Summit 8000

by Andrew Lock

  When I reached the West Face Base Camp, I found two expeditions there. One was American, whose members told me that I would have no chance of climbing through all the fresh snow. They had given up on the mountain and had called for porters. The other team was Spanish, although not the Inurrategi brothers. They felt the same way but were going to wait a week for the deep snow to settle or avalanche off, and then have a go. I was determined to try, however, so I borrowed a down suit from the Americans and a radio from the Spanish.

  I set off at five the next morning and climbed quickly through Camp 1 and towards Camp 2. The snow was deep but negotiable. All signs of previous expeditions and fixed ropes were well buried. I revelled in the feeling of being alone, powering up the slopes. I was fit, acclimatised and well rested after my prolonged wait at base camp. Stopping only for an occasional snack, I continued all the way up to Camp 3, which sat at 7000 metres, a good 2000 metres’ continuous climbing above Base Camp.

  Arriving there at 4 p.m., I started my stove and drank several cups of tea over the next couple of hours, and snoozed in the luxurious warmth of the bulky American down suit. Waking at 11.20 p.m., I lit the stove for one last drink. It was a clear night, but there was a mild breeze and it was bitterly cold.

  I started climbing at 12.20 a.m. There was no moon, and after a couple of hours in the pitch-dark, I couldn’t tell if I was on the right heading to get to the narrow couloir that would give me access to the ridge above. At 2.30 a.m. I stopped and waited until first light, which came around four, so that I could find my way up. So bitter was the cold that my 1-litre water bottle froze solid, despite being in a pocket inside my down suit.

  The light made it easier to see the way, but as the face steepened the snow became much deeper. I sometimes plunged thigh-deep, sometimes waist-deep, and other times I actually slid backwards down the slope. That wasn’t great for my motivation. Worse, I knew that there were two large crevasses to cross. Being unroped, I was at great risk of falling into them. There was no one on the mountain to rescue me if that happened, and I’d die either from the fall or from asphyxiation, crushed deep inside the icy fissure. Added to that risk was the considerable avalanche debris all around me, and my subconscious started asking the inevitable questions about the sanity of the task I’d embarked upon. I hadn’t listened to the others on this point, I decided, so there was no point in listening to myself either.

  The fresh snow must have been very deep because I didn’t ever find those crevasses, but the work of clawing my way up the bottomless muck in the ever-steepening gully was desperate. Hours ticked by and I seemed to be making hardly any progress. I had hoped to be on the col, a saddle between the Main and Central Buttresses, by 8 a.m., but that hour came and went and I was still well below it. I was comfortable being alone on this massive mountain, but I could feel my legs starting to tire. My wish for company at that moment was more to do with sharing the trail breaking than for the human contact.

  To counter any waning of my motivation, I reminded myself of my ultimate goal: Everest. Broad Peak was a step on the way, and exhaustion was simply not an excuse to quit. Nor was cold, self-doubt or loneliness. I pressed on and, finally, pulled up and onto the col at midday. When I’d set out from my bivouac twelve hours earlier, I’d hoped to be on the summit by this time, but there were still hours of climbing ahead of me in the rarefied air. I set my mind to yet another epic day at high altitude.

  At least the ridge was more solid than the slopes below had been. It was heavily corniced—windblown snow on the edges that concealed the limits of the solid ground—so I tried to stay above where I thought the rock was. I climbed over some knobs of snow and rock and was going okay, when suddenly the ground fell out from underneath me and I plummeted downwards.

  Instinctively I knew I’d strayed too far onto the cornice and had fallen through it. I threw my arms out sideways—like a crucifix—to stop myself from falling through the hole. Luckily the cornice held my plunging weight. My feet were dangling in space and when I looked through the hole my body had created in the cornice, I could see straight down the sheer vertical East Face of the mountain, thousands of metres down into China. I didn’t have a visa for that country, though, so considered it best not to keep falling.

