I thought, My companions will be arriving in Camp I by now. There will be the joy of reunion, the hugs, the congratulations, the tears. The relief. Yes, there will be much relief.
I looked up the ropes, up the snow gully, then down to the glacier. It was time to go. The others would be concerned if I did not arrive soon. But I had to wait a few more minutes before releasing the rope and continuing my rappel. It was the thought of the relief, that we had done it. We were all down alive. It was behind us, we had climbed to the summit, and now we were all down alive. We had been climbing on K2 for sixty-seven days. We were all going to make it. That was the relief. That was what caused the tears coming down my cheeks, tears I had to wipe away before continuing into camp. I didn’t want my companions to see me in tears.
| 12 |
THE GRIFFON
LEGS WEAK AND NEAR COLLAPSE, Jim Wickwire wished, nevertheless, to remain standing. Rob Schaller supported one arm and Saleem Khan, the liaison officer, natty in khaki fatigues and black field boots and looking trim from the months in Base Camp, supported the other. Wick was about to address the over one hundred Balti porters standing before them. He was giving his farewell; that afternoon a rescue helicopter would pluck him from near the snout of the glacier and carry him from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, the first step from the inner sanctum of the Karakoram to the surgery room of a hospital in Seattle.
Wick could not have chosen a more dramatic amphitheater. He was at Liliwa, a stopping place of about an acre of flat bench on the littoral of the Baltoro Glacier, and by custom, an established campsite. The back periphery of the sandy bench is a brown wall of some hundred feet of conglomerate mud and wash stone (which threatened to avalanche on the temporary rock and plastic sheet shanties the porters had built under it). In the other direction the bench looked across the vista of the Baltoro and bordering peaks—over the stone debris hitching a ride on the ice moving down-valley—to the Lopsang and Trango Towers, and Paiju Peak.
Wick could not address the porters directly, and his was not merely the problem of translation. He could not talk above a whisper. His vocal cords were paralyzed, and he was capable only of a harsh, aspirated whisper. Saleem, still affecting much bombast, translated to the porters. “Tell them,” Wick said in a weak frog voice, “I am sorry I cannot accompany them all the way out. Tell them I want to visit their villages, and join the celebration, but I am sick and must leave by helicopter.”
Saleem translated, and the porters acknowledged Wick’s request with cheers of support. The porters remembered Wick from the approach march: the short, sturdy man who always carried heavy, who always was one of the first to arrive in camp, who remembered many of them from the 1975 expedition and who had greeted them with the embrace of parted brothers. That this man was standing before them—weak, coughing blood, frostbitten, unable to talk, breathing in loud rasps, near death—and thanking them for all they had done to help, they knew was a gesture of the heart.
“Tell them,” Wick said, “I enjoyed listening to them play music and sing last night. I was very sick in my tent, but I still listened, and I still enjoyed it. It was the best Balti music I have ever heard.”
Again, they cheered.
“Most of all,” Wick continued, “I have to thank them for all they’ve done for me in the last five days. I know they have gone without food because I have been slow, and it has taken them twice as many days to hike out as they brought food for. Tell them . . . ”
Wick stopped in a paroxysm of low, deep, slow coughing—more a rasp, from the depths of his clogged lungs. He lowered his head and tried to clear the bloody spittle from his throat, and his face grimaced in pain. The porters watched in silence.
“Tell them I most want to thank them for helping carry me down, for bearing the stretcher to Concordia. I was very touched by their help, and I want them to know I think they are fine human beings, close brothers.”
Saleem finished the translation, and the hundred porters began, in unison, to pray to Allah. They asked Allah to grant reprieve to this man, to allow him to live.
