No Way Down_ Life And Death On K2 Part 9

Hugues d'Aubarede's oxygen had run out before the summit. When Cas van de Gevel had pa.s.sed him on the Traverse, d'Aubarede wasn't sure he could go on. He was exhausted and his mind was filled with questions. Could he climb down? Should he stay where he was until daylight?

He remembered how he had almost missed the summit attempt. The bad weather had swept across K2 in the middle of July, forcing every expedition to push back their expected summit dates. But the contract of d'Aubarede's chief high-alt.i.tude porter, Qudrat Ali, expired at the end of the month. Qudrat had worked with d'Aubarede since they climbed Nanga Parbat together in 2005. He had been the Frenchman's guide on K2 in 2006, although he hadn't come to the mountain with him in 2007. Ali was tough and experienced. The second guide, Karim Meherban, twenty-nine, was Qudrat's cousin and a student from the same small town. They were both indispensable to d'Aubarede.

D'Aubarede's flight from Islamabad back to France left on August 8 and the journey to the Pakistani capital could take eight days. Eventually he concluded there was going to be no weather window opening up. He telephoned and brought the date of his flight forward and ordered up five porters from Concordia to fetch his belongings from Base Camp.

Gerard McDonnell and Wilco van Rooijen tried to persuade him to stay. They said their forecast showed the storms relenting around July 29. D'Aubarede called his friend Yan Giezendanner, who worked for the French government's meteorological service in Chamonix, who confirmed the better forecast.

"Is it possible for me, Qudrat?" he said when he found his HAP. "I want to get to the summit with Karim."

"You must try," Ali said. The guide knew how much getting to the top of K2 meant to d'Aubarede. "I hope you reach the top."

D'Aubarede called Mine in Lyon. "I have good news," he said.

"Do what you want," Mine said.

D'Aubarede called the airline to change his ticket back. Qudrat insisted he still had to leave-he had other clients waiting on another peak-so d'Aubarede hired a new high-alt.i.tude guide to replace Ali-Jahan Baig-whom Ali knew from Shimshal.

But once d'Aubarede believed he was going for the top, a creeping doubt had set in. He feared the lack of sleep that would come at the higher alt.i.tudes, the difficulty in breathing, the cold.

His friend Philippe Vernay in Lyon had tried to make d'Aubarede believe in G.o.d: If K2 was so beautiful it was because of G.o.d. But that was not the reason he was crazy about climbing. Yes, d'Aubarede fully appreciated the wonders of nature. But he didn't believe in G.o.d. Sorry, Philippe. He did, however, believe in something absolute, and that was probably what he was searching for.

But this year the climbing had been more difficult than ever. It was hard for a sixty-one-year-old. How his back hurt on the slopes, especially the steep slopes below Camp Two. At the end of the day it was hard just to bend to get inside the tent. He found sleeping increasingly tough, even at Base Camp, where he had an inch-thick mattress between his body and the glacier, but especially at the higher camps. He gulped aspirin to ease the blaring alt.i.tude headaches that squeezed at his temples.

He knew about the dangers. He knew all about death. In July 2005, he had shared a tent with his friend Bernard Constantine on Nanga Parbat. Three months later, on the slopes of Nepal's Kang Guru, Constantine had disappeared under an avalanche with six other Frenchmen and five Sherpas. Last year on K2, his friend Stefano Zavka, exhausted and alone, walked off the side of the Shoulder on the way down and was never seen again. This year, when d'Aubarede made the pilgrimage to the Gilkey Memorial, he studied the plaques stamped with the names of the dead. He said out loud that he hoped he would not be there one day.

He missed his family. He kept in touch with them almost every day. He had a friend back in Lyon, Raphaele Vernay, Philippe's wife, who kept a blog for him. And he took comfort reading in his sleeping bag the text messages his friends and family sent him on his satellite phone.

Back in July, his younger daughter, Constance, had sent him a bottle of Chartreuse and a note. She told him the latest plans for her wedding. The wine and champagne were purchased, the church at Houches reserved.

She warned her father not to be late. She said she didn't want to walk to the altar alone.

