Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2's Deadliest Day (14 page)

Abruzzi and Cesen Routes (
opposite
):
The weather on K2 allowed a climbing window of just three days, forcing a crowd of mountaineers to try for the summit at once. They took one of two routes, which converged at Camp 4.

The Abruzzi, the most popular route, traces the mountain’s southeast spur. It has
four camps
: at 20,300 feet, 22,000 feet, 24,000 feet, and 26,000 feet. Past Camp 1, a 45-degree slope rains rocks. This stretch almost killed Wilco in 1995 and Ger in 2006. Climbers must clear it in the early morning when the ice is firm. Next, they face House’s Chimney. Free-climbing this rock flue with a pack is impractical, so mountaineers ascend using a rickety ladder and a loom of fixed lines. Camp 2, above, is a wind-scoured platform that backs into a headwall. The route then claws toward the Black Pyramid, a 2,000-foot wall of granite-gneiss, with Camp 3 perched on top. Approaching the Death Zone, the route flattens onto the Shoulder, a glacial saddle reserved for high camp.

The Cesen route is longer and more technical but safer. It avoids some rockfall areas. From Base Camp, the Cesen follows a ridgeline that initially seems as gentle as a ski slope. The first camp, at
about 19,000 feet
, is jammed behind a butterfly-shaped outcropping. From there, a rock wall at
20,300 feet
shelters Camp 2 from wind and avalanches. Snaking around the wall, the route plows upward, fanning into a monotonous incline called the White Desert. Camp 3 is pitched above a hump of gneiss at
23,500 feet
. A steep ice field and a rock spire are the last obstacles before the Cesen joins the Abruzzi.

From Camp 4, the common camp on the Shoulder, the combined routes approach the Bottleneck. Seracs hulk above this channel like prows of tanker ships. Lines of climbers crowd the narrow passage. Once through the Bottleneck, the route swerves diagonally across K2’s southeast face along the Traverse. A massive lump of ice called the Snow Dome bridges the Traverse with a crevassed snowfield. From there, a ridge leads to the summit.

During the logistical meeting, the group chose Shaheen Baig to supervise the men who would break trail and fix ropes through the Bottleneck. Each large team contributed support climbers. The Koreans volunteered Pasang Lama and Jumik Bhote. The Serbians assigned two Balti high-altitude porters,
Muhammad Hussein
and
Muhammad Khan
. Chhiring Dorje represented the American team; Pemba Gyalje represented the Dutch. This advance team of Pakistani and Nepali climbers would start from Camp 4 at midnight and scale the Bottleneck before dawn.

A second wave of climbers planned to set off an hour behind the lead team. If all went well, the fixed lines would be in place by the time they reached the Bottleneck. Another six hours of breaking trail and they’d be on the summit. “We should turn around by 2 p.m.,” Shaheen said. If deep snow clogged the Bottleneck, the climbers might take an extra hour, “but no one should continue up after 3.”

Everyone would set their radios to frequency 145.140 MHz. The teams agreed to share willow wands used to mark the route, as well as
rope, ice screws, and pickets
. Mr. Kim anointed his teammate, Park Kyeong-hyo, as equipment manager. He would check in with each team and confirm that they had brought the necessary gear. “Everything was decided in a systematic way, every small detail,” recalled Pemba Gyalje. He felt confident about the plan.

Few recognized the cultural crevasse beneath the slick organizational surface. The advance team was dangerously diverse: Shaheen spoke Wakhi; the two Muhammads, Balti. These Pakistanis communicated in Urdu, a third language, which Shaheen translated into English for the Nepalis to understand. The Nepalis, in turn, played their own linguistic hopscotch. Pasang and Jumik’s first language was Ajak Bhote; Chhiring’s was Rolwaling Sherpi tamgney; Pemba Gyalje’s was Shar-Khumbu tamgney. They used Nepali to communicate among themselves. Information could easily become garbled as it passed through four linguistic layers, not to mention the crackle of a radio. Furthermore, only Jumik could communicate with Park, the equipment manager, who spoke Korean. If one link in the linguistic chain broke—Shaheen, for instance—the Pakistanis would be completely unable to talk to the Nepalis.

