K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [50]
Where the Shigar entered the Indus, the boatmen had to make a desperate paddle to cross the big river to the Skardu side. The current was so strong that the zok reached the bank two and a half miles below the town. But it had taken only seven hours to raft those twenty-eight miles. The cost of the wild ride was eight and a half rupees, or $3.15.
Bates was evidently a handy man with a raft. In 1935, at the end of an epic five-month traverse of the Saint Elias Range in subarctic Canada and Alaska, he and two teammates had run into the Alsek River, which they had hoped to ford and which they had to cross to get to civilization. Instead, the river was in spring flood, far too deep and swift to wade. Un-fazed, under Bates’s direction the trio improvised a raft out of driftwood logs, two air mattresses, and two pairs of skis, and, using another ski as a paddle, they pulled off the dangerous crossing.
Apparently for the boatmen, a ride downstream from Yuno to Skardu was all in a day’s work. After they had arrived, they took the zok apart and carried it in pieces back to their home village.
In Skardu, after consulting with the tehsildar, or local governor, Bates and Streatfeild quickly solved the porter crisis. By May 30, the whole expedition was back on the trail. The perils of the trek were not finished, however. Above the village of Hoto, the whole caravan had to cross a two-hundred-foot-deep gorge by means of what Bates called a rope bridge. “Rope,” however, was too fancy a term: the contraption was made entirely of willow twigs twisted and braided into cables. At regular intervals, the bridge was stabilized by branches jammed crossways between the two handrails.
Bates admits that the crossing of this native bridge was terrifying. It “creaked like an abused wicker chair” underfoot, and as they tiptoed gingerly along the middle cable, the climbers recalled the Balti maxim “No rope bridge should be repaired until it is broken.”
By 1992, the willow-twig bridge was long gone. In the years since Pakistan had won its independence from India, the approaches to the Karakoram had become a region of military importance, so the primitive trail the 1938 climbers had hiked was now a good paved road, and sturdy bridges crossed the gorges. Right out of Skardu, for instance, you cross a giant metal suspension bridge. In the jeep on which we’d hitched a ride, the journey was basically routine.
On June 3, 1938, Houston’s team reached Askole, by their reckoning precisely 323 miles from Srinagar. So far, the worst mishap the team had suffered was Burdsall’s bad blisters. But now a new crisis struck, as Petzoldt came down with a fever of 104 degrees. Houston, the twenty-four-year-old medical student serving as expedition doctor, could not determine the cause of the illness, which lasted for days. (It was later tentatively diagnosed as dengue fever.)
Whatever tensions might have existed between the Wyoming cowboy and the Eastern “nabobs,” they seemed to have dissolved by the time the party reached Askole. As Petzoldt’s fever raged on, the team made an excruciating decision. Houston, though the leader of the expedition, would stay in Askole to minister to his patient. The other four climbers, the six Sherpa, and the porters hired in Askole would forge ahead toward the Baltoro Glacier and base camp. If Petzoldt did not recover soon, that could mean the end of the expedition for Houston and himself. “If he dies,” Houston joked to his departing comrades, “I’ll bury him and go on to meet you. If he recovers, we’ll both try to catch up with the expedition.”
I’ve never met Charlie Houston, but I’ve admired him ever since, as a teenager, I