By evening I threw down my tarp at the base of McKinley’s West Rib. The sky looked as if the weather would cooperate. In a good mood, I fixed a huge dinner and visited with two Anchorage mountain guides who shared my campsite. The nights here are only a little darker than the day, so time loses meaning. I woke at 5 A.M. on the twenty-third and might have started out earlier, but I was fatigued from the work the day before. Still feeling the full effects of dinner, I ate a light breakfast. As I packed up, firsthand knowledge of McKinley’s penetrating cold and mercurial weather patterns prevented me from lightening my load. With the sleeping bag, stove, gas, and tent, my pack weighed twenty kilograms or more. I began the assault at exactly 7:30 A.M.
The bottom of the couloir was not steep; I had the trail left by previous climbers to follow. My speed was good, but I was not going at full strength. Soon the snow ended and I began to climb sound, crisply ringing ice. Denali, as Alaska natives call their mountain, made me cautious. Past the steep ice, I came onto a snowy crest. One more hour of effort and I passed Camp I. Rushing on for two more hours, I arrived at Camp II. During a five-minute rest, I explained my mission to the climbers I met there. Surprise registered on their faces. An hour later at Camp III, I stopped for a ten-minute rest with another Fantasy Ridge expedition. They had started out on May 16. (The only way I can explain such slow progress is that the Americans sit too long and don’t climb in bad weather.) Again I told my story and asked the group members to take a few pictures of me. The next section was not so steep. My sharp crampons dug into the frozen, bare rocky terrain. By the time I reached the elevation of 4,800 meters, my shoulders and arms were numb from the weight of my pack. Somewhere about 5,000 meters I passed the last group of climbers that I would meet before the summit ridge. Three hundred meters farther on, I understood that I had to stop. I sat for fifteen minutes, ate a small snack, and fixed myself a hot drink.
Only snow-covered slope lay between the summit crest and me, but it was steep and the crust was hard. I was a little apprehensive because slabs of snow break off easily in those conditions. After seven hours of continuous work my pack felt unbearably heavy, and the slope seemed to stretch on to infinity. The only comforting thought was that somewhere above me it would all end. After the West Rib joined the West Buttress the final journey to the summit was not so steep. After that I could go down.
The last meters on that slope were difficult, hard going for me. Wearily, I traversed left and came around a corner. Then I saw people slowly climbing to the summit. Dragging myself to the flag-marked path, I abandoned the unbearable weight of my pack. I started to the summit. The wind blew strongly and the cold was incredible. I was not sorry that I had taken the time to put on my down jacket. Silently, I was grateful for the mittens one of Michael’s clients had given me. With dogged determination I passed eight climbers. I arrived on the top in the company of an Englishman, ten and one-half hours from the time I’d started out. We photographed one another for posterity, and my fingers became instantly numb without the protection of the mittens.
Right away, I started down. After recovering my pack, I followed a flagged trail on the West Buttress. A team of climbing instructors camped at 5,000 meters gave me a mug of hot tea. Steering the unfamiliar course by following the fixed rope, finally I arrived on a big plateau where many groups were camped. It looked strange, a lone Russian coming down the mountain. People asked me a lot of questions. Cached food that I had hidden at the trail junction on the glacier was my destination. I only wanted to eat and drink. When I arrived, I was so exhausted that I had no power to look for the food or to put up my tent. Trying to melt the water for tea, I fumbled and the temperamental stove caught fire. I managed to put out the flames, gulped a meager amount of water. Using the last of my strength, I crawled into my sleeping bag.
I had done it. In less than one day I had completed a route that would normally have taken five camps. I fell asleep thankful that the night was not too cold.
Climbing magazine noted the ten-and-one-half-hour solo ascent of McKinley by Anatoli Boukreev in the October 1990 issue. It was the fastest ascent of McKinley in the history of the mountain. The Denali Park rangers would add unreal to the list of adjectives describing the “Ration” West Rib, No Problem expedition.
2
FROM ELBRUS TO ELDORADO, FALL 1990
The familiar sounds of Russian conversation woke me from my sleep. All around me in the New York airport were people with huge bags of goods, things purchased during their visit to America. They talked of homecoming; like me, everyone was absorbed with his or her return to the motherland. At the check-in counter, the clerk informed me that I owed $32 more for the extra weight in my baggage. Digging in my pockets for money, I found less than $10. I attempted to explain my predicament. The airline official decided not to be too strict and allowed my luggage to be loaded on the plane without the extra charge.
That was just one of the many times during my first visit when I had cause to appreciate the remarkable kindness and generosity of Americans. Perhaps the country’s general affluence allows its citizens to be this way. On the flight back to Moscow, I sat next to the assistant director of a Moscow champagne factory. He could not stop talking about how wonderful life was in the USA. After three months of traveling I did not need him to tell me what was good and what was not.
