The Last Step

by Rick Ridgeway

  When the plane began its descent sunlight reflected off the Indus and, in one nearby area of flat flood plain, it glimmered off the tributaries and oxbows. Next to the river was Skardu, a town of about ten thousand people. Surrounding the houses and bazaars were green fields of wheat, poplars, mulberries, and apricots, and beyond the fields, dry, barren hills.

  The plane touched down and in a few minutes we were gathering our luggage. The bulk of gear had been shipped to Pakistan weeks before and trucked to Skardu on a long, circuitous road through the Himalayan foothills. All we had to bother with was our duffels of personal equipment. So far, we were on, if not slightly ahead of, our most optimistic schedule—something that was a very important consideration, since we had been forced to begin our trip late in what is normally the season of best weather for climbing in the Karakoram.

  The British, led by well-known expedition leader Chris Bonington, had originally been given permission to climb K2 in 1978. To ensure enough porters for both groups, we had been required to begin our own approach march almost a month behind his team. That decision made, the only question left unresolved concerned routes on the mountain: we must choose one other than Bonington’s.

  K2 is the most remarkable of all the world’s highest mountains in that it is nearly a perfect pyramid, much as most people would imagine the ideal mountain. Unlike Everest, there is no “easy” way to get up K2. Both previous ascents of the mountain had been via the Abruzzi Ridge on the southeast side of the peak, and although that is the easiest access to the top, it is still a difficult and demanding climb. Of all the unclimbed ridges of K2, two were of most interest both to Bonington’s group and to us. The west ridge looked like a handsome route—steep, and direct to the top. It would have difficult sections all along, but the hardest parts of all would most likely be encountered near the summit. Scarcity of oxygen would make the climbing there even more difficult. The other possibility was the northeast ridge. The Poles had nearly reached the summit on this ridge in 1976, but had been turned back only seven hundred feet from the top when threatening weather and pending nightfall forced them to retreat. It was no doubt a less steep route than the west ridge, but it had the disadvantage of being very long. At one point, the ridge maintains the same altitude for nearly half a mile, and because it is knife-sharp, it would be a problem to haul equipment across to the upper camps.

  At the time of our meeting in Seattle eight months before we left the States, Bonington’s group still had not chosen their route, and we discussed our own preferences. Most of us thought the west ridge superior because it was such an aesthetic line to the summit; the rest thought the northeast ridge offered a better chance of reaching the top. A few weeks later the decision was made for us: Bonington had chosen the west ridge. We would have the northeast ridge.

  We had stayed in touch with Bonington during preparation. He helped us by filling our oxygen bottles in England; we helped by supplying him with oxygen bottles and regulators manufactured in the States. We had radios with compatible frequencies, so we could stay in contact during the climbs. While in Rawalpindi, we learned that his group had successfully reached the base of K2 and were beginning their ascent. With our own expedition moving along well, who could tell? Maybe we could make rapid progress and meet Bonington on the summit. Even though such thoughts were flights of fantasy, we did look forward to hiking to their base camp and passing the grog bottle.

  There were three jeeps waiting when we landed in Skardu to take us to the government-run rest house. Leaving the airport, we ran into four Americans on another climbing expedition. I knew one—Jim Donini, a famous climber with whom I had been on a trip to the Amazon a year before. It is one of the more amazing aspects of climbing to be in such a remote corner of Central Asia and run into pals you last saw in South America. Jim was part of a four-person team attempting an extremely difficult twenty-four-thousand-foot unclimbed peak called Latok (they surmounted nearly all its difficulties, but failed a few hundred feet short of the summit). Since they would use the same approach trail as we would, they hoped to leave Skardu at least a day ahead of our much larger group to avoid congestion on the trail. But they were still waiting for the arrival of some of their goods being air shipped from Rawalpindi and, so far, nothing had shown. It looked like both our groups would be in Skardu for a few days, so they promised to drop by our hotel.

