Thieves, Liars and Mountaineers: On the 8000 Metre Peak Circus in Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains (7 page)

It's snowing when I wake up this morning. We know that a storm is on the way, and we have to get down from Camp 2 to Base Camp for a few days' rest and to wait out the bad weather. It's -9º C in the tent when I wake up, and my fingers are cold as I perform the morning routine of putting on my harness and crampons. I know ropework is required this morning, however, so put on my thinner gloves which allow me some manual dexterity, rather than my nice warm down mitts.

At 7.45, while Tarke is collapsing the tents at Camp 2 and marking them with bamboo wands in preparation for the storm which is sure to bury them, I slowly move on up the short snow slope which leads into Camp 2. At the top of the slope is a narrow ridge leading to the rock buttress overlooking the top of the Banana Ridge. This morning this horizontal ridge is barely discernible among the sea of white that envelops my vision. The footprints of yesterday have been obliterated by fresh snow, and all I have to guide me along it is the thin dark line of fixed rope which I clip into with my safety carabiner. Although this will be sufficient to protect me in the event of a slip, even so I have no wish to find myself dangling on my harness above the 500 metre drop to the Gasherbrum Cwm which exists on either side of me, so I make my way very slowly along it, making certain every step I take lands on a bed of solid snow.

After two rope lengths I reach the top of the Banana Ridge and look down it. This is where the serious climbing starts, and it looks like I'm going to have to descend this formidable 200 metre feature in a howling blizzard. I begin by facing outwards, looking down the ridge and carefully descending yesterday's steps while clutching the fixed rope with one hand and digging into the snow with the prong of my ice axe in the other. The steps are disappearing fast, however, and as fresh snow slides beneath my feet it quickly becomes clear this is not a safe way to descend. I turn around and face into the slope. I now have a third point of contact with the slope as I look behind and down, searching for the remains of steps, and carefully lower myself down using the front points of my crampons to dig into the snow. My only safety precaution beyond these three points of contact – my crampons, my ice axe, and my gloved hand on the fixed rope – is a carabiner clipped into the fixed rope and attached to my harness. Although this will save my life by preventing me tumbling 500 metres to the Gasherbrum Cwm, I will still fall all the way down to the next anchor point, which could be an entire rope length if I happen to be at the top of one when I slip. This would certainly put the willies up me for the rest of the descent, and I'm determined not to let it happen.

I make painstaking progress and my fingers become numb with cold, causing my grip on the fixed rope to weaken. Even so, as drifting snow howls across my face, I know I have to forget about the cold and the rate of progress and continue down step by step – it will take as long as it takes, and there's little I can do about it.

I've descended a little more than one rope length when I notice Tarke and Michael appear at the top of the Banana Ridge above me and begin following me down. The front-pointing is tiring on my calves, and every so often, when I reach a step big enough to accommodate my whole foot, I stop and rest. Then I hear Tarke shout something down to me. I look up and Michael repeats the instruction.

“Mark, try abseiling.”

Until now I'd believed fixed ropes to be too tight to abseil off, but I see Michael descending quickly towards me. I reach behind my back to unclip my figure-of-eight loop from my harness. I'm at the top of the third fixed rope, but when I try to snatch a bite out of it to attach the figure-of-eight I find it too tight and struggle to grab enough. Michael is much closer to me now, and I resume front-pointing, but this time much more quickly, almost recklessly. After I've descended another ten metres I look down the ridge and see how much further I have to descend in this painstaking fashion. It's disheartening and it feels like it's going to take hours this way. I try to attach the abseil device again. This time the weight of my descent on the fixed rope has stretched it a little, and I'm able to attach the device without difficulty. This is a massive relief – not only is abseiling much quicker, but also much safer and less tiring as I lean back and let the rope slip through my figure-of-eight loop.

It takes about ten to twelve abseils to reach the bottom of the Banana Ridge, but now I can enjoy myself, and when I turn the corner to reach its base and wait for Tarke and Michael to catch up, I even find my fingers have warmed up again. We have a straightforward, if somewhat frustrating, descent to Camp 1 from here. The slope is now covered in fresh snow a few inches thick, obliterating most of the old tracks and making for a tedious descent, with ending up on your backside in the snow a constant hazard. As the snow continues to fall we pass a lone nutcase on his way up. With a storm forecast for the next few days it seems inevitable he will be stranded at Camp 2 in dangerous conditions for several days – if he doesn't reach the Banana Ridge, look up it and have the good sense to turn around.

