Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains (10 page)

Back up to Camp 1 for the fourth time. It's overcast and surprisingly mild when I wake up at 4am this morning, +2½º C inside my tent. Michael is fast asleep and I actually have to go inside his tent to wake him up as there's no response when I call him from outside. Likewise Gorgan has to wake up the kitchen crew to bring us tea and hot water, though in fairness to them they respond quickly and it doesn't hold us up.

Michael, Ian and I set off together to begin our summit push on Gasherbrum II shortly after 5am. There are lots of people in the icefall this time and, climbing unroped initially unlike the rest of them, we're able to overtake all of them before roping up straight after the initial intricate section of the icefall. The overcast conditions make the climb a little monotonous this time around – no blue skies and jagged grey peaks; just an endless sea of white. At the top of the Cwm, Ian and I get slightly irritated with one another. After climbing non-stop for over two hours and feeling pretty tired, I stop a couple of times for Michael to take photographs, but each time Ian, at the back of the rope, hassles me to keeping moving after only about 30 seconds. Then the path branches and I take the one which looks like a shortcut, only to find it arrive at the edge of a large crevasse. The “shortcut” then loops round to join the original path at almost the same point where it left it.

Ascending through the icefall

“Mark, you've taken the wrong path,” says Ian, at the back of the rope. This seems obvious, so I assume Ian is trying to wind me up.

“Would you prefer to lead yourself,” I ask, in the spirit of banter, but only just. Whereupon Ian turns around and starts trying to lead us back the other way around the circle that I've just completed!

We arrive at Camp 1 shortly after 9am, the quickest we've done it yet, and we're all friends again. The sun dimly penetrates through the cloud cover and heats the tent up rapidly. This is the fourth time we've been here now, and every time there's been a period of two or three hours over midday when it's been too hot to do anything but lie in the tent and sleep – something which has been very easy indeed.

We see figures on the Banana Ridge on their way up to Camp 2 again, but we think most people are now waiting for our Sherpa boys (and Jagged Globe's high altitude porters) to go up above Camp 3 first to fix ropes and break trail. Given the very tight summit window now, it looks like it will be busy up there on the 14 th . Frustratingly, at 3 o'clock it starts snowing, and we all think, “here we go again”, but it only lasts an hour and is followed by sunshine, so there's no harm done. However, during the 6 o'clock radio call with Phil at Base Camp, David Hamilton, who is leading the Jagged Globe team up at Camp 2, comes over the air and puts a bit of a dampener on things.

“Here at Camp 2 it's been very windy all day. Looking upwards it's going to be difficult to get to Camp 3 and dangerous to go any higher,” he says.

We begin thinking we're going to be driven back by the wind, and that this summit attempt is doomed. Afterwards I step outside our tent and gaze around the Gasherbrum Cwm, something I can never tire of doing. I can see what David means. Here at Camp 1, all is tranquil and the sky above is predominantly blue. But some of the summits, such as G4 and G1, have some nasty black clouds hanging over them, and G2 itself has very fast-moving grey clouds passing left to right across the whole mountain above the shoulder where Camp 3 is situated.

We turn into our sleeping bags in somewhat sombre mood, expecting to be awoken at 4am tomorrow morning by our companions, who are intending to leave Base Camp on their summit push at midnight.

My alarm wakes me up at 5am after a good night's sleep at Camp 1. My immediate thought is that Phil, Gordon and Arian were expected to arrive an hour ago and I didn't hear them, but no more than a minute later voices outside the tent allow us no further respite.

“F--- me, that was tiring,” I hear Arian say.

“I'm just going to jump in here for an hour or so,” Gordon says.

“Guys, let's stop for a short rest, get our down suits on and then move on, ‘cos it's f---ing freezing,” says Phil. “It sounds like everyone else is still asleep.”

Like hell we are, with the racket they're making. They left at half past midnight from Base Camp, and it sounds like they're in a bad way. I can hear Arian throwing up. Then he climbs into the tent with Phil and I hear his voice again.

“I think I'm hypothermic.”

“Then get your down suit on, quick,” Phil replies. “F---, I think I've got giardia. I shat myself twice on the way up.”

