Almost all altitude-adjustment routines involve climbing in order to stock camps, followed by a period of recovery at lower altitude—ideally, below 18,000 feet. Mountaineers ascend in the morning and descend before nightfall. Doing this seems to jolt the body into faster adjustment until about 27,000 feet.
Above that is the Death Zone. Nobody can adjust to it. At this extreme altitude, the percentage of oxygen in the air is the same as at sea level, but the air pressure is much lower—the same volume of gas has fewer molecules in it. As a result, the body can’t extract enough oxygen from the air. The more time spent in the Death Zone, the weaker and sicker a climber becomes. The digestive system fails and the body devours its own muscle tissue. “It’s living hell. You feel your body deteriorating,” said Wilco. “Ever tried to run up a staircase while breathing through a straw?”
Acclimatization increases the amount of time climbers can survive in the Death Zone. During acclimatization, the kidneys excrete more bicarbonate ions, acidifying the blood, which quickens respiration. The bone marrow revs up red-cell production so the blood can transport more oxygen. Blood flow surges in the brain and lungs. Without acclimatization to altitude, someone dropped off at the summit of K2 would black out within minutes. Those who have acclimatized can last several days.
These adjustments nevertheless come with dangers. A higher concentration of red blood cells thickens the blood. Clots form more easily and the heart has to pump harder. The rise in blood pressure can dislodge the clots, which then travel up the legs and clog the coronary artery, causing heart attacks; or the clots can cut off oxygen supply to the brain, causing strokes. There is also the specter of edema, or fluid buildup. Desperate for more oxygen, the body’s cells release nitric oxide and other chemical signals to the capillaries, directing them to accept more blood. As the capillaries expand, they expose themselves to higher blood pressure and tear. Fluid leaks, pooling in places it shouldn’t.
Capillaries in the eyes explode like fireworks, and this hemorrhaging blurs vision in severe cases. When the fluid collects in the lungs, which have the body’s greatest concentration of capillaries, climbers suffer from high-altitude pulmonary edema. Instead of breathing normally, victims of high-altitude pulmonary edema can only pant. The cough resembles the bark of a sea lion. The pulse races. Lungs cannot deliver oxygen. Death comes within hours unless the climber descends fast or is entombed within an inflatable pressure bag.
Like the lungs, the brain, which draws in an enormous supply of blood, can also leak fluid. When this happens, it’s called high-altitude cerebral edema. Its first symptoms are often mild; they may be what causes acute mountain sickness. However, victims can deteriorate fast. The headache feels as though a sadist is testing a jackhammer on your cranium. Balance wavers and speech slurs—almost as though you’ve downed ten martinis. Half the body may go numb. Unreal smells, sounds, tastes, and visions appear. During an altitude-induced hallucination on the 1954 K2 expedition, “I found myself inside an ice cream parlor in Padova,” recalled Italian scientist Bruno Zanettin. “I told myself, ‘This can’t be real. I’m alone inside a tent in Pakistan,’ but I could still taste the flavor of the ice cream.”
It’s hard to predict whom these afflictions will strike. They can break even the best climbers, ones who have always excelled in thin air. Bizarrely, the dying commonly fail to notice how sick they are. And even those handling the altitude well or breathing bottled oxygen can feel the drain. Viagra can help. The drug relaxes the vessel tone of the pulmonary arteries and can increase exercise tolerance, so mountaineers commonly take it.
Experts debate whether altitude causes permanent brain damage, but oxygen deprivation certainly impairs judgment. In 2008, for example, Roeland van Oss of the Dutch team nearly gassed himself. On July 1, at 23,000 feet, he was melting a pot of ice inside his tent without adequate ventilation. “On the burner there’s a big sticker: ‘Only use this outside,’ ” explained Wilco. Carbon monoxide filled the tent, and Roeland fell flat. He would have died if his teammate, Court Haegens, hadn’t immediately dragged him into the open air. Although Roeland’s mistake was just an oversight, the Savage Mountain had nearly claimed the first victim of the summer.
Climbers call him “The Weather God,” but meteorologist Yan Giezendanner is an atheist—“to the point of eating priests.” Multiple sclerosis consigns him to a wheelchair, but his reach extends six miles into the troposphere. From his ground-floor apartment in Chamonix, Yan was responsible for choreographing the movements of Hugues, Karim, and Jehan.