The liaison officer of the Serbian team, Captain Sabir Ali, recognized the potential for breakdown. He made a list of the equipment the teams promised to carry and proposed a contract, insisting that each leader sign his name on the paper. But even after that, several climbers were still unsure of the particulars.

“I speak Tarzan English,” Marco said to Shaheen after signing. “I hope I understood.”

Shaheen shrugged.

Wilco soon regretted the decision to join ranks with all the other climbers. “I signed for it,” he recalled, “but I should have said, ‘I’ve never climbed with any of you. Why should I trust you based on nothing but your blue eyes?’ ” He didn’t voice this concern at the time. No one did. The summit was waiting, and the teams felt ready. As the meeting broke up, Ger switched on a boombox. It blasted Biffy Clyro’s rock ballad
Mountains
into the clearing sky.

8

Ghost Winds

Base Camp to Camp 4
Up the Abruzzi. Up the Cesen
17,388 feet to 25,800 feet
July 28 to July 31

T
wo hours before he left Base Camp, Chhiring blessed his ropes, smoking them with incense. He stuffed the coils in his pack below a cylinder of oxygen, stashed for emergencies. He placed a
mala
rosary of 108 gnarled bodhi seeds in his jacket. He’d use them for meditation at high camp. Beside the beads he put a Ziploc bag of
tsampa
, barley flour that his
lama
had blessed. He planned to scatter grain through the Bottleneck as an offering to the goddess.

Deep in his pack, beneath strata of energy powder and butane canisters, he carried an envelope of rock salt. His
lama
had told him to sprinkle it on his last meal before the summit—it would give him strength. Around his neck he wore a crimson thread called a
bhuti
. A gift from his
lama
, the
bhuti
had three charms attached. The most potent, a silver amulet, concealed a mantra stamped on rice paper. Lama Ngawang Oser Sherpa had forbidden Chhiring to open the amulet’s casing and examine the mantra inside. If exposed, the mantra’s power would evaporate, reversing Chhiring’s fortune. The
bhuti
’s second charm, an oblong bead cocooned in black electrical tape, prevented cerebral and pulmonary edema. The third, a cluster of knots, halted avalanches and deflected falling rocks. Chhiring tucked the
bhuti
and its charms under his Capilene shirt, next to his heart.

Like Chhiring, other climbers deliberated over what to carry. Provisions supplied warmth, orientation, and motivation, but everything added weight, so they packed needful things first: altimeters, batteries, cameras, candy, crampons, downsuits, duct tape, goggles, headlamps, helmets, ice screws, ice axes, lighters, nose guards, radios, ropes, sleeping bags, stakes, stoves, sunscreen, tents, toothpaste, and satellite phones. But everyone had different ideas of what was essential.

The Nepalis wore
bhuti
s similar to Chhiring’s, but charms differed. Pasang’s older cousin, Big Pasang Bhote, wore a pendant of red coral, symbolizing eternal life. He hoped it would relieve him of his recurrent nightmare in which a horned demon came to gore him in the stomach. Pasang’s other cousin, Jumik, wore a
bhuti
with a special weave to protect his teenage wife, Dawa Sangmu. Their baby was two weeks overdue.

Pasang usually kept two
bhuti
s: one to wear around his neck and another to slip beneath his pillow to dissolve nightmares. But as he left Base Camp, Pasang realized that he’d forgotten them both. At least he remembered the lucky ring. Its soft gold, soldered into a snake, coiled up his middle finger. The ring belonged to his mother, Phurbu Chejik Bhoteni, who lent it on the condition that Pasang return it to her in person.

Many climbers brought reminders of people they loved and hoped to return to. Serbian climber Hoselito Bite carried a photo of his four-year-old daughter, Maya. “I’ve grown a lot in two months,” she had told him via satellite phone before he left for the summit bid. “When you come back, you won’t recognize me.” Hoselito kept her photo in a locket wrapped in waterproof tape.

