No Way Down, Life and Death On K2 (2010) (8 page)

His name was Stolz, he later found out, and he was from Denmark.

Zerain crisscrossed the summit snowfield from left to right, prodding gingerly with his ice axe. He had wrapped its handle in silver tape to prevent the skin of his fingers from freezing onto the cold metal. He was tempted to escape the clinging deep snow by crossing far to the right, onto the ice of the serac. He strode across, his back bent under the sun. But then he left the serac behind him and was forced to plunge back into the soft snow.

As he had done since the base of the Bottleneck, he was opening the trail alone, and the snow was deep. The going was so slow that he had thought it would be only a matter of minutes before the pursuing group caught up with him. The ones who were using supplementary oxygen would be faster. Before long, they would be speeding along behind him and then they would share the work of opening the route.

But no one had appeared. He had gone on, feeling weary, keeping every unnecessary effort to a minimum, because even stopping to open his backpack cost energy. About three hundred feet before the summit, he had watched carefully for hidden crevasses. Then at last, he had climbed the final steep, diagonal ridge and had come out alone onto the summit of K2. The first climber to reach the top in 2008.

The afternoon was perfect. Not the slightest cloud. The summit was a 150-foot sloping snow ridge. He climbed up the ridge to get to the highest spot. About fifteen feet below the top on the other side was a comfortable flat area of about eighteen square yards where he could sit.

The surrounding mountains receded into the distance, lesser giants of the Karakoram compared to K2. On one side, they marched northeast into China, on the other into Pakistan. India, China, Pakistan—they all seemed close from up here. And Zerain could see the back of Broad Peak, the Gasherbrums, Nanga Parbat, and many more mountains, all of them wondrous sights. So too were the swirling patterns of the glaciers, like patterns on butterfly wings, 11,800 feet below on the valley floor.

Wait until he told his friends and family back home, Zerain thought. He wished he had his Olympus. He opened his eyes wide and scanned the horizon so that even without his camera he would remember every detail. He gloried in the view; he felt he could see every brushstroke.

The summit was broad, but he eyed it warily. He couldn't be sure of the safety of the snow. Maybe it was rock he was treading on or maybe it was an overhanging lip of snow waiting to collapse under him. He didn't trust it. Although his gaze wandered far, he drank some tea and stayed sitting and didn't move around much.

Down below, at the lip of the long snowfield, the other climbers were at last spitting up out from beneath the serac. Zerain checked his watch and frowned. He was surprised that they were still intending to shoot for the top.

He knew what they were feeling. Up here, on the summit slopes, you were close to the gods, or at least you felt you were. But you forgot there was work to be done to get up and down again.

Watching the climbers ascend the mountainside toward him, Zerain closed his eyes and felt sleepy. He lay back on the snow. The tea was warming him. The sun was on his face. He had had no sleep for more than twenty-four hours, since he had woken up at Camp Three.

To avoid the crowds going up the Abruzzi and Cesen routes, Zerain had climbed directly from Camp Three the previous night, arriving in Camp Four at midnight. He had waited under the quiet stars for people to leave for the summit. There had been no moon and, when he had gazed along the Shoulder, Zerain could barely make out the Bottleneck. He didn't want to be up there alone.

Soon he had noticed movement and a Sherpa approached from one of the tents.

“Namaste!”

It was Pemba Gyalje, the strong Sherpa in the Dutch team. Gyalje peered forward to see who was lurking near the tents, and Zerain explained who he was.

A few other climbers gathered with Gyalje at the edge of the camp and then headed out onto the Shoulder. Zerain joined them, third in line. Not far out of Camp Four—they had been walking for probably forty minutes—the two climbers ahead of Zerain stopped abruptly and started to pull rope from their backpacks.

Zerain was confused. At this point the Shoulder was as flat as a cow's meadow. Why were they doing this now? He couldn't see the other climbers' faces behind their balaclavas and hoods. Maybe, he thought, the Sherpas and HAPs were concerned their clients were not skilled enough for this terrain. Grasping the rope, he realized that if he helped them, they would be faster.