I don’t believe that the United States is free of problems. Everything has a price. Survival depends on the individual’s initiative; there no one is promising you anything. There is some cruelty in a system that makes no allowances for human weakness, but at the same time, the people are forced to be stronger. Factors that affect life are concrete, not abstract. Maybe that is for the best. At home all our attempts at humanism have gotten us to the place where no one remembers how to work hard and there is no motivation to strive for a better life. Something terrible is happening to the young people in my country: drug and alcohol addiction and other signs of moral degradation are common. I think these problems are growing faster in the USSR than they are in America. Now there are problems with every aspect of Soviet existence. Average people should be inspired by the opportunities in their lives, but they are not. The field of sports is no exception. Athletes like me need ways to become self-supporting.
In America I observed a phenomenon that was new to me. Masses of people use running to keep fit. In Colorado on the weekends the countryside was crowded with groups enjoying hiking or rock climbing. Few of those people were training to be professional athletes. Daily sports activity is used to relieve the stress of work or as a way to socialize or commune with nature. A passion for the outdoors enriches the quality of their lives. In that way sports produces stronger citizens, people who appreciate the harmony of nature and are motivated to get more out of their free moments than rest from work. Those are the essential benefits of sports activity on the psychology of the masses. Europe and America have far more people than we do who understand my point, but in those countries it is possible to earn enough money to finance the luxury of active leisure.
My passion for sports has led to its becoming my profession. I live about forty kilometers from Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the midrange of the Zaalyskiy Ala Tau Mountains. When I am not climbing, I work as the coach of the skiing program at a collective farm in the village of Mountain Gardener. The pay is miserable, $100 a month, but my work allows me to maintain a schedule of training. Climbing and coaching has been my life for eight years. In that time I progressed from a mountaineer of the first category to Master of Sports, International Class. Over the same period, three of my protégés rose from rank novices to become members of the Combined National Ski-Racing Team and finalists for the Olympic team from the USSR.
For fifteen years I have been a proponent of cross-country running for fitness. For anyone who conditions this way, shoes are the most important item of equipment. During my first trip to America, I found out that there are specially designed sports shoes, which make even steep downhill tracks a pleas
ure. When I jog, I am usually not alone; members of my ski team run with me, but they have no special shoes. When I visited American stores, my eyes devoured the racks of special equipment that is available to anyone. In the USSR even top-caliber athletes can only find work boots for training.
Beyond the borders of our country, a variety of extreme sports have gained popularity. Success in those events is won by exploring the limits of human ability. On adventures such as climbing the highest peaks, sailing alone around the world, in triathlons and supermarathons, individuals are setting new standards for human endurance. Businessmen from many companies in Europe and America understand the advertising benefits of sponsoring competitions and professional athletes. Foreign climbing publications are full of record-setting reports. Italian Ermanno Salvaterra climbed five difficult routes in the Alps alone and in a day. Americans storm Yosemite’s sheer rock faces, speeding up routes that once took days in a matter of hours. There is a record time for climbing Everest. French climber Marc Batard made it up in twenty-two hours and thirty minutes. A rumor has it that he will try to better his record next year. It will not be too difficult for him to find a sponsor for that ambition.
Since McKinley, the idea of challenging Batard’s record has inspired me. Of necessity that goal is set somewhere in the future. Before one can break records, first there must be the opportunity to climb the highest mountain in the world. The permit alone is $3,200. Add to that the expenses of living in Nepal for several months, the cost of equipment for preparing the route, and wages for the porters, and climbing in the Himalayas becomes an expensive proposition for a ski coach with my salary.
Respected Boulder, Colorado, mountaineer Kevin Cooney is interested in joining me on an Everest speed ascent. He is a professional triathlon competitor and a strong rock climber. Now Kevin is looking for sponsors. For training and to generate some interest in our plans, we decided to compete in several high-altitude races. Vladimir Balyberdin is trying to get financing from the Soviet Ministry of Sports to undertake an Everest-Lhotse expedition in the fall of 1991; the speed ascent appealed to him as well. To show his support for us, he arranged for the official invitations that allowed Kevin and another Colorado friend, Patrick Healey, to come to the Soviet Union to compete in the Second International Elbrus Race. In October, I returned to America to run the Basic Boulder Marathon, the high-altitude competition that Kevin sponsors.
Last summer the Everest idea inspired me to undertake two speed ascents in the Tien Shan. A month after the McKinley climb I was still weak. Back at home I was diagnosed with an infectious illness: a case of giardiasis had progressed to a critical stage and I had abscesses in my liver. Initially, I had intended to challenge the speed records set by our teams climbing Khan-Tengri and Pobeda, but in no way was I committed to paying the ultimate price for such a victory. To climb solo safely, I needed to be strong enough to carry everything required for a bivouac on either route. The weather in the Tien Shan is unpredictable. Two months passed before I felt that I had regained enough strength to make the climbs feasible. Though in the West solo climbing is considered a high level of accomplishment, in the USSR such climbs are prohibited by Soviet mountaineering rules. To use the facilities at Base Camp, official permission was required. Fortunately, the coach of my sports club, Irvand Illinski, is an innovator by nature and a true sportsman in his soul. He resolved the problem with a compromise: he would not officially sanction my speed ascents, but neither did he forbid me from making them.
