The Last Step

by Rick Ridgeway

  Wick set down his pack and unstrapped the unwieldy tent while Lou began chopping the platform. Of the three, Terry, having carried the heaviest pack, was the most exhausted. It was dark when they finally had the tent pitched, and the three jammed inside for what would be a difficult night without sleep. It was early—seven o’clock—the altitude 25,750 feet.

  “I’ll sleep in the middle,” Wick said, “with my head down at the other end. Give us more room that way.”

  Wick, having the most space at his end of the tent, got the job of cooking, and soon the billy pot packed with snow was balanced on the narrow grill of the small butane stove. Patiently the trio waited for their drinks; it was now of utmost importance to hydrate fully for the summit assault.

  It was difficult to feel elation. They were so exhausted from the push to Camp VI, so fatigued from the lack of oxygen. It was difficult to think of anything other than immediate duties: melting snow, arranging gear for the morning, being careful not to doze too late. It was difficult to appreciate that after sixty-two days on the mountain, after the weeks and months of struggling through snow, of climbing across steep ice, of carrying load after load to higher camps; that after six storms and the days and days spent holed up in tents; that after so many frustrations followed by reborn hopes buried by still more disappointments and new frustrations, they were now poised to be, after forty years of questing, the first Americans to make that last step to the summit of K2.

  It was still not certain, by any means, that they would succeed. Others had been where they were, and failed. Wiessner, in 1939, was turned back at a point hundreds of feet above where they then were camped. Would they find more impassible soft snow above? That was the possibility that would most likely prevent success. At least the weather seemed, at long last, to have given the expedition a long-awaited reprieve. Although the temperature had dropped dramatically in the last week as winter neared, the sky that night was cloudless, and despite gusting winds, promised a good summit day.

  “Damn it,” Wick cursed, jerking up.

  He had dozed, one hand steadying the pot full of water, and the billy tipped, spilling part of the water on his parka and his half-bag. He had intended to take both parka and half-bag with him to the summit, in case he had to bivouac, but now that they were wet, and in only minutes the water would change to ice, he knew he would leave the useless garments behind. That small incident of spilled water would nearly cost him his life, but at the moment, all that bothered him was losing valuable water and wasting precious time and fuel.

  He refilled the pot and patiently waited for the water to heat. He served more drinks. It was near to midnight. Filled with expectation, there was no use trying to sleep. It made more sense to stay up and continue melting snow, to continue hydrating. Wick knew the ultimate test was then only hours away.

  SEPTEMBER 6. CAMP VI ABRUZZI. 1:30 A.M.

  “Not again, Wickwire, what’s wrong with you,” Wick groaned, chastising himself.

  “What happened?” Lou asked, lifting his head at the other end of the tent.

  “Fell asleep and knocked over the pot again. Now I’m really soaked. No use taking any of this wet stuff along.”

  Wick looked at his half-bag, flattened and limp, already sheeted with ice from the previous spill.

  “We should start getting ready soon,” Lou said. “It would be good to get started by three-thirty or four.”

  “I’ll melt more water,” Wick said.

  The hour arrived; it was time to begin dressing. Awkwardly the two men struggled in the confines of the small tent to fit their clothing and push into their frozen boots. They could only guess the temperature. The nearest thermometer, with Jim and Dianne at Camp III, registered twenty below, and it was probably about thirty below where they were, three thousand feet higher. They knew they would soon be out in the wind, too, then buffeting the sides of the tent, and the chill factor would add even more bite to the low temperature. Wick was concerned about frostbite; in the last spill he had also soaked his pile mittens, and now he would have to use his backup pair of single-layer Dachstein wool mittens, covered with only a thin nylon outer shell.

  Time sped as the two continued seemingly in slow motion to finish preparations. Lou, then Wick, crawled from the tent at 4:00 a.m. and pulled their packs behind them through the narrow tent door. It was later than the time they had hoped to leave. Terry crawled out to help them off. Something fell out of Wick’s parka; he had stored his water bottle in his parka to keep it warm, and now he and Terry heard it skid down the ice, out of sight, into the black. A small error, and one that would add to the severity of the grueling trial ahead.

