Part 19 (1/2)
By now my taxi driver, a young man from Afghanistan, had arrived.
I asked Van Rooijen if his wife was with his son but he said no, it was her night off. He was in charge.
”But she must be in the house.”
”No, in Utrecht.”
I wondered how long the boy, about a year old, had been crying.
Van Rooijen sold me a book about his expedition to K2 in 2006 and I left.
The taxi driver, a doctor, had been watching all of this. ”He is a focused man, if I may say so, egocentric,” he said as we drove away toward the highway in the dark. I had to agree.
Still, Van Rooijen had given me insight into mountaineering psychology. Before I left, he had said something unsettling. Leaning back in his chair, he shook his head. ”Shame about Marco, though, that he got it all wrong. He was exhausted. His mind was obviously gone. He may have...exaggerated.”
He was referring to the story that Confortola had recounted on the train from Rome to Milan: the struggle beside Gerard McDonnell to free the two trapped South Koreans and Jumik Bhote; McDonnell subsequently wandering away in a hypoxic haze; his subsequent death in the avalanche. It was one of the most devastating chapters of the entire tragedy. But recently, McDonnell's family had begun to dispute it.
Confortola stuck tenaciously to his story, but McDonnell's family put forth a rival account, the rewriting led by Annie Starkey, McDonnell's partner in Alaska. She could not believe that McDonnell would walk away from the trapped climbers, no matter what pressure his mind and body were under. In fact, she insisted it was McDonnell who had stayed and Marco Confortola who had climbed down. It was not McDonnell whom Confortola saw killed in the avalanche but instead another climber entirely, Karim Meherban, Hugues d'Aubarede's high-alt.i.tude porter. She had photographs she believed showed Karim on the top of the serac before he fell. McDonnell had freed the trapped mountaineers and was descending behind them when he was thrown to his death by a separate avalanche.
For evidence, Starkey relied, among other things, on a radio call that Pemba Gyalje said he had received from Pasang Bhote. In the call, according to Gyalje, the Sherpa reported having reached the trapped climbers and that he was guiding them back down toward Camp Four, just minutes before they were swept away in the serac collapse. Pasang also said he had seen a climber in a red and black suit following behind. In Gyalje and Starkey's view, this was Gerard McDonnell, who had just freed the Koreans and Jumik Bhote.
When I sought out the opinion of Chris Klinke, the American climber who had been closely involved in coordinating the rescue attempt from Base Camp, he said, ”I don't believe Gerard freed the Koreans; they had been hanging there for twenty-four hours, and you don't just get up and walk down after that, though he may have rescued Jumik Bhote. I believe however it was Gerard that Marco saw killed.”
I also called Michael Kodas, a climber and author who writes about mountaineering and who knew some of the people involved in the tragedy. He said he had studied the photographs of the serac and Bottleneck on the morning of August 2, purportedly taken by Pemba Gyalje and published on the website ExplorersWeb, which Starkey claimed showed Gerard working to free the climbers. But Kodas was unconvinced. The narrative Starkey and ExplorersWeb had imposed on them was just ”too perfect,” he said. In a follow-up email, he said that the ”evidence-Pemba's supposition that the man described in a radio call from a now-dead colleague was Gerard, tiny dots in photos that can't be identified for certain as climbers, much less as specific climbers engaged in a rescue, and a faint line in the top of the glacier-one of scores of such marks-was inadequate ”to contradict the description of the only living eyewitness to the events,” Marco Confortola.
It is possible that McDonnell stayed or returned after Marco Confortola descended and helped the two Korean climbers and Jumik Bhote begin their journey down. If it is true, it could be one of the most selfless rescue attempts in the history of high-alt.i.tude mountaineering. Confortola would be right in his speech in Rome to say McDonnell deserved at least part of his medal. Even the fact that, in Confortola's account, McDonnell stayed for one and a half hours alongside the Italian to try to free the climbers is unimaginably brave. It sits alongside other acts of heroism over those three days, such as Chhiring Dorje's descent tied to Little Pasang, Fredrik Strang and Eric Meyer's ascent to try to resuscitate Dren Mandic, the decision by Pemba Gyalje to retrieve Marco Confortola. And, perhaps most of all, the willing climb by Big Pasang Bhote, and behind him by Chhiring Bhote, into the terrifying dangers of the Bottleneck to reach their cousin and brother Jumik, only for Big Pasang to lose his life.
It is a terrible sadness that McDonnell died. It is made worse that we will never know for sure about those last minutes of his life, just as we will never know for certain what Big Pasang found at the top of the Bottleneck.
