K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [3]
In focusing on the six most dramatic seasons in the mountain’s history—August 2008, 1938, 1939, 1953, 1954, and 1986—my aim is not just to tell the stories of those campaigns, not just to write chapters of a K2 history, but to muse and probe my way through those episodes as I attempt to glean their lessons. This book might in fact be called “Lessons Learned from K2.” Plenty of mistakes were made during those campaigns, leading to shocking tragedies. But it’s not my intention to sit back and second-guess my predecessors. Instead I want to imagine my way into their company, where I can ponder the what-might-have-been of their dilemmas.
Each of those six campaigns evolved into complicated human predicaments. Faced with adversity, the members of the 1938 and 1953 expeditions drew together, forging brotherhoods so deep that they lasted for decades thereafter. That kind of brotherhood is not only truly admirable but, I think, almost unique to mountaineering. The camaraderie born of shared adventures was one of the chief things that drew me to climbing in the first place.
Faced with other kinds of adversity, however, the 1939 and 1954 teams split into bitter factions, sparking personal animosities so intense that some of the men never spoke to each other again for the rest of their lives. During the 1986 and 2008 seasons, when many separate teams thronged K2 (unlike the single expeditions of ‘38, ‘39, ‘53, and ‘54), any semblance of order degenerated into a kind of every-man-for-himself anarchy.
In chapter 2, I retell my own story of K2, bringing in details and events I either neglected or forgot to mention in No Shortcuts. During the four years since I wrote that other book, I’ve reflected many times on what went right and what went wrong on K2 in 1992, and—not surprisingly—my take on that turning point in my life has shifted. By reorganizing my own story in a more straightforward, chronological narrative, I hope to uncover stones I’ve never looked under before.
There’s all too much tragedy in K2’s history. But I hope this book serves as a hymn of praise to the great mountain. As well as being dubbed the hardest or the deadliest mountain in the world, K2 is often called the most beautiful. It still seems to me a holy grail—and I am neither the first nor the last of its many worshippers to travel to the ends of the earth for the chance to grasp it in my hands.
A sharp pyramid of black rock, sheer snow gullies and ridges, and ominous hanging glaciers, K2 has a symmetry and grace that make it the most striking of the fourteen 8,000ers. Rising from the Baltoro Glacier in the heart of the Karakoram, K2 is flanked by five other of the world’s seventeen highest peaks. That range, in fact, holds the densest constellation of skyscraping mountains anywhere in the world—even denser than the Himalaya around Everest. Yet K2 soars in proud isolation over Broad Peak, Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II, and its other formidable neighbors.
When you approach Mount Everest from the south, as do all teams that attempt the classic first-ascent route through the Khumbu Icefall and up to the South Col, the great mountain only gradually comes into view. Most of the way to base camp, Everest is effectively hidden behind the bulk of its satellite peak, 25,790-foot Nuptse. During the multiday trek into base camp, you get only sporadic peekaboo glimpses of its summit. As a result, for climbers the first sight of Everest seldom comes as a stunning, unforgettable moment.
It’s just the opposite with K2. As they march up the Baltoro Glacier, most climbers get their first view of the mountain from Concordia, where several glacial streams converge. All at once, after a week’s trek from the last village, Askole,