DISPATCHES

Heilprin

	click for dispatch photos

Waiting for a break in the weather, climbers plan to spend a long day establishing fixed lines to Camp 1 at about 20,000 feet on K2's North Ridge - and avoid the type of monstrous avalanche that nearly hit a team of climbers this week.

Saturday brought sunny weather, but since it generally takes at least a day for the slopes to become safe again after loading with snow, the entire team rested up at Advanced Base Camp at 16,800 feet. An avalanche that appeared as if it were triggered by snow, not a broken serac, tumbled several thousand feet down the face in mid-afternoon.

There was time to dry out, wash hair and clothes, stare up at the North Ridge and work on bouldering problems near the array of Mountain Hardwear tents. And with supply lines stretched down into the valley, the snow the past week also has allowed team members to carry up much-needed food and gear from a lower camp at 14,900 feet.

"We have a nice toehold on the mountain right now," said Paul Teare, who will lead the next rope-fixing team with Wayne Wallace, Ivan Ramirez and Gill James. "The plan is to fix as much as rope as we have in our packs and to find a suitable place for Camp 1."

At first, the route was to be right of an ice cliff. That is the most direct way, and it provides a uniformly easy angle for load hauling. But due to the avalanche — a big chunk of the ice cliff that swept down 100 feet away from a trio of climbers and dusted them — the route now leads up a safer path toward the left. It involves two short but steep sections of ice, making load hauling a bit more difficult.

The site of the first of four camps along the 12,000-foot ridge has yet to be determined, but the options include digging out tent platforms on top of or beneath a rock flatiron in the middle of the large ice face that defines the first half of the route.

"The higher we can place Camp 1 the better," another climbing leader, Mike Bearzi, said, "because climbers will always be at their peak strength on that first day."

After an initial burst of climbing earlier in the week — allowing the expedition to set fixed lines to within 100 meters of Camp 1 — climbing teams have been shut down because of four days of snow blanketing the mountain towering over camp. The extra time has allowed some to adapt to the challenge. "At first it was very intimidating, but the more you look at it the more you get used to it," said Drew Hansen.

Occasional sun has loosened a series of avalanches on slopes in all directions high above, but relatively distant from, camp, only to be replaced by more storms lasting most of the day or night. The hope is that the next three or four days will bring clear skies to possibly extend the route as far as Camp 2, which would be in a fairly established site at about 22,500 feet.

"That could put the expedition a week or two ahead of schedule, but it's foolish to say that because the snow can set you right back," Jeff Alzner, the expedition leader, says. "We're optimistic, but we cannot afford to lose a day on this route."

Reconnaisance on the route began Monday. A cache of gear was established at the bottom of the route and wands were set through the glacier. The next day, five climbers, Bearzi, Fred Ziel, Ziggy Emme, Jay Sieger and National Geographic Director of Photography Jeff Rhoads, led the way toward possible sites for Camp 1.

That meant navigating through two sets of seracs. The consensus was to shoot for the right side of a lower serac. Ziel was several pitches up, each about 300 feet in length, when the avalanche struck at about 9am.

"There was the big crack, and I saw part of it peel away, the high part of the serac, planted both tools and put my head down, and waited for the inevitable," he recalled. "Then it just whizzed by, a miss as good as a mile — shaken not stirred. It was noise and lots of air," he said. "In retrospect, we made a good judgement about how the serac would fall, because it missed us."

Furthest away from the slide were Sieger and Bearzi, who managed to fire off three photos. Afterward, Ziel kept leading. The next closest to Ziel were Rhoads and Emme, who were in the middle of a wide-open slope as the snow blotted out the sky.

"I looked left and right, but there was no place to hide. I just sunk my axes in and put my head down and prayed," Emme said. "I thought it would hit. It was pretty damn big. It didn't take us long after that to take the ropes down and switch directions."

— John Heilprin, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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