by Clint Willis
They would climb without oxygen on most of the route. They would fix rope only part of the way up the peak. This would allow them to work with minimum support on the route itself. Bonington’s 1975 Everest expedition had employed sixty people above the Western Cwm. Chris intended to field only six climbers and two high-altitude porters on K2’s West Ridge.
Chris resumed his accustomed role of team leader and fundraiser. Jim Duff had been with Chris on Everest in 1975 and on Changabang before that. He joined the expedition as team physician. Tony Riley would film the trip.
The smaller team meant there was less to organize, but there was still a great deal to do. Chris had enjoyed life as a foot soldier on the Ogre. He felt the strain of being back in command. It was hard to raise money for a trip to K2. The mountain might be more difficult than Everest—and nearly as high—but it lacked Everest’s cachet.
Joe Tasker—new to Chris and his ways—didn’t make things easier. Joe had ambitions as a writer. He balked at signing an agreement to put off publishing anything about the K2 trip until after publication of the official expedition account. Joe eventually signed, but only after Chris lost his temper. The experience left Joe skeptical about the merits of mixing commerce with mountaineering. He had now made two major Himalayan climbs, each with a single partner: Dick Renshaw on Dunagiri and Peter Boardman on Changabang. The K2 expedition—so small by Bonington standards—struck Joe as too big. He felt his outsider’s status, too. The other climbers had been on Everest together, and four of them were just back from the Ogre. Chris for his part thought Joe, the new boy, was being difficult and a little ungrateful.
Tony Riley departed for Pakistan in April of 1978, shepherding two vans full of expedition gear. Chris and Peter flew out in early May, three days ahead of the rest of the team, to buy food and make other last-minute preparations. The two of them hadn’t spent much time together on Everest. They struck up a friendship during this early phase of the expedition. Peter was at once idealistic and practical—in some ways a younger version of Chris, but on the whole more relaxed than Chris had been at that age.
The others arrived several days behind Chris and Peter. The team took a plane to Skardu; it was the same flight four of the climbers had taken on their way to the Ogre. The expedition hired porters in Skardu, and a week’s walking brought them to the Baltoro Glacier. They reached the place on a gray, forbidding day. Chris as he took his first steps on the glacier felt that he and his companions had fallen into the hands of a storyteller—one who suspended certain rules, so that at any time the party might come upon a castle or a wizard. Mountains arose on all sides as the climbers walked. Chris had an eerie sense that the climbers came into the mountains’ view and not the other way around.
They walked thirty miles on the Baltoro. The porters sang mournful songs around their cook fires in the gray mornings. The climbers knew the names of many of the peaks they passed—spectacular granite spires such as Nameless Tower and Uli Biaho. This knowledge did not make the mountains’ shapes less strange or imposing. There was something dimly shocking in the way that the spires received the men’s notice and gave nothing back.
The climbers and porters often woke to new snow on the ground. Chris began to wonder if the porters would continue as far as the expedition’s Base Camp on the Savoia Glacier. He sent Doug Scott and Joe Tasker ahead with a small group of porters to size up the ground and report back. The other climbers stayed behind to coax the main group of porters higher. Chris and Nick and Peter doled out food and presided over the cooking. They resolved conflicts and responded to porter complaints about gear or the terrain or the weather. There was little common language between the British and the local men. The porters rose from their sleeping mats in the morning like ghosts, and then fell back to the ground to pray. There was an abstract and motiveless quality to their praying and to their complaints.
Doug and Joe had been delayed by their own porter difficulties. The main party caught them at the start of the Savoia Glacier, which led around to the western side of the mountain. Doug and Joe set off up the Savoia to finish their reconnaissance. Nick and Chris paid off most of the Baltis, doling out a total of fifteen thousand pounds in two hours. They kept twenty-five porters to carry supplies across the more difficult ground to Base Camp.
The party established Base Camp three days later, the second day of June. Peter had lagged behind the other climbers that day. He was glad to be on his own in these mountains. He felt his spirits rise at the site of new peaks. He imagined himself an explorer, the first to come here, a privileged visitor to some vast and empty picture gallery.
