No Way Down, Life and Death On K2 (2010) (17 page)

After reassuring Heleen, Van Eck called the Dutch climbers in the tents at the real K2 Base Camp in Pakistan and they radioed up the mountain to Pemba Gyalje, who was waiting at Camp Four.

In the whiteout above the high camp, Van Rooijen's Thuraya rang and he greeted Gyalje.

The Sherpa asked him to describe his location.

“I really don't know where I am exactly,” Van Rooijen said. He squinted into the mist. There was snow and great hulks of rocks but nothing that struck him as familiar.

“I think I am near Camp Four.”

Gyalje said he and Cas van de Gevel were coming up to find him. He told Van Rooijen to climb down toward them.

“Come down but keep left,” Gyalje said. “Don't go right because that's the south face. We are coming up. We will shout.”

Van Rooijen climbed down through the snow, excited now. Surely they couldn't miss each other. He didn't know what he would do if this plan failed. He called their names.

“Cas! Cas! Pemba! Pemba!”

He could already imagine their reunion.

A dark figure appeared in the distance in the swirling fog but it turned out to be a rock. Van Rooijen saw another shape and climbed down toward it. “Cas!” Again it was the mountain playing tricks on him.

After descending a few more feet, he abruptly stopped, feeling uneasy.

As the fog shifted, he saw he was standing above a steep drop. He turned slowly, then retreated quickly back up the slope. He had been close to falling. He saw a way to the right and climbed down in that direction, though it took him among huge rocks.

He began to get the disturbing feeling that he had missed Van de Gevel and Gyalje. He stopped and realized it was true. The world around him was cold and empty; he was lost and alone again.

The feeling was devastating. And now Van Rooijen was afraid that in trying to reach his rescuers he had strayed onto the big southern face, far down the wrong side of the Shoulder. Continuing in this direction meant getting even more lost, or at some point slipping unnoticed into the thousand-foot gullies beneath him. But it would take too much effort to climb back the way he had come. He couldn't face it. So he went on.

As he climbed down, he called Heleen again. He was worried the call wouldn't go through on the satellite because there was often a difficult connection, but she picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you?” he heard her say. “Can you see any other mountains? Can you see Broad Peak?”

“I am sure I am at Camp Four,” he said abruptly. “Just tell Maarten. I am at Camp Four,” he insisted. Hanging up, he regretted his blunt tone.

He continued down. He wanted to breathe the air of the lower altitudes and he wanted water. He looked longingly at the snow. He knew the snow had no calories; you lost energy melting it inside your body, and once he started eating it, it would taste so good he wouldn't be able to stop. Still, he hacked out a chunk with his ice axe, rubbed it against his lips, and swallowed a few flakes. They burned his mouth, yet for a few glorious moments they quenched his thirst. To avoid blisters and numb his throat, the next time he dropped the snow directly down into his throat.

Wherever he saw a safe stretch of ice or rock in front of him, Van Rooijen put his boot there and stepped another few inches lower.
Down
,
down
, he told himself, despite the exhaustion he was feeling. He fell asleep, then woke up angrily and forced himself on. Then he came to a point where the mountain face sank beneath him in the fog and there was no place to put his boot. Not to the right or to the left or straight ahead.

Folding his legs, he sat down. He grabbed his knees closer, trying to keep in the warmth. He had, he thought, reached the end.

Sitting on the precipice, he rested his head on the stone behind him and he reflected that K2 was such a beautiful peak, but that now amid the dark rocks and clouds it had turned ugly. He was trapped in a nightmarish otherworld of shifting fogs and bottomless voids. This was a place no man or woman was ever meant to be.

He tried to call again on the Thuraya but the batteries were either too cold or dead. He saw a group of climbers nearby and called out to them for help, but they disappeared.

7 a.m.

U
p at the end of the summit snowfield, Marco Confortola and Gerard McDonnell followed the route Van Rooijen had taken lower around the edge of the serac. As they lowered themselves down, the two men could barely believe that the Dutchman had abandoned them. The altitude, the lack of oxygen, and the exhaustion must have finally driven Van Rooijen out of his mind.

Backing down several yards, Confortola saw three climbers off to the right. They were trapped in ropes and hanging several yards apart from one another against the rough ice on the side of the mountain. Some other lengths of old rope also hung down between the rocks. Confortola remembered the cries he had heard in the darkness the night before.

McDonnell was about eighteen feet above him, and Confortola called up to tell him to come and look at what he had discovered.

“Come here, Gerard!” he cried, his voice growing louder. “Come here!”

He couldn't tell who the climber at the top was. He was dangling headfirst down the slope. But Confortola recognized the big camera hanging around his neck. It was a German Rollei; one of the South Koreans in the Flying Jump team had owned a similar camera.

Confortola could recognize the climber at the bottom—he was a Sherpa. He had lost a boot; the man's left foot, exposed to the air, was covered only by a sock.

