No Way Down_ Life And Death On K2 Part 14

Earlier, before dawn, he had confronted Big Pasang Bhote and Chhiring Bhote before they left Camp Four, urging them not to go back up into the Bottleneck to search for survivors. It was too dangerous. He suspected that Kim, the South Korean leader, was pus.h.i.+ng them to go up there because the three Koreans were missing-Park Kyeong-hyo, Kim Hyo-gyeong, and Hw.a.n.g Dong-jin. But the two Sherpas had told him they were going of their own free will. They wanted to go because Jumik Bhote had still failed to return.

Talking now to Meyer and Strang, Gyalje was adamant that they all should descend from Camp Four soon. None of them should stay at that alt.i.tude for many more hours, he said.

"We must go down," Gyalje said. "Before we lose more energy. The weather is also getting worse."

Meyer realized Gyalje could use some of his doctor's help. He shook some pills into Gyalje's hand, dexamethasone, dextroamphetamine, and 200 milligrams of Provigil. The capsules seemed to help; Gyalje soon seemed more alert. He said he was going back to his tent to rest.

The sun rose and Meyer and Strang went outside. At this alt.i.tude, the dawn was quick and already the sun's rays shone on the Bottleneck and the hanging glacier. The air temperature, which had dropped sharply during the night, had risen again and was a few degrees above freezing. They could see the slopes. A dozen or so climbers were standing around the tents-including Go and Kim and the six or seven members of the Korean B team, and the group of the other mountaineers who had been expecting to make a summit attempt today but had now called it off.

Everyone was staring up at the mountain. Meyer could see the day was going to be stunning again; the air was so clear. The sky arched over the summit. Crystals of snow seemed to jump across the waves of the Shoulder, where the wands and red flags Marco Confortola had set the day before fluttered in the breeze.

At about 7 a.m., Cecilie Skog and Lars Nessa walked over to the Americans' tent. Skog borrowed Strang's satellite phone to call their manager in Norway who was going to let Rolf Bae's parents know about his death.

She spoke of walking out a short way onto the Shoulder for a small ceremony to say good-bye to her husband properly. But at around 8 a.m., she, Nessa, and Stangeland set out for Base Camp, leaving their two tents standing.

Those who remained behind looked to see whether they could locate anyone beyond the Shoulder. The Bottleneck and the serac were a beautiful blue-gray. Up to the left of the serac, on its western edge, where the climbers had seen headlamps the previous night, the onlookers at Camp Four could now see black specks in the snow. They pointed, able to make out the specks with the naked eye but also staring through binoculars. The specks, they realized, could be bodies but they were not moving, except one. A single figure was standing alone in the snowfields above the serac. As they watched, the figure moved slowly through the snows to the right, zig-zagging higher and then descending again toward the lip of the serac. His mind must have gone, or he was panicking, for he was heading in the wrong direction if he was going to descend to the Traverse and come down the Bottleneck. After a short while, when clouds started to drift in, the mountaineers at Camp Four lost sight of the figure.

A few of the climbers took photographs. Strang shot some film. It had been so dark and cold during the night that forming a clear picture of what happened had been impossible. But now they counted who was missing: Van Rooijen, McDonnell, Confortola, Jumik Bhote, Hw.a.n.g, Kim, Park. There was still some uncertainty about Hugues d'Aubarede. His HAP, Karim Meherban, was also not accounted for.

Standing outside his tent, Meyer took out one of the Americans' radios and tried to make contact with anyone who was still up on the mountain and alive. He went up and down the frequencies, turning the k.n.o.b on top of the radio, even though he still did not know for sure who among those missing possessed a radio and who didn't. They believed that Gerard McDonnell wasn't carrying a radio or a satellite phone because they thought he had given his satphone to Pemba Gyalje at the summit. Wilco van Rooijen had only his Thuraya.

"This is Camp Four," Meyer said. "Do you hear us?"

He spun the dial around and listened to the static. Some of the others still had binoculars trained on the specks.

What if someone was alive but couldn't talk? What if they were frozen or in such a state of hypoxia that they couldn't speak?

"Press the talk b.u.t.ton if you hear us," Meyer said, hoping.

Still, nothing.

