Above the Clouds

by Anatoli Boukreev

  I did not cry. Slowly I reckoned with what had happened. I did not want to accept Peter’s and Reinmar’s deaths. I wanted to change something in the situation, to find some peg on which to construct a scenario for their survival. I could find nothing that gave me hope. Finally it was clear to me that they were dead. For two hours I sat staring at the tracks we had made in the snow on the way to the summit the day before. The mountain was lit harshly by the sun, and in the shade it was cold blue. K2 looked like a monster. I suggested to Andy that we should go up. He shrugged his shoulders as if he could not understand. In reality, I had no strength to go up. Around 11 A.M. Andy and Rafael started down the mountain. I spent three more hours in camp, just sitting, looking at the mountain, as if hypnotized.

  I left camp at 2 P.M. and caught up with Rafael and Andy. They were talking to the British mountaineer Victor Saunders. He offered to help Rafael down to the snow cave below Camp III where the other members of Rafael’s expedition were waiting. Andy and I stayed in the cave I had built, and on August 1 we descended to Base Camp. That day the wind came up again and destroyed all the tents at Camp II.

  Writing this now, there is no joy in my achievement. I only look at life and value it a little differently. It is easy to lose in the mountains if you step over the border of what is possible. Where are those borders? For four months since my return, I have searched my soul for answers. Why were Rafael, Andy, and I allowed to come down alive, after crossing into that no-man’s-land, the forbidden zone? Why was the door of return closed to Daniel, Peter, and Reinmar? I feel my participation in these events acutely. What more could I have done that day to help my friends? Is it wrong that I lived, that I did not die with them?

  5

  MAKALU, SPRING 1994

  The bus trip home to Almaty from Pakistan telescoped Anatoli through a thousand years of time and lifestyles. Intriguing aspects of the modestly durable cultures in Hunza and Sinkiang provided some distraction from his somber ruminations.

  News of his success on the second-highest mountain in the world was received indifferently by officials in the Kazakh Ministry of Sports. Reconciling his exponentially expanding worldview with the narrow mind-set of people at home became increasingly difficult. In September of 1993, frustrated by the lack of opportunity in Almaty, he scraped together the means to return to America.

  While resting in the haven of Jack Robbins’s Berkeley home, he wrote a ninety-page history of the K2 expedition. Though it did little to assuage his sadness over the deaths of Reinmar Joswig and Peter Metzger, writing allowed Anatoli to reflect on the order of events and to examine the choices that had led to the tragedy. Later that fall he moved on to Boulder, Colorado, to visit friends and to take advantage of an opportunity to earn money. The champion ski-coach-cum-mountaineering-master accepted the work that was offered. Wry humor concealed the humiliation that Anatoli, a proud man, felt using his talents for mixing cement. He was not the only Soviet climber who found refuge in the West.

  After marrying American adventurist Fran Destifano, Serge Arsentiev, Anatoli’s Kanchenjunga climbing partner, settled in the mountains of Colorado. Besides having been a member of the prestigious Combined Team, Serge has been the first Soviet to summit Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen. Anatoli credited him as being one of the strongest climbers their old school had produced. Before the Soviet Union had deconstructed, the Leningrad native had worked as a high-level satellite communications engineer.

  In the summer of 1993, Anatoli reconnected with Serge and his new wife, Fran, who were visiting in Almaty. Serge told Anatoli he was making his own adjustments to life in America as a carpenter in Telluride, Colorado. Hearing that Buka wanted a place to stay for the winter, Fran Arsentiev had offered to rent him a room in her home. Anatoli remembered that the appealing alpine location was reminiscent of the taiga around Mountain Gardener. During his stay he found that many of the small-town citizens were accomplished counterculture athletes.

  Fran had plans to put Anatoli to work as a summer guide for her new business, Trek around the World. Combining her organizational skill with that of top-level Soviet athletes, she aimed to provide the first adventure-travel packages to the mountains in the former Soviet republics. She remembered, “Anatoli was an intensely private man, with a religious dedication to training.”