Marco kept his grandmother’s rosary inside the top lid of his pack. It was a peculiar inheritance. She had died when Marco was a child, and, on the day of her funeral, Marco had tiptoed to where her body lay. “The rosary was laced between her fingers,” he explained, “and I stole it.”

Dren carried a miniature Snoopy that his girlfriend, Mirjana, had given him at the airport in Belgrade. He bound the doll to the right strap of his pack. It reminded him of his pretty zookeeper and their home filled with reptile tanks.

Rolf wore a blue-gray cap his wife had knitted at Base Camp. His bride, Cecilie, wore her wedding ring on a chain, so she wouldn’t have cold metal around her finger, increasing the chance of frostbite. It was a replacement for the first ring Rolf had given her. En route to the South Pole, Rolf had removed his skis, knelt in the snow, and presented her with a ring fashioned of steel wire from a repair kit. With tears freezing on her face, Cecilie had agreed to marry him. She had worn the ring, which dug into her finger, until they returned to Norway, where Rolf replaced it with a white-gold band.

Nick, the climber from California, brought an iPod filled with a motivational mix of Coldplay, Radiohead, and The White Stripes. He liked to lip-synch, infuriating Wilco. Wilco carried a Thuraya satellite phone with fresh batteries and raised buttons that he could punch even if he were snow-blind.

Others carried intangibles. Hugues climbed with faith in Yan, his weather god; Hugues’s high-altitude porters, Karim and Jehan, who believed “no atom’s weight in earth or heaven escapes Allah,” both shouldered seventy-pound packs filled with Hugues’s food and bottled oxygen. Hugues’s dehydrated meals were not
halal
by Islamic dietary law but luxurious by mountaineering standards. The most appetizing was a silver packet of freeze-dried Bumble Bee chicken. With boiling water, it would swell into a juicy fillet.

At least one climber, Mr. Kim, itemized his gear with military precision, rejecting all items of superstition except for a single object. The leader of the Flying Jump was rumored to be carrying the lost quartz, the same rock that had caused a scuffle with the crew on Everest.

Chhiring’s friend Eric packed a portable pharmacopoeia. Aside from diuretics, steroids, antibiotics, and antivirals, the anesthesiologist carried several doses of alteplase, a clot-busting tissue plasminogen activator, designed to reverse severe frostbite. Each 50 milligram shot cost $1,375. The doctor wore a Capilene undershirt silk-screened with the motto: “
K2: A Little Shorter/A Lot Harder
.” A climber who asked not to be named brought JWH-018, a synthetic marijuana with ten times the punch of THC. The drug’s street name was “K2.”

Irish climber Ger McDonnell carried a crucifix, his grandfather’s pocket watch, an eighty-five-year-old whistle that had called four generations of McDonnells to the dinner table, and a vial of holy water mixed from Lourdes, Knock, and St. Bridget’s. Just before he departed, Ger assured his mother in a final blog entry that he had not misplaced the holy water, adding in Gaelic: “
T
á an t-am ag teacht
”—The time is coming.

Climbing an 8,000-meter peak resembles a siege, and over the years, two campaign strategies have emerged: expedition style and alpine style.

Expedition-style climbing
is akin to trench warfare. High-altitude workers scout the route, break trail, fix lines, and establish fixed camps, each higher than the last. Returning to Base Camp, they scoop up supplies and climb the mountain again, stocking the tents with food and fuel. Then, on the summit push, they climb to the camps again, escorting the clients through crevasse fields and up the slopes. With expedition-style climbs, clients frequently use oxygen during the long and expensive assault on the mountain, and many have no compunction about taking drugs to aid acclimatization.

Alpine-style climbing
is like a blitz. Elite teams with as few as two people sprint up and down the mountain as fast as their bodies allow; speed is safety. They pack light, only the bare essentials, and carry their tent between camps. They also adhere to a protocol called “fair means,” which rejects acclimatization drugs, high-altitude porters, and bottled oxygen. Alpine-style climbers who adhere to fair means are the real rock stars of mountaineering. They generally are highly skilled and experienced, and they attract considerably more attention and respect than expedition-style climbers.