Strang had lit three burners and was melting snow just outside the tent to prepare water for anyone who came in. Survivors would need liquids quickly.

They were ready to go up to rescue people if there were signs of life, but so far they had none. They could not bring down a person unable to move on his own.

Among the climbers gathered around the tents, the sense grew that they were in the middle of something serious, an escalating tragedy beyond their power to cope. Cas van de Gevel stalked out of his tent. He looked exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot. He said he was going to search for Wilco van Rooijen and Gerard McDonnell, but Strang pointed out that he couldn't just run up into the Bottleneck without any idea of where they were likely to be.

"This is not a guided tour," added Meyer. "If there were one person, we could go get him. But there are nine missing."

Down in Base Camp, the Dutchman Roeland van Oss and the American Chris Klinke, who together were now leading the information gathering and setting up the emergency operations, made plans for people still in Camp Four to organize and send a rescue party into the Bottleneck. At the high camp, however, there was an overwhelming reluctance to go up. As far as Meyer and Strang could tell, they had no ropes, save those that were pinning down the tents. And they had only a single bottle of oxygen, which was the six-kilo bottle Chhiring Dorje had taken all the way to the summit and back again without using.

By 10 a.m., the serac and the Bottleneck were cut off from view as the weather turned. Gray clouds rolled over the summit and billowed around the great face of K2, closing around it like a curtain. The temperature plummeted again to minus twenty degrees or lower.

By noon, most of the climbers decided they had had enough and they couldn't wait any longer. Who knew what was going to happen to the weather next? Not to mention the fact that they had been above 26,000 feet for nearly forty-eight hours.

"We're going down," said Meyer. He knew it would be dark before they reached the base of the mountain.

The American team packed up their belongings but left their tent. A second American expedition had arrived at Base Camp and they had an agreement they would use Meyer's tent for their summit push.

Van de Gevel was still lying inside his tent. He was going to wait at Camp Four. Pemba Gyalje said that he would stay awhile as well, in case there were any survivors, but he wasn't going to wait for long.

"I stay for a few more hours but I come down today," he said.

The Koreans were also staying.

A group of five climbers led by Meyer and Strang came together on the slope outside Camp Four to begin their descent. Some of those who had come up a day late to try for a second night's summit attempt were disappointed that they had never gotten the chance because people had not turned back when they should have. They were not going to go for the summit while climbers were still missing.

The mountaineers had a big descent ahead and Meyer handed out a few more drugs-Provigil, dextroamphetamine-to give a kick to their systems. They left Chhiring Dorje's oxygen bottle with Gyalje along with a bag of resuscitation pills. One by one, they climbed down the last hundred yards of the Shoulder and over the brow onto the Abruzzi ridge.

Up on the great hump of the Shoulder, the two Sherpas Chhiring Bhote and Pasang Bhote scoured the area below the Bottleneck for the missing Korean climbers.

Just after noon, through the mist, they noticed something in the distance. Thirty or forty yards away, a climber was crawling on his hands and knees.

When they reached him, he wasn't making much sense. Pasang, who was carrying the radio, called Pemba Gyalje farther down the mountain. We have found someone! He is collapsed. We have found someone! He is collapsed.

They said the climber was wearing a green and black suit, and hearing this description, Gyalje realized the climber had to be the Italian, Marco Confortola.

He told the two Sherpas to get out of the Bottleneck area quickly and bring him down. But Pasang said the climber was out of the most dangerous area and they still planned to go higher to search for Jumik Bhote and the Koreans.

You climb up to bring this one down?

Gyalje thought about the Bottleneck, and the h.e.l.l he had survived the previous night.

Pemba?

Big Pasang and Chhiring said they were setting off.

Pemba relented. His teammates in the Dutch expedition were still missing. He wanted to find them. Okay. I come. I will bring the oxygen. Okay. I come. I will bring the oxygen.

Pemba Gyalje and Cas van de Gevel packed up and climbed out tentatively onto the wasteland of the Shoulder. They were following the same route over the snow they had climbed a day earlier. This time, Van de Gevel thought, he was without Wilco van Rooijen and Gerard McDonnell. He looked from side to side but he could not see his colleagues anywhere in the snows.