He was crossing a snowfield at the base of a mountain called Angel Peak when an enormous tower of ice collapsed in the near distance. He heard the collapse and threw down his pack without looking and tried to run in the snow but he fell. He had time to cover his face with his hat and snow swam over him; it got into his clothes and punched at his face.
It stopped. He picked himself up, surprised. He stood for a moment and bent to cough. The coughing turned to wheezing and at last subsided. He straightened to look up past mountains and their shadows to sun and the sky’s blue mirror; nothing had changed but everything was new. He set out to finish traversing the snow slope but after the first steps he sat down. It was an hour before he could stand up and walk again. He soon came upon Nick and one of the porters, come to look for him. Nick was very relieved. He had imagined looking for Peter and not finding him and then having to tell the others.
The climbers sat outside their tents at Base Camp that night. The wind was a whisper. K2 was upon them—that huge pyramid of black and white, utterly silent. Nick and Chris had seen it from the Ogre a year ago. It was strange to recall that moment.
Nick had opened a climbing shop and given notice at his job before leaving home for this trip. He meant to combine the shop with freelance computer work after K2. His co-workers had sent him off with an inflatable doll. He’d produced this monstrosity a few nights earlier. The other climbers had found it wildly amusing. They’d all stayed up late and drunk whiskey and laughed until they were weak.
Nick at times thought the climbing was just an excuse to come to these places. Then at times climbing became everything. Kicking steps in snow was real; the rest was a cozy dream—or like that doll a slighting reference to the sacred. He thought of his home in the Manchester suburbs. He’d put on a party there to celebrate the shop opening and the place had been full of climbers; someone had gone headfirst through a window, right into the garden. People were doing this thing with knives; you’d put a knife on the stove and heat up hashish and put a glass over it or something and breathe in the smoke. People were smoking a lot of dope. Some people were doing mushrooms. It was fun but ridiculous. Carolyn wasn’t pleased, and really she was right. He was thirty-four, getting too old for it.
He was too old for this as well. He had worried about this trip. His memories of the Ogre haunted him; the experience had raised questions that he did not wish to articulate, let alone try to answer. He had wondered whether he should come to K2 at all; once or twice he had been close to calling Chris and withdrawing from the expedition but he could not; there were too many reasons to come—there was the potential for surprise and discovery. Things weren’t good at home. He’d been a difficult husband in some ways. He couldn’t help but compare himself to a fellow like Peter Boardman who for all his obvious talent and strength seemed a sensible sort—young but not wild; he wouldn’t put his head through a window. Nick liked Peter. They were to go together in the morning up the Savoia to seek an approach to the West Ridge.
THEY DIDN’T FIND it. They reached a saddle on the glacier and peered down into China. The view revealed that the northern aspect of the West Ridge was too steep and iced-up to serve as an approach to their route.
Joe and Doug meanwhile discovered a route that lay to the south of the ridge. It took them through a small icefall pocked with holes that put Joe in mind of small black mouths. These hole
s gave entrance to huge, bell-shaped chambers; the thought of those brought to mind catacombs—vaults for the ancient dead. The route after passing through the icefall struck out across a vast snow basin.
Four of the climbers—Doug, Peter, Nick and Chris—set out the next day to find a site for Camp One. They passed through the icefall and struck out up into the snow basin, which was punctuated by a series of rock buttresses. They reached the first buttress late in the morning. Doug wanted to press on to a place on the crest of the West Ridge. Nick was for establishing a camp on the spot. They had words. Doug complained—a bit childishly—that Nick disagreed with all of his ideas. Nick maintained—with a touch of pomposity—that he was simply bringing his critical intelligence to bear on an important decision, as he might do at his workplace. Chris came up with an acceptable compromise: they would continue to a site a bit higher, near another small buttress that might provide protection from avalanche.
Peter and Doug and Joe carried more gear to the site the next morning and established Camp One. Tut remained at Base Camp with chest pains, and Nick stayed to pay off the rest of the porters. The next day the trio out front continued up the basin toward the ridge. They moved through deep snow that collapsed under foot. The sun and the altitude—they were now higher than 6,000 meters—made every step an ordeal.
