DISPATCHES

Howkins

"Do not," a famous high-altitude climber once warned me, "ever make the mistake of trying to write about why you climb." In the priesthood of high-altitude climbing, trying to explain why an otherwise sane individual would sacrifice four months with family, friends, and the luxury of porcelain toilets for an opportunity to suffer on a remote and snowy peak is like, well, like trying to explain who or what God is. You just don't do it. People who ask the question either already know the answer, or they don't.

Of course, there are those who try to write about it anyway. A skydiver friend of mine emailed me a beautiful example of such an attempt a couple of years ago. "We, as adventurers," he wrote, "are The Tested. Every single one of us has conquered our basic fears, performed under pressure, embraced life and survival with gusto. We are validating ourselves, measuring ourselves not against a relative scale of skill or merit, but against the absolutes of gravity and our own fragile existence."

The Tested. Embracing survival with gusto. Fragile existence. Wow, I thought, he's finally got it. I'll have to memorize this one for the next corporate speech.

But then the rats of doubt began to gnaw at my mind. What about the flashes of light that you can see when you're up above 24,000 feet, looking down on the Earth's atmosphere? What about learning to swear in nine different languages at Base Camp? What about the agony of losing fingers or toes or a partner at a high-altitude camp? What about squatting in the dust listening to camel drivers singing wailing Uyghur songs about brave lovesick men?

There are as many reasons to climb as there are climbers, and every expedition is different. George Leigh Mallory, the Everest climbing legend, answered the question, "Why climb Everest?" with the flippant now-famous quip, "Because it's there." Prior to the expedition, our answer to the hypothetical question, "Why climb K2 in Y2K?" was "Because it's STILL there."

Now, however, after 8 continuous days of movement and load carries, we are beginning to rethink that answer. The best way to answer the question, in my opinion, is a la 80's-style, via a poll. And so I conducted a poll of the team at lunch time today. Here are our top 10 responses to the "why" question:

1. To increase the likelihood of being transported by yetis or other extraterrestrial visitors to another world.
2. To experience conditions so extreme that you have a legitimate excuse to cook inside your tent, despite all the manufacturer warnings about asphyxiation and other nasty side effects.
3. To experience the Zen-like calm (Fred calls it "swimming in the void") that descends on you when you know that your pee bottle is full, and you've still got to pee.
4. To avoid credit card collectors.
5. To test the patience of your employer by taking a four-month vacation.
6. To discover what happens to your extremities when it's so cold that the water bottle you're hugging freezes inside your down suit, inside your down sleeping bag.
7. To experience the effects of the "K2000 diet plan", including excessive hair loss and muscle mass depletion.
8. To experience febrile hallucinations after 3 days of dehydration from a GI tract disorder.
9. Because "THEY'RE" not here.
10. Because it's better than watching the K2 movie.

— Heidi Howkins, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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