He was back in the mountains, making new friends. One day, he piled into the old VW with several other climbers and headed north with a plan to climb Mount Baker, near the Canadian border. Coming round a bend in the road, Dusan suddenly jammed on the brakes, throwing his friends forward. The car skidded to the side of the road. He got out and for several minutes, while his friends thought he had lost his marbles, he stared at the vista in front of him. There were forests of hemlock and fir, wildflowers, and in the background, a magnificent mountain covered with snow and glaciers. It was Mount Shuksan. Before him was the advertisement, the panorama that every morning for six months had called to him from the New York subway.
After the guiding season, Dusan got a part-time job at REI, where he met a pretty, twenty-five-year-old, dark-haired woman who seemed always to smile and laugh, and they fell in love. The main problem was that she did not know how to climb. After he had given a couple of basic lessons, they were ready for their first ascent. There was only one suitable objective: Mount Shuksan. The romance flowered and they were soon married.
For Dusan, it was the American dream. He met another ambitious young climber who was not unlike his wife, in that he was always laughing and smiling, optimistic and affable. Al Givler was nearly thirty years old and married; he had grown up in Seattle and was known locally as one of the area’s better alpinists. Al and Dusan started a service offering individual guided climbs, as well as classes, in the Pacific Northwest, and through hard work and good promotion it became a success.
Apart from their business, both of them had a desire to make new and hard ascents. They had a desire for big mountains. They heard a rumor that Jim Whittaker was gathering a team to go back to K2. There were hundreds of climbers hungry for the few available spots, but Al and Dusan hoped they had a better chance than most. They arranged a meeting with Jim Wickwire and Whittaker, who were recruiting the team. Soon the reply came. They were going to K2.
For Al and Dusan, it was more than just a chance to realize the dream of climbing in the Himalaya; it was a chance at one of the world’s greatest mountaineering objectives. No other high-altitude mountain in the world had such allure, such magnitude, such beauty. They were determined to be in top shape, and that meant plenty of climbing. A year before the expedition was to leave, they decided to go to Alaska with Wick to make the first ascent of a beautiful unnamed peak in the Fairweather Range. They traveled up fjords in inflatable rubber boats, pushing leads through the pack ice, then snowshoed up a glacier, man-hauling sledges. Arriving at the base of their peak, they chose a direct route up a prominent, steep, rock and ice buttress that lead straight to the summit. The climbing was superb, the rock in perfect condition. They made rapid progress and, in the afternoon of the second day, they stood on the summit.
There is a picture of Dusan on the summit that Diana keeps in her living room. He has on a white English sports hat—the kind sportscar drivers wear—with ear flaps hanging down, like ears on a springer spaniel. His eyes are sharp and sparkle in the near midnight arctic sun; the orange light has painted his face with a warm glow. He is looking at the horizon. He is pensive, but pleased. A satisfied look. It is the last photo of Dusan. A few minutes later, he and Al began their descent. No one will ever know which of them slipped. But they were roped together, and they fell four thousand feet.
We asked Diana if we could help prepare supper, but she had it under control. Jim Whittaker was lighting the stove, and Dianne was unpacking boxes and sorting lunch for the next day. Months earlier, when we had had that big meeting in Seattle to work out expedition logistics, the first question was: Who could replace Al and Dusan? After much discussion, the answer finally came: nobody. We would keep the team small. We knew Al and Dusan would be climbing beside us, in spirit if not in body. But we did decide we needed a person to manage Base Camp, organize the food, and cook. Jim said he had long considered Diana for the job. He could not think of anyone who was a harder worker with as cheerful a disposition. But would Diana want to go? Would there be, for her, too many shadows and emotions? We agreed that Jim should, at any rate, invite her. She thought about it for a week or two, then accepted. She needed a diversion, to get away from Seattle. “I’ve got a lot of time to fill,” she said.
