Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains (12 page)

Phil is beginning to get restless about the accuracy of weather forecasts and the fact that lots of people from other teams are going up and down the mountain while we've chosen to stay at Base Camp and wait things out. Today is our sixth straight day here, and although it's been predominantly fine and sunny throughout that period, the fact remains that nobody has reached the summit on either Gasherbrum I or Gasherbrum II in that time, and every day we've had reports of people driven back by the wind. Today was no different. The Iranian team was poised at Camp 3 on G2 overnight, and our very own Serap Jangbu Sherpa was at Camp 3 above the Japanese Couloir on G1, but both had to retreat today. Nevertheless the clock is ticking and it's true that weather forecasts have not been great. Rumours abound of the jetstream finally leaving the Karakoram towards the end of the week, and we're now thinking of leaving Base Camp for a summit push on Tuesday, with a view to staying up there and waiting for a window if necessary.

All of us – clients, Sherpas and kitchen crew – pass the time this morning in a team effort to move the dining tent a few metres away from a newly formed crevasse it's in imminent danger of falling into. My one bit of exercise this afternoon involves wandering around on the glacier near my tent to check that some new makeshift anti-balling plates I've cobbled together for my crampons don't interfere with their grip.

Today is our last day at Base Camp for a while. Although weather forecasts are not promising, everyone is agreed that after a week here we just need to get up the mountain and take our chances, as a number of other groups have been doing over the last week. So far, apart from Ueli Steck's solo performance a couple of weeks ago, there is yet to be a single summit on Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II, Broad Peak or K2 this year. There have been three deaths on K2, and we think one on Broad Peak, with a report that lots of people tried to summit Broad Peak a couple of days ago but had to be rescued by groups off K2. None of us have much confidence about the summit push we're about to embark upon.

There have been a number of reports of thefts from the higher camps of food, stoves, gas, and even some personal items like gloves, as well as tent poles. The prime suspect is a lone independent climber known as “Polish Jack”, who has been seen climbing up and down the mountain with only a very small pack. He is believed to have no tent of his own, stays in whatever tents are already pitched and vacant in the higher camps, and has no qualms about making use of any equipment he finds there. The leader of the Canada West group had a week's supply of food go missing, and we're all expecting to find things stolen when we go up tomorrow. Although everybody seems to think they know who the culprit is, there doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do to stop him. The agent he used to come here is a company called Jasmine Tours, who have no expedition leader and consist entirely of so-called independent climbers who, other than sharing base camp services, have no connection with each other. There have even been thefts reported within their group.

This morning Arian, Michael and I go out onto the glacier for a refresher in crevasse rescue from Gordon, who is a volunteer with the British Columbia mountain rescue service. Crevasse rescue is a fairly complicated procedure which involves the rigging up of an elaborate pulley system using prussics and carabiners in order to pull a potentially unconscious person out. Although I've been taught it a couple of times before, I'd never be able to remember the various steps in a live situation. Gordon's session is by far the most comprehensive I've ever had, however. We're out there for more than two hours, and each of us gets an opportunity to rig the whole contraption up ourselves. Who knows, maybe this time some of it might even stick. I ask Gordon whether most of his rescues are of climbers or skiers.

“Actually, most of them are just walkers who have got lost,” he says.

The session is also notable for the fact that it shows us a serious, sensible side to Gordon. Most of the time all we see of him is an impish little bearded leprechaun of a character sitting in the dining tent sipping tea and making wise cracks and cheap knob gags while we play cards.

Gordon and Phil moaning about the weather forecast

Meanwhile the news from higher up the mountain continues to be mostly bad, but shortly before dinner we do at least receive a piece of more positive news among the doom and gloom. John, the leader of the Canada West group, reports that two Polish climbers descending from Camp 3 on G2 triggered an avalanche and would have been swept off the mountain but for the fixed ropes they were attached to. There have also been some reports of climbers avalanched in the Japanese Couloir between Camp 2 and Camp 3 on G1, a feature we'd previously believed to be too steep to be a major avalanche risk. But just before dinner we learn that a group of Iranian climbers reached the summit of G2 today, despite the winds. They set off from Camp 3 at midnight, so the information we've received states, and reached the summit at 1pm after 13 hours of climbing. This is a desperately long summit day, only partly explained by the information that it took them several hours to fix the summit ridge because none of their team had much experience of fixing ropes, and we don't even know how long it took them to descend again. The news that despite less than ideal conditions the summit has finally been reached by ordinary amateur climbers gives all of us hope that our summit push may not simply be another forlorn attempt after all.

