Lou followed me up. Although he did not say much, it was clear he had not been impressed with Chris’s lead. We rested awhile, and from our new perch on the ridge crest we were able to see down the glacier to ABC and across the valley to Broad Peak. Two rope teams of antlike figures were moving up the glacier—that would be the rest of the team including our four Hunza porters, carrying loads from ABC to Camp I. From our vantage point it was easy to make out the hidden crevasses. The snow covering them had a unique texture and contrasted clearly with the surrounding white. Thus, the crevasses formed long zebra stripes that split the glacier side to side, and it was fun to watch the climbers below approach one, stop, and move along it to find a suitable crossing. Had we been in radio contact, we could have coached them across the glacier; it seemed odd how hard it was to detect a crevasse when standing on the edge of one.
The next several hundred feet up the ridge was easy, then it steepened and our pace slowed. We discovered a section of white eleven-millimeter rope buried under a few inches of ice, obviously left from the 1976 Polish attempt. Foolishly, Lou and I went up and started hacking it out, thinking we might be able to reuse it and save our own rope; we should have realized that after two years it would not be trustworthy. Chopping it out of the ice was an arduous task, and since Skip and Chris were idle, Lou suggested they go back to the steep section where Chris had knocked down the rocks and reroute the rope to a safer location.
Lou and I eventually scuttled the idea of using the Polish rope and continued up, fixing our own line as we went. About 3:30 p.m. we were only a few hundred feet below a level spot on the ridge, the spot that would be our Camp II site. We decided to retreat and come back early the next morning to finish fixing ropes into the new campsite.
We headed back to the ridge crest, above the spot where Chris had knocked down the rocks. Below, we could see Chris and Skip rappelling the ropes. It had been four hours since they had left Lou and me higher on the ridge.
“They should have had those ropes finished by now,” Lou said. “There’s been more than enough time.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s taking them awhile.”
“Those guys weren’t too impressive this morning, either. I know Skip isn’t acclimatizing well, but Chris could be doing better. If they don’t hurry, we’ll be out here tonight bivouacking. Seriously.”
“I’m not sure it will come to that, but they sure as hell could be moving faster,” I agreed.
At the same time as I agreed with Lou, I felt guilty criticizing Skip and Chris behind their backs. Skip had mentioned he did not feel he was acclimatizing very well; we were at twenty thousand feet, and if he felt sluggish it was understandable. And while Chris had lacked zest the last couple of weeks, it seemed rather extreme to charge him with indolence. But there were the small things—like being slow getting up in the morning. Perhaps he thought of this trip more as a vacation than as an arduous ascent that would take all the energy and effort any of us could muster. Maybe, for him, it was an escape from the problems he faced back home. He was having trouble with his ex-wife—divorce, alimony, child custody. Or perhaps these problems had followed him to K2 and were weighing heavy even as he began the climb on the ridge. There was one thing I knew for sure, one thing I thought the others probably realized, too: Those who would finally be picked to go to the summit would be the ones who had not just worked the hardest and climbed the best, but those who had demonstrated the most gusto, those who had not just climbed hard but had climbed with relish. It was that kind of person Jim Whittaker liked, and it was that kind he would pick to go to the top. I knew Chris had to show some spark and verve if he were going to make it.
I thought, Maybe that’s why I feel a little guilty when I criticize Chris for being slow—because I know he is not going to be chosen if he doesn’t put out that little extra distance. That’s the core of the problem right there, isn’t it. That’s the guilt. If Chris and I are climbing together as a rope team, chances are Jim will pick another pair over us. It’s almost a simple choice—a choice of staying with Chris, your friend, and probably not getting to the top, or going with Roskelley and almost certainly reaching the summit if anybody at all makes it.
That’s what you want, Ridgeway, I thought. And you know that’s what you’re going to do. You’ll go with Roskelley even if it means abandoning Chris. You want the summit so bad. You missed it on Everest, and you’re not going to let it happen this time. But is it worth it? Ask yourself that. Chris is having a lot of trouble now, trying to figure out his personal life, and shouldn’t you be with him, giving your support? You should be, but you won’t. Because you want that summit too bad.
