PRAISE FOR THE LAST STEP
“Never before have the people who climb the high mountains of the world seemed so human. But it is this frailty that makes us root all the harder for their success.”
—Outside magazine
“The Last Step is a classic expedition tale.”
—American Alpine Journal
“The final approach has all the suspense and excitement the reader can bear. . . . A gripper.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The Last Step is a step above many of today’s climbing tales.”
—The Tacoma News Tribune
“A tale of high drama in the high Karakoram. . . .[It] deserves a place among the great annals of mountaineering.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“The Last Step goes paces beyond the usual mountaineering expedition story. . . . Compelling.”
—Adventure Travel
“Unlike many previous mountaineering tomes filled with platitudes about camaraderie and grand vistas, Ridgeway’s account of the K2 climb is startlingly frank.”
—Adventure Journal
“[Ridgeway] was one of the first mountaineering writers to adapt a tell-all style for expedition narratives—the style that’s so in vogue today.”
—David Roberts
“A riveting, heart-stopping account of a 67-day human triumph and ordeal.”
—Sierra magazine
“An astonishing feat and an amazing story. . . . The Last Step is an outdoor adventure for general readers as well as climbing enthusiasts.”
—Booklist
THE LAST STEP
THE LAST STEP
THE AMERICAN ASCENT OF K2
RICK RIDGEWAY
Foreword by
YVON CHOUINARD
LEGENDS AND LORE SERIES
Mountaineers Books is the publishing division of The Mountaineers, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas.
1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201 • Seattle, WA 98134 800.553.4453 • www.mountaineersbooks.org
Copyright © 2014 by Rick Ridgeway
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed in the United Kingdom by Cordee, www.cordee.co.uk
17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5
Series design: Karen Schober
Book design and layout: Jennifer Shontz, www.redshoedesign.com
Cover photograph: Four climbers en route to K2’s Camp III with the summit pyramid behind © Dianne Roberts
Frontispiece: Map of K2’s northeast ridge © Dee Molenaar
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ridgeway, Rick.
The last step : the American ascent of K2 / Rick Ridgeway.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-59485-861-1 (pbk)
1. Mountaineering—Pakistan—K2 (Mountain) 2. K2 (Pakistan : Mountain)—Description and travel. I. Title.
GV199.44.P182K184 2013
796.522095491'3—dc23
2013031998
Printed on 30% postconsumer-waste recycled paper
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-59485-861-1
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-936-6
In warm memory of Al Givler, Dusan Jagersky, and Leif-Norman Patterson
And dedicated to the mothers, fathers, wives, and loved ones who are the true heroes of this story
__________________
Keep your eye fixed on the path to the top, but don’t forget to look in front of you. The last step depends on the first. Don’t think you’re there just because you see the summit. Watch your footing, be sure of the step, but don’t let that distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last.
René Daumal, Mount Analogue
CONTENTS
New Foreword by Yvon Chouinard
Introduction to the Original Edition
Introduction to the 1999 Edition
Prelude by Jim Whittaker
1.Dust From the Road
2.Bridge Over the Dumordo
3.The Book of Marvels
4.The Crystal Ball
5.The Snow Butterfly
6.Storms and Tempers
7.The Snow Dome
8.Problemas Grandes
9.Into the Death Zone
10.At the Edge
11.No Conquerors—Only Survivors
12.The Griffon
Epilogue
FOREWORD
RICK RIDGEWAY AND I STARTED climbing together over forty years ago. Back then he joined me on trips to the east side of California’s Sierra Nevada, where we climbed frozen waterfalls to test prototypes of improvements I had in mind for traditional ice ax design. As a climber, Rick was more focused on mountaineering expeditions to remote ranges, while I was devoted to the big walls in Yosemite and alpine peaks in places like Patagonia. Nevertheless Rick and I were together on some expeditions, including one in eastern Tibet to Minya Konka in 1980, the first year the People’s Republic of China opened it to outside climbers. To get there, we took a four-day train pulled by steam locomotive from Peking (as it was still called in those years) to Chengdu, then a four-day bus ride, and finally a week-long trek with horses packing our gear. It was on this approach that I first read The Last Step.
From the beginning I could tell that this was a different kind of book in the annals of mountaineering literature. It was honest—some would say brutally honest—in its depiction of the conflicts the team weathered. The style was novelistic in its use of stream of consciousness to portray the feeling of climbing at very high altitude without oxygen, and in its use of dialogue. When the book came out, some critics questioned the accuracy of the dialogue, but I’ve watched how on these expeditions Rick keeps careful notes, and, in the case of the K2 climb, he also had as cross-references the detailed journals kept by some of his teammates.
The 1978 American K2 Expedition was at the end of the era of so-called traditional expedition-style mountaineering—huge endeavors made up of a dozen or more climbers and supported by hundreds of porters who carried tons of gear to a base camp, from which the team then ferried load after load of supplies to camps positioned higher and higher up the peak. However, by the end of Rick’s account, I could see that the way he and his teammates made it to the top, climbing the summit pyramid without supplemental oxygen—and, in the case of John Roskelley and Rick, without a rope or any kind of protection—presaged the age of alpine-style ascents that would follow.
