by Andrew Lock
Despite the danger, or perhaps because of it, the KKH is an exciting ride through wild and remote villages, whose grubby streets are lined with even grubbier occupants. Many sport homemade versions of military weaponry, and offer none-too-friendly glances at passing westerners. Such is the frontier-like nature of the KKH that many vehicles travel in convoy to lessen the risk of being robbed by bandits en route. The imposing presence of Nanga Parbat—another of the 8000ers, which looms above the highway near Chilas, the most disreputable village of them all—seems positively sanctuary-like by comparison.
Our flight up to Skardu diverted around Nanga Parbat rather than going over it, such is the height of this Himalayan massif. With cameras clicking incessantly, we identified possible routes and began hatching plans to return and climb that beast. Such is the thrilling lure of these monoliths to mountaineers that, even before we’d faced the challenge of K2, we buzzed with excitement at the sight of another big mountain.
Although Skardu is relatively close to the Karakorum mountain range, it is baking hot in summer, so T-shirts, shorts and sandals are the dress code. After we had settled into our basic but comfortable hotel, the beat of a helicopter soon drew our attention to the nearby landing field. A short time later its passengers revealed themselves: two injured Slovenian climbers who’d been badly frostbitten in a storm on K2 a few days earlier and their expedition doctor. Another teammate had died and they’d had to leave him in a tent at Camp 4.
In truth, I was unsure just who had been less fortunate. The two young survivors were both terribly frostbitten and would later have all their fingers and toes amputated. It was gut-wrenching to see these two men, who’d no doubt come to the mountain with great aspirations and dreams of conquest, invalided for life. The younger lad, who was only about twenty, found it difficult to walk because his footwear did not fit over his heavily bandaged feet. When he looked dolefully at my sandals, I realised I had no option but to give them to him. I spent the rest of the expedition worrying about what I’d wear if I suffered the same fate.
Peter arrived a few days later, simultaneously wide-eyed from his experience on the KKH but also semi-comatose from lack of sleep. While he collapsed into a twenty-four hour stupor, the others and I finalised the arrangements for our departure the next morning. We’d spent the preceding days engaging a cook for our Base Camp, as well as support staff and a sirdar. We’d also purchased kerosene, food and kitchen equipment, and had organised jeeps to drive us to the remote village of Askole, the starting point for our trek to base camp.
The next morning we set off in three jeeps. We, the sahibs, were in one, and the other two vehicles were for the porters we would engage while passing through the desolate villages along the way. While our sirdar selected the more able-bodied applicants—about a hundred villagers would surround him and clamour until he agreed to employ the lot of them—I ducked into the local café. These usually comprised a mud hut, a rickety table with even more rickety stools out the front and, in the more salubrious establishments, a piece of rusty corrugated iron overhead to protect you from the debilitating sun. A cup of their finest was often a small glass of strong, hot, milky and very sweet tea, accompanied by a slab of naan bread that was steaming hot and straight from the tandoori oven. There is no better bread in the world—smoky, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth. The typical wood-fired oven in these parts creates a unique flavour that simply cannot be replicated by our high-tech western kitchen gadgets.
Unlike in Nepal, where the trek to a mountain base camp usually moves through villages that are dotted along the route, expeditions in the Karakorum start their long trek from the last village and must then be completely self-sufficient. As well as the porters we employed to carry our expedition equipment, we needed porters to carry provisions for them. Amazingly, for our seven-week expedition, which comprised just five climbers and two Base Camp staff, we needed 120 porters, each of whom would carry a 25-kilogram load. That meant a total of 3 tonnes of food and equipment.
We couldn’t transport all the additional porters to Askole in the two spare jeeps we had, so we arranged additional vehicles. Thus, several more jeeps groaned into our camp one evening, bristling like porcupines with their laughing, singing cargo—there were twenty or more men in a single jeep. These people must be the toughest on the planet. Desperately poor, eking out an existence from land that’s drier than the Australian outback, living in squalor with virtually no education or access to health services, yet quick to laugh and to share their last piece of naan, they are the most fiercely proud people I have ever met.