On July 22, Yan studied two screens streaked with yellow slashes and green waves superimposed on the contours of Kazakhstan. A cyclonic circulation was blowing east. As the eye moved into China, a ridge of high pressure developed over the Karakorum on the cyclone’s west side. In this ridge, right over K2, winds would become preternaturally calm for three to four days. “In ten years, I had never seen such a beautiful window,” Yan recalled. He didn’t pick up the phone right away. “I sat in my kitchen, stalling. I knew August 1 would be perfect. I also knew my prediction might cause a friend to die.” Reluctantly, he dialed Hugues’s number. When the Frenchman’s satellite phone chirped at Base Camp, Hugues, Karim, and Jehan were packing to go home. Hugues had no sponsors to impress. After four dreary weeks stuck in Base Camp, he could catch a flight to Paris without disappointing anyone but his dentist, who wanted a photo of Hugues’s teeth gleaming from the summit.
But once he heard the news about the weather window, Hugues resolved to stay, and so did many others. That day, Thuraya phones all over camp were bleating, and ecstatic climbers were zipping from one tent to the next. “Base Camp turned upside down,” said expedition manager Maarten van Eck, who had received an earlier forecast from the Dutch weather god. Although they still had nine days before the window opened, climbers lined their axes, ropes, and pickets across the moraine like butchers primed to gut a hog. They huddled around laptops. They filed their crampons. And soon the problem became obvious: With so many mountaineers planning to climb the mountain at once, crowds would pack the slopes. Nobody wanted to miss this one chance, and forecasters had only predicted four days of good weather. The teams decided to work together.
Four days after the news came in, about two dozen mountaineers crowded into the Serbian mess tent for the last logistical meeting of the summer. A jaundiced light filtered through the nylon fabric. A Warhol-style collage of food labels hung from a string overhead. Climbers drinking sugar-laced tea fidgeted as though waiting to be strapped inside a roller coaster. They discussed the siege of the Savage Mountain. Teams would advance along two routes, the Abruzzi and the Cesen, which converge at high camp, or Camp 4. Twenty-six climbers had claimed the Abruzzi; ten had chosen the Cesen.
Abruzzi and Cesen Routes (opposite): The weather on K2 allowed a climbing window of just three days, forcing a crowd of mountaineers to try for the summit at once. They took one of two routes, which converged at Camp 4.
The Abruzzi, the most popular route, traces the mountain’s southeast spur. It has four camps: at 20,300 feet, 22,000 feet, 24,000 feet, and 26,000 feet. Past Camp 1, a 45-degree slope rains rocks. This stretch almost killed Wilco in 1995 and Ger in 2006. Climbers must clear it in the early morning when the ice is firm. Next, they face House’s Chimney. Free-climbing this rock flue with a pack is impractical, so mountaineers ascend using a rickety ladder and a loom of fixed lines. Camp 2, above, is a wind-scoured platform that backs into a headwall. The route then claws toward the Black Pyramid, a 2,000-foot wall of granite-gneiss, with Camp 3 perched on top. Approaching the Death Zone, the route flattens onto the Shoulder, a glacial saddle reserved for high camp.
The Cesen route is longer and more technical but safer. It avoids some rockfall areas. From Base Camp, the Cesen follows a ridgeline that initially seems as gentle as a ski slope. The first camp, at about 19,000 feet, is jammed behind a butterfly-shaped outcropping. From there, a rock wall at 20,300 feet shelters Camp 2 from wind and avalanches. Sn
aking around the wall, the route plows upward, fanning into a monotonous incline called the White Desert. Camp 3 is pitched above a hump of gneiss at 23,500 feet. A steep ice field and a rock spire are the last obstacles before the Cesen joins the Abruzzi.
From Camp 4, the common camp on the Shoulder, the combined routes approach the Bottleneck. Seracs hulk above this channel like prows of tanker ships. Lines of climbers crowd the narrow passage. Once through the Bottleneck, the route swerves diagonally across K2’s southeast face along the Traverse. A massive lump of ice called the Snow Dome bridges the Traverse with a crevassed snowfield. From there, a ridge leads to the summit.
During the logistical meeting, the group chose Shaheen Baig to supervise the men who would break trail and fix ropes through the Bottleneck. Each large team contributed support climbers. The Koreans volunteered Pasang Lama and Jumik Bhote. The Serbians assigned two Balti high-altitude porters, Muhammad Hussein and Muhammad Khan. Chhiring Dorje represented the American team; Pemba Gyalje represented the Dutch. This advance team of Pakistani and Nepali climbers would start from Camp 4 at midnight and scale the Bottleneck before dawn.