All three climbers seemed to be alive, though it looked to Confortola as if they were barely hanging on. He wondered why Van Rooijen had not stopped to help them. Maybe the Dutchman hadn't even noticed the climbers, although he must have passed close by. Van Rooijen had perhaps concluded that he couldn't do anything.

When Confortola looked down, he could see Van Rooijen about four hundred feet below them. He had descended rapidly but had now stopped and appeared to be peering tentatively over a stretch of steep rocks. McDonnell had come down closer to Confortola, and the two men whistled to Van Rooijen to tell him to change route, but it seemed he couldn't hear them.

Confortola, too, was doubtful about what he could do to help the trapped men. These guys had been hanging all night. Confortola and McDonnell had to think of themselves. But at the same time, Confortola thought, if the three men were going to die, it was better they died respectably, and not hanging upside down like carcasses.

McDonnell was already lifting up the head of the climber at the top, trying to make him more comfortable. He had a history of aiding mountaineers in distress—he had been awarded a Denali pin in 1998 for bravery on Mount McKinley and in 2003 he had helped an older Irish climber descend from near the top of Everest after his oxygen failed.

It took only a moment for Confortola to decide to help his friend. He knew that he could never have left these men.

Their first task had to be to relieve the suffering of the top Korean with the camera by turning him the right way up. They also had to untangle his harness, which was wrapped around his legs. Then they could lower him down to the other two climbers, where the slope was less steep.

The three climbers were hanging on a steep face of ice and snow. Confortola and McDonnell were a few yards away on a marginally less
steep incline, about 30 to 40 degrees. If they could untangle or cut the rope, they could lift the climbers across and make them more secure.

“Give me a hand so I can help these people,” said Confortola. “If you hold the head of the first guy up, I can try to get his harness off.”

They had to be careful because the climbers were dangerously intertwined. When they tried to pull one of the men closer, another swung out, threatening to take all three down with them. They also had to think of themselves because they were not protected by ropes. It was going to be a terrifying balancing act.

McDonnell braced himself and held up the head of the first climber. Confortola descended a few yards to test the state of the ropes and to see whether he could untangle them or whether it was safe to try to cut them. He realized, though, that the ropes were too tight to untangle, and they were supporting the climbers; severing them would cause the men to tumble down the mountain. He searched for an extra loose bit of rope he might use, and for some spare oxygen cylinders.

He saw that the two climbers at the bottom had oxygen cylinders. They were next to their backpacks among the ropes. But the men were missing oxygen masks, which must have been lost in the fall.

The second climber was unconscious, he discovered. When Confortola reached him, he initially thought it was a Sherpa. But he realized later that it was Park Kyeong-hyo, one of the South Korean climbers. From his harness, Confortola retrieved a yellow and gray knife. A few yards away a yellow Grivel axe lay on the ice. Confortola thought he might be able to use the knife and axe to do something with the ropes. Holding both like weapons, he climbed back up to a position a few yards above McDonnell and the uppermost Korean. There he cut ten yards of old rope from one of the spare lengths.

Dropping a few yards, he rammed the Grivel axe into a crack in the ice and secured the rope around it. He tied the other end of the rope around the Korean's waist, and then he opened the man's har
ness. He took the weight of the Korean from McDonnell and began to lower him down.

All this took a long time, more than an hour, it seemed, although Confortola wasn't sure how long. He and McDonnell had been exchanging only a few words as they worked, and Confortola now realized that McDonnell had gone quiet.

When he looked up, he saw that McDonnell was climbing back up the ice face toward the top of the glacier.

“Where are you going?” he called.

At first he thought his friend was climbing higher to take a photograph for evidence. But when the Irishman continued to climb past the ropes, Confortola became alarmed. He didn't know where his friend was going.

“Jesus! Come back! Jesuuus!”

There was no answer. Without turning around, McDonnell scaled the slope and disappeared around the edge of the serac.

Confortola was mortified. The altitude must finally have gotten to McDonnell's brain. No wonder, after everything he had been through. The bivouac. No oxygen. No water. The horror of the trapped climbers. His mind had been plunged into delirium and perhaps he thought he still had to reach the summit.

Confortola paused to consider what he could do now that he was left alone. He stared up at the top of the serac but McDonnell had really gone. He couldn't climb up after his friend. Should he descend now? Was he going to lose his mind like McDonnell?

The sun was bright but he was freezing, hungry, and so tired. Anger, however, gave him new energy. He climbed down to the first climber. He was on a less steep slope and Confortola secured him and propped him upright with a ski pole so that he could breathe more easily. He also lifted the second climber to a sitting position. He hadn't freed them from the ropes entirely because it was the ropes that were keeping them on the mountain.

He climbed down the final few yards to the Sherpa, who was awake. Confortola didn't know his name. The man was confused but of the three he was the least injured. His foot had been exposed for the entire night, and in a weak voice he begged the Italian to help him.