Occasionally, the mists above them parted, revealing the great summit slopes. At one point they saw two black figures moving several hundred feet above them. It was the two Sherpas from the South Korean expedition who had gone out to search the slopes.

Then the clouds came down again and Gyalje and Van de Gevel could see nothing.

Van de Gevel felt his body giving in. It had been a long few days. He stopped and said to Gyalje, "If I go onto the Bottleneck, I will never come back." Even for Wilco, he couldn't go on.

"We should not split up," said Gyalje.

"It will be safer," said Van de Gevel. "I am sorry."

The clouds were thick now, and the two men agreed that Van de Gevel would sit where he was and mark the way back to Camp Four for Gyalje. They each had a radio and could communicate if they got into any trouble. The Sherpa turned and climbed up into the mist.

The man in the black and luminous green climbing suit lay unconscious in the snow. His hands were folded behind his head. He wasn't wearing any big climbing gloves and his harness was half off. Pemba Gyalje saw that the snow was cut and churned up around him.

Gyalje took a photograph to record the state of the climber and then he took out the oxygen tank he had carried up and tried to rouse Confortola. As the gas began to flow into his body, Confortola struggled and pushed the mask away. Confortola had reached the summit of K2 without using supplementary oxygen, and even now he didn't want to diminish his accomplishment.

Gyalje forced the mask back over Confortola's mouth. Confortola stopped struggling. After a few minutes, taking gasps of air, he was able to stand.

Gyalje's top priority was to get the exhausted man down to Camp Four as quickly as possible. It was hard going-Confortola's feet were frozen, and Gyalje had to watch every step he took. Gyalje knew they had to keep him moving at a steady pace to be really sure they were out of the reach of the serac; he urged Confortola on.

As the two climbers struggled down the top of the Shoulder in the mist, Gyalje received another crackling radio call from Big Pasang Bhote, who was still about six hundred feet above them. Pasang had more news.

He had climbed to the top of the Bottleneck, Pasang told Gyalje, and there he had met up with the Sherpa Jumik Bhote and the two South Korean mountaineers who had been trapped on the ropes. They were injured but they had been able to make their way slowly across the Traverse. Incredibly, they were still alive. Big Pasang was now helping them to descend.

"We met at the top section of the couloir and we come down now together," Pasang told him. "There are three. Two Koreans. One Sherpa."

Gyalje listened to the report and could hardly believe it. It was the best news in the world. Jumik and the Koreans had survived!

"We come down, though we have no ropes," Bhote said on the radio.

Gyalje looked up in the direction of the mountain but the mist was so dense that he could see nothing beyond ten yards away. Somewhere up there Big Pasang was now helping the injured climbers down the Bottleneck.

The radio continued to crackle. Awkwardly, Gyalje paused with Confortola on the Shoulder and held the set close against his ear. Big Pasang had something else to tell his friend.

Bhote said he had seen, on the lower sections of the Traverse, a fourth climber following about ten yards behind the two Koreans and Jumik Bhote. But he said another part of the serac had collapsed and had killed him.

"Okay, Pemba, there is one member falling down from the Traverse, the lower section of the Traverse, because hit by serac," Pasang said on the radio.

Pasang said he had watched as the climber had fallen to his death.

Gyalje wanted to know who it was.

"Can you identify him?" said Gyalje.

"He had a red and black down suit."

Gyalje heard this description and his heart fell. He knew immediately who it was.

It could have been Karim Meherban, Hugues d'Aubarede's HAP, but in Gyalje's memory Meherban was wearing a pure red suit, like many of the other climbers on the mountain. Alberto Zerain had a red suit, but he had already descended. So did the Koreans but he didn't think the description fit them. Only one person had a red suit with black patches, and that was Gerard McDonnell.

"A red and black down suit. Definitely Gerard."

Gyalje's friend was dead. Gyalje was devastated. It was too much. The mountain was taking a heavy toll.

Holding Confortola securely on the slope, Gyalje put the radio up to his mouth and told Big Pasang to get out of the Bottleneck and bring Jumik Bhote and the two Koreans down as quickly as he could. It was too dangerous for anyone to be up there any longer.

We are below you. Come down.