He went over the fresh snow up the Shoulder, the other climbers passing more rope to him from behind as he marched on. He went to the right, to the rocks, a little way out of the full glare of the serac above.

Finally, as the sun rose higher, Zerain had fixed two screws near the top of the Bottleneck and then waited for the others to bring more rope for the Traverse. He had 100 feet of rope in his backpack but they said they were bringing extra rope of their own, so he had waited, perched beneath the serac, so close then that he had been able to study it properly for the first time.

That was hours ago now. Abruptly, Zerain forced his eyes open again. He was still sitting on the summit. If he took a nap now, he might never wake up. He checked his father's watch: 3:40 p.m. Time to go down. Forcing himself upright, he climbed down from the summit.

When, about an hour later, he reached the other climbers and began to pass them, they greeted him warmly. Those who were using oxygen had made the quickest time. The Sherpa returned the Olympus. The South Koreans' leader, Kim, so far as he understood, thanked Zerain for placing the rope on the Bottleneck and for opening the Traverse.

In return, Zerain smiled and said thank you, but all the while he wanted to tell them to turn back.
It is late!
he wanted to shout.
Turn back with me. Is it worth the risk?

One figure in the line was waving especially enthusiastically. He was wearing an oxygen mask and goggles and his face was partly covered by his hood. Hugues d'Aubarède took off his mask and wrapped his arms around Zerain.

“Alberto!”

“Bonjour, Hugues.” But Zerain looked at d'Aubarède and thought that he would rather be seeing him in Base Camp already.

“How was it?” said d'Aubarède, speaking in French. He seemed tired, but excited.

“Be careful,” Zerain said. “It is very bad.”

He wanted to say more. Just a few words might have persuaded d'Aubarède to turn around. But the Frenchman's burly HAP hovered at his shoulder and Zerain did not want to interfere. The HAPs were being paid to get their climbers to the top.

He felt sorry for his friend because going down would be hard.

“Good luck, Hugues!” Zerain said.

“I will see you,” said d'Aubarède, smiling.

Zerain passed Cecilie Skog, who asked him how far it was to the summit. The first time Zerain had met Skog was three weeks earlier at Camp
Two. It was soon after he had arrived on the mountain, while he had barely been able to speak because he was so tired after a day of climbing, Skog had marched into the camp, calling out greetings to her teammates. Her voice had seemed so happy. He had thought,
This is a strong woman
.

Skog still looked full of energy, even now. But Zerain knew he had to answer her carefully since he might give her false hope or wrongly discourage her.

“With a good rhythm, it should take you no more than two hours,” he said.

She grinned, seeming to take heart. She looked so beautiful in the sunlight.

After saying good-bye, Zerain climbed down in the direction of the Traverse. Up above him, the line of climbers was spreading out, still meandering on toward the summit.

He wanted to shout, “It's okay if you turn around!” He hoped none of them would become the latest name on the Gilkey Memorial, the monument at Base Camp to the people who had lost their lives on K2.

On the Traverse, he found the old rope and the screws that he had punched in still fixed to the ice. No one had replaced them after all.

About two-thirds of the way across toward the Bottleneck, six orange oxygen bottles dangled from one of the screws and Zerain wondered who could have left them there.

At last he reached Camp Four. Outside one of the tents, a single climber was sitting and brewing some tea. One of the Americans, he thought.

Although the tea looked tempting to Zerain, he wanted to push on down. He nodded at the other climber and waited for a moment, still hoping perhaps for an invitation because the tea looked so good. But the climber said nothing, so Zerain left the tents behind. He climbed down the steep ridge to Camp Three, where he had spent the previous night and where he found two of the Pakistani HAPs from the Serbian team and was glad to share their tent.

5:30 p.m.

A
head of Cecilie Skog, one of the South Koreans' Sherpas climbed up the final steep ridge and disappeared over the crest onto the summit.

A few minutes later, Skog's lanky Norwegian colleague, Lars Flato Nessa, overtook four members of the South Korean team and followed the Sherpa onto the top. Alberto Zerain had told Skog the last stretch up the snowfields would take two hours and they had done it in two and a half. She was relieved.