I had been intending to talk to Chris about it for some time, but whenever I was alone with him and started to mention it, I always got distracted onto something else. I always thought, Well, I’ll bring it up soon. Only I never did. It is funny how things like that work; it happens so often with people you care about. You want to tell them something, something that is important because they are your friend, but you can’t quite bring it out. And so you end up discussing the weather, or the climb, or what equipment you should haul next to which camp, and all the while you’re thinking, Yes, I’ll bring it up. And all the while you know you probably won’t.
Chris and Skip had the rope ready.
“About time,” Lou said, as he got ready to rappel. I followed Lou down the rope, giving him enough time to get out of the gully in case I should loosen any rocks, and I thought, Yeah, I’ll have to talk to Chris about it.
JULY 14. Another brilliant, cloudless day. The gods of the weather are still favoring us. If it keeps up, we could climb the mountain in only a month. The thought is intoxicating, and too attractive; I know that will not happen. There will be the inevitable storms, the delays, the illnesses. But it is still a possibility, and good grist for those daydreams while I stand on the snow, anchored to pickets, belaying the rope out around my waist, watching Lou climb higher. One more rope length and we’ll reach Camp II, I think.
Lou, Chris, Skip, and I had again left camp early in the morning, a little tired from the long day before, but fired with the knowledge we would get to Camp II and firmly establish the route with fixed ropes. It would be ready for the others—who meanwhile were carrying more loads from ABC to Camp I—to start stocking Camp II. Then Jim and Wick could begin immediately the push to Camp III. Yes, I thought, it was very fast, very rapid progress. The four of us agreed to divide into two groups: Skip and Chris would stay lower on the route to exchange the less secure six-millimeter rope we had put in the day before for eight-millimeter, and in addition move the rappel from the dangerous gully where Chris had dislodged the rocks to another one farther up the ridge that had less rock around it; Lou and I would go to the campsite, fixing ropes that far. If time allowed, we would prepare a few tent platforms as well.
It was still noon as we made the last distance to Camp II; we would have plenty of time to work on the campsite. There was no doubt we were at the “right” spot. There were aluminum poles, with tatters of orange nylon fabric hanging like debris from a past war, the remnants of the 1976 Polish camp. We took off our packs, laying them in a pocket between the poles—it was steep enough that we could not set our packs on the slope without fear of their rolling away. It would take time to chop the tent platforms in the hard, icy slope.
Before we started, Lou and I relaxed and nibbled on our lunch ration. The view was superb. Skyang Kangri was to our left, behind were the hills of Sinkiang, brown in the rain shadow of the Karakoram. Across the Godwin-Austen were the massive ramparts and hanging glaciers coming off the north side of Broad Peak, forming a wall along the glacier and hiding from view the peaks beyond. But we knew we would see them soon enough from the higher camps: Gasherbrum II, III, IV, Hidden Peak, Chogolisa.
Lou and I sat quietly, gazing. Below, we could see small figures making their way up the glacier, carrying to Camp I. Tomorrow many of them would be coming up to stay, to begin t
he carries to Camp II.
Lou turned around and looked at the slope above Camp II. It was only visible for about five hundred feet—above, a hump in the ridge hid the rest of the route to Camp III. It would be a long, though relatively easy, climb.
“We’re here early with still a lot of time,” Lou said. “And a little extra rope and a few anchors. Maybe I’ll run out a few hundred feet more above camp.”
“You’d be poaching on Jim and Wick’s territory,” I said, thinking it more important to use the time preparing the site here. “It’s their lead from here to Three.”
“It’s all for the good of the expedition,” Lou said, laughing mischievously. “They probably won’t like it, but there’s not much they can say if they come up here and the rope is already in.”
“O.K., but stick around long enough to help me chop a tent platform,” I said with a chastising tone.