For Wick, it was the last day of the grueling hike from Base Camp to an altitude low enough for the Pakistan Army helicopter to land and rescue him. Since the day we had rappelled the last ropes and arrived safely in Camp I, six days before, Wick’s condition had been steadily worsening. Then, we had been delivered safe from the mountain to the teary-eyed greetings of our teammates. There was much embracing, and our companions quickly set us in the cook tent to what seemed a great feast of leftover freeze-dried dinners. To the untrained eye it would have appeared a toss-up which of us looked the worst from the ordeal, but Rob Schaller quickly singled out Wick for immediate attention. He noted Wick was cyanotic—his fingernails and lips were bluer than anyone’s. His cough was also the worst, and obviously painful. Rob escorted Wick to his medical tent to listen to his lungs. There were all the classical indications of pneumonia, but to his relief Rob detected no friction, or rawls, that would have indicated pleurisy (that would come later).
Rob considered putting him on oxygen and decided against it, fearing it might deacclimatize him and make him dependent on it. It was a double-edged sword: Wick might have immediate benefit from oxygen, but the long-term effects could have been worse. Rob placed him on intravenous fluids and antibiotics.
The next day, with support from the two HAPS, Gohar and Honar, Wick had had enough strength to walk the long distance down the Godwin-Austen Glacier to Base Camp. He arrived, accompanied by Jim, Dianne, and Rob, late in the afternoon to the merrymaking of the porters, beating on empty fuel cans, cheering the safe arrival off the mountain of the last sahibs. But Wick had been in no mood for celebrating. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and the next day, when we abandoned Base Camp, Wick was transported on a litter jury-rigged by several team members from tent poles and rope. Leaving in the morning, Wick and an entourage of porters and team members had not arrived in Concordia until nine that night.
By then Rob was concerned for Wick’s life, and by the time we reached Urdukas we decided to request, using our single-sideband radio, an evacuation helicopter. Wick was coughing up quantities of blood. Rob concluded that his pneumonia was becoming complicated with pleurisy, and that he had formed dangerous pulmonary emboli. In addition, Wick’s left vocal cord and diaphragm were paralyzed—which Rob considered the result of a further viral infection—and several of his toes were badly frostbitten. All Wick’s problems resulted from a general physical collapse related to the stress of the summit climb, the bivouac at nearly twenty-eight thousand feet, the long descent, the prolonged dehydration and malnutrition. The one ordeal Wick suffered that was spared the rest of us summit climbers—the bivouac—was probably the final blow.
There are no bacteria, of course, at twenty-eight thousand feet, so how could Wick have contracted pneumonia and a viral infection? Rob speculated it occurred during bivouac or descent, and was the result of aspirated spittle. Rob postulated Wick had carried the bacteria in his body and coughed them up, then aspirated them into his lungs. Normally the body’s defense system would shut off the larynx to avoid such aspiration, but in Wick’s condition the night of the bivouac, or on descent, he was so physically exhausted, out of oxygen and dehydrated, his normal defense systems were broken.
Amazingly, despite sedation, lack of sleep, and malnutrition, Wick forced himself to continue his entries in his journals.
SEPTEMBER 14. Today, to avoid the torture and slowness of the litter, I walked with the team. Extremely hard work. Bad lung had not only cut back strength, but also general body dehydration and malnutrition. Haven’t eaten much since summit on September 6. We are apparently short of food. Took seven hours to reach same campsite used on way in July 3. Tomorrow to Urdukas. Last view today of K2. No emotion. Totally drained.
SEPTEMBER 15. Urdukas. Took nearly eight hours to reach here. Rob, Gohar, Sanger Jan, and I, along with a few porters to carry our gear, were the last of the caravan to arrive. Today wa
s easier footing, slightly shorter in distance, yet physically more demanding because I felt weaker. I had the hand of Gohar Shah, who walked at my side, supporting me virtually the entire way. So weak I lacked normal balance. As we walked into Urdukas and hit the level dirt trail, I thanked Gohar, walked a hundred feet, and fell off the trail. Back came Gohar to support me for the remaining short distance.