Fifteen minutes later, she joined Nessa on top of the world. She relaxed in the warm sunshine.

“Congratulations, Cecilie,” Nessa said. The fair-haired Norwegian was grinning.

“We have done it.” Rolf would be pleased.

The day was so hot that Skog had gone without gloves and jacket since the Bottleneck. She was wearing the purple down ski pants that were a gift from Stein Peter Aasheim, a friend who was on the first Norwegian expedition to Everest in 1985.

After the breathless exertions of the ascent, the conditions on the top were perfect. There was no wind. Skog took off her woolen hat and concentrated on the peaks around her. This was the first time she and Nessa had been able to see the Chinese side of the mountain. The ranges of perfectly formed peaks surprised them. They could have
been standing in the Alps. Above them, the sky still shone a brilliant blue but the heat of the day was gone and the air was cooling.

The summit ridge was crisscrossed by footprints. Proudly, Skog and Nessa took out the Norwegian flag and posed in front of Nessa's Sony Cyber-shot. Skog also held up an orange banner from her hometown soccer team, Alesund. Skog was a soccer fan and a decent player; she had spent eight months as an au pair in Britain, in Bromley in Kent, and she had played for the Millwall Lionesses, one of the country's women's teams.

They followed a few more rituals planned for this special moment. The Norwegians had left their clunky satellite phone behind in one of the lower camps—they joked it was the size of a shoe box; it was like something out of the 1980s—so they had no way to call to tell anyone of their triumph even if they had wanted to. They took out three plastic red roses that they had kept around Base Camp to make the tent look pretty. They also unpacked a special hat that Bae had given them to carry to the summit—a pink rabbit hat with long, floppy ears. Bae had carried it with him on his expeditions to the North and South Poles, and when he stopped after the Traverse he had asked Skog to take it with her. Now, Nessa pulled it over his head with a big smile as Skog took a picture.

This one is for Rolf.

They shot some video. Skog said she was glad to reach the summit but she felt exhausted and was eager to start the descent. She was not celebrating yet.

By now, the other members of the South Korean team were arriving and spreading across the summit. Earlier, while he had been waiting for Skog, Nessa had spoken to the South Koreans' Sherpa. The Sherpa introduced himself as Pasang; he looked like he was in his early twenties. There was another Pasang in the South Korean expedition so he was called Little Pasang.

Even though they had been on the mountain together for weeks, Nessa had never spoken to him before. They talked about the peaks
around them and Little Pasang described the countryside in Nepal, and his family. They took photographs and Nessa shared some water with him.

Now, Skog and Go Mi-sun posed for a few shots side by side, two women together on the peak of K2, a mountain that at times in its history had been unkind to women. Of the first five women who had climbed K2, three had died on the descent, and the remaining two had died on other mountains shortly afterward. This was a moment Skog and Go wanted to celebrate.

The Koreans took photographs of themselves with their sponsor flags. They called their sponsor, Kolon Sport, in Korea and a press release was sent out to announce that Flying Jump had successfully made it to the top. They were going to wait for the slower climbers in their team, who were still coming up the summit snowfield; Skog said good-bye. The heat of the day was ending and the air was cooling. She wanted to get down to her husband.

 

On the way up the long snowfield from the Traverse, Wilco van Rooijen hadn't been sure he was going to make it. He was not using supplementary oxygen like the Koreans or Norwegians, so it was hard going at twenty-eight thousand feet. He felt emptied. Everything he had was gone.

All he could do was focus on the tracks in the deep snow in front of him and on going forward. Somewhere nearby he heard the high-pitched voice of the Sherpa from the American expedition, Chhiring Dorje, shouting out that they should hurry. Unless they wanted to be buried in a sea of snow.

“There is avalanches here sometimes,” Dorje shouted.

Van Rooijen tried to speed up but it was hard. The route seemed to take them up one hill of deep snow after another. It wound to the left up a steep ridge.
Almost there
, he thought.

