July 18: SUBSTANCE In the past week, Paul, Chris W. and I had a good acclimatization trip. We spent two nights at Camp 1, then two nights at Camp 2. After a short climb of 50m or so above C2, we decided we’d had enough and headed back to BC. The biggest problem we have is that our tent sites suck. There is literally only one truly flat tent site during the first vertical mile of ascent, and that site isn’t ours. As a result, our sleep suffers. The wind was quite strong during two of our four nights, and we spent a lot of time on our backs.
Now, life is good after three nights in Base Camp. Simply being able to stretch out and sleep at full length is a major luxury. We’re about ready to head back up, but the weather gods are not happy. We need to spend two nights at C3 (7300m or 24,000 ft) to be physiologically prepared to get to the summit without oxygen.
We’ve had two big meetings among most of the teams to coordinate our ‘summit strategies.’ While these meetings are overall quite positive, it’s very clear that some teams are living in, shall we say, an alternate universe where summit attempts can be planned 10 days in advance. Rather than planning an attempt like you would book an airplane flight, you have to be a guerilla fighter and be ready to strike at a moment’s notice, whenever the mountain weather shows a weakness.
STYLE The climbing style used by many teams is quite archaic and frankly disappointing. K2 was first climbed without oxygen 30 years ago and it is generally not used by real climbers. However, there are many bottle of oxygen stored on the hill for the summit attempt.
If you use oxygen, you generally need high-altitude porters (HAPs) to carry the bottles up. This year there are many porters, both Nepali Sherpas and Pakistanis, and most of work of establishing the route (on the Abruzzi Ridge) has fallen to them. Given modern lightweight equipment and rope, there is no particular need for teams to employ HAPs in most circumstances.
The HAPs have also been responsible for installing the fixed rope on our route. This rope is used to both ascend and descend the route. The rope eliminates the actual climbing, but it doesn’t make going up or down physically easy. The route is a constant 46% angle with almost no flat spots, much steeper than your typical high peak.
We are not using oxygen. We are not using HAPs (we do have one Sherpa as a team member, not a HAP) We are using fixed ropes.
Finally, we are providing our share of the rope and helping to maintain the route. I’ll talk about parasites (as Messner called them) in a later post. These individuals use the ropes (and often tents, gear, gas, and food) of other climbers without contributing anything themselves. Luckily, there are few on our route this year.
It’s snowing out for the first time in a while. The weather for the next week is: crappy. So lots of sitting around is likely on my part. We may go to Advance Base Camp tomorrow just to get in a walk. Right now my feet are cold, my hands are cold, and Rage Against the Machine is playing in the Mess Tent. Send me an email if you have my address, because I’ll surely have time to read them.
Mike