  As I looked down, I saw an old ice axe sticking out of the snow a couple of feet below me. I’ll have that, thanks, I thought, and gently reached down with one hand to retrieve it while hanging rather precariously from the other. I’m guessing the previous owner had had a similar experience to me but continued down into China, also without a visa, and liked it so much that he stayed. If, on the other hand, the Buddhists are right, then I still have that ice axe at home and he’s welcome to have it back.

  I was able to get some footing and crawled back onto firm ground. The near miss had taken a toll on my confidence, though, and I felt even more alone and exposed, totally beyond any kind of help. My mind was playing games with me and I was starting to listen to it.

  The ridge steepened and I was forced to climb across very exposed rock pinnacles. I picked my way gingerly around them, feeling really unprotected without the safety of a rope. Near the top of the ridge, a large pinnacle forced me further out onto the face, and I found myself delicately traversing on loose rock with enormous exposure beneath me. The Base Camp tents that I’d left at dawn the previous day were 3 vertical kilometres below the soles of my feet.

  At this point my self-doubt welled up, and every sense screamed at me to turn back. I stopped, clinging to life by my mittens and crampon points. I had no rope, no friendly, encouraging voices with me, no one even to notice my passing if I slipped. I looked around. I was completely alone on the mountain, had just nearly fallen through a cornice, was mentally strung out after a day and a half of climbing solo without equipment, and had been without food or water since midnight. Above me lay danger, perhaps even death. Below me, safety, comfort and warmth. And people.

  I looked again at the steep rock to which I clung. If any of my hand or footholds broke, or even slightly slipped, I was gone. The only sensible thing was to go down. I’d given it my best shot, but this was beyond acceptable risk. I started down.

  Wait a minute, my inner voice reminded me. Remember: you decided to start succeeding or take up another sport. After this, it’s lawn bowls.

  I stopped again. Acceptable risk. I looked once more at the rock, still feeling very, very exposed, and willing it to give me an answer. Actually, the climbing isn’t so difficult, I thought. Okay, so there’s no rope. And nobody to see me fall. But what would they do anyway? Wave goodbye? I suddenly understood that it was the environment that was intimidating me, not the climbing. The climbing was well within my capability. At sea level I’d do it with my eyes closed. Sure, if a hold broke I’d have a bad day, but that wasn’t actually likely. It was unlikely. The climbing was within acceptable risk.

  With that realisation, I was able to control my fear and continue. I began moving up again. I later wrote in my expedition diary:

  Decided to go for it. Did not want to fail again. This was really a psychological point in the climb! Once committed, I knew I would make the summit. I wasn’t going to stop. I knew that I would be caught by the darkness but I was no longer concerned. I would take the obstacles as they came. Moved up … all the while clinging to the rock pinnacle like a cat to a tree branch.

  This was the most significant epiphany I’d had in my climbing career. The previous few years of expeditions had all failed on the summit push, and while there’d been a good reason to stop each time, in retrospect I believe I could have better assessed the risks involved and pushed harder to succeed.

  This time I did push on. I overcame the rock step and continued up the ridge, climbing over ice seracs and a couple of little pinnacles before finally breaking out onto the false summit. It was 3.30 p.m. I knew that many expeditions had stopped at this point and claimed to have reached the true summit because it is still a daunting distance away along the ridge, but I wa
sn’t interested in claiming the summit; I wanted to achieve it. Logically, perhaps I should have turned around, since the night would be on me in a couple of hours, but I was so far past my own turn-around time that it didn’t matter any more. Either way, I would still be climbing when darkness fell. And I wanted that summit.

  *

  The summit ridge of Broad Peak is very long, close to a kilometre. It undulates by 15 or 20 metres but is pretty much on the same contour except for a couple of seracs along the way. I edged carefully along the crest, which dropped sharply down the West Face and absolutely vertically on its east side, then climbed over a large serac and started the long traverse to the true summit.