  We loaded our gear into the jeeps, crawled in the back, and were ready to drive the five or six miles into town. I hopped in a jeep with John Roskelley and a few others; immediately John told the driver to step on it and pass the jeep in front of us, so we wouldn’t eat dust. The driver hesitated, but John and the rest of us assured him it was O.K. So he threw it in gear and spun around the jeep carrying Jim Whittaker and Dianne Roberts. I heard Jim yell at us as we passed, “O.K. you guys, we go first.” Our driver heard the order and pulled over, allowing Jim’s jeep out in front. John pulled out his bandana and tied it around his mouth to filter dust. I heard him mutter under his breath, “What a bunch of bull—pulling rank. This whole expedition better not be that way.”

  We drove down the half-mile-long main street lined with small shops and bazaars. Standing in the back of the jeep, we had to keep a weather eye for low-hanging power lines. The streets were crowded with an assortment of Baltis dressed traditionally in homespun and Gilgit caps, mixed with taller, more swarthy men—probably from the lowlands—wearing shalwarcamise, the national costume of baggy pajama pants and a pullover shirt that drops below the waist. As could be expected in a Moslem country, few women were to be seen except those working in the wheatfields. If the women caught you looking at them, they either turned away or covered their faces with their scarves, revealing only their eyes. Purdah—the tradition of isolating women—though not as strong as in the lowlands, still prevailed.

  The government rest house was a new, concrete, one-story building, built in an effort to increase tourism in Baltistan, the province around Skardu. There were no trees or bushes on the premises, and mortar was still splashed on the bathroom tiles. It was spartan but clean and far and away the best accommodation in Skardu.

  Not wasting time, we began to sort through the duffels of personal equipment that had been issued to each climber, including the four Hunza high-altitude porters and, by government regulation, Saleem the liaison officer. Although he wouldn’t go above Base Camp, it was required of expeditions to outfit their L.O. with ice axes, crampons, double boots, and every other item of gear the climbers received. Each person had quite a pile: two sleeping bags (a lightweight one for the approach march and a heavier one for high altitude), pack, goggles, balaclava, several types of mittens, down booties, parka, down vest, a specially made jumpsuit of Gore-Tex material, many pairs of socks, special underwear made with angora rabbit wool, pile coats and pants, down pants, water bottles, headlamp, knife, climbing knickers. Each climber had brought a personal ice hammer, ice ax, and double boots.

  I was bunking in a room with Jim Wickwire, Saleem, and Chris Chandler, a close friend with whom I had been to Everest in 1976. Once we had our equipment, Saleem came over to my bed to inspect my gear; he noticed I had a type of sock that he, apparently, had not been issued. He picked them up.

  “I don’t receive this type of sock,” he said in stentorian voice, a hint of British accent in his English.

  “Well, I’m sure we can find you a pair somewhere.”

  “Yes. You must go now and find this type of sock for me,” he ordered.

  I could see we had to get things straightened out right away. Saleem hadn’t yet left the army barracks.

  “No, Saleem. You must go and find your own socks.”

  He looked taken aback, but did not appear to be insulted. After a few seconds, he smiled and said, “O.K. I go and see if Leader has socks.”

  Before we would have time to finish sorting and initialing our gear with a marking pencil, we had an appointment: afternoon tea with the district commissioner of Baltistan. It was important to be on
good terms with the D.C., as he was to help us hire porters, facilitate the transfer of funds through the local bank to pay porters, arrange for a radio operator who would monitor our broadcasts from Base Camp and pass on any news to the outside world, and generally troubleshoot any problems we might have.