However, it should also be stated that there is nowhere like Base Camp for rumour and gossip, and every day we seem to hear stories that are later contradicted or denied. The story that Iranian climbers reached the summit today has been received by word-of-mouth from more than one source, but it wouldn't surprise me one iota if it also proves to be complete hogwash.

At dinner we're joined by a friend of Phil's called Tunch (short for Tuncay), a professional mountaineer from Turkey who has just come off failed attempts on K2 and is now looking to climb G2 as consolation. He turns out to be very personable and is keen to get to know our Sherpa crew. Immediately prior to K2 he climbed Dhaulagiri in Nepal, another 8000 metre peak which he says was very dangerous between Base Camp and Camp 1 because of the high avalanche risk. He has been up to Camp 2 on G2 in the last couple of days and tells us about a new hazard on the Banana Ridge. It seems somebody got caught short on the fixed ropes and left behind a brown substance so unpleasant that people have been preferring to detach their jumars and climb through that section unprotected rather than plough straight through it.

I ask Tunch to confirm an old urban myth for me regarding the manager of the Welsh national football team.

“The manager of Wales is a man called John Toshack,” I say, by way of introduction. I study Tunch carefully for any sign of a reaction, but he remains impassive.

“But at one stage in has career,” I continue, “he went to manage the Turkish side Besiktas, but had to leave because apparently in Turkish ‘toshack' means ‘bollocks'.”

Still Tunch's expression doesn't change, but his answer is clear. “Yes,” he says, “this is absolutely true.”

Every crevasse, serac, undulation, stream and snow hole on the trail through the South Gasherbrum Glacier has become familiar. Occasionally the path changes to divert around a crevasse which has now become too wide to leap over, sometimes a thin layer of ice crumbles and a new icy stream appears, and today at one stage the path is blocked by a tumble of giant ice blocks which have melted and fallen, and we have to scramble over them, but the general route has remained the same. By this time next year every ridge and crest will have completely vanished and a new route will have to be found.

Today we make our fifth climb through the icefall, and perhaps our last, myself, Michael, Arian and Gorgan. Phil and Gordon, perversely, have decided to come up later in the afternoon and arrive in Camp 1 late this evening. We set off at 6am, and at the bottom of the icefall the ice is very rotten, but the path is still surprisingly good. It's another decent clear day and unusually warm, but high overhead lenticulars and wispy cirrus clouds travel at a great rate. Wind speeds near the summit are still a major concern.

Passing between seracs in the icefall

As we approach Camp 1 in the Gasherbrum Cwm at 10.30, Gorgan and Arian start abusing a group of Iranians who are sitting outside their tents with all their food spread out on a mat of blue canvas.

“You are f---ing disgusting!” Gorgan cries at them.

At first I think these people are their friends and this is just a round of friendly banter, but the Iranians remain very quiet, and one or two of them are wearing shocked expressions.

“Would you like me to come to Iran and throw rubbish all over your country?” says Arian.

Our two French friends have just seen them casually emptying a sack of rubbish down a crevasse. Michael and I look on in silence, but Gorgan and Arian are very angry, and as Gorgan continues to hurl abuse at them I try to lead him away. The point has been made.

Gorgan's posh toilet, which he dug in the snow last time we were here at Camp 1, has had some use in the intervening days and now requires some work. The hole has become too wide for any but gymnasts to be able to crouch down comfortably, so it's necessary to perch on the edge where it's very slippery, preferably gripping an ice axe to steady yourself. A comical accident seems inevitable, but fortunately I get my job done without mishap, and won't be needing to use it again for a while.

Later in the day we see twelve small figures making their way down from Camp 3 to Camp 2, and one of the Iranians comes over to ask if we have any oxygen. They say one of their group is struggling and has taken 5 hours to descend just 100 metres, though it looks to us as though they're descending more quickly than that. The figures we've been watching are the Iranians whom we believe to have reached the summit yesterday. It seems they've reached Camp 2 and found some oxygen which they would like to use, but it's not ours. They ask if we can radio down to Base Camp to find out from the owner if it can be used. We think it belongs to the Canada West group, who are planning to use it for their own summit attempt. We know Phil, who is touchy about our Sherpas being overworked, will not be pleased if we radio down for help and get his Sherpas dragged into a rescue operation, so we offer them Diamox and high altitude drugs for cerebral and pulmonary oedema instead, but they decline.

All is quiet at Camp 1 for a while. Then at 5 o'clock everything kicks off.

I'm outside the tent collecting snow and talking to Gorgan, Arian and Michael, who are all looking at the mountain and watching the climbers come down from Camp 2, when the Portuguese couple, Paulo and Daniela, come over in an agitated state.