  He credited their relationship and that time in her home with teaching him the ropes of survival in America. Anatoli’s English was still rudimentary and his business acumen naively “collective.” The cost of living in America required some mental gymnastics for a parsimonious athlete. One month’s rent in Telluride ($500) would have paid his apartment expenses in Almaty for one year. Russian-style, his blunt frustrations were candidly expressed to only a few friends. Serge’s mild-mannered equanimity helped Anatoli round some sharp corners during that season of adjustment. The neighbors who dropped in at Fran’s often found the two mountaineering giants making bread with all the attention normally reserved for a science experiment. (Anatoli openly wondered why the richest country in the world produced the “weak” bread for sale in our markets.) He earned the money to pay his bills clearing snow off the steeply pitched roofs in Telluride. His $5-an-hour wages did not go much further than that. Shoveling, he remembered, did not become a favorite form of exercise, but there were enough days off for skiing on the high backcountry trails to keep him fit and acclimated to three thousand meters.

  Tolya became a well-liked, familiar figure in town. A reporter from the local newspaper printed an interview with him that detailed his K2 experience. The account caught the attention of the owner of a Colorado company, Condor Adventures. International mountain guide and entrepreneur Thor Kieser made Anatoli an offer that provided him with a natural next step in his career.

  Yet another Himalayan expedition is behind me. The name of the first citizen from the Kazakhstan Republic to climb the fifth-highest mountain in the world is written in Elizabeth Hawley’s record books. Few Soviet mountaineers find ways to climb an 8,000-meter peak these days. Our nation has fractured into independent countries that can boast only of having the lowest workers’ wages in the world. Three years of rampant inflation makes money worthless. Over the same period, permit fees and expedition costs for climbing the highest peaks in the Himalayas have increased so much that even my foreign friends complain that they are prohibitive.

  Twice during my last expedition I was on top of Makalu. Standing there, I felt that I represented all Soviet mountaineers of my generation, men parted from their dreams forever by the financial chaos that plagues our lives. These great climbers can not afford to think of mountaineering. Literally, they struggle to earn the money to pay for bread to eat. I refuse to forget the honor bestowed on me by the Soviet Union or that my ability was perfected in the most outstanding school of mountaineering in the world. When we destroyed the old system of government, we said good-bye to traditions that had taken years for us to build. In sports, the arts and sciences, knowledge was passed from generation to generation. I was one of those who benefited from our national commitment to perfecting human excellence.

  These days when I return to Almaty from my expeditions, I see that the achievements of our Sports Club are not valued or appreciated the way they were in the past. Our best climbers spend every moment resolving petty everyday problems that have nothing to do with their hard-won expertise. The insulting predicament devalues the enormous work done by my generation pioneering new routes in the Himalayas. It slanders the courage and commitment of those who taught us, whose experience paved our way to those great peaks. The growing social indifference renders meaningless the lives of men and women who paid the ultimate price and remain forever in the mountains.

  My accomplishments are connected directly to the efforts of all those who helped create the high standards of Russian alpinism. Step by step with courage, discipline, and commitment they redefined the limits of human potential. With my life I endeavor not to discredit those standards, only to im
prove them. Painfully, I wonder, “Who will follow in my footsteps?” Having neither personal prosperity nor stable social conditions, my peers throughout the former republics have abandoned sport climbing. Young people are denied the support that we were given, for without mentors there is no proper framework for experiential growth.

  An impressive tradition of high-altitude alpinism developed in the Central Asia Army Sports Club under the supervision of our honored trainer and coach, Irvand Tikhonovich Illinski. He contributed a lot to our development; he gave a lot to me especially. Despite the changes, Illinski and a few of our club members attempt to preserve the philosophy of our school, sharing their time and skills teaching young climbers. Now we must find the way to climb with money; the time when commitment, readiness, and ambition were enough is over. Now to climb in the Himalayas or Karakoram I pay my own way.