Now, on the Traverse, as d'Aubarede watched Cas van de Gevel disappear into the distance, he reminded himself that he had to descend from the clouds to share his success with his friends and his family. He had to get back for Constance's wedding.

D'Aubarede turned on his Thuraya and tried his family in France but he could not get through. A moment later, he stood up and followed the Dutchman along the rope.

In the Bottleneck, Cas van de Gevel climbed several yards down the steep slope in the direction he had seen the body falling. He knew it was Hugues d'Aubarede.

He gazed ahead with his headlamp but he could see no trace of d'Aubarede.

When he looked back up, two lights were quivering among the rocks a few hundred yards above him. He thought they probably belonged to the Korean climbers who were following behind. He braced himself with his ice axe and cupped his hand to his mouth.

"Someone fell!" he shouted, hoping they would help. "Hugues has fallen!"

Whoever it was that was following him down, there was no answer. They were too far away to hear him.

He couldn't waste any more time searching. A few minutes later, the slope lessened and he could turn around to face down the mountain as he climbed.

Near the bottom of the Bottleneck, he saw two headlamps approaching slowly up the gully. They turned out to belong to two Sherpas or HAPs, who had come out from Camp Four; they were so bundled up behind balaclavas and goggles that he couldn't tell who they were for sure.

He told them what he had seen and pointed to where the body had fallen.

"You look over there," he said. "Can you help?"

The two men walked away in the direction he had pointed but they seemed to be in no rush.

As he approached Camp Four, Van de Gevel radioed Base Camp and spoke to Roeland van Oss. He told Van Oss he was okay.

Van Oss had been waiting all night for the climbers from the Dutch team to call in. He was pleased to hear from Van de Gevel.

"I am below the Bottleneck," Van de Gevel said. "I am safe."

"Okay, Cas," he said. "Good to hear from you."

Van de Gevel said he had no idea where the others in his team were. Van Rooijen. McDonnell. "We got dispersed," he said. He had seen something troubling, he added. "I think I saw someone falling down," he said. "You need to send someone up to find out what happened."

"You should get down to Camp Four as quickly as you can," Van Oss told him.

As Van de Gevel descended the Shoulder, the big light from Camp Four grew brighter.

He thought about Hugues d'Aubarede. He didn't know why d'Aubarede had fallen. Perhaps he had been concentrating so hard on climbing down the rope that he didn't notice when the line had ended. Or he had come off the rope successfully but then tripped on one of the ice blocks littering the slope.

When Van de Gevel reached Camp Four, it was some time around 2 a.m. He was so exhausted that he went straight to his tent. Van Rooijen had not come in yet, he saw.

He drank water thirstily and sank onto his sleeping bag.

Go Mi-sun's oxygen had finished just after the summit. Then she had had to start breathing the empty frigid air of the high mountain, which provided no energy or warmth at all.

When she reached the end of the Traverse, the line was cut, but she managed to turn down into the Bottleneck. She was surprised at the unusually thin rope playing through her hands but she followed it into the gully. Then, using her two axes, she navigated her way between the icefalls onto the Shoulder.

She was following Kim Jae-s...o...b..t by then she could no longer see his light. He was in front somewhere but his headlamp was facing forward.

The forty-one-year-old was a small, stocky, pretty woman, who had grown up in a small town about four hours outside of Seoul. She was single, and she lived in Seoul close to her sister and brother. Bouldering and ice and rock climbing were her main sports-she had been an Asian climbing champion for several years and had competed in the extreme sports championships, the X Games, in San Diego-but when she got older and put on weight (she had gained twenty-two pounds since 2003, she complained) she switched from sport climbing to mountaineering.

Now the night was especially dark and the wind started to pick up, so she decided to search for shelter from the wind, a large rock or something else that would protect her. Gradually, the realization dawned that she had made a huge mistake. She had lost the route across the spine of the Shoulder and had wandered instead down its side-probably the eastern side.

