Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains (13 page)

At 9.45pm we're all tucked up in our sleeping bags and trying to get some sleep after all the excitement of the day. This is pretty much the latest night we've had on the expedition, but it's about to get longer. There are lights outside our tent and voices. Somebody is trying to wake us up.

“There is a light,” an Iranian voice says.

I sit up and open the back entrance of our tent, which faces directly onto the south face of Gasherbrum II. The night is clear, and I can just make out the dark triangle of the summit pyramid high above us. Halfway along the lighter shade of the snow traverse immediately below it, there is a pinprick of light flashing intermittently. It's about four hours after Michael and I saw the black dot apparently move at the top of the traverse, and the position of the light would tally with a person crawling along the traverse back to Camp 4 from the base of the summit ridge.

I have my torch out, and from the tent next door Gordon the mountain rescue volunteer suggests I shine single, double and triple flashes in succession to try and open up a line of communication and establish whether it's definitely a person up there. Unfortunately by now half the people in Camp 1 are shining their torches, so there's no way a person up there would be able to figure out we're trying to signal some sort of code. In any case, by now I'm under no doubt whatsoever there's definitely someone on the traverse trying to contact us, and it can only be the Spanish climber, Luis.

Michael and Arian are out of the tents by now and going over to wake up Paulo and Daniela, his friends. They come back a few minutes later, and the two Portuguese are keen to go up there right away and try to get to him. Polish Jack is also awake and keen to join them, and Michael and Arian are both prepared to go with them. As for me, however, I'm sitting up inside my tent listening to the goings-on outside, and keenly aware of the fact that the two people in the tents either side of me are Phil and Gordon, two very experienced mountain rescue experts. I can't even begin to think how we're going to go about rescuing this person, and judging by their silence, Phil and Gordon are also trying to think. Eventually I hear Gordon's voice interrupt the people outside.

“Come on into the tent,” he says. “Huddle round; let's think about this one.”

“How long do you think it's going to take you to get up to Camp 4?” I hear him say a moment later.

“About 12 hours,” Paulo replies. “Eight hours to Camp 3 and another four to Camp 4.”

“And you've been up there. How far beyond Camp 4 is he now?” says Gordon again.

It's Polish Jack who answers. “About two, two and half hours. I think he's at about 7800 metres. It's very sheltered where he is, but the trouble is when he gets to Camp 4 it's very windy.”

Camp 4 is before the beginning of the traverse, beyond the left-hand side of the summit pyramid, where there is no rock face to protect against prevailing winds.

“So it's going to take at least 14 hours of climbing to get to him. And when you get there,” continues Gordon, “what are you going to do?”

“I don't know,” replies Daniela, “but we see our friend dying up there and we have to do something.”

Nobody can argue with this sentiment, but if I went all the way up from Camp 1 to Camp 4 – 1500 metres of ascent at a very high altitude – in a single push, then I know what kind of state I'd be in. If I made it at all then I'd need to flop straight into a tent and rest, yet I know there are no tents at Camp 4.

At this point Phil decides it's time to interrupt.

“It took twelve of us to carry someone down from Everest this year, and that was just 400 metres. This guy's nearly 2000 metres above us. Michael, Arian, I don't want you going all the way to Camp 4. You've never been that high before. We don't know whether you'll be able to acclimatise, you might get cerebral oedema, and then we've got to rescue you as well. Gordon, what's the highest helicopter rescue ever attempted?”

“The usual cut-off is twenty thousand feet. They can fly higher than that to have a look around, but to actually pull someone off the mountain, twenty thousand feet is standard.”

This is about 6000 metres, only a few metres higher than we are at present, sitting at Camp 1. It means that in order to evacuate the Spanish climber by helicopter we would pretty much need to carry him all the way from above Camp 4 down to here at Camp 1. So far, of all of us sitting here debating, only Polish Jack has been above Camp 2 on the current expedition. As I sit in my tent pondering over this fact, Phil outlines it to everyone else.

