Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains (9 page)

I'm woken up at 5am by Arian shouting from the neighbouring tent, “It was minus 18 last night!”

I look at my watch, but it reads just -8º C, which seems more like par for the course. It's been -7º C at a similar time in the morning at Base Camp, which is 850 metres lower and consequently some five degrees warmer (you can usually reckon a drop of six degrees Celsius per 1000 metres of altitude gained). I'm getting used to the cold temperatures now. It's next to impossible to put on boots, harness and crampons and go for an early morning slash without ending up with freezing fingers. Usually I clear this discomfort quickly after I've put on my big down mitts and begun walking, but it's another crystal clear morning and I'd like to be able to take photos, so I take a chance with my small leather Marmot gloves.

Arian, cheerful as ever, jogs up and down on the spot while he waits for Michael and me to get ready, and we leave Camp 1 around 6am, Michael leading this time, with me in the middle of the rope and Arian at the back. My fingers are painful at first, but after twenty minutes of arm-swinging as I walk I manage to get them comfortable enough for photography, though soon discover taking sneaky pictures while on the move isn't quite so easy from the middle of the rope. For most of the walk down Michael's silhouette is framed above by the giant sun-kissed dome of Baltoro Kangri (or Golden Throne), which sits above Base Camp on the opposite side of the Abruzzi Glacier. This is the mountain that most frequently lets us know it's there by giving off regular avalanche rumbles, and we can see more of it – a good 500 metres crowning its top – from the upper reaches of the South Gasherbrum Glacier. However, a rope swinging in front of me, another swinging behind, ice axe under my arm, and camera in my left hand as I peer at the display as I walk, is a tricky operation, and I can only hazard it on the more open sections where we are free from immediate crevasse danger. Even so, on a couple of occasions Michael has to stop when my legs get entangled and he feels a tug on the rope.

About half an hour after we've left camp we encounter a cheerful Serap Jangbu coming the other way with our cook Ashad, who has worked Base Camp on many expeditions, but this is the first time he's come up to the Gasherbrum Cwm. Although we're miffed that Serap has kidnapped our cook, the smile that lights up Ashad's face as he stands among the horseshoe of triangular peaks quickly dispels any hard feelings. We get back to Base Camp at 8.45. The others have waited for us before having breakfast, and at 9.30 Serap and Ashad stroll back into camp, having left at 3am, walked all the way up to Camp 1 and come back down again. We expect such feats of stamina from Serap Jangbu, the man who's climbed eleven 8000 metre peaks, but given that it took me six hours just to get up the first time I went to Camp 1 it seems we have a superstar chef in our midst as well.

It was a great couple of days in the Cwm, and very encouraging for the summit push, but I have no difficulty falling back into the lazy routine of Base Camp, hanging all my gear up on the outside of my tent, then lying inside reading
Tom Jones
, or helping Gorgan get over-excited by a game of cards in the dining tent. There are times when it's like watching a small child throw its toys out of the pram. If we were to be stuck here for six months, I'm convinced Gorgan would be the first of us to lose his marbles and end up doing something silly, like putting his underpants on his head and a pencil up each nostril.

Lots of attention is now focussed on the fixed ropes on the Banana Ridge, which are now buried under snow. I overhear someone come over and describe them to Phil as being “buried beneath at least two sun crests.” Adele from Jagged Globe has gone up today with two HAPs (High Altitude Porters) to see if she can locate the anchor points, and Gombu and our Sherpa team will be going up with a spade tomorrow to try and dig up the whole length and re-establish the trail after all the snow. We're still looking at a July 14 th summit day, and a complete day of sun today will have gone a long way towards making the route safe again, but six days is such a long time in the Karakoram that anything can happen between now and then.

As I spend another day lying lazily at Base Camp, Gombu and Pasang are busily preparing the way for our summit push. They leave Base Camp early this morning, travel past Camp 1, and pull up all the ropes buried under snow up to Camp 2. At Camp 2 they discover our tents to be buried under two metres of snow. After digging them out and re-pitching them, they then go all the way up to Camp 3 to pull up all the fixed ropes on that part of the route as well. Despite this unimaginable feat of endurance which for sure would leave me dying of exhaustion before I'd left Camp 2, it wouldn't surprise me to see them back at Base Camp in time for dinner.