  The two men each placed an oxygen cylinder in their packs. They planned to climb as high as they could, perhaps 26,500 feet, before using the gas, since they had only one cylinder each and would have to make it last until the summit. Terry watched with blighted hope as Wick loaded his cylinder; he still wanted to help them carry their oxygen higher, until the point they would begin to use it, but Wick had understood that Terry—worried about frostbite—didn’t want to go any higher. It was a poignant scene—a misunderstanding at 25,750 feet.

  Not saying anything, Terry realized that Camp VI was, for him, the high point. He helped Wick shoulder his pack, and then, as the two climbers tied into their rope and left Camp VI in a blustery wind at 4:30 a.m., he crawled back in the tent and waited for the morning sun. His only remaining desire was to return to Camp V and join Cherie. But their purpose was not finished: They would yet help four climbers crawl off the mountain in a desperate descent and a race against death.

  Lou immediately set a fast pace, trying to burn energy and heat his body. Wick struggled to keep up, breathing fast, staring intently at the snow under his feet, being careful not to stumble in the darkness. Already he knew his fingers had frozen. There was no feeling; the fingers felt hard and lifeless. If a few fingers were to be the price to climb K2, he thought, so be it. The snow surface continued hard, and the wind had tortured the ground to small sastrugi. The slope was steeper than Wick remembered from studying accounts and photographs of previous climbs. The pair continued at a good pace, heads lowered against the icy wind, fighting for enough oxygen. At 5:45 the first light tinted the sky across the great Karakoram and slowly filled the deep shadows below them. A hundred miles of mountains spread before the two men. But they could not enjoy the panorama; in the hostility of the cold, thin air, they could barely acknowledge the dawn. For Wick it was the beginning of the day when he would realize the most ambitious mountaineering goal of his life, but the profundity of that moment escaped him. He had already entered the other-worldly somnambulism of those who climb in the death zone.

  SEPTEMBER 6. CAMP I. 18,400 FEET. 5:30 A.M.

  Rob Schaller slowly drifted to consciousness. In the yellow, nylon walls he could see a hue of first dawn. Although the tent was still dark, he nevertheless knew the position of every item inside; it was as familiar as his bedroom back home in Seattle. Without searching he knew where to find his pants, his pile jacket, his red, white, and blue balaclava embroidered with emblems his wife Joanne had sewn on, his medicine and hospital supplies stored along the back wall. Near his head he kept his journal and writing supplies and a stack of letters from his wife. The tent had been pitched in the same place so long the glacial ice around it, melting faster in direct sun, had left him perched on a pedestal three feet above the surrounding terrain.

  Rob recalled the events of the previous three days, and the disappointment to everyone in Camp I. They had listened on the radio when John and I reported deep snow, and that we didn’t think we could reach the top via the direct finish; they had witnessed, through a telescope, the avalanches down the gully above Camp VI Direct that confirmed what John and I had said; they had watched the only remaining hope for success dissolve when Lou, Terry, and Wick had failed to cross to the Abruzzi. But they thought they had seen them finally make it the next day so that now, Rob thought, there was an outside chanc
e they might be able to try for the summit that morning.

  In the cold first light, he crawled out of his tent and in his down booties walked to where the telescope was mounted on a tripod. Everyone else was still asleep. There was already enough light on the upper mountain to distinguish detail in the rock and ice features. He carefully studied the Abruzzi Ridge, the big snow shoulder below the summit pyramid, the ice cliffs above the rock band, and the narrow snow gully that would be the route—the route, that is, if anyone up there was capable of reaching the top.

  He fixed his attention on the slope just below the couloir. There were dozens of black dots on the snow—rocks protruding from the ice—and he gazed at them intensely. Something looked different. His eyes fixed on two of the rocks. Could it be? He wasn’t sure. He watched, stared, and then he saw it. He saw one of the rocks move, then the other. The two rocks were moving slowly, very slowly, but there was no doubt. He stared, transfixed, realizing even more than the two rocks themselves the full import of the scene.