  We entered through a gate to a lawn and flower garden courtyard with a modest-sized one-story whitewashed stucco house. On the lawn were a couple of dozen chairs arranged in a semicircle, and we all took seats while servants served tea and biscuits and Balti musicians and dancers performed for us. We were a motley crew; I wondered what was the commissioner’s real opinion of us, behind his outward politeness. But when he brought out his guest book for us to sign, I learned he was used to hosting mountaineering expeditions and, therefore, perhaps didn’t take any offense at our appearance. The book was a compendium of climbing history in the Karakoram for the past twenty-five years. There were names of the early American climbers in the Karakoram: Bates, Houston, Bell, Schoening; the famous Italian alpinists Carlo Mauri and Walter Bonatti as well as the Italian anthropologist-climber Fosco Maraini; perhaps most interesting of all, the great German climber Hermann Buhl, who in 1953 startled the climbing world with his bold solo push from his expedition’s high camp to the summit of Nanga Parbat. For twenty-one years Germans had been trying to climb Nanga Parbat, and after four defeats that had claimed thirty-one lives, Buhl was instantly a national hero. It was haunting to read his name, signed in the guest book in 1957. He had been on his way to make the first ascent of Broad Peak, a 26,400-foot neighbor of K2. He and his climbing companion made that climb with so little trouble, they decided to make a first-ascent of nearby Chogolisa. On the descent, Buhl broke through a cornice. His body is still up there somewhere, frozen in the ice.

  We walked back to the rest house and spent most of the evening packing our personal gear. With any luck, the next day we would pack the extra food we had purchased into porter loads, sort through all the boxes that had been shipped in advance, and send the loads ahead on the tractors. Jim Wickwire, who was bunking next to me, had all his gear heaped, like the rest of us, in a big pile that he was sorting through, packing everything into duffels, trying to keep handy the items he would need on the approach march.

  Perhaps more than any of us, Wick felt confident that not only would someone on our team reach the summit, but in all probability, that someone would include him. After the 1975 failure, it was his commitment to climbing K2 that, more than anything, resulted in the effort to return in 1978. Wick had worked closely with Jim Whittaker to obtain the permit, and it was Wick’s opinion that was heard the strongest when it came to deciding who should be invited on the 1978 team. Wick had done the most research on our proposed route; he had written to the Polish team that had attempted the northeast ridge in 1976 and had obtained valuable information on the details of the route and the placement of the camps, along with a set of instructive black-and-white photos of the ridge. He was thirty-eight years old, five foot eight inches, with short-trimmed black hair graying on the edges. He was strongly built, and although in good shape he sensed this expedition could very well be the high-water mark of his climbing career. He was a senior partner in a successful Seattle-based law firm and was married to a striking woman who gave him unfailing support in all his endeavors. They had five children and were a close-knit family. You could almost hear them rooting their support, twelve thousand miles away.

  Wick, Chris Chandler, and I sorted through our gear and talked about our proposed route.

  “It took the Poles ten days to get across the traverse from Camp Three to Camp Four. They were some pretty tough dudes, too, so I don’t imagine we’ll make it much easier,” Wick said.

  “Tough dudes is probably an understatement,” I said.

  “They had nineteen climbers,” Chris added. “Each one was handpicked from the best in Poland, and they’ve got some hot climbers. There are only fourteen of us.”

  “It’s the headwall below the summit that will be the crux,” Wick said. “I think the secret of getting to the top will be putting Camp Six as high as we can get it. That is, if we can find a ledge for a tent—it’s pretty steep up there.”

  We had been through these discussions many times before: How many carries would it take to stock each camp? How high could we carry before we needed oxygen? Where would we place each camp? We were still talking, packing our gear at the same time, when Jim Donini—my friend from the Latok expedition—walked in. With him were the three other climbers from his group. We thought they had just come over to chew the fat; however, they were bringing electrifying news.

  “How’s it going?” we said.

  They nodded, not saying anything. Two of them sat on a bed; Donini stood for a few seconds watching us pack. He had a serious look on his face, but I did not, at first, sense anything wrong.

  “We just came from the rest house where we’re staying,” Donini said. He paused, then added, “Bonington’s there. So is Doug Scott.”

  The room suddenly went quiet. We looked up at Donini.

  “What the hell is Bonington doing back here?” Wick asked. I glanced at Wick, and for a second our eyes held. I could tell we both had the same thought: Bonington is back in Skardu; something must have gone wrong. Very wrong.

  “It was Estcourt,” Donini said. “Avalanche just above Camp Three. A big slab broke off. I guess they never found the body.”