Diana had the dinner ready. We each received a portion of freeze-dried porkchops and mushroom gravy. I leaned against a rock backrest, lying on my sleeping bag, and watched the last sunrays inch to the tips of the peaks above the valley walls, then disappear. I pulled out the radishes we had bought from the two children and bit into one. It snapped fresh and juicy, and tasted good with dinner. It was the end of the first day on the trail.
On the fourth day we reached Askole, a village of perhaps a hundred houses. This is the last human habitation on the way to K2, still almost eighty miles away. We entered the outskirts of town walking between stone walls lined with poplars and apricot trees. The shade, cooled by irrigation water in the fields, created a feeling of hiking in a park.
Small huts built over irrigation streams housed old granite grindstones, powered by paddle wheels and used for milling wheat. The women were, as usual, shy. Those working in fields turned away if we looked at them. Occasionally, we would spot a female face on a rooftop, but it would disappear as soon as we made eye contact. The men were out to welcome us, however. All greeted us with “Salaam!” as we walked to a dusty lot enclosed by stone walls. There we made camp.
Instead of leaving in the morning we would stay an extra rest day: our schedule had been set by the Pakistan government in new regulations covering approach marches for climbing expeditions. It gave the porters time to buy the wheat flour they would need for the rest of the march and, for those who lived in Askole, there would be a chance to visit their families. The regulations also required that we pay the first installment of wages to the porters.
By Balti standards, Askole is a medium-sized village, and like all such places with no roads for automobiles, no electricity, no telephones, it has a medieval ambience. The streets are narrow, made for people. Animals grange in courtyards, roosters call from rooftops, and the smell of manure prevails. The people cook over open fires, and like people who cook this way the world over, they smell of smoke. It is easy to imagine their lives have not changed for the last thousand years, but actually this is not true. While the influences of modern times are certainly felt, and the passage each year of dozens of climbing expeditions is accelerating this influence, the more distant past has seen other significant contacts with outside cultures whose imprint is still evident today. Everything about the Baltis—their language, religion, architecture, even their physical features—reflects the waxing and waning of centuries of empires across Central Asia. Here it is possible to find people representing nearly the gamut of human physiotypes: among our porters were men with the Asian epicanthic fold; Mongolian men with thick black hair and swarthy skin, looking yet like Tartar horsemen from the Steppes; Southern European men who could easily have come from a peasant village in Sicily; even men with blond hair and blue eyes.
Originally, the Balti people were dominated by Tibetan culture. The language they speak is derived from ancient Tibetan; its similarity to that parent tongue is thought by some linguists to be even closer than is today’s modern Tibetese. The architecture also reflects this influence: beams and joists are T-barred on upright posts, construction is typically two-story, and overhanging eaves are seen on some buildings.
By the 1500s, the Mongol invasion was sweeping across the Indian subcontinent, and one of its outmost arms touched the remote Braldu valley in the Karakoram. Today, the Baltis kneel several times a day (five times for the most orthodox) and pray toward Mecca: “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” In Islam the whole world is a mosque, and prayer can take place anywhere. On the approach march it was common to see Baltis, their carpets spread at the side of the trail or the outskirts of camp, bowed in prayer.
Our retainment of each Balti porter took the for
m of a signed contract designed by the Pakistan government. For our part, we agreed to pay each of them 45 rupees ($4.50) a day, with half pay for rest days and days spent returning from Base Camp to their villages; to pay a stipend for food; to buy insurance covering each porter for up to $1000 in event of death; to guarantee that each load weighed no more than fifty-five pounds, to provide each man with footwear and rainwear; and to provide the group with stoves for cooking dinner and tarps for constructing shelters. Each day’s hiking distance, referred to as a “stage,” was precalculated, and if we asked the porters to hike more than that distance in one day, we paid them accordingly. In return, this contract obliged each Balti to faithfully deliver his load to the base of K2 as long as we met our half of the agreement, and prevented him (at least in writing) from going on strike.
