The Last Step

by Rick Ridgeway

  Anyway, it was one of those days in the mountains—the days one wishes all days were like—when all the rhythms matched up, when even the hard work flowed, effortlessly, without pain; one of those days when I knew my companions felt exactly the same, when there was no need to talk because there was everything to say but no way of saying it, when even the sun beating down, burning my face, was somehow welcome and the heaviest load sat on my back like a feather. It was the sort of day I wish could happen more often, but that I am thankful happened even once.

  The 180-degree shift in the wind Dianne had mentioned was indeed the herald of improved weather—the long-awaited end of the storm. We made plans to return to Camp II. We radioed Chris and Cherie, who said they would descend the next morning to pull the fixed ropes from beneath the new snow, and more important, to kick down the fresh accumulation—which would help minimize the danger of avalanches hitting those climbing up.

  Everyone was up early. After breakfast we prepared our loads for the carry to Camp II. Four of us planned to spend the night there: John Roskelley, Bill Sumner, Jim Wickwire, and me. Over the previous few days we had designed a new strategy for the next stage of the climb—moving back up to Camp III, then negotiating the difficult traverse to Camp IV. Instead of Wick, Bill, and John taking the first crack at it with Chris and me the second, as we had originally planned, Jim had decided to have John and me spend the first two days fixing ropes. Then Bill and Wick would take over. With any luck, we would reach Camp IV in one push.

  There were several reasons for the change. Bill, feeling he was not climbing very fast at the higher altitudes, preferred to be on the second team. And, since Wick had put in the route to Camp III, it was felt the next lead should go to someone else. That John should be among those to lead across the knife-edged ridge was never questioned: not only had he not yet done any lead climbing, but he was the most proficient technical ice climber in the group. Needless to say, I was delighted to have the chance not only to climb with John, but to climb with him across the most difficult terrain on our route. For me, it was the major turning point in the expedition.

  The person most obviously left out was Chris. During the days he and Cherie had stayed at Camp II, there had been much secretive discussion in Camp I, and nearly everyone there felt that the two should descend. I cared less about the actual friendship developing between Chris and Cherie than about how it might injure Terry, weaken Chris’s chance of being on a summit team, or in general create disharmony that could possibly jeopardize the expedition’s chances of success.

  Unfortunately neither I nor anyone else brought our concerns directly to Terry. If we had, we might have prevented many future problems, for Terry was in no way worried. He knew Chris and Cherie were becoming close friends, and he himself saw in Chris a future friend. But he felt they were being selfish by staying high so they could better acclimatize, eating food all of us had worked hard to deliver to that altitude, while everyone else waited out the storm in Camp I. The rest of us assumed Terry’s increasing moroseness, as the storm continued, was from other concerns.

  Jim Whittaker had been keeping a low profile. As a person who himself values his private moments, he was inclined to let others do the same—unless, of course, it began to have an adverse effect on the expedition as a whole. Apparently, he had not seen Chris and Cherie’s friendship as any problem. No doubt his attitude was influenced by Dianne; she grumbled that Cherie was being victimized by male chauvinists, particularly John Roskelley. Dianne felt a sharp repugnance for John’s attitude that he would never “permit” his own wife to behave in such a manner; in fact, she thought John’s marital mores—and for that matter many of his other beliefs and values—smacked of some medieval code of ethics designed to maintain male supremacy.

  But regardless of Jim’s personal attitude, the team had asked him to do something. His only action, however, was to call Chris midway through the storm and tell him it would be “politically expedient” to descend. To the bewilderment of nearly everyone Chris chose to stay at Camp II. Finally, Jim realized that, at a minimum, Chris would have to come back to Camp I after the storm to at least discuss the problem, and that if Chris were to be put in the lead as we worked toward Camp IV, it would be only in support of Bill and Wick.

  Many of the team believed it had been a mistake for Jim not to order Chris to descend earlier, that he had not recognized, in this ignoble affair, the seeds of future disharmony. Perhaps had we all better communicated our concerns—perhaps, had Jim been more forceful in asking Chris and Cherie to descend—we could have forestalled the acrimony and animosity, the poison, that were to divide our team.

  I caught up with Lou and John about half an hour out of Camp I, where the fixed ropes started up the steep slopes to Camp II. They were stopped at the bottom of the first rope, staring up the thousand feet of snow, ice, and rock that led to the crest of the ridge. My first thought was that they were waiting for Chris, who must be somewhere above, clearing the ropes and kicking loose the avalanche-prone snow. That morning Lou had talked to Chris on the radio and told him we would meet him partway down the lower ropes. But Chris was not in sight.

  “I’m reluctant to start up the ropes,” John said. “It just smells funny. Too much new snow. It looks very unstable.”

  “I think we should definitely wait for Chris to come down and clear the way,” Lou said.

  We decided to dig a test pit and study the snow. Looking down the hole, we could see three layers, the bottom of which seemed to be resting on hard ice spread with a coating of little ice ball-bearings—good conditions for a slab avalanche. We waited for Chris.

  “Maybe he thinks we are climbing higher,” I suggested, “and will rendezvous with him farther up.”