The next morning, after some heated debate about wages, the porters lined up to sign their employment contracts with a thumbprint from an inkpad, after which they queued for their loads. As well as a 25-kilogram plastic drum or cardboard box of equipment, they had to carry their own personal gear, but that generally consisted of a blanket and not much else. Pakistan’s mountaineering regulations required that we supply specified rations and equipment to the porters, which consisted of meat, flour, salt, lentils, sugar, tea and tobacco. Shoes, socks, gloves and glacier glasses to protect our employees’ eyes complemented these rations. While the basic food items were easy to obtain and preserve, meat was another issue, so we purchased three live goats and hired a goat herder to shepherd the animals until they hit the cooking pots.
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The trek from Askole to K2 Base Camp takes about ten days. After moving through dry fields and rocky escarpments, we crossed several glacial torrents fed by the distant mountains towards which we were so hungrily marching. Despite the freezing water of the rivers, the air temperature in these lower valleys was absolutely searing, as the sun’s rays blazed down from cloudless skies and then reflected off the polished rock slabs that extended for thousands of metres above and around us.
Three days into the trek, we camped in a wood called Paiju, just short of the mouth of the Baltoro Glacier. From that point on we could have no fires, so the porters took the opportunity to prepare their food for the rest of the trek. They’d have kerosene stoves on the glacier to heat water for their tea but preferred to cook the food here, so they could carry only the minimum amount of fuel. They cooked lentils and made roti, a round flatbread similar to damper, and transformed poor ‘Billy’ and his two brothers into piles of fresh meat. This was divided among the 120 porters by hand but with more accuracy than the best butcher’s scales. Woe betide the poor fellow charged with sharing out the spoils if it was deemed that so much as goat’s whisker more fell on someone else’s pile!
The slaughtering of the goats and preparation of the other food was a cause for celebration among the porters, and all were in great spirits as the evening approached. At dusk I wandered down to the small rock enclosures in which the porters camped and was honoured when I was offered some of Billy’s freshly cooked liver—a real delicacy. I ate only a little so as not to deprive the workers, but I appreciated the gesture.
As I moved among the men, chatting with them in my very basic Urdu, I heard a most incredible sound. One porter had moved away from the main camp and was singing the Islamic call to prayer. His was the singularly most soulful, lilting male voice I have ever heard in song. In the eerie dusk of the Karakorum wilderness it was immensely moving. The sound seemed to emanate from nature itself. It was a heartfelt invitation for his brothers to join him in devotion, and for the pious it would have been impossible to resist. Indeed, I wanted to join them just to observe, but thought it would not have been appropriate so I returned to camp.
Later that evening, the porters returned from prayer and resumed their celebrations. Soon a small group of them had circled one of the fires and started singing their local folk songs. Without instruments, they clapped their hands and used a plastic barrel as a drum while taking turns to sing the verses. More joined the circle and the volume of the singing increased. They took turns to dance in the middle, and this continued for many hours. Once more, I was impressed by the resilience of these people, and
by their capacity to find joy even in the most inhospitable environments.
The following day we moved on to the Baltoro Glacier, a massive river of ice that runs for 62 kilometres from the very heart of the Karakorum Mountains. We would walk its full length over several days, before moving on to another glacier, the Godwin-Austen, for the final day’s trek to Base Camp at K2. On the Baltoro, I found it hard not to trip and stumble, because my eyes were constantly drawn upwards to the incredible rock spires on either side of us. All had inspiring names—Trango Towers, Uli Biaho, Muztagh Tower, Mitre Peak and Masherbrum—and all towered thousands of metres above our heads.