  After this expedition I found myself in an especially critical financial situation. It has taken ten days of living in the cheapest hotel room in Kathmandu, every day selling more pieces of my personal equipment, to raise the money for my ticket home to Almaty. I count it as a blessing that I came back from Makalu with my weight above normal, thanks only to the huge supply of food provided by the American company that had the expedition permit. Compared to what is available on the shelves at home, at our remote Base Camp I feasted on first-class meals. We even had beer. My American friends thought the selection was meager. During the expedition they each lost a couple of kilograms; one person lost five kilograms. When I look in the mirror, only my face seems thinner. That I attribute to mental strain and the effects of prolonged time at high altitude.

  Actually, I enjoyed the way my employer, Thor Kieser, organized this expedition. Though Makalu is formidable and our route was tricky, no incidents marred our experience. Thor’s company, Condor Adventures, specializes in guided excursions in the mountains of South America. Now he has dreams of expanding his business to the Himalayas. In the past, only well-prepared, cohesive teams had tried to climb Makalu. This was the first commercial expedition. We had an international team: ten Americans, an Englishman, a Bolivian native, and myself, Russian by birth, Kazakh by fate. Lately my allegiance to a homeland goes to the mountains: the Rockies, Tien Shan, Pamirs, Karakoram, or the Himalayas.

  Thor screened his clients well; most of the group members were familiar to him from a previous expedition to Gasherbrum II. Several men were guides or had experience on harder 8,000-meter peaks. No one required a personal guide, but team members needed strong leadership to support their ambitions. In America the school of mountaineering has evolved in a different direction from ours. It has produced many expert rock climbers with advanced technical skills. In the United States, only a few alpinists have gained my level of experience climbing high without using supplemental oxygen. The 481 meters that Makalu rises above the 8,000-meter mark has a critical impact on athletic ability. Without previous experience it is impossible for a human to work well in those conditions. Americans respect and know how to value professionalism. Thor invited me to join the expedition because he wanted the benefits of my strength and expertise. My presence gave the other team members a psychological advantage.

  The basic price per person was $9,600. For clients who had previously worked as mountain guides or climbed hard peaks, that price was discounted several thousand dollars. In exchange for my share of the cost, I agreed to be responsible for all the technical work on the route. That deal did not cover any of my travel expenses or equipment. Even that sum of money was problematic for me in my current situation. Officially, Thor introduced me to the team as his assistant. In reality, I assumed an enjoyable role, that of climbing leader and expert consultant for everyone. Climbing first, I selected our route and secured rope along the more dangerous sections. I picked the location of camps and set them up. It was interesting work, even for me.

  The physical burden of my job increased when all but one of our participants developed mild mountain sickness at the elevation of Camp I (6,500 meters). Only Bernardo Guarachi, a native of the Andes, adapted to increases in altitude without problems. The weight of equipment and supplies we hauled up the mountain represented a considerable amount of work for only two men. Though Bernardo is the first native of the South American Andes to climb an 8,000-meter peak, at that time his experience was limited to the lowest and easiest of the giants. His lack of technical mountaineering skills meant that he could only belay me in the critical places. To provide adequate protection up the sixty-degree slopes of the six-hundred-meter-long ice couloir below Makalu La, by myself I fixed twenty successive sections of climbing rope. The continuous stress of working in front exhausted me psychologically. Unfortunately, my partner did not speak English, and I do not speak Spanish, so some days passed and not a word was spoken between us.

  We supplied the second camp at the elevation of 7,400 meters on Makalu La. A short climb higher, about one kilometer below the summit, Bernardo and I encountered the remains of a climber. His frozen body rested casually on the snow slope. Tattered, faded clothing fluttered in the breeze. Wind and time had eroded his features. Like a climbing partner from the past, death’s face was there to remind us of the dangers and difficulties overcome by the pioneers who had broken the 8000-meter barrier before us. This man had a powerful psychological effect on my American friends.