We continued to nibble lunch, and I thought that Lou was going to be perhaps the hardest person on the trip to get to know. In fact, it might be impossible. It was easy to tell he was highly motivated, driven to accomplishment, and that he had as likely a chance as any of reaching the top of this peak. If anyone would go that little extra distance—the extra I thought would make the difference when Whittaker picked the summit climbers—it would be Lou. It was typical of him, for example, to decide to go up and fix a few hundred feet more rope, even though we had already done our job and it would be just as useful to stay at the campsite and cut tent platforms. But I believed it was also a gesture to spite Wick and Jim—especially Wick—and I thought I knew Lou’s motivation. John Roskelley had tipped me off a few days earlier.
It was a small incident—outwardly small—back when we first arrived at Base Camp and half the team had gone off to search for porter food at the abandoned British camp. Chris and I had gone up toward Advanced Base Camp. Originally Lou had volunteered, saying Wick would go with him to the Brits’ camp to get the extra food. Lou wanted to see that side of the mountain anyway, and he felt that finding extra food for the porters was the most important task at hand. That evening he took Wick aside and said, “I hope you didn’t mind me volunteering you for the job, but I know you and I are about the strongest guys here, and we could do the best job.” Wick had been complimented.
The next day, however, Lou woke up with a sore throat and cough and decided he would be better resting a day than risk having the illness develop into something more serious. When Wick went to Lou’s tent to see if he was ready to go, Lou said, “I’ve still got a sore throat this morning, and also a new cough. I’d better stay here and rest.” Wick left the tent, but as he did he grumbled, “Yeah, and I’ve got an old cough.”
A small thing, but Lou had fumed, and I suspected he was still fuming now, more than a week later. I also suspected stringing out three hundred feet of rope across Wick’s territory was Lou’s way of showing Wick he was no slouch and not one to shrink from a job. Lou was an odd-looking sort. He appeared to be about his thirty-five years, no more or less. Sitting next to me, he had the unconsciously disheveled appearance of an academic, or a scientist. I did not know much about his research in neurobiology, but I did know he was highly respected in his field. Of course, he was as serious about his career in science as he was about his career in climbing. I had heard an amusing story that when Lou returned with John Roskelley from the summit of Dhaulagiri in 1973, his colleagues played a trick on him. Lou had climbed the 26,795-foot mountain without oxygen, and in retrospect he remembered how difficult it had been to think coherently at that altitude. As a neurobiologist, he was very much aware of the permanent damage that hypoxia—lack of oxygen—can cause to brain cells. It is a common joke among climbers that you come back from high-altitude trips acting like someone fresh from fifteen thousand volts of shock therapy.
With this in mind, Lou’s colleagues began calling him up and saying things like, “Lou, where were you this morning?”
“I was right here in my lab,” Lou would reply.
“Why weren’t you at the meeting? Remember, we had an important meeting this morning. Nine o’clock. You were supposed to be there.”
“I didn’t know about any meeting. There was a meeting?”
“Lou, we told you five times there was a meeting. You feeling O.K. these days?”
Lou eventually figured out the joke, but apparently not without worrying he might be suffering from brain damage.
Sitting next to him, I noted his brown-black hair sticking out in tufts from around his ski goggles, the lenses of which were smudged with sun-cream. He also had sunscreen smeared in blotches on his face and lips, and big blobs of the stuff stuck in his month-old beard. He was wearing his angora wool top, and his pile underwear for pants. I sat watching him out of the corner of my eye. His nose was running, and I watched with amusement as he blew his nose in his hand and sat for a moment wondering what to do with it. He glanced around for a few moments looking for something to wipe it on, and not finding anything suitable, smeared the mess on his trousers, leaving white patches stringing across the wool pile.
I thought, Boy, this guy sure is weird.
There was one other story I knew about Lou, one that shed a little more light on his personality but at the same time made him seem even more enigmatic. It was one of the more incredible—and tragic—stories in the history of American climbing. The year was 1969, the scene the first American attempt to climb Dhaulagiri, and by a new and difficult route. The team was a selection of some of America’s best mountaineers.
Eight of the team were pushing the route up a glacier at the base of the east ridge. A fog settled, minimizing visibility, and suddenly in the distance they heard the unmistakable roar of an avalanche. Everyone took shelter; Lou found only a change in the slope—a hummock—to hide behind. The avalanche hit, and he felt his back pelted with ice debris. Then it cleared, and all was quiet. Lou looked around, and slowly he realized the extent of the tragedy. He was the only one alive; all seven of his companions had been killed.
