”

  John waited while I removed the regulator—carefully wrapped in plastic to protect against moisture—screwed it on the bottle, and opened the valve. Full pressure—no leaks. Next I fitted a cloth skullcap to which straps from the aviator-type mask would fit. I had to shoulder the pack, bottle inside, then secure the second-stage selector valve to a drawstring I had earlier sewn on my parka. I had practiced this procedure many times, in the lower camps waiting out storms, adjusting the straps and snaps, checking the regulator, with soapy water, for leaks, making certain I would arrive at the point where I would begin using oxygen with a problem-free apparatus.

  But even after all that, something was wrong. My mask would not seal around my face. Its straps seemed to lead to the snaps on my skullcap at the wrong angle, and without a tight fit I would leak valuable oxygen. John watched with growing impatience as I removed the skullcap and refitted it. Again, the mask pulled askew. Again, I removed the skullcap. John lost patience.

  “I’m going. See you up there.”

  “I’ll be along as soon as I get this thing straightened out.”

  John started the traverse, obviously finding it easier without the weight of his oxygen. He moved across the snow laced with rocks, crossing legs and placing his crampons on rock with expert precision, movements automated by subconscious accumulation of years of experience. He held his ax with one hand on the shaft, the other on the adze, placing the pick in the ice between the rocks. He reminded me of the old sepia photographs of Armand Charlet, the great French alpinist famous for ballet precision when climbing ice. Below John’s feet the rock and ice angled abruptly, disappearing to empty space, and all I could see was the zebra stripes of the glacier about two miles down. John moved in perfect balance, made more dramatic because he had no rope. Not bad, I thought, for over twenty-seven thousand feet.

  I continued to hassle with my oxygen apparatus. John disappeared around a corner, and my frustration mounted. I once again removed the mask, and the skullcap, and studied them. I rerouted the fastening straps through loops on the mask and fitted the skullcap at a different angle. It was worse, the mask dropping hopelessly from my face. I tried a different lacing, but it too failed. My fingers were freezing. The more I studied the puzzle, the more it bewildered me.

  I thought, Damn it, this is crazy. I had
this thing adjusted days ago. Everything was ready. Now study it, Ridgeway; think. Imagine what my IQ score would be right now. Even a half-wit chimpanzee could do better than this. John’s probably halfway up the snow gully by now, on his way to the summit snowfield. How long have I been fiddling with this contraption? Five minutes? Twenty minutes? This is like being loaded on dope. Can’t think right. Don’t even know how much time has passed. Too bad my watch broke. Don’t let my mind wander; focus on this problem. O.K. It’s simple: It worked before, when I tested it in the tent, so therefore it has to work now. Try putting the strap through the other loop, around the nose piece on the mask, then back through the bottom loop. That doesn’t look right, either. John must be halfway to the top by now. If I don’t hurry, I’ll never make it. He climbs faster than I do anyway. Maybe I’ll just end up staying here all day, fiddling with this mask, while he climbs to the summit. The thought of that chimpanzee comes to mind again. Remember a picture I once saw of a chimp wearing eyeglasses, sitting and staring confoundedly at a book. The same thought now, only it’s me, Rick Ridgeway, sitting just like the chimp, staring confoundedly at my oxygen mask. O.K., now don’t let my mind wander; focus on this mask. Let’s see, what else can I do?

  Try to climb K2 without oxygen?

  Can I do it?

  I had been performing satisfactorily up to that point, without oxygen, carrying the dead weight of the cylinder. Without that hindrance it would be even easier. But there were over a thousand feet to go. What would it be like at twenty-eight thousand? Would it be possible for me? I considered the danger of pulmonary edema. If that happened, there would be no hope. My lungs would fill with blood, and I would die.

  I had to make some decision fast. I was quickly losing body temperature, starting to shiver. I needed to move to regain warmth. The wind was still dropping, but even the direct sun failed to warm. I looked again at my regulator, and the chance that I could correctly adjust the straps seemed remote.