K2 (30 page)

The same day the team reached Camp IV, Houston, Dee Molenaar,
and George Bell tackled House’s Chimney. Houston had been thinking about that crux pitch for a decade and a half. He would write in
K2: The Savage Mountain
, with characteristic self-deprecation:

Molenaar and Bell were happy to turn over the “sharp end” to Houston.

That last line was a sly nod to the 1938 partner who had first led the chimney. And Houston’s performance must have been more skillful than he let on, because Dee recorded in his diary that it had taken only an hour to lead the pitch—half the time Wiessner had expended on it in 1939.

At the old Camp V, only 300 feet above the top of House’s Chimney, the three men found more relics from 1939. “Another smashed tent,” wrote Dee, “and letters to Wolfe—including a bill from some laundry outfit back home.”

One of the delights of Dee’s diary is that it captures—as “official” expedition books rarely do—the homely day-to-day details of life on a big mountain. A few examples:

So far, almost everything on the expedition had gone well. The weather had been consistently good, as camps were established and supplies moved steadily up the mountain. Up to Camp III, the Hunzas had performed yeoman work. Houston was tempted to use them higher, but decided against that tactic, on the grounds that the men were simply not experienced enough on difficult terrain. On July 12, as they started back to base camp, the Hunzas parted company for good with the Americans. Wrote Houston later, “Their early cockiness, bred of ignorance, had been succeeded by overcautiousness…. After their initial demoralization at Camp I (and what mountain porters have not gone through this?), they had performed splendidly.” As the Hunzas receded into the distance below Camp III, they shouted out,
“America zindabad!”
(“Long live America!”) and
“Pakistan zindabad!”

Pete Schoening, the engineer, had designed an aluminum A-frame tripod to which he now attached a pulley. With this device, pulling on ropes fed through the pulley, the men hauled many hundreds of pounds of gear up House’s Chimney. “This was hard work, and time-consuming,” wrote Houston. “But it was nowhere near as hard as carrying loads up the narrow chimney.” In his diary, Dee crowed,
“A-frame big success!”

Now, however, the weather changed. Beginning on July 14, it stormed on seven of the next eleven days. Houston figured the inevitable delays put the team about a week behind schedule. But the men’s spirits plunged
with the weather. “Gone were most of the jokes; the banter had become more serious,” remembered Houston. “We were more determined now than ever, but the picnic was over; the true struggle had begun.”

It’s always true on expeditions that when you’re stuck in a tent with nothing to do, your thoughts turn to food. Houston wittily recaptured those stormbound vigils:

I was amused to discover in Dee’s diary that everybody’s favorite dessert was Jell-O. I haven’t taken Jell-O on an expedition since my attempt on the east face of Everest in 1988. There, instead of following the directions on the package, to get a quick gut-bomb of energy, we would mix Jell-O or pudding powder with water in a quart bottle and slug the liquid down before it set. Jell-O may be a great treat for kids, but it’s insipidly bland at 20,000 feet, and waiting for it to firm up seems to take an eternity.

On July 20, between storms, Bates and Schoening reconnoitered higher and reached Camp VI. There they discovered the most poignant of all the vestiges of the 1939 expedition. Houston described the scene: “Two tents had been torn to shreds. A stove, gasoline, and sleeping bags, rolled and ready to be strapped to the carrying frames, lay nearby. A small bundle of tea wrapped in a handkerchief lay inside an empty stove box beneath the snow.”

On July 31, 1939, Pasang Kikuli, Phinsoo, and Kitar had set out from
Camp VI on their second attempt to rescue Dudley Wolfe, leaving Tsering to brew up tea. The sleeping bags had evidently been rolled up in anticipation of five men descending the Abruzzi Ridge. Instead, only Tsering returned.

Pasang Kikuli and Phinsoo had become Houston’s dear friends on the 1938 expedition. Fifteen years later, he saluted them and Kitar movingly: “Whatever their fate, the history of climbing has no braver story, no more generous chapter than theirs. Their sleeping bags, and the pathetic bundle of tea, were sad reminders of their courage.”

On July 25, Houston, Craig, and Bell attacked the Black Pyramid. Bell led most of the way, across deceptively tricky terrain: “The rock was solid, steep, polished by icefalls through ages past. The holds were small for hands and feet, and often choked with ice.” But, according to Houston, “Bell was in his element here.” In 1992 we found the Black Pyramid a challenging and exciting break from the rather ill-defined route work leading up to it. The climbing’s not extremely difficult, but until we got it fixed with ropes we were constantly aware of just how exposed it is.

Unlike 1939, when Wiessner, the only strong climber, led virtually every step of the route, in 1953 all eight men—even Tony Streather—took turns advancing the team’s push up the Abruzzi Ridge. That goes a long way toward explaining why those men bonded together so harmoniously, and so loyally. I’ve had my own solid partnerships on 8,000ers, with guys like Veikka Gustafsson and J.-C. Lafaille, but I’ve only rarely been on an expedition in which as many as eight teammates worked together so smoothly. That’s an ideal that many teams aspire to but few achieve.

