Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains (15 page)

Doom and gloom around the breakfast table again this morning. Serap is back from yet another aborted attempt on Gasherbrum I, and has fallen into a crevasse on his way through the icefall. He says he was in there for 10 minutes, and if he hadn't been roped to the Bulgarians he'd be a dead man.

“I've never felt so scared before,” he says.

This coming from the man who's climbed eleven 8000 metre peaks, including K2 and Kangchenjunga, has an inevitable effect on the other Sherpas, who are all now keen to get back to Nepal.

Gombu is on the radio to the Spanish team at Camp 1 this morning, and passes the handset back to Phil in disgust.

“F---ing Spanish,” he mutters.

Sherpas almost never swear, but Gombu has just learned that another solitary Spaniard has gone up to Camp 3 on G1 on his own after Gorgan and Dirk, whom he'd been climbing with, decided to turn back. The rest of the Spanish team left Base Camp in the early hours of this morning bound for Camp 1. During his radio call to them Gombu thought he could hear someone sobbing in the background, and his worry is that if we all go up to Camp 2 and another lone Spaniard gets into trouble, the rest of the Spanish team will expect our Sherpas to rescue him. We're all still in a state of lingering surprise about what happened last week, when they did nothing to help another of their team struggling for his life on Gasherbrum II, and more or less left him to die.

“Last week we arranged to meet Spanish team in morning to talk about a rescue,” he says. “But they not show up.”

Although weather conditions ultimately prevented a rescue, and the Spanish climber would almost certainly have died anyway, we were all very surprised that the rest of his team did nothing to help, such as sending someone up to Camp 1 to coordinate and assess the situation, and at least give some sort of sign that they cared about him. And if Gombu was annoyed with the Spanish team for not meeting him when they said they would, it's hard to imagine the feelings of the Portuguese couple Paulo and Daniela, who were friends of the climber who died, and who risked their own necks by descending through the South Gasherbrum Icefall at night to bring word of the climber's perilous situation, only to see his team react with indifference.

And now it looks very much like we may be facing a repeat performance.

Arian is late for breakfast, and it emerges that he has pains in his chest which Gordon thinks may be signs of a hernia. He's been on painkillers all night, and is still in pain this morning.

“Perhaps the Iranians did have a voodoo doll, after all,” says Phil. He eventually gets Arian out of bed by suggesting we summon a helicopter to take him back to Skardu.

The next piece of bad news comes when Gorgan arrives back in Base Camp at midday while Gordon, Michael, Arian and I are in the middle of another marathon card game. He tells us he got to about 6800m in the Japanese Couloir, but the fixed rope is actually last year's, and is somewhat weathered after 365 days of freezing and thawing out again. Very few people have been using it this year, and Phil is now wondering whether it can be trusted. Gorgan also confirms that the icefall is in an atrocious state, and it took him 4½ hours to descend through it instead of the usual three. Both he and Serap are now finished and want to go home tomorrow. Phil's friend Tunch has already gone, after looking at K2, G2 and now G1 and deciding none of them can be climbed this year.

Later in the afternoon Veikka Gustafsson holds a party for everyone still remaining in Base Camp – which is not very many of us – to celebrate his successful ascent of G1, his fourteenth and final 8000 metre peak. It's a party unlike any I've ever been to before: no alcohol, and men dancing with men on a patch of bumpy moraine with G1 as a backdrop, a mountain which seems to look more and more awesome every time I glance at it, probably because we're now getting very close to the time when we ourselves will tread its slopes.

Veikka Gustafsson with Gorgan and Michael

The remaining cooks at Base Camp, including Ashad, have put a good spread of food on, and a handful of porters and kitchen crew start banging empty fuel canisters and singing, and doing their very best to turn this patch of moraine recently vacated by the Iranian team, into a dance floor. Veikka is presented with a bouquet and white
kata
scarves by some of our Sherpas, and gives a short speech. He has the humility to thank the four Bulgarian climbers who summited on the same day, for breaking trail through waist deep snow beneath the Japanese Couloir during atrocious weather. Had it not been for them, he says, then he may not have been in place to take advantage of the narrow summit window.

And what a window. His Japanese cameraman has set up a laptop in Veikka's dining tent, and is showing footage of their summit day. The weather is perfect, as the jetstream winds vanish for a day before returning again. The summit ridge and summit itself are broad enough and look comfortable, but there is one piece of footage of Veikka hacking his way up a steep climb with his ice axe, which I would not like to try without fixed ropes.

For us, we are still waiting for our window on either mountain, but Veikka's film has reminded me what it can be like when everything comes together, and why I've been sitting around on a glacier for a month and a half now. Oh, to experience that crow's eye view of the Karakoram that Veikka enjoyed! But I don't think it's going to happen now.

Gorgan and Serap Jangbu leave this morning with a handful of porters. Serap came here to climb Gasherbrum I and Broad Peak, potentially his twelfth and thirteenth 8000 metre peaks, but such has been the weather this year that he's been no further than Camp 3 on G1. Even so, he is very philosophical about the whole thing, and gives a short speech at breakfast which puts things in perspective for all of us.

“There are three things which are important in mountaineering. Number 1 is safety. You must always come back safely and with all your fingers and toes. The mountain will always be here next year. Number 2 is to enjoy the climbing and your time at base camp. If you can't be happy in the mountains, where can you be happy? Number 3 is reaching the summit, and this comes only after the other two. I came here to climb G1 and Broad Peak and didn't succeed, but I am happy, because I am alive and safe and will come back next year.”