Most of the details and enforcement of this contract grew out of the failure of the 1975 K2 expedition. Although the porters on that expedition had also agreed to wages predetermined by the government, there had been no way to prevent the porters, once they were above the last villages and away from civilization, from striking.
To prevent the same thing from happening in 1978, Jim made some recommendations in a report to the Pakistan government. To his pleasure, they agreed with his suggestions; the contract was designed. All porters were hired through the district commissioner’s office in Skardu, where efforts could be made to see that the Baltis understood the contract and pressure applied to ensure they would not strike. Furthermore, the Pakistan government decided to assign our expedition an older, experienced liaison officer who would make certain that the Baltis, as well as the sahibs, honored their respective halves of the contract.
Subadar-Major Mohammed Saleem Khan was better than we had ever hoped. He exuded authority. Each day, he made grandiloquent speeches to the porters, underlining their duty to Pakistan and to God to carry their loads to the base of K2. He made certain loads were weighed so each man would carry fifty-five pounds, and no more. And he made certain we paid each his correct wage. The porters seemed pleased, and we were pleased. But it cost us a king’s ransom.
That first day in Askole, we pulled out our money bag and began the laborious job of counting out hundreds of stacks of rupee notes. The money was laid on a plastic tarp and each man was called forward to receive his pay and ink his thumbprint in a ledger. Jim shook each man’s hand, thanking him for his good work. Saleem oversaw the payment, and everybody was happy. But the total cost for just the first four days’ march tallied a whopping $10,000; despite our advance knowledge of the wage agreement, we had underestimated the expense of delivering our loads to Base Camp. Jim realized he would have to arrange for more money to be sent up from Skardu by mail runner.
The underestimation of porter expenses and the temporary shortage of cash notwithstanding, Jim had done a remarkable job of financing the expedition. It is no easy task raising money for mountaineering ventures, especially in the United States where there are no government funds available as there are in many countries. The bill for a big Himalayan expedition can total a quarter-million dollars or more. There are expenses for food and equipment, oxygen bottles and regulators, shipping freight, airline tickets, porters, and an infinity of smaller items that rapidly eat up an expedition’s budget. For example, we learned in Askole that just to have more money sent up from the Skardu bank, we would have to hire two guards—they were reluctant to travel alone—and pay them full porters’ salaries to escort the porter who would actually carry the money, plus three more porters to carry food for the two guards. It was an unforeseen expense that, in the end, came to $450.
Past expeditions have raised money in many ways. Members of the 1975 K2 expedition—which was still in debt $8000 when we left the States on the 1978 trip—had solicited donations from private individuals, made a film (which was never sold), given innumerable slide shows and lectures, and written a book (In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, by 1975 team member Galen Rowell). For the 1976 American Bicentennial Everest Expedition, which Chris Chandler and I were on, the major source of money was CBS, which bought both the rights to film a documentary TV special, and my book The Boldest Dream.
We considered a television film to underwrite our K2 expenses, but there were two problems. First, it was difficult to interest the networks. Most producers had never even heard of the mountain: we called one who thought K2 was a brand of dog food. “What would you want to climb the second highest mountain for?” was a frequent question. “If you’re going to all that trouble and spending all that money how come you’re not climbing Everest?” The second problem was that making a film would drastically increase the logistical complexity of the expedition. Adding a film crew would mean adding more porters, more food, more supplies up the mountain—more everything. It could conceivably make the difference between reaching or not reaching the summit. We decided that, if at all possible, we would avoid television.
Jim’s idea was to finance our expedition by appealing to the general public for support. He persuaded Seattle advertising agency Hinton, Steele and Nelson to design, free of charge, a poster-brochure explaining the background of our proposed attempt on K2 and why reaching the top would be a milestone in American mountaineering, then persuaded Craftsman Press to print it for us free. The brochure asked for a $20 donation—tax deductible—in return for a postcard signed by each team member, carried by runner from Base Camp and postmarked in Skardu, Pakistan. In addition, each contributor’s name would be included on a microfilm list that would be buried on the summit of K2. Jim talked three magazines—Summit, Mariah, and Wilderness Camping—into running advertisements, free of charge, to plead for donations. Then he lined up Nike shoes, who ran another ad in several national magazines, asking people to support the expedition. It was a clever ad. There was a large aerial photo of K2, and under it the caption, “Because it’s not there.” What was not there, of course, was the cash to make our dream a reality.