  It took another two and a half exhausting hours, as I plodded just a few steps at a time and then bent over my ice axe and gasped for breath for several minutes. Finally, after ascending a short rise to a snowy pinnacle, I was on top. It was 6.05 p.m. on 7 August 1997.

  It was a balmy and clear evening, with spectacular views across the Karakorum Mountains, over the Gasherbrum Ranges to Masherbrum and back to K2. I turned on the borrowed Spanish radio and called them at base camp. They were cheering and congratulating me and said that they’d watched me through their telescope. I took a few photos, then balanced my little camera on my ice axe to take a self-portrait.

  I spent fifteen minutes on the summit and then started back, six and a half hours behind schedule. By 7 p.m. it was dark and I climbed by the light of my headlamp. It would be a long night. I was incredibly tired, and hadn’t had a drink in twenty-one hours of extreme physical effort in the dry and cold atmosphere, nor any food.

  I climbed back along the ridge as fast as I could, but the hours ticked by quickly. My exhaustion must have been extreme because it took longer to climb down the ridge than up it. At 11 p.m. I found myself at the top of the rock step that had almost stopped me on the way up. By then I was so frozen and dehydrated that I didn’t have the dexterity to climb back down the rock and so I was faced with a dilemma: risk climbing down without being able to hold on properly, or bivouac at 8000 metres without tent, sleeping bag, stove or water.

  Bivouac! That most fearsome of words to high-altitude climbers. I’d once watched a documentary about Mike Rheinberger’s successful but tragic ascent of Everest in 1994, in which a climber at Base Camp watched through a telescope as Mike and his guide were preparing to bivouac.

  ‘Bivouac,’ he’d said. ‘French for mistake.’

  That comment rang loudly in my mind. This was a far more serious situation than my brief bivouac the night before, 1000 metres lower, where I’d had a stove and where the air was exponentially thicker. Bivouacking at this altitude meant prolonged exposure without the oxygen I so desperately needed, which brought a much greater likelihood of falling victim to pulmonary and/or cerebral oedema. If they got me, I’d be dead. My dehydrated state also meant that my blood was thickening dangerously, leaving me at great risk of a stroke. And, in the extreme cold, my body would try to prevent hypothermia by cutting the blood flow to my fingers and toes, so I’d also be risking serious frostbite. If that happened, I’d be stuck above the rock step for good. Bivouacking above the rock step was all bad news, but I simply couldn’t down-climb the cliff without falling. Put simply, my choice was to stay up and risk death, or to climb down and guarantee it. I chose the bivouac.

  It would be the longest night of my life to that point—interminable, freezing at minus 25 degrees Celsius, a strong wind blowing and nowhere to shelter. I scraped a seat in the snow, then took off my crampons so they wouldn’t draw the heat from my feet and forced myself to stay awake so that I wouldn’t just go to sleep and die.

  I worked my fingers and toes throughout the night to stave off frostbite. To kill time, I dreamed of cooking meals and eating them. I even went as far as making up a recipe, shopping for the ingredients, preparing the meal, cooking it and then eating it slowly, savouring every bite. All in my mind.

  The time passed so slowly that it was depressing to look at my watch, so I’d try to estimate how much had elapsed. When I thought it was about an hour, I’d refuse to look at my watch and force myself to wait another hour, just to be sure. When finally that hour had passed in my mind, I’d allow myself to peek, only to find that just five minutes had elapsed since I last looked. Five minutes when it felt like two hours! It was soul-destroying. The night just wouldn’t end. I told myself stories, mumbled songs with chattering teeth, rolled from side to side to keep from freezing, and visualised warm things.

  I forced myself to break the night into chunks and focus only on each chunk. When an hour had passed—a real hour—I told myself that I was one-sixth of the way through the night—That was an hour. Now we’ll do another one. Just another hour. After the second hour I was one-third of the way there—One-third. That wasn’t so bad. Only twice that still to go. I can do this. After three hours I was halfway there—Okay, you’re over the hump. Everything still to go is less than you’ve done already. It isn’t so bad. It isn’t so cold. Wiggle your fingers. Wiggle your toes. I can do this.

