DISPATCHES

Davis

In Baffin Island, the thing is cold and polar bears. In Patagonia, the thing is high winds and bad weather. In the former Soviet Republic, the thing is thieving horsemen and poison vodka. In Pakistan, the thing is... well, there are a lot of things.

Most sensible climbers do their best to avoid these kinds of things by enjoying the lifetimes' worth of climbing around their home countries, maybe crossing continents occasionally to check out a really super area they've heard about. Other, more stupid climbers like me, have an uncontrollable need to go off in search of newer and weirder things that will make climbing even more inconvenient than it already is.

At the risk of offending my three wonderful partners on this trip, I will take the liberty of including them in the latter category. This trip to the Kondus is chockful of "things." The one thing that springs to mind at the moment, though, is being sick. Because being sick has been my main activity for the last four days. I have come to the sad conclusion that it's not possible to climb in Pakistan without getting sick at some point in the journey. And not just sick — Sick.

When Dave got sick at the start of the trip, I was afraid. Dave is one of the tougher, more stoic people I know, and he was so sick he could barely speak for days. When Jimmy got sick, while Dave was still recovering, I got really scared. Jimmy is the type who has to make an effort not to smile. He was so sick, I basically didn't see him for two days. I think he crawled under a rock somewhere.

You always think it won't happen to you... I had the good timing to get sick the day before we were ready to do a final haul and move up onto the wall. Not wanting to hold things up, I chose to believe that one day of rest would be enough, and then informed myself that I felt fine to do a day of space hauling and jumaring. Not!!

After our haul day, I spent two days crawling back and forth like a crippled ant on the dirt ledge at Camp 1, trying to find a shady spot to suffer in. At first, festering in a portaledge seemed bearable. But then I discovered that if I scraped out a coffin-shaped flat spot in the dirt, I gained the convenience of merely turning my head to the side when I needed to throw up.

However, shortly after dark, the mosquitoes arrived. Don't ask me why there are mosquitoes 1500 feet up a bone-dry granite tower when there are none at base camp, a stone's throw from the river. But there they were. Trapped and defenseless, I spent the whole night in feverish visions of malaria, feebly turning my head from side to side to save myself. When dawn broke, I made a superhuman effort to gather my strength, and crawled back into the portaledge.

While I became acquainted with the joys of Camp 1, the guys fixed some pitches up the massive dihedral above. I was too sick to even be jealous. Today I began to show vague but slow signs of recovery, Jimmy was flirting with a relapse, and Brady was beginning to wonder if his turn was coming.

Unfortunately, Tahir Tower is south facing, and this route is starting to redefine hot. So in the spirit of obeying fate, we decided to come back to base camp for a few days of recovery, in hopes of being able to go back up with even more water and four healthy climbers. Ah, adventure...

— Steph Davis, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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