It seems safe to say most climbers would have hung up their ice axes and considered such miraculous escape as divine intervention, a celestial message to give up climbing. Lou not only continued, but his next major expedition took him back to Dhaulagiri, to take care of unfinished business. After reaching the summit, his first eight-thousand-meter peak, he went to the summit of Nanda Devi in 1976 and was now on K2 in 1978. Lou was no ordinary man with ordinary drives; he had some kind of devils running around inside, which apparently were exorcized—and then, I suspected, only temporarily—by brilliant accomplishment.
We finished lunch, and Lou helped to chop the tent platform before stringing rope up the icy slope above Camp II. After he left, I continued chopping. It was laborious work. Under a few inches of snow, the slope turned to hard ice and progress was slow. It was fascinating work, though, since I kept uncovering remnants from the Polish expedition—old hardhats, unused packets of fruit juice mix, candy wrappers, even a can of sausage that I opened and found to be tasty. I felt as archaeologists must during digs, stopping to wonder about the people who had left these mementos. What were their hopes, their frustrations, their fears? There had been nineteen of them, the best climbers in their country, and they had given this route everything they had. And missed. Only five hundred feet from the summit, and turned back. But they had got down safely, at least. I wondered what our own story would be a few months hence.
Lou finished the ropes and came down to give me a hand. It was now late afternoon, time to head back to Camp I. The trip down would be easier than yesterday, we thought, with the ropes rearranged and safely secured. We began the long series of rappels. Skip and Chris were way down the slope, near the bottom. It was satisfying to see the ropes secured well, the ice screws well placed and tied off with nylon webbing to save carabiners. It was a much better job than Lou and I had done when we first placed the anchors; it gave me a warm feeling to know Chris and Skip had done it. Lou seemed pleased, too.
&
nbsp; We called ABC on the walkie-talkie that evening to report that Camp II was established, with fixed ropes in place.
“Terrific,” Jim replied. “That’s wonderful news. Great job, you guys. I guess you’ll be coming back down to ABC tomorrow for a rest? You deserve it.”
We looked at each other, and winked. “Rest?” Lou said. “What for? No, we’re going up in the morning to carry the first loads to Camp Two.”
Back at ABC, everyone sitting around the radio looked at each other, surprised by the reply, but smiling and laughing.
“O.K., you tigers,” Jim said over the radio. “We’ll see you up there tomorrow. Most of us will be moving up to stay. Then in Urdu he added the word that meant good job! “Botacha!” he said.
FROM WICK’S JOURNAL
JULY 17. A good day. Jim and I weren’t able to get all the way to Camp III, although we didn’t expect to. Got away about 8:00 a.m. and headed up the steep section of rope Lou had fixed a few days before. Steeper than it appeared. Jim led the first pitch up very steep snow, to a corner where a small ice cliff forced us right. Then across a crevassed section, then a steep 150-foot pitch of snow and ice. This took us to the crest of the ridge and the bulk of the day’s work.
Hot day. Sapped our energy. The upper mountain kept inching closer, however, and even the traverse didn’t seem as long or foreboding. But make no mistake! This ridge is long and without letup in difficulty. The absolutely superb weather is enabling us to steadily move up the mountain. The storm days are coming; it is just uncertain when.
Tomorrow we should make it to the site of Camp III. It will be another long day. After that I’m not sure what. Descend to Camp I for a rest day, or hump loads from II to III. Glad Lou will be with us tomorrow. Spread the weight. Today packing two thousand feet of rope, numerous ice screws, pickets, and deadmen, while leading up steep ice, was hard work.
Jim is asleep. He dropped off right away when we got back; he’s tired from the day’s exertions. Being forty-nine years old and pushing the way he does is remarkable. There’s not many like him. Lou is by himself in the dome tent next to ours. He apparently talks to himself as there are strange noises and mumblings emanating from his tent. He is undeniably strong, but his personality is somewhat different.
The Last Step Page 14