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A minor mutiny eventually erupted. As Lacedelli remembers it,

For a while we played along, but then we told Compagnoni it wouldn’t work. We said that the orders had to be based on the needs of those on the highest rope party…. “They know best what they need,” we said, “not Desio, not even you.” “I’m sorry,” Compagnoni would say, “but Desio has spoken.” “We couldn’t care less,” I said eventually.

No one worked harder on the mountain than Walter Bonatti. And no one cared more about getting to the summit than he. But as the youngest member of the team, he knew it was unlikely that Compagnoni or Desio would choose him for a summit attempt. Throughout the expedition, moreover, relations between Bonatti and Compagnoni were cool at best.

Despite the tensions between the climbers high on the Abruzzi and their leader typing out orders from base camp, a chain of well-stocked camps crept up the mountain. Logistical overkill can work on a mountain, in the simple sense of getting men and gear and food in place. The Italians were skilled climbers, technically perhaps a bit better than the Americans of the previous year. (Most of the Italians worked at least parttime as professional guides in the Alps, which gave them a steady climbing regimen. The Americans all had jobs or graduate school programs, from which they could escape only on weekends and holidays to hone their mountain craft.) And two of the Hunzas, Mahdi and Isakhan, performed as well at altitude as the Italians.

On July 18, four men, including Bonatti, first reached the Shoulder, where they chose a site for Camp VIII. It was not until ten days later, however, that that camp was installed. At 25,300 feet, it stood only 200 feet lower than the Americans’ Camp VIII of the year before, where Art Gilkey had collapsed with thrombophlebitis.

So in a few days the stage was set for what ought to have been one of the proudest accomplishments in twentieth-century exploration. Instead, what developed high on K2 during the following days would turn into a feud so sordid, bitter, and long-lasting that it has few parallels in mountaineering history.

On July 28, Desio made radio contact with the climbers at Camp VII. But then, during the critical days that followed, the leader at base camp lost touch completely with the high camps. The Little Chief was vexed.

As time went on we became more and more anxious. We were sorely tempted to set out in a body for the ridge, but on second thoughts we decided that it would be wiser to remain in camp with our ears glued to the radio-set, ready to intervene as and when circumstances required. We had set up the radio out in the open, on a “glacier table” [a flat rock perched on a pedestal of ice], and we tried to contact our colleagues at half-hourly intervals.

To no avail. Just what sort of intervention Desio planned if he did make contact, only he would have known.

Fifty-two years later, Lacedelli would shed light on the radio silence:

At Camp VIII, we couldn’t make contact with Base Camp by radio, so we weren’t able to tell them that we had reached 7,750 meters and established Camp VIII. That day, Desio was at “Sella dei Venti” [Windy Gap] on the left side of the mountain, looking down. Then, suddenly, we heard Desio on the radio. “I haven’t got time for you,” he said, “I need to get on with my studies.” … He just got really annoyed. So I told him where he could go, and said, “From now on, if you want to know what’s going on you can come up and find out for yourself!” End of radio contact.

Compagnoni, however, would insist that no radio communications were possible from Camp VIII and higher because the climbers no longer had line of sight to base camp.

According to Desio’s orders, the first summit team was supposed to be Compagnoni and Ubaldo Rey, Compagnoni’s regular tentmate, a thirty-one-year-old guide from Courmayeur. They were supposed to set out from Camp VIII, establish a camp high on the Shoulder, then go for the summit