“One of our friends is missing!” says Paulo. They both start talking together and the message is garbled, but they are clearly upset.

“His name is Luis and he was climbing with Jasek. Jasek turned round at 2 o'clock and Luis went on, but although he looked for him for 4 hours, he never came back to the tent,” Paulo continues.

“We climbed with him here last year,” says Daniela, “and he was obsessed with reaching the summit. My god, he's gone and got himself killed!”

My first instinct is that Paulo and Daniela have got hold of some snippet of information and are jumping to conclusions. I've never known anywhere like Base Camp for rumour and hearsay. People overhear snatches of conversation over the radio, Chinese whispers occur between climbers who pass each other on the mountain or in camps, and very little information ever seems to be reliable. Probably 90% of what I hear in Base Camp about climbers feats, incidents and weather conditions, is later contradicted. For instance, we are about to find out that nobody reached the summit yesterday after all, contrary to the report we heard before dinner that five Iranians did.

We try to calm Paulo and Daniela down. It seems two more climbers, Luis and Jasek, also tried for the summit yesterday along with the Iranian team, and one of them, Luis, hasn't returned. But we don't know for certain that he isn't still alive. Could he have crawled into a tent late and be asleep somewhere that nobody has noticed? But Paulo and Daniela have been told there are no tents at all at Camp 4, not even old abandoned ones from previous years. Everyone who attempted the summit yesterday stayed at Camp 3, and the Iranians seem to have all packed up and left – we've been watching their progress down to Camp 1 for the last few hours. That leaves Jasek and Luis, who were sharing a tent at Camp 3 which belonged to Luis.

“Could Jasek have left early this morning and Luis crawled back to the tent later?” I ask. “Perhaps he's now safely in his tent at Camp 3.”

“It's possible,” says Paulo, “but I don't know …” He sounds sceptical.

Just at that moment the first Iranians arrive back in Camp 1. Arian greets one of them as Ali.

“Have you seen the Spanish?” says Daniela, rushing over to him.

“He is missing,” says Ali. “He is gone. We got within 50 metres of the summit, but then … very technical rock climb. Everybody turned back except the Spanish. We tell him not to go, but …” He throws his arms up in the air in a gesture of despair.

Not far behind him is Luis's companion Jasek, who turns out to be none other than the notorious Polish Jack. He trudges into camp leaning heavily on his two trekking poles. He isn't wearing any gloves, and his hands are black and callused. Not only does he look tired, but emotionally drained, and we all descend upon him to hear his story. His English is not good, but it's not hard for him to make himself understood.

“We reach final part of summit at 2 o'clock. I plead with him, I say, ‘please, Luis, don't go.” Polish Jack puts the palms of his hands together in a gesture of supplication. “Then I say, ‘Luis, don't go up or I kill you!'” He puts his fist to his chin, as though to punch himself. “But still Luis insist, so I say, ‘OK, I wait for twenty minutes.' But I wait 3, 4, 5, 6 o'clock.” He counts the hours out on his fingers. “I shout his name, ‘Luis, Luis,' but still he not come. So I go.”

He is clearly distraught, and finds his words with great difficulty. Probably he blames himself a little for not stopping his friend, and perhaps he thinks that we are blaming him for what happened, too. But it sounds like he did all he could, and despite the rumours that we heard about Polish Jack yesterday, about him taking things from other people's tents, I feel very very sorry for him.

A little while later the doctor from the Iranian team arrives and confirms the same story.

“We all turned around, but the Spanish went on, though we told him not to. We got back to camp and he never returned, so we were flashing our lights into the darkness to try and bring him back, but nothing. It was very windy up there, 60 to 80 kilometres an hour, and after dark it was very cold. There is no way he could have survived a night up there.”

Paulo and Daniela, and to a lesser extent Arian and Gorgan, seem to be unhappy with the Iranian team, and feel they should have done more to help, but I'm not so sure. They tried to persuade him to turn around, but once he's refused, a single independent climber is no longer their responsibility. With the poor weather conditions, high wind speeds and cold temperatures, they would not be able to linger without risking frostbite, and they would want to get back down to camp as soon as possible. Once there, it would be several hours before the Spanish climber's failure to arrive would become a serious concern, and to go back up to the summit after nightfall when they are already exhausted from their own summit attempt, would be putting their own lives at risk. But they didn't give up on him then: they flashed their lights to try and guide him down. It's hard to see what else they should have done.

“At least they could have stayed at Camp 3 an extra day to wait for him,” says Gorgan.