SEPTEMBER 16. Liliwa. This is not a normal stopover coming down the Baltoro—most groups make a long double stage to Paiju, but to accommodate my illness we camped here. Still the most strenuous single stage of the entire route. Left in light snowstorm. On I-V fluids all night. Helped dehydration, but nevertheless a damn long day. Gohar and Honar were principal aides. Turned out to be a beautiful fall day as clouds finally broke, revealing the orange-tinted flanks of the Grand Cathedral and the Trangos. In the scene, however, I was a robot moving, swaying, clinking, and every so often, for the doctors’ and presumably my benefit, coughing up globs of blood.
Wick was very much moved by the sight of a hundred ragamuffin men kneeling before him, praying to God for his safe deliverance. He had never been the recipient of the collective goodwill of so many people. When they finished the prayers, Saleem thanked them again for their support and hard work, and with a great simultaneous cheer, the Baltis hefted their loads, strapped their goat-hair harnesses over their shoulders, and began the trek down the glacier to Paiju Camp.
For many of us the hike out, although nothing compared to Wick’s ordeal, was painful. Of the four summit climbers, John appeared strongest, although he suffered minor frostbite and was in pain walking. I was very weak and frequently dizzy and was forced to sit down and rest. The ends of most of my fingers were turning coal black, accompanied by razor jabs of pain. I still had an infection, my skin was breaking out in a rash, and boils formed inside my mouth—all, the doctors felt, a result of general physical weakness. I had lost over thirty pounds. Normally I can come nowhere close to pinching my fingers around my biceps; now they wrapped easily around.
It would have been easy to complain, to try to elicit sympathy from my companions, but in view of Wick’s troubles, it would have been petty sniveling. Lou was also suffering, stoically, as we had learned that morning leaving Liliwa. He had mentioned having a frostbitten toe that pained him when he walked, and he thought perhaps Rob should have a look. He removed his boot and sock, and aghast, we stared at his big toe.
All the skin had sloughed off, and the entire toe was exposed muscle tissue. Rob bandaged the toe, and without comment Lou turned to the day’s hike.
I found myself frequently walking alone, no doubt partly because I was slower than most, in my weakened state, and also because of a propensity to silence. I noticed that several of the others seemed to share this inclination, and I suspected many of us spent much time in reverie over imminent reunion with parents and wives and children and lovers. Other than the satisfaction of having successfully climbed the mountain, the most common sentiment shared by team members, not surprisingly, was relief: Finally the expedition was at an end; the storms, the monotonous food, the endless carries to higher camps, were at last over.
Now we were on our way home; now it would be only a couple of weeks until we arrived back in the United States. We hiked toward Paiju, a scraggly lot, haggard, limping, coughing, skinny, and without bath for almost a hundred days, strung a mile over the stone trail covering the Baltoro ice. About noon the trail descended the terminus of the glacier, and I hiked the last miles to Paiju Camp on the easier footing along the alluvial bench bordering the Braldu River. In the distance I could hear the unmistakable Thumpf! Thumpf! Thumpf! of the helicopter.
It turned out to be two helicopters—the Pakistani Army had a safety policy of always flying the back country with escort. I watched, puzzled, as the two French-built Alouettes continued past us, up the Baltoro to Concordia. It seemed unlikely, but apparently they had missed our long caravan. In a few minutes they returned, this time spotting several of our team on a sand bar at the river’s edge near the snout of the glacier. They set down, and in a few minutes Wick’s party arrived; they had hiked madly the last half mile, after hearing the helicopters, to get to the landing spot. Wick was nearly in collapse. With him and Rob loaded in one, they took off and in a few minutes set down on a gravel bar in front of Paiju Camp. The rest of the team quickly gathered.
With two machines there was now available space for four passengers, and we had to decide who to pick for evacuation. It was essential that Rob accompany Wick, and Lou was next in line with his raw toe. That left John or me. We both had frostbitten feet. My hands were certainly more frostbitten, but that was no hindrance in walking.
“Go ahead,” John said.