Confortola urged him to stay calm. The Italian took his own outer high-altitude glove from his right hand and pulled it over the man's left sock.

“I call for rescue with the radio,” he said to the Sherpa.

He had seen a radio microphone coiling from one of the climbers' jackets and he thought he could see the radio set down the slope, where it must have fallen on the ice. Confortola climbed down slowly, careful not to slip, and retrieved it.

When he held it in his hand, he shouted into the mouthpiece, and heard the voices of two Sherpas answering him.
Emergency!
he shouted. Confortola explained where he was and what had happened.
But I'm exhausted. It's impossible for me to help anymore. Come quickly
.

About this time, a strong avalanche roar sounded somewhere across the mountain, and Confortola realized he had to be quick. The serac was unstable.

He had spent three hours with the trapped climbers. It was going to take another four to get down to Camp Four. Now he climbed above the three men and shoved his own axe in the ice to give further support for the ropes. Then he left them and crossed down toward the Traverse, which yawned without fixed lines. He thought of the roar he had heard earlier and guessed that ice may have fallen from the serac and swept the lines away.

Confortola went vertical, scrambling out onto the slope beneath the serac on his crampon tips. He only had one outer glove. His feet felt heavy and numb. Because he had left his axe in the ropes with the three trapped climbers, he had to use the point of his ski pole as an axe to support him, thrusting it like a dagger into the ice. In that way, he pulled himself across, staring straight at the face, feeling the
frightening overhang of ice above him and not daring to look at the drop below.

He was relieved when the end of the Traverse came close. He wanted to get out from under the serac.

Here he found a length of what seemed like old rope that he followed down into the Bottleneck. It was still hard climbing, and he was exhausted, but it was easier than it had been in the Traverse. He felt some relief.

When he came off the rope, he paused, hot and thirsty. He wished he could rip off his heavy suit to get some air. Several yards down in the gully he noticed an ice axe lying in the snow. It had probably been dropped by another climber. It would be invaluable to him, but to get to it he would have to climb down and across the ice for twenty yards. As he climbed out to reach it, his boot caught on a piece of ice and he tripped.

Confortola rolled fast straight down the gully, bumping hard against the ice, screaming and thrusting his arms out and kicking his legs, desperate to stop himself. This was it. He knew he was going to die.

He rolled for about ten yards before he stopped himself. He lay back on the snow, breathing hard. He was alive.

Standing up slowly, he found his legs and arms were stiff but he was uninjured. He had lost his other glove, however.

He climbed down several more feet, though he wasn't sure exactly how far he went. He was not sure of distances anymore. He was close to the Shoulder, but still within range of any avalanche from the serac, when he heard an explosion.

Several hundred yards away, up at the top of the big glacier, a huge avalanche cloud burst from the head of the serac. The ice and snow poured down across the Traverse and pummeled into the rocks at the side of the Bottleneck.

There were big chunks of ice, tumbling and bouncing down over
the rocks, followed by hovering clouds of snow, rolling in a channel beside the Bottleneck but also beginning to spread out across the gully.

Confortola watched, transfixed, his ears filled with the great rushing groan of the avalanche. The ice river bounced and poured toward him: within a few seconds, surely, he would be engulfed. But the avalanche's momentum slowed, the snow cloud died away, and only a few tributaries passed close by, stopping about thirty feet away from him.

As the avalanche had poured down from the Traverse, he had noticed something yellow caught up in the ice. He thought he had recognized something. Gerard McDonnell had been wearing yellow and black climbing boots.

Now, a few yards away, there was a dark spot in the snow. When Confortola crossed down to it he saw blood streaked across the ice and human remains. He saw bits of brain and a human eye, a blue eye. He picked the eye up and held it for a moment in his hand, staring at it, and then he placed it back down again.

Confortola knelt in the snow. He felt hopeless. He thought about McDonnell, about the good times they had had in Base Camp.
Gerard. Jesus.
He couldn't be sure, and his mind was struggling to function properly in the altitude. But he thought that McDonnell had probably climbed up onto the top of the glacier after he had left the three trapped climbers and he had been hit by the avalanche.

After a few minutes, Confortola forced himself to stand and he climbed down.

He hated the mountain now and wanted to go home. But he was so tired that several minutes later, he stopped and lay down on his back in the snow.

He told himself he could not fall asleep. He had to fight the feeling that the mountain had finally gotten him. But it felt good to rest at last, to lay his head against the slope and close his eyes, forgetting what he had witnessed.

His hands burned with the cold, and he put them behind his head, tucking them inside his hood.

Clouds crept over the slope and slowly snow started to fall. Confortola didn't move.

What must have been minutes later, he shook himself awake.

“Marco! Marco!”

Someone was standing over him, calling his name, and trying to thrust an oxygen mask over his face.