K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [114]
Man, that’s about as far from Houston’s concept of “brotherhood” as you can get! You can’t order “genuine brotherhood and mutual understanding” to exist: it has to evolve among men, like the climbers in 1953, as they get to know each other on the mountain. In the end, the 1954 expedition would generate the polar opposite of brotherhood among the principal climbers.
That kind of military approach to the 8,000ers, however, was far more common in the 1950s than it is today. John Hunt, the leader of the 1953 Everest expedition, was selected by the Himalayan Committee of the Alpine Club for his military background. On the mountain, however, he exercised his skill not by ordering climbers around like toy soldiers but by keeping firm control over the team’s complex logistics. And Hunt never led from the rear, as Desio would. He carried loads all the way up to 27,350 feet and even contemplated trying for the summit himself. In general, an expedition chief who leads from the front and by example inspires his team.
In 1950, before they left Paris, the French climbers bound for Annapurna were required by the Club Alpin Français to swear to an oath of complete obedience to their leader, Maurice Herzog. Such freethinkers as Gaston Rébuffat and Louis Lachenal were taken aback at this demand, but they mumbled the oath anyway, knowing they had to in order to get a crack at Annapurna. On the mountain, however, Herzog constantly sought the advice of his teammates, and he led from the front all the way from base camp to the summit.
There’s no doubt that Desio was keen to climb K2. He just didn’t want to do any of the climbing himself—and at age fifty-seven, with so little alpine experience, he probably made a wise decision. In the end, despite spending ninety-one days on the Baltoro and Godwin Austen glaciers, aside from a single jaunt to Camp II, aided by fixed ropes, Desio never set foot on the Abruzzi Ridge.
But the generalissimo was nothing if not thorough. Before he even learned the outcome of Houston’s expedition, and before he knew whether his own permit for 1954 was approved (no done deal, since a number of other countries had also applied), he planned his own reconnaissance of K2 for the late summer of 1953. In Rawalpindi, Desio overlapped for a couple of days with the Americans, fresh from their defeat. They generously shared all the information about the route that Desio could have wanted.
With a single Italian companion, Desio flew to Skardu in September 1953 and undertook a thirty-two-day mini-expedition of his own, hiking with porters all the way in to the base of the Abruzzi Ridge and back out again and making several side trips along the way. The companion was Ricardo Cassin. Forty-five years old that summer, Cassin was the greatest Italian mountaineer ever to that date, and one of the greatest in the world. In the 1930s, he had led the teams that had made the first ascents of two of the classic six north faces of the Alps—the Piz Badile and the fearsome Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses, near Chamonix.
Yet in Ascent, Desio says nothing about Cassin’s contribution to the reconnaissance. And his identification of his partner is laconic in the extreme: “To accompany me on this preliminary reconnaissance I had chosen Ricardo Cassin, a climber, to whose travelling expenses the Italian Alpine Club had generously contributed.”
Upon the return of the two men to Italy, and with the official granting of the permit to Desio in October, it was universally assumed that Cassin would be the climbing leader of the 1954 expedition. The reasons for Desio’s coolness in print toward his recon partner would eventually emerge—though only if you read between the lines.
With eighteen members from Italy, comprising both climbers and scientists, Desio’s extravaganza would amount to one of the most massive expeditions ever launched in the Himalaya or the