“Right, that means we've got to get him all the way down the Banana Ridge to Camp 1. Paulo, this guy's your friend, right? Can you get contact with the Spanish team –they need to coordinate this; he's their climber. Ask them what they want to do. Get them to send their high altitude porters up here immediately. Tell them to ask Hunza Guides [their Pakistani trekking agency] to contact the Pakistan Army to send a helicopter fly-by at first light [5am]. We can drop oxygen, food, water and a radio – this will get to him far earlier than if anyone walks up there. We can also see if this guy's still alive and whether it's worth coordinating a full rescue. It's dangerous to go up there at night and puts other lives at risk.”

“OK, yes, I will,” says Paulo. “But Phil, please can I ask, will the Sherpas be going up?”

This is the one factor that hasn't been mentioned yet, but one that for sure has been hovering in the air, and in and out of everyone's minds. It will take a Herculean effort for any of us sitting here debating to get up to the Spanish climber in a single push, something that may well prove beyond the strength of many, if not all of us. But of all the teams on Gasherbrum this year, Phil's Altitude Junkies team are the only ones possessing a resource which is realistically capable of carrying out a rescue. If anyone is going to carry the Spanish climber down the mountain, then our Sherpas are going to be integral, and will certainly be the ones to carry out the lion's share of the work. We all know this, and Phil is understandably touchy about it. Because his is the only team with Sherpa support, throughout the expedition he has been expected to take the lead on everything – rope fixing, trail breaking, and now leading a full scale rescue operation to bring back a climber who belongs to another team and is not his responsibility. I suspect this is why the Iranian came over to tell our team about the light they'd just seen on the traverse, rather than trying to get in contact with the Spanish team. Several of the other teams, including the Spanish, have brought High Altitude Porters (HAPs), who are the Pakistani equivalent of Sherpas, so there is no reason Phil's Sherpas should always be called upon ahead of them.

“Let's get the fly-by arranged first,” he replies. “I don't want to send our Sherpas up there risking their lives unless we know he's alive and we've got a clear plan of how we're going to get him down.”

It occurs to me that Phil has another motive at the back of his mind which he's not going to broadcast to other teams. If our Sherpas are used for a full rescue operation then it's very likely that our own summit chances will be over, and he doesn't want to commit these resources before he's discussed it with me, Michael, Arian and Gordon as the paying clients (we later discuss this and agree unanimously that our summit attempt is irrelevant if there's a realistic chance of bringing back the Spanish climber alive, although we also agree, of course, that the decision to go should rest with the Sherpas themselves).

Eventually common sense prevails. We're unable to contact the Spanish, who probably have their radios turned off at this time, so Paulo and Daniela, at Phil's suggestion, agree to walk all the way back to Base Camp immediately and wake up the Spanish team to get them to coordinate everything. They also say they will wake up our sirdar Gombu to get in radio contact with Phil. Phil agrees to keep his radio on all night – like it or not he's going to be central to any rescue.

It's now 11 o'clock, and we decide to put a brew on. We speculate on what may have happened to the Spanish climber. Phil thinks he probably fell, broke something and got knocked unconscious, waking up again several hours later. This would explain why he only appeared at the top of the traverse more than 24 hours after he went missing, and why he appears to be moving so slowly.

This is the last time we see the light flashing on the traverse. Someone at Camp 1 has put their headlamp on auto-flash outside their tent to let the Spanish climber know that he's not alone. Meanwhile Polish Jack is still threatening to go back up on his own. Somewhat comically, he eyes up the crampons outside our tent.

“I have very old crampons, and if I go back up again I will need to use these,” I hear him say to Michael.

But Polish Jack is exhausted. If he goes back up at night it is very likely we will be looking for two missing climbers tomorrow. Michael talks him out of it and hides everybody's crampons inside their tents.