  Finally, there was a faint lightening of the sky to the east, but I had to wait until the sun actually rose to feel some warmth. With the caress of those first life-giving rays, I regained some dexterity in my fingers—enough to climb with.

  I picked my way down the cliffs with the greatest care, as I still had only limited feeling in my hands. I felt very clumsy, like I’d been drugged by exhaustion and the altitude. Once off the rock face, I staggered down the corniced snow ridge to the col and, from there, plunged down the deep, steep snow face to where I’d left my stove, reaching it at 10 a.m.

  I called the Spanish and assured them that I was okay. They were greatly concerned that I might have been frostbitten, but I could feel my toes so I knew that any damage would be minor. It took another hour or so to boil some snow for a drink, as everything I did was in slow motion—just lighting the stove took a weight of concentration and effort. That first drink, thirty-eight hours since my last, was a weird mix of excruciating pain and pure bliss as I tried to swallow. But the pain eased and I kept the stove going until I’d drunk enough and filled my water bottle again.

  I then struck down for Base Camp, pushing myself through my exhaustion. By now I was desperate to get off the hill. Yet I was so spent that I’d fall back onto the snow and sit there panting for five minutes until I regained my breath. Eventually I passed some members of the Spanish team who’d decided to make their own summit bid.

  I had no desire to spend a third night in the open, so I pressed on without a rest, reaching the glacier around 7 p.m., where I wheezed and staggered in the gloom, anxious not to be caught in the maze of ice cliffs and crevasses there. My legs felt like dead weights and my almost empty rucksack like a bag of concrete. The final obstacle was a few small ridges of ice, but even the smallest rise now seemed Everest-like in size and reduced me to a crawl.

  At last I arrived at the Spanish Base Camp. It was about 8 p.m. Someone handed me some food, but it was fluid that I needed, and I sat there, speechless, drinking endless cups of tea and warm juice. In the afterglow of success and safety, I slumped into a tent; however, sleep escaped me—probably due to adrenaline, caffeine and the physical pain that was racking my body.

  Shahid had walked up from the South Ridge Base Camp to meet me. He’d made up a sign congratulating me and welcoming me back to base camp: ‘Welcome to Base Camp safe and sound after successful, courageous, wonderful and above all alone climb of Broad Peak.’ It was a really lovely gesture and I was very touched.

  With that, the expedition was over. While my little team of three waited several days for our porters to collect us, the Spanish summitted and returned to Base Camp safely and I pondered my latest success. Broad Peak was my third ascent of an 8000-metre mountain. By reaching its summit a few months after summitting Dhaulagiri, I’d become the first Australian to successfully summit two 8000-metre peaks in one year. More importantly, though, I had turned the corner on failu
re and endured two very tough expeditions, both of which had tested me to the limits of my psychological and physical endurance. Both had almost killed me, but I’d persevered and succeeded. And I’d learned that risk management is more than just knowing when to turn back; it is also about knowing when not to give up. I knew then that I could, and would, cope with whatever challenges I faced in the future. More than that, I looked to them with anticipation.

  That trek back to civilisation was glorious. I was on a high from my success and I was alive, fabulously warm, and safe. I luxuriated in every little experience, my senses in overdrive—a cup of tea, the first smell of vegetation, a friendly conversation. These were the real rewards for having put myself on the very edge of existence, for having risked my life on what many would see as a useless lump of rock and ice. For me, these intangible rewards were of exponentially more value than anything money could buy. I was the richest man on Earth and positively glowed with spiritual energy.

  Postscript

  Felix Inurrategi died in an avalanche on Gasherbrum 2 in 2000. This was a real tragedy because Gasherbrum 2 is one of the easiest 8000ers and he was a very gifted and accomplished climber.

  6

  SUMMITS AND BETRAYALS

  To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. That is the reward the mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits.

  Sir Francis Younghusband