John looked back down the crevasse and yelled to Cherie, “I’ll lower another rope. Tie your pack to it, then get your jumars and come up on your own rope.”
John lowered the rope and in a few minutes had Cherie’s pack out of the crevasse. We waited for Cherie.
“What’s she doing?” Lou asked impatiently. “She’s been down there ten minutes. She should have been out by now.”
John again yelled down the crevasse, “Cherie, can you get out?”
“She’s having some kind of trouble,” he reported. “She’s been in quite a while—might be getting cold. Looks like we’ll have to pull her out.”
Lou anchored the rope leading to Cherie with his ice ax, freeing Chris and me to join John at the edge of the crevasse. I peeked over the edge; she was barely visible beneath the thin shaft of light entering through the hole in the snow.
We rigged our jumars to make a ratchet device to keep the rope from slipping back, and the four of us began hauling Cherie in time to a heave-ho, heave-ho, gaining a quick five feet with each tug. In less than a minute we had her up.
Except for a minor cut on her nose she was uninjured, but she was shaken by the fall. She brushed the incident off with a laugh, telling us it looked pretty inside the crevasse with all the smooth blue ice walls, but she admitted she was a little cold and glad to be out. We rested for a few minutes, sitting on our packs, to give Cherie time to recover before getting under way again.
“I had trouble with my slings,” she said. “I couldn’t get them adjusted right so I could jumar up.”
“Yeah, it’s hard if you’re not set up just right,” Chris said. “I’ll help you get things adjusted later.”
Nobody else said anything. Chris was sympathetic; like the rest of us, he realized Cherie had probably had very little experience with jumars, but unlike us, he wanted to help her learn. John, Lou, and I thought that if she did not know by now, K2 was no place to learn. But Chris got along with Cherie much better; during the approach march, and for the past week, they had spent hours together talking, comparing their experiences in Nepal, their experiences raising kids (Chris had three children, although they were in the custody of his divorced wife), and their careers in medicine. They had a lot in common. Chris was finding that Cherie, more than anyone else on the trip, shared many of his own attitudes, beliefs, and values.
Some of the rest of us were skeptical, and among ourselves we quietly questioned Cherie’s ability as a mountaineer. It was still too early in the expedition to pass any judgment, but so far she seemed unsure of herself. Later that day, back in ABC, she would explain that her fall had been due to several inches of snow that had covered the previous track, hiding the true edge of the crevasse. Wick noted in his journal that evening:
To my observing eye the route hadn’t changed a bit. Despite the Dhaulagiri performance of seven years ago, I’ll be surprised if she goes very high on the mountain. People say she’s a good climber, better than Terry, but I want to see.
I had first questioned Cherie’s judgment five days earlier when we carried our first loads to Advance Base Camp. Terry Bech and Jim Whittaker were still down the glacier, hiking to intercept the money runner. Most of us carried packs filled with personal equipment so we could stay at ABC that night. Because Terry was away, Cherie wanted to help carry some of his personal gear, as well as her own, to ABC; she left Base Camp with a huge pack weighing easily ninety pounds. My pack weighed nearly fifty pounds, and I thought that was on the heavy side. From my experience climbing big mountains, I had learned it is very important to pace yourself. We would be on K2 for at least a month and a half, and it demanded caution not to burn out early. So I was surprised to see Cherie with such a behemoth load. As it turned out, people helped her carry part of the pack to ABC, although she did manage to deliver most of the load. That afternoon I expressed to John my doubts on her sagacity.
“I’m afraid she’s trying to prove herself, to show us she’s capable of carrying as much, if not more, than the men on the trip,” I told John. “Cherie has a strong desire to be the first woman to climb K2, but I’ve got a suspicion she might push herself too hard to do it.”
“I’m afraid it might be a repeat of what I’ve seen on other trips,” John said. “Every time I go on one of these big climbs with women it’s the same story. Every single time—I swear to God, this is the last time I’m climbing with any of them. I’ve seen them kill themselves trying to prove they are as strong as men. Eight of them in the Pamirs, then Devi. People always criticize me for being down on women on expeditions, but I’ve never yet been on a big mountain with one that’s worth a damn.”