I assume he means that he relieved himself by the side of the trail, but later learn it was so cold that he did it on the move inside his clothing. Meanwhile, we don't hear another word out of the usually garrulous Gordon. I look at my watch and see that it's reading -10º C. This is the minimum its thermometer goes down to, so it could be much colder. It's still dark, and the moment just before dawn is always the coldest part of the day. I'm glad we had an easy walk up yesterday, and really can't understand why Phil, Gordon and Arian decided to make it hard for themselves by leaving at midnight and climbing through the night.

I put on a few warm clothes, pull the gas canister out of my sleeping bag, lean forward and light the stove in the porch of our tent. The sound of it roaring into life attracts the attention of Phil and Arian in the adjacent tent, and I offer to make them hot drinks. Michael and I filled the stuff sack of our tent with snow before we went to sleep, so we have plenty to melt for water without my having to get up. An hour later Arian has warmed his insides with hot grape juice and is ready to leave for Camp 2 with Phil. It's still very cold at 6am, and Michael, Ian and I pack up in leisurely fashion and leave when the sun comes up at 7am. Gordon is still flat out inside his tent and says he'll come later, and Philippe and Gorgan, who both said they'd leave at 6am, have still not arisen.

Despite the cold, it's another glorious day – clear skies and very little wind. We plod slowly up the lower slopes of Gasherbrum II, and I stop to take a great many photos as Ian, who doesn't really know the meaning of slow plod, starts pulling away from us. We pass a party of Iranians on the first fixed rope section, and are surprised to catch up with Phil and Arian, who left Camp 1 an hour before us, just below the Banana Ridge. We complete the rest of the ascent together. The ridge is in good condition again, and we plod slowly up steps on slopes of 45 to 55 degrees. It's a great setting, and we pause to admire the view at the top, out over the whole of the Gasherbrum Cwm and down to the Abruzzi Glacier at Base Camp, with a line of climbers edging up the ridge below us.

We complete the short horizontal ridge and descend the few metres into Camp 2, behind the rock buttress, just before 10.30. Again, it has felt like a straightforward ascent and we're full of confidence, but for the uncertain weather. Up above us we can see figures on the way up to Camp 3. There are clear views up to the summit, and although the thin wispy clouds flying off the rock pyramid demonstrate that there are some very strong winds up there, Phil thinks we can still summit in these conditions. The mood is upbeat again.

Today passes in very similar fashion to yesterday, just 500 metres higher up. Sun beats down on the tent in the early afternoon and we try to snatch some sleep, but with Phil, Gordon, Arian, Ian, Philippe and Gorgan all camping right next to us there's too much conversation to sleep like we did yesterday. At about 3 o'clock it clouds over and starts snowing, but like yesterday it barely lasts an hour before the sun comes out again.

Phil and Arian at Camp 2 with Gasherbrum I behind

But as Michael and I sit in the tent that afternoon enjoying our freeze-dried roast turkey with potatoes and stuffing, Phil does the 6 o'clock radio call with Jagged Globe and Gombu, who is up at Camp 3 with Pasang. We now have conflicting weather reports, one of which says the next couple of days are going to be bad, but there is calmer weather following, and the other says the weather will be OK tomorrow, but high winds after. Neither of these are favourable for a summit attempt in two days' time, and any more snow could make the slopes above us avalanche-laden again. Phil agrees to contact Gombu again at 7am tomorrow morning for an update on conditions at Camp 3 before making any more decisions.

There is snow in the evening here at Camp 2, however, making the slopes above unstable again, and at 8.30pm I hear a small avalanche very close by. Chances are we're going to have to beat a retreat. Bummer.

A morning of waiting. Here at Camp 2 there's been 10 to 15 centimetres of snow overnight. It was a very mild night with little wind, but conditions are overcast above. Gombu joins the call at 7am to say it's windy up at Camp 3, but he and Pasang are going to try and fix ropes to Camp 4. By 8.30 the situation has changed again, however. The sun comes out briefly at Camp 2 but things appear to be worsening above. Regular avalanches, at least six of them, come down the face above, and although none are on the trail itself it's clear conditions are unstable. Then Gombu comes over the radio to say it's now very windy up there and advises that nobody should think of ascending to Camp 3. Phil orders them back to Camp 2 but tells them to leave the fixed ropes in place. Although things seem over for the time being, there's still a very slim hope we can go up later if the weather improves.