A second wave of climbers planned to set off an hour behind the lead team. If all went well, the fixed lines would be in place by the time they reached the Bottleneck. Another six hours of breaking trail and they’d be on the summit. “We should turn around by 2 p.m.,” Shaheen said. If deep snow clogged the Bottleneck, the climbers might take an extra hour, “but no one should continue up after 3.”
Everyone would set their radios to frequency 145.140 MHz. The teams agreed to share willow wands used to mark the route, as well as rope, ice screws, and pickets. Mr. Kim anointed his teammate, Park Kyeong-hyo, as equipment manager. He would check in with each team and confirm that they had brought the necessary gear. “Everything was decided in a systematic way, every small detail,” recalled Pemba Gyalje. He felt confident about the plan.
Few recognized the cultural crevasse beneath the slick organizational surface. The advance team was dangerously diverse: Shaheen spoke Wakhi; the two Muhammads, Balti. These Pakistanis communicated in Urdu, a third language, which Shaheen translated into English for the Nepalis to understand. The Nepalis, in turn, played their own linguistic hopscotch. Pasang and Jumik’s first language was Ajak Bhote; Chhiring’s was Rolwaling Sherpi tamgney; Pemba Gyalje’s was Shar-Khumbu tamgney. They used Nepali to communicate among themselves. Information could easily become garbled as it passed through four linguistic layers, not to mention the crackle of a radio. Furthermore, only Jumik could communicate with Park, the equipment manager, who spoke Korean. If one link in the linguistic chain broke—Shaheen, for instance—the Pakistanis would be completely unable to talk to the Nepalis.
The liaison officer of the Serbian team, Captain Sabir Ali, recognized the potential for breakdown. He made a list of the equipment the teams promised to carry and proposed a contract, insisting that each leader sign his name on the paper. But even after that, several climbers were still unsure of the particulars.
“I speak Tarzan English,” Marco said to Shaheen after signing. “I hope I understood.”
Shaheen shrugged.
Wilco soon regretted the decision to join ranks with all the other climbers. “I signed for it,” he recalled, “but I should have said, ‘I’ve never climbed with any of you. Why should I trust you based on nothing but your blue eyes?’ ” He didn’t voice this concern at the time. No one did. The summit was waiting, and the teams felt ready. As the meeting broke up, Ger switched on a boombox. It blasted Biffy Clyro’s rock ballad Mountains into the clearing sky.
8
Ghost Winds
Base Camp to Camp 4
Up the Abruzzi. Up the Cesen
17,388 feet to 25,800 feet
July 28 to July 31
Two hours before he left Base Camp, Chhiring blessed his ropes, smoking them with incense. He stuffed the coils in his pack below a cylinder of oxygen, stashed for emergencies. He placed a mala rosary of 108 gnarled bodhi seeds in his jacket. He’d use them for meditation at high camp. Beside the beads he put a Ziploc bag of tsampa, barley flour that his lama had blessed. He planned to scatter grain through the Bottleneck as an offering to the goddess.
Deep in his pack, beneath strata of energy powder and butane canisters, he carried an envelope of rock salt. His lama had told him to sprinkle it on his last meal before the summit—it would give him strength. Around his neck he wore a crimson thread called a bhuti. A gift from his lama, the bhuti had three charms attached. The most potent, a silver amulet, concealed a mantra stamped on rice paper. Lama Ngawang Oser Sherpa had forbidden Chhiring to open the amulet’s casing and examine the mantra inside. If exposed, the mantra’s power would evaporate, reversing Chhiring’s fortune. The bhuti’s second charm, an oblong bead cocooned in black electrical tape, prevented cerebral and pulmonary edema. The third, a cluster of knots, halted avalanches and deflected falling rocks. Chhiring tucked the bhuti and its charms under his Capilene shirt, next to his heart.
Like Chhiring, other climbers deliberated over what to carry. Provisions supplied warmth, orientation, and motivation, but everything added weight, so they packed needful things first: altimeters, batteries, cameras, candy, crampons, downsuits, duct tape, goggles, headlamps, helmets, ice screws, ice axes, lighters, nose guards, radios, ropes, sleeping bags, stakes, stoves, sunscreen, tents, toothpaste, and satellite phones. But everyone had different ideas of what was essential.