All sports change from one generation to the next. In my view, they often devolve as they depend more on equipment and technology and become less self-reliant. Climbing and mountaineering, however—at least on the leading edges of both sports—have enjoyed an evolution instead of a devolution. Today the biggest walls in Yosemite are climbed in absolutely the purest of styles—by solo climbers with no ropes—and the world’s highest peaks have all been ascended in single pushes by small teams with no bottled oxygen. Certainly today’s guided climbs up Everest are the opposite of this. As I observed in the film 180 South, the business executives and power brokers who buy their way to the top of Everest are “assholes when they start up and assholes when they get down.”
But it is interesting to note that no one is guiding alpine tourists up K2. The “mountain of mountains” is sometimes called the hardest climb in the world. While you can’t directly compare K2 to the hardest alpine climbs in Patagonia or the hardest solo climbs in Yosemite, most would agree that K2 is alone among the world’s highest peaks if for no other reason than the singular grandeur of its archi
tecture. It is indeed the Great Pyramid of the Himalayas, exceptional in what is required, both in skill and in endurance, to reach the top by any route.
Sometimes when people learn that Rick and his teammates made what was, in 1978, only the third ascent of the world’s second highest mountain—and the first ascent without oxygen—they say, “Wow, isn’t that the hardest mountain in the world to climb?”
“Well,” Rick answers, “it was a good thing we didn’t know that back then.”
—Yvon Chouinard, 2014
INTRODUCTION TO
THE ORIGINAL EDITION
IN MARCH 1965, MY BROTHER Bobby and Jim Whittaker reached the summit of the highest unclimbed mountain in Canada. Bobby was the first one to make the final steps to the top of Mount Kennedy, named in memory of our brother. This was an achievement of which he was very proud, and which had great personal meaning to him. In recalling this climb, Bobby said:
I returned with great respect for the men who climb mountains. They are not a footloose, carefree lot, haphazardly searching for thrills. The courage of mountain climbers is not blind, inexplicable, meaningless; it is courage with ability, brains, and tenacity of purpose.
President Kennedy loved the outdoors. He loved adventure. He admired courage more than any other human quality, and he was President of the United States, which is frequently and accurately called the loneliest job in the world.
So I am sure he would be pleased that this lonely, beautiful mountain in the Yukon bears his name, and in this way, at least, he is sharing the fraternity of those who love the outdoors, battle the elements, and climb mountains.
I was invited on this climb, but had to drop out following a back injury. In the years that followed, I continued a warm friendship with Jim Whittaker, and I was most enthusiastic when, in 1973, he decided to lead an expedition to the world’s second highest mountain—K2 in Pakistan. It has been an American goal to climb K2 since the first American attempt in 1938; to achieve that goal would be the realization of this long-time dream of American mountaineers.
Jim’s first courageous attempt in 1975, however, failed to reach the summit. Undaunted, he and some of the others from the unsuccessful expedition decided to return. In September 1978 I received the joyous and exciting news that their team had reached the summit! It was a narrow victory—they fought storm after storm, and several times it seemed impossible they would reach their goal. But they refused to give up. Their tenacity was rewarded by a last-minute break in the weather. The fact that the team struggled for sixty-five days above eighteen thousand feet before their success speaks for itself.
Tenacity is the lesson in their achievement—to seek a goal, to continue a struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds—that is the ethos upon which our great country was founded, and which continues to give us inspiration to realize our dreams.
I am personally aware of the deep meaning of the K2 victory because, in 1957, I climbed the Matterhorn. When I reached the summit, I felt the exhilaration Jim and his party must have felt. And yet, a successful climb is more than exhilarating—it is a very humbling experience. At the summit of one of the world’s truly majestic mountains, one realizes nature’s overwhelming beauty, her awesome power, and the harmony of our universe.
I want to share with the readers of this book the inspiring words of my dear friend, the late Senator Philip Hart:
In a complex and free society, few if any mountains will be scaled on the first try, and progress comes by climbing a molehill at a time. And perhaps that is the way it should be, for who among us has the wisdom to foresee with certainty what life is like on a summit we have yet to achieve.
—Senator Edward Kennedy, 1980
INTRODUCTION TO
THE 1999 EDITION
K2, THE SECOND HIGHEST PEAK on earth, continues to live up to its reputation: the Mountain of Mountains, the Savage Mountain, the Mountaineer’s Mountain. It may be lower than Everest by 230 meters, but to mountaineers it measures significantly higher in difficulty.