The mood is not improved when Phil, sheltering inside his tent, receives a call on his satellite phone from his wife to say that a Korean and a German climber have died on Nanga Parbat, 100 miles away across the Karakoram. The Korean woman Go Mi-Sun had just completed her eleventh 8000 metre peak and was due to come to Gasherbrum afterwards, where the rest of her team is already waiting for her. Phil's wife believes both fatalities occurred on descent from the summit, which sets us speculating as to whether they were due to the jetstream winds that we're experiencing just a few miles away.

At about midday we decide to retreat from the mountain. The weather has now become atrocious, and we find ourselves leaving in a blizzard. To make things more difficult, everybody seems to be retreating at once, and there are about 30 or 40 people heading for the Banana Ridge. I don't know where they all came from, for Camp 2 comprises only a handful of tents, or why they all decide to retreat at exactly the same moment as we do when they've had all morning to assess the weather, but it seems obvious to me most teams on the mountain now seem to be taking their cue from Phil. All morning his voice has been the one we can hear outside the tent as he talks over the situation on the radio with Gombu and David Hamilton, and when he told us to pack our kit up for descent, it seems everybody else huddled inside their tents began packing at the same time.

At the top of the Banana Ridge looking down

This is the second time I've found myself descending the Banana Ridge in horrible powdery snow conditions, and the presence of so many people makes it far more traumatic than last time, when the ropes were clear and I was able to abseil pretty much all the way down without a care in the world. We trudge the few steps up to the horizontal ridge in a whiteout and painfully slowly. On the narrow ridge the reason for this is revealed: an elderly German climber has lost his nerve and instead of coming back down to easier terrain to let the queue of people behind him past, he cowers on the ridge as one-by-one we try and get round him, Ian first, then Arian, then me. Each of us has to hold onto the rucksack of the person in front as they detach themselves from the fixed rope, step down into the snow beneath the ridge to reach around the German climber, and reattach their carabiners to the rope before stepping back up onto the ridge. It's a nerve-wracking operation, and all the while a chill wind cuts across us.

At the top of the Banana Ridge the person in front of Ian is abseiling off the first rope, so he has to wait until the rope is clear. In the powdery snow conditions abseiling is much the safest way to descend, but there are now people queuing up on the horizontal ridge behind us, and Phil shouts for Ian to drop down the Banana Ridge as quickly as possible so that everybody can get out of the wind. So, again, I begin the painstaking descent, facing into the slope and edging the front points of my crampons down step-by-step, feeling for a stable foothold and praying that the powdery snow doesn't give way beneath. I yearn to be able to abseil down, but I know this means nobody above me would be able to share the rope with me, and I would have to keep the queues of people waiting behind me until I reached the bottom of my rope. This is fine when the ropes are clear, but with so many people waiting in precarious footholds it would be selfish and dangerous to keep them waiting. Yet I know to front-point all the way down the 200 metres of the ridge I will find extremely difficult, if not impossible.

But if I'm still thinking of abseiling to the annoyance of people behind me, Phil soon gives me reason to change my mind in his customary no-nonsense manner. The person in front of Ian is abseiling all the way down, and doing it very slowly.

“These people shouldn't be on the mountain,” Phil shouts down. “They should learn to f---ing climb before they come here. Even on Everest people are better than this.”

I know where he's coming from, but I have doubts whether I'm a good enough climber myself to downclimb the entire ridge in these conditions. To speed us up, he shouts down to us to do a “forward rappel”, but I don't know what one of these is.

“What's a forward rappel?” I shout back up.

Gordon is next but one behind me and replies on Phil's behalf. “Put your ice axe away and face outwards from the slope, and walk down using the rope as a handrail, but don't put all your weight onto it.”

This is easier said than done, as my crampons keep balling up with fresh snow, losing any grip I once had, and with my ice axe tucked away inside my harness I'm unable to bang it against my boots to dislodge the snow. Three times I fall during the descent, and would be a-goner but for the fixed ropes. The first two occasions are when I'm trying to forward rappel, which I find impossible and simply lose my footing. On the second of these I find myself swinging embarrassingly in a wide arc across the face for several metres before I'm able to find any purchase with my crampons and inch my way back onto the ridge. After this I abandon the forward rappel, face back into the slope and resume front-pointing with my ice axe in hand, but I find it very hard work, both mentally and physically, as I tip-toe down with no safe places to stop, putting great strain on my calf muscles. Poor Arian, descending immediately below me, has the additional hazard of expecting any moment to get a crampon in his head as the idiot above him loses his grip and takes another tumble.

