K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [15]
“Pasang Lama was worried, but I said don’t worry,” Chhiring later e-mailed Freddie Wilkinson. “We have only two options—one is staying here, which is very dangerous under the serac. The other option is to descend down with one ice ax, which may lead us to Camp IV …if we don’t slip.”
So Chhiring cut off a short hank of broken fixed rope, tied Pasang to him in a tight tether, then, facing in, used his ax and his crampons to descend the Bottleneck, with his fellow Sherpa almost dangling from his harness like a haul bag. The two eventually reached Camp IV without mishap.
That’s a pretty astounding deed. But I can just imagine how you might pull it off: kick each foot in solid, plant the ax, then tell the other guy to kick with his own feet and even punch holds with his hands. Don’t move until he’s secure. Still, if Pasang had come off, he probably would have taken Chhiring with him. Talk about selfless!
It’s a Sherpa thing. They’re loyal. It’s their ethos, instilled in them on Everest. They just feel it’s the right thing to do.
But if Chhiring and Pasang could make it down with one ice ax between them, one guy short-roped like a dead weight to the other, why couldn’t those Europeans have downclimbed the Bottleneck unencumbered?
Pemba Gyalje reached Camp IV by 1:00 A.M. on August 2. In the morning, on learning that a bunch of climbers were still unaccounted for, he simply headed back up the mountain. To do that, after an exhausting summit day of your own—and both Chhiring and Pemba had summited without supplemental oxygen, the first Sherpa to do so on K2—takes incredible fortitude. And, once again, incredible selflessness.
Pemba reached Marco Confortola halfway up the Bottleneck. The Italian was unconscious and probably suffering from severe altitude sickness. With bottled oxygen, Pemba got Confortola going again. But almost as soon as the two men had started down, the third serac collapse—the one that carried the two Koreans and Pasang Bhote and Jumic Bhote to their deaths—nearly took out Confortola and Pemba. The Italian was struck in the back of the head by a chunk of falling ice. He started to fall, but Pemba grabbed him from behind and held him. The Sherpa then shepherded the Italian the rest of the way down to Camp IV. There is no doubt that Confortola would have died had Pemba not rescued him.
This time, as he collapsed in his tent, Pemba was truly worn out. But the next morning, when he learned that Wilco van Rooijen was still missing, he went out again.
Van Rooijen had gotten wildly off route as he made his impulsive and desperate descent. He had wandered to the west not only of the Abruzzi Ridge but of its western variant, the Cesen route, by which the Dutch team had ascended. He may have glancingly intersected the prominent snow ridge called “the Shoulder,” but he missed Camp IV altogether. After a second night out, van Rooijen was truly lost—and near death.
Bizarrely enough, the ring of the Dutchman’s sat phone in the darkness gave his team the first inkling of his whereabouts. On August 3, Pemba and Cas van de Gevel found van Rooijen. They led him slowly back to Camp III, which the three men reached only well after dark.
In his interviews with reporters, van Rooijen made scant mention of Pemba’s rescue. Recounting his epic to National Geographic Adventure, the Dutchman credited instead his own skills: “My mountaineering experience let me be quiet and patient enough to wait for better weather…. I took a risk climbing some difficult technical parts to traverse to easier slopes and to easier glaciers. I finally survived.”
This is a sad trend in recent mountaineering on the 8,000ers. When something screws up, the Sherpa are the first ones to be blamed. But when a Sherpa performs heroically, as Pemba did in saving the only two climbers who bivouacked above the Motivator and then got off the mountain alive,