When we left the States we were about $30,000 short of our estimated budget of $125,000, and the contributions were still pouring in as we boarded the plane in New York. Jim knew, however, that with the support of so many people, the pressure was on to get to the summit. If he returned this time with an unsuccessful climb, there would be no chance of raising money for another try. It had been hard enough this time. Many had asked, “If you didn’t make it in ’75, what makes you think you can make it in ’78?”
Jim replied that he had learned from his mistakes. With the new Pakistan regulations, there should be no problem with porter strikes. The route we would attempt was, for the most part, a known quantity, having been nearly climbed by a Polish team in 1976. He had been very careful to pick team members who were not only good climbers with considerable high-altitude experience, but also (presumably) mature people who knew how to get along with others on expeditions. He had resolved to include all the climbers equally in decision making, so no one would feel left out. On the ’75 trip, two climbers had threatened to quit the expedition because they felt they were mere pawns, being used as porters to ferry loads between camps so the “lead” climbers could try for the summit. To avoid such problems, Jim intended to divide lead climbing equally, and he vowed not to choose the summit team until late in the climb. “The mountain will decide who goes to the summit,” he told us. “When the time comes, I think it will be obvious to all of us who is still in the best condition, and who has the most drive to get that summit.”
Still, even with the lessons of the ’75 failure, Jim knew there was no guarantee of success. It had taken considerable courage to decide to go back in ’78. For him, it was a big gamble: there was a lot to win, but perhaps even more to lose. He was almost fifty years old; he felt this would be his last big expedition.
Jim had been climbing since his childhood in Seattle. He was born in 1929 and raised by a family conscious of outdoor activities. At age twelve, he joined the Boy Scouts. Many of the hiking trails in the Cascades lead to the base of bigger mou
ntains; since he and his troop often found themselves at the end of a trail and the beginning of a mountain ridge, they started scrambling up to the heights. The scrambling led to more serious climbing with the Explorer Scouts, and later the Mountaineers. By the time he finished high school, he had climbed all the major peaks in the Cascades; in his first year of college he started and ran a guide service on Rainier.
Working with his twin brother, Lou, he put himself through college guiding clients to the top of Rainier. The two Whittakers gained a lot of experience climbing on ice and snow and traveling on glaciers. After they graduated, both were drafted, but instead of overseas duty in the Korean War, they were sent to Colorado to teach for the Mountain and Cold Weather Command. In the summer, they taught rock climbing and, in the winter, cross-country skiing. It wasn’t a bad way to fight a war.
When he was discharged, Jim returned to Seattle, guided one more summer, then was hired as the first full-time employee of a co-op selling mountain climbing and outdoor gear. Recreational Equipment, Inc.—REI Co-op—was started in 1939 by a group of climbing pals looking for an inexpensive way to import climbing gear (at that time it was all imported from Europe) and their first outlet was the storage room of a gas station. When Jim took over, they expanded to the second floor of a decaying office building, sharing the store space with an accountant who doubled as the store’s clerk. That first year, 1955, they grossed $80,000. Jim retired as REI’s president and general manager in 1979; that fiscal year, total sales were nearly $50 million, making REI the biggest specialty retailer of backpacking, climbing, and outdoor gear in the world.
The turning point in Jim’s life, however, was not REI, but a phone call one day in 1960 from well-known climber and explorer Norman Dyhrenfurth. Jim had recently returned from an ascent of Mount McKinley, and combined with his years on Rainier, had considerable accumulated experience climbing. Dyhrenfurth wanted to know if Jim would be interested in going to Mount Everest in 1963.
The Last Step Page 6