On two of John’s previous expeditions, women had died. In 1974 he was part of an international convention of climbers hosted by the Russians in the Pamir Mountains. A group of eight Russian women had died tragically, caught in a storm on an ascent of 23,400-foot Peak Lenin. Perhaps they should have turned back at the first sign of the pending storm, but they were close to the top and pressed on until the blizzard stopped their advance—and their retreat. In 1976 John was on Nanda Devi with Willi Unsoeld and his daughter Nanda Devi, whom he had named after this beautiful mountain in India. Devi fell ill from a strange stomach ailment high on the mountain, and before she could be evacuated, she died.
“Anyway, I think I’ll talk to Cherie about it,” I had said. “Just to let her know she doesn’t have to prove anything.”
The next day I found myself alone for a few minutes with Cherie, in the cook tent, and I broached the subject. As I had expected, she reacted defensively.
“I’m used to carrying heavy,” she said. “We did it week after week on Dhaulagiri. Hell, man, we had to shuttle hundred-pound loads with just two of us. I would get into camp each night sweaty and sick, and I’d upchuck, and then do it again the next day.”
I decided if I said any more it would only end in argument. Perhaps she was super strong and could carry heavy every day without burning out early. I just hoped she did not get herself in trouble higher on the mountain, when things would, without doubt, get a lot tougher.
After Cherie recovered from her crevasse fall we shouldered our packs and finished the hike to Camp I. It was turning into a marvelous day. We were beneath the awesome east face of K2, with our northeast ridge forming the right skyline. We eyeballed the route up to the place where Camp III would eventually be placed, then along the difficult traverse to Camp IV. It looked spooky. Above IV, we could see that we would have to make a long climb to the top of a rounded dome, where the ridge joined the summit pyramid. Camp V would go there. The summit itself was concealed by a cloud—the only cloud in the sky.
We arrived at Camp I, dumped our loads, then began chopping platforms for our tents out of the ice. John and Cherie unloaded and started back to ABC. In the distance, out on the glacier, we could see Wick and Jim slowly hiking toward us in the heat of the afternoon sun.
FROM WICK’S JOURNAL
JULY 12. A brilliant day, a joy to be in the midst of the great mountains. Not the joy of route pioneering that Rick, Chris, Lou, and Skip will have tomorrow in moving up to establish Camp II. But the joy of feeling strong, full of life, the sheer exuberance of moving up the glacier beneath mighty K2. This is what Jim and I had this afternoon in making a late carry to Camp I. The heavy load didn’t matter; we were in close proximity to the commencement of our route, the magnificent northeast ridge. Hidden by clouds at the start, the upper ridge gradually revealed itself. A large avalanche down the eastern wall of K2, sending the telltale white cloud spreading out across the glacier in front of us, did not disturb our feeling of confidence.
Jim wanted to move fast, and fast we did, making the carry to Camp I in under two and half hours. Once there, it was good to see the guys had put in a very nice campsite against the buttress terminating the northeast ridge; the setting is superb. We stayed long enough to help erect another tent, then walked back out on the glacier.
As we left, the entire route, excep
t for the final summit rise, unfolded, and as afternoon sun filtered through wispy clouds, we could see the stretch to the dome at twenty-five thousand feet. The difficult traverse was foreshortened, but we could see each pinnacle, each dip, each facet of this stretch from Camp III to Camp IV.
At that moment, the feeling of certainty that we would climb this mountain became almost overwhelming. We were in high spirits. Weren’t we Pacific Northwesterners, after all, from the Land of Ice and Snow, and wasn’t this our kind of mountain? An ice and snow behemoth on this east side. It wasn’t overconfidence, but rather a feeling that we would without doubt overcome the difficulties—the storms and the rest—and reach that highest crest. As surely as we threaded our way through the crevasse field without mishap, we would climb to the summit of K2—the mountain of my dreams.
Then for me there would be other mountains and summits—those of the everyday world. Renewed closeness to a woman a man has been so fortunate to meet, to love, to have children with, and finally, to grow old together.