This was the point in the story about which there was sharpest disagreement, but it was not the only one. In piecing together the tragedy, I had expected a clear narrative but I found myself in some postmodern fractured tale. For example, I put it to the Serbs that in the final ascent to the summit, their HAP had turned around and that important equipment he was carrying was left behind below Camp Four. They retorted that this was ridiculous. The lack of equipment for the summit bid was someone else's fault. Chhiring Dorje, the Sherpa in the American expedition, told me how he caught Wilco van Rooijen when the Dutchman slipped on his way up in the Bottleneck, and several others corroborated this version of events; but Van Rooijen reacted with surprise when I asked him about the incident. Many people I have interviewed claimed that it was under the Korean team's influence that the ropes were set low before the Bottleneck and that their climbers were responsible for the extremely slow progress across the Traverse. But when I caught up with Go Mi-sun and Kim Jae-soo in a guesthouse in Islamabad, they claimed that the ropes on the Bottleneck had been set too far to the right-this had nothing to do with the Korean team and it was this that had caused the delay. And the real reason for the late descent was that exhausted climbers from other expeditions were using their ropes on the way down and holding everybody else up.
There were several more points of disagreement-not surprising given the fact that there were so many strong characters on the mountain with different points of view, and then there is the trick that lack of oxygen can play on memory at 20,000 feet above sea level.
Fortunately, in most cases the differences were a matter of shading. Most people agreed on the significant points, and a clear story emerged.
Ten months after the accidents I flew to Pakistan, intending to travel to K2, still unclear after all my conversations as to why people would risk their lives on such a mountain. The Taliban was intensifying its insurgency and the country seemed in uproar; climbing K2 at this time meant traveling through a nation at war.
One hot night, I crept out of Islamabad in a white Toyota mini-van, sitting beside six climbers who were also heading north to the mountains-in their case, to Gasherbrum I and II, two peaks near K2. We followed the Karakoram Highway, skirting the Swat Valley where the Pakistani Army was launching its latest b.l.o.o.d.y offensive. From Askole, we trekked six days east surrounded by the cold solitude of the Baltoro glacier to K2 Base Camp.
In the frigid morning, my heart beating wildly from the alt.i.tude and exhaustion, I gazed up two miles in the sky, trying to make out the serac's cruel, jagged outline. My seven porters, fearful of avalanches, and superst.i.tious about this place, clattered impatiently around me, eager to leave these alt.i.tudes. Finally, in the presence of this awesome mountain, I considered its reputation for death, the group of people who had challenged it, and the questions that had filled my mind ever since I wrote the first story in the New York Times New York Times about the disaster. about the disaster.
K2 was terrifically beautiful-its beauty exceeding anything I had expected. Yet, still the questions remained. Why had they come? Why had I come? For me, their story possessed an archetypal force, specific to their time and location and the personalities involved, but also basic and timeless.
They had broken out of comfortable lives to venture to a place few of us dare go in our lives. They had confronted their mortality, immediately and up close. Some had even come back to K2 after serious injury in earlier years, attracted like flies to the light to some deeper meaning about themselves, human experience, and human achievement.
In return, K2 had required from them heroism and selflessness and responsibility. It had also laid bare fatal flaws and staggering errors.
I thought about Rolf Bae waiting below the summit for his wife-forever waiting now.
I thought of Pasang Bhote, doing his duty by his clients and climbing back along the Traverse to reach Jumik Bhote and the other trapped men.
Some had emerged from the ordeal; others had perished. All had burned brightly in their lives.
NOTES.