  “I’ve got them,” he shouted. “Lou and Wick. I can see them. It’s Lou and Wick. They’re on their way to the summit.”

  SEPTEMBER 6. CAMP VI DIRECT. 26,200 FEET. 7:00 A.M.

  “It really doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Not much.”

  “But we’ve got to try. We just can’t go back without giving it everything we can.”

  “O.K. But only once. We’ll try to get across the slope, and if we make it we’ll push for the summit, but I won’t go up, fix ropes and come down, and go up again. It’s just too dangerous to cross more than once. Even then I’m not sure it is worth the risk. I don’t see how we can get to the top anyway.”

  John was more certain than I that the slope above Camp VI Direct was like a sprung trap ready to avalanche. As it turned out he was right; had either of us known that morning of the avalanches those below had witnessed, we would have deserted immediately.

  As it was, we had decided instead to make one last attempt to reach the summit. Again, we started preparations at 1:30 a.m. It was our second night at eight thousand meters, and our second night without sleep. It had taken even more willpower to get started that morning, and to leave the tent, because we knew in our hearts it was futile. We did not get away until 7:00—a very late start if we realistically hoped to reach the top. While John belayed from near the tent, I led around the corner, out of his sight, retracing the steps from the morning before to their end, and then slowly, slowly wading up virgin snow. Half an hour passed, then an hour. I hadn’t even covered the distance of a rope-length. I was working to gain a serac block, hoping it would have a more solid base, but then I exposed a crevasse hidden in the loose snow, and I searched for a bridge to span it. It seemed hopeless; even if I got across I knew the snow was still deep, nearly to my shoulders. I was determined to try, though, to climb as high as possible.

  I saw John come around the corner; he had left his belay stance and climbed to within shouting distance. I knew what he was going to say; I knew he wanted to bag it, to go down, and I knew he was right. It was futile and senseless to go farther. But he didn’t say what I expected:

  “I just got a call on the radio from Rob at Camp One. Lou and Wick are going for the summit. They can see them through the telescope.”

  I stared at John. So Lou and Wick had done it, I thought; they had managed to force a route to the Abruzzi, and now they were on their way to the top. All the futility cleared as I realized there was hope our expedition would still be successful.

  “Rob says they’re moving pretty well. Slow, but steady. Obviously they’ve got better conditions than we do.”

  I looked back above me. I could see the snowfield going up five hundred or six hundred more feet, then bearing left out of sight. Just as it disappeared I could see the corner of the vertical ice cliff we would have to scale. Above, I knew there would be another snowfield—in all probability more deep snow—and past that a traverse across a rock buttress. In these conditions, it seemed impossible.

  I thought a moment, then added, “There’s no way we can get up this.”

  “Then let’s bag it.”

  “And go down?”

  “Hell no. We’ll pack up this camp and head over to the Abruzzi, then follow Wick and Lou to the top tomorrow.”

  I thought about John’s proposal and considered the words, “pack up our camp.” The words were simple, but not the reality: a two-person tent, food, fuel, stove, sleeping bags, pads, parka, camera, climbing hardware, two oxygen bottles and regulators—at least sixty pounds each. We would carry the load from one side of K2 to the other, traversing an altitude close to eight thousand meters. Then go to the summit after our third night in a row in the death zone. I realized, though, there was no alternative.

  “O.K.,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We moved quickly to break camp and load our packs. I hefted mine to test the weight; carrying the load to the Abruzzi would be close to my limit of endurance. We still had the rope and climbing hardware to consider.

  “We can leave part of this hardware,” I said. There was a large assortment of pitons, carabiners, ice screws, deadmen, and pickets. I thought how futile to have worked so hard to carry it that high, and now propose to leave it.

  “We can leave it all here,” John said. “We don’t need to belay any of the pitches on the Abruzzi.”