Steep and four-sided, like the Great Pyramid of the Himalayas, K2 has become the test piece of high-altitude mountaineering. Year after year expeditions, counting among their members the world’s most accomplished high-altitude climbers, make the pilgrimage into the heart of Central Asia’s Karakoram Mountains to attempt the Mountain of Mountains. Today K2 has seen nearly two hundred ascents, but at the same time it continues to justify its other reputation as the Savage Mountain: nearly fifty climbers have died either trying to get to the top, or trying to get back down alive.
Twenty years ago it would have been hard to predict K2 would gain such popularity—and notoriety—not only among climbers but also with the broad public. In 1978, when we walked those 110 miles from the end of the road to the base of the mountain, K2 had been climbed only twice, and the second ascent (by an army of fifty-plus Japanese climbers) had been staged less than twelve months before. In those days, a survey on Main Street, America, would probably have revealed as many people who thought K2 was a new brand of dog food as those who knew it as the ultimate high-altitude peak in the world.
All that changed in 1986. K2’s popularity among mountaineers, coupled with a reversal of the Pakistan government’s former reticence in allowing more than one expedition at a time on the peak, resulted in nine expeditions arriving at the same time. As with the notorious tragedy on Everest that was to happen ten years later, it seemed almost inevitable that something would go wrong. And as on Everest, the set-up to tragedy in 1986 began when a large number of climbers was caught in a storm at the eight-thousand-meter high camp. The wind-whipped snow pinned them in their tents without food, oxygen, or fuel, and hour by hour they deteriorated from the combined effects of hypoxia and dehydration. Two of them fell into torpor, delirium, and finally death. When the storm abated five days later, those still alive began their descent, but more either collapsed, unable to stand back up, or stumbled and fell to their deaths. When it was over, of the seven climbers who had been trapped, only three got down alive.
In 1986 alone, twenty-seven people reached the summit, but thirteen died from exposure, high altitude illness, slipping and falling, or falling into a crevasse. Unlike the novice climbers led by professional guides who were the majority of victims in the Everest tragedy in 1996, the fallen K2 climbers were some of the best in the world. Then, as though to further confirm K2’s reputation, in the following three years, sixteen expeditions in a row failed to reach the summit. It wasn’t until 1990 that climbers again stood on top of the second highest point on earth.
From the perspective of hindsight on our own climb in 1978, it is easy to conclude that we were lucky. It can also be said, I think, that luck is less a matter of chance than an ability to recognize opportunity. We had two days of flawless weather when we made our summit bids, but by then we had paid our dues. We had worked hard above our advance base camp for over sixty days, and by the time we started our descent, those of us on the summit teams had stayed at eight thousand meters or higher for five days and four nights. We had waited long and patiently for our window of good weather and also had chosen to back off when conditions were questionable, as they were when John Roskelley and I attempted to make a direct finish up the northeast side of the summit pyramid.
When at last I did find myself standing on top of K2, my oxygen-starved brain had just enough presence of mind to remind me that the day would no doubt be one that would stand out for the rest of my life. While it would be an exaggeration to say that when I returned home the experience changed the direction of my life, it did give me a new yardstick against which to measure my more prosaic day-to-day challenges. I learned on K2 what another mountaineering friend had once told me was the way you go about eating an elephant: you do it one bite at a time.
Tenacity isn’t the only lesson I brought down from K2. Looking back with perhaps a more mature perspective, the arguments and squabbles that colored our expedition—and are predominant in this book—seem sometimes petty. They
make me wish we could go back and approach our differences with more mutual empathy, and also with the knowledge that in the long run those differences seem minor alongside the memories not only of the summit day but also of the day on the ridge at twenty-two thousand feet when I saw the butterflies; or the day the low afternoon sun cast our rainbow-rimmed shadows over the glacier a vertical mile below; or the day when we returned safely to base camp and received from our teammates a series of hugs and shoulder-slaps, despite our differences.
Such sentiments perhaps aren’t surprising considering that all of us on the K2 team are now somewhere between fifty and seventy years old. One thing that hasn’t changed in the last twenty years, however, is the mountain itself. Its immutability reminds me of a scene in Joseph Conrad’s Nigger of the Narcissus, when Old Singleton, the most experienced hand on the crew, has to take the helm for four days to bring the ship safely through a hurricane. When his long watch is over the old seaman stumbles down the companionway, pausing at a porthole to gaze at the sea. In front of him he sees his hand, weathered and veined, arthritic from the hours and days of gripping the wheel, and he thinks back to when he first went to sea as a youth, and how then his body was lean and strong. Then he looks back to the sea, the immutable sea—the same as our immutable mountain—and it looks exactly as it did when he first saw it, exactly as it will when he is gone.
— Rick Ridgeway
PRELUDE
THIS STORY TAKES PLACE IN the heart of Central Asia—the border between Pakistan and China—on the second highest mountain in the world. Called K2, it soars 28,250 feet above the sea, and it is one of nature’s most spectacular architectural achievements. Rising four-sided in perfect symmetry, like the Great Pyramid, it reaches such altitude that when viewed from an airplane even a hundred miles distant, it dominates the horizon.
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