  Our last camp was set at 7,800 meters. On April 29, Bernardo and I were free to pave a way up the final meters to the top. Above a dangerous icefall, we came to the peak’s final bastion. Above 8,400 meters the relief was obscured by a milky fog. The steepness of the last ice and talus slope required that we use rope and place pitons for security. Then we explored the top along a corridor between abrupt crags. The first native of South America and the first Russian climbed what we judged to be the highest tower on the summit of Makalu. By that effort we joined ninety-two climbers who had claimed that honor before us. Our route repeated the line first completed by the French in 1955. It is far harder than the normal route to the top of Everest, which four hundred men and women have negotiated. We descended to Base Camp full of satisfaction and proud of our good news. Bernardo headed back to Kathmandu.

  Ten days passed before the remaining members of our team were able to put themselves within striking distance of the top. On May 9 four climbers set out from Camp III. At an elevation of 8,200 meters the Englishman, Alan McPherson, turned back. Thor and my good friend Neal Beidleman ascended the last section of fixed ropes, but they gave up 120 vertical meters shy of their goal. With his effort reinforced by a canister of Poisk oxygen, good-natured Steve Bain stole up to the base of the summit’s icy tower, though wisely he did not risk surmounting the last meters on the steep crag alone. After a team discussion that compared Bernardo’s and my description with the top relief on a clearer day, I learned that Makalu’s summit has two towers. The highest one rose up another fifteen meters and was located approximately fifty meters past the one that I had climbed on April 29.

  After these efforts, Thor decided to end the expedition. The allotted time on our permit was about to expire, provisions were running low, the beer was gone. Most important, no one had the strength to try again. The tent at Camp III was abandoned. The equipment from Camps I and II was packed and brought down by the retreating climbers. Back in Base Camp, Neal reported that the moment they turned back was the happiest one in his life, so great was his relief that his body would be spared further torment in the inhuman atmosphere. After a few days of rest, like any athlete he regretted his lack of success. Neal had long dreamed of summiting an 8,000-meter peak.

  I could sympathize with my friend’s depression, because I knew that my fortunes would not likely offer me the opportunity to climb to Makalu again. I suggested that we should make one more effort together, employing a different strategy. While working with Bernardo, I couldn’t consider a sports ascent. My first responsibility was to make my presence on the expedition worthwhile for our team. Ten days of inactivity while the others climbed
had allowed me to recover some strength. Rested, I had a fresh perspective. Neal listened skeptically to a plan I had formulated that put the summit less than twenty-four hours away. The top was six to ten hours of climbing above Camp III, and I pointed out that we had abandoned a tent there to use as needed for rest or shelter. I was aware that there were drawbacks. What I proposed to him was a climbing supermission. Under optimum circumstances we would have approached the project very differently.

  Time above 7,800 meters on the previous summit bid had provided Neal’s body with an adequate period for altitude adjustment. Resting for three days at our 5,300-meter-high Base Camp would not let him completely recover from his effort, but I had faith in his reservoir of strength. Of all the athletes I have met in my sporting career, Neal has the best endurance conditioning. Many marathons and hundred-mile races are behind him. I was sure that his failure on the previous assault was due mainly to his lack of experience at high altitude. The endurance required to run marathons is different from the kind you need to climb high mountains. If he agreed to try again, I knew that I could help him climb at a proper pace. After my rest, though not back in peak form, I sensed that I could make an effort that would be only one or two hours off my best time.

  Lobbying for one more try, I expressed a personal commitment to Neal’s success. It seemed psychologically vital for him; he had turned back on K2 in 1992, and I did not want a second defeat to leave him permanently discouraged about his ability as a high-altitude climber. Also in about a month, many of our mutual friends were gathering to celebrate his marriage. I wanted him to have the success of climbing Makalu to share on that important occasion. My ambition to succeed was fired by the knowledge that the great Mexican climber Carlos Carsolio was attempting to make another mark in mountaineering history with a speed ascent up Lhotse that season.