K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [111]
At the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival that November, Charlie Houston gave the first of what would become a hugely popular series of “armchair talks.” Dispensing with the usual slide show, Houston simply sat in a comfortable, well-upholstered chair and answered questions from the moderator, Geoff Powter, who was the editor of the Canadian Alpine Journal.
I wasn’t there for that talk, but a friend who was later recounted what happened so vividly, I almost felt like I was present. Powter skillfully lobbed his questions so that they covered Houston’s long and glorious career as a mountaineer and as the world’s leading expert in high-altitude medicine, giving him a chance to tell his war stories. By now, Houston was eighty years old, a living legend, and the audience hung on his every word.
In that audience was Barry Blanchard, one of Canada’s best mountaineers. He had been on K2 the previous summer and had participated in the recovery of Gilkey’s remains. Blanchard waited through the Q & A period at the end of Houston’s talk, until Powter said, “Okay, one more question.” Then he stood up, introduced himself, and told the story of finding Gilkey’s body. Barry is normally a confident speaker, but his voice quavered as he announced the discovery, which was news to almost everyone in the crowd. He ended by telling Houston that the climbers on the glacier just two and a half months earlier had recovered Gilkey’s bones and brought them back to the United States, for eventual burial in a family plot.
Then Barry sat down. It was obvious that he hoped Houston would greet the stunning news of the discovery with an emotion matching his own, and perhaps even express heartfelt gratitude. As Barry had spoken, Houston had stared into the audience in the direction of his voice. By then, Houston was almost blind, so it’s doubtful that he could even see the face of the guy who had made the announcement about Gilkey.
For long moments, Houston didn’t say a word. The audience held its collective breath. Finally, in a cold, even voice, Houston said, “Frankly, I wish you had left him the way you found him.” Barry was devastated.
One reason why K2: The Savage Mountain is such a great book, one of the true classics of mountaineering literature, is that Houston and Bates (and Craig and Bell, who contributed a chapter each) tell their story in such a straightforward manner. The very directness of the prose animates the drama of the book. There’s no bluster, no bragging, not a whiff of nationalistic bravado in the telling of what, for each of its participants, was the adventure of a lifetime. At the core, all eight of those climbers were modest men.
So even though the expedition ended in failure and tragedy, the lessons it taught several younger generations of American climbers were inspiring ones. “The brotherhood of the rope” that Houston celebrates was no sentimental invention—it was the lifelong bond that their terrible ordeal on K2 forged among its seven survivors. The book affected me hugely. When I first started going on expeditions, I realized that even more important than getting to the summit was the chance to have a great adventure with partners I really liked and trusted. And I found that again and again, with teammates such as David Breashears, J.-C. Lafaille, Rob Hall, and Veikka Gustafsson.
In 1979, Nick Clinch, who led the team that made the first ascent of Gasherbrum I, in 1958 (the only 8,000er first climbed by Americans), and who would later serve as president of the AAC, eloquently summed up the legacy Houston and his teammates had left behind them:
In my opinion, the high point of American mountaineering remains the 1953 American Expedition to K2. The courage, devotion and team spirit of that expedition have yet to be surpassed, and still represent