It’s surprising how these good days can magically occur. Tonight I am a happy man, blessed with a wonderful wife and children, good and true friends, and the opportunity to reach the high and lonely summit of K2.
I rolled over in my sleeping bag to adjust an arm that had fallen asleep. I felt the blood run back into the tissue and the numb and prickly feeling give way to warmth. Without opening my eyes, I fluffed the down parka under my head and snuggled in to recapture the last thread of that pleasant dream before the arm woke me up. The only thing distracting me from complete comfort was the urge to pee. But that meant getting up and going out on the ice—wearing just my long-john underwear. Out of the question.
I had nearly regained the sweetness of that lovely dream when a sharp pop sounded from deep in the glacier. That is one of the fun parts of sleeping on glaciers—listening, and feeling the ice move, waiting for the occasional groans and sharp cracks from down in the bowels of the ice. In a second I heard another one. I could not feel any movement, as you sometimes can when there is a major split in the glacier. There was only the deep-down Pop!
I realized that I was, unfortunately, waking up. Somehow I knew if I opened my eyes it would be getting light outside. I hesitated, then cracked one eye open. Sure enough, I could see the pastel yellow of the tent fabric over my head. The first light of dawn.
I lay for a few more minutes before getting up. I thought, Today we start the route up to Camp II. It was exciting to think about getting out in the lead, exploring new ground. I sat up in my bag and put my pile jacket over the angora wool underwear I slept in. Then I leaned over, keeping my legs in the warm bag, and peeked out the tent door. The sky was deep indigo in the early morning light, made richer by the high altitude. There were still a few first-magnitude stars visible. And not one cloud. I pulled back into the tent and thought how lucky we had been with the weather. There had been only one day, a few back, when we had had to wait out a snowstorm in the tents. And almost every day of the approach march had been flawless. I knew it could not last. But again, perhaps it was a good sign, perhaps this was to be a year of exceptionally fine weather in the Karakoram. I knew a break like that, more than anything, would give us the luck we would need to reach the summit.
“Chris, you have the time?”
I was sharing a spacious four-person tent with Chris; Lou and Skip were in another one next door. I had drowned my watch in one of the rivers on the approach march, so I was always asking the time. Seiko had given us all those new alarm-buzzer, digital readout, calendar models, with a light to see in the dark. Chris stirred a little, but did not reply.
“Hey, I think it’s time to get up. What’s your watch say?”
He again stirred, half rolled over, and opened an eye.
“Five forty-six and twenty seconds. July thirteen.” He rolled back over, paused, and then added, “Oh yeah. It’s Thursday.”
Chris stayed in his bag as I began to get dressed. I could hear mumbling from the tent next door, and in a minute came the blow torch sound of the kerosene stove. Lou and Skip were heating water for the morning brew.
I thought, It will be warm today, unless the wind comes up, so I’ll just wear my angora woolies and my Gore-Tex jumpsuit. I weasled into the jumpsuit, then put my felt boot liners inside the outer boots, worked my feet in, and zipped up the knee-high gaiters. My toes were cold in the icy boot, but I knew they would soon warm.
I smeared PABA lotion on my face, cleaned my goggles, and loaded my camera. Other than packing the rope and climbing hardware we would need for the day, I was ready to go. Chris was still snoozing.
“You ought to get ready. We’ll be leaving soon,” I said to him.
From the next tent I heard Lou call, “Brew water is ready, you guys.”
“Be right there,” I called back.
Chris sat up in his bag. “O.K.,” he said. “Guess that means it’s time to do it.”
We sat in front of Lou and Skip’s tent drinking tea or coffee and munching a breakfast of candy bars, Slim Jim pepperoni sticks, and freeze-dried beef stroganoff leftover from the previous night’s dinner. After breakfast, we loaded our packs with about two thousand feet of six- and eight-millimeter rope, a dozen snow pickets, several deadmen (aluminum plates about eight inches wide and a foot long that set themselves to make anchors when placed in the snow and tugged), ice screws, pitons, aluminum chocks to jam in rock cracks, and carabiner snap-links to fasten the rope. With a little lunch packed, and a quart bottle of water apiece, we were ready.
