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Howkins

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Yesterday evening, we left the doors of our tents unzipped at ABC while we read and listened to music, leaning out onto the tent platforms on our elbows to suck deep drafts of the crisp air and soak up an alpenglow view of the summit of K2. This evening, the doors of our tents are unzipped only a crack, just enough to furtively check the route each time the distant sound of an avalanche comes rumbling through the clouds. The low-lying wet shroud of white threatens to dump another six inches of snow on camp tonight, and the wind is pounding on the walls of the tents in fitful, insistent gusts.

Every forecasting service we followed prior to coming to K2 pinpointed this region as a "transition area," an area of unusually unstable weather. The only exceptions to this are when a high-pressure front moves in from the north, from China, and pushes the "transition zone" south toward the Bay of Bengal. Or when the high-pressure front retreats so far north that the weather is predictably bad, which is what has happened in the past week or so.

When a high-pressure front moves in from China, the good-weather window is typically signalled by strong north winds. And when the high-pressure front retreats, you can see the bank of clouds from the south pour over the Savoia Pass like a wave, or at least this is the local lore. After watching our barometers yo-yo for seven days, we are beginning to doubt that the weather is following any reliable pattern.

Our only consolation is that it is still very early in the season (the earliest summit of K2 from the north side was on July 29th, with all of the rest of the summits occurring between August 4 and 20).

Seven days at ABC has, of course, left us all with a surplus of energy. Ziggy went all the way down to Camel Dump two days ago to round up goats for our July Fourth "feast," and returned to ABC with the meat on the same day. (This is a record round-trip distance, even for the porters.) Today, Jeff Alzner spent part of the day lengthening the straps on his crampons to accommodate his larger One Sport boots, and teaching the cooks how to use the Outback Ovens (pizza and cheesecake for dinner tomorrow, yippee!). Fred is tinkering with the ICOM HAM radio system (call sign BT0 QGL) in his tent. Wayne soloed a portion of a four-pitch ice flow on the ridge next to ABC yesterday.

I have completely exhausted all of the reading material I brought, so I have been neurotically trimming excess ounces off of my gear: cutting unnecessary inches from the straps on my pack, scrounging half-empty rolls of toilet paper from the cook, removing extra labels from clothing, transferring emergency high-altitude medicines to little Ziploc bags, hacking half the handle off my toothbrush.

Patience is a game, and in the end, everything we do is calculated to take as much time as possible, and to minimize the risk of interpersonal conflict in an already volatile atmosphere.

Possibly the only event of any consequence this week has been a meeting with the Chinese team leaders yesterday. Jeff Alzner, Mike, Fred, Jay, and I ambled down for lunch at around 2pm, and spent most of the afternoon discussing various logistical details: radio calls, the location of ropes that need to be carried up to Camp 2, strategies for avoiding congestion at Camps 1 and 4, etc. The Chinese tents are large, four-man domes that will not fit easily on the tiny ledge in the bergschrund at Camp 1, so we have agreed to give them two of our Mountain Hardwear Trango tents— two tents already stashed at Camp 1. They have agreed to carry one of their four-man tents to Camp 2 in exchange. So far, it looks as though we will be cooperating closely with them in fixing ropes to Camp 4, and hopefully in reaching the summit.

Now, if only the weather would be so amicable, we could put some of this excess energy to better use.

— Heidi Howkins, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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