Luckily she hadn't gone too far down, probably a hundred feet or so. She was tough; she knew how to get out of tight situations. Once, on another mountain in the Himalayas, she had fallen 180 feet, shattering a bone in her back; she had been alone but she told herself she was not going to allow herself to die, and over several hours she had managed to crawl down to safety.

Now, laboriously, Go retraced her steps in the dark. But when she got back onto what she thought had to be the main part of the Shoulder, the night was still pitch black and featureless and Go had no idea where she was.

She called out Kim's name in frustration and shouted for help. She walked several yards forward, slowly dropping down the slope. But she was lost again. Rocks reached up on every side of her, black and ugly spikes. She remembered how when she was young and had first gone to the mountains, the leaves were so beautiful. But there was no beauty here, only rocks. The hard stone clunked against her axe. She swung her headlamp around, realizing she had no idea where to go.

After two hours, Chhiring Bhote and Big Pasang Bhote saw a distant light and heard a voice calling for help, and it was then that the two Sherpas saw Go Mi-sun.

She was stuck in rocks some distance from the main route. They shouted to make her understand they had seen her. "Didi!" they called.

"Didi is coming!" she called back.

As they got nearer, however, she pleaded with them to get her down, and they rea.s.sured her they were on their way.

When they reached her, one of the Sherpas lifted her shoulders while the other held her legs, and together they carried her out. They tied her safety harness to theirs with a rope and led her down.

When they arrived back at Camp Four after about 4:30 a.m., Kim was lying in his tent, dozing. He woke when the two Sherpas helped Go under the nylon flap. At first, when Kim saw Go's familiar face and realized how late it was, he was angry with his star climber. He cared for her, and she had risked her life. He wanted to know why she had taken so long to climb down. Go, who was still shaken by her experience, bowed her head and apologized, until with relief he comforted her.

Go was surprised when she saw that most of the other tents in the camp were still empty. She was not the last climber from the Flying Jump "A" team to return. Four other climbers were still missing. The battery on the Koreans' radio was not working, so she and Kim could not contact them. The two Sherpas waiting outside might have to continue the search.

Chhiring Bhote and Big Pasang went to their tent to try to rest. They were glad they had found Go, who was a good friend to them. They couldn't sleep, however. They drank water and then stood outside, staring at the mountain.

The night was clear. Headlamps were burning above the Traverse. The serac that had so violently severed the ropes was still active and could yet toss more ice down the Traverse and Bottleneck.

The two Sherpas started packing supplies again. Jumik-their brother and cousin-was out there somewhere.

Part III

SERAC.

Sat.u.r.day, August 2

Tiocfaidh Ar La. Our day will come.

-Gerard McDonnell, K2, 2008

CHAPTER TWELVE.

2 a.m.

Jumik Bhote had led the seven-man South Korean Flying Jump "A" team victoriously from the summit at around 7:10 p.m., carrying 230 feet of rope in his backpack.

Where there was a clear track and the snow was compact and safe, he anch.o.r.ed one end of the rope into the ground with a snow stake and the team members and other climbers plunged down it. The fit Sherpa brought up the rear and then climbed lower with the rope and fixed it in the snow again.

Bhote repeated the maneuver with the rope four or five times, bending and fixing and scurrying down, helped in his labors by Chhiring Dorje, the Sherpa from the American expedition. Eventually, the teams unclipped from the rope and climbed on independently, spreading out in the darkness. On the long snowfield, the two South Korean leaders, Kim Jae-soo and Go Mi-sun, rushed on ahead. As they disappeared into the shadows, Bhote was left alone with the last climbers in the Flying Jump team.

The three men had been so joyful on the summit, Bhote remembered. Before they had left for Pakistan, one of them, Park Kyeong-hyo, a twenty-nine-year-old from a mountaineering club in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang province, had written on the online bulletin board of his mountaineering club: "Now, it's not just a dream anymore. In some 150 days, we'll be climbing this mountain. Just imagine that. Isn't it fabulous?"

He had been good enough to climb Everest a year earlier, but now Park and the other two climbers-Kim Hyo-gyeong and Hw.a.n.g Dong-jin-looked like they were dying. None of them said a word. Hw.a.n.g had been part of the lead group that had left early from Camp Four to fix the rope up the Bottleneck. They just stared at one another dumbly from behind their climbing masks.