  “Maybe,” John said. “But it’s not worth going up just to deliver a few loads of food and oxygen.”

  “You’ve survived more climbs than any of us,” I agreed.

  “Yeah, and I’ve backed off a hell of a lot of them, too,” John added. “That may be one reason I’m still around.”

  “I think there’s a ninety-five percent chance it’s O.K.,” Lou said. “But let’s not forget one thing: about five miles from here a friend of ours is buried right now. Nick Estcourt landed on the five percent.”

  Saying no more, we cached our packs under a rock and returned to Camp I. It was frustrating to lose yet another day after being penned up for so long, but none of us doubted we had made the right decision. There was more than one person in camp, later that afternoon, who cursed Chris for not descending all the way and clearing the ropes.

  On the radio that evening Chris said he had descended three hundred feet down the gully below the ridge, but he had not seen anyone. He thought we had decided not to come up.

  “Of course he didn’t see anyone,” Wick commented, somewhat acerbically. “If his job is to knock down avalanches, does he think we would be standing in the middle of an avalanche gully where he could see us?”

  Jim “ordered” Chris to come down the next morning.

  “Why don’t you plan on meeting us here in Camp One for breakfast,” Jim told Chris, “nice and early, say about seven.”

  Lou left camp first the following morning and met Chris near the base of the ridge. Cherie was a distance behind, descending more slowly.

  “Basically there are three things we’re upset about,” Lou said to Chris. “One is that you didn’t come down earlier when Whittaker made several suggestions that it would be a good idea. The other is that you didn’t come down at all yesterday to break trail for us as you said you would, causing us to lose an entire day. And finally, because it seems your friendship with Cherie is upsetting Terry, and that is affecting the whole team.”

  “Let me take these one at a time,” Chris replied. “First, Jim never ordered us down. He said something like it would be nice if we came down, but he never ordered us. He made it sound like we could come down if we wanted to—and we didn’t want to. But I did come down yesterda
y.”

  “Funny we didn’t see you. What time was it?”

  “Well, after we got the call from you—about seven—we made breakfast, got our gear in order, and left about ten.”

  “It seems you could have left a little earlier than that. We had given up by ten and were back in camp.”

  “I came down the ridge and looked over and didn’t see anybody. The weather was still questionable, and I wasn’t sure you were coming up . . . ”

  “You should have come down all the way to camp. But there’s nothing to do about it now—the day has been lost. What about you and Cherie?”

  “Do I have to clear it with you, Lou, before I choose who my friends are on this trip? That’s my business—not yours.”

  “It’s my business—it’s everybody’s business—when it affects the team.”

  “Then I’ll talk to Terry when we get to camp. I really doubt he considers it to be the problem you guys seem to think it is.”

  Lou went on up. Chris passed John and me at the bottom of the ropes. John more or less said the same thing Lou had; I told Chris I thought it might be a good idea if he talked with Jim and apologized for not coming down.

  “Whittaker’s not mad at anybody,” I said. “All you’ve got to do is start working hard and you’ll have as good a chance as anybody to make the summit. You know how he’s going to choose the summit team. He’ll pick whoever is out there doing the most, working the hardest. That’s the kind of climber Jim likes.”

  “O.K.,” Chris promised. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “There’s one other thing,” I said. “I feel kind of bad—I think I should have talked to you earlier. That’s what friends are supposed to be for. I just never brought it up. Sorry.”

  Chris continued down. We met Cherie a few minutes later.

  “We should tell you that people are a little upset back in camp,” John said.

  “I just talked to Lou,” Cherie said acidly. “I’m tired of hearing all this stuff about Terry being upset. Everyone whispering behind our backs. You’re all bastards. Bastards, bastards, bastards.”

  “Look, we could care less what goes on as long as it doesn’t affect the team and the climb,” John said.

  “What do you mean what goes on? I’m sick of all this gossiping.” Cherie started to cry.

  “It’s not that big a problem,” I told her. “I’m sure it will be easy to clear up.”

  “O.K.,” Cherie said. “I’ll talk to Terry and the others in camp.” She worked her way down the ropes.

  John and I made Camp II about 10:30. We moved back into the tent we had left several days before, finding much of our gear wet, but knowing it would dry in the afternoon heat. There were still a few clouds in the sky, and haze hung over the summits of Broad Peak and K2. It seemed, however, as if the storm were clearing. We felt confident we would have good weather for the trip to Camp IV. I was excited with the anticipation of going out on the traverse, of exploring new territory, of doing some hard climbing with John. And I looked forward to leaving behind, for a few days anyway, the wrangling and squabbling and bickering. Gazing up at the great summit pyramid peeking through the clouds after so many days of storm, our little contentions seemed so petty. I only hoped that, in the weeks ahead, we would be able to measure up to the majesty of such a mountain.

  JULY 30. Crystal air. No clouds, no wind. A summer feeling, the earth falling away before us to a distant, curved horizon, an indigo sky. It was the sky of a day after a long storm: a sky with no dust or pollution, no opaqueness; a sky that was a vacuum, like a sky on the moon. A mountain a hundred miles away appeared in minute detail, as if it could be touched.