I was reluctant to accept, thinking he had as much right as I did, and also harboring a desire to stay the distance with the team, despite the pain of hiking.
“Let’s flip for it,” I whispered to John, winking. We decided to keep our decision-making secret from Jim, thinking he might not approve such a haphazard technique. Rob was standing nearby, and we asked him to pick a number between one and ten. I lost.
“Sure you don’t want to go?” John said.
“See you back home,” I replied, smiling. The helicopters were idling, ready to go, waiting for John. I gave him a hug, and he climbed in. The team gathered around and waved to Wick, Rob, Lou, and John. The blades revved; the birds lifted off and sped down the Baltoro. We stood silently and watched as the machines grew small among the peaks, then rounded a turn in the deep valley. There was much relief in seeing Wick delivered to the safety of hospital care, and when the helicopters disappeared the sight filled me with an odd, mixed feeling, a kind of happy melancholy.
Ahead Jim Whittaker hiked the trail, steeply switchbacking a ridge we had to climb up, then down, to detour an hour-glass constriction in the river gorge. It had been four days since the helicopter had evacuated the others; ahead we still had another three days of walking. Behind a short distance followed Dianne Roberts and a group of Baltis carrying their personal gear. Jim’s tall frame was gaunt, testimony to the many weeks of hard work at altitude, but his face was at ease, contented. He had no regrets; he had led the first successful American ascent of K2, and for Jim the expedition had been a ratification of the creed he lived.
Following our last retreat to Camp IV during the final storm, Jim and Dianne had descended to Camp III and waited there the next several days while we reached the summit. Before abandoning that camp to make room for our arrival, and also to conserve meager food and fuel, Jim had made a solo carry to Camp IV with extra supplies in case, for some reason, we were delayed on our descent. (Had the storm that pinned us in Camp III arrived a day earlier, Jim’s precaution would have been vital to our survival.) His trail through that new snow also aided Cherie and Terry’s descent, and consequently made our own escape easier. Jim had performed remarkably well for a man a few weeks from his fiftieth birthday.
Upon abandoning Camp III, Jim and Dianne had written several messages with a marking pen on the tent walls conveying their hearty congratulations for our successful ascent, and also a selection of their favorite quotes and aphorisms. Now, watching Jim hike ahead of me, I thought back to the graffiti walls and realized the writing on the tent was a pithy representation of the creed of the man who had led our expedition:
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic.”
“Victory is sweetest to those who have known defeat.”
Jim had every right to be proud, for what he did took courage. To be sure, Jim made mistakes. It would have been better, for example, had he at times been more authoritarian, and left less to democratic consensus. But his reasons for so doing were valid, based on lessons from the dismal failure of the 1975 expedition. He had gambled high going back to K2 in 1978. He easily could have rested on the laurels of the Everest climb the rest of his life. Even fifteen years after being the first American to climb the highest moun
tain in the world, Jim was very much the hero in the public’s eye. It was a role he regarded seriously. He had strong ideas about the function of heroes in society; he regarded it as no small tragedy that young kids worshipped lacquered, larger-than-life heroes of popular TV drama or rock ’n’ roll stars elevated to the position of demigods, instead of men and women of real-life flesh and blood accomplishment. He never turned down a request to speak to a grade school or give a slide show to a Boy Scout troop. But Jim had wanted a confirmation of his mettle as a man of deeds, and now, having gone back and led a successful ascent of K2, he had every justification to believe he was made of the stuff that was his public image.
To Jim’s friends, it was also a confirmation of this mettle, an affirmation that Jim embodied the ideal of the man who picks a goal and strives, not giving up, until that goal is reached. When we had arrived in Base Camp, safe from the ascent, a series of telegrams had been relayed to us over the radio. The first to arrive at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad read simply, “Congratulations to you and your team. Ted and Joan.” 7
Jim continued to hike slowly up the trail, followed closely by Saleem. Jim pulled over to the side and let Saleem pass while he waited for Dianne to catch up.
The Last Step Page 39