Camp VII was pitched on a narrow platform hacked out of a steep snow slope at 24,500 feet. It was so marginal a site that on the way up the Abruzzi, only one pair of climbers spent a single night there. But on July 31, during a cold, windy day, Schoening and Gilkey broke through and found a spot for Camp VIII. At 25,500 feet, it was 800 feet higher than the highest camp in 1938.

All the way through the Black Pyramid and up to the lower edge of the Shoulder, the men placed willow wands every 50 feet or so to mark their route—as I did in 1992, but as no one bothered to in 1986 or 2008, an oversight that contributed to both tragedies. Arriving after a tough push through whiteout conditions on August 2, Bates and Streather found their way to Camp VIII. The first thing Bates said to his teammates was “Thank God for your willow wands. We had no idea where your camp was and couldn’t see a thing. Your tracks were completely gone above the ice steps.”

By August 3, all eight climbers were ensconced in their tents at Camp VIII. (“Some kind of record for an expedition,” Dee speculated in his diary.) Houston later recalled, “Morale was magnificent. We were in striking distance of the goal. The summit might still be ours.”

The entries in Dee’s diary are not so sanguine. The weather during the last ten days had been remarkably cold. Bates and Houston kept remarking on how much colder it was than during the corresponding weeks in 1938. Korean boots or no, most of the climbers had felt the nip of incipient frostbite on their feet. As early as July 25, Dee wrote, “Our experience with frostbite also indicates (happily) that we are thinking more of our fingers and toes than of reaching the summit. Perhaps the altitude is affecting our will to push high at any price.” A few days later: “Worried about toes. Craig’s are turning white.” Soon Dee was deeply ambivalent. “I feel alternately strong,” he wrote on July 31, “with good ‘eager’ days, and then I lose my appetite for taking chances with the weather and personally going much higher—willing now to be in support role rather than attaining the summit myself.”

Three days earlier, he had voiced an apprehension in his diary that would prove uncannily prescient: “Bringing an injured man down from K2 would be an
extremely
difficult, if not impossible, task.”

On July 31, Dee once more jotted down thumbnail impressions of his teammates and their current states of mind and body. “Charlie continues to push ahead as leader,” he wrote, “although I feel he may push himself too hard at times…. Gilkey is strong and quiet, probably the only one
who really wants the summit badly enough to take a few risks—wants us
all
to make it to the top.”

By August 3, however, the team was reconciled to the likelihood that only two men might get a chance to go for the summit. So, democratic to the end, they held a secret ballot. George Bell and Bob Craig were chosen for the first summit team, Pete Schoening and Art Gilkey for the second.

The men kept telling one another that all they needed was three consecutive clear days to give the summit their best shot. But that day a storm swept in over the Karakoram. It lasted for seven straight days. The men sat in their tents, trying to stay warm, burning their precious fuel, and eating their dwindling rations. Houston later recalled the tedium of that vigil:

On August 6, the wind grew so strong that Houston and Bell’s tent started to rip apart in the night. The two men gathered up their belongings, waited for a lull, then made a dash for the other tents. Houston threw himself into one shelter, Bell into another. This meant that two of the team’s remaining three tents, designed for two men each, had to hold three.

Day by day, the men watched their hopes for the summit slip through their fingers. And then August 7 brought the unforeseeable event that would cancel those hopes completely—and turn the expedition into a survival ordeal.

That day began with optimism, as the clouds rose, the sky grew brighter, and the wind diminished. But as Houston would later write,

His teammates half-carried Gilkey back into his tent. They undressed him so that Houston, the team doctor, could examine the leg. “I’ve had this Charley horse for a couple of days now,” Gilkey said, almost apologetically. “I thought it would be gone by now.”

Indeed, Dee’s diary for August 2, five days earlier, as the men had pushed up to Camp VIII, notes,

Houston knew at once that Gilkey’s ailment was no Charley horse. The man’s left ankle was red and swollen. “The diagnosis was all too clear,” Houston recalled. “Art had developed thrombophlebitis.”

That diagnosis was deeply puzzling to the experienced doctor. Blood clots had formed in Gilkey’s left calf. In the best of circumstances, he might lose his leg. But the far greater danger was that as Art moved around, the clots could break off, migrate to the lungs, and cause a fatal embolism, or blockage of a blood vessel. After wrapping Gilkey’s leg in Ace bandages and trying to “reassure” him, Houston went from tent to tent to deliver the bad news. “I can’t tell you what caused it,” he told his teammates. “It’s a disease which usually hits older people, or surgical patients. I have never heard of it in healthy young mountaineers.”