  I moved with deliberate, even steps, kicking the toe of my boot into the surface snow, feeling my crampons bite the ice underneath, then moving my ax, then my other foot. Pace. In our packs we had twelve hundred feet of rope, which we intended to string all that day; so far, we had a good start, but we had much ground to cover and would make it only if we kept up an exact, deliberate pace. I regulated my breathing to harmonize with the movements of my feet—I knew this would conserve energy, allowing me to maintain a better pace, all day, without stopping.

  I turned around to see John belaying me, standing on a snow platform cut in the steep slope about two hundred feet away. We had worked out a system for rapidly fixing the ropes: for this first section I would lead out, tied to the end of the rope, while John progressively fed it out, belaying through the anchors we had placed at this station. Every so often, I would put in another anchor—an ice screw, a picket, a deadman, or a piton—clipping the rope through it to decrease the length of a fall in case I should slip. When I got to the end of a two-hundred- or three-hundred-foot section (the rope was cut in varying lengths), I would anchor it, and while John jumared across, I would rearrange the next sling of climbing hardware and uncoil a new section of rope. When John reached me he would immediately tie in to the new rope, pick up the already organized hardware sling, and start along the next section. I would rest while belaying John on his lead, then the cycle would repeat. On the extremely steep sections with loose rock—where a fall was a very real possibility—we would add an extra, heavier belay rope.

  I continued my lead, keeping to a steady, even pace. The altitude was 22,600 feet. I felt strong, very strong; I knew I could go all day without stopping, not even for lunch. I knew we could string the twelve hundred feet. This was my chance: if I put in a good performance climbing with John here, I might possibly earn my place on the summit team.

  I stopped, examined a large rock that looked ideal for looping with a sling to provide a protection point, then climb up to the top of it. There was an old piece of white rope frozen partway under the rock—the Poles had also used it for an anchor. At the top of the rock I was on the knife’s edge and could gaze down the Pakistan side of the ridge. As if mounting a horse, I threw one leg over the crest and straddled it while I worked the sling into place. With the rope clipped through, I moved on, soon reaching its end. I placed another anchor and tied off the rope. John started up and joined me at the belay stance.

  We were climbing on the edge of a knife. The slope dropped away on both sides, steeply, dramatically, to glaciers thousands of feet below. We had crossed the ridge and dropped a few feet below its crest, traversing. For the first time, we were in China.

  “I’m not sure I remembered to get my visa,” John quipped.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone around to check our passports,” I replied.

  There was an excitement in working so precisely, so efficiently, and a satisfaction in seeing the years of practice and honing of skills, the years of climbing on lesser peaks, paying dividends in such a grand manner.

  John’s first lead was steeper, across rocks and ice, then up a pointed gendarme—a pinnacle—rising out of the ridge. Once over the gendarme, he disappeared. Presently, I heard him call me. The rope was anchored; I could climb up. My rest had been very short. I traversed, then climbed up the gendarme to his station. Again the hardware was ready, a fresh rope uncoiled. I tied in to the rope and was off on the next lead, carefully dusting snow from the rocks, delicately placing my steel-spiked crampons on the stone. I felt superb, climbing catlike. We were still traversing—not gaining altitude, but moving horizontally along the edge of the knife. One hundred feet, one hundred fifty, then the end of the rope. I anchored it and John came across. He tied in to the next one and was gone. Precision. Efficiency. Twelve noon and we had already fixed more than seven hundred feet of rope. I knew we could finish the twelve hundred by the end of the day.

  It was my turn to belay, my turn to rest. My only duty was to feed out the rope around my waist to John while he climbed. For the first time that morning, I studied the terrain to the north—the remote, uninhabited Shaksgam district of China’s Sinkiang Province. Visibility was extraordinary: it was possible to see for distances that must have been much more than a hundred miles. The sere mountains stretched away, into foothills, punctuat
ed occasionally by glacier-covered peaks. One peak about thirty miles inside China, to the west of K2’s north glacier, rose white and black out of a sea of brown hills like the dorsal of an orca.

  We could also see the lower section of K2’s north ridge. Entirely on the Chinese side of the mountain, this ridge is one of the most outstanding features of mountain architecture on earth. It rises at a continuous angle of forty-five to fifty degrees, uninterrupted by any major steps or irregularities in its crest, from the head of the north glacier to the summit, a vertical rise of nearly fifteen thousand feet. It is the longest uninterrupted mountain ridge on earth. No one has ever attempted to climb it, though there was a rumor a group of Chinese tried to reconnoiter it a few years ago. It is, without doubt, one of the most awesome challenges remaining for tomorrow’s mountaineers.

  I carefully studied the hills beyond the north glacier, wondering if perhaps I could see a road or other sign of human passage. When Jim, Wick, Rob, and the others had been planning the 1975 K2 attempt, they had studied satellite photographs that appeared to show Chinese roads within forty miles of K2. But all I could see was unmarked, barren hills, burnt brown in the rain shadow of the Karakoram.