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GET PSYCHED!!

GO! GO! GO! GO!

On August 12, Scott and I and Hall & Ball left base camp at 2:00 A.M., planning to climb all the way to Camp III that day. Several others had left the day before and spent the night at Camp II, in hopes of meeting up with us at CIII when we arrived. In the lead all the way, I reached Camp III at noon. I’d climbed those 7,500 feet in ten hours—an hour faster than my great time on August 3. Charley Mace, who had spent the night at Camp II, arrived at 2:30 P.M. Scott didn’t get in until 4:00. Hall & Ball and the rest of their teammates were even slower. From my diary:

Rob & Gary arrived totally fried-out & hypothermic. Had to set up camp for ‘em & give hot drinks. Mex’s & Swedes showed between 7–8 P.M.! Not a lot of strength here that’s for sure.

Beautiful clear evening. High hopes for good weather tomorrow.

But as it turned out, the weather the next morning was decidedly iffy, with lenticular cloud caps covering all the major peaks—almost always a sign of a coming storm. None of us was sure what to do, until Scott and I decided to head up to the Shoulder. We didn’t get off until 9:30 A.M. The others eventually followed us.

As part of my homework for K2, I had studied all the things that had gone wrong on previous expeditions on the Abruzzi Ridge. In particular, I’d learned a sobering lesson from the 1986 tragedy. On their descent, a number of climbers that year had been marooned on the Shoulder during a long storm. One reason some of them didn’t seize the lulls in the storm to head down was that they were afraid of losing the route. And the reason for that was that they had not adequately wanded the stretch from Camp III to Camp IV.

“Willow wands” are ordinary garden stakes painted green, with little red ribbons attached to one end. On the way up, if you plant a wand in the snow every hundred feet or so, you’re marking the route so that you can find it even in a whiteout on the way down. I’d been trained on Rainier and Denali always to wand a route.

Thus I’d been stunned to learn that the climbers marooned on the Shoulder in 1986 simply had not brought enough willow wands to mark the route on the featureless white expanse below Camp IV. On a nice sunny day, it’s hard to imagine the need for those markers. But I’d always been taught to plan for the worst and hope for the best. Wanding doesn’t seem to be a European thing—it’s not quite chic to be seen lugging a pack with dozens of green sticks protruding from the top flap. Even the Russians on our trip had not bothered to wand the route above Camp III.

Now, on the way up from Camp III to Camp IV, I placed wands at regular intervals. I knew that this stretch was the most likely place for us to get lost on the way down. As I climbed, I kept repeating to myself, “Remember ‘86!” It wasn’t easy, since we had lost a bunch of wands when the tents were buried. In the end, as I began to run out, I had to break many of the wands in half and plant them short to eke out our supply. We had even scrounged tent poles from broken tents at Camp III to use as wands. Several days later, those markers would save our asses.

Scott and I reached Camp IV at 2:00 P.M. Once again the others straggled in hours later, some as late as 8:00 P.M. I’d deliberately placed our campsite as high on the Shoulder as was feasible, to shorten the climb on summit day. Now we all settled in to wait. In this incarnation, Camp IV was a small cluster of freshly erected and newly occupied tents. Charley Mace was camped just below us. In various tents were the members of Hall & Ball’s team: Rob and Gary, two Swedish climbers, and the three Mexicans.

Scott and I had also chosen to go superlight. Our tent was not a regular two-man model but a five-pound bivy tent. We had only one sleeping bag to share between the two of us. The idea was to sleep in our down suits, with the bag unzipped and draped over us like a blanket. In the claustrophobic confines of our cramped tent, we thought, this arrangement should keep us warm enough.

Our only rope was