We left camp at 6:30 and climbed along the base of the ridge until we reached a snow gully dividing two rock promontories. There was more rock above the gully, and one concern was avoiding, as much as possible, rockfall from above.
“The Poles went up the next gully around the corner,” I said. “But I think this one is faster and no more dangerous. Let’s give it a go, and we won’t fix any ropes. That way we can always come down the Polish gully if this has too much rockfall.”
We reached the top of the gully about 8:30, Lou breaking trail, kicking steps in the snow almost the whole way. A few rocks had hurtled down as the morning sun loosened the frozen debris above the gully, and we would definitely want to investigate the Polish gully when we came back down later in the afternoon. The sky was still cloudless; it looked like it would be a perfect day. For the first time, we were high enough to see a magnificent twenty-four-thousand-foot peak that adjoins K2 on the northeastern side—Skyang Kangri, also called Staircase Peak, after a series of huge steps on its eastern ridge. At the foot of Skyang Kangri, the head of the Godwin-Austen Glacier, was a 19,500-foot pass known as Windy Gap. We could just see over the top of Windy Gap, and on the other side the beginnings of the burnt-sienna hills of China’s great Sinkiang Province. There was considerable magic in that first view into China.
Above, the route steepened and the snow changed to ice. We cut a platform, placing two ice-screw anchors, and began to belay the rope to the lead climber. Lou led the first section, then I took over, then it was Chris’s turn. Just below the crest of the ridge, it appeared that the ice stopped, and we would be forced to climb up rock to reach the top of the ridge. We tried to avoid rock, when possible, because it was loose and frost-shattered. There was danger the lead climber would knock loose rocks on those below.
Chris worked up the ice by planting his ax, pick first, then kicking into the ice with his front points—two spikes on the crampons that stick out from the toe of the boot. It is not a particularly difficult technique, but Chris had not been climbing for almost a year before the expedition, and it was easy to see he was uncomfortable. He climbed off the ice and onto the bordering rock, carefully continuing up. Skip and I were together on a small platform cut in the ice and Lou was a few feet above. We watched Chris cautiously take each step. He was about sixty feet above us. As we had feared, he loosened a few rocks, which zinged by, just missing Skip and me; Lou was better protected under a rock outcrop. We yelled to
Chris to be more careful, but another barrage of rocks came down. Skip and I tucked, covering our heads and backs with our packs. Rocks hit all around, but amazingly I was not touched. I heard Skip cursing—he must have been hit.
“Skip, you O.K.?”
“No. I got a couple in my arm and shoulder.”
He was feeling his arm and rolling back his sleeve.
“I don’t think it’s broken,” he said. “But it hurts like hell.”
There was a big bruise already rising on his forearm. Some of the skin was cut and bleeding, but not badly. His shoulder seemed bruised but otherwise O.K.
Chris yelled down, “Sorry. There’s lots of loose stuff. You guys O.K.?”
“Be careful,” I yelled. “Skip got hit in the arm and shoulder. I think he’ll be able to climb up, but I don’t know about leading.”
Chris went on, and in a minute another barrage of rocks came down. Again, we ducked. This time, I felt several good-sized ones thump into the padded pack covering my head.
Suddenly I flew into a rage, screaming at Chris, “Get back on the ice! You trying to kill us?”
Chris yelled back, also upset but more contained than me, “Look, the ice doesn’t go much higher than this anyway. I’ve got to be on rock from here up. I’m being careful—it’s loose up here.”
I realized losing my temper was not making things any better. But it seemed to me he could have climbed farther on the ice, minimizing the time on the rotten rock. Chris continued up and traversed so that any other rocks would roll down another gully, missing us. Ten minutes more and he was at the crest of the ridge, ready to belay us up. As I climbed the rock, I realized it was impossible not to knock a few down. When I got to Chris I apologized.
“Sorry I yelled at you that way. I know it was loose—it was just scary being on the wrong end of a bowling alley.”
“Forget it,” Chris said, but I could see he was still miffed.
The Last Step Page 13