One Mountain Thousand Summits
At a little past midnight, on August 1, 2008, a small company of men and women roused in their high camp at seventy-eight hundred meters on a snow-laden ridge deep in the crinkled topography of the Karakoram mountain range, in northeast Pakistan. Outside, the night sky was cold and quiet and clear of cloud cover. Stars shone overhead, and the twinkling lights of the trailbreaking party could be faintly seen, already moving upward, bound for the 8,611-meter summit of K2, the second-highest point on planet Earth.
Their tents were clustered together, pitched so closely that it was hard to maneuver in and out of the vestibule entrance of one shelter without brushing against the adjacent dwelling or tripping over an unseen cord that guyed the structure to the mountain. The thin fabric walls did nothing to suppress the chorus of hollow coughs and isobutane stoves that sputtered and hacked in the darkness, punctuated by the occasional sound of a sleeping bag zipper or the rustle of nylon.
It was to be one of the single largest blitzes in the history of the mountain, and a more pluralistic group of modern climbers could hardly be imagined. They came from France, Italy, Ireland, Sweden, Serbia, Norway, the Netherlands, the United States, South Korea, Pakistan, and Nepal: More than thirty individuals from seven separately permitted expeditions occupied the final bivouac, only a day's climb from the summit. They had invested months of time, thousands of dollars, and made untold personal sacrifices just to be there, to have this chance. With few exceptions, they were ambitious, successful men in the prime of their lives.
Some, like Wilco van Rooijen, the outspoken, prematurely gray leader of the Dutch Norit team, and Kim Jae-su, the taciturn, no-nonsense head of the Korean expedition, were devoted professionals with large corporate sponsors backing their climbs. But others, like Lars Nessa, a lanky nurse from Norway, Cas van de Gevel, a mild-mannered carpenter from Holland, and Gerard McDonnell, a barrel-chested Irish electronic engineer, were skilled amateurs who had worked long months to save enough money to attempt K2. Hugues D'Aubarede, a compact insurance agent from Lyons, France, had changed his travel arrangements at the last possible moment, delaying his plane flight home to have one more crack at the summit. Two women joined the otherwise male-dominated summit push. Cecilie Skog, an attractive professional adventurer with a shock of curly, sandy-blond hair, climbed with her husband, Rolf Bae, as part of the Norwegian team. Go Mi-yeong, from South Korea, was an accomplished competition rock climber who had recently turned her attention to high-altitude climbing. Partnered with Kim Jae-su, she had summited four different eight-thousand-meter peaks in just over a year: Everest, Broad Peak, Shishapangma, and Lhotse.
Inside each shelter, all was covered in a glittering universe of ice crystals, formed as the climbers' moist breath condensed and froze in the arctic temperatures. Most climbers sat facing one another, their backs leaning against the taut tent cloth, a lit stove between them. A carpet of Ensolite foam pads covered the floor; equipment and clothing littered almost every available space. The cramped environs were impossible to keep organized, and if one climber needed to stretch his legs, or change position, it had to be carefully choreographed with his tentmates so as not to inadvertently kick anyone or knock over the stove.
In slow, uncoordinated movements, they dressed in thick one-piece down suits with balaclavas, hats, hoods, and headlamps. Spare mittens, ski goggles, sunblock, and a few packets of energy gel were placed near the door. Perhaps a folded flag or small memento was added to the pile. Then all that remained to be done was to top off the last of the insulated bottles with lukewarm water, poured ever so carefully from small titanium pans.
They came from all walks of life, and all corners of the globe, and were motivated by a varying mix of personal challenge and professional gain -- just as the challenge of the world's highest mountains has always attracted complex and compulsive personalities. Indeed, the only thing that could be said without hesitation about all of them was this: They were obsessed. And each climber knew the final challenge -- summit day -- would be the most severe.
Land at midday, during business hours, after an overnight flight from Europe or North America, and the first thing you notice on leaving Tribhuvan International Airport is the noise and condition of the road: a fusillade of horns -- blapping, tapping, popping, poking -- in chaotic crescendos as the traffic weaves back and forth between potholes and pedestrians. Kathmandu is situated in the middle of a broad, terraced valley surrounded by jungle hills. It is forty-five hundred feet above sea level, and roughly the same latitude as Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There are palm trees, banana trees, monkeys, and dozens of emaciated, sullen cows wandering the streets and idly sniffing at garbage.
Ask a shopkeeper, taxi driver, or streetside huckster where he is from, and he will give you the easiest answer.
Kathmandu, of course.
But be careful. Kathmandu Valley is at once a civilization centuries old, and a city still in its infancy. Before 1950, Nepal was ruled by a tightly controlled Hindu aristocracy. Understandably weary of the imperial presence to their south, they kept the borders of their mountain kingdom mostly closed. At the same time, the Ranas enjoyed such a lavish lifestyle that, during the first half of the twentieth century, the economic gap between Kathmandu's elite and its poor widened. There was little business to lure the rural inhabitants of Nepal to the city; anyone who chose to seek their fortune in a far-off city moved to India. The people around Kathmandu Valley rebelled in 1950, and King Tribhuvan, a Shah, was annointed ruler the next year. The first motor road linking Kathmandu to the outside world was opened in 1956. In 1974, Tribhuvan brought regularly scheduled international air transport to the country. The population of Kathmandu tripled in twenty years.