He leaned forward to see if any of the specks up ahead had reached the summit yet. The top, still hours away, was rounded against the deep blue sky.

After the ridge, he arrived at a steep climb, so steep he could no longer see the top of the mountain. As he got closer, he heard a voice encouraging him from somewhere out of his range of vision. He recognized it: Cecilie Skog. “Keep going.”

His Dutch team members were spread out up the slope. He summoned what strength he had and followed behind them, taking ten steps, then resting, leaning on the shaft of his ice axe or on his knee in the snow, then starting again. Finally he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled.

And then at last he came over the top onto the summit and he staggered to his feet.

It was wonderful. Gazing around him, he could hardly believe it. Years of frustration had come to an end. Seven-thirty p.m. After seventeen hours of climbing.

“K2!”

Letting go of his backpack, he raised his arms in victory. Then he started to cry.

The whole Dutch team was standing in front of him. They rushed together in a group hug, dancing, a jumble of snowsuits and ski poles, framed by the white churned-up ridge of the summit and the blue dome of the sky. Van Rooijen, Van de Gevel, Gerard McDonnell, Pemba Gyalje.

It was late, but the joy of reaching the summit was on everyone's face. They had joined an elite club, the nearly three hundred mountaineers in the world who had now scaled K2. He and Van de Gevel were only the third and fourth Dutchmen to reach the top. Gerard McDonnell was the first Irishman. Pemba Gyalje and Chhiring Dorje were among the first Sherpas to have done it without the help of extra oxygen.

Cas van de Gevel spoke on the radio to Base Camp to let the rest of the team know the good news. They heard whoops and handclapping.

On the way up, Van Rooijen had kept his satellite phone switched off in the folds of his jacket to keep it warm and to preserve its charge. He knelt down now and took it out, and he called Maarten van Eck at the Dutch team's home base in Utrecht.

“Maarten, we are standing on Kaay Tooo!” he shouted. The news would be immediately relayed to the world via the Dutch team's website.

Van de Gevel filmed his friend and they panned the scenery with their HD camera. Talking to Base Camp, they learned that Dren Mandic had died. It was sad but they didn't let his death dull the mood for long. They couldn't get over how beautiful it was up on the summit.

Gerard McDonnell was especially fired up. He had removed his helmet and was also crying. The air was colder now but he took off his big climbing gloves and pulled an Irish flag from the pocket of his coat. He arched his back and unfurled the flag with two hands above his head.

He tried to call his family in Kilcornan but for some reason the satellite phone wouldn't work and he couldn't get through. But he spoke to his girlfriend, Annie, in Alaska. They talked just for a few moments. “I'm feeling great,” he said. He was elated.

While McDonnell was celebrating, Van de Gevel strode across to congratulate Hugues d'Aubarède. “Very good that you did this at your age!” the Dutchman said to d'Aubarède. Despite running out of oxygen, the Frenchman had made it to the top and was taking photographs of the spectacular scenery.

He looked tired but he was happy.

“Yes, but I was using oxygen,” said d'Aubarède. “So not so good as you, Cas.”

After talking to Van de Gevel, d'Aubarède walked across the little ridge to greet Pemba Gyalje from the Dutch team. The two men had
met at Base Camp when Gyalje helped him arrange some prayer flags around his tent. They had talked about Buddhism, and the political situations in Nepal and Tibet.

The Sherpa was well-traveled and knew the world; he had spent time in France, the Netherlands, Britain.

Before they had set off from Base Camp for the main summit ascent, Gyalje had warned d'Aubarède to take four oxygen bottles with him. But d'Aubarède had insisted two would be enough. The Sherpa didn't say anything now about the oxygen though he could see that d'Aubarède's tanks were empty.

Instead, the Frenchman handed the Sherpa his video camera. “Will you take a picture of me talking to my family?” he said.

While Gyalje filmed him, d'Aubarède took out his satellite phone and called his partner, Mine Dumas, in Lyon.