Arian and Michael have both been outside through all of the discussion, and enthusiastically keen to help in any way they can, while the older generation of Phil, Gordon and myself have remained in our tents, a lot more sceptical about the practicalities of launching an immediate rescue. Meanwhile Gorgan, with his ear plugs in, has slept through everything. Arian has been very emotional. At one point he was in tears watching the flashing light, knowing that up there somewhere, someone is dying a very slow and painful death while there is very little any of us can do to help them. By contrast Michael has been much more level-headed and practical.

“At the end of the day, I'd like to help if I can,” he says to me later when he's climbed over the brewing stove in our porch and returned to the tent, “but I don't know the guy, and he's done something very stupid.”

The water boils and we pass hot drinks to Phil, Arian and Gordon in the tents either side of us before falling fast asleep shortly after midnight, tucked up in our warm sleeping bags, and wondering whether a solitary person over a mile above us will survive the night.

I wake up abruptly at 6am having slept soundly. Snow is hammering on the tent and it was light an hour ago. I didn't hear the sound of a helicopter hovering overhead, and when I look out of the back of our tent I know why. It's a complete whiteout. I can barely see Gorgan's toilet ten metres away, and certainly can't see the base of Gasherbrum II half a mile away. There's no way a helicopter could fly close enough to a mountain to find a person in these conditions.

Phil has had his radio on all night, but nobody has contacted him. He says it started snowing at 3am. It continues relentlessly all day, and all the while the snow slope above Camp 2 becomes more dangerous. There is little hope for the Spanish climber now, and when Phil finally establishes contact with his team, it seems there is little motivation among them to launch a rescue. They have a bag ready to drop from the helicopter when it's able to fly, but they're not intending to send any team members up until tomorrow. Unless the Spanish climber is able to crawl to Camp 3, where there is a tent and some food, there is little hope for him. Even then, he is likely to be extremely badly frostbitten after two nights in the open above 7000 metres, and may not be able to operate a stove with his fingers. Then there's the ethical issue of sending people above Camp 2 to rescue him on slopes which are now dangerously avalanche prone from the fresh snow, putting more lives at risk to find someone who is in all probability dead by now. Certainly if the snow continues, there is no hope.

We remain all day in our tents at Camp 1. At 5 o'clock the snow finally stops and briefly a window appears through the clouds on G2, enough for us to see the route between Camp 3 and the traverse. Gorgan and Michael look through binoculars again for any sign of the Spanish climber, but see nothing.

Arian decides to take advantage of the break in the weather to go and investigate the crevasse where he saw the Iranian climbers dumping rubbish. They have now packed up and left Camp 1, taking the remainder of their rubbish with them, but before they left they put two large bags of food outside the tents belonging to the Spanish team. It's possible they've made an arrangement with the Spaniards to leave any unused food with them, but equally this could be another more subtle method of leaving behind kit they can't be bothered to carry back down again.

Arian and Michael walk over to the crevasse. Both dressed in bright red Mountain Hardware down suits, they look like a pair of Teletubbies, but the playful appearance belies a serious task they're about to undertake, one which is more reminiscent of a Womble than a Teletubby. Arian sets up snow anchors from which he belays Michael into the crevasse. About seven or eight metres down Michael finds the big white sack of litter dumped there by the Iranian team, and brings it out again. There are about 15 to 20 kilos in all, which Arian and Gorgan then divide up between them for carrying back down to Base Camp tomorrow.

At 8pm the snow resumes. There's no possibility of us going back up G2 again until the snow has had a few days to consolidate, and retreating back to Base Camp is now our only option. At 9.30 I look out the back porch of our tent again to see if there is a light on high, like there was yesterday. It's overcast, and I can no longer see G2, but for about ten minutes I signal with my head torch to try and get a response. I can only guess where Camps 3 and 4 are in the scene outside, but I see no light in answer through the gloom.

I'm afraid the Spanish climber Luis is gone.