It was going to be a hard task for the Sherpa to get them down safely with minimal equipment and he hoped they were going to be okay.

Five minutes after the radio call from Pasang, Marco Confortola was concentrating hard on climbing down the slope below the bottom of the Bottleneck when he felt Pemba Gyalje's hand on his arm pus.h.i.+ng him harder.

Up close beside him, Gyalje shouted that something terrible was about to happen.

"Run, run!" Gyalje screamed. "Go fast!"

Confortola moved his clumsy legs more quickly. He was exhausted but he tried to hurry. Gyalje, he realized, knew something that he did not.

Then, the world exploded. The serac was collapsing again.

Because the slopes were hidden in cloud, the two men could see nothing at first. But the roar grew louder and they realized an avalanche was spilling onto the Bottleneck. There was a second blast and another and they understood there were repeated icefalls. The avalanches punched down through the fog toward the two climbers, spitting out a great shower of ice and snow that was funneled and multiplied by the Bottleneck.

Struggling down the steep slope Confortola felt something slap hard into the back of his head and throw him forward. An oxygen bottle had been caught up in the avalanche and had been tossed down with the rest of the mess of ice and snow. Reeling from the blow, Confortola was convinced he was going to fall to his death, but as he toppled forward, Gyalje, who was still beside him, pulled Confortola back and pinned him against the snow, covering him with his own body until the rumbling stopped and the avalanche had pa.s.sed. It had missed them by just a couple of yards.

They had survived. Confortola owed his life to Gyalje's quick and brave action. But several yards below them, visible through the cold fog, four bodies were lying scattered on the top of the ice that had been swept down the mountain.

It was another scene of death. Gyalje and Confortola climbed lower toward the bodies, Gyalje helping Confortola navigate the big chunks of ice that littered the slope. When they came within a few yards, Confortola sat in the snow while Gyalje stepped across the slope to the bodies.

Watching him walk closer, Confortola could see that it was the climbers who had been trapped up at the other end of the Traverse. The climbers he and Gerard McDonnell had tried to save. They were tangled in ropes and lying on the ice, lifeless bundles in big jackets and climbing gear, the crampons on their boots sticking up in the air.

Big Pasang was also among them. He was dead. Gyalje had spoken to the Sherpa just a few minutes before the serac collapsed and now he was gone.

Gyalje took out his camera and shot some photographs of the dead. Then he returned to Confortola and helped him up and the two men started to climb down the Shoulder through the fog.

They had gone several yards when Confortola heard a voice calling from up above them on the Bottleneck. A person climbed down toward them, waving his arms to attract their attention.

They waited until Chhiring Bhote climbed down. He had accompanied Big Pasang on the rescue bid but he and the other Sherpa had become separated; while Big Pasang had climbed ahead up the Bottleneck, Chhiring had stopped to pick up some of the fixed lines off the lower slopes in case they needed them later. He was about eighty feet below Big Pasang when the avalanche occurred. When he heard the roar, he had screamed and unclipped his safety harness from the rope as the ice swept by. In that way, he had saved himself. He was close to a rump of large rocks, which had protected him.

The young Sherpa was crying as he stepped gingerly past the avalanche debris and joined Gyalje and Confortola.

They went down together, and farther down the slope two Korean climbers and Little Pasang came out to meet them. Near Camp Four, they met Cas van de Gevel.

"Come with me," the Dutchman said to Confortola, taking his arm.

Van de Gevel was disappointed that his friend Wilco van Rooijen, had not been located, but he was glad nevertheless to see Confortola.

As he was helped down, Confortola couldn't shake the sense that the mountain could have killed him three or four times by this point. It could still claim him, he knew, and he just wanted to get off its slopes.

The snow was falling more heavily, the clouds wrapping even more tightly around the peak. K2 seemed to be closing in on itself.

At Camp Four, he went directly to the Flying Jump tents to talk to the Korean leaders. Confortola told Go Mi-sun and Kim Jae-soo about his attempts to free the Korean climbers and Jumik Bhote from the ropes. He related what they knew about the deaths of the Korean climbers at the base of the Bottleneck. But Confortola couldn't speak much. He was in tears, and as they heard the news Kim and Go cried, too.