Leaving aside Gombu, Pasang, Tarke, Temba and Serap, the five Sherpas in our team, of the other eighty or so climbers at Base Camp with permits for Gasherbrum I or Gasherbrum II, two climbers appear to stand head and shoulders above the rest of us. While some of the teams here, including ourselves (Altitude Junkies), Jagged Globe and the German team Amical, are transparently commercial groups who provide support services on the mountain designed to give relatively inexperienced climbers the best possible chance of reaching the summit, other teams claim to contain so-called independent “unsupported” climbers, but at times it's hard to see the difference. Apart from carrying up and pitching their own tents, which we have our Sherpas do for us, they all seem to be waiting for our Sherpas or Jagged Globe's HAPs (High Altitude Porters) to break the trail and fix ropes for them. Most have even provided our two teams with hardware such as ropes and snow pickets, and others have paid money to used the fixed ropes. Many of them come to our camp every day to find out the specialist weather forecast that we're paying for, and one couple of Portuguese climbers not only come here every day for the forecast, but then sit in our dining tent having tea and biscuits that Ashad and co. always hospitably provide them with! Even among our own team, two of the clients, Gorgan and Philippe, who are supposedly paying for “base camp only” services, seem to be on much the same schedule as the rest of us, dictated by our Sherpas breaking trail and fixing ropes (though to give Philippe his due, he has hired Serap Jangbu as his own personal Sherpa, whose presence here has certainly benefited all of us).

Superstar Sherpas Temba, Pasang Lama, Tarke and Pasang Gombu at Base Camp

The two climbers who are an exception to this are the Finnish climber Veikka Gustafsson, who is currently breaking his own trail up Gasherbrum I to complete his 14 th and last 8000 metre summit, and the Swiss climber Ueli Steck, who is well-known in European climbing circles for a series of record-breaking speed ascents on a handful of mountains in the Alps. The latter has been the subject of much speculation today. He broke his own trail to Camp 2 on Gasherbrum II yesterday, and has been reported as being seen above Camp 3 today. Some say he even climbed the rock pyramid to the summit rather than traversing beneath it on the standard route that the rest of us intend using. All will hopefully be revealed in the next day or so.

To pass the time before we begin our own summit push, myself, Ian, Gordon, Gorgan, Michael and Arian must surely have played the longest game of cards in Gasherbrum Base Camp history. Starting straight after breakfast we play 28 hands before finishing just before lunch at 1pm. In terms of stamina, Ueli Steck has nothing on us. Ian, universally condemned by all of us as being rubbish at cards, wins convincingly.

Later in the afternoon I find myself carrying out an incident of supreme idiocy when I walk into the dining tent and spy a half-eaten tin of sardines on the table. The rest of the team are circled around Phil's tent in conversation, and it seems nobody is in their own tent. Remembering the old student prank of taking out the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers and putting an open tin of fish underneath it before replacing the drawer, so that the unfortunate student whose room it is has to live with a deteriorating fishy smell for the rest of term, I pick up the tin of sardines and carry it over to Gorgan's tent to slide it under his back porch. Unfortunately I don't notice that I'm carrying it at a slight angle, and only discover my mistake when I arrive at the tent to find a revolting odorous fish sauce covering my trouser leg. As these are supposed to be my “clean” trousers, I immediately go to the glacial stream beneath our campsite to wash the offending stain off with soap and water. The crowd assembled round Phil's tent notices me doing this, and Gorgan of all people starts shouting at me.

“Mark, don't do it, don't do it!”

I return to my tent to dry off my wet trouser leg which, however, still stinks of fish after it's dried. This is a schoolboy prank which backfires if ever there was such a thing. I spend the next hour poring over the poetic justice of my action, and in the end I decide to sneak back to Gorgan's tent and sheepishly remove the tin of sardines.

A day of anticipation and waiting around as tomorrow, at long last, we embark upon our summit push on Gasherbrum II. I spend most of the day getting a fair way to completing
Tom Jones
, but I don't manage it, and the ending will have to wait until I return next week.

In the afternoon a group of porters from the K2 Clean Up team that Arian and I spoke to when we passed through Concordia, arrive at Base Camp to do some litter picking. I have the front entrance of my tent tied up, so I see them pass by as I read. I'm not the only one, and I hear the following cries across the campsite.

Phil: “Arian, are you going to give them a hand?”