Bhote coaxed them onward. He was cold, too, and tired. Keep going! We must be quick! Please. Keep going! We must be quick! Please.

At the end of the snowfield, after searching for the way lower for a while, Bhote and the three Koreans dropped down toward the fixed rope that they hoped would lead them into the diagonal around the edge of the serac.

Slowly, they backed down on the ropes toward the Traverse. But after a few yards they stopped.

You have to go! Jumik shouted. Jumik shouted.

Finally, dangling on the rope, the three men underneath Bhote seemed unable to climb down another inch, no matter how much he urged them on.

He was worried about how long the rope would hold their weight, or whether there was danger of snow or ice crashing down from above.

Please!

Bhote's voice rang out in the cold darkness on the side of the mountain. He tried to focus-on the rope, the ice face, the lamps of the climbers below him-until he felt his own mind drifting away.

In Kathmandu, Jumik Bhote failed his school exit exam and started working on his older brother's fourth-hand family bus on the traffic-clogged streets of the capital, collecting five rupees each from the Nepalese pa.s.sengers and the tourists traveling to the hotels around the Kathmandu ring road. After a year or two the bus was so broken down that his brother sold it. Later Bhote signed up as a porter with the South Koreans.

Naw.a.n.g, the expedition cook, was from the same village as Bhote. He had introduced him to the Flying Jump team, warning him under his breath, "If you work for the Koreans, you have no future." But the unemployment rate in Nepal was more than 40 percent. This was good work for a poor man from the mountains.

In the spring of 2007, Bhote climbed Everest twice, once with the South Koreans, and became a favorite of Go Mi-sun, who gave him a digital camera. He was proud of that camera.

In the fall, the South Koreans asked him to climb with them on Shishapangma. He was worried about avalanches and he hesitated. No matter what blessings he called down, the G.o.ds would be unhappy. Yet by now his father back in Hatiya was dead from a gastric ulcer, his younger brother Chhiring Bhote was living with him in Kathmandu, and three more sisters had already left the countryside for the capital during the Maoist insurgency, in which the rebels had been rounding up anyone from the villages to fight the government. Jumik needed the money.

By now, he also had a partner, Dawa Sangmu, to support. He and Chhiring and their sisters all lived in their older brother's small apartment in the Boudhanath district near the stupa. The apartment had only four rooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a storeroom, and a small bathroom with a squat toilet. There were no beds, only mats, which during the day they packed away in the storeroom. He knew of no other route to success for a young man such as himself in Nepal. He didn't want to be like another brother of his, who had stayed behind in the village and was drinking himself to death on cheap rice wine, and died shortly before Jumik came to K2.

Bhote went to Shishapangma with Kim and the Koreans and it was a triumph. When he returned to Kathmandhu he had been promoted to lead Sherpa. To celebrate, Bhote spent $2,000 on a big, black secondhand Yamaha motorbike. Dawa got pregnant. She and Jumik moved into a new apartment, only a single room with a shared kitchen, but it was their own.

He still did not relish climbing in the mountains, but he realized they had been good to him. He took other jobs, guiding a banker from New York on a rapid ascent up Mera Peak in the Hinku valley. He learned a bit of Korean from language ca.s.settes bought from Pilgrim's bookstore in Kathmandu. He took a $250 course in high-alt.i.tude climbing at the Khumbu Climbing School outside Namche Bazaar near Everest.

In the spring of 2008, he climbed on Lhotse with his brother Chhiring, and in June, despite last-minute misgivings, they left for K2 with the Flying Jump team.

Now, that all seemed such a long time ago. As he waited in the dark above the three Koreans, Bhote wished he had listened to his instinct. His mind was so distracted by the cold that he wasn't sure what happened next. He didn't know whether there was an avalanche or an icefall or whether the top screw had simply come away from where it was fixed.

The rope dropped suddenly and in a dark, roaring, confusing rush Bhote catapulted past the South Koreans.