K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [158]
In a postscript I wrote for the paperback edition of No Shortcuts to the Top, I admitted that after my eighteen-year-long campaign to climb all fourteen 8,000ers had come to a close, there were times when I felt at loose ends. Appearances on shows such as The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart were fun and gratifying, as were the numerous letters and e-mails I got from readers, and the enthusiastic receptions that often greeted my slide shows and “inspirational” talks. But I didn’t really envision my future as that of an after-dinner speaker, living off an endless recounting of the climbs I’d done in my prime. I enjoy those speaking events, but I still need to push myself physically and mentally in the outdoors. The future would seem empty to me if I had no more mountains to climb.
Since May 2005, when I returned from Annapurna, I’ve also found other kinds of adventures to keep my juices flowing. One was running the New York City Marathon with Paula in November 2006. As much fun as the run itself (notwithstanding all the sore muscles we strained on that twenty-six-mile course) were the weeks of training together near our home on Bainbridge Island. Paula and I were able to share a workout regimen with a common goal in a more satisfying way than we could ever share 8,000-meter expeditions.
My dogsled trip with Will Steger on Baffin Island in the spring of 2007 was another novel form of adventure for me. I had to learn a whole new art of traveling, and I was fascinated by the culture of the Inuit villages we visited, so different from the cultures of Skardu and Askole or Dingboche and Namche Bazar. Yet as grueling as that overland journey was at its toughest, it didn’t test me to the limits as the 8,000ers—especialy Annapurna and K2—had.
A year later, I returned to Baffin Island with my dog-mushing friend John Stetson. This time, rather than using dogs to haul our gear, we pulled our own sleds, which weighed 220 pounds each, almost 150 miles over the barren, frozen landscape in a long loop out of the small town of Pond Inlet. This was a physically more demanding trip than the one with Steger, and for me a more rewarding one.
In January 2009, I climbed Aconcagua, at 22,841 feet the highest peak in South America, as part of a gear-testing expedition organized by the Eddie Bauer company—a trial run, in effect, for the launching of the First Ascent line that we would undertake on Everest in the spring. Aconcagua’s not as hard a mountain as an 8,000er, but it can be deceptively lethal: many climbers die on its slopes from altitude sickness, pulmonary or cerebral edema, hypothermia, or getting lost in a storm. Several folks died, in fact, while we were on the mountain.
I’d first climbed Aconcagua twenty years earlier, when I was twenty-nine and in prime shape. I expected to find it a little harder at the age of forty-nine, but I surprised myself. On the summit, I thought, Hell, I feel great, I want to go farther. And also: Hey, this is still what excites me!
The pleasure I had on Aconcagua was what motivated me to go to Everest with the Eddie Bauer First Ascent team last spring. I’m sure that skeptics may have said, “What’s in it for Viesturs to go back to Everest for the eleventh time? A lucrative deal with his sponsors, more publicity via online dispatches?” But the number one reason for me to go to Everest in 2009 was the simple fact that I still find high mountains intriguing. I’ll always love the mountain environment. And as I learned on Aconcagua, climbing is still fun.
Skeptics might also say, “Hey, he’s scared of turning fifty. He still thinks