In the summer of 1990, for the first time our mountaineering camps were open for the use of international teams. When I stepped off the helicopter at Khan-Tengri Base Camp, I could see that so many climbers were attempting my route, there was not much possibility of ascending the technical portions quickly. I had to be satisfied with gaining a good acclimatization and a speed ascent from 5,800 meters. Leaving the last camp early, I had the steep route to the top to myself. After four hours of effort I was standing on the 7,010-meter-high summit. Encouraged by my body’s performance, I moved up the South Ilynichk Glacier to the base of Pobeda, expecting a harder challenge.
Pobeda Peak is a more complicated mountain, and climbing it alone proved to be a difficult test for me psychologically. The day that I began my ascent, the sky changed in the late morning and showed signs that the weather might deteriorate. Worried about that eventuality, a group of Italians turned back at 6,700 meters. I was left alone with the mountain. About 2 P.M. while eating lunch, I studied the sky. Conditions were not changing rapidly. I decided to go on. By 3 P.M. I topped Vasha Pshavel, a subsidiary peak on the huge Pobeda Massif. From that point, a three-kilometer traverse along an undulating 7,000-meter-high ridge separated me from the base of the summit pyramid. To spare my back some weight and increase my speed, I stashed my sleeping bag and extra supplies in a depression about midway across the traverse. With me I carried a gas stove, a pot for melting snow, a headlamp, and my ice tool. The altitude wasn’t causing any problem and I did not feel tired. About 6 P.M. I began ascending the last five hundred vertical meters. Looking at the sky, I thought my only nemesis was the coming nightfall. The summer sun set beneath the clouds as I reached the 7,439-meter summit. Grateful that my old Pentax camera was working in the low evening temperatures, I took a few photos and quickly descended. In the fading twilight I began the traverse—somewhere in the middle of the ridge, my sleeping bag, shovel, and extra food were in a snow depression. The wind picked up, erasing my trail. In the dark of night heavy clouds descended, obscuring the relief. Recovering the food and sleeping bag became critical. Somehow I located the pack. Past the summit of Vasha Pshavel, I gave up and took shelter in a snow cave.
The storm raged all night. At noon the next day I resumed my descent down slopes burdened with a deep, dangerous layer of unconsolidated snow. In places I waded in powder up to my waist; moving forward was difficult. Eleven hours later, exhausted, I reached the safety of the International Mountaineering Camp. I was lucky and grateful to be alive. As a welcome home my thoughtful comrades had heated up the banya (Russian sauna) for me.
One month before the Elbrus race, I returned to my dacha in Gorni Sadovod (Mountain Gardener). Soon I was able to enjoy easy runs with my team of skiers on the cross-country trails through the taiga. During those late-summer days, I relaxed and made my final preparations for the trip to the Caucasus.
In 1989, I had protected my feet with several pairs of socks and wore lightweight track shoes with cleats to win the Elbrus race. Last year the finish line had not been at the top of the mountain; the 1990 race was set to end on the east summit. In late September I expected that the daytime temperatures on the route would be below freezing. Beth Wald had reported on my unusual footgear in her Climbing magazine article. I learned that my American friends were coming to compete in the race armed by Nike with “secret weapons,” specially fitted track shoes. My search for the right-size shoes in Almaty was fruitless; I was forced to run the race in trekking boots and crampons.
On race day the officials lined us up in front of the Hotel Priyut, at 4,200 meters. We took off, and Vladimir Balyberdin started his stopwatch, standing on the summit finish 1,440 meters higher. With the excellent acclimatization from my summer efforts, I ran without feeling the altitude. The official record time went down in the books: one hour and forty minutes. I finished first and Kevin was second, losing to me by only twelve minutes.
When I said good-bye to Kevin, I had my official invitation to America in my hand and twenty days to obtain authorization to leave the USSR, a visa, and a ticket to the USA. Only a Soviet citizen can appreciate such a mission. Illinski decided that my trip to America was a personal initiative. Without an official sponsor, permission to leave the country was a problem, and all the trip expenses had to come out of my pocket.
Unfortunately, in our country a regular citizen going abroad, especially to the United States, is about as likely as flying to the moon. That is a joke, but a bitter one. Finally Balyberdin agreed to spon
sor me through [his business] Alpinist, but my exit visa came through only one day before I was supposed to be in New York to pick up a ticket to Boulder. By that time only a first-class seat was available from Moscow, which cost me twice as much as a regular fare. That had a dramatic impact on my finances.
Because of the bureaucratic tangle, in those twenty days I managed to make only one long-distance training exercise for the marathon. Though that beautiful eighty-kilometer run over two mountain passes from Almaty to Lake Issyk-Kul was an intense, difficult effort, it was nothing like a competition. At any whim, I stopped to drink from the mountain streams and rested in the warm sun. My lack of experience running the marathon distance made it impossible for me to judge my strength during the actual race.
Above the Clouds Page 7