  Wick and I still held each other’s eyes. We both looked surprised, serious, eyebrows twisted. It was taking several seconds to sink in, but already I felt nausea rising in my guts.

  “Did anybody else get the chop?” Chris asked.

  “Just Estcourt,” Donini said. “He and Scott were coming out of Camp Two when the slab broke off. I guess they were roped up and Estcourt pulled Scott off but somehow the rope caught on a rock or something and broke. Scott looks shook up—it was another close call for him. Bonington looks pretty bad too. I think he and Estcourt were close. They’ve been hiking at full speed, five days down from Base Camp, so they could call Estcourt’s wife before the news gets out.”

  “Where is everybody else?”

  “They stayed to break camp, and I guess they’re on their way down now, moving slower with porters.”

  The news spread from room to room and, in a minute, the others were coming in to hear the details.

  “Oh Christ, that’s horrible,” Whittaker said. He was a personal friend of Bonington, and he knew he should go over to see him before Chris and Scott left for Rawalpindi on the morning’s flight.

  “Is Bonington over at the other rest house?” Whittaker asked.

  “No, I think he’s at the district commissioner’s house,” Donini said. “Filling in the officials on what happened.”

  Whittaker left immediately and covered the mile to the district commissioner’s house at a fast clip. There was a full moon. The valley and the surrounding hills were beautiful in silver light and dark moonshadows, but Jim had a hard time appreciating it. His thoughts ran first to how hard it was going to be for Bonington. Jim knew that he and Estcourt had been close friends. But there would also be the hassles of returning to England without having even climbed much above Base Camp, and there would be Nick’s loved ones to face.

  Jim could not help thinking how the west ridge had been our own first choice of routes, and we had decided to try the northeast ridge only because Bonington had picked the west ridge. That was getting awfully close to home.

  He found Bonington and Scott in a living room with the district commissioner and two other officials. Bonington looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a sad, wornout look. He was still dirty from the trail, his hair was full of dust, his voice was hoarse and haggard. He and Scott had walked the 110 grueling miles from Base Camp to the roadhead in five days. Whittaker could sense, from Bonington’s eyes, the strain of the ordeal.

  They greeted each other. Bonington related to Jim how Estcourt had been killed in the slab avalanche.
“It was an unbelievably big slab,” Bonington said. “Maybe eight feet thick, and when it came off it roared clear across the glacier floor.” They talked for some time, and before Jim left, Bonington said, “Good luck on your climb. I have a good feeling you’ll make it without incident. Somebody has got to climb K2 in style, and I think it will be your expedition.”

  Jim bid everyone good night and started toward the rest house. This time he noted the full-moon glory of the Indus valley. His thoughts were on the vicissitudes of living and dying. He thought how lucky had been his own immediate family, in which no one had died. But he had so many friends who had died young. He thought of Bobby Kennedy, and then of Jake Breitenbach, who had died on the ’63 Everest expedition. Jake had been killed by an ice avalanche just the second climbing day into the expedition, but the team had decided to keep going, as if they had to climb the mountain for Jake’s sake. He thought of Leif and Al and Dusan, who should have been with him on this expedition. But instead of being fearful of the outcome of our own climb, Jim felt that, somehow, we had paid our dues. There had been enough deaths; the gods should be appeased. We should get to the top of K2 and down again safely. He was more than ever committed to that goal, and he hoped the rest of the team felt the same way.

  That night Jim and Dianne shared a room with the other married couple on the team—Terry and Cherie Bech. Sometime in the middle of the night, Terry awoke the others in the room talking in his sleep. In a strange voice that sounded like it was coming from another person, he kept saying, “No, no, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Be careful, you’ll cause an accident. Be careful. We’ll all be killed.”

  On the morning of June 21, two days later, we loaded the fourteen tractors and trailers and sent them on their way. We would leave later that same afternoon, riding in jeeps as far as Shigar, a town somewhat smaller than Skardu, and about four hours’ travel in the jeeps. The tractors would drive into the night and arrive at Baha, the place where the road ends and the trail to K2 begins, about noon the next day—more or less the same time we would arrive in the jeeps.