My third fall I put down to sheer exhaustion. I'm near the bottom of the slope when I simply lack the strength to keep a toehold with my crampons. The slope is very steep now, and I let go of my ice axe and let it dangle on my harness so that I can grab the rope with both hands and haul myself back up to regain a toehold.

“Right, that's it,” I say, partly to Arian but mainly to myself. “F--- what Phil says, from now on I'm abseiling.”

But now a Polish climber immediately behind me is getting fed up with my incompetence. As I wait for Arian to clear the rope below me so I can abseil, he gets impatient with me.

“Please, this is the last rope. Can we climb down?”

“OK,” I reply. “I was going to abseil, but I'll try.”

I manage to descend the next rope without falling, but it turns out not to be the last one. Exhausted now, and seeing that Arian has vacated the rope below, I attach my figure-of-eight and slide down to the bottom of the ridge. Here it turns a corner on a new rope. I try to abseil down this one, but have difficulty swinging round the corner in my tired state. By now the Polish climber has caught up with me again and is shaking his head.

“No, it's easy. Easy path!” he says.

I look down and see that he's right. Sheepishly I let him pass, detach my figure-of-eight and follow him down the slope to a flatter area where I unhitch my rucksack and flop exhausted into the snow.

The remainder of the descent to Camp 1 is easier and less nerve-wracking, but the danger of slipping has not been reduced. All of us are having problems with our crampons balling up with snow, and the benefits of wearing them are debatable in these soft, powdery snow conditions. Some people even take theirs off, but this doesn't appear to make it any easier for them, either. Constantly I find myself banging the snow off my boots with my ice axe, only to find great football-sized chunks have built up again just a few paces later. Everyone is sliding around on their backsides, and at one point I hear a cry behind me and turn around to see Tarke come flying past. He makes no attempt to arrest himself with his axe, and simply sits back and toboggans down. Within seconds he's at the bottom of the slope while the rest of us struggle on down. It's oddly reassuring to discover that a man who's climbed six 8000 metre peaks finds it no easier to keep his footing than I do, though perhaps Tarke has merely taken the sensible option. Meanwhile, all of us walk past members of the Jagged Globe team, who have chosen to abseil down even this gentler section of the slope.

I limp into Camp 1 at about 2.30. Here we have a short rest and leave most of our things for next time we come up here. None of us relishes the thought of a fifth trip through the icefall.

At 3.15 we leave to continue down to Base Camp. I share a rope with Michael and Ian again, and decide not to wear my crampons until the intricate section, so useless had they become in the freshly fallen snow. Michael is leading this time, and finds a bit of role reversal in operation. He sets off very slowly, so I tell him to speed up a little if he prefers, as I'm usually the slowest member of the team. But a few minutes later Ian, at the back of the rope again, shouts for him to slow down. What's going on? It's usually the other way round, but then I notice that Ian is carrying a big rucksack full of equipment and I remember. He needs to carry all of his equipment back to Base Camp because he's due back in the UK by the end of the month. His expedition is now over, but first he needs to get down safely. Towards the bottom of the icefall he puts his leg through a snow hole. This is a common occurrence in the icefall, and Michael and I wait patiently for him to extricate himself. But five minutes later he is still in the same position as Phil, Gordon and Arian arrive on the second rope. Snow has collapsed around Ian's leg and glued it in place, so Phil helps to dig it out for him and we move on.

At 6.15 we stagger into Base Camp, tired out and in low spirits. The weather and my difficulties on the technical section of the climb have put me at a low ebb. Although we still have three weeks here, I'm now starting to face the very real prospect that we may not get a serious attempt at either of these mountains. Veikka Gustafsson has also retreated off Gasherbrum I, and so far Ueli Steck's superhuman solo ascent of Gasherbrum II on the 9 th is the only summit on any of the Gasherbrums this year. Word is filtering into us that teams are bailing out of K2 and Broad Peak as well, and although Nanga Parbat has just seen 10 summits, its 2 deaths are a high price to pay.

It's looking like a bleak season in the Karakoram.