D'Aubarède had come to climbing relatively late in life. His infatuation had begun in 1972 when he glimpsed the summit of beautiful Kilimanjaro from an airplane window as he returned from Madagascar on military service. He had never forgotten it. Back in Lyon, he had gotten on with his life, marriage, two lovely daughters, and his job at the Audiens insurance company. His wife didn't really approve of climbing, so he rarely went to the mountains, even though Mont Blanc loomed just over the horizon. But in 1993, they divorced; a year later, at the age of forty-seven, he had traveled with Mine back to Kilimanjaro.

“The summit is so beautiful,” he said now, shaking his head at the beauty of it all. “The scenery. I am so happy.”

D'Aubarède had discovered he had an exceptional ability for high-altitude climbing. On May 17, 2004, he became only the fifty-sixth Frenchman to climb Everest. But his family didn't climb with him in the really tall mountains of the world, and Mine and his daughters worried about him during the time he spent away. One day, he might not return.

With the satellite phone pressed to his lips, he promised Mine
this would be his last climb. “Next time, I will be near the sea with the family!”

He said he kissed her over the phone but she told him to save his breath and to return home to France quickly. His daughter, Constance, was getting married in September in Chamonix.

“I will call you when I get down,” he said.

The sun's light was fading and the temperature was dropping. They spoke for a couple more minutes and then d'Aubarède telephoned the director of Audiens in Lyon, Patrick Bezier. In recent years, d'Aubarède's work had become a sideline, compared to his climbing, but he was featured in the company newsletter and his adventures were a favorite talking point among the clients. The company gave him time off from work for his mountaineering and helped sponsor his expeditions.

He reached an answering machine. “This is Hugues d'Aubarède,” he said, speaking quietly into his phone. “It's minus twenty. I am at eight thousand, six hundred and eleven meters. I am very cold. I am very happy. Thank you.”

When he had finished talking, he offered the phone to Gyalje, who was still standing beside him.

“Did you contact your wife from up here?” d'Aubarède said. “You have to do this, Pemba. Please. You can use my satphone.”

But the Sherpa was serious and said they were already late. “It's time we climb down,” he said.

“Yes, I agree, but we have reached the summit!”

When Gyalje still refused, d'Aubarède took back the camera and spent a few more minutes snapping more photographs.

One of the Sherpas did call home, however. Jumik Bhote, the lead Sherpa in the South Korean team, had left his cell phone with his partner in Kathmandu. He borrowed the Koreans' satellite phone to call her. When he got through, Dawa Sangmu told him she had had the baby, a boy.

Bhote closed his eyes and thanked her.
I love you! Say hello to everyone. I will be back soon.

He was so happy. He was going to name his son after his own late father, Jen Jen.

 

After the celebrations, the expeditions packed up their gear for the descent—cameras, telephones, water bottles, flags. The radios and the satellite phones each weighed about a pound. Gerard McDonnell handed his phone to Pemba Gyalje to lighten his load.

Some of the teams had arrived later than the rest and some chose to spend longer than the others on the summit. By now there was a haze in the air, and it was clear evening was coming on. The sky was a deeper blue. In the valleys, some of the distant craggy peaks stuck up through mist like sharks' fins. Cumulus clouds lined up like trains on the horizon.

The teams gazed down toward Camp Four. It was a distant, alluring pinpoint, beyond the summit plateau, beyond the serac and the Bottleneck.

The two Norwegian climbers were the first to descend. Skog knew that Bae was waiting for her somewhere on the snowfield. She was impatient to share the good news with him. He had insisted on setting a deadline of being back at the Traverse and clipped onto the fixed ropes before nightfall. Once they were on the ropes, they would be fine. It was easy—they could just follow the lines back to Camp Four.

Since leaving the Traverse, Skog had been climbing without the aid of extra oxygen but she felt she needed some now. Nessa was carrying their only remaining cylinder, and he pulled the two pipes from his nose and passed them back over his shoulder to her. In that fashion, one closely following behind the other, they climbed down over the eastern side of the summit ridge.

Directly in front of them, the late afternoon sun cast the shadow of the mountain over hundreds of miles of land. The shadow was stark
and huge, a perfect triangle, and so long that it rose above the horizon.