Gorgan: “Yes, Arian, you've done f------ nothing!”

This latter statement alludes to suggestions at the commencement of the expedition that to coincide with his Master's dissertation on “waste management on 8000 metre peaks in Pakistan”, Arian would also be helping to clean up the mountain. In fact, although he has interviewed most of the teams at Base Camp about their waste management policies, in the three weeks we've been here nobody's actually seen him carrying out any more waste management than the rest of us, namely picking up the few bits of litter we see in the immediate vicinity of our tents, and carrying back down any rubbish we've created at the higher camps. I think his earlier resolution to concentrate his efforts on cleaning up Camps 3 and 4 looks likely to be discarded in favour of a summit attempt with the rest of us. I can't really blame him for doing this – for I'm doing nothing more myself – but his earlier talk has left him open to the odd bit of gentle needling. More importantly, however, he's obtained sponsorship in the form of free clothing from mountain equipment manufacturers on the strength of his clean up operations on other mountains such as Aconcagua in Argentina, so Arian knows that at some point he's going to have to do something more than he's done so far to justify this. But perhaps he already has something in mind and we do him an injustice. Only time will tell.

Later in the afternoon some Pakistani liaison officers begin clearing away an area of moraine right next to Ian's pitch to erect some tents of their own. Apparently there's to be a party thrown here tomorrow night for one reason or another.

“It's the only time in the year the Pakistanis drink booze,” says Phil. “I'll be there.”

Until now Ian has been dithering as to whether or not he will leave early tomorrow for Camp 1 with myself and Michael, or whether to delay his departure until midnight with Phil, Gordon and Arian, to go directly to Camp 2.

Gasherbrum Base Camp with Chogolisa rising up behind

“You'll be able to get pissed and leave for Camp 2 straight from the party,” I tell him.

I'd been betting myself a fiver that Ian, who doesn't appear to believe in making things easy for himself, would end up plumping for the straight to Camp 2 option, but I think this new development might sway him the other way.

Veikka Gustafsson came back down to Base Camp today, and will be launching his summit bid for Gasherbrum I at the same time as we launch ours on G2. Everybody seems to be agreed that the summit window has finally arrived. Yesterday Ueli Steck was indeed the first person to summit G2 this year, on his own breaking trail from Camp 1. He passed us on skis while we were digging out our tents at Camp 1 three days ago, but agreeing with Phil and Gordon that the slopes to Camp 2 were still unsafe, he came back again half an hour later. However, he must have decided it was safe by the following day, 8 th , as he broke trail up to Camp 2 and possibly up to Camp 3 as well, before reaching the summit and returning to Camp 2 yesterday. This must have been a superhuman effort given the conditions. Phil went to see him after he got back to Base Camp today, to find out what conditions are like above Camp 3. He said Ueli was looking extremely badly weather-beaten, but that's hardly surprising given that we believe the jetstream was hitting the mountain at the time, so he must have reached the summit in extremely high winds. He told Phil that the snow isn't too bad on the Traverse – only about 20cm deep – but is approaching waist deep on the summit ridge.

At dinner time Phil brings less encouraging news when he arrives with an updated weather forecast. Conditions for our summit day on the 14 th appear to be deteriorating. The prediction yesterday was that the winds for that day would be 20 to 40 kmh, but now they've increased to 30 to 50. Wind speeds on the 15 th are now estimated at 50 to 70 kmh and 70+ the day after. With this in view Phil is now thinking in terms of an evening start (10pm) on the 13 th for our summit attempt, and walking through the night to reach the summit as early as possible on the 14 th , so we can be on the way down again before the winds become too strong.

We're now looking at possible frostbite territory on summit day, and Phil gives those of us attempting an 8000 metre peak for the first time some tips on how to avoid it. This includes the sage advice: “If you want to go to the bathroom, don't undo your down pants and pee normally, or your dick's gone. Instead, piss inside your down suit – you can always clean it later.” This statement also proves once and for all that Phil is now definitely more American than British. Brits, of course, wouldn't expect to see a bathroom at 7000 metres.

The change in the wind speeds has put a bit of a dampener on spirits, and certainly dented the confidence prior to launching our summit push. There's nothing we can do about it now, though, as the 14 th is our only possible window, so we've just got to get on with it and hope things turn out alright.