Whatever I may have said a couple of days ago about having been through the icefall so many times now that every twist and turn, and every peak and trough, has become familiar, can be disregarded. We retreat from Camp 1 at 7am in a snowstorm, and there has been so much fresh snowfall over the last couple of days obliterating the trail, that this morning I recognise hardly any of it, at least in the upper section above Halfway Camp. Phil leads the way very tentatively at first, and at one point visibility becomes so poor that we can't even see the next bamboo wand through the whiteout. These are treacherous conditions, as the whole of the icefall is an intricate maze of snow bridges and crevasses which are now completely hidden by fresh snowfall. Gorgan steps into the breach, however. Prodding away in front of him with his trekking pole, he feels around for the firmer ground of compacted snow where the old trail has been used, and manages to guide us through with surprising speed and accuracy. Lower down, although the snow continues to fall, visibility improves to such an extent that we can see all the way through the intricate section to Base Camp an hour below us.

No matter how many times I go through the icefall, and whether or not I'm descending all the way from Camp 2 or just from Camp 1, I always find the last half hour into Base Camp extremely hard work. I'm so close to home, but the route ascends and descends steeply over folds in the glacier and seems to drag on interminably. Today the fresh snow balls up my crampons within seconds, so I complete the descent carrying a few extra pounds on my feet just for good measure. Once again I limp into Base Camp exhausted. It's 10.30, and it's taken us 3½ hours to descend – only half an hour less than it took us to go up.

Not content with giving the Iranian team a truckload of abuse for dumping litter in a crevasse at Camp 1, Gorgan and Arian have further plans as they make their way past their camp just above ours on the moraine at Base Camp. Most of the Iranian team are sitting in their dining tent enjoying morning tea when our two intrepid French eco-warriors walk to the entrance and empty the two sacks of rubbish that were fished out of the crevasse yesterday afternoon. The Iranians look on in total silence as Michael captures the incident on video. This is rather more confrontational than I was expecting, and I imagine there will be repercussions. There are, but not in the way I expect.

News of Arian and Gorgan's stunt spreads around Base Camp very quickly, and before long another Iranian from a different team comes to our camp asking if he can talk to Arian for a moment. Ten minutes later Arian returns from their conversation with a smile on his face.

“That man is from the Jasmine group, and Paulo and Daniela have just told him about what we did. He says the Iranian team are quite big in the Iranian Mountaineering Association and are always talking about cleaning up in the mountains. They even run a mountain clean-up day every year. He says this will be bad publicity for them and big news in Iranian climbing circles, and has asked me for all our photographs so that he can write an article about it.”

Arian's name gets bandied around camp throughout the day, and people come over to thank him for what he did. Phil has been browsing the internet and says the news is filtering onto mountaineering websites. Veikka Gustafsson's Pakistani cook comes over to shake Arian's hand, and our own cook Ashad tells us there have been complaints over many years about Iranian mountaineers dumping rubbish in the Karakoram, so everyone is pleased that Arian has highlighted it in this way.

Shortly before lunch Phil gets a new weather forecast, and although wind speeds seem to be dropping a little, it looks like there's going to be more snow for another week. With time running out, and the Sherpas very worried about avalanches above Camp 2 on Gasherbrum II, we agree unanimously to turn our attention to Gasherbrum I, where the route is much steeper and not so prone to avalanche. G1 is a much more technically difficult mountain than G2, which I'm not as confident about tackling, but I now doubt whether we will ever get a decent summit window on either mountain, so a change of scenery is fine by me. In any case, I don't particularly relish the prospect of descending the Banana Ridge for a third time in horrible powdery snow conditions, and although the Japanese Couloir on G1 is supposed to be even steeper, I'm prepared to give it a go if weather permits. The Sherpas will be going up to Camp 2 on G2 tomorrow to pack up our camp and bring everything down to the Gasherbrum Cwm, which serves as Camp 1 for both G1 and G2.

At dinner we're served custard blancmange in a tin which everyone has been using for shaving and washing clothes. It gets halfway round the table before Michael decides to point this fact out.

“Isn't this the same tin I've been washing my underpants in?” he says.

The blancmange remains unfinished after that.