They were laying out fixed rope from 600-foot reels. Doug broke trail for 1,200 feet before giving way to Peter. The scale of the landscape deceived them. The mountain’s individual features proved much larger than they appeared from a distance. The climbers missed their way to a gully, losing two hours.
Chris meanwhile came up from Base Camp. Peter and Doug and Joe found him waiting for them when they descended to Camp One that evening. Chris and Joe climbed together the next morning. Chris was glad to be on the route; he had spent much of these first days on the mountain at Base Camp, working on logistics and writing media reports. He led a gully of ice and emerged from it onto a rock shelf at the edge of another snow basin. He had studied pictures of this basin at home. The angle was easy. He planned to cross it to reach the site he had in mind for Camp Two, at the start of the difficult climbing.
The slope’s angle was just low enough to allow snow to accumulate, creating the potential for big avalanches. Doug had told Joe he thought they should bypass this second snow basin and follow a gully to the West Ridge itself. Joe mentioned Doug’s idea, but Chris favored the basin—it was quicker, and it seemed safe enough to him. Joe didn’t pursue the matter.
The two climbers crossed the snow unroped. It was technically easy, but they both felt the altitude. They were now at around 6,400 meters (21,000 feet) above sea level. They took turns breaking trail to a spot near a rock wall that offered some protection from slides; this was the site for Camp Two. Pete and Doug came up behind them, carrying loads for the new camp. The four climbers rested briefly and then returned to Camp One. Nick was there with a high-altitude Hunza porter named Quamajan. Nick and Quamajan made tea for everyone.
Peter wanted a turn out front the next day, and Doug volunteered to go back up with him. Chris—worried about losing control of the expedition to Doug—proposed that the five climbers draw straws to decide who would climb in the morning. Peter and Joe won. Doug turned churlish. He warned them not to make a route-finding mistake and he announced that he couldn’t share a tent with Chris any longer; the snoring was keeping him awake. Nick said he was used to the noise, and he volunteered to move in with Chris. Doug moved his things into Quamajan’s tent.
Peter and Joe moved up to occupy Camp Two the next day. Three men—Chris, Nick and Quamajan—followed with loads. Doug stayed behind to organize Camp One. His anger evaporated amid the quiet mountain landscape. He had tea waiting for the load bearers when they returned that evening.
The stars came out for a time that evening, but gave way to heavy clouds and snow while the climbers slept. The snow continued to fall into the next day. It fell quietly. There was no drama to this storm; it struck Nick that this snow would have been the same if they had not been here to see it. The snow was a tide, drawn to the earth by the earth. The planet’s purposes were not secret. The information, the data, was here—it was only that he couldn’t read it.
The four climbers at Camp One waited for two days in their tents. They had done this kind of waiting before; it had become a sort of practice for them. Nick and Chris enjoyed the time together. They were old friends. They had never wanted the same things; that circumstance had helped them. They were in debt to each other for various services, but most of their achievements and losses seemed at least partly accidental. They weren’t especially proud of what they’d achieved. They sometimes thought they were ashamed of their failures, but their shame was mostly manufactured. It obscured their sorrow and their surprise at their losses.
They loved some of the same things. They loved times like this—a quiet sky, snow on the ground and more falling. Nick one afternoon listened to Chris snore and wondered how long the new snow would remain on this mountain. The snow here seemed a version of eternity—effable, eternally renewed. The snow lay beneath them like a dense but shallow sky. The earth wanted nothing but it tugged at them all. Nick fell asleep.
The third day brought blue sky and a high wind. Peter and Joe roused themselves up at Camp Two and melted snow on their stove and pulled on boots. Their hands went numb in the shadows of morning. They set off to cross a snow slope that led to a gully, fixing rope as they went. For almost the first time on the mountain they were able to take in the scenery and feel themselves to be a part of it. They climbed into a new version of the world, gazed across at peaks and ranges unnamed and unexplored, unknown.