And so, there is always a second answer to the question. You just have to rephrase the query: Where is your village home?
It was the last week of September: high season in Thamel, the tourism capital and red-light district of Kathmandu. I sat in a corner of the lobby of the Hotel Marshyangdi, watching as a party of German trekkers clad in matching fleece jackets assaulted the concierge.
"But my luggage is missing. Lufthansa has lost it," one exclaimed at a decibel level that was impossible to ignore. "How can I trek to Mount Everest base camp with no trekking equipment?"
I knew Chhiring Dorje the moment he walked through the door.
He wore a sleek soft-shell jacket, a cleanly pressed T-shirt tucked into Schoeller hiking pants, and a pair of Salomon trail-running sneakers.
Chhiring shook my hand aggressively, laughing as he did so, and said in broken English: "Namaste, Fredrick! How are you? You like we can go get some tea?" He stood perhaps five feet, eight inches tall, but had broad shoulders and a thick torso. My first reaction was that of my inner climber, sizing him up: This guy is built like a brick shit house.
I had suggested over e-mail that we meet up for a beer or coffee. Nodding toward the door, Chhiring immediately began to retreat from the bustling hotel lobby, motioning me to follow. I almost tripped into a thickset kid with a mop of dark hair that flopped over his forehead, almost touching the wire-rimmed glasses he wore.
The one-lane street was flooded with motorbikes and early evening shoppers. I skipped a half step to catch up with Chhiring. The Asian kid was following close behind. Chhiring glanced over his shoulder.
"This is my brother, Ngawang," he said by way of introduction.
Five minutes later we had found a quiet table at the Rum Doodle Bar & Restaurant. The Rum Doodle is a Thamel institution, the traditional venue for Western climbers and trekkers to engage in a little pretrip debauchery or gorge on well-prepared, Western-style meals after returning from the hills. It was not quite six p.m., however, and the place was still deserted. A waiter approached and Chhiring ordered tea for the three of us.
If you believe what Gerard McDonnell's friends and teammates say about him, it was probably preordained from the moment they found the distressed Korean team that Gerard would not leave them so long as he believed they could be saved. Marco's testimony describes lowering the "Korean leader," but he mentioned few precise details about the other two, who were presumably also tangled in rope. And in earlier statements, the Italian painted an even more desperate scene. "I tried everything and more, but I simply couldn't do it, could not take them back home. In my role of mountain rescuer I felt worthless ... useless," one article in the Guardian quoted him as saying. Based on either version, it's clear that Jumik and the Koreans were not entirely freed from their entanglements when Marco decided he could do no more and continued his descent. Gerard McDonnell was by temperament a problem-solver and by training an engineer. He was also methodical, persistent and safety-conscious. His outgoing personality, his love of music, family, friends, and travel, were rooted in one more trait that was the bedrock of who he was: unfiltered empathy for all human beings. All of these elements of his character must have combined in what happened next.
There are myriad ways Gerard might have finished the job. Matt Szundy describes one simple step-by-step process by which Gerard could have transferred the load. First, he would have had to determine which rope within the tangle needed to be unloaded. Then he would have ascended to the anchor point above, and tied a three-wrap friction hitch around the taunt line. This would be connected to a spare section of rope, which in turn would be connected by a munter hitch to the anchor. With a new load-bearing system thus created, Gerard could then cut the tensioned line above the friction hitch, and lower the climbers using the munter hitch with the spare line.
Regardless of how he did it, there would have been few words exchanged between them as he worked. Neither Jumik or the Koreans spoke fluent English under the best of circumstances; after thirty hours above eight thousand meters communication would be reduced to all but the most basic messages. By then, very little needed to be said. There was only the persistent pull of gravity, the involuntary panting of each man as his body yearned for more oxygen and a parched dryness burned in his throat, and the taunt rope that bound them all together.
We know from Tsering Bhote's story that Big Pasang never went much higher than the top of the Bottleneck. Tsering was close below, still close enough that they could communicate by shouting. He waited on the right side of the couloir, just beneath the Bottleneck itself, and watched as an intermittent whiteout swirled around -- the landscape awash in the snowless, colorless vapor of cloud.
Big Pasang never quite met Gerard McDonnell. But he also must have been close, close enough that through the openings in the whiteout Big Pasang could see another human form descending the lower section of the traverse, just to his left. He was coming down last, behind his teammates, in the traditional position of a guide or the strongest member of the team.
If Big Pasang could see Gerard, it is possible that Gerard saw Big Pasang. He probably wouldn't have recognized him; he would have noticed only another person, that someone had arrived to help them down. For a moment, he might have felt some shiver of warmth, knowing that they were not alone.
Minutes later, Tsering saw them climbing down in a row toward him. They were roped together and Jumik was in the lead, with Big Pasang behind him, and then the foreigners.
Tsering saw the accident with his own eyes.