In researching No Way Down No Way Down, I relied heavily on interviews with the climbers and their families, friends, and colleagues. Unless indicated otherwise, all of the following interviews were conducted in person: Qudrat Ali, Skardu, Pakistan, June 2009, also by email, April, June 2009; Judy Aull, by telephone, February 2009; Alan Arnette, July 2009; Barbara Baraldi, Rome, Milan, Valfurva, November 2008, and by telephone, January, March, June 2009; Chhiring Bhote, interview by local stringer, Tilak Pokharel, Kathmandu, January 2009; Chuck Boyd, by telephone, December 2009; Serge Civera, by phone, April 2009; Marco Confortola, Rome, Milan, Valfurva, December 2008, also by telephone, August 2008, and by fact-checker Elettra Fiumi in New York via telephone, December 2009; Agostino da Polenza, by email, December 2009; Kurt Diemberger, by telephone December 2009; Chhiring Dorje, New York, January 2010, and Kathmandu, January 2009, with local stringer Tilak Pokharel, and by telephone, December 2008; Mine Dumas, Lyon, France, January 2009; Milivoj Erdeljan, interview by email, December 2008, and in Belgrade, Serbia, by local reporter Alisa Dogramadzieva; Mike Farris, January 2010; Pat Falvey, Ireland, August 2008, and by telephone, July 2009; Donatella Fioravanti, by email, May 2009; Yan Giezendanner, Chamonix, France, January 2009; Go Mi-sun, and in Seoul, January 2009, by local reporter Peter Chang (Islamabad, June 2009) Yannick Graziani, by telephone, December 2009; Maurice Isserman, by telephone, April 2009; Kim Jae-soo, Seoul, 2008, by local reporter Peter Chang, and Islamabad, June 2009; Chris Klinke, interviews by phone, November 2008, August, September, October, November, December 2009; Michael Kodas, by telephone and email, October 2009; Eric Meyer, Denver, Colorado, December 2008, and by phone and email, December 2008, and April, October, and December 2009, January 2010; Nicolas Mugnier, Chamonix, France, January 2009; Lars Flato Nessa, Stavanger, Norway, January 2009, and by telephone and email, October, November, December 2009 and January 2010; Bruce Normand, by email, January 2010; Jerome O'Connell, Kilcornan, Ireland, August 2008; Virginia O'Leary, New York, April 2009, and by telephone and email January, July, and December 2009; Asghar Ali Porik, Islamabad, Pakistan, June 2009; Phil Powers, Denver, Company, December 2008 and by telephone and email, May 2009; Nick Rice, interviews by phone, from K2 Base Camp, August 5, 2009, and by phone November 2008 and January 2009; n.a.z.ir Sabir, interview by email, December 2009; Bjorn Sekkesaeter, interview by email, December 2008, December 2009; Andy Selter, by phone, December 2009; Sajjad Shah, Islamabad, June 2009; Cecilie Skog, Denver, Colorado, December 2008; Jelle Staleman, by telephone, December 2008; Annie Starkey, by email, October and November 2009; Fredrik Strang, interviews by phone, December 2008, April 2009, June 2009; Christian Trommsdorff, by phone, December 2009; Cas van de Gevel, Utrecht, the Netherlands, January 2009 and by email and phone, December 2009; Maarten van Eck, Kilcornan, Ireland, August 2008, and by phone, December 2008; Roeland van Oss, Lyon, France, January 2009; Wilco van Rooijen, Voorst, the Netherlands, January 2009, and by email, December 2009; Philippe Vernay, Lyon, France, January 2009; Raphaele Vernay, Lyon, France, January 2009; Paul Walters, by email, December 2009; Chris Warner, by telephone, February 2010; Predrag Zagorac, by telephone, December 2008, and in person with local stringer/reporter Alisa Dogramadzieva, Belgrade, Serbia; Alberto Zerain, Subillana-Gasteiz, near Bilbao, Spain, January 2009, and by email, December 2009.
For perhaps understandable reasons, two of the climbers, Pemba Gyalje and Pasang Lama, did not agree to an interview. Pemba's friend Gerard McDonnell had died and Little Pasang had lost friends. As a result, some parts of the story are weighted away from them more than I would have liked, especially in the case of Gyalje, who was a pivotal figure. However, I managed to see filmed video evidence Gyalje gave in Islamabad in August 2008, and which was provided for me by Annie Starkey.
PROLOGUE.
The confused departure from Camp Four in the early hours of August 1 was described to me by many people, including Eric Meyer, Nick Rice, Alberto Zerain, and Chhiring Dorje. These moments, and other parts of the story, were captured to differing degrees by some early and excellent magazine treatments of the 2008 accidents. These early accounts include: Michael Kodas's ”A Few False Moves,” Outside Magazine Outside Magazine (September 2008); Freddie Wilkinson's ”Perfect Chaos,” (September 2008); Freddie Wilkinson's ”Perfect Chaos,” Rock and Ice Rock and Ice (December 2008); and Matthew Power's ”K2: The Killing Peak,” (December 2008); and Matthew Power's ”K2: The Killing Peak,” Men's Journal Men's Journal (November 2008). (November 2008).
Meyer's Talus cold-weather mask warmed and added moisture to the air he was breathing-important because at alt.i.tude the air is especially cold and dry. The volume of air breathed per minute increases with alt.i.tude, and this also adds to the dryness of a climber's airways-causing mountaineers' well-known ”Khumbu cough.”
The description of the ropes situation is drawn from interviews with Wilco van Rooijen, Chris Klinke, Cecilie Skog, and Lars Nessa, among others.