K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [57]
In 1992, after Scott and I drew straws and I won the lead, I got up the fissure not by chimneying inside it but by stemming outside, my feet and hands spread-eagled on rock holds on either side. Unlike House, I wore my crampons all the way up. I was able to clip in to a couple of pitons already in place—”fixed pins” left by some previous expedition. It’s almost impossible to rate pure climbing moves on a big mountain, but I’d say the chimney was only about 5.4. (The decimal scale of difficulty in use today ranges from 5.1, the easiest, to 5.15, the hardest. In the 1960s, when pitches harder than 5.9 started to be performed, climbers could think of no way to rate them except by calling them 5.10, then 5.11, and so on.)
On the other hand, I found the crack half-choked with ice and snow, into which I could kick a few footholds, which I’m sure made the pitch easier than it was for House. No matter what, as Peter Boardman remarked in 1980, House’s Chimney was far harder than anything that had been climbed on Everest by 1938.
The climbing had so worn out Bates and House that they decided to pitch Camp V only a little bit higher, a mere 500 vertical feet above Camp IV. They had reached the foot of the Black Pyramid, a steep, triangular buttress made up of mixed rock.
By now Burdsall, though he had gamely carried loads to the lower camps, had dropped out of the team pushing higher on the route. At forty-two, he was the oldest of the five American climbers and the least skilled technically. Streatfeild had already withdrawn from the advance guard, as he’d performed his fuel-searching mission to Gasherbrum I, then turned his attention to surveying unmapped parts of the surrounding peaks and glaciers.
The climbers still pushing high were reduced to Bates, House, Houston, and Petzoldt—as well as the three strongest Sherpa. Among those three, Pasang Kikuli was the stalwart, performing as well as the four Americans.
In 1992, after I’d strung a good fixed rope down House’s Chimney, it was a routine business to rappel down that pitch and jumar back up it. Not so for the guys in 1938, who, carrying twenty-five-pound loads up the chimney, had to haul themselves hand over hand as they hung on the loops they had tied in the fixed rope.
From July 15 to 20, as the weather held almost perfect, the climbers frenziedly pushed the route higher and higher. Houston and Petzoldt made some daring, exposed leads as they forced their way through the Black Pyramid. The team established a Camp VI at 23,300 feet, and then Camp VII at 24,700 feet. On the afternoon of July 19, Petzoldt and Houston broke through the 25,000-foot barrier. Only a relatively low-angle snow slope stood between them and the Shoulder.
There’s a line of Houston’s about this gutsy push that makes me chuckle: “After a restful cigarette, which seemed especially welcome at these high altitudes, we turned again to our task.” These guys, in the shape of their lives, were smoking all the way up the mountain!
That evening, with everyone ensconced in Camp VI, the team held another council of war. Bates had calculated that the men had only ten days’ worth of food and fuel left. Worried about an eventual descent in bad weather, the party decided to err on the side of caution and send only two climbers up to push the route to the highest possible altitude. Without even putting the question to a vote, the team chose Houston and Petzoldt, as Bates and House magnanimously stepped aside.
On July 20, all four men made the last carry to Camp VII. They decided that the Sherpa had “reached the limits of their climbing ability” and so should be left behind; but at the last minute Pasang Kikuli begged to be included, and the “sahibs” relented.
That evening, Petzoldt and Houston settled into their sleeping bags at Camp VII, restless and eager for the final push the next morning.