We took a rest and acclimatisation day at the campsite of Urdukas, on the side of the glacier and gratefully replaced our walking boots with runners, as there were several large boulders that demanded to be climbed. We also took the opportunity to issue the sunglasses to our porters, as we anticipated trekking on snow the following day. The glasses were definitely not the latest styles from Ray-Ban, but you wouldn’t have known it from the excitement our porters showed. They were men who had virtually no possessions, so this small gift was of immense value to them. They refused to take the stickers off the lenses, and even kept the sunglasses on at night.
After several more days trekking we reached Concordia, the confluence of the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers. Inconceivably, the vista at this point only got better, as Concordia is almost crushed beneath the overwhelming magnitude of four 8000-metre peaks—K2, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum 1 and Gasherbrum 2. There are also several other peaks that just fail to touch that magical altitude. Nowhere else on Earth will you find so many high peaks in such concentration.
We reached Base Camp on 6 July, only to learn that K2 had claimed another casualty just days before. An American–Canadian expedition had successfully reached the summit, but one of their team had fallen to his death during their descent. K2 was living up to her reputation as the Savage Mountain.
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After depositing our loads on the glacier at Base Camp, our porters collected their pay and raced back down the glacier to their villages, either to toil in their fields or find work with other expeditions. We wouldn’t see them again until we sent a message at the end of the expedition to return and collect us.
I soon discovered that my teammates were on a mission to climb the mountain as quickly as possible. They were keen to commence immediately, which conflicted with my preferred style of taking a couple of rest and acclimatisation days upon arrival at Base Camp. Having joined the expedition in Pakistan, I’d missed the opportunity to contribute to the planning, so I was only just learning about their climbing style. Luckily, I still had some residual acclimatisation from the Everest expedition a few weeks earlier, so I adjusted to the altitude well.
Our route on the mountain was the Abruzzi Ridge, named after an Italian explorer who had made an aborted attempt on the mountain some eighty-four years earlier. The Abruzzi is a beautiful but dangerous route. Climbing over 3300 vertical metres from Base Camp to the summit, you are exposed to severe weather, rockfall, crevasses, avalanches, serac collapses and, of course, extreme altitude. What more could you want?
Our plan was to ascend the mountain in traditional siege style, placing well-stocked camps all the way up the mountain to safeguard both our summit attempt and our subsequent descent. Lots of gear was needed at various points up the mountain, and the only way to get it there was to carry it on our backs, as we had no high-altitude porters—the Pakistan equivalent of climbing Sherpas—to assist us.
Each day we rose around 4 a.m., had a quick cup of tea and a bowl of porridge and made the two-hour walk up the glacier to the start of the climb. We would climb for around six hours to reach Camp 1, then deposit our loads and return to Base Camp by about 5 p.m. each afternoon. Dinner, sleep and do it again. After a week we had stocked Camp 1 with everything we needed both for that camp and for the ones above it, so we moved up, occupied the camp and started the same process up to Camp 2.
While Camp 1 was on reasonably flat ground, being perched on a little knoll that jutted out from the mountain face, the climb to Camp 2 was steep and technical. The crux of this part of the mountain was 30 metres of climbing known as House’s Chimney, named after an American climber from a 1938 attempt on K2. Once above that cliff—and by now at 6700 metres’ altitude—we hacked out of the ice on the steep mountain face a site for Camp 2.
By the time we’d fully stocked this camp, we’d been on the go for almost two weeks without a break. I was in real need of a couple of rest days at Base Camp, but the Germans would have none of it. Although I thought we were at risk of burning out, we were making good progress up the mountain and were quickly passing the high points of the several other expeditions that were climbing K2 that year.
For the most part, the other teams waited at Base Camp for a spell of good weather. We’d been climbing in consistently foul weather, and had been hammered every day by freezing winds and driving snow. Our plan was to overcome the low-altitude difficulties during the bad weather, position ourselves high on the mountain by the time the good weather came, and thereby give ourselves the strongest chance of reaching the summit. It was a sound philosophy but exhausting.