True alpine style forgoes fixed lines, but hardly anyone attempts the purest form on K2. Mountaineers on K2, regardless of style, need to fix ropes. To do this, a lead climber, with a rope attached to his harness, starts up a pitch and creates a protection by driving in a snow picket, twisting in an ice screw, hammering in a piton, or looping a sling over a solid rock. Then the climber clips the rope through the protection, continues up, and adds more hardware as required by the terrain.

A well-placed anchor should hold on rock, but snow and ice are harder to predict. If the lead slips and the anchor holds, the belayer can quickly brake the rope, and his partner will only fall twice as far as the last anchor. To absorb some of the shock of a fall, ropes are designed to stretch, but that’s not always enough to avoid pulling out an anchor. The astute belayer knows whether to stop a fall instantly or to slow it more gradually, thus reducing the yank on the line.

With alpine-style climbing, the leader climbs to a suitable spot, puts in a solid anchor or two, and prepares to stand nearby to belay. The second climber then ascends. With expedition-style climbing, the ropes stay in place. The followers clip onto the fixed ropes with a jumar—a D-shaped device that bites the rope like a ratchet, sliding up but not down—and winch their way along the lines. If a climber slips, the jumar, leashed to the harness, stops the fall immediately. On descent, fixed ropes serve as a convenient hand line, and, on steep terrain, they provide an easy way to rappel down.

Expedition-style climbing might appear safer, but it isn’t necessarily. Hanging from knots that strangers have tied, many commercial expeditions’ clients don’t have lead-climbing experience or a clear understanding of climbing mechanics. Faster clients get caught behind slower ones, or climbers set out in groups, placing the weight of several bodies on a single anchor, which “increases the chance that somebody is going to blow up the whole thing,” as Wilco put it. Overloaded anchors pull out and then everyone goes down, initiating a death train. In 2008, all the climbers approached K2 in expedition style, but each team imposed its own ethos. The Flying Jump relied heavily on fixed lines, support staff, and bottled oxygen; the Dutch team abstemiously followed the fair-means rules of engagement.

Early on the morning of July 28, Chhiring, Pasang, and Shaheen left Base Camp as part of the lead team on the Abruzzi route. The snow was pitted and pocked, Chhiring recalled, “as though the goddess had swung a hammer” along the route. Ice screws had melted out or vanished. Fresh snow slides covered the bamboo stakes that marked supply caches, and sections of fixed lines, now buried, had become useless. Pulling them out could trigger avalanches. The climbers strung new ropes.

Pasang, breaking trail, stomped out bucket steps for the climbers to follow, testing for hidden crevasses and marking weak snow bridges with purple flags. When he reached camp, he realized that the jet stream had sent some tents sailing, leaving lonely platforms. So he pitched new tents.

Once the lines were reset, the rest of the climbers followed, using jumars attached by a line to each climber’s harness. The followers stepped in the lead climbers’ tracks to reduce the chance of setting off an avalanche or dropping down a crevasse. “You take a step. You breathe. You take another step. You breathe again,” explained Wilco. “Your whole mind is occupied with taking each individual step.” Using just an ice axe or a ski pole to balance, they climbed a distance roughly the equivalent of three Empire State Buildings on the first day.

To overcome the exertion, mountaineers use several tricks to stay strong at altitude. One method is to inhale deeply, pursing one’s lips and exhaling forcefully, as if blowing up a balloon. This is known as pressure breathing; physicians call it positive end expiratory pressure, or PEEP. Patients with emphysema or other breathing difficulties use this technique reflexively, and research shows that it improves gas exchange and prevents fluid buildup in the lungs. The pursed lips and forceful exhalation increase air pressure, which resuscitates the lungs’ air sacs, or alveoli, so they can expand, absorb more oxygen, and expel more carbon dioxide.

Many climbers also take rest steps, a gait with a momentary pause and knee lock. Greater weight rests on the leg when locked, not bent, and spares the calf and thigh muscles. The gait looks stiff, as though the climber were wearing stilts, but it postpones “Elvis leg,” or uncontrollable muscle twitching.