K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [103]
On July 25, Houston, Craig, and Bell attacked the Black Pyramid. Bell led most of the way, across deceptively tricky terrain: “The rock was solid, steep, polished by icefalls through ages past. The holds were small for hands and feet, and often choked with ice.” But, according to Houston, “Bell was in his element here.” In 1992 we found the Black Pyramid a challenging and exciting break from the rather ill-defined route work leading up to it. The climbing’s not extremely difficult, but until we got it fixed with ropes we were constantly aware of just how exposed it is.
Unlike 1939, when Wiessner, the only strong climber, led virtually every step of the route, in 1953 all eight men—even Tony Streather—took turns advancing the team’s push up the Abruzzi Ridge. That goes a long way toward explaining why those men bonded together so harmoniously, and so loyally. I’ve had my own solid partnerships on 8,000ers, with guys like Veikka Gustafsson and J.-C. Lafaille, but I’ve only rarely been on an expedition in which as many as eight teammates worked together so smoothly. That’s an ideal that many teams aspire to but few achieve.
Camp VII was pitched on a narrow platform hacked out of a steep snow slope at 24,500 feet. It was so marginal a site that on the way up the Abruzzi, only one pair of climbers spent a single night there. But on July 31, during a cold, windy day, Schoening and Gilkey broke through and found a spot for Camp VIII. At 25,500 feet, it was 800 feet higher than the highest camp in 1938.
All the way through the Black Pyramid and up to the lower edge of the Shoulder, the men placed willow wands every 50 feet or so to mark their route—as I did in 1992, but as no one bothered to in 1986 or 2008, an oversight that contributed to both tragedies. Arriving after a tough push through whiteout conditions on August 2, Bates and Streather found their way to Camp VIII. The first thing Bates said to his teammates was “Thank God for your willow wands. We had no idea where your camp was and couldn’t see a thing. Your tracks were completely gone above the ice steps.”
By August 3, all eight climbers were ensconced in their tents at Camp VIII. (“Some kind of record for an expedition,” Dee speculated in his diary.) Houston later recalled, “Morale was magnificent. We were in striking distance of the goal. The summit might still be ours.”
The entries in Dee’s diary are not so sanguine. The weather during the last ten days had been remarkably cold. Bates and Houston kept remarking on how much colder it was than during the corresponding weeks in 1938. Korean boots or no, most of the climbers had felt the nip of incipient frostbite on their feet. As early as July 25, Dee wrote, “Our experience with frostbite also indicates (happily) that we are thinking more of our fingers and toes than of reaching the summit. Perhaps the altitude is affecting our will to push high at any price.” A few days later: “Worried about toes. Craig’s are turning white.” Soon Dee was deeply ambivalent. “I feel alternately strong,” he wrote on July 31, “with good ‘eager’ days, and then I lose my appetite for taking chances with the weather and personally going much higher—willing now to be in support role rather than attaining the summit myself.”
Three days earlier, he had voiced an apprehension in his diary that would prove uncannily prescient: “Bringing an injured man down from K2 would be an extremely difficult, if not impossible, task.”
On July 31, Dee once more jotted down thumbnail impressions of his teammates and their current states of mind and body. “Charlie continues to push ahead as leader,” he wrote, “although I feel he may push himself too hard at times…. Gilkey is strong and quiet, probably the only one who really wants the summit badly enough to take a few risks—wants us all to make it to the top.”
By August 3, however, the team was reconciled to the likelihood that only two men might get a chance