Chris and Nick and Doug meanwhile made a carry, crossing the snow basin to Camp Two. The new snow made their progress difficult. They dropped their loads and descended as quickly as they could manage. They felt the sun’s warmth and the changes it made in the snow as they descended to Camp One for the night.
Chris had developed a head cold. He decided to take a rest day. Nick and Doug and Quamajan would make another carry the next morning. Chris woke in time to say good-bye to them. He lay in his sleeping bag when they had gone, feeling the sun’s warmth through the tent fabric. He had learned to savor these moments of solitude on big expeditions—they always felt stolen. He heard shouts from lower down. Jim Duff had led some porters up from Base Camp. Chris roused himself and went down to help. He felt his strength returning. He could have gone higher today—he thought that perhaps he should have done so.
He made tea for the porters, and saw them off. Jim had brought the news that Tut Braithwaite was going home. Tut’s chest was giving him trouble. He was worried about that—and he missed his girlfriend; they planned to marry upon his return. Chris took the news easily. He found he wasn’t angry or let down. Tut’s departure would leave them a climber short—the team was already small—but they would manage.
The sky was windless and perfectly clear. Chris and Jim spoke of Tut’s departure and what it meant for their hopes of getting up the mountain. The crack and rumble of an avalanche—a huge one—interrupted their talking. They looked up and saw that they weren’t in danger. Chris grabbed his camera and started taking pictures but Jim suddenly shouted at him: For God’s sake stop. The lads could be in that.
DOUG AND NICK had decided to fix rope across the snow basin that led to Camp Two. The rope would help to protect them from any small slides in the fresh snow. Doug tied an end of rope to his waist and set out. He seemed anxious to be off, and Nick let him go first; what did it matter? Doug repaid him, turned to speak: It looks like we’ll be going to the top together, mate.
Nick smiled at him and settled in to wait. He smoked a cigarette; Quamajan had one as well. They watched Doug cross the slope. The porter got up to follow when Doug was halfway across but Nick stopped him; Nick would go now. He tied himself to the middle of Doug’s rope. He didn’t bother clipping to the fixed rope.
The angle of the slope was
easy; it was really just walking, and so he was free to look up at the route. The mountain struck Nick now as a sort of semifrozen chaos—a slow-motion explosion of mass. He was conscious of how the rock captured and held the snow in bowls and gullies high above them. He knew that things here were much bigger than they seemed. And yet the peak itself was a mere barnacle, a microbe on this massive planet. The sky’s immensity disoriented Nick; he felt obscurely that he could at any moment be plucked from the snow by some hidden law of physics—some reverse version of gravity. The sun’s warmth made him heavy; it bounced off the snow to bake his face. He was very thirsty. He was looking forward to tea.
He came to the halfway mark. He imagined that he was fording some enormous still body of water. There was no way out or across but to continue wading.
Everything around him moved. He moved with it, a solitary witness. The slope broke into floes that swam faster, colliding and breaking apart. Nick swam with them. He’d lost his footing and he was riding something—he must stay on top and for the moment he accomplished this.
He had wondered what he would do with the weight of his memory, his attachment to Carolyn, to the children, to questions, to his whole deluded state. His longing for all of it filled him but now here was this sparkling weightless sensation as things fell away. He fell too as the river reversed itself or turned him upside down and it seemed a long tumble into the pool at the bottom. He swept toward it within this astonishing roar, this roaring underwater quiet. He went deep until everything stopped but his falling.
A long moment but he felt the breath in his lungs; it slowed his fall. He described an inexorable, smile-shaped arc, scraping the sandy bottom of the pool. The surface flickered and receded as he rose to it.
DOUG HAD REACHED the other side of the snow basin when the avalanche occurred. Nick’s weight came on the rope at Doug’s waist and tore Doug from his steps and toward the slide. His surprise and his interest were intense. It was his first time in an avalanche. It occurred to him that he could die in it, and the notion gave him an almost warm feeling; he thought it wouldn’t be so hard to die. He piled into a deep snow bank and stopped. The rope attaching him to Nick had snapped.