But again I'm not so sure. It's easy to judge when you're not in that situation yourself. “You heard the opinion of the doctor,” I reply. “He's unlikely to survive a night up there.”

“But it's funny why the five Iranians sitting here at Camp 1 never said anything to us about the missing Spaniard when we arrived,” says Michael.

“Well, that's hardly surprising – the first thing we did when we arrived was give them a truckload of abuse about dumping rubbish in a crevasse. They're hardly going to strike up a conversation with us after that!”

Despite the desperate scenario, we persist in our hope that the Spanish climber may still be alive. Gorgan brings out his binoculars and Michael begins scanning the route below the summit for any sign of a person. At the far right hand side of the summit pyramid, just below the point where the rocky summit ridge meets the top of the snow slope on the horizon, he sees a small black object which could be a person, but could also be a rock since it appears to be stationary. I peer through the binoculars myself and agree with this opinion. A few minutes later, however, Michael notices the small black object is no longer there, but there is another small object a little further along the slope. Again I look myself and decide if the object is a person then they are lying down in the snow. But the object doesn't move for a long while, and eventually we stop looking at it. Landslides and avalanches are two a penny around here, and perhaps this was just a boulder which rolled a few metres down a steep slope after the snow melted around it. There is certainly not enough evidence to suggest there's a person alive up there to mount a rescue operation that will put other lives at risk.

The route above Camp 2 on Gasherbrum II

Meanwhile Paulo and Daniela still seem to be very upset with the Iranian team. Apparently a report has reached Base Camp that someone saw the Spanish climber fall to his death after a cornice collapsed beneath him just below the summit.

“Why do they make these stories up?” says Paulo.

“For them it is just, ‘we reached the summit, we reached the summit!'” says Daniela.

But again I find this harsh. “We get this rumour and hearsay at Base Camp all the time,” I reply. “Who knows where these stories come from, but there's no reason to think there's anything malicious or sinister about them.”

It seems to me that Paulo and Daniela were friends with the Spanish climber, and as commonly happens in these situations, they are looking for someone to blame for his death. This is understandable, but it's wrong to try and blame the Iranians. They are clearly upset about what's happened and have all been very subdued as they returned into Camp 1. There's certainly been nothing triumphal or celebratory about their arrival. At the end of the day, there's only one person to blame for the Spanish climber's death, and that's the climber himself, who insisted on going on and climbing a hard technical rock section at 8000 metres without any fixed rope or protection, when everyone else turned round and urged him not to.

To reinforce this opinion, the leader of the Iranian team comes over to us a little while later with the climber called Ali.

“Where is Phil?” he asks us.

We explain that Phil is coming up later today and won't be here till late this evening.

“Are you going on summit push now?”

We nod.

“Because we get weather forecast from University of Tehran. Very accurate, and they are telling us there is terrible weather for the next three days, but after that it is better.”

There is a great deal of emotion in his eyes and he is talking through Ali now. “We had terrible weather conditions and it is getting worse. We command you, please do not go up until Saturday.”

Phil arrives with Gordon at about 7.30pm. He's fallen into several snow holes on his way through the icefall and is in a very pessimistic mood. We explain about the weather forecasts we've been hearing, and ask what he thinks about staying an extra day in Camp 1, to delay our summit push by a day and coincide it with the better weather.

“Dude, I'm going to stay up here a couple of days, and then I'm going back down again. I've had enough of this weather. I don't think the jetstream's going to move off the mountain. The forecasts have been saying it will for weeks now, but the weather window keeps getting pushed back. Now it's happening again.”

It looks like Phil's now given up on us ever getting to the summit, but then he adds: “Gordon's going up, though, and if you decide to stay the Sherpas will probably come, too.”

Phil and Gordon have also received garbled messages about what happened to the Spanish climber Luis. Phil says that both the Iranian leader and Paulo and Daniela spoke to him as he arrived in Camp 1 and gave conflicting accounts. As we've been talking to people returning from the summit throughout the day, we probably know as much as anyone, so we fill him in on what we've been able to conclude.

“The trouble is, everyone's very emotional,” says Phil. “They all knew this climber and are attached to him. I'm not attached to him. He's dead. That's it.”

Callous as this may sound, Phil has seen many deaths in his years working on big mountains, and it naturally causes him to react differently to them than the rest of us. Besides, there's truth in what he says, and the dangers of high altitude mountaineering require an objective view like this to complement the emotion. But the trouble is, one of the things Phil said definitely isn't true, and it's a very important one.

Unbeknown to us, the climber's not dead yet.