The Nepalis wore bhutis similar to Chhiring’s, but charms differed. Pasang’s older cousin, Big Pasang Bhote, wore a pendant of red coral, symbolizing eternal life. He hoped it would relieve him of his recurrent nightmare in which a horned demon came to gore him in the stomach. Pasang’s other cousin, Jumik, wore a bhuti with a special weave to protect his teenage wife, Dawa Sangmu. Their baby was two weeks overdue.
Pasang usually kept two bhutis: one to wear around his neck and another to slip beneath his pillow to dissolve nightmares. But as he left Base Camp, Pasang realized that he’d forgotten them both. At least he remembered the lucky ring. Its soft gold, soldered into a snake, coiled up his middle finger. The ring belonged to his mother, Phurbu Chejik Bhoteni, who lent it on the condition that Pasang return it to her in person.
Many climbers brought reminders of people they loved and hoped to return to. Serbian climber Hoselito Bite carried a photo of his four-year-old daughter, Maya. “I’ve grown a lot in two months,” she had told him via satellite phone before he left for the summit bid. “When you come back, you won’t recognize me.” Hoselito kept her photo in a locket wrapped in waterproof tape.
Marco kept his grandmother’s rosary inside the top lid of his pack. It was a peculiar inheritance. She had died when Marco was a child, and, on the day of her funeral, Marco had tiptoed to where her body lay. “The rosary was laced between her fingers,” he explained, “and I stole it.”
Dren carried a miniature Snoopy that his girlfriend, Mirjana, had given him at the airport in Belgrade. He bound the doll to the right strap of his pack. It reminded him of his pretty zookeeper and their home filled with reptile tanks.
Rolf wore a blue-gray cap his wife had knitted at Base Camp. His bride, Cecilie, wore her wedding ring on a chain, so she wouldn’t have cold metal around her finger, increasing the chance of frostbite. It was a replacement for the first ring Rolf had given her. En route to the South Pole, Rolf had removed his skis, knelt in the snow, and presented her with a ring fashioned of steel wire from a repair kit. With tears freezing on her face, Cecilie had agreed to marry him. She had worn the ring, which dug into her finger, until they returned to Norway, where Rolf replaced it with a white-gold band.
Nick, the climber from California, brought an iPod filled with a motivational mix of Coldplay, Radiohead, and The White Stripes. He liked to lip-synch, infuriating Wilco. Wilco carried a Thuraya satellite phone with fresh batteries and raised buttons that he could punch even if he were snow-blind.
Others carried int
angibles. Hugues climbed with faith in Yan, his weather god; Hugues’s high-altitude porters, Karim and Jehan, who believed “no atom’s weight in earth or heaven escapes Allah,” both shouldered seventy-pound packs filled with Hugues’s food and bottled oxygen. Hugues’s dehydrated meals were not halal by Islamic dietary law but luxurious by mountaineering standards. The most appetizing was a silver packet of freeze-dried Bumble Bee chicken. With boiling water, it would swell into a juicy fillet.
At least one climber, Mr. Kim, itemized his gear with military precision, rejecting all items of superstition except for a single object. The leader of the Flying Jump was rumored to be carrying the lost quartz, the same rock that had caused a scuffle with the crew on Everest.
Chhiring’s friend Eric packed a portable pharmacopoeia. Aside from diuretics, steroids, antibiotics, and antivirals, the anesthesiologist carried several doses of alteplase, a clot-busting tissue plasminogen activator, designed to reverse severe frostbite. Each 50 milligram shot cost $1,375. The doctor wore a Capilene undershirt silk-screened with the motto: “K2: A Little Shorter/A Lot Harder.” A climber who asked not to be named brought JWH-018, a synthetic marijuana with ten times the punch of THC. The drug’s street name was “K2.”
Irish climber Ger McDonnell carried a crucifix, his grandfather’s pocket watch, an eighty-five-year-old whistle that had called four generations of McDonnells to the dinner table, and a vial of holy water mixed from Lourdes, Knock, and St. Bridget’s. Just before he departed, Ger assured his mother in a final blog entry that he had not misplaced the holy water, adding in Gaelic: “Tá an t-am ag teacht”—The time is coming.
Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day Page 12