At last we reach the bottom of the face and trudge across the Gasherbrum Cwm to Camp 1. Here we pause only to drop off our sleeping bags and mats before roping up and continuing our descent. It's 10.20 when we leave, and this time our descent to Base Camp is slower. The wind continues to blow spindrift across our faces, and although the continued cold weather ensures snow bridges and ice towers in the South Gasherbrum Icefall remain intact, fresh snow begins to cover old tracks and brings the new risk of hidden crevasses getting covered in snow. We stay roped up all the way down and are tired when we trudge into the safety of Base Camp at 1.30. The bottom section of the icefall is a very dispiriting obstacle for tired feet, as there are almost as many ascents as descents as snow ridges and ice seracs need to be surmounted. The snow becomes quite slushy towards the bottom, and I have a problem with my crampons balling up with fresh snow. I have to keep asking Tarke and Michael to stop so that I can bash the snow off with my ice axe.

As we walk into Base Camp, Michael has a more serious problem when he looks down at his feet and notices one of his crampons has disappeared. Behind him on the rope I didn't notice it fall off, but I do remember being surprised to see a single crampon lying in the snow at a new campsite a big group of Iranian climbers who have just arrived in Base Camp were pitching on the moraine beyond ours. Michael rushes back and is relieved to discover it's his crampon. A missing crampon would have meant the end of his expedition. Ehshan, one of the kitchen assistants, brings over a pot of orange juice, and sweet and sour with rice is ready for us in the dining tent. Phil tells us we now have four or five days of rest ahead of us at Base Camp before our summit push.

I seem to be becoming prudish in my old age. At dinner this evening, fed up with the amount of unnecessary swearing bashing across my ears across the table, I suggest introducing a swear box to pay for alcohol.

“F--- you, c—ksucker,” says Gordon. “That's a f---ing bulls—t idea. They did that where I worked once, and it ended up costing me 200 bucks. I wasn't allowed to make any sexist comments either, and all the girls in the office turned up to work showing cleavage and bending over to open bottom drawers. It drove me mad!”

Poor Gordon.

Day 1 of doing nothing, and for most of the day it's easy. As I lie in my tent and listen to the snow pounding on the roof, it's clear nobody's going anywhere for a while. I finish reading my book
Shogun
, all 1243 pages of it, and am glad of it. It's full of death, people having their heads chopped off with samurai swords, and people committing suicide by slicing their own bellies open and watching the entrails spill out onto the floor. I prefer reading books with sympathetic, likable characters, and am looking forward to returning to my classics.

Gazing up at Gasherbrum I

At about 5pm, after snowing non-stop all day, the sun comes out and everyone emerges from their tents to look out upon a fantastic winter mountain scene. Michael takes down his tent and re-erects it on a flatter platform. Phil, whose attempts to charge the big battery he's brought along from various solar panel's he's erected outside his tent has become something of a comical Keystone Kops-style theme over the last week or so, is absolutely delighted. Several of us take the opportunity to photograph this very different looking landscape. Since the whole team is here in one place for the first time in a few days, we also have a group photograph on the puja platform with Gasherbrum I in the background.

Day 2 of doing nothing. It's fine weather for most of today, but due to the fresh dump of snow over the last couple of days, we still can't go up the mountain until the snow's consolidated due to the risk of avalanches.

After washing some clothes I go for a wander up the moraine finger beyond the army camp with Ian and Michael to try and get an alternative view of Gasherbrum II, which can't be seen from where we're camped on the moraine. Unfortunately, although it's predominantly sunny there is a small amount of cloud in the Gasherbrum Cwm which obscures most of the mountains, including G2. Back in my tent it's absolutely sweltering. I try to read some of my latest book
Tom Jones
, but it's uncomfortably hot, so I spend most of the afternoon playing cards with Gordon, Gorgan, Ian and Michael in the dining tent. After Gordon spots me taking a sneaky peek at Gorgan's cards everybody spends the rest of the game trying to stitch me up. Thankfully they fail, and somehow I still manage to win the game.