  Although the climbing would be steep, I knew he was right. If we had any hope of reaching the top in one day, we had to forego the luxury of protecting the steep sections with the safety of a belay.

  “If we’re not going to belay, this rope won’t do much good either.”

  “We’ll leave it at the junction—get it on the way back. We’ll climb to the summit unroped.”

  I packed the rope on top so I could easily get it out and cache it at the junction near Camp V. I thought, A little farther out on the limb. To the summit—unroped.

  SEPTEMBER 6. SUMMIT PYRAMID, ABRUZZI FINISH. 26,500 FEET. 7:30 A.M.

  The direct morning sun lit the rock to his left, and feeling evermore in a dream world, Wick slowly, step by slow step, worked toward a small flat spot on that ridge. Lou was already there, sitting, resting. Making the last steps, Wick unloaded his pack and looked around. To his surprise, he found more than just rock, ice, and snow. On the lonely shelf at 26,500 feet, in the heart of Central Asia, he also discovered a high-altitude garbage dump: an empty fuel canister and a fragment of aluminum wrapper from a drink mix, or possibly a soup package. He wasn’t certain which since the label was in Japanese. They had stopped at the site of the Camp VI of the 1977 Japanese K2 Expedition.

  Wick decided to start using oxygen; Lou was going to wait until a bit higher, until the narrow couloir they could see above them. Opening the top flap of his pack, Wick exposed the yellow fiberglass-wrapped aluminum bottle, and with his fingers unscrewed the brass cap protecting the valve opening. He had made certain, before leaving camp, the cap was only finger-tight; we had all been wary of carrying our oxygen bottle a total of 9500 vertical feet (the altitude distance to Base Camp) only to find a cap that couldn’t be removed without a wrench. He next screwed the regulator into the fitting and tightened it with a wing nut designed to operate with mittened hands. He cracked the valve and looked at the gauge, then looked again. At first he couldn’t believe it, then he tried to imagine how it had happened, how he could have hauled the bottle that far without knowing it was only partially full. The gauge read 2700 psi, well below the 3900 to 4100 psi of a full-pressure bottle. Somehow, precious gas had leaked. Despite the extreme altitude, Wick was still thinking clearly enough to realize that to make the summit before the bottle emptied he would have to climb with a slow flow rate of one liter a minute. That would be far less than the two- to four-liter rate climbers normally use at comparable altitudes on Everest.

  With the mask fitted and the rubber bladder-reservoir ballooned in front of his face, he signaled to Lou he was ready. Lou led out, but just before the bottlene
ck in the couloir, where it became the steepest. Wick took the lead and worked up, carefully placing his crampons on the ice-covered rock and making sure the pick of his ax was securely in the ice before making each move. He realized his thoughts were slowing, and he knew he had to think through each move carefully, but he was feeling more strength—the benefit of the oxygen.

  At the top of the couloir Wick stopped and pulled the rope up, and Lou followed. Despite not yet using his oxygen, Lou was keeping up with Wick. In the narrowest and steepest part, one of Lou’s crampons suddenly popped off as the icehold under his boot gave way, and he just caught himself. He had to breathe rapidly before he felt his oxygen-starved body regain strength sufficient to try again. He wondered if he could make the move with the weight on his back. But he did—he had to—and together he and Wick studied the next obstacle.

  Straight above them loomed the enormous ice cliffs of the summit pyramid. To overcome the obstacle they would be forced to traverse left over rock covered with loose snow and some ice. It looked spooky. Above the narrow catwalk was vertical ice; below, a ten-thousand-foot drop down the south face to Base Camp.

  “You should probably use your oxygen,” Wick said.

  “O.K.”

  Lou removed his pack to screw on the regulator, then fitted the mask. Shouldering the pack, he slowly led across the traverse. He gingerly made each crampon-step, trying to keep the metal points off the rock where they would more easily pop off. Wick belayed the rope around his ice ax, but they both knew the anchor might not hold a fall.