I believe him. As he stands at the head of the table in his cowboy hat, with his long straight ponytail hanging down his back, there is a smile on his face which extends behind his eyes and is entirely genuine, hiding nothing – no regrets or wistfulness.

Veikka Gustafsson and Serap Jangbu Sherpa

Gorgan's emotions are harder to fathom. “See you in London, when I come over to shag all your English women,” he says with a grin as he shakes my hand. I think he's just glad to be getting out of here.

Today is the second day of three days of storms, according to the last weather forecast we received. It's certainly the worst day I can remember us experiencing at Base Camp. A cold wet snow hammers down all day, and damp clouds hang across the Abruzzi and South Gasherbrum Glaciers, obscuring all mountains so that it looks like our little patch of moraine is afloat on an endless sea of ice. Not a hint of sun penetrates through to warm our tents, and in the afternoon I huddle inside mine wearing down boots, down jacket and two layers of trousers, with all tent flaps firmly zipped up, listening to a gusty wind hammer against the sides of the tent. At one point a solitary wasp finds its way inside and buzzes around my ears. With not a single blade of grass for miles around, I wonder what on earth the stupid insect is doing up here.

Despite the atrocious weather, our two enthusiastic youngsters, Arian and Michael, decide to spend the afternoon ice climbing on the glacier in the expectation that it will be good practice for when we come to climb G1. I very much hope severe ice climbing requiring two technical ice axes will not be necessary on summit day, where we will not be using fixed ropes. If so, I will be turning round and heading back down again – I've no wish to die on this mountain. As I sit and listen to the snow patter on my tent, a more realistic concern is whether we will ever get above Camp 2 on either mountain. Although we were intending to put up fixed ropes between Camps 3 and 4 and on the summit ridge of Gasherbrum II, supposedly an easier mountain, I seem to be the only person concerned that none of the route will be fixed above Camp 3 on G1. Either my companions are somewhat complacent or they're very talented ice climbers.

At dinner time I receive slightly better news. Phil has been over to see the newly arrived Korean team of Miss Oh Eun-Sun, who is hoping to make G1 her thirteenth 8000m peak after coming fresh off a successful summit of Nanga Parbat, her twelfth. Unlike anyone else on Gasherbrum this year, apart from ourselves, she has a team of Sherpas with her. She believes there will be a summit window between 31 st July and 4 th August, and her Sherpas will be using oxygen to help them fix 400 metres of rope on summit day. Phil offered for our Sherpas to help with fixing and breaking trail, and we understand this has been accepted. I try not to get too excited about this, though. News changes around here like a monkey swinging from tree to tree and never settling in one place. I'm certain circumstances will change again before we get anywhere near the summit.
Que sera, sera
.

After breakfast, while Gordon wisely decides to retire to his tent for a snooze, I make the mistake of taking Arian and Michael up on their invitation to go ice climbing. Thinking they intend to simply go to a section of glacier behind our camp, I end up following them for half an hour as we walk all the way across the Abruzzi Glacier to the foot of Baltoro Kangri, leaping numerous icy streams en route. Here Arian selects a 20 metre section of mostly vertical ice, sets up snow anchors at the top, and we abseil down to find a belay station at its base.

“I might struggle with this one,” I say to him. “but I'll give it a go.”

I then watch the pair of them surmount it without too much difficulty before struggling up myself. By the time I reach the top I'm panting for breath and coughing like a smoker, and definitely not feeling like another go. Hard core ice climbing the day before our likely summit push isn't what I had in mind.

“I'll leave you youngsters to it,” I say to Arian. “I'm off back – I've got a mountain to climb tomorrow.”

He's amazed, but while he's definitely a climber, I'm just a walker who regards climbing as a necessary skill to get up certain mountains. While a climber enjoys the sheer thrill of technical difficulty, a walker is just there to enjoy the scenery and freedom of being outdoors, and is glad to get the difficult sections over with. Happy that I've refreshed my rope skills and crampon technique, I wander back to camp and have stopped coughing by the time I get back.

“Those guys are a bit hardcore for me,” I say to Phil as I pass his tent. “They had me climbing 20 metre vertical ice walls!”

“Dude, you don't need that,” he replies. “That's why we always take the simplest route up these mountains.”

Although we can see storms in the icefall and over Gasherbrum I today, the weather holds back at Base Camp. We're no longer receiving forecasts from our usual source, so unless the weather is atrocious when we wake up tomorrow morning, we're just going to head up the mountain anyway for a last gasp effort, and we'll see what happens.

I'm finding that after nearly two months here now, I'm losing my motivation for the whole thing, and have a very bad feeling about our latest summit dash, for a number of reasons:

1. Of the hundreds of climbers with permits for the five Karakoram 8000ers this year, there have been precisely 13 summits and 8 deaths;
   
2. High jetstream winds and heavy snow have been sweeping the Gasherbrums ever since we've been here. There's no indication from the weather over the last few days, or the forecast for the next week, that this is about to change;
   
3. One man with eleven 8000 metre peaks to his name, Serap Jangbu, has already given G1 up as a bad job this year, and looked very happy to be going home in one piece;
   
4. It looks like everyone left in Base Camp is intending to go up the Japanese Couloir on the same day – 7 Koreans, 8 Spanish, 7 Czechs, and 9 Altitude Junkies – using last year's ropes, kicking stones and ice down as they go, and with no space for anyone to turn around if conditions aren't right;
   
5. There are no fixed ropes above Camp 3, and I'm conscious that at least two of the 8 deaths this year have been as a result of people falling in difficult sections with no fixed rope.
   

Still – chin up. Got to get on with it and give it a go.