The Finnish mountaineer Veikka Gustafsson and Jagged Globe leader David Hamilton join us for afternoon tea. Veikka is here to climb Gasherbrum I, and if he's successful it will be his 14 th and final 8000 metre peak, putting him into a select group of less than twenty climbers. We discuss the various weather forecasts available to us, which no longer seem to be correlating. The popular consensus seems to be that there may be one or two fine days ahead of us, but there will be a lot of new snow arriving on 6 th , and then clear weather afterwards. G2 is dangerously avalanche prone above Camp 2 after new snow, and Phil knows this only too well after he watched a group of German mountaineers trigger an avalanche there two years ago, killing two members of their party and effectively closing the mountain. There therefore doesn't seem to be much point budging from Base Camp onto G2 until the 7 th at the earliest.

“But that still means we could potentially summit on the 10 th or 11 th ,” says Phil. “We could go straight from Base Camp to Camp 2 like we did the other day. You were all strong enough to be able to do that.”

I don't know whether he's trying to show off to Veikka or David, but there are a few smirks around the table, and before any of us say anything he decides to qualify his statement.

“Actually we did it, but everyone was f---ed.”

We talk about the possibility of getting the route fixed on G1 while we wait for a weather window on G2. It's a steeper mountain than G2 and thus not as avalanche prone. David and Phil have been beavering away in meetings with other groups at Base Camp trying to get contributions for the rope fixing, and Phil now thinks they have enough rope to fix virtually the whole of G1. David has summited G1 before, and Veikka has been within 50 metres of the summit, so they discuss options. Veikka doesn't need the fixed ropes, but it seems he may be happy to wait for our Sherpas to go up there first and break the trail (I guess you don't climb all the 8000 metre peaks without knowing how to conserve your energy). Serap Jangbu is of course equally keen to get up there to complete one of his three remaining 8000 metre peaks.

West face of Gasherbrum I

One of David's team members called Paul has decided to go home because he's frustrated by their lack of progress on G2. It's a surprise because he's their strongest climber and has already summited Everest. They still have plenty of time left, and when the weather closes in like this there's no alternative but to be patient and wait at Base Camp for a summit opportunity.

“And Ali's gone home because of his frozen dick,” says Phil.

This has been a common talking point and always drawers roars of laughter every time it's mentioned, poor Ali.

“Ah, but that's a good reason for going home,” I reply.

Nobody's really sure the Ali story is true apart from Arian, who is adamant Ali told him explicitly about his frozen member.

“But you still haven't found out how he did it,” says Gordon.

“Well, you build a snow woman and try to shag it, what do you expect?” replies David.

At dinner one of our Sherpas, Pasang Lama, tells me about his ascent of K2 last year, on the night of a tragedy which killed a great many climbers. On August 1 st , 2008, 11 climbers died after a large serac above a feature called the Bottleneck Couloir collapsed, sweeping away the fixed ropes placed for the safety of inexperienced climbers. Pasang lost his ice axe, and his friend Chiring Dorje descended the couloir with Pasang attached to his harness. They were with a Korean team, three of whom died along with one of their Sherpas. It's clear he found the whole experience very traumatic, and he concludes by saying that K2 isn't a mountain anyone should attempt unless they're able to get themselves down. The same ought to be true for any mountain, but of course, it isn't. Having abseiled down the Banana Ridge on Gasherbrum II using fixed ropes, it would certainly have been an exceedingly risky business for me to descend that section without the security of the fixed rope, knowing that a slight slip could have sent me tumbling 500 metres to the Gasherbrum Cwm. I certainly wouldn't risk climbing the mountain without fixed ropes. Fortunately, in terms of objective danger the ascent of G2 is much safer than that of K2. Climbers have previously described the ascent of the Bottleneck Couloir, where the risk of falling ice is ever-present, as playing Russian Roulette. This is why I would describe K2 as a suicide mountain – even a very experienced climber has to take great risk, and is at the mercy of factors beyond his control. You wouldn't catch me having a go at it, not on your nelly.