K2 is infamous for having some of the worst weather in the Himalaya and Karakorum Mountains. Standing alone and so tall, it interrupts weather systems to generate wild windstorms and massive snow dumps. Typical weather for the region during the climbing season is to have several days of good weather followed by five or so of storms. There is no such pattern on K2, and weeks of bad weather are not at all uncommon. Years have passed without a single ascent of the mountain due to its tough conditions.
As it happened, the Germans’ plan to push on without respite was thwarted unexpectedly, and very nearly tragically. Climbing from Camp 2 to Camp 3, we encountered the most technically difficult part of the Abruzzi Ridge, known as the Black Pyramid. This 400-metre face of evil-looking black rock requires steep, sustained rock and ice climbing at an altitude of 7000 metres. Yet again we climbed in a blizzard as we forced our way upward, clinging to loose, often vertical, rock. We scrabbled to find purchase on the wet, snow-covered ledges with our crampons. When we finally flopped onto the easier snow slope above, where we would later erect our Camp 3 tents, we stayed long enough only to bury our loads, to prevent them from being blown off the mountain, then marked the spot with a bamboo wand before descending back into the tempest.
It was dusk when we reached our nylon tents at Camp 2, which were barely withstanding the gale. We quickly fired up the stoves to heat some tea while waiting for Reinmar, who was still coming down the ropes. He was 30 metres above the rest of us when we entered the tents, but half an hour later he had still not arrived. I went out to check what the problem was and, to my surprise, he was nowhere to be seen on the slopes above.
Then I spotted him, 20 metres below, flailing groggily in the snow. I dropped down to find him bleeding severely from the head, concussed and unable to speak clearly. After getting him back up to the tent, we established that, just before entering the tent, he’d been struck by a falling stone, knocking him unconscious and causing him to fall. Incredibly, he’d landed in a tiny patch of snow. Had he been even a couple of metres to either side, he’d have hit steep rock and kept on bouncing down to Base Camp, 1.5 kilometres below.
Reinmar had actually been the only member of the team to refuse to wear a helmet as we climbed that day. While he would regret that decision, a part of me was somewhat grateful for it because the following day we had to help him down to Base Camp. He received a few stiches to his wound, administered by a friendly member of a British expedition, and was obliged to rest for several days. I was only too happy to assist, and I slept and ate solidly for the next three days.
The rest also gave us time to socialise with the other expeditions, and I found out that the leader of the British expedition, Roger Payne, and his wife, Julie Ann Clyma, were the two lucky avalanche survivors I’d seen out
run that massive serac collapse on Mount McKinley in 1991. This is one of the aspects of extreme mountaineering that I have always enjoyed. The community is reasonably small, so it’s quite common to run into friends with whom you’ve shared great climbs or who have survived major catastrophes. There’s a real sense of camaraderie. I suppose most friendships born of adversity have strong bonds.
The break at Base Camp allowed me to spend some more time with Anatoli, who for the majority of our climb so far had been sharing a tent with Reinmar, while I was sharing one with Peter and Ernst. Anatoli had a wicked sense of humour and was quick to bait anyone less easygoing than himself. As it turned out, that was Peter. It was Anatoli’s habit to eat honey by the spoonful—the jarful, actually—but that meant double dipping his spoon, which was something Peter could not abide. All too frequently, Peter could be heard in the meal tent, saying, ‘Anatoli, please don’t put your dirty spoon back in the honey jar! Ja?’
Anatoli’s response, after sucking his spoon clean, would be to ever so laconically reach out, with a slow but inevitable movement, and dip it back into the honey jar, with a deadpan face but a sparkle in his eyes.
I was less fussed by his manners, and I enjoyed learning about the highly regimented communist climbing bureaucracy through which Anatoli had persevered to satisfy his mountaineering passion. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it had become much easier for him to travel, and he’d since spent considerable time in the United States. Over yet another miel fest, which he enhanced by chewing cloves of raw garlic (‘Good for blood, Andre’), Anatoli told me of one his recent American experiences.