K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [105]
Within the team, Schoening, Molenaar, and Craig had the most experience in mountain rescue, so Houston conferred with them about the chances of getting Gilkey down the mountain. The men answered that they thought they could manage such an extreme task, but, as Houston wrote, “Their statements lacked conviction.” And:
I did not believe them. I knew, we all knew, that no one could be carried, lowered, or dragged down the Black Pyramid, over the dreadful loose rock to Camp V, down House’s Chimney…. My mind’s eye flew over the whole route. There was no hope, absolutely none. Art was crippled. He would not recover enough to walk down. We could not carry him down.
In his diary, Dee wrote a laconic assessment: “Situation looks desperate.” As if to mock the team’s ambitions, that very afternoon the sky in the west started clearing.
Hopeless the rescue might be, but, in Houston’s words, “We could try, and we must.” Gilkey was placed in a sleeping bag, which was wrapped in a tent, and a climbing rope was tied to his waist. The first effort, however, was a complete failure. The days of storm had loaded the slopes below camp until they were on the verge of avalanching. The lowering was inviting disaster. The men hauled Gilkey only a few hundreds yards before they gave up.
There was nothing to do but return to camp. That took an all-out effort. The snow was too soft and deep for the men to haul Gilkey uphill, so he had to aid the effort by making what Houston called “great leaps with his good leg.”
The next day no one could move, as high winds tore at the tents, despite the slowly clearing sky. Gilkey’s condition seemed to improve slightly. “I’ll be climbing again tomorrow,” he told Houston, who knew that this brave promise could never be fulfilled.
By this point, the strongest climbers were Pete Schoening and Bob Craig. On that day, August 8, Craig made a bold proposal. “Charlie,” he said, “what about a dash for the summit from here?”
“Or maybe we could move two men up to IX today,” Schoening added. “I’m game. We might as well do something while we wait for Art’s leg to get better.”
If Houston was miffed by his teammates’ hunger for the summit, he never said so in print. And he gave them his blessing to head upward onto the Shoulder. In the deep snow, Schoening and Craig managed only some 400 vertical feet before turning back. Dee estimated their high point at 25,800 feet. Thanks to Gilkey’s collapse, the 1953 team failed by some 200 vertical feet to match the altitude reached by Houston and Petzoldt in 1938—and by 1,700 feet the high point Wiessner and Pasang Lama had attained in 1939.
On August 9, the storm returned in full force. And that morning, to his dismay, having listened to Gilkey’s “dry, hacking cough” through the night, Houston examined his patient and determined that the blood clots had indeed migrated to his lungs. Gilkey had a pulmonary embolism. Houston later wrote in K2: The Savage Mountain,
This was our lowest time. For the first time I thought we might all perish here in this pitiless storm. We would never leave Art; none of us had even thought of it. But we could not move him in the storm; indeed, we could not move ourselves in the storm of that day.
Dee’s diary entry for August 9 is equally poignant and honest:
Charlie came by and asked how our morale was—then informed us that Art probably wouldn’t last long. My feelings are hard to put down now. A few moments later, tears are in all our eyes. (I thought I just heard Art laugh in his tent.)
Plans change: Terrible thought that perhaps our getting down safely depends on Art’s early passing. (God, spare me from such thoughts!)
Gilkey’s courage through this ordeal was extraordinary. He told Houston that while he felt no pain, the nonstop coughing was